ppiness, there is no
need of place: "no matter where, for I am still the same," said one most
miserable being. More--in the case of mere spirits, there is no need for
any apparatus of torments, or fires, or other fearful things. But, when
spirit is married to matter, the case is altered; needs must a place to
prison the matter, and a corporal punishment to vex it.

Nothing is unlikely here; excepting--will a man urge?--the dread
duration of such hell. This is a parenthesis; but it shall not be
avoided, for the import of that question is deep, and should be answered
clearly. A man, a body and soul inmixt, body risen incorruptible, and
soul rested from its deeds, must exist for ever. I touch not here the
proofs--assume it. Now, if he lives for ever, and deliberately chooses
evil, his will consenting as well as his infirmity, and conscience
seared by persisted disobedience, what course can such a wilful,
rational, responsible being pursue than one perpetually erratic? How
should it not be that he gets worse and worse in morals, and more and
more miserable in fact? and when to this we add, that such wretched
creatures are to herd together, continually flying further away from the
only source of Happiness and Good; and to this, that they have earned by
sin, remorses and regrets, and positive inflictions; how probable seems
a hell, the sinner's doom eternal. The apt mathematical analogy of lines
thrown out of parallel, helps this for illustration: for ever and for
ever they are stretching more remote, and infinity itself cannot reunite
their travel.

This, then, as a passing word; a sad one. Honest thinker, do not scorn
it, for thine own soul's sake. "Now is the time of grace, now is the day
of salvation." To return. A place of punishment exists; to what quarter
shall we look for its anterior probability? I think there is a
likelihood very near us. There may be one, possibly, beneath us, in the
bowels of this fiery-bursting earth; whither went Korah and his company?
This idea is not without its arguments, just analogies, and scriptural
hints. But my judgment inclines towards another. This trial-world, we
know, is to be purified and restored, and made a new earth: it was even
to be expected that Redemption should do this, and I like not to imagine
it the crust and case of hell, but rather, as thus: At the birth of this
same world, there was struck off from its burning mass at a tangent, a
mournful satellite, to be the home of