How Horrible!

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Oct 24, 1885

Jonathan Edwards, D. D., of the Presbyterian church, in his works represents hell as seven times hotter than a limekiln, or an oven, or furnace heated seven times hotter than usual. And he says after the soul has been there millions of years, and heated through and through, like a red hot iron wedge, the punishment will then only just have commenced; so says this eminent divine. He further says, that "parents will look down from the battlements of Heaven, and smile at the damnation of their own children."

In relation to the damnation of infants, he says: "God Almighty will take the little vipers up in the tongs of his wrath, and hold them over the fire of hell until they spit venom in the face of Jehovah." But let us pause! We sicken and turn from such theology with loathing! and yet it is orthodoxy in all its purity. We get the same now, only they do it up in a little heavenly sugar, or "good religion," to make it more palatable; or in other words, they are more dishonest now than they were then; for if they were honest, they would come out like men and tell what they believe to be the truth, and the whole truth. The entire Orthodox Protestant world believe in a hell of endless duration; and in torment most excruciating; that they dare not deny. But now it is not much talked of, for fear that it will frighten away the flock from which these dishonest priests get their "golden fleece." The Bible teaches no such horrible doctrine as this. It says, "All the wicked shall be destroyed." Psalms cxlv, 20. "They shall be as though they had not been." Obad. xvi.

How long will the people run after these strange priests, and their dogmas, and disregard "the word of the Lord?" Alas! "Ephraim is joined to his idols, let him alone." The people "love darkness rather than light, because their deeds are evil.">—Ex.