This doctrine is a relapse on Paganism, and derived from it. It has nothing to do with Christianity, except to corrupt it. No man was ever made better by believing it: multitudes have been made worse. It attributes to our heavenly Father conduct that, if done by the worst of men, would add a shade of increased wickedness to their character. It assumes that God has made intelligent creatures with the intention of tormenting some of them forever. It assumes that those who are thus created, exposed to this awful risk, are to be thus tormented, unless they happen to pass through what is called an Orthodox conversion in this short earthly life. God keeps them alive forever in order to torture them forever. The barbarity of this opinion exceeds all power of language to express. We are accustomed to mourn over the anguish and misery that are in this world. The problem of earthly evil has been a burden and anxiety to good men in all times, a great question for thinkers in all ages. The only satisfactory solution is, that it is temporary and educational; that it is to pass away, and, in passing, to create a higher joy and goodness than could otherwise have come. But the doctrine of everlasting punishment not only annuls this explanation, and makes it impossible to explain earthly evil, but adds to it a tenfold greater mystery. The fatherly character of God disappears in Pagan darkness, in view of this horrid doctrine; for the everlasting suffering of one human being contains in itself more evil than the accumulated sufferings of all mankind from the creation of the world to the end of it. Add together all the sicknesses, bereavements, disappointments, of all mankind; all the wars, famines, pestilences, that have tormented humanity; add to these all the mental and moral pangs produced by selfishness and sin in all ages, and all that are to be to the end of time,—and these all combined are logically and mathematically _nothing_, compared with the sufferings of one human being destined to be everlastingly punished. For all temporal sufferings added together are finite; but this is infinite. Now, the being who could inflict such torture as this is _not_ the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. There may be some deity of cruelty, some incarnation of wrath and despotism, in the Hindoo Pantheon, capable of such terrific wickedness. It is no answer to say that God inflicts suffering now in this world, and therefore he may inflict everlasting suffering in the other; for those are all finite; that is infinite. _Finite_ suffering may result in greater good, may be an education to good; but _everlasting_ suffering cannot. The finite and infinite cannot be compared together. There is no analogy between them.