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but this is not the time or place to argue them. Of such are they which follow:

If they for punishment were sent, which never was to cease,
Why keep them here, midway so long? For they must go at last.
What kith, or kin, are they of ours? and why together bound?
There's room enough in hell and earth for each a home to find.

Why Michael them expel from heaven, Messiah save us here?
As they and we one Christ will judge, and that at the same bar.
When God man made why put he not them on yonder fair moon,
Or other orb, a safe retreat, where Satan could not come?

Why leave them here, to sin exposed, if sin they ne'er had known;
Where Satan, far more arch than we, at will with us could roam?
Why not give us the seats they left unoccupied in heav'n,

And leave him here with them alone who out with him were driven?

Or, if for hell we were create, in fire to ever burn,
Why not us salamanders make and put us near the sun,
On Mercury's more fitting disk, when our career began?
Then we had been, by heat, prepared a happy race to run.

And, last of all, but not the least of these dark questions put,
Why they and we, so much unlike, to the same hell commit?
Were we and they one and the same, these things would all be plain,
And if you knew that to be true, would you not loud exclaim:

"O carry me back, O carry me back,

To" (heaven's happy) "shores!"

CHAPTER VIII.

Same Subject Continued-- This Seripture to be Literally ConstruedMysterious and Figurative, yet True-So Construed Consists with other Scriptures-Satan known by various Titles —Of Fallen Angels-Tartarus, What and Where-Hades-Hell-Nature of that War-General View of Rev. 12—-Double Interpretation of Emblems-Persecution-Now restrained by Law and how at present carried on.

If the evidence offered in the preceding chapter be considered as sufficient to establish the identity of the parties engaged in that celestial warfare, as insisted there, it will be found an easy task to satisfy the reader that the narrative under consideration is a faithful and true history of "War in Heaven" (Rev. 12: 7 to 17), and that, although brief, figurative, and mysterious, we are to accept it in its most literal sense.

That it is brief, if literally true, will be conceded by all. Why an event fraught with such momentous consequences should have been related in so few words is, at first view, hard to comprehend; but if we reflect carefully, and compare the manner in which this revelation is made with the mode adopted to communicate other facts of the first magnitude, those connected with the great and final judgment for instance, we will find that we are as fully informed of the particulars of that "WAR IN HEAVEN," as we are of those which relate to the judgment; and many other things of vast interest to us in our present critical condition.

It is also involved in great mystery, but not more so than are many other of the most precious truths related

in the Bible, and which are accredited as true by all Christians.

The language and terms employed are eminently figurative, not more so, however, than we often find used by our Savior himself, when with us in person, in his favorite and sublime method of teaching by parables.

We must not, therefore, discredit this part of God's revelation to men for any of these, or similar reasons, and refuse it credence in its most literal interpretation, if we find it, in that sense, consistent with both natural reason and everything else which is clearly taught in the Sacred Scriptures.

Is this wonderful chapter, when literally construed, consistent with the other Scriptures?

Let us examine this question by comparing this with a few other facts which are elsewhere plainly taught in the Bible. In this investigation we must constantly bear in mind, that by "Michael," Jesus Christ is intended, and by the "dragon" Satan is represented; and that Satan and his angels were "cast out into the earth.”

What do we next hear of them? In the form of a serpent figuring before Eve in Eden, Satan first makes his appearance to our race. From then till now he has been, by one name or other, the acknowledged leader, chief head and prince of devils. In Eph. 2: 2, he is called "the prince of the power of the air." He is often called "the prince of this world," as in John 12: 31. He is the same that was sometimes called by the Jews, "Beelzebub," but by the Savior, Satan. (See Mark 3: 22 to 26.) Of that great apostate much is said by the New Testament writers; and if we make the search to which the subject is entitled, we may learn a great deal about "his angels," that were "cast out with him," from the same Scriptures.

St. Jude says: "And the angels which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, he hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day.”—V. 6.

In his second general epistle, 2: 4, the apostle Peter, speaking of the certainty and severity of the punishment

of the wicked, says of them: "For if God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to HELL, and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment." Speaking of the final judgment the Savior said: "Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels."-Mat. 25: 41.

The word translated hell in the above quotation from Peter, is neither of the Greek words gehenna nor hades, which are usually translated hell, but a name, and should have been rendered Tartarus. Why it was translated hell, I can not conceive. The word Tartarus, it is said, occurs nowhere else in the New Testament; but it is one which was often used by the old Greek and Latin poets.

Dr. A. Clark says: "The ancient Greeks appear to have received by tradition an account of the punishment of the 'fallen angels,' and of bad men after death."

Tartarus is the name of the place or condition to which they supposed such fallen angels and the souls of bad men were sent or held. They do not appear to have had any clear or distinct idea as to where that place was; but they all seem to agree that it was somewhere on, in, or under this earth. Hesiod speaks of it as "Black Tartarus, within earth's spacious womb." Of Homer's description of it Pope says:

"No sun e'er gilds the gloomy horrors there;

No cheerful gales refresh the lazy air;
But murky Tartarus attends around."

The explanation of the fable of Tartarus by the Abbe Banier will reflect much light upon the question, as to the true sense and meaning of the word Tartarus as there used by St. Peter. He says: "The Greeks regarded the places situated to the east of them as higher than those which lay to the west; and hence they placed heaven in the former and hell in the latter."

According to his notion, the earliest Greeks placed their hell either in Spain, the residence of Pluto, or in Italy, countries situate to the west of them, and at that time.

but little known."-See Watson, A. Clark, Lempriere, and Bickersteth.

Without such explanation, as all must see, Peter is made to differ sadly with what is said in Revelation and by Jude, as to the place where and condition in which the fallen angels were at first sent, and are now retained; and to appear as inconsistent or unmeaning, in what he says of them himself.

In Rev. 12, they are represented as simply having been cast out "into the earth," without then saying anything more of them. Jude adds, that they are "reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day;" and Peter is made to say that they were cast "down to hell" at once, as the language used fully implies, and then further to add, "and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto the judgment."

If they were committed to hell then, for what good reason could they have been "reserved unto the judgment?" We must do that divinely inspired and faithful apostle more justice than to charge him with such error of faith or ignorance of the proper use of terms. The word "Tartarus" was in common use, and its meaning well understood in his time, as all classical readers well know. It is but fair, therefore, to presume that he employed that term in its usual sense; and by Tartarus he intended the same place or condition usually called hades. And that our translators misconceived his meaning as to where the fallen angels were sent, and hence, most innocently, made him say they were sent directly to hell: the place prepared for the final reception and eternal punishment of "the devil and his angels;" whoever at the time of the judgment for which they are reserved, may be found to be "his angels," whether they or we, or both, or only part of each be so adjudged.

If those who translated our Bible had ever conceived the idea that any mercy whatever was to be shown those rebellious spirits, they would not have done Peter's letter the violence they so did. But they would have understood why it was that although it is so often repeated in

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