called Tophet, nor the valley of the son of Hinnom, but the valley of slaughter. And I will make void the counsel of Judah and Jerusalem in this place; and I will cause them to fall by the sword before their enemies, and by the hands of them that seek their lives; and their carcasses will I give to be meat for the fowls of the heaven, and for the beasts of the earth. And I will make this city desolate, and an hissing; every one that passeth thereby shall be astonished and hiss, because of all the plagues thereof. And I will cause them to eat the flesh of their sons, and the flesh of their daughters, and they shall eat every one of the flesh of his friend, in the siege and straitness wherewith their enemies, and they that seek their lives shall straiten them. Then shalt thou break the bottle in the sight of the men that go with thee, And shalt say unto them, Thus saith the Lord of hosts, Even so will I break this people, and this city, as one breaketh a potter's vessel, that cannot be made whole again; and they shall bury them in Tophet, till there be no place to bury. This will I do unto this place, saith the Lord, and to the inhabitants thereof, and even make this city as Tophet: And the houses of Jerusalem, and the houses of the kings of Judah, shall be defiled as the place of Tophet, because of all the houses upon whose roofs they have burned incense unto all the host of heaven, and have poured out drink-offerings unto other gods. Then came Jeremiah from Tophet, whither the Lord had sent him to prophesy; and he stood in the court of the Lord's house, and said to all the people, Thus saith the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, I will bring upon this city, and upon all her towns, all the evil that I have pronounced against it; because they have hardened their necks, that they might not hear my words."

Having examined with good attention the preceding prophecies, we may be the better prepared to analyze

the threats of our Lord concerning Jerusalem. But first, let us inquire of what Jeremiah was directed to make Gehenna the emblem? Answer. "Thus saith the Lord of hosts, even so [as Jeremiah was to break the bottle] will I break THIS PEOPLE, and this CITY, as one breaketh a potter's vessel, that cannot be made whole again; and they shall bury them in TOPHET, till there be no place to bury. Thus will I do to this place, saith the LORD, and to the inhabitants thereof, and even make this city AS TOPHET." Gehenna then, was made an emblem of pollution, and temporal misery, and we shall soon see how our Lord applied it.

In the verse preceding the one under special consideration, the Jews are directed-" Fill ye up then the measure of your fathers." What was this measure? Let the context answer:

"Wherefore, behold, I send unto you prophets, and wise men, and scribes; and some of them ye shall kill and crucify; and some of them shall ye scourge in your synagogues, and persecute them from city to city: That upon you may come all the righteous blood shed upon the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel, unto the blood of Zacharias, son of Barachias, whom ye slew between the temple and the altar. Verily I say unto you, all these things shall come upon this generation. O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not! Behold, your house is left unto you desolate."

The man who does not see that the theatening to make the city desolate, is a repetition of the prophecy by Jeremiah, is most certainly a dull scholar. That Christ here alludes to this prophecy, is evident, from his description of the catastrophe. But let it be particularly noted, that this punishment is denounced

against the Jews and their chief city only. It has no allusion to the punishment of wicked men generally, and therefore the apostles of our Lord never preached it to the Gentiles. The Jews, as a people, most evidently understood the language, for it was that of the prophets, and they must have understood it as they did the words of their prophecies. And that they did so understand it, is evident by the fact that Christ does not intimate any other meaning; nor do they express any surprise as they undoubtedly would, had he conveyed any ideas to their minds which were not usually associated with the language in common use.

That our Lord was foretelling the destruction of Jerusalem by the sword of the Romans, will hardly be disputed, by those who will carefully consider the prophecies just quoted. How the Lord "made void the counsel of Judah and Jerusalem," is evident by the result of the siege, as well as the manner in which the disciples were saved by believing the words of their master respecting the suffering of that devoted people. They fled from Jerusalem to Pella, being persuaded the day of vengeance had arrived, in which the wrath had "come upon them to the uttermost." Josephus, the Jewish historian, testifies that the horrors of the siege, described Jer. 19: 9, were literally fulfilled in the generation of the apostles. Ir this light we also view the declaration, "Verily I say unto you, all these things shall come upon THIS GENERATION." But was this generation to be known in another world, and was all the blood of the prophets to be required at the hands of the Jews who heard our Saviour, in another state of existence? Impossible, that so flagrant a breach of every just rule of criticism should be deliberately practised by honest and discriminating minds. But as the labours of the orthodox are generally more acceptable than those of Universalists, we will give the celebrated Dr. Adam

Clarke's Commentary on Mat. 5: 22. "whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire." "Thou fool.-A rebel against God, apostate from all good. This term implied, among the Jews, the highest enormity, and most aggravated guilt. Among the Gentoos, such an expression was punished by cutting out the tongue, and thrusting a hot iron, of ten fingers' breadth, into the mouth of the person who used it.

"Shall be in danger of hell fire.-Shall be liable to the hell of fire. Our Lord here alludes to the valley of the son of Hinnom. This place was near Jerusalem, and had been formerly used for those abominable sacrifices in which the idolatrous Jews had caused their children to pass through the fire to Moloch. A particular place in this valley was called Tophet, the fire-stove, in which some suppose they burnt their children alive to the above idol. From the circumstances of this valley having been the scene of those infernal sacrifices, the Jews, in our Saviour's time, used the word for hell, the place of the damned. [This is a mere supposition without a fact in its support.] It is very probable, that our Lord means no more here than this: If a man charge another with apostacy from the Jewish religion, or rebellion against God, and cannot prove his charge, then he is exposed to that punishment, (burning alive) which the other must have suffered, if the charge had been substantiated. are three kind of offences here, which exceed each other in their degrees of guilt. 1st. Anger against a man, accompanied with some injurious act. 2dly. Contempt, expressed by the opprobrious epithet raca, or shallow brains. 3dly. Hatred and a mortal enmity, expressed by the term moreh, or apostate, where such apostacy could not be proved. Now, proportioned to these three offences were three different degrees of punishment, each exceeding the other in its

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severity, as the offences exceeded each other in their different degrees of guilt. 1st. The judgment, the council of twenty-three, which could inflict the punishment of strangling. 2dly. The Sanhedrim, or great council, which could inflict the punishment of stoning. And 3dly, the being burnt alive in the valley of the son of Hinnom. This appears to be the meaning of our Lord."

As no man will accuse Dr. Clarke of wishing to countenance Universalists, we hope the facts which he has stated, and of which he was fully competent to judge, will have their due influence. That the Jews. understood our Lord, in the foregoing quotation, to threaten any thing more than "being burnt alive in the valley of the son of Hinnom," to which punishment the Sanhedrim could condemn them, no man, we believe, will venture to affirm. If he attached any other meaning to the term γεννα τον πυρος, the burning of Gehenna, we have no means of ascertaining the fact. And can gidsws, condemnation, judgment, add to, or alter the place, or Gehenna? Nobody will pretend this. Why then, need we seek among the moderns, or the pagans of antiquity, for a meaning to certain words and phrases, not known to the Jewish Scriptures? The question is not, and cannot be, What do the moderns believe, or affirm, relative to these things? But, what did the Jews believe, and to what purpose did they apply them-and what was their understanding of the terms? We have seen by the Old Testament with what view the prophets used them, and of what they were made the emblems. If our Lord employed them in another sense, the fact has not come down to us, and analogy is utterly against it..

But, whatever meaning men may attach to the phrase damnation of hell, or punishment of Gehenna, one thing is well to remember-it was never threatened to any but Jews, nor to them but by our Lord.

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