Flowers of Freethought Volume I Part 3

There are scores of other divisions. All cannot be right, and all may be wrong. Even if one is entirely right, how do we know it is the Baptists?

According to the law of probabilities, Spurgeon was very likely in the wrong; and if wrong belief, however sincere, entails d.a.m.nation, it is quite possible that at 11.5 p.m. on Sunday, January 31, Spurgeon entered h.e.l.l instead of Heaven. *

* The next article will explain this matter.

Far be it from us to wish a fellow creature in h.e.l.l, but there is always a certain pleasure in seeing the engineer hoist with his own petard. All tragedy has a touch of comedy. Fancy Spurgeon in Hades groaning "I sent other people here by the million, and here I am myself."

How would this be worse than the groan of any other lost soul? Few men are devils or angels. Most are neither black nor white, but grey.

Between the best and vilest how much difference is there in the eye of infinite wisdom? And if G.o.d, the all-knowing and all-powerful, created men as they are, strong and weak, wise and foolish, good, bad, and indifferent; there is no more injustice in Spurgeon's burning in h.e.l.l than in the d.a.m.nation of the worst wretch that ever cursed the world.

Spurgeon used to preach h.e.l.l with a certain gusto. Here is a hot and strong pa.s.sage from his sermon on the Resurrection of the Dead:

"When thou diest', thy soul will be tormented alone; that will be a h.e.l.l for it; but at the day of judgment thy body will join thy soul, and then thou wilt have twin-h.e.l.ls, thy soul sweating drops of blood, and thy body suffused with agony. In fire exactly like that which we have on earth thy body will lie, asbestos-like, for ever unconsumed, all thy veins roads for the feet of pain to travel on, every nerve a string on which the Devil shall for ever play his diabolical tune of h.e.l.l's Unutterable Lament."

After preaching this awful doctrine a man should be ill for a fortnight.

Would it not afflict a kind-hearted man unspeakably to think that millions of his fellow beings, or hundreds, or even one, would suffer such a terrible fate? Would it not impair his sleep, and fill his dreams with terror? But it did not have this effect on Spurgeon. After preaching h.e.l.l in that way, and rolling d.a.m.nation over his tongue as a dainty morsel, he went home, dined with a good appet.i.te, drank his wine, and smoked his cigar.

There was not the slightest doubt in Spurgeon's mind as to the endless doom of the d.a.m.ned. Here is an extract from another sermon--

"Thou wilt look up there on the throne of G.o.d and it shall be written, 'For ever!' When the d.a.m.ned jingle the burning irons of their torment they shall say, 'For ever!' When they howl, echo cries, 'For ever!'

'For ever' is written on their racks, 'For ever' on their chains; 'For ever' burneth in the fire, 'For ever' ever reigns."

How bodies are to burn without consuming, how a fire could last for ever, or how a good G.o.d could roast his own children in it, are questions that Spurgeon did not stop to answer. He took the d.a.m.nable doctrine of d.a.m.nation as he found it. He knew it was relished by myriads of callous, foolish people; and it gave such a pungent flavor to a long sermon! His listeners were not terrified. Oh dear no! Smith, the Newington greengrocer, was not alarmed; he twirled his thumbs, and said to himself, "Spurgeon's in fine form this morning!"

Archdeacon Farrar protests against the notion of a fiery, everlasting h.e.l.l as the result of fear, superst.i.tion, ignorance, hate, and slavish letter-worship. He declares that he would resign all hope of immortality to save a single human soul from the h.e.l.l of Mr. Spurgeon. But is not the h.e.l.l of Mr. Spurgeon the h.e.l.l of the New Testament? Does not Jesus speak of everlasting fire? Why seek to limit the duration of h.e.l.l by some hocus-pocus of interpretation? It is idle to pretend that "everlasting" means something less than everlasting. If it means that in relation to h.e.l.l it must also mean it in relation to heaven. Dr. Farrar cannot have two different meanings for the same word in the same verse; and should he ever go to h.e.l.l (he will pardon us the supposition), how much consolation would he derive from knowing that his doom was not "everlasting" but only "eternal"? There was more honesty and straightforwardness in Mr. Spurgeon. He preached what the Bible taught him. He set forth a hateful creed in its true colors. His presentation of Christianity will continue to satisfy those who belong to the past, but it will drive many others out of the fold of faith into the broad pastures of Freethought.

