ingenious paraphrases of every sort of
penalty and pang known in Egypt. The same thing may be affirmed
with quadruple emphasis of the Hindu doctrine of future
punishment. In the Hindu hells, truly, the possibilities of horror
are exhausted. To enumerate their sufferings in anything like
their own detail would require a large volume. The Vishnu Parana
names twenty eight distinct hells, assigning each one to a
particular class of sinners; and it adds that there are hundreds
of others, in which the various classes of offenders undergo the
penalties of their misdeeds. There are separate hells for thieves,
for liars, for those who kill a cow, for those who drink wine, for
those who insult a priest, and so on. Some of the victims are
chained to posts of red hot steel and lashed with flexible flames:
others are forced to devour the most horrible filth. Some are
mangled and eaten by ravenous birds, others are squeezed into
chests of fire and locked up for millions of years. These examples
may serve as a small specimen of the infernal ingenuity displayed
in the descriptions of the Hindu hells, which are all of one
substantial pattern, however varied in the embroidery.

The Parsees hold that when a bad man dies his soul remains by the
body three days and nights, seeing all the sins it has ever
committed, and anxiously crying, "Whither shall I go? Who will
save me?" On the fourth day devils come and thrust the bad soul
into fetters and lead it to the bridge that reaches from earth to
heaven. The warder of the bridge weighs the deeds of the wicked
soul in his balance, and condemns it. The devils then fling the
soul down and beat it cruelly. It shrieks and groans, struggles,
and calls for help; but all in vain. It is forced on toward hell,
when it is suddenly met by a hideous and hateful maiden. It
demands, "Who art thou, O, maiden, uglier and more detestable than
I ever saw in the world?" She replies, "I am no maiden; I am thine
own wicked deeds, O, thou hateful unbeliever furnished with bad
thoughts and words." After further disagreeable adventures, the
soul is plunged into the abode of the devil, where the darkness
and foul odor are so thick that they can be grasped. Fed with
horrid viands, such as snakes, scorpions, poison, there the wicked
soul must remain until the day of resurrection.

Now, no enlightened Christian scholar or thinker will hesitate
with one stroke to brush away all the details of these pagan
descriptions