sciousness of death to an everlasting existence in his kingdom. THE PRISON The word prison does not denote a receptacle in which the wicked will be tormented for ever. It sometimes occurs in the sense of grave: as in Isa. 42: 1-7, " Behold my servant (the Christ,) whom I uphold; mine elect in whom my soul delighteth. I, the Lord, have called thee in righteousness, and will hold thy hand, and will keep thee, and give thee for a covenant of the people, for a light of the Gentiles; to open the blind eyes (of the liv ing) to bring out the prisoners (the dead,) from the pri son (the grave,) [and] them that recline in darkness out of the prison house (the grave)." The same general sentiment is found in Isa. 49: 8, "In an acceptable time have I heard thee....and I will preserve thee, and give thee for a covenant of the people, to establish the earth, to cause the desolate heritages to be inherited; that thou mayest say to the prisoners, (those who are in graves,) go forth; to them that are in darkness, show yourselves." Ps. 1427," Bring my soul out of prison (the grave) that I may praise thy name." Isa. 61: 1, "The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me; because the Lord hath anointed me to preach good tidings to the meek; he hath sent me to bind up the broken hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison (the grave) to them that are bound (therein); to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord, and the day of ven geance of our God." Luke 4: 18. Ps. 69, "For the Lord heareth the poor and despiseth not his prisoners." Speaking of high ones and kings, God says in Isa. 24: 22, "And they shall be gathered together as prisoners are gathered in the pit:" may refer to their being collected in the valleys of Jeshoshaphat prior to their destruction in Gehenna: or, being brought down to death, be "visited" with a resurrection; and ther "the Lol of armies, shall reign in Mount Zion." CHAPTER XI. EXAMINATION OF SHEOL AND HADES-HELL. The most important words in this connection are the Hebrew word sheol, and its Greek counterpart hadles We intend to demonstrate that neither of these words ever mean a definite place, much less a place where per sons are tormented. Professor Stuart says sheol has been derived from shoal, to ask, crave, demand, require, seek for, etc; it is equal to the Latin, orcus rapax-insatiable sepulchre, the grave. We give a few instances that bear out this meaning. Prov. 27: 20, "Sheol, and destruction are never (sovaia) satisfied; so the eyes of man are never (sovaia) satisfied." Sheol tr. hell. Prov. 30: 15, The horse leech hath two daughters, crying, Give, give. There are three things that are never satisfied, yea, four things say not, It is enough: Sheol; and the barren womb; the earth that is not filled with water; and the fire that saith not, It is ENOUGH." Sheol is here tr. the grave. Isa. 5: 14, "Therefore shcol hath enlarged herself, and opened her mouth without measure: and their glory, and their multitude, and their pomp, and he that rejoiceth, shall descend into it." Hab. 2: 5, "Yea, also, because he transgresseth by wine, he is a proud man, neither keepeth at home, who enlargeth his desire as shcol, and is as death, and cannot be satisfied, but gathereth unto him all nations, and heapeth unto him all people." These examples confirm the craving nature of shcoi; and while there are mortal persons upon the earth, the grave will be asking for thein. The obvious sense of shcol is the grave in a general sense; that is, the state of death The dominion of the dead, into which the righteous and the wicked alike are cast, and in which they both alike repose. It is not a specific place, but a state. Some only are in any kind of grave; but all are in sheol, the state of death. Sheol never occurs in the plural; so if in going down into a specified place, or grave, one person is said to go into sheol; and in going down into another specified place, or grave, another person is said to be in sheol; as there is but one shcol, and these two persons are in different places; therefore sheol cannot be a place, but must be a state: they are both in sheol, and both are in the state of death. In the German Bible, sheol is translated holle, which seems to be very much like our old Saxon word helle, or hell-the definition of which see in another place-in all places excepting Gen. 37: 35, where it is translated die grube,' grave, tomb, or sepulchre; and in Gen. 42:38 die grube'; 2 Sam. 22: 6, schmerzen des todes,' pains of death. But observe, Luther has frequently rendered the Hebrew word bour, a PIT, by the German word holle: as in Ps. 28: 1; 88:4; Prov. 28: 17; Isa. 14: 19; and Ezek. 31: 14. But then, Luther did not believe in the immortality of the soul, nor in its separate conscious existence, nor in everlasting torments, and therefore did not perceive any great difference of mean ing between the grave, and hell, and the pit. In his Defence, Prop. 27th, published 1520, he classes the 'immortality of the soul' "with all those monstrous opinions to be found in the Roman dunghill of decretals." If he had