Chapter VII (1)

LOCAL FATE OF MAN IN THE ASTRONOMIC UNIVERSE.

ACCORDING to the imagining of some speculative geologists, perhaps this earth first floated in the abyss as a volume of vapor, wreathing its enormous folds of mist in fantastic shapes as it was borne along on the idle breath of law. Ages swept by, until this stupendous fog ball was condensed into an ocean of fire, whose billows heaved their lurid bosoms and reared their ashy crests without a check, while their burning spray illuminated its track around the sable vault. During periods which stagger computation, this molten world was gradually cooled down; constant rivers wrung from the densely swathing vapor poured over the heated mass and at last submerged its crust in an immense sea. Then, for unknown centuries, fire, water, and wind waged a Titanic war, that imagination shudders to think of, jets of flame licking the stars, massive battlements and columns of fire piled to terrific heights, now the basin of the sea suddenly turned into a glowing caldron and the atmosphere saturated with steam, again explosions hurling mountains far into space and tearing the earth open in ghastly rents to its very heart. At length the fire was partially subdued, the peaceful deep glassed the sky in its bosom or rippled to the whispers of the breeze, and from amidst the fertile slime and mould of its sheltered floor began to sprout the first traces of organic life, the germs of a rude species of marine vegetation. Thousands of years rolled on. The world ocean subsided, the peaks of mountains, the breasts of islands, mighty continents, emerged, and slowly, after many tedious processes of preparation, a gigantic growth of grass, every blade as large as our vastest oak, shot from the soil, and the incalculable epoch of ferns commenced, whose tremendous harvest clothed the whole land with a deep carpet of living verdure. While unnumbered growths of this vegetation were successively maturing, falling, and hardening into the dark layers of inexhaustible coal beds, the world, one waving wilderness of solemn ferns, swept in its orbit, voiceless and silent, without a single bird or insect of any kind in all its magnificent green solitudes, the air everywhere being heavily surcharged with gases of the deadliest poison. Again innumerable ages passed, and the era of mere botanic growths reaching its limit, the lowest forms of animal life moved in the waters, the earliest creatures being certain marine reptiles, worms, and bugs of the sea. Then followed various untimed periods, during which animal life rose by degrees from mollusk and jellyfish, by plesiosaurus and pterodactyl, horrible monsters, hundreds of feet in length, whose tramp crashed through the woods, or whose flight loaded the groaning air, to the dolphin and the whale in the sea, the horse and the lion on the land, and the eagle, the nightingale, and the bird of paradise in the air. Finally, when millions of aons had worn away, the creative process culminated in Humanity, the crown and perfection of all; for God said, "Let us make man in our own image;" and straightway Adam, with upright form, kingly eye, and reason throned upon his brow, stood on the summit of the world and gave names to all the races of creatures beneath.1

At this stage two important questions arise. The first is, whether man is the final type of being intended in the Divine plan for this world, or whether he too is destined in his turn to be superseded by a higher race, endowed with form, faculties, and attributes transcending our conceptions, even as our own transcended the ideas of the previous orders of existence. Undoubtedly, had the ichthyosaurus, ploughing through the deep and making it boil like a pot, or one of those mammoth creatures of the antediluvian age who browsed half a dozen trees for breakfast, crunched a couple of oxen for luncheon and a whole flock of sheep for his dinner, been consulted on a similar problem, he would have replied, without hesitation, "I exhaust the uses of the world. What animal can there be superior to me? beyond a question, my race shall possess the earth forever!" The mastodon could not know any uses of nature except those he was fitted to experience, nor imagine a being with the form and prerogatives of man. Therefore he would not believe that the mastodon race would ever be displaced by the human. We labor under the same disqualification for judgment. There may be in the system of nature around us adaptations, gifts, glories, as much higher than any we enjoy as our noblest powers and privileges are in advance of those of the tiger or the lark.

It is a remarkable fact that the mature states of the antediluvian races correspond with the foetal states of the present races, and that the foetal states of embryonic man are counterparts of the mature states of the lower races now contemporaneous with him. This great discovery of modern science, though perhaps destitute of logical value, suggests to the imagination the thought that man may be but the foetal state of a higher being, a regent temporarily presiding here until the birth and inauguration of the true king of the world, and destined himself to be born from the womb of this world into the free light and air of the spirit kingdom!

The resources of God are inexhaustible; and in the evolution of his prearranged ages it may be that there will arise upon the earth a race of beings of unforetold majesty, who shall disinter the remnant bones and ponder the wrecked monuments of forgotten man as we do those of the disgusting reptiles of the Saurian epoch. But this is a mere conceit of possibility; and, so far as the data for forming an opinion are in our hands, it is altogether incredible. So far as appears, the adaptation between man and the earth is exhaustive. He is able to subdue all her forces, reign over all her provinces, enjoy all her delights, and gather into his consciousness all her prophecies. And our practical conviction is absolute that the race of men is the climax of being destined for this earth, and that they will occupy its hospitable bosom forever with their toils and their homes, their sports and their graves.2

The other question is this: Was the subjection of the human race to physical death a part of the Creator's original plan, or the retributive result of a subsequent dislocation of that plan by sin? a part of the great harmony of nature, or a discord marring the happy destiny

1 Harris, The Pre Adamite Earth.

2 Agassiz says no higher creature than man is to be expected on earth, because the capacities of the earthly plan of organic creation are completed and exhausted with him. Introduction to Study of Natural History, p. 57.

