FRINGES OF TRUTH

Southland Times, Issue 20002, 16 October 1926, Page 13 (Supplement)

FRINGES OF TRUTH

OBITUARY—THE DEVIL

(By

"Rufus.”)

Like most people who have lived in Invercargill for any length of time my highest ambition is that when my labours are over I may take a well-earned rest in some warmer climate. And now the enterprising theologians have shattered my hopes. On the authority of Dean Inge, the Bishop of Liverpool and Mr Jerome K. Jerome, Hell has been officially relegated to the scrap heap. The movement will, one supposes, be strenuously opposed by the hell-fire and brimstone brigade that march in the van of the now dwindling but still truculent Fundamentalists, but there can be little doubt that Hell is finally doomed. The reasons for this religious revolution are at first not very apparent, although possibly the British coal shortage may have something to do with it. Dean Inge’s argument was rather a weak one; he said he had never met anyone who merited eternal torture. The Dean, like most ecclesiastics, is a man of limited experience. If he had over heard the youth next door who is learning the violin he would think differently. Then there is the man who never returns your lead, and the man who tells you how he managed to lose his last golf match, and in fact dozens of others we have in mind for whom eternal punishment would be a most fitting retribution. The real reason for the decline of Hell is the Church itself. It is not that its ministers have neglected the subject—quite the contrary—but they have for so long been busy boosting Hell with all the most lurid language at their control that they seem to have forgotten about Heaven. The result is that while we have been informed with a commendable wealth of detail of the everlasting tortures that await erring souls, we are still very vague about the ultimate reward for a life of virtue. A harp and a halo can hardly be regarded as adequate equipment for eternity, and the prospect of meeting all our relations in the Happy Land will not thrill many of us. This feeling that if we escape the fire of Hell we will only drop into a frying-pan is not a newone. In that exquisite romance of Aucassin and Nicolette, which comes down to us from the spring time of the world there is a passage which expresses most poignantly that feeling of the inadequacy of celestial cosmography. Aucassin is pleading with the Count Garin of Beaucaire to release his lady love, but the Count reproaches him with the unworthiness of his passion, and says, “Moreover, what would you think to have gained if you had taken her for paramour and brought her to your bed? Much of httle would you have got by it, for all the days of the world would yoqr soul be in Hell for it. since into Paradise never could you win.” And then Aucassin unburdens himself of what must have in those days been very blasphemous sentiments.

“In Paradise Wat. have Ito do? I seek not to enter there, but only to have Nicolette, my most sweet friend, whom I so love! For into Paradise go none but such folk as I shall tell you. There go these old priests, and the old cripples and the maimed, who all day and all night crouch in front of the altars and in the old crypts, and those who are clad in old worn-out coats and tattered rags, who go naked and barefoot and full of sores, who die of hunger and hardship, and cold, and wretchedness. All these go into Paradise; with them I have nothing to do. But into Hell I am willing to go; for to Hell go the fine clerks and the fair knights who have fallen in jousts and ripe wars, and the skilled warriors and the brave men. With these I am fain to go. There also go the fair and courteous ladies who have two loters or three, and their lords beside. And there go the gold and the silver, and the ermines and the grey furs; there too, the harpers and the kings of the world. With these will I go too, so that I may have with me Nicolette, my most sweet friend.”

In our own time the subject has been treated at great length by Mr George Bernard Shaw in his “Man and Superman.” He gives a “close-up” of Hell stripped of all its mediaeval horrors, although his conception is not so pleasing as Aucassin’s. In fact, he shows us a rather dismal place where disconsolate shades wander aimlessly in the murk and pass the time by swapping Shavian epigrams.

But while most people will now be feeling a little more comfortable about the after life, one cannot help having a great deal of sympathy for the Devil. Although he is the monarch of Hell he seems to be the only one who has not been consulted about its summary abolition. His career has been rather unfortunate. First of all he fell foul of the authorities in Heaven over a trifling intrigue and was, with his not inconsiderable following, told to go to Hell. After putting up a very creditable fight against the Hosts of Light he courageously announced that it was better to rule in Hell than serve in Heaven and took his departure. Now, in company with the Russian royal family, King Constantine, and the ex-Kaiser, he presents the rather pathetic spectacle of a king without a kingdom. It will be interesting to note what country he will select in which to spend his exile, for presumably he will be an awkward citizen for any country to have within its borders. At any rate the poor fellow cannot be expected to spend the rest of his days wandering in space. There is one other point I should like to raise before the discussion is closed, and I think it should exercise the Church. It must be pointed out to these radical divines that if they do away with Heifr they can hardly retain Heaven, otherwise the scheme of things entire, becomes rather lop-sided. What is to happen to those who die unrepentant if there is no Hell to send them to? If they are to dwell in Heaven among the elect, then religion will lose half its significance. What attractions will Heaven have for the good Catholic if he knows that the Presbyterians will also be there? Or for the Presbyterian if he knows that the Catholics will be there? Yet if the unrepentant are not to go to Heaven, where will they go? They cannot be consigned to oblivion because even the Christian denominations are agreed that the soul is immortal. Perhaps Bible Student or Mr Frank Sampson will exolain the matter in their wellkrown lucid style.