Gates of Hell

“ Indeed according to some, Hell should be a Place of Fire and Torment to the Souls that are cast into it, but not to the Devils themselves; who we make little more or less than keepers and Turnkeys to Hell, as a Goal; that they are sent about to bring Souls thither, lock them in when they come, and then away upon the Scent to fetch more: That one Sort of Devils are made to live in the World among Men, and to be busy continually debauching and deluding Mankind bringing them as it were to the Gates of Hell ”

“ Who dares think one thing, and another tell, My heart detests him as the gates of hell. ”

“ But I have often seen the specific form of the hells or infernal societies; for at their openings which are called the gates of hell, there usually appears a monster that represents in general the form of those who are within. ”

“ Sin and Death sitting till then at the gates of Hell, by wondrous sympathy feeling the success of Satan in this new world, and the sin by Man there committed, resolve to sit no longer confined in Hell, but to follow Satan their sire up to the place of Man: to make the way easier from Hell to this world to and fro, they pave a broad high-way or bridge over Chaos, according to the track that Satan first made ”

“ Perhaps at this moment, seven o'clock in the evening, a child is just going into Hell. To-morrow evening at seven o'clock, go and knock at the gates of Hell and ask what the child is doing. The devils will go and look. ”

“ The gates and doors of the hells also are visible only to those who are about to enter, to whom they are then opened. When these are opened gloomy and seemingly sooty caverns are seen tending obliquely downwards to the abyss, where again there are many doors. Through these caverns nauseous and fetid stenches exhale, which good spirits flee from because they abominate them, but evil spirits seek for them because they delight in them. ”

“ The hells are everywhere, both under the mountains, hills, and rocks, and under the plains and valleys. The openings or gates to the hells that are under the mountains, hills, and rocks, appear to the sight like holes and clefts in the rocks, some extended and wide, and some straitened and narrow, and many of them rugged. They all, when looked into, appear dark and dusky; but the infernal spirits that are in them are in such a luminosity as arises from burning coals. ”

“ Nevertheless, the good spirits turn themselves away from the evil spirits; and when spirits turn themselves away they become invisible. But the hells are not seen because they are closed up. Only the entrances, which are called gates, are seen when they are opened to let in other like spirits. All the gates to the hells open from the world of spirits, and none of them from heaven. ”

“ When we say in the Apostles' Creed that after His death Jesus Christ descended into Hell, the name Hell, says the Catechism of the Council of Trent, signifies those hidden places where the souls are detained which have not yet reached eternal beatitude. But these prisons are of different kinds. One is a dark and gloomy dungeon, where the damned are continually tormented by evil spirits, and by a fire which is never extinguished. This place, which is Hell properly so called, is also named Gehenna and abyss.
There is another Hell, which contains the fire of Purgatory. ”

“ Finally, I beheld him approach to the centre of the great abyss, that is to say, to Hell itself; and the expression of his countenance was most severe.
The exterior of Hell was appalling and frightful; it was an immense, heavy-looking building, and the granite of which it was formed, although black, was of metallic brightness; and the dark and ponderous doors were secured with such terrible bolts that no one could behold them without trembling. Deep groans and cries of despair might be plainly distinguished even while the doors were tightly closed ”

“ Yet, what is it compared with the accounts we read of miserable men and women racked, in hideous dungeons, by the most horrible tortures which an enlightened Christian ingenuity could devise, and who then, with limbs whose loosened fibres could scarcely sustain their bruised and mangled bodies, were led, or driven at the sword's point, to a stake fixed in the ground, there to be tied and burned, whilst devout Christian multitudes stood around, rejoicing, like demons, over the hellish scene.
No one can gloat over the imaginary torments of Hell without being a persecuting devil at heart. ”

