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sorts of ideal beings. First with those which make the real misery of mankind upon Earth; such as War, Discord, Labour, Grief, Cares, Distempers, and Old age and secondly with fancied terrors, and all the most frightful creatures of our own imagination; such as Gorgons, Harpies, Chimeras, and the like.

2. The next is the Water which all the departed were supposed to pass, to enter into the other world. This was called Styx, or the hateful passage. The imaginary personages of this division, are the souls of the departed who are either passing over, or suing for a passage; and the master of the vessel, who carries them over, one freight after another, according to his will and pleasure.

3. The third division begins immediately with the bank on the other side of the river, and was supposed to extend a great way in. It is subdivided again into several particular districts. The first seems to be the receptacle for infants. There is the limbo, for all such as have been put to death without a cause. Next is the place for those who have put a period to their own lives: a melancholy region, and situated among the marshes, made by the overflowing of the hateful river. After this are the fields of mourning, full of dark woods and groves, and inhabited by those who died for love. Last of all, spreads an open champaign country, allotted for the souls

of departed warriors. The name of this whole

division is Erebus. The several districts of this division seem to be disposed all in a line, one after the other; but after this the great line or road divides into two, of which the right-hand road leads to Elysium, or the place of the blest; and the lefthand road to Tartarus, or the place of the tormented.

4. The fourth general division of the subterranean world is this Tartarus, or the place of torments. There is a city in it and a prince to preside over it. Within the city is a vast deep pit in which the tortures are supposed to be performed. In this horrid part Virgil places two sorts of souls; first, such as have shown their impiety and rebellion towards the gods; and secondly, such as have been vile or mischievous among men. Those more particularly of the latter, who hated their brethren, used their parents ill, or cheated their dependants, who made no use of their riches, who committed incest or disturbed the marriage union of others, those who were rebellious subjects, or knavish servants, who were despisers of justice and betrayers of their country, and who made and unmade laws not for the good of the public, but only to get money themselves. All these, and the despisers of the gods, Virgil places in this most horrid division of the subterranean world, and in the vast abyss which was the most horrible part of that division.

5. The fifth division is that of Elysium, or the place

of the blest. Here Virgil places those who died for their country, those of pure lives, truly inspired poets, the inventors of arts, and all who have done good to mankind. He does not speak of any particular districts for these, but supposes that they have the liberty of going where they please in that delightful region, and conversing with whom they please. He only mentions one vale towards the end of it as appropriated to any particular use, and this is the vale of Lethe, or forgetfulness; in the river of which many of the ancient philosophers supposed the souls which had passed through some periods of their trial, would be immersed as a preliminary to being put into new bodies, to fill up the remainder of their probation in our upper world. In each of these three divisions on the other side of the river Styx was a prince or judge: Mincs for the regions of Erebus; Rhadamanthus for Tartarus, and Eacus for Elysium. Pluto and Proserpine had their palace at the entrance of the road to the Elysian fields, and presided as sovereigns over the whole subterranean world.1

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Whilst this very elaborate system of future existence was being evolved by the philosophers and poets of Greece and Rome, the Sheol of the Hebrews, under the influence of Babylonian and Persian

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contact, was developing new energies and characteristics. The Hebrews had gone into captivity with a belief in their shadowy Sheol, the abode of shades. Whilst Daniel by his life, and Ezekiel by his life and writings, were protesting against the polytheistic systems with which they were coming in contact, they were familiarizing their fellow-countrymen with the "beasts" and "living creatures" and all the other imagery of the denounced creeds: and while Ezekiel was inveighing against the form of beasts pourtrayed upon the temple walls, he was indelibly engraving on their minds the imagery of Babylonian mythology, imagery which survived in full force into Christian times, and formed the staple of the Apocalyptic vision of St. John, and an inexhaustible supply of allegories for the pious Christians of the present day to interpret. But another and a greater influence was at work.

The captive Hebrews came face to face with the Persian theology, a pure worship of fire; so much akin to their own traditional worship of Jehovah, who had manifested Himself in fire, and who dwelt in the light that no man could approach unto. Nothing was so calculated as this to blot out the lingering remnants of the gross Canaanitish rites, which had clung like a fœtid mantle round the ideal of their faith. The Jews passed through their fiery affliction of captivity, and the fiery influence of the Zend religion, and they returned to their native land

chastened and purified. With revised ideas of the Deity, they had imbibed revised ideas of the after life; the souls of men, after death, no longer passed a shadowy negative existence in a dark and silent underworld, where few but degraded gods could expect notice, even sufficient for punishment. But there was a decisive judgment for all with results trenchantly distinct; for the souls of the righteous, a gradual and blissful reviving into new life, as stage by stage they realize new joys until they reach Eternal light, and are welcomed out of the corruptible world into the imperishable life of spotless purity. The souls of the wicked sink lower and lower, through ever increasing stages of corruption and impurity, until they sink into final despair. It is true that hosts of angels and demons troop into the system, obscuring, materializing, and degrading much that is otherwise refined and noble in the Persian creed, but such incrustations were and are the common inheritance of many systems, and although they obscure they do not destroy the main distinctive features.

The outcome of all this was a belief in a Hades for all, a Purgatory for most, and a Gehenna of fire for a few of the eminently wicked. The Rabbins in the Talmud revel in fanciful descriptions of the locality, and the nature and incidents of this nether world; but these views have been summed up as follows:"Ordinary transgressors of Israel, whose merits pre

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