STEPPING-STONES OVER BIG DIFFICULTIES.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XV, Issue 27, 28 October 1887, Page 5

STEPPING-STONES OVER BIG DIFFICULTIES.

♦ ROUND ABOUT HELL.

(By Rev. Father Cassidy, New

Plymouth.) (Continued.)

The mercy of God cannot defeat His justice, neither can His love prevent the punishment that those deserving it may receive. On the contrary, God's very love demands the existence of Hell. Yes, divine love reigns supreme even at the august tribunal where so many are condemned to the darkness of eternal night. The print of the nail is in the very hand that waves away the lost into perdition, and the voice that so often tenderly invited the impenitent now commands them to depart. We need not feel surprised at this since in everyday life we witness the same. We see a fond sorrowing father out of love for his children, or to guard them from a brother's contaminating influence, forced to pronounce a sentence of banishment on his son, and to drive him from his home for ever, thereby inflicting a wound on his sorrowing heart, that balm cannot heal, and time can never close. It is better that one child be lost, than that the whole family should perish. The lambs must ba protected from the wolf, and he must be driven from the fold. It is then the highest exercise of parental love, to save the innocent by the expulsion from among them of one nnwortby of their society and undeserving of their home. And as the father's love for his good and faithful children demands the banishment of the unworthy son, so the divine love of God demands the separation of the wicked from the good, and if it builds up a heaven for the one, it mußt also form a hell for the other. The justice and mercy of God cannot stand in antagonism to each other. It is not mercy but injustice that is irreconcilable with justice ; it is cruelty, not justice, that stands opposed to mercy, and so the justice and mercy cf God must remain, as the two eternal pillars of the everlasting Throne. In all the works of God we find justice and mercy blended together, and even when God must punish, we find divine kindness mingling with the strokes of His chastisement. There was mercy mingled with justice in the Garden of Eden, and in the first great trial of the angels in Heaven ; there was mercy mingled with the justic ■ tliat swept the wicked from the world at the time of the Flood. Even in that great scene, where the stern justice of God appals us, what mercy do we not witness 1 What patient long-suffering kindness shown 1 What warnings given, what mercy despised 1 There was mercy mingled with every drop of justice that swelled into the terrible wave of vengeance that then rolled over the world, when the waters rose, and crowding closer on the narrow spaces of lessening hill tops, men and beasts fought fiercely for standing room ; there was mercy blended with every groan and every tear. When the thunders pealed loudest and the lightnings

flashed and the waters rose, and the head of tbe highest summit went down beneath the wave, and the shriek of the last survivor died away over the silent thoreless ocean, there was mercy brooding over the deep. Though Death, the emblem of justice and punishment, then rode in triumph on top of some giant billow, which meeting no coast, or continent, or Alp to break its fury upon, swept fiercely round and round the world, still on that same billow, and looming dimly through the awful gloom, floated a lonely ship carrying mercy in all its beauty on board. She brought the most precious freight that ever sailed the seas, the Saints of the old world, and the Fathers of the new. But not only in that Ark was mercy to be found, but on every silent billow and on every ghastly face that floated round her. For long before the lighteninge flashed from the angry heavens and the thunder rolled along the tempest laden sky, God had been calling an impenitent world to repentance, and it was not till mercy's arm grew weary did justice come. There was a truce of one hundred years between the first stroke of the hammer and the first crash of the thunder. Noah giew grey preaching repentance, and the Ark stood the laughing-stock for the scoffer, and ten thousand warnings were ridiculed and despised before the terrible catastrophe came. Most patient and merciful God, none has suffered the justice of your indignation without trampling under foot ten thousand warnings, and mercies even more. Wherever we turn our eyes mercy meets us. We see her preserving the guilty world of sin and folly from the stern destruction it has so long deserved. We see in every sinner that moves along it a monument of saving, forgiving mercy, and in every saint a pillar of mercy too Mercy floats in every breath. It is mercy that feeds and clothes ua it is mercy that preserves and sustains us. Mercy falls in every shower, and shines in every Bunbeam, and in the darkest storm of life she is there watching, saving, loving, helping us, though we see her not. Mercy runs to meet the prodigal, she opens her arms to fold the penitent to her breast ; here she murmurs pardon over the most desperate sinner, and there she pleads for the impenitent ; here she weeps with those that mourn, and there Bhe kisses away the tear from sorrow's cheek. Mercy despises none, nor despairs of any.and her wings of tender pity and majestic love cover over all the earth, and even beneath that earth we will find her keeping lonely guard at the forgotten grave. In that quiet home has not mercy sheltered many from the gathering storms ? Earth, like a gentle mother, has wrapped her mantle round her little ones, and when the tempests blew fierce and loud they were sleeping calmly in the peaceful tomb. If we look up to the sparkling heavens above, there we will find, mercy shining in all the robes of light, mercy echoing from every heart of gladness, and mercy beaming from every brow with the mark Calvary upon it! Down in the lowest depths of the dark land of horror and despair we will find mercy there also, but not mercy enjoyed, but mercy rejected, forming the gnawing worm of the lost. No matter where we go we will find that God is merciful, and no matter how merciful we would wish Him to be we must also everywhere find Him just And if we shudder at the sufferings of the lost, and look sorrowl ingly for a ray of sunny mercy in the exterior darkness and cannot find it, still we must acknowledge it is there like a pearl hidden in the depths of the ocean, or like a diamond that lies buried in the dark caverns of the earth. Our common sense will tell us that for the sufferings of Hell, God cannot be blamed, that they are tbe work of man, they are the offsprings of his own choice, and if it is written by the inspired pen, •' that God has kindled a fire in His wrath," we will find it also written that " He will draw this fire out of the heart of man " (Deut. xxxii. 22 ; Etech. xxviii, 18.) If it is written that the condemned shall be the eternal food of death, it is also written that it is the sinner, not God who has created death! " For God made not deatb, but the wicked with workß aud words have called it to them " (Wisdom 1, 13, 16.) If in Holy writ we find many passages by which an active part is given to God to punish the wicked, we will find also in Scripture as many others that it is the eiuner himself who has dug his own pit, and that he will only reap in eternity what he has sown in time. (Ps. vii, 16 ; Gal. vi, 8; etc., etc.) We know that God has a perfect right to punish the obstinate wicked, and that He is even bound to do so. We nee earthly rulers inlicting penalties as terrible as that of death to inspire a respect for laws whose end is temporary, and for subjects whose happiness is temporal, aud we must admit that God should lift the arm of His justice to protect the laws of an eternal society, and to save his faithful snbjects from unholy contamination. There is no political society, no corporation or college, but has the power to exclude forever from its advantages, and membership those who refoee to abide by its rules, or who are incorrigible. We must not be surprised if the same law holds good here, and if man knowingly and deliberately breaking the eternal law of God, should be expelled from His society. In wilfully bringing upon himself expulsion from the blessed society of God and His saints, man in consequence becomeß the creator of his own hell, for hell is only a continuation of sin and sin is the work of man. Hell is the work of pride, of cupidity of sensuality. Hell is manufactured by human malice, and man alone is the cause of its existence. But the scriptures tell us that hell ia a place of everlasting punishment, of everlasting fire. " And these shall go into everlasting punishment, but the just into life everlasting " Math, xv., 46. And you who are troubled rest with us when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven, with the angels of his power. " In a flame of fire yielding vengeance to them that know not God' and who obey not the GosDel of Our Lord Jesus Chrish. Thess I 1 9. " And if thy hand or thy foot scandalise thee, pluck it out and cast it from thee. It is better for thee to enter into life maimed or lame than haying two hands and two feet to be cast into everlasting fire." And if thy eye scandalise thee, pluck it out and cast it from thee. It is better for thee with one eye to enter into life, than havine two eyea to be cast into hell fire." Math. XVIII., 9 10. The Bible certainly Bpeaks in many places of the fire of hell, but about what may be the nature of that fire, scripture and tradition say little. Is it merely, we might here aßk, a metaphorical fire, indentical with moral sufferng alone, or is it only an eruption of the fires of the soul ? What sort of fire is it ? It is one, certainly, we cannot form any idea of, and we might say of it as St. Paul said of heaven, « That eye hath not seen nor ear heard, nor hath it entered into the heart of man to

