Sermon for the Twenty-Fifth Sunday after Pentecost (Fifth Sunday after Epiphany):
Excerpt from the book Sermons for the Sundays and Some Festivals of the Year
On Indifference in the Affair of Salvation
“Suffer both to grow until the harvest, and in the time of the harvest I will say to the reapers, gather up first the cockle, and bind it into bundles to burn, but the wheat gather ye into my barn.”— Matthew 13:30
Gospel: Matthew 13:24-30
The awful attribute of justice, so terrible to the offending creature, is, however, essential to the all-perfect Creator. In vain would the impious man and the conscious sinner strip him of it; in vain do they force their own reason, and strive to frame to themselves a Deity according to their own guilty minds; one who should be all bounty; benevolent, but not avenging; his justice absorbed in his goodness. The latter, indeed, in this life, is often seen, according to the repeated expressions of Scripture, to surpass the other; still this is absolutely indispensable to him, and must, in its proper place, vindicate its rights, and establish its equality.
This earth, it is obvious, is not its adequate theatre. Striking as are the judgments of God, that have been from time to time displayed on its surface, they are at most but a few overflowing drops of that cup of vengeance, the full contents of which are to be poured out in another place. Yes, my brethren, it is in hell, that God purposely and avowedly displays his justice, and to that dreary realm must we resort, to form a just conception of it. Thank God, it is not necessary, in order to do so, that we should descend thither in reality; revelation has provided us with all the requisite lights; and by their aid I propose to display to you, but in a brief and rapid survey, that awful scene, which the Almighty has chosen for the eternal theatre of his justice.
And let no Christian, with a false delicacy, shrink from the alarming subject; for few moral topics are more salutary or more necessary. With its wholesome terrors it was that the solitaries of the deserts frequently encouraged themselves in their penitential career, and that the martyrs animated and hardened themselves to their excruciating torments; it may even be said, as it has been said, that at these infernal flames, did many of the most fervent lovers of God first kindle that divine and celestial fire, which afterwards burned so ardently in their breasts. Consequently, every Christian may, with undoubted profit, give this subject a place in his meditations; the weak mid wavering may derive from it a new and useful stimulus to their fear, and the fervent and constant an additional incentive to their love. “Come then, and see the works of the Lord , terrible in His councils over the children of men.” (Psalm 65:5)
In opposition to a prejudice which, on this and similar subjects is too generally prevalent, I must premise that it is one on which exaggeration need not be feared, because it is impossible; the most fervid mind, the most powerful imagination of man in this life, never yet pictured to itself its real terrors; they are, alas, adequately conceived by those only who experience them. The reason is clear — they are the exertion of the justice of God, of Him who, in all his attributes, is incomprehensible; and, as we find it impossible to conceive aright the extent of his power, his goodness, or his wisdom, we may be sure, that with the utmost enlargement of our ideas we shall never estimate duly the weight of his justice. You may, therefore, on such a subject, securely give the reins to your imagination and follow me unhesitatingly in the description.
Begin by conceiving a vaulted prison, cast by the hand of the almighty Architect, intended originally for the rebel spirits of heaven, subsequently for their imitators, the sinners of the earth. This is the first notion of hell; it is a prison. Its inexorable doors, once closed on the prisoner, never reopen; in vain does he look round for any outlet, any escape: an almighty hand binds him down. The dungeons of this world allow some room to their inmates, some range for motion and action; but the prisoners of hell are otherwise situated; each one of them is bound down in his own eternal place, deprived of all liberty and power, unable alike to flee from his tormentors, to resist their assaults, or to afford himself the slightest relief by a change of position. It is thus man is punished for the misuse of that liberty which he prizes so much on earth, but which he so often wickedly perverts; and, considering his natural activity, his restlessness, his impatience of restraint, this itself must be an insupportable torment. Yet this is only a preliminary, a preparation for his torment.
