but also add to their torments by their laughter and sneering, and by the tortures they inflict on them?
Thus the company of the damned must be itself an intolerable hell. Hell, what a sad and dismal dwelling-place thou art! How terrible to have to live forever amidst all imaginable torments, in the society of countless companions filled with undying hatred for and torturing each other unceasingly! The Catholic Church permits married people who have a great aversion for each other to be separated as far as living together is concerned, although the marriage-tie can never be dissolved; and she does so through a compassionate desire of saving them from the heavy cross they would have to carry in being in each other’s company. Oh, if the damued had that consolation, and could separate themselves from their hated companions, and hide away in some crevice of the earth to suffer their hellish pains by themselves, they would be freed from one of their worst and most bitter punishments! But any wish or hope of that kind would be utterly vain for them. “The wicked shall see, and shall be angry,” such are the words of the Prophet David; “he shall gnash with his teeth and pine away.” For all eternity he shall behold his hated companions, and gnash his teeth against them with rage and despair, and be filled with unconquerable loathing for them; but all his desires to be freed from them shall be unavailing, for “the desire of the wicked shall perish.”[1]
How foolish to comfort one’s self with the thought of the company to be met with in hell! Where are you now, O sinners! with your former reasoning? Oh, you say, what does it matter if I should go to hell? I shall find plenty of comrades there, and amongst them the richest and noblest of the world to bear me company. O foolish and unhappy people! Do you talk and mock in that style when during your life-time a public calamity scourges the city or country? when, for instance, a fire breaks out and consumes a whole street, and your own house is burnt with the rest? Then every one of you would run out at once and leave everything for the sake of saving dear life, regardless of the poverty and distress that must ensue from the loss of property. When the ship, overwhelmed by the raging waves, begins to sink, every one does his best to save his life by swimming to land. When in war-time the hostile army is engaged in plundering and devastating a country, the inhabitants do what they can to save their own effects. Now in such circumstances why do not people say
- ↑ Peccator videbit et irascetur, dentibus suis fremet et tabescet, desiderium peccatorum peribit.—Ps. cxi. 10.
