shall we account for the fact that Jesus never used this language but once, and then, not to a mixed popular audience, where the sinful and depraved might hear and profit by his teachings, but to his disciples alone? Were they in any special peril of the judgments of Gehenna, to which their countrymen generally were not exposed? And how shall we account for the fact that his disciples, to whom, after his departure, was entrusted the great work of propagating his religion, in all their letters and in all their public addresses of which we have any account, never repeated these sentiments or any others like them? It is a somewhat singular fact, and one which we regard as entirely inconsistent with the commonly received opinions upon this subject, that there is not an instance in the New Testament, where the word Gehenna is addressed to any Gentile individual, or audience, or to any church or convert from among the Gentiles. If the Saviour, and those who by his special commission succeeded him in the labor of spreading the gospel, had used the word Gehenna to designate a place or state of endless sufferings for the wicked, would not the use of that word, in the signification they attached to it, have extended as fast and as far as the Christian doctrines were accepted? Would not every faithful teacher use it, and explain it with the utmost care to all who were ignorant of its meaning? If, as we are told, Gehenna in the New Testament is always to be understood as a place of punishment for the wicked in the future world, then it was something to which the Gentile was exposed no less than the Jew. How comes it then, that the Gentiles were never permitted to hear this word;-that they were never informed of their exposure to the sufferings to which it mysteriously alluded? All this is easily explained, if, as we have attempted to show, Gehenna was something with which the Jews alone were acquainted. If it was something merely of a local nature, any reference to it would be understood only by those who were familiar with the local usage of the term. What did the Gentile know of the valley of Hinnom; of the intense loathing which its seething corruption, its lurid fires, and its myriads of worms excited in the Jewish mind? What did the Christian convert at Rome, Ephesus, or Corinth, know or care about the fires of Gehenna, or its penal inflictions, the least allusion to which would be heard with such

loathing and horror by the native of Judea? The explanation already given of this word and its usage among the Jews, enables us readily to answer all these questions. But if Gehenna means a place of endless suffering to which both Jews and Gentiles were equally exposed; if, as it is now pretty generally conceded by the best of Orthodox critics-this is the word upon which the doctrine of endless misery must rely for support, then we confess our inability to understand why it should never have been uttered except to the disciples alone.

The object of the Saviour in addressing this language to his disciples, is at once apparent from the context. He was giving them a charge on sending them out to preach in the cities of Israel. As yet their conceptions of the gospel were very inadequate; they knew nothing of the labor and sacrifice that would be demanded of them as its advocates, or of the odium, contempt and persecution they would incur, as the opposers of old, popular and established forms of worship. They knew little of the opposition they were to encounter from their own countrymen; and as yet they had no suspicion that they would be called to bear the message of good tidings to the Gentiles of distant lands. Jesus knew how strong would be their temptation to desert his hard and dangerous service. He had just told them that they should be delivered up to councils, and scourged in synagogues; that they should be brought before governors, and kings for his sake; that brother should deliver brother to death, and parents their children, and children their parents; that among a perverse and faithless people who had called him Beelzebub, those who proved themselves his faithful disciples must be prepared at any time to encounter persecution and even death. 14 There is no mistaking the object of these warnings and exhortations. They were to prepare the minds of the disciples for what they were so soon to experience; to guard them against being disheartened, in the ordeal through which they were to pass. To sustain them under all these adverse circumstances, and so prevent their turning back from the field of gospel labor, he says to them, "Fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul." Who are they whom the disciples

14 Matthew, x. 16–25.

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are exhorted not to fear? Is it not evident that they are the temporal powers-the councils, synagogues, kings and governors before which, as he had just told them, they should be delivered, scourged, persecuted, and slain? These were able to kill the body; but they had no power "to kill the soul;" or, as it is expressed by Luke, they "have no more that they can do." It is sometimes questioned whether the word soul, in this connection, means the immortal part. We do not see how it can well be understood in any other sense; for, though it is the same word that is often used to denote the mere animal life, such a meaning in this place, instead of assisting us to understand the Saviour's language, would seem to involve the whole in hopeless confusion. When the body is killed, the animal life is destroyed. But the term soul, in these passages, evidently means something that continues to exist after the killing of the body ;-something which the killing of the body does not destroy.

