PINS

 Cum grano salis.

The end of man, according to the stoics,

is not to find peace in either life or death. It

is to do his duty and tell the truth.—LECKY

"As for Truth, it endureth and is always strong! It liveth and conquereth evermore!—KEDEAS.

"Whatever is resting on fiction and fraud will be overthrown ; institutions that organise imposture and spread delusion must show what right they have to exist. Faith must render an account of herself to Reason. Mysteries must give place to facts. . . . There must be absolute freedom of thought."
-Dr. DRAPER.

Perhaps you will kindly print my last week's contribution, together with this, in their proper order. Having heard the Rev. Mr. Austin on "Hades " as well as "Purgatory," I see no reason why what I had already written should be consigned to the waste paper basket. Mr. Austin's aim is to do good ; and being actuated by the same motive, I am induced to skirmish along his lines with my Tirailleurs or light cavalry. If Mr. Austin's object is to arrive at TRUTH, I am with him ; if only to create sectarian antagonism, his sermons were better unsaid and these lines unwritten. However, believing that the rev. gentleman means well, I write in no carping spirit, but in accordance with the progressive spirit of the age—which says "There shall be no obstacle thrown in the way of enquiry." My first Pin will,  therefore, be understood as having been written for your last issue.   

That a sermon on "Purgatory" should "draw" is not to be wondered at. People live by sensation now-a-days, and therefore a considerable addition to the ordinary congregation at the Wesleyan Chapel, on Sunday evening, was only natural. Mr. Austin's discourse was an able one—though disappointing (to me, at least). I fancy his sermon would have been far more telling (to his audience) had he rattled away in his own straight dealing style, instead of quoting so much from the "Dark Ages." Let such a man as Mr. Austin give free expression to his thoughts (and one may safely presume he does think pretty deeply upon his subject), in his own fluent manner, and he is bound to have his audience with him ; but when he quotes, many of his hearers consider the theme broken, and the discourse patchy and straggling. The preacher selected his text from Job—14th chap., the 8th and following verses. Now, everyone knows that Job was a very vague old philosopher; he said many a good thing, but there is invariably an indefiniteness about him. For instance, a Materialist might argue equally as well from the verses quoted for the text as Mr. Austin himself. There is far too much reliance placed upon the words of these old authorities. The "Fathers" are everything in the R. C. Church, and are still held in fair repute by Anglicans; but Mr. Austin failed to find any good in any of them in this matter of Purgatory—even good old St. Augustine contradicted himself, and it was not until Pope Pius VI. took the matter in hand that Purgatory became an established doctrine of the Church. Yet Mr. Austin goes to Job who, to my mind, is one of the most unsatisfactory writers out, for if every man be left to construe Job's enigmatical sentences, he is a most accommodating old file; for instance, Job writes thus : " Man that is born of woman is of few days, and full of trouble. He cometh forth like a flower, and is cut down; he fleeth like a shadow and continueth not." Now, here a Materialist has a good case—and no man untrammelled with the binding chains of some particular dogma, could twist that statement into anything else than that when a man died he was dead for ever. One might also take the 12th verse of the same chapter: "So man lieth down, and riseth not; till the heavens be no more they shall not awake, nor be raised out of their sleep"—and apply it in the same direction; for, no doubt, Job believed the heavens would last for ever, and yet he says, "Man shall not awake until the heavens are no more"—which simply means not at all. Mr. Austin made short work of such people as the old Pagan philosophers and poets— such absurd old duffers are not matter-of-fact enough for people in the nineteenth century. Though Mr. Austin did not say so, the inference was plain that the Purgatory of the Roman Catholic Church was simply a continuation of the Elsysian Fields of the Greeks—and that is my opinion also; the Catholic Church has perpetuated many of the Pagan ideas of the highly Cultured Greeks—as also have Protestants. Mr. Austin did not "go" quite so straight at Purgatory generally, as he did to combat the idea of their being different degrees of punishment, and that the hope of bettering the condition of a soul after death by the prayers of the living was a most