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Title: The Destiny of the Soul: A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life
Author: William Rounseville Alger
Release date: August 19, 2006 [eBook #19082]
Language: English
Credits: Produced by Edmund Dejowski
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DESTINY OF THE SOUL: A CRITICAL HISTORY OF THE DOCTRINE OF A FUTURE LIFE ***
Produced by Edmund Dejowski
A CRITICAL HISTORYOF THEDOCTRINE OF A FUTURE LIFE,
BYWILLIAM ROUNSEVILLE ALGER.
TENTH EDITION,
WITH SIX NEW CHAPTERS, AND
A Complete Bibliography of the Subject.
[Note: bibliography not included here]
COMPRISING 4977 BOOKS RELATING TO THE NATURE, ORIGIN, ANDDESTINY OF THE SOUL. THE TITLES CLASSIFIED AND ARRANGEDCHRONOLOGICALLY, WITH NOTES, AND INDEXES OF THE AUTHORS ANDSUBJECTS.
BY EZRA ABBOT,
PROFESSOR OF NEW TESTAMENT CRITICISM AND INTERPRETATION INTHE DIVINITY SCHOOL OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY.
BOSTON:ROBERTS BROTHERS.1880
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1860, by
WILLIAM ROUNSEVILLE ALGER,
in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United
States for the District of Massachusetts.
Copyright 1878, W.R. Alger
ELECTROTYPED BY JOHNSON & CO., PHILADA.
University Press: John Wilson & Son,
Cambridge.
PREFACE TO THE TENTH EDITION.
THIS work has passed through nine editions, and has been out ofprint now for nearly a year. During the twenty years which haveelapsed since it was written, the question of immortality, thefaith and opinions of men and the drift of criticism and doubtconcerning it, have been a subject of dominant interest to me, andhave occupied a large space in my reading and reflection.Accordingly, now that my publisher, moved by the constant demandfor the volume, urges the preparation of a new edition introducingsuch additional materials as my continued researches have gatheredor constructed, I gladly comply with his request.
The present work is not only historic but it is also polemic;polemic, however, not in the spirit or interest of any party orconventicle, but in the spirit and interest of science andhumanity. Orthodoxy insists on doctrines whose irrationality intheir current forms is such that they can never be a basis for theunion of all men. Therefore, to discredit these, in preparationfor more reasonable and auspicious views, is a service to thewhole human race. This is my justification for the controversialquality which may frequently strike the reader.
Looking back over his pages, after nearly a quarter of a centurymore of investigation and experience, the author is grateful thathe finds nothing to retract or expunge. He has but to add suchthoughts and illustrations as have occurred to him in the courseof his subsequent studies. He hopes that the supplementarychapters now published will be found more suggestive and maturethan the preceding ones, while the same in aim and tone. For hestill believes, as he did in his earlier time, that there is muchof error and superstition, bigotry and cruelty, to be purged outof the prevailing theological creed and sentiment of Christendom.And he still hopes, as he did then, to contribute something ofgood influence in this direction. The large circulation of thework, the many letters of thanks for it received by the authorfrom laymen and clergymen of different denominations, the numerousavowed and unavowed quotations from it in recent publications,all show that it has not been produced in vain, but has bornefruit in missionary service for reason, liberty, and charity.
This ventilating and illumining function of fearless andreverential critical thought will need to be fulfilled much longerin many quarters. The doctrine of a future life has been made sofrightful by the preponderance in it of the elements of materialtorture and sectarian narrowness, that a natural revulsion ofgenerous sentiment joins with the impulse of materialistic scienceto produce a growing disbelief in any life at all beyond thegrave. Nothing else will do so much to renew and extend faith inGod and immortality as a noble and beautiful doctrine of God andimmortality, freed from disfiguring terror, selfishness, andfavoritism.
The most popular preacher in England has recently asked hisfellow believers, "Can we go to our beds and sleep while China,India, Japan, and other nations are being damned?" The proprietorof a great foundry in Germany, while he talked one day with aworkman who was feeding a furnace, accidentally stepped back, andfell headlong into a vat of molten iron. The thought of whathappened then horrifies the imagination. Yet it was all over intwo or three seconds. Multiply the individual instance byunnumbered millions, stretch the agony to temporal infinity, andwe confront the orthodox idea of hell!
Protesting human nature hurls off such a belief with indignantdisdain, except in those instances where the very form andvibration of its nervous pulp have been perverted by the hardeninganimus of a dogmatic drill transmitted through generations. Totrace the origin of such notions, expose their baselessness,obliterate their sway, and replace them with conceptions of a morerational and benignant order, is a task which still needs to bedone, and to be done in many forms, over and over, again andagain. Though each repetition tell but slightly, it tells.
Every sound argument is instantly crowned with universal victoryin the sight of God, and therefore must at last be so in the sightof mankind. However slowly the logic of events limps after thelogic of thoughts, it always follows. Let the mind of one manperceive the true meaning of the doctrine of the generalresurrection and judgment and eternal life, as a natural evolutionof history from within, and it will spread to the minds of allmen; and the misinterpretation of that doctrine so long prevalent,as a preternatural irruption of power from without, will be setaside forever. For there is a providential plan of God, notinjected by arbitrary miracle, but inhering in the order of theworld, centred in the propulsive heart of humanity, which beatsthrob by throb along the web of events, removing obstacles andclearing the way for the revelation of the completed pattern. Whenit is done no trumpets may be blown, no rocks rent, no gravesopened. But all immortal spirits will be at their goals, and theuniverse will be full of music.
NEW YORK, February 22, 1878.
PREFACE.
WHO follows truth carries his star in his brain. Even so bold athought is no inappropriate motto for an intellectual workman, ifhis heart be filled with loyalty to God, the Author of truth andthe Maker of stars. In this double spirit of independence andsubmission it has been my desire to perform the arduous task nowfinished and offered to the charitable judgment of the reader. Onemay be courageous to handle both the traditions and the noveltiesof men, and yet be modest before the solemn mysteries of fate andnature. He may place no veil before his eyes and no finger on hislips in presence of popular dogmas, and yet shrink from theconceit of esteeming his mind a mirror of the universe. Ideas,like coins, bear the stamp of the age and brain they were struckin. Many a phantom which ought to have vanished at the first cockcrowing of reason still holds its seat on the oppressed heart offaith before the terror stricken eyes of the multitude. Everythoughtful scholar who loves his fellow men must feel it anobligation to do what he can to remove painful superstitions, andto spread the peace of a cheerful faith and the wholesome light oftruth. The theories in theological systems being but philosophy,why should they not be freely subjected to philosophicalcriticism? I have endeavored, without virulence, arrogance, orirreverence towards any thing sacred, to investigate the variousdoctrines pertaining to the great subject treated in these pages.Many persons, of course, will find statements from which theydissent, sentiments disagreeable to them. But, where thought anddiscussion are so free and the press so accessible as with us, noone but a bigot will esteem this a ground of complaint. May allsuch passages be charitably perused, fairly weighed, and, ifunsound, honorably refuted! If the work be not animated with amean or false spirit, but be catholic and kindly, if it be notsuperficial and pretentious, but be marked by patience andthoroughness, is it too much to hope that no critic will assail itwith wholesale condemnation simply because in some parts of itthere are opinions which he dislikes? One dispassionate argumentis more valuable than a shower of missile names. The most vehementrevulsion from a doctrine is not inconsistent, in a Christianmind, with the sweetest kindness of feeling towards the personswho hold that doctrine. Earnest theological debate may be carriedon without the slightest touch of ungenerous personality. Who butmust feel the pathos and admire the charity of these eloquentwords of Henry Giles?
"Every deep and reflective nature looking intently 'before andafter,' looking above, around, beneath, and finding silence andmystery to all his questionings of the Infinite, cannot butconceive of existence as a boundless problem, perhaps aninevitable darkness between the limitations of man and theincomprehensibility of God. A nature that so reflects, thatcarries into this sublime and boundless obscurity 'the largediscourse of Reason,' will not narrow its concern in the solutionof the problem to its own petty safety, but will brood over itwith an anxiety which throbs for the whole of humanity. Such anature must needs be serious; but never will it be arrogant: itwill regard all men with an embracing pity. Strange it should everbe otherwise in respect to inquiries which belong to infiniterelations, that mean enmities, bitter hatreds, should come intoplay in these fathomless searchings of the soul! Bring whatsolution we may to this problem of measureless alternatives,whether by Reason, Scripture, or the Church, faith will neverstand for fact, nor the firmest confidence for actualconsciousness. The man of great and thoughtful nature, therefore,who grapples in real earnest with this problem, however satisfiedhe may be with his own solution of it, however implicit may be histrust, however assured his convictions, will yet often bow downbefore the awful veil that shrouds the endless future, put hisfinger on his lips, and weep in silence."
The present work is in a sense, an epitome of the thought ofmankind on the destiny of man. I have striven to add value to itby comprehensiveness of plan, not confining myself, as most of mypredecessors have confined themselves, to one province or a fewnarrow provinces of the subject, but including the entire subjectin one volume; by carefulness of arrangement, not piling thematerial together or presenting it in a chaos of facts and dreams,but grouping it all in its proper relations; by clearness ofexplanation, not leaving the curious problems presented wholly inthe dark with a mere statement of them, but as far as possibletracing the phenomena to their origin and unveiling their purport;by poetic life of treatment, not handling the different topicsdryly and coldly, but infusing warmth and color into them; bycopiousness of information, not leaving the reader to hunt upevery thing for himself, but referring him to the best sources forthe facts, reasonings, and hints which he may wish; and bypersevering patience of toil, not hastily skimming here and thereand hurrying the task off, but searching and researching in everyavailable direction, examining and re examining each mooted point,by the devotion of twelve years of anxious labor. How far myefforts in these particulars have been successful is submitted tothe public.
To avoid the appearance of pedantry in the multiplication of footnotes, I have inserted many authorities incidentally in the textitself, and have omitted all except such as I thought would bedesired by the reader. Every scholar knows how easy it is toincrease the number of references almost indefinitely, and alsohow deceptive such an ostensible evidence of wide reading may be.
When the printing of this volume was nearly completed, and I hadin some instances made more references than may now seem needful,the thought occurred to me that a full list of the books publishedup to the present time on the subject of a future life, arrangedaccording to their definite topics and in chronological order,would greatly enrich the work and could not fail often to be ofvast service. Accordingly, upon solicitation, a valued friend Mr.Ezra Abbot, Jr., a gentleman remarkable for his varied andaccurate scholarship undertook that laborious task for me; and hehas accomplished it in the most admirable manner. No reader,however learned, but may find much important information in thebibliographical appendix which I am thus enabled to add to thisvolume. Every student who henceforth wishes to investigate anybranch of the historical or philosophical doctrine of theimmortality of the soul, or of a future life in general, may thankMr. Abbot for an invaluable aid.
As I now close this long labor and send forth the result, theoppressive sense of responsibility which fills me is relieved bythe consciousness that I have herein written nothing as a bigotedpartisan, nothing in a petty spirit of opinionativeness, but haveintended every thought for the furtherance of truth, the honor ofGod, the good of man.
The majestic theme of our immortality allures yet baffles us. Nofleshly implement of logic or cunning tact of brain can reach tothe solution. That secret lies in a tissueless realm whereof nonerve can report beforehand. We must wait a little. Soon we shallgrope and guess no more, but grasp and know. Meanwhile, shall wenot be magnanimous to forgive and help, diligent to study andachieve, trustful and content to abide the invisible issue? Insome happier age, when the human race shall have forgotten, inphilanthropic ministries and spiritual worship, the bigotries anddissensions of sentiment and thought, they may recover, in itsall embracing unity, that garment of truth which God madeoriginally "seamless as the firmament," now for so long a timetorn in shreds by hating schismatics. Oh, when shall we learn thata loving pity, a filial faith, a patient modesty, best become usand fit our state? The pedantic sciolist, prating of his clearexplanations of the mysteries of life, is as far from feeling thetruth of the case as an ape, seated on the starry summit of thedome of night, chattering with glee over the awful prospect ofinfinitude. What ordinary tongue shall dare to vociferateegotistic dogmatisms where an inspired apostle whispers, withreverential reserve, "We see through a glass darkly"? There arethree things, said an old monkish chronicler, which often make mesad. First, that I know I must die; second, that I know not when;third, that I am ignorant where I shall then be.
"Est primum durum quod scio me moriturum: Secundum, timeo quia hocnescio quando: Hine tertium, flebo quod nescio ubi manebo."
Man is the lonely and sublime Columbus of the creation, who,wandering on this cloudy strand of time, sees drifted waifs andstrange portents borne far from an unknown somewhere, causing himto believe in another world. Comes not death as a means to bearhim thither? Accordingly as hope rests in heaven, fear shudders athell, or doubt faces the dark transition, the future life is asweet reliance, a terrible certainty, or a pathetic perhaps. Butliving in the present in the humble and loving discharge of itsduties, our souls harmonized with its conditions though aspiringbeyond them, why should we ever despair or be troubled overmuch?Have we not eternity in our thought, infinitude in our view, andGod for our guide?
CONTENTS
Part First.
HISTORICAL AND CRITICAL INTRODUCTORY VIEWS.
CHAPTER I.
THEORIES OF THE SOUL'S ORIGIN
CHAPTER II.
HISTORY OF DEATH
CHAPTER III.
GROUNDS OF THE BELIEF IN A FUTURE LIFE
CHAPTER IV.
THEORIES OF THE SOUL'S DESTINATION
Part Second.
ETHNIC THOUGHTS CONCERNING A FUTURE LIFE.
CHAPTER I.
BARBARIAN NOTIONS OF A FUTURE LIFE
CHAPTER II.
DRUIDIC DOCTRINE OF A FUTURE LIFE
CHAPTER III.
SCANDINAVIAN DOCTRINE OF A FUTURE LIFE
CHAPTER IV.
ETRUSCAN DOCTRINE OF A FUTURE LIFE
CHAPTER V.
EGYPTIAN DOCTRINE OF A FUTURE LIFE
CHAPTER VI.
BRAMANIC AND BUDDHIST DOCTRINE OF A FUTURE LIFE
CHAPTER VII.
PERSIAN DOCTRINE OF A FUTURE LIFE
CHAPTER VIII.
HEBREW DOCTRINE OF A FUTURE LIFE
CHAPTER IX.
RABBINICAL DOCTRINE OF A FUTURE LIFE
CHAPTER X.
GREEK AND DOCTRINE OF A FUTURE LIFE
CHAPTER XI.
MOHAMMEDAN DOCTRINE OF A FUTURE LIFE
CHAPTER XII.
EXPLANATORY SURVEY OF THE FIELD AND ITS MYTHS
Part Third.
NEW TESTAMENT TEACHINGS CONCERNING A FUTURE LIFE.
CHAPTER I.
PETER'S DOCTRINE OF A FUTURE LIFE
CHAPTER II.
DOCTRINE OF A FUTURE LIFE IN THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS
CHAPTER III.
DOCTRINE OF A FUTURE LIFE IN THE APOCALYPSE
CHAPTER IV.
PAUL'S DOCTRINE OF A FUTURE LIFE
CHAPTER V.
JOHN'S DOCTRINE OF A FUTURE LIFE
CHAPTER VI.
CHRIST'S TEACHINGS CONCERNING THE FUTURE LIFE
CHAPTER VII.
RESURRECTION OF CHRIST
CHAPTER VIII.
ESSENTIAL CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF DEATH AND LIFE
Part Fourth.
CHRISTIAN THOUGHTS CONCERNING A FUTURE LIFE.
CHAPTER I.
PATRISTIC DOCTRINE OF A FUTURE LIFE
CHAPTER II.
MEDIAVAL DOCTRINE OF A FUTURE LIFE
CHAPTER III.
MODERN DOCTRINE OF A FUTURE LIFE
Part Fifth.
HISTORICAL AND CRITICAL DISSERTATIONS CONCERNING A FUTURE LIFE.
CHAPTER I.
DOCTRINE OF A FUTURE LIFE IN THE ANCIENT MYSTERIES
CHAPTER II.
METEMPSYCHOIS; OR, TRANSMIGRATION OF SOULS
CHAPTER III.
RESURRECTION OF THE FLESH
CHAPTER IV.
DOCTRINE OF FUTURE PUNISHMENT; OR, CRITICAL HISTORY OF THE IDEA OFA HELL
CHAPTER V.
THE FIVE THEORETIC MODES OF SALVATION
CHAPTER VI.
RECOGNITION OF FRIENDS IN A FUTURE LIFE
CHAPTER VII.
LOCAL FATE OF MAN IN THE ASTRONOMIC UNIVERSE
CHAPTER VIII.
CRITICAL HISTORY OF DISBELIEF IN A FUTURE LIFE
CHAPTER IX.
MORALITY OF THE DOCTRINE OF A FUTURE LIFE
Part Sixth.
SUPPLEMENTARY CHAPTERS.
CHAPTER I.
THE END OF THE WORLD
CHAPTER II.
THE DAY OF JUDGMENT
CHAPTER III.
THE MYTHOLOGICAL HELL AND THE TRUE ONE; OR, THE LAW OF PERDITION
CHAPTER IV.
THE GATES OF HEAVEN; OR, THE LAW OF SALVATION IN ALL WORLDS
CHAPTER V.
RESUME OF THE SUBJECT: HOW THE QUESTION OF IMMORTALITY NOW STANDS
CHAPTER VI.
THE TRANSIENT AND THE PERMANENT IN THE DESTINY OF THE SOUL
PART FIRST.
HISTORICAL AND CRITICAL INTRODUCTORY VIEWS.
CHAPTER I.
THEORIES OF THE SOUL'S ORIGIN.
PAUSING, in a thoughtful hour, on that mount of observation whencethe whole prospect of life is visible, what a solemn vision greetsus! We see the vast procession of existence flitting across thelandscape, from the shrouded ocean of birth, over the illuminatedcontinent of experience, to the shrouded ocean of death. Who canlinger there and listen, unmoved, to the sublime lament of thingsthat die? Although the great exhibition below endures, yet it ismade up of changes, and the spectators shift as often. Each rankof the host, as it advances from the mists of its commencingcareer, wears a smile caught from the morning light of hope, but,as it draws near to the fatal bourne, takes on a mournful castfrom the shadows of the unknown realm. The places we occupy werenot vacant before we came, and will not be deserted when we go,but are forever filling and emptying afresh.
"Still to every draught of vital breath
Renew'd throughout the bounds of earth and ocean,
The melancholy gates of death
Respond with sympathetic motion."
We appear, there is a short flutter of joys and pains, a brightglimmer of smiles and tears, and we are gone. But whence did wecome? And whither do we go? Can human thought divine the answer?
It adds no little solemnity and pathos to these reflections toremember that every considerate person in the unnumberedsuccessions that have preceded us, has, in his turn, confrontedthe same facts, engaged in the same inquiry, and been swept fromhis attempts at a theoretic solution of the problem into the realsolution itself, while the constant refrain in the song ofexistence sounded behind him, "One generation passeth away, andanother generation cometh; but the earth abideth forever." Theevanescent phenomena, the tragic plot and scenery of human birth,action, and death, conceived on the scale of reality, clothed in
"The sober coloring taken from an eye That hath kept watch o'erman's mortality,"
and viewed in a susceptible spirit, are, indeed, overwhelminglyimpressive. They invoke the intellect to its most piercingthoughts. They swell the heart to its utmost capacity of emotion.They bring us upon the bended knees of wonder and prayer.
"Between two worlds life hovers, like a star'
Twixt night and morn upon the horizon's verge.
How little do we know that which we are!
How less what we may be! The eternal surge
Of time and tide rolls on, and bears afar
Our bubbles: as the old burst, new emerge,
Lash'd from the foam of ages: while the graves
Of empires heave but like some passing waves."
Widely regarding the history of human life from the beginning,what a visionary spectacle it is! How miraculously permanent inthe whole! how sorrowfully ephemeral in the parts! What patheticsentiments it awakens! Amidst what awful mysteries it hangs! Thesubject of the derivation of the soul has been copiously discussedby hundreds of philosophers, physicians, and poets, from Vyasa toDes Cartes, from Galen to Ennemoser, from Orpheus to Henry More,from Aristotle to Frohschammer. German literature during the lasthundred years has teemed with works treating of this question fromvarious points of view. The present chapter will present a sketchof these various speculations concerning the commencement andfortunes of man ere his appearance on the stage of this world.
The first theory to account for the origin of souls is that ofemanation. This is the analogical theory, constructed from theresults of sensible observation. There is, it says, one infiniteBeing, and all finite spirits are portions of his substance,existing a while as separate individuals, and then reassimilatedinto the general soul. This form of faith, asserting the efflux ofall subordinate existence out of one Supreme Being, seemssometimes to rest on an intuitive idea. It is spontaneouslysuggested whenever man confronts the phenomena of creation withreflective observation, and ponders the eternal round of birth anddeath. Accordingly, we find traces of this belief all over theworld; from the ancient Hindu metaphysics whose fundamentalpostulate is that the necessary life of God is one constantprocess of radiation and resorption, "letting out and drawing in,"to that modern English poetry which apostrophizes the glad andwinsome child as
"A silver stream
Breaking with laughter from the lake Divine
Whence all things flow."
The conception that souls are emanations from God is the mostobvious way of accounting for the prominent facts that salute ourinquiries. It plausibly answers some natural questions, and boldlyeludes others. For instance, to the early student demanding thecause of the mysterious distinctions between mind and body, itsays, the one belongs to the system of passive matter, the othercomes from the living Fashioner of the Universe. Again: thistheory relieves us from the burden that perplexes the finite mindwhen it seeks to understand how the course of nature, thesuccession of lives, can be absolutely eternal without involvingan alternating or circular movement. The doctrine of emanationhas, moreover, been supported by the supposed analytic similarityof the soul to God. Its freedom, consciousness, intelligence,love, correspond with what we regard as the attributes and essenceof Deity. The inference, however unsound, is immediate, that soulsare consubstantial with God, dissevered fragments of Him, sentinto bodies. But, in actual effect, the chief recommendation ofthis view has probably been the variety of analogies and imagesunder which it admits of presentation. The annual developments ofvegetable life from the bosom of the earth, drops taken from afountain and retaining its properties in their removal, theseparation of the air into distinct breaths, the soil intoindividual atoms, the utterance of a tone gradually dying away inreverberated echoes, the radiation of beams from a central light,the exhalation of particles of moisture from the ocean, theevolution of numbers out of an original unity, these are among theillustrations by which an exhaustless ingenuity has supported thenotion of the emanation of souls from God. That "something cannotcome out of nothing" is an axiom resting on the ground of ourrational instincts. And seeing all things within our comprehensionheld in the chain of causes and effects, one thing always evolvingfrom another, we leap to the conclusion that it is precisely thesame with things beyond our comprehension, and that God is theaboriginal reservoir of being from which all the rills of finiteexistence are emitted.
Against this doctrine the current objections are these two. First,the analogies adduced are not applicable. The things of spirit andthose of matter have two distinct sets of predicates andcategories. It is, for example, wholly illogical to argue thatbecause the circuit of the waters is from the sea, through theclouds, over the land, back to the sea again, therefore thederivation and course of souls from God, through life, back toGod, must be similar. There are mysteries in connection with thesoul that baffle the most lynx eyed investigation, and on which noknown facts of the physical world can throw light. Secondly, thescheme of emanation depends on a vulgar error, belonging to theinfancy of philosophic thought, and inconsistent with somenecessary truths. It implies that God is separable into parts, andtherefore both corporeal and finite. Divisible substance isincompatible with the first predicates of Deity, namely,immateriality and infinity. Before the conception of theillimitable, spiritual unity of God, the doctrine of the emanationof souls from Him fades away, as the mere figment of a dreamingmind brooding over the suggestions of phenomena and apparentcorrespondences.
The second explanation of the origin of souls is that which saysthey come from a previous existence. This is the theory ofimagination, framed in the free and seductive realm of poeticthought. It is evident that this idea does not propose anysolution of the absolute origination of the soul, but only offersto account for its appearance on earth. The pre existence of soulshas been most widely affirmed. Nearly the whole world of Orientalthinkers have always taught it. Many of the Greek philosophersheld it. No small proportion of the early Church Fathers believedit.1 And it is not without able advocates among the scholars andthinkers
1 Keil, Opuscula; Be Pre existentia Animarum. Beausobre, Hist. duManicheisme, lib. vii. cap. iv.
of our own age. There are two principal forms of this doctrine;one asserting an ascent of souls from a previous existence belowthe rank of man, the other a descent of souls from a highersphere. Generation is the true Jacob's ladder, on which souls areever ascending or descending. The former statement is virtuallythat of the modern theory of development, which argues that thesouls known to us, obtaining their first organic being out of theground life of nature, have climbed up through a graduated seriesof births, from the merest elementary existence, to the plane ofhuman nature. A gifted author, Dr. Hedge, has said concerning preexistence in these two methods of conceiving it, writing in ahalf humorous, half serious, vein, "It is to be considered asexpressing rather an exceptional than a universal fact. If hereand there some pure liver, or noble doer, or prophet voice,suggests the idea of a revenant who, moved with pity for humankind, and charged with celestial ministries, has condescended to
'Soil his pure ambrosial weeds
With the rank vapors of this sin worn mould,'
or if, on the other hand, the 'superfluity of naughtiness'displayed by some abnormal felon seems to warrant the suppositionof a visit from the Pit, the greater portion of mankind, wesubmit, are much too green for any plausible assumption of aforegone training in good or evil. This planet is not theirmissionary station, nor their Botany Bay, but their native soil.Or, if we suppose they pre existed at all, we must rather believethey pre existed as brutes, and have travelled into humanity bythe fish fowl quadruped road with a good deal of the habitudes anddust of that tramp still sticking to them." The theory ofdevelopment, deriving human souls by an ascension from the lowerstages of rudimentary being, considered as a fanciful hypothesisor speculative toy, is interesting, and not destitute of plausibleaspects. But, when investigated as a severe thesis, it is founddevoid of proof. It is enough here to say that the mostauthoritative voices in science reject it, declaring that, thoughthere is a development of progress in the plan of nature, from themore general to the more specific, yet there is no advance fromone type or race to another, no hint that the same individual evercrosses the guarded boundaries of genus from one rank and kingdomto another. Whatever progress there may be in the upward processof natural creation or the stages of life, yet to suppose that thelife powers of insects and brutes survive the dissolution of theirbodies, and, in successive crossings of the death gulf, ascend tohumanity, is a bare assumption. It befits the delirious lips ofBeddoes, who says,
"Had I been born a four legg'd child, methinks I might have foundthe steps from dog to man And crept into his nature. Are there notThose that fall down out of humanity Into the story where thefour legg'd dwell?"
The doctrine that souls have descended from an anterior life onhigh may be exhibited in three forms, each animated by a differentmotive. The first is the view of some of the Manichean teachers,that spirits were embodied by a hostile violence and cunning, theforce and fraud of the apostatized Devil. Adam and Eve were angelssent to observe the doings of Lucifer, the rebel king of matter.He seized these heavenly spies and encased them in fleshlyprisons. And then, in order to preserve a permanent union of thesecelestial natures with matter, he contrived that their race shouldbe propagated by the sexes. Whenever by the procreative act thegerm body is prepared, a fiend hies from bale, or an angel stoopsfrom bliss, or a demon darts from his hovering in the air, toinhabit and rule his growing clay house for a term of earthlylife. The spasm of impregnation thrills in fatal summons to hellor heaven, and resistlessly drags a spirit into the appointedreceptacle. Shakspeare, whose genius seems to have touched everyshape of thought with adorning phrase, makes Juliet, distractedwith the momentary fancy that Romeo is a murderous villain, cry,
"O Nature! what hadst thou to do in hell
When thou didst bower the spirit of a fiend
In mortal paradise of such sweet flesh?"
The second method of explaining the descent of souls into thislife is by the supposition that the stable bliss, the uncontrastedpeace and sameness, of the heavenly experience, at last weariesthe people of Paradise, until they seek relief in a fall. Theperfect sweetness of heaven cloys, the utter routine and safetytire, the salient spirits, till they long for the edge and hazardof earthly exposure, and wander down to dwell in fleshly bodiesand breast the tempest of sin, strife, and sorrow, so as to give afresh charm once more to the repose and exempted joys of thecelestial realm. In this way, by a series of recurring lives belowand above, novelty and change with larger experience and morevivid contentment are secured, the tedium and satiety of fixedhappiness and protection are modified by the relishing oppositionof varied trials of hardship and pain, the insufferable monotonyof immortality broken up and interpolated by epochs of surpriseand tingling dangers of probation.
"Mortals, behold! the very angels quit
Their mansions unsusceptible of change,
Amid your dangerous bowers to sit
And through your sharp vicissitudes to range!"
Thus round and round we run through an eternity of lives anddeaths. Surfeited with the unqualified pleasures of heaven, we"straggle down to this terrene nativity:" When, amid the sourexposures and cruel storms of the world, we have renewed ourappetite for the divine ambrosia of peace and sweetness, weforsake the body and ascend to heaven; this constant recurrenceillustrating the great truths, that alternation is the law ofdestiny, and that variety is the spice of life.
But the most common derivation of the present from a previous lifeis that which explains the descent as a punishment for sin. Inthat earlier and loftier state, souls abused their freedom, andwere doomed to expiate their offences by a banished, imprisoned,and burdensome life on the earth. "The soul," Plutarch writes,"has removed, not from Athens to Sardis, or from Corinth toLemnos, but from heaven to earth; and here, ill at ease, andtroubled in this new and strange place, she hangs her head like adecaying plant."
Hundreds of passages to the same purport might easily be citedfrom as many ancient writers. Sometimes this fall of souls fromtheir original estate was represented as a simultaneous event: apart of the heavenly army, under an apostate leader, havingrebelled, were defeated, and sentenced to a chained bodily life.Our whole race were transported at once from their native shoresin the sky to the convict land of this world. Sometimes thedescent was attributed to the fresh fault of each individual, andwas thought to be constantly happening. A soul tainted with impuredesire, drawn downwards by corrupt material gravitation, hoveringover the fumes of matter, inhaling the effluvia of vice, grewinfected with carnal longings and contagions, became fouled andclogged with gross vapors and steams, and finally fell into a bodyand pursued the life fitted to it below. A clear human child is ashining seraph from heaven sunk thus low. Men are degradedcherubim.
"Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The soul that rises with us, our life's star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar."
The theory of the pre existence of the soul merely removes themystery one stage further back, and there leaves the problem ofour origin as hopelessly obscure as before. It is sufficientlyrefuted by the open fact that it is absolutely destitute ofscientific basis. The explanation of its wide prevalence as abelief is furnished by two considerations. First, there were oldauthoritative sages and poets who loved to speculate and dream,and who published their speculations and dreams to reign over thesubject fancies of credulous mankind. Secondly, the conception wasintrinsically harmonious, and bore a charm to fascinate theimagination and the heart. The fragmentary visions, brokensnatches, mystic strains, incongruous thoughts, fading gleams,with which imperfectrecollection comes laden from our childishyears and our nightly dreams, are referred by self pleasing fancyto some earlier and nobler existence. We solve the mysteries ofexperience by calling them the veiled vestiges of a bright lifedeparted, pathetic waifs drifted to these intellectual shores overthe surge of feeling from the wrecked orb of an anteriorexistence. It gratifies our pride to think the soul "a startravelled stranger," a disguised prince, who has passinglyalighted on this globe in his eternal wanderings. The gorgeousglimpses of truth and beauty here vouchsafed to genius, thewondrous strains of feeling that haunt the soul in tender hours,are feeble reminiscences of the prerogatives we enjoyed in thoseeons when we trod the planets that sail around the upper world ofthe gods. That ennui or plaintive sadness which in all life's deepand lonesome hours seems native to our hearts, what is it but thenostalgia of the soul remembering and pining after its distanthome? Vague and forlorn airs come floating into our consciousness,as from an infinitely remote clime, freighted with a luxury ofdepressing melancholy.
"Ah! not the nectarous poppy lovers use,
Not daily labor's dull Lethean spring,
Oblivion in lost angels can infuse
Of the soil'd glory and the trailing wing."
How attractive all this must be to the thoughts of men, howfascinating to their retrospective and aspiring reveries, itshould be needless to repeat. How baseless it is as aphilosophical theory demanding sober belief, it should be equallysuperfluous to illustrate further.
The third answer to the question concerning the origin of the soulis that it is directly created by the voluntary power of God. Thisis the theory of faith, instinctively shrinking from thedifficulty of the problem on its scientific ground, and evading itby a wholesale reference to Deity. Some writers have held that allsouls were created by the Divine fiat at the beginning of theworld, and laid up in a secret repository, whence they are drawnas occasion calls. The Talmudists say, "All souls were made duringthe six days of creation; and therefore generation is not bytraduction, but by infusion of a soul into body." Others maintainthat this production of souls was not confined to any past period,but is continued still, a new soul being freshly created for everybirth. Whenever certain conditions meet,
"Then God smites his hands together,
And strikes out a soul as a spark,
Into the organized glory of things,
From the deeps of the dark."
This is the view asserted by Vincentius Victor in opposition tothe dogmatism of Tertullian on the one hand and to the doubts ofAugustine on the other.2 It is called the theory of Insufflation,because it affirms that God immediately breathes a soul into eachnew being: even as in the case of Adam, of whom we read that "Godbreathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and he became aliving soul." The doctrine drawn from this Mosaic text, that thesoul is a divine substance, a breath of God, miraculously breathedby Him into every creature at the commencement of its existence,often reappears, and plays a prominent part in the history ofpsychological opinions. It corresponds with the beautiful Greekmyth of Prometheus, who is fabled to have made a human image fromthe dust of the ground, and then, by fire stolen from heaven, tohave animated it with a living soul. So man, as to his body, ismade of earthly clay; but the Promethean spark that forms his soulis the fresh breath of God. There is no objection to the realground and essence of this theory, only to its form andaccompaniments. It is purely anthropomorphitic; it conceives Godas working, after the manner of a man, intermittently,arbitrarily. It insulates the origination of souls from the fixedcourse of nature, severs it from all connection with that commonprocess of organic life which weaves its inscrutable web throughthe universe, that system of laws which expresses the unchangingwill of God, and which constitutes the order by whose solemn logicalone He acts. The objection to this view is, in a word, that itlimits the creative action of God to human souls. We suppose thatHe creates our bodies as well; that He is the immediate Author ofall life in the same sense in which He is the immediate Author ofour souls. The opponents of the creation theory, who strenuouslyfought it in the seventeenth century, were accustomed to urgeagainst it the fanciful objection that "it puts God to an invenust
2 Augustine, De Anima et ejus Origine, lib. iv.
employment scarce consistent with his verecundious holiness; for,if it be true, whenever the lascivious consent to uncleanness andare pleased to join in unlawful mixture, God is forced to stand aspectator of their vile impurities, stooping from his throne toattend their bestial practices, and raining down showers of soulsto animate the emissions of their concupiscence"3
A fourth reply to the inquiry before us is furnished inTertullian's famous doctrine of Traduction, the essential importof which is that all human souls have been transmitted, or broughtover, from the soul of Adam. This is the theological theory: forit arose from an exigency in the dogmatic system generally held bythe patristic Church. The universal depravity of human nature, theinherited corruption of the whole race, was a fundamental point ofbelief. But how reconcile this proposition with the conception,entertained by many, that each new born soul is a fresh creationfrom the "substance," "spirit," or "breath" of God? Augustinewrites to Jerome, asking him to solve this question.4 Tertullian,whose fervid mind was thoroughly imbued with materialisticnotions, unhesitatingly cut this Gordian knot by asserting thatour first parent bore within him the undeveloped germ of allmankind, so that sinfulness and souls were propagated together. 5Thus the perplexing query, "how souls are held in the chain oforiginal sin," was answered. As Neander says, illustratingTertullian's view, "The soul of the first man was the fountainhead of all human souls: all the varieties of individual humannature are but modifications of that one spiritual substance." Inthe light of such a thought, we can see how Nature might, whensolitary Adam lived, fulfil Lear's wild conjuration, and
"All the germens spill
At once that make ingrateful man."
In the seventh chapter of the Koran it is written, "The Lord drewforth their posterity from the loins of the sons of Adam." Thecommentators say that God passed his hand down Adam's back, andextracted all the generations which should come into the worlduntil the resurrection. Assembled in the presence of the angels,and endued with understanding, they confessed their dependence onGod, and were then caused to return into the loins of their greatancestor. This is one of the most curious doctrines within thewhole range of philosophical history. It implies the strictcorporeality of the soul; and yet how infinitely fine must be itsattenuation when it has been diffused into countless thousands ofmillions! Der Urkeim theilt sich ins Unendliche.
"What! will the line stretch out to the crack of doom?"
The whole thought is absurd. It was not reached by an induction offacts, a study of phenomena, or any fair process of reasoning, butwas arbitrarily created to rescue a dogma from otherwiseinevitable rejection. It was the desperate clutch of a headytheologian reeling in a vortex of hostile argument, and ready toseize any fancy, however artificial, to save
3 Edward Warren, No Pre Existence, p. 74.
4 Epistola CLXVI.
5 De Anima, cap. x. et xix.
himself from falling under the ruins of his system. Henry Woolnerpublished in London, in 1655, a book called "Extraction of Soul: asober and judicious inquiry to prove that souls are propagated;because, if they are created, original sin is impossible."
The theological dogma of traduction has been presented in twoforms. First, it is declared that all souls are developed out ofthe one substance of Adam's soul; a view that logically implies anultimate attenuating diffusion, ridiculously absurd. Secondly, itis held that "the eating of the forbidden fruit corrupted all thevital fluids of Eve; and this corruption carried vicious andchaotic consequences into her ova, in which lay the souls of allher posterity, with infinitely little bodies, already existing."6This form is as incredible as the other; for it equally implies alimitless distribution of souls from a limited deposit. As Whewellsays, "This successive inclusion of germs (EinschachtelungsTheorie) implies that each soul contains an infinite number ofgerms."7 It necessarily excludes the formation of new spiritualsubstance: else original transmitted sin is excluded. The doctrinefinds no parallelism anywhere else in nature. Who, no matter howwedded to the theology of original sin and transmitted death,would venture to stretch the same thesis over the animal races,and affirm that the dynamic principles, or animating souls, of allserpents, eagles, and lions, were once compressed in the firstpatriarchal serpent, eagle, or lion?
That the whole formative power of all the simultaneous members ofour race was concentrated in the first cell germ of our originalprogenitor, is a scientific impossibility and incredibleness. Thefatal sophistry in the traducian account of the transmission ofsouls may be illustrated in the following manner. The germs of allthe apple trees now in existence did not lie in the first appleseed. All the apple trees now existing were not derived by literaldevelopment out of the actual contents of the first apple seed.No: but the truth is this. There was a power in the first appleseed to secure certain conditions; that is, to organize a certainstatus in which the plastic vegetative life of nature would positnew and similar powers and materials. So not all souls were latentin Adam's, but only an organizing power to secure the conditionson which the Divine Will that first began, would, in accordancewith His creative plan, forever continue, His spirit creation. Thedistinction of this statement from that of traduction is thedifference between evolution from one original germ or stock andactual production of new beings. Its distinction from the thirdtheory the theory of immediate creation is the difference betweenan intermittent interposition of arbitrary acts and the continuousworking of a plan according to laws scientifically traceable.
There is another solution to the question of the soul's origin,which has been propounded by some philosophers and may be calledthe speculative theory. Its statement is that the germs of soulswere created simultaneously with the formation of the materialuniverse, and were copiously sown abroad through all nature,waiting there to be successively taken up and furnished with theconditions of development.8 These latent seeds of souls, swarmingin all places, are drawn in with the first breath or imbibed withthe earliest nourishment of the
6 Hennings, Geschichte von den Seelen der Menschen, s. 500.
7 Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, vol. I. b. ix. ch. iv.sect. 4.
8 Ploucquet, De Origin atque Generatione Anima Humana exPrincipiis Monadologicis stabilita.
new born child into the already constructed body which before hasonly a vegetative life. The Germans call this representationpanspermismus, or the dissemination theory. Leibnitz, in hiscelebrated monadology, carries the same view a great deal further.He conceives the whole created universe, visible and invisible, toconsist of monads, which are not particles of matter, butmetaphysical points of power. These monads are all souls. They areproduced by what he calls fulgurations of God. The distinctionbetween fulguration and emanation is this: in the latter case theprocession is historically defined and complete; in the formercase it is momentaneous. The monads are radiated from the DivineWill, forth through the creation, by the constant flashes of Hisvolition. All nature is composed of them, and nothing isdepopulated and dead. Their naked being is force, and theirindestructible predicates are perception, desire, tendency todevelop. While they lie dormant, their potential capacities allinwrapped, they constitute what we entitle matter. When, by therising stir of their inherent longing, they leave their passivestate and reach a condition of obscure consciousness, they becomeanimals. Finally, they so far unwind their bonds and evolve theirfacultative potencies as to attain the rank of rational minds inthe grade of humanity. Generation is merely the method by whichthe aspiring monad lays the organic basis for the grouped buildingof its body. Man is a living union of monads, one regent monadpresiding over the whole organization. That king monad which hasattained to full apperception, the free exercise of perfectconsciousness, is the immortal human soul. 9 Any labored attemptto refute this ingenious doctrine is needless, since the doctrineitself is but the developed structure of a speculative conceptionwith no valid basis of observed fact. It is a sheer hypothesis,spun out of the self fed bowels of a priori assumption andmetaphysic fancy. It solves the problems only by changes of theirform, leaving the mysteries as numerous and deep as before. It isa beautiful and sublime piece of latent poetry, the evolution andarchitecture of which well display the wonderful genius ofLeibnitz. It is a more subtle and powerful process of thought thanAristotle's Organon, a more pure and daring work of imaginationthan Milton's Paradise Lost. But it spurns the tests ofexperimental science, and is entitled to rank only among thesplendid curiosities of philosophy; a brilliant and plausibletheorem, not a sober and solid induction.
One more method of treating the inquiry before us will completethe list. It is what we may properly call the scientific theory,though in truth it is hardly a theory at all, but rather a carefulstatement of the observed facts, and a modest confession ofinability to explain the cause of them. Those occupying thisposition, when asked what is the origin of souls, do not pretendto unveil the final secret, but simply say, everywhere in theworld of life, from bottom to top, there is an organic growth inaccordance with conditions. This is what is styled the theory ofepigenesis, and is adopted by the chief physiologists of thepresent day. Swammerdam, Malebranche, even Cuvier, had defendedthe doctrine of successive inclusion; but Wolf, Blumenbach, andVon Baer established in its place the doctrine of epigenesis. 10
9 Leibnitz, Monadologie.
10 Ennemoser, Historisch psychologische Untersuchungen tiber denUrsprung der menschlichen Seelen, zweite Auflage.
Scrupulously confining themselves to the mass of collected factsand the course of scrutinized phenomena, they say there is anatural production of new living beings in conformity to certainlaws, and give an exposition of the fixed conditions and sequencesof this production. Here they humbly stop, acknowledging that thecausal root of power, which produces all these consequences, is aninexplicable mystery. Their attitude is well represented bySwedenborg when he says, in reference to this very subject, "Anyone may form guesses; but let no son of earth pretend to penetratethe mysteries of creation." 11
Let us notice now the facts submitted to us. First, at the base ofthe various departments of nature, we see a mass of apparentlylifeless matter. Out of this crude substratum of the outward worldwe observe a vast variety of organized forms produced by avariously named but unknown Power. They spring in regular methods,in determinate shapes, exist on successive stages of rank, withmore or less striking demarcations of endowment, and finally fallback again, as to their physical constituents, into the inorganicstuff from which they grew. This mysterious organizing Power,pushing its animate and builded receptacles up to the level ofvegetation, creates the world of plants.
"Every clod feels a stir of might,
An instinct within it that reaches and towers,
And, grasping blindly above it for light,
Climbs to a soul in grass and flowers."
On the level of sensation, where the obscure rudiments of will,understanding, and sentiment commence, this life giving Powercreates the world of animals. And so, on the still higher level ofreason and its concomitants, it creates the world of men. In aword, the great general fact is that an unknown Power call it whatwe may, Nature, Vital Force, or God creates, on the various planesof its exercise, different families of organized beings. Secondly,a more special fact is, that when we have overleaped the mysteryof a commencement, every being yields seed according to its kind,wherefrom, when properly conditioned, its species is perpetuated.How much, now, does this second fact imply? It is by adding to theobserved phenomena an indefensible hypothesis that the error oftraduction is obtained. We observe that human beings are begottenby a deposit of germs through the generative process. To affirmthat these germs are transmitted down the generations from theoriginal progenitor of each race, in whom they all existed atfirst, is an unwarranted assertion and involves absurdities. It isrefuted both by Geoffrey St. Hilaire's famous experiments on eggs,and by the crossing of species.12 In opposition to thistheological figment, observation and science require the beliefthat each being is endowed independently with a germ formingpower.
Organic life requires three things: a fruitful germ; a quickeningimpulse; a nourishing medium. Science plainly shows us that thisprimal nucleus is given, in the human species, by the union of thecontents of a sperm cell with those of a germ cell; that thisdynamic start is imparted from the life force of the parents; andthat this feeding environment is
11 Tract on the Origin and Propagation of the Soul, chap. i.
12 Flourens, Amount of Life on the Globe, part ii. ch. iii. sect. ii.
furnished by the circle of co ordinated relations. That theformative power of the new organism comes from, or at least iswholly conditioned by, the parent organism, should be believed,because it is the obvious conclusion, against which there isnothing to militate. That the soul of the child comes in some wayfrom the soul of the parent, or is stamped by it, is also impliedby the normal resemblance of children to parents, not more inbodily form than in spiritual idiosyncrasies. This fact alonefurnishes the proper qualification to the acute and significantlines of the Platonizing poet:
"Wherefore who thinks from souls new souls to bring,
The same let presse the sunne beames in his fist
And squeeze out drops of light, or strongly wring
The rainbow till it die his hands, well prest."
"That which is born of the flesh is flesh: that which is born ofthe spirit is spirit." As the body of the child is the derivativeof a germ elaborated in the body of the parent, so the soul of thechild is the derivative of a developing impulse of power impartedfrom the soul of the parent. And as the body is sustained byabsorbing nutrition from matter, so the soul is sustained byassimilating the spiritual substances of the invisible kingdom.The most ethereal elements must combine to nourish that consummateplant whose blossom is man's mind. This representation is notmaterialism; for spirit belongs to a different sphere and is thesubject of different predicates from matter, though equally undera constitution of laws. Nor does this view pretend to explain whatis inherently transcendent: it leaves the creation of the soulwithin as wide a depth and margin of mystery as ever. Neither isthis mode of exposing the problem atheistic. It refers the formsof life, all growths, all souls, to the indefinable Power thatworks everywhere, creates each thing, vivifies, governs, andcontains the universe. And, however that Power be named, is it notGod? And thus we still reverently hold that it is God's own hands"That reach through nature, moulding men." The ancient heroes ofGreece and India were fond of tracing their genealogy up directlyto their deities, and were proud to deem that in guarding them thegods stooped to watch over a race of kings, a puissant andimmortal stock,
"Whose glories stream'd from the same clond girt founts
Whence their own dawn'd upon the infant world."
After all the researches that have been made, we yet find thesecret of the beginning of the soul shrouded among the fathomlessmysteries of the Almighty Creator, and must ascribe our birth tothe Will of God as piously as it was done in the eldest mythicalepochs of the world. Notwithstanding the careless frivolity ofskepticism and the garish light of science abroad in this moderntime, there are still stricken and yearning depths of wonder andsorrow enough, profound and awful shadows of night and fearenough, to make us recognise, in the golden joys that visit usrarely, in the illimitable visions that emancipate us often, inthe unearthly thoughts and dreams that ravish our minds,enigmatical intimations of our kinship with God, prophecies ofa super earthly destiny whose splendors already break through theclouds of ignorance, the folds of flesh, and the curtains oftime in which our spirits here sit pavilioned.
Augustine pointedly observes, "It is no evil that the origin ofthe soul remains obscure, if only its redemption be madecertain."13 Non est periculum si origo animoe lateat, dumredemptio clareat. No matter how humanity originates, if itsobject be to produce fruit, and that fruit be immortal souls. Whenour organism has perfected its intended product, willingly will welet the decaying body return into the ground, if so be we areassured that the ripened spirit is borne into the heavenly garner.Let us, in close, reduce the problem of the soul's origin to itslast terms. The amount of force in the universe is uniform.14Action and reaction being equal, no new creation of force ispossible: only its directions, deposits, and receptacles may bealtered. No combination of physical processes can produce apreviously non existent subject: it can only initiate themodification, development, assimilation, of realities already inbeing. Something cannot come out of nothing. The quickeningformation of a man, therefore, implies the existence, first, of amaterial germ, the basis of the body; secondly, of a power toimpart to that germ a dynamic impulse, in other words, to depositin it a spirit atom, or monad of life force. Now, the fresh bodyis originally a detached product of the parent body, as an appleis the detached product of a tree. So the fresh soul is atransmitted force imparted by the parent soul, either directlyfrom itself, or else conditioned by it and drawn from the groundlife of nature, the creative power of God. If filial soul bebegotten by procession and severance of conscious force fromparental soul, the spiritual resemblance of offspring andprogenitors is clearly explained. This phenomenon is also equallywell explained if the parent soul, so called, be a die strikingthe creative substance of the universe into individual form. Thelatter supposition seems, upon the whole, the more plausible andscientific. Generation is a reflex condition moving the life basisof the world to produce a soul, as a physical impression moves thesoul to produce a perception.15
But, however deep the mystery of the soul's origin, whatever ourconclusion in regard to it, let us not forget that the inmostessence and verity of the soul is conscious power; and that allpower defies annihilation. It is an old declaration that whatbegins in time must end in time; and with the metaphysical shearsof that notion more than once the burning faith in eternal lifehas been snuffed out. Yet how obvious is its sophistry! A beingbeginning in time need not cease in time, if the Power whichoriginated it intends and provides for its perpetuity. And thatsuch is the Creative intention for man appears from the fact thatthe grand forms of belief in all ages issuing from his mentalorganization have borne the stamp of an expected immortality. Ourideas may disappear, but they are always recoverable. If the soulsof men are ideas of God, must they not be as enduring as his mind?
13 Epist. CLVI.
14 Faraday, Conservation of Force, Phil. Mag., April, 1857.
15 Dr. Frohschammer, Ursprang der menechlichen Seelen, sect. 115.
The naturalist who so immerses his thoughts in the physical phasesof nature as to lose hold on indestructible centres ofpersonality, should beware lest he lose the motive which propelsman to begin here, by virtue and culture, to climb that ladder oflife whose endless sides are affections, but whose discrete roundsare thoughts.
CHAPTER II.
HISTORY OF DEATH.
DEATH is not an entity, but an event; not a force, but a state.Life is the positive experience, death the negation. Yet in nearlyevery literature death has been personified, while no kindredprosopopoeia of life is anywhere to be found. With the Greeks,Thanatos was a god; with the Romans, Mors was a goddess: but nostatue was ever moulded, no altar ever raised, to Zoe or Vita. Atfirst thought, we should anticipate the reverse of this; but, intruth, the fact is quite naturally as it is. Life is a continuousprocess; and any one who makes the effort will find how difficultit is to conceive of it as an individual being, with distinctiveattributes, functions, and will. It is an inward possession whichwe familiarly experience, and in the quiet routine of custom wefeel no shock of surprise at it, no impulse to give it imaginativeshape and ornament. On the contrary, death is an impendingoccurrence, something which we anticipate and shudder at,something advancing toward us in time to strike or seize us. Itsexternality to our living experience, its threatening approach,the mystery and alarm enwrapping it, are provocative conditionsfor fanciful treatment, making personifications inevitable.
With the Old Aryan race of India, death is Yama, the soul of thefirst man, departed to be the king of the subterranean realm ofthe subsequent dead, and returning to call after him each of hisdescendants in turn. To the good he is mild and lovely, but to theimpious he is clad in terror and acts with severity. The purelyfanciful character of this thought is obvious; for, according toit, death was before death, since Yama himself died. Yama does notreally represent death, but its arbiter and messenger. He is theruler over the dead, who himself carries the summons to eachmortal to become his subject.
In the Hebrew conception, death was a majestic angel, namedSammael, standing in the court of heaven, and flying thence overthe earth, armed with a sword, to obey the behests of God. TheTalmudists developed and dressed up the thought with many details,half sublime, half fantastic. He strides through the world at astep. From the soles of his feet to his shoulders he is full ofeyes. Every person in the moment of dying sees him; and at thesight the soul retreats, running through all the limbs, as ifasking permission to depart from them. From his naked sword fallthree drops: one pales the countenance, one destroys the vitality,one causes the body to decay. Some Rabbins say he bears a cup fromwhich the dying one drinks, or that he lets fall from the point ofhis sword a single acrid drop upon the sufferer's tongue: this iswhat is called "tasting the bitterness of death." Here again, wesee, it is not strictly death that is personified. The embodimentis not of the mortal act, but of the decree determining that act.The Jewish angel of death is not a picture of death in itself, butof God's decree coming to the fated individual who is to die.
The Greeks sometimes depicted death and sleep as twin boys, oneblack, one white, borne slumbering in the arms of their mother,night. In this instance the phenomenon of dissolvingunconsciousness which falls on mortals, abstractly generalized inthe mind, is then concretely symbolized. It is a bold and happystroke of artistic genius; but it in no way expresses or suggeststhe scientific facts of actual death. There is also a classicrepresentation of death as a winged boy with a pensive brow andan inverted torch, a butterfly at his feet. This beautiful image,with its affecting accompaniments, conveys to the beholder notthe verity, nor an interpretation, of death, but the sentimentsof the survivors in view of their bereavement. The sad brow denotesthe grief of the mourner, the winged insect the disembodiedpsyche, the reversed torch the descent of the soul to the underworld; but the reality of death itself is nowhere hinted.
The Romans give descriptions of death as a female figure in darkrobes, with black wings, with ravenous teeth, hovering everywhere,darting here and there, eager for prey. Such a view is apersonification of the mysteriousness, suddenness, inevitableness,and fearfulness, connected with the subject of death in men'sminds, rather than of death itself. These thoughts are groupedinto an imaginary being, whose sum of attributes are thenignorantly both associated with the idea of the unknown cause andconfounded with the visible effect. It is, in a word, mere poetry,inspired by fear and unguided by philosophy.
Death has been shown in the guise of a fowler spreading his net,setting his snares for men. But this image concerns itself withthe accidents of the subject, the unexpectedness of the fatalblow, the treacherous springing of the trap, leaving the root ofthe matter untouched. The circumstances of the mortal hour areinfinitely varied, the heart of the experience is unchangeably thesame: there are a thousand modes of dying, but there is only onedeath. Ever so complete an exhibition of the occasions andaccompaniments of an event is no explanation of what the inmostreality of the event is.
The Norse conception of death as a vast, cloudy presence, darklysweeping on its victims, and bearing them away wrapped in itssable folds, is evidently a free product of imagination broodingnot so much on the distinct phenomena of an individual case as onthe melancholy mystery of the disappearance of men from thefamiliar places that knew them once but miss them now. In asomewhat kindred manner, the startling magnificence of the sketchin the Apocalypse, of death on the pale horse, is a product ofpure imagination meditating on the wholesale slaughter which wasto deluge the earth when God's avenging judgments fell upon theenemies of the Christians. But to consider this murderous warrioron his white charger as literally death, would be as erroneous asto imagine the bare armed executioner and the guillotine to bethemselves the death which they inflict. No more appalling pictureof death has been drawn than that by Milton, whose dire image hasthis stroke of truth in it, that its adumbrate formlessnesstypifies the disorganizing force which reduces all cunningly builtbodies of life to the elemental wastes of being. The incestuousand mistreated progeny of Sin is thus delineated:
"The shape,
If shape it might be call'd that shape had none
Distinguishable in member, joint, or limb,
Or substance might be call'd that shadow seem'd,
For each seem'd either, black it stood as night,
Fierce as ten furies, terrible as hell,
And shook a dreadful dart: what seem'd his head
The likeness of a kingly crown had on."
But the most common personification of death is as a skeletonbrandishing a dart; and then he is called the grisly king ofterrors; and people tremble at the thought of him, as children doat the name of a bugbear in the dark. What sophistry this is! Itis as if we should identify the trophy with the conqueror, thevestiges left in the track of a traveller with the travellerhimself. Death literally makes a skeleton of man; so manmetaphorically makes a skeleton of Death! All theserepresentations of death, however beautiful, or pathetic, orhorrible, are based on superficial appearances, misleadinganalogies, arbitrary fancies, perturbed sensibilities, not on afirm hold of realities, insight of truth, and philosophicalanalysis. They are all to be brushed aside as phantoms ofnightmare or artificial creations of fiction. Poetry has mostlyrested, hitherto, on no veritable foundation of science, but on avisionary foundation of emotion. It has wrought upon flitting,sensible phenomena rather than upon abiding substrata of facts.For example, a tender Greek bard personified the life of a tree asa Hamadryad, the moving trunk and limbs her undulating form andbeckoning arms, the drooping boughs her hair, the rustling foliageher voice. A modern poet, endowed with the same strength ofsympathy, but acquainted with vegetable chemistry, might personifysap as a pale, liquid maiden, ascending through the roots andveins to meet air, a blue boy robed in golden warmth, descendingthrough the leaves, with a whisper, to her embrace. So thepersonifications of death in literature, thus far, give us nopenetrative glance into what it really is, help us to no acutedefinition of it, but poetically fasten on some feature, oraccident, or emotion, associated with it.
There are in popular usage various metaphors to express what ismeant by death. The principal ones are, extinction of the vitalspark, departing, expiring, cutting the thread of life, giving upthe ghost, falling asleep. These figurative modes of speech springfrom extremely imperfect correspondences. Indeed, the unlikenessesare more important and more numerous than the likenesses. They aresimply artifices to indicate what is so deeply obscure andintangible. They do not lay the secret bare, nor furnish us anyaid in reaching to the true essence of the question. Moreover,several of them, when sharply examined, involve a fatal error. Forexample, upon the admitted supposition that in every case of dyingthe soul departs from the body, still, this separation of the soulfrom the body is not what constitutes death. Death is the state ofthe body when the soul has left it. An act is distinct from itseffects. We must, therefore, turn from the literary inquiry to themetaphysical and scientific method, to gain any satisfactory ideaand definition of death.
A German writer of extraordinary acumen and audacity has said,"Only before death, but not in death, is death death. Death is sounreal a being that he only is when he is not, and is not when heis."1 This paradoxical and puzzling as it may appear issusceptible of quite lucid interpretation and defence. For deathis, in its naked significance, the state of not being. Of course,then, it has no existence save in the conceptions of the living.We compare a dead
1 Feuerbach, Gedanken uber Tod and Unsterblichkeit, sect. 84.
person with what he was when living, and instinctively personifythe difference as death. Death, strictly analyzed, is only thisabstract conceit or metaphysical nonentity. Death, therefore,being but a conception in the mind of a living person, when thatperson dies death ceases to be at all. And thus the realization ofdeath is the death of death. He annihilates himself, dying withthe dart he drives. Having in this manner disposed of thepersonality or entity of death, it remains as an effect, an event,a state. Accordingly, the question next arises, What is death whenconsidered in this its true aspect?
A positive must be understood before its related negative can beintelligible. Bichat defined life as the sum of functions by whichdeath is resisted. It is an identical proposition in verbaldisguise, with the fault that it makes negation affirmation,passiveness action. Death is not a dynamic agency warring againstlife, but simply an occurrence. Life is the operation of anorganizing force producing an organic form according to an idealtype, and persistently preserving that form amidst the incessantmolecular activity and change of its constituent substance. Thatoperation of the organic force which thus constitutes life is acontinuous process of waste, casting off the old exhausted matter,and of replacement by assimilation of new material. The close ofthis process of organific metamorphosis and desquamation is death,whose finality is utter decomposition, restoring all the bodilyelements to the original inorganic conditions from which they weretaken. The organic force with which life begins constrainschemical affinity to work in special modes for the formation ofspecial products: when it is spent or disappears, chemicalaffinity is at liberty to work in its general modes; and that isdeath. "Life is the co ordination of actions; the imperfection ofthe co ordination is disease, its arrest is death." In otherwords, "life is the continuous adjustment of relations in anorganism with relations in its environment." Disturb thatadjustment, and you have malady; destroy it, and you have death.Life is the performance of functions by an organism; death is theabandonment of an organism to the forces of the universe. Nofunction can be performed without a waste of the tissue throughwhich it is performed: that waste is repaired by the assimilationof fresh nutriment. In the balancing of these two actions lifeconsists. The loss of their equipoise soon terminates them both;and that is death. Upon the whole, then, scientifically speaking,to cause death is to stop "that continuous differentiation andintegration of tissues and of states of consciousness"constituting life. 2 Death, therefore, is no monster, no force,but the act of completion, the state of cessation; and all thebugbears named death are but poor phantoms of the frightened andchildish mind.
