Do you recognize that you have sinned?

The Judge takes up the story about certain visits, which he had made to the infernal regions—

You must know that there are many hells, and they are mostly of your own making. 

That is one of those platitudes, which are based upon fact.

Desiring one day to see the particular kind of hell to which a drunkard would be likely to go, I sought that part of the hollow sphere around the world, which corresponds to one of those countries where drunkenness is most common. 

Souls, when they come out, remain in the neighbourhood where they lived, unless there is some strong reason to the contrary.

I had no difficulty in finding a hell full of drunkards. 

What do you fancy they were doing? 

Repenting their sins? 

Not at all. 

They were hovering around those places on earth where the fumes of alcohol and the heavier fumes of those who overindulge in alcohol made sickening the atmosphere. 

It is no wonder that sensitive people dislike the neighbourhood of drinking saloons.

You would draw back with disgust and refuse to write for me should I tell you all that I saw. 

One or two instances will suffice.

I placed myself in a sympathetic and neutral state, so that I could see into both worlds.

A young man with restless eyes and a troubled face entered one of those “gin palaces” in which gilding and highly polished imitation mahogany tend to impress the miserable wayfarer with the idea that he is enjoying the luxury of the “kingdoms of this world.” 

The young man’s clothes were threadbare and his shoes had seen much wear. 

A stubble of beard was on his chin, for the price of a shave is the price of a drink and a man takes that which he desires most—when he can get it.

He was leaning on the bar, drinking a glass of some soul-destroying compound. 

And close to him, taller than he, and bending over him, with its repulsive, bloated, ghastly face pressed close to his, as if to smell his whisky-tainted breath, was one of the most horrible astral beings, which I have seen in this world since I came out. 

The hands of the creature (and I use that word to suggest its vitality)—

The hands of the creature were clutching the young man’s form—

One long and naked arm was around his shoulders—

The other around his hips. 

It was literally sucking the liquor-soaked life of its victim, absorbing him, using him in the successful attempt to enjoy vicariously the passion, which death had intensified.

But was that a creature in hell? you ask. 

Yes; for I could look into its mind and see its sufferings. 

For ever (the words “for ever” may be used of that which seems endless) this entity was doomed to crave and crave and never to be satisfied.

And the young man who leaned on the bar in that gilded palace of gin was filled with a nameless horror and sought to leave the place, but the arms of the thing that was now his master clutched him tighter and tighter—

The sodden, vaporous cheek was pressed closer to his—

The desire of the vampire creature aroused in an answering desire in its victim and the young man demanded another glass.

Verily, earth and hell are neighbouring states, and the frontier has never been charted.

I have seen hells of lust and hells of hatred—

Hells of untruthfulness, where every object, which the wretched dweller tried to grasp, turned into something else, which was a denial of the thing desired—

Where truth was mocked eternally and nothing was real, but everything, changing and uncertain as untruthfulness, became its own antithesis.

I have seen the anguished faces of those not yet resigned to lies—have seen their frantic efforts to clutch reality, which melted in their grasp. 

For the habit of untruthfulness, when carried into this world of shifting shapes, surrounds the untruthful person with ever-changing images, which mock him and elude.

Beware of deathbed repentance and its after-harvest of morbid memories. 

It is better to go into eternity with one’s karmic burdens bravely carried upon the back, rather than to slink through the back door of hell in the stockinged-feet of a sorry cowardice.

If you have sinned, accept the fact with courage and resolve not to sin no more, but he who dwells upon his sins in his last hour will live them over and over again in the state beyond the tomb.

Every act is followed by its own effect, which nothing—save the powerful dynamics of will itself—can modify, and when will modifies the effect of an antecedent cause, it is always by setting up a counteracting and more powerful cause than the first—

A cause so strong that the other is irresistibly carried along with it, as a great flood can sweep a trickling stream of water from an open hosepipe, carrying the hosepipe cause and its trickling effect along with the rushing torrent of its own flood.

If you recognise the fact that you have sinned, set up good actions more powerful than your sins and reap the reward for those.