The New Gospel

There is no heresy or no philosophy which is so abhorrent to the church as a human being.

The preacher’s knife had probed deeply into his diseased conscience and he [Dedalus] felt now that his soul was festering in sin … The preacher began to speak in a quiet friendly tone.  His face was kind and he joined gently the fingers of each hand, forming a frail cage by the union of their tips … Last and crowning torture of all torture of that awful place is the eternity of hell.  Eternity!  O, dread and dire word.  Eternity!  What mind of man can understand it? … An eternity of endless agony, of endless bodily and spiritual torment, without one ray of hope, without one moment of cessation, of agony limitless in extent, limitless in intensity, of torment infinitely lasting, infinitely varied, of torture that sustains eternally that which it eternally devours … Such is the terrible punishment decreed for those who die in mortal sin by an almighty and a just God.