Allan Kardec-THE Spirit's Book_ The Principles of Spiritist Doctrine (1989)

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THE SPIRITS’ BOOK
such an idea? That the ancients should have seen, in the Master of the Universe, a terrible,
jealous, vindictive God, is conceivable, for, in their ignorance, they attributed to the Divinity
the passions of men; but such is not the God of the Christians, who places love, charity, pity,
the forgetfulness of offences, in the foremost rank of virtues, and who could not lack the
qualities which He has made it the duty of His creatures to possess. Is it not a contradiction to
attribute to Him infinite love and infinite vengeance? You say that God's justice is infinite,
transcending the limited understanding of mankind; but justice does not exclude kindness,
and God would not be kind if He condemned the greater number of His creatures to horrible
and unending punishment. Could He make it obligatory on His children to be just, if His own
action towards them did not give them the most perfect standard of justice? And is it not the
very sublimity of justice and of kindness to make the duration of punishment to depend on the
efforts of the guilty one to amend, and to mete out the appropriate recompense, both for good
and for evil, 'to each, according to his works'?"
SAINT AUGUSTINE
"Set yourselves, by every means in your power, to combat and to annihilate the idea of eternal
punishment, which is a blasphemy against the justice and goodness of God, and the principal
source of the scepticism, materialism, and indifferentism that have invaded the masses since
their intelligence has begun to be developed When once a mind has received enlightenment,
in however slight a degree, the monstrous injustice of such an idea is immediately perceived;
reason rejects it, and rarely fails to confound, in the same ostracism, the penalty against which
it revolts and the God to whom that penalty is attributed. Hence the numberless ills which
have burst upon you, and for which we come to bring you a remedy. The task we point out to
you will be all the easier because the defenders of this belief have avoided giving a positive
opinion in regard to it; neither the Councils nor the Fathers of the Church have definitely
settled this weighty question. If Christ, according to the Evangelists and the literal
interpretation of His allegorical utterances, threatens the guilty with a fire that is
unquenchable, there is absolutely nothing in those utterances to prove that they are
condemned to remain in that fire eternally.
"Hapless sheep that have gone astray! behold, advancing towards you, the Good Shepherd
who, so far from intending to drive you