We greatly question whether any school of theologians have succeeded in throwing a single ray of real light into this mysterious region.[69] Our readers are well aware that there are three such schools. One of these contemplates the eternity of punishment physical, mental, or both; another the final salvation of all men; while a third expects the annihilation of the wicked in Gehenna. Now while it is entirely without our province to enter into these discussions, we may yet be permitted to point out that, as it appears to us, the principle of Continuity demands not merely one state, but rather an eternal and infinite succession of states, in order to constitute true immortality. The precise conditions of such an immortality it is not for us to discuss. Under any school of theological thought a glorious immortality implies the ultimate union, morally and spiritually, of the individual with the Divine over-life, while the fate of the impenitent must surely be something so awful that language fails to bring it fully before the mind. 261. But this graphic and powerful picture of the fate of the lost fared as badly as other New Testament conceptions when it fell into the hands of the materialists of the middle ages. Its meaning was entirely altered, and the Christian Hell, instead of being the Gehenna of the Universe, where all its garbage and filth is consumed, was changed into a region shut in by adamantine walls and full of impossible physical fires—the Devil being the chief stoker. The one idea is awful, while the other is simply grotesque. An antient Jew who had occasion to pass by the valley of Hinnom, and whose senses were invaded by the sights and smells of that doleful region, must have entertained a conception of the Hell described by Christ as different as possible from that which has reached us from the middle ages, and to which some even of the readers of this book may have been accustomed in their earlier years. The reader who desires to know something of the more than fiendish malignity with which human beings (mainly Christian ministers) have _improved upon_ the solemn but markedly reserved language of Scripture on such points has only to refer to the _Inferno_. Perhaps the hideous realism of Doré’s illustrations will of itself be enough for him. If not, a very few lines of the original cannot fail to suffice. Perch’ io dissi:—Maestro, esti tormenti Cresceranno ei dopo la gran sentenza, O fien minori, o saran si cocenti? Ed egli a me:—Ritorna a tua scienza, Che vuol, quanto la cosa è più perfetta, Più senta ’l bene, e così la doglienza. Tutto che questa gente maledetta In vera perfezion giammai non vada, Di là, più che di qua, essere aspetta.[70] Since the time of Dante many attempts have been made, unsuccessfully, by men without his genius, to import additional horror.