by Joseph Parker (1867)

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Ch. XV: Eternal Punishments

It is held by many to be a hard thing that any man should be damned for not believing “these sayings of mine.” The conclusion must have been reached through a most incomplete apprehension of the term “belief.” In the course of this argument we have had repeated occasion to state that a man’s belief is that by which his whole life is governed—the foundation of his character, the very vitality of his manhood. It can hardly be repeated too often that belief is not a mere mental asset to a proposition, but the resting and consequent risking of the whole life upon the truth of that proposition.

By setting aside, for the moment, the term “belief,” on the account of the narrow theological associations which have been unjustly gathered around it, the point may to some extent be elucidated by another word which has no such associations attached to it—that word is character. Now as we have found ourselves at liberty, on the authority of Christ himself, to reason from the human towards the divine, let us in a familiar manner try what can be done by an analogical process. Is there anything in the constitution of human society which will throw at least an edge of light around the awful mystery of endless punishment?

It will not be denied, at the outset, that there are many persons whom a virtuous man would not admit to his confidence or hospitality. Ask the reason, and the answer will be, “The persons have lost their good character—they are dissipated, vicious and altogether unworthy of respect or confidence.” Here then, is a point to begin at. It is conceded by this answer that purity of character is the indispensable qualification for admission into virtuous society, and by so much it is shown that a bad man is “damned,” ostracized (or soften it into unrecognized), solely on the ground of vice. But what is vice? It is not the practical side of belief? The man believes in vice as a principle, or a policy, or an enjoyment, and therefore he pursues it. But by pursuing it he becomes socially a condemned man; he that believes not (he that is not virtuous) is damned. It may be urged that a man may have many heterodox [non-standard] notions about religion, and yet his social repute may be irreproachable; and on the other hand, that a man’s notions about religion may be orthodox, while his life is sinful. This is true, but it merely throws us back upon a definition already laid down: namely, that belief is not intellectual but moral: “with the heart man believeth unto righteousness,” so that religion is not a question of mere notions, but the expression of the entire spiritual life. It would be as logical to contend that a man is going on a journey because he can explain the construction of an engine, as to contend that a man is going to heaven because he can correctly answer theological questions. Salvation turns upon spiritual vitality, and spiritual vitality is represented by the right use of the term faith. It must never be absent from the mind that religion is not a set of opinions, but life in Jesus Christ. So far, then, we find society doing precisely what God does: namely, drawing a broad line of demarcation between virtuous and the vicious—in other words, “establishing a system of rewards and punishments based exclusively on morals. Society has found this to be necessary to its own preservation and prosperity; for all history has gone to show that, apart from every theological system, the moral element has always determined the true value of civilization. Virtue has meant safety; vice has meant danger. This is a fact of immense value in an inductive inquiry respecting rewards and punishments.

It is now proposed to show that, in the matter of endless punishment for sin, society does, in its degree, precisely what Almighty God is declared in the Christian writings to do. If God punishes the finally impenitent for ever, man does the same thing, and does it necessarily—necessarily because of the demands of the moral universe without, as well as the exactions of the moral principle within. In other words, the very constitution of the moral universe demands and necessitates the endless punishment of the impenitent. How we may work our way to this conclusion will now appear.

It is objected that there is no proportion between time and eternity, and consequently, that to punish man eternally for doing wrong in his short lifetime is inequitable. While it is not denied that punishment is merited, it is contended that there should be some proportion between the crime and the penalty.

In answer to this objection, let us examine the law of proportion in the light of social laws. Does the idea of proportion amount roughly to this, that a day’s crime should be met by a day’s punishment; that a man who does wrong today should be punished tomorrow, and restored to confidence the day after? The objector will probably say, “No, not exactly that; but say that a day’s crime should be met by a month’s punishment, or a year’s; only let there be some proportion between the crime and the penalty.” The answer does not relieve the difficulty. What is the moral proportion between one day and a month, or one day and a year? Does nothing depend on the nature of the crime? For example: a man commits a petty larceny; would the objector say that a month’s imprisonment would be enough? Another man, say, commits murder; would the objector say that a year’s punishment would suffice? But why should the one criminal be punished a month and the other a year? It is urged that the nature of the crime determines that. Let this be granted; then it will appear that the proportion is really not one of time, but of turpitude [wickedness]. In reality society proceeds upon the principle that the extent of time occupied in the perpetration of a criminal act is not to be taken into account in considering the punishment which is to be awarded. Nor ought it to be accounted of. Less time may be occupied in taking away a life than in committing a burglary; but on the principle of strict proportion (which sophistically proceeds on the idea of mere duration), the burglar should undergo a longer punishment than the murderer. But society will not allow this; its moral instincts overrule its sentimentalities, and demand that the gravity of the crime should determine the gravity of the punishment.