“ Hence, hell is called a land of darkness covered with the shadow of death. ”A land that is dark and covered with the mist of death a land of misery and darkness, where the shadow of death, and no order but everlasting horror dwelleth." (Job x. 21, 22.) To hear that a criminal is shut up in a dungeon for ten or twenty years excites our compassion. Hell is a dungeon closed on every side, into which a ray of the sun or the light of a candle never enters. Thus the damned”shall never see light." (Ps xlviii. 20.) The fire of this world gives light, but the fire of hell is utter darkness. ”

“ In the cathedrals, too, we still see this idea fossilized. Devils and imps, struck into stone, clamber upon towers, prowl under cornices, peer out from bosses of foliage, perch upon capitals, nestle under benches, flame in windows. Above the great main entrance, the most common of all representations still shows Satan and his imps scowling, jeering, grinning, while taking possession of the souls of men and scourging them with serpents, or driving them with tridents, or dragging them with chains, into the flaming mouth of hell. ”

“ How great the number is of the hells I have been permitted to realize from knowing that there are hells under every mountain, hill, and rock, and likewise under every plain and valley, and that they stretch out beneath these in length and in breadth and in depth. In a word, the entire heaven and the entire world of spirits are, as it were, excavated beneath, and under them is a continuous hell. ”

“ The fourth hell is beautiful to look upon. Its floor is covered with the sacred lotus, but hidden amongst its rosy petals are sharp-pointed iron spikes. And as the damned come to the edges of hell, they are seized by the powerful arms of diabolical monsters, who fling them with Titanic force upon the treacherous flowers below. They are flung times without number, their wailing and moaning echoing and re-echoing through the corridors of hell for a space of four thousand years whose every day is equal to seventy-six million years upon earth. ”

“ In the city of Hell nothing is to be seen but dismal dungeons, dark caverns, frightful deserts, fetid swamps filled with every imaginable species of poisonous and disgusting reptile. In Heaven you behold the happiness and peaceful union of the saints; in Hell, perpetual scenes of wretched discord, and every species of sin and corruption, either under the most horrible forms imaginable, or represented by different kinds of dreadful torments. ”

“ Their bodies also are monstrous; and their speech is like the speech of anger, hatred or revenge,—for every one speaks from his own falsity, and in a tone corresponding to his own evil. In a word they are all images of their own hell.
I have not been permitted to see what is the form of hell itself in general; I have only been told that, as the universal heaven in one complex resembles one man, so the universal hell in one complex resembles one devil, and may also be presented in the effigy of one devil. ”

“ Now, if the devil is so frightful in human shape, what must he be in his own native ugliness? If so unpleasant to look at here on earth, what will he be when I see him at home in hell? The lost souls, too, what a shocking sight they will present and that, too, in the dim light of hell, for the hell-fire gives not light enough to comfort the eye, but only enough to reveal to it everything that may torment it. ”

“ Before I could ask aught, quoth the Angel: “This is the gulf that reaches to another great world.” “What, pray, is that world called?” I enquired. “’Tis called the bottomless pit or the Nethermost Hell, the home of the devils, whither they now have gone. And those vast, dreary wilds, parts of which thou hast traversed, are called the Region of Despair, ordained for the condemned until the Judgment Day; then it will become one with the utmost, bottomless Hell; then will one of us come and seal up the devils and the damned together, never more to open upon them, never to all eternity. ”

“ They live their sordid lives and pass into Hell, a vast and countless number. Oh, how blind they are, how wayward, and how full of folly! If they were to make but a single pilgrimage to these thirty-three shrines sacred to our Lady of Mercy, a pure and wonderful light would shine from their feet, feet made spiritually strong to crush down all evil, to scatter the hundred and thirty-six hells into fragments. ”

“ Madness, and Fear, and Plague, and Famine, still
Heaped corpse on corpse, as in autumnal woods
The frosts of many a wind with dead leaves fill
Earth's cold and sullen brooks; in silence still,
The pale survivors stood; ere noon the fear
Of Hell became a panic, which did kill
Like hunger or disease, with whispers drear,
As 'Hush! hark! come they yet?—Just Heaven, thine hour is near!'
XLV.
And Priests rushed through their ranks, some counterfeiting
The rage they did inspire, some mad indeed
With their own lies. ”

