THE ETERNITY OF HELL.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume V, Issue 216, 15 June 1877, Page 13

THE ETERNITY OF HELL.

(Continued.J

With respect to the second point indicated in your letter, I do not agree with you that a punishment of limited duration would exercise on the minds of men, with regard to the regulation of their conduct, an equivalent impression of identical results. You hold that if it were accompanied with the circumstances of long duration or terrible torture, it would be sufficient to curb unruly passions, and impose a limit on wicked desires; and with this observation you think you upset the reason assigned by Catholics for the existence of hell, viz., that it is a safeguard of morality. But it appears to me you have not gone deeply enough into this subject, and you don't seem to remark that though it is true the idea of torment frightens and terrifies us when ib has to be suffered in this life, it makes but a very slight impression if it is reserved for the other. I shall give you two proofs of this — one experimental, the other scientific.

The doctrine of purgatory involves a terrible idea; and books of devotion and preachers are constantly painting that place of expiation in frightful colours. The faithful believe it so; they hear it incessantly; they pray for their departed relatives and friends who may be detained in it; but, frankly, is the fear people have of purgatory very great P Would it of itself be a strong enough dyke to oppose the impetuosity of the passions? Let each one answer from his own experience, and let those who have had occasion to observe it answer for others. We are told the pains endured there are terrible — it is true ; their duration may be very long I—certainly1 — certainly ; the soul shall not escape without paying the last farthing — undoubtedly ; but those pains shall have an end ; we are sure they cannot last for ever ; and placed between the risk of long sufferings in the other life, and the necessity of bearing slight annoyances in the present, we prefer a thousand times to run the risk than to endure the annoyances.

Reason points out the causes of what every-day experience places before our eyes ; and to know them, a very slight consideration of human nature is sufficient. While we live on this earth our soul is united to our body, which unceasingly transmits the impressions it receives from everything around it. It is true our soul possesses some faculties, which, elevated by nature above things corporeal and sensible, are directed by other principles ; are employed on more lofty objects, and inhabit, if we may say so, a region which of itself has no connection with anything of a material or earthly nature. Without ignoring the dignity of these faculties, or the sublimity of the region in which they dwell, we must confess, such is the influence exercised on them by others of an inferior order, that they often compel them to descend from their elevation ; and instead of obeying them as their mistresses, reduce them to a state of slavery. When things do not come to this extreme, at least it frequently happens that the superior faculties remain without performing their functions, as if they were sleeping, so that the intellect scarcely descries in obscure luxuriance the truths which form its principal aud most noble object, and the will does not tend towards it except with great carelessness and sloth. There is a hell to fear, a heaven to hope for ; but all this is in the other life and reserved for a distant period : they are things which belong to an entirely distinct order iv a new world in which we firmly believe, but from which we derive no direct actual impressions ; and hence we require to make an effort of concentration and reflection to impress on ourselves the immense interest they have for us, incomparably beyond everything that surrounds us. In the meantime some earthly object strikes our imagination or our senses ; now, impressing us with some tear, now soothing us with some pleasure; the other world disappears from our sight; the intellect falls back into its sluggishness, the will into its languor ; and if either is excited anew it is to contribute to the greater expansion of the other faculties. Man is almost always guided by the impressions of the moment; and when he weighs in the scales of his judgment the advantages and inconveniences an action can produce for .him, the distance or proximity of their realisation is one of the circumstances that influence his action most. And why should nob this occur with regard to the affairs of the other life, when it happens with respect to those of the present ? Is not the number of those who sacrifice riches, honour, health, and life itself, to a momentary pleasure infinite ? And why is this ? Because the object that seduces is present, and the evils distant ; and man deludes himself with the hope of avoiding, or resigns himself to suffer them, like a person who casts himself down a precipice blindfolded. From this we may infer it is not true, as you said, that the fear of a long punishment would be capable of producing an equal effect with the eternity of hell. It is not true ; on the contrary, it may be asserted that from the moment the idea of eternity is separated from that of pain, it loses the greater part of its horror, and is reduced to the same class as that of purgatory. If the chastisements of the other life are to produce a fear capable of restraining us in our depraved inclinations, they must have a formidable character, the mere recollection of which, presenting itself to our mind now and then, may produce a salutary shudder, which will be felt in the midst of the dissipations and distractions of life, as the sound of sonorous metal vibrates long after the stroke is given.

(To be continued.)