Hell generally signifies the Infinite Terror, the thing a man is infinitely afraid of, and shudders and shrinks from, struggling with his whole soul to escape from it. There is a Hell therefore, if you will consider, which accompanies man, in all stages of his history, and religious or other development: but the Hells of men and Peoples differ notably. With Christians it is the infinite terror of being found guilty before the just judge. With old Romans, I conjecture, it was the terror not of Pluto, for whom they probably cared little, but of doing unworthily, doing unvirtuously, which was their word for unmanfully. And now what is it, if you pierce through his Cants, his oft-repeated Hearsays, what he calls his Worships and so forth, -- what is it that the modern English soul does, in very truth, dread infinitely, and contemplate with entire despair? What s his Hell, after all these reputable, oft-repeated Hearsays, what is it? With hesitation, with astonishment, I pronounce it to be the terror of "Not succeeding"; of not making money, fame, or some other figure in the world, -- chiefly of not making money (10. 145-46)

This kind of hell, he decides, "belongs naturally to the Gospel of Mammonism, which has also its corresponding Heaven.... About one thing we are entirely in earnest: The making of money" (10.146). Carlyle, who denies the importance of belief in a hell as a literal place, here writes about the kind of issues discussed by the preacher and takes the preacher's attitude toward a congregation.