An illustration may be useful here. Thirty years ago, let it be supposed, a criminal forged the reader’s name to a check for a thousand guineas. He did it in a few moments; a stroke or two of the skilled pen, and the deed was done. The criminal never confessed the act; never uttered a penitential word; he suffered imprisonment for 10 years; and now for 20 years he has been at large. Has the reader forgiven him? Has he restored him to confidence? Has he invited the offender into his family circle? Has he replaced him at the commercial desk? The reader says, “No.” But what becomes of the agreement proportion? Let it be remembered that the criminal was imprisoned 10 years for a crime committed in less than 10 minutes. Was not the punishment sufficient? Think of 10 minutes being multiplied into 10 years, and then say whether more can be reasonably demanded. But it may be urged that the criminal is impenitent; he never owns his sin, never asks forgiveness, and treats the injured man as if he himself had been injured. The injured man is so far philanthropic as to say that he will meet the criminal on the first sign of his contrition—he only waits to acknowledgement of the guilt, and promise of better behavior. Nothing can be more humane—nothing more reasonable—and the point to be specially remarked is, that this is the very principle upon which the Divine government in relation to sin proceeds: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins.” Man’s own heart being witness, he proceeds upon the very principle of adjunction which he condemns in the government of God.

The sum of the answer is this: If a criminal continue to be impenitent resecting any crime, he is as guilty of that crime on the last day of his life as he was in the very hour of its committal, though he may have survived that hour 50 years. Time has no mitigating influence upon guilt. The question between the criminal and society is not one of time, but of penitence, and, so long as he is impenitent, society must, by compulsion deeper than all formal law, mark and avoid him. Society does this. If particular members of society do not do so, they are immoral—connivance with unreported guilt being an affront to the spirit of virtue. Society punishes (more or less lightly, more or less directly) all impenitent offenders against its laws, and punishes them throughout their whole lifetime, which is as much of eternity as its retributive influence can encompass. In very grave cases, indeed, society will not allow the penal shadow to pass from the reputation even after death; so truly is this the case that there are names which cannot now be pronounced, though they represent long extinct lives, without bringing a frown upon the countenances of all who hear them. Is this eternal punishment or is it not?

The question of proportion may be looked at in another light. A citizen who has maintained a good reputation for half a century as a pure, upright, noble man; who has figured on subscription lists as a generous benefactor of the poor; whose name obtained the highest credit on the Exchange—has been proved guilty of a crime: the crime was being perpetrated in imagined secrecy; the criminal had no idea that any eye was upon him; the fact, however, becomes known; and the question is, how does society treat the tower which was fifty years in building? Society razes the very foundation, and forgets half a century of unchallenged life in one day’s discovered villainy. But where is the law of proportion? Why not deduct one day from the fifty years’ reputation, or regard the crime but as a spot on the disc of a brilliant life? The law of proportion founded on mere duration would, if strictly interpreted, require this deduction; but society happily forgets its formal logic when under the influence of high moral inspiration, and in its own arbitrated decisions reproduces the government of God.

The argument of proportion as to time is obviously fallacious. No crime is self-contained. All actions are influential. What is done in an hour may affect society through many generations. Long after the pebble is at the bottom of the lake, the circles multiply and expand on the surface. The lifting of a hand sends a vibration to the stars.

