10 The Question of an Eternal Hell
even from looking one another in the face; their eyes had been
eternally fixed each upon his neighbor's back. And yet, added
the skull, whenever Macarius prayed for those poor lost souls,
they found themselves momentarily able to glimpse the faces
of their fellows after all, for which they were profoundly grate-
ful; for this was the only respite they could ever hope to enjoy
amid their unrelenting torments. On hearing these things, Ma-
carius began to weep, and declared that it would have been
better had the unfortunate priest never been born at all. He
then asked whether there were others in hell enduring even
greater tortures than these, and the skull told him that indeed
there were. In fact, it said, the suffering visited on him and his
fellow pagans was comparatively mild, since they had never
known the true God and so had never really had the choice
of serving him; immeasurably more terrible were the penal-
ties endured by those plunged deep down in the abyss of fire
below, it said, for they had known God and had rejected him
nevertheless. In dread, Macarius buried the skull and hastened
on his way.
I was, I think, fourteen when I first read that story, in
a volume of writings from the early church belonging to my
eldest brother. I was not a particularly pious youth, but I
liked old legends. And then, a week or so later, quite by co-
incidence, I heard the same story recited in a sermon by an
Episcopal priest (exceedingly high church), who seemed to fall
into something like a mystic transport as he rhapsodized upon
the tale's rare beauty: the deftly minimalist skill with which
it painted its portrait of the merciful soul of Abba Macarius,
the ravishingly lovely conceit that even the pains of hell may
be alleviated by the sight of another human face, the piercing
reminder that our pity must admit no boundaries ( and other
things along those lines). For the life of me, I had no idea what