only as do not stereotype foregone conclusions in matters of immemorial controversy.

I know that inveterate prejudice, passing into second habit by centuries of tyrannous tradition, is invincible in all but the noblest souls. The roots of the mandrake were believed to strike very deeply into the soil, and when it was torn up it shrieked. Yet let every candid reader perpend these simple, undeniable, and indisputable facts.

1. The verb "to damn" and its cognates does not once occur in the Old Testament.

No word conveying any such meaning occurs in the Greek of the New Testament.

The words so rendered mean "to judge," "judgment," and "condemnation"; and if the word "damnation" has come to mean more than these words do-as, to all but the most educated readers, is notoriously the case—then the word is a grievous mistranslation, all the more serious because it entirely and terribly perverts and obscures the real meaning of our Lord's utterances; and all the more inexcusable, at any rate for us with our present knowledge, because if the word "damnation"

were used as the rendering of the very same words in multitudes of other passages (where our translators have rightly translated them), it would make those passages at once impossible and grotesque.1

2. The word "Hell," in the Old Testament represents the single word Sheôl (big), which means neither more nor less than "the unseen world," or "the world beyond the grave," and is in thirty-three places rendered "the grave."?

In the New Testament it is used to render three words, neither of which conveys, or could have been originally intended to convey, the notion which all but the few now attach to "hell." Now if a word conveys meanings which are not necessarily involved in the original, it is an inadequate translation; if it conveys to the vast majority meanings which have nothing

1 The gratuitous introduction of "damnation" for "judgment" into I Cor. xi. 29, and so into our Communion Service, has been a sad cause of spiritual loss to thousands of timid souls.

2 The word has in fact changed its meanings. It once meant (as is shown alike by our own and by Luther's version) merely "the underworld"; it has now come to mean a place of endless torment. See Ersch and Grüber s. v., Hölle, and Excursus II. p. 195.

corresponding to them in the original, it is a mistranslation; if it be deliberately retained after it has acquired a shade of meaning far darker than the original, and far darker than formerly belonged to it, is it too much to say that it will be a mistranslation which a multitude of readers will find it very hard to condone ?

a. One of the three words rendered "hell" occurs but once, in 2 Pet. ii. 4. It is the Greek Tartarus, and ought to be so rendered. It cannot be rendered "hell," for it refers to an intermediate state previous to judgment.

B. Another is Hades, which is the exact equivalent of the Hebrew Sheôl, and means "the unseen world," as a place both for the bad and the good (Acts ii. 27, 36). It tells directly against the received notion of “hell,” because (like Tartarus in 2 Pet. ii. 4), it means an intermediate state of the soul previous to judgment.1

1 This is the word used in Luke xvi. 23 of Dives.-"In Hades he lift up his eyes being in torments." So far therefore from furnishing any argument in favour of the popular view, this parable tells distinctly against it, since it points to an intermediate condition-as Stier admits (Words of the Lord Jesus, iv. 223, E. Tr.) ;—and it shows how rapidly in that condition a moral renovation has been

y. A third is Gehenna.

It is most essential that

this word should be rightly understood, because (with the exception of James iii. 6—a mere incidental allusion in no wise bearing on the history of the word) it is used by our Lord alone.

In the Old Testament it is merely the pleasant Valley of Hinnom (Ge Hinnom), subsequently desecrated by idolatry, and specially by Moloch worship, and defiled by Josiah on this account.1 Used, according to Jewish tradition, as the common sewer of the city, the corpses of the worse criminals were flung into it unburied, and fires were lit to purify the contaminated air. It then became a word which secondarily implied (i) the severest judgment which a Jewish court could pass

wrought in a sinful and selfish soul (see some excellent remarks in Mr. Cox's Salvator Mundi, p. 65). Neander goes perhaps too far in saying that it is foreign to the scope of the parable to give us any clue to the future life; but the expression "Abraham's bosom " shows how utterly figurative it is, and Stier holds that the Ba'o avoi were meant to work repentance. Even Luther, Von Gerlach, &c.,

teach that "the whole conversation passed in the conscience." And Dives is Tékvov still.

1 See I Kings xi. 7; 2 Kings xxiii. 10 (Jer. vii. 31, xix. 10-−14; Is. xxx. 33, Tophet)

upon a criminal-the casting forth of his unburied corpse amid the fires and worms of this polluted valley; and (ii.) a punishment—which to the Jews, as a body-never meant an endless punishment beyond the grave.1

Whatever may be the meaning of the entire passages in which this word occurs, "hell" must be a complete mistranslation, since it attributes to the term used by Christ a sense entirely different from that in which it was understood by our Lord's hearers, and therefore entirely different from the sense in which He could have used it. I must not shrink from recording my most emphatic opinion that if the Revision.

1 Schleusner (Lex N. T. s. v.), though holding the traditional view without any suspicion of its utter groundlessness, yet renders Matt. ν. 22, ἔνοχος ἔσται εἰς τὴν γέενναν τοῦ πυρός by “dignus qui contumeliosa morte afficiatur." If any one will give one moment's unbiassed thought to this verse, so obviously figurative—since in its literal sense it was of course not the case that angry thoughts, or common expletives came under the cognizance of the Jewish courts, and since it is utterly shocking to the moral sense to suppose that an angry word will doom men to endless torment-he will see how utterly the sense is travestied by the introduction of hell-fire for "the Gehenna of fire," into the English version.

C