Now, as to the message of eternal grief:
"Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels."
"And these shall go away into everlasting punishment; but the righteous [meaning the Methodists] into life eternal."
"He that believeth not shall be damned."
"He that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him."
"Fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul; but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell."
"And the smoke of their torment ascendeth up forever and ever."
Knowing, as we do, that but few people have been believers, that during the last eighteen hundred years not one in a hundred has died in the faith, and that consequently nearly all the dead are in hell, it can truthfully be said that Christianity came with a message of eternal grief.
Now, as to the second "gigantic falsehood," to the effect that Christianity filled the future with fear and flame, and made God the keeper of an eternal penitentiary, destined to be the home of nearly all the sons of men.
In the Old Testament there is nothing about punishment in some other world, nothing about the flames and torments of hell. When Jehovah killed one of his enemies he was satisfied. His revenge was glutted when the victim was dead. The Old Testament gave the future to sleep and oblivion. But in the New Testament we are told that the punishment in another world is everlasting, and that "the smoke of their torment ascendeth up forever and ever."