shrieking like voices:
—Hell! Hell! Hell! Hell! Hell!
Voices spoke near him:
—On hell.
—I suppose he rubbed it into you well.
—You bet he did. He put us all into a blue funk.
—That’s what you fellows want: and plenty of it to make you work.
He leaned back weakly in his desk. He had not died. God had spared him still. He was still in the familiar world of the
school. Mr Tate and Vincent Heron stood at the window, talking, jesting, gazing out at the bleak rain, moving their heads.
—I wish it would clear up. I had arranged to go for a spin on the bike with some fellows out by Malahide. But the roads
must be knee–deep.
—It might clear up, sir.
The voices that he knew so well, the common words, the quiet of the classroom when the voices paused and the
silence was filled by the sound of softly browsing cattle as the other boys munched their lunches tranquilly, lulled his
aching soul.
There was still time. O Mary, refuge of sinners, intercede for him! O Virgin Undefiled, save him from the gulf of death!
The English lesson began with the hearing of the history. Royal persons, favourites, intriguers, bishops, passed like
mute phantoms behind their veil of names. All had died: all had been judged. What did it profit a man to gain the whole
world if he lost his soul? At last he had understood: and human life lay around him, a plain of peace whereon ant–like
men laboured in brotherhood, their dead sleeping under quiet mounds. The elbow of his companion touched him and his
heart was touched: and when he spoke to answer a question of his master he heard his own voice full of the quietude of
humility and contrition.
His soul sank back deeper into depths of contrite peace, no longer able to suffer the pain of dread, and sending forth,
as he sank, a faint prayer. Ah yes, he would still be spared; he would repent in his heart and be forgiven; and then those
above, those in heaven, would see what he would do to make up for the past: a whole life, every hour of life. Only wait.
—All, God! All, all!
A messenger came to the door to say that confessions were being heard in the chapel. Four boys left the room; and he
heard others passing down the corridor. A tremulous chill blew round his heart, no stronger than a little wind, and yet,
listening and suffering silently, he seemed to have laid an ear against the muscle of his own heart, feeling it close and
quail, listening to the flutter of its ventricles.
No escape. He had to confess, to speak out in words what he had done and thought, sin after sin. How? How?
—Father, I…
The thought slid like a cold shining rapier into his tender flesh: confession. But not there in the chapel of the college.
He would confess all, every sin of deed and thought, sincerely; but not there among his school companions. Far away
from there in some dark place he would murmur out his own shame; and he besought God humbly not to be offended
with him if he did not dare to confess in the college chapel and in utter abjection of spirit he craved forgiveness mutely of
the boyish hearts about him.
Time passed.
He sat again in the front bench of the chapel. The daylight without was already failing and, as it fell slowly through the
dull red blinds, it seemed that the sun of the last day was going down and that all souls were being gathered for the
judgement.
—I AM CAST AWAY FROM THE SIGHT OF THINE EYES: words taken, my dear little brothers in Christ, from the Book
of Psalms, thirtieth chapter, twenty–third verse. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
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.
—This morning we endeavoured, in our reflection upon hell, to make what our holy founder calls in his book of spiritual
exercises, the composition of place. We endeavoured, that is, to imagine with the senses of the mind, in our imagination,
the material character of that awful place and of the physical torments which all who are in hell endure. This evening we
shall consider for a few moments the nature of the spiritual torments of hell.
—Sin, remember, is a twofold enormity. It is a base consent to the promptings of our corrupt nature to the lower
instincts, to that which is gross and beast–like; and it is also a turning away from the counsel of our higher nature, from
all that is pure and holy, from the Holy God Himself. For this reason mortal sin is punished in hell by two different forms of
punishment, physical and spiritual.
Now of all these spiritual pains by far the greatest is the pain of loss, so great, in fact, that in itself it is a torment greater
than all the others. Saint Thomas, the greatest doctor of the church, the angelic doctor, as he is called, says that the
worst damnation consists in this, that the understanding of man is totally deprived of divine light and his affection
obstinately turned away from the goodness of God. God, remember, is a being infinitely good, and therefore the loss of
such a being must be a loss infinitely painful. In this life we have not a very clear idea of what such a loss must be, but
the damned in hell, for their greater torment, have a full understanding of that which they have lost, and understand that
they have lost it through their own sins and have lost it for ever. At the very instant of death the bonds of the flesh are
broken asunder and the soul at once flies towards God as towards the centre of her existence. Remember, my dear little
boys, our souls long to be with God. We come from God, we live by God, we belong to God: we are His, inalienably His.
