ments, what, in some instances, may be denominated undesigned or inadvertent notices of the intermediate state; by which terms it is not meant that the inspired penmen wrote without being conscious of what they were transmitting, but merely, that in many cases they gave notice of this state in hints, or eliptical expressions; sometimes in circumlocutory phrases, conscious that their meaning would be instantly caught by their countrymen. Remaining satisfied with this, they looked no farther, and gave themselves no concern as to the obscurity into which language of this kind might fall, or as to the construction that after ages might put upon it. Of these notices, some are more express and clear than others, according to the particular adjuncts and circumstances with which they come attended; but taken altogether, they furnish an irresistible body of evidence that there are distinct places of abode assigned to reprobate and happy souls during the interval which takes place between death and the resurrection. * Thus the Latins say of death, discessit, vixerunt; and with respect to the state of the soul, abiere ad plures, abiere in communem locum, which in the language of Job is, they have gone to the house of assembly for all the living. Facit quod faciendum fuit Plautus. To denote that there is no resisting the law of mortality. CHAPTER CHAPTER XVI. To investigate what Opinion the antient Hebrews entertained with respect to the Place of departed Spirits, under the Appellation of Sheol in the Old Testament, and Hades in the New. EVIDENCE of this nature, as being direct and home, must be viewed as possessing a weight superior to that which is indirect and circumlocutory. It is exceeding unsatisfactory that our translators should, without the assignment of a reason why, tell us, that Sheol sometimes denotes a grave or cavity dug in the earth; at other times Hell. In the ordinary way of understanding these, there cannot be two things in nature more remote. The consequence arising from this is, that the ideas of the reader are at times confused. When the term Hell occurs, he is ready to attach to it his idea of the place of the damned; and where it is rendered the grave, he will think of nothing farther than the repository of the body formed in the earth. It is singular that when our translators found the term Sheol clothed with circumstances which prevented them from rendering it the grave, how, when it occurred divested of these, they should Kk 2 render render it by a term as opposite to Hell as light is to darkness. Surely what is predicated of it once, such as its situation and extent being altogether unknowable to mortals, must for ever hold true, although not explicitly set forth on every oc casion. Betwixt an antient Hebrew and a modern inhabitant of Europe, there would, from a view of the original Sheol, and the translation grave, be this difference, that the latter would think only of a cavity dug in the earth; whereas the former would have in his eye the abode of the departed spirit. But it might be urged, would not the Hebrew have the grave also in his idea? Doubtless, but not under the name Sheol, but Keber, the common term in that language for the grave. When the patriarch Jacob says, "I will go down to Sheol to my son mourning," our translators, as it would seem, found the term Hell here would not suit the public ear that had been so much inured to the ordinary acceptation, and on this account they render it the grave. But this is rather missing than giving the sense of the original to the extent intended. Joseph was, as understood by Jacob, now dead: but this patriarch could not have the grave in his idea, as the place where the body of his son was deposited, after he had learned from his other sons that Joseph was torn in pieces by a wild beast, and of course course in no grave at all. On the other hand, when in the following sentences it is said, "Sheol and destruction are before the Lord, how much more the hearts of the children of men? It is deep as Sheol, what canst thou know?" they saw the circumstances here, viz. its invisibility and immensity of depth, would not permit it to be rendered a grave, they haye therefore turned it by the termHell. Here there would again be a wide chasm between the ideas of the Hebrew, and those of the modern. As this latter, in the former instance, fell far short in taking up the full extent of the original, he would now in his conception outstep it, and clothe it with those circumstances of horror which properly belong to that place of torment, which the antient Jews term Gehenna, and to which the reprobate part of mankind are to be consigned after the last judgment. Understanding Shcol to signify only a grave, there is a feebleness introduced which takes off very much from the threatenings of scripture, so as to render them of little or no effect. For example, we are told in the book of Proverbs, that the way of life to the wise is above, that he may depart from Sheol below. But from this, if it inean only grave, who is it that can deliver himself, let him be ever so famed for wisdom ?. From the lower, he may by taking heed to cleanse his way according to the divine word. Solomon directs directs to beat a child with the rod, that he may not die; but what father is it that can, by any mode of correction, save his son from death, or from Sheol, if signifying the grave? He may, however, save him from the lower Sheol, or, what the antient Hebrews termed, as being synonymous with it, the second death. Solomon, that master of wisdom, gives it as an apothegm, deserving to be remembered and acted upon," that whatever our hands find to do, to do it with our might, for," adds he, "there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge in Sheol, whether we are going." In our version, it is in the grave. But why should Solomon tell us, with so much the air of wisdom and important discovery, whatwould draw the smile from the untutored Indian? Was this latter to learn, for the first time, that a corpse in the grave neither acts nor thinks? Or if Solomon had merely the grave in his eye, why did he not express it by its usual term Keber? But the sentiment rises, when he would put us on meditating on the destination of the departed spiritthat in that world, although there is a rest for the souls of the pious, yet there are also awaiting the impious, mansions of despair, in which they shall, after death, lift up their eyes and be in tormentthat the period of exertion is now past, to return no more: that whatever the disembodied spirit may know, will now be of no avail, it being in that |