It appears, that by such a train of thinking, under the influence of the imagination, that the religious system which has come down to us, and which, from time to time, has had additions and modifications, namely, the existence of a God and of a place called Heaven, inhabited by angels, had its origin. Ignorant of the laws of nature, the power of imagination has produced, owing to the organization of the human mind, a world of fiction, consisting of a God, angels, and a habitation in the skies. By the same process of reasoning, (though feeble,) yet propelled by an active imagination, which had fixed the habitation of a good Being in the skies, in a splendid city, with attendants singing his praises, and eager to execute his orders, untaught man now turned hi# attention to the author of his misfortunes and misery. Being totally ignorant that a portion of pain was indispensable to the full enjoyment of happiness in his precarious life, he could not think that pleasure and pain proceeded from the same being; which must have induced him to conclude that an evil and malignant being existed, nearly equal in power to the one that was good; and to such an one, he ascribed all pain and misfortune.
Here, then, are all the materials for a system of theology which has been propagated and believed in by every nation under heaven, in which have been included "saint, savage, and sage." In all the hundreds of systems of religious worship, the before-mentioned materials have been the ground-work, with the exception of the Jewish; for, during their dispensation, the Devil made no part of it. But when Jesus came to gather up "_the lost sheep of the house of Israel,_" along came Mr. Devil to oppose him. As the imagination had created a Devil, the Father of all evil, something was still wanting to complete the whole; and that was, an abode of darkness and horror. Hell, then, is his dread mansion, over which he reigns triumphant.
It has been reserved for the Christian Religion to depict hell in all its awful terrors. The New Testament represents hell as a place of torment by fire never-ending, where the unfortunate occupants are forever burning, but kept alive, and never consumed. The hell of the Greeks and other nations is less horrible, being represented as the abode of darkness, humiliation, and sorrow. But Christianity has a God in heaven, and a Devil in hell, forever contending with each other, like gladiators of old for the prize; and that prize is the human race. But the same New Testament represents that the Devil will have by far the greatest number of prisoners, so that, in the final winding up of this holy war, _Old Nick_ will win the field.