forlorn one indeed—in fact, it couldn't be done; there was no authority for it in the only reliable book—the Bible; and even the Catholics could show but one authority in their version of Holy Writ—which was an uninspired book— Machabees, 2nd book, 12th chap., the last five verses. In referring to certain prayers (the Month's Mind) offered in the R C. Church for the repose of the soul of the Late Archbishop Goold, Mr. Austin supposed a case, which, I confess, I thought very pertinent. A wealthy, but not over pious Catholic, dies and receives absolution just prior to death, and is therefore saved from the the extreme of punishment; while Archbishop Gould, who had devoted a lifetime to the Church, and was a good and pious man, had to he prayed for after death, in order that his soul should be released from an intermediate stage. Now, with the dogmas of the Church, or Mr, Austin's dogma, I have nothing to do, but I confess, it appears to me a stupid proceeding—just as I do the Protestant theory of punishing a man first and judging him afterwards. I am no apologist for the Roman Catholic Church, for I do not believe in Purgatory—and, I am Very much afraid, I am even heretical enough not to believe in the Protestant hell—still, as a reasoning being, uninfluenced by the sayings of musty old Fathers, unawed by tradition and bound by no dogma, I do think the Catholic idea a far more reasonable one. Of course it is a remnant of Paganism—but it also became a   necessity after the crucifixion—for it would .  . .. .suppose that a Divine being went  .... for three days—in fact, we are  . .  means grave—though ...  words used independently throughout the Bible. To be consistent,then, Protestants must give up the idea of a great day of judgment—for what can be the use of it if people have already been enjoying their deserts in either heaven or hell, for long thousands or millions of years? Of course, I shall have Scripture flung at me; but I prefer to be guided in this instance, as in all others, by reason. No such idea of justice could enter a human mind, and yet, I take it, our ideas of what is right at wrong, are, in a measure, inspired. I do not forget, however that Luke reports Christ to have said to the thief on the cross beside him, 'Verily I say unto thee; To-day shalt thou be with me in paradise"—which excludes even the bare idea of Purgatory; yet in spite of this we are told Christ was in hell (the grave) three days—which, of course, meant the body only. This speech of Christ's is, in my opinion, the strongest—in fact, the ONLY basis upon which argument rests against an intermediate state, and far too much has been made of it by all Protestant Writers. Let us examine this matter closely : Matthew tells us that Christ was crucified on the sixth day—the day before the Jew's Sabbath—was buried that evening, and a watch set against his grave or sepulchre, so that his disciples should not steal the body by night, in order that the Master's words might be verified. Towards the first day of the week —that is, before the Sabbath had expired, the two Marys went to the sepulchre and found Christ had arisen and an angel in his place, John mentions "two angels in white, sitting the one at the head and the other at the foot where the body of Jesus had lain" ; and turning back from the tomb she saw Jesus himself, and upon his making himself known to her, she sought to touch him, whereupon he said : " Touch me not : for I am not yet ascended to my Father!"  Now where had he been? the three days had not expired in which his body was supposed to be in the grave; and if the soul had left the body, where had it been—in hell, or in Purgatory (the Elsysian Fields of the Pagans), or had it remained in a quiescent state in the body ? It is a most singular thing that men will attempt to explain away things, which, if true at all, are mysteries to us ; and yet signally fail in the attempt. Judged by human reason, neither Mr. Austin nor any other man, can make these statements dove-tail. If it is a mystery let it remain so; if it is false altogether, more's the pity; at any rate, the Catholics have here, in my humble opinion, as strong, and even a stronger basis for their belief in Purgatory than exists on the other side against it. Forty days after the resurrection (so Tertullian says), Christ ascended to heaven in the presence of his disciples in his natural body—for while on earth he was a man, and is he not called by all good Christians, the " Son of Man ?" This is another mystery—such an event had occurred but twice before in Jewish history, viz., the apotheosis of Enoch and Elijah. But why pursue this matter further, no good can come of it—and like many another thing