Ancient Faiths And Modern: A Dissertation upon Worships, Legends and Divinities in Central and Western Asia, Europe, and Elsewhere, Before the Christian Era. Showing Their Relations to Religious Customs as They Now Exist.Inman, Thomas
Religion
Ancient Faiths And Modern: A Dissertation upon Worships, Legends and Divinities in Central and Western Asia, Europe, and Elsewhere, Before the Christian Era. Showing Their Relations to Religious Customs as They Now Exist.
Inman, Thomas
Religions
Before we either pity or despise Siddartha for not giving his followers
any idea of what we call Heaven, it would be well to endeavour to
discover the true teaching of Jesus of Nazareth upon this point, and the
ideas of his followers. We must also say a few words about his ideas of
Hell. He clearly believed that there was a place in which those whose
lives had been wicked would be punished after death by the devil and his
angels--the place was one of outer darkness, where shall be weeping and
wailing, and gnashing of teeth (Matt. viii. 12). In Matt. xiii. 42 this
place of outer darkness is described as "a furnace of fire," and in Mark
ix. 43-44 this fire is described as one that never shall be quenched,
and in which there lives a worm. In Luke xvi. 23-24 there is an
expression of the belief that the body lives after death in its usual
form, and has eyes, a tongue, the power of speech, &c.; yet in Matt. x.
28 the doctrine is inculcated that both body and soul are destroyed
in Hell. In Jude 7 and 13 Hell is again described as a place of
unquenchable fire, and yet one occupied by the blackness of darkness;
whilst in Revelation xix. 20 and xx. 10 we are told that the fire is
a lake of burning brimstone. Of the absolute locality of this horrible
spot not a word is said.
On the other hand, Heaven is described (Matt xiii. 43) as a place where
the righteous shall shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of God. In
Luke xvi. 22 the pleasure of Heaven is made to consist of a simple
repose in the bosom of Abraham; but though we are there led to believe
that the blessed can see the torments of the damned, it does not appear
that either "the father of the faithful," or the poor beggar Lazarus,
take any pleasure in contemplating them, as some few divines of the
church of England believe that they will do, when they have arrived at
the abode of bliss, and see their enemies in the burning lake. Paul,
when writing to the Corinthians, (1 Ep. xv.) gives his idea of the
resurrection of the just as one in which each man will be a spiritual
edition of his former terrestrial self, but beyond the statement in 1
Thess. iv. 17, that the redeemed will, when in heaven, dwell for
ever with the Lord, he expresses no opinion of the occupation of
the glorified ones. In John's gospel (xiv. 2) Jesus is reported as
saying,--"In my Father's house are many mansions or houses--I go to
prepare a place for you," but there is nothing like any account of what
is to be done in those abodes.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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