pretend that the heavens are moveable, and that their form is circular?" Lactantius, once more, says, in the

The author of the "Spectacle of Na

A writer, if I am not mistaken, of the name of Pluche, has been recently exhibiting Moses as a great natural philosopher; another had previously harmo-third book of his Institutions, "I could nized Moses with Descartes, and pub prove to you by many arguments that it lished a book, which he called, "Cartesius is impossible heaven should surround the Mosaisans;" according to him, "Moses earth." was the real inventor of "Vortices," and the subtle matter; but we full well know,ture" may repeat to M. le Chevalier as that when God made Moses a great le- often as he pleases, that Lactantius and gislator and prophet, it was no part of St. Chrysostom are great philosophers. his scheme to make him also a professor He will be told in reply that they were of physics. Moses instructed the Jews great saints; and that to be a great saint, in their duty, and did not teach them a it is not at all necessary to be a great single word of philosophy. Calmet, who astronomer. It will be believed that they compiled a great deal, but never reasoned are in heaven, although it will be admitat all, talks of the system of the Hebrews; ted to be impossible to say precisely in but that stupid people never had any what part of it. system. They had not even a school of geometry; the very name was utterly unknown to them. The whole of their science was comprised in money changing and usury.

HELL.

INFERNUM, subterranean; the regions below, or the infernal regions. Nations which buried the dead placed them in the inferior or infernal regions. Their soul, then, was with them in those regions. Such were the first physics and the first metaphysics of the Egyptians and Greeks.

We find in their books ideas on the structure of heaven, confused, incoherent, and in every respect worthy of a people immersed in barbarism. Their first heaven was the air, the second the firmament in which the stars were fixed. This fir- The Indians, who were far more anmament was solid and made of glass, and {cient, who had invented the ingenious supported the superior waters which is-doctrine of the metempsychosis, never sued from the vast reservoirs by flood- believed that souls existed in the infernal gates, sluices, and cataracts, at the time of regions. the deluge.

The Japanese, Coreans, Chinese, and the inhabitants of the vast territory of eastern and western Tartary, never knew a word of the philosophy of the infernal

Above the firmament or these superior waters was the third heaven, or the empyreum, to which St. Paul was caught up. The firmament was a sort of demi-regions. vault which came close down to the The Greeks, in the course of time, earth. constituted an immense kingdom of these

It is clear that, according to this opi-infernal regions, which they liberally connion, there could be no antipodes. Ac-ferred on Pluto and his wife Proserpine. cordingly, St. Augustin treats the idea of They assigned them three privy counantipodes as an absurdity; and Lactan-sellors, three house-keepers called Futius, whom we have already quoted, ex-ries, and three Fates to spin, wind, and pressly says can there possibly be any cut the thread of human life. And, as in persons so simple as to believe that there ancient times, every hero had his dog to are men whose heads are lower than their guard his gate, so was Pluto attended feet?" &c. and guarded by an immense dog with St. Chrysostom exclaims, in his four-three heads; for everything, it seems, teenth homily, “Where are they who was to be done by threes. Of the three

prvy counsellors, Minos, acus, and lieved in sucn absurdities," Lucretius adRhadamanthus, one judged Greece, ano-mitted that these ideas were very power

ther Asia Minor (for the Greeks were then unacquainted with the Greater Asia), and the third was for Europe.

The poets, having invented these infernal regions, or hell, were the first to laugh at them. Sometimes Virgil mentions hell in the Ænead in a style of seriousness, because that style was then suitable to his subject. Sometimes he speaks of it with contempt in his Georgics (ii. 490, &c.)

Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas
Atque metns omnes et inexorabile fatum
Subjecit pedibus strepitunique Acherontis avari!
Happy the man whose vigorous soul can pierce
Through the formation of this universe,
Who nobly dares despise with soul sedate,
The dea of Acheron, and vulgar fears and fate.

Wharton.

The following lines from the Troad { (chorus of act ii.) in which Pluto, Cerberus, Phlegethon, Styx, &c. are treated like dreams and childish tales, were repeated in the theatre of Rome, and applauded by forty thousand hands :

..Tænara et aspero

Regnum sub domino, limen et obsidens
Custos non facili Cerberus ostio
Rumores vacui, verbaque inania,
Et par solicito fabula somnio.

fully impressive upon men's minds; his
object, he says, is to destroy them :—

Si certum finem esse viderent
AErumnarum homines, aliqua ratione valerent
Religionibus atque minis obsistere vatum.
Nunc ratio nulla est restandi, nulla facultas;
AEternas quoniam poenas in morte timendum.
Lucretius, book 1. 108.