of man? Approaching this problem on grounds of science and reason alone, there can be no hesitation as to the reply. There are but two considerations really bearing upon the point and throwing light upon it; and they both force us to the same conclusion. First, it is a fact admitting no denial that death was the predetermined natural fate of the successive generations of the races that preceded man. Now, what conceivable reason is there for supposing that man, constructed from the same elements, living under the same organic laws, was exempt from the same doom? There is not in the whole realm of science a single hint to that effect. Secondly, the reproductive element an essential feature in the human constitution, leading our kind to multiply and replenish the earth is a demonstration that the office of death entered into God's original plan of the world. For otherwise the earth at this moment could not hold a tithe of the inhabitants that would be demanding room. When God had permitted this world to roll in space for awful ages, a lifeless globe of gas, fire, water, earth, and then let it be occupied for incommensurable epochs more by snails, vermin, and iguanodons, would he wind up the whole scene and destroy it when the race of man, crowning glory of all, had only flourished for a petty two thousand years? It is not credible. And yet it must have been so unless it was decreed that the successive generations should pass away and thus leave space for, the new comers. We conclude, then, that it is the will of God and was in the beginning that the human race shall possess the earth through all the unknown periods of the future, the parents continually passing off the stage in death as the children rise upon it to maturity. We cannot discern any authority in those old traditions which foretell the impending destruction of the world. On what grounds are we to believe them? The great system of things is a stable harmony. There is no wear or tear in the perfect machinery of the creation, rolling noiseless in its blue bearings of ether. It seems, comparatively speaking, to have just begun. Its oscillations are self adjusted, and science prophesies for humanity an illimitable career on this earthly theatre. The swift melting of the elements and restoration of chaos is a mere heathen whim or a poetic figment. It is the bards who sing,

"The earth shall shortly die. Her grave is dug. I see the worlds, night clad, all gathering In long and dark procession. And the stars, Which stand as thick as glittering dewdrops on The fields of heaven, shall pass in blazing mist."

Such pictures are delusion winning the imagination, not truth commanding the reason. In spite of all the Cassandra screams of the priesthood, vaticinating universal ruin, the young old earth, fresh every spring, shall remain under God's preserving providence, and humanity's inexhaustible generations renewedly reign over its kingdoms, forever. Plotinus said, "If God repents having made the world, why does he defer its destruction? If he does not yet repent, he never will, as being now accustomed to it, and becoming through time more friendly to it."

3 Lucan says, "Our bones and the stars shall be mingled on one funeral pyre." Communis mundo superest rogus, ossibus astra Misturus.

But to receive such a good piece of poetry as veritable prevision is surely a puerile error which a mature mind in the nineteenth century should be ashamed to commit.

The most recently broached theory of the end of the world is that developed from some remarkable speculations as to the composition and distribution of force. The view is briefly this. All force is derived from heat. All heat is derived from the sun.4 The mechanical value of a cubic mile of sunlight at the surface of the earth is one horse power for a third of a minute; at the sun it is fifteen thousand horse power for a minute. Now, it is calculated that enough heat is radiated from the sun to require for its production the annual consumption of the whole surface of the sun to the depth of from ten to twenty miles. Of course, ultimately the fuel will be all expended; then the forces of the system will expire, and the creation will die.5 This brilliant and sublime theorem assumes, first, that the heat of the sun arises from consumption of matter, which may not be true; secondly, that it is not a self replenishing process, as it certainly may be. Some have even surmised that the zodiacal light is an illuminated tornado of stones showering into the sun to feed its tremendous conflagration. The whole scheme is a fine toy, but a very faint terror. Even if it be true, then we are to perish at last from lack of fire, and not, as commonly feared, from its abundance!

The belief of mankind that a soul or ghost survives the body has been so nearly universal as to appear like the spontaneous result of an instinct. We propose to trace the history of opinions concerning the physical destination of this disembodied spirit, its connection with localities, to give the historical topography of the future life.

The earliest conception of the abode of the dead was probably that of the Hebrew Sheol or the Greek Hades, namely, the idea born from the silence, depth, and gloom of the grave of a stupendous subterranean cavern full of the drowsy race of shades, the indiscriminate habitation of all who leave the land of the living. Gradually the thought arose and won acceptance that the favorites of Deity, peerless heroes and sages, might be exempt from this dismal fate, and migrate at death to some delightful clime beyond some far shore, there, amidst unalloyed pleasures, to spend immortal days. This region was naturally located on the surface of the earth, where the cheerful sun could shine and the fresh breezes blow, yet in some untrodden distance, where the gauntlet of fact had not smitten the sceptre of fable. The paltry portion of this earth familiar to the ancients was surrounded by an unexplored region, which their fancy, stimulated by the legends of the poets, peopled with mythological kingdoms, the rainbow bowers and cloudy synods of Olympus, from whose glittering peak the Thunderer threw his bolts over the south; the Golden Garden of the

3 Ennead ii. lib. ix.: Contra Gnosticos, cap. 4.

4 Helmholtz, Edinburgh Phil. Msg., series iv. vol. xi.: Interaction of Natural Forces.

5 Thomson, Ibid. Dec. 1854: Mechanical Energies of the Solar System.

Hesperides, whose dragons lay on guard in the remote west; the divine cities of Meru, whose encircling towers pierced the eastern sky; the Banquet Halls of Ethiopia, gleaming through the fiery desert; the fragrant Islands of Immortality, musical and luring in the central ocean; the happy land of the Hyperboreans, beyond the snowy summits of northern Caucasus:

"How pleasant were the wild beliefs That dwelt in legends old! Alas! to our posterity Will no such tales be told. We know too much: scroll after scroll Weighs down our weary shelves: Our only point of ignorance Is centred in ourselves."

