Protestant Views of Hell,
To which we may apply the language of Eze. xxii, 28: "And her prophets have daubed them with untempered mortar, seeing vanity and divining lies unto them, saying, Thus saith the Lord, when the Lord hath not spoken." Let us be thankful that the Bible is not responsible for such sentiments of eternal misery. Dr. Mather Byles, pastor of a church in Boston, Mass., 1771, in a sermon on the resurrection, page 19, says: "The unbeliever and impenitent have no interest at all in the 'blessed hope.' It is true the wicked must be raised from the dead, as well as the holy. But oh! how wide the difference between the one and the other, at the great decisive day. The wicked shall be raised to 'shame and everlasting contempt.' No glory shall shine about them; no image of Christ shall appear on them. They shall be changed 'tis true, but oh, the dreadful change! Their feeble bodies must be changed into bodies strong to bear the wrath of Almighty God. Their dying and dead bodies shall be changed into bodies of an immortal constitution; bodies that must live forever in anguish! They must measure eternal ages with groans and out-cries, and execrations and despair! Their corrupt and filthy bodies shall be changed into ten thousand times more hideous and loathsome figures, fit to be inhabitants of hell, and companions for devils. Their healthy and pleasurable bodies shall be changed; be seized and racked with an unknown variety of pains and torments; shall feed the flames of the horrible furnace kindled with the wrath of God that burneth as an oven, and endureth forever. And oh! who can dwell with devouring fire? who can endure everlasting burnings? The darkness of the grave shall be changed for the outer darkness, where shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth." The American Tract Society publish a tract, (No. 277) from the works of Saurin, a divine of the 17th century, on the "ETERNAL MISERY OF HELL." We give a brief extract as a sample. "As God will aggravate the sufferings of the damned by displaying his glorious attributes, their hatred of him will be unbounded, their torment will excite their hatred, their hatred will aggravate their torment. Is not this the height of misery—to be filled with unmixed hate toward the Perfect Being, the Supreme Being, the Sovereign Beauty—in a word, to hate the infinite God? Doth not this idea present to your mind a state the most melancholy, the most miserable? One chief excellence of the glory of happy spirits is a consummate love to their Creator. One of the most horrid punishments of hell is the exclusion of divine love. Oh, miserable state of the damned! In it they utter as many blasphemies against God as the happy souls in Heaven shout alleluiahs to his praise. "These are the punishments of condemned souls. It remains only that we consider the length and duration of them. But can we number the innumerable? and measure that which is beyond mensuration?" The Rev. Mr. Spurgeon recently addressed the following remarks to the sinner: "When thou diest thy soul will be tormented alone; that will be a 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, each brim full 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 tortured; but more, thy head tormented with racking pains; thine eyes starting from their sockets with sights of blood and woe; thine ears tormented with83'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 lament; thy soul forever and ever aching, and thy body palpitating in unison with thy soul. Fictions, sir? Again, I say, they are no fictions, and as God liveth, but solid, stern truth. If God be true and this Bible be true, what I have said is the truth, and you will find it one day to be so." "There is a real fire in hell as truly as you now have a real body—a fire exactly like that we have on earth in everything except this—that it will not consume though it will torment you." Richard Benson, an able and learned preacher of the Wesleyan connection, gives the following on "ENDLESS MISERY." "God is present in hell, in his infinite justice and ALMIGHTY WRATH, as an UNFATHOMABLE SEA OF LIQUID FIRE, where the wicked must drink in everlasting torture. The presence of God IN HIS VENGEANCE scatters darkness and woe through the dreary regions of misery. As Heaven would be no Heaven, if God did not there display or manifest his love, so hell would be no hell, if God did not there display his wrath. It is the presence and agency of God, which gives everything virtue and efficacy; without which, there can be no life, no sensibility, no power. God is, therefore, himself present in hell, to see the punishment of these rebels against his government, that it may be adequate to the infinity of their guilt. His fiery indignation kindles, and his incensed fury feeds the flame of their torment. While his powerful presence and operations maintain their being, and render all their powers most acutely sensible; thus setting the keenest edge upon their pain and making it cut most intolerably deep; he will exert all his divine attributes to make them as wretched as the capacities of their minds will admit." On the duration of this torment, he says: "Let every star, every drop, every grain of sand, represent one million of tormenting ages, and know that as many more millions still remain behind, and yet as many more behind these, and so on without end."