.. If it once appear
That after death there's neither hope nor fear;
Then might men freely triumph, then disdain
The poet's tales, and scorn their fancied pain;
But now we must submit, since pains we fear
Eternal after death, we know not where.-Creech.

It was therefore true, that among the lowest classes of the people, some laughed at hell, and others trembled at it. Some regarded Cerberus, the Furies, and Pluto, as ridiculous fables, others perpetually presented offerings to the infernal gods. It was with them just as it is now among ourselves :—

Et quocumque tamen miseri venere, parentant,
Et nigros mactant pecudes, et Manibu' divis
Inferias mittuut maltoque in rebus acerbis
Acrius admittunt animos ad religionem.

Lucretius, iii. 51.

Nay, more than that, where'er the wretches come
They sacrifi e black sheep on every tomb,
To please the manes; and of all the rout,
When cares and dangers press, grow most devout.
Creech.

Many philosophers who had no belief the fables about hell, were yet desirous that the people should retain that belief. Such was Zimens of Loc:is. Such was the political historian Polybius. "Hell," says he, " is useless to sages, but necessary to the blind and brutal populace."

Lucretius and Horace express them-{in selves equally strong. Cicero and Seneca used similar language in innumerable parts of their writings. The great emperor Marcus Aurelius reasons still more philosophically than all those I have mentioned." He who fears death, fears either to be deprived of all senses, or to experience other sensations. But, if yoù no longer retain your own senses, you will be no longer subject to any pain or grief. If you have senses of a different nature, you will be a totally different being."

To this reasoning, profane philosophy had nothing to reply. Yet, agreeably to that contradiction or perverseness which distinguishes the human species, and seems to constitute the very foundation of our nature, at the very time when Cicero publicly declared, that "not even an old woman was to be found who be

'

It is well known, that the law of the Pentateuch never announces a hell. All mankind was involved in this chaos of contradiction and uncertainty, when Jesus Christ came into the world. He confirmed the ancient doctrine of hell, not the doctrine of the heathen poets, not that of the Egyptian priests, but that which Christianity adopted, and to which every thing must yield. He announced a kingdom that was about to come, and a hell that should have no end.

He said, in express words, at Capernaum in Galilee, "Whosoever shall call his brother 'Raca,' shall be condemned

by the sanhedrim; but whosoever shall call him fool, shall be condemned to gehenna hinnon, gehenna of fire."

This proves two things, first, that Jesus Christ was adverse to abuse and reviling; for it belonged only to him, as master, to call the Pharisees hypocrites, and a 'generation of vipers.'

Secondly, that those who revile their neighbour deserve hell; for the gehenna of fire was in the valley of Hinnon, where victims had formerly been burnt in sacrifice to Moloch, and this gehenna was typical of the fire of hell.

eaten and drunk with thee, and thou hast taught in our public places; and he will reply, 'Nescio vos, whence are you, {workers of iniquity? And there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth, when ye shall see there Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and the prophets, and yourselves cast out."

Notwithstanding the other positive declarations made by the Saviour of mankind, which assert the eternal damnation of all who do not belong to our church, Origen and some others were not believers in the eternity of punishments. He says, in another place, "If any one {The Socinians reject such punishments; shall offend one of the weak who believe but they are without the pale. The Luin me, it were better for him that a mill-therans and Calvinists, although they have stone were hanged about his neck and he were cast into the sea.

"And if thy hand offend thee, cut it off; it is better for thee to enter into life maimed, than to go into the gehenna of{ inextinguishable fire, where the worm dies not, and where the fire is not quenched.

"And if thy foot offend thee, cut it off; it is better for thee to enter lame into eternal life, than to be cast with two feet into the inextinguishable gehenna, where the worm dies not, and where the fire is not quenched.

"And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out; it is better to enter into the kingdom of God with one eye, than to be cast with both eyes into the gehenna of fire, where the worm dies not, and the fire is not quenched.

"For every one shall be burned with fire, and every victim shall be salted with salt.

"Salt is good; but if the salt have lost its savour, with what will you salt? "You have salt in yourselves, preserve peace one with another."