Life consisting in the constant differentiation of the tissues bythe action of oxygen, and their integration from the blastemafurnished by the blood, why is not the harmony of these processespreserved forever? Why should the relation between the integrationand disintegration going on in the human organism ever fall out ofcorrespondence with the relation between the oxygen and foodsupplied from its environment? That is to say, whence originatedthe sentence of death upon man? Why do we not live immortally aswe are? The current reply is, we die because our first parentsinned. Death is a penalty inflicted upon the
2 Spencer, Principles of Psychology, pp. 334-373.
human race because Adam disobeyed his Maker's command. We mustconsider this theory a little.
The narrative in Genesis, of the creation of man and of the eventsin the Garden of Eden, cannot be traced further back than to thetime of Solomon, three thousand years after the allegedoccurrences it describes. This portion of the book of Genesis, ashas long been shown, is a distinct document, marked by manypeculiarities, which was inserted in its present place by thecompiler of the elder Hebrew Scriptures somewhere between sevenand ten centuries before Christ.3 Ewald has fully demonstratedthat the book of Genesis consists of many separate fragmentarydocuments of different ages, arranged together by a comparativelylate hand. Among the later of these pieces is the account of theprimeval pair in paradise. Grotefend argues, with much force andvariety of evidence, that this story was derived from a far moreancient legend book, only fragments of which remained when thefinal collection was made of this portion of the Old Testament.4Many scholars have thought the account was not of Hebrew origin,but was borrowed from the literary traditions of some earlierOriental nation. Rosenmuller, Von Bohlen, and others, say it bearsunmistakable relationship to the Zendavesta which tells howAhriman, the old Serpent, beguiled the first pair into sin andmisery. These correspondences, and also that between the tree oflife and the Zoroastrian plant hom, which gives life and willproduce the resurrection, are certainly striking. Buttmann sees inGod's declaration to Adam, "Behold, I have given you for foodevery herb bearing seed, and every tree in which is fruit bearingseed," traces of a prohibition of animal food. This was not thevestige of a Hebrew usage, but the vegetarian tradition of somesect eschewing meat, a tradition drawn from South Asia, whence thefathers of the Hebrew race came.5 Gesenius says, "Many things inthis narrative were drawn from older Asiatic tradition." 6 Knobelalso affirms that numerous matters in this relation were derivedfrom traditions of East Asian nations.7 Still, it is not necessaryto suppose that the writer of the account in Genesis borrowed anything from abroad. The Hebrew may as well have originated suchideas as anybody else. The Egyptians, the Phoenicians, theChaldeans, the Persians, the Etruscans, have kindred narrativesheld as most ancient and sacred.8 The Chinese, the SandwichIslanders, the North American Indians, also have their legends ofthe origin and altered fortunes of the human race. Theresemblances between many of these stories are better accountedfor by the intrinsic similarities of the subject, of the mind, ofnature, and of mental action, than by the supposition ofderivation from one another.
Regarding the Hebrew narrative as an indigenous growth, then, howshall we explain its origin, purport, and authority? Of course wecannot receive it as a miraculous revelation conveying infallibletruth. The Bible, it is now acknowledged, was not given in theprovidence
3 Tuch, Kommentar uber Genesis, s. xcviii.
4 Zur altesten Sagenpoesie des Orients. Zeitschrift der deutschenMorgenlandischen Gesellschaft, band viii. ss. 772-779.
5 Mythologus, (Schopfung and Sundenfall, ) band i. s. 137.
6 Article "Adam," in Encyclopadia by Ersch and Gruber.
7 Die Genesis erklart, s. 28.
8 Palfrey's Academical Lectures, vol. ii. pp. 21-28.
of God to teach astronomy, geology, chronology, and the operationof organic forces, but to help educate men in morality and piety.It is a religious, not a scientific, work. Some unknown Hebrewpoet, in the early dawn of remembered time, knowing littlemetaphysics and less science, musing upon the fortunes of man, hiswickedness, sorrow, death, and impressed with an instinctiveconviction that things could not always have been so, castingabout for some solution of the dim, pathetic problem, at laststruck out the beautiful and sublime poem recorded in Genesis,which has now for many a century, by Jews, Christians,Mohammedans, been credited as authentic history. With his ownhands God moulds from earth an image in his own likeness, breatheslife into it, and new made man moves, lord of the scene, and liftshis face, illuminated with soul, in submissive love to hisCreator. Endowed with free will, after a while he violated hisMaker's command: the divine displeasure was awakened, punishmentensued, and so rushed in the terrible host of ills under which wesuffer. The problem must early arise: the solution is, to acertain stage of thought, at once the most obvious and the mostsatisfactory conceivable. It is the truth. Only it is cast inimaginative, not scientific, form, arrayed in emblematic, notliteral, garb. The Greeks had a lofty poem by some early unknownauthor, setting forth how Prometheus formed man of clay andanimated him with fire from heaven, and how from Pandora's box thehorrid crew of human vexations were let into the world. The twonarratives, though most unequal in depth and dignity, belong inthe same literary and philosophical category. Neither was intendedas a plain record of veritable history, each word a naked fact,but as a symbol of its author's thoughts, each phrase themetaphorical dress of a speculative idea.
Eichhorn maintains, with no slight plausibility, that the wholeaccount of the Garden of Eden was derived from a series ofallegorical pictures which the author had seen, and which hetranslated from the language of painting into the language ofwords. At all events, we must take the account as symbolic, asuccession of figurative expressions. Many of the best minds havealways so considered it, from Josephus to Origen, from Ambrose toKant. What, then, are the real thoughts which the author of thisHebrew poem on the primal condition of man meant to convey beneathhis legendary forms of imagery? These four are the essential ones.First, that God created man; secondly, that he created him in astate of freedom and happiness surrounded by blessings; third,that the favored subject violated his Sovereign's order; fourth,that in consequence of this offence he was degraded from hisblessed condition, beneath a load of retributive ills. Thecomposition shows the characteristics of a philosopheme or a myth,a scheme of conceptions deliberately wrought out to answer aninquiry, a story devised to account for an existing fact orcustom. The picture of God performing his creative work in sixdays and resting on the seventh, may have been drawn after theseptenary division of time and the religious separation of theSabbath, to explain and justify that observance. The creation ofEve out of the side of Adam was either meant by the author as anallegoric illustration that the love of husband and wife is themost powerful of social bonds, or as a pure myth seeking toexplain the incomparable cleaving together of husband and wife bythe entirely poetic supposition that the first woman was taken outof the first man, bone of his bone, flesh of his flesh. All earlyliteratures teem with exemplifications of this process, aspontaneous secretion by the imagination to account for somepresented phenomenon. Or perhaps this part of the relation"and he called her woman [manness], because she was takenout of man" may be an instance of those etymological myths withwhich ancient literature abounds. Woman is named Isha because shewas taken out of man, whose name is Ish. The barbarous treatmentthe record under consideration has received, the utterbaselessness of it in the light of truth as foundation for literalbelief, find perhaps no fitter exposure than in the fact that formany centuries it was the prevalent faith of Christendom thatevery woman has one rib more than man, a permanent memorial of theDivine theft from his side. Unquestionably, there are many goodpersons now who, if Richard Owen should tell them that man has thesame number of ribs as woman, would think of the second chapter ofGenesis and doubt his word!
There is no reason for supposing the serpent in this recital to beintended as a representative of Satan. The earliest trace of suchan interpretation is in the Wisdom of Solomon, an anonymous andapocryphal book composed probably a thousand years later. What issaid of the snake is the most plainly mythical of all theportions. What caused the snake to crawl on his belly in the dust,while other creatures walk on feet or fly with wings? Why, thesly, winding creature, more subtle, more detestable, than anybeast of the field, deceived the first woman; and this is hispunishment! Such was probably the mental process in the writer. Toseek a profound and true theological dogma in such a statement isas absurd as to seek it in the classic myth that the lapwing withhis sharp beak chases the swallow because he is the descendant ofthe enraged Tereus who pursued poor Progne with a drawn sword. Or,to cite a more apposite case, as well might we seek a reliablehistorical narrative in the following Greek myth. Zeus once gaveman a remedy against old age. He put it on the back of an ass andfollowed on foot. It being a hot day, the ass grew thirsty, andwould drink at a fount which a snake guarded. The cunning snakeknew what precious burden the ass bore, and would not, except atthe price of it, let him drink. He obtained the prize; but withit, as a punishment for his trick, he incessantly suffers theass's thirst. Thus the snake, casting his skin, annually renewshis youth, while man is borne down by old age.9 In all these casesthe mental action is of the same kind in motive, method, andresult.
The author of the poem contained in the third chapter of Genesisdoes not say that man was made immortal. The implication plainlyis that he was created mortal, taken from the dust and naturallyto return again to the dust. But by the power of God a tree wasprovided whose fruit would immortalize its partakers. The penaltyof Adam's sin was directly, not physical death, but being forcedin the sweat of his brow to wring his subsistence from the sterileground cursed for his sake; it was indirectly literal death, inthat he was prevented from eating the fruit of the tree of life."God sent him out of the garden, lest he eat and live forever." Hewas therefore, according to the narrative, made originally subjectto death; but an immortalizing antidote was prepared for him,which he forfeited by his transgression. That the writer made useof the trees of life and knowledge as embellishing allegories ismost
9 Alian, no Nat. Animal., lib. vi. cap. 51.
probable. But, if not, he was not the only devout poet who, in theearly times, with sacred reverence believed the wonders theinspiring muse gave him as from God. It is not clear from theBiblical record that Adam was imagined the first man. On thecontrary, the statement that Cain was afraid that those who methim would kill him, also that he went to the land of Nod and tooka wife and builded a city, implies that there was another andolder race. Father Peyrere wrote a book, called "Praadamita," morethan two hundred years ago, pointing out this fact and arguingthat there really were men before Adam. If science shouldthoroughly establish the truth of this view, religion need notsuffer; but the common theology, inextricably built upon andintertangled with the dogma of "original sin," would be hopelesslyruined. But the leaders in the scientific world will not on thataccount shut their eyes nor refuse to reason. Christians shouldfollow their example of truth seeking, with a deeper faith in God,fearless of results, but resolved upon reaching reality.
It is a very singular and important fact that, from the appearancein Genesis of the account of the creation and sin and punishmentof the first pair, not the faintest explicit allusion to it issubsequently found anywhere in literature until about the time ofChrist. Had it been all along credited in its literal sense, as adivine revelation, could this be so? Philo Judaus gives it athoroughly figurative meaning. He says, "Adam was created mortalin body, immortal in mind. Paradise is the soul, piety the tree oflife, discriminative wisdom the tree of knowledge; the serpent ispleasure, the flaming sword turning every way is the sun revolvinground the world."10 Jesus himself never once alludes to Adam or toany part of the story of Eden. In the whole New Testament thereare but two important references to the tradition, both of whichare by Paul. He says, in effect, "As through the sin of Adam allare condemned unto death, so by the righteousness of Christ allshall be justified unto life." It is not a guarded doctrinalstatement, but an unstudied, rhetorical illustration of theaffiliation of the sinful and unhappy generations of the past withtheir offending progenitor, Adam, of the believing and blessedfamily of the chosen with their redeeming head, Christ. He doesnot use the word death in the Epistle to the Romans prevailinglyin the narrow sense of physical dissolution, but in a broad,spiritual sense, as appears, for example, in these instances: "Tobe carnally minded is death;" "The law of the spirit of life inChrist hath made me free from the law of sin and death." For thespiritually minded were not exempt from bodily death. Paul himselfdied the bodily death. His idea of the relations of Adam andChrist to humanity is more clearly expressed in the other passagealready alluded to. It is in the Epistle to the Corinthians, andappears to be this. The first man, Adam, was of the earth, earthy,the head and representative of a corruptible race whose flesh andblood were never meant to inherit the kingdom of God. The secondman, Christ the Lord, soon to return from heaven, was a quickeningspirit, head and representative of a risen spiritual race for whomis prepared the eternal inheritance of the saints in light. As bythe first man came death, whose germ is transmitted with theflesh, so by the second man comes the resurrection of the dead,whose type is seen in his glorified ascension from Hades toheaven. "As in Adam all die, even so in
10 De Mundi Opificio, liv lvi. De Cherub. viii.
Christ shall all be made alive." Upon all the line of Adam sin hasentailed, what otherwise would not have been known, moral deathand a disembodied descent to the under world. But the gospel ofChrist, and his resurrection as the first fruits of them thatslept, proclaim to all those that are his, at his speedy coming, akindred deliverance from the lower gloom, an investiture withspiritual bodies, and an admission into the kingdom of God.According to Paul, then, physical death is not the retributiveconsequence of Adam's sin, but is the will of the Creator in thelaw of nature, the sowing of terrestrial bodies for the gatheringof celestial bodies, the putting off of the image of the earthyfor the putting on of the image of the heavenly. The specialty ofthe marring and punitive interference of sin in the economy is, inaddition to the penalties in moral experience, the interpolation,between the fleshly "unclothing" and the spiritual "clothingupon," of the long, disembodied, subterranean residence, from thedescent of Abel into its palpable solitude to the ascent of Christout of its multitudinous world. From Adam, in the flesh, humanitysinks into the grave realm; from Christ, in the spirit, it shallrise into heaven. Had man remained innocent, death, considered aschange of body and transition to heaven, would still have been hisportion; but all the suffering and evil now actually associatedwith death would not have been.
Leaving the Scriptures, the first man appears in literature, inthe history of human thought on the beginning of our race, inthree forms. There is the Mythical Adam, the embodiment ofpoetical musings, fanciful conceits, and speculative dreams; thereis the Theological Adam, the central postulate of a group ofdogmas, the support of a fabric of controversial thought, the layfigure to fill out and wear the hypothetical dresses of adoctrinal system; and there is the Scientific Adam, the firstspecimen of the genus man, the supposititious personage who, asthe earliest product, on this grade, of the Creative organic forceor Divine energy, commenced the series of human generations. Thefirst is a hypostatized legend, the second a metaphysicalpersonification, the third a philosophical hypothesis. The firstis an attractive heap of imaginations, the next a dialectic massof dogmatisms, the last a modest set of theories.
Philo says God made Adam not from any chance earth, but from acarefully selected portion of the finest and most sifted clay, andthat, as being directly created by God, he was superior to allothers generated by men, the generations of whom deteriorate ineach remove from him, as the attraction of a magnet weakens fromthe iron ring it touches along a chain of connected rings. TheRabbins say Adam was so large that when he lay down he reachedacross the earth, and when standing his head touched thefirmament: after his fall he waded through the ocean, Orion like.Even a French Academician, Nicolas Fleurion, held that Adam wasone hundred and twenty three feet and nine inches in height. Allcreatures except the angel Eblis, as the Koran teaches, madeobeisance to him. Eblis, full of envy and pride, refused, and wasthrust into hell by God, where he began to plot the ruin of thenew race. One effect of the forbidden fruit he ate was to causerotten teeth in his descendants. He remained in Paradise but oneday. After he had eaten from the prohibited tree, Eve gave of thefruit to the other creatures in Eden, and they all ate of it, andso became mortal, with the sole exception of the phoenix, whorefused to taste it, and consequently remained immortal.
The Talmud teaches that Adam would never have died had he notsinned. The majority of the Christian fathers and doctors, fromTertullian and Augustine to Luther and Calvin, have maintained thesame opinion. It has been the orthodox that is, the prevailingdoctrine of the Church, affirmed by the Synod at Carthage in theyear four hundred and eighteen, and by the Council of Trent in theyear fifteen hundred and forty five. All the evils which afflictthe world, both moral and material, are direct results of Adam'ssin. He contained all the souls of men in himself; and they allsinned in him, their federal head and legal representative. Whenthe fatal fruit was plucked,
"Earth felt the wound, and Nature from her seat, Sighing throughall her works, gave signs of woe That all was lost."
Earthquakes, tempests, pestilences, poverty, war, the endlessbrood of distress, ensued. For then were
"Turn'd askance The poles of earth twice ten degrees and moreFrom the sun's axle, and with labor push'd Oblique the centricglobe."
Adam's transcendent faculties and gifts were darkened anddiminished in his depraved posterity, and all base propensitieslet loose to torment, confuse, and degrade them. We can scarcelyform a conception of the genius, the beauty, the blessedness, ofthe first man, say the theologians in chorus.11 Augustinedeclares, "The most gifted of our time must be considered, whencompared with Adam in genius, as tortoises to birds in speed."Adam, writes Dante, "was made from clay, accomplished with everygift that life can teem with." Thomas Aquinas teaches that "he wasimmortal by grace though not by nature, had universal knowledge,fellowshipped with angels, and saw God." South, in his famoussermon on "Man the Image of God," after an elaborate panegyric ofthe wondrous majesty, wisdom, peacefulness, and bliss of manbefore the fall, exclaims, "Aristotle was but the rubbish of anAdam, and Athens the rudiments of Paradise!" Jean Paul hasamusingly burlesqued these conceits. "Adam, in his state ofinnocence, possessed a knowledge of all the arts and sciences,universal and scholastic history, the several penal and othercodes of law, and all the old dead languages, as well as theliving. He was, as it were, a living Pegasus and Pindus, a movablelodge of sublime light, a royal literary society, a pocket seat ofthe Muses, and a short golden age of Louis the Fourteenth!"
Adam has been called the Man without a Navel, because, not beingborn of woman, there could be no umbilical cord to cut. Thethought goes deep. In addition to the mythico theological picturesof the mechanical creation and superlative condition of the firstman, two forms of statement have been advanced by thoughtfulstudents of nature. One is the theory of chronological progressivedevelopment; the other is the theory of the
11 Strauss gives a multitude of apposite quotations in hisChristliche Glaubenslehre, band i. s. 691, sect. 51, ff.
simultaneous creation of organic families of different species ortypical forms. The advocate of the former goes back along theinterminable vistas of geologic time, tracing his ancestral linethrough the sinking forms of animal life, until, with the aid of amicroscope, he sees a closed vesicle of structureless membrane;and this he recognises as the scientific Adam. This theory hasbeen brought into fresh discussion by Mr. Darwin in his rich andstriking work on the Origin of Species12 The other view contrastswidely with this, and is not essentially different from theaccount in Genesis. It shows God himself creating by regularmethods, in natural materials, not by a vicegerent law, not withthe anthropomorphitic hands of an external potter. Every organizedfabric, however complex, originates in a single physiologicalcell. Every individual organism from the simple plant known as redsnow to the oak, from the zoophyte to man is developed from such acell. This is unquestionable scientific knowledge. The phenomenalprocess of organic advancement is through growth of the cell byselective appropriation of material, self multiplication of thecell, chemical transformations of the pabulum of the cell,endowment of the muscular and nervous tissues produced by thosetransformations with vital and psychical properties.
But the essence of the problem lies in the question, Why does oneof these simple cells become a cabbage, another a rat, another awhale, another a man? Within the limits of known observationduring historic time, every organism yields seed or bears progenyafter its own kind. Between all neighboring species there areimpassable, discrete chasms. The direct reason, therefore, why onecell stops in completion at any given vegetable stage, another ata certain animal stage, is that its producing parent was thatvegetable or that animal. Now, going back to the first individualof each kind, which had no determining parent like itself, thetheory of the gradually ameliorating development of one speciesout of the next below it is one mode of solving the problem.Another mode more satisfactory at least to theologians and theirallies is to conclude that God, the Divine Force, by whom the lifeof the universe is given, made the world after an ideal plan,including a systematic arrangement of all the possiblemodifications. This plan was in his thought, in the unity of allits parts, from the beginning; and the animate creation is theexecution of its diagrams in organic life. Instead of the linealextraction of the complicated scheme out of one cell, there hasbeen, from epoch to epoch, the simultaneous production of allincluded in one of its sections. The Creator, at his chosen times,calling into existence a multitude of cells, gave each one theamount and type of organic force which would carry it to thedestined grade and form. In this manner may have originated, atthe same time, the first sparrow, the first horse, the first man,in short, a whole circle of congeners.
"The grassy clods now calved; now half appear'd
The tawny lion, pawing to get free
His hinder parts, then springs as broke from bonds,
And rampant shakes his brinded mane."
12 The most forcible defence of this hypothesis is that made by
Herbert Spencer. See, in his volume of Essays, No. 2 of the
Haythorne Papers. Also see Oken, Entstehung des ersten Menechen,
Isis, 1819, ss. 1117-1123.
Each creature, therefore, would be distinct from others from thefirst. "Man, though rising from not man, came forth sharplydefined." The races thus originated in their initiativerepresentatives by the creative power of God, thenceforth possessin themselves the power, each one, in the generative act, to putits typical dynamic stamp upon the primordial cells of itsimmediate descendants. Adam, then, was a wild man, cast infavoring conditions of climate, endowed with the same faculties asnow, only not in so high a degree. For, by his peculiar power offorming habits, accumulating experience, transmitting acquirementsand tendencies, he has slowly risen to his present state with allits wealth of wisdom, arts, and comforts.
By either of these theories, that of Darwin, or that of Agassiz,man, the head of the great organic family of the earth, and itmatters not at all whether there were only one Adam and Eve, orwhether each separate race had its own Adams and Eves,13 notmerely a solitary pair, but simultaneous hundreds, man, physicallyconsidered, is indistinguishably included in the creative planunder the same laws and forces, and visibly subject to the samedestination, as the lower animals. He starts with a cell as theydo, grows to maturity by assimilative organization and endowingtransformation of foreign nutriment as they do, his life is acontinuous process of waste and repair of tissues as theirs is,and there is, from the scientific point of view, no conceivablereason why he should not be subject to physical death as they are.They have always been subject to death, which, therefore, is anaboriginal constituent of the Creative plan. It has beenestimated, upon data furnished by scientific observation, thatsince the appearance of organic life on earth, millions of yearsago, animals enough have died to cover all the lands of the globewith their bones to the height of three miles. Consequently, thehistoric commencement of death is not to be found in the sin ofman. We shall discover it as a necessity in the first organic cellthat was ever formed.
The spherule of force which is the primitive basis of a cellspends itself in the discharge of its work. In other words, "theamount of vital action which can be performed by each living cellhas a definite limit." When that limit is reached, the exhaustedcell is dead. To state the fact differently: no function can beperformed without "the disintegration of a certain amount oftissue, whose components are then removed as effete by theexcretory processes." This final expenditure on the part of a cellof its modification of force is the act of molecular death, thegerminal essence of all decay. That this organic law should rulein every living structure is a necessity inherent in the actualconditions of the creation. And wherever we look in the realm ofphysical man, even "from the red outline of beginning Adam" to theamorphous adipocere of the last corpse when fate's black curtainfalls on our race, we shall discern death. For death is the otherside of life. Life and death are the two hands with which theorganic power works.
The threescore simple elements known to chemists die, that is,surrender their peculiar powers and properties, and enter into newcombinations to produce and support higher forms of life.Otherwise these inorganic elemental wastes would be all that thematerial universe could show.
13 The Diversity of Origin of the Human Races, by Louis Agassiz,Christian Examiner, July, 1850.
The simple plant consists of single cells, which, in itsdevelopment, give up their independent life for the productionof a more exalted vegetable form. The formation of a perfectlyorganized plant is made possible only through the continuous dyingand replacement of its cells. Similarly, in the development of ananimal, the constituent cells die for the good of the wholecreature; and the more perfect the animal the greater thesubordination of the parts. The cells of the human body areincessantly dying, being borne off and replaced. The epidermis orscarf skin is made of millions of insensible scales, consisting offormer cells which have died in order with their dead bodies tobuild this guardian wall around the tender inner parts. Thus,death, operating within the individual, seen in the light ofnatural science, is a necessity, is purely a form of selfsurrendering beneficence, is, indeed, but a hidden and indirectprocess and completion of life.14
And is not the death of the total organism just as needful, justas benignant, as the death of the component atoms? Is it not thesame law, still expressing the same meaning? The chemicalelementswherein individuality is wanting, as Wagner says, die thatvegetable bodies may live. Individual vegetable bodies die thatnew individuals of the species may live, and that they may supplythe conditions for animals to live. The individual beast dies thatother individuals of his species may live, and also for the goodof man. The plant lives by the elements and by other plants: theanimal lives by the elements, by the plants, and by other animals:man lives and reigns by the service of the elements, of theplants, and of the animals. The individual man dies if we maytrust the law of analogy for the good of his species, and that hemay furnish the conditions for the development of a higher lifeelsewhere. It is quite obvious that, if individuals did not die,new individuals could not live, because there would not be room.It is also equally evident that, if individuals did not die, theycould never have any other life than the present. The foregoingconsiderations, fathomed and appreciated, transform theinstitution of death from caprice and punishment into necessityand benignity. In the timid sentimentalist's view, death ishorrible. Nature unrolls the chart of organic existence, aconvulsed and lurid list of murderers, from the spider in thewindow to the tiger in the jungle, from the shark at the bottom ofthe sea to the eagle against the floor of the sky. As the perfumedfop, in an interval of reflection, gazes at the spectacle throughhis dainty eyeglass, the prospect swims in blood and glares withthe ghastly phosphorus of corruption, and he shudders withsickness. In the philosophical naturalist's view, the dyingpanorama is wholly different. Carnivorous violence prevents morepain than it inflicts; the wedded laws of life and death wear thesolemn beauty and wield the merciful functions of God; all isbalanced and ameliorating; above the slaughterous struggle safelysoar the dove and the rainbow; out of the charnel blooms the roseto which the nightingale sings love; nor is there poison whichhelps not health, nor destruction which supplies not creation withnutriment for greater good and joy.
By painting such pictures as that of a woman with "Sin" written onher forehead in great glaring letters, giving to Death a globeentwined by a serpent, or that of Death as a
14 Hermann Wagner, Der Tod, beleuchtet vom Standpunkte derNaturwissenschaften.
skeleton, waving a black banner over the world and soundingthrough a trumpet, "Woe, woe to the inhabitants of the earth!" byinterpreting the great event as punishment instead of fulfilment,extermination instead of transition, men have elaborated, in thefaith of their imaginations, a melodramatic death which naturenever made. Truly, to the capable observer, death bears the doubleaspect of necessity and benignity: necessity, because it is anultimate fact, as the material world is made, that, since organicaction implies expenditure of force, the modicum of force given toany physical organization must finally be spent; benignity,because a bodily immortality on earth would both prevent all thehappiness of perpetually rising millions and be an unspeakablecurse upon its possessors.
The benevolence of death appears from this fact, that itboundlessly multiplies the numbers who can enjoy the prerogativesof life. It calls up ever fresh generations, with wondering eyesand eager appetites, to the perennial banquet of existence. HadAdam not sinned and been expelled from Paradise, some of theChristian Fathers thought, the fixed number of saints foreseen byGod would have been reached and then no more would have beenborn.15
Such would have been the necessity, there being no death. But, bythe removal of one company as they grow tired and sated, room ismade for a new company to approach and enjoy the ever renewingspectacle and feast of the world. Thus all the delightful boonslife has, instead of being cooped within a little stale circle,are ceaselessly diffused and increased. Vivacious claimantsadvance, see what is to be seen, partake of what is furnished, aresatisfied, and retire; and their places are immediately taken byhungry successors. Thus the torch of life is passed briskly, withpicturesque and stimulating effect, along the manifold race ofrunning ages, instead of smouldering stagnantly forever in themoveless grasp of one. The amount of enjoyment, the quantity ofconscious experience, gained from any given exhibition by amillion persons to each of whom it is successively shown for onehour, is, beyond all question, immensely greater and keener thanone person could have from it in a million hours. The generationsof men seem like fire flies glittering down the dark lane ofHistory; but each swarm had its happy turn, fulfilled its hour,and rightfully gave way to its followers. The disinterestedbeneficence of the Creator ordains that the same plants, insects,men, shall not unsurrenderingly monopolize and stop the bliss ofbreath. Death is the echo of the voice of love reverberated fromthe limit of life.
The cumulative fund of human experience, the sensitive affiliatingline of history, like a cerebral cord of personal identitytraversing the centuries, renders a continual succession ofgenerations equivalent to the endless existence of one generation;but with this mighty difference, that it preserves all the edgeand spice of novelty. For consider what would be the result ifdeath were abolished and men endowed with an earthly immortality.At first they might rejoice, and think their last, dreadest enemydestroyed. But what a mistake! In the first place, since none areto be removed from the earth, of course none must come into it.The space and material are all wanted by those now in possession.All are soon mature men and women, not another infant ever to hangupon a mother's breast or be lifted in a father's arms.
15 Augustine, Op. Imp. iii. 198.
All the prattling music, fond cares, yearning love, andgushing joys and hopes associated with the rearing of children,gone! What a stupendous fragment is stricken from the fabric ofthose enriching satisfactions which give life its truest value andits purest charm! Ages roll on. They see the same everlastingfaces, confront the same returning phenomena, engage in the sameworn out exercises, or lounge idly in the unchangeable conditionswhich bear no stimulant which they have not exhausted. Thousandsof years pass. They have drunk every attainable spring ofknowledge dry. Not a prize stirs a pulse. All pleasures,permutated till ingenuity is baffled, disgust them. No terrorstartles them. No possible experiment remains untried; nor isthere any unsounded fortune left. No dim marvels and boundlesshopes beckon them with resistless lures into the future. They haveno future. One everlasting now is their all. At last the incessantrepetition of identical phenomena, the unmitigated sameness ofthings, the eternal monotony of affairs, become unutterablyburdensome and horrible. Full of loathing and immeasurablefatigue, a weariness like the weight of a universe oppresses them;and what would they not give for a change! any thing to break thenightmare spell of ennui, to fling off the dateless flesh, todie, to pass into some unguessed realm, to lie down and sleepforever: it would be the infinite boon!
Take away from man all that is dependent on, or interlinked with,the appointment of death, and it would make such fundamentalalterations of his constitution and relations that he would nolonger be man. It would leave us an almost wholly different race.If it is a divine boon that men should be, then death is a good tous; for it enables us to be men. Without it there would neither behusband and wife, nor parent and child, nor family hearth andaltar; nor, indeed, would hardly any thing be as it is now. Theexistent phenomena of nature and the soul would comprise all. Andwhen the jaded individual, having mastered and exhausted thisfinite sum, looked in vain for any thing new or further, the worldwould be a hateful dungeon to him, and life an awful doom; and howgladly he would give all that lies beneath the sun's golden roundand top of sovereignty to migrate into some untried region andstate of being, or even to renounce existence altogether and liedown forever in the attractive slumber of the grave! Withoutdeath, mankind would undergo the fate of Sisyphus, no future, andin the present the oppression of an intolerable task with anaching vacuum of motive. The certainty and the mystery of deathcreate the stimulus and the romance of life. Give the human racean earthly immortality, and you exclude them from every thinggreater and diviner than the earth affords. Who could consent tothat? Take away death, and a brazen wall girds in our narrow life,against which, if we remained men, we should dash and chafe in theclimax of our miserable longing, as the caged lion or eagle beatsagainst his bars.
The gift of an earthly immortality conferred on a single person aboon which thoughtless myriads would clasp with frantic triumphwould prove, perhaps, a still more fearful curse than ifdistributed over the whole species.
Retaining his human affections, how excruciating and remedilesshis grief must be, to be so cut off from all equal community ofexperience and destiny with mankind, to see all whom he loves,generation after generation, fading away, leaving him alone, toform new ties again to be dissolved, to watch his beloved onesgrowing old and infirm, while he stands without a change! His lovewould be left, in agony of melancholy grandeur, "a solitary angelhovering over a universe of tombs" on the tremulous wings ofmemory and grief, those wings incapacitated, by his madly covetedprerogative of deathlessness, ever to move from above the sad rowsof funereal urns. Zanoni, in Bulwer's magnificent conception, saysto Viola, "The flower gives perfume to the rock on whose breast itgrows. A little while, and the flower is dead; but the rock stillendures, the snow at its breast, the sunshine on its summit." Adeathless individual in a world of the dying, joined with them byever bereaved affections, would be the wretchedest creatureconceivable. As no man ever yet prayed for any thing he would prayto be released, to embrace dear objects in his arms and float awaywith them to heaven, or even to lie down with them in the kindembrace of mother earth. And if he had no affections, but lived astoic existence, exempt from every sympathy, in impassivesolitude, he could not be happy, he would not be man: he must bean intellectual marble of thought or a monumental mystery of woe.
Death, therefore, is benignity. When men wish there were no suchappointed event, they are deceived, and know not what they wish.Literature furnishes a strange and profound, though whollyunintentional, confirmation of this view. Every form in whichliterary genius has set forth the conception of an earthlyimmortality represents it as an evil. This is true even down toSwift's painful account of the Struldbrugs in the island ofLaputa. The legend of the Wandering Jew,16 one of the mostmarvellous products of the human mind in imaginative literature,is terrific with its blazoned revelation of the contents of anendless life on earth. This story has been embodied, with greatvariety of form and motive, in more than a hundred works. Everyone is, without the writer's intention, a disguised sermon ofgigantic force on the benignity of death. As in classic fable poorTithon became immortal in the dawning arms of Eos only to lead ashrivelled, joyless, repulsive existence; and the fair young witchof Cuma had ample cause to regret that ever Apollo granted herrequest for as many years as she held grains of dust in her hand;and as all tales of successful alchemists or Rosicrucians concurin depicting the result to be utter disappointment and revulsionfrom the accursed prize; we may take it as evidence of aspontaneous conviction in the depths of human nature a convictionsure to be brought out whenever the attempt is made to describe inlife an opposite thought that death is benign for man as he isconstituted and related on earth. The voice of human nature speakstruth through the lips of Cicero, saying, at the close of hisessay on Old Age, "Quodsi non sumus immortales futuri, tamenexstingui homini suo tempore optabile est."
In a conversation at the house of Sappho, a discussion once aroseupon the question whether death was a blessing or an evil. Somemaintained, the former alternative; but Sappho victoriously closedthe debate by saying, If it were a blessing to die, the immortalgods would experience it. The gods live forever: therefore, deathis an evil.17 The reasoning was plausible and brilliant. Yet itssophistry is complete. To men, conditioned as they are in thisworld, death may be the greatest blessing; while to the gods,conditioned so differently, it may have no similar application.
16 Bibliographical notice of the legend of the wandering Jew, byPaul Lacroix; trans. into English by G.W. Thornbury. Grasse, Derewige Jude.
17 Fragment X. Quoted in Mare's Hist. Lit. Greece, book iii. chap.v. sect. 18.
Because an earthly eternity in the flesh would be a frightfulcalamity, is no reason why a heavenly eternity in the spiritwould be other than a blissful inheritance.
Thus the remonstrance which may be fallaciously based on some ofthe foregoing considerations namely, that they would equally makeit appear that the immortality of man in any condition would beundesirable is met. A conclusion drawn from the facts of thepresent scene of things, of course, will not apply to a sceneinconceivably different. Those whose only bodies are their mindsmay be fetterless, happy, leading a wondrous life, beyond ourdeepest dream and farthest fancy, and eternally free from troubleor satiety.
Death is to us, while we live, what we think it to be. If weconfront it with analytic and defiant eye, it is that nothingwhich ever ceases in beginning to be. If, letting thesuperstitious senses tyrannize over us and cow our better part ofman, we crouch before the imagination of it, it assumes the shapeof the skeleton monarch who takes the world for his empire, theelectric fluid for his chariot, and time for his sceptre. In thecontemplation of death, hitherto, fancy inspired by fear has beenby far too much the prominent faculty and impulse. The literatureof the subject is usually ghastly, appalling, and absurd, withpoint of view varying from that of the credulous Hindu,personifying death as a monster with a million mouths devouringall creatures and licking them in his flaming lips as a firedevours the moths or as the sea swallows the torrents,18 to thatof the atheistic German dreamer, who converts nature into animmeasurable corpse worked by galvanic forces, and that of thebold French philosopher, Carnot, whose speculations have led tothe theory that the sun will finally expend all its heat, andconstellated life cease, as the solar system hangs, like a deadorrery, ashy and spectral, the ghost of what it was. So theextravagant author of Festus says,
"God tore the glory from the sun's broad brow And flung theflaming scalp away."
The subject should be viewed by the unclouded intellect, guided byserene faith, in the light of scientific knowledge. Then death isrevealed, first, as an organic necessity in the primordial lifecell; secondly, as the cessation of a given form of life in itscompletion; thirdly, as a benignant law, an expression of theCreator's love; fourthly, as the inaugurating condition of anotherform of life. What we are to refer to sin is all the seeminglawlessness and untimeliness of death. Had not men sinned, allwould reach a good age and pass away without suffering. Death isbenignant necessity; the irregularity and pain associated with itare an inherited punishment. Finally, it is a condition ofimprovement in life. Death is the incessant touch with which theartist, Nature, is bringing her works to perfection.
Physical death is experienced by man in common with the brute.Upon grounds of physiology there is no greater evidence for man'sSpiritual survival through that overshadowed crisis than there isfor the brute's. And on grounds of sentiment man ought not toshrink from sharing his open future with these mute comrades. DesCartes and Malebranche taught that animals are mere machines,without souls, worked by God's arbitrary power. Swedenborg heldthat "the souls of brutes are extinguished with their bodies." 19
18 Thomson's trans. of Bhagavad Gita, p. 77.
19 Outlines of the Infinite, chap. ii. sect. iv. 13.
Leibnitz, by his doctrine of eternal monads, sustains theimmortality of all creatures.
Coleridge defended the same idea. Agassiz, with much power andbeauty, advocates the thought that animals as well as men have afuture life. 20 The old traditions affirm that at least fourbeasts have been translated to heaven; namely, the ass that spoketo Balaam, the white foal that Christ rode into Jerusalem, thesteed Borak that bore Mohammed on his famous night journey, andthe dog that wakened the Seven Sleepers. To recognise, as Goethedid, brothers in the green wood and in the teeming air, tosympathize with all lower forms of life, and hope for them an openrange of limitless possibilities in the hospitable home of God, issurely more becoming to a philosopher, a poet, or a Christian,than that careless scorn which commonly excludes them from regardand contemptuously leaves them to annihilation. This subject hasbeen genially treated by Richard Dean in his "Essay on the FutureLife of Brutes."
But on moral and psychological grounds the distinction is vastbetween the dying man and the dying brute. Bretschneider, in abeautiful sermon on this point, specifies four particulars. Manforesees and provides for his death: the brute does not. Man dieswith unrecompensed merit and guilt: the brute does not. Man dieswith faculties and powers fitted for a more perfect state ofexistence: the brute does not. Man dies with the expectation ofanother life: the brute does not. Three contrasts may be added tothese. First, man desires to die amidst his fellows: the brutecreeps away by himself, to die in solitude. Secondly, man intershis dead with burial rites, rears a memorial over them, cherishesrecollections of them which often change his subsequent character:but who ever heard of a deer watching over an expiring comrade, adeer funeral winding along the green glades of the forest? Thebarrows of Norway, the mounds of Yucatan, the mummy pits ofMemphis, the rural cemeteries of our own day, speak the humanthoughts of sympathetic reverence and posthumous survival, typicalof something superior to dust. Thirdly, man often makes death anactive instead of a passive experience, his will as it is hisfate, a victory instead of a defeat.21 As Mirabeau sank towardshis end, he ordered them to pour perfumes and roses on him, and tobring music; and so, with the air of a haughty conqueror, amidstthe volcanic smoke and thunder of reeling France, his giant spiritwent forth. The patriot is proud to lay his body a sacrifice onthe altar of his country's weal. The philanthropist rejoices tospend himself without pay in a noble cause, to offer up his lifein the service of his fellow men. Thousands of generous studentshave given their lives to science and clasped death amidst theirtrophied achievements. Who can count the confessors who havethought it bliss and glory to be martyrs for truth and God?Creatures capable of such deeds must inherit eternity. Theirtranscendent souls step from their rejected mansions through theblue gateway of the air to the lucid palace of the stars. Anymeaner allotment would be discordant and unbecoming their rank.
Contemplations like these exorcise the spectre host of the brainand quell the horrid brood of fear. The noble purpose of selfsacrifice enables us to smile upon the grave, "as some sweetclarion's breath stirs the soldier's scorn of danger."
20 Contributions to the Natural History of the United States, vol.i. pp. 64-66. Umbreit, fiber das Sterben ais einen Akt menschlichpersonlicher Selbststandigkeit. Studien und Kritiken, 1837.
Death parts with its false frightfulness, puts on its true beauty,and becomes at once the evening star of memory and the morningstar of hope, the Hesper of the sinking flesh, the Phosphor ofthe rising soul. Let the night come, then: it shall be welcome.And, as we gird our loins to enter the ancient mystery, we willexclaim, with vanishing voice, to those we leave behind,
"Though I stoop Into a dark tremendous sea of cloud, It is but fora time I press God's lamp Close to my breast: its splendor, soonor late, Will pierce the gloom: I shall emerge somewhere."
CHAPTER III.
GROUNDS OF THE BELIEF IN A FUTURE LIFE.
IT is the purpose of the following chapter to describe theoriginating supports of the common belief in a future life; not toprobe the depth and test the value of the various grounds out ofwhich the doctrine grows, but only to give a descriptive sketch ofwhat they are, and a view of the process of growth. The objectionsurged by unbelievers belong to an open discussion of the questionof immortality, not to an illustrative statement of the suggestinggrounds on which the popular belief rests. When, after sufficientinvestigation, we ask ourselves from what causes the almostuniversal expectation of another life springs, and by whatinfluences it is nourished, we shall not find adequate answer inless than four words: feeling, imagination, faith, and reflection.The doctrine of a future life for man has been created by thecombined force of instinctive desire, analogical observation,prescriptive authority, and philosophical speculation. These arethe four pillars on which the soul builds the temple of its hopes;or the four glasses through which it looks to see its eternalheritage.
First, it is obvious that man is endowed at once withforeknowledge of death and with a powerful love of life. It is nota love of being here; for he often loathes the scene around him.It is a love of self possessed existence; a love of his own soulin its central consciousness and bounded royalty. This is aninseparable element of his very entity. Crowned with free will,walking on the crest of the world, enfeoffed with individualfaculties, served by vassal nature with tributes of various joy,he cannot bear the thought of losing himself, of sliding into thegeneral abyss of matter. His interior consciousness is permeatedwith a self preserving instinct, and shudders at every glimpse ofdanger or hint of death. The soul, pervaded with a guardianinstinct of life, and seeing death's steady approach to destroythe body, necessitates the conception of an escape into anotherstate of existence. Fancy and reason, thus set at work, speedilyconstruct a thousand theories filled with details. Desire firstfathers thought, and then thought woos belief.
Secondly, man, holding his conscious being precious beyond allthings, and shrinking with pervasive anxieties from the moment ofdestined dissolution, looks around through the realms of nature,with thoughtful eye, in search of parallel phenomena furtherdeveloped, significant sequels in other creatures' fates, whoseevolution and fulfilment may haply throw light on his own. Witheager vision and heart prompted imagination he scrutinizeswhatever appears related to his object. Seeing the snake cast itsold slough and glide forth renewed, he conceives, so in death manbut sheds his fleshly exuvia, while the spirit emerges,regenerate. He beholds the beetle break from its filthy sepulchreand commence its summer work; and straightway he hangs a goldenscarsbaus in his temples as an emblem of a future life. Aftervegetation's wintry deaths, hailing the returning spring thatbrings resurrection and life to the graves of the sod, he dreamsof some far off spring of Humanity, yet to come, when the frostsof man's untoward doom shall relent, and all the costly seeds sownthrough ages in the great earth tomb shall shoot up in celestialshapes. On the moaning sea shore, weeping some dear friend, heperceives, now ascending in the dawn, the planet which he latelysaw declining in the dusk; and he is cheered by the thought that
"As sinks the day star in the ocean bed, And yet anon repairs hisdrooping head, And tricks his beams, and with new spangledore Flames in the forehead of the morning sky, So Lycidas, sunklow, shall mount on high."
Some traveller or poet tells him fabulous tales of a bird which,grown aged, fills its nest with spices, and, spontaneouslyburning, soars from the aromatic fire, rejuvenescent for athousand years; and he cannot but take the phoenix for amiraculous type of his own soul springing, free and eternal, fromthe ashes of his corpse. Having watched the silkworm, as it woveits cocoon and lay down in its oblong grave apparently dead, untilat length it struggles forth, glittering with rainbow colors, awinged moth, endowed with new faculties and living a new life in anew sphere, he conceives that so the human soul may, in thefulness of time, disentangle itself from the imprisoning meshes ofthis world of larva, a thing of spirit beauty, to sail throughheavenly airs; and henceforth he engraves a butterfly on thetombstone in vivid prophecy of immortality. Thus a moralizingobservation of natural similitudes teaches man to hope for anexistence beyond death.
Thirdly, the prevailing belief in a future life is spread andupheld by the influence of authority. The doctrine of the soul'ssurvival and transference to another world, where its experiencedepends on conditions observed or violated here, conditionssomewhat within the control of a select class of men here, such adoctrine is the very hiding place of the power of priest craft, avast engine of interest and sway which the shrewd insight ofpriesthoods has often devised and the cunning policy of statessubsidized. In most cases of this kind the asserted doctrine isplaced on the basis of a divine revelation, and must be implicitlyreceived. God proclaims it through his anointed ministers:therefore, to doubt it or logically criticize it is a crime.History bears witness to such a procedure wherever an organizedpriesthood has flourished, from primeval pagan India to modernpapal Rome. It is traceable from the dark Osirian shrines of Egyptand the initiating temple at Eleusis to the funeral fires of Gauland the Druidic conclave in the oak groves of Mona; from thereeking altars of Mexico in the time of Montezuma to the massesfor souls in Purgatory said this day in half the churches ofChristendom. Much of the popular faith in immortality which hasprevailed in all ages has been owing to the authority of itspromulgators, a deep and honest trust on the part of the people inthe authoritative dicta of their religious teachers.
In all the leading nations of the earth, the doctrine of a futurelife is a tradition handed down from immemorial antiquity,embalmed in sacred books which are regarded as infalliblerevelations from God. Of course the thoughtless never think ofquestioning it; the reverent piously embrace it; all are educatedto receive it. In addition to the proclamation of a future life bythe sacred books and by the priestly hierarchies, it has also beenaffirmed by countless individual saints, philosophers, andprophets. Most persons readily accept it on trust from them as ademonstrated theory or an inspired knowledge of theirs. It isnatural for modest unspeculative minds, busied with worldly cares,to say, These learned sages, these theosophic seers, so much moregifted, educated, and intimate with the divine counsels and planthan we are, with so much deeper experience and purer insight thanwe have, must know the truth: we cannot in any other way do so wellas to follow their guidance and confide in their assertions.Accordingly, multitudes receive the belief in a life to come onthe authority of the world's intellectual and religious leaders.
Fourthly, the belief in a future life results from philosophicalmeditation, and is sustained by rational proofs.1 For thecompletion of the present outline, it now remains to give a briefexposition of these arguments. For the sake of convenience andclearness, we must arrange these reasonings in five classes;namely, the physiological, the analogical, the psychological, thetheological, and the moral.
There is a group of considerations drawn from the phenomena of ourbodily organization, life and death, which compose thephysiological argument for the separate existence of the soul. Inthe first place, it is contended that the human organization, sowondrously vitalized, developed, and ruled, could not have grownup out of mere matter, but implies a pre existent mental entity, aspiritual force or idea, which constituted the primeval impulse,grouped around itself the organic conditions of our existence, andconstrained the material elements to the subsequent processes andresults, according to a prearranged plan.2 This dynamic agent,this ontological cause, may naturally survive when the fleshlyorganization which it has built around itself dissolves. Itsindependence before the body began involves its independence afterthe body is ended. Stahl has especially illustrated in physiologythis idea of an independent soul monad.
Secondly, as some potential being must have preceded our birth, toassimilate and construct the physical system, so the greatphenomena attending our conscious life necessitate, both to ourinstinctive apprehension and in our philosophical conviction, thedistinctive division of man into body and soul, tabernacle andtenant. The illustrious Boerhaave wrote a valuable dissertation onthe distinction of the mind from the body, which is to be foundamong his works. Every man knows that he dwells in the flesh butis not flesh. He is a free, personal mind, occupying and using amaterial body, but not identified with it. Ideas and passions ofpurely immaterial origin pervade every nerve with terrificintensity, and shake his encasing corporeity like an earthquake. Athought, a sentiment, a fancy, may prostrate him as effectually asa blow on his brain from a hammer. He wills to move a palsiedlimb: the soul is unaffected by the paralysis, but the musclesrefuse to obey his volition: the distinction between the personwilling and the instrument to be wielded is unavoidable.
Thirdly, the fact of death itself irresistibly suggests theduality of flesh and spirit. It is the removal of the energizingmind that leaves the frame so empty and meaningless. Think of theundreaming sleep of a corpse which dissolution is winding in itschemical embrace. A moment ago that hand was uplifted to claspyours, intelligent accents were vocal on those
1 Wohlfarth, Triumph des Glaubens an Unsterblichkeit undWiedersehen uber jeden Zweifel. Oporinus, Historia CriticaDoctrina de Immortalitate Mortalium.
2 Muller, Elements of Physiology, book vi. sect. i. ch. 1.
lips, the light of love beamed in that eye. One shuddering sigh,and how cold, vacant, forceless, dead, lies the heap of clay! Itis impossible to prevent the conviction that an invisible powerhas been liberated; that the flight of an animating principle hasproduced this awful change. Why may not that untraceable somethingwhich has gone still exist? Its vanishing from our sensiblecognizance is no proof of its perishing. Not a shadow of genuineevidence has ever been afforded that the real life powers of anycreature are destroyed.3 In the absence of that proof, a multitudeof considerations urge us to infer the contrary. Surely there isroom enough for the contrary to be true; for, as Jacobi profoundlyobserves, "life is not a form of body; but body is one form oflife." Therefore the soul which now exists in this form, notappearing to be destroyed on its departure hence, must be supposedto live hereafter in some other form.4
A second series of observations and reflections, gathered frompartial similarities elsewhere in the world, are combined to makethe analogical argument for a future life. For many centuries, inthe literature of many nations, a standard illustration of thethought that the soul survives the decay of its earthy investiturehas been drawn from the metamorphosis of the caterpillar into thebutterfly.5 This world is the scene of our grub state. The body isbut a chrysalis of soul. When the preliminary experience andstages are finished and the transformation is complete, the spiritemerges from its cast off cocoon and broken cell into the moreethereal air and sunnier light of a higher world's eternal day.The emblematic correspondence is striking, and the inference isobvious and beautiful. Nor is the change, the gain in endowmentsand privileges, greater in the supposed case of man than it isfrom the slow and loathsome worm on the leaf to the swift andglittering insect in the air.
Secondly, in the material world, so far as we can judge, nothingis ever absolutely destroyed. There is no such thing asannihilation. Things are changed, transformations abound; butessences do not cease to be. Take a given quantity of any kind ofmatter; divide and subdivide it in ten thousand ways, bymechanical violence, by chemical solvents. Still it exists, as thesame quantity of matter, with unchanged qualities as to itsessence, and will exist when Nature has manipulated it in all herlaboratories for a billion ages. Now, as a solitary exception tothis, are minds absolutely destroyed? are will, conscience,thought, and love annihilated? Personal intelligence, affection,identity, are inseparable components of the idea of a soul. Andwhat method is there of crushing or evaporating these out ofbeing? What force is there to compel them into nothing? Death isnot a substantive cause working effects. It is itself merely aneffect. It is simply a change in the mode of existence. That thischange puts an end to existence is an assertion against analogy,and wholly unsupported.
Thirdly, following the analogy of science and the visible order ofbeing, we are led to the conception of an ascending series ofexistences rising in regular gradation from coarse to fine, frombrutal to mental, from earthly composite to simply spiritual, andthus pointing up the rounds of life's ladder, through all nature,to the angelic ranks of heaven. Then, feeling his kinship andcommon vocation with supernal beings, man is assured of a loftiercondition of
3 Sir Humphry Davy, Proteus or Immortality.
4 Bakewell, Natural Evidence of a Future State.
5 Butler, Analogy, part i. ch. 1.
of existence reserved for him. There are no such immense, vacantlyyawning chasms, as that would be, between our fleshly estate andthe Godhead. Nature takes no such enormous jumps. Her scalingadvance is by staid and normal steps.
"There's lifeless matter.
Add the power of shaping,
And you've the crystal: add again the organs
Wherewith to subdue sustenance to the form
And manner of one's self, and you've the plant:
Add power of motion, senses, and so forth,
And you've all kinds of beasts: suppose a pig.
To pig add reason, foresight, and such stuff,
Then you have man.
What shall, we add to man
To bring him higher?"
Freedom from the load of clay, emancipation of the spirit into thefull range and masterdom of a spirit's powers!
Fourthly, many strong similarities between our entrance into thisworld and our departure out of it would make us believe that deathis but another and higher birth.6 Any one acquainted with thestate of an unborn infant deriving its sole nutriment, its veryexistence, from its vascular connection with its mother couldhardly imagine that its separation from its mother would introduceit to a new and independent life. He would rather conclude that itwould perish, like a twig wrenched from its parent limb. So it maybe in the separation of the soul from the body. Further, as ourlatent or dimly groping senses were useless while we weredeveloping in embryo, and then implied this life, so we now have,in rudimentary condition, certain powers of reason, imagination,and heart, which prophesy heaven and eternity; and mysteriousintimations ever and anon reach us from a diviner sphere,
"Like hints and echoes of the world To spirits folded in thewomb."
The Persian poet, Buzurgi, says on this theme,
"What is the soul? The seminal principle from the loins ofdestiny. This world is the womb: the body, its envelopingmembrane: The bitterness of dissolution, dame Fortune's pangs ofchildbirth. What is death? To be born again, an angel ofeternity."
Fifthly, many cultivated thinkers have firmly believed that thesoul is not so young as is usually thought, but is an old stageron this globe, having lived through many a previous existence,here or elsewhere.7 They sustain this conclusion by variousconsiderations, either drawn from premises presupposing thenecessary eternity of spirits, or resting on dusky reminiscences,"shadowy recollections," of visions and events vanished long ago.Now, if the idea of foregone conscious lives, personal careers oftrepeated with unlost being, be admitted, as it frequently has beenby such men as Plato and Wordsworth, all the
6 Bretschneider, Predigten uber Tod, Unsterblichkeit, undAnferstehung.
7 James Parker, Account of the Divine Goodness concerning thePre existence of Souls.
connected analogies of the case carry us to the belief thatimmortality awaits us. We shall live through the next transition,as we have lived through the past ones.
Sixthly, rejecting the hypothesis of an anterior life, andentertaining the supposition that there is no creating andoverruling God, but that all things have arisen by spontaneousdevelopment or by chance, still, we are not consistently obligedto expect annihilation as the fate of the soul. Fairly reasoningfrom the analogy of the past, across the facts of the present, tothe impending contingencies of the future, we may say that thenext stage in the unfolding processes of nature is not thedestruction of our consciousness, but issues in a purer life,elevates us to a spiritual rank. It is just to argue that ifmindless law or boundless fortuity made this world and brought ushere, it may as well make, or have made, another world, and bearus there. Law or chance excluding God from the question may aseasily make us immortal as mortal. Reasoning by analogy, we mayaffirm that, as life has been given us, so it will be given usagain and forever.
Seventhly, faith in immortality is fed by another analogy, notbased on reflection, but instinctively felt. Every change ofmaterial in our organism, every change of consciousness, is a kindof death. We partially die as often as we leave behind forgottenexperiences and lost states of being. We die successively toinfancy, childhood, youth, manhood. The past is the dead: but ourcourse is still on, forever on. Having survived so many deaths, weexpect to survive all others and to be ourselves eternally.
There is a third cluster of reasonings, deduced from thedistinctive nature of spirit, constituting the psychologicalargument for the existence of the soul independent of the body. Inthe outset, obviously, if the soul be an immaterial entity, itsnatural immortality follows; because death and decay can only besupposed to take effect in dissoluble combinations. Severalingenious reasons have been advanced in proof of the soul'simmateriality, reasons cogent enough to have convinced a largeclass of philosophers.8 It is sufficient here to notice thefollowing one. All motion implies a dynamic mover. Matter isdormant. Power is a reality entirely distinct from matter in itsnature. But man is essentially an active power, a free will.Consequently there is in him an immaterial principle, since allpower is immaterial. That principle is immortal, becausesubsisting in a sphere of being whose categories exclude thepossibility of dissolution.9
Secondly, should we admit the human soul to be material, yet if itbe an ultimate monad, an indivisible atom of mind, it is immortalstill, defying all the forces of destruction. And that it actuallyis an uncompounded unit may be thus proved. Consciousness issimple, not collective. Hence the power of consciousness, thecentral soul, is an absolute integer. For a living perceptivewhole cannot be made of dead imperceptive parts. If the soul werecomposite, each component part would be an individual, adistinguishable consciousness. Such not being the fact, theconclusion results that the soul is one, a simple substance.10
8 Astrue, Dissertation sur l'Immaterialite et l'Immortalite del'Ame. Broughton, Defence of the Doctrine of the Human Soul as anImmaterial and Naturally Immortal Principle. Marstaller, Von derUnsterblichkeit der Menschlichen Seele.
9 Andrew Baxter, Inquiry into the Nature of the Soul.
10 Herbart, Lehrbuch zur Psychologie, sect. 150.
Of course it is not liable to death, but is naturally eternal.
Thirdly, the indestructibleness of the soul is a direct inferencefrom its ontological characteristics. Reason, contemplating theelements of the soul, cannot but embrace the conviction of itsperpetuity and its essential independence of the fleshlyorganization. Our life in its innermost substantive essence isbest defined as a conscious force. Our present existence is theorganic correlation of that personal force with the physicalmaterials of the body, and with other forces. The cessation ofthat correlation at death by no means involves, so far as we cansee, the destruction or the disindividualization of the primalpersonal force. It is a fact of striking significance, oftennoticed by psychologists, that we are unable to conceive ourselvesas dead. The negation of itself is impossible to consciousness.The reason we have such a dread of death is that we conceiveourselves as still alive, only in the grave, or wandering throughhorrors and shut out from wonted pleasures. It belongs to materialgrowths to ripen, loosen, decay; but what is there in sensation,reflection, memory, volition, to crumble in pieces and rot away?Why should the power of hope, and joy, and faith, change intoinanity and oblivion? What crucible shall burn up the ultimate offorce? What material processes shall ever disintegrate thesimplicity of spirit? Earth and plant, muscle, nerve, and brain,belong to one sphere, and are subject to the temporal fates thatrule there; but reason, imagination, love, will, belong toanother, and, immortally fortressed there, laugh to scorn thefretful sieges of decay.
Fourthly, the surviving superiority of the soul, inferred from itscontrast of qualities to those of its earthy environment, isfurther shown by another fact, the mind's dream power, and theideal realm it freely soars or walks at large in when itpleases.11 This view has often been enlarged upon, especially byBonnet and Sir Henry Wotton. The unhappy Achilles, exhausted withweeping for his friend, lay, heavily moaning, on the shore of thefar sounding sea, in a clear spot where the waves washed in uponthe beach, when sleep took possession of him. The ghost ofmiserable Patroclus calve to him and said, "Sleepest thou and artforgetful of me, O Achilles?" And the son of Peleus cried, "Comenearer: let us embrace each other, though but for a little while."Then he stretched out his friendly hands, but caught him not; forthe spirit, shrieking, vanished beneath the earth like smoke.
Astounded, Achilles started up, clasped his hands, and said,dolefully, "Alas! there is then indeed in the subterranean abodesa spirit and image, but there is no body in it."12 The realm ofdreams is a world of mystic realities, intangible, yet existent,and all prophetic, through which the soul nightly floats while thegross body slumbers. It is everlasting, because there is nothingin it for corruption to take hold of. The appearances and soundsof that soft inner sphere, veiled so remote from sense, arereflections and echoes from the spirit world. Or are they a directvision and audience of it? The soul really is native resident in aworld of truth, goodness, and beauty, fellow citizen with divineideas and affections. Through the senses it has knowledge andcommunion with the hard outer world of matter. When the sensesfall away, it is left, imperishable denizen of its own appropriateworld of idealities.
11 Schubert, Die Symbolik des Traumes.
12 Iliad, lib. xxiii. ll. 60 106.
Another assemblage of views, based on the character of God, formthe theological argument for the future existence of man.13Starting with the idea of a God of infinite perfections, theimmortality of his children is an immediate deduction from theeternity of his purposes. For whatever purpose God originally gaveman being, for the disinterested distribution of happiness, forthe increase of his own glory, or whatever else, will he not forthat same purpose continue him in being forever? In the absence ofany reason to the contrary, we must so conclude. In view of theunlimited perfections of God, the fact of conscious responsiblecreatures being created is sufficient warrant of their perpetuity.Otherwise God would be fickle. Or, as one has said, he would be amere drapery painter, nothing within the dress.
Secondly, leaving out of sight this illustration of an eternalpurpose in eternal fulfilment, and confining our attention to theanalogy of the divine works and the dignity of the divine Worker,we shall be freshly led to the same conclusion. Has God mouldedthe dead clay of the material universe into gleaming globes andordered them to fly through the halls of space forever, and has hecreated, out of his own omnipotence, mental personalitiesreflecting his own attributes, and doomed them to go out inendless night after basking, poor ephemera, in the sunshine of amomentary life? It is not to be imagined that God ever works invain. Yet if a single consciousness be extinguished in everlastingnonentity, so far as the production of that consciousness isconcerned he has wrought for nothing. His action was in vain,because all is now, to that being, exactly the same as if it hadnever been. God does nothing in sport or unmeaningly: least of allwould he create filial spirits, dignified with the solemnendowments of humanity, without a high and serious end.14 To makemen, gifted with such a transcendent largess of powers, whollymortal, to rot forever in the grave after life's swift day, werework far more unworthy of God than the task was to Michael Angeloset him in mockery by Pietro, the tyrant who succeeded Lorenzo theMagnificent in the dukedom of Florence, that he should scoop upthe snow in the Via Larga, and with his highest art mould a statuefrom it, to dissolve ere night in the glow of the Italian sun.
