PULPIT MUST PREACH “HELL"

Evening Star, Issue 18999, 22 July 1925, Page 10

PULPIT MUST PREACH “ HELL"

A BISHOP’S BELIEF. Modern preachers have lost their punch, and must get back to the doctrine of Hell fire and damnation in order to keep their flocks in the green pastures of salvation, according to the Bishop of Lincoln. “Hell is real,” the bishop asserts, in attacking modern methods of_ soul-saving, “ but modern religion fails to remind people of it. “Jn a little more than a generation the Christian pulpit has lost the note of severity. Preachers of the old guard lived and taught in awful apprehension of the judgment to come. It is worthy of consideration whether the milder message of our own generation is not out of harmony with the actual world in which we live and the facts of human experience. “In the lower world of Nature consequence reigns supreme. It is a grave matter to violate the law of Nature, for Nature knows' nothing of forgiveness. When wo pass it to the higher level we find that sin leads to unhappiness and misery. Bitterness, hatred, and selfishness breed sorrow. In this sense the Christian doctrine of Hell is not so much an article of faith as a fact of experience. “ Whether the misery which is the outcome of an evil will is endless is another question; but if the same moral law prevails in the world beyond the grave as prevails here and now—and it is unthinkable that there can bo two moral laws — then beyond the grave sin unrepeuted must bring misery.”