The learned Cameron, Professor of Greek at Glasgow near the close of the seventeenth century, confesses that hades never, in Scripture signifies hell (in the popular acceptation) "but constantly either the grave, or the state and condition of a man diseased." *

Grotius says "Hades is an unseen place, when applied to the body, it is the sepulchre, in which there is a body without a soul: when applied to the soul, it is the region of the soul without the body."+

Ambrose defines hades, "the invisible place prepared for the dead." ‡

Verstegan, who is probably as good authority as we canquote on this word, derives hell from "Being helled over, that is to say, covered in low obscurity." §

Bishop Horsley says, "the English word hell, in its primary and natural meaning, signifies nothing more than "the unseen and covered place ;" and is properly used both in the Old Testament and in the New, to render the Hebrew word in the one, and the Greek word in the other, which denote the invisible mansion of disembodied souls, without any reference to suffering." I

*Myroth. Evangel. in loc.

"Hades est locus visibus nostris substractus, & de corpore quidem cum accipitur, sepulcrum in quo est corpus sine animo: de animo vero, totam illam regionem in quo est animus sine corpore." Grotius in Lucam xvii. vers. 23.

"Hades significat locum invisibilem defunctis præparatum.” Ambrose, quo. Cri. Sac. N. T.

§ Restitution of Decayed Intelligence, chap vii,

| Vol. II. Ser. 20,

Dr. Whitby, the celebrated Episcopal Commentator, testifies that, "Hades is the place to which the good, as well as the bad go; it signifies not the place of punishment, but the grave, or the place of death." In another place the same great author says, "All men go to sheol (or hades.) There Jacob, and Job, and David, and Hezekiah expected, and even desired to be."

"As to

Dr. Campbell, a Scotch Presbyterian, says, the word hades, in my judgment, it ought never in Scripture to be rendered hell, in the sense wherein that word is now universally understood among Christians. In the Old Testament, the corresponding word is sheol, which signifies the state of the dead in general, without regard to the goodness or badness of the persons, their happiness or misery."

Wakefield says, "It must be remembered that hades nowhere means hell, (in the common acceptation) in any author whatsoever, sacred or profane."

Sophocles uses hades to denote the end of man, or the grave.

*

Virgil translates this word "a house without a light." And this definition of hades is quoted and approved by old Scapula, in his "Lexicon Græcolatinum."

The learned William Du Gard defines hades, orcus, sepulcrum, i. e. the grave, the sepulchre. He says it means a dark, obscure place, "because the sun never shines into it." ‡

Ede tou haden eisorositou biou.

+ Sine luce domus.

Du Gard's Lexicon Græci Teatàmenti in loc.

Sop. Antigone 586.

Authority of this kind might be multiplied to any extent. We could quote from Dawson, Ewing, Tooke, Thompson, and a host of others, to support the views already given; that hades, or hell, does not signify a place of future torment. But we need not proceed further, for, as Dr. Campbell remarks, it is now hardly pretended that hell properly signifies a place of misery by the learned.

To be sure the gentleman has endeavoured to prop up his sham definition on the authority of such men as one Roy, and Parsons Cooke, a Congregationalist minister who lives some where near Boston, Mass. and whose authority, in this matter, is of no more weight than the bray of an Ass.

It was, no doubt, an unwelcome necessity, which made all the learned advocates of infernal torments, above quoted, confess that the only word which, in the Bible is, by the laws of language properly translated hell, does not mean a place of torments. But the fact could not be suppressed but by the forfeiture of their reputations, and the violation of their consciences.

All this horrible raving about hell torments which disgraces so many pulpits in the land, is nothing but the maniac cry of ignorance—it is a madman's folly.

Hades, or its equivalent, occurs sixty-four times in the Old Testament, and in the common version, it is twenty-nine times translated grave, three times pit, and in twenty-two instances hell. It occurs eleven times in the New Testament; and is once rendered grave, in every other place, hell.

But when you read of hell in the Bible, you have no more right to associate the idea of torments with it, than when you read of the pit or the grave. And more than all this, I have as much authority for preaching that hades or hell, generally means a place of future happiness, as these disciples of wrath and brimstone, have to preach that it means a place of future torments. If it' should be said that the Bible represents hell as a place to which the wicked go; we reply, so it is represented as a place to which the good go likewise. The venerable Jacob said, "I will go down to hell to my son mourning." And again he said, "Ye will bring down my gray hairs with sorrow to hell." The righteous Job prayed that God would "hide his soul in hell." And David and Hezekiah desired to be "in hell.”

Now if we should take these passages, and many others like them, and go on to preach that hell is a place of future happiness, because it is a place where good men expected, and desired to go, we should make ourselves ridiculous enough undoubtedly; but then we should become no more ridiculous than they make themselves, who contend that hell is a place of misery because the bad go there.

Hell is sometimes, in the Bible, used figuratively; in which case it signifies a political, a moral, or any other debasement. There is a just remark on the figurative use of this word in the Lexicon appended to the American edition of the Greek text of Griesback. "Hades; the lower world, the place of the dead; metaphor, an extremely depressed condition." This is its meaning

the eighty-sixth Psalm, where David declares that he had been "delivered from the lowest hell." David himself informs us what that lowest hell was; he says, "I found trouble and sorrow." Matt. ii; 23, is another example. "And thou Capernaum, which art exhalted to heaven, shall be brought down to hell." In this text, heaven is a metaphor for height, and hell for depth. The meaning is, that the city of Capernaum, which had been highly exalted in prosperity and fame, would soon be destroyed, and brought to the dust. Clark remarks that, "This prediction of our Lord was literally fulfilled; for, in the wars between the Romans and Jews, these cities were totally destroyed, so that no traces are now found of Bethsaida, Chorazin, or Capernaum." This is just what David meant by all the wicked nations being turned into hell. They should be destroyed. In Thompson's Translation of the Bible, the text in the 9th of Psalms, is thus rendered, "Let the sinners be turned back to the mansion of the dead-all nations that forget God."

W. Rider, one of the Oxford divines, who wrote copious notes to an English edition of the Bible, published 1743, says in a note on this text. "The Hebrew word le-sheolah, doth not signify the state of the wicked, in the christian acceptation of the word; it does not signify the receptacle of living souls but the receptacle of dead bodies."

In Bishop Mant's edition of the Bible there is the following explanation of this text, on the authority of Mudge and Edwards, "By the word hell in this place