IS SPURGEON IN HEAVEN?

When Mrs. Booth died, the wife of the famous "General," the "Army"

reported her as "Promoted to Glory from Clacton-on-Sea." It was extremely funny. Clacton-on-Sea is such a prosaic anti-climax after Glory. One was reminded of Sir Horace Glendower:

Sprat. But the sense of humor is not acute in religious circles.

Mr. Spurgeon frequently gave expression to his dislike and mistrust of the antics or the Salvation Army. He was far from prim himself, but he held that if people were not "won over to Christ" by preaching, it was idle to bait the hook with mere sensationalism. Yet by a strange irony his closest friends, in announcing his death to his flock, actually improved on the extravagance of the Salvationists. Here is a copy of the telegram that was affixed to the rails of the Metropolitan Tabernacle the morning after his decease:

Mentone, 11.50.

Spurgeon's Tabernacle, London.

Our beloved pastor entered heaven 11.5 Sunday night.

Harrald.

This Harrald was Mr. Spurgeon's private secretary, but he writes like the private secretary of G.o.d Almighty. A leading statesman once said he wished he was as c.o.c.ksure of anything as Tom Macaulay was c.o.c.ksure of everything; but what was Macaulay's c.o.c.ksureness to the c.o.c.ksureness of Harrald? The gentleman could not have spoken with more a.s.surance if he had been Saint Peter himself, and had opened the gate for Pastor Spurgeon.

We take it that Spurgeon expired at 11.5 on Sunday night. That is the _fact_. All the rest is conjecture.

How could his soul enter heaven at the very same moment? Is heaven in the atmosphere? He who a.s.serts it is a very bold speculator. Is it out in the ether? If so, where? And how is it our telescopes cannot detect it? If heaven is a place, as it must be if it exists at all, it cannot very well be within the astronomical universe. Now the farthest stars are inconceivably remote. Our sun is more than 90,000,000 miles distant, and Sirius is more than 200,000 times farther off than the sun. There are stars so distant that their light takes more than a thousand years to reach us, and light travels at the rate of nearly two hundred thousands miles per second!

It is difficult to imagine Spurgeon's soul travelling faster than that; and if heaven is somewhere out in the vast void, beyond the sweep of telescopes or the register of the camera, Spurgeon's soul has so far _not_ "entered heaven" that its journey thither is only just begun. In another thousand years, perhaps, it will be nearing the pearly gates.

_Perhaps_, we say; for heaven may be a million times further off, and Spurgeon's soul may pull the bell and rouse Saint Peter long after the earth is a frozen ball, and not only the human race but all life has disappeared from its surface. Nay, by the time he arrives, the earth may have gone to pot, and the whole solar system may have vanished from the map of the universe.

What a terrible journey! Is it worth travelling so far to enter the Bible heaven, and sing hymns with the menagerie of the Apocalypse?

Besides, a poor soul might lose its way, and dash about the billion-billion-miled universe like a lunatic meteor.

It appears to us, also, that Mr. Harrald and the rest of Mr. Spurgeon's friends have forgotten his own teaching. He thoroughly believed in the bodily resurrection of the dead, and an ultimate day of judgment, when bodv and soul would join together, and share a common fate for eternity.

How is this reconcileable with the notion that Spurgeon's soul "entered heaven at 11.5" on Sunday evening, the thirty-first of January, 1892? Is it credible that the good man went to the New Jerusalem, will stay there in perfect felicity until the day of judgment, and will then have to return to this world, rejoin his old bodv, and stand his trial at the great a.s.size, with the possibility of having to shift his quarters afterwards? Would not this be extremely unjust, nay dreadfully cruel?

