By this comparison we can realize that the sun is a big thing, and we can
form some idea of what kind of a place it would be to pass the summer
months. In contemplating the terrible heat of the sun, we are led to
wonder why those whose duty it is to preach a hell, hereafter, have not
argued that the sun is the place where sinners will go to when they die.
It is not our desire to inaugurate any reform in religious matters, but we
realize what a discouraging thing it must be for preachers to preach hell
and have nothing to show for it. As the business is now done, they are
compelled to draw upon their imagination for a place of endless
punishment, and a great many people, who would be frightened out of their
boots if the minister could show them hell as he sees it, look upon his
talk as a sort of dime novel romance.
They want something tangible on which they can base their belief, and
while the ministers do everything in their power to encourage sinners by
picturing to them the lake of fire and brimstone, where boat-riding is out
of the question unless you paddle around in a cauldron kettle, it seems as
though their labors would be lightened if they could point to the sun, on
a hot day in August, and say to the wicked man that unless he gets down on
his knees and says his "Now I lay me," and repents and is sprinkled, and
chips in pretty flush towards the running expenses of the church,
and stands his assessments like a thoroughbred, that he will wake up some
morning, and find himself in the sun, blistered from Genesis to
Revelations, thirsty as a harvest hand and not a brewery within a million
miles, begging for a zinc ulster to cool his parched hind legs.
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