HELL
You and I can never imagine all the depths of hell. Shut out from us by a black veil of
darkness, we cannot tell the horrors of that dismal dungeon of lost souls. Happily, the
wailings of the damned have never startled us, for a thousand tempests were but a
maiden’s whisper, compared with one wail of a damned spirit. It is not possible for us
to see the tortures of those souls who dwell eternally within an anguish that knows
no alleviation. These eyes would become sightless balls of darkness, if they were
permitted for an instant to look into that ghastly shrine of torment. Hell is horrible,
for we may say of it, eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the
heart of man to conceive the horrors which God hath prepared for them that hate
him. 203.310
As a man lives and dies, so will he be throughout eternity. The drunkard here will
have all a drunkard’s thirst there without the means of gratifying it. The swearer
here will become a yet more ripe and proficient blasphemer. Death does not change
but fixes character; it petrifies it. “He that is holy let him be holy still; he that is
filthy let him be filthy still.” The lost man remains a sinner and a growing sinner,
and continues to rebel against God. Would you have such a man in heaven? Shall the
thief prowl through the streets of the New Jerusalem? Shall the atmosphere of
Paradise be polluted by an oath? Shall the songs of angels be disturbed by the
ribaldry of licentious conversation? It cannot be. 518.378
We know that when impenitent sinners are gathered at the last their characters will
be the same. They were filthy here, they will be filthy still. Here on earth their sin
was in the bud; in hell it will be full-blown. If they were bad here they will be worse
there. Here they were restrained by providence, by company, by custom—there,
there will be no restraints, and hell will be a world of sinners at large, a land of
outlaws, a place where every man shall follow out his own heart’s most horrible
inclinations. Who would wish to be with them? 524.453
Beloved, the eternal torment of men is no joy to God. 610.37
Scripture does not speak of the fire of hell as chastening and purifying, but as
punishment which men shall receive for deeds done in the body. They are to be
visited with many stripes, and receive just recompence for transgressions. What can
there be about hell fire to change a man’s heart? Surely the more the lost will suffer
the more will they hate God. 682.177
What will be the development of an unregenerate character in hell I cannot tell, but
I am certain it will be something which my imagination dares not now attempt to
depict, for all the restraints of this life which have kept men decent and moral will be
gone when they come into the next world of sin; and as heaven is to be the perfection
of the saint’s holiness, so hell will be the perfection of the sinner’s loathsomeness, and
there will he discover, and others will discover, what sin is when it cometh to its
worst. 805.209
If you anxiously desire to see sin at the full come hither, and gaze adown the
fathomless abyss. Listen to those blasphemous execrations. If you have the courage,
hearken to those mingled cries of misery and passion which come up from Tophet,
from the abodes of lost spirits. Sin is there ripe; here it is green. Here we see its
darkness as the shades of evening, but there it is ten-fold night. Here it scatters
fire-brands, but there its quenchless conflagrations flame on for ever and ever. Oh! if
we have but grace to be rid of sin now, the riddance will save us from the wrath to
come. Sin, indeed, is hell, hell in embryo, hell in essence, hell kindling, hell emerging
from the shell: hell is but sin when it has manifested and developed itself to the full.
Stand at the gates of Tophet and understand how fell the disease for which heaven’s
remedy is provided in the stripes of the Only Begotten. 834.557
Then, O ye impenitent, there shall come to your eyes a tear which shall drip for ever,
a scalding drop which no mercy shall ever wipe away; a thirst that shall never be
abated; a worm that shall never die; and a fire that shall never be quenched. 860.147
There are two flaming jewels of Jehovah’s crown which shall be terribly seen in hell;
his wrath and his power. “What if God, willing to show his wrath and to make his
power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath fitted for
destruction?” 1314.519
The torments of the lost will be self-inflicted, they are suicides to their souls, the
venom in their veins is self-created and self-injected. 1320.599
What, if it could be proven, as it never will be, that there are no pains of hell and no
eternal wrath, yet is not this enough—to have lost this immortality of glory, this
immortality of honour, and of likeness to God? This pain of loss, may none of us ever
incur it: for it is hell to lose heaven, it is infinite misery to miss infinite felicity. 1466.186
I am not like yon flatterers who tell you that there is a little hell and a little God,
from which you naturally infer that you may live as you like. Both you and they will
perish everlastingly if you believe them. There is a dreadful hell, for there is a
righteous God. 1523.120
There they come, streams of them, hurrying impatiently, rushing down to death
and hell—yes, eagerly panting, hurrying, dashing against one another to descend to
that awful gulf from which there is no return! No missionaries are wanted, no
ministers are needed to plead with men to go to hell. No books of persuasion are
wanted to urge them to rush onward to eternal ruin. They hurry to be lost; they are
eager to be destroyed. 2082.239
The Lord will, at the last, put us among those whom we are most like; in the day
when he shall separate the people gathered before him as a shepherd divideth the
sheep from the goats, the sheep will be put with the sheep, and the goats with the
goats. If you have lived like the wicked, you will die like the wicked, and be damned
like the wicked. 2401.87
Hell is sin fully developed,—a man’s own soul permitted to go to extreme limits with
that which it now carries out in a mitigated form, and so, becoming like a furnace
heated seven times hotter than usual, tormenting itself beyond all power of
imagination. 2723.183
There is a place where there is a dreadful prayer-meeting every day, and every hour
in the day; a prayer-meeting where all the attendants pray,—not merely one, but
all; and they pray, too, with sighs, and groans, and tears; and yet they are never
heard. That prayer-meeting is in hell. There is a begging meeting there, indeed. Oh,
that there were on earth half the prayer there will be there! Oh, that the tears shed
in eternity had but been shed in time! Oh, that the agony that the lost ones now feel
had but been felt beforehand! Oh, that they had repented ere their life was ended!
Oh, that their hearts had been made tender before the terrible fire of judgment had
melted them! 2766.80
Moreover, we are persuaded that the penalties of sin will differ; and that, albeit all
the wicked shall be cast into hell, yet there will be degrees in the anguish of that lost
estate. 3015.566
Would it not be better to go to heaven side by side with a poor old almshouse-
woman, or a chimney-sweep, or a pauper from the workhouse, than to go to hell
with a lord, a duke, or a millionaire? 3258.330