Thirdly, it is an attribute of Infinite Wisdom to proportionpowers to results, to adapt instruments to ends with exactfitness. But if we are utterly to die with the ceasing breath,then there is an amazing want of symmetry between our endowmentsand our opportunity; our attainments are most superfluouslysuperior to our destiny. Can it be that an earth house of six feetis to imprison forever the intellect of a La Place, whosetelescopic eye, piercing the unfenced fields of immensity,systematized more worlds than there are grains of dust in thisglobe? the heart of a Borromeo, whose seraphic love expanded tothe limits of sympathetic being? the soul of a Wycliffe, whoseundaunted will, in faithful consecration to duty, faced the firesof martyrdom and never blenched? the genius of a Shakspeare, whoseimagination exhausted worlds and then invented new? There is vastincongruity between our faculties and the scope given them here.On all it sees below the soul reads "Inadequate," and rises
13 Aebli, Unsterblichkeit der menschlichen Seele, sechster Brief.
14 Ulrici, Unsterblichkeit der menschlichen Seele aus dem WesenGottes erwiesen.
dissatisfied from every feast, craving, with divine hunger andthirst, the ambrosia and nectar of a fetterless and immortalworld. Were we fated to perish at the goal of threescore, Godwould have harmonized our powers with our lot. He would never haveset such magnificent conceptions over against such poorpossibilities, nor have kindled so insatiable an ambition for sotrivial a prize of dust to dust.
Fourthly, one of the weightiest supports of the belief in a futurelife is that yielded by the benevolence of God. Annihilation istotally irreconcilable with this. That He whose love for hiscreatures is infinite will absolutely destroy them after theirlittle span of life, when they have just tasted the sweets ofexistence and begun to know the noble delights of spiritualprogress, and while illimitable heights of glory and blessednessare beckoning them, is incredible. We are unable to believe thatwhile his children turn to him with yearning faith and gratitude,with fervent prayer and expectation, he will spurn them intounmitigated night, blotting out those capacities of happinesswhich he gave them with a virtual promise of endless increase.Will the affectionate God permit humanity, ensconced in the fieldof being, like a nest of ground sparrows, to be trodden in by thehoof of annihilation? Love watches to preserve life. It wereMoloch, not the universal Father, that could crush into deaththese multitudes of loving souls supplicating him for life, dashinto silent fragments these miraculous personal harps of athousand strings, each capable of vibrating a celestial melody ofpraise and bliss.
Fifthly, the apparent claims of justice afford presumptive proof,hard to be resisted, of a future state wherein there arecompensations for the unmerited ills, a complement for thefragmentary experiences, and rectification for the wrongs, of thepresent life.15 God is just; but he works without impulse orcaprice, by laws whose progressive evolution requires time to showtheir perfect results. Through the brief space of this existence,where the encountering of millions of free intelligences withinthe fixed conditions of nature causes a seeming medley of good andevil, of discord and harmony, wickedness often triumphs, villanyoften outreaches and tramples ingenuous nobility and helplessinnocence. Some saintly spirits, victims of disease and penury,drag out their years in agony, neglect, and tears. Some boldminions of selfishness, with seared consciences and nerves ofiron, pluck the coveted fruits of pleasure, wear the diadems ofsociety, and sweep through the world in pomp. The virtuous sufferundeservedly from the guilty. The idle thrive on the industrious.All these things sometimes happen. In spite of the compensatingtendencies which ride on all spiritual laws, in spite of themysterious Nemesis which is throned in every bosom and saturatesthe moral atmosphere with influence, the world is full of wrongs,sufferings, and unfinished justice.16 There must be another world,where the remunerating processes interiorly begun here shall beopenly consummated. Can it be that Christ and Herod, Paul andNero, Timour and Fenelon, drop through the blind trap of deathinto precisely the same condition of unwaking sleep? Not if therebe a God!
15 M. Jules Simon, La Religion Naturelle, liv. iii.:l'Immortalite.
16 Dr. Chalmers, Bridgewater Treatise, chap. 10.
There is a final assemblage of thoughts pertaining to thelikelihood of another life, which, arranged together, may bestyled the moral argument in behalf of that belief.17 Theseconsiderations are drawn from the seeming fitness of things,claims of parts beseeching completion, vaticinations ofexperience. They form a cumulative array of probabilities whoseguiding forefingers all indicate one truth, whose consonant voicesswell into a powerful strain of promise. First, consider theshrinking from annihilation naturally felt in every breast. If manbe not destined for perennial life, why is this dread of nonexistence woven into the soul's inmost fibres? Attractions are coordinate with destinies, and every normal desire foretells its ownfulfilment. Man fades unwillingly from his natal haunts, stilllonging for a life of eternal remembrance and love, and confidingin it. All over the world grows this pathetic race of forget menots. Shall not Heaven pluck and wear them on her bosom? Secondly,an emphatic presumption in favor of a second life arises from thepremature mortality prevalent to such a fearful extent in thehuman family. Nearly one half of our race perish before reachingthe age of ten years. In that period they cannot have fulfilledthe total purposes of their creation. It is but a part we see, andnot the whole. The destinies here seen segmentary will appear fullcircle beyond the grave.
The argument is hardly met by asserting that this untimelymortality is the punishment for non observance of law; for,denying any further life, would a scheme of existence have beenadmitted establishing so awful a proportion of violations andpenalties? If there be no balancing sphere beyond, then all shouldpass through the experience of a ripe and rounded life. But thereis the most perplexing inequality. At one fell swoop, infant,sage, hero, reveller, martyr, are snatched into the invisiblestate. There is, as a noble thinker has said, an apparent "capricein the dispensation of death strongly indicative of a hiddensequel." Immortality unravels the otherwise inscrutable mystery.
Thirdly, the function of conscience furnishes another attestationto the continued existence of man. This vicegerent of God in thebreast, arrayed in splendors and terrors, which shakes andillumines the whole circumference of our being with its thundersand lightnings, gives the good man, amidst oppressions and woes, aserene confidence in a future justifying reward, and transfixesthe bad man, through all his retinue of guards and panoplieddefences, with icy pangs of fear and with a horrid looking forjudgment to come. The sublime grandeur of moral freedom, theimperilling dignities of probation, the tremendousresponsibilities and hazards of man's felt power and position, areall inconsistent with the supposition that he is merely to crossthis petty stage of earth and then wholly expire. Such momentousendowments and exposures imply a corresponding arena and career.After the trial comes the sentence; and that would be as if apalace were built, a prince born, trained, crowned, solely that hemight occupy the throne five minutes! The consecrating, royalizingidea of duty cannot be less than the core of eternal life.Conscience is the sensitive corridor along which the mutualwhispers of a divine communion pass and repass. A moral law and afree will
17 Crombie, Natural Theology, Essay IV.: The Arguments forImmortality. Bretschneider, Die Religiose Glaubenslehre, sect.20-21.
are the root by which we grow out of God, and the stem by which weare grafted into him.
Fourthly, all probable surmisings in favor of a future life, orany other moral doctrine, are based on that primal postulatewhich, by virtue of our rational and ethical constitution, we areauthorized and bound to accept as a commencing axiom, namely, thatthe scheme of creation is as a whole the best possible one,impelled and controlled by wisdom and benignity. Whatever, then,is an inherent part of the plan of nature cannot be erroneous normalignant, a mistake nor a curse. Essentially and in the finality,every fundamental portion and element of it must be good andperfect. So far as science and philosophy have penetrated, theyconfirm by facts this a priori principle, telling us that there isno pure and uncompensated evil in the universe. Now, death is aregular ingredient in the mingled world, an ordered step in theplan of life. If death be absolute, is it not an evil? What canthe everlasting deprivation of all good be called but an immenseevil to its subject? Such a doom would be without possible solace,standing alone in steep contradiction to the whole parallel moraluniverse. Then might man utter the most moving and melancholyparadox ever expressed in human speech:
"What good came to my mind I did deplore, Because it perish must,and not live evermore."
Fifthly, the soul, if not outwardly arrested by some hostileagent, seems capable of endless progress without ever exhaustingeither its own capacity or the perfections of infinitude.18 Thereare before it unlimited truth, beauty, power, nobleness, to becontemplated, mastered, acquired. With indefatigable alacrity,insatiable faculty and desire, it responds to the infinite call.The obvious inference is that its destiny is unending advancement.Annihilation would be a sequel absurdly incongruous with thefacts. True, the body decays, and all manifested energy fails; butthat is the fault of the mechanism, not of the spirit. Were we tolive many thousands of years, as Martineau suggests, no onesupposes new souls, but only new organizations, would be needed.And what period can we imagine to terminate the unimpeded spirit'sabilities to learn, to enjoy, to expand? Kant's famousdemonstration of man's eternal life on the grounds of practicalreason is similar. The related ideas of absolute virtue and amoral being necessarily imply the infinite progress of the lattertowards the former. That progress is impossible except oncondition of the continued existence of the same being. Thereforethe soul is immortal.19
Sixthly, our whole life here is a steady series of growingpreparations for a continued and ascending life hereafter. All thespiritual powers we develop are so much athletic training, all theideal treasures we accumulate are so many preliminary attainments,for a future life. They have this appearance and superscription.Man alone foreknows his own death and expects a succeedingexistence; and that foresight is given to prepare him. There arewondrous impulses in us, constitutional convictions prescient offuturity, like those prevising instincts in birds leading them totake preparatory flights before their actual migration.
18 Addison, Spectator, Nos. 3 and 210.
19 Jacob, Beweis fur die Unsterblichkeit der Seele aus demBegriffe der Pflicht.
Eternity is the stuff of which our love, flying forward, buildsits nest in the eaves of the universe. If we saw wings growingout upon a young creature, we should be forced to conclude thathe was intended some time to fly. It is so with man. By exploringthoughts, disciplinary sacrifices, supernal prayers, holy toilsof disinterestedness, he fledges his soul's pinions, lays uptreasures in heaven, and at last migrates to the attracting clime.
"Here sits he, shaping wings to fly: His heart forebodes amystery; He names the name eternity."
Seventhly, in the degree these preparations are made in obedienceto obscure instincts and the developing laws of experience, theyare accompanied by significant premonitions, lucid signals of thefuture state looked to, assuring witnesses of its reality. Themore one lives for immortality, the more immortal things heassimilates into his spiritual substance, the more confirmingtokens of a deathless inheritance his faith finds. He becomesconscious of his own eternity.20 When hallowed imagination weighsanchor and spreads sail to coast the dim shores of the otherworld, it hears cheerful voices of welcome from the headlands anddiscerns beacons burning in the port. When in earnest communionwith our inmost selves, solemn meditations of God, mysteriousinfluences shed from unseen spheres, fall on our souls, and many a"strange thought, transcending our wonted themes, into glorypeeps." A vague, constraining sense of invisible beings, by whomwe are engirt, fills us. We blindly feel that our rank anddestination are with them. Lift but one thin veil, we think, andthe occult Universe of Spirit would break to vision with cloudycrowds of angels. Thousand "hints chance dropped from nature'ssphere," pregnant with friendly tidings, reassure us. "Strange,"said a gifted metaphysician once, "that the barrel organ, man,should terminate every tune with the strain of immortality!" Notstrange, but divinely natural. It is the tentative prelude to thethrilling music of our eternal bliss written in the score ofdestiny. When at night we gaze far out into immensity, along theshining vistas of God's abode, and are almost crushed by theoverwhelming prospects that sweep upon our vision, do not somepre monitions of our own unfathomed greatness also stir within us?Yes: "the sense of Existence, the ideas of Right and Duty, awfulintuitions of God and immortality, these, the grand facts andsubstance of the spirit, are independent and indestructible. Thebases of the Moral Law, they shall stand in every tittle, althoughthe stars should pass away. For their relations and root are inthat which upholds the stars, even with worlds unseen from thefinite, whose majestic and everlasting arrangements shall burstupon us as the heavens do through the night when the light of thisgarish life gives place to the solemn splendors of eternity."
Eighthly, the belief in a life beyond death has virtuallyprevailed everywhere and always. And the argument from universalconsent, as it is termed, has ever been esteemed one of theforemost testimonies, if not indeed the most convincing testimony,to the truth of the doctrine. Unless the belief can be shown to beartificial or sinful, it must seem conclusive. Its innocence isself evident, and its naturalness is evidenced by itsuniversality.
20 Theodore Parker, Sermon of Immortal Life.
The rudest and the most polished, the simplest and the mostlearned, unite in the expectation, and cling to it throughevery thing. It is like the ruling presentiment implanted inthose insects that are to undergo metamorphosis. This believinginstinct, so deeply seated in our consciousness, natural,innocent, universal, whence came it, and why was it given?There is but one fair answer. God and nature deceive not.
Ninthly, the conscious, practical faith of civilized nations, today, in a future life, unquestionably, in a majority ofindividuals, rests directly on the basis of authority, trust in aforeign announcement. There are two forms of this authority. Theauthority of revelation is most prominent and extensive. God hasrevealed the truth from heaven. It has been exemplified by amiraculous resurrection. It is written in an infallible book, andsealed with authenticating credentials of super natural purport.It is therefore to be accepted with implicit trust. Secondly, withsome, the authority of great minds, renowned for scientificknowledge and speculative acumen, goes far. Thousands of such men,ranking among the highest names of history, have positivelyaffirmed the immortality of the soul as a reliable truth. Forinstance, Goethe says, on occasion of the death of Wieland, "Thedestruction of such high powers is something which can never, andunder no circumstances, even come into question." Such a dogmaticexpression of conviction resting on bare philosophical grounds,from a mind so equipped, so acute, and so free, has great weight,and must influence a modest student who hesitates in confessedincompetence.21 The argument is justly powerful when but humanlyconsidered, and when divinely derived, of course, it absolutelyforecloses all doubts.
Tenthly, there is another life, because a belief in it isnecessary to order this world, necessary as a comfort and aninspiration to man now. A good old author writes, "the very nervesand sinews of religion is hope of immortality." The convictionthat there is a retributive life hereafter is the moral cement ofthe social fabric. Take away this truth, and one great motive ofpatriots, martyrs, thinkers, saints, is gone. Take it away, and toall low minded men selfishness becomes the law, earthly enjoymentthe only good, suffering and death the only evil. Life then is tobe supremely coveted and never put in risk for any stake. Selfindulgence is to be secured at any hazard, little matter by whatmeans. Abandon all hope of a life to come, and "from that instantthere is nothing serious in mortality." In order that the worldshould be governable, ethical, happy, virtuous, magnanimous, is itpossible that it should be necessary for the world to believe inan untruth?
"So, thou hast immortality in mind?
Hast grounds that will not let thee doubt it?
The strongest ground herein I find:
That we could never do without it!"
Finally, the climax of these argumentations is capped by thatgrand closing consideration which we may entitle the force ofcongruity, the convincing results of a confluence of harmoniousreasons. The hypothesis of immortality accords with the cardinalfacts of observation, meets all points of the case, andsatisfactorily answers every requirement.
21 Lewis, Influence of Authority in Matters of Opinion.
It is the solution of the problem, as the fact of Neptune explainedthe perturbations of the adjacent planets. Nothing ever gravitatestowards nothing; and it must be an unseen orb that so draws ouryearning souls. If it be not so, then what terrible contradictionsstagger us, and what a chilling doom awaits us! Oh, what mockingirony then runs through the loftiest promises and hopes of theworld! Just as the wise and good have learned to live, theydisappear amidst the unfeeling waves of oblivion, like snow flakesin the ocean. "The super earthly desires of man are then createdin him only, like swallowed diamonds, to cut slowly through hismaterial shell" and destroy him.
The denial of a future life introduces discord, grief, and despairin every direction, and, by making each step of advanced culturethe ascent to a wider survey of tantalizing glory and experiencedsorrow, as well as the preparation for a greater fall and a sadderloss, turns faithful affection and heroic thought into "blindfuries slinging flame." Unless immortality be true, man appears adark riddle, not made for that of which he is made capable anddesirous: every thing is begun, nothing ended; the facts of thepresent scene are unintelligible; the plainest analogies areviolated; the delicately rising scale of existence is broken offabrupt; our best reasonings concerning the character and designsof God, also concerning the implications of our own being andexperience, are futile; and the soul's proud faculties tellglorious lies as thick as stars. Such, at least, is the usual wayof thinking.
However formidable a front may be presented by the spectral arrayof doubts and difficulties, seeming impediments to faith inimmortality, the faithful servant of God, equipped withphilosophical culture and a saintly life, will fearlessly advanceupon them, scatter them right and left, and win victorious accessto the prize. So the mariner sometimes, off Sicilian shores, seesa wondrous island ahead, apparently stopping his way with itscypress and cedar groves, glittering towers, vine wreathedbalconies, and marble stairs sloping to the water's edge. He sailsstraight forward, and, severing the pillared porticos and greengardens of Fata Morgana, glides far on over a glassy sea smilingin the undeceptive sun.
CHAPTER IV.
THEORIES OF THE SOUL'S DESTINATION.
BEFORE examining, in their multifarious detail, the specialthoughts and fancies respecting a future life prevalent indifferent nations and times, it may be well to take a sort ofbird's eye view of those general theories of the destination ofthe soul under which all the individual varieties of opinion maybe classified. Vast and incongruous as is the heterogeneous massof notions brought forth by the history of this province of theworld's belief, the whole may be systematized, discriminated, andreduced to a few comprehensive heads. Such an architecturalgrouping or outlining of the chief schemes of thought on thissubject will yield several advantages.
Showing how the different views arose from natural speculations onthe correlated phenomena of the outward world and facts of humanexperience, it affords an indispensable help towards aphilosophical analysis and explanation of the popular faith as tothe destiny of man after death, in all the immense diversity ofits contents. An orderly arrangement and exposition of thesecardinal theories also form an epitome holding a bewilderingmultitude of particulars in its lucid and separating grasp,changing the fruits of learned investigation from a cumbersomeburden on the memory to a small number of connected formularies inthe reason. These theories serve as a row of mirrors hung in aline of historic perspective, reflecting every relevant shape andhue of meditation and faith humanity has known, from the idealvisions of the Athenian sage to the instinctive superstitions ofthe Fejee savage. When we have adequately defined these theories,of which there are seven, traced their origin, comprehended theirsignificance and bearings, and dissected their supportingpretensions, then the whole field of our theme lies in lightbefore us; and, however grotesque or mysterious, simple or subtle,may be the modes of thinking and feeling in relation to the lifebeyond death revealed in our subsequent researches, we shall knowat once where to refer them and how to explain them. The preciseobject, therefore, of the present chapter is to set forth thecomprehensive theories devised to solve the problem, What becomesof man when he dies?
But a little while man flourishes here in the bosom of visiblenature. Soon he disappears from our scrutiny, missed in all theplaces that knew him. Whither has he gone? What fate has befallenhim? It is an awful question. In comparison with its concentratedinterest, all other affairs are childish and momentary. Wheneverthat solemn question is asked, earth, time, and the heart, naturaltransformations, stars, fancy, and the brooding intellect, arefull of vague oracles. Let us see what intelligible answers can beconstructed from their responses.
The first theory which we shall consider propounds itself in oneterrible word, annihilation. Logically this is the earliest,historically the latest, view. The healthy consciousness, theeager fancy, the controlling sentiment, the crude thought, all theuncurbed instinctive conclusions of primitive human nature, pointforcibly to a continued existence for the soul, in some way, whenthe body shall have perished. And so history shows us in all thesavage nations a vivid belief in a future life. But to thephilosophical observer, who has by dint of speculation freedhimself from the constraining tendencies of desire, faith,imagination, and authority, the thought that man totally ceaseswith the destruction of his visible organism must occur as thefirst and simplest settlement of the question.1 The totality ofmanifested life has absolutely disappeared: why not conclude thatthe totality of real life has actually lost its existence and isno more? That is the natural inference, unless by some means thecontrary can be proved. Accordingly, among all civilized people,every age has had its skeptics, metaphysical disputants who havemournfully or scoffingly denied the separate survival of the soul.This is a necessity in the inevitable sequences of observation andtheory; because, when the skeptic, suppressing or escaping hisbiassed wishes, the trammels of traditional opinion, and thespontaneous convictions prophetic of his own uninterrupted being,first looks over the wide scene of human life and death, andreflectingly asks, What is the sequel of this strange, eventfulhistory? obviously the conclusion suggested by the immediatephenomena is that of entire dissolution and blank oblivion. Thisresult is avoided by calling in the aid of deeper philosophicalconsiderations and of inspiring moral truths. But some will notcall in that aid; and the whole superficial appearance of thecase regarding that alone, as they then will is fatal to ourimperial hopes. The primordial clay claims its own from thedisanimated frame; and the vanished life, like the flame of anoutburnt taper, has ceased to be. Men are like bubbles or foamflakes on the world's streaming surface: glittering in a momentaryray, they break and are gone, and only the dark flood remainsstill flowing forward. They are like tones of music, commencingand ending with the unpurposed breath that makes them. Nature is avast congeries of mechanical substances pervaded by mindlessforces of vitality. Consciousness is a production which resultsfrom the fermentation and elaboration of unconscious materials;and after a time it deceases, its conditions crumbling into theirinorganic grounds again.
From the abyss of silence and dust intelligent creatures breakforth, shine, and sink back, like meteor flashes in a cloud. Thegenerations of sentient being, like the annual growths ofvegetation, by spontaneity of dynamic development, spring fromdead matter, flourish through their destined cycle, and relapseinto dead matter. The bosom of nature is, therefore, at once thewondrous womb and the magnificent mausoleum of man. Fate, like aniron skeleton seated at the summit of the world on a throne offresh growing grass and mouldering skulls, presides over all, andannihilation is the universal doom of individual life. Such is theatheistic naturalist's creed. However indefensible or shocking itis, it repeatedly appears in the annals of speculation; and anysynopsis of the possible conclusions in which the inquiry intoman's destiny may rest that should omit this, would be grosslyimperfect.
This scheme of disbelief is met by insuperable objections. Itexcludes some essential elements of the case, confines itself to awholly empirical view; and consequently the relentless solution itannounces applies only to a mutilated problem. To assert thecessation of the soul because its physical manifestations throughthe body have ceased, is certainly to affirm without just warrant.It would appear impossible for volition and intelligence to
1 Lalande, Dictionnaire des Athees Anciens et Modernes.
originate save from a free parent mind. Numerous cogent evidencesof design seem to prove the existence of a God by whose will allthings are ordered according to a plan. Many powerful impressionsand arguments, instinctive, critical, or moral, combine to teachthat in the wreck of matter the spirit emerges, deathless, fromthe closing waves of decay. The confirmation of that truth becomesirresistible when we see how reason and conscience, with delightedavidity, seize upon its adaptedness alike to the brightestfeatures and the darkest defects of the present life, whoseimperfect symmetries and segments are harmoniously filled out bythe adjusting complement of a future state.2
The next representation of the fate of the soul disposes of it byre absorption into the essence from which it emanated. There is aneternal fountain of unmade life, from which all individual,transient lives flow, and into which they return. This conceptionarose in the outset from a superficial analogy which must haveobtruded itself upon primitive notice and speculation; for man isled to his first metaphysical inquiries by a feeling contemplationof outward phenomena. Now, in the material world, when individualforms perish, each sensible component relapses into its originalelement and becomes an undistinguishable portion of it. Ourexhaled breath goes into the general air and is united with it:the dust of our decaying frames becomes part of the ground andvegetation. So, it is strongly suggested, the lives of things, thesouls of men, when they disappear from us, are remerged in thenative spirit whence they came. The essential longing of everypart for union with its whole is revealed and vocal throughout allnature. Water is sullen in stillness, murmurs in motion, and neverceases its gloom or its complaining until it sleeps in the sea.Like spray on the rock, the stranding generations strike thesepulchre and are dissipated into universal vapor. As lightningsslink back into the charged bosom of the thunder cloud, as eagerwaves, spent, subside in the deep, as furious gusts die away inthe great atmosphere, so the gleaming ranks of genius, thestruggling masses of toil, the pompous hosts of war, fade anddissolve away into the peaceful bosom of the all engulfing SOUL.This simplest, earliest philosophy of mankind has had mostextensive and permanent prevalence.3 For immemorial centuries ithas possessed the mind of the countless millions of India. Baurthinks the Egyptian identification of each deceased person withOsiris and the burial of him under that name, were meant to denotethe reception of the individual human life into the universalnature life. The doctrine has been implicitly held whereverpantheism has found a votary, from Anaximander, to whom finitecreatures were "disintegrations or decompositions from theInfinite," to Alexander Pope, affirming that
"All are but parts of one stupendous whole, Whose body nature is,and God the soul."
The first reasoners, who gave such an ineradicable direction andtinge to the thinking of after ages, were furthermore driven tothe supposition of a final absorption, from the
2 Drossbach, Die Harmonie der Ergebnisse der Naturforschung mitden Forderungen des Menschlichen Gemuthes.
3 Blount, Anima Mundi; or, The Opinions of the Ancients concerningMan's Soul after this Life.
impossibility, in that initiatory stage of thought, of graspingany other theory which would apparently meet the case so well orbe more satisfactory. They, of course, had not yet arrived at theidea that God is a personal Spirit whose nature is revealed in theconstitutive characteristics of the human soul, and who carries onhis works from eternity to eternity without monotonous repetitionor wearisome stagnancy, but with perpetual variety in neverceasingmotion. Whatever commences must also terminate, they said,forgetting that number begins with one but has no end. They didnot conceive of the universe of being as an eternal line, makingimmortality desirable for its endless novelty, but imaged it tothemselves as a circle, making an everlasting individualconsciousness dreadful for its intolerable sameness, an immenseround of existence, phenomena, and experience, going forth andreturning into itself, over and over, forever and ever. To escapeso repulsive a contemplation, they made death break the fencingintegument of consciousness and empty all weary personalities intothe absolute abyss of being.
Again: the extreme difficulty of apprehending the truth of aCreator literally infinite, and of a limitless creation, wouldlead to the same result in another way. Without doubt, it seemedto the naive thinkers of antiquity, that if hosts of new beingswere continually coming into life and increasing the number of theinhabitants of the future state, the fountain from which theyproceeded would some time be exhausted, or the universe growplethoric with population. There would be no more substance belowor no more room above. The easiest method of surmounting thisproblem would be by the hypothesis that all spirits come out of agreat World Spirit, and, having run their mortal careers, areabsorbed into it again. Many especially the deepest Orientaldreamers have also been brought to solace themselves with thisconclusion by a course of reasoning based on the exposures, andassumed inevitable sufferings, of all finite being. They arguethat every existence below the absolute God, because it is setaround with limitations, is necessarily obnoxious to all sorts ofmiseries. Its pleasures are only "honey drops scarce tasted in asea of gall." This conviction, with its accompanying sentiment,runs through the sacred books of the East, is the root and heartof their theology, the dogma that makes the cruelest penancespleasant if a renewed existence may thus be avoided. The sentimentis not alien to human longing and surmise, as witnesses the nightthought of the English poet who, world sated, and sadly yearning,cries through the starry gloom to God,
"When shall my soul her incarnation quit, And, readopted to thyblest embrace, Obtain her apotheosis in thee?"
Having stated and traced the doctrine of absorption, it remains toinvestigate the justice of its grounds. The doctrine starts from apremise partly true and ends in a conclusion partly false. Weemanate from the creative power of God, and are sustained by thein flowing presence of his life, but are not discerptions from hisown being, any more than beams of light are distinct substancesshot out and shorn off from the sun to be afterwards drawn backand assimilated into the parent orb. We are destined to aharmonious life in his unifying love, but not to be fused and lostas insentient parts of his total consciousness. We are products of
God's will, not component atoms of his soul. Souls are to be inGod as stars are in the firmament, not as lumps of salt are in asolvent. This view is confirmed by various arguments.
In the first place, it is supported by the philosophicaldistinction between emanation and creation. The conception ofcreation gives us a personal God who wills to certain ends; thatof emanation reduces the Supreme Being to a ghastly array of laws,revolving abysses, galvanic forces, nebular star dust, dead ideas,and vital fluids. According to the latter supposition, finiteexistences flow from the Infinite as consequences from aprinciple, or streams from a fountain; according to the former,they proceed as effects from a cause, or thoughts from a mind.That is pantheistic, fatal, and involves absorption by a logicalnecessity; this is creative, free, and does not presuppose anycircling return. Material things are thoughts which Godtransiently contemplates and dismisses; spiritual creatures arethoughts which he permanently expresses in concrete immortality.The soul is a thought; the body is the word in which it isclothed.
Secondly, the analogy which first leads to belief in absorption isfalsely interpreted. Taken on its own ground, rightly appreciated,it legitimates a different conclusion.
A grain of sand thrown into the bosom of Sahara does not lose itsindividual existence. Distinct drops are not annihilated as totheir simple atoms of water, though sunk in the midst of the sea.The final particles or monads of air or granite are notdissolvingly blended into continuity of unindividualizedatmosphere or rock when united with their elemental masses, butare thrust unapproachably apart by molecular repulsion. Now, amind, being, as we conceive, no composite, but an ultimate unity,cannot be crushed or melted from its integral persistence ofpersonality. Though plunged into the centre of a surroundingwilderness or ocean of minds, it must still retain itself unlostin the multitude. Therefore, if we admit the existence of aninclusive mundane Soul, it by no means follows that lesser soulsreceived into it are deprived of their individuality. It is "onenot otherwise than as the sea is one, by a similarity andcontiguity of parts, being composed of an innumerable host ofdistinct spirits, as that is of aqueous particles; and as therivers continually discharge into the sea, so the vehicularpeople, upon the disruption of their vehicles, discharge andincorporate into that ocean of spirits making the mundane Soul."4
Thirdly, every consideration furnished by the doctrine of finalcauses as applied to existing creatures makes us ask, What use isthere in calling forth souls merely that they may be taken backagain? To justify their creation, the fulfilment of some educativeaim, and then the lasting fruition of it, appear necessary. Whyelse should a soul be drawn from out the unformed vastness, andhave its being struck into bounds, and be forced to pass throughsuch appalling ordeals of good and evil, pleasure and agony? Anindividual of any kind is as important as its race; for itcontains in possibility all that its type does. And the purposesof things, so far as we can discern them, the nature of ourspiritual constitution, the meaning of our circumstances andprobation, the resulting tendencies of our experience, all seem toprophesy, not the destruction, but the perfection andperpetuation, of individual being.
4 Tucker, Light of Nature, Part II. chap. xxii.
Fourthly, the same inference is yielded by applying a similarconsideration to the Creator. Allowing him consciousness andintentions, as we must, what object could he have either inexerting his creative power or in sending out portions of himselfin new individuals, save the production of so many immortalpersonalities of will, knowledge, and love, to advance towards theperfection of holiness, wisdom, and blessedness, filling hismansions with his children? By thus multiplying his own image headds to the number of happy creatures who are to be bound togetherin bands of glory, mutually receiving and returning his affection,and swells the tide of conscious bliss which fills and rollsforever through his eternal universe.
Nor, finally, is it necessary to expect personal oblivion in Godin order to escape from evil and win exuberant happiness. Thoseends are as well secured by the fruition of God's love in us as bythe drowning of our consciousness in his plenitude of delight.Precisely herein consists the fundamental distinction of theChristian from the Brahmanic doctrine of human destiny. TheChristian hopes to dwell in blissful union with God's will, not tobe annihilatingly sunk in his essence. To borrow an illustrationfrom Scotus Erigena,5 as the air when thoroughly illumined bysunshine still keeps its aerial nature and does not becomesunshine, or as iron all red in the flame still keeps its metallicsubstance and does not turn to fire itself, so a soul fullypossessed and moved by God does not in consequence lose its ownsentient and intelligent being. It is still a bounded entity,though recipient of boundless divinity. Thus evil ceases, eachpersonality is preserved and intensely glorified, and, at the sametime, God is all in all. The totality of perfected, enraptured,immortalized humanity in heaven may be described in this manner,adopting the masterly expression of Coleridge:
"And as one body seems the aggregate Of atoms numberless, eachorganized, So, by a strange and dim similitude, Infinite myriadsof self conscious minds In one containing Spirit live, who fillsWith absolute ubiquity of thought All his involved monads, thatyet seem Each to pursue its own self centring end."
A third mode of answering the question of human destiny is by theconception of a general resurrection. Souls, as fast as they leavethe body, are gathered in some intermediate state, a starlessgrave world, a ghostly limbo. When the present cycle of things iscompleted, when the clock of time runs down and its lifelessweight falls in the socket, and "Death's empty helmet yawns grimlyover the funeral hatchment of the world," the gates of this longbarred receptacle of the deceased will be struck open, and itspale prisoners, in accumulated hosts, issue forth, and enter onthe immortal inheritance reserved for them. In the sable land ofHades all departed generations are bivouacking in one vast army.On the resurrection morning, striking their shadowy tents, theywill scale the walls of the abyss, and, reinvested with theirbodies, either plant their banners on the summits of the earth inpermanent encampment, or storm the battlements of the sky andcolonize heaven with flesh and blood.
5 Philosophy and Doctrines of Erigena, Universalist QuarterlyReview, vol. vii. p. 100.
All advocates of the doctrine of psychopannychism, or the sleepof souls from death till the last day, in addition to the generalbody of orthodox Christians, have been supporters of thisconclusion.6
Three explanations are possible of the origination of this belief.First, a man musing over the affecting panorama of the seasons asit rolls through the year, budding life alternating with deadlydesolation, spring still bringing back the freshness of leaves,flowers, and carolling birds, as if raising them from an annualinterment in winter's cold grave, and then thinking of the destinyof his own race, how many generations have ripened and decayed,how many human crops have been harvested from the cradle andplanted in the tomb, might naturally especially if he had anything of the poet's associating and creative mind say to himself,Are we altogether perishable dust, or are we seed sown for higherfields, seed lying dormant now, but at last to sprout into swiftimmortality when God shall make a new sunshine and dewomnipotently penetrate the dry mould where we tarry? No matter howpartial the analogy, how forced the process, how false the result,such imagery would sooner or later occur; and, having occurred, itis no more strange that it should get literal acceptance than itis that many other popular figments should have secured the firmestablishment they have.
Secondly, a mourner just bereaved of one in whom his whole lovewas garnered, distracted with grief, his faculties unbalanced, hissoul a chaos, is of sorrow and fantasy all compact; and he solaceshimself with the ideal embodiment of his dreams, half seeing whathe thinks, half believing what he wishes. His desires pass throughunconscious volition into supposed facts. Before the miraculouspower of his grief wielded imagination the world is fluent, andfate runs in the moulds he conceives. The adored form on whichcorruption now banquets, he sees again, animated, beaming, claspedin his arms. He cries, It cannot be that those holy days areforever ended, that I shall never more realize the blissful dreamin which we trod the sunny world together! Oh, it must be thatsome time God will give me back again that beloved one! thesepulchre closed so fast shall be unsealed, the dead be restored,and all be as it was before! The conception thus once born out ofthe delirium of busy thought, anguished love, and regnantimagination, may in various ways win a fixed footing in faith.
Thirdly, the notion which we are now contemplating is one link ina chain of thought which, in the course of time and the range ofspeculation, the theorizing mind could not fail to forge. Theconcatenation of reflections is this. Death is the separation ofsoul and body. That separation is repulsive, an evil. Therefore itwas not intended by the Infinite Goodness, but was introduced by afoe, and is a foreign, marring element. Finally God will vanquishhis antagonist, and banish from the creation all his thwartinginterferences with the primitive perfection of harmony andhappiness. Accordingly, the souls which Satan has caused to beseparated from their bodies are reserved apart until the fulnessof time, when there shall be a universal resurrection andrestoration. So far as reason is competent to pronounce on thisview considered as a sequel to the disembodying doom of man, it isan arbitrary piece of fancy. Philosophy ignores it. Science givesno hint of it.
6 Baumgarten, Beantwortung des Sendschreibens Heyns vom Schlafeder abgeschiedenen Seelen. Chalmers. Astronomical Discourses, iv.
It sprang from unwarranted metaphors, perverted, exaggerated,based on analogies not parallel. So far as it assumes to reston revelation it will be examined in another place.
Fourthly, after the notion of a great, epochal resurrection, as areply to the inquiry, What is to become of the soul? a dogma isnext encountered which we shall style that of a local andirrevocable conveyance. The disembodied spirit is conveyed to somefixed region,7 a penal or a blissful abode, where it is to tarryunalterably. This idea of the banishment or admission of souls,according to their deserts, or according to an elective grace,into an anchored location called hell or heaven, a retributive orrewarding residence for eternity, we shall pass by with few words,because it recurs for fuller examination in other chapters. In thefirst place, the whole picture is a gross simile drawn fromoccurrences of this outward world and unjustifiably applied to thefortunes of the mind in the invisible sphere of the future. Thefigment of a judicial transportation of the soul from one place orplanet to another, as if by a Charon's boat, is a clattering andrepulsive conceit, inadmissible by one who apprehends thenoiseless continuity of God's self executing laws. It is a jarringmechanical clash thrust amidst the smooth evolution of spiritualdestinies. It compares with the facts as the supposition that theplanets are swung around the sun by material chains compares withthe law of gravitation.
Moral compensation is no better secured by imprisonment or freedomin separate localities than it is, in a common environment, by thefatal working of their interior forces of character, and theirrelations with all things else. Moreover, these antagonistkingdoms, Tartarean and Elysian, defined as the everlastinghabitations of departed souls, have been successively driven, asdissipated visions, from their assumed latitudes and longitudes,one after another, by progressive discovery, until now theintelligent mind knows of no assignable spot for them. Since weare not acquainted with any fixed locations to which the soul isto be carried, to abide there forever in appointed joy or woe, andsince there is no scientific necessity nor moral use for thesupposition of such places and of the transferrence of thedeparted to them, we cannot hesitate to reject the associatedbelief as a deluding mistake. The truth, as we conceive it, is notthat different souls are borne by constabulary apparitions to twoimmured dwellings, manacled and hurried into Tophet or saluted andushered into Paradise, but that all souls spontaneously pass intoone immense empire, drawn therein by their appropriateattractions, to assimilate a strictly discriminative experience.But, as to this, let each thinker form his own conclusion.
The fifth view of the destination of the soul may be called thetheory of recurrence.8 When man dies, his surviving spirit isimmediately born again in a new body. Thus the souls, assigned ina limited number to each world, continually return, each one stillforgetful of his previous lives. This seems to be the specificcreed of the Druses, who affirm that all souls were created atonce, and that the number is unchanged, while they are born overand over. A Druse boy, dreadfully alarmed by the discharge of agun, on being asked by a Christian the cause of his fear, replied,"I was born murdered;" that is, the soul of a man who had beenshot
7 Lange, Das Land der Herrlichkelt.
8 Schmidius, Diss. de Multiplici Animarum Reditu in Corpora.
passed into his body at the moment of his birth.9 The youngmountaineer would seem, from the sudden violence with which he wassnatched out of his old house, to have dragged a trail ofconnecting consciousness over into his new one. As a general rule,in distinction from such an exception, memory is like one of thosepasses which the conductors of railroad trains give theirpassengers, "good for this trip only." The notion of an endlesssuccession of lives on the familiar stage of this dear old world,commencing each with clean wiped tablets, possesses for some mindsa fathomless allurement; but others wish for no return pass ontheir ticket to futurity, preferring an adventurous abandonment"to fresh fields and pastures new," in unknown immensity, to arenewed excursion through landscapes already traversed andexperiences drained before.
Fourier's doctrine of immortality belongs here. According to hisidea, the Great Soul of this globe is a composite being,comprising about ten billions of individual souls. Theirconnection with this planet will be for nearly eighty thousandyears. Then the whole sum of them will swarm to some higherplanet, Fourier himself, perhaps, being the old gray gander thatwill head the flock, pilot king of their flight. Each man is toenjoy about four hundred births on earth, poetic justice leadinghim successively through all the grades and phases of fortune,from cripplehood and beggary to paragonship and the throne. Theinvisible residence of spirits and the visible are both on thisglobe, the former in the Great Soul, the latter in bodies. In theother life the soul becomes a sharer in the woes of the GreatSoul, which is as unhappy as seven eighths of the incarnatedsouls; for its fate is a compound of the fates of the human soulstaken collectively. Coming into this outward scene at birth, welose anew all memory of past existence, but wake up again in theGreat Soul with a perfect recollection of all our previous livesboth in the invisible and in the visible world. These alternatingpassages between the two states will continue until the finalswooping of total humanity from this exhausted planet in search ofa better abode.10
The idea of the recurrence of souls is the simplest means ofmeeting a difficulty stated thus by the ingenious Abraham Tuckerin his "Light of Nature Pursued." "The numbers of souls dailypouring in from hence upon the next world seem to require aproportionable drain from it somewhere or other; for else thecountry might be overstocked." The objection urged against such abelief from the fact that we do not remember having lived beforeis rebutted by the assertion that
"Some draught of Lethe doth await, As old mythologies relate, Theslipping through from state to state."
The theory associated with this Lethean draught is confirmed byits responsive correspondence with many unutterable experiences,vividly felt or darkly recognised, in our deepest bosom. It seemsas if occasionally the poppied drug or other oblivious antidote
9 Churchill, Mount Lebanon, vol. ii. ch. 12.
10 Fourier, Passions of the Human Soul, (Morell's translation,)Introduction, vol. i. pp. 14-18; also pp. 233-236.
administered by nature had been so much diluted that reason, onlyhalf baffled, struggles to decipher the dim runes and vestiges ofa foregone state;
"And ever something is or seems That touches us with mysticgleams, Like glimpses of forgotten dreams."
In those excursive reveries, fed by hope and winged with dream,which scour the glens and scale the peaks of the land of thought,this nook of hypothesis must some time be discovered. And, broughtto light, it has much to interest and to please; but it is toodestitute of tangible proof to be successfully maintained againstassault.11
There is another faith as to the fate of souls, best stated,perhaps, in the phrase perpetual migration. The soul, bysuccessive deaths and births, traverses the universe, aneverlasting traveller through the rounds of being and the worldsof space, a transient sojourner briefly inhabiting each.12 Allreality is finding its way up towards the attracting, retreatingGodhead. Minerals tend to vegetables, these to animals, these tomen. Blind but yearning matter aspires to spirit, intelligentspirits to divinity. In every grain of dust sleep an army offuture generations. As every thing below man gropes upward towardshis conscious estate, "the trees being imperfect men, that seem tobemoan their imprisonment, rooted in the ground," so man himselfshall climb the illimitable ascent of creation, every step a star.The animal organism is a higher kind of vegetable, whosedevelopment begins with those substances with the production ofwhich the life of an ordinary vegetable ends.13 The fact, too,that embryonic man passes through ascending stagesundistinguishable from those of lower creatures, is full ofmeaning. Does it not betoken a preserved epitome of the longhistory of slowly rising existence? What unplummeted abysses oftime and distance intervene from the primary rock to the VictoriaRegia! and again from the first crawling spine to the fetterlessmind of a Schelling! But, snail pace by snail pace, thoseimmeasurable separations have been bridged over; and so everything that now lies at the dark basis of dust shall finally reachthe transplendent apex of intellect. The objection of theologicalprejudice to this developing succession of ascents that it isdegrading is an unhealthy mistake. Whether we have risen or fallento our present rank, the actual rank itself is not altered. And inone respect it is better for man to be an advanced oyster than adegraded god; for in the former case the path is upwards, in thelatter it is downwards. "We wake," observes a profound thinker,"and find ourselves on a stair: there are other stairs below us,which we seem to have ascended; there are stairs above us, many aone, which go upward and out of sight." Such was plainly the trustof the author of the following exhortation:
"Be worthy of death; and so learn to live That every incarnationof thy soul In other realms, and worlds, and firmaments Shall bemore pure and high."
11 Bertram, Prufung der Meinung von der Praexistenz dermenechlichen Seele.
12 Nurnberger, Still Leben, oder uber die Unsterblichkeit derSeele.
13 Liebig, Animal Chemistry, ch. ix.
Bulwer likewise has said, "Eternity may be but an endless seriesof those emigrations which men call deaths, abandonments of homeafter home, ever to fairer scenes and loftier heights. Age afterage, the spirit that glorious nomad may shift its tent, fated notto rest in the dull Elysium of the heathen, but carrying with itevermore its twin elements, activity and desire."
But there is something unsatisfactory, even sad and dreary, inthis prospect of incessant migration. Must not the pilgrim pineand tire for a goal of rest? Exhausted with wanderings, sated withexperiments, will he not pray for the exempted lot of a contentedfruition in repose? One must weary at last of being even sosublime a vagabond as he whose nightly hostelries are stars. And,besides, how will sundered friends and lovers, between whom, onthe road, races and worlds interpose, ever over take each other,and be conjoined to journey hand in hand again or build a bowertogether by the way? A poet of finest mould, in happiest mood,once saw a leaf drop from a tree which overhung a mirroringstream. The reflection of the leaf in the watery sky hollow farbelow seemed to rise from beneath as swiftly as the object fellfrom above; and the two, encountering at the surface, became one.Then he sang, touching with his strain the very marrow of deepesthuman desire,
"How speeds, from in the river's thought,
The spirit of the leaf that falls,
Its heaven in that calm bosom wrought,
As mine among yon crimson walls!
From the dry bough it spins, to greet
Its shadow on the placid river:
So might I my companions meet,
Nor roam the countless worlds forever!"
Moreover, some elements of this theory are too grotesque, are thetoo rash inferences from a too crude induction, to win sobercredit to any extent. It is easy to devise and carry out inconsistent descriptive details the hypothesis that the soul hasrisen, through ten thousand transitions, from the condition of redearth or a tadpole to its present rank, and that,
"As it once crawl'd upon the sod, It yet shall grow to be a god;"
but what scientific evidence is there to confirm and establish thesupposition as a truth? Why, if it be so, to borrow the humoroussatire of good old Henry More,
"Then it will follow that cold stopping curd And harden'd moldycheese, when they have rid Due circuits through the heart, at lastshall speed Of life and sense, look thorough our thin eyes Andview the close wherein the cow did feed Whence they were milk'd:grosse pie crust will grow wise, And pickled cucumbers sans doubtphilosophize!"
The form of this general outline stalks totteringly on stilts offancy, and sprawls headlong with a logical crash at the firstcritical probe.
The final theory of the destination of souls, now left to be setforth, may be designated by the word transition.14 It affirms thatat death they pass from the separate material worlds, which aretheir initiating nurseries, into the common spiritual world, whichis everywhere present. Thus the visible peoples the invisible,each person in his turn consciously rising from this world'srudimentary darkness to that world's universal light. Dwellinghere, free souls, housed in frames of dissoluble clay,
"We hold a middle rank 'twixt heaven and earth,
On the last verge of mortal being stand,
lose to the realm where angels have their birth,
Just on the boundaries of the spirit land."
Why has God "broken up the solid material of the universe intoinnumerable little globes, and swung each of them in the centre ofan impassable solitude of space," unless it be to train up in thevarious spheres separate households for final union as a singlediversified family in the boundless spiritual world? 15 Thesurmise is not unreasonable, but recommends itself strongly,that,
"If yonder stars be fill'd with forms of breathing clay like ours,Perchance the space which spreads between is for a spirit'spowers."
The soul encased in flesh is thereby confined to one home, itsnatal nest; but, liberated at death, it wanders at will,unobstructed, through every world and cerulean deep; andwheresoever it is, there, in proportion to its own capacity andfitness, is heaven and is God.16 All those world spots so thicklyscattered through the Yggdrasill of universal space are but thebrief sheltering places where embryo intelligences clip theirshells, and whence, as soon as fledged through the discipline ofearthly teaching and essays, the broodlet souls take wing into themighty airs of immensity, and thus enter on their eternalemancipation. This conjecture is, of all which have been offeredyet, perhaps the completest, least perplexed, best recommended byits harmony with our knowledge and our hope. And so one might wishto rest in it with humble trust.
The final destiny of an immortal soul, after its transition intothe other world, must be either unending progress towards infiniteperfection, or the reaching of its perihelion at last and thenrevolving in uninterrupted fruition. In the former case, pursuingan infinite aim, with each degree of its attainment the flyinggoal still recedes. In the latter case, it will in due seasontouch its bound and there be satisfied,
"When weak Time shall be pour'd out Into Eternity, and circularjoys Dance in an endless round."
14 Taylor, Physical Theory of Another Life, ch. xii.
15 Taylor, Saturday Evening, pp. 95-111.
16 Taylor, Physical Theory of Another Life, ch. xvii.
This result seems the more probable of the two; for the assertionof countless decillions of personalities all progressing beyondevery conceivable limit, on, still on, forever, is incredible. Ifendless linear progress were the destiny of each being, the wholeuniverse would at last become a line! And though it is true thatthe idea of an ever novel chase attracts and refreshes theimagination, while the idea of a monotonous revolution repels andwearies it, this is simply because we judge after our poor earthlyexperience and its flagging analogies. It will not be so if thatrevolution is the vivid realization of all our being'spossibilities.
Annihilation, absorption, resurrection, conveyance, recurrence,migration, transition, these seven answers to the question of ourfate, and of its relation to the course of nature, are thinkablein words. We may choose from among them, but can construct no realeighth. First, there is a constant succession of growth and decay.Second, there is a perpetual flow and ebb of personal emanationand impersonal resumption. Third, there is a continual return ofthe same persistent entities. Fourth, all matter may be sublimatedto spirit, and souls alone remain to occupy boundless space.Fifth, the power of death may cease, all the astronomic orbs bepopulated and enjoyed, each by one generation of everlastinginhabitants, the present order continuing in each earth untilenough have lived to fill it, then all of them, physicallyrestored, dwelling on it, with no more births or deaths. Sixth, ifmatter be not transmutable to soul, when that peculiar realityfrom which souls are developed is exhausted, and the lastgeneration of incarnated beings have risen from the flesh, thematerial creation may, in addition to the inter stellar region, beeternally appropriated by the spirit races to their own free rangeand use, through adaptations of faculty unknown to us now; else itmay vanish as a phantasmal spectacle. Or, finally, souls may beabsolutely created out of nothing by the omnipotence of God, andthe universe may be infinite: then the process may proceedforever.
But men's beliefs are formed rather by the modes of thought theyhave learned to adopt than by any proofs they have tested; not byargumentation about a subject, but by the way of looking at it.The moralist regards all creation as the work of a personal God, atheatre of moral ends, a just Providence watching over the parts,and the conscious immortality of the actors an inevitableaccompaniment. The physicist contemplates the universe asconstituted of atoms of attraction and repulsion, which subsist inperfect mobility through space, but are concreted in the molecularmasses of the planets. The suns are vast engines for thedistribution of heat or motion, the equivalent of all kinds offorce. This, in its diffusion, causes innumerable circulations andcombinations of the original atoms. Organic growth, life, is thefruition of a force derived from the sun. Decay, death, is therendering up of that force in its equivalents. Thus, the universeis a composite unity of force, a solidarity of ultimate unitieswhich are indestructible, though in constant circulation of newgroupings and journeys. To the religious faith of the moralist,man is an eternal person, reaping what he has sowed. To thespeculative intellect of the physicist, man is an atomic force, tobe liberated into the ethereal medium until again harnessed insome organism. In both cases he is immortal: but in that, as afree citizen of the ideal world; in this, as a flying particle ofthe dynamic immensity.
PART SECOND.
ETHNIC THOUGHTS CONCERNING A FUTURE LIFE.
CHAPTER I.
BARBARIAN NOTIONS OF A FUTURE LIFE.
PROCEEDING now to give an account of the fancies and opinions inregard to a future life which have been prevalent, in differentages, in various nations of the earth, it will be best to begin bypresenting, in a rapid series, some sketches of the conceits ofthose uncivilized tribes who did not so far as our knowledgereaches possess a doctrine sufficiently distinctive and full, orimportant enough in its historical relations, to warrant adetailed treatment in separate chapters.
We will glance first at the negroes. According to all accounts,while there are, among the numerous tribes, diversities anddegrees of superstition, there is yet, throughout the native paganpopulation of Africa, a marked general agreement of belief in thesurvival of the soul, in spectres, divination, and witchcraft; andthere is a general similarity of funeral usages. Early travellerstell us that the Bushmen conceived the soul to be immortal, and asimpalpable as a shadow, and that they were much afraid of thereturn of deceased spirits to haunt them. They were accustomed topray to their departed countrymen not to molest them, but to stayaway in quiet. They also employed exorcisers to lay these illomened ghosts. Meiners relates of some inhabitants of the Guineacoast that their fear of ghosts and their childish credulityreached such a pitch that they threw their dead into the ocean, inthe expectation of thus drowning soul and body together.
Superstitions as gross and lawless still have full sway. Wilson,whose travels and residence there for twenty years have enabledhim to furnish the most reliable information, says, in his recentwork,1 "A native African would as soon doubt his present as hisfuture state of being." Every dream, every stray suggestion of themind, is interpreted, with unquestioning credence, as a visit fromthe dead, a whisper from a departed soul. If a man wakes up withpains in his bones or muscles, it is because his spirit haswandered abroad in the night and been flogged by some otherspirit. On certain occasions the whole community start up atmidnight, with clubs, torches, and hideous yells, to drive theevil spirits out of the village. They seem to believe that thesouls of dead men take rank with good or bad spirits, as they havethemselves been good or bad in this life. They bury with thedeceased clothing, ornaments, utensils,
1 Western Africa, ch. xii.
and statedly convey food to the grave for the use of therevisiting spirit. With the body of king Weir of the Cavallatowns, who was buried in December of 1854, in presence of severalmissionaries, was interred a quantity of rice, palm oil, beef, andrum: it was supposed the ghost of the sable monarch would comeback and consume these articles. The African tribes, where theirnotions have not been modified by Christian or by Mohammedanteachings, appear to have no definite idea of a heaven or of ahell; but future reward or punishment is considered under thegeneral conception of an association, in the disembodied state,with the benignant or with the demoniacal powers.
The New Zealanders imagine that the souls of the dead go to aplace beneath the earth, called Reinga. The path to this region isa precipice close to the sea shore at the North Cape. It is saidthat the natives who live in the neighborhood can at night hearsounds caused by the passing of spirits thither through the air.After a great battle they are thus warned of the event long beforethe news can arrive by natural means.2 It is a common superstitionwith them that the left eye of every chief, after his death,becomes a star. The Pleiades are seven New Zealand chiefs,brothers, who were slain together in battle and are now fixed inthe sky, one eye of each, in the shape of a star, being the onlypart of them that is visible. It has been observed that themythological doctrine of the glittering host of heaven being anassemblage of the departed heroes of earth never received a moreingenious version.3 Certainly it is a magnificent piece of insularegotism. It is noticeable here that, in the Norse mythology, Thor,having slain Thiasse, the giant genius of winter, throws his eyesup to heaven, and they become stars. Shungie, a celebrated NewZealand king, said he had on one occasion eaten the left eye of agreat chief whom he had killed in battle, for the purpose of thusincreasing the glory of his own eye when it should be transferredto the firmament. Sometimes, apparently, it was thought that therewas a separate immortality for each of the eyes of the dead, theleft ascending to heaven as a star, the right, in the form of aspirit, taking flight for Reinga.
The custom, common in Africa and in New Zealand, of slaying theslaves or the wives of an important person at his death andburying them with him, prevails also among the inhabitants of theFeejee Islands. A chief's wives are sometimes strangled on theseoccasions, sometimes buried alive. One cried to her brother, "Iwish to die, that I may accompany my husband to the land where hehas gone. Love me, and make haste to strangle me, that I mayovertake him."4 Departing souls go to the tribunal of Ndengei, whoeither receives them into bliss, or sends them back, as ghosts, tohaunt the scenes of their former existence, or distributes them asfood to devils, or imprisons them for a period and then dooms themto annihilation. The Feejees are also very much afraid of Samiulo,ruler of a subterranean world, who sits at the brink of a hugefiery cavern, into which he hurls the souls he dislikes. In theroad to Ndengei stands an enormous giant, armed with an axe, whotries to maim and murder the passing souls. A powerful chief,whose gun was interred with him, loaded it, and, when
2 Shortland, Traditions of the New Zealanders, ch. vii.
3 Library of Ent. Knowl.: The New Zealanders, pp. 223-237.
4 Wilkes, Narrative of the U. S. Exploring Expedition, vol. iii.ch. 3.
he came near the giant, shot at him, and ran by while the monsterwas dodging the bullet.
The people of the Sandwich Islands held a confused medley ofnotions as to another life. In different persons among them werefound, in regard to this subject, superstitious terror, blankindifference, positive unbelief. The current fancy was that thesouls of the chiefs were led, by a god whose name denotes the"eyeball of the sun," to a life in the heavens, while plebeiansouls went down to Akea, a lugubrious underground abode. Somethought spirits were destroyed in this realm of darkness; others,that they were eaten by a stronger race of spirits there; othersstill, that they survived there, subsisting upon lizards andbutterflies.5 What a piteous life they must have led here whoseimaginations could only soar to a future so unattractive as this!
The Kamtschadales send all the dead alike to a subterraneanelysium, where they shall find again their wives, clothes, tools,huts, and where they shall fish and hunt. All is there as here,except that there are no fire spouting mountains, no bogs,streams, inundations, and impassable snows; and neither huntingnor fishing is ever pursued in vain there. This lower paradise isbut a beautified Kamtschatka, freed from discommoding hardshipsand cleansed of tormenting Cossacks and Russians. They have nohell for the rectification of the present wrong relations ofvirtue and misery, vice and happiness. The only distinction theyappear to make is that all who in Kamtschatka are poor, and havefew small and weak dogs, shall there be rich and be furnished withstrong and fat dogs. The power of imagination is very remarkablein this raw people, bringing the future life so near, andawakening such an impatient longing for it and for their formercompanions that they often, the sooner to secure a habitationthere, anticipate the natural time of their death by suicide.6
The Esquimaux betray the influence of their clime and habits, inthe formation of their ideas of the life to come, as plainly asthe Kamtschadales do. The employments and enjoyments of theirfuture state are rude and earthy. They say the soul descendsthrough successive places of habitation, the first of which isfull of pains and horrors. The good, that is, the courageous andskilful, those who have endured severe hardships and mastered manyseals, passing through this first residence, find that the othermansions regularly improve. They finally reach an abode of perfectsatisfaction, far beneath the storms of the sea, where the sun isnever obscured by night, and where reindeer wander in great drovesbeside waters that never congeal, and wherein the whale, thewalrus, and the best sea fowls always abound.7 Hell is deep, butheaven deeper still. Hell, they think, is among the roots, rocks,monsters, and cold of the frozen or vexed and suffering waters;but
"Beneath tempestuous seas and fields of ice
Their creed has placed a lowlier paradise."
The Greenlanders, too, located their elysium beneath the abyssesof the ocean, where the good Spirit Torngarsuk held his reign in ahappy and eternal summer. The wizards, who pretended to visit thisregion at will, described the disembodied souls as pallid, and, ifone
5 Jarves, Hist. of the Sandwich Islands, p. 42.
6 Christoph Meiners, Vermischte Philosophische Schriften, 169-173.
7 Prichard, Physical Hist. of Mankind, vol. i. ch. 2.
sought to seize them, unsubstantial.8 Some of these people,however, fixed the site of paradise in the sky, and regarded theaurora borealis as the playing of happy souls. So Coleridgepictures the Laplander
"Marking the streamy banners of the North, And thinking he thosespirits soon should join Who there, in floating robes of rosylight, Dance sportively."
