At all events, whether the general Rabbinical belief was in the primitive destination of man to a heavenly or to an earthly immortality, whether the "death" decreed upon him in consequence of sin was the dissolution of the body or the wretchedness of the soul, they all agree that the banishment of souls into the realm of blackness under the grave was a part of the penalty of sin. Some of them maintained, as we think, that, had there been no sin, souls would have passed to heaven in glorified bodies; others of them maintained, as we think, that, had there been no sin, they would have lived eternally upon earth in their present bodies; but all of them agreed, it is undisputed, that in consequence of sin souls were condemned to the under world. No man would have seen the dismal realm of the sepulchre had there not been sin. The earliest Hebrew conception was that all souls went down to a common abode, to spend eternity in dark slumber or nerveless groping. This view was first modified soon after the Persian captivity, by the expectation that there would be discrimination at the resurrection which the Jews had learned to look for, when the just should rise but the wicked should be left. The next alteration of their notions on this subject was the subdivision of the underworld into Paradise and Gehenna, a conception known among them probably as early as a century before Christ, and very prominent with them in the apostolic age. "When Rabbi 4 Schoettgen, in 1 Cor. xv. 44. Jochanan was dying, his disciples asked him, 'Light of Israel, main pillar of the right, thou strong hammer, why dost thou weep?' He answered, 'Two paths open before me, the one leading to bliss, the other to torments; and I know not which of them will be my doom.'"5 "Paradise is separated from hell by a distance no greater than the width of a thread."6 So, in Christ's parable of Dives and Lazarus, Abraham's bosom and hell are two divisions. "There are three doors into Gehenna: one in the wilderness, where Korah and his company were swallowed; one in the sea, where Jonah descended when he 'cried out of the belly of hell;' one in Jerusalem, for the Lord says, 'My furnace is in Jerusalem.'"7 "The under world is divided into palaces, each of which is so large that it would take a man three hundred years to roam over it. There are distinct apartments where the hell punishments are inflicted. One place is so dark that its name is 'Night of Horrors."8 "In Paradise there are certain mansions for the pious from the Gentile peoples, and for those mundane kings who have done kindness to the Israelites."9 "The fire of Gehenna was kindled on the evening of the first Sabbath, and shall never be extinguished."10 The Egyptians, Persians, Hindus, and Greeks, with all of whom the Jews held relations of intercourse, had, in their popular representations of the under world of the dead, regions of peace and honor for the good, and regions of fire for the bad. The idea