The Way to Hell Looks Pleasant,
Henry Ward Beecher, Lectures to Young Men on Various Important
Subjects, 1849. Hell is populated with the victims
of harmless amusements. Will men never learn that the
way to hell is through the valley of deceit? When Satan approaches
to charm us, it is not as a grim fiend gleaming from a ghastly
cloud, but as an angel of light, radiant with innocence. His words
fall like dew upon the flower, as musical as the crystal drop
warbling from a fountain. Beguiled by his deceits, he leads
you to the enchanted ground. O you, who have thought that
the way to Hell was as bleak and frozen as the Arctic, as
parched and barren as the Sahara, strewed like Golgotha with bones
and skulls, reeking with stench like the valley of Gehenna. Witness
your mistake. The way to hell looks pleasant. It is a broad highway. The enchanted
victim travels on. Startled for a moment, the victim
pauses, gazes around upon the flowery scene, and whispers,
Is it not harmless? Harmless responds a serpent from
the grass. You, who are meddling with the
edges of vice, you are on this road, and utterly duped by its
enchantments. The leprosy is all over you,
its blotches and eruptions cover you, Your feet stand on slippery
places, whence in due time they shall slide, if you refuse the
warning which I raise. They shall slide down to that
fiery abyss below you, out of which none ever come.