WHAT adds greatly to the miseries of the damned is that they have no friend in the universe, and no one who can sympathize in the least degree with them, or feel the slightest pity for them in their distresses. This seems to me one of the saddest of all the sad features of hell-torments. “It is some comfort in misery,” says Christopher Love, “to be pitied by a friend. And it is one of the wonderful things of this world that there is no one so utterly forlorn as to find no pity in circumstances of distress. The worst of men still have some friend who, if no better than themselves, can yet feel for their calamities, and would gladly relieve their pains.” But in hell, if orthodoxy is true, all humanity is extinct. Every feeling of love or sympathy or kindly regard is dead. As Rev. Thomas Boston says: “There, natural affection will be extinguished. The parents will not love their children, nor children their parents. The mother will not pity the daughter in the flames, nor will the daughter pity the mother. The son will show no regard to his father there, nor the servant to his master, where every one will be roaring under his own torment.”
But this is far from being the worst of the case. It was said long ago that “the dark places of the earth are full of the habitations of cruelty;” and it might not seem strange if the darker places of hell were so. But what is unspeakably more surprising and lamentable, heaven itself has lost all its charity! “In hell,” says Christopher Love, “you shall lose all kind of pity. God shall not pity you. The godly shall not pity you. It is the speech of Austin [Augustine], Nec Creator nec creatura ulla erga damnatos afficientur sympathia (Neither Creator nor creature shall be affected with any sympathy towards the damned in their torments). Here if thou art in misery, there is pity shown thee, but in hell there is none to pity thee, and so thy misery is the greater.” Upon this point all orthodox writers agree. “Though they have so many companions in hell,” says President Edwards, “yet they are no comfort to them, for there is no friend, no love, no pity, no quietness, no prospect, no hope.”
Again: “They will be in a most dreadful condition; they will have no friends. God will be their enemy; angels and the spirits of the just will be their enemies; devils and damned spirits will be their enemies. They will be hated with perfect hatred; will have none to pity them, none to bemoan their case, or be any comfort to them.” Once more: “They will not be able to find any to befriend them and intercede with God for them. They had the offer of a mediator often made them in this world; but they will have no such offers in hell. None will befriend them in hell; all there will be their enemies. They will have no friend in heaven; none of the saints or angels will befriend them; or if they should, it would be to no purpose. There will be no creature that will have any power to deliver them, nor will any ever pity them.”
President Edwards has a whole sermon devoted to this thought, in which, with much iteration, he affirms “that the torments of the wicked in hell are no occasion of grief to the saints in heaven.” He shows, in the first place, that heaven and hell will be so near each other, or in some other way, that the saints will see the punishments suffered by the damned; and that the damned will also see the happiness of the saints in glory. But while this vision of the joys of heaven will greatly aggravate the torments of the damned, the sight of their torments will not in the slightest degree lessen the felicities of heaven. “The two worlds of happiness and misery,” he says, “will be in view of each other. Though we know not by what means nor after what manner it will be, yet the Scriptures certainly lead us to think that they will some way or other have a direct and immediate apprehension of each other’s state. The saints in glory will see how the damned are tormented; they will see God’s threatenings fulfilled, and his wrath executed upon them. . . .
“The miseries of the damned in hell will be inconceivably great. When they shall come to hear [perhaps bear] the wrath of the Almighty poured out upon them without mixture, and executed upon them without pity or restraint, or any mitigation, it will doubtless cause anguish and horror and amazement beyond all the sufferings and torments that ever any man endured in this world, yea, and beyond all extent of our words or thoughts. For God, in executing wrath upon ungodly men, will act like an Almighty God. The Scripture calls this wrath God’s fury and the fierceness of his wrath.” In the second place, President Edwards tells us that the inhabitants of heaven will understand vastly better than it is possible for us now to do, how terrible these torments of the damned really are. “The saints in glory will see this,” he says, “and be far more sensible of it than now we can possibly be. They will be far more sensible how dreadful the wrath of God is, and will better understand how terrible the sufferings of the damned are.”
But this vision, this knowledge of the condition and miseries of the damned, will be the source of no regret, excite no sympathy, occasion them no pain. “This will be no occasion of grief to them,” he says. “They will not be sorry for the damned; it will cause no uneasiness or dissatisfaction to them.” And he proceeds to show why it cannot, and why it ought not, to produce any sorrow, or be the cause of any grief to the saints. “That seeing the wrath of God executed upon the damned should cause grief in the saints in glory is inconsistent with that state of perfect happiness in which they are. There can no such thing as grief enter, to be an alloy to the happiness and joy of that world of blessedness. Grief is an utter stranger in that world. God hath promised that he will wipe away all tears from their eyes, and there shall be no more sorrow.”
