It is only when we grasp the naive outlook of early days that we can realize the full significance of many Christian doctrines. Let us take the articles of the {102} creed. We are taught to believe that Jesus descended into Hell and then ascended into Heaven and sitteth on the right hand of God. What is this Hell into which Jesus is supposed to have descended? It is the Sheol of the old Hebrews, a misty region below the surface of the earth; it is the Hades of the Greeks, the place of the departed shades; it is the Avernus of the Romans, the lower regions where ghosts flit and gibber. This place of the dead is at first the grave and sinks deeper into the earth as time passes and the myth-making fancy has been directed upon it. But it is thought of literally as in the bowels of the earth. All through the Middle ages this naive view was held. There was an absolute down and a subterranean Hell, and every country told of some cavern which was one of its many mouths. With the advent of the Copernican view what becomes of these age-old ideas? To save them they must be transformed and given another location or a merely symbolic meaning. But why save them? They are as pure myths as any others to be found in olden days. They are brother to Tartarus and the Battle of the Titans and the Slaying of Rahab. The early Christians believed in a literal Hell beneath the surface of the earth. Their belief was wrong beyond the shadow of a doubt. We cannot make it true by modifying it out of all recognition.