ustice comes, "the horse
shall wade up to his breast, and the chariot shall sink to its
axle, in the blood of sinners."20 The author teaches that the
souls of men at death go into the under world, "a place deep and
dark, where all souls shall be collected;" "where they shall
remain in darkness till the day of judgment," the spirits of the
righteous being in peace and joy, separated from the tormented
spirits of the wicked, who have spurned the Messiah and persecuted
his disciples.21 A day of judgment is at hand. "Behold, he cometh,
with ten thousand of his saints, to execute judgment." Then the
righteous shall rise from the under world, be approved, become as
angels, and ascend to heaven. But the wicked shall not rise: they
remain imprisoned below forever.22 The angels descend to earth to
dwell with men, and the saints ascend to heaven to dwell with
angels.23 "From beginning to end, like the Apocalypse, the book is
filled," says Professor Stuart, (and the most careless reader must
remark it,) "with threats for the wicked persecutors and
consolations for the suffering pious." A great number of
remarkable correspondences between passages in this book and
passages in the Apocalypse solicit a notice which our present
single object will not allow us to give them here. An under world
divided into two parts, a happy for the good, a wretched for the
bad; temporary woes prevailing on the earth; the speedy advent of
Christ for a vindication of his power and his servants; the
resurrection of the dead; the final translation of the accepted
into heaven, and the hopeless dooming of the rejected into the
abyss, these are the features in the book before us which we are
now to remember.

There is one other extant apocryphal book whose contents are
strictly appropriate to the subject we have in hand, namely, the
APOCALYPSE OF JOHN.24 It claims to be the work of the Apostle John
himself. It represents John as going to Mount Tabor after the
ascension of Christ, and there praying that it may be revealed to
him when the second coming of Christ will occur, and what will be
the consequences of it. In answer to his request, a long and
minute disclosure is made. The substance of it is, that, after
famines and woes, Antichrist will appear and reign three years.
Then Enoch and Elijah will come to expose him; but they will die,
and all men with them. The earth will be purified with fire, the
dead will rise, Christ

18 Book of Enoch, translated