Religion and progress.

— Today it is generally thought that the Church admits the fire of hell as a moral fire and not as a material fire. Such is, at least, the opinion of the majority of theologians and of many enlightened clergymen. Nevertheless, it is only an individual opinion, and not a belief acquired by orthodoxy, for, otherwise, it would be universally professed. One may judge of this by the following picture, which a preacher drew of hell, during the last Lent, at Montreuil-sur-Mer:

“The fire of hell is millions of times more intense than that of the Earth, and if one of the bodies that burn there without being consumed were to be cast upon our planet, it would infest it from end to end!

“Hell is a vast and gloomy cavern, furnished with pointed nails, with blades of sharpened swords, with keen-edged razors, into which the souls of the damned are hurled!”

It would be superfluous to refute this description; nevertheless, we might ask the orator where he gathered so precise a knowledge of the place he describes. Certainly it was not in the Gospel, where there is no question of nails, nor of swords, nor of razors. To know whether these blades are well sharpened and keen-edged, one must have seen them and tested them. Could it be that, a new Aeneas or Orpheus, he himself had descended into that gloomy cavern which, moreover, greatly resembles the Tartarus of the pagans? Besides, he should have explained the action that nails and razors could have upon souls and the necessity of their being well sharpened and of good temper. Since he knows so well the interior details of the place, he should also have said where it is situated. It is not at the center of the Earth, for he supposes the hypothesis of one of the bodies it encloses having been cast upon our planet. Is it then in space? But astronomy fixed its gaze there long before, discovering nothing. It is true that it did not look with the eyes of faith. Be that as it may, is the picture made to seduce the unbelievers? It is rather doubtful, for it is more apt to diminish the number of believers.

— On the other hand, we shall cite the following passage from a letter written from Riom, and reported in the journal Vérité, in its issue of March 20, 1864:

“Yesterday, to my great surprise and satisfaction, I heard with my own ears this serene confession from the mouth of an eloquent preacher, in the presence of a numerous and astonished audience: There is no more hell… hell no longer exists… it has been admirably replaced by the fires of charity and of love, which redeem our faults!

“Is not our divine doctrine (Spiritism) entirely contained in these few words?”

— It is needless to say which of the two had more sympathy from the audience; but the second could even be accused of heresy by the first. Formerly he would have expiated, infallibly, at the stake or in a dungeon the audacity of having proclaimed that God does not command His creatures to be burned.

This double citation suggests to us the following reflections:

If some believe in the materiality of the punishments, while others deny it, necessarily some labor in error and others are right.

This point is more capital than it appears at first sight, because it is the door opened to interpretations in a religion founded on the absolute unity of belief and which, in principle, repels interpretation.

It is quite certain that until today the materiality of the punishments has formed part of the dogmatic beliefs of the Church. Why, then, do not all theologians give it credence? Since neither the ones nor the others have verified it for themselves, what leads some to see only an image where others see reality, if not the reason which, in the former, prevails over blind faith? Now, reason is free examination.

Here, then, are reason and free examination entering the Church by the force of opinion. One might say, without metaphor, by the door of hell; it is the hand laid upon the sanctuary of dogmas, not by the laity, but by the clergy itself.

Let this not be judged a question of lesser importance, for it contains within itself the germ of a whole religious revolution and of an immense schism, far more radical than Protestantism, because it threatens not only Catholicism, but Protestantism, the Greek Church, and all the Christian sects. Indeed, between the materiality of the punishments and purely moral punishments, there is the whole distance from the proper sense to the figurative sense, from allegory to reality. Once the flames of hell are admitted as allegory, it becomes evident that the words of Jesus: “Go into the eternal fire” have an allegorical sense. Hence the consequence that the same must happen with others of his words.

But the most serious consequence is this: Once interpretation is admitted on one point, there is no reason to reject it on others; it is, then, as we have said, the door opened to free discussion, a mortal blow dealt to the absolute principle of blind faith. The belief in the materiality of the punishments is intimately bound to other articles of faith, which are its corollaries; that belief being transformed, the others will be transformed by the force of things and, thus, gradually.

We already have an application of this. Only a few years ago still, the dogma: Outside the Church there is no salvation, was in all its force; baptism was a condition so imperious that it sufficed for the child of a heretic to receive it clandestinely and without the knowledge of the parents, in order to be saved, since all that was not rigorously orthodox was irremissibly condemned. But human reason having risen up against those billions of souls vowed to eternal tortures, when it had not depended on them to be enlightened in the true faith; against those countless children who die before acquiring the consciousness of their acts and who are nonetheless no less damned, if the negligence or the religious faith of their parents deprived them of baptism, the Church found itself forced, on this point, to renounce its absolutism. Today it says, or, at least, the majority of its theologians say, that these children are not responsible for the faults of their parents; that responsibility begins only at the moment when, having the possibility of becoming enlightened, they refuse it and, for this reason, these children are not damned for not having received baptism; that the same holds for the savages and the idolaters of all sects. Some go further: they recognize that, by the practice of the Christian virtues, that is, of humility and of charity, one can be saved in all religions, because it depends, also, on the will of a Hindu, of a Jew, of a Muslim, of a Protestant, as much as of a Catholic, to live in a Christian manner; that he who lives thus is in the Church by the spirit, even if he is not so by the form. Is not there the principle: Outside the Church there is no salvation, broadened and transformed into Outside charity there is no salvation? It is precisely what Spiritism teaches and, nevertheless, it is for this that it is declared the work of the demon. Why would these maxims be the breath of the demon in the mouth of the Spiritists and not in that of the ministers of the Church? If the orthodoxy of the faith is threatened, then it is not by Spiritism, but by the Church itself, because it suffers, in spite of itself, the pressure of general opinion and because, among its members, there are found some who see things from a higher vantage and in whom the force of logic prevails over blind faith. It might perhaps seem rash to say that the Church marches toward the encounter with Spiritism; nevertheless, it is a truth that will be recognized later. Advancing to combat it, it does not for all that cease, little by little, to assimilate its principles, even without suspecting it.