But others believed this state of restlessness in the clouds wasthe fate only of the worthless, who were there pinched with hungerand plied with torments. All agreed in looking for another stateof existence, where, under diverse circumstances, happiness andmisery should be awarded, in some degree at least, according todesert.9
The Peruvians taught that the reprobate were sentenced to a hellsituated in the centre of the earth, where they must endurecenturies of toil and anguish. Their paradise was away in the bluedome of heaven. There the spirits of the worthy would lead a lifeof tranquil luxury. At the death of a Peruvian noble his wives andservants frequently were slain, to go with him and wait on him inthat happy region.10 Many authors, including Prescott, yieldingtoo easy credence to the very questionable assertions of theSpanish chroniclers, have attributed to the Peruvians a belief inthe resurrection of the body. Various travellers and writers havealso predicated this belief of savage nations in Central Africa,of certain South Sea islanders, and of several native tribes inNorth America. In all these cases the supposition is probablyerroneous, as we think for the following reasons. In the firstplace, the idea of a resurrection of the body is either a lateconception of the associative imagination, or else a doctrineconnected with a speculative theory of recurring epochs in thedestiny of the world; and it is in both instances too subtle andelaborate for an uncultivated people. Secondly, in none of thecases referred to has any reliable evidence been given of theactual existence of the belief in question. It has merely beeninferred, by persons to whose minds the doctrine was previouslyfamiliar, from phenomena by no means necessarily implying it. Forexample, a recent author ascribes to the Feejees the belief thatthere will be a resurrection of the body just as it was at thetime of death. The only datum on which he founds this astoundingassertion is that they often seem to prefer to die in the fullvigor of manhood rather than in decrepit old age! 11 Thirdly, weknow that the observation and statements of the Spanish monks andhistorians, in regard to the religion of the pagans of SouthAmerica, were of the most imperfect and reckless character. Theyperpetrated gross frauds, such as planting in the face of highprecipices white stones in the shape of the cross, and thenpointing to them in proof of their assertion that, before theChristians came, the Devil had here parodied the rites anddoctrines of the gospel. 12 They said the Mexican goddess, wife ofthe sun, was Eve, or
8 Egede, Greenland, ch. 18.
9 Dr. Karl Andree, Gronland.
10 Prescott, Conquest of Peru, vol. i. ch. 3.
11 Erskine, Islands of the Western Pacific, p. 248.
12 Schoolcraft, History, &c. of the Indian Tribes, part v. p. 93.
the Virgin Mary, and Quetzalcoatl was St. Thomas! 13 Suchaffirmers are to be cautiously followed. Finally, it is a quitesignificant fact that while some point to the pains which thePeruvians took in embalming their dead as a proof that they lookedfor a resurrection of the body, Acosta expressly says that theydid not believe in the resurrection, and that this unbelief wasthe cause of their embalming.14 Garcilaso de la Vega, in his"Royal Commentaries of the Peruvian Incas," says that when heasked some Peruvians why they took so great care to preserve inthe cemeteries of the dead the nails and hair which had been cutoff, they replied that in the day of resurrection the dead wouldcome forth with whatever of their bodies was left, and there wouldbe too great a press of business in that day for them to affordtime to go hunting round after their hair and nails.15 The fancyof a Christian is too plain here. If the answer were really madeby the natives, they were playing a joke on their credulousquestioner, or seeking to please him with distorted echoes of hisown faith.
The conceits as to a future life entertained by the Mexicansvaried considerably from those of their neighbors of Peru. Soulsneither good nor bad, or whose virtues and vices balanced eachother, were to enter a medium state of idleness and empty content.The wicked, or those dying in any of certain enumerated modes ofdeath, went to Mictlan, a dismal hell within the earth. The soulsof those struck by lightning, or drowned, or dying by any of agiven list of diseases, also the souls of children, weretransferred to a remote elysium, Tlalocan. There was a place inthe chief temple where, it was supposed, once a year the spiritsof all the children who had been sacrificed to Tlaloc invisiblycame and assisted in the ceremonies. The ultimate heaven wasreserved for warriors who bravely fell in battle, for women whodied in labor, for those offered up in the temples of the gods,and for a few others. These passed immediately to the house of thesun, their chief god, whom they accompanied for a term of years,with songs, dances, and revelry, in his circuit around the sky.Then, animating the forms of birds of gay plumage, they lived asbeautiful songsters among the flowers, now on earth, now inheaven, at their pleasure.16 It was the Mexican custom to dressthe dead man in the garb appropriated to the guardian deity of hiscraft or condition in life. They gave him a jug of water. Theyplaced with him slips of paper to serve as passports throughguarded gates and perilous defiles in the other world. They made afire of his clothes and utensils, to warm the shivering soul whiletraversing a region of cold winds beyond the grave.17 Thefollowing sentence occurs in a poem composed by one of the oldAztec monarchs: "Illustrious nobles, loyal subjects, let us aspireto that heaven where all is eternal and corruption cannot come.The horrors of the tomb are but the cradle of the sun, and theshadows of death are brilliant lights for the stars." 18
13 Squier, Serpent Symbol in America, p. 13.
14 Acosta, Natural and Moral History of the Indies, book v. ch. 7.
15 Book ii. ch. 7.
16 Clavigero, History of Mexico, book vi. sect. 1.
17 Prescott, Conquest of Mexico, vol. i. ch. 6.
18 Ibid. sect. 39.
Amidst the mass of whimsical conceptions entering into the faithof the widely spread tribes of North America, we find a rulingagreement in the cardinal features of their thought concerning afuture state of existence. In common with nearly all barbarousnations, they felt great fear of apparitions. The Sioux were inthe habit of addressing the deceased at his burial, and imploringhim to stay in his own place and not come to distress them. Theirfuneral customs, too, from one extremity of the continent to theother, were very much alike. Those who have reported theiropinions to us, from the earliest Jesuit missionaries to thelatest investigators of their mental characteristics, concur inascribing to them a deep trust in a life to come, a cheerful viewof its conditions, and a remarkable freedom from the dread ofdying. Charlevoix says, "The best established opinion among thenatives is the immortality of the soul." On the basis of anaccount written by William Penn, Pope composed the famous passagein his "Essay on Man:"
Lo! the poor Indian, whose untutor'd mind
Sees God in clouds and hears him in the wind.
His soul proud Science never taught to stray
Far as the solar walk or milky way:
Yet simple nature to his faith hath given,
Behind the cloud topp'd hill, an humbler heaven,
Some safer world in depth of woods embraced,
Or happier island in the watery waste.
To be, contents his natural desire:
He asks no angel's wing, no seraph's fire,
But thinks, admitted to that equal sky,
His faithful dog shall bear him company."
Their rude instinctive belief in the soul's survival, and surmisesas to its destiny, are implied in their funeral rites, which, asalready stated, were, with some exceptions, strikingly similareven in the remotest tribes.19
In the bark coffin, with a dead Indian the Onondagas buried akettle of provisions, a pair of moccasins, a piece of deer skinand sinews of the deer to sew patches on the moccasins, which itwas supposed the deceased would wear out on his journey. They alsofurnished him with a bow and arrows, a tomahawk and knife, toprocure game with to live on while pursuing his way to the land ofspirits, the blissful regions of Ha wah ne u.20 Several Indiannations, instead of burying the food, suspended it above thegrave, and renewed it from time to time. Some writers haveexplained this custom by the hypothesis of an Indian belief in twosouls, one of which departed to the realm of the dead, while theother tarried by the mound until the body was decayed, or until ithad itself found a chance to be born in a new body.21 Thesupposition seems forced and extremely doubtful. The truthprobably lies in a simpler explanation, which will be offeredfurther on.
19 Baumgarten, Geschichte der Volker von America, xiii. haupts.:vom Tod, Vergribniss, und Trauer.
20 Clarke, Onondaga, vol. l. p. 51.
21 Muller, Geschichte der Amerikanischen Urreligionen, sect.66.
The Winnebagoes located paradise above, and called the milky waythe "Road of the Dead." 22 It was so white with the crowds ofjourneying ghosts! But almost all, like the Ojibways, imaginedtheir elysium to lie far in the West. The soul, freed from thebody, follows a wide beaten path westward, and enters a countryabounding with all that an Indian covets. On the borders of thisblessed land, in a long glade, he finds his relatives, for manygenerations back, gathered to welcome him.23 The Chippewas, andseveral other important tribes, always kindled fires on the freshgraves of their dead, and kept them burning four successivenights, to light the wandering souls on their way.24 An Indianmyth represents the ghosts coming back from Ponemah, the land ofthe Hereafter, and singing this song to the miraculous Hiawatha:
"Do not lay such heavy burdens
On the graves of those you bury,
Not such weight of furs and wampum,
Not such weight of pots and kettles;
For the spirits faint beneath them.
Only give them food to carry,
Only give them fire to light them.
Four days is the spirit's journey
To the land of ghosts and shadows,
Four its lonely night encampments.
Therefore, when the dead are buried,
Let a fire, as night approaches,
Four times on the grave be kindled,
That the soul upon its journey
May not grope about in darkness." 25
The subject of a future state seems to have been by far the mostprominent one in the Indian imagination. They relate manytraditions of persons who have entered it, and returned, and givendescriptions of it. A young brave, having lost his betrothed,determined to follow her to the land of souls. Far South, beyondthe region of ice and snows, he came to a lodge standing beforethe entrance to wide blue plains. Leaving his body there, heembarked in a white stone canoe to cross a lake. He saw the soulsof wicked Indians sinking in the lake; but the good gained anelysian shore, where all was warmth, beauty, ease, and eternalyouth, and where the air was food. The Master of Breath sent himback, but promised that he might at death return and stay. 26 TheWyandots tell of a dwarf, Tcha ka bech, who climbed a tree whichgrew higher as often as he blew on it. At last he reached heaven,and discovered it to be an excellent place. He descended the tree,building wigwams at intervals in the branches. He then returnedwith his sister and nephew, resting each night in one of thewigwams.
22 Schoolcraft, History, &c. of the Indian Tribes, part iv. p.240.
23 Ibid. part ii. p. 135.
24 Ibid. part v. p. 64; part iv. p. 55.
25 Longfellow, Song of Hiawatha, xix.: The Ghosts.
26 Schoolcraft, Indian in his Wigwam. p 79.
He set his traps up there to catch animals. Rising in the night togo and examine his traps, he saw one all on fire, and, uponapproaching it, found that he had caught the sun!
Where the Indian is found believing in a Devil and a hell, it isthe result of his intercourse with Europeans. These elements ofhorror were foreign to his original religion.27 There are in somequarters faint traces of a single purgatorial or retributiveconception. It is a representation of paradise as an island, theordeal consisting in the passage of the dark river or lake whichsurrounds it. The worthy cross with entire facility, the unworthyonly after tedious struggles. Some say the latter are drowned;others, that they sink up to their chins in the water, where theypass eternity in vain desires to attain the alluring land on whichthey gaze.28 Even this notion may be a modification consequentupon European influence. At all events, it is subordinate in forceand only occasional in occurrence. For the most part, in theIndian faith mercy swallows up the other attributes of the GreatSpirit. The Indian dies without fear, looking for no punishments,only for rewards.29 He regards the Master of Breath not as a holyjudge, but as a kind father. He welcomes death as opening the doorto a sweet land. Ever charmingly on his closing eyes dawns theprospect of the aboriginal elysium, a gorgeous region of softshades, gliding streams, verdant groves waving in gentle airs,warbling birds, herds of stately deer and buffalo browsing onlevel plains. It is the earth in noiseless and solemnmetamorphosis.30
We shall conclude this chapter by endeavoring to explain thepurport and origin of the principal ceremonies and notions whichhave now been set forth pertaining to the disembodied state. Thefirst source of these particulars is to be sought, not in anyclear mental perceptions, or conscious dogmatic belief, but in thenatural workings of affection, memory, and sentiment. Among almostevery people, from the Chinese to the Araucanians, from theEthiopians to the Dacotahs, rites of honor have been paid to thedead, various offerings have been placed at their graves. TheVedas enjoin the offering of a cake to the ghosts of ancestorsback to the third generation. The Greeks were wont to pour wine,oil, milk, and blood into canals made in the graves of their dead.The early Christians adopted these "Feasts of the Dead" asAugustine and Tertullian call them from the heathen, andCelebrated them over the graves of their martyrs and of theirother deceased friends. Such customs as these among savages likethe Shillooks or the Choctaws are usually supposed to imply thebelief that the souls of the deceased remain about the places ofsepulture and physically partake of the nourishment thusfurnished. The interpretation is farther fetched than need be, andis unlikely; or, at all events, if it be true in some cases, it isnot the whole truth. In the first place, these people see that thefood and drink remain untouched, the weapons and utensils are leftunused in the grave. Secondly, there are often certain features inthe barbaric ritual obviously metaphorical, incapable of literalacceptance. For instance, the Winnebagoes light a small fire onthe grave of a deceased warrior to light him on his journey to theland of souls,
27 Loskiel, Hist. Mission of United Brethren to N. A. Indians,part i. ch. 3.
28 Schoolcraft, Indian in his Wigwam, p. 202. History, &c. ofIndian Tribes, part iv. p. 173.
29 Schoolcraft, History of Indian Tribes, part ii. p. 68.
30 Ibid. pp. 403, 404.
although they say that journey extends to a distance of four daysand nights and is wholly invisible. They light and tend thatwatch fire as a memorial of their departed companion and a rudeexpression of their own emotions; as an unconscious emblem oftheir own struggling faith, not as a beacon to the straying ghost.Again, the Indian mother, losing a nursing infant, spurts some ofher milk into the fire, that the little spirit may not want fornutriment on its solitary path.31 Plato approvingly quotesHesiod's statement that the souls of noble men become guardiandemons coursing the air, messengers and agents of the gods in theworld. Therefore, he adds, "we should reverence their tombs andestablish solemn rites and offerings there;" though by his verystatement these places were not the dwellings or haunts of thefreely circuiting spirits.32
Not by an intellectual doctrine, but by an instinctiveassociation, when not resisted and corrected, we connect the soulsof the dead in our thoughts with the burial places of their forms.The New Zealand priests pretend by their spells to bring wanderingsouls within the enclosed graveyards.33 These sepulchral folds arefull of ghosts. A sentiment native to the human breast drawspilgrims to the tombs of Shakspeare and Washington, and, if notrestrained and guided by cultivated thought, would lead them tomake offerings there. Until the death of Louis XV., the kings ofFrance lay in state and were served as in life for forty daysafter they died.34 It would be ridiculous to attempt to wring anydoctrinal significance from these customs. The same sentimentwhich, in one form, among the Alfoer inhabitants of the ArruIslands, when a man dies, leads his relatives to assemble anddestroy whatever he has left, which, in another form, causes thePapist to offer burning candles, wreaths, and crosses, and torecite prayers, before the shrines of the dead saints, which, instill another form, moved Albert Durer to place all the prettyplaythings of his child in the coffin and bury them with it, thissame sentiment, in its undefined spontaneous workings, impelledthe Peruvian to embalm his dead, the Blackfoot to inter hisbrave's hunting equipments with him, and the Cherokee squaw tohang fresh food above the totem on her husband's grave post. Whatshould we think if we could foresee that, a thousand years hence,when the present doctrines and customs of France and America areforgotten, some antiquary, seeking the reason why the mourners inPere la Chaise and Mount Auburn laid clusters of flowers on thegraves of their lamented ones, should deliberately conclude thatit was believed the souls remained in the bodies in the tomb andenjoyed the perfume of the flowers? An American traveller, writingfrom Vienna on All Saints' Day, in 1855, describes the avenues ofthe great cemetery filled with people hanging festoons of flowerson the tombstones, and placing burning candles of wax on thegraves, and kneeling in devotion; it being their childish belief,he says, that their prayers on this day have efficacy to releasetheir deceased relatives from purgatory, and that the dim taperflickering on the sod lights the unbound soul to its heavenlyhome. Of course these rites are not literal expressions of literalbeliefs, but are
31 Andree, North America, p. 246.
32 Republic, book v. ch. 15.
33 R. Taylor, New Zealand, ch. 7.
34 Meiners, Kritische Geschichte der Religionen, buch iii. absch.1.
symbols of ideas, emblems of sentiments, figurative and inadequateshadows of a theological doctrine, although, as is well known,there is, among the most ignorant persons, scarcely anydeliberately apprehended distinction between image and entity,material representation and spiritual verity.
If a member of the Oneida tribe died when they were away fromhome, they buried him with great solemnity, setting a mark overthe grave; and whenever they passed that way afterwards theyvisited the spot, singing a mournful song and casting stones uponit, thus giving symbolic expression to their feelings. It would beabsurd to suppose this song an incantation to secure the repose ofthe buried brave, and the stones thrown to prevent his rising; yetit would not be more incredible or more remote from the facts thanmany a commonly current interpretation of barbarian usages. Anamusing instance of error well enforcing the need of extremecaution in drawing inferences is afforded by the example of thoseexplorers who, finding an extensive cemetery where the aborigineshad buried all their children apart from the adults, concludedthey had discovered the remains of an ancient race of pigmies! 35
The influence of unspeculative affection, memory, and sentimentgoes far towards accounting for the funeral ritual of thebarbarians. But it is not sufficient. We must call in further aid;and that aid we find in the arbitrary conceits, the poeticassociations, and the creative force of unregulated fancy andimagination. The poetic faculty which, supplied with materials byobservation and speculation, constructed the complex mythologiesof Egypt and Greece, and which, turning on its own resources,composed the Arabian tales of the genii and the modern literatureof pure fiction, is particularly active, fertile, and tyrannical,though in a less continuous and systematic form, in the barbarianmind. Acting by wild fits and starts, there is no end to theextravagant conjectures and visions it bodies forth. Destitute ofphilosophical definitions, totally unacquainted with criticaldistinctions or analytic reflection, absurd notions, soberconvictions, dim dreams, and sharp perceptions run confusedlytogether in the minds of savages. There is to them no clear andpermanent demarcation between rational thoughts and crazy fancies.Now, no phenomenon can strike more deeply or work more powerfullyin human nature, stirring up the exploring activities of intellectand imagination, than the event of death, with its bereavingstroke and prophetic appeal. Accordingly, we should expect to findamong uncultivated nations, as we actually do, a vast medley offragmentary thoughts and pictures plausible, strange, lovely, orterrible relating to the place and fate of the disembodied soul.These conceptions would naturally take their shaping and coloring,in some degree, from thescenery, circumstances, and experienceamidst which they were conceived and born. Sometimes thesefigments were consciously entertained as wilful inventions,distinctly contemplated as poetry. Sometimes they weresuperstitiously credited in all their grossness with full assentof soul. Sometimes all coexisted in vague bewilderment. Theselines of separation unquestionably existed: the difficulty is toknow where, in given instances, to draw them. A few examples willserve at once to illustrate the
35 Smithsonian Contributions, vol. ii. Squier's AboriginalMonuments, appendix, pp. 127-131.
operation of the principle now laid down, and to present stillfurther specimens of the barbarian notions of a future life.
Some Indian tribes made offerings to the spirits of their departedheroes by casting the boughs of various trees around the ash,saying that the branches of this tree were eloquent with theghosts of their warrior sires, who came at evening in the chariotof cloud to fire the young to deeds of war.36 There is an Indianlegend of a witch who wore a mantle composed of the scalps ofmurdered women. Taking this off, she shook it, and all the scalpsuttered shrieks of laughter. Another describes a magician scuddingacross a lake in a boat whose ribs were live rattlesnakes.37 Anexercise of mind virtually identical with that which gave thesestrokes made the Philippine Islanders say that the souls of thosewho die struck by lightning go up the beams of the rainbow to ahappy place, and animated Ali to declare that the pious, on comingout of their sepulchres, shall find awaiting them white wingedcamels with saddles of gold. The Ajetas suspended the bow andarrows of a deceased Papuan above his grave, and conceived him asemerging from beneath every night to go a hunting.38 The fishermanon the coast of Lapland was interred in a boat, and a flint andcombustibles were given him to light him along the dark cavernouspassage he was to traverse. The Dyaks of Borneo believe that everyone whose head they can get possession of here will in the futurestate be their servant: consequently, they make a business of"head hunting," accumulating the ghastly visages of their victimsin their huts.39 The Caribs have a sort of sensual paradise forthe "brave and virtuous," where, it is promised, they shall enjoythe sublimated experience of all their earthly satisfactions; butthe "degenerate and cowardly" are threatened with eternalbanishment beyond the mountains, where they shall be tasked anddriven as slaves by their enemies.40 The Hispaniolians locatetheir elysium in a pleasant valley abounding with guava, deliciousfruits, cool shades, and murmuring rivulets, where they expect tolive again with their departed ancestors and friends.41 ThePatagonians say the stars are their translated countrymen, and themilky way is a field where the departed Patagonians huntostriches. Clouds are the feathers of the ostriches they kill.42The play is here seen of the same mythological imagination which,in Italy, pictured a writhing giant beneath Mount Vesuvius, and,in Greenland, looked on the Pleiades as a group of dogssurrounding a white bear, and on the belt of Orion as a company ofGreenlanders placed there because they could not find the way totheir own country. Black Bird, the redoubtable chief of the O MaHaws, when dying, said to his people, "Bury me on yonder loftybluff on the banks of the Missouri, where I can see the men andboats passing by on the river." 43 Accordingly, as soon as heceased
36 Browne, Trees of America, p. 328.
37 Schoolcraft, Hist. &c part i. pp. 32-34.
38 Earl, The Papuans, p. 132.
39 Earl, The Eastern Seas, ch. 8.
40 Edwards, Hist. of the West Indies, book i. ch. 2.
41 Ibid. ch. 3.
42 Falkner, Patagonia, ch. 5.
43 Catlin, North American Indians, vol. ii. p. 6.
to breathe, they set him there, on his favorite steed, and heapedthe earth around him. This does not imply any believed doctrine,in our sense of the term, but is plainly a spontaneoustransference for the moment, by the poetic imagination, of thesentiments of the living man to the buried body.
The unhappy Africans who were snatched from their homes, enslavedand cruelly tasked in the far West India islands, pined undertheir fate with deadly homesickness. The intense longing mouldedtheir plastic belief, just as the sensation from some hot bricksat the feet of a sleeping man shaped his dreams into a journey upthe side of Atna. They fancied that if they died they shouldimmediately live again in their fatherland. They committed suicidein great numbers. At last, when other means had failed to checkthis epidemic of self destruction, a cunning overseer brought themropes and every facility for hanging, and told them to hangthemselves as fast as they pleased, for their master had bought agreat plantation in Africa, and as soon as they got there theywould be set to work on it. Their helpless credulity took theimpression; and no more suicides occurred.44
The mutual formative influences exerted upon a people's notionsconcerning the future state, by the imagination of their poets andthe peculiarities of their clime, are perhaps nowhere moreconspicuously exhibited than in the case of the Caledonians who atan early period dwelt in North Britain. They had picturesquetraditions locating the habitation of ghosts in the air abovetheir fog draped mountains. They promised rewards for nothing butvalor, and threatened punishments for nothing but cowardice; andeven of these they speak obscurely. Nothing is said of an underworld. They supposed the ghosts at death floated upward naturally,true children of the mist, and dwelt forever in the air, wherethey spent an inane existence, indulging in sorrowful memories ofthe past, and, in unreal imitation of their mortal occupations,chasing boars of fog amid hills of cloud and valleys of shadow.The authority for these views is Ossian, "whose genuine strains,"Dr. Good observes, "assume a higher importance as historicalrecords than they can claim when considered as fragments ofexquisite poetry."
"A dark red stream comes down from the hill. Crugal sat upon thebeam; he that lately fell by the hand of Swaran striving in thebattle of heroes. His face is like the beam of the setting moon;his robes are of the clouds of the hill; his eyes are like twodecaying flames; dark is the wound on his breast. The stars dimtwinkled through his form, and his voice was like the sound of adistant stream. Dim and in tears he stood, and stretched his palehand over the hero. Faintly he raised his feeble voice, like thegale of the reedy Lego. 'My ghost, O'Connal, is on my nativehills, but my corse is on the sands of Ullin. Thou shalt nevertalk with Crugal nor find his lone steps on the heath. I am lightas the blast of Cromla, and I move like the shadow of mist.Connal, son of Colgar, I see the dark cloud of death. It hoversover the plains of Lena. The sons of green Erin shall fall. Removefrom the field of ghosts.' Like the darkened moon, he retired inthe midst of the whistling blast."
We recognise here several leading traits in all the earlyunspeculative faiths, the vapory form, the echoless motion, themarks of former wounds, the feeble voice, the memory
44 Meiners, Geschichte der Religionen, buch xiv. sect. 765.
of the past, the mournful aspect, and the prophetic words. But therhetorical imagery, the scenery, the location of the spirit worldin the lower clouds, are stamped by emphatic climaticpeculiarities, whose origination, easily traceable, throws lighton the growth of the whole mass of such notions everywhere.
Two general sources have now been described of the barbarianconceptions in relation to a future state. First, the naturaloperation of an earnest recollection of the dead; sympathy,regret, and reverence for them leading the thoughts and the heartto grope after them, to brood over the possibilities of theirfate, and to express themselves in rites and emblems. Secondly,the mythological or arbitrary creations of the imagination when itis set strongly at work, as it must be by the solemn phenomenaassociated with death. But beyond these two comprehensivestatements there is, directly related to the matter, and worthy ofseparate illustration, a curious action of the mind, which hasbeen very extensively experienced and fertile of results. It is apeculiar example of the unconscious impartation of objectiveexistence to mental ideas. With the death of the body the man doesnot cease to live in the remembrance, imagination, and heart ofhis surviving friends. By an unphilosophical confusion, thisinternal image is credited as an external existence. The dead passfrom their customary haunts in our society to the imperishabledomain of ideas. This visionary world of memory and fantasy isprojected outward, located, furnished, and constitutes the futurestate apprehended by the barbarian mind. Feuerbach says in hissubtle and able Thoughts on Death and Immortality, "The Realm ofMemory is the Land of Souls." Ossian, amid the midnight mountains,thinking of departed warriors and listening to the tempest, fillsthe gale with the impersonations, of his thoughts, and exclaims,"I hear the steps of the dead in the dark eddying blast."
The barbarian brain seems to have been generally impregnated withthe feeling that every thing else has a ghost as well as man. TheGauls lent money in this world upon bills payable in the next.They threw letters upon the funeral pile to be read by the soul ofthe deceased.45 As the ghost was thought to retain the scars ofinjuries inflicted upon the body, so, it appears, these letterswere thought, when destroyed, to leave impressions of what hadbeen written on them. The custom of burning or burying things withthe dead probably arose, in some cases at least, from thesupposition that every object has its mancs. The obolus forCharon, the cake of honey for Cerberus, the shadows of thesearticles would be borne and used by the shadow of the dead man.Leonidas saying, "Bury me on my shield: I will enter even Hades asa Lacedamonian," 46 must either have used the word Hades bymetonymy for the grave, or have imagined that a shadowy fac simileof what was interred in the grave went into the grim kingdom ofPluto. It was a custom with some Indian tribes, on the new madegrave of a chief, to slay his chosen horse; and when he fell theysupposed
"That then, upon the dead man's plain, The rider grasp'd his steedagain."
45 Pomponius Mela, De Orbis Situ, iii. 2.
46 Translation of Greek Anthology, in Bohn's Library, p. 58.
The hunter chases the deer, each alike a shade. A Feejee once, inpresence of a missionary, took a weapon from the grave of a buriedcompanion, saying, "The ghost of the club has gone with him." TheIroquois tell of a woman who was chased by a ghost. She heard hisfaint war whoop, his spectre voice, and only escaped with her lifebecause his war club was but a shadow wielded by an arm of air.The Slavonians sacrificed a warrior's horse at his tomb.47 Nothingseemed to the Northman so noble as to enter Valhalla on horseback,with a numerous retinue, in his richest apparel and finest armor.It was firmly believed, Mallet says, that Odin himself haddeclared that whatsoever was burned or buried with the deadaccompanied them to his palace.48 Before the Mohammedan era, onthe death of an Arab, the finest camel he had owned was tied to astake beside his grave, and left to expire of hunger over the bodyof his master, in order that, in the region into which death hadintroduced him, he should be supplied with his usual bearer.49 TheChinese who surpass all other people in the offerings and worshippaid at the sepulchres of their ancestors make little paperhouses, fill them with images of furniture, utensils, domestics,and all the appurtenances of the family economy, and then burnthem, thus passing them into the invisible state for the use ofthe deceased whom they mourn and honor.50 It is a touching thoughtwith the Greenlanders, when a child dies, to bury a dog with himas a guide to the land of souls; for, they say, the dog is able tofind his way anywhere.51 The shadow of the faithful servant guidesthe shadow of the helpless child to heaven. In fancy, not withouta moved heart, one sees this spiritual Bernard dog bearing theghost child on his back, over the spectral Gothard of death, safeinto the sheltering hospice of the Greenland paradise.
It is strange to notice the meeting of extremes in the rudeantithetical correspondence between Plato's doctrine of archetypalideas, the immaterial patterns of earthly things, and the beliefof savages in the ghosts of clubs, arrows, sandals, andprovisions. The disembodied soul of the philosopher, an eternalidea, turns from the empty illusions of matter to nourish itselfwith the substance of real truth. The spectre of the Mohawkdevours the spectre of the haunch of roast venison hung over hisgrave. And why should not the two shades be conceived, if either?
"Pig, bullock, goose, must have their goblins too,
Else ours would have to go without their dinners:
If that starvation doctrine were but true,
How hard the fate of gormandizing sinners!"
The conception of ghosts has been still further introduced alsointo the realm of mathematics in an amusing manner. BishopBerkeley, bantered on his idealism by Halley, retorted that he toowas an idealist; for his ultimate ratios terms only appearing withthe
47 Wilkinson, Dalmatia and Montenegro, vol. i. ch. 1.
48 Northern Antiquities, ch. 10.
49 Lamartine, History of Turkey, book i. ch. 10.
50 Kidd, China, sect. 3.
51 Crantz, History of Greenland, book iii. ch. 6, sect. 47.
disappearance of the forms in whose relationship they consist werebut the ghosts of departed quantities! It may be added here that,according to the teachings of physiological psychology, allmemories or recollected ideas are literally the ghosts of departedsensations.
We have thus seen that the conjuring force of fear, with its dreadapparitions, the surmising, half articulate struggles ofaffection, the dreams of memory, the lights and groups of poetry,the crude germs of metaphysical speculation, the deposits of theinter action of human experience and phenomenal nature, now inisolated fragments, again, huddled indiscriminately togetherconspire to compose the barbarian notions of a future life.
CHAPTER II.
DRUIDIC DOCTRINE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
THAT strange body of men, commonly known as the Druids, whoconstituted what may, with some correctness, be called the Celticpriesthood, were the recognised religious teachers throughoutGaul, Armorica, a small part of Germany on the southern border,all Great Britain, and some neighboring islands. The notions inregard to a future life put forth by them are stated only in avery imperfect manner by the Greek and Roman authors in whosesurviving works we find allusions to the Druids or accounts of theCelts. Several modern writers especially Borlase, in hisAntiquities of Cornwall1 have collected all these references fromDiodorus, Strabo, Procopius, Tacitus, Casar, Mela, ValeriusMaximus, and Marcellinus. It is therefore needless to cite thepassages here, the more so as, even with the aid of all theanalytic and constructive comments which can be fairly made uponthem, they afford us only a few general views, leaving all thedetails in profound obscurity. The substance of what we learn fromthese sources is this. First, that the Druids possessed a body ofscience and speculation comprising the doctrine of immortality,which they taught with clearness and authority. Secondly, thatthey inculcated the belief in a future life in inseparableconnection with the great dogma of metempsychosis. Thirdly, thatthe people held such cheerful and attractive views of the futurestate, and held them with such earnestness, that they wept aroundthe newborn infant and smiled around the corpse; that theyencountered death without fear or reluctance. This reversal ofnatural sentiments shows the tampering of a priesthood who hadmotives.
A somewhat more minute conception of the Druidic view of thefuture life is furnished us by an old mythologic tale of Celticorigin.2 Omitting the story, as irrelevant to our purpose, wederive from it the following ideas. The soul, on being divested ofits earthly envelop, is borne aloft. The clouds are composed ofthe souls of lately deceased men. They fly over the heads ofarmies, inspiring courage or striking terror. Not yet freed fromterrestrial affections, they mingle in the passions and affairs ofmen. Vainly they strive to soar above the atmosphere; animpassable wall of sapphire resists their wings. In the moon,millions of souls traverse tremendous plains of ice, losing allperception but that of simple existence, forgetting the adventuresthey have passed through and are about to recommence. Duringeclipses, on long tubes of darkness they return to the earth, and,revived by a beam of light from the all quickening sun, enternewly formed bodies, and begin again the career of life. The diskof the sun consists of an assemblage of pure souls swimming in anocean of bliss. Souls sullied with earthly impurities are to bepurged by repeated births and probations till the last stain isremoved, and they are all finally fitted to ascend to a successionof spheres still higher than the sun, whence they can never sinkagain to reside in the circle of the lower globes and grosseratmosphere.
1 Book ii. ch. 14.
2 Davies, Celtic Researches, appendix, pp. 558-561.
These representations are neither Gothic nor Roman, but Celtic.
But a far more adequate exposition of the Druidic doctrine of thesoul's destinies has been presented to us through the translationof some of the preserved treasures of the old Bardic lore ofWales. The Welsh bards for hundreds of years were the solesurviving representatives of the Druids. Their poems numerousmanuscripts of which, with apparent authentication of theirgenuineness, have been published and explained contain quite fullaccounts of the tenets of Druidism, which was nowhere else sothoroughly systematized and established as in ancient Britain.3The curious reader will find this whole subject copiously treated,and all the materials furnished, in the "Myvyrian Archaology ofWales," a work in two huge volumes, published at London at thebeginning of the present century. After the introduction andtriumph of Christianity in Britain, for several centuries the twosystems of thought and ritual mutually influenced each other,corrupting and corrupted.4 A striking example in point is this.The notion of a punitive and remedial transmigration belonged toDruidism. Now, Taliesin, a famous Welsh bard of the sixth century,locates this purifying metempsychosis in the Hell of Christianity,whence the soul gradually rises again to felicity, the way for ithaving been opened by Christ! Cautiously eliminating the Christianadmixtures, the following outline, which we epitomize from thepioneer5 of modern scholars to the Welsh Bardic literature,affords a pretty clear knowledge of that portion of the Druidictheology relating to the future life.
There are, says one of the Bardic triads, three circles ofexistence. First, the Circle of Infinity, where of living or deadthere is nothing but God, and which none but God can traverse.Secondly, the Circle of Metempsychosis, where all things that liveare derived from death. This circle has been traversed by man.Thirdly, the Circle of Felicity, where all things spring fromlife. This circle man shall hereafter traverse. All animatedbeings originate in the lowest point of existence, and, by regulargradations through an ascending series of transmigrations, rise tothe highest state of perfection possible for finite creatures.Fate reigns in all the states below that of humanity, and they areall necessarily evil. In the states above humanity, on thecontrary, unmixed good so prevails that all are necessarily good.But in the middle state of humanity, good and evil are so balancedthat liberty results; and free will and consequent responsibilityare born. Beings who in their ascent have arrived at the state ofman, if, by purity, humility, love, and righteousness, they keepthe laws of the Creator, will, after death, rise into moreglorious spheres, and will continue to rise still higher, untilthey reach the final destination of complete and endlesshappiness. But if, while in the state of humanity, one pervertshis reason and will, and attaches himself to evil, he will, ondying, fall into such a state of animal existence as correspondswith the baseness of his soul. This baseness may be so great as toprecipitate him to the lowest point of being; but he shall climbthence through a series of births best fitted to free him from hisevil propensities. Restored to the probationary state, he may fallagain; but, though this should occur again and again
3 Sketch of British Bardism, prefixed to Owen's translation of theHeroic Elegies of Llywarch Hen.
4 Herbert, Essay on the Neo Druidic Heresy in Britannia.
5 Poems, Lyric and Pastoral, by Edward Williams, vol. ii. notes,pp. 194-256.
for a million of ages, the path to happiness still remains open,and he shall at last infallibly arrive at his preordainedfelicity, and fall nevermore. In the states superior to humanity,the soul recovers and retains the entire recollection of itsformer lives.
We will quote a few illustrative triads. There are three necessarypurposes of metempsychosis: to collect the materials andproperties of every nature; to collect the knowledge of everything; to collect power towards removing whatever is pernicious.The knowledge of three things will subdue and destroy evil:knowledge of its cause, its nature, and its operation. Threethings continually dwindle away: the Dark, the False, the Dead.Three things continually increase: Light, Truth, Life.
These will prevail, and finally absorb every thing else. The soulis an inconceivably minute particle of the most refined matter,endowed with indestructible life, at the dissolution of one bodypassing, according to its merits, into a higher or lower stage ofexistence, where it expands itself into that form which itsacquired propensities necessarily give it, or into that animal inwhich such propensities naturally reside. The ultimate states ofhappiness are ceaselessly undergoing the most delightfulrenovations, without which, indeed, no finite being could endurethe tedium of eternity. These are not, like the death of the lowerstates, accompanied by a suspension of memory and of consciousidentity. All the innumerable modes of existence, after beingcleansed from every evil, will forever remain as beautifulvarieties in the creation, and will be equally esteemed, equallyhappy, equally fathered by the Creator. The successive occupationof these modes of existence by the celestial inhabitants of theCircle of Felicity will be one of the ways of varying what wouldotherwise be the intolerable monotony of eternity. The creation isyet in its infancy. The progressive operation of the providence ofGod will bring every being up from the great Deep to the point ofliberty, and will at last secure three things for them: namely,what is most beneficial, what is most desired, and what is mostbeautiful. There are three stabilities of existence: what cannotbe otherwise, what should not be otherwise, what cannot beimagined better; and in these all shall end, in the Circle ofFelicity.
Such is a hasty synopsis of what here concerns us in the theologyof the Druids. In its ground germs it was, it seems to us,unquestionably imported into Celtic thought and Cymrian song fromthat prolific and immemorial Hindu mind which bore Brahmanism andBuddhism as its fruit. Its ethical tone, intellectual elevation,and glorious climax are not unworthy that free hierarchy ofminstrel priests whose teachings were proclaimed, as theirassemblies were held, "in the face of the sun and in the eye ofthe light," and whose thrilling motto was, "THE TRUTH AGAINST THEWORLD."
The latest publication on the subject of old Welsh literature is"Taliesin; or, The Bards and Druids of Britain." The author, D. W.Nash, is obviously familiar with his theme, and he throws muchlight on many points of it. His ridicule of the arbitrary tenetsand absurdities which Davies, Pughe, and others have taught in allgood faith as Druidic lore and practice is richly deserved. But,despite the learning and acumen displayed in his able and valuablevolume, we must think Mr. Nash goes wholly against the record indenying the doctrine of metempsychosis to the Druidic system, andgoes clearly beyond the record in charging Edward Williams andothers with forgery and fraud in their representations of ancientBardic doctrines.6 In support of such grave charges direct evidenceis needed; only suspicious circumstances are adduced. The nonexistence of public documents is perfectly reconcilable withthe existence of reliable oral accounts preserved by the initiatedfew, one of whom Williams, with seeming sincerity, claimed to be.
6 Taliesin, ch. iv.
CHAPTER III.
SCANDINAVIAN DOCTRINE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
MANY considerations combine to make it seem likely that at anearly period a migration took place from Southern Asia to NorthernEurope, which constituted the commencement of what afterwards grewto be the great Gothic family. The correspondence of many of theleading doctrines and symbols of the Scandinavian mythology withwell known Persian and Buddhist notions notions of a purelyfanciful and arbitrary character is too peculiar, apparently, toadmit of any other explanation.1 But the germs of thought andimagination transplanted thus from the warm and gorgeous climes ofthe East to the snowy mountains of Norway and the howling ridgesof Iceland, obtained a fresh development, with numerousmodifications and strange additions, from the new life, climate,scenery, and customs to which they were there exposed. Thetemptation to predatory habits and strife, the necessity for anintense though fitful activity arising from their geographicalsituation, the fierce spirit nourished in them by their actuallife, the tremendous phenomena of the Arctic world around them,all these influences break out to our view in the poetry, and arereflected by their results in the religion, of the Northmen.
From the flame world, Muspelheim, in the south, in which Surtur,the dread fire king, sits enthroned, flowed down streams of heat.From the mist world, Niflheim, in the north, in whose centralcaldron, Hvergelmir, dwells the gloomy dragon Nidhogg, rose floodsof cold vapor. The fire and mist meeting in the yawning abyss,Ginungagap, after various stages of transition, formed the earth.There were then three principal races of beings: men, whosedwelling was Midgard; Jotuns, who occupied Utgard; and the Asir,whose home was Asgard. The Jotuns, or demons, seem to have beenoriginally personifications of darkness, cold, and storm, thedisturbing forces of nature, whatever is hostile to fruitful lifeand peace. They were frost giants ranged in the outer wastesaround the habitable fields of men. The Asir, or gods, on theother hand, appear to have been personifications of light, andlaw, and benignant power, the orderly energies of the universe.Between the Jotuns and the Asir there is an implacable contest.2The rainbow, Bifrost, is a bridge leading from earth up to theskyey dwelling place of the Asir; and their sentinel, Heimdall,whose senses are so acute that he can hear the grass spring in themeadows and the wool grow on the backs of the sheep, keepsincessant watch upon it. Their chief deity, the father Zeus of theNorthern pantheon, was Odin, the god of war, who wakened thespirit of battle by flinging his spear over the heads of thepeople, its inaudible hiss from heaven being as the song of Atelet loose on earth. Next in rank was Thor, the personification ofthe exploding tempest. The crashing echoes of the thunder are hischariot wheels rattling through the cloudy halls of Thrudheim.Whenever the lightning strikes a cliff or an iceberg, then Thorhas flung his hammer, Mjolnir, at Joton's head.
1 Vans Kennedy, Ancient and Hindu Mythology, pp. 452, 463-464.
2 Thorpe, Northern Mythology, vol. ii.
Balder was the god of innocence and gentleness, fairest,kindest, purest of beings. Light emanated from him, andall things loved him. After Christianity was established in theNorth, Jesus was called the White Christ, or the new Balder. Theappearance of Balder amidst the frenzied and bloody divinities ofthe Norse creed is beautiful as the dew cool moon hanging calmlyover the lurid storm of Vesuvius. He was entitled the "Band in theWreath of the Gods," because with his fate that of all the restwas bound up. His death, ominously foretold from eldest antiquity,would be the signal for the ruin of the universe. Asa Loki was theMomus Satan or Devil Buffoon of the Scandinavian mythology, thehalf amusing, half horrible embodiment of wit, treachery, andevil; now residing with the gods in heaven, now accompanying Thoron his frequent adventures, now visiting and plotting with his ownkith and kin in frosty Jotunheim, beyond the earth environing sea,or in livid Helheim deep beneath the domain of breathinghumanity.3
With a Jotun woman, Angerbode, or Messenger of Evil, Loki begetsthree fell children. The first is Fenris, a savage wolf, so largethat nothing but space can hold him. The second is Jormungandur,who, with his tail in his mouth, fills the circuit of the ocean.He is described by Sir Walter Scott as
"That great sea snake, tremendous curl'd, Whose monstrous circlegirds the world."
The third is Hela, the grim goddess of death, whose ferociousaspect is half of a pale blue and half of a ghastly white, andwhose empire, stretching below the earth through Niflheim, is fullof freezing vapors and discomfortable sights. Her residence is thespacious under world; her court yard, faintness; her threshold,precipice; her door, abyss; her hall, pain; her table, hunger; herknife, starvation; her man servant, delay; her handmaid, slowness;her bed, sickness; her pillow, anguish; and her canopy, curse.Still lower than her house is an abode yet more fearful andloathsome. In Nastrond, or strand of corpses, stands a hall, theconception of which is prodigiously awful and enormouslydisgusting. It is plaited of serpents' backs, wattled togetherlike wicker work, whose heads turn inwards, vomiting poison. Inthe lake of venom thus deposited within these immense wrigglingwalls of snakes the worst of the damned wade and swim.
High up in the sky is Odin's hall, the magnificent Valhalla, ortemple of the slain. The columns supporting its ceiling arespears. It is roofed with shields, and the ornaments on itsbenches are coats of mail. The Valkyrs are Odin's battle maids,choosers of heroes for his banquet rooms. With helmets on theirheads, in bloody harness, mounted on shadowy steeds, surrounded bymeteoric lightnings, and wielding flaming swords, they hover overthe conflict and point the way to Valhalla to the warriors whofall. The valiant souls thus received to Odin's presence arecalled Einheriar, or the elect. The Valkyrs, as white clad virginswith flowing ringlets, wait on them in the capacity of cupbearers. Each morning, at the crowing
3 Oehlenschlager, Gods of the North. This celebrated and brilliantpoem, with the copious notes in Frye's translation, affords theEnglish reader a full conception of the Norse pantheon and itssalient adventures.
of a huge gold combed cock, the well armed Einheriar rush throughValhalla's five hundred and forty doors into a great court yard,and pass the day in merciless fighting. However pierced and hewnin pieces in these fearful encounters, at evening every wound ishealed, and they return into the hall whole, and are seated,according to their exploits, at a luxurious feast. Theperennial boar Sehrimnir, deliciously cooked by Andrimnir, thoughdevoured every night, is whole again every morning and ready to beserved anew. The two highest joys these terrible berserkers andvikings knew on earth composed their experience in heaven: namely,a battle by day and a feast by night. It is a vulgar error, longprevalent, that the Valhalla heroes drink out of the skulls oftheir enemies. This notion, though often refuted, still lingers inthe popular mind. It arose from the false translation of a phrasein the death song of Ragnar Lodbrok, the famous sea king, "Soonshall we drink from the curved trees of the head," which, as afigure for the usual drinking horns, was erroneously rendered byOlaus Wormius, "Soon shall we drink from the hollow cups ofskulls." It is not the heads of men, but the horns of beasts, fromwhich the Einheriar quaff Heidrun's mead.4
No women being ever mentioned as gaining admission to Valhalla orjoining in the joys of the Einheriar, some writers have affirmedthat, according to the Scandinavian faith, women had no immortalsouls, or, at all events, were excluded from heaven. The charge isas baseless in this instance as when brought againstMohammedanism. Valhalla was the exclusive abode of the most daringchampions; but Valhalla was not the whole of heaven. Vingolf, theHall of Friends, stood beside the Hall of the Slain, and was theassembling place of the goddesses.5 There, in the palace of Freya,the souls of noble women were received after death. The elder Eddasays that Thor guided Roska, a swift footed peasant girl who hadattended him as a servant on various excursions, to Freya's bower,where she was welcomed, and where she remained forever. The virgingoddess Gefjone, the Northern Diana, also had a residence inheaven, and all who died maidens repaired thither.6 The presenceof virgin throngs with Gefjone, and the society of noble matronsin Vingolf, shed a tender gleam across the carnage and carousal ofValhalla. More is said of the latter the former is scarcelyvisible to us now because the only record we have of the Norsefaith is that contained in the fragmentary strains of ferociousSkalds, who sang chiefly to warriors, and the staple matter ofwhose songs was feats of martial prowess or entertainingmythological stories. Furthermore, there is above the heaven ofthe Asir a yet higher heaven, the abode of the far removed andinscrutable being, the rarely named Omnipotent One, the true AllFather, who is at last to come forth above the ruins of theuniverse to judge and sentence all creatures and to rebuild abetter world. In this highest region towers the imperishable goldroofed hall, Gimle, brighter than the sun. There is no hintanywhere in the Skaldic strains that good women are repulsed fromthis dwelling.
According to the rude morality of the people and the time, thecontrasted conditions of admission to the upper paradise orcondemnation to the infernal realm were the admired
4 Pigott, Manual of Scandinavian Mythology, p. 65.
5 Keyser, Religion of the Northmen, trans. by Pennock, p. 149.
6 Pigott, p. 245.
virtues of strength, open handed frankness, reckless audacity, orthe hated vices of feebleness, cowardice, deceit, humility. Thosewho have won fame by puissant feats and who die in battle aresnatched by the Valkyrs from the sod to Valhalla. To die in armsis to be chosen of Odin,
"In whose hall of gold The steel clad ghosts their wonted orgieshold. Some taunting jest begets the war of words: In clamorousfray they grasp their gleamy swords, And, as upon the earth, withfierce delight By turns renew the banquet and the fight."
All, on the contrary, who, after lives of ignoble labor ordespicable ease, die of sickness, sink from their beds to thedismal house of Hela. In this gigantic vaulted cavern the airsmells like a newly stirred grave; damp fogs rise, hollow sighsare heard, the only light comes from funeral tapers held byskeletons; the hideous queen, whom Thor eulogizes as the Scourgerof Cowards, sits on a throne of skulls, and sways a sceptre, madeof a dead man's bone bleached in the moonlight, over a countlessmultitude of shivering ghosts.7 But the Norse moralists plunge toa yet darker doom those guilty of perjury, murder, or adultery. InNastrond's grisly hail, which is shaped of serpents' spines, andthrough whose loop holes drops of poison drip, where no sunlightever reaches, they welter in a venom sea and are gnawed by thedragon Nidhogg.8 In a word, what to the crude moral sense of themartial Goth seemed piety, virtue, led to heaven; what seemedblasphemy, baseness, led to hell.
The long war between good and evil, light and darkness, order anddiscord, the Asir and the Jotuns, was at last to reach a fatalcrisis and end in one universal battle, called Ragnarokur, or the"Twilight of the Gods," whose result would be the totaldestruction of the present creation. Portentous inklings of thisdread encounter were abroad among all beings. A shudderinganticipation of it sat in a lowering frown of shadow on the browsof the deities. In preparation for Ragnarokur, both partiesanxiously secured all the allies they could. Odin thereforejoyously welcomes every valiant warrior to Valhalla, as a recruitfor his hosts on that day when Fenris shall break loose. WhenHakon Jarl fell, the Valkyrs shouted, "Now does the force of thegods grow stronger when they have brought Hakon to their home." ASkald makes Odin say, on the death of King Eirilc Blood Axe, as anexcuse for permitting such a hero to be slain, "Our lot isuncertain: the gray wolf gazes on the host of the gods;" that is,we shall need help at Ragnarokur. But as all the brave andmagnanimous champions received to Valhalla were enlisted on theside of the Asir, so all the miserable cowards, invalids, andwretches doomed to Hela's house would fight for the Jotuns. Fromday to day the opposed armies, above and below, increase innumbers. Some grow impatient, some tremble. When Balder dies, andthe ship Nagelfra is completed, the hour of infinite suspense willstrike. Nagelfra is a vessel for the conveyance of the hosts offrost giants to the battle. It is to be built of dead men's nails:therefore no one should die with unpaired nails, for if he does he
7 Pigott, pp. 137, 138.
8 The Voluspa, strophes 34, 35.
furnishes materials for the construction of that ship which menand gods wish to have finished as late as possible.9
At length Loki treacherously compasses the murder of Balder. Thefrightful foreboding which at once flies through all hearts findsvoice in the dark "Raven Song" of Odin. Having chanted thisobscure wail in heaven, he mounts his horse and rides down thebridge to Helheim. With resistless incantations he raises from thegrave, where she has been interred for ages, wrapt in snows, wetwith the rains and the dews, an aged vala or prophetess, andforces her to answer his questions. With appalling replies hereturns home, galloping up the sky. And now the crack of doom isat hand. Heimdall hurries up and down the bridge Bifrost, blowinghis horn till its rousing blasts echo through the universe. Thewolf Skoll, from whose pursuit the frightened sun has fled roundthe heavens since the first dawn, overtakes and devours his brightprey. Nagelfra, with the Jotun hosts on board, sails swiftly fromUtgard. Loki advances at the head of the troops of Hela. Fenrissnaps his chain and rushes forth with jaws so extended that theupper touches the firmament, while the under rests on the earth;and he would open them wider if there were room. Jormungandurwrithes his entire length around Midgard, and, lifting his head,blows venom over air and sea. Suddenly, in the south, heavencleaves asunder, and through the breach the sons of Muspel, theflame genii, ride out on horseback with Surtur at their head, hissword outflashing the sun. Now Odin leads forward the Asir and theEinheriar, and on the predestined plain of Vigrid the strifecommences. Heimdall and Loki mutually slay each other. Thor killsJormungandur; but as the monster expires he belches a flood ofvenom, under which the matchless thunder god staggers and fallsdead. Fenris swallows Odin, but is instantly rent in twain byVidar, the strong silent one, Odin's dumb son, who well avengeshis father on the wolf by splitting the jaws that devoured him.Then Surtur slings fire abroad, and the reek rises around allthings. Iggdrasill, the great Ash Tree of Existence, totters, butstands. All below perishes. Finally, the unnamable Mighty Oneappears, to judge the good and the bad. The former hie from fadingValhalla to eternal Gimle, where all joy is to be theirs forever;the latter are stormed down from Hela to Nastrond, there, "undercurdling mists, in a snaky marsh whose waves freeze black and thawin blood, to be scared forever, for punishment, with terrors evernew." All strife vanishes in endless peace. By the power of AllFather, a new earth, green and fair, shoots up from the sea, to beinhabited by a new race of men free from sorrow. The foul, spotteddragon Nidhogg flies over the plains, bearing corpses and Deathitself away upon his wings, and sinks out of sight.10
It has generally been asserted, in consonance with the foregoingview, that the Scandinavians believed that the good and the bad,respectively in Gimle and Nastrond, would experience everlastingrewards and punishments. But Blackwell, the recent editor ofPercy's translation of Mallet's Northern Antiquities as publishedin Bohn's Antiquarian Library, argues with great force against thecorrectness of the assertion.11 The point is
9 Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie, s. 775, note.
10 Keyser, Religion of the Northmen, part i. ch. vi.
11 Pp. 497-503.
dubious; but it is of no great importance, since we know that thespirit and large outlines of their faith have been reliably setforth. That faith, rising from the impetuous blood and rude mindof the martial race of the North, gathering wonderfulembellishments from the glowing imagination of the Skalds,reacting, doubly nourished the fierce valor and fervid fancy fromwhich it sprang. It drove the dragon prows of the Vikingsmarauding over the seas. It rolled the Goths' conquering squadronsacross the nations, from the shores of Finland and Skager Rack tothe foot of the Pyrenees and the gates of Rome. The very ferocitywith which it blazed consumed itself, and the conquest of theflickering faith by Christianity was easy. During the dominion ofthis religion, the earnest sincerity with which its disciplesreceived it appears alike from the fearful enterprises it promptedthem to, the iron hardihood and immeasurable contempt of death itinspired in them, and the superstitious observances which, withpains and expenses, they scrupulously kept. They buried, with thedead, gold, useful implements, ornaments, that they might descend,furnished and shining, to the halls of Hela. With a chieftain theyburied a pompous horse and splendid armor, that he might ride likea warrior into Valhalla. The true Scandinavian, by age or sicknessdeprived of dying in battle, ran himself through, or flung himselffrom a precipice, in this manner to make amends for not expiringin armed strife, if haply thus he might snatch a late seat amongthe Einheriar. With the same motive the dying sea king had himselflaid on his ship, alone, and launched away, with out stretchedsails, with a slow fire in the hold, which, when he was fairly outat sea, should flame up and, as Carlyle says, "worthily bury theold hero at once in the sky and in the ocean." Surely then, ifever, "the kingdom of heaven suffered violence, and the violenttook it by force."
CHAPTER IV.
ETRUSCAN DOCTRINE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
ALTHOUGH the living form and written annals of Etruria perishedthousands of years ago, and although but slight references to heraffairs have come down to us in the documents of contemporarynations, yet, through a comparatively recent acquisition of facts,we have quite a distinct and satisfactory knowledge of hercondition and experience when her power was palmiest. We followthe ancient Etruscans from the cradle to the tomb, perceivingtheir various national costumes, peculiar physiognomies, names andrelationships, houses, furniture, ranks, avocations, games, dyingscenes, burial processions, and funeral festivals. And, furtherthan this, we follow their souls into the world to come, beholdthem in the hands of good or evil spirits, brought to judgment andthen awarded their deserts of bliss or woe. This knowledge hasbeen derived from their sepulchres, which still resist thecorroding hand of Time when nearly every thing else Etruscan hasmingled with the ground.1 They hewed their tombs in the livingrock of cliffs and hills, or reared them of massive masonry. Theypainted or carved the walls with descriptive and symbolic scenes,and crowded their interiors with sarcophagi, cinerary urns, vases,goblets, mirrors, and a thousand other articles covered withpaintings and sculptures rich in information of their authors.From a study of these things, lately disinterred in immensequantities, has been constructed, for the most part, our presentacquaintance with this ancient people. Strange that, when thewhole scene of life has passed away, a sepulchral world shouldsurvive and open itself to reveal the past and instruct thefuture! We seem to see, rising from her tombs, and moving solemnlyamong the mounds where all she knew or cared for has for so manyages been inurned, the ghost of a mighty people. With dejected airshe leans on a ruined temple and muses; and her shadowy tears fallsilently over what was and is not.
The Etruscans were accustomed to bury their deceased outside theirwalls; and sometimes the city of the living was thus surrounded bya far reaching city of the dead. At this day the decaying frontsof the houses of the departed, for miles upon miles along theroad, admonish the living traveller. These stone hewn sepulchrescrowd nearly every hill and glen. Whole acres of them are alsofound upon the plains, covered by several feet of earth, whereevery spring the plough passes over them, and every autumn theharvest waves; but the dust beneath reposes well, and knowsnothing of this.
"Time buries graves. How strange! a buried grave! Death cannotfrom more death its own dead empire save."
The houses of the dead were built in imitation of the houses ofthe living, only on a smaller scale; and the interior arrangementswere so closely copied that it is said the resemblance held in allbut the light of day and the sound and motion of life. The images
1 Mrs. Gray, Sepulchres of Etruria.
painted or etched on the urns and sarcophagi that fill thesepulchres were portraits of the deceased, accurate likenesses,varying with age, sex, features, and expression. These personalportraits were taken and laid up here, doubtless, to preservetheir remembrance when the original had crumbled to ashes. What atouching voice is this from antiquity, telling us that our poor,fond human nature was ever the same! The heart longed to be keptstill in remembrance when the mortal frame was gone. But how vainthe wish beyond the vanishing circle of hearts that returned itslove! For, as we wander through those sepulchres now, thousands offaces thus preserved look down upon us with a mute plea, whenevery vestige of their names and characters is forever lost, andtheir very dust scattered long ago.
Along the sides of the burial chamber were ranged massive stoneshelves, or sometimes benches, or tables, upon which the dead werelaid in a reclining posture, to sleep their long sleep. It oftenhappens that on these rocky biers lie the helmet, breastplate,greaves, signet ring, and weapons, or, if it be a female, thenecklace, ear rings, bracelet, and other ornaments, each in itsrelative place, when the body they once encased or adorned has notleft a single fragment behind. An antiquary once, digging fordiscoveries, chanced to break through the ceiling of a tomb. Helooked in; and there, to quote his own words, "I beheld a warriorstretched on a couch of rock, and in a few minutes I saw himvanish under my eyes; for, as the air entered the cemetery, thearmor, thoroughly oxydized, crumbled away into most minuteparticles, and in a short time scarcely a trace of what I had seenwas left on the couch. It is impossible to express the effect thissight produced upon me."
An important element in the religion of Etruria was the doctrineof Genii, a system of household deities who watched over thefortunes of individuals and families, and who are continuallyshown on the engravings in the sepulchres as guiding, or activelyinterested in, all the incidents that happen to those under theircare. It was supposed that every person had two genii allotted tohim, one inciting him to good deeds, the other to bad, and bothaccompanying him after death to the judgment to give in theirtestimony and turn the scales of his fate. This belief, sincerelyheld, would obviously wield a powerful influence over theirfeelings in the conduct of life.
The doctrine concerning the gods that prevailed in this ancientnation is learned partly from the classic authors, partly fromsepulchral monumental remains. It was somewhat allied to that ofEgypt, but much more to that of Rome, who indeed derived aconsiderable portion of her mythology from this source. As inother pagan countries, a multitude of deities were worshippedhere, each having his peculiar office, form of representation, andcycle of traditions. It would be useless to specify all.2 Thegoddess of Fate was pictured with wings, showing her swiftness,and with a hammer and nail, to typify that her decrees wereunalterably fixed. The name of the supreme god was Tinia. He wasthe central power of the world of divinities, and was alwaysrepresented, like Jupiter Tonans, with a thunderbolt in his hand.There were twelve great "consenting gods," composing the councilof Tinia, and called "The Senators of Heaven." They were pitilessbeings, dwelling in the inmost recesses
2 Muller, Die Etrusker, buch iii. kap. iv. sects. 7-14.
of heaven, whose names it was not lawful to pronounce. Yet theywere not deemed eternal, but were supposed to rise and falltogether. There was another class, called "The Shrouded Gods,"still more awful, potent, and mysterious, ruling all things, andmuch like the inscrutable Necessity that filled the darkbackground of the old Greek religion. Last, but most feared andmost prominent in the Etruscan mind, were the rulers of the lowerregions, Mantus and Mania, the king and queen of the under world.Mantus was figured as an old man, wearing a crown, with wings athis shoulders, and a torch reversed in his hand. Mania was afearful personage, frequently propitiated with human sacrifices.Macrobius says boys were offered up at her annual festival for along time, till the heads of onions and poppies were substituted.3Intimately connected with these divinities was Charun, their chiefminister, the conductor of souls into the realm of the future,whose dread image, hideous as the imagination could conceive, isconstantly introduced in the sepulchral pictures, and who with hisattendant demons well illustrates the terrible character of thesuperstition which first created, then deified, and then trembledbefore him. Who can become acquainted with such horrors as thesewithout drawing a freer breath, and feeling a deeper gratitude toGod, as he remembers how, for many centuries now, the religion oflove has been redeeming man from subterranean darkness, hatred,and fright, to the happiness and peace of good will and trust inthe sweet, sunlit air of day!
That a belief in a future existence formed a prominent andcontrolling feature in the creed of the Etruscans4 is abundantlyshown by the contents of their tombs. They would never haveproduced and preserved paintings, tracings, types, of such acharacter and in such quantities, had not the doctrines theyshadow forth possessed a ruling hold upon their hopes and fears.The symbolic representations connected with this subject may bearranged in several classes. First, there is an innumerablevariety of death bed scenes, many of them of the most touching andpathetic character, such as witnesses say can scarcely be lookedupon without tears, others of the most appalling nature, showingperfect abandonment to fright, screams, sobbing, and despair. Thelast hour is described under all circumstances, coming to allsorts of persons, prince, priest, peasant, man, mother, and child.Patriarchs are dying surrounded by groups in every posture ofgrief; friends are waving a mournful farewell to their weepinglovers; wives are torn from the embrace of their husbands; someseem resigned and willingly going, others reluctant and driven interror.
