PULPIT MUST PREACH “HELL”

New Zealand Times, Volume LII, Issue 12185, 9 July 1925, Page 4

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-sav-ing, “but modern religion fails to ;e----mind people of it. “In 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 worthv of consideration whether the milder message of our own generation •is not out of harmony with the actual world m which we live and the facts of human experience. “In the lower world of nature consequence reigns supreme. Tt is a grave matter to violato the law of nature, for nature knows nothing of forgiveness! IVlien we pass it to the higher level, we find that sin leads to unhappiness and misery. Bitterness, hatred, and selfishness breed sorrow. In this sense tho Christian doctrine of hell is not *o 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, hut if the same moral law prevails in tho world beyond the grave as prevails here and now—and it is unthinkable that there can he two moral law* - then hovond the grave, sin nnrepoiited miut bring misery. if