throne was the Judge of men; the books were opened; sentence was pronounced; "and whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire." Words so plain, and events so natural in their order and relation to each other, cannot be misunderstood by the candid reader. These words have been accepted for eighteen hundred years as the announcement of the fate of the wicked after the judgment, and no reason has yet been presented for the rejection of this interpretation.

I have thus completed a citation of the principal passages in the Bible on which we rest the doctrine of future punishment, often sacrificing thoroughness in discussion to a desire for conciseness and brevity. Many others might be given, but he who will not be convinced by those already presented, would not be persuaded "though one rose from the dead" to declare the truth. I have not attempted to follow and refute the forced interpretations, by which many have sought to pervert the true meaning of these passages. To silence the captious controversialist is an impossible task, for as often as defeated in one position he flies to another with some new device. To the candid, unprejudiced reader the array of evidence given must be sufficient to carry conviction, that from its beginning to its close revelation is saturated with this doctrine. The devout soul looking into God's Word with a prayer for

The

light, desiring above all else to know the truth, not only willing to accept it, but preferring God's will to his own, will not long be left in darkness or error. very stars in their courses must light such an inquirer on his way, and the spirit that gave will interpret the, revelation to him. But from the proud and self-confident, who contend about the truth to gratify their vanity for an assumed skill in disputation, truth shrinks and hides itself, while error, wandering abroad, fond of the company of such, is often embraced instead, and the delusion never discovered. One phase of the scriptural argument will be considered in the next chapter.

CHAPTER IV.

TERMINOLOGY.

In every discussion, a correct understanding of the terms employed is one of the first essentials to clearness of thought. Much of the misunderstanding and error that exist on the subject of future punishment arises from a misconception of the true import of the scriptural terms in which it is expressed. The whole discussion may be made to turn upon this point, by the definition given to the terms employed to represent the place and the duration of punishment. The meaning of the words in which a document is expressed is a consideration prior in logical order to the interpretation of its contents. An author's thoughts cannot be comprehended if his words are not understood. And the interpretation put upon his words will determine the meaning of his sentences.

These terms Sheol, hades, Gehenna, and Tartarus are, therefore, foundation-stones in this biblical argument, and the stability of our superstructure will depend largely upon the correctness of the meaning we give them. The words date from the dim twilight of his

tory; they have come down through many political and social revolutions; they have seen their own languages rise, flourish, die, and become the depositories of the most sublime truths. They have been buffeted by the critics till, "wounded and bleeding," they are scarcely recognizable by their friends. There is a natural difficulty apparent to every student of language, in determining the various senses in which a word four thousand years old, has been used at different periods in its history. The current of history has so many eddies and counter-currents that it is very easy to set over against the conclusions of the most learned criticism some fact which seems to contradict it; a rushing Niagara will have these irregularities in its flow. Language is so changeful and difficult of preservation in the circumstances of its use, that great facilities are afforded the adept in controversy for building barricades out of the formidable terminology of a dead language. Provincialisms and dialects invaded even the matchless Greek, and its eternal crystals changed their form and beauty under the influence of slowly revolving centuries. To arrive at the meaning of antique words requires a knowledge of all history, not only of their etymology, often a matter of great difficulty, but of the social, political, military, and religious customs of the people using them.

The terms we are about to consider have long been a

subject of discussion by the most learned and able men, who have been stimulated to highest endeavor by the vastness of the issues involved; and the accumulated results amount to almost the certainty of a practical demonstration.

In considering these words it is important to remember that it was the habit of the sacred writers to employ language as they found it, and not to introduce new terms for the exposition of new doctrines. They must often have found the Greek language, formed to express the ideas of a pagan people, wholly inadequate to express the sublime truths revealed in the gospel. Their meaning in such cases must be expressed by implication, by the general drift of argument, and by the apparent necessities of the system of truth they were teaching, rather than by the technical meaning of the terms employed. The difficulty for the common reader of the authorized version has been greatly increased, by translating into one word of our language these four different terms used in the Scriptures to represent the state of the wicked after death. They are all translated "Hell," while neither of them corresponds in its primary meaning with our idea of that word. The efforts of scholars to point out the defects of this translation have done little more than to confuse the popular mind and raise doubts on the general subject.

Another thing to be borne in mind in this discussion