God loves with a divine love every human soul, and every human soul lives in that love. How could it be otherwise?
Every breath that we draw, every thought of our brain, every instant of life proceeds from God’s inexhaustible goodness.
And if it be pain for a mother to be parted from her child, for a man to be exiled from hearth and home, for friend to be
sundered from friend, O think what pain, what anguish it must be for the poor soul to be spurned from the presence of
the supremely good and loving Creator Who has called that soul into existence from nothingness and sustained it in life
and loved it with an immeasurable love. This, then, to be separated for ever from its greatest good, from God, and to feel
the anguish of that separation, knowing full well that it is unchangeable: this is the greatest torment which the created
soul is capable of bearing, POENA DAMNI, the pain of loss.
The second pain which will afflict the souls of the damned in hell is the pain of conscience. Just as in dead bodies
worms are engendered by putrefaction, so in the souls of the lost there arises a perpetual remorse from the putrefaction
of sin, the sting of conscience, the worm, as Pope Innocent the Third calls it, of the triple sting. The first sting inflicted by
this cruel worm will be the memory of past pleasures. O what a dreadful memory will that be! In the lake of all–devouring
flame the proud king will remember the pomps of his court, the wise but wicked man his libraries and instruments of
research, the lover of artistic pleasures his marbles and pictures and other art treasures, he who delighted in the
pleasures of the table his gorgeous feasts, his dishes prepared with such delicacy, his choice wines; the miser will
remember his hoard of gold, the robber his ill–gotten wealth, the angry and revengeful and merciless murderers their
deeds of blood and violence in which they revelled, the impure and adulterous the unspeakable and filthy pleasures in
which they delighted. They will remember all this and loathe themselves and their sins. For how miserable will all those
pleasures seem to the soul condemned to suffer in hellfire for ages and ages. How they will rage and fume to think that
they have lost the bliss of heaven for the dross of earth, for a few pieces of metal, for vain honours, for bodily comforts,
for a tingling of the nerves. They will repent indeed: and this is the second sting of the worm of conscience, a late and
fruitless sorrow for sins committed. Divine justice insists that the understanding of those miserable wretches be fixed
continually on the sins of which they were guilty, and moreover, as saint Augustine points out, God will impart to them His
own knowledge of sin, so that sin will appear to them in all its hideous malice as it appears to the eyes of God Himself.
They will behold their sins in all their foulness and repent but it will be too late and then they will bewail the good
occasions which they neglected. This is the last and deepest and most cruel sting of the worm of conscience. The
conscience will say: You had time and opportunity to repent and would not. You were brought up religiously by your
parents. You had the sacraments and grace and indulgences of the church to aid you. You had the minister of God to
preach to you, to call you back when you had strayed, to forgive you your sins, no matter how many, how abominable, if
only you had confessed and repented. No. You would not. You flouted the ministers of holy religion, you turned your
back on the confessional, you wallowed deeper and deeper in the mire of sin. God appealed to you, threatened you,
entreated you to return to Him. O, what shame, what misery! The Ruler of the universe entreated you, a creature of clay,
to love Him Who made you and to keep His law. No. You would not. And now, though you were to flood all hell with your
tears if you could still weep, all that sea of repentance would not gain for you what a single tear of true repentance shed
during your mortal life would have gained for you. You implore now a moment of earthly life wherein to repent: In vain.
That time is gone: gone for ever.
—Such is the threefold sting of conscience, the viper which gnaws the very heart’s core of the wretches in hell, so that
filled with hellish fury they curse themselves for their folly and curse the evil companions who have brought them to such
ruin and curse the devils who tempted them in life and now mock them in eternity and even revile and curse the Supreme
Being Whose goodness and patience they scorned and slighted but Whose justice and power they cannot evade.