Besides, the saints will have no love for the damned. “The sufferings of the damned will be no occasion of grief to the heavenly inhabitants,” says President Edwards, “as they will have no love nor pity to the damned as such. . . . For the heavenly inhabitants will know that it is not fit that they should love them, because they will know then that God has no love to them, nor pity for them, but that they are the objects of God’s eternal hatred. And they will then be perfectly conformed to God in their wills and affections. They will love what he loves, and that only.”
In conclusion, he warns sinners that if they perish at last, their condition will be “destitute of any comforting consideration.” “You will have none to pity you,” he says. “Look which way you will,—before or behind, on your right hand or left, look up to heaven or look about you in hell,—and you will see none to condole your case, or to exercise any pity towards you, in your dreadful condition. . . . You will have no pity from the created inhabitants of heaven. . . . God will exercise no pity towards you. If you might have his pity in any degree, that would be of more worth to you than thousands of worlds. That would make your case to be not without comfort and hope. But God will exercise no pity towards you. He hath often said that his eye shall not spare, neither will he have pity. You will see nothing in God, and receive nothing from him but perfect hatred and the fierceness of his wrath; nothing but the mighty falls or outpourings of wrath upon you every moment; and no cries will avail to move God to any pity, or in the least to move him to lighten his hand, or assuage the fierceness and abate the power of your torments. . . .
“Jesus Christ will have no pity on you. Though he had so much love to sinners as to be willing to lay down his life for them, and offers you the benefit of his blood while you are in this world, and often calls upon you to accept them, yet then he will have no pity upon you. . . . You will find none that will pity you in hell. The devils will not pity you, but will be your tormentors, as roaring lions or hell-hounds, to tear you in pieces continually. And other wicked men, who shall be there, will be like devils; they will have no pity on you, but will hate and curse and torment you. And you yourselves will be like devils; you will be like devils to yourselves, and will be your own tormentors.”
Dr. Dwight draws a most fearful picture of the desolation, abandonment, and misery of the damned. “It is evident,” he says, “that there can be no confidence in the regions of misery. The wretched inhabitants of those regions will know all around them to be enemies and deceivers. Amid the vast multitudes not an individual will be found possessed of either natural affection or benevolence or sincerity. This will probably be one of the most painful and wearisome among all the ingredients of future woe. . . . The miserable inhabitants of hell will have no God, no Savior, no virtuous friends, no parents, no relatives, before whom they may spread their calamities with the hope of being heard, or in whose hearts or hands they may find refuge from the bitterness of woe. . . .
“Thus, while the inhabitant of that melancholy world looks around him, when he casts his eyes abroad through the universe, he will perceive that it contains no friend to him. In the midst of millions he is alone, and is sure of being loathed, rejected, and shunned by every being in the universe of God. Not a sigh can he breathe, not a tear can he shed, not a sorrow can he unfold, not a prayer can he utter, with the hope of being befriended, heard, or regarded!”
What a scene of loneliness and desolation! In the midst of millions, and yet alone. Surrounded by those of our kind, and yet none to love or pity or care! To sigh, to weep, to pray, and yet to feel and know that in the wide universe, from the dog that we fed to the Creator who made us, there is not one solitary being who hears or heeds us! If there is such a hell as this, what worse to a sensitive and social being is there to be conceived? But poets unite with our theologians in this doctrine. Thus Pollock:—
- Their hollow eyes did utter streams of woe,
- And there were groans that ended not, and sighs
- That always sighed, and tears that ever wept,
- And ever fell, but not in m ercy’s sight.
Mercy is dead in heaven as well as in hell. I do not wonder, therefore, that Dr. Young should represent one of the damned as crying out
- And this, my help! my God, at thy decree!
- Nature is changed, and Hell should succor me.
But what is strangest of all here is the wonderful agreement and harmony existing in the tempers and conduct of these two worlds. Heaven and hell have finally come to think and feel and act alike. God hates the damned in hell, and so does the Devil. Angels and saints hate them, and so do wicked spirits and wicked men! Was there ever anything like this seen before? Or could any mortal have rationally dreamed that in the process of the ages God and the Devil should thus come to agree? And the conversion seems unfortunately to have taken place on the wrong side. It is not the Devil who has become better, more just, more merciful, more humane, but—