There was a belief among the Persians that Kaf, a mountain two thousand miles high, formed a rim to the flat world and prevented travellers from ever falling off.6 The fact that the earth is a globe inhabited on all sides is a comparatively recent piece of knowledge. So late as in the eighth century Pope Zachary accused Virgilius, an Irish mathematician and monk, of heresy for believing in the existence of antipodes.7 St. Boniface wrote to the Pope against Virgilius; and Zachary ordered a council to be held to expel him from the Church, for "professing, against God and his own soul, so perverse and wicked a doctrine." To the ancients all beyond the region they had traversed was an unknown land, clothed in darkness, crowded with mystery and allurement. Across the weltering wastes of brine, in a halcyon sea, the Hindu placed the White Isle, the dwelling of translated and immortalized men.8 Under the attraction of a mystic curiosity, well might the old, wearied Ulysses say,

"Come, my friends, 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world. Push off, and, sitting well in order, smite The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths Of all the western stars, until I die. It may be that the gulfs will wash us down: It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles, And see the great Achilles, whom we knew."

Decius Brutus and his army, as Florus relates, reaching the coast of Portugal, where, for the first time, they saw the sun setting in the blood tinged ocean, turned back their standards with horror as they beheld "the huge corpse of ruddy gold let down into the deep." The Phoenician traders brought intelligence to Greece of a people, the Cimmerians, who dwelt on the borders of Hades in the umbered realms of perpetual night. To the dying Roman, on the farthest verge of the known horizon hovered a vision of Elysian Fields. And the American

6 Adventures of Hatim Tai, p. 36, note.

7 Whewell, Hist. Inductive Sciences, vol. i. book iv. ch. i. sect. 7.

8 Wilford, Essays on the Sacred Isles, In Asiatic Researches, vols. viii. xi.

Indian, sinking in battle or the chase, caught glimpses of happier Hunting Grounds, whose woods trooped with game, and where the arrows of the braves never missed, and there was no winter. There was a pretty myth received among some of the ancient Britons, locating their paradise in a spot surrounded by tempests, far in the Western Ocean, and named Flath Innis, or Noble Island.9 The following legend is illustrative. An old man sat thoughtful on a rock beside the sea. A cloud, under whose squally skirts the waters foamed, rushed down; and from its dark womb issued a boat, with white sails bent to the wind, and hung round with moving oars. Destitute of mariners, itself seemed to live and move. A voice said, "Arise, behold the boat of heroes: embark, and see the Green Isle of those who have passed away!" Seven days and seven nights he voyaged, when a thousand tongues called out, "The Isle! the Isle!" The black billows opened before him, and the calm land of the departed rushed in light on his eyes. We are reminded by this of what Procopius says concerning the conveyal of the soul of the barbarian to his paradise. At midnight there is a knocking at the door, and indistinct voices call him to come. Mysteriously impelled, he goes to the sea coast, and there finds a frail, empty wherry awaiting him. He embarks, and a spirit crew row him to his destination.10

"He finds with ghosts His boat deep freighted, sinking to the edge Of the dark flood, and voices hears, yet sees No substance; but, arrived where once again His skiff floats free, hears friends to friends Give lamentable welcome. The unseen Shore faint resounds, and all the mystic air Breathes forth the names of parent, brother, wife."

During that period of poetic credulity while the face of the earth remained to a great extent concealed from knowledge, wherever the Hebrew Scriptures were known went the cherished traditions of the Garden of Eden from which our first parents were driven for their sin. Speculation naturally strove to settle the locality of this lost paradise. Sometimes it was situated in the mysterious bosom of India; sometimes in the flowery vales of Georgia, where roses and spices perfumed the gales; sometimes in the guarded recesses of Mesopotamia. Now it was the Grand Oasis in the Arabian desert, flashing on the wilted pilgrim, over the blasted and blazing wastes, with the verdure of palms, the play of waters, the smell and flavor of perennial fruits. Again it was at the equator, where the torrid zone stretched around it as a fiery sword waving every way so that no mortal could enter. In the "Imago Mundi," a Latin treatise on cosmography written early in the twelfth century, we read, "Paradise is the extreme eastern part of Asia, and is made inaccessible by a wall of fire surrounding it and rising unto heaven." At a later time the Canaries were thought to be the ancient Elysium, and were accordingly named the Fortunate Isles. Indeed, among the motives that animated

9 Macpherson, Introduction to the History of Great Britain and Ireland, pp. 180-186.

10 Procopius, Gothica, lib. iv.

Columbus on his adventurous voyage no inferior place must be assigned to the hope of finding the primeval seat of Paradise.11 The curious traveller, exploring these visionary spots one by one, found them lying in the light of common day no nearer heaven than his own natal home; and at last all faith in them died out when the whole surface of the globe had been surveyed, no nook left wherein romance and superstition might any longer play at hide and seek.