The next series of engravings contain descriptions and emblems ofthe departure of the soul from this world, and of its passage intothe next. There are various symbols of this mysterious transition:one is a snake with a boy riding upon its back, its amphibiousnature plainly typifying the twofold existence allotted to man.The soul is also often shown muffled in a veil and travellinggarb, seated upon a horse, and followed by a slave carrying alarge sack of provisions, an emblem of the long and dreary journeyabout to be taken. Horses are depicted harnessed to cars in whichdisembodied spirits are seated, a token of the swift ride
3 Saturnal. lib. i. cap. 7.
4 Dennis, Cities and Cemeteries of Etruria, ch. xii.
of the dead to their doom. Sometimes the soul is gently invited,or led, by a good spirit, sometimes beaten, or dragged away, bythe squalid and savage Charun, the horrible death king, or one ofhis ministers; sometimes a good and an evil spirit are seencontending for the soul; sometimes the soul is seen, on its knees,beseeching the aid of its good genius and grasping at hisdeparting wing, as, with averted face, he is retiring; andsometimes the good and the evil spirits are leading it awaytogether, to abide the sentence of the tribunal of Mantus. Wholecompanies of souls are also set forth marching in procession,under the guidance of a winged genius, to their subterraneanabode.
Finally, there is a class of representations depicting theultimate fate of souls after judgment has been passed. Some areshown seated at banquet, in full enjoyment, according to theirideas of bliss. Some are shown undergoing punishment, beaten withhammers, stabbed and torn by black demons. There are no proofsthat the Etruscans believed in the translation of any soul to theabode of the gods above the sky, no signs of any path rising tothe supernal heaven; but they clearly expected just discriminationsto be made in the under world. Into that realm many gates are shownleading, some of them peaceful, inviting, surrounded by apparentemblems of deliverance, rest, and blessedness; others yawning,terrific, engirt by the heads of gnashing beasts and furiesthreatening their victim.
"Shown is the progress of the guilty soul
From earth's worn threshold to the throne of doom;
Here the black genius to the dismal goal
Drags the wan spectre from the unsheltering tomb,
While from the side it never more may warn
The better angel, sorrowing, flees forlorn.
There (closed the eighth) seven yawning gates reveal
The sevenfold anguish that awaits the lost.
Closed the eighth gate, for there the happy dwell.
No glimpse of joy beyond makes horror less."
In these lines, from Bulwer's learned and ornate epic of KingArthur, the dire severity of the Etruscan doctrine of a futurelife is well indicated, with the local imagery of some parts ofit, and the impenetrable obscurity which enwraps the great sequel.
CHAPTER V.
EGYPTIAN DOCTRINE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
IN attempting to understand the conceptions of the ancientinhabitants of Egypt on the subject of a future life, we are firstmet by the inquiry why they took such great pains to preserve thebodies of their dead. It has been supposed that no common motivecould have animated them to such lavish expenditure of money,time, and labor as the process of embalming required. It has beentaken for granted that only some recondite theologicalconsideration could explain this phenomenon. Accordingly, it isnow the popular belief that the Egyptians were so scrupulous inembalming their dead and storing them in repositories of eternalstone, because they believed that the departed souls would at somefuture time come back and revivify their former bodies, if thesewere kept from decay. This hypothesis seems to us as false as itis gratuitous. In the first place, there is no evidence of itwhatever, neither written testimony nor circumstantial hint.Herodotus tells us, "The Egyptians say the soul, on thedissolution of the body, always enters into some other animal thenborn, and, having passed in rotation through the variousterrestrial, aquatic, and arial beings, again enters the body of aman then born."1 There is no assertion that, at the end of thethree thousand years occupied by this circuit, the soul will reenter its former body. The plain inference, on the contrary, isthat it will be born in a new body, as at each preceding step inthe series of its transmigrations. Secondly, the mutilation of thebody in embalming forbids the belief in its restoration to life.The brain was extracted, and the skull stuffed with cotton. Theentrails were taken out, and sometimes, according to Porphyry2 andPlutarch,3 thrown into the Nile; sometimes, as modern examinationshave revealed, bound up in four packages and either replaced inthe cavity of the stomach or laid in four vases beside the mummy.It is absurd to attribute, without clear cause, to an enlightenedpeople the belief that these stacks of brainless, evisceratedmummies, dried and shrunken in ovens, coated with pitch, bound upin a hundredfold bandages, would ever revive, and, inhabited bythe same souls that fled them thirty centuries before, again walkthe streets of Thebes! Besides, a third consideration demandsnotice. By the theory of metempsychosis universally acknowledgedto have been held by the Egyptians it is taught that souls atdeath, either immediately, or after a temporary sojourn in hell orheaven has struck the balance of their merits, are born in freshbodies; never that they return into their old ones. But the pointis set beyond controversy by the discovery of inscriptions,accompanying pictures of scenes illustrating the felicity ofblessed souls in heaven, to this effect: "Their bodies shallrepose in their tombs forever; they live in the celestial regionseternally, enjoying the presence of the Supreme God." 4 A writeron this subject says, "A people who believed in the transmigration
1 Herod. lib. ii. cap. 123.
2 De Abstinentia, lib. iv. cap. 10.
3 Banquet of the Seven Wise Men.
4 Champollion, Descr. de l'Egypte, Antiq. tom ii. p. 132. Stuart'sTrans. of Greppo's Essay, p. 262.
of souls would naturally take extraordinary pains to preserve thebody from putrefaction, in the hope of the soul again joining thebody it had quitted." The remark is intrinsically untrue, becausethe doctrine of transmigration coexists in reconciled belief withthe observed law of birth, infancy, and growth, not with themiracle of transition into reviving corpses. The notion islikewise historically refuted by the fact that the believers ofthat doctrine in the thronged East have never preserved the body,but at once buried or burned it. The whole Egyptian theology ismuch more closely allied to the Hindu, which excluded, than to thePersian, which emphasized, the resurrection of the body.
Another theory which has been devised to explain the purpose ofEgyptian embalming, is that "it was to unite the soul permanentlyto its body, and keep the vital principle from perishing ortransmigrating; the body and soul ran together through the journeyof the dead and its dread ordeal." 5 This arbitrary guess isincredible. The preservation of the body does not appear in anyway not even to the rawest fancy to detain or unite the soul withit; for the thought is unavoidable that it is precisely theabsence of the soul which constitutes death. Again: such anexplanation of the motive for embalming cannot be correct, becausein the hieroglyphic representations of the passage to the judgmentthe separate soul is often depicted as hovering over the body, 6or as kneeling before the judges, or as pursuing its adventuresthrough the various realms of the creation. "When the body isrepresented," Champollion says, "it is as an aid to the spectator,and not as teaching a bodily resurrection. Sharpe's opinion thatthe picture of a bird poised over the mouth of a mummy, with theemblems of breath and life in its claws, implies the doctrine of ageneral physical resurrection, is an inferential leap of the moststartling character. What proof is there that the symbol denotesthis? Hundreds of paintings in the tombs show souls undergoingtheir respective allotments in the other world while their bodilymummies are quiet in the sepulchres of the present. In histreatise on "Isis and Osiris," Plutarch writes, "The Egyptiansbelieve that while the bodies of eminent men are buried in theearth their souls are stars shining in heaven." It is equallynonsensical in itself and unwarranted by evidence to imagine that,in the Egyptian faith, embalming either retained the soul in thebody or preserved the body for a future return of the soul. Whocan believe that it was for either of those purposes that theyembalmed the multitudes of animals whose mummies the explorer isstill turning up? They preserved cats, hawks, bugs, crocodiles,monkeys, bulls, with as great pains as they did men.7 When theCanary Islands were first visited, it was found that theirinhabitants had a custom of carefully embalming the dead. The samewas the case among the Peruvians, whose vast cemeteries remain tothis day crowded with mummies. But the expectation of a return ofthe souls into these preserved bodies is not to be ascribed tothose peoples. Herodotus informs us that "the Ethiopians, havingdried the bodies of their dead, coat them with white plaster,which they paint with colors to the likeness of the deceased andencase in a transparent substance. The dead, thus kept from beingoffensive, and yet plainly visible, are retained a
5 Bonomi and Arundel on Egyptian Antiq., p. 46.
6 Pl. xxxiii. in Lepsius' Todtenb. der. Agypter.
7 Pettigrew, Hist of Egyptian Mummies, ch. xii.
whole year in the houses of their nearest relatives. Afterwardsthey are carried out and placed upright in the tombs around thecity." 8 It has been argued, because the Egyptians expended somuch in preparing lasting tombs and in adorning their walls withvaried embellishments, that they must have thought the soulremained in the body, a conscious occupant of the dwelling placeprovided for it.9 As well might it be argued that, because theancient savage tribes on the coast of South America, who obtainedtheir support by fishing, buried fish hooks and bait with theirdead, they supposed the dead bodies occupied themselves in theirgraves by fishing! The adornment of the tomb, so lavish and variedwith the Egyptians, was a gratification of the spontaneousworkings of fancy and affection, and needs no far fetchedexplanation. Every nation has its funeral customs and its rites ofsepulture, many of which would be as difficult of explanation asthose of Egypt. The Scandinavian sea king was sometimes buried, inhis ship, in a grave dug on some headland overlooking the ocean.The Scythians buried their dead in rolls of gold, sometimesweighing forty or fifty solid pounds. Diodorus the Sicilian says,"The Egyptians, laying the embalmed bodies of their ancestors innoble monuments, see the true visages and expressions of those whodied ages before them. So they take almost as great pleasure inviewing their bodily proportions and the lineaments of their facesas if they were still living among them." 10 That instinct whichleads us to obtain portraits of those we love, and makes usunwilling to part even with their lifeless bodies, was the causeof embalming. The bodies thus prepared, we know from the testimonyof ancient authors, were kept in the houses of their children orkindred, until a new generation, "who knew not Joseph," removedthem. Then nothing could be more natural than that the priesthoodshould take advantage of the custom, so associated with sacredsentiments, and throw theological sanctions over it, shroud it inmystery, and secure a monopoly of the power and profit arisingfrom it. It is not improbable, too, as has been suggested, thathygienic considerations, expressing themselves in political lawsand priestly precepts, may at first have had an influence inestablishing the habit of embalming, to prevent the pestilencesapt to arise in such a climate from the decay of animalsubstances.
There is great diversity of opinion among Egyptologists on thispoint. One thinks that embalming was supposed to keep the soul inthe body until after the funeral judgment and interment, but that,when the corpse was laid in its final receptacle, the soulproceeded to accompany the sun in its daily and nocturnal circuit,or to transmigrate through various animals and deities. Anotherimagines that the process of embalming was believed to secure therepose of the soul in the other world, exempt fromtransmigrations, so long as the body was kept from decay.11Perhaps the different notions on this subject attributed by modernauthors to the Egyptians may all have prevailed among them atdifferent times or among distinct sects. But it seems most likely,as we have said, that embalming first arose from physical andsentimental considerations naturally operating, rather than fromany
8 Lib. iii. cap. 24.
9 Kenrick, Ancient Egypt, vol. i. ch. xxi. sect. iii.
10 Lib. i. cap. 7.
11 Library of Entertaining Knowledge, vol. ii. ch. iii.
theological doctrine carefully devised; although, after thepriesthood appropriated the business, it is altogether probablethat they interwove it with an artificial and elaborate system ofsacerdotal dogmas, in which was the hiding of the national power.
The second question that arises is, What was the significance ofthe funeral ceremonies celebrated by the Egyptians over theirdead? When the body had been embalmed, it was presented before atribunal of forty two judges sitting in state on the easternborders of the lake Acherusia. They made strict inquiry into theconduct and character of the deceased. Any one might makecomplaint against him, or testify in his behalf. If it was foundthat he had been wicked, had died in debt, or was otherwiseunworthy, he was deprived of honorable burial and ignominiouslythrown into a ditch. This was called Tartar, from the wailings thesentence produced among his relatives. But if he was found to haveled an upright life, and to have been a good man, the honors of aregular interment were decreed him. The cemetery a large plainenvironed with trees and lined with canals lay on the western sideof the lake, and was named Elisout, or rest. It was reached by aboat, the funeral barge, in which no one could cross without anorder from the judges and the payment of a small fee. In these andother particulars some of the scenes supposed to be awaiting thesoul in the other world were dramatically shadowed forth. Eachrite was a symbol of a reality existing, in solemn correspondence,in the invisible state. What the priests did over the body onearth the judicial deities did over the soul in Amenthe. It seemsplain that the Greeks derived many of their notions concerning thefate and state of the dead from Egypt. Hades corresponds withAmenthe; Pluto, with the subterranean Osiris; Mercurypsychopompos, with Anubis, "the usher of souls;" Aacus, Minos, andRhadamanthos, with the three assistant gods who help in weighingthe soul and present the result to Osiris; Tartarus, to the ditchTartar; Charon's ghost boat over the Styx, to the barge conveyingthe mummy to the tomb; Cerberus, to Oms; Acheron, to Acherusia;the Elysian Fields, to Elisout.12 Kenrick thinks the Greeks mayhave developed these views for themselves, without indebtedness toEgypt. But the notions were in existence among the Egyptians atleast twelve hundred years before they can be traced among theGreeks.13 And they are too arbitrary and systematic to have beenindependently constructed by two nations. Besides, Herodotuspositively affirms that they were derived from Egypt. Severalother ancient authors also state this; and nearly every modernwriter on the subject agrees in it.
The triumphs of modern investigation into the antiquities ofEgypt, unlocking the hieroglyphics and lifting the curtain fromthe secrets of ages, have unveiled to us a far more full andsatisfactory view of the Egyptian doctrine of the future life thancan be constructed from the narrow glimpses afforded by theaccounts of the old Greek authorities. Three sources of knowledgehave been laid open to us. First, the papyrus rolls, one of whichwas placed in the bosom of every mummy. This roll, covered withhieroglyphics, is called the funeral ritual, or book of the dead.It served as a passport through the burial rites. It contained thenames of the deceased and his parents, a series of prayers he wasto recite
12 Spineto on Egyptian Antiq, Lectures IV., V.
13 Wilkinson, Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians, 2dSeries, vol. i. ch. 12.
before the various divinities he would meet on his journey, andrepresentations of some of the adventures awaiting him in theunseen state.14 Secondly, the ornamental cases in which themummies are enclosed are painted all over with scenes settingforth the realities and events to which the soul of the deadoccupant has passed in the other life.15 Thirdly, the variousfates of souls are sculptured and painted on the walls in thetombs, in characters which have been deciphered during the presentcentury:16
"Those mystic, stony volumes on the walls long writ, Whose senseis late reveal'd to searching modern wit."
Combining the information thus obtained, we learn that, accordingto the Egyptian representation, the soul is led by the god Thothinto Amenthe, the infernal world, the entrance to which lies inthe extreme west, on the farther side of the sea, where the sungoes down under the earth. It was in accordance with thissupposition that Herod caused to be engraved, on a magnificentmonument erected to his deceased wife, the line, "Zeus, thisblooming woman sent beyond the ocean." 17 At the entrance sits awide throated monster, over whose head is the inscription, "Thisis the devourer of many who go into Amenthe, the lacerator of theheart of him who comes with sins to the house of justice." Thesoul next kneels before the forty two assessors of Osiris, withdeprecating asseverations and intercessions. It then comes to thefinal trial in the terrible Hall of the two Truths, the approvingand the condemning; or, as it is differently named, the Hall ofthe double Justice, the rewarding and the punishing. Here thethree divinities Horns, Anubis, and Thoth proceed to weigh thesoul in the balance. In one scale an image of Thmei, the goddessof Truth, is placed; in the other, a heart shaped vase,symbolizing the heart of the deceased with all the actions ofhis earthly life. Then happy is he "Who, weighed 'gainst Truth,down dips the awful scale."
Thoth notes the result on a tablet, and the deceased advances withit to the foot of the throne on which sits Osiris, lord of thedead, king of Amenthe. He pronounces the decisive sentence, andhis assistants see that it is at once executed. The condemned soulis either scourged back to the earth straightway, to live again inthe form of a vile animal, as some of the emblems appear todenote; or plunged into the tortures of a horrid hell of fire anddevils below, as numerous engravings set forth; or driven into theatmosphere, to be vexed and tossed by tempests, violently whirledin blasts and clouds, till its sins are expiated, and anotherprobation granted through a renewed existence in human form.
We have two accounts of the Egyptian divisions of the universe.According to the first view, they conceived the creation toconsist of three grand departments. First came the earth, or zoneof trial, where men live on probation. Next was the atmosphere, orzone of temporal
14 Das Todtenbuch der Agypter, edited with an introduction by Dr.Lepsius.
15 Ch. ix. of Pettigrew's History of Egyptian Mummies.
16 Champollion's Letter, dated Thebes, May 16, 1829. An abstractof this letter may be found in Stuart's trans. of Greppo's Essayon Champollion's Hieroglyphic System, appendix, note N.
17 Basnage, Hist. of the Jews, lib. ii. ch. 12, sect. 19.
punishment, where souls are afflicted for their sins. The ruler ofthis girdle of storms was Pooh, the overseer of souls in penance.Such a notion is found in some of the later Greek philosophers,and in the writings of the Alexandrian Jews, who undoubtedly drewit from the priestly science of Egypt. Every one will recollecthow Paul speaks of "the prince of the power off the air." AndShakspeare makes the timid Claudio shrink from the verge of deathwith horror, lest his soul should, through ages,
"Be imprison'd in the viewless winds, And blown with restlessviolence round about The pendent world."
After their purgation in this region, all the souls live again onearth by transmigration.18 The third realm was in the serene bluesky among the stars, the zone of blessedness, where the accepteddwell in immortal peace and joy. Eusebius says, "The Egyptiansrepresented the universe by two circles, one within the other, anda serpent with the head of a hawk twining his folds around them,"thus forming three spheres, earth, firmament, divinity.
But the representation most frequent and imposing is that whichpictures the creation simply as having the earth in the centre,and the sun with his attendants as circulating around it in thebrightness of the superior, and the darkness of the infernal,firmament. Souls at death pass down through the west into Amenthe,and are tried. If condemned, they are either sent back to theearth, or confined in the nether space for punishment. Ifjustified, they join the blissful company of the Sun God, and risewith him through the east to journey along his celestial course.The upper hemisphere is divided into twelve equal parts,corresponding with the twelve hours of the day. At the gate ofeach of these golden segments a sentinel god is stationed, to whomthe newly arriving soul must give its credentials to secure apassage. In like manner, the lower hemisphere is cut into the samenumber of gloomy sections, corresponding with the twelve hours ofthe night. Daily the chief divinity, in robes of light, traversesthe beaming zones of the blessed, where they hunt and fish, orplough and sow, reap and gather, in the Fields of the Sun on thebanks of the heavenly Nile. Nightly, arrayed in deep black fromhead to foot, he traverses the dismal zones of the damned, wherethey undergo appropriate retributions. Thus the future destiny ofman was sublimely associated with the march of the sun through theupper and lower hemispheres.19 Astronomy was a part of theEgyptian's theology. He regarded the stars not figuratively, butliterally, as spirits and pure genii; the great planets asdeities. The calendar was a religious chart, each month, week,day, hour, being the special charge and stand point of a god.20
There was much poetic beauty and ethical power in these doctrinesand symbols. The necessity of virtue, the dread ordeals of thegrave, the certainty of retribution, the mystic circuits oftransmigration, a glorious immortality, the paths of planets andgods and souls through creation, all were impressively enounced,dramatically shown.
18 Liber Metempsychosis Veterum Agyptiorum, edited and translatedinto Latin from the funeral papyri by H. Brugsch.
19 L'Univers, Egypte Ancienne, par Champollion Figeac, pp. 123145.
20 Agyptische Glaubenslehre von Dr. Ed. Roth, ss. 171, 174.
"The Egyptain soul sail'd o'er the skyey sea
In ark of crystal, mann'd by beamy gods,
To drag the deeps of space and net the stars,
Where, in their nebulous shoals, they shore the void
And through old Night's Typhonian blindness shine.
Then, solarized, he press'd towards the sun,
And, in the heavenly Hades, hall of God,
Had final welcome of the firmament."
This solemn linking of the fate of man with the astronomicuniverse, this grand blending of the deepest of moral doctrineswith the most august of physical sciences, plainly betrays thebrain and hand of that hereditary hierarchy whose wisdom was thewonder of the ancient world. Osburn thinks the localization ofAmenthe in the west may have arisen in the following way. Somesuperstitious Egyptians, travelling westwards, at twilight, on thegreat marshes haunted by the strange gray white ibis, saw troopsof these silent, solemn, ghostlike birds, motionless or slowstalking, and conceived them to be souls waiting for the funeralrites to be paid, that they might sink with the setting sun totheir destined abode.21
That such a system of belief was too complex and elaborate to havebeen a popular development is evident. But that it was really heldby the people there is no room to doubt. Parts of it were publiclyenacted on festival days by multitudes numbering more than ahundred thousand. Parts of it were dimly shadowed out in thesecret recesses of temples, surrounded by the most astonishingaccompaniments that unrivalled learning, skill, wealth, and powercould contrive. Its authority commanded the allegiance, its charmfascinated the imagination, of the people. Its force built thepyramids, and enshrined whole generations of Egypt's embalmedpopulation in richly adorned sepulchres of everlasting rock. Itssubstance of esoteric knowledge and faith, in its form of exotericimposture and exhibition, gave it vitality and endurance long. Inthe vortex of change and decay it sank at last. And now it is onlyafter its secrets have been buried for thirty centuries that theexploring genius of modern times has brought its hiddenhieroglyphics to light, and taught us what were the doctrinesoriginally contained in the altar lore of those priestly schoolswhich once dotted the plains of the Delta and studded the banks ofeldest Nile, where now, disfigured and gigantic, the solemn
"Old Syhinxes lift their countenances bland Athwart the river seaand sea of sand."
21 Monumental History of Egypt, vol. i. ch. 8.
CHAPTER VI.
BRAHMANIC AND BUDDHIST DOCTRINE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
IN the Hindu views of the fate of the human soul, metaphysicalsubtlety and imaginative vastness, intellect and fancy, slavishtradition and audacious speculation, besotted ritualism andheaven storming spirituality, are mingled together on a scale ofgrandeur and intensity wholly without a parallel elsewhere in theliterature or faith of the world. Brahmanism, with its hundredmillion adherents holding sway over India, and Buddhism, withits four hundred million disciples scattered over a dozennations, from Java to Japan, and from the Ceylonese to theSamoyedes, practically considered, in reference to their actuallyreceived dogmas and aims pertaining to a future life, agreesufficiently to warrant us in giving them a general examinationtogether. The chief difference between them will be explained inthe sequel.
The most ancient Hindu doctrine of the future fate of man, asgiven in the Vedas, was simple, rude, and very unlike the forms inwhich it has since prevailed. Professor Wilson says, in theintroduction to his translation of the Rig Veda, that thereferences to this subject in the primeval Sanscrit scriptures aresparse and incomplete. But no one has so thoroughly elucidatedthis obscure question as Roth of Tubingen, in his masterly paperon the Morality of the Vedas, of which there is a translation, byProfessor Whitney, in the Journal of the American OrientalSociety.1 The results of his researches may be stated in fewwords.
When a man dies, the earth is invoked to wrap his body up, as amother wraps her child in her garment, and to lie lightly on him.He himself is addressed thus: "Go forth, go forth on the ancientpaths which our fathers in old times have trodden: the two rulersin bliss, Yama and Varuna, shalt thou behold." Varuna judges all.He thrusts the wicked down into darkness; and not a hint or clewfurther of their doom is furnished. They were supposed either tobe annihilated, as Professor Roth thinks the Vedas imply, or elseto live as demons, in sin, blackness, and woe. The good go up toheaven and are glorified with a shining spiritual body like thatof the gods. Yama, the first man, originator of the human race onearth, is the beginner and head of renewed humanity in anotherworld, and is termed the Assembler of Men. It is a poetic andgrand conception that the first one who died, leading the way,should be the patriarch and monarch of all who follow. The oldVedic hymns imply that the departed good are in a state of exaltedfelicity, but scarcely picture forth any particulars. Thefollowing passage, versified with strict fidelity to the original,is as full and explicit as any:
Where glory never fading is, where is the world of heavenly light,
The world of immortality, the everlasting, set me there!
Where Yama reigns, Vivasvat's son, in the inmost sphere of heaven
bright.
Where those abounding waters flow, oh, make me but immortal there!
Where there is freedom unrestrain'd, where the triple vault of
heaven's in sight,
Where worlds of brightest glory are, oh, make me but immortal
there!
Where pleasures and enjoyments are, where bliss and raptures ne'er
take flight,
Where all desires are satisfied, oh, make me but immortal there!
1 Vol iii. pp. 342-346.
But this form of doctrine long ago passed from the Hinduremembrance, lost in the multiplying developments andspecifications of a mystical philosophy, and a teemingsuperstition nourished by an unbounded imagination.
Both Brahmans and Buddhists conceive of the creation on the mostenormous scale. Mount Meru rises from the centre of the earth tothe height of about two millions of miles. On its summit is thecity of Brahma, covering a space of fourteen thousand leagues, andsurrounded by the stately cities of the regents of the spheres.Between Meru and the wall of stone forming the extremecircumference of the earth are seven concentric circles of rocks.Between these rocky bracelets are continents and seas. In some ofthe seas wallow single fishes thousands of miles in everydimension. The celestial spaces are occupied by a large number ofheavens, called "dewa lokas," increasing in the glory and bliss oftheir prerogatives. The worlds below the earth are hells, called"naraka." The description of twenty eight of these, given in theVishnu Purana,2 makes the reader "sup full of horrors." TheBuddhist "Books of Ceylon" 3 tell of twenty six heavens placed inregular order above one another in the sky, crowded with allimaginable delights. They also depict, in the abyss underneath theearth, eight great hells, each containing sixteen smaller ones,the whole one hundred and thirty six composing one gigantic hell.The eight chief hells are situated over one another, eachpartially enclosing and overlapping that next beneath; and thesufferings inflicted on their unfortunate occupants are of themost terrific character. But these poor hints at the localapparatus of reward and punishment afford no conception whateverof the extent of their mythological scheme of the universe.
They call each complete solar system a sakwala, and say that, if awall were erected around the space occupied by a million millionsof sakwalas, reaching to the highest heaven, and the entire spacewere filled with mustard seeds, a god might take these seeds, and,looking towards any one of the cardinal points, throw a singleseed towards each sakwala until all the seeds were gone, and stillthere would be more sakwalas, in the same direction, to which noseed had been thrown, without considering those in the other threequarters of the heavens. In comparison with this Eastern vision ofthe infinitude of worlds, the wildest Western dreamer over thevistas opened by the telescope may hide his diminished head! Theirother conceptions are of the same crushing magnitude, Thus, whenthe demons, on a certain occasion, assailed the gods, Siva usingthe Himalaya range for his bow, Vasuke for the string, Vishnu forhis arrow, the earth for his chariot with the sun and moon for itswheels and the Vedas for its horses, the starry canopy for hisbanner with the tree of Paradise for its staff, Brahma for hischarioteer, and the mysterious monosyllable Om for his whipreduced them all to ashes.4
The five hundred million Brahmanic and Buddhist believers holdthat all the gods, men, demons, and various grades of animal lifeoccupying this immeasurable array of worlds compose one cosmicfamily. The totality of animated beings, from a detestable gnat to
2 Wilson's trans. pp. 207-209.
3 Upham's trans. vol. iii. pp. 8, 66, 159.
4 Vans Kennedy, Ancient and Hindu Mythology, p. 429.
thundering Indra, from the meanest worm to the supreme Buddha,constitute one fraternal race, by the unavoidable effects of thelaw of retribution constantly interchanging their residences in asuccession of rising and sinking existences, ranging through allthe earths, heavens, and hells of the universe, bound by theterrible links of merit and demerit in the phantasmagoric dungeonof births and deaths. The Vishnu Purana declares, "The universe,this whole egg of Brahma, is everywhere swarming with livingcreatures, all of whom are captives in the chains of acts." 5
The one prime postulate of these Oriental faiths the groundprinciple, never to be questioned any more than the central andstationary position of the earth in the Ptolemaic system is thatall beings below the Infinite One are confined in the circle ofexistence, the whirl of births and deaths, by the consequences oftheir virtues and vices. When a man dies, if he has an excess ofgood desert, he is born, as a superior being, in one of theheavens. According to the nature and degree of his merit, hisheavenly existence is prolonged, or perhaps repeated many times insuccession; or, if his next birth occurs on earth, it is underhappy circumstances, as a sage or a king. But when he expires,should there, on the other hand, be an overbalance of ill desert,he is born as a demon in one of the hells, or may in repeatedlives run the circuit of the hells; or, if he at once returns tothe earth, it is as a beggar, a leprous outcast, a wretchedcripple, or in the guise of a rat, a snake, or a louse.
"The illustrious souls of great and virtuous men
In godlike beings shall revive again;
But base and vicious spirits wind their way
In scorpions, vultures, sharks, and beasts of prey.
The fair, the gay, the witty, and the brave,
The fool, the coward, courtier, tyrant, slave,
Each one in a congenial form, shall find
A proper dwelling for his wandering mind."
A specific evil is never cancelled by being counterbalanced by agreater good. The fruit of that evil must be experienced, and alsoof that greater good, by appropriate births in the hells andheavens, or in the higher and lower grades of earthly existence.The two courses of action must be run through independently. Thisis what is meant by the phrases, so often met with in Orientalworks, "eating the fruits of former acts," "bound in the chains ofdeeds." Merit or demerit can be balanced or neutralized only bythe full fruition of its own natural and necessary consequences.6The law of merit and of demerit is fate. It works irresistibly,through all changes and recurrences, from the beginning to theend. The cessation of virtue or of vice does not put an end to itseffects until its full force is exhausted; as an arrow continuesin flight until all its imparted power is spent. A man faultlesslyand scrupulously good through his present life may be guilty ofsome foul crime committed a hundred lives before and not yetexpiated. Accordingly, he may now suffer for it, or his next birthmay take place in a hell. On the contrary, he may be credited withsome great merit acquired thousands of
5 P. 286.
6 Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. iv. p. 87.
generations ago, whose fruit he has not eaten, and which may bringhim good fortune in spite of present sins, or on the rolling andmany colored wheel of metempsychosis may secure for him next acelestial birthplace. In short periods, it will be seen, there ismoral confusion, but, in the long run, exact compensation.
The exuberant prodigiousness of the Hindu imagination isstrikingly manifest in its descriptions of the rewards of virtuein the heavens and of the punishments of sin in the hells. Visionspass before us of beautiful groves full of fragrance and music,abounding in delicious fruits, and birds of gorgeous plumage,crystal streams embedded with pearls, unruffled lakes where thelotus blooms, palaces of gems, crowds of friends and lovers,endless revelations of truth, boundless graspings of power, allthat can stir and enchant intellect, will, fancy, and heart. Insome of the heavens the residents have no bodily form, but enjoypurely spiritual pleasures. In others they are self resplendent,and traverse the ether. They are many miles in height, one beingdescribed whose crown was four miles high and who wore on hisperson sixty wagon loads of jewels. The ordinary lifetime of theinhabitants of the dewa loka named Wasawartti equals nine billionstwo hundred and sixteen millions of our years. They breathe onlyonce in sixteen hours.
The reverse of this picture is still more vigorously drawn, highlycolored, and diversified in contents. The walls of the Hindu hellare over a hundred miles thick; and so dazzling is theirbrightness that it bursts the eyes which look at them anywherewithin a distance of four hundred leagues.7 The poor creatureshere, wrapped in shrouds of fire, writhe and yell in frenzy ofpain. The very revelry and ecstasy of terror and anguish fill thewhole region. The skins of some wretches are taken off from headto foot, and then scalding vinegar is poured over them. A gluttonis punished thus: experiencing an insatiable hunger in a body aslarge as three mountains, he is tantalized with a mouth no largerthan the eye of a needle.8 The infernal tormentors, throwing theirvictims down, take a flexible flame in each hand, and with theselash them alternately right and left. One demon, Rahu, is seventysix thousand eight hundred miles tall: the palm of his handmeasures fifty thousand acres; and when he is enraged he rushes upthe sky and swallows the sun or the moon, thus causing an eclipse!In the Asiatic Journal for 1840 is an article on "The ChineseJudges of the Dead," which describes a series of twenty fourpaintings of hell found in a Buddhist temple. Devils in humanshapes are depicted pulling out the tongues of slanderers withredhot wires, pouring molten lead down the throats of liars, withburning prongs tossing souls upon mountains planted with hooks ofiron reeking with the blood of those who have gone before,screwing the damned between planks, pounding them in huskingmortars, grinding them in rice mills, while other fiends, in theshape of dogs, lap up their oozing gore. But the hardestsensibility must by this time cry, Hold!
With the turmoil and pain of entanglement in the vortex of births,and all the repulsive exposures of finite life, the Hinduscontrast the idea of an infinite rest and bliss, an endless
7 Hardy, Manual of Buddhism, p. 26.
8 Coleman, Mythology of the Hindus, p. 198.
exemption from evil and struggle, an immense receptivity ofreposing power and quietistic contemplation. In consequence oftheir endlessly varied, constantly recurring, intensely earnestspeculations and musings over this contrast of finite restlessnessand pain with infinite peace and blessedness, a contrast whichconstitutes the preaching of their priests, saturates their sacredbooks, fills their thoughts, and broods over all their life, theOrientals are pervaded with a profound horror of individualexistence, and with a profound desire for absorption into theInfinite Being. A few quotations from their own authors willillustrate this:
"A sentient being in the repetition of birth and death is like aworm in the midst of a nest of ants, like a lizard in the hollowof a bamboo that is burning at both ends."9 "Emancipation from allexistence is the fulness of felicity."10 "The being who is stillsubject to birth may now sport in the beautiful gardens of heaven,now be cut to pieces in hell; now be Maha Brahma, now a degradedoutcast; now sip nectar, now drink blood; now repose on a couchwith gods, now be dragged through a thicket of thorns; now residein a mansion of gold, now be exposed on a mountain of lava; nowsit on the throne of the gods, now be impaled amidst hungry dogs;now be a king glittering with countless gems, now a mendicanttaking a skull from door to door to beg alms; now eat ambrosia asthe monarch of a dewa loka, now writhe and die as a bat in theshrivelling flame."11 "The Supreme Soul and the human soul do notdiffer, and pleasure or pain ascribable to the latter arises fromits imprisonment in the body. The water of the Ganges is the samewhether it run in the river's bed or be shut up in a decanter; buta drop of wine added to the water in the decanter imparts itsflavor to the whole, whereas it would be lost in the river. TheSupreme Soul, therefore, is beyond accident; but the human soul isafflicted by sense and passion. Happiness is only obtained inreunion with the Supreme Soul, when the dispersed individualitiescombine again with it, as the drops of water with the parentstream. Hence the slave should remember that he is separated fromGod by the body alone, and exclaim, perpetually, 'Blessed be themoment when I shall lift the veil from off that face! the veil ofthe face of my Beloved is the dust of my body.'"12 "A pious manwas once born on earth, who, in his various transmigrations, hadmet eight hundred and twenty five thousand Buddhas. He rememberedhis former states, but could not enumerate how many times he hadbeen a king, a beggar, a beast, an occupant of hell. He utteredthese words: 'A hundred thousand years of the highest happiness onearth are not equal to the happiness of one day in the dewa lokas;and a hundred thousand years of the deepest misery on earth arenot equal to the misery of one day in hell; but the misery of hellis reckoned by millions of centuries. Oh, how shall I escape, andobtain eternal bliss?'" 13
9 Eastern Monachism, p. 247.
10 Vishnu Purana, p. 568.
11 Hardy, Manual of Buddhism, p. 454.
12 Asiatic Researches, vol. xvii. p. 298.
13 Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. iv. p. 114.
The literary products of the Eastern mind wonderfully abound withpainful descriptions of the compromises, uncleannesses, andafflictions inseparably connected with existence. Volumes would berequired to furnish an adequate representation of the vivid andinexhaustible amplification with which they set forth the direfuldisgusts and loathsome terrors associated with the series of ideasexpressed by the words conception, birth, life, death, hell, andregeneration. The fifth chapter in the sixth book of the VishnuPurana affords a good specimen of these details; but, toappreciate them fully, one must peruse dispersed passages in ahundred miscellaneous works:
"As long as man lives, he is immersed in afflictions, like theseed of the cotton amidst the down. . . . Where could man,scorched by the fires of the sun of this world, look for felicity,were it not for the shade afforded by the tree of emancipation? .. . Travelling the path of the world for many thousands of births,man attains only the weariness of bewilderment, and is smotheredby the dust of imagination. When that dust is washed away by thebland water of real knowledge, then the weariness is removed. Thenthe internal man is at peace, and obtains supreme felicity."14
The result of these views is the awakening of an unquenchabledesire to "break from the fetters of existence," to be "deliveredfrom the whirlpool of transmigration." Both Brahmanism andBuddhism are in essence nothing else than methods of securingrelease from the chain of incarnated lives, and attaining toidentification with the Infinite. There is a text in theApocalypse which may be strikingly applied to this exemption fromfurther metempsychosis: "Him that overcometh I will make a pillarin the temple of my God, and he shall go no more out forever." Thetestimony of all who have investigated the subject agrees with thefollowing assertion by Professor Wilson: "The common end of everysystem studied by the Hindus is the ascertainment of the means bywhich perpetual exemption from the necessity of repeated birthsmay be won."15 In comparison with this aim, every thing else isutterly insignificant. Prahlada, on being offered by Vishnu anyboon he might ask, exclaimed, "Wealth, virtue, love, are asnothing; for even liberation is in his reach whose faith is firmin thee." And Vishnu replied, "Thou shalt, therefore, obtainfreedom from existence."16 All true Orientals, however favored orpersecuted by earthly fortune, still cry night and day upwardsinto the infinite, with outstretched arms and yearning voice,
"O Lord, our separate lives destroy! Merge in thy gold our souls'alloy: Pain is our own, and Thou art Joy!"
According to the system of Brahmanism, the creation is regularlycalled into being and again destroyed at the beginning and end ofcertain stupendous epochs called kalpas. Four thousand threehundred and twenty million years make a day of Brahma. At the endof this day the lower worlds are consumed by fire; and Brahmasleeps on the abyss for a night as long
14 Vishnu Parana, p. 650.
15 Sankhya Karika, preface, p. 3.
16 Vishnu Purana, p. 144.
as his day. During this night the saints, who in high Jana lokahave survived the dissolution of the lower portions of theuniverse, contemplate the slumbering deity until he wakes andrestores the mutilated creation. Three hundred and sixty of thesedays and nights compose a year of Brahma; a hundred such yearsmeasure his whole life. Then a complete destruction of all thingstakes place, every thing merging into the Absolute One, until heshall rouse himself renewedly to manifest his energies.17 Althoughcreated beings who have not obtained emancipation are destroyed intheir individual forms at the periods of the general dissolution,yet, being affected by the good or evil acts of former existence,they are never exempted from their consequences, and when Brahmacreates the world anew they are the progeny of his will, in thefourfold condition of gods, men, animals, and inanimate things.18And Buddhism embodies virtually the same doctrine, declaring "thewhole universe of sakwalas to be subject alternately todestruction and renovation, in a series of revolutions to whichneither beginning nor end can be discovered."
What is the Brahmanic method of salvation, or secret ofemancipation? Rightly apprehended in the depth and purity of thereal doctrine, it is this. There is in reality but ONE SOUL: everything else is error, illusion, misery. Whoever acquires theknowledge of this truth by personal perception is therebyliberated. He has won the absolute perfection of the unlimitedGodhead, and shall never be born again. "Whosoever views theSupreme Soul as manifold, dies death after death." God isformless, but seems to assume form; as moonlight, impinging uponvarious objects, appears crooked or straight.19 Bharata says tothe king of Sauriva, "The great end of all is not union of selfwith the Supreme Soul, because one substance cannot becomeanother. The true wisdom, the genuine aim of all, is to know thatSoul is one, uniform, perfect, exempt from birth, omnipresent,undecaying, made of true knowledge, dissociated withunrealities."20 "It is ignorance alone which enables Maya toimpress the mind with a sense of individuality; for as soon asthat is dispelled it is known that severalty exists not, and thatthere is nothing but one undivided Whole." 21 The Brahmanicscriptures say, "The Eternal Deity consists of true knowledge.""Brahma that is Supreme is produced of reflection."22 The logicruns thus. There is only One Soul, the absolute God. All beside isempty deception. That One Soul consists of true knowledge. Whoeverattains to true knowledge, therefore, is absolute God, foreverfreed from the sphere of semblances.
The foregoing exposition is philosophical and scripturalBrahmanism. But there are numerous schismatic sects which holdopinions diverging from it in regard to the nature and destiny ofthe human soul. They may be considered in two classes. First,there are some who defend the idea of the personal immortality ofthe soul. The Siva Gnana Potham "establishes the doctrine of thesoul's eternal existence as an individual being." 23 The Saivaschool
17 Vishnu Purana, p. 25. Hardy, Manual of Buddhism, p. 33, note.
18 Vishnu Parana, pp. 39, 116.
19 Colebrooke, Essays, vol. i. p. 359.
20 Vishnu Purana, p. 252.
21 Vans Kennedy, Ancient and Hindu Mythology, p. 201.
22 Vishnu Purana, pp. 546, 642.
23 Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. ii. p. 141.
teach that when, at the close of every great period, all otherdeveloped existences are rendered back to their primordial state,souls are excepted. These, once developed and delivered from thethraldom of their merit and demerit, will ever remain intimatelyunited with Deity and clothed in the resplendent wisdom.24Secondly, there are others and probably at the present time theyinclude a large majority of the Brahmans who believe in the realbeing both of the Supreme Soul and of separate finite souls,conceiving the latter to be individualized parts of the former andtheir true destiny to consist in securing absorption into it. Therelation of the soul to God, they maintain, is not that of ruledand ruler, but that of part and whole. "As gold is one substancestill, however diversified as bracelets, tiaras, ear rings, orother things, so Vishnu is one and the same, although modified inthe forms of gods, animals, and men. As the drops of water raisedfrom the earth by the wind sink into the earth again when the windsubsides, so the variety of gods, men, and animals, which havebeen detached by the agitation of the qualities, are reunited,when the disturbance ceases, with the Eternal." 25 "The wholeobtains its destruction in God, like bubbles in water." TheMadhava sect believe that there is a personal All Soul distinctfrom the human soul. Their proofs are detailed in one of the MahaUpanishads.26 These two groups of sects, however, agree perfectlywith the ancient orthodox Brahmans in accepting the fundamentaldogma of a judicial metempsychosis, wherein each one is fastenedby his acts and compelled to experience the uttermost consequencesof his merit or demerit. They all coincide in one commonaspiration as regards the highest end, namely, emancipation fromthe necessity of repeated births. The difference between the threeis, that the one class of dissenters expect the fruition of thatdeliverance to be a finite personal immortality in heaven; theother interpret it as an unwalled absorption in the Over Soul,like a breath in the air; while the more orthodox believers regardit as the entire identity of the soul with the Infinite One.
Against the opinion that there is only one Soul for all bodies, asone string supports all the gems of a necklace, some Hinduphilosophers argue that the plurality of souls is proved by theconsideration that, if there were but one soul, then when any onewas born, or died, or was lame, or deaf, or occupied, or idle, allwould at once be born, die, be lame, deaf, occupied, or idle. ButProfessor Wilson says, "This doctrine of the multitudinousexistence or individual incorporation of Soul clearly contradictsthe Vedas. They affirm one only existent soul to be distributed inall beings. It is beheld collectively or dispersedly, like thereflection of the moon in still or troubled water. Soul, eternal,omnipresent, undisturbed, pure, one, is multiplied by the power ofdelusion, not of its own nature."27
All the Brahmanic sects unite in thinking that liberation from thenet of births is to be obtained and the goal of their wishes to bereached by one means only; and that is knowledge, real wisdom, anadequate sight of the truth. Without this knowledge there is nopossible emancipation; but there are three ways of seeking theneeded knowledge.
24 Ibid. vol. iv. p. 15.
25 Vishnu Purana, p. 287.
26 Weber, Akademische Vorlesungen uber IndischeLiteraturgeschichte, s. 160.
27 Sankbya Karika, p. 70.
Some strive, by direct intellectual abstraction and effort, bymetaphysical speculation, to grasp the true principles of being.Others try, by voluntary penance, self abnegation, and pain, toaccumulate such a degree of merit, or to bring the soul into sucha state of preparedness, as will compel the truth to revealitself. And still others devote themselves to the worship of somechosen deity, by ritual acts and fervid contemplation, to obtainby his favor the needed wisdom. A few quotations may serve toillustrate the Brahmanic attempts at winning this one thingneedful, the knowledge which yields exemption from all incarnatelives.
The Sankhya philosophy is a regular system of metaphysics, to bestudied as one would study algebra. It presents to its disciplesan exhaustive statement of the forms of being in twenty fivecategories, and declares, "He who knows the twenty fiveprinciples, whatever order of life he may have entered, andwhether he wear braided hair, a top knot only, or be shaven, he isliberated." "This discriminative wisdom releases forever fromworldly bondage."28 "The virtuous is born again in heaven, thewicked is born again in hell; the fool wanders in error, the wiseman is set free." "By ignorance is bondage, by knowledge isdeliverance." "When Nature finds that soul has discovered that itis to her the distress of migration is owing, she is put to shameby the detection, and will suffer herself to be seen no more."29"Through knowledge the sage is absorbed into Supreme Spirit."30"The Supreme Spirit attracts to itself him who meditates upon it,as the loadstone attracts the iron."31 "He who seeks to obtain aknowledge of the Soul is gifted with it, the Soul rendering itselfconspicuous to him." "Man, having known that Nature which iswithout a beginning or an end, is delivered from the grasp ofdeath." "Souls are absorbed in the Supreme Soul as the reflectionof the sun in water returns to him on the removal of the water."32
The thought underlying the last statement is that there is onlyone Soul, every individual consciousness being but an illusorysemblance, and that the knowledge of this fact constitutes theall coveted emancipation. As one diffusive breath passing throughthe perforations of a flute is distinguished as the several notesof the scale, so the Supreme Spirit is single, though, inconsequence of acts, it seems manifold. As every placid lakeletholds an unreal image of the one real moon sailing above, so eachhuman soul is but a deceptive reflection of the one veritableSoul, or God. It may be worth while to observe that Plotinus, asis well known, taught the doctrine of the absolute identity ofeach soul with the entire and indistinguishable entity of God:
"Though God extends beyond creation's rim, Yet every being holdsthe whole of him."
It belongs to an unextended substance, an immateriality, to beeverywhere by totality, not by portions. If God be omnipresent, hecannot be so dividedly, a part of him here and a part
28 Ibid. pp. 1, 16.
29 Ibid. pp. 48, 142, 174.
30 Vishnu Purana, p. 57.
31 Ibid. p. 651.
32 Rammohun Roy, Translations from the Veda, 2d ed., London, 1832,pp. 69, 39, 10.
of him there; but the whole of him must be in every particle ofmatter, in every point of space, in all infinitude.
The Brahmanic religion is a philosophy; and it keeps anincomparably strong hold on the minds of its devotees. Its mostvital and comprehensive principle is expressed in the followingsentence: "The soul itself is not susceptible of pain, or decay,or death; the site of these things is nature; but nature isunconscious; the consciousness that pain exists is restricted tothe soul, although the soul is not the actual seat of pain." Thisis the reason why every Hindu yearns so deeply to be freed fromthe meshes of nature, why he so anxiously follows the light offaith and penance, or the clew of speculation, through all mazesof mystery. It is that he may at last gaze on the central TRUTH,and through that sight seize the fruition of the supreme andeternal good of man in the unity of his selfhood with theInfinite, and so be born no more and experience no more trouble.It is very striking to contrast with this profound and gorgeousdream of the East, whatever form it assumes, the more practicaland definite thought of the West, as expressed in these lines ofTennyson's "In Memoriam:"
"That each, who seems a separate whole,
Should move his rounds, and, fusing all
The skirts of self again, should fall
Remerging in the general Soul,
Is faith as vague as all unsweet:
Eternal form shall still divide
The eternal soul from all beside,
And I shall know him when we meet."
But is it not still more significant to notice that, in the lineswhich immediately succeed, the love inspired and deep musinggenius of the English thinker can find ultimate repose only byrecurring to the very faith of the Hindu theosophist?
"And we shall sit at endless feast,
Enjoying each the other's good:
What vaster dream can hit the mood
Of Love on earth! He seeks at least
Upon the last and sharpest height,
Before the spirits fade away,
Some landing place, to clasp and say,
Farewell! We lose ourselves in light!"
We turn now to the Buddhist doctrine of a future life asdistinguished from the Brahmanic. The "Four Sublime Truths" ofBuddhism, as they are called, are these: first, that there issorrow; secondly, that every living person necessarily feels it;thirdly, that it is desirable to be freed from it; fourthly, thatthe only deliverance from it is by that pure knowledge whichdestroys all cleaving to existence. A Buddha is a being who, inconsequence of having reached the Buddhaship, which implies thepossession of infinite goodness, infinite power, and infinitewisdom, is able to teach men that true knowledge which securesemancipation.
The Buddhaship that is, the possession of Supreme Godhead is opento every one, though few ever acquire it. Most wonderful andtremendous is the process of its attainment. Upon a time, somebeing, perhaps then incarnate as a mosquito alighting on a muddyleaf in some swamp, pauses for a while to muse. Looking up throughinfinite stellar systems, with hungry love and boundless ambition,to the throne and sceptre of absolute immensity, he vows withinhimself, "I will become a Buddha." The total influences of hispast, the forces of destiny, conspiring with his purpose,omnipotence is in that resolution. Nothing shall ever turn himaside from it. He might soon acquire for himself deliverance fromthe dreadful vortex of births; but, determined to achieve thepower of delivering others from their miseries as sentient beings,he voluntarily throws himself into the stream of successiveexistences, and with divine patience and fortitude undergoes everything.
From that moment, no matter in what form he is successively born,whether as a disgusting bug, a white elephant, a monarch, or agod, he is a Bodhisat, that is, a candidate pressing towards theBuddhaship. He at once begins practising the ten primary virtues,called paramitas, necessary for the securing of his aim. Theperiod required for the full exercise of one of these virtues is abhumi. Its duration is thus illustrated. Were a Bodhisat once in athousand births to shed a single drop of blood, he would in thespace of a bhumi shed more blood than there is water in a thousandoceans. On account of his merit he might always be born amidst thepleasures of the heavens; but since he could there make noprogress towards his goal, he prefers being born in the world ofmen. During his gradual advance, there is no good he does notperform, no hardship he does not undertake, no evil he does notwillingly suffer; and all for the benefit of others, to obtain themeans of emancipating those whom he sees fastened by ignorance inthe afflictive circle of acts. Wherever born, acting, orsuffering, his eye is still turned towards that EMPTY THRONE, atthe apex of the universe, from which the last Buddha has vaultedinto Nirwana. The Buddhists have many scriptures, especially one,called the "Book of the Five Hundred and Fifty Births," detailingthe marvellous adventures of the Bodhisat during his numeroustransmigrations, wherein he exhibits for each species of being towhich he belongs a model character and life.
At length the momentous day dawns when the unweariable Bodhisatenters on his well earned Buddhaship. From that time, during therest of his life, he goes about preaching discourses, teachingevery prepared creature he meets the method of securing eternaldeliverance. Leaving behind in these discourses a body of wisdomsufficient to guide to salvation all who will give attentive earand heart, the Buddha then his sublime work of disinterested lovebeing completed receives the fruition of his toil, the superessential prize of the universe, the Infinite Good. In a word, hedies, and enters Nirwana. There is no more evil of any sort forhim at all forever. The final fading echo of sorrow has ceased inthe silence of perfect blessedness; the last undulation of thewave of change has rolled upon the shore of immutability.
The only historic Buddha is Sakya Muni, or Gotama, who was born atKapila about six centuries before Christ. His teachings containmany principles in common with those of the Brahmans. But herevolted against their insufferable conceit and cruelty. Heprotested against their claim that no one could obtainemancipation until after being born as a Brahman and passingthrough the various rites and degrees of their order. In theface of the most powerful and arrogant priesthood in the world,he preached the perfect equality of all mankind, and the consequentabolition of castes. Whoever acquires a total detachment ofaffection from all existence is thereby released from birth andmisery; and the means of acquiring that detachment are freelyoffered to all in his doctrine.
Thus did Gotama preach. He took the monopoly of religion out of thehands of a caste, and proclaimed emancipation to every creaturethat breathes. He established his system in the valley of theGanges near the middle of the sixth century before Christ. It soonoverran the whole country, and held sway until about eight hundredyears after Christ, when an awful persecution and slaughter on thepart of the uprising Brahmans drove it out of the land with swordand fire. "The colossal figure which for fourteen centuries hadbestridden the Indian continent vanished suddenly, like a rainbowat sunset."33
Gotama's philosophy, in its ontological profundity, is of asubtlety and vastness that would rack the brain of a Fichte or aSchelling; but, popularly stated, so far as our present purposedemands, it is this. Existence is the one all inclusive evil;cessation of existence, or Nirwana, is the infinite good. Thecause of existence is ignorance, which leads one to cleave toexisting objects; and this cleaving leads to reproduction. If onewould escape from the chain of existence, he must destroy thecause of his confinement in it, that is, evil desire, or thecleaving to existing objects. The method of salvation in Gotama'ssystem is to vanquish and annihilate all desire for existingthings. How is this to be done? By acquiring an intense perceptionof the miseries of existence, on the one hand, and an intenseperception, on the other hand, of the contrasted desirableness ofthe state of emancipation, or Nirwana. Accordingly, the discoursesof Gotama, and the sacred books of the Buddhists, are filled withvivid accounts of every thing disgusting and horrible connectedwith existence, and with vivid descriptions, consciously falteringwith inadequacy, of every thing supremely fascinating inconnection with Nirwana. "The three reflections on the impermanency,suffering, and unreality of the body are three gates leading tothe city of Nirwana." The constant claim is, that whosoever byadequate moral discipline and philosophical contemplation attainsto a certain degree of wisdom, a certain degree of intellectualinsight, instead of any longer cleaving to existence, will shudderat the thought of it, and, instead of shrinking from death, willbe ravished with unfathomable ecstasy by the prospect of Nirwana.Then, when he dies, he is free from all liability to a return.
When Gotama, early in life, had accidentally seen in succession awretchedly decrepit old man, a loathsomely diseased man, and adecomposing dead man, then the three worlds of passion, matter,and spirit seemed to him like a house on fire, and he longed to beextricated from the dizzy whirl of existence, and to reach thestill haven of Nirwana. Finding ere long that he had now, as thereward of his incalculable endurances through untold aons past,become Buddha, he said to himself, "You have borne the misery ofthe whole round of transmigrations, and have arrived at infinitewisdom, which is the highway to Nirwana, the
33 Major Cunningham, Bbilsa Topes, or Buddhist Monuments ofCentral India, p. 168.
city of peace. On that road you are the guide of all beings. Beginyour work and pursue it with fidelity." From that time until theday of his death he preached "the three laws of mortality, misery,and mutability." Every morning he looked through the world to seewho should be caught that day in the net of truth, and took hismeasures accordingly to preach in the hearing of men the truths bywhich alone they could climb into Nirwana. When he was expiring,invisible gods, with huge and splendid bodies, came and stood, asthick as they could be packed, for a hundred and twenty milesaround the banyan tree under which he awaited Nirwana, to gaze onhim who had broken the circle of transmigration.34
The system of Gotama distinguishes seven grades of being: sixsubject to repeated death and birth; one the condition of therahats and the Buddhaship exempt therefrom. "Who wins this hasreached the shore of the stormy ocean of vicissitudes, and is insafety forever." Baur says, "The aim of Buddhism is that all mayobtain unity with the original empty Space, so as to unpeople theworlds."35 This end it seeks by purification from all modes ofcleaving to existing objects, and by contemplative discrimination,but never by the fanatical and austere methods of Brahmanism.Edward Upham, in his History of Buddhism, declares this earth tobe the only ford to Nirwana. Others also make the samerepresentation:
"For all that live and breathe have once been men, And insuccession will be such again."
But the Buddhist authors do not always adhere to this statement.We sometimes read of men's entering the paths to Nirwana in someof the heavens, likewise of their entering the final fruitionthrough a decease in a dewa loka. Still, it is the common viewthat emancipation from all existence can be secured only by ahuman being on earth. The last birth must be in that form. Theemblem of Buddha, engraved on most of his monuments, is a wheel,denoting that he has finished and escaped from the circle ofexistences. Henceforth he is named Tathagata, he who has gone.
Let us notice a little more minutely what the Buddhists say ofNirwana; for herein to them hides all the power of theirphilosophy and lies the absorbing charm of their religion.
"The state that is peaceful, free from body, from passion, andfrom fear, where birth or death is not, that is Nirwana." "Nirwanaputs an end to coming and going, and there is no other happiness.""It is a calm wherein no wind blows." "There is no difference inNirwana." "It is the annihilation of all the principles ofexistence." "Nirwana is the completion and opposite shore ofexistence, free from decay, tranquil, knowing no restraint, and ofgreat blessedness." "Nirwana is unmixed satisfaction, entirelyfree from sorrow." "The wind cannot be squeezed in the hand, norcan its color be told. Yet the wind is. Even so Nirwana is, butits properties cannot be told." "Nirwana, like space, iscauseless, does not live nor die, and has no locality. It is theabode of those liberated from existence." "Nirwana is not, exceptto the being who attains it."36
34 Life of Gotama in Journal of the American Oriental Society,vol. iii.
35 Symbolik and Mythologie, th. ii. abth. 2, s. 407.
36 For these quotations, and others similar, see Hardy's valuablework, "Eastern Monachism," chap. xxii., on "Nirwana, its Paths andFruition."
Some scholars maintain that the Buddhist Nirwana is nothing butthe atheistic Annihilation. The subject is confessedly a mostdifficult one. But it seems to us that the opinion just stated isthe very antithesis of the true interpretation of Nirwana. In thefirst place, it should be remembered that there are various sectsof Buddhists. Now, the word Nirwana may be used in differentsenses by different schools.37 A few persons a small party,represented perhaps by able writers may believe in annihilation inour sense of the term, just as has happened in Christendom, whilethe common doctrine of the people is the opposite of that. In thesecond place, with the Oriental horror of individuated existence,and a highly poetical style of writing, nothing could be morenatural, in depicting their ideas of the most desirable state ofbeing, than that they should carry their metaphors expressive ofrepose, freedom from action and emotion, to a pitch conveying toour cold and literal thought the conceptions of blankunconsciousness and absolute nothingness.
Colebrooke says, "Nirwana is not annihilation, but unceasingapathy. The notion of it as a happy state seems derived from theexperience of ecstasies; or else the pleasant, refreshed feelingwith which one wakes from profound repose is referred to theperiod of actual sleep."38 A Buddhist author speculates thus:"That the soul feels not during profound trance, is not for wantof sensibility, but for want of sensible objects." Wilson,Hodgson, and Vans Kennedy three able thinkers, as well asscholars, in this field agree that Nirwana is not annihilation aswe understand that word. Mr. Hodgson believes that the Buddhistsexpect to be "conscious in Nirwana of the eternal bliss of rest,as they are in this world of the ceaseless pain of activity."Forbes also argues against the nihilistic explanation of theBuddhist doctrine of futurity, and says he is compelled toconclude that Nirwana denotes imperishable being in a blissfulquietude.39 Many additional authorities in favor of this viewmight be adduced, enough to balance, at least, the names on theother side. Koeppen, in his very fresh, vigorous, and lucid work,just published, entitled "The Religion of Buddha, and its Origin,"says, "Nirwana is the blessed Nothing. Buddhism is the Gospel ofAnnihilation." But he forgets that the motto on the title page ofhis volume is the following sentence quoted from Sakya Munihimself: "To those who know the concatenation of causes andeffects, there is neither being nor nothing." To them Nirwana is.Considering it, then, as an open question, unsettled by anyauthoritative assertion, we will weigh the probabilities of thecase.
