would he commit a
sin?

If he cannot appreciate that enormous penalty, much less can he
the infinite one, which is far more likely to shade off and blur
out into a vague and remote nothing. Truth is an expression of
God's will, which we are bound exclusively to accept and employ
regardless of consequences. When we do that, God, the author of
truth, is himself solely responsible for the consequences. But
when, thinking we can devise something that will work better, we
use some theory of our own, we are responsible for the
consequences. Let every one beware how he ventures to assume that
dread responsibility. It is surely folly as well as sin. For
nothing can work so well as truth, the simple, calm, living truth,
which is a chime in the infinite harmony of morals and things. It
is only the morbid melodramatic tastes and incompetencies of an
unfinished culture that make men think otherwise. The magnificent
poetry of the day of judgment an audience of five hundred thousand
millions gathered in one throng as the Judge rises to pronounce
the last oration over a dissolving universe takes possession of
the fancy, and people conceive it so vividly, and are so moved by
it, that they think they see it to be true.

Grant for a moment the truth of the conception of hell as a
physical world of fiery torture full of the damned. Suppose the
scene of probation over, hell filled with its prisoners shut up,
banished and buried in the blackest deeps of space. Can it be left
there forever? Can it be that the roar of its furnace shall rage
on, and the wail of the execrable anguish ascend, eternally?
Endeavor to realize in some faint degree what these questions
mean, and then answer. If anybody can find it in his heart or in
his head to say yes, and can gloat over the idea, and wish to have
it continually brandished in terrorem over the heads of the
people, one feels impelled to declare that he of all men the most
needs to be converted to the Christian spirit. An unmitigated hell
of depravity, pain, and horror, would be Satan's victory and God's
defeat; for the very wish of a Satanic being must be for the
everlasting prevalence of sin and wretchedness. As above the
weltering hosts of the lost, each dreadful second, the iron clock
of hell ticked the thunder word "eternity," how would the devil on
his sulphurous dais shout in triumph! But if such a world of fire,
crowded with the writhing damned, ever existed at all, could it
exist forever