On the supposition that eternal torture is to be inflicted as the penalty for a life of sin in this world, were man asked if God’s conduct in this respect was just, his own innate sense of justice, not yet wholly obliterated by the fall, would prompt him to a universal and determined, No! The framers of different religious systems have felt this, and seem to have searched sharply for some avenue of escape from the fearful wrong of this horrid theory. So Plato had his Acherusian lake from which at least some of the wretched sufferers in Tartarus, after a purgative process might issue forth again to the upper air. Augustine following Plato in his notion of an abode of unending pain for some, had also his purgatory from whence others might find a road to Heaven. Rome has only a purgatory, the fires of a finite period, for the millions within her communion. Origen conceived of a purgatory wider than Plato’s, Augustine’s, or Rome’s, from which all should at length be restored to the favor of God. The churches of the Reformation have generally accepted of Augustine’s hell, but denied his purgatory. In the Protestant denominations, therefore, we have this doctrine in its most horrid aspects. And it is no marvel that many who have felt compelled by their creed to accept it, have shrunk from its advocacy, and have tacitly, if not openly, confessed that they could heartily wish it were a lie. Saurin at the close of one of his sermons thus speaks:-- “I sink, I sink, under the awful weight of my subject; and I declare, when I see my friends, my relations, the people of my charge,--this whole congregation, when I think that I, that you, that we are all exposed to these torments; when I see in the lukewarmness of my devosions, in the langour of my love, in the levity of my resolutions and designs, the least evidence, though it be only possible or presumptive, of my future misery, I find in the thought a mortal poison, that diffuseth itself through every period of my existence, rendering society tiresome, nourishment insipid, pleasure disgustful, _and life itself a cruel bitter_. I cease to wonder that the fear of hell hath made some _melancholy_, others _mad_; that it hath disposed some to expose themselves to a living martyrdom, by fleeing from all commerce with the rest of mankind, and others, to suffer the most terrible, violent torments.” Albert Barnes, the well-known preacher and commentator, speaks on the same point as follows:--