Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 37.djvu/514

498

coal of fire as the heat is greater. Imagine also that your body were to lie there for a quarter of an hour, full of fire, and all the while full of quick sense; what horror would you feel at the entrance of such a furnace! and how long would that quarter of an hour seem to you! And, after you had endured it for one minute, how overbearing would it be to you to think that you had to endure it the other fourteen! But what would be the effect on your soul if you knew you must lie there, enduring that torment to the full, for twenty-four hours! And how much greater would be the effect if you knew you must endure it for a whole year! And how vastly greater still if you knew you must endure it for a thousand years! Oh, then, how would your hearts sink if you knew that you must bear it for ever and ever!—that there would be no end!—that, after millions of millions of ages, your torment would be no nearer to an end, and that you never, never should be delivered! But your torment in hell will be immensely greater than this illustration represents."

Among primitive peoples in various parts of the world, a variety of notions in regard to future punishment have prevailed. The African tribes which have not been affected by Mohammedan or Christian influence, although they may believe in future rewards and punishments, generally have no idea of definite places for heaven and hell. The Kamtchadales also have no hell. Of the American peoples, the ancient Mexicans affirmed that the wicked went to Mictlan, a dismal cavern within the earth. The Peruvian hell was also in the earth, and there the reprobate must endure centuries of toil and anguish. The Eskimo believe that hell is among the rocks, ice, monsters, and chilling waters of the sea. All souls must go down into it, but the good pass deeper to a more peaceful abode. The American Indians have no idea of a place of future torment except where it has been derived from white missionaries. "The typical belief of the tribes of the United States," says Brinton, "was well expressed in the reply of Esau Hajo, great medal chief and speaker for the Creek Nation in the National Council, to the question, Do the red people believe in a future state of rewards and punishments? "We have an opinion that those who have behaved well are taken under the care of Esaugetuh Emisee, and assisted; and that those who have behaved ill are left to shift for themselves; and that there is no other punishment."

No writer since ancient Egyptian times has given such a detailed theory of the future life as Swedenborg. In his book on Heaven and Hell, originally published in 1758, he says that punishments in hell are manifold; the more cunning and malignant of the damned domineer over the simpler. The faces of those in hell are deathly and dreadful: some are black, some fiery, some disfigured with pimples, warts, and ulcers; some have no face, only a hairy or bony surface. The "infernal heat is turned into