Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 37.djvu/508

492 in a dark, cold place; and the Sadducees 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 punishment 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 eternal 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 brimstone: 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 variations 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." 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" (