There is a prayer which every Brahmin prays, in which he declares
that he will never enter into a final state of bliss alone, but that
everywhere he will strive for universal redemption; that never will he
leave the world of sin and sorrow, but remain suffering and striving
and sorrowing after universal salvation. Compare that with the orthodox
idea, and send out your missionaries to the benighted Hindoos.
The doctrine of hell is infamous beyond all power to express. I wish
there were words mean enough to express my feelings of loathing on this
subject. What harm has it not done? What waste places has it not made?
It has planted misery and wretchedness in this world; it peoples the
future with selfish joys and lurid abysses of eternal flame. But we
are getting more sense every day. We begin to despise those monstrous
doctrines. If you want to better men and women change their conditions
here. Don't promise them something somewhere else. One biscuit will do
more good than all the tracts that were ever peddled in the world.
Give them more whitewash, more light, more air. You have to change men
physically before you change them intellectually.
I believe the time will come when every criminal will be treated as we
now treat the diseased and sick, when every penitentiary will become
a reformatory; and that if criminals go to them with hatred in their
bosoms, they will leave them without feelings of revenge. Let me tell
you the story of Orpheus and Eurydice. Eurydice had been carried away by
the god of hell, and Orpheus, her lover, went in quest of her. He took
with him his lyre, and played such exquisite music that all hell was
amazed. Ixion forgot his labours at the wheel, the daughters of Danaus
ceased from their hopeless task, Tantalus forgot his thirst, even Pluto
smiled, and, for the first time in the history of hell, the eyes of the
Furies were wet with tears. As it was with the lyre of Orpheus, so it is
to-day with the great harmonies of science, which are rescuing from the
prisons of superstition the torn and bleeding heart of man.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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