cast alive into this burning lake by order of the Supreme Judge of the universe, as criminals on earth are cast into prison by order of the judges of criminal courts. And that they were always to remain there, perfectly conscious, indued with the most exquisite sensibility to pain, forever burning yet never consumed, writhing and groaning in eternal agony. And as if this were not torment enough, the gross imaginations of religious teachers often added other horrors equally revolting. Mr. Buckle, in his History of Civilization in England, speaking of the clergy of the seventeenth century—especially the Scotch clergy—and their view of hell and its torments, says:
"In the pictures which they drew, they reproduced and heightened the barbarous imagery of a barbarous age. They delighted in telling their hearers that they would be roasted in great fires and hung up by their tongues. They were to be lashed with scorpions, and see their companions writhing and howling around them. They were to be thrown into boiling oil and scalding lead. A river of brimstone broader than the earth was prepared for them; in that they were to be immersed. . . . Such were the first stages of suffering, and they were only the first. For the torture, besides being unceasing, was to become gradually worse. So refined was the cruelty, that one hell was succeeded by another; and, lest the sufferer should grow callous, he was, after a time, moved on, that he might undergo fresh agonies in fresh places, provision being made that the torment should not pall
