The battle is literal; the taking of the Beast and the False Prophet is literal; the slaying of the kings and their armies is literal; Satan is literal; and his binding must be equally literal. It will not resolve itself into anything else, and fit to the connections or the terms. Some have asked, with an air of triumph, How can a chain of iron or brass bind a spirit, and that spirit an archangel? But the record does not say that it is a chain of iron, or brass, or steel, or any other material of earthly chains. It is a chain of divine make, as the sword that proceeds from the mouth of the Son of God. It is a spirit-chain, as the horses of the celestial army are spirit-horses. It is a chain of a character that can bind spirit and fetter angels. Jude tells of such chains, actually holding now (Jude 6), and which not even the angels can break. What they are made of, and how they serve to bind the freedom of spiritual natures, it is not for us to know or show; but they are not therefore any less real and literal chains. Figures, tropes, and shadows cannot bind anybody, unless it be some commentators, who seem to be hopelessly entangled in them. The Abyss is a reality, and the chain is also a reality, or it is not what inspiration says it is. It is called "a great chain ;" and "great" it must be to hold and confine the great Red Dragon.* But it is adequate to its purpose. Heaven makes no miscalculations. It is fastened on the limbs of the old monster. He cannot resist it, nor shake it off.

*See vol. ii, pp. 307-311.

Archangel as he is, he is compelled to submit, bound as a helpless prisoner, and violently cast into his dungeon, there to lie in his fetters for a decade of centuries.

The place into which Satan is cast is called äßvcovs, the Abyss. This is a different place from that into which the Beast and the False Prophet are cast. They were thrown into "the lake of fire which burneth with brimstone." The Devil, after the thousand years, is also cast into that same burning lake (chap. 19:10); but here he is cast into "the Abyss," whence the Beast came (chap. 17:8), and also the terrible plague of the spiritlocusts (chap. 9:1–3).

The question thus arises, What is the difference between "the Abyss" and "the lake of fire?" I might answer truly, that "the lake of fire" is the final Hell, the place of the eternal punishment of the damned; whilst "the Abyss" is a sort of fore-hell, a prison in which evil spirits are detained prior to their final judgment. The relation between the two is much like that of the county jail in which accused criminals are detained prior to their sentence, and the state penitentiary to which they are assigned for final punishment. But, as the question calls up the whole economy of the underworld, about which the Scriptures tell us more than is generally suspected or understood, it may be proper and desirable to look a little deeper into the matter.

In general, people have very dim, confused and inadequate ideas with regard to the whole unseen

world. This is owing in part to the reserve of the Scriptures on the subject, but more particularly to the obscuration of what is revealed by the faulty manner in which our English translators, though generally so correct, have dealt with the words and phrases of the sacred writers referring to this particular subject, begetting erroneous impressions, which reappear in our theological systems. Thus the word Hell, which in the Saxon vocabulary means simply the covered or unseen place, is used as the equivalent of words of very different signification, whilst those for which it is properly the equivalent are frequently rendered by other words which carry the mind quite aside from the real meaning. And so again, in popular language, the word Hell is carried away from its etymological signification, and made to stand for the place of final punishment, with which all other terms referring to the hidden abodes of wicked spirits are again confounded, whilst some of the original terms for which it is made to stand do not refer to the place of final punishment at all. The whole matter has thus become most sadly confused, involving in that confusion the article of the Creed respecting Christ's descent into Hell, and urgently needing to be unravelled and set right according to the true ideas of Revelation and of the early Church.

There is a word used sixty-five times in the original Hebrew of the Old Testament, which our English translators in thirty-one instances render Hell, in thirty-one instances Grave, and in three

instances the pit.

That word is Sheol, uniformly rendered Hades in the Greek of the Old Testament, and wherever the New Testament quotes the passages in which it occurs. By common consent the Greek word Hades is the exact equivalent of the Hebrew Sheol. It occurs eleven times in the New Testament, and always in the same sense as the Old Testament Sheol. To all intents and purposes, therefore, Sheol and Hades denote one and the same thing. But Sheol or Hades is never used to denote the Hell of final punishment. Neither is it ever used to denote the mere receptacle of the body after death, the grave. Nor yet is it ever used to denote the mere state of being dead as to the body; and still less to denote the pit or Abyss as such. A careful inventory of all the passages conclusively proves that Sheol or Hades is the name of a place in the unseen world, altogether distinct from the Hell of final punishment or the Heaven of final glory. Its true and only meaning is, "the place of departed spirits," the receptacle of souls which have left the body.* To this place all departed

* "Translating the word Hades, according to its etymology and its use among the Greeks, it is rendered an invisible place, which was all that Homer intended when he said the souls of his brave heroes were hurried, by the Trojan war, into Hades, where he exhibits them celebrating the Elysian games. The fathers, therefore, condemn the language of our translation (of the New Testament), and in the article of what is called the Apostles' Creed, which says Christ descended into Hell, misleading the vulgar by an English word, which now conveys an idea not contained in the original. This is so well known as to require no argument; but so little regarded as to demand re

spirits, good and bad, up to the time of the resurrection of Christ, went. In it there was a department for the good, called Paradise by the Saviour on the cross, and another department for the bad. Thus both the rich man and Lazarus went to Hades when they died; for the word is, "in Hades he lifted up his eyes, and seeth Abraham afar off and Lazarus in his bosom." Lazarus was then in Hades too, as well as Abraham; and the only dif ference between them and Dives was, that the good were separated from the bad by an impassable gulf, and that Lazarus was comforted and Dives tormented. So the dying Saviour told the penitent malefactor that they would yet that day be together in Paradise; that is, in the more favorable part of Hades. There they were neither in Heaven proper, nor in Hell proper; but simply in Hades. To this Hades all departed spirits went, the good with the good, and the bad with the bad. There was comfort there for the pious, and privation and torment for the wicked; and they of the one part could

*

peated protest."-Bennett's Theology of the Early Christian Church, pp. 323, 324.

"I cannot give a better periphrasis of it (the word Hades) than by translating it, that invisible place where the souls that leave their bodies live, whether it be a place of bliss or torment. In this sense it is taken in Scripture, the Apocrypha, Fathers, yea, and in heathenish authors too. And as for the Latin inferi, it is often taken in the same sense, and mostly used to express Hades."-Beveridge on the XXXIX Arts., pp. 115, 116.

* "Lazarus in Hades obtained comfort in Abraham's bosom ; the rich man, on the other hand, the torment of flame."-Tertullian, De Idol. 13.