Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 19, Number 22, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 November 1897 — A Telling Illustration. [ARTICLE]

A Telling Illustration.

The round, good-natured face of a / popular priest was seen In the midst of a small group of laughing men In the rotunda of a Columbus, Ohio, hotel one day last week. His reverence was telling a new batch of stories for the . collection of which he is famous. One Of these concerned a brother who was sent last fall Into the coke regions of Pennsylvania, where a number of foreigners were said to be sadly in need of his spiritual guidance. lie found them singularly unresponsive and none of his fervid eloquence appeared to move his hearers or to make the slightest impression on them. At length he saw that he would have to increase his vehemence and exaggerate his figure of speech. He was describing hell, and he reached his climax by these words: “You men have no Idea of the tortures of hell. It is hotter than can be described by mortal man. You may have some time put your hand in a pail of boiling water and know how hot that it. It Is 212 degrees, as science measures it. You have all looked into the blazing cokeovens. There is a fire which cracks the skin and sears the eyeballs. That is 3,000 degrees in Intensity. But, my friends, that coke oven fire is nothing Compared with hell. Three thousand degrees'. Why, 3,000 degrees is only ice cream for those devils down there!” This proved a clincher. The coke workers saw that hell was something to be avoided and that the good father could help them to do so.