s prevented from drinking
of its water. Lastly, he said he could not tell how he came back to
life.

Plato, after having related this fable, as he terms it, or this
apologue, concludes from it that the soul is immortal, and that to
gain a blessed life we must live uprightly, which will lead us to
heaven, where we shall enjoy that beatitude of a thousand years which
is promised us.

We see by this, 1. That a man may live a good while without eating or
breathing, or giving any sign or life. 2. That the Greeks believed in
the metempsychosis, in a state of beatitude for the just, and pains of
a thousand years duration for the wicked. 3. That destiny does not
hinder a man from doing either good or evil. 4. That he had a genius,
or an angel, who guided and protected him. They believed in judgment
after death, and that the souls of the just were received into what
they called the Elysian Fields.

Footnotes:

[615] John xi. 14.

[616] Luke vii. 11, 12.

[617] 2 Kings iv. 25.

[618] 2 Kings xiii. 21.

[619] Luke xvi. 24.

[620] Plato, lib. x. de Rep. p. 614.

CHAPTER LIV.

THE TRADITIONS OF THE PAGANS CONCERNING THE FUTURE LIFE ARE DERIVED
FROM THE HEBREWS AND EGYPTIANS.

All these traditions are clearly to be found in Homer, Virgil, and
other Greek and Latin authors; they were doubtless originally derived
from the Hebrews, or rather the Egyptians, from whom the Greeks took
their religion, which they arranged to their own taste. The Hebrews
speak of the _Rephaims_,[621] of the impious giants "who groan under
the waters." Solomon says[622] that the wicked shall go down to the
abyss, or hell, with the Rephaims. Isaiah, describing the arrival of
the King of Babylon in hell, says[623] that "the giants have raised
themselves up to meet him with honor, and have said unto him, thou has
been pierced with wounds even as we are; thy pride has been
precipitated into hell. Thy bed shall be of rottenness, and thy
covering of worms." Ezekiel describes[624] in the same manner the
descent of the King of Assyria into hell--"In the day that Ahasuerus
went down into hell, I commanded a general mourning; for him I closed
up the abyss, and arrested the course of the waters. You are at last
brought down to the bottom of the earth with the trees of Eden; you
will rest there with all those who have been killed by the sword;
there is Pharaoh with all his host," &c. In the Gospel,[625] there is
a great gulf between the bosom