Hell is populated with the victims of "_harmless amusements_." Will man never learn that the way to hell is through the valley of DECEIT? The power of Satan to _hold_ his victims is nothing to that mastery of art by which he first _gains_ them. When he approaches to charm us, it is not as a grim fiend, gleaming from a lurid cloud, but as an angel of light radiant with innocence. His words fall like dew upon the flower; as musical as the crystal-drop warbling from a fountain. Beguiled by his art, he leads you to the enchanted ground. Oh! how it glows with every refulgent hue of heaven! Afar off he marks the dismal gulf of vice and crime; its smoke of torment slowly rising, and rising forever! and he himself cunningly warns you of its dread disaster, for the very purpose of blinding and drawing you thither. He leads you to captivity through all the bowers of lulling magic. He plants your foot on odorous flowers; he fans your cheek with balmy breath; he overhangs your head with rosy clouds; he fills your ear with distant, drowsy music, charming every sense to rest. Oh ye! who have thought the way to hell was bleak and frozen as Norway, parched and barren as Sahara, strewed like Golgotha with bones and skulls reeking with stench like the vale of Gehenna,--witness your mistake! The way to hell is gorgeous! It is a highway, cast up; no lion is there, no ominous bird to hoot a warning, no echoings of the wailing-pit, no lurid gleams of distant fires, or moaning sounds of hidden woe! Paradise is imitated to build you a way to death; the flowers of heaven are stolen and poisoned; the sweet plant of knowledge is here; the pure white flower of religion; seeming virtue and the charming tints of innocence are scattered all along like native herbage. The enchanted victim travels on. Standing afar behind, and from a silver-trumpet, a heavenly messenger sends down the wind a solemn warning: THERE IS A WAY WHICH SEEMETH RIGHT TO MAN, BUT THE END THEREOF IS DEATH. And again, with louder blast: THE WISE MAN FORESEETH THE EVIL; FOOLS PASS ON AND ARE PUNISHED. Startled for a moment, the victim pauses; gazes round upon the flowery scene, and whispers, _Is it not harmless?_--"_Harmless_," responds a serpent from the grass!--"_Harmless_," echo the sighing winds!--"_Harmless_," re-echo a hundred airy tongues! If now a gale from heaven might only sweep the clouds away through which the victim gazes; oh! if God would break that potent power which chains the blasts of hell, and let the sulphur-stench roll up the vale, how would the vision change!--the road become a track of dead men's bones!--the heavens a lowering storm!--the balmy breezes, distant wailings--and all those balsam-shrubs that lied to his senses, sweat drops of blood upon their poison-boughs!