And even if Spurgeon, as one of the "elect," only left heaven for form's sake at the day of judgment, to go through the farce of a predetermined trial, would it not be a gratuitous worry to s.n.a.t.c.h him away from unspeakable bliss to witness the trial of the human species, and the d.a.m.nation of at least nine-tenths of all that ever breathed?

As a matter of fact, the Christian Church has never been able to make up its mind about the state or position of the soul immediately after death. Only a few weeks ago we saw that Sir G. G. Stokes, unconsciously following in the wake of divines like Archbishop Whately, holds the view that the soul on leaving the body will lie in absolute unconsciousness until the day when it has to wake up and stand in the dock. The controversies on this subject are infinite, and all sorts of ideas have been maintained, but nothing has been authoritatively decided. Mr.

Spurgeon's friends have simply _cut_ the Gordian knot; that is, they are only dogmatising.

Laying all such subtle disputes aside, we should like Mr. Harrald to tell us how he knows that Spurgeon has gone, is going, or ever will go to heaven. What certainty can they have in the matter? Saint Paul himself alluded to the possibility of his being "a castaway." How can an inferior apostle be _sure_ of the kingdom of heaven?

Saint Paul taught predestination, and so did Spurgeon. According to this doctrine, G.o.d knew beforehand the exact number of human beings that would live on this planet, though Omniscience itself must have been taxed to decide where the anthropoid exactly shaded off into the man. He also knew the exact number of the elect who would go to heaven, and the exact number of the reprobate who would go to h.e.l.l. The tally was decided before the spirit of G.o.d brooded over the realm of Chaos and old Night. Every child born into the world bears the stamp of his destiny.

But the stamp is secret. No one can detect it. Lists of saved and d.a.m.ned are not published. If they were, it would save us a lot of anxiety. Some would say, "I'm all right." Others would say, "I'm in for it; I'll keep cool while I can." But we must all die before we ascertain our fate.

We may feel confident of being in the right list, with the rest of the sheep; but confidence is not proof, and impressions are not facts.

When we take the great leap we shall know. Until then no man has any cert.i.tude; not even the most pious Christian that ever rolled his eyes in prayer to his Maker, or whined out the confession of his contemptible sins. All are in the same perplexity, and Spurgeon was no exception to the rule.

When predestination was really believed, the friends of the greatest saint only _hoped_ he had gone to heaven. When they are _sure_ of it predestination is dead. Nay, h.e.l.l itself is extinguished. Spurgeon's friends think he has gone to heaven because they feel he was too good to go to h.e.l.l. They knew him personally, and it is hard to think that a man whose hand once lay in yours is howling in everlasting fire. Such exceptions prove a new rule. They show that the human heart has outgrown the horrible doctrine of future torment, that the human mind has outgrown foolish creeds, that man is better than his G.o.d.

G.o.d IN j.a.pAN.

j.a.pan has just been visited by a terrible earthquake. Without a moment's warning it swept along, wrecking towns, killing people, and altering the very shape of mountains. A vast tidal wave also rushed against the coast and deluged whole tracts of low-lying country. It is estimated that 50,000 houses have been destroyed, and at least 5,000 men, women, and children. The first reports gave a total of 25,000 slain, but this is said to be an exaggeration. Nevertheless, as a hundred miles or so of railway is torn to pieces, and it is difficult to convey relief to the suffering survivors, the butcher's bill of this catastrophe may be doubled before the finish.

If earthquakes are the work of blind, unconscious Nature, it is idle to spend our breath in discussion or recrimination. Even regret is foolish.

We have to take the world as we find it, with all its disadvantages,

and make the best of a not too brilliant bargain. Instead of screaming we must study; instead of wailing we must reflect; and eventually, as we gain a deeper knowledge of the secrets of Nature, and a greater mastery over her forces, we shall be better able to foresee the approach of evil and to take precautionary measures against it.

