Page:A Defence of Revealed Religion.pdf/38

38 together by the law of affinity, is sufficient in itself to evolve a misery of which men here can have but faint conceptions. The misery of hell is the emanation of its cherished evils.

But it may be asked what about hell-fire in which men are tormented? Each infernal carries the fire within his own breast. What fire burns so fiercely as the inflamed passions of anger, and jealousy, and burning lust, and love of power. These produce conflagrations that no stream of earth can quench; they have, been the elements devouring whole nations and laying waste the fair fields of human virtue and intelligence. The fire of hell is not material, but infernal; and it is not the less, but rather the more real on that account. It is this infernal fire nourished by men on earth that flushes the face and causes the eyes to glare when the mind is filled with hatred and anger. And thus it is spoken of in the holy Word, as in Isaiah, "wickedness burneth as the fire: it shall devour the briers and thorns, and shall kindle in the thickets of the forest, and they shall mount up like the lifting up of smoke;" and also in Peter, "the tongue is a fire or world of iniquity: so is the tongue among our members, that it defileth the whole body, and setteth on fire the course of nature; and it is set on fire of hell." When passions rage, and men cannot satisfy them to the full, they are tormented by the fire, and the torment of hell consists in the perpetual effort to carry out their malicious designs upon others, and their inability to do so to the