THE PUNISHMENT OF THE WICKED.
The Rev. Dr. Theodore Clapp, in his autobiography says he had preached at New Orleans a zealous sermon for endless punishment. After the sermon, Judge W. (who, he says, was an eminent scholar, and had studied for the ministry, but relinquished his purpose because he could not find the doctrine of endless punishment and kindred dogmas) asked him to make out a list of texts in the Hebrew or Greek on which he relied to prove the doctrine. The doctor then gives a detailed account of his studies in search of texts to give to the judge. He began with the Old Testament in the Hebrew, and prosecuted his study during that and the succeeding year; and yet he was unable to find therein so much as an allusion to any suffering after death. In the dictionary to the Hebrew language he could not discern a word signifying hell, or a place of punishment in a future state; and to his utter astonishment it turned out that orthodox critics of the greatest celebrity were perfectly familiar with these facts. He was compelled to confess to the judge that he could not produce any Hebrew text; but he was still sanguine that the New Testament would furnish what he had sought for without success in Moses and the prophets. He prosecuted his study of the Greek of the New Testament eight years, with the result that he could not name a portion of it, from the first verse in Matthew to the last of Revelation, which, fairly interpreted, affirms that a portion of mankind will be eternally miserable. The doctor concludes by saying that it is an important, most instructive fact, that he was brought into his present state of mind (the repudiation of the dogma) by the Bible only—a state of mind running counter to all the prejudices of his early life, of parental precept, of school, theological seminary, and professional caste. —Judge Halsted, in Theology of the Bible.