plant which was only found growing on a single island of the great human world, and which demanded some special and miraculous condition of soil and air and sunlight, there might well be anxiety lest, if the conditions should at any time fail, it would perish from the earth. Such a rare exotic would not bear transplanting into some foreign soil where it would be deprived of its special aids. But religion is no exotic. It is the hardy native of every island and continent of human life, and is self-renewing. Its life is in itself. No flower of a summer day is it; but the frost-proof and blastdefying oak whose strength, having already matched itself with the tempests of all the past, may with confidence confront the future. "This is he who felled by foes, Sprung harmless up, refreshed by blows." Because it is a native of the soul and manifests such power of accommodation to circumstances, such power of selfadjustment and self-recovery, such marvelous activity,-always able in every fall to light upon its feet and, like the giant, refreshed by the touch of earth, renew the conflict;-because of its bound less hope, always facing the future with beaming eye and advancing foot; because it has risen unharmed out of the ruins of fallen empires, how can there be anything but unlimited confidence in its deathless power and its ultimate victory? Because the stars have been so long in the sky and seem to be regular and constant in all their movements, as if they felt themselves under the sway of some mighty law, is a good reason why we may expect them to be there to night. In this, "Old experience does attain To something of prophetic strain." If in their coming, some night, there should be signs of disorder, if some of those great worlds should fail to appear, there might be some reason for our solicitude. Our confidence in the regularity of nature's vast operations would be shaken, and all predictions might be silenced. So, if looking upon religion, there should appear signs of inextricable confusion, if some of its great prin ciples had disappeared, or were giving an uncertain lustre, there might be some dread that the whole sky in which they have so long hung was about to be left blank and desolate. It is true the air, within the years of our memory, has sometimes seemed to be full of falling ideas; and some have, in their alarm, raised the report that the whole fabric was passing away. But now it is seen that no principle essential to the moral and spiritual life of the race has disappeared. In November, our earth passes through the meteoric belt, and the air, at times, is full of what seems to be falling stars. Looking upon that spectacle for the first time, one might think that the final doom of earth and sky was near at hand. But, after a time, it ceases and all things great and essential remain unharmed. There, grand and silent still, arches the firmament; there, unhurt, is Sirius; there Orion and the Pleiades still looking down upon us, flinging their gentle beams across all those mapless spaces straight into our eyes, as if they would signal to us that whatever else might prove fickle they would be constant in their friendships; and the next morning up rises the sun, punctual to his appointment, bringing the new day of duty and surprise. In the world of thought, the mind has been passing through a meteoric belt. What has been falling and awakening such apprehension was not any of the great worlds which have so long graced the spiritual sky, but only some of the smaller particles which hovered for a time around those worlds. There, still is the infinite blue arching over the, soul; there, still, unharmed, moving through its mighty orbit, scattering its light and genial warmth upon all the earth, is the idea of God; there, still, are the grand and ancient ethical laws; there the orb of Duty; there, hurling its blaze of light full upon the deeds of hearts and of nations, is the fixed star of Justice; and there are Faith, Hope, Love, shining with undimmed light down upon the pathway of all wandering mortals. Seeking in our surroundings for an 66 Ebbing tide that left Strewn with dead miracles those eldest shores;" but as the flood tide of all these modern shores filling every "inlet and creek and bay" of being, and strewing the beach with living miracles and unmistakable signs of his presence and power. Science may have destroyed some of our ancient idols; but it has given in place of them the truth which the idol dimly shadowed. If some of the old ideas of God and man have been disenchanted, and some of the old mysteries solved, the enchantment has only moved into larger ideas; and the Mystery that is universal and unceasing is now awakening wonder and reverence in all thoughtful minds. Listening to the latest revelation made through star and atom, through grass blade and forest, the devout heart feels the surge of emotion sweeping through it and over it; and, though not near the hour or place for worship, the lips unconsciously frame the words of prayer and praise. Science is one of the stones which the builders neglected; but now it is, with shouts of rejoicing, made one of the chief corner-stones of that marvelous temple which shall endure until the end of time. Still another cheering sign, which our outlook