It has been reserved for the Christian Religion to depict hell in all its awful terrors. The New Testament represents hell as a place of torment by fire never-ending, where the unfortunate occupants are forever burning, but kept alive, and never consumed. The hell of the Greeks and other nations is less horrible, being represented as the abode of darkness, humiliation, and sorrow. But Christianity has a God in heaven, and a Devil in hell, forever contending with each other, like gladiators of old for the prize; and that prize is the human race. But the same New Testament represents that the Devil will have by far the greatest number of prisoners, so that, in the final winding up of this holy war, _Old Nick_ will win the field. The same process of reasoning, which led man, in the infancy of his reason, to personify the power who presided over the human race, induced him to infer that his pain and misfortune emanated from a malignant being, who delighted to do him harm. He then, by the simple process of his imagination, concluded that there must be two opposing powers which governed the affairs of mortals. The good, proceeded from a being who showered down blessings on mortals; and all evil and pain, from a being who took pleasure in the unhappiness of the human race; and his residence, to correspond with his evil disposition, was by them fixed in the gloomy regions of darkness and horror. This, then, Christians, appears to have been the origin of your God and Heaven; and also your Devil and Hell. That both heaven and hell are of heathen origin, there can be no doubt; and it is also equally clear, that the Jews, when they returned from captivity, brought these doctrines back with them into Judea. They then made part of the Jewish faith, and Jesus embraced them; for he pretended to cast out devils, and the Devil enticed him in the wilderness to rebel against God and enlist into the service of his Satanic Majesty. And this heaven, which originated in heathenism, Jesus promised as the reward of his faithful followers; and with this very hell he threatened the disobedient. What can Christians say (after this) of the divinity or the antiquity of the New Testament? Its doctrines originated in an age unknown, among a people more ancient than Moses, or than Adam, who is said to have been the first man. Yes! ye ministers of grace, your heaven and hell, by the proclaiming of which you alarm the good man, but make the wicked man worse, have no more existence in reality than the heaven and hell of Mahomet. But if there be a heaven, such as you preach up, and the road to it be as difficult as Jesus declared it to be, many of you will have to put up at the half-way house; you will never reach the end of your journey.