ehenna." Give these words a literal interpretation, and they
mean, "If your eyes or your hands are the occasions of crime, if
they tempt you to commit offences which will expose you to public
execution, to the ignominy and torture heaped upon felons put to a
shameful death and then flung among the burning filth of Gehenna,
pluck them out, cut them off betimes, and save yourself from such
a frightful end; for it is better to live even thus maimed than,
having a whole body, to be put to a violent death." No one can
suppose that Jesus meant to convey such an idea as that when he
uttered these words. We must, then, attribute a deeper, an
exclusively moral, significance to the passage. It means, "If you
have some bosom sin, to deny and root out which is like tearing
out an eye or cutting off a hand, pause not, but overcome and
destroy it immediately, at whatever cost of effort and suffering;
for it is better to endure the pain of fighting and smothering a
bad passion than to submit to it and allow it to rule until it
acquires complete control over you, pervades your whole nature
with its miserable unrest, and brings you at last into a state of
woe of which Gehenna and its dreadful associations are a fit
emblem." A verse spoken, according to Mark, in immediate
connection with the present passage, confirms the figurative sense
we have attributed to it: "Whosoever shall cause one of these
little ones that believe in me to fall, it were better for him
that a millstone were hanged around his neck and he were plunged
into the midst of the sea;" that is, in literal terms, a man had
better meet a great calamity, even the loss of life, than commit a
foul crime and thus bring the woe of guilt upon his soul.

The phrase, "their worm dieth not, and their fire is not
quenched," is a part of the imagery naturally suggested by the
scene in the Valley of Hinnom, and was used to give greater
vividness and force to the moral impression of the discourse. By
an interpretation resulting either from prejudice or ignorance, it
is generally held to teach the doctrine of literal fire torments
enduring forever. It is a direct quotation from a passage in
Isaiah which signifies that, in a glorious age to come, Jehovah
will cause his worshippers to go forth from new moon to new moon
and look upon the carcasses of the wicked, and see them devoured
by fire which shall not be quenched and gnawed by worms which
shall not die, until the last relics of them