reveals, is the closer alliance between religion and ethics. The chasm which theology once made between them has been filled up. They are married and have become one flesh. Worship and conduct are halves of the same "Like perfect music unto noble words; Sit side by side, full summed in all their powers, Self reverent each and reverencing each, But like each other even as those who If we need still another, guaranty for its continued existence it may be found in the respect that religion has for utility. The great charities of the world are religious at their core. How readily does religion lend its aid to every humanitarian movement! It was not always so in its organized form. Its whole thought and energy were directed towards another world. Now a change is manifest. It is as much a motive and guide for this life as for another. It has not ceased to dream its great dream of heaven; but it has respect also to earth. It still suggests that we are embosomed in mystery, which should keep us reverent and quiet; but it suggests also that life is for action as well as for thought: and that, while thinking of the ineffable wonder and awe of the world around and above us, we should not fail to keep our feet on the earth, nor forget to place them often in those paths which lead to acts of kindness and justice. It is at once a conscience and a reason, a passion and a judgment, a worship and a work, a divine inspiration and a human. helpfulness. Such are some of the reasons why religion seems to have an enduring and self-renewing quality within it. Special forms of it, now large and popular, may pass away as they have in the past, 438 The Religious Outlook. fade out of sight like the fauna and Out of all the turmoil which we have ture, but with its pathway more lighted by some rays from a brighter world than that of Earth; which shall have the optimism of the Universalist without his easy unconcern; which shall have the freedom of the Unitarian without his coldness and indifference: an eclectic religion; a gathering from all sources and grouping together of what is best in all religions; and thus out of all the scattered fragments would form one pure religion, as the scattered rays of many colors, when bound together, make pure light. Experience hints that reform is very But if the method of slow; and that the coming of that great time is far away. Providence, by which it is ordained that all things are on the way to finer issues, is to be continued in the future, then, somewhere that time will meet the race. We shall be elsewhere when the propi tious hour arrives; but we may cheer that it is on the way. ourselves even now with the assurance In the ancient cities of the East, watchmen were placed upon the walls to call the passing hours and announce the arrival of the dawn. The nights were often filled with danger; and welcome was the voice upon the battlements, after a night of anxiety, heralding the approaching day. Thus always may we be cheered in the darkest night by a voice which tells us that the darkness is passing. Now A better day is coming for new heart. may we hear that voice bidding us take religion. The banners of light are already waving in the eastern sky. All ye who have been anxious through the night lest your faith would be destroyed see the breaking day. All ye, too, who have been alienated from religion by its many mistakes, by its unworthy beliefs about God and man, by its unreason, let You will find that many the shout of the watchman be your sig nal to return. of the things which in the other days You will be wise drove you away from it, have now themselves been banished. to return to it: to take counsel with its intention; to go in the direction it points. You will thus be steadily uplifted into higher ways of life; you will find that The Bible "Hell." you are coming more and more into harmony with the omnipotent, the superpersonal Soul from which all things proceed, and by which all things are upheld. In every hour of life you will solace yourself with the thought that you are involved in a plan whose beneficence cannot be thwarted; and, secure in this trust, you will, without a single misgiving, pass into the mysterious future. Having suffered in my early life more than I can tell, and having seen others in my father's family suffer more, at least with results more sad, I early gave attention to this subject, till I was satisfied that the term had been grievously misunderstood and misrepresented, to the discomfort and ruin of thousands of sincere and honest souls, who placed implicit confidence in all they heard from the orthodox pulpit. When the late revisers were engaged in their work on the Bible, Canon (now Archdeacon) Farrar said: "If the revisers do their duty, when their work is completed, the word hell will not be found in the Bible." The ground of this remark is that there is no word in the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures which has the meaning of our English word hell. But, as this word is still found in our Bible, it seems to follow that the revisers failed of their duty. The truth is that they lacked courage. They feared blame for going too far; when almost the only thing they have been blamed for, is that they did not go far enough. It was perhaps too much to expect