It would seem that this superstition survives even to the present day, for it is well known that the dark and yellow atmosphere which settled over so much of the country, on the day of the removal of President Garfield from Washington to Long Branch, was sincerely held by hundreds of persons to be a death-warning sent from heaven, and there were numerous predictions that dissolution would take place before the train arrived at its destination. As Mr. Greg remarks, there can, we think, remain little doubt in unprepossessed minds, that the whole legend in question was one of those intended to magnify Christ Jesus, which were current in great numbers at the time the Matthew narrator wrote, and which he, with the usual want of discrimination and somewhat omnivorous tendency, which distinguished him as a compiler, admitted into his Gospel. FOOTNOTES: [206:1] Luke, xxiii. 44, 45. [206:2] Matthew, xxvii. 51-53. [206:3] Amberly: Analysis of Religious Belief, p. 268. [206:4] Life of Christ, vol. ii. p. 643. [207:1] See Prog. Relig. Ideas, vol. i. p. 71. [207:2] Rhys David's Buddhism, pp. 36, 37. [207:3] See Potter's Æschylus, "Prometheus Chained," last stanza. [207:4] Farrar's Life of Christ, p. 52. [207:5] See Higgins: Anacalypsis, vol. i. pp. 616, 617. [207:6] See Ibid. and Gibbon's Rome, vol. i. pp. 159 and 590, also Josephus: Jewish Antiquities, book xiv. ch. xii. and _note_. [207:7] "Cum caput obscura nitidum ferrugine texit Impiaquæ æternam timuerunt sæcula noctem." [207:8] See Gibbon's Rome, vol. i. pp. 159 and 590. [208:1] Tales of Ancient Greece, p. 46. [208:2] Ibid. pp. 61, 62. [208:3] Ibid. p. 270. [208:4] Anacalypsis, vol. i. p. 822. [208:5] See Bell's Pantheon, vol. i. p. 106. [209:1] See Kingsborough's Mexican Antiquities, vol. vi. p. 5. [209:2] The Fathers of the Church seem to cover the whole earth with darkness, in which they are followed by most of the moderns. (Gibbon. Luke, xxiii. 44, says "_over all the earth_.") [209:3] Origen (a Father of the third century) and a few modern critics, are desirous of confining it to the land of Judea. (Gibbon.) [209:4] Seneca, a celebrated philosopher and historian, born in Spain a few years B. C., but educated in Rome, and became a "Roman." [209:5] Pliny the elder, a celebrated Roman philosopher and historian, born about 23 A. D. [209:6] Seneca: Quaest. Natur. l. i. 15, vi. l. vii. 17. Pliny: Hist. Natur. l. ii. [209:7] Gibbon's Rome, i. 589, 590. [209:8] Matt. xvi. 20. [210:1] Hamlet, act 1, s. 1. CHAPTER XXII. "HE DESCENDED INTO HELL." The doctrine of Christ Jesus' descent into hell is emphatically part of the Christian belief, although not alluded to by Christian divines excepting when unavoidable. In the first place, it is taught in the _Creed_ of the Christians, wherein it says: "_He descended into hell, and on the third day he rose again from the dead._"