An old saint believed that hell was in the interior of the earth, and
that the rotation of the earth was caused by the souls trying to get
away from the fire. The old church at Stratford-on-Avon, Shakespeare's
home, is adorned with pictures of hell and the like. One of the pictures
represents resurrection-morning. People are getting out of their graves,
and devils are catching hold of their heels. In one place there is a
huge brass monster, and devils are driving scores of lost souls into his
mouth. Over hot fires hang caldrons with fifty or sixty people in each,
and devils are poking the fires. People are hung up on hooks by their
tongues, and devils are lashing them. Up in the right-hand corner are
some of the saved, with grins on their faces stretching from ear to ear.
They seem to say: "Aha, what did I tell you?"
Some of the old saints--gentlemen who died in the odour of sanctity and
are now in glory--insisted that heaven and hell would be plainly in view
of each other. Only a few years ago, the Rev. J. Furness (an appropriate
name), published a little pamphlet called "A Sight in Hell" I remember
when I first read that. My little child, seven years old, was ill and in
bed. I thought she would not hear me, and I read some of it aloud. She
arose and asked "Who says that?" I answered, "That's what they preach in
some of the churches." "I never will enter a church as long as I live!"
she said, and she never has.
The doctrine of orthodox Christianity is that the damned shall suffer
torment for ever and for ever. And if you were a wanderer, footsore,
weary, with parched tongue, dying for a drop of water, and you met one
who divided his poor portion with you, and died as he saw you reviving
--if he was an unbeliever and you a believer, and you died and went to
heaven, and he called to you from hell for a draught of water, it would
be your duty to laugh at him.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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