Continuing our search after the local abode of the departed, we now leave the surface of the earth and descend beneath it. The first haunted region we reach is the realm of the Fairies, which, as every one acquainted with the magic lore of old Germany or England knows, was situated just under the external ground, and was clothed with every charm poets could imagine or the heart dream. There was supposed to be an entrance to this enchanted domain at the Peak Cavern in Derbyshire, and at several other places. Sir Walter Scott has collected some of the best legends illustrative of this belief in his "History of Demonology." Sir Gawaine, a famous knight of the Round Table, was once admitted to dine, above ground, in the edge of the forest, with the King of the Fairies:

"The banquet o'er, the royal Fay, intent To do all honor to King Arthur's knight, Smote with his rod the bank on which they leant, And Fairy land flash'd glorious on the sight; Flash'd, through a silvery, soft, translucent mist, The opal shafts and domes of amethyst; Flash'd founts in shells of pearl, which crystal walls And phosphor lights of myriad hues redouble. There, in the blissful subterranean halls, When morning wakes the world of human trouble Glide the gay race; each sound our discord knows, Faint heard above, but lulls them to repose."

To this empire of moonlit swards and elfin dances, of jewelled banks, lapsing streams, and enchanting visions, it was thought a few favored mortals might now and then find their way. But this was never an earnest general faith. It was a poetic superstition that hovered over fanciful brains, a legendary dream that pleased credulous hearts; and, with the other romance of the early world, it has vanished quite away.

The popular belief of Jews, Greeks, Etruscans, Romans, Germans, and afterwards of Christians, was that there was an immense world of the dead deep beneath the earth, subdivided into several subordinate regions. The Greenlanders believed in a separated heaven and hell, both located far below the Polar Ocean. According to the old classic descriptions of the under world, what a scene of colossal gloom it is! Its atmosphere murmurs with a breath of plaintive sighs. Its population, impalpable ghosts timidly flitting at every motion,

11 Irving, Life of Columbus: Appendix on the Situation of the Terrestrial Paradise. By far the most valuable book ever published on this subject is that of Schulthess, Das Paradies, das irdische und uberirdische historische, mythische und mystische, nebst einer kritischen Revision der allgemelnen biblischen Geographie.

crowd the sombre landscapes in numbers surpassing imagination. There Cocytus creeps to the seat of doom, his waves emitting doleful wails. Styx, nine times enfolding the whole abode, drags his black and sluggish length around. Charon, the slovenly old ferryman, plies his noiseless boat to and fro laden with shadowy passengers. Far away in the centre grim Pluto sits on his ebony throne and surveys the sad subjects of his dreadful domain. By his side sits his stolen and shrinking bride, Proserpine, her glimmering brows encircled with a wreath of poppies. Above the subterranean monarch's head a sable rainbow spans the infernal firmament; and when, with lifted hand, he announces his decrees, the applause given by the twilight populace of Hades is a rustle of sighs, a vapor of tears, and a shudder of submission.

The belief in this dolorous kingdom was early modified by the reception of two other adjacent realms, one of reward, one of torture; even as Goethe says, in allusion to the current Christian doctrine, "Hell was originally but one apartment: limbo and purgatory were afterwards added as wings." Passing through Hades, and turning in one direction, the spirit traveller would arrive at Elysium or Abraham's bosom:

"To paradise the gloomy passage winds Through regions drear and dismal, and through pain, Emerging soon in beatific blaze Of light."

There the blessed ones found respite and peaceful joys in flowery fields, pure breezes, social fellowship, and the similitudes of their earthly pursuits. In this placid clime, lighted by its own constellations, favored souls roamed or reposed in a sort of ineffectual happiness. According to the pagans, here were such heroes as Achilles, such sages as Socrates, to remain forever, or until the end of the world. And here, according to the Christians, the departed patriarchs and saints were tarrying expectant of Christ's arrival to ransom them. Dante thus describes that great event:

"Then he, who well my covert meaning knew, Answer'd, Herein I had not long been bound, When an All puissant One I saw march through, With victory's radiant sign triumphal crown'd. He led from us our Father Adam's shade, Abel and Noah, whom God loved the most, Lawgiving Moses, him who best obey'd, Abraam the patriarch, royal David's ghost; Israel, his father, and his sons, and her Whom Israel served for, faithfully and long, Rachel, with more, to bliss did He transfer: No souls were saved before this chosen throng." 12

At the opposite extremity of Hades was supposed to be an opening that led down into Tartarus, "a place made underneath all things, so low and horrible that hell is its heaven." Here the old earth giants, the looming Titans, lay, bound, transfixed with thunderbolts, their

12 Parsons's trans. Dell' Inferno, canto iv. ii. 55-63.

mountainous shapes half buried in rocks, encrusting lava, and ashes. Rivers of fire seam the darkness, whose borders are braided with sentinel furies. On every hand the worst criminals, perjurers, blasphemers, ingrates, groan beneath the pitiless punishments inflicted on them without escape. Any realization of the terrific scenery of this whole realm would curdle the blood.13 There were fabled entrances to the dread under world at Acherusia, in Bithynia, at Avernus, in Campania, where Ulysses evoked the dead and traversed the grisly abodes, through the Sibyl's cave at Cuma, at Hermione, in Argolis, where the people thought the passage below so near and easy that they neglected to give the dying an obolus to pay ferriage to Charon, at Tanarus, the southern most point of Peloponnesus, where Herakles went down and dragged the three headed dog up into day, at the cave of Trophonius, in Lebadea, and at several other places.

