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.

The Indians, who were far more ancient, who had invented the ingenious doctrine of the metempsychosis, never believed that souls existed in the infernal regions.

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 regions.

The Greeks, in the course of time, constituted an immense kingdom of these infernal regions, which they liberally conferred on Pluto and his wife Proserpine. They assigned them three privy counsellors, three housekeepers called Furies, and three Fates to spin, wind, and cut the thread of human life. And, as in ancient times, every hero had his dog to guard his gate, so was Pluto attended and guarded by an immense dog with three heads; for everything, it seems, was to be done by threes. Of the three privy counsellors, Minos, ?acus, and Rhadamanthus, one judged Greece, another 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 “?neid” 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, etc.).

Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas

Atque metus omnes et inexorabile fatum

Subjecit pedibus strepitumque Acherontis avari!

Happy the man whose vigorous soul can pierce

Through the formation of this universe,

Who nobly dares despise, with soul sedate,

The den of Acheron, and vulgar fears and fate.

— Wharton.

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

. . . . T?nara et aspero

Regnum sub domino, limen et obsidens

Custos non facili Cerberus ostio

Rumores vacui, verbaque inania,

Et par solicito fabula somnio.

Lucretius and Horace express themselves equally strongly. Cicero and Seneca used similar language in innumerable parts of their writings. The great emperor Marcus Aurelius reasons still more philosophically than those I have mentioned. “He who fears death, fears either to be deprived of all senses, or to experience other sensations. But, if you 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 believed in such absurdities,” Lucretius admitted that these ideas were powerfully impressive upon men’s minds; his object, he says, is to destroy them:

. . . . Si certum finem esse viderent

?rumnarum homines, aliqua ratione valerent

Religionibus atque minis obsistere vatum.

Nunc ratio nulla est restandi, nulla facultas;

?ternas quoniam poenas in morte timendum.

— Lucretius, i. 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 Manibus divis

Inferias mittunt multoque in rebus acerbis

Acrius admittunt animos ad religionem.

— Lucretius, iii. 51.

Nay, more than that, where’er the wretches come

They sacrifice 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 in the fables about hell, were yet desirous that the people should retain that belief. Such was Zimens of Locris. Such was the political historian Polybius. “Hell,” says he, “is useless to sages, but necessary to the blind and brutal populace.”

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 everything 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 Hinnom, 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 neighbor deserve hell; for the Gehenna of fire was in the valley of Hinnom, where victims had formerly been burned in sacrifice to Moloch, and this Gehenna was typical of the fire of hell.

He says, in another place, “If any one shall offend one of the weak who believe in Me, it were better for him that a millstone 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 everyone shall be burned with fire, and every victim shall be salted with salt.

“Salt is good; but if the salt have lost its savor, 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 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.

The Socinians reject such punishments; but they are without the pale. The Lutherans and Calvinists, although they 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, Chald?ans, 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 bel............