What then is meant by "killing the soul," or "destroying the soul?" for though both expressions are used, they evidently mean the same thing. Of course it cannot be taken in a strictly literal sense, for that would be simply annihilation; and few Christians, we apprehend, would approve an interpretation which would make those passages teach such a doctrine. Since, then, we must accept the language as figurative, how shall we interpret the figure? Is it not evident that the death of the soul must be spiritual death, in which sin and estrangement from God inevitably involves the transgressor? Christ found the whole world. under the dominion of this death. The disciples had already been delivered from it; they had experienced the joys of the heavenly kingdom-peace, in obedience to Godlife, in reconciliation to the divine will. This life of the spirit they would forfeit and plunge again into all the bitterness and darkness of that death from which they had been released, if they deserted the gospel and turned back again to the beggarly elements of Judaism. Death is the scriptural designation for this spiritual condition. Life and death are the perpetual contrasts by which Inspiration represents the two opposite conditions of the human soul in its relations to God. The carnal mind is death; the spiritual, life, the dead in sins are quickened and live; those who accept the divine message pass from death to life. This was

the life which the death of the body could not touch; hence it was safe from the invasion of synagogue, council or governor. It is the life which those who really possess shall never die. The words "kill" and "soul are not often brought into immediate relation as in the passages under review; but how clearly is that relation implied in these constantly recurring symbols of human sinfulness and redemption. To kill, in its spiritual sense, is the appropriate word to denote the act which brings the soul into a state of spiritual death. Indeed, its use in that signification has the sanction of the sacred writers themselves. "Sin"-says the apostle-" taking occasion by the commandment, deceived me, and by it slew me." 15 Again, he says, "The letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life." 16 Here the word rendered "kill" and "slew," is the same; and it is the same word rendered kill in the passages under review. Of course in these passages from the apostle, the words "kill" and "slew" can have no other than a spiritual meaning. For the apostle was yet alive and active in the cause of the visible church. Though he had been slain by sin, he had been redeemed from that death. Precisely such a death would the disciples incur by deserting the cause of the Master.

That the killing or destroying is to take place only in the present state of being, appears sufficiently clear from the following considerations: The bodies which we are to possess in the future world will not be subject to death or destruction. We do not mean of course, that it will be impossible for God to destroy our future bodies; but that hereafter we are to be clothed with immortality. Even those who hold most firmly to the doctrine of the endless suffering of the wicked, do not believe that God will ever destroy the soul, or the body we shall possess in another life. Since therefore it is generally admitted that the soul is indestructible, and that our bodies can be destroyed only in the present life, it follows that the only Gehenna in which the body can be destroyed, must be in the present world. And if, as appears from the passages under examination, the same Gehenna is to serve for both body and soul, we are clearly justified in referring the whole process to the scenes of time. If it be said that the killing of the body 162 Corinthians, iii. 6.

15 Romans, vii. 11.

does not mean its natural death, but its perpetual suffering hereafter in connection with the soul, we may reply, that that is an assumption entirely gratuitous, besides begging the whole question at issue. The same word is used where the killing of the body is attributed to man and to God. If it refers to any thing which man can inflict, it must be confined to the present world; for in the future state, we trust, our bodies, as well as our souls, will be beyond the reach of injury from mortal hands. Besides, in the killing attributed to God, the idea of eternal suffering is excluded, by the possibility that something may succeed that act. The language of Luke is, "Fear him who, after he hath killed, hath power to cast into Gehenna." If, therefore, by the killing of the body be meant eternal torment, we do not well see how any thing could come afterward.

It may be inquired, is this spiritual death-this estrangement from God-this oppressive sense of divine condemnation-this consciousness of inward impurity ;-is this all the Saviour intended when he referred his disciples to the terrors of Gehenna to deter them from apostasy? We might well reply: "If all this were really apprehended by us as it ought to be,-if we felt, as we should, the dread reality of spiritual death, divine condemnation, estrangement from God, and uncleanness of soul-what could be more? Is that state of alienation from God, from which Christ came to save the world, but a trifling thing? Is there any conceivable thing in heaven, earth, or hell, that we ought to dread more than that? That condition, rendered perpetual, would completely justify the doctrine of endless misery, as generally taught by the Orthodox of the present day; and yet, do we ask, as if in surprise, "Is this all the disciples had to fear from apostasy?"

There seems to have been a two-fold reason why the Saviour's warning on this occasion took the particular form in which we find it. 1st. Gehenna had acquired a figurative sense, so that it might well represent any severe calamity regarded as a retribution for sins, and especially any ignominious or disgraceful punishments inflicted by human tribunals. Hence, with equal propriety, it might represent the moral and spiritual death which apostasy would bring upon the unfaithful disciple; his condemnation and anguish of mind; the tarnished reputation he would leave to posterity,