Similar conceptions have been embodied in the ecclesiastical doctrine which has generally prevailed in Christendom. Locating the scene in the hollow of the earth, thus has it been described by Milton,

"A dungeon horrible on all sides round As one great furnace flamed; yet from those flames No light, but rather darkness visible, Served only to discover sights of woe, Regions of anguish, doleful shades, where peace Nor hope can come, but torture without end Still urges, and a fiery deluge fed With ever burning sulphur unconsumed;" wherein, confined by adamantine walls, the fallen angels and all the damned welter overwhelmed with floods and whirlwinds of tempestuous fire. Shapes once celestially fair and proud, but now scarred from battle and darkened by sin into faded forms of haggard splendor, support their uneasy steps over the burning marl. Everywhere shrieks and moans resound, and the dusky vault of pandemonium is lighted by a blue glare cast pale and dreadful from the tossings of the flaming lake. This was hell, where the wicked must shrink and howl forever. Etna, Vesuvius, Stromboli, Hecla, were believed to be vent holes from this bottomless and living pit of fire. The famous traveller, Sir John Maundeville, asserted that he found a descent into hell "in a perilous vale" in the dominions of Prester John. Many a cavern in England still bears the name of "Hell hole." In a dialogue between a clerk and a master, preserved in an old Saxon catechism, the following question and reply occur: "Why is the sun so red when she sets?" "Because she looks down upon hell." Antonius Rusca, a learned professor at Milan, in the year 1621, published a huge quarto in five books, giving a detailed topographical account of the interior of the earth, hell, purgatory, and limbo.14 There is a lake in the south of Ireland in which is an island containing a cavern said to open down into hell. This cave

13 Descriptions of the sufferings of hell, according to the popular notions at different periods, are given in the work published at Weimar in 1817, Das Rad der ewigen Hollenqual. In den Curiositaten der physisch literarisch artistisch historischen Vor und Mitwelt, band vi. st. 2.

14 De Inferno et Statn Damonum ante Mundi Exitium.

is called St. Patrick's Purgatory, and the pretence obtained quite general credit for upwards of five centuries. Crowds of pilgrims visited the place. Some who had the hardihood to venture in were severely pinched, beaten, and burned, by the priests within, disguised as devils, and were almost frightened out of their wits by the diabolical scenes they saw where

"Forth from the depths of flame that singed the gloom Despairing wails and piercing shrieks were heard."

Several popes openly preached in behalf of this gross imposition; and the Church virtually authorized it by receiving the large revenues accruing from it, until at last outraged common sense demanded its repudiation and suppression.15

Few persons now, as they walk the streets and fields, are much disturbed by the thought that, not far below, the vivid lake of fire and brimstone, greedily roaring for new food, heaves its tortured surges convulsed and featured with souls. Few persons now shudder at a volcanic eruption as a premonishing message freshly belched from hell.16 In fact, the old belief in a local physical hell within the earth has almost gone from the public mind of to day. It arose from pagan myths and figures of speech based on ignorant observation and arbitrary fancy, and with the growth of science and the enlightenment of reason it has very extensively fallen and faded away. No honest and intelligent inquirer into the matter can find the slightest valid support for such a notion. It is now a mere tradition, upheld by groundless authority. And yet the dim shadow of that great idea of a subterranean hell which once burned so fierce and lurid in the brain of Christendom still vaguely haunts the modern world. The dogma still lies in the prevalent creeds, and is occasionally dragged out and brandished by fanatic preachers. The transmitted literature and influences of the past are so full of it that it cannot immediately cease. Accordingly, while the common understanding no longer grasps it as a definite verity, it lingers in the popular fancy as a half credible image. The painful attempts made now and then by some antiquated or fanatical clergyman to compel attention to it and belief in it as a tangible fact of science, as well as an unquestionable revelation of Scripture, scarcely win a passing notice, but provoke a significant smile. Father Passaglia, an eminent Jesuit theologian, in 1856 published in Italy a work on the Literality of Hell Fire and the Eternity of the Punishments of the Damned. He says, "In this world fire burns by chemical operations; but in hell it burns by the breath of the Lord!" The learned and venerable Faber, a voluminous author and distinguished English divine, published in the year 1851 a large octavo entitled "The Many Mansions in the House of the Father," discussing with elaborate detail the question as to the locality of the scenes awaiting souls after death. His grand conclusion the unreasonableness of which will be apparent without comment is as follows: "The saints having first risen with Christ into the highest regions of the air, out of reach of the dreadful heat, the tremendous flood of fire hitherto detained inside the earth will be let loose, and an awful conflagration rage till the whole material globe is dissipated into sublimated particles. Then the world will be formed anew, in three parts. First, there will be

15 Wright, St. Patrick's Purgatory: an Essay on the Legends of Paradise, Hell, and Purgatory, current during the Middle Ages.

16 Patuzzi, De Sede inferni in Terris quarenda.

a solid central sphere of fire the flaming nucleus of Gehenna two thousand miles in diameter. Secondly, there shall roll around this central ball on all sides an ignited ocean of liquid fire two thousand miles in depth, the peculiar residence of the wicked, the sulphurous lake spoken of in the Apocalypse. Thirdly, around this infernal sea a vast spherical arch will hang, a thousand miles thick, a massive and unbroken shell, through which there are no spiracles, and whose external surface, beautiful beyond conception, becomes the heaven of the redeemed, where Christ himself, perfect man as well as perfect God, fixes his residence and establishes the local sovereignty of the Universal Archangel." 17 A comfortable thought it must be for the saints, as they roam the flowery fields, basking in immortal bliss, to remember that under the crust they tread, a soundless sea of fire is forever plunging on its circular course, all its crimson waves packed with the agonized faces of the damned as thick as drops! The whole scheme is without real foundation. Science laughs at such a theory. Its scriptural supports are either ethnic figments or rhetorical tropes. Reason, recollecting the immateriality of the soul, dissipates the ghastly dream beyond the possibility of restoration to belief.

