has that meaning, but they will serve as a specimen of the use of the word, when employed in its secondary sense. Does it seem strange to any, that the place of future punishment is not revealed with more clearness in the Old Testament, they will do well to inquire with how much distinctness the place of future happiness is there spoken of. There is as much said, and as distinctly said in the Old Testament, of hell, as there is of heaven. Mr. B. makes much of the fact that there is no instance of the use of the word where it means of itself the place of eternal misery, that is, that the word does not of itself determine the duration of that punishment. But with what fairness let the reader judge. Is it the property of a name of a place of punishment to determine the duration of that punishment? Does heaven the name of the place of happiness, of itself determine the duration of that happiness? If I should undertake to prove that there is no future happiness for the righteous, I could with as much propriety say, that the word heaven is no where used as the name for a place of eternal happiness. Of the same character is the following suggestion of Mr. B.—" It is now generally conceded that the doctrine of endless punishment is not taught in the Old Testament. Mr. Stuart does not pretend that it is taught there, but begs his readers to grant that probably future punishment may be taught in five texts." Here are almost as many misrepresentations as words. The assertion that it is generally conceded that endless punishment is not taught in the Old Testament, is false, and Mr. B. ought to know it-I do not say that he does. I think I may say that he knows that orthodox writers generally interpret Daniel 12: 2. Some to shame and everlasting contempt-and Isaiah 33: 14. Who can dwell with everlasting burnings-as teaching the doctrine of endless punishment. Then he conveys the idea that Mr. S. concedes that it is not taught there, when from the very book of Mr. S. out of which he professes to take the concession, and to which he has published two professed replies, he might have read, and it is charitable to presume he has. read Mr. Stuart's interpretation of the word ever

lasting in Daniel 12: 2, to mean a proper eternity. But the falsehood ends not here. He tells us Mr. S. begs his readers to grant that future punishment may be taught in five texts, when Mr. Stuart has referred his readers to fifteen texts in which the doctrine is probably implied. The readers of Balfour who have never seen Stuart's Essays, must have strange impressions of that book.

I will now notice Mr. B.'s general concluding remarks upon the chapter upon sheol. His first remark is that "In no passage is sheol represented as a place of fire or torment. Nothing of this kind stands connected with it in the Old Testament." This is false. For in Deutronomy we read—A fire is kindled in my anger, and it shall burn to the lowest sheol.

His second remark is "That olim rendered everlasting, forever, &c., is never connected with sheol in any shape whatever." This is true, and what is more-this world olim is no where connected with the word translated heaven, meaning the place of future blessedness.

Remark 3d. "No persons are said to be alive in sheol, to be punished in any way by any means whatever." This is false in two particulars. In Isaiah 14. it is said, sheol from beneath is moved for thee, to meet thee-all they shall speak and say unto thee, &c. This you say is figurative. Very well. But the use of such a figure presupposes life and consciousness in sheol. In regard to the assertion that none are said to be punished there, its falsity appears in the Psalmist's assertion that death shall feed on them there. But suppose we grant all that is here asserted, and what follows? Cannot a place of punishment be named without being accompanied with descriptions of the several inflictions of punishment there?

Remark 4th. "The Old Testament writers and modern christians speak very differently about sheol and hell if both designate the same thing." Here is palpable unfairness. Mr. B. knows that none pretends that sheol is in all cases synonymous with hell, so that hell could properly be used for it where it means the grave. It would be strange if the Old

Testament writers should not use a word which most generally meant the place of the dead, differently from our use of the word hell. And it is neither their fault nor ours, that the English word hell, has not the same extent of meaning with the Hebrew word sheol. Our author has some strange notions about the nature and origin of language. And p. 47, he arraigns before him all the users of the English language for 200 years back, to answer for the crime of perverting the meaning of the word hell in the following terms: "Who has been so kind as to make the world of future misery the exclusive sense of hell, since the common translation was made?" And then he goes on to give his charge a wider range and a longer reach. "I ask why should hell have the sense of future misery at all." Sure enough Mr. Balfour-why should there be a word to express such an idea. But men always will be so wicked as to have words to express their ideas. And when you shall succeed to blot from the minds of men every trace of the idea of future misery, you will be able to redeem that word hell from perversion. Mr. B. says, "If their belief was the same as in our day, why do we never find them express that belief, about eternal punishment, as is now done in books and sermons and conference meetings and in common conversation." This question might be retorted. If the Old and New Testament writers believed there would in the future world be no difference between the righteous and the wicked, between him that serveth God and him that serveth him not, why do we never hear them express that belief, as it is now expressed in books and sermons and conference meetings? Perhaps if we had as much knowledge of the books and sermons and conference meetings and common conversation of David and Solomon and Isaiah and Ezra, as we have of those of the present day, this question would not have been asked. It is an unheard of requisition, that the only book that has survived of a nation that flourished 3,000 years ago shall give us all the detail, of what passed in books and sermons and conference meetings and common conversation.

Mr. B.'s answer to objections in the close of the chapter, I am little concerned to notice. For as the objections are chiefly the offspring of his own brain, I am little interested to defend them. He surely has the best right to determine whether they shall live or die.

CHAPTER VIII.

MEANING OF HADES. MEANING OF TARTARUS.

HADES is the word which the Septuagint translators of the Hebrew of the Old Testament into Greek, have usually employed to translate sheol. And it has essentially the corresponding meaning of sheol. It is used in the New Testament in the same sense which sheol has in the Old. The heathen Greeks connected with their hades, some of the creations of their superstitions. But through all the descriptions which appear in their poets, the leading facts of the Hebrew sheol can be discovered. The Greek poets have more particularly developed their notions of hades. They make it to be the region of the dead, the under world, the world of the dead, and this subdivided into upper and lower, the upper part being an Elysium, the abode of the good, and the other a Tartarus or place of punishment for the wicked. The word hades to which those who spoke the Greek language had given this meaning was employed as the word to express the Hebrew idea of sheol. As sheol, though not originally expressive of that, was capable in a secondary sense of expressing the place of future punishment, so hades was capable of denoting the place of punishment. And as hades by the Greeks implied both a place of happiness, and a place of misery, as separate divisions of the same mansion of the dead, it even more naturally answers the purpose of expressing a place of punishment, That the word is always used for a place of punishment in the New Testament, is not pretended. That it has this meaning in some instances, I shall proceed to show.

Matt. 11: 23. And thou Capernaum, which art exalted unto heaven, shalt be brought down to hell. So Luke 10: 15, the