104 
by the learned and ingenious Dr. Hook, who, after stating his objections to 
the opinion entertained by some, that the centre of the earth was liquid fire, 
* The Greeks entertained the notion that hell, or the place for the manes of departed people, vvas 
in the centre of the earth, and that there were certain passages leading thither, as the river Lethe, and 
the Acherusian cave. These were long roads, hence their custom of putting pieces of monej into 
the mouths of the dead to pay their journey. At Hermione the way was shorter, and hence the omis¬ 
sion there of the custom of putting money into the mouths of the departed. 
Milton gives us a fine poetic description of the rivers which descend intQ, and mingle with the 
flames of hell— 
■-They bend 
Four ways their flying march along the banks 
Of four infernal rivers that disgorge 
Into the burning lake their baleful stream: 
Abhorred Styx, the flood of deadly hate; 
Sad Aceron, of sorrow black and deep; 
Cocytus, named from lamentation loud, 
Heard on the rueful stream; fierce Phlegethon, 
Whose waves of torrent fire inflame with rage; 
Far off from those a slow and silent stream, 
Lethe, the river of oblivion, rolls, &c. 
The Greeks fancied the umbra, or ghost, hovered near the place where the death happened, whilst 
the spirit, spiritus, went to heaven. This idea is expressed in the following lines attributed to Ovid. 
Bis duo sunt homini: Manes, Caro, Spiritus, Umbra, 
Quatuor ista loci bis duo suscipient. 
Terra tegit Carriem, tumulum circumvolat Umbra, 
Orcus habet Manes, Spiritus astra petit. 
Thus Homer: 
-The fates suppress’d his lab’ring breast. 
And his eyes stiffen at the hand of death; 
To the realms above the spirit wings its way. 
The manly body stops, a load of clay, 
And plaintive glides along the dreary coast, 
The naked—wand’ring—melancholy— ghost. 
The Jews seem to have entertained the same notion of hell as the Greeks, and hence our Saviour, 
adapting his discourse to their conceptions, gives the parable of Dives and Lazarus.—The word infernal 
comes from inferus, below; and on the stage these are always represented with torches in their hands, 
and involved in flames.—But there is nothing in natural or revealed religion to authorise such a concep¬ 
tion. God is every where represented in Scripture in his true character, as the God of “ Love” and 
“ Mercy.” “ He wills, that all mankind should be saved.” 2 Tim. ii. 4. “ In my Father’s house 
there are many mansions,” says our Lord. S.John xiv. 2. Is it not then more than probable that those 
innumerable stars we see above us are replete with inhabitants, and that we pass from one star, or 
world, to another star, or world, either approaching towards, or receding from that Being (the 
plenitude of happiness, the cause of all things, whom we in this world behold as through a glass 
darkly; i. e. faintly conceiving the idea by the contemplation of the works of creation and redemption), 
according to our spent lives, and that every punishment inflicted on man is founded in justice tem¬ 
pered with mercy? Can there be any conception more noble than this? An infinity of stars, and each 
stored with an infinite number of differently created beings enjoying different degrees of happiness! If 
there are 10,000 insects, and 300 animals, reckoning the kinds in this world of sorrow, and delwht 
how vast the conception of millions of worlds and myriads of different beings, and each distinct and 
perfect as a whole, yet making but a link in the chain of created beings! Even the swht of the 
splendour of the heavenly bodies is the grandest spectacle in nature. 