entertained any idea that any of his degenerate successors would have given to his word holle, any other meaning than what is implied in a state of death, that word would not have found a place in his version. Holle (we believe) means a place covered, or concealed. The learned Tremellius, who was a Jew by birth, and professor of Hebrew at Sedan, where he died in 1580, translated the Syriac Version of the Bible, the oldest version extant, into Latin. He uniformly rendered the Syriac synonym for sheol into Latin, by sepulchr-um, i, o, u, (the different endings showing only the different grammatical construction,) which means the sepulchre, grave, or tomb, excepting in one single instance, Ps. 49: 14, last clause, where he has rendered it, infernus, hell, because he thought that the wicked could not be consigned to the same place as that from which the soul of the Psalmist was redeemed. Yet he acknowledges that sheol, in most places, meant the general receptacle of the dead. In the French Version, the word sheol is usually translated sepulchre, and only once enfer, hell, in Joo 11: 8, where it has no relation to the dead, but is contrasted with the height of heaven. In the Greek Septuagint, the version in use in our Savior's time, sheol is rendered hades, the unseen, sixty times out of sixty-three; twice by thanatos, death, viz., in 2 Sam. 22: 6, and Prov. 23: 14; and once by buthros, pit, in Ez. 32: 19, 21. As the Apocrypha is not found in Hebrew but only in Greek, and as the Septuagint has usually made hades the symbol of sheol, we give those places where hades is found, as probably showing where sheol was in the Hebrew original. The word occurs twenty times, and is translated hell eight times, viz., 2 Esd. 2: 29; 4: 8; 8: 53; Tob. 13:2; Wisd. 17: 14; Eccl. 21: 10; 51: 5, 6 ; and grave twelve times, viz., 2 Esd. 4: 41; Tob. 3:10; Est. 13: 7; Eccl. 14: 12, 16; 17: 27; 28: 18, 21; 41 4; Bar. 3: 11; Dan. 3: 66; 2 Mac. 6: 23. Sheol occurs sixty-four times in the O. T.; three times it is translated pit; thirty times grave; and thirty-one times hell. It would be passing strange, if the same word meant a particular place, where a single soul corrupted in unconscious silence, and also a receptacle where all the wicked souls or persons were congregated and tormented, and at the same time, a place where all the righteous dead were congregated in conscious enjoyment. Originally, the word seems to have meant the grave; but as all dead men are not in graves, it came to mean the state of death in general. The burned men and the buried men are equally in sheol, whether they be righteous or whether they be wicked. Sheol is translated pit, Job 17: 16; Num. 16: 30 and 33v. See article Pit. Sheol is translated grave, Gen. 37: 35; 42: 38; 44: 29, 21; 1 Sam. 2: 6; 1 Kings 2:6, 9; Job 7:9; 14. 13; 1:13; 21:13; 24: 19; Ps. 6:5; 30: 3; 31: 17; 49: 14, 15; 88: 3; 89: 48; 141: 7; Prov. 1: 12; 30: 16; Ecc. 9: 10; Cant. 8:6; Isa. 14: 11; 38: 10, 18; Ezk. 31: 15; Hos. 13: 14, twice. Sheol is translated HELL, properly, as a general thing, IF intended to mean the same as the old Saxon word hell, the covered receptacle of all the dead, where the good and the bad repose together in a state of unconsciousness, or as defined under the Saxon word hell, on an other page; but very improperly, and very shamefully, IF intended to be a symbol of the 'orthodox' and tradi tionary hell, as a place of conscious torment for the wicked only. But we, without the slightest reservation, condemn the translators; for they have evidently endeavored to obscure the true sense of the word sheol, and to uphold the traditionary meaning of hell at the expense of truth and uniformity. Had sheol been uniformly translated pit, or grave, or hell, or the state of the dead, or even the mansions of the dead, no such absurd idea, as that of a place of conscious torment, could ever have been associated with it. Sheol is translated hell in the following places, viz. Deut. 32: 22; 2 Sam. 22: 6; Job 11:8; 26:6; Ps. 9:17; 16: 10; 18:5; 55: 15; 86:13; 116:3; 139: 8; Pro. 5:5; 7: 27; 9: 18; 15: 11, 24; 23: 14; 27: 20; Isa. 5: 14; 14:9, 15; 28: 15, 18; 57:9; Eze. 31: 16, 17; 32: 21, 27; Am. 9:2; Jonah 2:2; Hab. 2: 5. Sheol is the only word that is translated hell in the O. T., and as we shall see, it always means the state of death, the grave, and corruption; and never can inean a place of conscious torment. The learned George Campbell observes, that the word sheol in the O. T. means no more than kever, the grave, or sepulchre, excepting that it has a more general sense. Kever, we have seen, is never translated hell. To show more conspicuously the glaring absurdity of considering the Hebrew sheol, as a burning hell for the torment of the wicked, we adduce sheol as being the name of the first king of Israel. In later times this name has been differently pointed, thereby making a little dif ference in the sound of the letters, without altering in the least degree their meaning, and is written Saul. See the meaning of Saul in Cruden's Concordance, p. 716. This caps the climax. It will be recollected that the |