Future Retribution. By Rev. George S. Mott [pp. 532-554]

Future Retribution.
writings. It was employed by them, as all confess, in order to
designate hell, the infernal region, the world of woe. In no
other sense can it in any way be made out that it is employed
in the New Testament." Stuart's Fture Punishment. Even
Alg,er is obliged to admit this. "This is a fact about which
there can be no question." p. 328.
This word, in its well-defined sense, is found eleven times in
our Lord's discourses. We quote a few: "Ye serpents, ye
generation of vipers! how can ye escape the damnation of hell?"
— gehenna. Matt. xxiii. 33. "I will forewarn you whom ye shall
fear: fear him, which after he hath killed hath power to cast
into hell"-gehenna. Luke xii. 15. "Whosoever shall say,
Thoui fool, shall be in danger of hell-fire "-gehenna. Matt. v. 22.
So in ver. 29, "It is profitable for thee that one of thy members
perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell "gehenna. So in the next verse, where the same principle is applied to the right hand. In the parallel passage in Mark ix. 43,
45, and 49, where the same sentiment occurs, we have the same
word, gehenna. Now it is impossible, without setting at defiance all laws which control language, to maintain that the
word translated hell in these verses means only the under-world,
or abode of the dead.
But we have another word. In 2 Pet. ii. 4, we read that
God spared not the angels which sinned, but cast them down
to hell (tartarosas). As Matthew, in writing for the Jews,
employed the term gehenna,* because with it was associated
the idea of woe, for the same reason Peter uses tar7tarosas in
writing to the " strangers scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia,
Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia," The Greeks knew nothing
about the valley of Hiinnonm, but they were familiar with the
idea of suffering in an abode their poets called Tartarus, and
which among them was as common as our word hell.
In searching for the meaning of hell, there is not alone the
word itself, but we encounter the idea of future punishment.
This is discoverable everywhere in the New Testament. This
is the spear's head, weighty as Goliath's, fastened to the shaft of
each warning, as it issues from the mouth of Jehovah. "Ex
* Luke uses it but once.
1871.]
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