He said on another occasion, on his journey to Jerusalem, "When the master of the house shall have entered and shut the door, you will remain without, and knock, saying, Lord, open unto us; and he will answer and say unto you,' Nescio vos,' I know you not; whence are you? And then ye shall begin to say, we have

strayed beyond the pale, yet admit the doctrine of a hell without end.

When men came to live in society, they must have perceived that a great number of criminals eluded the severity of the laws; the laws punished public crimes; it was necessary to establish a check upon secret crimes; this check was to be found only in religion. The Persians, Chaldeans, Egyptians, and Greeks, entertained the idea of punishments after the present life, and of all the nations of antiquity that we are acquainted with, the Jews, as we have already remarked, were the only one who admitted solely temporal punishments. It is ridiculous to believe, or pretend to believe, from some excessively obscure passages, that bell was recognised by the ancient laws of the Jews, by their Leviticus, or by their Decalogue, when the author of those laws says not a single word which can bear the slightest relation to the chastisements of a future life. We might have some right to address the compiler of the Pentateuch in such language as the following:-You are a man of no consistency, as destitute of probity as understanding, and totally unworthy of the name which you arrogate to yourself of legislator. What! you are perfectly acquainted, it seems, with that doctrine so eminently repressive of human vice, so necessary to the virtue and happiness of mankind-the doctrine of hell;

and absurdity of which are as clear as the sun at noon-day; for the offender who enjoyed good health, and whose family were in prosperous circumstances, must absolutely have laughed you to scorn.

and yet you do not explicitly announce it; and, while it is admitted by all the nations which surround you, you are content to leave it for some commentators, after four thousand years have passed away, to suspect that this doctrine might The apologist for the Jewish law would possibly have been entertained by you, here rejoin:-You are much mistaken; and to twist and torture your expressions, since, for one criminal who reasoned corin order to find that in them which you rectly, there were a hundred who never have never said. Either you are grossly reasoned at all. The man who, after he ignorant not to know that this belief was had committed a crime, found no punishuniversal in Egypt, Chaldea, and Persia; } ment of it attached to himself or his son, or you have committed the most disgrace- would yet tremble for his grandson. Beful error in judgment, in not having made sides, if after the time of committing his it the foundation stone of your religion. offence he was not speedily seized by some festering sore, such as our nation was extremely subject to, he would experience it in a course of years. Calamities are always occurring in a family, and we, without difficulty, instilled the belief that these calamities were inflicted by the hand of God taking vengeance for secret offences.

The authors of the Jewish laws could at most only answer :-We confess that we are excessively ignorant; that we did not learn the art of writing until a late period; that our people were a wild and barbarous horde, that wandered, as our own records admit, for nearly half a century in impracticable deserts, and at length obtained possession of a petty terri- It would be easy to reply to this answer tory by the most odious rapine and de- by saying :-Your apology is worth notestable cruelty ever mentioned in the thing; for it happens every day that very records of history. We had no commerce worthy and excellent persons lose their with civilised nations, and how could you έ health and their property; and, if there suppose that, so grossly mean and grovel- was no family that did not experience ling as we are in all our ideas and usages, calamity, and that calamity at the same we should have invented a system so re- time was a chastisement from God, all fined and spiritual as that in question? the families of your community must have been made up of scoundrels.

We employed the word which most nearly corresponds with soul, merely to The Jewish priest might again answer, signify life; we knew our God and his and say, that there are some calamities ministers, his angels, only as corporeal inseparable from human nature, and others beings; the distinction of soul and body, expressly inflicted by the hand of God. the idea of a life beyond death, can be But, in return, we should point out to the fruit only of long meditation and re-such a reasoner the absurdity of considerfined philosophy. Ask the Hottentotsing fever and hail-stones in some cases as and Negroes, who inhabit a country a divine punishments; in others as mere hundred times larger than ours, whether natural effects. they know anything of a life to come? In short, the Pharisees and the EsseWe thought we had done enough in per-nians, among the Jews, did admit, acsuading the people under our influence cording to certain notions of their own, that God punished offenders to the fourth the belief of a hell. This dogma had generation, either by leprosy, by sudden passed from the Greeks to the Romans," death, or by the loss of the little property and was adopted by the Christians. of which the criminal might be possessed. Many of the fathers of the church reTo this apology it might be replied:-jected the doctrine of eternal punishments. You have invented a system, the ridicule It appeared to them absurd, to burn to

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all eternity an unfortunate man for steal-which had been granted him by that ing a goat. Virgil has finely said :—