492 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 



ishment in a dark, cold place ; and the Saddncees thought that the 

 soul died with the body. The first threats of hell in the Scriptures 

 occur in the teachings of Jesus. There are three words in the 

 New Testament which were translated by hell in the King James 

 Bible : hades, meaning the same as elsewhere in Greek literature ; 

 Gehenna, which was properly the hell of Hebrew conception, and 

 is uniformly so rendered in the revised version ; and Tartarus, 

 used only once (2 Peter, iii, 4), which is the regular Greek word for 

 the place of punishment after death.* The place of future pun- 

 ishment represented in Christ's teachings is a region of fire : 

 " Whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of the 

 hell of fire " (Matt, v, 22, revised version) ; the fire is to be eter- 

 nal and unquenchable : " It is good for thee to enter into life 

 maimed, rather than having thy two hands to go into hell, into the 

 unquenchable fire, . . . where their worm dieth not, and the fire 

 is not quenched" (Mark ix, 43, 48; see also Matt, xviii, 8). 

 In Revelation " St. John informs us what fuel is to support the 

 unquenchable fire: "If any man worshipeth the beast and his 

 image, ... he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the 

 presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb : 

 and the smoke of their torment goeth up forever and ever ; and 

 they have no rest day and night" (Rev. xiv, 9-11). In another 

 passage it is revealed concerning various kinds of sinners that 

 " their part shall be in the lake that burneth with fire and brim- 

 stone : which is the second death " (Rev. xxi, 8). This doctrine was 

 intended to last unchanged for all time, for we find in the last 

 chapter the statement that, if any man shall add to or take from 

 the words of this book, he shall suffer all the torments and lose 

 all the rewards which are written in this prophecy (Rev. xxii, 

 18, 19). 



The religion of Islam is characterized by lack of originality, 

 and the Mohammedan hell contains nothing but easily made va- 

 riations of the Gehenna of the Jews. To the man that disobeys 

 the precepts of the Koran it is promised that " God shall cast him 

 into hell-fire ; he shall remain therein forever." f Further it is 

 written : " Verily, those who disbelieve our signs, we will surely 

 cast to be broiled in hell-fire ; so often as their skins shall be well 

 burned, we will give them other skins in exchange, that they may 

 taste the sharper torment, for God is mighty and wise " (chapter 

 iv). The physical pain of fire, applied in various ways, is also the 

 staple of the following torments : " They who believe not shall 

 have garments of fire fitted to them ; boiling water shall be poured 

 on their heads ; their bowels shall be dissolved thereby, and also 

 their skins ; and they shall be beaten with maces of iron " (chap- 



* Schaff-Herzog, ibid., idem. f The Koran, Sale's translation, chapter iv. 