A second objection will afford an opportunity of still further exposing the fallacy of the argument of proportion. It has been urged that, as virtue is its own reward, and vice its own punishment, the criminal is sufficiently punished while upon earth, and need not, therefore, have hell added on top of this.  The argument, if valid in relation to hell, is equally valid in relation to heaven; hence, as virtue is its own reward, the virtuous man is sufficiently rewarded on earth, and needs not a superadded [added to itself] heaven. By parity of reasoning this latter position is impregnable. The logic which closes hell annihilates heaven. Without, however, pressing the sophist (one who reasons with clever but fallacious arguments) too severely to accept the results of his premises, the whole answer may be included in one fundamental and fully illustrated principle—that punishment is not regenerative. All penalty is negative. It may appease the more public demands of society without making any good impression on the moral nature of the criminal. Take an instance: a felon who has undergone a term of imprisonment may leave the prison as great a criminal as he entered it. The mere fact of having been in jail for a series of months or years does not make the criminal an honest man. The law could touch his body only; so that at the very moment of his keenest smarting under the penal rod he might be plotting deeper schemes of crime. Punishment per se is not a regenerator. Hell itself, if intermediate instead of final, could not convert men to Christianity. It might terrify them; it might impose strong restraints upon them, originating in the lowest and most uncertain motives; but, as to regeneration, it might be as impotent as a passing storm. Virtue founded on fear is only vice in a fit of dejection.

Does not the objector himself proceed upon the principle that punishment is not regenerative? Imagine the objector seated in a public vehicle. He is holding pleasant intercourse with a fellow traveler; he likes the man, is pleased with his intelligence, frankness and civility: at one point of the journey, however, he is given to understand that his interlocutor is a ticket of leave man; does he during the remainder of the journey feel as comfortable as he did at the beginning? Does he, or does he not, involuntarily lay his hand upon his property? Is there, or is there not, a development of suspicion? But why? The criminal has, indeed, broken the laws of his country, but he has suffered the legal penalty, or escaped a portion of it by his credible conduct; why, then, should not the objector invite the well-behaved convict home, and introduce him to the confidence of his sons and daughters? Why should the convict be punished forever? Where is the proportion between a day’s crime and a life-long infamy? The objector’s philosophy succumbs to his moral instincts. He begins to think of contamination, and mentally to run over all the possibilities of having had something like friendly intercourse with a returned convict. Yet he would have God’s infinite holiness do what his own faded morality cannot do. He would have the sun overlook defects which his own rushlight [a kind of torch] brings into startling prominence. He fails to see that the case appeals not to benevolence, not to philosophy, but strictly to the moral sense; and if man, whose moral faculty is so liable to perversion, recoils from the idea of confiding in an impenitent convict, how can God look with complacency on an unclean heart? Does the objector say that, if he knew the returned convict to be a truly penitent man, he would give him another chance in life? Then let him recall the words just quoted—“If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins.”

The objector seems forgetful of the fact, that the doctrine of vice being its own punishment is necessarily overridden in all the penal arrangements of society, otherwise society would be insecurely guarded against outrage. If vice be its own punishment (not only individually, but socially, in a full degree), why should the thief be imprisoned or the murderer executed? Why not leave each to the tormenting remorse of his own conscience? Why not be satisfied with the scorpion sting of memory? The fact is, that there is a practical sophism in the doctrine that vice is its own punishment in an imperfect state of society. By repetition of crime conscience is hardened, so that actually he who has done most is punished least. The young thief, trembling in inexperience, hesitates as he approaches the lock at midnight, but the veteran burglar is as steady in darkness as at noonday. The criminal, therefore, would have merely to repeat his crimes to escape their punishment; for he who now blushes in anger may one day be calm in murder! Vice is its own punishment only when all alleviating circumstances are removed, as will be the case in the next world. There nature will be so quickened, and so thoroughly thrown back upon itself, that vice will in the fullest sense of the term be its own tormentor; but as earthly society is now constituted, there would be so many counterbalancing influences brought to bear upon the criminal that his reflections might be modified or entirely overpowered. The same principle has its obvious bearing on the doctrine that virtue is its own reward.