in Scripture, it will not bear examination by day light. Take the last chapter of Mark, the 24th chapter of Luke, and compare them with the 28th Matthew and the 20th John, and note the difference. Luke says : " Now upon the first day of the week, very early in morning there . . &c."; Mark, much  the same; John ;"The first day of the week, cometh Mary Magdalene early, when it was yet dark"; but Matthew thus : " In the the end of the Sabbath, as it began to dawn." One writer speaks of one angel, another of two, and yet Mr. Austin says Machabees is not an inspired book. Are the books attributed to St. Matthew, Mark, Luke, John or, say Job— inspired ? Then, why gird at the words "purgatory," and sneer at " material fires ?" How Often does the word "purge" occur in Charles Wesley's hymns? (purgo to clean, cleanse, purify religiously) ; and is there no mention of hell-fire in the Wesleyan Catechism ? Candidly speaking, the Pagan idea of purgatory was not a bad one; there were no fires there, and if the Catholics have any in their intermediate state—and I don't think they have—it is a mistake, for no poor soul should be punished until he is fairly tried. If Mr. Austin is satisfied that there is no purgatory, that should be sufficient; there are more millions of Christians who believe there is, than there are of those who believe it not—and perhaps as many more nominal Christians—that is, men who were reared as such—who believe in neither purgatorial fires or the eternal fires of damnation. This hell fire business is a bad business—strange as it  may appear for me, a poor "devil upon two sticks," to say it. What is the good of trying to prove that a thing is not when so many will believe it—even though they may no more be able to prove its existence than Mr. Austin is to disprove it. Let it rip, I say, and let us all go in for a little of the religion of humanity— which, unfortunately, has been too long neglected. People prate about science unsettling men's minds, making them this that and the other; but there is no conflict between science and this religion—for science cannot fall out with a man for loving his neighbour—much as it may knock imaginary saucepans out of ecclesiasticism, church monopolies, and clerical pride, lust for power, and wooden headed, stubborn cussedness. Then as to the Pagan philosophers' and poets' ideas— and one may say, the Christian poet's idea (Dante for instance) of there being degrees of punishment; well, what of it? Viewed in the light of reason it is a good one—but to go into this matter properly would tax your space too severely ; one must fail to do justice to a question of this kind in so short a screed as this—just as Mr. Austin's sermon was necessarily mutilated by its brevity. To me it appears no more unreasonable for God to heed the prayer of a poor heart-broken wife, or child, praying for the dead husband's or father's soul, than it is for a wife to pray that her sailor husband may escape ship-wreck, or her soldier son the cannon shot; for if God can, and will, answer prayer in one instance, why not in the other! Men pray for health, wealth, happiness, rain, fine weather, good crops, prosperity, and finally, everlasting joy; why not, then, may they not pray for the repose of the soul of a dead relative, or for the diminution of punishment? It is certainly not unreasonable! Mr. Austin, however, was good  enough to say, that however much he was opposed to this doctrine of the Church, be loved its members, and he begged to assure them that prayer would be of service to them only when offered in life; when they were dead, prayer would avail him nothing. After purgatory, comes hell—this is only a natural sequence—and Mr. Austin will tell us some thing about that dread place on Sunday next ; and as it should be an important and interesting subject to most of us, no doubt he will have many to hear him. I wonder whether the rev. gentleman has ever read the celebrated discussion between the Rev. Mr. Pope and the Rev. Father Maguire ? If not, he should do so, and he will find the whole question there discussed in a scholarly manner. Anyway, I cannot help thinking that such discussions do no real good ; people are getting harder headed every day—and perhaps harder hearted—and, consequently, purgatory, as well as a lot of other old-fashioned things, are very much out of date. Pious people of all creeds cling to their own faith like limpets to a rock—and none hold more tenaciously than the Roman Catholics do to theirs, and in this they are certainly worthy of imitation—whether they go straight off to their assigned quartier in the dark unknown land, or stop by the way in the pleasant groves and shades of the Elysian Fields.

