go together; and will, I believe, die together.
A great deal of Old Testament teaching is merely an elaborate extension of Punch's picture of the British workman holding a brick's end over an unfortunate batrachian, and saying, "I'll l'arn ye to be a toad!" And all he succeeds in doing is producing a dead toad instead of a live one; the species itself remaining entirely unaltered.
That is a parable of the doings of our theologians, since theology was invented for the Fall of Man. And if humans came to the conclusion that that was the mind of God, it is no wonder that they imitated Him, and do so to this day.
We must believe in punishment as the proper reward of crime—we must even believe in unreformative punishment as the proper reward of crime, if we believe in a Hell to which lost souls are relegated against their will, and there kept with no hope whatever of cure or betterment from the process. And that is what the whole of Christendom believed about Hell when Christians really did believe in it.
Unreformative punishment upon earth was a necessary consequence of that belief; and, therefore, belief in punishment for the sake of punishment became universal.
And over against it—quite unregarded—stood the new gospel of humanity—"Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, pray for them
