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Show Fire Ueed as Symbol of Destruction. The speaker reminded his audience of the views of tiie saintly Thomas a KempiB, in which he described the horrible hor-rible smells and sights of Hell so graphically as to make one wonder if he had made a special visit and returned re-turned to write a description. The tortures tor-tures of Hell, the saint informed us, .will be kept up throughout eternity for the joy of God and tho holy angels, for the satisfaction of some kind of justice which the saint had in mind, but which cwo of today are unable to comprehend. Fire is used in Scripture as a symbol of destruction, the Pastor explained, an illustration of tho final destruction of all the wilfully wicked. People know something about fiery trials and about heaping fiery coals upon their enemies' heads, figuratively. But whenever when-ever the word flro can be twisted into signifying eternal torment, those who Jove that kind of punishment for their enemies are swift to take advantage of it eternal torture is the just, the loving thing for the heathen, for the poor, ignorant and degraded, who, born in Hin, in weakness, find themselves them-selves discouraged and overwhelmed by the Adversary, and for all not church members. This sort of thing has gone so long that gradaally everybody came to believe be-lieve it, and remarkably few have inquired in-quired Into its unscripturalnesa. Many sensible people held aloof from religion entirely, unwilling to confess themselves them-selves believers of such a doctrine or worshipers of such a God. He then showed that ministers, without with-out giving their authority, now tell various va-rious tales about Hell, modified to suit our more refined feelings. Some have It with a slower fire, not so red-hot; others have it merely a place of mental men-tal remorse. In this they follow to some extent Dante's pictures of Purgatory, Pur-gatory, although not calling It by that name or admitting that there will ever be release from it They declare that there is nothing in the Bible about Purgatory, and forget that there is nothing there about thoir kind of Hell, tho Bible Hell being totally different The Rich Man In Hell, Etc. Tho Pastor then referred to the parable para-ble of The Rich Man and Lazarus as oue seized upon to prove that Hell is a place of torture, etc He could not digress to discuss this parable or the two figurative statements in Revelation Revela-tion used to bolster the doctrine of eternal torture. But he offered free of charge a booklet making these figurative figur-ative statements clear. "Whoever will address him Pn6tor Russell, Brooklyn. N. Y. requesting a copy of a pamphlet about Hell, will bo promptly served free. Many, after reading it, are enabled en-abled to love, worship and serve God heartily, intelligently, as never before. |