Following the historic locations of the abode of departed souls, we next ascend from the interior of the earth, and above the surface of the earth, into the air and the lofty realms of ether. The ancient Caledonians fixed the site of their spirit world in the clouds. Their bards have presented this conception in manifold forms and with the most picturesque details. In tempests the ghosts of their famous warriors ride on the thunderbolts, looking on the earth with eyes of fire, and hurling lances of lightning. They float over the summits of the hills or along the valleys in wreaths of mist, on vapory steeds, waving their shadowy arms in the moonlight, the stars dimly glimmering through their visionary shapes. The Laplanders also placed their heaven in the upper air, where the Northern Lights play. They regarded the auroral streamers as the sport of departed spirits in the happy region to which they had risen. Such ideas, clad in the familiar imagery furnished by their own climes, would naturally be suggested to the ignorant fancy, and easily commended to the credulous thoughts, of the Celts and Finns. Explanation and refutation are alike unnecessary.

Plutarch describes a theory held by some of the ancients locating hell in the air, elysium in the moon.18 After death all souls are compelled to spend a period in the region between the earth and the moon, the wicked in severe tortures and for a longer time, the good in a mild discipline soon purging away all their stains and fitting them for the lunar paradise. After tarrying a season there, they were either born again upon the earth, or transported to the divine realm of the sun. Macrobius, too, says, "The Platonists reckon as the infernal

17 Part iv. chap. ix. p. 417. Dr. Cumming (The End, Lect. X.) teaches the doctrine of the literal resurrection of the flesh, and the subsequent residence of the redeemed on this globe as their eternal heaven under the immediate rule of Christ. Quite a full detail of the historic and present belief in this scheme may be found in the recent work of its earnest advocate, D. T. Taylor, The Voice of the Church on the Coming of the Redeemer, or a History of the Doctrine of the Reign of Christ on Earth.

18 In his Essay on the Face in the Orb of the Moon.

region the whole space between the earth and the moon."19 He also adds, "The tropical signs Cancer and Capricorn are called the gates of the sun, because there he meets the solstice and can go no farther. Cancer is the gate of men, because by it is the descent to the lower regions; Capricorn is the gate of gods, because by it is a return for souls to the rank of gods in the seat of their proper immortality." 20 The Manicheans taught that souls were borne to the moon on leaving their bodies, and there washed from their sins in water, then taken to the sun and further cleansed in fire. They described the moon and sun as two splendid ships prepared for transferring souls to their native country, the world of perfect light in the heights of the creation.21

The ancient Hebrews thought the sky a solid firmament overarching the earth, and supporting a sea of inexhaustible waters, beyond which God and his angels dwelt in monopolized splendor. Eliphaz the Temanite says, "Is not God in the height of heaven? And behold the stars, how high they are; but he walketh upon the arch of heaven!" And Job says, "He covereth the face of his throne, and spreadeth his clouds under it. He hath drawn a circular bound upon the waters to the confines of light and darkness." From the dazzling realm above this supernal ocean all men were supposed, until after the resurrection of Christ, to be excluded. But from that time the belief gradually spread in Christendom that a way was open for faithful souls to ascend thither. Ephraim the Syrian,22 and Ambrose, located paradise in the outermost East on the highest summit of the earth, stretching into the serene heights of the sky. The ancients often conceived the universe to form one solid whole, whose different provinces were accessible from each other to gods and angels by means of bridges and golden staircases. Hence the innumerable paradisal legends associated with the mythic mountains of antiquity, such as Elborz, Olympus, Meru, and Kaf. Among the strange legends of the Middle Age, Gervase of Tilbury preserves the following one, illustrative of this belief in a sea over the sky: "One Sunday the people of an English village were coming out of church, a dark, gloomy day, when they saw the anchor of a ship hooked to one of the tombstones, the cable, tightly stretched, hanging down the air. Presently they saw a sailor sliding down the rope to unfix the anchor. When he had just loosened it the villagers seized hold of him; and, while in their hands, he quickly died, as though he had been drowned!" There is also a famous legend called "St. Brandon's Voyage." The worthy saint set sail from the coast of Ireland, and held on his way till he arrived at the moon, which he found to be the location of hell. Here he saw Judas Iscariot in execrable tortures, regularly respited, however, every week from Saturday eve till Sunday eve!

The thought so entirely in accordance with the first impression made by the phenomenon of the night sky on the ignorant senses and imagination that the stars are set in a firm revolving dome, has widely prevailed; and the thought that heaven lies beyond that solid arch, in the unknown space is a popular notion lingering still. The scriptural image declaring that the convulsions of the last day will shake the stars from their sockets in the

19 In Somnium Scipionis, lib. i. cap. xi.

20 Ibid. cap. xii.

21 Augustine, De Natura Boni, cap. xliv.

22 De Paradiso Eden, Sermo I.

heavenly floor, "as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs when she is shaken of a mighty wind," although so obviously a figure of speech, has been very generally credited as the description of a literal fact yet to occur. And how many thousands of pious Christians have felt, with the sainted Doddridge,

"Ye stars are but the shining dust Of my Divine abode, The pavement of those heavenly courts Where I shall see my God!"

