Page:The New View of Hell.djvu/95

 may have much to urge in favor of it; but could it prove it in such a manner as to give us anything like a comforting assurance of its truth?

And if unaided reason could not discern or clearly demonstrate even the soul's existence apart from the material body, what could it tell us about the nature, facts or laws of that realm which it is to inhabit after the body dies? What assurance could reason alone give us of any hell or heaven after the death of the body, or what could it tell us of the nature of either?—to say nothing of the more profound and subtle questions like that now before us. What need was there of any revelation concerning the life after death, if human reason of itself could have learned all about it?

Obviously the Lord saw the inadequacy of reason to such sublime discoveries; and therefore, in tender compassion and love toward us, He supplements the deficiencies of reason by the clearer light of revelation. He opens the eyes of chosen seers and prophets, and through them reveals truth concerning man's immortality and the life after death, which no one's reason without such revelation could ever have found out.

Plainly, then, the question before us narrows itself down to this: What is the teaching of revelation on the subject? Has the infinitely wise and gracious Lord—aiming to instruct and bless mankind through his own chosen and gifted seers—deigned to tell us anything in regard to the duration of the hells? If so, what is it?