"Well then--" exultantly, "where is it? I'd like to have any man, no
matter how wise he is, answer that. Where is it?"
"That," I said, "has troubled me, too. We don't always know just where
our hells are. If we did we might avoid them. We are not so sensitive to
them as we should be--do you think?"
He looked at me intently: I went on before he could answer:
"Why, I've seen men in my time living from day to day in the very
atmosphere of perpetual torment, and actually arguing that there was no
hell. It is a strange sight, I assure you, and one that will trouble you
afterwards. From what I know of hell, it is a place of very loose
boundaries. Sometimes I've thought we couldn't be quite sure when we
were in it and when we were not."
I did not tell my friend, but I was thinking of the remark of old
Swedenborg: "The trouble with hell is we shall not know it when we
arrive."
At this point Mr. Purdy burst out again, having opened his little book
at another page.
"When Adam and Eve had sinned," he said, "and the God of Heaven walked
in the garden in the cool of the evening and called for them and they
had hidden themselves on account of their disobedience, did God say to
them: Unless you repent of your sins and get forgiveness I will shut you
up in yon dark and dismal hell and torment you (or have the devil do it)
for ever and ever? Was there such a word?"