J96 SCRIPTURE NATURAL HISTORY. 



new head taking above three or four months for its completion, a 

 new tail being shot forth in less than as many weeks. Thus, two 

 animals, by dissection, were made out of one ; each with their sep- 

 arate appetites : each endued with life and motion ; and seemingly 

 as perfect as that single animal from whence they derived their ori- 

 gin ! This singular fact exhibits a striking proof of the compara- 

 tive imperfection of their organs, and seems to justify the classify- 

 ing them in the order of Zoophytes, a name which, as above re- 

 marked, implies vegetable nature endued with animal life. 



For the purpose of exhibiting, in a striking light, the weakness 

 and abjection of man, the sacred writers sometimes compare him 

 to this mean reptile, Job xxv. 1 ; Psalm xxii. 6. 



In Mark ix. 44, we read of the worm that dieth not, and the fire 

 that is unquenchable ; a passage which is evidently taken from 

 Isaiah Ixvi. 24, where the subject is the punishment to be inflicted 

 on the incorrigible in this life, in order to describe, as is usual with 

 the Jewish writers, the judgment of another world. Losing sight 

 of this circumstance, some writers who have argued against the 

 eternity of future punishments, have improperly and unwarranta- 

 bly restricted the sense of the passage. The place of the damned 

 is compared to a Afield where carcasses are thrown out, and are 

 gnawed by worms, or burnt with fire. Such was their Gehenna, 

 or the Valley of Hinnom, near Jerusalem ; odious by the former 

 sacrifices to Moloch, and afterwards desecrated by Josiah, by being 

 made a common burying place. Le Clerc and some others think 

 there is an allusion to the two sorts of funeral rites, burning and 

 burying. Hence, says bishop Lowth, the worms which preyed on 

 the carcasses, and the fire which consumed the victims. 





