s a revengeful tyrant,
declaring that He plunges into hell all those who do not please Him, and
causes them ever to feel His wrath; and that while they suffer unutterable
anguish, and writhe in the eternal flames, their Creator looks down upon
them with satisfaction.

Thus the arch-fiend clothes with his own attributes the Creator and
Benefactor of mankind. Cruelty is satanic. God is love; and all that He
created was pure, holy, and lovely, until sin was brought in by the first
great rebel. Satan himself is the enemy who tempts man to sin, and then
destroys him if he can; and when he has made sure of his victim, then he
exults in the ruin he has wrought. If permitted, he would sweep the entire
race into his net. Were it not for the interposition of divine power, not
one son or daughter of Adam would escape.

Satan is seeking to overcome men to-day, as he overcame our first parents,
by shaking their confidence in their Creator, and leading them to doubt
the wisdom of His government and the justice of His laws. Satan and his
emissaries represent God as even worse than themselves, in order to
justify their own malignity and rebellion. The great deceiver endeavors to
shift his own horrible cruelty of character upon our heavenly Father, that
he may cause himself to appear as one greatly wronged by his expulsion
from heaven because he would not submit to so unjust a governor. He
presents before the world the liberty which they may enjoy under his mild
sway, in contrast with the bondage imposed by the stern decrees of
Jehovah. Thus he succeeds in luring souls away from their allegiance to
God.

How repugnant to every emotion of love and mercy, and even to our sense of
justice, is the doctrine that the wicked dead are tormented with fire and
brimstone in an eternally burning hell; that for the sins of a brief
earthly life they are to suffer torture as long as God shall live. Yet
this doctrine has been widely taught, and is still embodied in many of the
creeds of Christendom. Said a learned doctor of divinity: "The sight of
hell-torments will exalt the happiness of the saints forever. When they
see others who are of the same nature and born under the same
circumstances, plunged in such misery, and they so distinguished, it will
make them sensible of how happy they are." Another used these words:
"While the decree of reprobation is eternally executing on the vessels of
wrath, the smoke of their torment will be eternally ascendi