No definition of Nirwana is more frequent than the one given bythe Kalpa Sutra,40 namely, "cessation from action and freedom fromdesire." But this, like many of the other representations, such,for instance, as the exclusion of succession, very plainly is nota denial of all being, but only of our present modes ofexperience. The dying Gotama is said to have "passed through theseveral states, one after another, until he arrived at the statewhere there is no pain. He then continued to enter the otherhigher states, and from the highest entered Nirwana." Can literalannihilation, the naked emptiness of nonentity, be better than
37 Burnouf, Introduction a l'Histoire du Buddhisme Indien,Appendice No. I., Du mot Nirvana.
38 Colebrooke, Essays, vol. i. p. 353.
39 Eleven Years in Ceylon, vol. ii. chap. ix.
40 Tanslation by Dr. Stevenson, p. 23.
the highest state of being? It can be so only when we view Nothingon the positive side as identical with All, make annihilatingdeprivation equivalent to universal bestowment, regard negation asaffirmation, and, in the last synthesis of contradictions, see theabysmal Vacuum as a Plenum of fruition. As Oken says, "The idealzero is absolute unity; not a singularity, as the number one, butan indivisibility, a numberlessness, a homogeneity, atranslucency, a pure identity. It is neither great nor small,quiescent nor moved; but it is, and it is not, all this."41
Furthermore, if some of the Buddhist representations would lead usto believe that Nirwana is utter nothingness, others apparentlyimply the opposite. "The discourses of Buddha are a charm to curethe poison of evil desire; a succession of fruit bearing treesplaced here and there to enable the traveller to cross the desertof existence; a power by which every sorrow may be appeased; adoor of entrance to the eternal city of Nirwana." "The mind of therahat" (one who has obtained assurance of emancipation and is onlywaiting for it to arrive) "knows no disturbance, because it isfilled with the pleasure of Nirwana." "The sight of Nirwanabestows perfect happiness." "The rahat is emancipated fromexistence in Nirwana, as the lotus is separated from the mud outof which it springs." "Fire may be produced by rubbing togethertwo sticks, though previously it had no locality: it is the samewith Nirawna." "Nirwana is free from danger, peaceful, refreshing,happy. When a man who has been broiled before a huge fire isreleased, and goes quickly into some open space, he feels the mostagreeable sensation. All the evils of existence are that fire, andNirwana is that open space." These passages indicate the cessationin Nirwana of all sufferings, perhaps of all present modes ofexistence, but not the total end of being. It may be said thatthese are but figurative expressions. The reply is, so are thecontrasted statements metaphors, and it is probable that theexpressions which denote the survival of pure being in Nirwana arecloser approximations to the intent of their authors than thosewhich hint at an unconscious vacancy. If Nirwana in its originalmeaning was an utter and infinite blank, then, "out of that veryNothing," as Max Muller says, "human nature made a new paradise."
There is a scheme of doctrine held by some Buddhist philosopherswhich may be thus stated. There are five constituent elements ofsentient existence. They are called khandas, and are as follows:the organized body, sensation, perception, discrimination, andconsciousness. Death is the dissolution and entire destruction ofthese khandas, and apart from them there is no synthetical unit,soul, or personality. Yet in a certain sense death is not theabsolute annihilation of a human existence, because it leaves apotentiality inherent in that existence. There is no identical egoto survive and be born again; but karma that is, the sum of aman's action, his entire merit and demerit produces at his death anew being, and so on in continued series until Nirwana isattained. Thus the succession of being is kept up with transmittedresponsibility, as a flame is transferred from one wick toanother. It is evident enough, as is justly claimed by Hardy andothers, that the limitation of existence to the five khandas,excluding the idea of any independent individuality, makes death
41 Elements of Physiophilosophy, Tulk's trans. p. 9.
annihilation, and renders the very conception of a future life forthose now living an absurdity. But we are convinced that this viewis the speculative peculiarity of a sect, and by no means thecommon belief of the Buddhist populace or the teaching of Gotamahimself. This appears at the outset from the fact that Gotama isrepresented as having lived through millions of existences, indifferent states and worlds, with preserved identity and memory.The history of his concatenated advance towards the Buddhaship isthe supporting basis and the saturating spirit of documentaryBuddhism. And the same idea pervades the whole range of narrativesrelating to the repeated births and deaths of the innumerableBuddhist heroes and saints who, after so many residences on earth,in the hells, in the dewalokas, have at last reached emancipation.They recollect their adventures; they recount copious portions oftheir experience stretching through many lives.
Again: the arguments cited from Buddha seem aimed to prove, notthat there is absolutely no self in man, but that the five khandasare not the self, that the real self is something distinct fromall that is exposed to misery and change, something deep,wondrous, divine, infinite. For instance, the report of a debateon this subject between Buddha and Sachaka closes with thesewords: "Thus was Sachaka forced to confess that the five khandasare impermanent, connected with sorrow, unreal, not the self.42These terms appear to imply the reality of a self, only that it isnot to be confounded with the apprehensible elements of existence.Besides, the attainment of Nirwana is held up as a prize to belaboriously sought by personal effort. To secure it is a positivetriumph quite distinct from the fated dissolution of the khandasin death. Now, if there be in man no personal entity, what is itthat with so much joy attains Nirwana? The genuine Buddhistnotion, as seems most probable, is that the conscious essence ofthe rahat, when the exterior elements of existence fall fromaround him, passes by a transcendent climax and discrete leapbeyond the outermost limits of appreciable being, and becomes thatINFINITE which knows no changes and is susceptible of nodefinitions. In the Ka gyur collection of Tibetan sacred books,comprising a hundred volumes, and now belonging to the Cabinet ofManuscripts in the Royal Library of Paris, there are two volumesexclusively occupied by a treatise on Nirwana. It is a significantfact that the title of these volumes is "Nirwana, or Deliverancefrom Pain." If Nirwana be simply annihilation, why is it not sostated? Why should recourse be had to a phrase partiallydescriptive of one feature, instead of comprehensively announcingor implying the whole case?
Still further: it deserves notice that, according to the unanimousaffirmation of Buddhist authors, if any Buddhist were offered thealternative of an existence as king of a dewa loka, keeping hispersonality for a hundred million years in the uninterruptedenjoyment of perfect happiness, or of translation into Nirwana, hewould spurn the former as defilement, and would with unutterableavidity choose the latter. We must therefore suppose that byNirwana he understands, not naked destruction, but some mysteriousgood, too vast for logical comprehension, too obscure toOccidental thought to find expression in Occidental language.
42 Hardy, Manual, p. 427.
At the moment when Gotama entered upon the Buddhaship, likea vessel overflowing with honey, his mind overflowed with thenectar of oral instruction, and he uttered these stanzas:
"Through many different births I have run, vainly seeking Thearchitect of the desire resembling house. Painful are repeatedbirths. O house builder! I have seen thee. Again a house thoucanst not build for me. I have broken thy rafters and ridge pole;I have arrived at the extinction of evil desire; My mind is goneto Nirwana."
Hardy, who stoutly maintains that the genuine doctrine of Buddha'sphilosophy is that there is no transmigrating individuality inman, but that the karma creates a new person on the dissolution ofthe former one, confesses the difficulties of this dogma to be sogreat that "it is almost universally repudiated." M. Obrypublished at Paris, in 1856, a small volume entirely devoted tothis subject, under the title of "The Indian Nirwana, or theEnfranchisement of the Soul after Death." His conclusion, after acareful and candid discussion, is, that Nirwana had differentmeanings to the minds of the ancient Aryan priests, the orthodoxBrahmans, the Sankhya Brahmans, and the Buddhists, but had not toany of them, excepting possibly a few atheists, the sense ofstrict annihilation. He thinks that Burnouf and Barthelemy SaintHilaire themselves would have accepted this view if they had paidparticular attention to the definite inquiry, instead of merelytouching upon it in the course of their more comprehensivestudies.
What Spinoza declares in the following sentence "God is one,simple, infinite; his modes of being are diverse, complex,finite" strongly resembles what the Buddhists say of Nirwana andthe contrasted vicissitudes of existence, and may perhaps throwlight on their meaning. The supposition of immaterial, unlimited,absolutely unalterable being the scholastic ens sine qualitateanswers to the descriptions of it much more satisfactorily thanthe idea of unqualified nothingness does. "Nirwana is real; allelse is phenomenal." The Sankhyas, who do not hold to thenonentity nor to the annihilation of the soul, but to its eternalidentification with the Infinite One, use nevertheless nearly thesame phrases in describing it that the Buddhists do. For example,they say, "The soul is neither a production nor productive,neither matter nor form"43 The Vishnu Purana says, "The mundaneegg, containing the whole creation, was surrounded by sevenenvelops, water, air, fire, ether, egotism, intelligence, andfinally the indiscrete principle"44 Is not this IndiscretePrinciple of the Brahmans the same as the Nirwana of theBuddhists? The latter explicitly claim that "man is capable ofenlarging his faculties to infinity."
43 Sankhya Karika, pp. 16-18.
44 Vishnu Purana, p. 19.
Nagasena says to the king of Sagal, "Neither does Nirwana existpreviously to its reception, nor is that which was not, broughtinto existence: still, to the being who attains it, there isNirwana." According to this statement, taken in connection withthe hundreds similar to it, Nirwana seems to be a simple mentalperception, most difficult of acquirement, and, when acquired,assimilating the whole conscious being perfectly to itself. TheAsangkrata Sutra, as translated by Mr. Hardy, says, "From thejoyful exclamations of those who have seen Nirwana, its charactermay be known by those who have not made the same attainment." Thesuperficial thinker, carelessly scanning the recorded sayings ofGotama and his expositors in relation to Nirwana, is aware only ofa confused mass of metaphysical hieroglyphs and poeticalmetaphors; but the Buddhist sages avow that whoso, by concentratedstudy and training of his faculties, pursues the inquiry withadequate perseverance, will at last elicit and behold the realmeaning of Nirwana, the achieved insight and revelation formingthe widest horizon of rapturous truth ever contemplated by thehuman mind. The memorable remark of Sir William Hamilton, that"capacity of thought is not to be constituted into the measure ofexistence," should show the error of those who so unjustifiablyaffirm that, since Nirwana is said to be neither corporeal norincorporeal, nor at all describable, it is therefore absolutelynothing. A like remark is also to be addressed to those who drawthe same unwarrantable conclusion of the nothingness of Nirwanafrom the fact that it has no locality, or from the fact that it issometimes said to exclude consciousness. Plato, in the Timaus,stigmatizes as a vulgar error the notion that what is not in anyplace is a nonentity. Many a weighty philosopher has followed himin this opinion. The denial of place is by no means necessarilythe denial of being. So, too, with consciousness. It isconceivable that there is a being superior to all the modes ofconsciousness now known to us. We are, indeed, unable to definethis, yet it may be. The profoundest analysis shows thatconsciousness consists of co ordinated changes.45 "Consciousnessis a succession of changes combined and arranged in special ways."Now, in contrast to the Occidental thinker, who covets alternationbecause in his cold climate action is the means of enjoyment, theHindu, in the languid East, where repose is the condition ofenjoyment, conceives the highest blessedness to consist inexemption from every disturbance, in an unruffled unity excludingall changes. Therefore, while in some of its forms his dream ofNirwana admits not consciousness, still, it is not inconsistentwith a homogeneous state of being, which he, in his metaphysicaland theosophie soarings, apprehends as the grandest and mostecstatic of all.
The etymological force of the word Nirwana is extinction, as whenthe sun has set, a fire has burned out, or a lamp is extinguished.The fair laws of interpretation do not compel us, in cases likethis, to receive the severest literal significance of a word asconveying the meaning which a popular doctrine holds in the mindsof its believers. There is almost always looseness, vagueness,metaphor, accommodation. But take the term before us in itsstrictest sense, and mark the result. When a fire is extinguished,it is obvious that, while the flame has disappeared, the substanceof the flame, whatever it was, has not ceased to be, has not been
45 Herbert Spencer, Principles of Psychology, ch. xxv.
actually annihilated. It has only ceased to be in a certainvisible form in which it existed before; but it still survivesunder altered conditions. Now, to compare the putting out of alamp to the death of a man, extinction is not actual destruction,but a transition of the flame into another state of being. Thatother state, in the case of the soul, is Nirwana.
There is a final consideration, possibly of some worth in dealingwith this obscure theme. We will approach it through a preliminaryquery and quotation. That nothing can extend beyond its limits isan identical proposition. How vast, then, must be the soul of manin form or in power!
"If souls be substances corporeal, Be they as big just as the bodyis? Or shoot they out to the height ethereal? Doth it not seem theimpression of a seal Can be no larger than the wax? The soul withthat vast latitude must move Which measures the objects that itdoth descry. So must it be upstretch'd unto the sky And rubagainst the stars."
Cousin asserts that man is conscious of infinity, that "theunconditional, the absolute, the infinite, is immediately known inconsciousness by difference, plurality, and relation." Now, doesnot the consciousness of infinity imply the infinity ofconsciousness? If not, we are compelled into the contradictionthat a certain entity or force reaches outside of its outermostboundary. The Buddhist ideal is not self annihilation, but selfuniversalization. It is not the absorption of a drop into the sea,but the dilatation of a drop to the sea. Each drop swells to thewhole ocean, each soul becomes the Boundless One, each rahat isidentified with the total Nirwana. The rivers of emancipated menneither disembogue into the ocean of spirit nor evaporate into theabyss of nonentity, but are blended with infinitude as anontological integer. Nirwana is unexposed and illimitable space.Buddhism is perfect disinterestedness, absolute self surrender. Itis the gospel of everlasting emancipation for all. It cannot bethat a deliberate suicide of soul is the ideal holding the deepestdesire of four hundred millions of people. Nirwana is notnegation, but a pure positive without alternation or foil.
Some light may be thrown on the subject by contemplating thesuccessive states through which the dying Gotama passed. MaxMuller describes them, after the Buddhist documents, thus: "Heenters into the first stage of meditation when he feels freedomfrom sin, acquires a knowledge of the nature of all things, andhas no desire except that of Nirvana. But he still feels pleasure;he even uses his reasoning and discriminating powers. The use ofthese powers ceases in the second stage of meditation, whennothing remains but a desire after Nirvana, and a general feelingof satisfaction arising from his intellectual perfection. Thatsatisfaction, also, is extinguished in the third stage.Indifference succeeds; yet there is still self consciousness, anda certain amount of physical pleasure. In the fourth stage theselast remnants are destroyed; memory fades away, all pleasure andpain are gone, and the doors of Nirvana now open before him. Wemust soar still higher, and, though we may feel giddy
and disgusted,46 we must sit out the tragedy till the curtainfalls. After the four stages of meditation are passed, the Buddha(and every being is to become a Buddha) enters first into theinfinity of space, then into the infinity of intelligence, andthence he passes into the third region, the realm of nothing. Buteven here there is no rest. There is still something left, theidea of the nothing in which he rejoices. That also must bedestroyed; and it is destroyed in the fourth and last region,where there is not even the idea of a nothing left, and wherethere is complete rest, undisturbed by nothing, or what is notnothing."47 Analyze away all particulars until you reach anuncolored boundlessness of pure immateriality, free from everypredicament; and that is Nirwana. This is one possible way ofconceiving the fate of the soul; and the speculative mind mustconceive it in every possible way. However closely the resultresembles the vulgar notion of annihilation, the difference inmethod of approach and the difference to the contemplator'sfeeling are immense. The Buddhist apprehends Nirwana as infinitudein absolute and eternal equilibrium: the atheist finds Nirwana ina coffin. That is thought of with rapture, this, with horror.
It should be noticed, before we close this chapter, that some ofthe Hindus give a spiritual interpretation to all the grossphysical details of their so highly colored and extravagantmythology. One of their sacred books says, "Pleasure and pain arestates of the mind. Heaven is that which delights the mind, hellis that which gives it pain. Hence vice is called hell, and virtueis called heaven." Another author says, "The fire of the angrymind produces the fire of hell, and consumes its possessor. Awicked person causes his evil deeds to impinge upon himself, andthat is hell." The various sects of mystics, allied in faith andfeeling to the Sufis, which are quite numerous in the East, agreein a deep metaphorical explanation of the vulgar notionspertaining to Deity, judgment, heaven, and hell.
In conclusion, the most remarkable fact in this whole field ofinquiry is the contrast of the Eastern horror of individuality andlonging for absorption with the Western clinging to personalityand abhorrence of dissolution.48 The true Orientalist, whetherBrahman, Buddhist, or Sufi, is in love with death. Through thisgate he expects to quit his frail and pitiable consciousness,losing himself, with all evil, to be born anew and find himself,with all good, in God. All sense, passion, care, and grief shallcease with deliverance from the spectral semblances of this falselife. All pure contemplation, perfect repose, unsullied andunrippled joy shall begin with entrance upon the true life beyond.Thus thinking, he feels that death is the avenue to infiniteexpansion, freedom, peace, bliss; and he longs for it with anintensity not dreamed of by more frigid natures. He often compareshimself, in this world aspiring towards another, to an enamoredmoth drawn towards the fire, and he exclaims, with a sigh and athrill,
46 Not disgust, but wonder and awe, fathomless intellectualemotion, at so unparalleled a phenomenon of our miraculous humannature.
47 Buddhism and Buddhist Pilgrims, p. 19.
48 Burnouf, Le Bhagavata Purana, tome i. livre iii. ch. 28:Acquisition de la Delivrance, ch. 31.
Marche de l'ame individuelle. "Highest nature wills the capture;'Light to light!' the instinct cries; And in agonizing rapturefalls the moth, and bravely dies. Think not what thou art,Believer; think but what thou mayst become For the World is thydeceiver, and the Light thy only home." 49
The Western mind approaches the subject of death negatively,stripping off the attributes of finite being; the Eastern mind,positively, putting on the attributes of infinite being. Negativeacts, denying function, are antipathetic, and lower the sense oflife; positive acts, affirming function, are sympathetic, andraise the sense of life. Therefore the end to which those look,annihilation, is dreaded; that to which these look, Nirwana, isdesired. To become nothing, is measureless horror; to become all,is boundless ecstasy.
49 Milnes, Palm Leaves.
CHAPTER VII.
PERSIAN DOCTRINE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
THE name of Zoroaster is connected, either as author or asreviser, with that remarkable system of rites and doctrines whichconstituted the religion of the ancient Iranians, and which yetfinds adherents in the Ghebers of Persia and the Parsees of India.Pliny, following the affirmation of Aristotle, asserts that heflourished six thousand years before Plato. Moyle, Gibbon, Volney,Rhode, concur in throwing him back into this vast antiquity.Foucher, Holty, Heeren, Tychsen, Guizot, assign his birth to thebeginning of the seventh century before Christ. Hyde, Prideaux, DuPerron, Kleuker, Herder, Klaproth, and others, bring him down toabout a hundred and fifty years later. Meanwhile, several weightynames press the scale in favor of the hypothesis of two or threeZoroasters, living at separate epochs. So the learned men differ,and the genuine date in question cannot, at present at least, bedecided. It is comparatively certain that, if he was the author ofthe work attributed to him, he must have flourished as early asthe sixth century before Christ. The probabilities seem, upon thewhole, that he lived four or five centuries earlier than that,even, "in the pre historic time," as Spiegel says. However, thesettlement of the era of Zoroaster is not a necessary condition ofdiscovering the era when the religion commonly traced to him wasin full prevalence as the established faith of the Persian empire.The latter may be conclusively fixed without clearing up theformer. And it is known, without disputation, that that religionwhether it was primarily Persian, Median, Assyrian, or Chaldeanwas flourishing at Babylon in the maturity of its power in thetime of the Hebrew prophets Ezekiel, Jeremiah, and Daniel,twenty five hundred years ago.
The celebrated work on the religion of the ancient Medes andPersians by Dr. Hyde, published in 1700, must be followed withmuch caution and be taken with many qualifications. The author wasbiassed by unsound theories of the relation of the Hebrew theologyto the Persian, and was, of course, ignorant of the mostauthoritative ancient documents afterwards brought to light. Hiswork, therefore, though learned and valuable, considering the timewhen it was written, is vitiated by numerous mistakes and defects.In 1762, Anquetil du Perron, returning to France from protractedjourneying and abode in the East, brought home, among the fruitsof his researches, manuscripts purporting to be parts of the oldPersian Bible composed or collected by Zoroaster. It was writtenin a language hitherto unknown to European scholars, one of theprimitive dialects of Persia. This work, of which he soonpublished a French version at Paris was entitled by him the "ZendAvesta." It confirmed all that was previously known of theZoroastrian religion, and, by its allusions, statements, andimplications, threw great additional light upon the subject.
A furious controversy, stimulated by personal rivalries andnational jealousy, immediately arose. Du Perron was denounced asan impostor or an ignoramus, and his publication stigmatized as awretched forgery of his own, or a gross imposition palmed upon himby some lying pundit. Sir William Jones and John Richardson, bothdistinguished English Orientalists, and Meiners in Germany, werethe chief impugners of the document in hand. Richardsonobstinately went beyond his data, and did not live long enough toretract; but Sir William, upon an increase of information, changedhis views, and regretted his first inconsiderate zeal and somewhatmistaken championship. The ablest defender of Du Perron wasKleuker, who translated the whole work from French into German,adding many corrections, new arguments, and researches of greatability. His work was printed at Riga, in seven quarto volumes,from 1777 to 1783. The progress and results of the wholediscussion are well enough indicated in the various papers whichthe subject drew forth in the volumes of the "Asiatic Researches"and the numbers of the "Asiatic Journal." The conclusion was that,while Du Perron had indeed betrayed partial ignorance and crudity,and had committed some glaring errors, there was not the leastground for doubt that his asserted discovery was in everyessential what it claimed to be. It is a sort of litany; acollection of prayers and of sacred dialogues held between Ormuzdand Zoroaster, from which the Persian system of theology may beinferred and constructed with some approach to completeness.
The assailants of the genuineness of the "Zend Avesta" wereeffectually silenced when, some thirty years later, ProfessorRask, a well known Danish linguist, during his inquiries in theEast, found other copies of it, and gave to the world suchinformation and proofs as could not be suspected. He, discoveringthe close affinities of the Zend with Sanscrit, led the way to themost brilliant triumph yet achieved by comparative philology.Portions of the work in the original character were published in1829, under the supervision of Burnouf at Paris and of Olshausenat Hamburg. The question of the genuineness of the dialectexhibited in these specimens, once so freely mooted, has beendiscussed, and definitively settled in the affirmative, by severaleminent scholars, among whom may be mentioned Bopp, whose"Comparative Grammar of the Sanscrit, Zend,Greek, Latin, Lithuanian, Gothic, and German Languages" is anastonishing monument of erudition and toil. It is the convictionof Major Rawlinson that the Zoroastrian books of the Parsees wereimported to Bombay from Persia in their present state in theseventh century of our era, but that they were written at leasttwelve centuries earlier.1
But the two scholars whose opinions upon any subject within thisdepartment of learning are now the most authoritative areProfessor Spiegel of Erlangen, and Professor Westergaard ofCopenhagen. Their investigations, still in progress, made with allthe aids furnished by their predecessors, and also with theadvantage of newly discovered materials and processes, are ofcourse to be relied on in preference to the earlier, and in somerespects necessarily cruder, researches. It appears that theproper Zoroastrian Scriptures namely, the Yasna, the Vispered, theVendidad, the Yashts, the Nyaish, the Afrigans, the Gahs, theSirozah, and a few other fragments were composed in an ancientIranian dialect, which may as Professor
W. D. Whitney suggests in his very lucid and able article in vol.v. of the Journal of the American Oriental Society most fitly becalled the Avestan dialect. (No other book in this dialect, webelieve, is known to be in existence now.) It is difficult to saywhen these
1 Wilson, Parsi Religion Unfolded, p. 405.
documents were written; but in view of all the relevantinformation now possessed, including that drawn from thedeciphered cuneiform inscriptions, the most probable date is abouta thousand years before Christ. Professor R. Roth of Tubingenwhose authority herein as an original investigator is perhapshardly second to any other man's says the books of the Zoroastrianfaith were written a considerable time before the rise of theAchamenian dynasty. He is convinced that the whole substantialcontents of the Zend Avesta are many centuries older than theChristian era.2 Professor Muller of Oxford also holds the sameopinion.3 And even those who set the date of the literary record afew centuries later, as Spiegel does, freely admit the greatantiquity of the doctrines and usages then first committed tomanuscript. In the fourth century before Christ, Alexander ofMacedon overran the Persian empire. With the new rule newinfluences prevailed, and the old national faith and ritual fellinto decay and neglect. Early in the third century of theChristian era, Ardeshir overthrew the Parthian dominion in Persiaand established the Sassanian dynasty. One of his first acts was,stimulated doubtless by the surviving Magi and the old piety ofthe people, to reinaugurate the ancient religion. A fresh zeal ofloyalty broke out, and all the prestige and vigor of the longsuppressed worship were restored. The Zoroastrian Scriptures werenow sought for, whether in manuscript or in the memories of thepriests. It would seem that only remnants were found. Thecollection, such as it was, was in the Avestan dialect, which hadgrown partially obsolete and unintelligible. The authoritiesaccordingly had a translation of it made in the speech of thetime, Pehlevi. This translation most of which has reached uswritten in with the original, sentence after sentence forms thereal Zend language, often confounded by the literary public withAvestan. The translation of the Avestan books, probably made underthese circumstances as early as A. D. 350, is called theHuzvaresch. In regard to some of these particulars there arequestions still under investigation, but upon which it is notworth our while to pause here. For example, Spiegel thinks theZend identical with the Pehlevi of the fourth century; Westergaardbelieves it entirely distinct from Pehlevi, and in truth only adisguised mode of writing Parsee, the oldest form of the modernPersian language.
The source from which the fullest and clearest knowledge of theZoroastrian faith, as it is now held by the Parsees, is drawn, isthe Desatir and the Bundehesh. The former work is the uniquevestige of an extinct dialect called the Mahabadian, accompaniedby a Persian translation and commentary. It is impossible toascertain the century when the Mahabadian text was written; butthe translation into Persian was, most probably, made in theseventh century of the Christian era.4 Spiegel, in 1847, saysthere can be no doubt of the spuriousness of the Desatir; but hegives no reasons for the statement, and we do not know that it isbased on any other arguments than those which, advanced by DeSacy, were refuted by Von Hammer. The Bundehesh is in the Pehlevior Zend language, and was written, it is
2 Ueber die Heiligen Schriften der Arier. Jahrbucher fur DeutscheTheologie, 1857, band ii. ss. 146, 147.
3 Essay on the Veda and the Zend Avesta, p. 24. See also Bunsen'sChristianity and Mankind, vol. iii. p. 114.
4 Baron von Hammer, in Heidelberger Jabrbucher der Literatur,1823. Id. in Journal Asiatique, Juillet, 1833. Dabistan,Preliminary Discourse, pp. xix. lxv.
thought, about the seventh century, but was derived, it isclaimed, from a more ancient work.5 The book entitled "Revelationsof Ardai Viraf" exists in Pehlevi probably of the fourth century,according to Troyer,6 and is believed to have been originallywritten in the Avestan tongue, though this is extremely doubtful.It gives a detailed narrative of the scenery of heaven and hell,as seen by Ardai Viraf during a visit of a week which his soulleaving his body for that length of time paid to those regions.Many later and enlarged versions of this have appeared. One ofthem, dating from the sixteenth century, was translated intoEnglish by T. A. Pope and published in 1816. Sanscrit translationsof several of the before named writings are also in existence. Andseveral other comparatively recent works, scarcely needing mentionhere, although considered as somewhat authoritative by the modernfollowers of Zoroaster, are to be found in Guzeratee, the presentdialect of the Indian Parsees. A full exposition of theZoroastrian religion, with satisfactory proofs of its antiquityand documentary genuineness, is presented in the PreliminaryDiscourse and Notes to the Dabistan. This curious and entertainingwork, a fund of strange and valuable lore, is an historicocritical view of the principal religions of the world, especiallyof the Oriental sects, schools, and manners. It was composed inPersian, apparently by Mohsan Fani, about the year 1645. AnEnglish translation, with elaborate explanatory matter, by DavidShea and Anthony Troyer, was published at London and at Paris in1843.7
In these records there are obscurities, incongruities, and chasms,as might naturally be anticipated, admitting them to be strictlywhat they would pass for. These faults may be accounted for inseveral ways. First, in a rude stage of philosophical culture,incompleteness of theory, inconsistent conceptions in differentparts of a system, are not unusual, but are rather to be expected,and are slow to become troublesome to its adherents. Secondly,distinct contemporary thinkers or sects may give expression totheir various views in literary productions of the same date andpossessing a balanced authority. Or, thirdly, the heterogeneousconceptions in some particulars met with in these scriptures maybe a result of the fact that the collection contains writings ofdistinct ages, when the same problems had been differentlyapproached and had given birth to opposing or divergentspeculations. The later works of course cannot have the authorityof the earlier in deciding questions of ancient belief: they areto be taken rather as commentaries, interpreting and carrying outin detail many points that lie only in obscure hints and allusionsin the primary documents. But it is a significant fact that, inthe generic germs of doctrine and custom, in the essentialoutlines of substance, in rhetorical imagery, in practical morals,the statements of all these books are alike: they only vary insubordinate matters and in degrees of fulness.
The charge has repeatedly been urged that the materials of themore recent of the Parsee Scriptures the Desatir and theBundehesh were drawn from Christian and Mohammedan sources. Noevidence of value for sustaining such assertions has been adduced.Under the circumstances, scarcely any motive for such animposition appears. In view of the whole case,
5 Dabistan, vol. i. p. 226, note.
6 Ibid. p. 185, note.
7 Reviewed in Asiatic Journal, 1844, pp. 582-595.
the reverse supposition is rather to be credited. In the firstplace, we have ample evidence for the existence of the generalZoroastrian system long anterior to the rise of Christianity. Thetestimony of the classic authors to say nothing of the knownantiquity of the language in which the system is preserved isdemonstrative on this point. Secondly, the striking agreement inregard to fundamental doctrines, pervading spirit, and ritualforms between the accounts in the classics and those in theAvestan books, and of both these with the later writings andtraditional practice of the Parsees, furnishes powerfulpresumption that the religion was a connected development,possessing the same essential features from the time of itsnational establishment. Thirdly, we have unquestionable proofsthat, during the period from the Babylonish captivity to theadvent of Christ, the Jews borrowed and adapted a great deal fromthe Persian theology, but no proof that the Persians took anything from the Jewish theology. This is abundantly confessed bysuch scholars as Gesenius, Rosenmuller, Stuart, Lucke, De Wette,Neander; and it will hardly be challenged by any one who hasinvestigated the subject. But the Jewish theology being thusimpregnated with germs from the Persian faith, and being in asense the historic mother of Christian theology, it is far morereasonable, in seeking the origin of dogmas common to Parsees andChristians, to trace them through the Pharisees to Zoroaster, thanto imagine them suddenly foisted upon the former by forgery on thepart of the latter at a late period. Fourthly, it is notoriousthat Mohammed, in forming his religion, made wholesale draughtsupon previously existing faiths, that their adherents might morereadily accept his teachings, finding them largely in unison withtheir own. It is altogether more likely, aside from historicevidence which we possess, that he drew from the tenets andimagery of the Ghebers, than that they, when subdued by his armiesand persecuted by his rule from their native land, introduced newdoctrines from the Koran into the ancestral creed which they sorevered that neither exile nor death could make them abjure it.For, driven by those fierce proselytes, the victorious Arabs, tothe mountains of Kirman and to the Indian coast, they clung withunconquerable tenacity to their religion, still scrupulouslypractising its rites, proudly mindful of the time when everyvillage, from the shore of the Caspian Sea to the outlet of thePersian Gulf, had its splendid fire temple,
"And Iran like a sunflower turn'd Where'er the eye of Mithraburn'd."
We therefore see no reason for believing that important Christianor Mohammedan ideas have been interpolated into the oldZoroastrian religion. The influence has been in the otherdirection. Relying then, though with caution, on what Dr. EdwardRoth says, that "the certainty of our possessing a correctknowledge of the leading ancient doctrines of the Persians is nowbeyond all question," we will try to exhibit so much of the systemas is necessary for appreciating its doctrine of a future life.
In the deep background of the Magian theology looms, in mysteriousobscurity, the belief in an infinite First Principle, ZeruanaAkerana. According to most of the scholars who have investigatedit, the meaning of this term is "Time without Bounds," or absoluteduration. But Bohlen says it signifies the "Untreated Whole;" andSchlegel thinksit denotes the "Indivisible One." The conceptionseems to have been to the people mostly an unapplied abstraction,too vast and remote to become prominent in their speculation orinfluential in their faith. Spiegel, indeed, thinks the conceptionwas derived from Babylon, and added to the system at a laterperiod than the other doctrines. The beginning of vital theology,the source of actual ethics to the Zoroastrians, was in the ideaof the two antagonist powers, Ormuzd and Ahriman, the firstemanations of Zeruana, who divide between them in unresting strifethe empire of the universe. The former is the Principle of Good,the perfection of intelligence, beneficence, and light, the sourceof all reflected excellence. The latter is the Principle of Evil,the contriver of misery and death, the king of darkness, theinstigator of all wrong. With sublime beauty the ancient Persiansaid, "Light is the body of Ormuzd; Darkness is the body ofAhriman." There has been much dispute whether the Persian theologygrew out of the idea of an essential and eternal dualism, or wasbased on the conception of a partial and temporary battle; inother words, whether Ahriman was originally and necessarily evil,or fell from a divine estate.
In the fragmentary documents which have reached us, the wholesubject lies in confusion. It is scarcely possible to unravel thetangled mesh. Sometimes it seems to be taught that Ahriman was atfirst good, an angel of light who, through envy of his greatcompeer, sank from his primal purity, darkened into hatred, andbecame the rancorous enemy of truth and love. At other times heappears to be considered as the pure primordial essence of evil.The various views may have prevailed in different ages or indifferent schools. Upon the whole, however, we hold the opinionthat the real Zoroastrian idea of Ahriman was moral and free, notphysical and fatal. The whole basis of the universe was good; evilwas an after perversion, a foreign interpolation, a battlingmixture. First, the perfect Zeruana was once all in all: Ahriman,as well as Ormuzd, proceeded from him; and the inference that hewas pure would seem to belong to the idea of his origin. Secondly,so far as the account of Satan given in the book of Job perhapsthe earliest appearance of the Persian notion in Jewishliterature warrants any inference or supposition at all, it wouldlead to the image of one who was originally a prince in heaven,and who must have fallen thence to become the builder andpotentate of hell. Thirdly, that matter is not an essential coreof evil, the utter antagonist of spirit, and that Ahriman is notevil by an intrinsic necessity, will appear from the twoconceptions lying at the base and crown of the Persian system:that the creation, as it first came from the hands of Ormuzd, wasperfectly good; and that finally the purified material world shallexist again unstained by a breath of evil, Ahriman himselfbecoming like Ormuzd. He is not, then, aboriginal andindestructible evil in substance. The conflict between Ormuzd andhim is the temporary ethical struggle of light and darkness, notthe internecine ontological war of spirit and matter. Roth says,"Ahriman was originally good: his fall was a determination of hiswill, not an inherent necessity of his nature." 8 Whatever otherconceptions may be found, whatever inconsistencies orcontradictions to this may appear, still, we believe the genuineZoroastrian view was such as we have now stated. The oppositedoctrine arose from the more abstruse lucubrations of a moremodern time, and is Manichaan, not Zoroastrian.
8 Zoroastrische Glaubenslehre, ss. 397, 398.
Ormuzd created a resplendent and happy world. Ahriman instantlymade deformity, impurity, and gloom, in opposition to it. Allbeauty, virtue, harmony, truth, blessedness, were the work of theformer. All ugliness, vice, discord, falsehood, wretchedness,belonged to the latter. They grappled and mixed in a millionhostile shapes. This universal battle is the ground of ethics, theclarion call to marshal out the hostile hosts of good and ill; andall other war is but a result and a symbol of it. The strife thusindicated between a Deity and a Devil, both subordinate to theunmoved ETERNAL, was the Persian solution of the problem of evil,their answer to the staggering question, why pleasure and pain,benevolence and malignity, are so conflictingly mingled in theworks of nature and in the soul of man. In the long struggle thatensued, Ormuzd created multitudes of co operant angels to assailhis foe, stocking the clean empire of Light with celestial alliesof his holy banner, who hang from heaven in great numbers, readyat the prayer of the righteous man to hie to his aid and work hima thousandfold good. Ahriman, likewise, created an equal number ofassistant demons, peopling the filthy domain of Darkness withcounterbalancing swarms of infernal followers of his pirate flag,who lurk at the summit of hell, watching to snatch everyopportunity to ply their vocation of sin and ruin. There are suchhosts of these invisible antagonists sown abroad, and incessantlyactive, that every star is crowded and all space teems with them.Each man has a good and a bad angel, a ferver and a dev, who areendeavoring in every manner to acquire control over his conductand possession of his soul.
The Persians curiously personified the source of organic life inthe world under the emblem of a primeval bull. In this symbolicbeast were packed the seeds and germs of all the creaturesafterwards to people the earth. Ahriman, to ruin the creation ofwhich this animal was the life medium, sought to kill him. He setupon him two of his devs, who are called "adepts of death." Theystung him in the breast, and plagued him until he died of rage.But, as he was dying, from his right shoulder sprang theandrogynal Kaiomorts, who was the stock root of humanity. His bodywas made from fire, air, water, and earth, to which Ormuzd addedan immortal soul, and bathed him with an elixir which rendered himfair and glittering as a youth of fifteen, and would havepreserved him so perennially had it not been for the assaults ofthe Evil One.9 Ahriman, the enemy of all life, determined to slayhim, and at last accomplished his object; but, as Kaiomorts fell,from his seed, through the power of Ormuzd, originated Meschia andMeschiane, male and female, the first human pair, from whom allour race have descended. They would never have died,10 butAhriman, in the guise of a serpent, seduced them, and they sinnedand fell. This account is partly drawn from that later treatise,the Bundehesh, whose mythological cosmogony reminds us of theScandinavian Ymer. But we conceive it to be strictly reliable as arepresentation of the Zoroastrian faith in its essentialdoctrines; for the earlier documents, the Yasna, the Yeshts, andthe Vendidad, contain the same things in obscure and undevelopedexpressions. They, too, make repeated mention of the mysteriousbull, and of Kaiomorts.11 They invariably represent death asresulting
9 Kleuker, Zend Avesta, band i. anhang 1, s. 263.
10 Ibid. band i. s. 27.
11 Yasna, 24th IIa.
from the hostility of Ahriman. The earliest Avestan account of theearthly condition of men describes them as living in a gardenwhich Yima or Jemschid had enclosed at the command of Ormuzd.12During the golden age of his reign they were free from heat andcold, sickness and death. "In the garden which Yima made they leda most beautiful life, and they bore none of the marks whichAhriman has since made upon men." But Ahriman's envy and hatredknew no rest until he and his devs had, by their wiles, brokeninto this paradise, betrayed Yima and his people into falsehood,and so, by introducing corruption into their hearts, put an end totheir glorious earthly immortality. This view is set forth in theopening fargards of the Vendidad; and it has been clearlyillustrated in an elaborate contribution upon the "Old IranianMythology" by Professor Westergaard.13 Death, like all otherevils, was an after effect, thrust into the purely good creationof Ormuzd by the cunning malice of Ahriman. The Vendidad, at itscommencement, recounts the various products of Ormuzd's beneficentpower, and adds, after each particular, "Thereupon Ahriman, who isfull of death, made an opposition to the same."
According to the Zoroastrian modes of thought, what would havebeen the fate of man had Ahriman not existed or not interfered?Plainly, mankind would have lived on forever in innocence and joy.They would have been blessed with all placid delights, exempt fromhate, sickness, pain, and every other ill; and, when the earth wasfull of them, Ormuzd would have taken his sinless subjects to hisown realm of light on high. But when they forsook the true serviceof Ormuzd, falling into deceit and defilement, they becamesubjects of Ahriman; and he would inflict on them, as thecreatures of his hated rival, all the calamities in his power,dissolve the masterly workmanship of their bodies in death, andthen take their souls as prisoners into his own dark abode. "HadMeschia continued to bring meet praises, it would have happenedthat when the time of man, created pure, had come, his soul,created pure and immortal, would immediately have gone to the seatof bliss."14 "Heaven was destined for man upon condition that hewas humble of heart, obedient to the law, and pure in thought,word, and deed." But "by believing the lies of Ahriman they becamesinners, and their souls must remain in his nether kingdom untilthe resurrection of their bodies."15 Ahriman's triumph thusculminates in the death of man and that banishment of thedisembodied soul into hell which takes the place of itsoriginally intended reception into heaven.
The law of Ormuzd, revealed through Zoroaster, furnishes to allwho faithfully observe it in purity of thought, speech, andaction, "when body and soul have separated, attainment of paradisein the next world,"16 while the neglecters of it "will pass intothe dwelling of the devs,"17 "after death will have no part inparadise, but will occupy the place of darkness
12 Die Sage von Dschemschid. Von Professor R. Roth. In Zeitschriftder Deutschen Morgeulandischen Gesellschaft, band iv. ss. 417-431.
13 Weber, Indische Studien, band iii. 8. 411.
14 Yesht LXXXVII. Kleuker, band ii. sect. 211.
15 Bundehesh, ch. xv.
16 Avesta die Heiligen Schriften der Parsen. Von Dr. F. Spiegel,band i. s, 171.
17 Ibid. s. 158.
destined for the wicked."18 The third day after death, the souladvances upon "the way created by Ormuzd for good and bad," to beexamined as to its conduct. The pure soul passes up from thisevanescent world, over the bridge Chinevad, to the world ofOrmuzd, and joins the angels. The sinful soul is bound and ledover the way made for the godless, and finds its place at thebottom of gloomy hell.19 An Avestan fragment 20 and the VirafNameh give the same account, only with more picturesque fulness.On the soaring bridge the soul meets Rashne rast, the angel ofjustice, who tries those that present themselves before him. Ifthe merits prevail, a figure of dazzling substance, radiatingglory and fragrance, advances and accosts the justified soul,saying, "I am thy good angel: I was pure at the first, but thygood deeds have made me purer;" and the happy one is straightwayled to Paradise. But when the vices outweigh the virtues, a darkand frightful image, featured with ugliness and exhaling a noisomesmell, meets the condemned soul, and cries, "I am thy evil spirit:bad myself, thy crimes have made me worse." Then the culpritstaggers on his uncertain foothold, is hurled from the dizzycauseway, and precipitated into the gulf which yawns horriblybelow. A sufficient reason for believing these last details nolate and foreign interpolation, is that the Vendidad itselfcontains all that is essential in them, Garotman, the heaven ofOrmuzd, open to the pure, Dutsakh, the abode of devs, ready forthe wicked, Chinevad, the bridge of ordeal, upon which all mustenter.21
Some authors have claimed that the ancient disciples of Zoroasterbelieved in a purifying, intermediate state for the dead. Passagesstating such a doctrine are found in the Yeshts, Sades, and inlater Parsee works. But whether the translations we now possess ofthese passages are accurate, and whether the passages themselvesare authoritative to establish the ancient prevalence of such abelief, we have not yet the means for deciding. There was a yearlysolemnity, called the "Festival for the Dead," still observed bythe Parsees, held at the season when it was thought that thatportion of the sinful departed who had ended their penance wereraised from Dutsakh to earth, from earth to Garotman. Du Perronsays that this took place only during the last five days of theyear, when the souls of all the deceased sinners who wereundergoing punishment had permission to leave their confinementand visit their relatives; after which, those not yet purifiedwere to return, but those for whom a sufficient atonement had beenmade were to proceed to Paradise. For proof that this doctrine washeld, reference is made to the following passage, with others:"During these five days Ormuzd empties hell. The imprisoned soulsshall be freed from Ahriman's plagues when they pay penance andare ashamed of their sins; and they shall receive a heavenlynature; the meritorious deeds of themselves and of their familiescause this liberation: all the rest must return to Dutsakh."22Rhode thinks this was a part of the old Persian faith, and thesource of
18 Ibid. s. 127.
19 Ibid. ss. 248-252. Vendidad, Fargard XIX.
20 Kleuker, band i. ss. xxxi. xxxv.
21 Spiegel, Vendidad, ss. 207, 229, 233, 250.
22 Kleuker, band ii. s. 173.
the Roman Catholic doctrine of purgatory.23 But, whether so ornot, it is certain that the Zoroastrians regarded the wholeresidence of the departed souls in hell as temporary.
The duration of the present order of the world was fixed at twelvethousand years, divided into four equal epochs. In the first threethousand years, Ormuzd creates and reigns triumphantly over hisempire. Through the next cycle, Ahriman is constructing andcarrying on his hostile works. The third epoch is occupied with adrawn battle between the upper and lower kings and theiradherents. During the fourth period, Ahriman is to be victorious,and a state of things inconceivably dreadful is to prevail. Thebrightness of all clear things will be shrouded, the happiness ofall joyful creatures be destroyed, innocence disappear, religionbe scoffed from the world, and crime, horror, and war be rampant.Famine will spread, pests and plagues stalk over the earth, andshowers of black rain fall. But at last Ormuzd will rise in hismight and put an end to these awful scenes. He will send on eartha savior. Sosiosch, to deliver mankind, to wind up the finalperiod of time, and to bring the arch enemy to judgment. At thesound of the voice of Sosiosch the dead will come forth. Good,bad, indifferent, all alike will rise, each in his order.Kaiomorts, the original single ancestor of men, will be thefirstling. Next, Meschia and Meschiane, the primal parent pair,will appear. And then the whole multitudinous family of mankindwill throng up. The genii of the elements will render up thesacred materials intrusted to them, and rebuild the decomposedbodies. Each soul will recognise, and hasten to reoccupy, its oldtenement of flesh, now renewed, improved, immortalized. Formeracquaintances will then know each other. "Behold, my father! mymother! my brother! my wife! they shall exclaim." 24
In this exposition we have following the guidance of Du Perron,Foucher, Kleuker, J. G. Muller, and other early scholars in thisfield attributed the doctrine of a general and bodily resurrectionof the dead to the ancient Zoroastrians. The subsequent researchesof Burnouf, Roth, and others, have shown that several, at least,of the passages which Anquetil supposed to teach such a doctrinewere erroneously translated by him, and do not really contain it.And recently the ground has been often assumed that the doctrineof the resurrection does not belong to the Avesta, but is a moremodern dogma, derived by the Parsees from the Jews or theChristians, and only forced upon the old text by misinterpretationthrough the Pehlevi version and the Parsee commentary. A questionof so grave importance demands careful examination. In the absenceof that reliable translation of the entire original documents, andthat thorough elaboration of all the extant materials, which weare awaiting from the hands of Professor Spiegel, whose secondvolume has long been due, and Professor Westergaard, whose secondand third volumes are eagerly looked for, we must make the bestuse of the resources actually available, and then leave the pointin such plausible light as existing testimony and fair reasoningcan throw upon it. In the first place, it should be observed that,admitting the doctrine to be nowhere mentioned in the Avesta,still, it does not follow that the belief was not prevalent whenthe
23 Rhode, Heilige Sage des Zendvolks, s. 410.
24 Bundehesh, ch. xxxi.
Avesta was written. We know that the Christians of the first twocenturies believed a great many things of which there is nostatement in the New Testament. Spiegel holds that the doctrine indebate is not in the Avesta, the text of which in its present formhe thinks was written after the time of Alexander.25 But heconfesses that the resurrection theory was in existence longbefore that time.26 Now, if the Avesta, committed to writing threehundred years before Christ, at a time when the doctrine of theresurrection is known to have been believed, contains no referenceto it, the same relation of facts may just as well have existed ifwe date the record seven centuries earlier. We possess only asmall and broken portion of the original Zoroastrian Scriptures;as Roth says, "songs, invocations, prayers, snatches oftraditions, parts of a code, the shattered fragments of a oncestately building." If we could recover the complete documents intheir earliest condition, it might appear that the now lost partscontained the doctrine of the general resurrection fully formed.We have many explicit references to many ancient Zoroastrian booksno longer in existence. For example, the Parsees have a very earlyaccount that the Avesta at first consisted of twenty one Nosks. Ofthese but one has been preserved complete, and small parts ofthree or four others. The rest are utterly wanting. The fifthNosk, whereof not any portion remains to us, was called the Do azah Hamast. It contained thirty two chapters, treating, among otherthings, "of the upper and nether world, of the resurrection, ofthe bridge Chinevad, and of the fate after death." 27 If thisevidence be true, and we know of no reason for not crediting it,it is perfectly decisive. But, at all events, the absence from theextant parts of the Zend Avesta of the doctrine under examinationwould be no proof that that doctrine was not received when thosedocuments were penned.
Secondly, we have the unequivocal assertion of Theopompus, in thefourth century before Christ, that the Magi taught the doctrine ofa general resurrection.28 "At the appointed epoch Ahriman shall besubdued," and "men shall live again and shall be immortal." AndDiogenes adds, "Eudemus of Rhodes affirms the same things."Aristotle calls Ormuzd Zeus, and Ahriman Haides, the Greek namesrespectively of the lord of the starry Olympians above, and themonarch of the Stygian ghosts beneath. Another form also in whichthe early Greek authors betray their acquaintance with the Persianconception of a conflict between Ormuzd and Ahriman is in theidea expressed by Xenophon in his Cyropadia, in the dialoguebetween Araspes and Cyrus of two souls in man, one a brilliantefflux of good, the other a dusky emanation of evil, each bearingthe likeness of its parent.29 Since we know from Theopompus thatcertain conceptions, illustrated in the Bundehesh and notcontained in the fragmentary Avestan books which have reached us,were actually received Zoroastrian
25 Studien uber das Zend Avesta, in Zeitschrift der DeutschenMorgenlandischen Gesellschaft, 1855, band ix. s. 192.
26 Spiegel, Avesta, band i. s. 16.
27 Dabistan, vol. i. pp. 272-274.
28 Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Philosophers, Introduction,sect. vi. Plutarch, concerning Isis and Osiris.
29 Lib. vi. cap. i. sect. 41.
tenets four centuries before Christ, we are strongly supported ingiving credence to the doctrinal statements of that book asaffording, in spite of its lateness, a correct epitome of the oldPersian theology.
Thirdly, we are still further warranted in admitting the antiquityof the Zoroastrian system as including the resurrection theory,when we consider the internal harmony and organic connection ofparts in it; how the doctrines all fit together, and imply eachother, and could scarcely have existed apart. Men were thecreatures of Ormuzd. They should have lived immortally under hisfavor and in his realm. But Ahriman, by treachery, obtainedpossession of a large portion of them. Now, when, at the end ofthe fourth period into which the world course was divided by theMagian theory, as Theopompus testifies, Ormuzd overcomes thisarch adversary, will he not rescue his own unfortunate creaturesfrom the realm of darkness in which they have been imprisoned?When a king storms an enemy's castle, he delivers from thedungeons his own soldiers who were taken captives in a formerdefeat. The expectation of a great prophet, Sosiosch, to come andvanquish Ahriman and his swarms, unquestionably appears in theAvesta itself.30 With this notion, in inseparable union, theParsee tradition, running continuously back, as is claimed, to avery remote time, joins the doctrine of a general resurrection; adoctrine literally stated in the Vendidad,31 and in many otherplaces in the Avesta,32 where it has not yet been shown to be aninterpolation, but only supposed so by very questionableconstructive inferences. The consent of intrinsic adjustment andof historic evidence would, therefore, lead to the conclusion thatthis was an old Zoroastrian dogma. In disproof of this conclusionwe believe there is no direct positive evidence whatever, and noinferential argument cogent enough to produce conviction.
There are sufficient reasons for the belief that the doctrine of aresurrection was quite early adopted from the Persians by theJews, not borrowed at a much later time from the Jews by theParsees. The conception of Ahriman, the evil serpent, bearingdeath, (die Schlange Angramainyus der voll Tod ist,) isinterwrought from the first throughout the Zoroastrian scheme. Inthe Hebrew records, on the contrary, such an idea appears butincidentally, briefly, rarely, and only in the later books. Theaccount of the introduction of sin and death by the serpent in thegarden of Eden dates from a time subsequent to the commencement ofthe Captivity. Von Bohlen, in his Introduction to the Book ofGenesis, says the narrative was drawn from the Zend Avesta.Rosenmuller, in his commentary on the passage, says the narratorhad in view the Zoroastrian notions of the serpent Ahriman and hisdeeds. Dr. Martin Haug an acute and learned writer, whose opinionis entitled to great weight, as he is the freshest scholaracquainted with this whole field in the light of all that othershave done thinks it certain that Zoroaster lived in a remoteantiquity, from fifteen hundred to two thousand years beforeChrist. He says that Judaism after the exile and, through Judaism,Christianity afterwards received an important influence fromZoroastrianism,
30 Spiegel, Avesta, band i. ss. 16, 244.
31 Fargard XVIII, Spiegel's Uebersetzung, s. 236.
32 Kleuker, band ii. ss. 123, 124, 164.
an influence which, in regard to the doctrine of angels, Satan,and the resurrection of the dead, cannot be mistaken.33 The Hebrewtheology had no demonology, no Satan, until after the residence atBabylon. This is admitted. Well, is not the resurrection a pendantto the doctrine of Satan? Without the idea of a Satan there wouldbe no idea of a retributive banishment of souls into hell, and ofcourse no occasion for a vindicating restoration of them thence totheir former or a superior state.
On this point the theory of Rawlinson is very important. Heargues, with various proofs, that the Dualistic doctrine was aheresy which broke out very early among the primitive Aryans, whothen were the single ancestry of the subsequent Iranians andIndians. This heresy was forcibly suppressed. Its adherents,driven out of India, went to Persia, and, after severe conflictsand final admixture with the Magians, there established theirfaith.34 The sole passage in the Old Testament teaching theresurrection is in the so called Book of Daniel, a book full ofChaldean and Persian allusions, written less than two centuriesbefore Christ, long after we know it was a received Zoroastriantenet, and long after the Hebrews had been exposed to the wholetide and atmosphere of the triumphant Persian power. Theunchangeable tenacity of the Medes and Persians is a proverb. Howoften the Hebrew people lapsed into idolatry, accepting Pagangods, doctrines, and ritual, is notorious. And, in particular, howcompletely subject they were to Persian influence appears clearlyin large parts of the Biblical history, especially in the Books ofEsther and Ezekiel. The origin of the term Beelzebub, too, in theNew Testament, is plain. To say that the Persians derived thedoctrine of the resurrection from the Jews seems to us asarbitrary as it would be to affirm that they also borrowed fromthem the custom, mentioned by Ezekiel, of weeping for Tammuz inthe gates of the temple.
In view of the whole case as it stands, until further researcheseither strengthen it or put a different aspect upon it, we feelforced to think that the doctrine of a general resurrection was acomponent element in the ancient Avestan religion. A furtherquestion of considerable interest arises as to the nature of thisresurrection, whether it was conceived as physical or asspiritual. We have no data to furnish a determinate answer.Plutarch quotes from Theopompus the opinion of the Magi, thatwhen, at the subdual of Ahriman, men are restored to life, "theywill need no nourishment and cast no shadow." It would appear,then, that they must be spirits. The inference is not reliable;for the idea may be that all causes of decay will be removed, sothat no food will be necessary to supply the wasting processeswhich no longer exist; and that the entire creation will be sofull of light that a shadow will be impossible. It might bethought that the familiar Persian conception of angels, both goodand evil, fervers and devs, and the reception of departed soulsinto their company, with Ormuzd in Garotman, or with Ahriman inDutsakh, would exclude the belief in a future bodily resurrection.But Christians and Mohammedans at this day believe in immaterialangels and devils, and in the immediate entrance of disembodiedsouls upon reward or
33 Die Lehre Zoroasters nach den alten Liedern des Zendavesta.Zeitschrift der Morgenlandischen Gesellschaft, band ix. ss. 286,683-692.
34 Rawlinson's Herodotus, vol. i. pp. 426-431.
punishment in their society, and still believe in their finalreturn to the earth, and in a restoration to them of their formertabernacles of flesh. Discordant, incoherent, as the two beliefsmay be, if their coexistence is a fact with cultivated andreasonable people now, much more was it possible with anundisciplined and credulous populace three thousand years in thepast. Again, it has been argued that the indignity with which theancient Persians treated the dead body, refusing to bury it or toburn it, lest the earth or the fire should be polluted, isincompatible with the supposition that they expected aresurrection of the flesh. In the first place, it is difficult toreason safely to any dogmatic conclusions from the funeral customsof a people. These usages are so much a matter of capriciouspriestly ritual, ancestral tradition, unreasoning instinct, blindor morbid superstition, that any consistent doctrinal constructionis not fairly to be put upon them. Secondly, the Zoroastrians didnot express scorn or loathing for the corpse by their manner ofdisposing of it. The greatest pains were taken to keep it fromdisgusting decay, by placing it in "the driest, purest, openestplace," upon a summit where fresh winds blew, and where certainbeasts and birds, accounted most sacred, might eat the corruptibleportion: then the clean bones were carefully buried. The dead bodyhad yielded to the hostile working of Ahriman, and become hispossession. The priests bore it out on a bed or a carpet, andexposed it to the light of the sun. The demon was thus exorcised;and the body became further purified in being eaten by the sacredanimals, and no putrescence was left to contaminate earth, water,or fire.35 Furthermore, it is to be noticed that the modernParsees dispose of their dead in exactly the same manner depictedin the earliest accounts; yet they zealously hold to a literalresurrection of the body. If the giving of the flesh to the dogand the vulture in their case exists with this belief, it may havedone so with their ancestors before Nebuchadnezzar swept the Jewsto Babylon. Finally, it is quite reasonable to conclude that theold Persian doctrine of a resurrection did include the physicalbody, when we recollect that in the Zoroastrian scheme of thoughtthere is no hostility to matter or to earthly life, but all isregarded as pure and good except so far as the serpent Ahriman hasintroduced evil. The expulsion of this evil with his ultimateoverthrow, the restoration of all as it was at first, in purity,gladness, and eternal life, would be the obvious and consistentcarrying out of the system. Hatred of earthly life, contempt forthe flesh, the notion of an essential and irreconcilable warfareof soul against body, are Brahmanic and Manichaan, notZoroastrian. Still, the ground plan and style of thought may nothave been consistently adhered to. The expectation that the verysame body would be restored was known to the Jews a century or twobefore Christ. One of the martyrs whose history is told in theSecond Book of Maccabees, in the agonies of death plucked out hisown bowels, and called on the Lord to restore them to him again atthe resurrection. Considering the notion of a resurrection of thebody as a sensuous burden on the idea of a resurrection of thesoul, it may have been a later development originating with theJews. But it seems to us decidedly more probable that the Magiheld it as a part of their creed before they came in contact withthe children of Israel. Such an opinion may be modestly held untilfurther information is
35 Spiegel, Avesta, ss. 82, 104, 109, 111, 122.
afforded 36 or some new and fatal objection brought.
After this resurrection a thorough separation will be made of thegood from the bad. "Father shall be divided from child, sisterfrom brother, friend from friend. The innocent one shall weep overthe guilty one, the guilty one shall weep for himself. Of twosisters one shall be pure, one corrupt: they shall be treatedaccording to their deeds." 37 Those who have not, in theintermediate state, fully expiated their sins, will, in sight ofthe whole creation, be remanded to the pit of punishment. But theauthor of evil shall not exult over them forever. Their prisonhouse will soon be thrown open. The pangs of three terrible daysand nights, equal to the agonies of nine thousand years, willpurify all, even the worst of the demons. The anguished cry of thedamned, as they writhe in the lurid caldron of torture, rising toheaven, will find pity in the soul of Ormuzd, and he will releasethem from their sufferings. A blazing star, the comet Gurtzscher,will fall upon the earth. In the heat of its conflagration, greatand small mountains will melt and flow together as liquid metal.Through this glowing flood all human kind must pass. To therighteous it will prove as a pleasant bath, of the temperature ofmilk; but on the wicked the flame will inflict terrific pain.Ahriman will run up and down Chinevad in the perplexities ofanguish and despair. The earth wide stream of fire, flowing on,will cleanse every spot and every thing. Even the loathsome realmof darkness and torment shall be burnished and made a part of theall inclusive Paradise. Ahriman himself, reclaimed to virtue,replenished with primal light, abjuring the memories of hisenvious ways, and furling thenceforth the sable standard of hisrebellion, shall become a ministering spirit of the Most High,and, together with Ormuzd, chant the praises of Time withoutBounds. All darkness, falsehood, suffering, shall flee utterlyaway, and the whole universe be filled by the illumination of goodspirits blessed with fruitions of eternal delight. In regard tothe fate of man,
Such are the parables Zartushi address'd To Iran's faith, in theancient Zend Avest.
36 Windischmann has now (1863) fully proved this, in hisZoroastrische Studien. Spiegel frankly avows it: Avesta, bandiii., einleitung, s. lxxv.
37 Rhode, Heilige Sage des Zendvolks, s. 467.
CHAPTER VIII.
HEBREW DOCTRINE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
ON the one extreme, a large majority of Christian scholars haveasserted that the doctrine of a retributive immortality is clearlytaught throughout the Old Testament. Able writers, like BishopWarburton, have maintained, on the other extreme, that it saysnothing whatever about a future life, but rather implies the totaland eternal end of men in death. But the most judicious,trustworthy critics hold an intermediate position, and affirm thatthe Hebrew Scriptures show a general belief in the separateexistence of the spirit, not indeed as experiencing rewards andpunishments, but as surviving in the common silence and gloom ofthe under world, a desolate empire of darkness yawning beneath allgraves and peopled with dream like ghosts.1
A number of important passages have been cited from differentparts of the Old Testament by the advocates of the view firstmentioned above. It will be well for us to notice these and theirmisuse before proceeding farther.
