the most vague and undefined conceptions of some intermediate state. And, therefore, we have no right to translate it by a word which we use to denote the final state, the last and unchangeable lot of guilty men, and which calls up in our minds the most definite and terrible conceptions. Our plain duty to the passage is to read it in English as it reads in the original Greek, "God spared not angels who sinned, but cast them into Tartarus."

2. The word Hades occurs five times in the Gospels and Epistles; and in every instance our translators render it by the word "hell." That the translation is

the Mysteries was a faith which revealed to them hopeful things about the world to come, and which, not so much as a condition, but as a consequence of this clearer light, this higher faith, made them better citizens and better men. This faith was taught them in the Mysteries through symbols, through prayer and fasting, through wild rejoicings; but, as Aristotle expressly tells us, it was reached, not by intellectual persuasion, but by a change into a new moral state-in fact, by being spiritually revived." After adverting to the wonderful fidelity with which this secret, known to so many, has been kept, so that we have nothing but hints of the " scenes of darkness and fear in which the hopeless state of the unbelievers was pourtrayed, and of light and glory to which the convert attained, when at last his eyes were opened to the knowledge of good and evil," he sums up thus: "But all these things are fragmentary glimpses, as are also the doctrines hinted of the unity of God, and of atonement by sacrifice. There remains nothing clear and certain but the unanimous verdict as to the greatness, the majesty, and the awe of the services, and as to the great spiritual knowledge and comfort which they conveyed. The consciousness of guilt was not, indeed, first taught by them, but was felt generally, and felt very keenly, by the Greek mind. These Mysteries were its Gospel of Reconciliation with the offended gods."

an inaccurate one, and at times even a grotesquely inaccurate one, it will be easy to shew.

The word Hades (aïdes, from anot, and dw= to see) means, according to its derivation, that which is not and cannot be seen. According to its usage, it denotes in especial that vast subterranean kingdom, that dim shadow-world, into which the spirits of all men, good and bad alike, were held to pass at death. When they die, men are no longer seen; they pass over into the land which, if not dark in itself, is dark to us, hidden behind impenetrable veils of mystery. This, at least, was a common, perhaps the most common, conception of the future state among both the Eastern and Western nations of antiquity,1 most of whom assumed the earth to be a vast plain, floating through space as "a broad leaf floats through air," the upper side of which, illumined by the sun, was reserved for the living, while the spirits of the dead were condemned to the dark under-surface, i.e., to what we should call "the Antipodes." And the Jews shared, or adopted, this conception. They, too, thought of the kingdom of the dead as a vast under-world, in which the disembodied spirits of men would dwell until the day of judgment. In this vast kingdom there were two provinces, separated from each other

1 See Dr Draper's "History of the Intellectual Development of Europe," vol. i., passim.

by an impassable gulf-Paradise, answering to the Elysian fields of the heathen poets, and Gehenna, answering to their Tartarus. In Paradise the souls of the righteous awaited their final and complete blessedness; while in Gehenna the souls of the wicked awaited their final doom. To this entire kingdom, including both provinces, they gave the name Hades. For them Hades included Paradise as well as Gehenna; and therefore it is obviously inaccurate and misleading to render the word Hades, as our translators do, by the word "hell." Nay, the word "hell" is in every case a false and misleading rendering of the word Hades; for (1), Hades is never once used to denote the final estate of men, but only the state which precedes the day of judgment; and (2), it is commonly used to denote the whole of that intermediate state, the lot of the righteous as well as that of the unrighteous. Thus, for example, Josephus speaks of the spirit of Samuel as being evoked from Hades to warn King Saul of his approaching doom; and we may be very sure that Josephus did not conceive of that great prophet as doomed to an everlasting torment. Indeed, all the best ancient writers, Greek and Roman, Jewish and Christian, speak of their noblest men as dwelling in Hades, and looking with solemn expectation and sustaining hope for the dawn of some great day of deliverance.

And the word is used in pre

cisely the same sense both in the Gospels and in the Epistles.

Thus, in St Matthew xi. 23, we have our Lord's pathetic apostrophe: "And thou, Capernaum, which art exalted unto heaven, shalt be brought down to Hades!" So at least it stands in the Original, and not, as in our Version, "to hell." And no doubt the thought in his mind was, that all that busy multitude of living men who then thronged who then thronged the streets of Capernaum, would, ere long, be hurried into the dark under-world, leaving their favoured city desolate—as it is to this day.

In St Matthew xvi. 18, we have his gracious promise to Simon Barjona: "Thou art Petros (a rock), and on this petra (or rock), I will build my church; and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it;" that is to say, no spiritual principalities and powers from the unseen world, whether bringing with them airs from Paradise or blasts from Gehenna, shall ever overthrow the Church animated by the spirit of that loyal and zealous Apostle. No thought of "hell," the final prison-house, was in our Lord's mind.

I have said that we must be careful not to push the details of any parable too far, that we must not go to parables for clear and authoritative teaching on the

future conditions of the human race.

But I gave you

that caution simply because it is dictated both by

common sense and by sound criticism, not because the Parables tell against my argument. They tell in favour of it, as you may see by referring to St Luke xvi. 23. In the parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus, our Lord describes the after condition of him who here was clothed in purple and fine linen, and fared sumptuously every day, thus: "And in Hades he lift up his eyes, being in torment." Here, of course, the word Hades stands for, or at least includes, that dark province of the under-world in which the unrighteous receive the due reward of their deeds; but is it therefore equivalent to our word "hell?" By no means; for "hell" is the name we give to the final estate of the wicked; to us it suggests, whatever it may have suggested to an earlier generation, the thought of never-ending punishment. But our Lord, in his parable, is evidently speaking only of the state which immediately follows death. Neither Lazarus nor Nimeusis (if this were the rich man's name) has reached his last state, his final condition, or can reach it until after the day on which the secrets of all hearts shall be disclosed. So that even here we must reject the word "hell," and retain Christ's word, "hades."

Nor is our Lord's description of the moral effects of the " torment on the Rich Man's character without many suggestions of hope, were this the place to dwell on them. For obviously a process