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Testimonies for the Church Volume 1
ing Friend of sinners, who loves His creatures with a love past all
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understanding and desires them to be saved in His kingdom.
My feelings were very sensitive. I dreaded giving pain to any
living creature. When I saw animals ill-treated, my heart ached for
them. Perhaps my sympathies were more easily excited by suffering
because I myself had been the victim of thoughtless cruelty, resulting
in the injury that had darkened my childhood. But when the thought
took possession of my mind that God delighted in the torture of His
creatures, who were formed in His image, a wall of darkness seemed
to separate me from Him. When I reflected that the Creator of the
universe would plunge the wicked into hell, there to burn through the
ceaseless rounds of eternity, my heart sank with fear, and I despaired
that so cruel and tyrannical a being would ever condescend to save me
from the doom of sin.
I thought that the fate of the condemned sinner would be mine, to
endure the flames of hell forever, even as long as God Himself existed.
This impression deepened upon my mind until I feared that I would
lose my reason. I would look upon the dumb beasts with envy, because
they had no soul to be punished after death. Many times the wish arose
that I had never been born.
Total darkness settled upon me, and there seemed no way out of
the shadows. Could the truth have been presented to me as I now
understand it, much perplexity and sorrow would have been spared
me. If the love of God had been dwelt upon more, and His stern justice
less, the beauty and glory of His character would have inspired me
with a deep and earnest love for my Creator.
I have since thought that many inmates of insane asylums were
brought there by experiences similar to my own. Their consciences
were stricken with a sense of sin, and their trembling faith dared not
claim the promised pardon of God. They listened to descriptions of
the orthodox hell until it seemed to curdle the very blood in their veins,
and burned an impression upon the tablets of their memory. Waking
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or sleeping, the frightful picture was ever before them, until reality
became lost in imagination, and they saw only the wreathing flames of
a fabulous hell, and heard only the shrieking of the doomed. Reason
became dethroned, and the brain was filled with the wild phantasy of a
terrible dream. Those who teach the doctrine of an eternal hell would
do well to look more closely after their authority for so cruel a belief.