—The next spiritual pain to which the damned are subjected is the pain of extension. Man, in this earthly life, though he
be capable of many evils, is not capable of them all at once, inasmuch as one evil corrects and counteracts another just
as one poison frequently corrects another. In hell, on the contrary, one torment, instead of counteracting another, lends it
still greater force: and, moreover, as the internal faculties are more perfect than the external senses, so are they more
capable of suffering. Just as every sense is afflicted with a fitting torment, so is every spiritual faculty; the fancy with
horrible images, the sensitive faculty with alternate longing and rage, the mind and understanding with an interior
darkness more terrible even than the exterior darkness which reigns in that dreadful prison. The malice, impotent though
it be, which possesses these demon souls is an evil of boundless extension, of limitless duration, a frightful state of
wickedness which we can scarcely realize unless we bear in mind the enormity of sin and the hatred God bears to it.
—Opposed to this pain of extension and yet coexistent with it we have the pain of intensity. Hell is the centre of evils
and, as you know, things are more intense at their centres than at their remotest points. There are no contraries or
admixtures of any kind to temper or soften in the least the pains of hell. Nay, things which are good in themselves
become evil in hell. Company, elsewhere a source of comfort to the afflicted, will be there a continual torment:
knowledge, so much longed for as the chief good of the intellect, will there be hated worse than ignorance: light, so much
coveted by all creatures from the lord of creation down to the humblest plant in the forest, will be loathed intensely. In this
life our sorrows are either not very long or not very great because nature either overcomes them by habits or puts an end
to them by sinking under their weight. But in hell the torments cannot be overcome by habit, for while they are of terrible
intensity they are at the same time of continual variety, each pain, so to speak, taking fire from another and re–endowing
that which has enkindled it with a still fiercer flame. Nor can nature escape from these intense and various tortures by
succumbing to them for the soul is sustained and maintained in evil so that its suffering may be the greater. Boundless
extension of torment, incredible intensity of suffering, unceasing variety of torture—this is what the divine majesty, so
outraged by sinners, demands; this is what the holiness of heaven, slighted and set aside for the lustful and low
pleasures of the corrupt flesh, requires; this is what the blood of the innocent Lamb of God, shed for the redemption of
sinners, trampled upon by the vilest of the vile, insists upon.
—Last and crowning torture of all the tortures of that awful place is the eternity of hell. Eternity! O, dread and dire word.
Eternity! What mind of man can understand it? And remember, it is an eternity of pain. Even though the pains of hell
were not so terrible as they are, yet they would become infinite, as they are destined to last for ever. But while they are
everlasting they are at the same time, as you know, intolerably intense, unbearably extensive. To bear even the sting of
an insect for all eternity would be a dreadful torment. What must it be, then, to bear the manifold tortures of hell for ever?
For ever! For all eternity! Not for a year or for an age but for ever. Try to imagine the awful meaning of this. You have
often seen the sand on the seashore. How fine are its tiny grains! And how many of those tiny little grains go to make up
the small handful which a child grasps in its play. Now imagine a mountain of that sand, a million miles high, reaching
from the earth to the farthest heavens, and a million miles broad, extending to remotest space, and a million miles in
thickness; and imagine such an enormous mass of countless particles of sand multiplied as often as there are leaves in
the forest, drops of water in the mighty ocean, feathers on birds, scales on fish, hairs on animals, atoms in the vast
expanse of the air: and imagine that at the end of every million years a little bird came to that mountain and carried away
in its beak a tiny grain of that sand. How many millions upon millions of centuries would pass before that bird had carried
away even a square foot of that mountain, how many eons upon eons of ages before it had carried away all? Yet at the
end of that immense stretch of time not even one instant of eternity could be said to have ended. At the end of all those
billions and trillions of years eternity would have scarcely begun. And if that mountain rose again after it had been all
carried away, and if the bird came again and carried it all away again grain by grain, and if it so rose and sank as many
times as there are stars in the sky, atoms in the air, drops of water in the sea, leaves on the trees, feathers upon birds,
scales upon fish, hairs upon animals, at the end of all those innumerable risings and sinkings of that immeasurably vast
mountain not one single instant of eternity could be said to have ended; even then, at the end of such a period, after that
eon of time the mere thought of which makes our very brain reel dizzily, eternity would scarcely have begun.
