debted for the central
dogmas of our religion! No, these things are imagery, not essence,
the human element of imaginative error with which the divine
element of truth has been overlaid, and from whose darkening and
corrupt company this is to be extricated.

There are, in the New Testament, in addition to the relevant
metaphors which we have already examined, several others of great
impressiveness and importance. We must now explain these, separate
the truths and errors popularly associated with them, and leave
the subject with an exposition of the real method of the divine
government and the true idea of the day of judgment, in contrast
with the prevalent ecclesiastical perversions of them.

The part played in theological speculation and popular religious
belief by imagery borrowed from the scenery and methods of
judicial tribunals, the procedures and enforcement of penal law,
has not been less prominent and profound than the influence
exerted by natural, political, and military metaphors. The power,
the pomp, the elaborate spectacle, the mysterious formalities, the
frightful penalties, the intense personal hopes and fears,
associated with the trial of culprits in courts or before the head
of a nation, must always have sunk so deeply into the minds of men
as to be vividly present in imagination to be affixed as typical
stamps on their theories concerning the judgments of God and the
future world. This process is perhaps nowhere more distinctly
shown than in the belief of the ancient Egyptians. Before the
sarcophagus containing the mummy was ferried over the holy lake to
be deposited in the tomb, the friends and relatives of the
departed, and his enemies and accusers, if he had any, together
with forty two assessors, each of whom had the oversight of a
particular sin, assembled on the shore and sat in judgment. The
deceased was put on his trial before them: and, if justified,
awarded an honorable burial; if condemned, disgraced by the
withholding of the funeral rites. Now the papyrus rolls found with
the mummies give a description of the judgment of the dead, a
picture of the fate of the disembodied soul in the Egyptian Hades,
minutely agreeing in many particulars with the foregoing ceremony.
Ma, the Goddess of Justice, leads the soul into the judgment hall,
before the throne of Osiris, where stands a great balance with a
symbol of truth in one scale, the symbol of a human heart in the
other. The accuser is heard, a