A third objection urges that God should issue a universal amnesty—open every prison door in the universe—say to devils, “You are forgiven,” and to lost men, “Be free.” This would be considered so magnanimous as to be worthy of God. The objection is not without plausibility. Two things, however, appear to be forgotten. (I) That an amnesty could not, in itself, work any moral change. Look at the case from a national point of view. Suppose that the monarch were to proclaim a universal amnesty: would the thief, the murderer, the incendiary, or any other criminal, be thereby constituted a virtuous member of society? Such an amnesty, instead of being a blessing, would be a curse; liberty would degenerate into licentiousness. If the insane idea of a universal amnesty were seriously proposed, all virtuous men would protest against throwing back the flood gates, and liberating torrents of crime. What then would God’s amnesty do? Would a demon be less a demon one one side of a prison door than on another? Does the door make the demon? The second thing that is forgotten by the objector is (II) That forgiveness requires the consent of two parties. The term “forgiveness” is often used with a most inadequate conception of its meaning. An enemy cannot by any act of so-called forgiveness be turned into a friend. The philanthropic man may even love his enemies, bless them that curse him, and pray for them that despitefully use him and persecute him, and yet not forgive them in the right sense of that term. The man may excuse an offense against himself, but he has no power to excuse an offense against righteousness; that is to say, he may rise superior to the mere personal consideration, and no doubt will do so; but, if he trifle with the demands of morality, which alone can make personal considerations of any consequence, his so-called forgiveness is a sin, and his supposed magnanimity is a violation of God’s prerogative. It comes to this, then, that even God himself cannot forgive a sinner apart from certain conditions which the sinner himself must supply. It is (if the supposition may be allowed) anything merely personal which God condemns in the action of the sinner against himself? Can the sinner do God any harm? Can the mightiest chief in all the armies of hell pluck one star from the sky, or keep back the light of the sun, or bind the sweet influences of Pleiades, or loose the bands of Orion? God is not, so to speak, alarmed for his personal government. The offenses against his power cost him no concern, but the offenses against his holiness afflict him with great sorrow. The parent cares nothing for the mere blow of the child’s tiny fist, but the passion which prompted it breaks his heart. God has to maintain the public virtue and order of the universe. He fears no stroke of power; but if, for mere convenience of expression, we may distinguish between his personality and his attributes, we may say that offenses against his person are forgiven, but offenses against his attributes cannot be forgiven apart from confession and repentance on this side of the criminal.

It has been suggested that annihilation would better harmonize with the divine attributes than the infliction of eternal misery. This, however, is a sentiment rather than an argument. God does not inflict the eternal misery; he simply points it out as the resultant of certain courses. Men often complain as if the misery were superimposed by God: it is not; it comes out of the man, not from God. God says to his moral creatures, “You are immortal: right means immortal glory: wrong means immortal infamy.” In this representation on the part of God there is nothing arbitrary—it simply points out the inevitable operation of cause and effect. When a parent warns a child to beware of the fire, he does so in love, not in anger: he does not inflict the pain of burning; he merely points out that such pain will be the result of disobedience. So with God: he does not inflict the punishment; the punishment is the effect of a cause. It is easy to pronounce the word annihilation, but has its meaning been fully considered? There need not be any hesitation (notwithstanding that a modern philosopher has advised metaphysical theologians to to drop the argument that a spiritual substance, by the essential constitution of its nature, cannot perish)* [*Mill’s Examination of Hamilton’s Philosophy] in reverently declaring that God cannot annihilate a moral agent. If he could, could he not have annihilated the devil that vexed his beloved Son in the wilderness? so far as we can gather from the sacred writings, what has been the attitude of God in relation to the devil? He has degraded his position in the universe; he has taken away the lustrous robe with which he was originally clothed; he has caused him to wither into the most awful and repulsive deformity; on every side the most tremendous pressure has been brought to bear upon him; but no force can touch the life: diabolism is nothing but abused divinity, and can God be annihilated? All moral creatures are such by virtue of a divine element of their nature. But cannot God withdraw that divine element? Let us pause. What would he make of it after he had withdrawn it? Could be absorb the poisoned element which for a lifetime had been given up to the devil?

It must not be forgotten that there is a broad distinction between a penalty and a consequence, as those terms are commonly understood. When Christ said, “He that believes not shall be damned,” he announced a consequence, he did not threaten a penalty in the usual acceptation of the term. A consequence is the direct and inevitable result of certain processes, partaking of their very nature, and inseparable form them; but a penalty may possibly be something different, something arbitrarily added onto itself, regardless of adaptation or measure. Being chilled is a consequence of exposure to cold air; but being flogged for such exposure is a penalty. Eternal punishment is the consequence of rejecting the Gospel, not a penalty (in the low sense of revenge) attached to a crime.