“ It has now been made clear that the damned will one day be cast, body and soul, into the huge and awful furnace of Hell, into the immense lake of fire, where they will be surrounded by flames. There will be fire below them, fire above them, fire all round about them. Every breath will be the scorching breath of a furnace. These infernal flames will penetrate every portion of the body, so that there will be no part or member, within or without, that is not steeped in fire.
How despairing the cries, how agonizing the shrieks that will ascend from this bed of torture! ”

“ The earth beneath these falling groups of figures is rocky and burning, and seems as if convulsed by earthquakes. A great city, on fire, is seen in the distance. The armies (?) are fleeing upon the mountains. On the foreground Hell is opened, and many figures are descending into it down stone steps, and beside a gate beneath a rock, where Sin and Death are to be closed eternally by that fiend who carries the key in one hand, and drags them down with the other. On the rock, and above the gate, a fiend with wings urges the wicked onward with fiery darts. ”

“ After pausing a moment or two, the reverend man continued, “Are there any of you here who would rather burn in hell than rest in heaven? Remember that once in hell you can never get out. If you attempt to escape little devils are stationed at the top of the pit, who will, with their pitchforks, toss you back into the pit, curchunk, where you must remain forever. ”

“ A vast rib or arch in the walls of pandemonium admits one into the contiguous gulf of Hell, forming the third fresco, or rather a continuation of the second—in which Satan sits in the midst, in gigantic terror, cased in armor and crunching sinners—of whom Judas, especially, is eaten and ejected, re-eaten and re-ejected again and again forever. The punishments of the wicked are portrayed in circles numberless around him. ”

“ Guess it must have been the devil in hell, for it's a friend of his."
Her face grew pale and a nameless horror crept into her eyes.
"It ain't nice to look on now,—is it?"
"No!" I granted.
"You want to see it in the winter, when there's a storm tearing in, with the sea crashing over it in a white foam and,—and,—people trying to hang on to it. Oh!—I tell you what it is,—it's hellish, that's all. It's well named The Ghoul,—it's a robber of the dead."
"Robber of the dead!—what do you mean?"
"Everybody but a stranger knows:—it robs them of a decent burial. ”

“ Below the lowest hell wherein, in sunless crime and vice, their ruined natures were immerged, lay, as in the Inferno of Dante, a hell still lower—the hell decreed by avarice for innocent men, new-risen from which, all loathly foul, all awful with long suffering, stood the dark fugitive, afraid to tell his name, afraid to say from whence he had come, afraid to stand in the presence of his fellow, as though he were some frightful felon dreading the vengeance of mankind! ”

“ Hell is formed of nine concentric, ever-narrowing terraces, or circles, exhibiting a great variety of landscapes, rivers, and lakes, gloomy forests and sandy deserts, all shrouded in utter darkness except where flickering flames tear the thick pall of night, or the red-hot walls of Dis gleam balefully over the waters of the Stygian marsh. Here are punished the various groups of sinners, whom Dante sees, whose suffering he describes, and with whom he converses as he makes his way downward from circle to circle. ”

“ Hell was a merry jest to them, a synonym for warmth and rest,—a combination which had been all too rare with them on earth. Besides, Hell had no shadow of terror to people who, for years, had suffered the torments of a life in a literal hell in London. ”

“ We see, then, that, according to the New doctrine, no single individual as chief of the fallen angels, is meant by these Scripture terms, but all evil spirits in the complex,—or some one of the infernal societies with whose every act and purpose the whole conspires. Devil is the term employed when hell is spoken of with more especial reference to the evil loves that reign there: and Satan, when it is spoken of with more especial reference to its false persuasions. ”