The confusion between the King of Hell and the King of Heaven has cleared
up, thank God, since then!
So I was whipped and put to bed--the whipping altering my secret heart just
about as much as the dread of hell-fire did.
I speak as a Christian man--an orthodox Churchman (if you require that
shibboleth). Was I so very wrong? What was there in the idea of religion
which was represented to me at home to captivate me? What was the use
of a child's hearing of "God's great love manifested in the scheme of
redemption," when he heard, in the same breath, that the effects of that
redemption were practically confined only to one human being out of a
thousand, and that the other nine hundred and ninety-nine were lost and
damned from their birth-hour to all eternity--not only by the absolute
will and reprobation of God (though that infernal blasphemy I heard often
enough), but also, putting that out of the question, by the mere fact of
being born of Adam's race? And this to a generation to whom God's love
shines out in every tree and flower and hedge-side bird; to whom the
daily discoveries of science are revealing that love in every microscopic
animalcule which peoples the stagnant pool! This to working men, whose
craving is only for some idea which shall give equal hopes, claims, and
deliverances, to all mankind alike! This to working men, who, in the smiles
of their innocent children, see the heaven which they have lost--the
messages of baby-cherubs, made in God's own image! This to me, to whom
every butterfly, every look at my little sister, contradicted the lie! You
may say that such thoughts were too deep for a child; that I am ascribing
to my boyhood the scepticism of my manhood; but it is not so; and what went
on in my mind goes on in the minds of thousands.
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