In the Phaedo [Plato’s writings on the human soul], and also in the Gorgias [a Socratic dialogue written by Plato], we find a theory which seems to meet some of the difficulties, but which in reality meets some at the expense of others. It appears, according to the Platonic dream, that persons who have passed through life without bringing any special disgrace upon themselves suffer for their evil deeds, and are then rewarded for their good works. On the other hand, those who are incurable are cast into Tartarus, where they remain forever. The class lying between receive different treatment. In the first instance, they are cast into Tartarus; but after remaining there a year, they are cast forth—the homicides into Cocytus, the parricides and matricides into Pyriphlegethon. With a singular accuracy—the very principle of confession being the basis of pardon, and the consent of two parties being required in order to an act of complete forgiveness—it is declared in the Phaedo, that when the members of this intermediate class are borne along to the Acherusian lake, they invoke those whom they murdered or injured; and if the aggrieved parties relent, the sufferers are permitted to go out into the lake, and thus to escape further suffering; but if the aggrieved parties do not relent , the sufferers are remanded to Tartarus. The same doctrine is taught in the Gorgias. Rhadamanthus examines the souls, without knowing anything of their identity, and according to their nature dismisses them either to Tartarus or to the isles of the blessed. The points common to the Platonic and Evangelic theories are (1) that there are two conditions after death, and (2) that eternal punishment is the consequence of unpardoned guilt. In the “beautiful fable” related by Socrates in the Phaedo, we have the principle of a purgatory affirmed; that is to say, some sinners are punished for a time; and then sent forward to everlasting rewards. The Christian doctrine is opposed to this; it knows nothing of intermediate distinctions; its classification is dual: in referring to destiny, it recognizes two terms only—heaven and hell.

The moral effect is higher than that of the Socratic fable. No license is given to the criminal; no uncertainty beclouds the anticipations of the good man. Virtue is recognized as a principle; not judged by deceptive shades. Socrates, in concluding his fable, well said that it would not become any man of sense to affirm positively that the things were exactly as the fabulist had pictured them. But Christ makes no such reservations; he speaks with the authority of one before whose eyes all things stood in the clearest light: it is a revealer, not an inquirer, who sees that the bad man cannot rise and the good cannot fall in the day of judgement. Why be startled by the announcement that the bad man shall “go away into everlasting punishment?” Society has actually affirmed the principle in its own penal arrangements; why, then, be shocked at its own moral instincts? The shock is occasioned by the word “eternal” rather than the word “punishment;” yet why so? If remorse can be endured at all, why not for ever? Beings can suffer only according to their capacity. The suffering will be mental, not physical—an eternal self-reproach for having given God the lie.

This gives us a view of the redemptive work of Christ which could not have been otherwise obtained. It presents, too, an impressive aspect of human dignity. To save man from such consequences, Christ undertook the work of mediation—would Christ have died to save an insect which could be crushed into nothingness? According to the Christian writings, man stands in salvageable relation to Christ’s work only during his continuance on earth; throughout the whole of that period he is importuned by the most earnest persuasions to avail himself of the benefits of Christ’s mediation; and if, in defiance of all such importunity, he determinedly persists in a criminal course, how can he possibly escape the effects of that course? The question is, how can he? If punishment is not regenerative; if selfish fear is not a moral agent; if a moral creature cannot be annihilated; then how can the criminal cheat God, and find a way into heaven? Is it suggested that a second probation might meet the case? A second probation is an impossibility; but even assuming the possibility, where would be the equity? Give men to know that there would be a second probation, and how many of them would care for the first? And if they neglect the first, they are so much weaker in moral nerve to encounter the discipline of the second. And if there should be two probations, why not three?

“But say I could repent, and could obtain
By act of grace my former state; how soon
Would height recall high thoughts, how soon unsay
What feigned submission swore! ease would recant
Vows made in pain, as violent and void.”

How do men regard this probationary idea as it comes up in the concerns of daily life? There is one seed-time in the year; an indolent farmer neglects it, and then sets up the theory that to have only an annual seed-time is ridiculous! When poverty comes as “an armed man,” does society pity or reproach him? It may be suggested that possibly the suffering might have a good effect upon the lost; it might cause them to reflect; it might bring them to repentance. It is forgotten, however, that every thing has been done for them which even God could do: they have resisted the whole system of redeeming love, thrust away the bleeding and dying Christ and, if mere suffering will save any man, God has made a stupendous mistake in sending his Son to save sinners. Hell would then be more successful than the Son of God.

