A church dictionary

by Walter Farquhar Hook

HEARSE. A frame set over the coffin of any great person deceased, and covered with a pall: also the carriage in which corpses are carried to the grave.

HEATHEN. (From ἔθνη, nations, or Gentiles.) Pagans who worship false gods.

HEAVEN. That place where God affords a nearer and more immediate view of himself, and a more sensible manifestation of his glory, than in other parts of the universe. That it is a place as well as a state, is clear from John xiv. 2, 3, and from the existence of our Lord’s body there, and the bodies of Enoch and Elijah.

HEBDOMADARIUS. The priest whose weekly turn it was to perform the divine offices in cathedrals and colleges. In some foreign cathedrals it is the designation of a clergyman corresponding to our minor canons, &c. In the Scottish universities the name was given to one of the superior members, whose weekly turn it was to superintend the discipline of the students. The office was effectively exercised at St. Andrew’s, at least, till of late years.—Jebb.

HELL. (Anglo-Saxon and Icelandic Hele, Hela, a “cavern;” “concealed place;” “mansion of the dead.”) Two entirely different words in the original language of the New Testament are rendered in our version by the single word “hell.” The first of these is Hades, which occurs eleven times in the New Testament, and in every case but one is translated “hell.” Now Hades is never used to denote the place of final torment, the regions of the damned; but signifies “the place of departed spirits,” whether good or bad,—the place where they are kept until the day of judgment, when they shall be re-united to their bodies, and go each to his appointed destiny. The other word, Gehenna, signifies the place of torment,—the eternal abode of the wicked. At the time when our translation was made, and the Prayer Book compiled, the English word “hell” had a more extensive meaning than it has at present. It originally signified to cover over or conceal; and it is still used in this sense in several parts of England, where, for example, to cover a church or a house with a roof is to hell the building, and the person by whom it is done is called a hellier. But the word also denoted the place of future misery, and is accordingly used in that sense in the New Testament, as the translation of Gehenna; and in consequence of the changes which our language has experienced during the last 200 years, it is now restricted to this particular meaning. (See Gehenna.)

Bearing in mind, then, that Hades was translated by the word “hell,” for want of another more exactly corresponding with the original, the reader will perceive that the article in the Creed, “He descended into hell,” does not refer to the place of final misery; but to that general receptacle of all departed human souls, both penitent and impenitent, where they are reserved in a state of comparative enjoyment or misery, to wait the morning of the resurrection, when their bodies being united to their souls, they will be advanced to complete felicity or woe, in heaven or hell.

One great use of the system of catechising, as enjoined by the Church, is the opportunity it affords of inculcating upon the people such distinctions as these.

It was necessary that our Lord’s death should be attended with all those circumstances which mark the death of men. Christ was possessed of a human nature, both body and soul, besides his Divinity. The body of man at death sinks to the grave; and the soul goes to Hades, or the place of departed spirits. In like manner the body of our Lord was laid in the tomb, but his soul went to the general repository of human disembodied spirits, “the lower parts of the earth,” (Ps. xvi. 10; Eph. iv. 9, with Ps. lxiii. 9, and Isa. v. 14,) Hades, the place of separated souls, not Gehenna, the place of condemnation; because if it relate to the place of either bliss or misery, it must be the former, in consistence with the Lord’s promise to the penitent thief. (Luke xxiii. 43.)

Five different opinions have been entertained on this subject. First, that the word “descended” is to be taken metaphorically; implying only the efficacy of Christ’s death as to the souls departed. But this seems refuted by the passage, “Thou wilt not leave my soul in hell,” (Ps. xvi. 10,) whereas the efficacy of our Lord’s death still continues.

Secondly, that the descent into hell signifies the suffering the torments of the damned; and this in the stead of those who otherwise must have endured them. But it is not to be believed that our Lord could suffer from the “worm that never dieth”—the remorse of conscience, and a sense of the continuance and consequences of the displeasure of God, and consequent despair; or that he who overcame the powers of hell could suffer under their vengeance. Nor, again, can he, in this article, be said by a metaphor to have felt the torments of hell, by this meaning only the greatest torments, because all that he felt which we know of, was antecedent to his death, and not afterwards. The torments of hell then cannot be here meant literally, because not supported by truth, nor figuratively, because not applicable.