The apt mathematical analogy of lines
thrown out of parallel, helps this for illustration: for ever and for
ever they are stretching more remote, and infinity itself cannot reunite
their travel.
This, then, as a passing word; a sad one. Honest thinker, do not scorn
it, for thine own soul's sake. "Now is the time of grace, now is the day
of salvation." To return. A place of punishment exists; to what quarter
shall we look for its anterior probability? I think there is a
likelihood very near us. There may be one, possibly, beneath us, in the
bowels of this fiery-bursting earth; whither went Korah and his company?
This idea is not without its arguments, just analogies, and scriptural
hints. But my judgment inclines towards another. This trial-world, we
know, is to be purified and restored, and made a new earth: it was even
to be expected that Redemption should do this, and I like not to imagine
it the crust and case of hell, but rather, as thus: At the birth of this
same world, there was struck off from its burning mass at a tangent, a
mournful satellite, to be the home of its immortal evil; the convict
shore for exiled sin and misery; a satellite of strange differences, as
guessed by Virgil in his musings upon Tartarus, where half the orb is,
from natural necessities, blistered up by constant heats, the other half
frozen by perennial cold. A land of caverns, and volcanoes, miles deep,
miles high; with no water, no perceptible air: imagine such a dreadful
world, with neither air nor water! incapable of feeding life like ours,
but competent to be a place where undying wretchedness may struggle for
ever.
Pages:
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120