Hell

“ Where are you damn'd? MEPHIST. In hell. FAUSTUS. How comes it, then, that thou art out of hell? MEPHIST. Why, this is hell, nor am I out of it: Think'st thou that I, that saw the face of God, And tasted the eternal joys of heaven, Am not tormented with ten thousand hells, In being depriv'd of everlasting bliss? ”

“ But the sufferings of hell are a raging storm racking every limb and joint, a whirlwind of unthinkable woe, an eternal dance of anguish; for as one wave rolls upon another, and is followed by another and another in all eternity, so the scalding pangs and blows of hell follow one another ever and everlastingly, without end and without pause. ”

“ And Hell, very truly Hell, had power over God's upper Earth for a season. The cruelest Portent that has risen into created Space these ten centuries: let us hail it, with awestruck repentant hearts, as the voice once more of a God, though of one in wrath. ”

“ The guileless maid and spotless heart,
And stabs them with his venom'd dart!
Let Satan bind, with chains of fire,
This vain, conceited, bestial liar;
Whom gods, and men, and angels spurn,
And call on hell his soul to burn! ”

“ If there is hell, where he who burns in lust and anger, burns in flame, then there’s your place. If there is a heaven that hears the voice of innocence, sending the white angels down to give it succor, then will the heaven open now, and white-robed creatures will deliver me. ”

“ If thou lookest downwards, thou may's see hell gaping and opening its mouth to swallow thee up quick; Many dangers attend thee every day, many miseries every moment, legions of devils stand about thee, watching for thee, and waiting only for the leave of God, to drag thy soul into the lake of fire. ”

“ Me miserable! which way shall I fly Infinite wrath, and infinite despair? Which way I fly is Hell; myself am Hell; And, in the lowest deep, a lower deep Still threatening to devour me opens wide, To which the Hell I suffer seems a Heaven. ”

“ Hell is not merely a region of unutterable horror, where wretches writhe in eternal torture, but also a region of boundless sin, of malignant wickedness, of hopeless corruption, of vilest affections, of basest passions. ”

“ Heaven weeps, the saints do shed celestial tears, They fear thy fall, and cite thee with remorse, They knock thy conscience, moving pity there, Willing to fence thee from the rage of hell— Hell, Hubert, trust me, all the plagues of hell Hangs on performance of this damned deed. ”

“ Hell is a place of punishment into which no ray of grace or glory can penetrate, and which our Lord, therefore, calls a place of exterior darkness. The lost souls are imprisoned; they cannot get free, but are shut in without help and without hope. ”

“ Hell is depicted as a continent of lakes of fire and burning mud, over which adulterers hang by the hair and blasphemers of the way of righteousness by the tongue. False witnesses chew tongues of fire in their mouths. ”

“ Of woods and grass and yellow grain
Doth ravish the soul and sense:
And never a sigh beneath the sky,
And folk that smile and gaze above—’
‘But saw’st thou here, with thine own eye,
Hell?’ quoth Love. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We are told that the views of our fathers about hell, and the devil, and punishment, are obsolete and old–fashioned. We are to embrace what is called a "kinder theology" and treat hell as a pagan fable or a bugbear to frighten children and fools. Against such false teaching I desire, for one, to protest. Painful, sorrowful, distressing as the controversy may be, we must not blink it or refuse to look the subject in the face. I, for one, am resolved to maintain the old position, and to assert the reality and eternity of hell. ”

“ The creature who had spat at the cross on the scaffold, whose perfect tusks had grinned out of the gloom above our heads an hour ago? Laughing in Hell, if death makes men wise. For Hell is a place of wise laughter. ”

“ 2 There is a dreadful hell,
And everlasting pains,
There sinners must with devils dwell
In darkness, fire, and chains. ”

“ The scenery of hell, like that of heaven, is in perfect correspondence with the states of those there. It is an outbirth from the minds of its inhabitants; and as they are deformed and full of every pollution, so their scenery is full of horrors and things abominable. “In hell there is no sun, but the inhabitants roam in darkness corresponding to themselves, for they are darkness: their light is artificial, as of coal fires, meteors, ignes fatui, and the lights of night. ”

“ The powers of Hell lurked in sinfulness. Hell lurked in curiosity. Hell lurked as a devil's sabbath in Anton's books and albums. It lurked in her mother's past. It lurked in Ina's devouring curiosity. She, Aunt Stefanie, was afraid of Hell: she wanted to go to Heaven. ”

“ Upon life, is to leave you face to face
With Hell’s Powers, and at their cruel grace.
Dread not; whatever penalties you owe
You will pay to the full, but not Below.
Hell’s horrors are mere bugbears; and, as they,
Shadows from the realities of day;
Warnings as well.
In no drear realm beneath
Wanders Tantalus, with fear-frozen breath
Lest the huge rock shall snap the slender thread, [115]
And thunder down upon his helpless head.
It is a parable. The weight of cares,
The uncertainties in human affairs—
These men attribute to the wrath of God;
Charging Heaven with strokes from Fortune’s rod. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The answer is, Into hell, into utter darkness, into the fire that is prepared for the devil and his angels. Wherefore, to be cast away, to be cast away of God, it showeth unto us God's abhorrence of such souls, and how vile and loathsome such are in His divine eyes. ”

“ Hell is a perpetual prison, full of fire and of innumerable and very terrible torments, to chastise perpetually such as die in mortal sin. Or, again, hell is an eternal state, wherein sinners, for the punishment of their sins, want all that good which they may desire for their content, and endure all kinds of evils which they may fear for their torment. So that in hell is joined together the privation of all that good which men enjoy in this life and angels in the other, and the presence of all those evils which afflict men in this life and the devils in the other. ”