The translation of Enoch has been regarded as a revelation of theimmortality of man. It is singular that Dr. Priestley shouldsuggest, as the probable fact, so sheer and baseless a hypothesisas he does in his notes upon the Book of Genesis. He says, "Enochwas probably a prophet authorized to announce the reality ofanother life after this; and he might be removed into it withoutdying, as an evidence of the truth of his doctrine." The grossmaterialism of this supposition, and the failure of God's designwhich it implies, are a sufficient refutation of it. And, besidesthe utter unlikelihood of the thought, it is entirely destitute ofsupport in the premises. One of the most curious of the manystrange things to be found in Warburton's argument for the DivineLegation of Moses an argument marked, as is well known, byprofound erudition, and, in many respects, by consummate abilityis the use he makes of this account to prove that Moses believedthe doctrine of immortality, but purposely obscured the fact fromwhich it might be drawn by the people, in order that it might notinterfere with his doctrine of the temporal special providence ofJehovah over the Jewish nation. Such a course is inconsistent withsound morality, much more with the character of an inspiredprophet of God.
The only history we have of Enoch is in the fifth chapter of theBook of Genesis. The substance of it is as follows: "And Enochwalked with God during his appointed years; and then he was not,for God took him." The author of the Epistle to the Hebrews,following the example of those Rabbins who, several centuriesbefore his time, began to give mystical interpretations of theScriptures, infers from this statement that Enoch was borne intoheaven without tasting death. But it is not certainly known whothe author of that epistle was; and, whoever he was, his opinion,of course, can have no authority upon a subject of criticism like
1 Boettcher, De Inferis Rebusque post mortem futuris ex Hebraorumet Gracoram Opinionibus.
this. Replying to the supposititious argument furnished by thispassage, we say, Take the account as it reads, and it neitherasserts nor implies the idea commonly held concerning it. It saysnothing about translation or immortality; nor can any thing of thekind be legitimately deduced from it. Its plain meaning is no morenor less than this: Enoch lived three hundred and sixty fiveyears, fearing God and keeping his commandments, and then he died.Many of the Rabbins, fond as they are of finding in the Pentateuchthe doctrine of future blessedness for the good, interpret thisnarrative as only signifying an immature death; for Enoch, it willbe recollected, reached but about half the average age of theothers whose names are mentioned in the chapter. Had thisoccurrence been intended as the revelation of a truth, it wouldhave been fully and clearly stated; otherwise it could not answerany purpose. As Le Clerc observes, "If the writer believed soimportant a fact as that Enoch was immortal, it is wonderful thathe relates it as secretly and obscurely as if he wished to hideit." But, finally, even admitting that the account is to beregarded as teaching literally that God took Enoch, it by no meansproves a revelation of the doctrine of general immortality. Itdoes not show that anybody else would ever be translated or wouldin any way enter upon a future state of existence. It is not putforth as a revelation; it says nothing whatever concerning arevelation. It seems to mean either that Enoch suddenly died, orthat he disappeared, nobody knew whither. But, if it really meansthat God took him into heaven, it is more natural to think thatthat was done as a special favor than as a sign of what awaitedothers. No general cause is stated, no consequence deduced, noprinciple laid down, no reflection added. How, then, can it besaid that the doctrine of a future life for man is revealed by itor implicated in it?
The removal of Elijah in a chariot of fire, of which we read inthe second chapter of the Second Book of Kings, is usuallysupposed to have served as a miraculous proof of the fact that thefaithful servants of Jehovah were to be rewarded with a life inthe heavens. The author of this book is not known, and can hardlybe guessed at with any degree of plausibility. It wasunquestionably written, or rather compiled, a long time probablyseveral hundred years after the prophets whose wonderfuladventures it recounts had passed away. The internal evidence issufficient, both in quality and quantity, to demonstrate that thebook is for the most part a collection of traditions. Thischaracteristic applies with particular force to the ascension ofElijah. But grant the literal truth of the account: it will notprove the point in support of which it is advanced, because itdoes not purport to have been done as a revelation of the doctrinein question, nor did it in any way answer the purpose of such arevelation. So far from this, in fact, it does not seem even tohave suggested the bare idea of another state of existence in asingle instance. For when Elisha returned without Elijah, and toldthe sons of the prophets at Jericho that his master had gone up ina chariot of fire, which event they knew beforehand was going tohappen, they, instead of asking the particulars or exulting overthe revelation of a life in heaven, calmly said to him, "Behold,there be with thy servants fifty sons of strength: let them go, wepray thee, and seek for Elijah, lest peradventure a whirlwind, theblast of the Lord, hath caught him up and cast him upon one of themountains or into one of the valleys. And he said, Ye shall notsend. But when they urged him till he was ashamed, he said, Send."This is all that is told us. Had it occurred as is stated, itwould not so easily have passed from notice, but mightyinferences, never to be forgotten, would have been drawn from itat once. The story as it stands reminds one of the closing scenein the career of Romulus, speaking of whom the historians say, "Inthe thirty seventh year of his reign, while he was reviewing anarmy, a tempest arose, in the midst of which he was suddenlysnatched from the eyes of men. Hence some thought he was killed bythe senators, others, that he was borne aloft to the gods."2 Ifthe ascension of Elijah to heaven in a chariot of fire did reallytake place, and if the books held by the Jews as inspired andsacred contained a history of it at the time of our Savior, it iscertainly singular that neither he nor any of the apostles alludeto it in connection with the subject of a future life.
The miracles performed by Elijah and by Elisha in restoring thedead children to life related in the seventeenth chapter of theFirst Book of Kings and in the fourth chapter of the Second Bookare often cited in proof of the position that the doctrine ofimmortality is revealed in the Old Testament. The narration ofthese events is found in a record of unknown authorship. The modein which the miracles were effected, if they were miracles, theprophet measuring himself upon the child, his eyes upon his eyes,his mouth upon his mouth, his hands upon his hands, and in onecase the child sneezing seven times, looks dubious. The twoaccounts so closely resemble each other as to cast still greatersuspicion upon both. In addition to these considerations, and evenfully granting the reality of the miracles, they do not touch thereal controversy, namely, whether the Hebrew Scriptures containthe revealed doctrine of a conscious immortality or of a futureretribution. The prophet said, "O Lord my God, let this child'ssoul, I pray thee, come into his inward parts again." "And theLord heard the voice of Elijah, and the soul of the child cameinto him again, and he revived." Now, the most this can show isthat the child's soul was then existing in a separate state. Itdoes not prove that the soul was immortal, nor that it wasexperiencing retribution, nor even that it was conscious. And wedo not deny that the ancient Jews believed that the spirits of thedead retained a nerveless, shadowy being in the solemn vaults ofthe under world. The Hebrew word rendered soul in the text issusceptible of three meanings: first, the shade, which, upon thedissolution of the body, is gathered to its fathers in the greatsubterranean congregation; second, the breath of a person, used assynonymous with his life; third, a part of the vital breath ofGod, which the Hebrews regarded as the source of the life of allcreatures, and the withdrawing of which they supposed was thecause of death. It is clear that neither of these meanings canprove any thing in regard to the real point at issue, that is,concerning a future life of rewards and punishments.
One of the strongest arguments brought to support the propositionwhich we are combating at least, so considered by nearly all theRabbins, and by not a few modern critics is the account of thevivification of the dead recorded in the thirty seventh chapter ofthe Book of Ezekiel. The prophet "was carried in the spirit ofJehovah" that is, mentally, in a prophetic ecstasy into a valleyfull of dry bones. "The bones came together, the flesh
2 Livy, i. 16; Dion. Hal. ii. 56.
grew on them, the breath came into them, and they lived and stoodon their feet, an exceeding great army." It should first beobserved that this account is not given as an actual occurrence,but, after the manner of Ezekiel, as a prophetic vision meant tosymbolize something. Now, of what was it intended as the symbol? adoctrine, or a coming event? a general truth to enlighten andguide uncertain men, or an approaching deliverance to console andencourage the desponding Jews? It is fair to let the prophet behis own interpreter, without aid from the glosses of prejudicedtheorizers. It must be borne in mind that at this time the prophetand his countrymen were bearing the grievous burden of bondage ina foreign nation. "And Jehovah said to me, Son of man, these bonesdenote the whole house of Israel. Behold, they say, Our bones aredried, and our hope is lost, and we are cut off." This plainlydenotes their present suffering in the Babylonish captivity, andtheir despair of being delivered from it. "Therefore prophesy, andsay to them, Thus saith the Lord Jehovah, Behold, I will open yourgraves and cause you to come up out of your graves, O my people,and bring you into the land of Israel." That is, I will rescue youfrom your slavery and restore you to freedom in your own land. Thedry bones and their subsequent vivification, therefore, clearlysymbolize the misery of the Israelites and their speedyrestoration to happiness. Death is frequently used in a figurativesense to denote misery, and life to signify happiness. But thosewho maintain that the doctrine of the resurrection is taught as arevealed truth in the Hebrew Scriptures are not willing to letthis passage pass so easily. Mr. Barnes says, "The illustrationproves that the doctrine was one with which the people werefamiliar." Jerome states the argument more fully, thus: "Asimilitude drawn from the resurrection, to foreshadow therestoration of the people of Israel, would never have beenemployed unless the resurrection itself were believed to be a factof future occurrence; for no one thinks of confirming what isuncertain by what has no existence."
It is not difficult to reply to these objections with convincingforce. First, the vision was not used as proof or confirmation,but as symbol and prophecy. Secondly, the use of any thing as anillustration does by no means imply that it is commonly believedas a fact. For instance, we are told in the ninth chapter of theBook of Judges that Jotham related an allegory to the people as anillustration of their conduct in choosing a king, saying, "Thetrees once on a time went forth to anoint a king over them; andthey said to the olive tree, Come thou and reign over us;" and soon. Does it follow that at that time it was a common belief thatthe trees actually went forth occasionally to choose them a king?Thirdly, if a given thing is generally believed as a fact, aperson who uses it expressly as a symbol, of course does notthereby give his sanction to it as a fact. And if a belief in theresurrection of the dead was generally entertained at the time ofthe prophet, its origin is not implied, and it does not followthat it was a doctrine of revelation, or even a true doctrine.Finally, there is one consideration which shows conclusively thatthis vision was never intended to typify the resurrection; namely,that it has nothing corresponding to the most essential part ofthat doctrine. When the bones have come together and are coveredwith flesh, God does not call up the departed spirits of thesebodies from Sheol, does not bring back the vanished lives toanimate their former tabernacles, now miraculously renewed. No: hebut breathes on them with his vivifying breath, and straightwaythey live and move. This is not a resurrection, but a newcreation. The common idea of a bodily restoration implies and,that any just retribution be compatible with it, it necessarilyimplies the vivification of the dead frame, not by theintroduction of new life, but by the reinstalment of the very samelife or spirit, the identical consciousness that before animatedit. Such is not represented as being the case in Ezekiel's visionof the valley of dry bones. That vision had no reference to thefuture state.
In this connection, the revelation made by the angel in hisprophecy, recorded in the twelfth chapter of the Book of Daniel,concerning the things which should happen in the Messianic times,must not be passed without notice. It reads as follows: "And manyof the sleepers of the dust of the ground shall awake, those tolife everlasting, and these to shame, to contempt everlasting. Andthey that are wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament,and they that turn many to righteousness, as the stars for everand ever." No one can deny that a judgment, in which reward andpunishment shall be distributed according to merit, is hereclearly foretold. The meaning of the text, taken with theconnection, is, that when the Messiah appears and establishes hiskingdom the righteous shall enjoy a bodily resurrection upon theearth to honor and happiness, but the wicked shall be left belowin darkness and death.3 This seems to imply, fairly enough, thatuntil the advent of the Messiah none of the dead existedconsciously in a state of retribution. The doctrine of thepassage, as is well known, was held by some of the Jews at thebeginning of the Christian era, and, less distinctly, for abouttwo centuries previous. Before that time no traces of it can befound in their history. Now, had a doctrine of such intenseinterest and of such vast importance as this been a matter ofrevelation, it seems hardly possible that it should have beenconfined to one brief and solitary text, that it should haveflashed up for a single moment so brilliantly, and then vanishedfor three or four centuries in utter darkness. Furthermore, nearlyone half of the Book of Daniel is written in the Chaldee tongue,and the other half in the Hebrew, indicating that it had twoauthors, who wrote their respective portions at different periods.Its critical and minute details of events are history rather thanprophecy. The greater part of the book was undoubtedly written aslate as about a hundred and sixty years before Christ, long afterthe awful simplicity and solitude of the original Hebrew theologyhad been marred and corrupted by an intermixture of the doctrinesof those heathen nations with whom the Jews had been often broughtin contact. Such being the facts in the case, the text isevidently without force to prove a divine revelation of thedoctrine it teaches.
In the twenty second chapter of the Gospel by Matthew, Jesus saysto the Sadducees, "But as touching the resurrection of the dead,have ye not read that which was spoken unto you by God, saying, Iam the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob?God is not the God of the dead, but of the living." The passage towhich reference is made is written in the third chapter of theBook of Exodus. In order to ascertain the force of the Savior'sargument, the extent of meaning it had in his mind, and the amountof knowledge attributed by it to Moses, it will be necessary todetermine first the definite purpose he had
3 Wood, The Last Things, p. 45.
in view in his reply to the Sadducees, and how he proposed toaccomplish it. We shall find that the use he made of the text doesnot imply that Moses had the slightest idea of any sort of futurelife for man, much less of an immortal life of blessedness for thegood and of suffering for the bad. We should suppose, beforehand,that such would be the case, since upon examining the declarationcited, with its context, we find it to be simply a statement madeby Jehovah explaining who he was, that he was the ancient nationalguardian of the Jews, the Lord God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.This does not seem to contain the most distant allusion to theimmortality of man, or to have suggested any such thought to themind of Moses. It should be distinctly understood from the outsetthat Jesus did not quote this passage from the Pentateuch asproving any thing of itself, or as enabling him to prove any thingby it directly, but as being of acknowledged authority to theSadducees themselves, to form the basis of a process of reasoning.The purpose he had in view, plainly, was to convince the Sadduceeseither of the possibility or of the actuality of the resurrectionof the dead: its possibility, if we assume that by resurrection hemeant the Jewish doctrine of a material restoration, the reunionof soul and body; its actuality, if we suppose he meant theconscious immortality of the soul separate from the body. If theresurrection was physical, Christ demonstrates to the Sadduceesits possibility, by refuting the false notion upon which theybased their denial of it. They said, The resurrection of the bodyis impossible, because the principle of life, the consciousness,has utterly perished, and the body cannot live alone. He replied,It is possible, because the soul has an existence separate fromthe body, and, consequently, may be reunited to it. You admit thatJehovah said, after they were dead, I am the God of Abraham,Isaac, and Jacob: but he is the God of the living, and not of thedead, for all live unto him. You must confess this. The soul,then, survives the body, and a resurrection is possible. It willbe seen that this implies nothing concerning the nature orduration of the separate existence, but merely the fact of it.But, if Christ meant by the resurrection of the dead as we thinkhe did the introduction of the disembodied and conscious soul intoa state of eternal blessedness, the Sadducees denied its realityby maintaining that no such thing as a soul existed after bodilydissolution. He then proved to them its reality in the followingmanner. You believe for Moses, to whose authority you implicitlybow, relates it that God said, "I am the God of Abraham, Isaac,and Jacob," and this, long after they died. But evidently hecannot be said to be the God of that which does not exist:therefore their souls must have been still alive. And if Jehovahwas emphatically their God, their friend, of course he will showthem his loving kindness. They are, then, in a conscious state ofblessedness. The Savior does not imply that God said so much insubstance, nor that Moses intended to teach, or even knew, anything like it, but that, by adding to the passage cited a premiseof his own, which his hearers granted to be true, he could deduceso much from it by a train of new and unanswerable reasoning. Hisopponents were compelled to admit the legitimacy of his argument,and, impressed by its surpassing beauty and force, were silenced,if not convinced. The credit of this cogent proof of humanimmortality, namely, that God's love for man is a pledge andwarrant of his eternal blessedness a proof whose originality andsignificance set it far beyond all parallel is due to the dimgropings of no Hebrew prophet, but to the inspired insight of thegreat Founder of Christianity.
The various passages yet unnoticed which purport to have beenuttered by Jehovah or at his command, and which are urged to showthat the reality of a retributive life after death is a revealeddoctrine of the Old Testament, will be found, upon criticalexamination, either to owe their entire relevant force tomistranslation, or to be fairly refuted by the reasonings alreadyadvanced. Professor Stuart admits that he finds only oneconsideration to show that Moses had any idea of a futureretribution; and that is, that the Egyptians expressly believedit; and he is not able to comprehend how Moses, who dwelt so longamong them, should be ignorant of it.4 The reasoning is obviouslyinconsequential. It is not certain that the Egyptians held thisdoctrine in the time of Moses: it may have prevailed among thembefore or after, and not during, that period. If they believed itat that time, it may have been an esoteric doctrine, with which hedid not become acquainted. If they believed it, and he knew it, hemight have classed it with other heathen doctrines, and supposedit false. And, even if he himself believed it, he might possiblynot have inculcated it upon the Israelites; and the question is,what he did actually teach, not what he knew.
The opinions of the Jews at the time of the Savior have no bearingupon the point in hand, because they were acquired at a laterperiod than that of the writing of the records we are nowconsidering. They were formed, and gradually grew in consistencyand favor, either by the natural progress of thought among theJews themselves, or, more probably, by a blending of theintimations of the Hebrew Scriptures with Gentile speculations,the doctrines of the Egyptians, Hindus, and Persians. We leavethis portion of the subject, then, with the following proposition.In the canonic books of the Old Dispensation there is not a singlegenuine text, claiming to come from God, which teaches explicitlyany doctrine whatever of a life beyond the grave. That doctrine asit existed among the Jews was no part of their pure religion, butwas a part of their philosophy. It did not, as they held it, implyany thing like our present idea of the immortality of the soulreaping in the spiritual world what it has sowed in the physical.It simply declared the existence of human ghosts amidst unbrokengloom and stillness in the cavernous depths of the earth, withoutreward, without punishment, without employment, scarcelywith consciousness, as will immediately appear.
We proceed to the second general division of the subject. Whatdoes the Old Testament, apart from the revelation claimed to becontained in it, and regarding only those portions of it which areconfessedly a collection of the poetry, history, and philosophy ofthe Hebrews, intimate concerning a future state of existence?Examining these writings with an unbiased mind, we discover thatin different portions of them there are large variations andopposition of opinion. In some books we trace an undoubting beliefin certain rude notions of the future condition of souls; in otherbooks we encounter unqualified denials of every such thought. "Manlieth down and riseth not," sighs the despairing Job. "The deadcannot praise God, neither any that go down into darkness," wailsthe repining Psalmist. "All go to one place,"
4 Exegetical Essays, (Andover, 1830,) p. 108.
and "the dead know not any thing," asserts the disbelievingPreacher. These inconsistencies we shall not stop to point out andcomment upon. They are immaterial to our present purpose, which isto bring together, in their general agreement, the sum andsubstance of the Hebrew ideas on this subject.
The separate existence of the soul is necessarily implied by thedistinction the Hebrews made between the grave, or sepulchre, andthe under world, or abode of shades. The Hebrew words bor andkeber mean simply the narrow place in which the dead body isburied; while Sheol represents an immense cavern in the interiorof the earth where the ghosts of the deceased are assembled. Whenthe patriarch was told that his son Joseph was slain by wildbeasts, he cried aloud, in bitter sorrow, "I will go down to Sheolunto my son, mourning."
He did not expect to meet Joseph in the grave; for he supposed hisbody torn in pieces and scattered in the wilderness, not laid inthe family tomb. The dead are said to be "gathered to theirpeople," or to "sleep with their fathers," and this whether theyare interred in the same place or in a remote region. It iswritten, "Abraham gave up the ghost, and was gathered unto hispeople," notwithstanding his body was laid in a cave in the fieldof Machpelah, close by Hebron, while his people were buried inChaldea and Mesopotamia. "Isaac gave up the ghost and died, andwas gathered unto his people;" and then we read, as if it weredone afterwards, "His sons, Jacob and Esau, buried him." Theseinstances might be multiplied. They prove that "to be gatheredunto one's fathers" means to descend into Sheol and join there thehosts of the departed. A belief in the separate existence of thesoul is also involved in the belief in necromancy, or divination,the prevalence of which is shown by the stern laws against thosewho engaged in its unhallowed rites, and by the history of thewitch of Endor. She, it is said, by magical spells evoked theshade of old Samuel from below. It must have been the spirit ofthe prophet that was supposed to rise; for his body was buried atRamah, more than sixty miles from Endor. The faith of the Hebrewsin the separate existence of the soul is shown, furthermore, bythe fact that the language they employed expresses, in everyinstance, the distinction of body and spirit. They had particularwords appropriated to each. "As thy soul liveth," is a Hebrewoath. "With my spirit within me will I seek thee early." "I,Daniel, was grieved in my spirit in the midst of my body:" thefigure here represents the soul in the body as a sword in asheath. "Our bones are scattered at the mouth of the under world,as when one cutteth and cleaveth wood upon the earth;" that is,the soul, expelled from its case of clay by the murderer's weapon,flees into Sheol and leaves its exuvioe at the entrance. "Thyvoice shall be as that of a spirit out of the ground:" the word"Lhere used signifies the shade evoked by a necromancer from theregion of death, which was imagined to speak in a feeble whisper.
The term rephaim is used to denote the manes of the departed. Theetymology of the word, as well as its use, makes it mean the weak,the relaxed. "I am counted as them that go down into the underworld; I am as a man that hath no strength." This faint, powerlesscondition accords with the idea that they were destitute of flesh,blood, and animal life, mere umbroe. These ghosts are described asbeing nearly as destitute of sensation as they are of strength.They are called "the inhabitants of the land of stillness." Theyexist in an inactive, partially torpid state, with a dreamyconsciousness of past and present, neither suffering nor enjoying,and seldom moving. Herder says of the Hebrews, "The sad andmournful images of their ghostly realm disturbed them, and weretoo much for their self possession." Respecting these images, headds, "Their voluntary force and energy were destroyed. They werefeeble as a shade, without distinction of members, as a nervelessbreath. They wandered and flitted in the dark nether world." This"wandering and flitting," however, is rather the spirit ofHerder's poetry than of that of the Hebrews; for the whole tenorand drift of the representations in the Old Testament show thatthe state of disembodied souls is deep quietude. Freed frombondage, pain, toil, and care, they repose in silence. The ghostsummoned from beneath by the witch of Endor said, "Why hast thoudisquieted me to bring me up?" It was, indeed, in a dismal abodethat they took their long quiet; but then it was in a place "wherethe wicked ceased from troubling and the weary were at rest."
Those passages which attribute active employments to the dwellersin the under world are specimens of poetic license, as the contextalways shows. When Job says, "Before Jehovah the shades beneathtremble," he likewise declares, "The pillars of heaven tremble andare confounded at his rebuke." When Isaiah breaks forth in thatstirring lyric to the King of Babylon,
"The under world is in commotion on account of thee, To meet theeat thy coming; It stirreth up before thee the shades, all themighty of the earth; It arouseth from their thrones all the kingsof the nations; They all accost thee, and say, Art thou too becomeweak as we?"
he also exclaims, in the same connection,
"Even the cypress trees exult over thee, And the cedars ofLebanon, saying, Since thou art fallen, No man cometh up to cut usdown."
The activity thus vividly described is evidently a mere figure ofspeech: so is it in the other instances which picture the rephaimas employed and in motion. "Why," complainingly sighed theafflicted patriarch, "why died I not at my birth? For now should Ilie down and be quiet; I should slumber; I should then be atrest." And the wise man says, in his preaching, "There is no work,nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in Sheol." What has alreadybeen said is sufficient to establish the fact that the Hebrews hadan idea that the souls of men left their bodies at death andexisted as dim shadows, in a state of undisturbed repose, in thebowels of the earth.
Sheol is directly derived from a Hebrew word, signifying, first,to dig or excavate. It means, therefore, a cavity, or emptysubterranean place. Its derivation is usually connected, however,with the secondary meaning of the Hebrew word referred to, namely,to ask, to desire, from the notion of demanding, since rapaciousOrcus lays claim unsparingly to all; or, as others have fancifullyconstrued it, the object of universal inquiry, the unknown mansionconcerning which all are anxiously inquisitive. The place isconceived on an immense scale, shrouded in accompaniments ofgloomy grandeur and peculiar awe: an enormous cavern in the earth,filled with night; a stupendous hollow kingdom, to which arepoetically attributed valleys and gates, and in which arecongregated the slumberous and shadowy hosts of the rephaim, neverable to go out of it again forever. Its awful stillness isunbroken by noise. Its thick darkness is uncheered by light. Itstretches far down under the ground. It is wonderfully deep. Inlanguage that reminds one of Milton's description of hell, wherewas
"No light, but rather darkness visible,"
Job describes it as "the land of darkness, like the blackness ofdeath shade, where is no order, and where the light is asdarkness." The following passages, selected almost at random, willshow the ideas entertained of the place, and confirm andillustrate the foregoing statements. "But he considers not that inthe valleys of Sheol are her guests." "Now shall I go down intothe gates of Sheol." "The ground slave asunder, and the earthopened her mouth, and swallowed them up, and their houses, and alltheir men, and all their goods: they and all that appertained tothem went down alive into Sheol, and the earth closed upon them."Its depth is contrasted with the height of the sky. "Though theydig into Sheol, thence shall mine hand take them; though theyclimb up to heaven, thence will I bring them down." It is thedestination of all; for, though the Hebrews believed in a world ofglory above the solid ceiling of the dome of day, where Jehovahand the angels dwelt, there was no promise, hope, or hint that anyman could ever go there. The dirge like burden of their poetry wasliterally these words: "What man is he that liveth and shall notsee death? Shall he deliver his spirit from the hand of Sheol?"The old Hebrew graves were crypts, wide, deep holes, like thehabitations of the troglodytes. In these subterranean caves theylaid the dead down; and so the Grave became the mother of Sheol, arendezvous of the fathers, a realm of the dead, full of eternalghost life.
This under world is dreary and altogether undesirable, save as anescape from extreme anguish. But it is not a place of retribution.Jahn says, "That, in the belief of the ancient Hebrews, there weredifferent situations in Sheol for the good and the bad, cannot beproved."5 The sudden termination of the present life is thejudgment the Old Testament threatens upon sinners; its happyprolongation is the reward it promises to the righteous. Textsthat prove this might be quoted in numbers from almost every page."The wicked shall be turned into Sheol, and all the nations thatforget God," not to be punished there, but as a punishment. It istrue, the good and the bad alike pass into that gloomy land; butthe former go down tranquilly in a good old age and full of days,as a shock of corn fully ripe cometh in its season, while thelatter are suddenly hurried there by an untimely and miserablefate. The man that loves the Lord shall have length of days; theunjust, though for a moment he flourishes, yet the wind bloweth,and where is he?
We shall perhaps gain a more clear and adequate knowledge of theideas the Hebrews had of the soul and of its fate, by marking thedifferent meanings of the words they used to
5 Biblical Archeology, sect. 314.
denote it. Neshamah, primarily meaning breath or airy effluence,next expresses the Spirit of God as imparting life and force,wisdom and love; also the spirit of man as its emanation,creation, or sustained object. The citation of a few texts inwhich the word occurs will set this in a full light. "The Lord Godformed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into hisnostrils the spirit of existence, and man became a consciousbeing." "It is the divine spirit of man, even the inspiration ofthe Almighty, that giveth him understanding." "The Spirit of Godmade me, and his breath gave me life."
Ruah signifies, originally, a breathing or blowing. Two othermeanings are directly connected with this. First, the vitalspirit, the principle of life as manifested in the breath of themouth and nostrils. "And they went in unto Noah into the ark, twoand two of all flesh in whose nostrils was the breath of life."Second, the wind, the motions of the air, which the Hebrewssupposed caused by the breath of God. "By the blast of thine angerthe waters were gathered on an heap." "The channels of waters wereseen, and the foundations of the world were discovered, O Lord, atthe blast of the breath of thy nostrils." So they regarded thethunder as his voice. "The voice of Jehovah cutteth out the fierylightnings," and "shaketh the wilderness of Kadesh." This word isalso frequently placed for the rational spirit of man, the seat ofintellect and feeling. It is likewise sometimes representative ofthe character and disposition of men, whether good or bad. Hoseaspeaks of "a spirit of vile lust." In the Second Book ofChronicles we read, "There came out a spirit, and stood beforeJehovah, and said, I will entice King Ahab to his destruction. Iwill go out and be a lying spirit in the mouth of all hisprophets." Belshazzar says to Daniel, "I know that the spirit ofthe holy gods is in thee." Finally, it is applied to Jehovah,signifying the divine spirit, or power, by which all animatecreatures live, the universe is filled with motion, allextraordinary gifts of skill, genius, strength, or virtue arebestowed, and men incited to forsake evil and walk in the paths oftruth and piety. "Thou sendest forth thy spirit, they are created,and thou renewest the face of the earth; thou takest away theirbreath, they die and return to their dust." "Jehovah will be aspirit of justice in them that sit to administer judgment." Itseems to be implied that the life of man, having emanated from thespirit, is to be again absorbed in it, when it is said, "Thenshall the dust return to the earth as it was, and the spirit shallreturn unto God who gave it."
Nephesh is but partially a synonym for the word whosesignifications we have just considered. The different senses itbears are strangely interchanged and confounded in King James'sversion. Its first meaning is breath, the breathing of a livingbeing. Next it means the vital spirit, the indwelling life of thebody. "If any mischief follow, thou shalt take life for life." Themost adequate rendering of it would be, in a great majority ofinstances, by the term life. "In jeopardy of his life [not soul]hath Adonijah spoken this." It sometimes represents theintelligent soul or mind, the subject of knowledge and desire. "Mysoul knoweth right well.". Also the heart, is often used morefrequently perhaps than any other term as meaning the vitalprinciple, and the seat of consciousness, intellect, will, andaffection. Jehovah said to Solomon, in answer to his prayer, "Lo,I have given thee a wise and an understanding heart." The laterJews speculated much, with many cabalistic refinements, on thesedifferent words. They said many persons were supplied with aNephesh without a Ruah, much more without a Neshamah. Theydeclared that the Nephesh (Psyche) was the soul of the body, theRuah (Pneuma) the soul of the Nephesh, and the Neshamah (Nous) thesoul of the Ruah. Some of the Rabbins assert that the destinationof the Nephesh, when the body dies, is Sheol; of the Ruah, theair; and of the Neshamah, heaven. 6
The Hebrews used all those words in speaking of brutes, to denotetheir sensitive existence, that they did in reference to men. Theyheld that life was in every instance an emission, or breath, fromthe Spirit of God. But they do not intimate of brutes, as they doof men, that they have surviving shades. The author of the Book ofEcclesiastes, however, bluntly declares that "all have one breath,and all go to one place, so that a man hath no pre eminence abovea beast." As far as the words used to express existence, soul, ormind, legitimate any inference, it would seem to be, either thatthe essential life is poured out at death as so much air, or elsethat it is received again by God, in both cases implyingnaturally, though not of philosophic necessity, the close ofconscious, individual existence. But the examination we have madeof their real opinions shows that, however obviously thisconclusion might flow from their pneumatology, it was not theexpectation they cherished. They believed there was a dismalempire in the earth where the rephaim, or ghosts of the dead,reposed forever in a state of semi sleep.
"It is a land of shadows: yea, the land
Itself is but a shadow, and the race
That dwell therein are voices, forms of forms.
And echoes of themselves."
That the Hebrews, during the time covered by their sacred records,had no conception of a retributive life beyond the present, knewnothing of a blessed immortality, is shown by two conclusivearguments, in addition to the positive demonstration afforded bythe views which, as we have seen, they did actually hold in regardto the future lot of man. First, they were puzzled, they weretroubled and distressed, by the moral phenomena of the presentlife, the misfortunes of the righteous, the prosperity of thewicked. Read the Book of Ecclesiastes, the Book of Job, some ofthe Psalms. Had they been acquainted with future reward andpunishment, they could easily have solved these problems to theirsatisfaction. Secondly, they regarded life as the one blessing,death as the one evil. Something of sadness, we may suppose, wasin the wise man's tones when he said, "A living dog is better thana dead lion." Obey Jehovah's laws, that thy days may be long inthe land he giveth thee; the wicked shall not live out half hisdays: such is the burden of the Old Testament. It was reserved fora later age to see life and immortality brought to light, and forthe disciples of a clearer faith to feel that death is gain.
There are many passages in the Hebrew Scriptures generallysupposed and really appearing, upon a slight examination, notafterwards to teach doctrines different from those here stated. Wewill give two examples in a condensed form. "Thou wilt not leave
6 Tractatus de Anima a R. Moscheh Korduero. In Kabbala Denudata.tom. i. pars ii.
my soul in Sheol: . . . at thy right hand are pleasures forevermore." This text, properly translated and explained, means,Thou wilt not leave me to misfortune and untimely death: . . . inthy royal favor is prosperity and length of days. "I know that myRedeemer liveth:. . . in my flesh I shall see God." The genuinemeaning of this triumphant exclamation of faith is, I know thatGod is the Vindicator of the upright, and that he will yet justifyme before I die. A particular examination of the remainingpassages of this character with which erroneous conceptions aregenerally connected would show, first, that in nearly every casethese passages are not accurately translated; secondly, that theymay be satisfactorily interpreted as referring merely to thislife, and cannot by a sound exegesis be explained otherwise;thirdly, that the meaning usually ascribed to them is inconsistentwith the whole general tenor, and with numberless positive andexplicit statements, of the books in which they are found;fourthly, that if there are, as there dubiously seem to be in someof the Psalms, texts implying the ascent of souls after death to aheavenly life, for example, "Thou shalt guide me with thycountenance, and afterward receive me to glory," they were theproduct of a late period, and reflect a faith not native to theHebrews, but first known to them after their intercourse with thePersians.
Christians reject the allegorizing of the Jews, and yettraditionally accept, on their authority, doctrines which can bededuced from their Scriptures in no other way than by the absurdhypothesis of a double or mystic sense. For example, scores ofChristian authors have taught the dogma of a general resurrectionof the dead, deducing it from such passages as God's sentence uponAdam: "From the dust wast thou taken, and unto the dust shalt thoureturn;" as Joel's patriotic picture of the Jews victorious inbattle, and of the vanquished heathen gathered in the valley ofJehoshaphat to witness their installation as rulers of the earth;and as the declaration of the God of battles: "I am he that killsand that makes alive, that wounds and that heals." And theymaintain that the doctrine of immortality is inculcated in suchtexts as these: when Moses asks to see God, and the reply is, "Noman can see me and live;" when Bathsheba bows and says, "Let mylord King David live forever;" and when the sacred poet praisesGod, saying, "Thou hast delivered my soul from death, mine eyesfrom tears, and my feet from falling." Such interpretations ofScripture are lamentable in the extreme; their context shows themto be absurd. The meaning is forced into the words, not derivedfrom them.
Such as we have now seen were the ancient Hebrew ideas of thefuture state. To those who received them the life to come wascheerless, offering no attraction save that of peace to the wearysufferer. On the other hand, it had no terror save the naturalrevulsion of the human heart from everlasting darkness, silence,and dreams. In view of deliverance from so dreary a fate, bytranslation through Jesus Christ to the splendors of the worldabove the firmament, there are many exultations in the Epistles ofPaul, and in other portions of the New Testament.
The Hebrew views of the soul and its destiny, as discerned throughthe intimations of their Scriptures are very nearly what, from afair consideration of the case, we should suppose they would be,agreeing in the main with the natural speculations of other earlynations upon the same subject. These opinions underwent but littlealteration until a century or a century and a half before the dawnof the Christian era.
This is shown by the phraseology of the Septuagint version ofthe Pentateuch, and by the allusions in the so calledApocryphal books. In these, so far as there are any relevantstatements or implications, they are of the same character asthose which we have explained from the more ancient writings. Thisis true, with the notable exceptions of the Wisdom of Solomon andthe Second Maccabees, neither of which documents can be datedearlier than a hundred and twenty years before Christ. The formercontains the doctrine of transmigration. The author says, "Beingwise, I came into a body undefiled."7 But, with the exception ofthis and one other passage, there is little or nothing in the bookwhich is definite on the subject of a future life. It is difficultto tell what the author's real faith was: his words seem ratherrhetorical than dogmatic. He says, "To be allied unto wisdom isimmortality;" but other expressions would appear to show that byimmortality he means merely a deathless posthumous fame, "leavingan eternal memorial of himself to all who shall come after him."Again he declares, "The spirit when it is gone forth returnethnot; neither the soul received up cometh again." And here we find,too, the famous text, "God created man to be immortal, and madehim to be an image of his own eternity. Nevertheless, through envyof the devil came death into the world, and they that hold of hisside do find it."8 Upon the whole, it is pretty clear that thewriter believed in a future life; but the details are toopartially and obscurely shadowed to be drawn forth. We may,however, hazard a conjecture on the passage last quoted,especially with the help of the light cast upon it from itsevident Persian origin. What is it, expressed by the term "death,"which is found by the adherents of the devil distinctively?"Death" cannot here be a metaphor for an inward state of sin andwoe, because it is contrasted with the plainly literal phrases,"created to be immortal," "an image of God's eternity." It cannotsignify simply physical dissolution, because this is found as wellby God's servants as by the devil's. Its genuine meaning is, mostprobably, a descent into the black kingdom of sadness and silenceunder the earth, while the souls of the good were "received up."
The Second Book of Maccabees with emphasis repeatedly assertsfuture retribution and a bodily resurrection. In the seventhchapter a full account is given of seven brothers and their motherwho suffered martyrdom, firmly sustained by faith in a gloriousreward for their heroic fidelity, to be reaped at theresurrection. One of them says to the tyrant by whose order he wastortured, "As for thee, thou shalt have no resurrection to life."Nicanor, bleeding from many horrible wounds, "plucked out hisbowels and cast them upon the throng, and, calling upon the Lordof life and spirit to restore him those again, [at the day ofresurrection,] he thus died."9 Other passages in this book to thesame effect it is needless to quote. The details lying latent inthose we have quoted will soon be illuminated and filled out whenwe come to treat of the opinions of the Pharisees. 10
7 Cap. viii. 20.
8 Cap. ii. 23, 24.
9 Cap. xiv. 46.
10 See a very able discussion of the relation between the ideasconcerning immortality, resurrection, judgment, and retribution,contained in the Old Testament Apocrypha, and those in the NewTestament, by Frisch, inserted in Eichhorn's Allgemeine Bibliothekder Biblischen Literatur, band iv. stuck iv.
There lived in Alexandria a very learned Jew named Philo, theauthor of voluminous writings, a zealous Israelite, but deeplyimbued both with the doctrines and the spirit of Plato. He wasborn about twenty years before Christ, and survived him aboutthirty years. The weight of his character, the force of histalents, the fascinating adaptation of his peculiar philosophicalspeculations and of his bold and subtle allegorical expositions ofScripture to the mind of his age and of the succeeding centuries,together with the eminent literary position and renown earlysecured for him by a concurrence of causes, have combined to makehim exert according to the expressed convictions of the bestjudges, such as Lucke and Norton a greater influence on thehistory of Christian opinions than any single man, with theexception of the Apostle Paul, since the days of Christ. It isimportant, and will be interesting, to see some explanation of hisviews on the subject of a future life. A synopsis of them mustsuffice.
Philo was a Platonic Alexandrian Jew, not a ZoroastrianPalestinian Pharisee. It was a current saying among the ChristianFathers, "Vel Plato Philonizat, vel Philo Platonizat." He haslittle to say of the Messiah, nothing to say of the Messianiceschatology. We speak of him in this connection because he was aJew, flourishing at the commencement of the Christian epoch, andcontributing much, by his cabalistic interpretations, to leadChristians to imagine that the Old Testament contained thedoctrine of a spiritual immortality connected with a system ofrewards and punishments.
Three principal points include the substance of Philo's faith onthe subject in hand. He rejected the notion of a resurrection ofthe body and held to the natural immortality of the soul. Heentertained the most profound and spiritual conceptions of theintrinsically deadly nature and wretched fruits of all sin, and ofthe self contained welfare and self rewarding results of everyelement of virtue, in themselves, independent of time and placeand regardless of external bestowments of woe or joy. He alsobelieved at the same time in contrasted localities above andbelow, appointed as the residences of the disembodied souls ofgood and of wicked men. We will quote miscellaneously variouspassages from him in proof and illustration of these statements:
"Man's bodily form is made from the ground, the soul from nocreated thing, but from the Father of all; so that, although manwas mortal as to his body, he was immortal as to his mind."11"Complete virtue is the tree of immortal life."12 "Vices andcrimes, rushing in through the gate of sensual pleasure, changed ahappy and immortal life for a wretched and mortal one."13Referring to the allegory of the garden of Eden, he says, "Thedeath threatened for eating the fruit was not natural, theseparation of soul and body, but penal, the sinking of the soul inthe body."14 "Death is twofold, one of man, one of the soul. Thedeath of man is the separation of the soul from the body; thedeath of the soul is the corruption of virtue
11 Mangey's edition of Philo's works, vol. i. p. 32.
12 Ibid. p. 38.
13 Ibid. p. 37.
14 Ibid. p. 65.
and the assumption of vice."15 "To me, death with the pious ispreferable to life with the impious. For those so dying, deathlesslife delivers; but those so living, eternal death seizes."16 Hewrites of three kinds of life, "one of which neither ascends norcares to ascend, groping in the secret recesses of Hades andrejoicing in the most lifeless life."17 Commenting on the promiseof the Lord to Abram, that he should be buried in a good old age,Philo observes that "A polished, purified soul does not die, butemigrates: it is of an inextinguishable and deathless race, andgoes to heaven, escaping the dissolution and corruption whichdeath seems to introduce."18 "A vile life is the true Hades,despicable and obnoxious to every sort of execration." 19"Different regions are set apart for different things, heaven forthe good, the confines of the earth for the bad."20 He thinks theladder seen by Jacob in his dream "is a figure of the air, which,reaching from earth to heaven, is the house of unembodied souls,the image of a populous city having for citizens immortal souls,some of whom descend into mortal bodies, but soon return aloft,calling the body a sepulchre from which they hasten, and, on lightwings seeking the lofty ether, pass eternity in sublimecontemplations."21 "The wise inherit the Olympic and heavenlyregion to dwell in, always studying to go above; the bad, theinnermost parts of Hades, always laboring to die."22 He literallyaccredits the account, in the sixteenth chapter of Numbers, of theswallowing of Korah and his company, saying, "The earth opened andtook them alive into Hades."23 "Ignorant men regard death as theend of punishments, whereas in the Divine judgment it is scarcelythe beginning of them."24 He describes the meritorious man as"fleeing to God and receiving the most intimate honor of a firmplace in heaven; but the reprobate man is dragged below, down tothe very lowest place, to Tartarus itself and profounddarkness."25 "He who is not firmly held by evil may by repentancereturn to virtue, as to the native land from which he haswandered. But he who suffers from incurable vice must endure itsdire penalties, banished into the place of the impious until thewhole of eternity."26
Such, then, was the substance of Philo's opinions on the themebefore us, as indeed many more passages, which we have omitted assuperfluous, might be cited from him to show. Man was madeoriginally a mortal body and an immortal soul. He should have beenhappy and pure while in the body, and on leaving it have soared upto the realm of light and bliss on high, to join the angels."Abraham, leaving his mortal part, was added to the people of God,
15 Ibid. p. 65.
16 Ibid. p. 233.
17 Ibid. p. 479.
18 Ibid. p. 513.
19 Ibid. p. 527.
20 Ibid. p. 555.
21 Ibid. p. 641, 642.
22 Ibid. p. 643.
23 Ibid. vol. ii. p. 178.
24 Ibid. p. 419.
25 Mangey's edition of Philo's Works, vol. ii. p. 433.
26 Ibid. vol. i. p. 139.
enjoying immortality and made similar to the angels. For theangels are the army of God, bodiless and happy souls."27 But,through the power of evil, all who yield to sin and vice lose thatestate of bright and blessed immortality, and become discordant,wretched, despicable, and, after the dissolution of the body, arethrust down to gloom and manifold just retribution in Hades. Hebelieved in the pre existence, and in a limited transmigration, ofsouls. Here he leaves the subject, saying nothing of aresurrection or final restoration, and not speculating as to anyother of the details. 28
We pass on to speak of the Jewish sects at the time of Christ.There were three of these, cardinally differing from each other intheir theories of the future fate of man. First, there were theskeptical, materialistic Sadducees, wealthy, proud, few. Theyopenly denied the existence of any disembodied souls, avowing thatmen utterly perished in the grave. "The cloud faileth and passethaway: so he that goeth down to the grave doth not return."29 Weread in the Acts of the Apostles, "The Sadducees say there is noresurrection, neither angel nor spirit." At the same time theyaccepted the Pentateuch, only rejecting or explaining away thoseportions of it which relate to the separate existence of souls andto their subterranean abode. They strove to confound theiropponents, the advocates of a future life, by such perplexingquestions as the one they addressed to Jesus, asking, in the caseof a woman who had had seven successive husbands, which one ofthem should be her husband in the resurrection. All that we cangather concerning the Sadducees from the New Testament is amplyconfirmed by Josephus, who explicitly declares, "Their doctrine isthat souls die with the bodies."
The second sect was the ascetical and philosophical Essenes, ofwhom the various information given by Philo in his celebratedpaper on the Therapeuta agrees with the account in Josephus andwith the scattered gleams in other sources. The doctrine of theEssenes on the subject of our present inquiry was much like thatof Philo himself; and in some particulars it remarkably resemblesthat of many Christians. They rejected the notion of theresurrection of the body, and maintained the inherent immortalityof the soul. They said that "the souls of men, coming out of themost subtle and pure air, are bound up in their bodies as in somany prisons; but, being freed at death, they do rejoice, and areborne aloft where a state of happy life forever is decreed for thevirtuous; but the vicious are assigned to eternal punishment in adark, cold place." 30 Such sentiments appear to have inspired theheroic Eleazar, whose speech to his followers is reported byJosephus, when they were besieged at Masada, urging them to rushon the foe, "for death is better than life, is the only true life,leading the soul to infinite freedom and joy above."31
27 Ibid. p. 164.
28 See, in the Analekten of Keil and Tzschirner, band i stuckii., an article by Dr. Schreiter, entitled Philo's Ideen uberUnsterblichkeit, Auferstehung, und Vergeltung.
29 Lightfoot in Matt. xxii. 23.
30 Josephus, De Bell. lib. ii. cap. 8.
31 Ibid. lib. vii. cap. 8.
But by far the most numerous and powerful of the Jewish sects atthat time, and ever since, were the eclectic, traditional,formalist Pharisees: eclectic, inasmuch as their faith was formedby a partial combination of various systems; traditional, sincethey allowed a more imperative sway to the authority of theFathers, and to oral legends and precepts, than to the plainletter of Scripture; formalist, for they neglected the weightierspiritual matters of the law in a scrupulous tithing of mint,cumin, and anise seed, a pretentious wearing of broadphylacteries, an uttering of long prayers in the streets, and thevarious other hypocritical priestly paraphernalia of a severemechanical ritual.
From Josephus we learn that the Pharisees believed that the soulsof the faithful that is, of all who punctiliously observed the lawof Moses and the traditions of the elders would live again bytransmigration into new bodies; but that the souls of all others,on leaving their bodies, were doomed to a place of confinementbeneath, where they must abide forever. These are his words: "ThePharisees believe that souls have an immortal strength in them,and that in the under world they will experience rewards orpunishments according as they have lived well or ill in this life.The righteous shall have power to live again, but sinners shall bedetained in an everlasting prison."32 Again, he writes, "ThePharisees say that all souls are incorruptible, but that only thesouls of good men are removed into other bodies."33 The fragmententitled "Concerning Hades," formerly attributed to Josephus, isnow acknowledged on all sides to be a gross forgery. The Greekculture and philosophical tincture with which he was imbued ledhim to reject the doctrine of a bodily resurrection; and this isprobably the reason why he makes no allusion to that doctrine inhis account of the Pharisees. That such a doctrine was held amongthem is plain from passages in the New Testament, passages whichalso shed light upon the statement actually made by Josephus.Jesus says to Martha, "Thy brother shall rise again." She replies,"I know that he shall rise in the resurrection, at the last day."Some of the Pharisees, furthermore, did not confine the privilegeor penalty of transmigration, and of the resurrection, to therighteous. They once asked Jesus, "Who did sin, this man or hisparents, that he was born blind?" Plainly, he could not have beenborn blind for his own sins unless he had known a previous life.Paul, too, says of them, in his speech at Casarea, "Theythemselves also allow that there shall be a resurrection of thedead, both of the just and of the unjust." This, however, is veryprobably an exception to their prevailing belief. Their religiousintolerance, theocratic pride, hereditary national vanity, andsectarian formalism, often led them to despise and overlook theGentile world, haughtily restricting the boon of a renewed life tothe legal children of Abraham.
But the grand source now open to us of knowledge concerning theprevailing opinions of the Jews on our present subject at andsubsequent to the time of Christ is the Talmud. This is acollection of the traditions of the oral law, (Mischna,) with thecopious precepts and comments (Gemara) of the most learned andauthoritative Rabbins. It is a wonderful monument of myths andfancies, profound speculations and ridiculous puerilities, antique
32 Antiq. lib. xviii. cap. 1.33 De Bell. lib. ii. cap. 8.
legends and cabalistic subtleties, crowned and loaded with thenational peculiarities. The Jews reverence it extravagantly,saying, "The Bible is salt, the Mischna pepper, the Gemara balmyspice." Rabbi Solomon ben Joseph sings, in our poet's version,
"The Kabbala and Talmud hoar Than all the Prophets prize I more;
For water is all Bible lore, But Mischna is pure wine."
The rambling character and barbarous dialect of this work havejoined with various other causes to withhold from it far too muchof the attention of Christian critics. Saving by old Lightfoot andPocock, scarcely a contribution has ever been offered us inEnglish from this important field. The Germans have done farbetter; and numerous huge volumes, the costly fruits of theirtoils, are standing on neglected shelves. The eschatological viewsderived from this source are authentically Jewish, however closelythey may resemble some portion of the popular Christianconceptions upon the same subject. The correspondences betweensome Jewish and some Christian theological dogmas betoken theinflux of an adulterated Judaism into a nascent Christianity, notthe reflex of a pure Christianity upon a receptive Judaism. It isimportant to show this; and it appears from severalconsiderations. In the first place, it is demonstrable, it isunquestioned, that at least the germs and outlines of the dogmasreferred to were in actual existence among the Pharisees beforethe conflict between Christianity and Judaism arose.Secondly, inthe Rabbinical writings these dogmas are most fundamental, vital,and pervading, in relation to the whole system; but in theChristian they seem subordinate and incidental, have everyappearance of being ingrafts, not outgrowths. Thirdly, in theapostolic age Judaism was a consolidated, petrified system,defended from outward influence on all sides by an invulnerablebigotry, a haughty exclusiveness; while Christianity was in ayoung and vigorous, an assimilating and formative, state.Fourthly, the overweening sectarian vanity and scorn of the Jews,despising, hating, and fearing the Christians, would not permitthem to adopt peculiarities of belief from the latter; but theChristians were undeniably Jews in almost every thing except inasserting the Messiahship of Jesus: they claimed to be the genuineJews, children of the law and realizers of the promise. The Jewishdogmas, therefore, descended to them as a natural linealinheritance. Finally, in the Acts of the Apostles, the letters ofPaul, and the progress of the Ebionites, (which sect includednearly all the Christians of the first century,) we can trace stepby step the actual workings, in reliable history, of the processthat we affirm, namely, the assimilation of Jewish elements intothe popular Christianity.
CHAPTER IX.
RABBINICAL DOCTRINE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
THE starting point in the Talmud on this subject is with theeffects of sin upon the human race. Man was made radiant, pure,immortal, in the image of God. By sin he was obscured, defiled,burdened with mortal decay and judgment. In this representationthat misery and death were an after doom brought into the world bysin, the Rabbinical authorities strikingly agree. The testimony isirresistible. We need not quote confirmations of this statement,as every scholar in this department will accept it at once. But asto what is meant precisely by the term "death," as used in such aconnection, there is no little obscurity and diversity of opinion.In all probability, some of the Pharisaical fathers perhaps themajority of them conceived that, if Adam had not sinned, he andhis posterity would have been physically immortal, and wouldeither have lived forever on the earth, or have been successivelytransferred to the home of Jehovah over the firmament. They callthe devil, who is the chief accuser in the heavenly court ofjustice, the angel of death, by the name of "Sammael." RabbiReuben says, "When Sammael saw Adam sin, he immediately sought toslay him, and went to the heavenly council and clamored forjustice against him, pleading thus: 'God made this decree, "In theday thou eatest of the tree thou shalt surely die." Therefore givehim to me, for he is mine, and I will kill him; to this end was Icreated; and give me power over all his descendants.' When thecelestial Sanhedrim perceived that his petition was just, theydecreed that it should be granted."1 A great many expressions ofkindred tenor might easily be adduced, leaving it hardly possibleto doubt as indeed we are not aware that any one does doubt thatmany of the Jews literally held that sin was the sole cause ofbodily dissolution. But, on the other hand, there were ascertainly others who did not entertain that idea, but understoodand explained the terms in which it was sometimes conveyed in adifferent, a partially figurative, sense. Rabbi Samuel ben Davidwrites, "Although the first Adam had not sinned, yet death wouldhave been; for death was created on the first day." The referencehere is, as Rabbi Berechias explains, to the account in Genesiswhere we read that "darkness was upon the face of the deep," "bywhich is to be understood the angel of death, who has darkened theface of man."2 The Talmudists generally believed also in the preexistence of souls in heaven, and in a spiritual body investingand fitting the soul for heaven, as the present carnal bodyinvests and fits it for the earth. Schoettgen has collectednumerous illustrations in point, of which the following may serveas specimens.3 "When the first Adam had not sinned, he was everyway an angel of the Lord, perfect and spotless, and it was decreedthat he should live forever like one of the celestial ministers.""The soul cannot ascend into Paradise except it be first investedwith a
1 Schoettgen, Dissertatio de Hierosolyma Coelesti, cap. iii. sect.9.
2 Schoettgen, Hora Biblica et Talmudica, in Rom. v. 12, et inJohan. iii. 19.
3 Ibid. in 2 Cor. v. 2.
clothing adapted to that world, as the present is for this world."These notions do not harmonize with the thought that man wasoriginally destined for a physical eternity on this globe. Allthis difficulty disappears, we think, and the true metaphoricalforce often intended in the word "death" comes to view, throughthe following conception, occupying the minds of a portion of theJewish Rabbins, as we are led to believe by the clews furnished inthe close connection between the Pharisaic and the Zoroastrianeschatology, by similar hints in various parts of the NewTestament, and by some quite explicit declarations in the Talmuditself, which we shall soon cite in a different connection. God atfirst intended that man should live for a time in pure blessednesson the earth, and then without pain should undergo a gloriouschange making him a perfect peer of the angels, and be translatedto their lofty abode in his own presence; but, when he sinned, Godgave him over to manifold suffering, and on the destruction of hisbody adjudged his naked soul to descend to a doleful imprisonmentbelow the grave. The immortality meant for man was a timely ascentto heaven in a paradisal clothing, without dying. The doom broughton him by sin was the alteration of that desirable change ofbodies and ascension to the supernal splendors, for a permanentdisembodiment and a dreaded descent to the subterranean glooms. Itis a Talmudical as much as it is a Pauline idea, that thetriumphant power of the Messiah would restore what the unfortunatefall of Adam forfeited. Now, if we can show as we think we can,and as we shall try to do in a later part of this article that thelater Jews expected the Messianic resurrection to be the preludeto an ascent into heaven, and not the beginning of a gross earthlyimmortality, it will powerfully confirm the theory which we havejust indicated. "When," says one of the old Rabbins, "the dead inIsraelitish earth are restored alive," their bodies will be "asthe body of the first Adam before he sinned, and they shall allfly into the air like birds."4
At all events, whether the general Rabbinical belief was in theprimitive destination of man to a heavenly or to an earthlyimmortality, whether the "death" decreed upon him in consequenceof sin was the dissolution of the body or the wretchedness of thesoul, they all agree that the banishment of souls into the realmof blackness under the grave was a part of the penalty of sin.Some of them maintained, as we think, that, had there been no sin,souls would have passed to heaven in glorified bodies; others ofthem maintained, as we think, that, had there been no sin, theywould have lived eternally upon earth in their present bodies; butall of them agreed, it is undisputed, that in consequence of sinsouls were condemned to the under world. No man would have seenthe dismal realm of the sepulchre had there not been sin. Theearliest Hebrew conception was that all souls went down to acommon abode, to spend eternity in dark slumber or nervelessgroping. This view was first modified soon after the Persiancaptivity, by the expectation that there would be discriminationat the resurrection which the Jews had learned to look for, whenthe just should rise but the wicked should be left.
The next alteration of their notions on this subject was thesubdivision of the underworld into Paradise and Gehenna, aconception known among them probably as early as a century beforeChrist, and very prominent with them in the apostolic age. "WhenRabbi
4 Schoettgen, in 1 Cor. xv. 44.
Jochanan was dying, his disciples asked him, 'Light of Israel,main pillar of the right, thou strong hammer, why dost thou weep?'He answered, 'Two paths open before me, the one leading to bliss,the other to torments; and I know not which of them will be mydoom.'"5 "Paradise is separated from hell by a distance no greaterthan the width of a thread."6 So, in Christ's parable of Dives andLazarus, Abraham's bosom and hell are two divisions. "There arethree doors into Gehenna: one in the wilderness, where Korah andhis company were swallowed; one in the sea, where Jonah descendedwhen he 'cried out of the belly of hell;' one in Jerusalem, forthe Lord says, 'My furnace is in Jerusalem.'"7 "The under world isdivided into palaces, each of which is so large that it would takea man three hundred years to roam over it. There are distinctapartments where the hell punishments are inflicted. One place isso dark that its name is 'Night of Horrors."8 "In Paradise thereare certain mansions for the pious from the Gentile peoples, andfor those mundane kings who have done kindness to theIsraelites."9 "The fire of Gehenna was kindled on the evening ofthe first Sabbath, and shall never be extinguished."10 TheEgyptians, Persians, Hindus, and Greeks, with all of whom the Jewsheld relations of intercourse, had, in their popularrepresentations of the under world of the dead, regions of peaceand honor for the good, and regions of fire for the bad. The ideamay have been adopted from them by the Jews, or it may have beenat last developed among themselves, first by the imaginativepoetical, afterwards by the literally believing, transferencebelow of historical and local imagery and associations, such asthose connected with the ingulfing of Sodom and Gomorrah in fireand sulphur, and with the loathed fires in the valley of Hinnom.
Many of the Rabbins believed in the transmigration or revolutionof souls, an immemorial doctrine of the Fast, and developed itinto the most ludicrous and marvellous details.11 But, with theexception of those who adopted this Indian doctrine, the Rabbinssupposed all departed souls to be in the under world, some in thedivision of Paradise, others in that of hell. Here they fanciedthese souls to be longingly awaiting the advent of the Messiah."Messiah and the patriarchs weep together in Paradise over thedelay of the time of the kingdom."12 In this quotation the Messiahis represented as being in the under world, for the Jews expectedthat he would be a man, very likely some one who had alreadylived. For a delegation was once sent to ask Jesus, "Art thouElias? art thou the Messiah? art thou that prophet?" Light is thusthrown upon the Rabbinical saying that "it was doubted whether theMessiah would come from the living, or the dead."13 Borrowing somePersian modes of thinking, and adding them to their own inordinatenational pride, the Rabbins soon began
5 Talmud, tract. Berachoth.
6 Eisenmenger, Entdecktes Judenthum, th. ii. cap. v. s. 315.
7 Lightfoot, in Matt. v. 22.
8 Schroder, Satzungen and Gebrauche des Talmudisch RabbinischenJudenthums, s. 408.
9 Schoettgen, in Johan. xiv. 2.
10 Nov. Test. ex Talmude, etc. illustratum a J. G. Menschen, p.125.
11 Basnage, Hist. of Jews, lib. iv. cap. 30. Also, Traditions ofthe Rabbins, in Blackwood for April, 1833.
12 Eisenmenger, th. ii. s. 304.
13 Lightfoot, in Matt. ii. 16.
to fancy that the observance or non observance of the Pharisaicritual, and kindred particulars, must exert a great effect indetermining the destination of souls and their condition in theunder world. Observe the following quotations from the Talmud."Abraham sits at the gate of hell to see that no Israeliteenters." "Circumcision is so agreeable to God, that he swore toAbraham that no one who was circumcised should descend intohell."14 "What does Abraham to those circumcised who have sinnedtoo much? He takes the foreskins from Gentile boys who diedwithout circumcision, and places them on those Jews who werecircumcised but have become godless, and then kicks them intohell."15 Hell here denotes that division in the under world wherethe condemned are punished. The younger Buxtorf, in a preface tohis father's "Synagoga Judaica," gives numerous specimens ofJewish representations of "the efficacy of circumcision being sogreat that no one who has undergone it shall go down into hell."Children can help their deceased parents out of hell by their gooddeeds, prayers, and offerings.16 "Beyond all doubt," says Gfrorer,"the ancient Jewish synagogue inculcated the doctrine ofsupererogatory good works, the merit of which went to benefit thedeparted souls."17 Here all souls were, in the under world, eitherin that part of it called Paradise, or in that named Gehenna,according to certain conditions. But in whichever place they were,and under whatever circumstances, they were all tarrying inexpectation of the advent of the Messiah.
