People's Pilot, Volume 2, Number 40, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 March 1893 — ON A COMET. [ARTICLE]

ON A COMET.

That Is Where a Scientist Believes Hades Will Be Located. What do you think of the idea of hell, the future abode of the wicked, being situated in the nucleus of some gigantic comet? This opinion, says the St. Louis Republic, odd as it may seem to those who have given comets and the future state of the dead but little attention, has been entertained by many really eminent scientists and philosophers, among them the learned Dr. Whiston, the friend and sometimes adviser of the great Sir Isaac Newton. In answer to the inquiries of a friend, who wrote to ask the doctor for some tangible proof on the subject, the following unique theories were advanced; “. . . . According to my calculations and deductions, this theory, which you rightly say ‘must belong to me and me alone,’ does locate hell, the awful prison house of the damned, in the fiery nucleus of some (perhaps yet undiscovered) comet of unthinkable size. . . . “In this wide-circling chariot of fire they will be whirled in the twinkling of an eye from the intolerable heat of the surface of the sun back into space hundreds and hundreds of millions of miles from the great torch-bearer of our system. “Thus instantly the wretched tenants will be given two unbearable extremes, one of cold and the other of heat; this to continue through the endless ages of eternity, while the Almighty is dispensing the severities of justice.” Did mortal man ever harbor a more horrible idea than this?