With regard to the punishments of another world, we find the same discreet reserve in the Christian Scriptures. The most awful retribution is declared; and the fears of unbelieving man are excited by allusions to all those miseries which we here most shudder at; but hell is not described. We are told of "the fire that never shall be quenched; where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched;"" of outer darkness, where shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth;" of "the everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels';" of "the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone, whence the smoke of their torment ascendeth up for ever and ever, and they have no rest day nor night"." But the subject is left in these obscure generalities; and the apostles, instead of enlarging, as a natural temptation might have led them to do, upon the texts thus left them by their master, confine themselves to the most modest and prudent statements upon this tremendous theme. They denounce, as was their commission, the 1 Mark, ix. 44. Matt. viii. 12. Matt. xxv. 41. "terrors of the Lord," "indignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish, upon every soul of man that doeth evil;" but they wrap up these terrors and this anguish in the general expressions of "the blackness of darkness for ever," and "everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord," and the forfeiture of the heavenly inheritance. In short, instead of yielding to imagination, and giving way to the allurement of ambitious descriptions either of future punishment, or future reward, they rather surprise us by their reserve. Not so Mohammed. He has," in his Koran and traditions, been very exact in describing the various torments of hell; which, according to him, the wicked will suffer both from intense heat and excessive cold3." "Unto those who treasure up gold and silver, and employ it not for the advancement of God's true religion, denounce a grievous punish 3 Sale's Prelim. Disc. 92. ment. On the day of judgment their treasures shall be intensely heated in the fire of hell, and their foreheads, and their sides, and their backs shall be stigmatized therewith; and their tor mentors shall say, this is what ye have treasured for your souls; taste, therefore, that which ye have treasured up 4." up "Those 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. So often as they shall endeavour to get out of hell, because of the anguish of their torments, they shall be dragged back into the same; and their tormentors shall say unto them, Taste ye the pain of burning 5." "Woe be, on that day, unto those who accused the prophets of imposture! It shall be said unto them, Go ye into the punishment which ye denied as a falsehood: go ye into the shadow of the smoke of hell, which Koran, ch. ix. p. 153. 5 Koran, ch. xxii. p. 276. shall arise in three columns, and shall not shade you from the heat, neither shall it be of service against the flame; but it shall cast forth sparks as big as towers, resembling yellow camels in colour "." This is a specimen, and only a short specimen, compared with the numerous passages to the same effect, which occur in the Koran, of the manner in which the imagination is likely to wanton and riot, when it enters upon the mysterious field of future reward and punishment. The Christian writers themselves of the second and third century often afford us a similar example, and appal us by the minuteness with which they delineate the undescribable transac 6 Koran, ch. lxxviii. p. 478. I have made these quotations the more freely, because I believe few persons, comparatively, know what the Koran really contains. They understand that it is a successful imposture, which has covered a wider surface than even Christianity; and this operates to injure Christianity, by familiarizing us to an idea of successful imposture. But if the original records were consulted, if Mohammed were read instead of Gibbon, the imposture would become a powerful auxiliary to the truth. tions of the day of judgment, and its astonishing consequences'. Scripture alone is temperate ;-intelligible, as far as its religious effects require that the subject should be explained: yet neither alluring the fancy by luxuriant images, nor disgusting it by terrific descriptions. Yet apart from his divinity, I see no reason why Jesus and his followers should have differed from those whose inferiority to him every reader must acknowledge. The subject is a favourite with the vulgar; and he addressed his instructions to the poor. The Eastern writers delight in allegory, and figures, and highly coloured representations. And he was an oriental teacher. Even Mohammed's descriptions are, in many instances, traced to Jewish origin: and Jesus was brought up in the midst of those ideas and fables which the Jews had engrafted upon their authentic Scriptures. So that if we persist in supposing that all set out under the same circumstances, no rational account can be 7 See, in particular, Tertull. de Spectaculis, c. 30. Lactant. Instit. vii. 21. |