Then comes that fire, those vengeful flames, so often mentioned in Scripture. Fire, of all the elements of this world, as it is the most inexplicable in its nature, is the most terrible in its effects. Observe it in action; see how rapid and violent it is; how it rages round its prey; with what fury it envelopes it; how it subsists only by its destruction, and immediately expires with it. Approach, and try its effects on your sensitive frame; or, if you have ever witnessed its action upon animal life, see the instant agitation, the writhing, the tortures of its unhappy victim, expressive of intolerable anguish. If such be the fire of this world, created for our use and subjected to our control, it may enable us to conceive another of a higher order, created by God expressly for vengeance, blown up by his own breath to a ten-thousand-fold intensity, and endued with the wonderful property, which he can give it, of acting on the soul as well as the body. It is in a fire of this kind that these prisoners are plunged; they dwell in it, according to the expression of the prophet, as their element. Each one of them in his separate dungeon, invested on all sides, its burning waves raging round them, above them, and completely enveloping their whole substance, and converting them in a manner into fire itself, according to the expression of another prophet: “Thou shalt make them a furnace of fire.” (Psalm 20:10)
Nor is it merely in these particulars that the flames of hell differ from our feeble element. Our fire perishes by its own violence; it first annihilates, or at least dissipates the subject upon which it feeds, and then itself expires. But the peculiar and most terrible property of hell-fire is, that it is imperishable in its action; that it burns without consuming; that it renovates its own fuel, preserves what it should naturally destroy, and only seasons it for torment. The idea is not mine; it is given us by our Redeemer himself, in that remarkable expression: “They shall be salted with fire.” (Mark 9:48)
It were still some alleviation for the sufferers, if the fire which burned them, afforded them light in their dungeon; but as one of the enjoyments of the blessed is to consist in brightness and glory, so one of the torments of the reprobate will be the gloom and darkness of their prison, admitting no ray of light, except such as may serve to aggravate their situation, and render darkness itself more horrible. How delightful and cheering is light, and how painful to the aching sense the long privation of it! What an aggravation to a sick man’s sufferings are the tedious hours of darkness and solitude, and how eagerly does he hail the first breakings of the cheerful morn! How horrible was that preternatural darkness which sat on the land of Egypt, so thick that it might be felt by the hand, as the Scripture says. It may not be amiss to hear its description: “Being fettered in the bonds of darkness,” says the inspired writer, “and a long night they lay there, exiled from the eternal Providence.” (Wisdom 17:2)
Neither did the den that held them keep them from fear; for noises coming down troubled them, and sad visions appearing to them affrighted them. And no power of fire could give them light, neither could the bright flame of the stars enlighten that horrible night. Yet that night was at last relieved by morning; but here, on the long night of the damned, no morning shall ever, dawn, no friendly ray shall by any chance wander across their infernal gloom; but a thick pitchy darkness, forever brooding over their low dungeon, will aggravate all its horrors, redouble all its torments, and wrap up and concentrate all the senses of the damned in their own miserable destiny.
Still, the condition of the reprobate would not be utterly desperate if they suffered in solitude, or at least in such society as were supportable; but the last aggravation of their prison is the company that infests it. This is no other than the infernal spirits, those spirits created for vengeance, according to the expression of holy writ; who, from being once the beautiful inhabitants of heaven, are now become the foul and hideous monsters of the infernal deep, and are therefore depicted to us in Scripture under the frightful forms of dragons, asps, and basilisks. While they themselves continually smart under the divine vengeance, they are deputed to exercise it upon others; an office for which they are but too well qualified by their power, their craft, and their malignity. They will incessantly haunt the wretched sufferers, and hang over them in their torments, allowing them no rest, continually goading and exasperating them, mocking at their pains, and stinging them with the most cruel taunts and reproaches. If the wanton levity of a bystander so much aggravates the pain of a sufferer here on earth, judge what must be the condition of these sufferers in hell, continually writhing under the most excruciating pangs, while every pang is sharpened and redoubled by the insatiate malice of these never-sleeping executioners.
Nor think that they will find, in the mean time, any solace from their fellows in damnation. No one here will have the will, even if he had the power, to stir a finger for the comfort or convenience of any neighbor: they will all hate and execrate one another, and continually discharge on each other all that bitter but impotent malice with which their souls overflow. And, as to those who have been accomplices in sin, being eternally yoked together by the just judgment of God, they will find in the sight and company of each other a new hell; they will be to one another implacable furies, and expiate their guilty passion by the most cruel hatred. In fine, conceive a mingled scene of endless discord, war, rage, hatred, and revenge, and you will have some idea of this land of misery and darkness where no order, but everlasting horror dwells.
