To all this it will probably be retorted, "you are arguing as though God's justice were the same as man's, and you were therefore capable of judging it, an assumption which is unwarrantable, and is grossly presumptuous." To which I reply: "If by God's justice you do not mean justice at all, but refer to some Divine attribute of which we know nothing, all my strictures on it fall to the ground; only, do not commit the inconsistency of arguing that hell is _just_, when by 'just' you mean some unknown quality, and then propping up your theories with proofs drawn from human justice. It would perhaps tend to clearness in argument if you gave this Divine attribute some other name, instead of using for it an expression which has already a definite meaning."
The justice of hell disposed of, we turn to the love of God. I have never heard it stated that hell is a proof of his great love to the world, but I take the liberty myself of drawing attention to it in this light. God, we are told, existed alone before ought was created; there perfect in himself, in happiness, in glory, he might have remained, say orthodox theologians. Then, we have a right to ask in the name of charity, why did he, happy himself, create a race of beings of whom the vast majority were to be endlessly and hopelessly miserable? Was this love? "He created man to glorify him." But was it loving to create those who would only suffer for his glory? Was it not rather a gigantic, an inconceivable selfishness?
"Man may be saved if he will." That is not to the point; God foreknew that some would be lost, and yet he made them. With all reverence I say it, God had no right to create sentient beings, if of one of them it can ever be truly said, "good were it for that man that he had never been born." He who creates, imposes on himself, by the very act of creation, duties towards his creatures. If God be self-conscious and moral, it is an absolute certainty that the whole creation is moving towards the final good of every creature in it. We did not ask to be made; we suffered not when we existed not; God, who has laid existence on us without our consent, is responsible for our final good, and is bound by every tie of righteousness and justice, not to speak of love, to make the existence he gave us, unasked, a blessing and not a curse to us. Parents feel this responsibility towards the children they bring into the world, and feel themselves bound to protect and to make happy those who, without them, had not been born. But, if hell be true, then every man and woman is bound not to fulfil the Divine command of multiplying the race, since by so doing they are aiding to fill the dungeons of hell, and they will, hereafter, have their sons and their daughters cursing the day of their birth, and overwhelming their parents with reproaches for having brought into the world a body, which God was thus enabled to curse with the awful gift of an immortal soul.