This is undoubtedly the language from which the expression in Mark is borrowed; but a moment’s examination of it will show that the worm is not the remorse of a guilty conscience, but that, like the fire, it is something external to, and distinct from, the objects upon which it preys; and moreover that those upon whom it feeds are not the living, but the dead: it is the “carcasses” of the men that have transgressed against the Lord. In Isa. 14: 11, and 51: 8, the prophet again speaks of the worm as an agent of destruction, but it is always in connection with death. It is thus evident that the terms employed by our Lord in describing the doom of the wicked would convey to the minds of his hearers the very opposite of the idea of eternal life in misery. There is other evidence, though no other is necessary, to show that the idea which would be conveyed, and which the language was designed to convey, to their minds, was that of complete extinction of being, an utter consumption by external elements of destruction. The word translated hell in the passage under consideration is _ge-enna_. It is better to enter into life maimed, than to go in full possession of all our members and faculties into _ge-enna_. Did those to whom Christ spoke know anything about this place, and what kind of a fate awaited those who were cast therein? A vivid picture of the place of torment to which our Lord refers was in constant operation before their eyes, near by Jerusalem. Greenfield defines the word thus:-- “Gehenna, the valley of Hinnom, south of Jerusalem, once celebrated for the horrid worship of Moloch and afterward polluted with every species of filth, as well as the carcasses of animals and dead bodies of malefactors; to _consume which_, in order to avert the pestilence which such a mass of corruption would occasion, constant fires were kept burning.” Such was the fire of Gehenna; not a fire into which people were cast to be kept alive and tortured, but one into which they were cast to be consumed; not one which was designed to prey upon living beings, but upon the carcasses of animals and the dead bodies of malefactors. Hence we can see the consistency of associating the fire and the worm together. Whatever portion of the dead body the fire failed to consume, the worm would soon seize upon and devour. If a person had been condemned to be cast alive into this place, as the wicked will be cast into their Gehenna, what would have been his hope of escape? If the fire could have been speedily quenched before it had taken his life, and the worms which consumed what the fire left, could have been destroyed, he might have had some hope of coming out alive; but if this could not be done, he would know of a surety that his life would soon become extinct, and then even his lifeless remains would be utterly consumed by these agents of destruction.