their strength is firm; neither are they plagued like other men....
Their eyes stand out with fatness; they have more than their heart can
wish.... And they say, How doth God know? and is there knowledge with
the Most High?"

But when we open the Word of God, it is impossible for any honest
man to deny, that whether its teaching be true or false, the fact of
future punishment is an essential portion of what is taught. By no
conceivable perversion of the words of Christ, so often repeated on
this subject, and by no interpretation of His parables, can it be
denied that it was His intention to give the very impression which the
universal Church has received, that there is a "wrath to come," and a
state of being which to some is "cursed," and so very dreadful that,
with reference to one of His own disciples, who is called "the son of
perdition," the Saviour said that it would have "been good for that
man had he never been born."

I must presume that this general statement regarding the teaching of
Christ himself, not to speak of that of His apostles, requires no
proof to any one who has ever read the Gospels. Punishment of some
kind awaits the wicked after death. Yet if this much is admitted, we
have surely already reached a conclusion which ought to fill with the
most solemn awe the mind of every man who has any reverence for the
Divine authority of Jesus Christ; or who even believes that He who
represented Himself as saying, "Depart from me, ye cursed, into
everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels,"--"Depart from
me, I know you not, all ye workers of iniquity," and who narrated such
a parable as that of the rich man and Lazarus, was one incapable of
all exaggeration or evil passion, and one who possessed the only
perfect love which was ever manifested in humanity. The apostles, who