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SUPPOSE THERE IS NO HELL
SUPPOSE THERE IS NO HELL
In a sermon by William Elbert Munsey, a preacher of the 1800's, he brings up this supposition. He has already preached three sermons on the existence of hell. He has a very picturesque description:
"Now suppose there is no Hell. Suppose the soul in no special or particular place of misery, but simply lost—flung by the power of God beyond creation's boundaries into immeasurable wastes of night, where no world ever rolled in sight, no ray of light ever penciled an image, no word or sound ever wandered, and over whose expanse no angel ever flew.
See it traversing the darkness, and threading the inky abysms in search of worlds, in search of heaven, in search of something where there is nothing visible, tangible, or ponderable—in search of something beside itself.
Saints commune with saints, angels with angels, and they all commune with God: but this soul, sympathetic and social in the very construction of its being, its state changed and not its constitutional nature, is eternally isolated from everything like itself, and plunged into an ocean of darkness interminable to its flagging wing, where no sight or sound will ever greet its aching sense, and doomed to wander in the pathless void while cycles roll and ages go grinding on.
See it careering in its bewildered flight. It has crossed its track a thousand times, and recrossed it. It is lost! lost! beyond the power of finding. It knows it. It feels it, but still it flies, now advancing, now regressing. It turns, and turns again, and lo! a blush of dusky light—a stupendous arch of massive bend, and a temple grand in its darkness, with dusky gates and dingy towers, greets its vision. It fain would scale the loftiest turret—it soars, it hovers, but oh, horror of horrors! temple, gates, and towers melt away into darker gloom, and it is left in awful loneliness hanging in agony, but a speck of quivering terror in untenanted and unilluminated space. Shall it ascend, descend, or move off on a level?
There are no ups or downs, or recumbent planes where there is nothing. If ups, and downs, and planes there are, it may soar up, up, up, forever, or dip down, down, down, forever, or rush on, on, on, forever it is still, and through all eternity a lost soul.
See it yonder, yonder, yonder. It goes that way: LOST! lost! Lost! It comes this way, shrieking lost! lost! lost! till our hearts stand still with horror.
Scream on, and fly on, cursed and ruined spirit : no battlemented walls of towering jasper will ever meet thy gaze, or furnish a resting-place for thy weary pinion. Fly on, lost soul, forever, no angel of mercy will ever cross thy solitary way, or overtake thee in thy wanderings. Lost spirits! blackened with the curse of thy God, fly on, and repeat in despairing cry the chorus of thine own horrible death-march, lost, lost, where no echoes will ever mock thy misery.
Immortal soul! lost in boundless, bottomless, infinite darkness, fly on, thou shalt never find company till the ghost of eternity will greet you over the grave of God, and thou shalt never find rest till thou art able to fold thy wings on the gravestone of thy Maker."
In a sermon by William Elbert Munsey, a preacher of the 1800's, he brings up this supposition. He has already preached three sermons on the existence of hell. He has a very picturesque description:
"Now suppose there is no Hell. Suppose the soul in no special or particular place of misery, but simply lost—flung by the power of God beyond creation's boundaries into immeasurable wastes of night, where no world ever rolled in sight, no ray of light ever penciled an image, no word or sound ever wandered, and over whose expanse no angel ever flew.
See it traversing the darkness, and threading the inky abysms in search of worlds, in search of heaven, in search of something where there is nothing visible, tangible, or ponderable—in search of something beside itself.
Saints commune with saints, angels with angels, and they all commune with God: but this soul, sympathetic and social in the very construction of its being, its state changed and not its constitutional nature, is eternally isolated from everything like itself, and plunged into an ocean of darkness interminable to its flagging wing, where no sight or sound will ever greet its aching sense, and doomed to wander in the pathless void while cycles roll and ages go grinding on.
See it careering in its bewildered flight. It has crossed its track a thousand times, and recrossed it. It is lost! lost! beyond the power of finding. It knows it. It feels it, but still it flies, now advancing, now regressing. It turns, and turns again, and lo! a blush of dusky light—a stupendous arch of massive bend, and a temple grand in its darkness, with dusky gates and dingy towers, greets its vision. It fain would scale the loftiest turret—it soars, it hovers, but oh, horror of horrors! temple, gates, and towers melt away into darker gloom, and it is left in awful loneliness hanging in agony, but a speck of quivering terror in untenanted and unilluminated space. Shall it ascend, descend, or move off on a level?
There are no ups or downs, or recumbent planes where there is nothing. If ups, and downs, and planes there are, it may soar up, up, up, forever, or dip down, down, down, forever, or rush on, on, on, forever it is still, and through all eternity a lost soul.
See it yonder, yonder, yonder. It goes that way: LOST! lost! Lost! It comes this way, shrieking lost! lost! lost! till our hearts stand still with horror.
Scream on, and fly on, cursed and ruined spirit : no battlemented walls of towering jasper will ever meet thy gaze, or furnish a resting-place for thy weary pinion. Fly on, lost soul, forever, no angel of mercy will ever cross thy solitary way, or overtake thee in thy wanderings. Lost spirits! blackened with the curse of thy God, fly on, and repeat in despairing cry the chorus of thine own horrible death-march, lost, lost, where no echoes will ever mock thy misery.
Immortal soul! lost in boundless, bottomless, infinite darkness, fly on, thou shalt never find company till the ghost of eternity will greet you over the grave of God, and thou shalt never find rest till thou art able to fold thy wings on the gravestone of thy Maker."
This should make us want to reach out to the lost all around us when we really contemplate what they have ahead of them. It should make us weep and want to share Jesus.
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