Hear how it screams to come out. See how it turns and twists
itself about in the fire. It beats its head against the roof of
the oven. It stamps its little feet on the floor. Very likely God
saw that this child would get worse and worse, and never repent,
and thus would have to be punished much more in hell. So God in
his mercy called it out of the world in its early childhood." Of
these diabolical horrors, drawn out through hundreds of pages, the
orthodox Protestant may say, "Oh, this is only a piece of Popish
superstition. We all repudiate it as a most repulsive and absurd
fancy."

Well, what then will he say if representations, though perhaps not
quite so grossly graphic in circumstance, yet absolutely identical
in principle, are set before him from the fresh utterances of
hundreds of the most distinguished Baptist, Methodist,
Presbyterian, Episcopalian preachers and theologians? It would be
easy to present whole volumes of apposite citations. But two or
three will be enough. John Henry Newman in that one of his
parochial sermons, entitled, "On the Individuality of the Soul,"
gives us accounts of hell which for unshrinking detail of
materiality will compare with the most frightful passages of
Oriental mythology. George Bull, Lord Bishop of Saint Davids, in
his volume of sermons declares that all who die with any sin
unrepented of, "are immediately consigned to a place and state of
irreversible misery a place of horrid darkness where there shines
not the least glimmering of light or comfort." Mr. Spurgeon
asserts, "There is a real fire in hell a fire exactly like that
which we have on earth, except that it will torture without
consuming. When thou diest thy soul will be tormented alone in
hell: but at the day of judgment thy body shall join thy soul, and
then thou wilt have twin hells, body and soul together, each
brimfull of pain; thy soul sweating in its inmost pores drops of
blood, and thy body, from head to foot, suffused with agony; not
only conscience, judgment, memory, all tormented, but thy head
tormented with racking pain, thine eyes starting from their
sockets with sights of blood and woe; thine ears tormented with
horrid noises; thy heart beating high with fever; thy pulse
rattling at an enormous rate in agony; thy limbs cracking in the
fire, and yet unburned; thyself put in a vessel of hot oil,
pained, yet undestroyed. Ah! fine lady, who takest care of thy
goodly fashioned face, that fair face shall be