In concocting the doctrine of the first judgment the Egyptian
astrologers, ignoring the Nirvana, inculcated the future sentient
existence of the soul; and, while retaining the Metempsychotial
expiations of the Oriental system, taught that its rewards, and
principal punishments, would be enjoyed or suffered in the under or
nether world, the existence of which they had conceived in constructing
their system of nature. This imaginary region, known to the Egyptians
as the Amenti, to the Greeks as Hades, and to the Hebrews as Sheol, was
divided by an impassable gulf into the two states of happiness and
misery which were designated in the Grecian mythology as the Elysium,
or Elysian Fields, and the Tartarus. In the lower part of the latter
was located the Phlegethon, or lake of fire and brimstone, the smoke
from which ascended into an upper apartment.

In this system it was taught that the souls of the two extremes of
society, constituted of the righteous and the great sinners, would be
consigned immediately after the first judgment, the one to the Elysium,
and the other to the Phlegethon, where they were to remain until the
second or general judgment; while the souls of less venial sinners,
constituting the greater mass of mankind, before being permitted to
enter the Elysium would be compelled to suffer the expiatory
punishments of the Metempsychosis, or in the upper region, or "smoky
row" of the Tartarus. Such was the Egyptian purgatory, and its denizens
constituted "the spirits in prison" referred to in I. Peter iii. 19,
from which the astrologers claimed to have the power to release,
provided their surviving friends paid liberally for their propitiatory
offices; and, from this assumption, the clergy of the Catholic church
derived the idea of saying masses for the repose of the soul. These
doctrines were carried by Pythagoras from Egypt to Greece about 550
years before the beginning of our era; and passing from thence to Rome,