The universal diffusion in civilized nations of the knowledge that the visible sky is no substantial expanse, but only an illimitable void of space hung with successive worlds, has by no means banished the belief, originally based on the opposite error, in a physical heaven definitely located far overhead, the destination of all ransomed souls. This is undoubtedly the most common idea at the present time. An English clergyman once wrote a book, afterwards translated into German, to teach that the sun is hell, and that the black spots often noticed on the disk of that orb are gatherings of damned souls.23 Isaac Taylor, on the contrary, contends with no little force and ingenuity that the sun may be the heaven of our planetary system, a globe of immortal blessedness and glory.24 The celebrated Dr. Whiston was convinced that the great comet which appeared in his day was hell. He imagined it remarkably fitted for that purpose by its fiery vapor, and its alternate plunges, now into the frozen extremity of space, now into the scorching breath of the sun. Tupper fastens the stigma of being the infernal prison house on the moon, in this style:

"I know thee well, O Moon, thou cavern'd realm, Sad satellite, thou giant ash of death, Blot on God's firmament, pale home of crime, Scarr'd prison house of sin, where damned souls Feed upon punishment: Oh, thought sublime, That amid night's black deeds, when evil prowls Through the broad world, thou, watching sinners well, Glarest o'er all, the wakeful eye of Hell!"

Bailey's conception is the darker birth of a deeper feeling:

"There is a blind world, yet unlit by God, Rolling around the extremest edge of light, Where all things are disaster and decay: That black and outcast orb is Satan's home That dusky world man's science counteth not Upon the brightest sky. He never knows How near it comes to him; but, swathed in clouds, As though in plumed and palled state, it steals, Hearse like and thief like, round the universe, Forever rolling, and returning not,

23 Swinden, On the Nature and Location of Hell.

24 Physical Theory of Another Life, chap. xvi.

Robbing all worlds of many an angel soul, With its light hidden in its breast, which burns With all concentrate and superfluent woe."

In the average faith of individuals to day, heaven and hell exist as separate places located somewhere in the universe; but the notions as to the precise regions in which they lie are most vague and ineffectual when compared with what they formerly were.

The Scandinavian kosmos contained nine worlds, arranged in the following order: Gimle, a golden region at the top of the universe, the eternal residence of Allfather and his chosen ones; next below that, Muspel, the realm of the genii of fire; Asgard, the abode of the gods in the starry firmament; Vindheim, the home of the air spirits; Manheim, the earth, or middle realm; Jotunheim, the world of the giants, outside the sea surrounding the earth; Elfheim, the world of the black demons and dwarfs, just under the earth's surface; Helheim, the domain of the goddess of death, deep within the earth's bosom; and finally, Niflheim, the lowest kingdom of horror and pain, at the very bottom of the creation. The Buddhist kosmos, in the simplest form, as some of them conceived it, was composed of a series of concentric spheres each separated from the next by a space, and successively overarching and under arching each other with circular layers of brightness above and blackness beneath; each starry hollow overhead being a heaven inhabited by gods and blessed souls, each lurid hollow underfoot being a hell filled with demons and wicked souls in penance. The Arabian kosmos, beginning with the earth, ascended to a world of water above the firmament, next to a world of air, then to a world of fire, followed in rising order by an emerald heaven with angels in the form of birds, a heaven of precious stones with angels as eagles, a hyacinth heaven with angels as vultures, a silver heaven with angels as horses, a golden and a pearl heaven each peopled with angel girls, a crystal heaven with angel men, then two heavens full of angels, and finally a great sea without bound, each sphere being presided over by a chief ruler, the names of all of whom were familiar to the learned Arabs. The Syrian kosmos corresponded closely to the foregoing. It soared up the mounting steps of earth, water, air, fire, and innumerable choruses successively of Angels, Archangels, Principalities, Powers, Virtues, Dominations, Thrones, Cherubim and Seraphim, unto the Expanse whence Lucifer fell; afterwards to a boundless Ocean; and lastly to a magnificent Crown of Light filling the uppermost space of all.25

It is hard for us to imagine the aspects of the universe to the ancients and the impressions it produced in them, all seemed so different then, in the dimness of crude observation, from the present appearance in the light of astronomic science. Anaximander held that the earth was of cylindrical form, suspended in the middle of the universe and surrounded by envelopes of water, air, and fire, as by the coats of an onion, but that the exterior stratum was broken up and collected into masses, and thus originated the sun, moon, and stars, which are carried around by the three spheres in which they are fixed.26 Many of the Oriental nations believed the planets to be animated beings, conscious divinities, freely marching around their high realms, keeping watch and ward over the creation, smiling their favorites on to happy fortune,

25 Dupuis, L'Origine de tous les Cultes, Planche No. 21.

26 Arist. de Coel. ii. 13.

fixing their baleful eyes and shedding disastrous eclipse on "falling nations and on kingly lines about to sink forever." This belief was cherished among the later Greek philosophers and Roman priests, and was vividly held by such men as Philo, Origen, and even Kepler. It is here that we are to look for the birth of astrology, that solemn lore, linking the petty fates of men with the starry conjunctions, which once sank so deeply into the mind of the world, but is now wellnigh forgotten:

"No more of that, ye planetary lights! Your aspects, dignities, ascendancies, Your partite quartiles, and your plastic trines, And all your heavenly houses and effects, Shall meet no more devout expounders here.

