s were exempt. There was a difference, greatly for the
worse in the latter, between their condition in the two deaths. In
the former they descended to the dark under world, the silent and
temporary abode of the universal dead; but in the latter they went
down "into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the devil and the
beast and the false prophet are, and shall be tormented day and
night for

42 Divin. Instit. lib. vii. cap. 20, 21, 26.

43 on Deut. xxxiii. 6.

44 Gfrorer, Geschichte des Urchristenthums, kap. 10. s. 289.

ever and ever." For "Death and Hades, having delivered up the dead
which were in them, were cast into the lake of fire. This is the
second death." It is plain that here the common locality of
departed souls is personified as two demons, Death and Hades, and
the real thought meant to be conveyed is, that this region is to
be sunk beneath a "Tartarean drench," which shall henceforth roll
in burning billows over its victims there, "the smoke of their
torment ascending up for ever and ever." This awful imagery of a
lake of flaming sulphur, in which the damned were plunged, was of
comparatively late origin or adoption among the Jews, from whom
the Christians received it. The native Hebrew conception of the
state of the dead was that of the voiceless gloom and dismal
slumber of Sheol, whither all alike went. The notion of fiery
tortures inflicted there on the wicked was either conceived by the
Pharisees from the loathed horrors of the filth fire kept in the
vale of Hinnom, outside of Jerusalem, (which is the opinion of
most commentators,) or was imagined from the sea of burning
brimstone that showered from heaven and submerged Sodom and
Gomorrah in a vast fire pool, (which is maintained by
Bretschneider and others,) or was derived from the Egyptians, or
the Persians, or the Hindus, or the Greeks, all of whom had lakes
and rivers of fire in their theological hells, long before history
reveals the existence of such a belief among the Jews, (which is
the conclusion of many learned authors and critics.)

We have now reached the last feature in the scheme of eschatology
shadowed forth in the Apocalypse, the most obscure and difficult
point of all, namely, the locality and the principal elements of
the final felicity of the saved. The difficulty of clearly
settling this question is twofold, arising, first, from the swift
and partial glimpses which are all that the writer yields us on
the subject, and, s