of them. They have gone a good way in the right direction. They have lessened the number of passages containing this word about one-half: and in the rest they have put the right word in the margin. It is more than some of us 439 expected. Let us be thankful for what we have, and wait patiently for the rest. in a few years, as it was agreed among Should there be an American edition the revisers, we shall have but little cause for complaint, for the American revisers were far ahead of their British associates. lated hell in the old version; three are Four words in the Bible are transso translated in the new. The four are sheol, hades, gehenna, and tartarus. hades is left out, and hades is put in its In the revised version the word hell for sixty-five times in the Old Testament, place. The first of them, sheol, occurs and, being a Hebrew word, is found only in that part of the Bible. Greek, and is found only in the New Testament; there it is found eleven new, one of the eleven being regarded times in the old version and ten in the as spurious by the revisers. Hades is the New Testament only, though its hades of the New, are correspond- either the Jews or the Pagans, did not the Jewish people. This is the only passage in the whole Bible which has the slightest appearance of favoring the theory in question. No one can pretend that it is a doctrine of divine revelation; nor did Jesus give it his sanction by the use he makes of it. Para bles were generally made up for the occasion; and no one supposed it necessary for them to be literally true. a At the time of the revision of the Bible, it was well understood that the men engaged in that work generally held the theory above stated. They gave as reason for not translating the words in accordance with this theory, that there was no English word that expressed the exact sense of these terms. This is not satisfactory. How is it in other cases? Surely this is not a solitary example in the matter of translating. I suppose the general rule is, if one word does not answer the purpose,to take two or three; or, what might have been better, let the original stand in the place of a translation. This is the plan adopted by the New Testament revisers; and their example ought to have been followed by those of the Old Testament. Instead of this, they have given all the old renderings, hell, grave, and pit, in a part of the passages, and done the sensible thing with the rest, namely, left sheol in the text. As will probably be inferred, I do not endorse the common opinion. Sheol means the grave, hades means the grave. The only exception is the one given above, where the heathen theory is as sumed the time for being. A few passages from the Old and New Testaments, where sheol and hades occur, will, I think, sustain the definition I give of these words. The patriarch Jacob says, "I will go down to the grave to my son mourning." "Ye will bring down my gray hairs with sorrow to the grare." (Gen. xxxvii., 35; xlii., 38; xliv., 29, 31). Here sheol is used four times in the same connection, and can mean only the grave. It is said of Korah and his company, who rebelled against Moses, "They and all that appertained to them, went down alive into the pit." (Num. xvi., 30, 33). This pit in the earth was their grave, sheol. That a place of spirits is not intended, is proved by the fact that all that appertained to them (tents and goods) went to the same place. We read of being brought down to sheol with blood (1 Kings ii., 9); of being hidden in sheol (Job xiv., 13); of sheol being in the dust (Job xvii., 16); we read that sheol consumes those who go there (Job xxiv., 19); that in sheol there is no remembrance, no giving thanks (Ps. vi., 5); that some are consigned to sheol like sheep (Ps. xlix., 14); that our bones are scattered at the mouth of sheol, etc. (Ps. cxli., 7). Even in Isaiah xiv., 11, 15, where the revisers have used the word hell, we we find the words, "Thy pomp is brought down to sheol, and the noise of thy viols; the worm is spread under thee; and the worms cover thee." So in Ezekiel xxxii., 27, we read of those "which are gone down to sheol with their weapons of war; and they have laid their swords under their heads.” That a place of spirits is not meant, a single passage ought to suffice proof,- "There is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in sheol, whither thou goest" (Eccl. ix., 10). as I find that sheol is put in the text thirty times, grave and hell fifteen times each, and pit five times. This is easily remem bered,—30 +15 + 15 + 5 = 65. In the New Testament, hades is used as sheol is in the Old. Capernaum, is threatened with being brought down to hades (Luke x., 15; Matt. xi., 23). Nothing surely is meant but its utter destruction. In like manner it is said, "The gates of hades shall not prevail against the church" (Matt. xvi., 18). An abode of spirits, having twenty or one hundred saints to one sinner, would not be likely to make war on the church. A hundred years ago when these figures were reversed, such a warfare might seem more probable. The meaning is that the church should never die, should never pass through the gates of the grave. Jesus was not left in hades; nor did he remain long enough to see corruption (Acts. ii., 27, 31). It is certain the |