The Reverend T. Surnden,[18] commenting on the speculations of his predecessors, fills a whole volume with unanswerable arguments, tending to show that the locality _of Hell is in the sun_. We suspect that the reverend speculator had read the _Apocalypse_ in bed, and had the nightmare in consequence. There are two verses in the _Revelation of John_ reading thus: “And the fourth angel poured out his vial upon the sun, and power was given him to scorch men with fire. And men were scorched with great heat, and blasphemed the name of God.”[19] This is simply Pythagorean and kabalistic allegory. The idea is new neither with the above-mentioned author nor with John. Pythagoras placed the “sphere of purification in the sun,” which sun, with its sphere, he moreover locates in the middle of the universe,[20] the allegory having a double meaning: 1. Symbolically, the central, spiritual sun, the Supreme Deity. Arrived at this region every soul becomes purified of its sins, and unites itself forever with its spirit, having previously suffered throughout all the lower spheres. 2. By placing the sphere of _visible_ fire in the middle of the universe, he simply taught the heliocentric system which appertained to the Mysteries, and was imparted only in the higher degree of initiation. John gives to his Word a purely kabalistic significance, which no “Fathers,” except those who had belonged to the Neo-platonic school, were able to comprehend. Origen understood it well, having been a pupil of Ammonius Saccas; therefore we see him bravely denying the perpetuity of hell-torments. He maintains that not only men, but even devils (by which term he meant disembodied human sinners), after a certain duration of punishment shall be pardoned and finally restored to heaven.[21] In consequence of this and other such heresies Origen was, as a matter of course, exiled. Many have been the learned and truly-inspired speculations as to the locality of hell. The most popular were those which placed it in the centre of the earth. At a certain time, however, skeptical doubts which disturbed the placidity of faith in this highly-refreshing doctrine arose in consequence of the meddling scientists of those days. As a Mr. Swinden in our own century observes, the theory was inadmissible because of two objections: 1st, that a fund of fuel or sulphur sufficient to maintain so furious and constant a fire could not be there supposed; and, 2d, that it must want the nitrous particles in the air to sustain and keep it alive. “And how,” says he, “can a fire be eternal, when, by degrees, the whole substance of the earth must be consumed thereby?”[22] The skeptical gentleman had evidently forgotten that centuries ago St. Augustine solved the difficulty. Have we not the word of this learned divine that hell, nevertheless, _is_ in the centre of the earth, for “God supplies the central fire with air _by a miracle_?” The argument is unanswerable, and so we will not seek to upset it.