of amendment has begun to take effect on him, and even now already has been carried to a surprising length. He who had cared only for himself now cares for his "five brethren," and cares not that they should be clothed with purple and fine linen, and surfeited with sumptuous fare, but that they should be quickened and renewed in the spirit of their minds, and saved from the torment to which he has doomed himself. In short, vital and hopeful germs of charity and spirituality have already been released and developed within him; and how can any torment, any discipline, which produces such happy effects, be enduring?

Turn now to Acts ii. 27 and 31. In his great sermon on the Day of Pentecost, St Peter is arguing that Jesus of Nazareth was the Christ whose advent had been afore-announced by the Hebrew prophets. He quotes certain words uttered by "the patriarch David," which he affirms were true of Jesus, and of Him alone" Thou wilt not leave thy Holy One in Hades." In those words, argues the Apostle, David

spake of the resurrection of Christ, that his soul was not left in Hades." Now here, surely, every man may see for himself how inaccurate and misleading it is to translate "Hades" by "Hell." God will not leave his Holy One, the Christ, in hell! Is that a promise? What special grace is there, or rather, is there not a

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very special and incredible indignity, in assuring the Holy One that God will not leave Him in hell, when we know that He will not suffer any of his holy ones so much as to enter hell? But though God does not suffer any good man to enter hell, He suffers all good men to enter Hades. He leaves them there, in the world of disembodied spirits, until the morning of the resurrection; i.e., He leaves them all there but one. The Christ could not be holden of death; his soul was not left in Hades, as ours are, any more than his flesh saw corruption, as ours does. There was, therefore, a very special grace in the promise made to Him, a grace vouchsafed to none but Him; and if this promise were fulfilled in Jesus of Nazareth, as St Peter affirmed it was, its fulfilment was an infallible proof that he was in very deed the Christ of God.1

1 There is one other passage in the Textus Receptus in which Hades occurs; but here (1 Cor. xv. 55) the Authorized Version renders it by "grave." The true Text, however, reads fávaтn (death), not a'de (Hades).

There are also four places in the Apocalypse in which "hell" is substituted for "Hades," in our Version. They are as follows :— Rev. i. 18, "I have the keys of Hades and of Death;" Rev. vi. 8, "His name that sat on him was Death, and Hades followed with him;" Rev. xx. 13, "Death and Hades delivered up the dead that were in them;" and Rev. xx. 14, "Death and Hades were cast into the lake of fire." No real student of the Bible will deny that the word Hades should be retained in all these cases. And indeed one is puzzled to know what those who hold the "orthodox" view can possibly make of the last of these texts, if they retain the present rendering of it; for surely "the lake of fire" stands for hell; and if hades also be hell, it would seem that hell was, or is to be, cast into hell,-a somewhat questionable feat.

We have now examined all the passages in the Gospels and the Epistles in which the word Hades occurs; and I think you will admit that in no one of these cases should it be translated by the word "hell.” For whereas our word "hell" denotes the final and everlasting torment of the wicked, there is not a single instance in which the word "Hades " is used in that sense. Where it applies to the lot of the wicked at all, it denotes simply that intermediate and preparatory state of punishment, or discipline, which precedes "the last judgment;" while at least, in some cases, the word obviously covers Paradise as well as Gehenna, and denotes the tranquil and happy intermediate estate of the good, that rest-full region or condition in which the righteous await the Resurrection, and into which Christ Himself entered, although He was not "left" in it.

3. There is but one other word in the New Testament which is rendered by "hell," the word Gehenna. This word occurs twelve times in the Gospels and Epistles. And how inadequately the word "hell" translates it you will see if we consider (1) the derivation of the word; (2) the sense in which it was used and understood in the time of our Lord and his Apostles; and (3) the meaning of the several passages in which it is found. And as these passages are those on which the popular dogma is very largely based, we must examine them with some patience and care.

(1). As to the derivation of the word there is not, there never has been, the slightest doubt. Gehenna is the Greek form of the Hebrew Ge-Hinnom, or "Valley of Hinnom." This valley was a steep ravine immediately under the South-Western wall of Jerusalem, watered by the brook Kidron and "Siloa's sacred stream." In the time of the Hebrew Kings it was laid out in "paradises," i.e., pleasure gardens, with their groves, pools, fish-ponds. Here the wealthier nobles and citizens of Jerusalem had their country villas, their summer palaces. At its South-Eastern extremity lay the paradise of King Solomon, with its "tophet," or music grove, the grove in which the King, with his wives and concubines, listened to his mensingers and women-singers, and to the blended strains of "musical instruments of divers sorts." The whole beautiful valley, in short, was full of those delicious retreats which are still found in the close neighbourhood of large and wealthy Oriental cities, and in which the monarch and his nobles seek repose from the sultry heat of the summer, and from the frets and toils of public life. To gratify the "foreign women" with whom he consorted, Solomon polluted his pleasant gardens and groves with idolatrous shrines, in which the cruel and licentious rites of Egypt and Phoenicia were observed. His successors imitated, and out-ran, his evil example. The horrid fires of Molech were

kindled in the beautiful valley, and children were burned in them-" passed through the fire." Gradually "the valley of Hinnom" grew to be a type of all that was flagrantly wicked and abominable to the faithful souls, fallen on evil times, who still worshipped Jehovah on the neighbouring hill of Zion. And when Josiah came to the throne, and good men could once more lift up their heads, the groves were burned down, the pleasant gardens laid waste, the shrines ground to powder, and, to render the valley for ever "unclean," the bones of the dead were strewn over its surface. Thenceforth it became the common cesspool of the city, into which offal was cast, and the carcasses of animals, and even the bodies of great criminals who had lived a life so vile as to be judged unworthy of decent burial. Worms preyed on their corrupting flesh; and fires were kept burning lest the pestilential infection should rise from the valley and float through the streets of Jerusalem.

To the Hebrew prophets this foul terrible Valley became an apt type, or illustration, of the doom of the unrighteous. They drew from it their images, images of which such terrible and unwarrantable use has been made, of the worm that never dies, and of the fire which is not quenched. With them, to say that a man was in danger of Gehenna was to say that his sins had exposed him to a judgment the terrors of