Democratic Sentinel, Volume 2, Number 3, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 March 1878 — Age of the Idea of Hell. [ARTICLE]

Age of the Idea of Hell.

In tlie first place, it is necessary to rise above that narrowness of view which regards the doctrine of hell as especially a Christian doctrine, or as the monopoly of any particular religion. On the contrary, it is as ancient and universal as the systems of religious faith that have overspread the world. The oldest religions of which, we have any knowledge—Hindoo, Egyptian, and the various oriental systems of worship —all affirm the doctrine of a futqjje life,, with accompanying hells for the torture of condemned souls. We-eertiunly cannot assume that all these systems are true, and of divine origin ; but, if not, then the question forces itself Upon us, how they came by this belief. Tbe'olJ, historic religious systems involved advanced and complicated creeds and rituals, and if they were not real divine revelations in this elaborated Sh'Spe we are compelled to regard them as having, had a natural development out of lowTr and cruder forms of superstition. To explain these religions—-as to explain the earliest political institutions—Wte mudt go behind them. There is a prehistoric/ rudimentary theology of the primitive man, the quality of which has to be deduced from his low, infantine condition of mind, interpreted by what we observe among the inferior types of mankind at the present time.— Prof. Youmans, in Popular Science Monthly fbr March. . »