I have here only sketched for you its main features; to complete the picture, you must subjoin to it an accumulation of other circumstances — the noisome stench of this lower pit; the dismal sounds that eternally ring there; the groans and curses of the tormented; the yelk and hissings of the infernal dragons, their tormentors; the reverberating blast and roaring of the flames; the cruel hunger and thirst, never to be alleviated even by one drop of water. And when you have put together these circumstances and whatever of this kind the terrified imagination can invent, do you think you have finished the subject, and formed an adequate conception of hell? Ah! come and see the works of the Lord, terrible in his counsels over the children of men.
You have yet entered into only half its terrors, and that the smaller half. All that you have hitherto contemplated relates chiefly to the body: but it is the soul that is the seat of pain, and it is there mainly, in it and its immortal power, that the justice of God will satiate itself, and fix its sharpest arrows. Follow me, then, through this other part of the subject, if less painful in sound and description, yet far more awful to the reflecting mind.
The human soul is the master-piece of God; its powers and its passions are most wonderful; let us then observe two or three of them under the action of divine justice in the world to come.
Conscience is that power of the soul by which she knows herself, by which she sees what is within her, by which she discerns right and wrong, by which she is happy in innocence and wretched in guilt. As in this life a good conscience is a perpetual feast, so a guilty conscience is an insufferable torment. It neutralizes every joy; it is a sting that allows no rest; it haunts the unhappy wretch so far as not unfrequently to make him throw himself spontaneously on human justice, and seek for relief to his tortured mind in a public confession and an ignominious death.
But alas, I the guilty conscience of this world, if painful, is salutary; it is given rather as a monitor than a tormentor; but in hell its office is not to amend, (that, alas! is now hopeless,) but to torment; it is purely penal and vindictive. There, in his eternal dungeon, lies the unhappy wretch, fastened down to this cruel companion, which never lets him sleep, but continually rouses him to anguish, and forces him to view the odious portrait of himself. He sees himself a wretch, a reprobate, the outcast of creation; he sees his soul stained, infected, and penetrated with sin, a foul poison which now can never be extracted; he is an object of horror to himself, and his own most cruel tormentor. This is what is meant by that singular expression so often used by our divine Redeemer: “Their worm dies not.” (Mark 9:45) Yes, this voracious reptile fastens on the soul, eats into its very vitals, pierces and repierces its immortal substance, gnaws without being ever wearied, and devours without ever destroying. I know of no words that convey this truth better than those of Job: “They that devour me sleep not.” (Job 30:17)
Then comes memory to increase his torment, — that various and active power, which in life so promptly administered to his wants and his enjoyments: its sad and single office now, is to collect from the past all that can make him miserable. He remembers his sins; he remembers the first sin he ever committed,—that unhappy day, when his yet free and well-balanced soul wantonly made the fatal transition from right to wrong: he remembers for what a trifle he made the inestimable sacrifice; how empty, how miserable, how momentary was the guilty pleasure at which he snatched; how base in itself, how bitter in its fruits. He remembers how, untaught by the severe lesson, he suffered himself to be again deluded, repeated his offence, and at last became familiar with iniquity, persisted in it in spite of conviction, in spite of constant disappointment.
Then he remembers all the efforts that were made to recover and to save him; all the graces he received from God, all the remorse of conscience within, all the warnings from without, the exhortations of his spiritual guide, the good examples of others, the prayers of his friends; all which he frustrated. He calls to mind the powerful helps which he had in his own hand; the Sacraments, the holy sacrifice, prayers, alms-deeds. A little exertion, and any one of these would have saved him; a single confession, well made, a few fervent prayers, one short act of sincere contrition, would have been enough; and he was so infatuated as to neglect it.
He had it once in his power, but it is now too late; he had the precious moment in his hand, and let it slip; he had but to move a finger, and he would have turned aside with ease the immense load of wo that oppresses him; and now, there is no power in heaven or earth, that will ever be able to remove, or to alleviate it. Then it is, that the unhappy wretch hates and curses himself, and, acknowledging the justice of his punishment, becomes his own voluntary executioner; his infuriate soul can be compared to nothing better than the fabled reptile, which, in the fury of its pain, is said to turn on itself, and sting its own vitals!
