The House of Folly: A Way, Not a Destination

"Her house is the way to hell"—an energetic expression from the Hebrew wisdom tradition. Exell notes the critical distinction: it is not the place itself, but the way to it. Yet what difference remains between the path and its end? They are one and the same. Whoever enters the way may reckon upon it as a fatal certainty that he will accomplish the journey and be plunged into "the chamber of death."

No man intends the full descent. A man's will is not destroyed in an instant; it is taken from him little by little, almost imperceptibly. He imagines himself as strong as ever, declaring he will shake himself free as at other times, not knowing that the spirit of might has departed from him. What object on earth is more pathetic than a man who has lost his power of resistance to evil, dragged onward as an unresisting victim wherever the spirit of perdition desires?

The young man may plead the power of fascination—all that music, colour, blandishment, and flattery can accomplish has been done. The cloven foot remains concealed; the speech is all garden, paradise, sweetness, and joy. The word hell or perdition is scarcely mentioned. This is seduction: leading a man out of himself by carefully graded processes until fascination has bound the consenting soul in eternal bondage.

—J. Parker, D.D.