conceive. We must not confound the reality of hell fire with ite materiality, the materiality of the fire of hell is at least very doubtful. Natural philosophers even call in question, and with sufficient reason the materiality of terrestrial fire, The generally accepted theory of the nature of fire is, that it is only a mode of motion, so says Sir William Thompson. Professor Cooke tells us also that light and heat are only forms of motion, and the differences of the phenomena that have been referred to by these two apents are simply different seniations or different, effects, produced by the same wave motion. Burning is merely chemical change and all combustion with which we are familiar in common life, is a chemical combination of the burning substance, whether it be coal or wood with the oxygen of the air. Combustion is, then, a process of chemical combination, and the light and heat, which are evolved in the process, are only the concomitanti or tbe chemical change. Respiration is a true example of combustion. Jbe seat of combustion is the lungs. The substance burnt is sugar, ibe products are carbonic dioxide gas and water. Decay and burning are essentiatly the same chemical change. The substances involved are the same, the results are the same, and it has been proved that tbe amount of heat generated is the same, the only difference being that in burning the whole amount of heat that is set free in a few hours producing phenomena of intense ignition, while in the process of decay the same quantity evolved slowly during perhaps a century escapes our notice. Thus all chemical combinations evolve the same amount of heat, whether the combustion be slow or rapid. Thus that combustion may be so slow as to cause no pain, or it may be fait enough only to produce a slight amount of suffering, or so rapid as to cause a great amount of agony. But from the agencies and combinations that surround us, from the effects of substances we see, or from the powers we feel producing certain results to us, or to other sensitive physical organisations, we cannot conclude anything, or fix on anything that could help to solve the mystery before us. Many passages of the Bcripture imply that this terrible agent of Divine justice, this everlasting fire, is only the work of the sinner, and the anguish of hii souL St. Augustine tells us " Not to believe that this serenity and ineffable divine light, can draw from itself wherewith to punish sin, but rather than it has so ordained our sins that what constituted the pleasure of the sinner will serve as an instrument of divine vengeneance. The great Bossuet developing the same thought tells us. Let us not imagine that hell consists in fearful torments, in pools of fare and sulphur, in eternally devouring flames, in rage, despair, and horrible gnashing of teeth. Hell, if we understand it, is sin itself, hell is to be deprived of God, and the proof of it is evident from the Scriptures. Bzekiel tells us "I will make to come forth from the midtt of thee a fire which shall devour thee." Bossuet adds to this, » I shall not send it from afar against thee, it shall be kindled in thy conscience, and the flames shall burst forth from the midst of thee, and it shall be thy sins that shall produce it. Dost thou remember Christian that while sinning thou art forging the instrument of thy own eternal punishment? Thou art doing so. Thou swalloweat iniquity like water and art swallowing torrents of flames."

(Zb be continued.)