my bed in hell, behold, thou art
there." If God is in hell, there must be mercy and hope there,
some gleams of alleviation and promise there, surely; even as the
Lutheran creed says that "early on Easter morning, before his
resurrection, Christ showed himself to the damned in hell." If God
is in hell, certainly it must be to soothe, to save. "Oh, no,"
says the popular theologian. Let us quote his words. "Why is God
here? To keep the tortures of the damned freshly plied, and to see
that no one ever escapes!" Can the climax of horror and

22 Lord, Christ in Hades.

blasphemy any further go? How much more reasonable, more moral and
Christ like, to say, with one of the best authors of our time,

"What hell may be I know not: this I know: I cannot lose the
presence of the Lord: One arm humility takes hold upon His dear
Humanity; the other love Clasps his Divinity: so, where I go He
goes; and better fire wall'd Hell with him Than golden gated
Paradise without."

The irreconcilableness of the common doctrine of endless misery
with any worthy idea of God is made clear by a process of
reasoning whose premises are as undeniable as its logic is
irrefragable and its conclusion consolatory. God is infinite
justice and goodness. His purpose in the creation, therefore, must
be the diffusion and triumph of holiness and blessedness. God is
infinite wisdom and power. His design, therefore, must be
fulfilled. Nothing can avail to thwart the ultimate realization of
all his intentions. The rule of his omnipotent love pervades
infinitude and eternity as a shining leash of law whereby he holds
every child of his creation in ultimate connection with his
throne, and will sooner or later bring even the worst soul to a
returning curve from the career of its wildest orbit. In the realm
and under the reign of a paternal and omnipotent God every being
must be salvable. Remorse itself is a recoil which may fling the
penitent into the lap of forgiving love. Any different thought
appears narrow, cruel, heathen. The blackest fiend that glooms the
midnight air of hell, bleached through the merciful purgation of
sorrow and loyalty, may become a white angel and be drawn into
heaven.

Lavater writes of himself, and the same is true of many a good
man, "I embraced in my heart all that is called man, past,
present, and future times and nations, the dead, the damned, even
Satan. I presented them all to God with the warmest wishes that he
would have