But the standard teaching of England, to say nothing of less civilised nations, is not Naturalism but Theism. We are told that there is a G.o.d over all, and that he doeth all things well. On the practical side this deity is called Providence. It is Providence that sends fine weather, and Providence that sends bad weather; Providence that sends floods, and Providence that sends drought; Providence that favors us with a fine harvest, and Providence that blights the crops, reducing millions of people, as in Russia at this moment, to the most desperate shifts of self-preservation. It is Providence that saves Smith's precious life in a railway accident, and of course it is. Providence that smashes poor Jones, Brown and Robinson.

Now it will be observed that the favorable or adverse policy of Providence is quite irrespective of human conduct, There is no moral discrimination. If Grace Darling and Jack the Ripper were travelling by the same train, and it met with an accident, everybody knows that their chances of death are precisely equal. If there were any difference it would be in favor of Jack, who seems very careful of his own safety, and would probably take a seat in the least dangerous part of the train.

Some people, of course, and especially parsons, will contend that Providence does discriminate. They have already been heard to hint that the Russian famine is on account of the persecution of the Jews. But this act of brutality is the crime of the Government, and the famine falls upon mult.i.tudes of peasants who never saw a Jew in their lives.

They have to suffer the pangs of hunger, but the Czar will not go without a single meal or a single bottle of champagne.

No doubt a pious idiot or two will go to the length of a.s.serting or insinuating that the earthquake in j.a.pan is a divine warning to the people, from the Mikado down to his meanest subject, that they are too slow in accepting Christianity. In fact there is a large collection of such pious idiots, only they are deterred by a wholesome fear of ridicule. Hundreds of thousands of people have seen Mr. Wilson Barrett in _Claudian_, without being in the least astonished that an earthquake, which ruins a whole city, should be got up for the hero's spiritual edification.

Let the pious idiots, however numerous, be swept aside, and let the Christian with a fair supply of brains in his skull consider Providence in the light of this earthquake. It is folly to pretend that the j.a.panese are particularly wicked at this moment. It is greater folly to pretend that the earthquake killed the most flagitious sinners. It slew like Jehovah's bandits in the land of Canaan, without regard to age, s.e.x, or character. The terrible fact must be faced, that in a country not specially wicked, and in a portion of it not inhabited by select sinners, the Lord sent an earthquake to slay man, woman, and child, and if possible to "leave alive nothing that breatheth."

Lay your hand upon your heart, Christian, and honestly answer this question. Would you have done this deed? Of course not. Your cheek flames at the thought. You would rush to save the victims. You would soothe the dying and reverently bury the dead. Why then do you worship a Moloch who laughs at the writhings of his victims and drinks their tears like wine? See, they are working and playing; they are at business and pleasure; one is toiling to support the loved ones at home; another is sitting with them in peace and joy; another is wooing the maiden who is dearer to him than life itself; another is pondering some benevolent project; another is planning a law or a poem that shall be a blessing and a delight to posterity. And lo the mandate of Moloch goes forth, and "his word shall not return unto him void." Swifter than thought calamity falls upon the gay and busy scene. Hearts that throbbed with joy now quiver with agony. The husband folds his wife in a last embrace. The mother gathers her children like Niobe. The lover clasps in the midst of horror the maiden no longer coy. Homes are shaken to dust, halls fall in ruins, the very temples of the G.o.ds are shattered. Brains are dashed out, blood flows in streams, limbs are twisted, bodies are pinned by falling masonry, cries of anguish pierce the air, groans follow, and lastly silence. Moloch then retires to his inmost sanctuary, filled and sated with death and pain.

Is it not better, Christian friend, to defy Moloch instead of worshipping him? Is it not still better to regard this deity as the creation of fanciful ignorance? Is not existence a terror if Providence may swoop upon us with inevitable talons and irresistible beak? And does not life become sweeter when we see no cruel intelligence behind the catastrophes of nature?