“ Hell is the dungeon into whose depths are plunged the souls of the impious and unrepenting. But purgatory lies between the two, and is meant to receive for a time those souls of the just who will require some further purification. ”

“ Cursed—always blood—and witchery—you cannot get rid of it—the thought of Hell—and the faces of your dead who died foully—your disfigured dead—and your child slaying your child—both damned—and singeing in Hell! ”

“ In hell thou shalt see more sorrow than man may devise. In purgatory more torment than man may endure. In paradise more joy than man may desire. Hell will teach thee how God shall venge deadly sin. Purgatory will show thee how God shall venge venial sin. ”

“ Hence, hell does not consist in its devouring fire, nor in its intolerable stench, nor in the unceasing shrieks and howlings of the damned, nor in the terrific sight of the devils, nor in the narrowness of that pit of torments, in which the damned are thrown one over the other: the pain which constitutes hell is the loss of God. ”

“ The sufferings of the wicked in hell will be indescribably great. Think what is represented by torment, by burning flame, by insupportable thirst, by that state when a single drop of water would afford relief. Remember that all this is but a representation of the pains of the damned, and that this will have no relief, day nor night, but will continue from year to year, and age to age, and without any end, and you have a faint view of the sufferings of those who are in hell. ”

“ Here is a little image of what you will be in hell, except you repent and fly to Christ.—Sermon X. Do but consider what it is to suffer extreme torment for ever and ever; to suffer it night and day, from one day to another, from one year to another, from one age to another; in pain, in wailing and lamenting, groaning and shrieking and gnashing your teeth; with your bodies and every member full of racking torture ”

“ Fourthly, descending to particulars, I must consider the dreadfulness of that place which we call hell.
1. For first it is a place under the earth, obscure and full of darkness thicker than that of Egypt, where never enters the light of the sun, moon, nor stars. And the fire, although it burns, gives no light, but smokes and blinds the sight; for " the Lord," on account of the wicked, " divideth the flame of fire," [252] taking from it the good that it has, and leaving it the evil.
2. Moreover, hell is a most narrow place, devoid of the flowery meadows and spacious forests of the earth. ”

“ The word hell, for example, is, without doubt, capable of being pronounced in such a hideous tone and action, as to affect and affright even a Hottentot, who knows nothing of hell: But if, with the sound of hell, the description of hell be likewise conveyed; that it is a dark, immense, and baleful dungeon, guarded by frightful and implacable furies, armed with whips and torches; that it is filled with suffocating and burning sulphur, and unintermitting fire; that it is inhabited by the damned, whose incessant shrieks, hideous roarings, and dismal yells, are the chief entertainments there ”

“ Hell or Hades thou didst call it—a place where the vital essence lives and retains an individual memory, and where all the errors and faults of judgment, and unsatisfied passions and the unsubstantial terrors of the mind wherewith it hath at any time had to do, come to mock and haunt and gibe and wring the heart for ever and for ever with the vision of its own hopelessness. ”

“ Oh! if he could have heard the shriek of triumph that came up from the devils in hell. "Thou art also wounded as well as we, thou art become like unto us. Thy pride is brought down to hell. Thy carcass is fallen down. ”

“ Consider, that of all bodily torments, which we can suffer in this world, there is none more terrible than to burn alive: but, alas! there is no comparison between burning here, and burning in hell. All our fires upon earth are but painted flames, if compared to the fire of hell. The fire of this world was made to serve us, and to be our comfort: that of hell was created to be an instrument of God's vengeance upon sinners. ”

“ As I was walking among the fires of Hell, delighted with the enjoyments of Genius, which to Angels look like torment and insanity, I collected some of their proverbs, thinking that as the sayings used in a nation mark its character, so the proverbs of Hell show the nature of infernal wisdom better than any description of buildings or garments. ”

“ But, if thou canst not tear thyself from the cross, cry at least unto these infamous judges that they need not look elsewhere for Hell and the gathering of witches—Here is the Hell where they sacrifice human creatures, where they offer to thee as hymns the lamentations of the tortured, and as incense the smell of burning flesh! ”

“ 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. ”

“ horrour and doubt distract His troubled thoughts, and from the bottom stir The Hell within him; for within him Hell He brings, and round about him, nor from Hell One step, no more than from himself, can fly By change of place: Now conscience wakes despair, That slumbered; ”

“ These devils are life-size, and so are the nude male and female figures suffering torments. The mouth of hell is represented as a yawning beast, vomiting fire and smoke, into the jaws of which the nude wicked are tumbling. ”

“ When he lay upon his death-bed the thought of hell seized upon him with terrible force, and drove him to wild despair.
3. Verily there is a hell; but what is hell? Our poor human understanding can never grasp its full signification, much less can words describe it. The words of St. Paul: "Eye hath not seen," can be applied to hell in an inverted sense, and we can say: " Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man, what things God hath prepared for those who hate Him, and depart out of this life not in His love and grace, but in the state of mortal sin." ”

“ Hell is destruction from the presence of the Lord, 2 Thess. i. 9. It is a perpetual banishment from the fountain of all good. This is the choice of sinners; and so shall their doom be, to their eternal confusion. ”

“ I shall first speak of the fire, which is the principal pain that torments the senses of the damned, and afterwards of the other pains of hell.
1. BEHOLD! the final doom of sinners who abuse the divine mercy is, to burn in the fire of hell. God threatens hell, not to send us there, but to deliver us from that place of torments. ”