CLOSELY connected with memory is conscience, that part of our moral nature which distinguishes between right and wrong, which approves or condemns us according as our actions are good or bad, and, without a revelation of the divine will, makes man a law unto himself. Though wicked men here in this world may at times hush the voice of conscience, and silence its upbraidings, we cannot doubt that the time must come in the future when this will be impossible, and all men will be brought to see themselves just as they are. The passions, that now urge them on in the path of wrong-doing, will then be still; reason, calm and clear-sighted, will reassume her throne, and conscience, so long neglected and trampled under foot, will again lift its voice in tones so commanding that they must be heard and heeded. Every unholy passion indulged, every evil thought formed, every wicked deed done, will then stand before us in all their deformity and sin. This revelation of sinners to themselves, implying necessarily a great and most important change in their intellectual and moral condition, cannot fail to be attended with inexpressible shame and self-condemnation.
Whether this change is to be effected suddenly, and as by miracle, or more slowly by the natural process of education, is immaterial in respect to the final result. The dark and hardened sinner, before he can feel the full torment of conscience, must have his moral nature aroused and enlightened; he must see the beauty of holiness, and feel something of the excellence of virtue and truth. In other words, he must, directly or indirectly, have been lifted out of his depravity, his indifference to the welfare of his fellow-men, and his disregard of God’s moral law. President Edwards, in accordance with the teachings of orthodoxy then and now, maintained that “a natural man”—not a hardened sinner, imbruted by a long course of transgression, but a man as he is born—“cannot have a true sight of sin, and of the evil of it. A man cannot truly know the evil of sin against God, except by a discovery of his glory and excellence, and then he will be sensible how great an evil it is to sin against him.”
To give to conscience its full retributive power, it must be awakened, enlightened, and cultivated, and brought effectually under the highest Christian influences. A besotted, brutish man, ignorant and unfeeling, cannot experience the exquisite pain that conscience is able to inflict. His finer sensibilities are dead or unused, and must be quickened into life and activity. Now, how much this necessarily implies, our orthodox friends do not seem to reflect. If, as they say, there is no moral change after death, the wicked ought to be as hard and insensible to the claims of truth and righteousness in the future state as they are in the present. But in that case we exclude them from the possibility of some of the keenest sufferings of which moral beings are susceptible. We leave them with consciences benumbed and seared as with a hot iron. They neither see the enormity of their sins nor feel the compunctions that the consciousness of guilt ought to bring. Yet, with an inconsistency which is too obvious to need remark, our orthodox friends constantly insist that the damned are to be tormented by a conscience as clear and sharp as that of the saints in heaven.
“In the midst of hell,” says Rev. Mr. Swinden, “there is another hell. There the wicked shall be exposed to the intolerable anguish of an outraged conscience, the remorse of which shall continually prey upon them for what they have done in their lives-time.” So says Calvin: “Wherefore, miserable consciences find no repose, but are harassed and agitated with a dreadful tempest, feel themselves torn asunder by an angry God, and transfixed and penetrated by mortal stings; are terrified by the thunderbolts of God, and broken by the weight of his hand, so that to sink away into any gulf or abysses would be more tolerable than to stand a moment in such terrors.” “Besides these miseries and calamities,” says Jeremy Taylor, “in the power of the soul is engendered the worm of conscience, which is so often proposed unto us in Scripture as a most terrible torment, and greater than that of fire. Only in one sermon Christ, our Redeemer, three times menaces us with the worm which gnaws the consciences, and tears in pieces the hearts of the damned: admonishing us often that their worm shall never die, nor their fire be quenched. For as the worm which breeds in dead flesh, or that which breeds in woods, eats and gnaws that substance of which they are engendered, so the worm which is bred from sin is in perpetual enmity with it, gnawing and devouring the heart of the sinner with raging and desperate grief; still putting him in mind that, by his own fault, he lost that eternal glory, which he might as easily have obtained, and is now fallen into eternal torments, whence there is no redemption.”
Speaking of the rich man in hell, “tormented in this flame,” President Edwards says: “Here we are told that when the rich man died, he lift up his eyes, being in torment; and he tells Abraham that he is tormented in a flame; and it seems the flame was not only about him, but in him; he therefore asks for a drop of water to cool his tongue. This doubtless is to represent to us that they are full of the wrath of God, as it were with fire, and they shall there be tormented in the midst of devils and damned spirits; and they shall have inexpressible torments from their own consciences. God’s wrath is the fire that never shall be quenched, and conscience is the worm that never dies. How much do men suffer from horror of conscience sometimes in this world, but how much more in hell!” “Who knows how keen and bitter will be the agonies of an awakened conscience,” says Dr. Watts, “and the vengeance of a provoked God. This sort of anguish of spirit, with loud and cutting complaints, would destroy itself, and these inward terrors would sting their souls to death, if there could be any such thing as dying there.
“Such sighs and sobs and bitter agonies would break their hearts and dissolve their being, if the heart could break and the being could be dissolved. But immortality is their dreadful portion,—immortality of sorrows to punish their wicked and wilful abuse of time, and that waste of the means of grace they were guilty of in their mortal state.” I need quote no more from our divines, who all speak to the same purpose; but I cannot omit the testimony of that very orthodox poet, Robert Pollock, who evidently intended to make his description impressive, and succeeded in making it horrid and revolting.
- I paused and looked;
- And saw, where’er I looked upon that mound,
- Sad figures traced in fire; not motionless,
- But imitating life. One I remarked
- Attentively; but how shall I describe
- What naught resembles else my eye hath seen?
- Of worm or serpent kind it something looked,
- But monstrous with a thousand snaky heads
- Eyed each with double orbs of glaring wrath;
- And with as many tails, that twisted out
- In horrid convolutions, tipped w ith stings;
- And all its mouths that wide and darkly gaped,
- And breathed most poisonous breath, had each a sting,
- Forked, and long, and venomous, and sharp.
- And in its writhings infinite it grasped,
- Malignantly, what seemed a heart, swollen, black,
- And quivering with torture most intense.
- And still the heart with anguish throbbing high,
- Made effort to escape, but could not, for
- However it turned, and oft it vainly turned,
- Those complicated foldings held it fast.
- And still the monstrous beast with sting of head
- Or tail tran sfixed it, bleeding evermore.
- What this could image, much I searched to know,
- And while I strove, and gazed, and wondered long,
- A voice from whence I knew not, for no one
- I saw, distinctly whispered in my ear
- These words: This is the worm that never dies!