The plain meaning of the Saviour is this: It is better for you to give up all worldly interests, though dear as your right eye or right hand, if they keep you back from the kingdom of God, the gospel kingdom, the life of divine truth; for it is better to part with these, and become my disciples, and enjoy that eternal life which is to know God, and Jesus Christ whom he has sent; than, retaining these, to refuse the truth of God, the gospel of his Son, and so have part in the fiery judgment which is coming upon this wicked generation. And in order to set forth the terrible and utterly destructive character of this judgment, this day of wrath, he describes it under the figure of Gehenna, with its unquenchable fires, its perpetual putrefaction and ever breeding worms.'

Gehenna, then, was used to represent any dreadful judgment or, as Schleusner says, "any severe punisment, especially an infamous kind of death." Much as Sodom was used to represent any very wicked or corrupt city or people, as in Ezekiel xvi. 46–56, where Sodom means the half heathenish Israelites, or per

be thoroughly destroyed and abolished. In a standard author we have the expression, "unquenchable love of freedom;" and another, speaking of a celebrated actress, says, "She was the best tragedian of her times, with an inextinguishable fire in her heart," and immediately adds, alluding to her death, "we must deplore the extinction of her fire." A newspaper, speaking of a comic personage, remarks that what he did "created inextinguishable mirth." And this is the very expression in English, which Homer has in Greek, daßatos yśλws, (Iliad, i. 599,) unquenchable laughter. In these examples, as in the Bible usage, there is no reference to duration, but to intensity only — the meaning is great, excessive.

1 Dr. ALBERT BARNES says: "The extreme loathsomeness of the place, the filth and putrefaction, the corruption of the atmosphere, and the lurid fires blazing by day and by night, made it one of the most appalling and terrific objects with which a Jew was ever acquainted."

haps the neighboring heathen themselves. And in Rev. xi. 8, Jerusalem is called Sodom and Egypt, because of its utter vileness and wickedness. Much as we of this day use the name of Waterloo to represent a great political conflict: "It was a Waterloo defeat"-i. e., thorough, complete, irreparable. So with the Jews, the overthrow of a people, the destruction of a city, was called a Gehenna judgment— i. e., a thorough and utter destruction.

This closes the New Testament usage of the word; and it is obvious to every candid mind that the assertion is utterly destitute of proof, that Gehenna was used by the Jews of our Saviour's time to designate a place of endless torment for the wicked, or that it bears that meaning in the New Testament.

Our inquiry shows that it is employed in the Old Testament in its literal or geographical sense only, as the name of the valley lying on the South of Jerusalem that the Septuagint proves it retained this meaning as late as B. C. 150-that it is not found at all in the Apocrypha; neither in Philo, nor in Josephus, whose writings cover the very times of the Saviour and the New Testament, thus leaving us without a single example of contemporary usage to determine its meaning at this period-that for one hundred years after Josephus there are no Jewish writings extant, thereby shutting out all evidence as to what was its popular usage and signification for one hundred and seventy years after Christ-that from A. D. 150-195, we find in two Greek authors, Justin and Clement of Alexandria, the first resident in Italy and the last in Egypt, that Gehenna began to be used to designate a place of punishment after

death, but not endless punishment, since Clement was a believer in universal restoration that the first time we find Gehenna used in this sense in any Jewish writing is near the beginning of the third century, in the Targum of Jonathan Ben Uzziel, two hundred years too late to be of any service in the argument and lastly, that the New Testament usage shows that while it had not wholly lost its literal sense, it was also employed in the time of Christ as a symbol of moral corruption and wickedness; but more especially as a figure of the terrible judgments of God on the rebellious and sinful nation of the Jews.

Tagragoas, Tartarosas, the word being a partiΤαρταρώσας, ciple, is found only in 2 Peter ii. 4: "For if God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell, and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment," &c. Jude, who cites the same illustrations in enforcing his exhortations, has it thus: "And the angels who kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, he hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day." Verse 6.

Although this chapter has legitimately only to do with the word "hell," yet it will be necessary, in order to understand this passage, to notice several other points.

1. This is the first and only allusion in the Bible to fallen angels. There is not a word in the Old

Testament on the subject, neither in the historical, prophetic or poetic books. The Saviour in all his ministry never alluded to anything of the kind; nor any of his disciples, save Peter and Jude. Now, if the texts cited are to be understood literally, as an actual historical record, is it probable that such a profound silence would have been observed in regard to so important an event, till forty years after the death of Christ?'

2. It is plain that the story of the fallen angels was well known to those whom Peter and Jude addressed. Though this is the first time it appears in the sacred writings, it is introduced without explanation; and it is taken for granted that the readers have heard of it before. The tradition, therefore, must have been common and popular, or the apostles would not have referred to it in such a familiar way.

3. The Jews certainly had a tradition of this sort current among them. Before the birth of Christ, they had come to believe that "the sons of God" mentioned in Gen. vi. 2, were angels, who, enamored of the beautiful daughters of men, left their heavenly habitations, of their own accord, that they might dwell with them on earth. Josephus makes mention of this: "For many angels of God accompanied with women, and begat sons that proved unjust, and despisers of all that was good," &c. Of course, as there is nothing of this sort in the Old Testament, it was a fiction of their own invention. The "sons of

2

All commentators agree that Rev. xii. 7-17, refers to the conflicts between Paganism and Christianity. Besides, the dragon and his angels were cast out into the earth," and there "persecuted the woman which brought forth the man-child."

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2" Jewish Antiquities," Book i. chapter 3.

God" in Gen. vi. were not angels, but the true worshippers of God; probably the descendants of Seth, in distinction from those of Cain.

4. This tradition or fiction respecting the angels, was wrought out with all the extravagant fancies and wild absurdities and inventions characteristic of the Jewish mind; and about the time of our Saviour's birth, or just before, it appeared in full dramatic costume in the celebrated "Book of Enoch," written by some foreign Jew. In this, we have the whole story in detail, resting on the above-named absurd interpretation of Gen. vi. by the later Jewish teachers.

The story begins with chapter vii. thus: "It happened, after the sons of men had multiplied in those days, that daughters were born unto them, elegant and beautiful. And when the angels, the sons of heaven, beheld them, they became enamored of them, saying to each other, Come, let us select for ourselves wives from the progeny of men, and let us beget children."

Then follows an account of the increase of impiety and wickedness on the earth; and chapter x. carries the story forward as follows: "Then the Most High, the Great and Holy One spake, and said to Raphael, "Bind Azazyel hand and foot; cast him into darkness; and opening the desert which is in Dudael, cast him in there. Throw upon him swift and pointed stones, covering him with darkness. There shall he remain forever; cover his face, that he may not see the light. And in the great day of judgment let him be cast into the fire." To Michael, likewise, the Lord said, "Go and announce his crime to Samyaza, and to the others who are with him. And when all