but talk of with a pleasant smile. No-it does not approach the reality-but it resembles it in some faint degree. This is what our neighbors believe will become of us, though only now and then one is able to describe it so clearly, and he either dies young, as did Pollok, or becomes insane. We are forever to wish to die, and to quench our thirst cups of burning gall are to be presented to our lips. And this by the Being who loves us and sent Jesus to save us!

I might multiply these passages to an indefinite extent, but will only pain you by offering enough to give a faithful idea of the doctrine which has wrought so much mischief, in the language of those who receive it. It is a professed description of the last scene, when the wicked are driven away, into torment :

"So saying, God grew dark with utter wrath,
And drawing now the sword undrawn before,
Which through the range of infinite all round
A gleam of fiery indignation threw,

He lifted up his hand omnipotent,

And down among the damned the burning edge
Plunged; and from his arrowy quiver sent
Emptied, the seven last thunders ruinous,-
Which, entering, withered all their souls with fire.
Then first was vengeance, first was ruin seen,
Red, unrestrained, vindictive, final, fierce.
They howling fled to rest among the dark;
But fled not there the terrors of the Lord:

Pursued and driven beyond the gulf which frowns

Impassable between the good and bad
And downward, far remote to left, oppressed
And scorched with the avenging fires, begun
Burning within them, they upon the verge
Of Erebus a moment pausing stood,

And saw below the unfathomable lake,
Tossing with tides of dark, tempestuous wrath,—
And would have looked behind; but greater wrath
Behind forbade, which now no respite gave
To final misery: God in the grasp

Of his Almighty strength, took them upraised,
And threw them down into the yawning pit
Of bottomless perdition, ruined, damned.
Fast bound in chains of darkness evermore..
And second death, and the undying worm,
Opening their horrid jaws with hideous yell,
Falling, received their everlasting prey.

A groan returned, as down they sunk, and sunk,
And ever sunk, among the utter dark.

A groan returned-the righteous heard the groan,
The groan of all the reprobate, when first
They felt damnation sure, and heard hell close!
And heard Jehovah and his love retire!

A groan returned, the righteous heard the groan !
As if all misery, all sorrow, grief,

All pain, all anguish, all despair, which all
Have suffered, or shall feel from first to last
Eternity, had gathered to one pang,
And issued in one groan of boundless wo!
And now the wall of Hell, the outer wall,
First gateless then, closed round them,
* * * of fiery adamant, emblazed
With hideous imagery, above all hope,
Above all flight of fancy, burning high;
And guarded evermore by justice turned

*

To wrath, that hears, unmoved, the endless groan
Of those, wasting within; and sees, unmoved,
The endless tear of vain repentance fall.
Nor ask if these shall ever be redeemed-
They never shall."

From this last specimen we learn that the righteous are to know of the condition of the wicked, and that their awful groans are to reach their delighted ears. Happy condition. Even soldiers, mad with war, cannot fight unless the groans of their dying enemies are drowned with martial music, and we are taught that the redeemed are so hardened with diabolical selfishness, that they take delight in the endless groaning of untold millions who never harmed them. Oh, what will not men believe and teach - what wicked absurdity, if it is only labelled Religion !

DR. TRAPP, an infernal poet, sings in discor dant, and no less false strains, the details of the world of wo :

"Meanwhile, as if but light were all these pains, Legions of devils, bound themselves, in chains, Tormented, and tormenters, o'er them shake Thongs, and forked iron, in the burning lake: Belching infernal flames, and wreathed with spires Of curling serpents rouse the brimstone fires, With whips of fiery scorpions, scourge their slaves, And in their faces dash the livid waves."

He tells us that there are heard

"Clattering of iron, and the clank of chains; The clang of lashing whips: shrill shrieks and groans, Loud, ceaseless howlings, cries and piercing moans."

We may see what a licentious imagination will beget, when once it is unbridled. Bishop JEREMY TAYLOR has revealed to us all the minutia of Hell Torments. Let the reader see how his deformed conceptions differ from the glorious truths of Christianity ::

"The smell shall also be tormented with the most pestilential stink. Horrible was that torment used by Mezentius, to tie a living body to a dead, and then to leave them until the infection and putrified exhalations of the dead had killed the living. What can be more abominable than for a living man to have his mouth laid close to that of a dead one, full of grubs and worms, where the living must receive all those pestilential vapors breathed forth from a corrupt carcase, and suffer such loathsomeness and abominable stink? But what is this in respect to hell, when each body of the damned is more loathesome and unsavory than a million of dead dogs, and all these pressed and crowded together in so strait a compass? Bonaventure goes so far us to say that if only one of the damned were brought into this world, it were sufficient to infect the whole earth. Neither shall the devils send forth a better smell. Hell is

the world's sink, and the receptacle of all the filth in this great frame, and withal a deep dungeon where the air hath no access. How great must the stink and infection needs be of so many corruptions heaped one upon another! and how nsufferable the smell of that infernal brimstone

O gulf

mixed with so many corrupted matters! of horror! O infernal grave! without vent or breathing place! Eternal grave of such as die continually and cannot die, with what abominable filth art thou filled!

"The hearing shall not only be afflicted by an intolerable pain, caused by that ever-burning and penetrating fire, but also with the fearful and amazing noises of thunders, howlings, clamors, groans, curses and blasphemies.

What shall be the harmony of hell, where the ears shall be deafened with the cries and complaints of the damned! What confusion and horror shall it breed to hear all lament, all complain, all curse and blaspheme, through the bitterness of the torments which they suffer! But the damned shall principally be affirighted, and shall quake, to hear the thunder-clap of God's wrath, which shall continually resound in their

ears.

"What then shall I say of the tongue, which is the instrument of so many ways of sinning, flattery, lying, murmuring, calumniating, gluttony and drunkeness! Who can express that bitterness which the damned shall suffer, greater than that of aloes and wormwood? The Scripture tells us, the gall of dragons shall be their wine; and they shall taste the poison of asps to all eternity, unto which shall be joined an intolerable thirst, and dog-like hunger.

Famine is the most pressing of all necessities, and most deformed of all evils: plagues and wars are happiness in respect to it. If hunger be so terrible a mischief in this life, how will it afflict