“Nor is this all to those who suffer least. It is not only the loss of all, and a horrible lake of ever-burning fire, but there are horrible objects, filling every sense and every faculty; and there are horrible engines and instruments of torture. There are the ‘chains of darkness,’ thick, heavy, hard, and smothering as the gloom of blank and black despair—chains strong as the cords of omnipotence, hot as the crisping flames of vengeance, indestructible and eternal as justice. With chains like these, every iron link burning into the throbbing heart, is bound each doomed, damned soul, on a bed of burning marl, under an iron roof, riven with tempests, and dripping with torrents of unquenchable fire.”
The object of the preacher being to make as terrific a picture as possible, he accumulates these material images of bodily torment in order to excite the imagination to the utmost. We can conceive of his writing these sentences carefully in his comfortable study, in an easy chair, by the side of a cheerful fire, with a smile of self-complacency, as he selects each striking expression. Then he proceeds:—
“Nor is this all. Unmortified appetites, hungry as death, insatiable as the grave, torture it. Every passion burning, an unsealed volcano in the heart. Every base lust a tiger unchained—a worm undying, let loose to prey on soul and body. Pride, vanity, envy, shame, treachery, deceit, falsehood, fell revenge, and black despair, malice, and every unholy emotion, are so many springs of excruciating and ever-increasing agonies, are so many hot and stifling winds, tossing the swooning, sweltering soul on waves of fire. And there will be deadly hunger, but no food; parching thirst, but no water; eternal fatigue, but no rest; eternal lust of sensuous and intellectual pleasures, but no gratification. And there will be terrible companions, or rather foes, there. Eternal longings after society, but no companion, no love, and no sympathy there. Every one utterly selfish, hateful, and hating. Every one cunning, false, malignant, fierce, fell, and devilish. All commingle in the confusion and the carnage of one wide-spread, pitiless, truceless, desperate strife. And there will be terrible sights and sounds there. Fathers and sons, pastors and people, husbands and wives, brothers and sisters, with swollen veins and bloodshot eyes, straining towards each other's throats and hearts, reprobate men, and devils in form and features, hideous to as great a degree as are the beauties of the blest in heaven beautiful. And there are groans and curses, and everlasting wailings, as harsh and horrible as heaven's songs, shouts, and anthems are sweet, joyous, and enrapturing. And there will be terrible displays of the divine power and skill, and infinitely awful displays of merciless and omnipotent justice, in the punishment of that rebel crew, that generation of moral vipers full grown, that congregation of moral monsters.”
All this, however, is not enough. It is necessary to go further, and represent God in the character of the devil, in order to complete the picture.
“Upon such an assembly, God, who is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity, cannot look but with utter detestation. His wrath shall come up in his face. His face shall be red in his anger. He will whet his glittering sword, and his hand shall take hold on vengeance; and he shall recompense. He shall launch forth his lightnings, and shoot abroad his arrows. He shall unseal all his fountains, and pour out his tumbling cataracts of vengeance. He shall build his batteries aloft, and thunder upon them from the heavens. His eye shall not pity them, nor shall his soul spare for their crying. The day of vengeance is in his heart, and it is what he has his heart set on. He will delight in it. He will show his wrath, and make his power known. That infinite power has never been fully made known yet; but it will be then. It is but a little that we see of it in creation and providence; but we shall see it, fully revealed, in the destruction of that rebel crew. He will tread them in his anger, and trample them in his fury, and will stain his raiment with their blood. The cup of the wine of his fierce wrath shall contain no mixture of mercy at all. And they will not be able to resist that wrath, nor will they be able to endure it; but they shall, in soul and body, sink wholly down into the second death. The iron heel of omnipotent and triumphing justice, pitiless and rejoicing, shall tread them down, and crush them lower still, and lower ever, in that burning pit which knows no bottom. All this, and more and worse, do the Scriptures declare; and that preacher who hesitates to proclaim it has forsworn his soul, and is a traitor to his trust.”
Now, it is simple truth to say that the blasphemer and profane swearer who spends fifty years in cursing God and Christ is not so blasphemous as the man who writes such sentences as these about the Almighty, and utters them to young men as a preparation for their work in the ministry. The people of Sodom and Gomorrah shall rise up in the day of judgment against those who speak thus of God, and shall condemn them. The Pagans, who represent their gods as horrid idols, pleased with blood and slaughter, have an excuse, which Mr. Davidson has not, for they do not have the gospel of the Lord Jesus in their hands. Thus he continues:—
“And all this shall be forever. It shall never, never end. (Matt. ch. 25.) The wicked go away into everlasting torments. This is a bitter ingredient in their cup of wormwood, a more terrible thing in their terrible doom. If after enduring it all for twice ten thousand times ten thousand years, they might have a deliverance, or at least some abatement, it were less terrible. But this may never, never be. Their estate is remediless. There is a great gulf fixed, and they cannot pass from thence. Or, if after suffering all this as many years as there are aqueous particles in air and ocean, they might then be delivered, or if, after repeating that amazing period as many times as there are sand-grains in the globe, they might then be delivered, there would be some hope. Or, if you multiply this latter sum—too infinite to be expressed by figures, and too limitless to be comprehended by angels—by the number of atoms that compose the universe, and there might be deliverance when they had passed those amazing, abysmal gulfs of duration, then there would be some hope. But no! when all is suffered and all is past, still all beyond is eternity.”
To show how some Roman Catholics write in the middle of the nineteenth century, we quote the following from a Roman Catholic book, published in England, by Rev. J. Furniss, being especially “a book for children.” Wishing to spare our readers such horrors, we put it here, advising no one of weak nerves to read its atrocious descriptions.
“The fourth dungeon is ‘the boiling kettle.’ Listen: there is a sound like that of a kettle boiling. Is it really a kettle which is boiling? No. Then what is it? Hear what it is. The blood is boiling in the scalded veins of that boy; the brain is boiling and bubbling in his head; the marrow is boiling in his bones. The fifth dungeon is the ‘red-hot oven,’ in which is a little child. Hear how it screams to come out; see how it turns and twists itself about in the fire; it beats its head against the roof of the oven. It stamps its little feet on the floor of the oven. To this child God was very good. Very likely God saw that this child would get worse and worse, and would never repent, and so it would have to be punished much more in hell. So God in his mercy called it out of the world in its early childhood.”
We take the following from the “Monthly Religious Magazine:”—