This new manner of regarding the question of salvation is serious. Placed above the form, the Spirit is an eminently revolutionary principle in orthodoxy. Salvation being recognized as possible outside the Church, the efficacy of baptism is relative, and not absolute: it becomes a symbol. The unbaptized child not bearing the penalty of the negligence nor of the ill will of the parents, what becomes of the penalty incurred by the whole human race through the fault of the first man? what becomes also of original sin, such as the Church understands it?

Many times the greatest effects flow from small causes. The right of interpretation and of free examination, puerile in appearance, once admitted on the question of the materiality of the future punishments, is a first step whose consequences are incalculable, because it represents a breach in dogmatic immutability, and a stone torn away drags others along. It is necessary to agree: the position of the Church is delicate. However, there is only one of two courses to take: to remain stationary, in spite of everything, or to go forward. But, then, it cannot escape this dilemma: if it immobilizes itself absolutely in the errors of the past, it will be infallibly overtaken, as it already is, by the flow of new ideas, then isolated and, at last, dismembered, as it would be today, if it had persisted in expelling from its bosom those who believe in the movement of the Earth, or in the geological periods of Creation; if it enters upon the path of the interpretation of dogmas it transforms itself and enters upon it by the simple fact of renouncing the materiality of the punishments and the absolute necessity of baptism.

— The danger of a transformation, moreover, is clearly and energetically formulated in the following passage from a pamphlet published by Father Marin de Boylesve, of the Society of Jesus, under the title of The Miracle and the Devil, n in reply to the [Revue Des Deux Mondes — Google Books.]

“There is, among others, a question which, for religion, is one of life or death: the question of the miracle. That of the devil is no less so. Take away the devil, and Christianity vanishes. If the devil be but a myth, the fall of Adam and original sin will enter into the domain of fables. Consequently the redemption, baptism, the Church, Christianity, in a word, have no further reason for being. That is why Science spares no effort to efface the miracle and suppress the devil.”

Thus, if Science discovers a law of Nature that brings within natural facts a fact which is reputed miraculous; if it proves the anteriority of the human race and the multiplicity of its origins, the whole edifice collapses. A religion is very fragile when a scientific discovery is for it a question of life and death. Here is a clumsy confession. For our part, we are far from sharing the apprehensions of Father Boylesve with regard to Christianity. We say that Christianity, such as it issued from the mouth of Jesus, but only such as it issued, is invulnerable, because it is the law of God:

The conclusion is this: No concession, under penalty of dying. The author forgets to examine whether there are more chances of living in immobility. Our opinion is that there are fewer and that it is preferable to live transformed than not to live at all.

In the one case and the other, the split is inevitable. It may even be said that it already exists; doctrinal unity is broken, for there is no perfect accord in the teaching; some approve what others censure; some absolve what others condemn. Thus, the faithful are seen going by preference to those whose ideas best suit them. The pastors dividing, the flock likewise divides. From this divergence to a separation, the distance is not great; one step more and those who are in the vanguard will be treated as heretics by those who have remained in the rearguard. Now, behold the schism established; there is the danger of immobility.

— Religion, or rather, all religions suffer, in spite of themselves, the influence of the progressive movement of ideas. A fatal necessity obliges them to keep themselves at the level of the ascending movement, under penalty of foundering. Thus, all have been forced, from time to time, to make concessions to Science, to minimize the literal sense of certain beliefs before the evidence of facts. That which should repudiate the discoveries of Science and their consequences, from the religious point of view, would sooner or later lose its authority and its credit and would increase the number of the unbelievers. If any religion can be compromised by Science, the fault is not Science's, but that of the religion founded upon absolute dogmas, in contradiction with the laws of Nature, which are divine laws. To repudiate Science is, then, to repudiate the laws of Nature and, by that very fact, to disavow the work of God; to do it in the name of religion would be to put God in contradiction with Himself and to make Him say: I established laws to govern the world; but do not believe in these laws. Man has not been able, in the different epochs, to know all the laws of Nature. The successive discovery of these laws constitutes progress; hence, for religions, the necessity of putting their beliefs and their dogmas in harmony with progress, under penalty of receiving the contradiction of the facts ascertained by Science. Only on this condition is a religion invulnerable. In our opinion, religion ought to do more than place itself in the wake of progress, which it only follows constrained and forced; it ought to be an advanced sentinel, because it is to honor God to proclaim the grandeur and the wisdom of His laws.

The contradiction that exists between certain religious beliefs and the natural laws has made the majority of the unbelievers, whose number increases in proportion as the knowledge of these laws becomes popularized. If the accord between Science and religion were impossible, no religion would be possible. We proclaim loudly the possibility and the necessity of this accord, because, in our view, Science and religion are sisters for the greater glory of God [ad majorem Dei glorium] and ought to complete one another, instead of contradicting each other reciprocally. They will extend their hands to each other, when Science sees in religion nothing incompatible with the demonstrated facts and religion no longer has to fear the demonstration of facts. Spiritism, by the revelation of the laws that govern the relations between the visible world and the invisible world, will be the bond of union that will allow them to look at each other face to face, the one without laughing, the other without trembling. It is by the concordance of faith and reason that daily so many unbelievers are led back to God. [1]

[Le Miracle et le diable, par Marin de Boylesve — Google Books.]