" If a man die, shall he live again? All the days of my appointed time will I wait till my change come."-JOB.

Therefore be wise, and learn at last how manfully to play thy part ;

Repentant prove for follies past by purifying now thy heart.

'Tis in the human heart alone that pure religion e'er can dwell :

'Tis there that Heaven erects its throne, or there exists the human hell."-ANON.

" If all come to ashes of dung,
If maggots and rats ended us, then Alarum !
for we are betrayed
Then indeed suspicion of death."
. . . . . . . . . .
" Do you suspect death? If I were to suspect death I should die now,—

Do you think I could walk pleasantly and
well-suited towards annihilation." WALT WHITMAN.

If Mr. Austin's discourse on Purgatory was unsatisfactory, how much more so his laboured sermon on Hades! I, as well as others, imagined that we should be told something of what is known, to both Protestants and Catholics, as hell—the place of the damned ; but Mr. Austin wouldn't approach that subject—his object was only to show that Hades and hell were synonymous terms, that, in fact it was simply—after all his objections to Purgatory—an intermediate state. Certainly his words inferred nothing else—no matter what his thoughts may have been. From the first, it was evident that Mr. Austin had selected a tough subject—one far above his mental grasp; and here, I wish it to be understood, that I by no means seek to under-rate Mr. Austin's powers of reflection or perception, or the extent of his reading; but he undertook to deal with a subject that all men must fail in—just as men fail, in all instances, to explain the Trinity or the Immaculate Conception. These things are either mysteries or lies : if the former, all that can be said is " such things are ; how, we know not, and why, Faith accounts for what Reason fails to discover"; and if the latter, the least said about them the better. However, millions believe they are true, while millions believe other wise ; and one side fails to convince the other. Mr. Austin again went to Job for a text ; and warned his hearers that his sermon was not to be about the place of future punishments, but to prove the existence of Hades or Sheol—not as a locality, but a state into which souls would remain that were not permitted to ascend to Paradise, Hades was mentioned nineteen times in the Scriptures, and meant unseen or invisible—there was a third place. Tartarus, which was thought by many to be the place of punishment. Of course Mr. Austin quoted the case of Lazarus and Dives; but one fails to see in the place wherein lie the rich man in agony and torture, any other place than a fierce fire— and all through the Scripture we have the same idea of a "bottomless pit" of fire and brimstone eternally burning, into which damned souls will be tossed; the idea is taken up by poets and painters and priests of succeeding ages, down to the present day— for we find that not only the old hardshells of the orthodox Churches, but that new-fangled sect, the Salvationists, believing implicitly in a never-dying, sulphurous fire.
Mr. Austin did not agree with this hell-fire business (as far as Hades was concerned), and I was pleased thereat—though, at the conclusion of his sermon, he admitted a place beyond, of which he could speak with no authority—a place of punishment which, he trusted, none of his hearers would ever become acquainted with. It seemed to me that Mr. Austin was evasive: conscientiously he does not believe in hell-fire, yet the doctrine of his church, and throughout its literature, both hymnal and prose—insist upon it. What, then, is the good of playing with words, and supposing Hades, Hell, and Sheol to mean a quiet state of gloom and darkness —in which the soul is shut out from the sight of Heaven, when these places are generally understood by the members of Mr. Austin's church, as well as by other people, to mean a place of punishment and torture ? After all the elaborate arguments advanced by Mr. Austin in his former sermon, against Purgatory—the Catholic intermediate slate —he actually establishes such a place himself—he may not have meant to do so, but he certainly did. Let us have done with this absurd reasoning; let us not split straws as to the meaning of Hades, Hell, Sheol, Gehenna, Tartarus, The Pitt, Eblis, Enfer, and the other numerous names it is known by—either let us have an honest, straight forward definition — let it he either a hell of fire, or a frigid zone, as Dante hath it, or chuck the horrid bug-bear of men's lives up altogether; most men have abandoned the idea of a personal devil, let them follow suit by throwing cold water upon hell—even at the risk of an earthquake. Of course it is a good old doctrine—as good as all other old things are, rotten to the core; and from Tertulian down to John Wesley it has been ardently believed in. As an intelligent, honest man, Mr. Austin could not reason against his convictions ; as a Wesleyan minister, he could not preach against the dogma of his church—and thus he was placed, as any one could see, between two fires, and his position was not an enviable one. His discourse was, in one sense, an able one; but it was anything but convincing. Once a man becomes a member of any church, he must, we take it to be consistent, subscribe to its tenets—and this applies of course, more particularly to the minister than the laymen, though binding in both. When a man once gets ideas of his own, he can no longer be a member of a church, he must henceforth, become a free lance. To he consistent and honest, he must get over the hedge; for he cannot possibly belong to a communion which says "Thus shalt thou believe and preach—all else is error!" Looking over Tertullian's "Apology," I find there written what Wesleyans, as well as other Christians, must and do ascribe to. He says:

These Holy Scriptures teach us there is one God, who made the world out of nothing, who, though daily seen, is invisible; his infiniteness is known only to himself; his immensity conceals, but at the same time discovers, him. He has ordained for men, according to their lives, rewards and punishments ; he will raise all their dead that have ever lived from the creation of the world, will command them to reassume their bodies, and thereupon adjudge them to felicity that has no end, or to eternal flames. The fires of hell are those hidden flames which the earth shuts up in her bosom.

