630 



HELIOTYPE 



HELL 



roots from, the light. The former phenomenon is 

 termed positive, and the latter negative, heliotrop- 

 ism. The shoots and leaves of nearly all plants 

 turn towards the light, and the turning of the sun- 

 flower towards the sun is familiar to every one. In 

 the case of organs which are positively heliotropic 

 the growth of the side next the light is retarded, 

 and that of the opposite side increased ; the result 

 of these combined actions is a concavity on the 

 former, and a convexity on the latter, thus causing 

 a curvature towards the light. In the case of roots' 

 these actions are reversed. That these results are 

 brought about by the action of light is evident ; 

 the cells on the concave side become less, while 

 those on the convex side become more, turgid, 

 thus forcing the organ to bend ; but the cause of 

 turgescence is unknown. 



Heliotype. See PHOTOGRAPHY. 



Heliozoa, or 'sun-animalcules,' a class of 

 Protozoa of the Rhizopod type i.e. provided with 

 protruding processes of living matter. These 

 processes are unlike those of the Amoeba (q.v.) 

 in being slender and radiant, unlike those of 

 Foraminifera (q.v.) in being stable and rarely 

 interlaced. The unit-mass or cell of which the 

 Heliozoon consists is globular and stable, with one 

 nucleus or with many, and usually with vacuoles 

 both contractile and non-contractile. There is 

 generally a 'skeleton,' gelatinous or siliceous, and 

 in the latter case either continuous or composed 

 of loose spicules. Multiplication is effected by 

 division of the cell into two, or by budding, or by 

 that internal fission known as spore-formation. In 

 some cases the spores or young Heliozoa are flagel- 

 late, and thus very unlike the comparatively slow 

 and passive adults. In a few instances Heliozoa 

 have been seen united in colonies. The majority 

 live in fresh water, but some are marine. Common 

 examples are Actinosph^rium, Actinophrys, Ra- 

 phidiophrys, and Clathrulina. See PROTOZOA ; 

 Butschli's Protozoa in Bronn's Thierreich. 



Helium. See ARGON, SUN. 



Helix ( Gr. , ' a snail ' ), a term used for a genus 

 of molluscs, including the land -snails ; for part of 

 the human ear (see EAR) ; and for a small volute 

 or twist in the capital of a Corinthian column. 



Hell, the place of torment, and the condition to 

 which the finally impenitent are consigned after 

 death, located by all the Fathers in the centre of the 

 earth, although St Thomas says no one, without a 

 special revelation on the point, can say where it is. 

 Unfortunately for clearness of ideas on the subject 

 the word has been from the beginning employed 

 in the most various senses, and the confusion 

 has been only deepened by the fact that in our 

 Authorised Version it has been employed to render 

 three wholly different words, Sheol or Hades, 

 Gehenna, and once Tartarus (2 Peter, ii. 4). The 

 word Sheol occurs in the Old Testament sixty-five 

 times, and is rendered ' hell ' thirty-one times, 

 ' grave ' thirty-one times, and ' pit ' three times. 

 Its original meaning seems strictly to have implied 

 merely the shadowy under-world, a deep and 

 gloomy cavern considered as the abode of the souls 

 of the dead, the common receptacle for all man- 

 kind, not yet definitely differentiated into two dis- 

 tinct classes with the more rigorous logic of a later 

 age and a fuller revelation. The Hebrew concep- 

 tion of Sheol was merely a kind of vague shadow 

 of past life, in which the soul was shut off from any 

 communion with the living, although we see in its 

 loftier expressions of religious aspiration the impas- 

 sioned desire for an unbroken continuity of union 

 with God rising into a vision so vivid that it almost 

 realises itself (Job, xiv. 13-15 ; cf. also Ps. xvi. 10, 

 xlix. 15, Ixxiii. 24). In these passages the Psalmists, 

 in the heights of spiritual elevation and conscious- 



ness of living communion with God, leap in vision 

 across the separating grave into a real conviction of 

 living continuity of fellowship that rises into the 

 region of true immortality ; Job, in the perplexity 

 of despair between his present calamities and the 

 immediate expectation of death before God's 

 favour is renewed to him, yet absorbed with the 

 idea that God cannot belie himself by finally for- 

 getting his righteous servant and his former fellow- 

 ship, grasps the notion of immortality as a neces- 

 sity of God's inherent righteousness, and thus 

 reaches the loftiest spiritual conception of Chris- 

 tianity a living union possible between man and 

 God, by a process of pure religious abstraction. 



The hope of a future life, in Old Testament pro- 

 phecy, hardly extended beyond the perfected glory 

 of the Israelitic theocracy under conditions which 

 were essentially earthly, but yet already partly 

 elevated into the supernatural. The condition of 

 the dead continued to be represented as a shadowy 

 existence in Sheol an existence without special 

 religious significance and value. 



In post-exilic Judaism, on the contrary, the faith 

 in the resurrection of the pious dead ( in connection 

 with the Messianic time of salvation) developed 

 itself out of these two elements : (a) from the more 

 individual conception of the covenant-relation and 

 from the postulate of retribution in the kingdom of 

 the Messiah, arid (b) from the influences of the 

 Persian faith in the resurrection, which co-operated 

 with the former and furnished to them a definite 

 form. While this faith, through the Pharisees, 

 became a popular element of the Messianic hope, 

 the Sadducees held fast to the old Hebrew con- 

 ception of Sheol, and the Essenes assumed the 

 Hellenistic doctrine of the incorporeal immortality 

 of souls in a higher state of being, a doctrine which 

 fitted in with the Essene spiritualism. 



In consequence of this developed eschatology, 

 there then entered also into the conception of 

 Sheol the distinction of different moral retributive 

 states : ( a ) for the righteous in Paradise or Abra- 

 ham's bosom ; ( b ) for the godless in Gehenna. 



The Septuagint equivalent for Sheol is Hades, a 

 word which occurs in the New Testament eleven 

 times, and in ten of these is rendered 'hell,' the 

 sole exception being 1 Cor. xv. 55. Again, ' hell ' 

 is used as the rendering for Gehenna twelve times. 

 Originally as in the Old Testament usage the latter 

 word simply signified the Valley of Hinnom near 

 the city, which had been defiled by the abomina- 

 tions of human sacrifice in the Moloch worship of 

 Ahaz and Manasseh. It became later a kind of re- 

 ceptacle for filth, the combustible portions of which, 

 according to some authorities, were consumed with 

 fire. Hence in later times it became an image of 

 the place of punishment, ' where their worm dieth 

 not, and the fire is not quenched.' The word 

 Tophet occurs in the Old Testament nine times, 

 and apparently meant originally a grove or garden 

 in Hinnom ; afterwards defiled and polluted by 

 idolatries, it became to the Rabbis a fit symbol 

 for all abominations, the very gate or pit of hell. 

 Almost all the passages in which the term Gehenna 

 occurs are hopelessly metaphorical in character, 

 on which it seems unsafe to build too rigorous dog- 

 matic definitions : in such investigations should 

 never be forgotten the saving caution, ' Theologia 

 parabolica non est demonstrative.' No less difficult 

 is the Greek word aiunios (aion, Hebrew olam), 

 variously rendered by 'everlasting' and 'eternal.' 

 It occurs seventy-one times in the New Testament, 

 and in some of these cases it is certainly employed 

 of periods limited in duration. The word aion does 

 not necessarily connote what is understood by 

 ' eternity ' either in classical or Hellenistic Greek, 

 and in the Oxford Library of the Fathers we find 

 its adjective rendered very properly by 'secular.' 