—A holy saint (one of our own fathers I believe it was) was once vouchsafed a vision of hell. It seemed to him that he
stood in the midst of a great hall, dark and silent save for the ticking of a great clock. The ticking went on unceasingly;
and it seemed to this saint that the sound of the ticking was the ceaseless repetition of the words—ever, never; ever,
never. Ever to be in hell, never to be in heaven; ever to be shut off from the presence of God, never to enjoy the beatific
vision; ever to be eaten with flames, gnawed by vermin, goaded with burning spikes, never to be free from those pains;
ever to have the conscience upbraid one, the memory enrage, the mind filled with darkness and despair, never to
escape; ever to curse and revile the foul demons who gloat fiendishly over the misery of their dupes, never to behold the
shining raiment of the blessed spirits; ever to cry out of the abyss of fire to God for an instant, a single instant, of respite
from such awful agony, never to receive, even for an instant, God’s pardon; ever to suffer, never to enjoy; ever to be
damned, never to be saved; ever, never; ever, never. O, what a dreadful punishment! 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
intensity, of torment infinitely varied, of torture that sustains eternally that which it eternally devours, of anguish that
everlastingly preys upon the spirit while it racks the flesh, an eternity, every instant of which is itself an eternity of woe.
Such is the terrible punishment decreed for those who die in mortal sin by an almighty and a just God.
—Yes, a just God! Men, reasoning always as men, are astonished that God should mete out an everlasting and infinite
punishment in the fires of hell for a single grievous sin. They reason thus because, blinded by the gross illusion of the
flesh and the darkness of human understanding, they are unable to comprehend the hideous malice of mortal sin. They
reason thus because they are unable to comprehend that even venial sin is of such a foul and hideous nature that even
if the omnipotent Creator could end all the evil and misery in the world, the wars, the diseases, the robberies, the crimes,
the deaths, the murders, on condition that he allowed a single venial sin to pass unpunished, a single venial sin, a lie, an
angry look, a moment of wilful sloth, He, the great omnipotent God could not do so because sin, be it in thought or deed,
is a transgression of His law and God would not be God if He did not punish the transgressor.
—A sin, an instant of rebellious pride of the intellect, made Lucifer and a third part of the cohort of angels fall from their
glory. A sin, an instant of folly and weakness, drove Adam and Eve out of Eden and brought death and suffering into the
world. To retrieve the consequences of that sin the Only Begotten Son of God came down to earth, lived and suffered
and died a most painful death, hanging for three hours on the cross.
—O, my dear little brethren in Christ Jesus, will we then offend that good Redeemer and provoke His anger? Will we
trample again upon that torn and mangled corpse? Will we spit upon that face so full of sorrow and love? Will we too, like
the cruel jews and the brutal soldiers, mock that gentle and compassionate Saviour Who trod alone for our sake the
awful wine–press of sorrow? Every word of sin is a wound in His tender side. Every sinful act is a thorn piercing His
head. Every impure thought, deliberately yielded to, is a keen lance transfixing that sacred and loving heart. No, no. It is
impossible for any human being to do that which offends so deeply the divine majesty, that which is punished by an
eternity of agony, that which crucifies again the Son of God and makes a mockery of Him.
—I pray to God that my poor words may have availed today to confirm in holiness those who are in a state of grace, to
strengthen the wavering, to lead back to the state of grace the poor soul that has strayed if any such be among you. I
pray to God, and do you pray with me, that we may repent of our sins. I will ask you now, all of you, to repeat after me
the act of contrition, kneeling here in this humble chapel in the presence of God. He is there in the tabernacle burning
with love for mankind, ready to comfort the afflicted. Be not afraid. No matter how many or how foul the sins if you only
repent of them they will be forgiven you. Let no worldly shame hold you back. God is still the merciful Lord who wishes
not the eternal death of the sinner but rather that he be converted and live.
—He calls you to Him. You are His. He made you out of nothing. He loved you as only a God can love. His arms are
open to receive you even though you have sinned against Him. Come to Him, poor sinner, poor vain and erring sinner.
Now is the acceptable time. Now is the hour.
