p. 99 | SPURGEON ON HELL by Editor

Publishing Committee · Battle Creek, Mich. · Aug 14, 1860

SPURGEON ON HELL.

By Editor

AND what say the wicked? "We do not care for metaphorical fire." But they are real, sir—yes, as real as yourself. There is a real fire in hell, as truly as you have now a real body—a fire exactly like that which we have on earth in everything except this, it will not consume, though it will torture you. You have seen the asbestos lying in the fire red hot, but when you take it out it is unconsumed. So your body will be prepared by God in such a way that it will burn forever without being consumed; it will lie, not as you consider, in metaphorical fire, but in actual flame. Did our Saviour mean fictions when he said he would cast body and soul into hell? What should there be a pit for if there were not bodies? Why fire, why chains, if there were to be no bodies? Can fire touch the soul? Can pits shut in spirits? Can chains fetter souls? No; pits, and fire, and chains are for bodies, and bodies shall be there. Thou wilt sleep in the dust a little while. When thou diest, thy soul will be tormented alone—that will be hell for it—but at the day of judgment thy body will join thy soul and then thou wilt have twin hells; body and soul shall be together, brimful of pain, thy soul sweating in its inmost pore drops of blood, and thy body from head to foot, suffused with agony; conscience, judgment, memory, all torture; but more, thy head tormented with racking pains, thine eyes starting from their sockets with sights of blood and woe, thine ears tormented with

"Sullen moans, and hollow groans, And shrieks of tortured ghosts."

Thine heart beating high with fever, thy pulse rattling at an enormous rate in agony, thy limbs cracking like the martyrs in the fire, and yet unburnt; thyself put in a vessel of hot oil, pained, yet coming out undestroyed; all thy veins becoming a road for the hot feet of pain to travel on; every nerve a string on which the Devil shall ever play his diabolical tune of hell's unutterable torment; thy soul forever and ever aching, and thy body palpitating in union with thy soul.

Fictions, sir? Again I say, they are no fictions, and as God liveth, but solid, stern truth. If God be true, what I have said is the truth, and you will find it one day to be so.

But hear me while I again affirm God's truth.

I tell thee sinner, that those eyes that now look on lust, shall look on miseries that shall vex and torment thee. Those ears which now thou lendest to hear the song of blasphemy, shall hear moans and groans and horrid sounds such as only the damned know. That very throat down which thou dost drink shall be filled with fire. Those very lips and arms of thine shall be tortured all at once. Why, if thou hast a headache thou wilt run to thy physician; but what wilt thou do when thy head, and heart and hands, and feet ache all at once? If thou hast but a pain in thy veins, thou wilt search out medicine to heal thee; but what wilt thou do when gout, and rheum, and vertigo, and all else that is vile attack thy body at once? How wilt thou bear thyself when thou shalt be loathsome with every kind of disease, leprous, palsied, black, rotten, thy bones aching, thy marrow quivering, every limb thou hast filled with pain; thy body a temple of demons, and a channel of miseries? And will you march blindly on? *

You listen to me now unmoved; it will be harder work when death gets hold of you, and you lie roasting in the fire.

REMARKS. Even heathens repudiate such doctrine as the foregoing. Bad as they are in other respects, they have not so far done violence to the light of nature as to incorporate into their religious belief the idea of eternal torture for the wicked. The Siamese tell us we may keep to ourselves our American God who torments men forever; for their god is so far superior that he torments men only a thousand years. The doctrine of never-ending misery is thus left to find its adherents among Catholics and Protestants. Catholics teach and defend it, as Luther said, "to make the Pope's pot boil;" and their deluded victims believe it, because in their ignorance and superstition they know no better. But Protestants, enlightened and educated Protestants, with whom the Bible has become as household words—what shall we say of them? Here would we charitably suspend sentence till we invite them once more to compare carefully and thoroughly this doctrine with that sacred word, to see if they can find it taught therein. When they will do this, we trust to be relieved from the necessity of passing upon them any decision prejudicial to their honesty, or to their professed willingness to take "the Bible, and the Bible alone, as their rule of faith and practice."—Ed.