92. However late, as holy angels teach, Souls now in Hades, bliss in Heaven may reach. All whose conduct has been mainly right, With lightning speed may gain that blissful height; While those who selfish, sensual ends pursue, For ages may their vicious conduct rue, Doom’d in some low and loathsome plane to dwell, Made through remorse and shame the sinner’s hell; Yet through contrition and a change of mind, The means of rising may each sinner find. The higher spirits their assistance give, Teaching the contrite how for heaven to live. 93. Let these lines be contrasted with those which are given in the work on Heaven of the Rev. Dr. Harbaugh—a most excellent orthodox clergyman of the German Reformed Church—which are as follows: 94. “But the wicked? alas! for him at that awful moment! Oh! my soul, come not thou into the secret of his sorrows. “How shocking must thy summons be, O death! To him.— In that dread moment, how the frantic soul Raves round the walls of her clay tenement; Runs to each avenue, and shrieks for help; But shrieks in vain! How wishfully she looks On all she’s leaving, now no longer hers! A little longer; yet a little longer; Oh! might she stay to wash away her stains; And fit her for her passage! Mournful sight! Her very eyes weep blood, and every groan She heaves is big with horror. But the foe, Like a stanch murderer, steady to his purpose, Pursues her close, through every lane of life, Nor misses once the track; but presses on, Till forced at last to the tremendous verge, At once she sinks to everlasting ruin.” 95. But I conceive that the existence of a devil is irreconcilable with all goodness and omnipotency; and that, were a devil created by God, the Creator would be answerable for all the acts of the being so created. Evidently, the devil could be nothing else but what omnipotence should make him, and could do nothing but what prescience would foresee. The acts of the devil would therefore be indirectly those of his maker. 96. I would inquire of those who rely on the Bible as the source of their opinions, how it happens that Moses makes no allusion to Satan as an agent in the events of which he is the narrator? 97. Though Milton represents that malevolent being as taking the form of the serpent, Moses, far from sanctioning that idea, makes not only the individual snake, but the whole genus forever amenable for the part performed. 98. In his description of hell, Josephus represents an archangel as the janitor, which is quite inconsistent with Satan’s being the jailor. Is it conceivable that an archangel should be doorkeeper to the devil? 99. Moreover, in stating the reasons why the doom of the rich man (broiling to eternity) was irremediable, no allusion is made to the satanic despot whose inexorable malevolence would have had to be counteracted.