Here there is no mistake as to meaning; no metaphor, but plain honest language; and a locality is defined. Mr. Austin believes, no doubt, in Tertullian, yet he believes not in Augustine in the matter of Purgatory—though strange to say, he quoted the old Saint in his last sermon, in support of Hades. I'll give a bit more of Tertullian on devils—their origin and nature :

Under Satan, their prince, they produce diseases, irregularities of the air, plagues, and the blighting influence of the blossoms of the earth, who seduce men to offer sacrifices, that they may have the blood of their victims—which is their food. They are nimble as birds, and hence know everything that is passing on earth; they live in the air, and hence can spy what is going on in heaven; for this reason they can impose on men feigned prophecies, and deliver oracles. Thus they announced in Rome that a victory would be obtained over King Perseus, when in truth they knew that the battle was already won. They falsely cure diseases, for, taking possession of the body of man, they produce in him a distemper, and then ordaining some remedy to be used, they cease to afflict him, and man think that a cure has taken place.

Of course, Mr. Austin, no more than myself, believes in such rubbish—but does he believe in this :

He that believeth and is baptised shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned. And these signs shall follow them that believe : In my name shall they cast out devils ; they shall speak with new tongues; they shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.

Now this is not Tertullian's, but Mark's. Does Mr. Austin believe it ? Anybody can see where Tertullian took his cue from. Hell-fire has been one of the most powerful levers in the hands of priests ever since its first invention : men have not been governed by love but by fear. Mr. Voisey, in one of his able discourses, said " that it was the successful treatment of hell-fire that was the cause of the triumph of Christianity. But this age was witnessing the quenching of that nether-most place of perdition." Three years ago, a Wesleyan Minister, the Rev. Hans Mack, delivered a Lecture at Balmain, in defence of a personal devil and a material hell; now we have another Wesleyan minister arguing against it; truly the "signs of the times" are becoming brighter every day. Thomas Paine said "that no religion can be true that outrages the conscience of a little child, and this hell-fire doctrine does so effectually." As for the Devil—the real jolly old personal devil with wings and horns and tail, where shall we find him —in poetry and fiction—not in philosophy or science, surely ? In Milton and Dante, or in the Bible ? Let Mr. Austin have a look at the "Histoire du Diable, ses origines, sa grandeur et sa Decadence" by M.. Albert Reville, and Miss Prances B. Cobbes' clever review of the same in the "Fortnightly." Reville says " The age of the Apocrypha, with its intermixture of Persian and Alexandrian ideas, saw Satan, or as the Septuagent calls him, Diabolos, the Slanderer, already robed in some borrowed glory of Ahrimanes, and no longer a slave of Jah (Jehovah) but a rebel banished from those courts of heaven wherein the poet Job beheld him freely entering." Mark, "Job the poet," so that when Mr. Austin wants a text for his sermon on the " Devil" let him go to an English poet instead of an ancient one, for it is to Milton, I fear, that we shall have to go for our theology—that is, the grand old sort. But there's a shorter way than poring over Milton's " Paradise Lost," for another Englishman, Daniel Defoe, has written a "complete history of the Devil," so that here is material to hand at once. I have often searched—and researched, in vain—for the precise locality of Hell or Hades—or Tartarus, or whatever it is; but the more I have read, the fainter grew the hideous picture, until finally nothing was left upon the canvas. I have seen the smoking craters of both Etna and Vesuvius, and have heard Stromboli's roar; I have also heard legends in hundreds (both ancient and modern) as to these being the entrance to the bottomless pit ; but for all that, the hell-fire of the orthodox—the "nicely saved," as our friends down the street say—has no terrors for me. There is no need to say more; nor to quote from either orthodox or infidel writer as to the existence of either hell or the devil, but I take the liberty of suggesting that the energies of men, with as much brain power as the Rev. Mr. Austin has, may find better work to do for humanity than in digging up such mythical rubbish as Purgatory and Hades. They're both buried nearly out of sight and memory, therefore let 'em rip until the last trump—which shall reveal all—this mystery (if it be one) as well as the mysteries of life and death. What sort of place Mr. Austin will make Hell to be in his next sermon—after his treatment of the subject last Sunday night, puzzles me exceedingly. He may have some other place in view not yet heard of, and which—having disposed of Hades, to his own satisfaction —there is no authority for in the Scripture.

ARMODEUS.

 Hawkesbury Chronicle and Farmers Advocate 14 August 1886,