--- title: Improvement Era description: Monthly periodical of the Mormon church, 1897 onward. This library holds the issues of November 1897 to December 1930. authors: - J. Percy Goddard collections: - periodicals tags: - magazine - improvement-era periodical: Improvement Era volume: 33 number: 10 published: 1930-08 publisher: Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations publisher_place: Salt Lake City language: en type: magazine reference: "J. Percy Goddard, “Abominable Creeds,” *Improvement Era* 33, no. 10 (August 1930): 680–681." source: url: https://archive.org/details/improvementera3310unse transcription: Transcribed from the Internet Archive scan of each issue (the item for each issue is named in the issue's own source); unnumbered advertising leaves are omitted, printed page numbers are kept as page markers. identifier: improvementera3310unse start_page: 680 end_page: 681 rights: status: public-domain basis: US publication 1930 or earlier (published 1930-08) source: https://archive.org/details/improvementera3310unse publication_year: 1930 note: The Internet Archive item metadata carries a blanket "© Copyright by Intellectual Reserve, Inc." notice. The library owner judged it inapplicable because this issue was published in 1930, before 1931; a scan-level notice does not restore copyright. --- # Abominable Creeds Abominable Creeds By J. PERCY GODDARD Member of the Deseret Sunday School Board II IN a previous article under the above title several quotations were made from Dr. F. W. Farrar's books, "Eternal Hope" and "Mercy and Judgment," set- ting forth the frightful teachings regarding "hell" that were current in Christendom a century ago. The several quotations con- tained in this article seem justified on the grounds that the books quoted are now out of print and are accessible to only a very few readers. r\N the doctrine "that the vast ^ majority of mankind are doomed to endless torments," the following quotations are from chapter five of "Mercy and Judg- ment:" "1. Of the case of unbaptised infants I will say very little. Their 'damnation' is graciously asserted to be 'of a very slight character.' Still what has been the opinion of most Christian writers since the days of St. Augustine about them? "Their damnation was affirmed by the second canon of the Council of Carthage. "At the Synod of Diospolis, A. D. 415, it was made one of the seven express charges against Pelagius that he had taught 'that infants dying unbaptised enjoy eternal life, though they do not enter the Kingdom of Heaven." '"It can be lightly said,' says St. Augustine, 'that infants, passing out of the body without baptism, will be in a damnation the mildest of all.' He con- demned the notion of a limbus infantum, urging that there was no middle place. Any one who was not with Christ could not, he said, be anywhere except with the devil. "Dante sees the spirits of unbaptised in- fants in the first circle of the inferno, where they live in desire of seeing God, but without hope. "The damnation of infants was an ac- knowledged doctrine of Calvinism. When George Keith impugned the doctrine, Cotton Mather, and other Boston ministers wrote a treatise against him (A. D. 1690), and expressly maintained the reprobation of infants if unbaptised. "It was also the all but universal opinion among Roman Catholics." P. 141. "2 What have been the prevalent opinions as to the salvation of the Heathen, who, even alone, form the vast majority of mankind? "St. Francis Xavier wrote, in 1552, 'One of the things that most pains and torments these Japanese is that we teach them that the prison of hell is irrevocably shut. For they grieve over the fate of their departed children, of their parents and rela- tives; and they often show their grief by their tears. So they ask us if there is any hope * * * and I am obliged to answer that there is absolutely none. The grief at this affects and torments them wonder- fully; they almost pine away with sorrow * * * I can hardly restrain my tears sometimes at seeing many so dear to my heart suffer such intense pain about a thing which is already done with and can never be undone.' P. 144. "The opinion of the Westminster Assembly of Divines, as expressed in their Larger Catechism, is that 'they who, having never heard the Gospel, know not Jesus Christ, and believe not in him, can- not be saved, be they never so diligent to frame their lives according to the light of nature or to the law of that religion which they profess.' "Again, the American Board of Mis- sions say in their appeal, 'Within the last thirty years a whole generation of five hundred millions have gone down to eternal death;' and again in their tract on 'The Great Motive to Missionary Effort,' 'the heathen * * * are expressly doomed to perdition. Six hundred millions of deathless souls on the brink of hell! What a spectacle!' Again, 'The most popular preacher in England has recently asked his fellow-believers, 'Can we go to our beds and sleep while China, India, Japan, and other nations are being damned?' " P. 147. "Indeed it seems superfluous to pause over the proof that the everlasting dam- nation of the heathen has been