s not a frozen petrifaction of selfishness or an
incarnate devil, how can he look on his family, friends,
neighbors, fellow citizens, fellow beings, in the light of his
faith seeing them quivering over the dizzy verge of a blind
probation and momentarily dropping into the lake of fire and
brimstone that burns forever, how can he do this without being
ceaselessly stung with wretchedness and crushed with horror by the
perception? For a man who appreciatingly believes that hell is
directly under our meadows, streets, and homes, and that nine
tenths of the dead are in it, and that nine tenths of the living
soon will be, for such a man to be happy and jocose is as horrible
as it would be for a man, occupying the second story of a house,
to light it up brilliantly with gas, and make merry with his
friends, eating tidbits, sipping wine, and tripping it on the
light fantastic toe to the strains of gay music, while,
immediately under him, men, women, and children, including his own
parents and his own children, were stretched on racks, torn with
pincers, lacerated with surgical instruments, cauterized, lashed
with whips of fire, their half suppressed shrieks and groans
audibly rising through the floor!

Secondly, if the doctrine be true, then all unnecessary worldly
enterprises, labors, and studies should at once cease. One moment
on earth, and then, accordingly as we spend that moment, an
eternity in heaven or in hell: in heaven, if we succeed in
placating God by a sound belief and ritual proprieties; in hell,
if we are led astray by philosophy, nature, and the attractions of
life! On these suppositions, what time have we for any thing but
reciting our creed, meditating on the atonement, and seeking to
secure an interest for ourselves with God by flouting at our
carnal reason, praying in church, and groaning, "Lord, Lord, have
mercy on us miserable sinners"? What folly, what mockery, to be
searching into the motions of the stars, and the occult forces of
matter, and the other beautiful mysteries of science! There will
be no astronomy in hell, save vain speculations as to the distance
between the nadir of the damned and the zenith of the saved; no
chemistry in hell, save the experiments of infinite wrath in
distilling new torture poisons in the alembics of memory and
depositing fresh despair sediments in the crucibles of hope. If
Calvin's doctrine be true, let no book be printed, save the
"Westminster Catechism;" no calculati