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iJCSB LIBRARY X-

THE CHRISTIAN HELL FROM THE FIRST TO THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

WATTS'S gd. NET SERIES. Each pocket size, bound in cloth. (N.B. Postage on one book, 2d. orjd.; on tvuo books, $d. or <fd.; and so on.) THE RIDDLE OF THE UNIVERSE. By Professor Ernst Haeckel. 348pp., with portrait ; by post is. THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. By Joseph McCabe. 160 pp.; by post is. THE BELIEF IN PERSONAL IMMORTALITY. By E. S. P. Haynes, author of Religions Persecution, etc. 164 pp.; by post is. THE OLD TESTAMENT. By Chilperic Edwards. 160 pp.; by post is. WAR AND THE ESSENTIAL REALITIES. Bv Nor- man Angell, author of The Great Illusion. With Introduc- tion by J. M. Robertson, M.P. 78pp.; by post nd. ESSAYS TOWARDS PEACE. By Norman Angell, J. M. Robertson, M.P., S. H. Swinny, and Professor Westermarck. With Preface by Mrs. H. bradlaugh Banner. 92 pp.; by post nd. PEACE AND WAR IN THE BALANCE. By H. W. Nevinson. 80 pp.; by post nd. ART AND THE COMMONWEAL. By William Archer. With Introduction by Israel ZangwilL 76 pp.; by post nd. THE TASK OF RATIONALISM : In Retrospect and Prospect. By John Russell, M.A. 80 pp.; by post nd. TWELVE YEARS IN A MONASTERY. By Joseph McCabe. Third edition, specially revised by the Author. 356 pp., with portrait ; by post is. THE ORIGIN AND IDEALS OF THE MODERN SCHOOL. By the late Senor Francisco Ferrer. Translated from post- humous papers by Joseph McCabe. 128 pp.; by post nd. LIFE AND DESTINY. By Professor Felix Adler. 128 pp.; by post nd. Also to be had in leather, is. 6d. net, by post is. 8d.

SATAN, CASED IN ARMOUR, CRUNCHING SINNERS IN THE GULF OF HELL. (From Didron's Christian Iconography.)

THE CHRISTIAN HELL FROM THE FIRST TO THE TWENTIETH CENTURY BY HYPATIA BRADLAUGH BONNER [ISSUED FOR THE RATIONALIST PRBSS ASSOCIATION, LIMITED] With Twenty-Eight Illustrations LONDON : WATTS & CO., 17 JOHNSON'S COURT, FLEET STREET, E.G. 19*3

CONTENTS _. PARE PREFACB'- ix CHAP. I. INTRODUCTION j II. LITERATURE AND ICONOGRAPHY . . ig III. THE SURPASSING HORROR OF THE CHRISTIAN IDEA - . . . . - : IV. THE EARLY CHRISTIAN FATHERS - - 46 V. VISIONS AND DESCRIPTIONS ... 52 VI. AFTER THE REFORMATION - . - 64 VII. NINETEENTH CENTURY - . . .78 VIII. TO-DAY - .... 92 IX. "MISSION PICTURES" 99 X. " HELL OPENED TO CHRISTIANS " - 112 XL FATHER FURNISS'S " BOOKS FOR CHILDREN"- 121 XII. CONCLUSION - - . - -135 INDEX - 145

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Satan (Campo Santo, Pisa) - . . Frontispiece flG - PAGE 1. The Temptation - - - - 18 2. The Almighty Cursing the Serpent... 3. St. Guthlac Tormented by Devils 4. Satan Overcome by the Virgin ... 5. Satan Yielding up a Soul to the Virgin 6. The Harrowing of Hell .... 7. Sinner Bound to Devil's Tail . - 8. The Ladder of the Soul's Salvation... 9. St. Dunstan and the Devil.... 10. Hell Mouth--..-. n. Punishment of the Ale-wife - 12. Naked Men Struggling with Worms 13. Tundale's Vision ..... vii

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 14. The Christian's Death-bed - - 61 15. Frontispiece of Dr. Watts's " World to Come " 74 16. The Soul in a State of Mortal Sin - - 100 17. The Soul Returns to God - 101 18. The Soul has Seen the Evil of Sin - - - 102 19. The Soul in a State of Grace - - 104 20. The Soul Returns to Sin .... 105 21. The Soul Relapses into Mortal Sin 106 22. The Sinner's Deathbed - - 108 23. The Soul Judged and Cast into Hell 109 24. The Two Roads - 1 1 1 25. Frontispiece to " Hell Opened to Christians " 113 26. The Fire - - - - Il6 27. Eternity of Pain - -119

PREFACE "WHAT old woman is so stupid now as to tremble at those tales of hellwhich were once so firmly believed in ?" asked Cicero nearlytwo thousand years ago. This belief in an afterworld of pain, so scornfully rejected by the pagan philosophers, was made the cornerstone of the new Christian religion, and from the first century of the Christian era to the twentieth it has done more to poison the wells ofhuman happiness than any other evil, real or imaginary, known to mankind. Many books have been written upon the eschatology of the Christian religion, but the earlier ones were avowedly for the purpose of maintaining the reality of the lastjudgment and enlarging upon the awful fate which awaited the sinner in hell, while the object of most of the more recent is to deny that reality, and to explain away the terrors. The books which have dealt with this subject from a really critical and historical point of view are few and far between, and have the disadvantage that they are written from the theistic standpoint In any case they are bulky volumes, more suited to the theo- logical student or the man of leisure than for the information of the general public. Within the narrow limits of the following pages, I have endeavoured briefly to set forth the nature of the teaching of the Christian Churches in English-speaking countries, and, even at the risk of becoming wearisome, I have so far as possible given either the actual words or a brief resum& of the words of those whose authority has been accepted, or whose influence has been of weight in some or other of