the common opinion in the church, when we find that whole treatises have been written to over- throw the common opinion as to the dam- nation of even the purest and the most illustrious of them." Pp. 145-6. T^vEAN FARRAR then points out that many Protestant 1 DESIRE, the Lord giving me his spirit, to declare my faith in the divine mission of the Son of God, who spoke as no man ever spoke; who announced principles and doctrine that no man ever enunciated, and who proclaimed in the clearest possible terms, the plan of life and salvation; and gave his own life and name to the world, as the only means and name under heaven by which man can be saved and exalted in the Kingdom of God. — President Joseph F. Smith, Oct. 4, 1907. writers have denied salvation to Roman Catholics and Roman Catholics in turn have counted Protestants among the lost. Quotations are cited from writ- ers who have estimated that out of five thousand or possibly out of ten thousand one human being might be saved. "Du Moulin, a History Professor at Oxford, published a book in 1680 on the 'Number of the Elect' of which part of the title was 'proving plainly from scripture that not one in a hundred thousand (nay, probably not one in a million,) from Adam down to our day, shall be saved.' Yet not even Du Moulin went sufficiently far for some of his readers." P. 151. AS to the effect of the doc- ■^ trine of "endless punishment" we read in the introductory chapter to "Mercy and Judgment:" "I had become aware that the minds of many of the living were hope- lessly harassed and — I can use no other word — devastated by the horror with which they brooded over the fate of the dead. The happiness of their lives was shat- tered, the peace of their souls des- troyed, not by the sense of earthly bereavement, but by the terrible belief that brother, or son, or wife, or husband had passed away into physical anguish and physical tor- ment, endless, and beyond all ut- terance excruciating. Such thoughts did not trouble the careless or the brutal, who might be supposed to need them. They troubled only the tender-hearted and the sincere. They were the direct result of the religious teaching which they had received from their earliest years. To the irreligious poor the com- mon presentment of 'endless tor- ment' was a mere stumbling-block: to the best of the religious it was a permanent misery. The irreli- gious are driven to disbelieve in any punishment, because they have heard the punishment with which they are threatened described in such a way as to be utterly unbe- lievable; the religious accept these coarse pictures, and are either The Improvement Era for August, 1930 681 hardened by them into lovelessness or crushed into despair. Pharisa- ism and Infidelity are the twin children of every form of theology which obscures the tenderness of revelation, and belies the love of God." Pp. 4-5. [" N chapter four the effects of such teachings are further discussed as follows: "And unauthorized as these descriptions of hell- torments certainly are, — false as I believe most of them to be, — have they done no harm to humanity? "To me it seems that they have done deadly harm. "In the first place they have made it very difficult for multitudes to accept any part of a religion which comes to them enveloped in such a lurid glare. They have raised in many faithful minds an almost insuperable difficulty in accepting the real revelation as to the world beyond the grave. They have created the perfect fear which casts out all love." P. 109. "Again, they have made good men despair of humanity, despair of life. God said to man, 'Be fruitful and multiply; but if these doctrines be true, they make this the most cruel of all commands, and the animals are transcendently happier, and have a lot to be unspeakably envied by millions of mankind. Bunyan may well say, 'I blessed the condition of the dog or toad, because they had no soul to perish under the everlasting weight of hell.' 'I fancy,' said the pious and able Henry Rogers, 'I should not grieve if the whole race of mankind died in its fourth year. As far as we can see, I do not know tbaf it would be a thing much to be lamented.' Thus, the belief in these false representa- tions has driven holy Christian men to conclusions differing but little from those of the most advanced and infidel material- ism, which declares the existence of man- kind to be a miserable mistake." P. 110. "It was these doctrines which made men think that they did God service by thrust- ing martyrs to gasp out their souls in the flames of Toledo and of Smithfield. 