The joy of Jupiter, The exaltation of the Dragon's head, The sun's triplicity and glorious Day house on high, the moon's dim detriment, And all the starry inclusions of all signs, Shall rise, and rule, and pass, and no one know That there are spirit rulers of all worlds, Which fraternize with earth, and, though unknown, Hold in the shining voices of the stars Communion on high and everywhere."

The belief that the stars were living beings, combining with the fancy of an unscientific time, gave rise to the stellar apotheosis of heroes and legendary names, and was the source of those numerous asterisms, out lined groups of stars, which still bedeck the skies and form the landmarks of celestial topography. It was these and kindred influences that wrought together

"To make the firmament bristle with shapes Of intermittent motion, aspect vague, And mystic bearings, which o'ercreep the earth, Keeping slow time with horrors in the blood;" the Gorgon's petrific Head, the Bear's frightful form, Berenice's streaming Hair, the curdling length of Ophiuchus, and the Hydra's horrid shape. The poetic eye of old religion saw gods in the planets walking their serene blue paths,

"Osiris, Bel, Odin, Mithras, Brahm, Zeus, Who gave their names to stars which still roam round The skies all worshipless, even from climes Where their own altars once topp'd every hill."

By selected constellations the choicest legends of the antique world are preserved in silent enactment. On the heavenly sea the Argonautss keep nightly sail towards the Golden Fleece. There Herakles gripes the hydra's heads and sways his irresistible club; Arion with his harp rides the docile Dolphin; the Centaur's right hand clutches the Wolf; the Hare flees from the raging eye and inaudible bark of the Dog; and space crawls with the horrors of the Scorpion.

In consequence of the earth's revolution in its orbit, the sun appears at different seasons to rise in connection with different groups of stars. It seems as if the sun made an annual journey around the ecliptic. This circuit was divided into twelve parts corresponding to the months, and each marked by a distinct constellation. There was a singular agreement in regard to these solar houses, residences of the gods, or signs of the zodiac, among the leading nations of the earth, the Persians, Chaldeans, Hebrews, Syrians, Hindus, Chinese, Arabians, Japanese, Siamese, Goths, Javanese, Mexicans, Peruvians, and Scandinavians. 27 Among the various explanations of the origin of these artificial signs, we will notice only the one attributed by Volney to the Egyptians. The constellations in which the sun successively appeared from month to month were named thus: at the time of the overflow of the Nile, the stars of inundation, (Aquarius;) at the time of ploughing, stars of the ox, (Taurus;) when lions, driven forth by thirst, appeared on the banks of the Nile, stars of the lion, (Leo;) at the time of reaping, stars of the sheaf, (Virgo;) stars of the lamb and two kids, (Aries,) when these animals were born; stars of the crab, (Cancer,) when the sun, touching the tropic, returned backwards; stars of the wild goat, (Capricorn,) when the sun reached the highest point in his yearly track; stars of the balance, (Libra,) when days and nights were in equilibrium; stars of the scorpion, (Scorpio,) when periodical simooms burned like the venom of a scorpion; and so on of the rest.28

The progress of astronomical science from the wild time when men thought the stars were mere spangles stuck in a solid expanse not far off, to the vigorous age when Ptolemy's mathematics spanned the scope of the sky; from the first reverent observations of the Chaldean shepherds watching the constellations as gods, to the magnificent reasonings of Copernicus dashing down the innumerable crystalline spheres, "cycle on epicycle, orb on orb," with which crude theorizers had crowded the stellar spaces; from the uncurbed poetry of Hyginus writing the floor of heaven over with romantic myths in planetary words, to the more wondrous truth of Le Verrier measuring the steps from nimble Mercury flitting moth like in the beard of the sun to dull Neptune sagging in his cold course twenty six hundred million miles away; from the half inch orb of Hipparchus's naked eye, to the six feet speculum of Rosse's awful tube; from the primeval belief in one world studded around with skyey torch lights, to the modern conviction of octillions of inhabited worlds all governed by one law constitutes the most astonishing chapter in the history of the human mind. Every step of this incredible progress has had its effect in modifying the conceptions of man's position and importance in nature and of the connection of his future fate with localities. Of old, the entire creation was thought to lie pretty much within the comprehension of man's unaided senses, and man himself was supposed to be the chief if not the sole object of Divine providence. The deities often came down in incarnations and mingled with their favorites and rescued the earth from evils. Every thing was anthropomorphized. Man's relative magnitude and power were believed to be such that he fancied during an eclipse that, by screams, the crashing of gongs, and magic rites, he could scare away the monsters

27 Pigott, Scandinavian Mythology, chap. i. p. 31.

28 Volney, Ruins, chap. xxii. sect. 3. Maurice, Hist. Hindostan, vol. i. pp. 145-147.

who were swallowing the sun or the moon. Meteors shooting through the evening air the Arabs believed were fallen angels trying to get back into heaven but hurled from the crystal battlements by the flaming lances of the guardian watchers. Then the gazer saw "The top of heaven full of fiery shapes, Of burning cressets."

Now the student contemplates an abyss swarming with orbs each out weighing millions of our earth. Then they read their nativities in the planets and felt how great must be the state overwatched by such resplendent servitors. Now "They seek communion with the stars that they may know How petty is this ball on which they come and go."