x PREFACE the various sects which are sheltered under the name of Christianity. The subject is one which urgently calls for free and open discussion upon serious lines, and should no longer be confined to the jester or to the timid utterances of clerics, who are necessarily hampered by the conscious- ness that any but the most superficial criticism is bound to undermine the creed which they have made it the business of their lives to disseminate and uphold. A sane and sound morality has everything to gain from the letting-in of a little light upon a doctrine which is, even at this day, cankering the lives ofhundreds of thousands of our fellows, men, women, and children especially the children in different parts of the world. Where this terrible dogma does not embitter happiness, it corrupts character. Where people believe with a realized belief, their whole lives must be overshadowed with its stupen- dous horror ; where they only pretend to believej the extent of their hypocrisy can be measured only by their pretence. The task of preparing this little book has not been a pleasant one, and as it proceeded there have been moments when I have been compelled to lay aside my work I have felt absolutely overwhelmed and sickened by the interminable repetition of ferocious exultations at the pain and sorrow supposed to await the majority of the human race, the nauseous imaginings, the inhumanity of man to man. I have, however, been encouraged to persevere in my task by the hope that these pages may help some here and there to realize the full and dreadful significance ofthe Christian hell ; and, realizing it, to reject it as a debasing and humiliating survival of an ignorant and superstitious past. H. B. B. October /,

CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION Decline in Belief Necessary for the Common People New Testament Teaching Fate of Unbelievers Exclusive Salva- tion The Rich Man Nature of Punishment Church of England Farrar Nonconformists Salvation Army Re- vivals Missionaries Roman Catholics Education. AMONG scholars and advanced thinkers there exists a comfortable assumption that the idea of the devil and hell has become " a negligible quantity "; that it is not worth bothering about except as a matter of anti- quarian research. It is a subject rarely discussed, seldom even named, in polite society ; and is con- sidered rather an unseemly topic for the platform or for general conversation. Contrasted with the wide- spread terrorism of the past, this attitude is, indeed, sufficiently remarkable, and if we looked no further we might be led to believe that the days of hell as a priestly incentive to morality have passed away. Unfortunately for morality, this sanguine view is very far from representing the real state of affairs. It is true that during the last half century, among certain classes of the community in England and other progressive countries, there has been a notable decline in the belief in hell as a place of punishment for evildoers. Up to fifty years ago the Bible was regularly read in nearly all middle-class families in England and Scotland. It was read day by day, chapter by chapter, from Genesis to Revelation ; and i

INTRODUCTION when the last chapter of Revelation was finished, the reader turned back and began at the first in Genesis once more. This practice, once universal, has now almost disappeared in large centres, but is still to be found among dwellers in small country towns and rural villages. Fifty years ago the Bible was looked upon as all-important for the instruction of the young in the schools, and in season and out of season it was hammered into the minds of the working classes. Religion, with its hopes and fears of rewards and punishments, was held necessary for women, children, and the common people. Dr. Thomas Burnet (1635-1715), who opposed the doctrine of eternity of punishment in his Latin treatise De StatuMortuontm, nevertheless enjoined : "Whatsoever you determine within yourself and in your own breast concerning these punishments, whether they are eternal or not, yet you ought to use the common doctrine and the common language when you preach or speak to the people, especially those of the lower rank who are ready to run head- long into vice and are to be restrained from evil by the fear of punishment." To this advice he puts a marginal note : " Whoever shall translate these sentiments [from the Latin in which he wrote] into our mother tongue, I shall think it was done with evil design and to bad purpose." Dr. Watts recklessly disregarded this injunction, and appended a trans- lation as a note to Discourse 13 in his World to Come. The Rev. J. Francis, preaching against Chartism in 1839, expressed the opinion that a firm belief in "a hell, where the wicked shall be eternally tor- mented," was a certain safeguard against political agitation (Eternal Torment, Lightfoot and Brad- laugh debate, p. 6). Fifty years ago Herbert Spencer could write : "Even now, for the great mass of men, unable through lack of culture to trace out with due

INTRODUCTION clearness those good and bad consequences which conduct brings round through the established order of the Unknowable, it is needful that there should be vividly depicted future torments and future joys pains and pleasures of a definite kind, produced in a manner direct and simple enough to be clearly imagined. Nay, still more must be conceded. Few if any are as yet fitted wholly to dispense with such conceptions as are current" {FirstPrinciples, chap, v, 32). "Theology," says Professor Bury, "has been regarded as a good instrument for keeping the poor in order, and unbelief as a cause or accompaniment of dangerous political opinions. The idea has not altogether disappeared that free thought is peculiarly indecent in the poor ; that it is highly desirable to keep them superstitious in order to keep them con- tented ; that they should be duly thankful for all the theological as well as social arrangements which have been made for them by their betters. I may quote from an essay of Mr. Frederic Harrison an anecdote which admirably expresses the becoming attitude of the poor towards ecclesiastical institu- tions. 'The master of a workhouse in Essex was once called in to act as chaplain to a dying pauper. The poor soul faintly murmured some hopes of heaven. But

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