'As the souls of heretics are hereafter to be eternally burning in hell,' — such was the reasoning of Queen Mary Tudor in defence of her awful persecution. — 'there can be nothing more proper than for me to im- itate the Divine Vengeance by burning them on earth.'" P. 116. "The popular belief in the inconceivable brutalities, which (as they are told) went on in hell, made men indifferent to the guilt and shame of inflicting torments on the bodies of their fellow-men." ^7HILE Dr. Farrar discusses vv such teachings as we have quoted as being the "common view" he maintains that some the- ologians have advanced a broader view, and then says: "The rea- son why neither the Catholic Church, nor the English branch of it, has ever defined the precise be- T HIS is the great truth which I referred to a moment since that Mormonism has to offer to the world. It is a principle that was unknown to men in our generation until it Was revealed through God's chosen servant in these last days, the Prophet Joseph Smith. We carry this message in our right hand to the world. We not only tell men of the immortality that shall be after the resurrection, but we tell them of the immortality that ex- isted before their earth-life began. The mfsts that shroud the origin of man and that perplex the phil- osophers are pushed away, and be- hold! we look into a beginningless past, as we look forward into an endless future. — Pres. B. H. Rob- erts, Apr. Conference, 1904. liefs which have been taught by hundreds of individual preachers, is because Scriptural teaching on this subject has left room for very wide diversities of opinion." P. 8. In the light of this statement it is clear that the biblical scriptures had not been a sufficient guide, and that there was surely a need for new revelations from God to dissi- pate the "gross darkness" that en- veloped the minds of the people. How grateful we should be that God has made clear to his Latter- day Church that in his mercy and love there is hope, even for the sin- ner, in the life beyond, after he shall have paid the just penalty for his evil deeds. What a flood of light and wisdom is given to man- kind in the glorious revelation con- stituting section seventy-six of the Doctrine and Covenants. How thankful we should be for the doc- trine of Salvation for the Dead whereby the redemption of those who have died in ignorance is made possible. There have been numerous crit- ics of the "Mormon" doctrine of "hope beyond the grave." Let Dean Farrar answer them: "Noth- ing is more strange to me than the constantly recurring objection that the Gospel of Eternal Hope dero- gates from the necessity for the aw- ful self-sacrifice of Christ. It seems to me that the blessedness of that sacrifice is infinitely enhanced if its effects be powerful even beyond the grave: and that our love and grati- tude to him is unspeakably inten- sified if we can believe that even in death he is able and willing to save our souls." — Preface to Eternal Hope. P. XIV. "U7HETHER through direct or W indirect contact with "Mor- mon" literature during the forty years that the restored Gospel had been preached in England, or through the inspiration of heaven granted to a great and generous soul, certain it is that the light re- vealed to men through Joseph Smith had reached the mind of the man who wrote these concluding paragraphs to the book, "Mercy and Judgment:" "I believe that God is Love. "I believe that God wd'.eth all men to be saved. "I believe that God has given to all men the gift of immortality and that the gifts of God are without repentance. "I believe that every man shall stand before the judgment-seat of Christ, and shall be judged according to his deeds. "I believe that man's destiny stops not at the grave, and that many who knew not Christ here will know him there. "I believe that 'in the depths of the Divine compassion there may be op- portunity to win faith in the future state.' "I believe that hereafter — whether by means of the 'almost-sacrament of death' or in other ways unknown to us — God's mercy may reach many who, to all earthly appearance, might seem to us to die in a lost and unregenerate state. "I believe that the punishment is effected, not by arbitrary inflictions, but by natural and inevitable consequences, and therefore that the expressions which have been interpreted to mean physical and material agonies by worm and flame are metaphors for a state of remorse and alien- ation from God. "I believe that Christ went and preached to the spirits in prison, and I see reasons to hope that since the Gospel was thus once preached 'to them that were dead,' the offers of God's mercy may in some form be extended to the soul, even after death. "I believe that there will be degrees of blessedness and degrees of punishment or deprivation, and I see reasons to hope that there may be gradual mitigations of penal doom to all souls that accept the Will of God respecting them. "And I believe that to be without God is 'hell'; and that in this sense there is a hell beyond the grave; and that for any soul to fall even for a time into this con- dition, though it be through its own hard- ened impenitence and resistance of God's grace, is a very awful and terrible prospect; and that in this sense there may be for some souls an endless hell. But I see reason to hope that through God's mercy, and through the merits of Christ's sac- rifice, the great majority of mankind may be delivered from this awful doom. For, according to the Scriptures, though, I know not what its nature will be or how it will be effected, "I believe in the restitution of all things; and "I believe in the coming of that time when, — though in what sense I cannot pretend to explain or to fathom — Cod will be all in all."