The priest rose and, turning towards the altar, knelt upon the step before the tabernacle in the fallen gloom. He waited
till all in the chapel had knelt and every least noise was still. Then, raising his head, he repeated the act of contrition,
phrase by phrase, with fervour. The boys answered him phrase by phrase. Stephen, his tongue cleaving to his palate,
bowed his head, praying with his heart.
—O my God!—
—O my God!—
—I am heartily sorry—
—I am heartily sorry—
—for having offended Thee—
—for having offended Thee—
—and I detest my sins—
—and I detest my sins—
—above every other evil—
—above every other evil—
—because they displease Thee, my God—
—because they displease Thee, my God—
—Who art so deserving—
—Who art so deserving—
—of all my love—
—of all my love—
—and I firmly purpose—
—and I firmly purpose—
—by Thy holy grace—
—by Thy holy grace—
—never more to offend Thee—
—never more to offend Thee—
—and to amend my life—
—and to amend my life—
He went up to his room after dinner in order to be alone with his soul, and at every step his soul seemed to sigh; at every
step his soul mounted with his feet, sighing in the ascent, through a region of viscid gloom.
He halted on the landing before the door and then, grasping the porcelain knob, opened the door quickly. He waited in
fear, his soul pining within him, praying silently that death might not touch his brow as he passed over the threshold, that
the fiends that inhabit darkness might not be given power over him. He waited still at the threshold as at the entrance to
some dark cave. Faces were there; eyes: they waited and watched.
—We knew perfectly well of course that though it was bound to come to the light he would find considerable difficulty in
endeavouring to try to induce himself to try to endeavour to ascertain the spiritual plenipotentiary and so we knew of
course perfectly well—
Murmuring faces waited and watched; murmurous voices filled the dark shell of the cave. He feared intensely in spirit
and in flesh but, raising his head bravely, he strode into the room firmly. A doorway, a room, the same room, same
window. He told himself calmly that those words had absolutely no sense which had seemed to rise murmurously from
the dark. He told himself that it was simply his room with the door open.
He closed the door and, walking swiftly to the bed, knelt beside it and covered his face with his hands. His hands were
cold and damp and his limbs ached with chill. Bodily unrest and chill and weariness beset him, routing his thoughts. Why
was he kneeling there like a child saying his evening prayers? To be alone with his soul, to examine his conscience, to
meet his sins face to face, to recall their times and manners and circumstances, to weep over them. He could not weep.
He could not summon them to his memory. He felt only an ache of soul and body, his whole being, memory, will,
understanding, flesh, benumbed and weary.
That was the work of devils, to scatter his thoughts and over–cloud his conscience, assailing him at the gates of the
cowardly and sin–corrupted flesh: and, praying God timidly to forgive him his weakness, he crawled up on to the bed
and, wrapping the blankets closely about him, covered his face again with his hands. He had sinned. He had sinned so
deeply against heaven and before God that he was not worthy to be called God’s child.
Could it be that he, Stephen Dedalus, had done those things? His conscience sighed in answer. Yes, he had done
them, secretly, filthily, time after time, and, hardened in sinful impenitence, he had dared to wear the mask of holiness
before the tabernacle itself while his soul within was a living mass of corruption. How came it that God had not struck him
dead? The leprous company of his sins closed about him, breathing upon him, bending over him from all sides. He strove
to forget them in an act of prayer, huddling his limbs closer together and binding down his eyelids: but the senses of his
soul would not be bound and, though his eyes were shut fast, he saw the places where he had sinned and, though his
ears were tightly covered, he heard. He desired with all his will not to hear or see. He desired till his frame shook under
the strain of his desire and until the senses of his soul closed. They closed for an instant and then opened. He saw.
A field of stiff weeds and thistles and tufted nettle–bunches. Thick among the tufts of rank stiff growth lay battered
canisters and clots and coils of solid excrement. A faint marshlight struggling upwards from all the ordure through the
bristling grey–green weeds. An evil smell, faint and foul as the light, curled upwards sluggishly out of the canisters and
from the stale crusted dung.
Creatures were in the field: one, three, six: creatures were moving in the field, hither and thither. Goatish creatures with
human faces, hornybrowed, lightly bearded and grey as india–rubber. The malice of evil glittered in their hard eyes, as
they moved hither and thither, trail