In the most appalling of his parables Christ represents a rich man as lifting up his eyes in hell, being in torment. Parables are not always to be pressed into literal evidences, but this parable is absolutely pointless if it does not teach (1) that there is a hell, and (2) that those who are in hell are conscious of their position. This parable contains an incidental confirmation of Christ’s picture of the judgment. The rich man neglected Lazarus—that is the principle fact we know respecting his outside relations: the next thing heard of him is that he is “in hell.” So in the judgment the goats go away into everlasting punishment because they have neglected the hungry, the thirsty and the sick—that is positively the only charge brought against them. But what are the terms of the preaching commission? Not he that is philanthropic, but, “He that believeth shall be saved.” Are the terms, then, altered? The alteration is nominal, not essential. No man can believe without being a philanthropist; no man can be a philanthropist without believing—that is, without going out of himself, resting on something better than the pivot of individualism. Philanthropy is the manward aspect of faith in Christ. “Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.” The basis of an arbitrator-settled dispute, then, is not changed, but an enlarged conception of faith is given, and by so much is disclosed a fuller view of the enormity which brings upon itself “everlasting punishment;” for it appears by this definition of faith (a point often overlooked in the discussion of the subject), that the criminal outrages alike theology and humanity—God and man. Those who “go away into everlasting punishment” are expressly said to have neglected their fellow-creatures; they are condemned on human grounds—not because they had a heretical creed, but because they had no love towards man—“and if a man love not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he that not seen?” Misanthropy alone necessitates hell.

So much for an outline of argument. We are not unaware of the pleadings of mere sentiment. All good men would unite in the expression of generous hopes, were they at liberty to deal with the sentimentalism of the subject; but, as all the arrangements of society show, the moral instincts of the world protest against a forgiveness of the criminal apart from suffering and contrition. If temporary punishment in hell will bring men to God, why send Jesus Christ to die a sacrificial death, or any death at all? Why not put all men into hell at once, and save by fear those who refuse to be saved by love? Is it because we have pleasure in contemplating the suffering of criminals that we have spoken thus urgently of future punishments? We know that we subject ourselves to such a taunt; it may be, however, that a frank statement on the affirmative side of the question may be conceived in a more delicate and tremulous tenderness than the utterance of vapid generalities of hope. We are bound to point out that nowhere in the sacred writings is hell referred to as exerting a remedial influence on the criminal; if it does exert such an influence, it was an inexcusable oversight not to dwell upon the fact specifically. On the other hand, it is distinctly taught by Jesus Christ, that, if men will not avail themselves of such moral advantages as are at their disposal, they would not “be persuaded though one rose from the dead.” Men are apt to think that something which has not been tried, specially something startling and sensational, would succeed in saving the obstinate. Are they wiser than God, or tenderer than Christ? Others, again, refer to the heathen, and to those within our own civilization who have never heard the Gospel, and ask, “Are such to be eternally punished?” This horror is uninformed and unreasoning. No man will be condemned for not believing what he never heard. It is the man who believeth not that is to be condemned, and the very terms imply that he case has been laid before him. As for others, they are in the hands of God, and will be adjudged righteously. “It is better to fall into the hands of God than into the hands of men.” Why preach the Gospel at all then? some may say. The answer is, (1) Christ commanded it to be preached, and (2) the very nature of the Gospel demands proclamation; the truth will not be silent. The appeal which must concerns us is addressed immediately to those who have heard the Gospel, seen Christ in his word and works, and had an opportunity of accepting eternal life. If men have insulted God, poured contempt upon his Son, counted the blood of the covenant as an unworthy thing, grieved and quenched the Holy Spirit, what can possibly remain of a remedial kind? The inquiry is one on which reason may expend its powers. What remains after God has been exhausted? Those who plead against eternal punishment often talk as though no mercy had been shown to the sinner; as if mercy were an orb reserved to shine upon the uttermost darkness to show the way to heaven. Such a suggestion is a grave reflection upon the plan of salvation; it plainly, though indirectly, charges that plan with incompleteness, and violently enlarges the period of human probation. As if God’s mercy were less than man’s pity! We attempt not to read the unpublished decrees of God; in our present sphere, without present means of judging, reason itself binds us to accept the conclusion of consciousness and revelation in preference to the plausibilities of mere sentiment.