But further, the same view which puts these souls into Heaven, puts the souls of the wicked, at the termination of this mortal life, into the lake of fire, where they are racked with unutterable and unceasing anguish, in full view of all the heavenly host. In proof of this, the parable of the rich man and Lazarus is strenuously urged. But is it so? If it is not, then the popular exposition of that parable must be abandoned. But that supposed stronghold will not readily be surrendered, so it is proper to look at the bearing it has upon the case before us. According, then, to the orthodox view, the persecutors of these souls were even then, or certainly soon would be, enveloped in the flames of hell, right before their eyes, every fiber of their being quivering with a keenness of torture which no language can express, and of which no mind can adequately conceive. Here they were, their agony full in view of these souls of the martyrs, and their piercing shrieks of infinite and hopeless woe ringing in their ears; for the rich man and Abraham, you know, could converse together across the gulf. And was not the sight of all this woe enough to glut the most insatiate vengeance? Is there a fiend in hell who could manifest the malevolence of planning and praying for greater vengeance than this? Yet these souls are represented, even under these circumstances, as calling upon God to avenge their blood on their persecutors, and saying “How long?” as if chiding the tardy movements of Providence, in commencing, or intensifying, their torments. Such is the character which the common view attributes to these holy martyrs, and such the spirit with which it clothes a system of religion the chief injunction of which is to forgive, and the chief law of which is mercy. Does it find indorsement in any breast in which there remains a drop of even the milk of human kindness? 4. These souls pray that their _blood_ may be avenged--an article which the uncompounded, invisible, and immaterial soul, as generally understood, is not supposed to possess. These are some of the difficulties we meet, some of the camels we have to swallow, in taking down the popular view.