all; or, as others have fancifully
construed it, the object of universal inquiry, the unknown mansion
concerning which all are anxiously inquisitive. The place is
conceived on an immense scale, shrouded in accompaniments of
gloomy grandeur and peculiar awe: an enormous cavern in the earth,
filled with night; a stupendous hollow kingdom, to which are
poetically attributed valleys and gates, and in which are
congregated the slumberous and shadowy hosts of the rephaim, never
able to go out of it again forever. Its awful stillness is
unbroken by noise. Its thick darkness is uncheered by light. It
stretches far down under the ground. It is wonderfully deep. In
language that reminds one of Milton's description of hell, where
was

"No light, but rather darkness visible,"

Job describes it as "the land of darkness, like the blackness of
death shade, where is no order, and where the light is as
darkness." The following passages, selected almost at random, will
show the ideas entertained of the place, and confirm and
illustrate the foregoing statements. "But he considers not that in
the valleys of Sheol are her guests." "Now shall I go down into
the gates of Sheol." "The ground slave asunder, and the earth
opened her mouth, and swallowed them up, and their houses, and all
their men, and all their goods: they and all that appertained to
them went down alive into Sheol, and the earth closed upon them."
Its depth is contrasted with the height of the sky. "Though they
dig into Sheol, thence shall mine hand take them; though they
climb up to heaven, thence will I bring them down." It is the
destination of all; for, though the Hebrews believed in a world of
glory above the solid ceiling of the dome of day, where Jehovah
and the angels dwelt, there was no promise, hope, or hint that any
man could ever go there. The dirge like burden of their poetry was
literally these words: "What man is he that liveth and shall not
see death? Shall he deliver his spirit from the hand of Sheol?"
The old Hebrew graves were crypts, wide, deep holes, like the
habitations of the troglodytes. In these subterranean caves they
laid the dead down; and so the Grave became the mother of Sheol, a
rendezvous of the fathers, a realm of the dead, full of eternal
ghost life.

This under world is dreary and altogether undesirable, save as an
escape from extreme anguish. But it is not a place of retribution.
Jahn says, "That, in the belief of the ancient Hebrews,