Next, imagination rises up to his torment. It represents to him, in bitter contrast, all that he was created for; it busily paints to him the joys of heaven; it transports him thither, and shows him all the bliss, all the delights of that glorious kingdom, and then suggests to him, cruelly suggests, that all this was once, if he had pleased, his own; that he was positively created for it, and might have obtained it with the greatest ease; and he has deliberately exchanged it for his own desperate condition.
He sees the saints of God, many of them his own acquaintance, his friends and relatives, some of them even once his subjects and dependents, happy with God, and entirely wrapped up in their own joys, without the least care or concern for the reprobate who is thus cruelly tormented at a distance; or, if ever they regard or remember him, approving of his torments, as due to the justice of that God who is now their only object. Then shall the wretch fall back again in despair upon himself, and verify the words of the Prophet: “The sinner shall see, and shall be enraged; he shall gnash his teeth and pine away.” (Psalm 111:10)
Let us now see how the passions, those springs of the soul, will act upon the sinner, and exert all their force in grinding and oppressing that spiritual substance which they served to guide and impel before. Fear, that most painful sentiment, will ever haunt him with terrible apprehensions, with horrible imaginings. Sadness will ever steep his soul in the most black and bitter melancholy. Desire will incessantly corrode his heart with insatiate and vain longings; and aversion torture him with the most hateful repugnance. Oh! the cruel situation of ever wishing for what can never be, and always hating what must be forever.
But we need not dwell on the rest; there is one passion which will serve for all, as it is the master-principle, and indeed, properly understood, the sole passion of the breast. The sinner once loved God; he once felt the charm of that sacred and ravishing influence; or at least, he loved the creatures of God; he amused, if he could not satiate his heart with them; he misdirected the tendency, but he felt some of its sweetness.
Now, all creatures being withdrawn from him, his soul will violently turn to its natural object, will expand to its Creator all its vast capacity, and heave towards him with a force, of which we shall in vain seek for an image in this life; and, terrible to think, this all-essential Creator will incessantly mock and repel all her efforts, and, with the whole force of his omnipotent arm, bind her down in this state of violence. He may form some idea of this, who has ever felt what it is to have the heart torn asunder from some dear object, if he only conceive that object, instead of being trivial and transient, to be infinitely charming and inestimable; but he will still more correctly imagine it, who has had his most ardent affection flung back upon him with contempt, by the only object in which his heart was centered.
Yes, this is the real state, only infinitely more intense, of the soul reprobated by God. She was created essentially for good; God is the sovereign good, the only good: the infinite beauty, the source and center of all love; yet he will not be loved by her, much less will he ever love her; on the contrary, he repels all her approaches, and spurns her forever from him. Nay, more than this, he becomes himself her tormentor, and she knows and feels that what she suffers comes from him; that his pleasure is her pain, and that it is his hand all the while, that divine hand, so amiable in itself, but so terrible to her, which prepares unseen and inflicts all her tortures.
Here, then, doubtless it is, that occurs that mourning and weeping, so often spoken of by our Redeemer. The unhappy creature, thus flung off from her only good, abandons herself to her anguish, and pours out torrents of bitter tears; tears, still happy, could they be of the least avail, or ever hope to soften the anger or move the pity of her offended Creator. But they are utterly fruitless; he views them with the most perfect indifference, and suffers her to weep on, unpitied and not regarded. Then the unhappy wretch curses the day on which he was born; then his whole soul becomes a hell to itself, more cruel than that which surrounds it, and is torn in pieces by all the conflicting furies of remorse, hatred, rage and despair.
Is this picture of hell, my brethren, think you, now complete? No, it yet wants its last and most terrible circumstance. What we have hitherto seen is dreadful indeed, yet it can be conceived; it is finite; but to suit an infinite God, it must have something of infinitude about it, and therefore hell then only becomes truly hell and completely overwhelming to us, when collecting together all its torments, (which, you must ever remember, though I have described them one by one, act in reality all at once in all their intensity,) we add, that all these inexpressible torments without change, without intermission, without alleviation, are to last forever!
