Among the evangelicals, only one voice, so far as I know, is heard to protest against eternal torture; and all honour is due to the Rev. Samuel Minton, for his rare courage in defying on this point the opinion of his "world," and braving the censure which has been duly inflicted on him. He seems to make "eternal" the equivalent of "irremediable" in some cases and of "everlasting" in others. He believes that the wicked will be literally destroyed, burnt up, consumed; the fact that the fire is eternal by no means implies, he remarks, that that which is cast into the fire should be likewise eternal, and that the fire is unquenchable does not prove that the chaff is unconsumable. "Eternal destruction" he explains as irreparable destruction, final and irreversible extinction. This theory should have more to recommend it to all who believe in the supernatural inspiration of the Bible, than the Broad Church explanation; it uses far less violence towards the words of Scripture, and, indeed, a very fair case may be made out for it from the Bible itself.
It is scarcely necessary to add to this small list of dissentients from orthodox Christianity, the Unitarian body; I do not suppose that there is such a phenomenon in existence as a Unitarian Christian who believes in an eternal hell.
With these small exceptions the mass of Christians hold this dogma, but for the most part carelessly and uncomprehendingly. Many are ashamed of it even while duteously confessing it, and gabble over the sentences in their creed which acknowledge it in a very perfunctory manner. People of this kind "do not like to talk about hell, it is better to think of heaven." Some Christians, however, hold it strongly, and proclaim their belief boldly; the members of the Evangelical Alliance actually make the profession of it a condition of admittance into their body, while many High Church divines think that a sharp declaration of their belief in it is needed by loyalty towards God and "charity to the souls of men." I wish I could believe that all who profess this dogma did not realize it, and only accepted it because their fathers and mothers taught it to them. But what can one say to such statements as the following, quoted from Father Furniss by W. R. Greg in his splendid "Enigmas of Life:" I take it as a specimen of Roman Catholic _authorized_ teaching. Children are asked: "How will your body be when the devil has been striking it every moment for a hundred million years without stopping?" A girl of eighteen is described as dressed in fire; "she wears a bonnet of fire. It is pressed down all over her head; it burns her head; it burns into the skull; it scorches the bone of the skull and makes it smoke." A boy is boiled: "Listen! there is a sound just like that of a kettle boiling.... The blood is boiling in the scalded veins of that boy. The brain is boiling and bubbling in his head. The marrow is boiling in his bones." Nay, even the poor little babies are not exempt from torture: one is in a red hot oven, "hear how it screams to come out; see how it turns and twists about in the fire.... You can see on the face of this little child"--the fair pure innocent baby-face--"what you see on the faces of all in hell--despair, desperate and horrible." Surely this man realized what he taught, but then he was that half-human being--a priest.