"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 d.a.m.ned 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 h.e.l.l, 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, a.s.serted that he found a descent into h.e.l.l "in a perilous vale" in the dominions of Prester John.
Many a cavern in England still bears the name of "h.e.l.l 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 h.e.l.l."
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, h.e.l.l, 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 h.e.l.l. This cave
13 Descriptions of the sufferings of h.e.l.l, 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 h.e.l.l.16 In fact, the old belief in a local physical h.e.l.l 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 h.e.l.l 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 pa.s.sing notice, but provoke a significant smile. Father Pa.s.saglia, an eminent Jesuit theologian, in 1856 published in Italy a work on the Literality of h.e.l.l Fire and the Eternity of the Punishments of the d.a.m.ned. He says, "In this world fire burns by chemical operations; but in h.e.l.l 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 ent.i.tled "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, h.e.l.l, 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 ma.s.sive and unbroken sh.e.l.l, 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 G.o.d, 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 d.a.m.ned 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 h.e.l.l 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. c.u.mming (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 s.p.a.ce 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 G.o.ds, because by it is a return for souls to the rank of G.o.ds 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 G.o.d and his angels dwelt in monopolized splendor. Eliphaz the Temanite says, "Is not G.o.d 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 G.o.ds and angels by means of bridges and golden staircases. Hence the innumerable paradisal legends a.s.sociated 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, ill.u.s.trative 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 h.e.l.l. Here he saw Judas Iscariot in execrable tortures, regularly respited, however, every week from Sat.u.r.day 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 s.p.a.ce 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 G.o.d!"
The universal diffusion in civilized nations of the knowledge that the visible sky is no substantial expanse, but only an illimitable void of s.p.a.ce 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 h.e.l.l, and that the black spots often noticed on the disk of that orb are gatherings of d.a.m.ned 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 h.e.l.l. He imagined it remarkably fitted for that purpose by its fiery vapor, and its alternate plunges, now into the frozen extremity of s.p.a.ce, 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 G.o.d"s firmament, pale home of crime, Scarr"d prison house of sin, where d.a.m.ned 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 h.e.l.l!"
Bailey"s conception is the darker birth of a deeper feeling:
"There is a blind world, yet unlit by G.o.d, 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, Hea.r.s.e like and thief like, round the universe, Forever rolling, and returning not,
23 Swinden, On the Nature and Location of h.e.l.l.
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 h.e.l.l 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 G.o.ds 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 G.o.ddess 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 s.p.a.ce, 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 G.o.ds and blessed souls, each lurid hollow underfoot being a h.e.l.l 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, Princ.i.p.alities, 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 s.p.a.ce 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 ma.s.ses, 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 part.i.te 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 pa.s.s, 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 G.o.ds 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 s.p.a.ce crawls with the horrors of the Scorpion.
In consequence of the earth"s revolution in its...o...b..t, 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 G.o.ds, or signs of the zodiac, among the leading nations of the earth, the Persians, Chaldeans, Hebrews, Syrians, Hindus, Chinese, Arabians, j.a.panese, 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