Let us try to conceive and to feel what this means. Will, then, a God of unbounded goodness and mercy see his once beloved creature in all this complication of extreme torture, and never relent? Never! How dreadful to our imagination is the situation of a human being passing an entire day or night in excruciating pain! Extend it then through his whole life, or protract it through a century; what think you of such a doom?
Well, then, proceed farther yet; go back to the commencement of time and conceive, what will not be mere fiction, the first of the damned during six thousand years, during the slow revolution of so many years and ages and millenniums, while vast empires had time to rise and fall, and countless generations of men to come and disappear, suffering during this immense period, not the petty pangs of this life, but the overwhelming pains of the other; and tell me whether you conceive it possible that a God of infinite compassion, who, from the sinner on earth, would accept a single prayer or tear in atonement for all his sins, can see all this vast series of suffering, and not relent at it? He never will; it is certain, that he never will.
Let us proceed farther, and, in order to aid our conceptions, make a supposition, which has been often made, but has not the less force on that account. Let us suppose that the injured Creator should make with His suffering creature this hard condition, that from all his floods of tears He would accept and lay by one in a thousand years, till he should have shed enough, I do not say to make a river, nor even to form an ocean, but to fill up, to the very summit, the immense void between heaven and earth!
Consider well the terms of the agreement; what kind of a grace does this seem to you? The oldest inhabitant of that land of desolation would yet have shed but six tears,—six tears against an ocean; the term surely could never arrive; this is but another idea for eternity itself!
You are mistaken,— the time would certainly come, — the time would come, when he would first see half of his immense task completed: then he would achieve another half of the still immense remainder; and at last, — ah! when? — but the time would at last come, when the unhappy wretch would exult to see the immeasurable ocean just swelling to its full accomplishment, and only one tear wanting to complete its level! And would not God then, do you think, a God of infinite love, he who once died for man, would he not then, at least, begin to relent, and make some allowance for all this suffering? No, not the slightest: the supposition is a fiction, and it will never be realized.
Begin again, unhappy sufferer; weep afresh, and when thou shalt have shed oceans of oceans of such tears, thou wilt still have labored in vain: thy eternity will be still entire; God will live forever, and thou be tormented forever, — forever, forever, forever! Oh, eternity! who ever yet considered thee aright? and who, that ever seriously thought of thee, could dare to sin?
Such, my brethren, is the idea I am able to give you of the justice of God, and of that woeful place which He has destined for its eternal theatre. It is, after all, but a faint sketch, the feeble draft of a feeble imagination: judge, then, what must be its reality. In attempting it, I surely cannot, as a minister of the gospel, have merely had in view to raise a momentary ebullition of amazement or terror; no: there is no subject more practically useful. Let those who love God, and who humbly hope they are in his favor, here see how much they owe him, and what they have been delivered from; reflecting, as they lift their eyes upwards from the horrid abyss, that they were once its devoted victims, debtors to the goodness of God by all that it contains. And who is there, that does not verify in himself the reflection? Well considered, I know not a stronger motive to divine love.
And let those who are yet enemies of God, if unfortunately there should be any here, see what awaits them, and over what a terrible abyss they are at this very moment hanging. And as to those who yet have the temerity to offend God occasionally by mortal sin, let them remember, that, every time they sin, they madly propel themselves to the brink of the terrible precipice; that they are only held up from its irremeable gulf by that very divine hand which they provoke; that God’s mercy, though infinite in itself, is limited in its exercise; and that no one is so likely to be a select object of vengeance, as he, who has been warned, and yet deliberately repeats the provocation.
Let us all cherish as the greatest of treasures, and prize as the most solid of all principles, in opposition to the spirit of the world, which knows it not or undervalues it, that salutary fear of God, which is, so often pointed out to us as the beginning of wisdom; being assured, that we all stand in need of it for salvation; that God is inscrutable in his judgments; that many will come into that place of woe, who once never expected it; that many have ended ill, who began well, as some have ended well, who began ill; that final perseverance is a grace of God, which he owes to no man; and that he only can justly hope for it, who, to the last, works out his salvation with fear and trembling.
From the book The Catholic Pulpit (John Murphy and Co., 1850, pages 134-135).