How deeply rooted, how eagerly cherished, the Jewish belief in theapproaching appearance of the Messiah was, and what a splendidgroup of ideas and imaginations they clustered around his reign,are well known facts. He was to be a descendant of royal David, aninspired prophet, priest, and king, was to subdue the whole earthbeneath his Jewish sceptre and establish from Jerusalem atheocratic empire of unexampled glory, holiness, and delight. Inso much the consent was general and earnest; though in regard tomany further details there would seem to have been an incongruousdiversity of opinions. They supposed the coming of the Messiahwould be preceded by ten frightful woes,18 also by the appearanceof the prophet Elias as a forerunner.19 There are a few passagesin the Rabbinical writings which, unless they were forged andinterpolated by Christians at a late period, show that there werein the Jewish mind anticipations of the personal descent of theMessiah into the under world.20 "After this the Messiah, the sonof David, came to the gates of the underworld. But when the bound,who are in Gehenna, saw the light of the Messiah, they beganrejoicing to receive him, saying, 'He shall lead us up from thisdarkness.'" "The captives shall
14 Schroder, s. 332.
15 Eisenmenger, th. ii. kap. vi. s. 340.
16 Ibid. s. 358.
17 Geschichte des Urchristenthums, zweit. abth. s. 186. Maimonidesalso asserts the doctrine of supererogatory works: see p. 237 ofH. H. Bernard's Selections from the Yad Hachazakah of Maimonides.
18 Surenhusius, Mischna, pars tertia, p. 308.
19 Lightfoot, in Matt. xvii. 10.
20 For a general view of the Jewish eschatology, see Gfrorer,Geschichte des Urchristenthums, kap. x.; Eisenmenger, EntdecktesJudenthum, th. ii. kap. xv. xvii.
ascend from the under world, Schechinah at their head."21 Gfrorerderives the origin of the doctrine that Christ rescued souls outof the under world, from a Jewish notion, preserved in theTalmud,22 that the just patriarchs sometimes did it.23 Bertholdtadduces Talmudical declarations to show that through the Messiah"God would hereafter liberate the Israelites from the under world,on account of the merit of circumcision"24 Schoettgen quotes thisstatement from the Sohar: "Messia shall die, and shall remain inthe state of death a time, and shall rise."25 The so called FourthBook of Ezra says, in the seventh chapter, "My son, the Christ,shall die: then follow the resurrection and the judgment."Although it is clear, from various other sources, as well as fromthe account in John xii. 34, that there was a prevalentexpectation among the Jews that "the Messiah would abide forever,"it also seems quite certain that there were at the same time atleast obscure presentiments, based on prophecies and traditions,that he must die, that an important part of his mission wasconnected with his death. This appears from such passages as wehave cited above, found in early Rabbinical writers, who wouldcertainly be very unlikely to borrow and adapt a new idea of sucha character from the Christians; and from the manner in whichJesus assumes his death to be a part of the Messianic fate andinterprets the Scriptures as necessarily pointing to that effect.He charges his disciples with being "fools and blind" in not sounderstanding the doctrine; thus seeming to imply that it wasplainly known to some. But this question the origin of the idea ofa suffering, atoning, dying Messiah is confessedly a very nice andobscure one. The evidence, the silence, the inferences, thepresumptions and doubts on the subject are such, that some of themost thorough and impartial students say they are unable to decideeither way.
However the foregoing question be decided, it is admitted by allthat the Jews earnestly looked for a resurrection of the dead asan accompaniment of the Messiah's coming. Whether Christ was to godown into the under world, or to sit enthroned on Mount Zion, ineither case the dead should come up and live again on earth at theblast of his summoning trumpet. Rabbi Jeremiah commanded, "Whenyou bury me, put shoes on my feet, and give me a staff in my hand,and lay me on one side, that when the Messiah comes I may beready."26 Most of the Rabbins made this resurrection partial."Whoever denies the resurrection of the dead shall have no part init, for the very reason that he denies it."27 "Rabbi Abbu says, "Aday of rain is greater than the resurrection of the dead; becausethe rain is for all, while the resurrection is only for thejust."28 "Sodom and Gomorrah shall not rise in the resurrection ofthe dead."29 Rabbi Chebbo says, "The patriarchs so vehementlydesired to be buried in
21 Schoettgen, De Messia, lib. vi. cap. v. sect. 1.
22 Eisenmenger, th. ii. ss. 343, 364.
23 Geschichte Urchrist. kap. viii. s. 184.
24 Christologia Judaorum Jesu Apostolorumque Atate, sect. 34, (DeDescensu Messia ad Inferos.)
25 De Messia, lib. vi. cap. v. sect. 2.
26 Lightfoot, in Matt. xxvii. 52.
27 Witsius, Dissertatio de Seculo, etc. sect. 9.
28 Nov. Test. Illustratum, etc. a Meuschen, p. 62.
29 Schoettgen, in Johan. vi. 39.
the land of Israel, because those who are dead in that land shallbe the first to revive and shall devour his years, [the years ofthe Messiah.] But for those just who are interred beyond the holyland, it is to be understood that God will make a passage in theearth, through which they will be rolled until they reach the landof Israel."30 Rabbi Jochanan says, "Moses died out of the holyland, in order to show that in the same way that God will raise upMoses, so he will raise all those who observe his law." Thenational bigotry of the Jews reaches a pitch of extravagance insome of their views that is amusing. For instance, they declarethat "one Israelitish soul is dearer and more important to Godthan all the souls of a whole nation of the Gentiles!" Again, theysay, "When God judges the Israelites, he will stand, and make thejudgment brief and mild; when he judges the Gentiles, he will sit,and make it long and severe!" They affirm that the resurrectionwill be effected by means of a dew; and they quote to that effectthis verse from Canticles: "I sleep, but my heart waketh; my headis filled with dew, and my locks with drops of the night." Someassert that "the resurrection will be immediately caused by God,who never gives to any one the three keys of birth, rain, and theresurrection of the dead." Others say that the power to raise andjudge the dead will be delegated to the Messiah, and even go sofar as to assert that the trumpet whose formidable blasts willthen shake the universe is to be one of the horns of that ramwhich Abraham offered up instead of his son Isaac! Some confinethe resurrection to faithful Jews, some extend it to the wholeJewish nation, some think all the righteous of the earth will havepart in it, and some stretch its pale around all mankind alike.31They seem to agree that the reprobate would either be left in thewretched regions of Sheol when the just arose, or else be thrustback after the judgment, to remain there forever. It was believedthat the righteous after their resurrection would never die again,but ascend to heaven. The Jews after a time, when the increase ofgeographical knowledge had annihilated from the earth their oldEden whence the sinful Adam was expelled, changed its locationinto the sky. Thither, as the later fables ran, Elijah was bornein his chariot of fire by the horses thereof. Rabbi Pinchas says,"Carefulness leads us to innocence, innocence to purity, purity tosanctity, sanctity to humility, humility to fear of sins, fear ofsins to piety, piety to the holy spirit, the holy spirit to theresurrection of the dead, the resurrection of the dead to theprophet Elias."32 The writings of the early Christian Fatherscontain many allusions to this blessed habitation of saints abovethe clouds. It is illustrated in the following quaint Rabbinicalnarrative. Rabbi Jehosha ben Levi once besought the angel of deathto take him up, ere he died, to catch a glimpse of Paradise.Standing on the wall, he suddenly snatched the angel's sword andsprang over, swearing by Almighty God that he would not come out.Death was not allowed to enter Paradise, and the son of Levi didnot restore his sword until he had promised to be more gentletowards the dying.33 The righteous were never to return to thedust, but "at the end
30 Schoettgen, De Messia, lib. vi. cap. vi. sect. 27.
31 See an able dissertation on Jewish Notions of the Resurrectionof the Dead, prefixed to Humphrey's Translation of Athenagoras onthe Resurrection.
32 Surenhusius, Mischna, pars tertia, p. 309.
33 Schroder, s. 419.
of the thousand years," the duration of the Messiah's earthlyreign, "when the Lord is lifted up, God shall fit wings to thejust, like the wings of eagles."34 In a word, the Messiah and hisredeemed ones would ascend into heaven to the right hand of God.So Paul, who said, "I am a Pharisee, the son of a Pharisee,"declares that when the dead have risen "we shall be caught up inthe clouds to be forever with the Lord."
We forbear to notice a thousand curious details of speculation andfancy in which individual Rabbins indulged; for instance, theircommon notion concerning the bone luz, the single bone which,withstanding dissolution, shall form the nucleus of theresurrection body. It was a prevalent belief with them that theresurrection would take place in the valley of Jehoshaphat, inproof of which they quote this text from Joel: "Let the heathen bewakened and come up to the valley of Jehoshaphat; for there will Isit to judge the nations around." To this day, wherever scatteredabroad, faithful Jews cling to the expectation of the Messiah'scoming, and associate with his day the resurrection of the dead.35The statement in the Song of Solomon, "The king is held in thegalleries," means, says a Rabbinical book, "that the Messiah isdetained in Paradise, fettered by a woman's hair!" Every day,throughout the world, every consistent Israelite repeats the wordsof Moses Maimonides, the peerless Rabbi, of whom it is a proverbthat "from Moses to Moses there arose not a Moses:" "I believewith a perfect faith that the Messiah will come, and though hedelays, nevertheless, I will always expect him till he come." Thenshall glory cover the living, and the risen, children of Israel,and confusion fall on their Gentile foes. In almost every inch ofthe beautiful valley of Jehoshaphat a Jew has been buried. Allover the slopes of the hill sides around lie the thick clusteringsepulchral slabs, showing how eagerly the chosen people seek tosleep in the very spot where the first rising of the dead shallbe. Entranced and mute,
"In old Jehoshaphat's valley, they
Of Israel think the assembled world
Will stand upon that awful day,
When the Ark's light, aloft unfurl'd,
Among the opening clouds shall shine,
Divinity's own radiant shrine."
Any one familiar with the Persian theology36 will at once notice astriking resemblance between many of its dogmas and those, first,of Pharisaism, secondly, of the popular Christianity. Someexamination of this subject properly belongs here. There is, then,as is well known, a circle or group of ideas, particularlypertaining to eschatology, which appear in the later Jewishwritings, and remarkably correspond to those held by the Parsees,the followers of Zoroaster. The same notions also reappear in theearly Christianity as popularly understood. We will specify someof these correspondences. The doctrine of angels, received by theJews, their names, offices, rank, and destiny, was borrowed andformed
34 Schoettgen, de Messia, lib. vi. cap. vi. sect. 23; cap. vii.ss. 3, 4.
35 John Allen, Modern Judaism, ch. vi. and xv.
36 See Abriss der Religion Zoroasters nach den Zendbuchern, vonAbbe Foucher, in Kleuker's Zend Avesta, band i. zweit anhang, ss.328-342.
by them during and just after the Babylonish captivity, and ismuch like that which they found among their enslavers.37 Theguardian angels appointed over nations, spoken of by Daniel, arePersian. The angels called in the Apocalypse "the seven spirits ofGod sent forth into all the earth," in Zechariah "the seven eyesof God which run to and fro through all the earth," are theAmschaspands of the Persian faith. The wars of the angels aredescribed as minutely by the old Persians as by Milton. The ZendAvesta pictures Ahriman pregnant with Death, (die altehollenschlange, todschwangere Ahriman,) as Milton describes thewomb of Sin bearing that fatal monster. The Gahs, or second orderof angels, the Persians supposed,38 were employed in preparingclothing and laying it up in heaven to clothe the righteous afterthe resurrection, a fancy frequent among the Rabbins andrepeatedly alluded to in the New Testament. With both the Persiansand the Jews, all our race both sexes sprang from one originalman. With both, the first pair were seduced and ruined by means offruit which the devil gave to them. With both, there was a beliefin demoniacal possessions, devils or bad spirits entering humanbodies. With both, there was the expectation of a greatDeliverer, the Persian Sosiosch, the Jewish Messiah, whose comingwould be preceded by fearful woes, who would triumph over allevil, raise the dead, judge the world, separate the righteous andthe wicked, purge the earth with fire, and install a reign ofglorious blessedness.39 "The conception of an under world," saysDr. Roth, "was known centuries before Zoroaster; but probably hewas the first to add to the old belief the idea that the underworld was a place of purification, wherein souls were purged fromall traces of sin."40 Of this belief in a subterranean purgatorythere are numerous unmistakable evidences and examples in theRabbinical writings.41
These notions and others the Pharisees early adopted, and wroughtinto the texture of what they called the "Oral Law," that body ofverbally transmitted legends, precepts, and dogmas, afterwardswritten out and collected in the Mischna, to which Christrepeatedly alluded with such severity, saying, "Ye by yourtraditions make the commandments of God of none effect." To somedoctrines of kindred character and origin with these Paul referswhen he warns his readers against "the worshipping of angels,""endless genealogies," "philosophy falsely so called," and variousbesetting heresies of the time. But others were so woven andassimilated into the substance of the popular Judaism of the age,as inculcated by the Rabbins, that Paul himself held them, thelingering vestiges of his earnest Pharisaic education andorganized experience. They naturally found their way into theApostolic Church, principally composed of Ebionites, Christianswho had been Jews; and from it they were never separated, but havecome to us in seeming orthodox garb, and are generally
37 Schroder, p. 385.
38 Yacna, Ha 411. Kleuker, zweit. auf. s. 198.
39 Die Heiligen Schriften der Parsen, von Dr. F. Spiegel, kap. ii.ss. 32-37. Studien and Kritiken, 1885, band i., "Ist die Lehre vonder Anferstehung des Leibes nicht ein alt Persische Lehre?" F.Nork, Mythen der Alten Perser als Quellen ChristlicherGlaubenslehren und Ritualien.
40 Die Zoroastrischen Glaubenslehre, von Dr. Eduard Roth. s. 450.
41 See, In tom. i. Kabbala Denudata, Synopsis Dogmatum Libri Soharpp. 108, 109, 113.
retained now. Still, they were errors. They are incredible to thethinking minds of to day. It is best to get rid of them by thetruth, that they are pagan growths introduced into Christianity,but to be discriminated from it. By removing these antiquated andincredible excrescences from the real religion of Christ, we shallsave the essential faith from the suspicion which theirassociation with it, their fancied identity with it, invites andprovokes.
The correspondences between the Persian and the Pharisaic faith,in regard to doctrines, are of too arbitrary and peculiar acharacter to allow us for a moment to suppose them to have been anindependent product spontaneously developed in the two nations;though even in that case the doctrines in question have nosanction of authority, not being Mosaic nor Prophetic, but onlyRabbinical. One must have received from the other. Which was thebestower and which the recipient is quite plain.42 There is not awhit of evidence to show, but, on the contrary, ample presumptionto disprove, that a certain cycle of notions were known among theJews previous to a period of most intimate and constantintercourse between them and the Persians. But before that periodthose notions were an integral part of the Persian theology. EvenPrideaux admits that the first Zoroaster lived and Magianismflourished at least a thousand years before Christ. And the dogmaswe refer to are fundamental features of the religion. These dogmasof the Persians, not derived from the Old Testament nor knownamong the Jews before the captivity, soon after that time began toshow themselves in their literature, and before the opening of theNew Testament were prominent elements of the Pharisaic belief. Theinference is unavoidable that the confluence of Persian thoughtand feeling with Hebrew thought and feeling, joined with thematerials and flowing in the channels of the subsequent experienceof the Jews, formed a mingled deposit about the age of Christ,which deposit was Pharisaism. Again: the doctrines common toZoroastrianism and Pharisaism in the former seem to be primesources, in the latter to be late products. In the former, theycompose an organic, complete, inseparable system; in the latter,they are disconnected, mixed piecemeal, and, to a considerableextent, historically traceable to an origin beyond the native,national mind. It is a significant fact that the abnormal symbolicbeasts described by several of the Jewish prophets, and in theApocalypse, were borrowed from Persian art. Sculpturesrepresenting these have been brought to light by the recentresearches at Persepolis. Finally, all early ecclesiasticalhistory incontestably shows that Persian dogmas exerted on theChristianity of the first centuries an enormous influence, apervasive and perverting power unspent yet, and which it is one ofthe highest tasks of honest and laborious Christian students inthe present day to explain, define, and separate. What was thatManichaanism which nearly filled Christendom for a hundred years,what was it, in great part, but an influx of tradition,speculation, imagination, and sentiment, from Persia? The GnosticChristians even had a scripture called "Zoroaster's Apocalypse."43"The wise men from the east," who knelt before the infant Christ,"and opened their treasures, and gave him gifts, gold,frankincense, and myrrh," were Persian Magi. We may imaginativelyregard that sacred scene as an emblematical figure of the fardifferent tributes which
42 Lucke, Einleitung in die Offenbarung des Johannes, kap. 2,sect. 8.
43 Kleuker, Zend Avesta, band ii. anhang i. s. 12.
a little later came from their country to his religion, theunfortunate contributions that permeated and corrupted so much ofthe form in which it thenceforth appeared and spread. In the puregospel's pristine day, ere it had hardened into theological dogmasor become encumbered with speculations and comments, from the lipsof God's Anointed Son repeatedly fell the earnest warning, "Bewareof the leaven of the Pharisees." There is far more need to havethis warning intelligently heeded now, coming with redoubledemphasis from the Master's own mouth, "Beware of the leaven of thePharisees." For, as the gospel is now generally set forth andreceived, that leaven has leavened well nigh the whole lump of it.
CHAPTER X.
GREEK AND ROMAN DOCTRINE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
THE disembodied soul, as conceived by the Greeks, and after themby the Romans, is material, but of so thin a contexture that itcannot be felt with the hands. It is exhaled with the dyingbreath, or issues through a warrior's wounds. The sword passesthrough its uninjured form as through the air. It is to the bodywhat a dream is to waking action. Retaining the shape, lineaments,and motion the man had in life, it is immediately recognised uponappearing. It quits the body with much reluctance, leaving thatwarm and vigorous investiture for a chill and forceless existence.It glides along without noise and very swiftly, like a shadow. Itis unable to enter the lower kingdom and be at peace until itsdeserted body has been buried with sacred rites: meanwhile, nakedand sad, it flits restlessly about the gates, uttering dolefulmoans.
The early Greek authors describe the creation as a stupendoushollow globe cut in the centre by the plane of the earth. Theupper hemisphere is lighted by beneficent luminaries; the lowerhemisphere is filled with unvarying blackness. The top of thehigher sphere is Heaven, the bright dwelling of the Olympian gods;its bottom is the surface of the earth, the home of living men.The top of the lower sphere is Hades, the abode of the ghosts ofthe dead; its bottom is Tartarus, the prison of the Titans,rebellious giants vanquished by Zeus. Earth lies half way from thecope of Heaven to the floor of Tartarus. This distance is so greatthat, according to Hesiod, it would take an anvil nine days tofall from the centre to the nadir. Some of the ancients seem tohave surmised the sphericity of the earth, and to have thoughtthat Hades was simply its dark side, the dead being our antipodes.In the Odyssey, Ulysses reaches Hades by sailing across the oceanstream and passing the eternal night land of the Cimmerians,whereupon he comes to the edge of Acheron, the moat of Pluto'ssombre house. Virgil also says, "One pole of the earth to usalways points aloft; but the other is seen by black Styx and theinfernal ghosts, where either dead night forever reigns or elseAurora returns thither from us and brings them back the day."1 Butthe prevalent notion evidently was that Hades was an immensehollow region not far under the surface of the ground, and that itwas to be reached by descent through some cavern, like that atAvernus.
This subterranean place is the destination of all alike, rapaciousOrcus sparing no one, good or bad. It is wrapped in obscurity, asthe etymology of its name implies, a place where one cannot see.
"No sun e'er gilds the gloomy horrors there; No cheerful galesrefresh the stagnant air."
The dead are disconsolate in this dismal realm, and the livingshrink from entering it, except as a refuge from intolerableafflictions. The shade of the princeliest hero dwelling there the
1 Georg. lib. i. II. 242-250.
swift footed Achilles says, "I would wish, being on earth, toserve for hire another man of poor estate, rather than rule overall the dead." Souls carry there their physical peculiarities, thefresh and ghastly likenesses of the wounds which have despatchedthem thither, so that they are known at sight. Companies offellow countrymen, knots of friends, are together there,preserving their remembrance ofearthly fortunes and belovedrelatives left behind, and eagerly questioning each newly arrivingsoul for tidings from above. When the soul of Achilles is told ofthe glorious deeds of Neoptolemus, "he goes away taking mightysteps through the meadow of asphodel in joyfulness, because he hadheard that his son was very illustrious."2 Sophocles makes thedying Antigone say, "Departing, I strongly cherish the hope that Ishall be fondly welcomed by my father, and by my mother, and by mybrother."3 It is important to notice that, according to the earlyand popular view, this Hades, the "dark dwelling of the joylessimages of deceased mortals," is the destination of universalhumanity. In opposition to its dolorous gloom and repulsiveinanity are vividly pictured the glad light of day, the glory andhappiness of life. "Not worth so much to me as my life," says theincomparable son of Peleus, "are all the treasures which populousTroy possessed, nor all which the stony threshold of PhoebusApollo contains in rocky Pytho. Oxen, and fat sheep, and trophies,and horses with golden manes, may be acquired by effort; but thebreath of man to return again is not to be obtained by plunder norby purchase, when once it has passed the barrier of his teeth."
It is not probable that all the ornamental details associated bythe poets with the fate and state of the dead as they are setforth, for instance, by Virgil in the sixth book of the Aneid wereever credited as literal truth. But there is no reason to doubtthat the essential features of this mythological scenery wereaccepted in the vulgar belief. For instance, that the popular mindhonestly held that, in some vague sense or other, the ghost, onleaving the body, flitted down to the dull banks of Acheron andoffered a shadowy obolus to Charon, the slovenly old ferryman, fora passage in his boat, seems attested not only by a thousandaverments to that effect in the current literature of the time,but also by the invariable custom of placing an obolus in the deadman's mouth for that purpose when he was buried.
The Greeks did not view the banishment of souls in Hades as apunishment for sin, or the result of any broken law in the plan ofthings. It was to them merely the fulfilment of the inevitablefate of creatures who must die, in the order of nature, likesuccessive growths of flowers, and whose souls were too feeble torank with gods and climb into Olympus. That man should cease fromhis substantial life on the bright earth and subside into sunlessHades, a vapid form, with nerveless limbs and faint voice, aghostly vision bemoaning his existence with idle lamentation, orbusying himself with the misty mockeries of his former pursuits,was melancholy enough; but it was his natural destiny, and not anavenging judgment.
But that powerful instinct in man which desires to see villanypunished and goodness rewarded could not fail, among so cultivateda people as the Greeks, to develop a doctrine of futurecompensation for the contrasted deserts of souls. The earliesttrace of the idea of
2 Odyssey, lib. xi. II. 538, 539.
3 Antigone, II. 872-874.
retribution which we find carried forward into the invisible worldis the punishment of the Titans, those monsters who tried bypiling up mountains to storm the heavenly abodes, and to wrest theThunderer's bolts from his hand. This germ is slowly expanded; andnext we read of a few specified criminals, who had beenexcessively impious, personally offending Zeus, condemned by hisdirect indignation to a severe expiation in Tartarus. The insulteddeity wreaks his vengeance on the tired Sisyphus, the mockedTantalus, the gnawed Tityus, and others. Afterwards we meet thestatement that condign retribution is always inflicted for the twoflagrant sins of perjury and blasphemy. Finally, we discern ageneral prevalence of the belief that punishment is decreed, notby vindictive caprice, but on the grounds of universal morality,all souls being obliged in Hades to pass before Rhadamanthus,Minos, or Aacus, three upright judges, to be dealt with, accordingto their merits, with impartial accuracy. The distribution ofpoetic justice in Hades at last became, in many authors, somelodramatic as to furnish a fair subject for burlesque. Someludicrous examples of this may be seen in Lucian's Dialogues ofthe Dead. A fine instance of it is also furnished in the EmperorJulian's Symposium. The gods prepare for the Roman emperors abanquet, in the air, below the moon. The good emperors areadmitted to the table with honors; but the bad ones are hurledheadlong down into Tartarus, amidst the derisive shouts of thespectators.
As the notion that the wrath of the gods would pursue theirenemies in the future state gave rise to a belief in thepunishments of Tartarus, so the notion that the distinguishingkindness of the gods would follow their favorites gave rise to themyth of Elysium. The Elysian Fields were earliest portrayed lyingon the western margin of the earth, stretching from the verge ofOceanus, where the sun set at eve. They were fringed withperpetual green, perfumed with the fragrance of flowers, andeternally fanned by refreshing breezes. They were representedmerely as the select abode of a small number of living men, whowere either the mortal relatives or the special favorites of thegods, and who were transported thither without tasting death,there to pass an immortality which was described, with greatinconsistency, sometimes as purely happy, sometimes as joyless andwearisome. To all except a few chosen ones this region was utterlyinaccessible. Homer says, "But for you, O Menelaus, it is notdecreed by the gods to die; but the immortals will send you to theElysian plain, because you are the son in law of Zeus."4 Had theinheritance of this clime been proclaimed as the reward of heroicmerit, had it been really believed attainable by virtue, it wouldhave been held up as a prize to be striven for. The whole account,as it was at first, bears the impress of imaginative fiction aslegibly upon its front as the story of the dragon watched gardenof Hesperus's daughters, whose trees bore golden apples, or thestory of the enchanted isle in the Arabian tales.
The early location of Elysium, and the conditions of admission toit, were gradually changed; and at length it reappeared, in theunder world, as the abode of the just. On one side of theprimitive Hades Tartarus had now been drawn up to admit thecondemned into its penal tortures, and on the other side Elysiumwas lowered down to reward the justified by receiving them intoits peaceful and perennial happiness; while, between the two,Erebus
4 Odyssey, lib. iv. II. 555-570.
remained as an intermediate state of negation and gloom forunsentenced shades. The highly colored descriptions of thissubterranean heaven, frequently found thenceforth, it is to besupposed were rarely accepted as solid verities. They werescarcely ever used, to our knowledge, as motives in life,incitement in difficulties, consolation in sorrow. They weremostly set forth in poems, works even professedly fictitious. Theywere often denied and ridiculed in speeches and writings receivedwith public applause. Still, they unquestionably exerted someinfluence on the common modes of thought and feeling, had ashadowy seat in the popular imagination and heart, helped men toconceive of a blessed life hereafter and to long for it, and tookaway something of the artificial horror with which, under thepower of rooted superstition, their departing ghosts hailed thedusky limits of futurity:
"Umbra Non tacitas Erebi sedes, Ditisque profundi Pallida regnapetunt."
First, then, from a study of the Greek mythology we find all thedead a dull populace of ghosts fluttering through the neutralmelancholy of Hades without discrimination. And finally we discernin the world of the dead a sad middle region, with a Paradise onthe right and a Hell on the left, the whole presided over by threeincorruptible judges, who appoint the new corners their places inaccordance with their deserts.
The question now arises, What did the Greeks think in relation tothe ascent of human souls into heaven among the gods? Did theyexcept none from the remediless doom of Hades? Was there no pathfor the wisest and best souls to climb starry Olympus? To disposeof this inquiry fairly, four distinct considerations must beexamined. First, Ulysses sees in the infernal regions the image ofHerakles shooting the shadows of the Stymphalian birds, while hissoul is said to be rejoicing with fair legged Hebe at the banquetsof the immortal gods in the skies. To explain this, we mustremember that Herakles was the son of Alcmene, a mortal woman, andof Zeus, the king of the gods. Accordingly, in the flames on MountOeta, the surviving ghost which he derived from his motherdescends to Hades, but the purified soul inherited from his fatherhas the proper nature and rank of a deity, and is received intothe Olympian synod.5 Of course no blessed life in heaven for thegenerality of men is here implied. Herakles, being a son andfavorite of Zeus, has a corresponding destiny exceptional fromthat of other men.
Secondly, another double representation, somewhat similar, buthaving an entirely different interpretation, occurs in the case ofOrion, the handsome Hyrian hunter whom Artemis loved. At one timehe is described, like the spectre of the North American Indian,chasing over the Stygian plain the disembodied animals he had inhis lifetime killed on the mountains:
"Swift through the gloom a giant hunter flies: A ponderous brazenmace, with direful sway, Aloft he whirls to crush the savage prey;
5 Ovid, Met. lib. ix. II. 245-272.
Grim beasts in trains, that by his truncheon fell, Now, phantomforms, shoot o'er the lawn of hell."
In the common belief this, without doubt, was received as actualfact. But at another time Orion is deified and shown as one of thegrandest constellations of the sky,
"A belted giant, who, with arm uplift, Threatening the throne of
Zeus, forever stands, Sublimely impious."
This, obviously, is merely a poetic symbol, a beautiful artificeemployed by the poets to perpetuate a legend by associating itwith the imperishable hieroglyphs of the galaxy. It is notcredible that men imagined that group of stars only outlined insuch shape by the help of arbitrary fancy to be literally thetranslated hunter himself. The meaning simply was that he wasimmortalized through the eternal linking of his name and form witha stellar cluster which would always shine upon men. "Thereverence and gratitude of a weak world for the heroes andbenefactors they could not comprehend, named them divinities, whomthey did star together to an idolatrous immortality whichnationalized the heavens" with the shining shapes of the great andbrave. These types of poetry, symbols lent to infant science, werenever meant to indicate a literal translation and metamorphosis ofhuman souls, but were honors paid to the memories of illustriousmen, emblems and pledged securities of their unfading fame. Withwhat glorious characters, with what forms of deathless beauty,defiant of decay, the sky was written over! Go out this eveningbeneath the old rolling dome, when the starry scroll is outspread,and you may still read the reveries of the marvelling minds of theantique world, as fresh in their magic loveliness as when thebards and seers of Olympus and the Agean first stamped them inheaven. There "the great snake binds in his bright coil half themighty host." There is Arion with his harp and the charmeddolphin. The fair Andromeda, still chained to her eternal rock,looks mournfully towards the delivering hero whose conquering handbears aloft the petrific visage of Medusa. Far off in the norththe gigantic Bootes is seen driving towards the Centaur and theScorpion. And yonder, smiling benignantly upon the crews of many ahome bound ship, are revealed the twin brothers, joined in theembrace of an undying friendship.
Thirdly, it is asserted by several Latin authors, in generalterms, that the ghost goes to Hades but the soul ascends toheaven; and it has been inferred most erroneously that thisstatement contains the doctrine of an abode for men after death onhigh with the gods. Ovid expresses the real thought in full,thus:
"Terra tegit carnem; tumulum circumvolat umbra; Orcus habet manes;spiritus astra petit."
"The earth conceals the flesh; the shade flits round the tomb; theunder world receives the image; the spirit seeks the stars." Thoseconversant with the opinions then prevalent will scarcely doubtthat these words were meant to express the return of the compositeman to the primordial elements of which he was made. Theparticulars of the dissolving individual are absorbed in thegeneral elements of the universe. Earth goes back to earth, ghostto the realm of ghosts, breath to the air, fiery essence of soulto the lofty ether in whose pure radiance the stars burn.Euripides expressly says that when man dies each part goes whenceit came, "the body to the ground, the spirit to the ether."6Therefore the often misunderstood phrase of the Roman writers,"the soul seeks the stars," merely denotes the impersonal minglingafter death of the divine portion of man's being with the parentDivinity, who was supposed indeed to pervade all things, but moreespecially to reside beyond the empyrean.
Fourthly: what shall be said of the apotheosis of their celebratedheroes and emperors by the Greeks and Romans, whereby these wereelevated to the dignity of deities, and seats were assigned themin heaven? What was the meaning of this ceremony? It does notsignify that a celestial immortality awaits all good men; becauseit appears as a thing attainable by very few, is only allotted byvote of the Senate. Neither was it supposed actually to confer onits recipients equality of attributes with the great gods, makingthem peers of Zeus and Apollo. The homage received as gods byAlexander and others during their lives, the deification of JuliusCasar during the most learned and skeptical age of Rome, withother obvious considerations, render such a suppositioninadmissible. In view of all the direct evidence and collateralprobabilities, we conclude that the genuine import of an ancientapotheosis was this: that the soul of the deceased person sohonored was admitted, in deference to his transcendent merits, oras a special favor on the part of the gods, into heaven, into thedivine society. He was really a human soul still, but was called agod because, instead of descending, like the multitude of humansouls, to Hades, he was taken into the abode and company of thegods above the sky. This interpretation derives support from theremarkable declaration of Aristotle, that "of two friends one mustbe unwilling that the other should attain apotheosis, because insuch case they must be forever separated."7 One would be inOlympus, the other in Hades. The belief that any, even a favoredfew, could ever obtain this blessing, was of quite limiteddevelopment, and probably sprang from the esoteric recesses of theMysteries. To call a human soul a god is not so bold a speech asit may seem. Plotinus says. "Whoever has wisdom and true virtue insoul itself differs but little from superior beings, in this alonebeing inferior to them, that he is in body. Such an one, dying,may therefore properly say, with Empedocles, 'Farewell! a godimmortal now am I.'"
The expiring Vespasian exclaimed, "I shall soon be a god."8 Muresays that the doctrine of apotheosis belonged to the GracoPelasgic race through all their history.9 Seneca severelysatirizes the ceremony, and the popular belief which upheld it, inan elaborate lampoon called Apocolocyntosis, or the reception ofClaudius among the pumpkins. The broad travesty of
6 The Suppliants, l. 533.
7 Nicomachean Ethics, lib. viii. cap. 7.
8 Suetonius, cap. xxiii.
9 Hist. Greek Literature, vol. i. ch. 2, sect. 5.
Deification exhibited in Pumpkinification obviously measures thedistance from the honest credulity of one class and period to thekeen infidelity of another.
One of the most important passages in Greek literature, inwhatever aspect viewed, is composed of the writings of the greatTheban lyrist. Let us see what representation is there made of thefate of man in the unseen world. The ethical perception, profoundfeeling, and searching mind of Pindar could not allow him toremain satisfied with the undiscriminating views of the futurestate prevalent in his time. Upon such a man the problem of deathmust weigh as a conscious burden, and his reflections wouldnaturally lead him to improved conclusions. Accordingly, we findhim representing the Blessed Isles not as the haven of a fewfavorites of the gods, but as the reward of virtue; and thepunishments of the wicked, too, are not dependent on fickleinclinations, but are decreed by immutable right. He does notdescribe the common multitude of the dead, leading a dark sadexistence, like phantoms in a dream: his references to death andHades seem cheerful in comparison with those of many other ancientGreek authors. Dionysius the Rhetorician, speaking of hisThrenes, dirges sung at funerals, says, "Simonides lamented thedead pathetically, Pindar magnificently."
His conceptions of the life to come were inseparably connectedwith certain definite locations. He believed Hades to be thedestination of all our mortal race, but conceived it subdividedinto a Tartarus for the impious and an Elysium for the righteous.He thought that the starry firmament was the solid floor of aworld of splendor, bliss, and immortality, inhabited by the gods,but fatally inaccessible to man. When he thinks of this place, itis with a sigh, a sigh that man's aspirations towards it are vainand his attempts to reach it irreverent. This latter thought heenforces by an earnest allusion to the myth of Bellerophon, who,daring to soar to the cerulean seat of the gods on the wingedsteed Pegasus, was punished for his arrogance by being hurled downheadlong. These assertions are to be sustained by citations of hisown words. The references made are to Donaldson's edition.
In the second Pythian Ode10 Pindar repeats, and would appear toendorse, the old monitory legend of Ixion, who for his outrageouscrimes was bound to an ever revolving wheel in Hades and made toutter warnings against such offences as his own. In the firstPythian we read, "Hundred headed Typhon, enemy of the gods, liesin dreadful Tartarus."11 Among the preserved fragments of Pindarthe one numbered two hundred and twenty three reads thus: "Thebottom of Tartarus shall press thee down with solid necessities."The following is from the first Isthmian Ode: "He who, laying upprivate wealth, laughs at the poor, does not consider that heshall close up his life for Hades without honor."12 The latterpart of the tenth Nemean Ode recounts, with every appearance ofdevout belief, the history of Castor and Pollux, the god begottentwins, who, reversing conditions with each other on successivedays and nights, spent their interchangeable immortality eachalternately in heaven and in Hades. The astronomicalinterpretation of this account may be correct; but itsapplicability to the wondering faith of the earlier poets isextremely doubtful.
10 L. 39.
11 LI. 15, 16.
12 L. 68.
The seventh Isthmian contains this remarkable sentence: "Unequalis the fate of man: he can think of great things, but is tooephemeral a creature to reach the brazen floored seat of thegods."13 A similar sentiment is expressed in the sixth Nemean:"Men are a mere nothing; while to the gods the brazen heavenremains a firm abode forever."14 The one hundred and secondfragment is supposed to be a part of the dirge composed by Pindaron the death of the grandfather of Pericles. It runs in this way:"Whoso by good fortune has seen the things in the hollow under theearth knows indeed the end of life: he also knows the beginningvouchsafed by Zeus." It refers to initiation in the EleusinianMysteries, and means that the initiate understands the life whichfollows death. It is well known that a clear doctrine of futureretribution was inculcated in the Mysteries long before it foundgeneral publication. The ninety fifth fragment is all that remainsto us of a dirge which appears, from the allusion in the firstline, to have been sung at a funeral service performed atmidnight, or at least after sunset. "While it is night here withus, to those below shines the might of the sun; and the red rosiedmeadows of their suburbs are filled with the frankincense tree,and with golden fruits. Some delight themselves there with steedsand exercises, others with games, others with lyres; and amongthem all fair blossoming fortune blooms, and a fragrance isdistilled through the lovely region, and they constantly mingleall kinds of offerings with the far shining fire on the altars ofthe gods." This evidently is a picture of the happy scenes in thefields that stretch around the City of the Blessed in the underworld, and is introduced as a comfort to the mourners over thedead body.
The ensuing passage the most important one on our subject is fromthe second Olympic Ode.15 "An honorable, virtuous man may restassured as to his future fate. The souls of the lawless, departingfrom this life, suffer punishment. One beneath the earth,pronouncing sentence by a hateful necessity imposed upon him,declares the doom for offences committed in this realm of Zeus.But the good lead a life without a tear, among those honored bythe gods for having always delighted in virtue: the others endurea life too dreadful to look upon. Whoever has had resolutionthrice in both worlds to stand firm, and to keep his soul purefrom evil, has found the path of Zeus to the tower of Kronos,where the airs of the ocean breathe around the Isle of theBlessed, and where some from resplendent trees, others from thewater glitter golden flowers, with garlandsofwhich they wreathetheir wrists and brows in the righteous assemblies ofRhadamanthus, whom father Kronos has as his willing assistant."The "path of Zeus," in the above quotation, means the path whichZeus takes when he goes to visit his father Kronos, whom heoriginally dethroned and banished, but with whom he is nowreconciled, and who has become the ruler of the departed spiritsof the just, in a peaceful and joyous region.
The following passage constitutes the ninety eighth fragment. "Tothose who descend from a fruitless and ill starred life Persephone[the Queen of the Dead] will grant a compensation for their formermisfortune, after eight years [the judicial period of atonementand lustration for great crimes] granting them their lives again.Then, illustrious kings, strong,
13 Ll. 42-44.
14 Ll. 4-6.
15 Ll. 55-78.
swift, wise, they shall become the mightiest leaders; andafterwards they shall be invoked by men as sacred heroes." In thispiece, as in the preceding one where reference is made to thethrice living man, is contained the doctrine, early brought fromthe East, that souls may repeatedly return from the dead and innew bodies lead new lives. One other fragment, the ninety sixth,added to the foregoing, will make up all the important genuinepassages in Pindar relating to the future life. "By a beneficentallotment, all travel to an end freeing from toil. The body indeedis subject to the power of death; but the eternal image is leftalive, and this alone is allied to the gods. When we are asleep,it shows in many dreams the approaching judgment concerninghappiness and misery." When our physical limbs are stretched ininsensible repose, the inward spirit, rallying its sleepless andprophetic powers, foretells the balancing awards of another world.
We must not wholly confound with the mythological schemes of thevulgar creed the belief of the nobler philosophers, many of whom,as is well known, cherished an exalted faith in the survival ofthe conscious soul and in a just retribution. "Strike!" one ofthem said, with the dauntless courage of an immortal, to a tyrantwho had threatened to have him brayed in a mortar: "strike! youmay crush the shell of Anaxarchus: you cannot touch his life."Than all the maze of fabulous fancies and physical rites in whichthe dreams of the poets and the guesses of the people wereentangled, how much more
"Just was the prescience of the eternal goalThat gleamed, 'midCyprian shades, on Zeno's soul, Or shone to Plato in the lonelycave, God in all space, and life in every grave!"
An account of the Greek views on the subject of a future lifewhich should omit the doctrine of Plato would be defective indeed.The influence of this sublime autocrat in the realms of intellecthas transcended calculation. However coldly his thoughts may havebeen regarded by his contemporary countrymen, they soon obtainedcosmopolitan audience, and surviving the ravages of time andignorance, overleaping the bars of rival schools and sects,appreciated and diffused by the loftiest spirits of succeedingages, closely blended with their own speculations by manyChristian theologians have held an almost unparalleled dominionover the minds of millions of men for more than fifty generations.
In the various dialogues of Plato, written at different periods ofhis life, there are numerous variations and inconsistencies ofdoctrine. There are also many mythical passages obviously intendedas symbolic statements, poetic drapery, by no means to be handledor looked at as the severe outlines of dialectic truth.Furthermore, in these works there are a vast number of opinionsand expressions introduced by the interlocutors, who often belongto antagonistic schools of philosophy, and for which, of course,Plato is not to be held responsible. Making allowance for thesefacts, and resolutely grappling with the many other difficultiesof the task, we shall now attempt to exhibit what we consider werethe real teachings of Plato in relation to the fate of the soul.This exposition, sketchy as it is, and open to question as it maybe in some particulars, is the carefully weighed result ofearnest, patient, and repeated study of all the relevant passages.
In the first place, it is plain that Plato had a firm religiousand philosophical faith in the immortality of the soul, which wascontinually attracting his thoughts, making it a favorite themewith him and exerting no faint influence on his life. This faithrested both on ancient traditions, to which he frequently referswith invariable reverence, and on metaphysical reasonings, whichhe over and over presents in forms of conscientious elaboration.There are two tests of his sincerity of faith: first, that healways treats the subject with profound seriousness; secondly,that he always uses it as a practical motive. "I do not think,"said Socrates, "that any one who should now hear us, even thoughhe were a comic poet, would say that I am talking idly."16 Again,referring to Homer's description of the judgments in Hades, hesays, "I, therefore, Callicles, am persuaded by these accounts,and consider how I may exhibit my soul before the judge in themost healthy condition."17 "To a base man no man nor god is afriend on earth while living, nor under it when dead," say thesouls of their ancestors to the living; "but live honorably, andwhen your destined fate brings you below you shall come to us asfriends to friends."18 "We are plants, not of earth, but ofheaven."19 We start, then, with the affirmation that Platohonestly and cordially believed in a future life.
Secondly, his ethical and spiritual beliefs, like those of nearlyall the ancients, were closely interwoven with physical theoriesand local relations. The world to him consisted of two parts, thecelestial region of ideas, and the mundane region of materialphenomena, corresponding pretty well, as Lewes suggests, to ourmodern conception of heaven and earth. Near the close of thePhado, Socrates says that the earth is not of the kind andmagnitude usually supposed. "We dwell in a decayed and corroded,muddy and filthy region in the sediment and hollows of the earth,and imagine that we inhabit its upper parts; just as if onedwelling in the bottom of the sea should think that he dwelt onthe sea, and, beholding the sun through the water, should imaginethat the sea was the heavens. So, if we could fly up to the summitof the air as fishes emerging from the sea to behold what is onthe earth here and emerge hence, we should know that the trueearth is there. The people there dwell with the gods, and seethings as they really are; and what the sea is to us the air is tothem, and what the air is to us the ether is to them." Again, inthe tenth book of the Republic, eleventh chapter, the soul ismetaphorically said in the sea of this corporeal life to getstones and shell fish attached to it, and, fed on earth, to berendered to a great extent earthy, stony, and savage, like themarine Glaucus, some parts of whose body were broken off andothers worn away by the waves, while such quantities of shells,sea weed, and stones had grown to him that he more resembled abeast than a man. In keeping with the whole tenor of the Platonicteaching, this is a fine illustration of the fallen state of manin his vile environment of flesh here below. The soul, in itsearthly sojourn, embodied here, is as much mutilated and degradedfrom its equipped and pure condition in its lofty natal home, thearchetypal world of Truth above the base Babel of materialexistence, as Glaucus was on
16 Phado, 40.
17 Gorgias, 173.
18 Menexenus, 19.
19 Timaus, 71.
descending from his human life on the sunny shore to his encrustedshape and blind prowling in the monstrous deep.
At another time Plato contrasts the situation of the soul on earthwith its situation in heaven by the famous comparison of the darkcave. He supposes men, unable to look upwards, dwelling in acavern which has an opening towards the light extending lengthwisethrough the top of the cavern. A great many images, carryingvarious objects and talking aloud, pass and repass along the edgeof the opening. Their shadows fall on the side of the cave below,in front of the dwellers there; also the echoes of their talksound back from the wall. Now, the men, never having been orlooked out of the cave, would suppose these shadows to be the realbeings, these echoes the real voices. As respects this figure,says Plato, we must compare ourselves with such persons. Thevisible region around us is the cave, the sun is the light, andthe soul's ascent into the region of mind is the ascent out of thecave and the contemplation of things above.20
Still again, Plato describes the ethereal paths and motions of thegods, who, in their chariots, which are the planets and stars,ride through the universe, accompanied by all pure souls, "thefamily of true science, contemplating things as they really are.""Reaching the summit, they proceed outside, and, standing on theback of heaven, its revolution carries them round, and they beholdthat supercelestial region which no poet here can ever sing of asit deserves." In this archetypal world all souls of men havedwelt, though "few have memory enough left," "after their fallhither," "to call to mind former things from the present." "Now,of justice and temperance, and whatever else souls deem precious,there are here but faint resemblances, dull images; but beauty wasthen splendid to look on when we, in company with the gods, beheldthat blissful spectacle, and were initiated into that most blessedof all mysteries, which we celebrated when we were unaffected bythe evils that awaited us in time to come, and when we beheld, inthe pure light, perfect and calm visions, being ourselves pure andas yet unmasked with this shell of a body to which we are nowfettered."21
To suppose all this employed by Plato as mere fancy and metaphoris to commit an egregious error. In studying an ancient author, wemust forsake the modern stand point of analysis, and envelopourselves in the ancient atmosphere of thought, where poetry andscience were as indistinguishably blended in the personal beliefsas oxygen and nitrogen are in the common air. We have not a doubtthat Plato means to teach, literally, that the soul was alwaysimmortal, and that in its anterior states of existence, in therealm of ideas on high, it was in the midst of those essentialrealities whose shifting shadows alone it can behold in its lapsedcondition and bodily imprisonment here. That he closelyintertwisted ethical with physical theories, spiritual destinieswith insphering localities, the fortunes of men with therevolutions of the earth and stars, is a fact which one can hardlyread the Timaus and fail to see; a fact which continuallyreappears. It is strikingly shown in his idea of the consummationof all things at regular epochs determined by the recurrence of agrand
20 Republic, lib. vii. cap. 1 4.
21 Phadrus, 56-58, 63, 64.
revolution of the universe, a period vulgarly known under the nameof the "Platonic Year."22 The second point, therefore, in thepresent explanation of Plato's doctrine of another life, is theconception that there is in the empyrean a glorious world ofincorruptible truth, beauty, and goodness, the place of the gods,the native haunt of souls; and that human souls, having yielded tobase attractions and sunk into bodies, are but banished sojournersin this phenomenal world of evanescent shadows and illusions,where they are "stung with resistless longings for the skies, andonly solaced by the vague and broken reminiscences of their formerstate."
Thirdly, Plato taught that after death an unerring judgment andcompensation await all souls. Every soul bears in itself the plainevidence of its quality and deeds, its vices and virtues; and inthe unseen state it will meet inevitable awards on its merits. "Togo to Hades with a soul full of crimes is the worst of allevils."23 "When a man dies, he possesses in the other world adestiny suited to the life which he has led in this."24 In thesecond book of the Republic he says, "We shall in Hades suffer thepunishment of our misdeeds here;" and he argues at much length theabsolute impossibility of in any way escaping this. The fact of afull reward for all wisdom and justice, a full retribution for allfolly and vice, is asserted unequivocally in scores of passages,most of them expressly connecting the former with the notion of anascent to the bright region of truth and intellect, the latterwith a descent to the black penal realm of Hades. Let the citationof a single further example suffice. "Some souls, being sentenced,go to places of punishment beneath the earth; others are borneupward to some region in heaven."25 He proves the genuineness ofhis faith in this doctrine by continually urging it, in the mostearnest, unaffected manner, as an animating motive in theformation of character and the conduct of life, saying, "He whoneglects his soul will pass lamely through existence, and againpass into Hades, aimless and unserviceable."26
The fourth and last step in this exposition is to show theparticular form in which Plato held his doctrine of futureretribution, the way in which he supposed the consequences ofpresent good and evil would appear hereafter. He received theOriental theory of transmigration. Souls are born over and over.The banishment of the wicked to Tartarus is provisional, apreparation for their return to incarnate life. The residence ofthe good in heaven is contingent, and will be lost the moment theyyield to carelessness or material solicitations. The circumstancesunder which they are reborn, the happiness or misery of theirrenewed existence, depend on their character and conduct in theirprevious career; and thus a poetic justice is secured. At theclose of the Timaus, Plato describes the whole animal kingdom asconsisting of degraded human souls, from "the tribe of birds,which were light minded souls, to the tribe of oysters, which havereceived the most remote habitations as a punishment of theirextreme ignorance." "After this manner, then, both formerly and
22 Statesman, 14, 15.
23 Gorgias, 165.
24 Republic, lib. vi. cap. i.
25 Phadrus, 61.
26 Timaus, 18.
now, animals transmigrate, experiencing their changes through theloss or acquisition of intellect and folly." The general doctrineof metempsychosis is stated and implied very frequently in many ofthe Platonic dialogues. Some recent writers have tried to explainthese representations as figures of speech, not intended toportray the literal facts, but merely to hint their moralequivalents. Such persons seem to us to hold Plato's pages in thefull glare of the nineteenth century and read them in thephilosophic spirit of Bacon and Comte, instead of holding them inthe old shades of the Academy and pondering them in the marvellingspirit of Pythagoras and Empedocles.
We are led by the following considerations to think that Platoreally meant to accredit the transmigration of souls literally.First, he often makes use of the current poetic imagery of Hades,and of ancient traditions, avowedly in a loose metaphorical way,as moral helps, calling them "fables." But the metempsychosis hesets forth, without any such qualification or guard, with so muchearnestness and frequency, as a promise and a warning, that we areforced, in the absence of any indication to the contrary, tosuppose that he meant the statements as sober fact and not asmythical drapery. As with a parable, of course we need notinterpret all the ornamental details literally; but we must acceptthe central idea. And in the present case the fundamental thoughtis that of repeated births of the soul, each birth trailingretributive effects from the foregone. For example, the last fourchapters of the tenth book of the Republic contain the account ofErus, a Pamphylian, who, after lying dead on the battle field tendays, revived, and told what he had seen in the other state. Platoin the outset explicitly names this recital an "apologue." Itrecounts a multitude of moral and physical particulars. Thesedetails may fairly enough be considered in some degreeas mythicaldrapery, or as the usual traditional painting; but the essentialconception running through the account, for the sake of which itis told, we are not at liberty to explain away as empty metaphor.Now, that essential conception is precisely this: that souls afterdeath are adjudged to Hades or to heaven as a recompense for theirsin or virtue, and that, after an appropriate sojourn in thoseplaces, they are born again, the former ascending, squalid andscarred, from beneath the earth, the latter descending, pure, fromthe sky. In perfect consonance with this conclusion is the moraldrawn by Plato from the whole narrative. He simply says, "If thecompany will be persuaded by me, considering the soul to beimmortal and able to bear all evil and good, we shall alwayspersevere in the road which leads upwards."
Secondly, the conception of the metempsychosis is thoroughlycoherent with Plato's whole philosophy. If he was in earnest aboutany doctrine, it was the doctrine that all knowledge isreminiscence. The following declarations are his. "Soul is olderthan body." "Souls are continually born over again from Hades intothis life." "To search and learn is simply to revive the images ofwhat the soul saw in its pre existent state of being in the worldof realities."27 Why should we hesitate to attribute a sincerebelief in the metempsychosis to the acknowledged author of thedoctrine that the soul lived in another world before appearinghere, and that its knowledge is but reminiscence? If born from theother world
27 Menexenus, 15.
once, we may be many times; and then all that is wanted tocomplete the dogma of transmigration is the idea of a presidingjustice. Had not Plato that idea?
Thirdly, the doctrine of a judicial metempsychosis was mostprofoundly rooted in the popular faith, as a strict verity,throughout the great East, ages before the time of Plato, and wasfamiliarly known throughout Greece in his time. It had beenimported thither by Musaus and Orpheus at an early period, wasafterwards widely recommended and established by the Pythagoreans,and was unquestionably held by many of Plato's contemporaries. Herefers once to those "who strongly believe that murderers who havegone to Hades will be obliged to come back and end their nextlives by suffering the same fate which they had before inflictedon others."28 It is also a remarkable fact that he states theconditions of transmigration, and the means of securing exemptionfrom it, in the same way that the Hindus have from immemorialtime: "The soul which has beheld the essence of truth remains freefrom harm until the next revolution; and if it can preserve thevision of the truth it shall always remain free from harm," thatis, be exempt from birth; but "when it fails to behold the fieldof truth it falls to the earth and is implanted in a body."29 Thisstatement and several others in the context corresponds preciselywith Hindu theology, which proclaims that the soul, upon attainingreal wisdom, that is, upon penetrating beneath illusions andgazing on reality, is freed from the painful necessity of repeatedbirths. Now, since the Hindus and the Pythagoreans held thedoctrine as a severe truth, and Plato states it in the identicalforms which they employed, and never implies that he is merelypoetizing, we naturally conclude that he, too, veritablyinculcates it as fact.
Finally, we are the more confirmed in this supposition when wefind that his lineal disciples and most competent expounders, suchas Proclus, and nearly all his later commentators, such as Ritter,have so understood him. The great chorus of his interpreters, fromPlotinus to Leroux, with scarcely a dissentient voice, approve theopinion pronounced by the learned German historian of philosophy,that "the conception of the metempsychosis is so closelyinterwoven both with his physical system and with his ethical asto justify the conviction that Plato looked upon it as legitimateand valid, and not as a merely figurative exposition of the soul'slife after death." To sum up the whole in one sentence: Platotaught with grave earnestness the immortality of the soul, subjectto a discriminating retribution, which opened for its temporaryresidences three local regions, heaven, earth, and Hades, andwhich sometimes led it through different grades of embodied being."O thou youth who thinkest that thou art neglected by the gods,the person who has become more wicked departs to the more wickedsouls; but he who has become better departs to the better souls,both in life and in all deaths."30
Whether Aristotle taught or denied the immortality of the soul hasbeen the subject of innumerable debates from his own time untilnow. It is certainly a most ominous fact that his great name hasbeen cited as authority for rejecting the doctrine of a futurelife by so many
28 The Laws, b. ix. ch. 10.
29 Phadrus, 60-62.
30 The Laws, lib. x. cap. 13.
of his keenest followers; for this has been true of weightyrepresentatives of every generation of his disciples. Antagonisticadvocates have collected from his works a large number of varyingstatements, endeavoring to distinguish between the literal and thefigurative, the esoteric and the popular. It is not worth ourwhile here, either for their intrinsic interest or for theirhistoric importance, to quote the passages and examine thearguments. All that is required for our purpose may be expressedin the language of Ritter, who has carefully investigated thewhole subject: "No passage in his extant works is decisive; but,from the general context of his doctrine, it is clear that he hadno conception of the immortality of any individual rationalentity."31
It would take a whole volume instead of a chapter to set forth themultifarious contrasting tenets of individual Greek philosophers,from the age of Pherecydes to that of Iamblichus, in relation to afuture life. Not a few held, with Empedocles, that human life is apenal state, the doom of such immortal souls as for guilt havebeen disgraced and expelled from heaven. "Man is a fallen godcondemned to wander on the earth, sky aspiring but sense clouded."Purged by a sufficient penance, he returns to his former godlikeexistence. "When, leaving this body, thou comest to the freeether, thou shalt be no longer a mortal, but an undying god."Notions of this sort fairly represent no small proportion of thespeculations upon the fate of the soul which often reappearthroughout the course of Greek literature. Another class ofphilosophers are represented by such names as Marcus Antoninus,who, comparing death to disembarkation at the close of a voyage,says, "If you land upon another life, it will not be empty ofgods: if you land in nonentity, you will have done with pleasures,pains, and drudgery."32 And again he writes, "If souls survive,how has ethereal space made room for them all from eternity? Howhas the earth found room for all the bodies buried in it? Thesolution of the latter problem will solve the former. The corpseturns to dust and makes space for another: so the spirit, letloose into the air, after a while dissolves, and is either renewedinto another soul or absorbed into the universe. Thus room is madefor succession."33 These passages, it will be observed, leave thesurvival of the soul at all entirely hypothetical, and, evensupposing it to survive, allow it but a temporary duration. Suchwas the common view of the great sect of the Stoics. They allagreed that there was no real immortality for the soul; but theydiffered greatly as to the time of its dissolution. In the wordsof Cicero, "Diu mansuros aiunt animos; semper, negant:" they saysouls endure for a long time, but not forever. Cleanthes taughtthat the intensity of existence after death would depend on thestrength or weakness of the particular soul. Chrysippus held thatonly the souls of the wise and good would survive at all.34Panatius said the soul always died with the body, because it wasborn with it, which he proved by the resemblances of children'ssouls to those of their parents.35 Seneca has a great manycontradictory passages on this subject
31 Hist. Anc. Phil. p. iii. b. ix. ch. 4.
32 Meditations, lib. iii. cap. 3.
33 Ibid. lib. iv. cap. 21.
34 Plutarch, Plac. Phil. iv. 7.
35 Tusc. Quast. lib. i. cap. 32.
in his works; but his preponderant authority, upon the whole, isthat the soul and the body perish together.36 At one time he says,"The day thou fearest as the last is the birthday of eternity.""As an infant in the womb is preparing to dwell in this world, soought we to consider our present life as a preparation for thelife to come."37 At another time he says, with stunning bluntness,"There is nothing after death, and death itself is nothing."
Post mortem nihil est, ipsaque mors nihil. 38
Besides the mystics, like Plotinus, who affirmed the stricteternity of the soul, and the Stoics, like Poseidonius, whobelieved that the soul, having had a beginning, must have an end,although it might endure for a long period after leaving the body,there were among the Greeks and Romans two other classes ofbelievers in a future life, namely, the ignorant body of thepeople, who credited, more or less fully, the common fablesconcerning Hades; and an educated body of select minds, who, whilecasting off the popular superstitions, yet clung tenaciously tothe great fact of immortality in some form or other, withoutattempting to define the precise mode of it.
There was among the illiterate populace, both Greek and Roman,even from the age of Eumolpus to that of Augustus, a good deal offirm faith in a future life, according to the gross scheme andparticulars preserved to us still in the classic mythology. Athousand current allusions and statements in the generalliterature of those times prove the actual existence of a commonand literal belief in Hades with all its accompaniments. This wasfar from being, in the average apprehension, a mere myth. Platosays, "Many, of their own accord, have wished to descend intoHades, induced by the hope of there seeing and being with thosethey have loved."39 He also says, "When a man is about to die, thestories of future punishment which he had formerly ridiculedtrouble him with fears of their truth."40 And that frightfulaccounts of hell really swayed and terrified the people, even solate as the time of the Roman republic, appears from the earnestand elaborate arguments employed by various writers to refutethem.
The same thing is shown by the religious ritual enacted atfunerals and festivals, the forms of public and private worshipobserved till after the conversion of Constantine. The cake ofrice and honey borne in the dead hand for Cerberus, the periodicalofferings to the ghosts of the departed, as at the festivalscalled Feralia and Parentalia,41 the pictures of the scenery ofthe under world, hung in the temples, of which there was a famousone by Polygnotus,42 all imply a literal crediting of the vulgardoctrine. Altars were set up on the spots where Tiberius and CaiusGracchus were murdered, and services were there performed in honorof their manes. Festus, an old Roman lexicographer who lived inthe second or third century, tells us there was in the Comitium astone covered pit which was supposed to be the
36 Christoph Meiners, Vermischte Philosophische Schriften.Commentarius quo Stoicorum Sententia; de Animorum post mortemStatu satis illustrantur.
37 Epist. 102.
38 Troades, 1. 397.
39 Phado, 34.
40 Republic, lib. i. cap. 5.
41 Ovid, Fasti, lib. ii. II. 530-580.
42 Pausanias, lib. x. cap. 28.
mouth of Orcus, and was opened three days in the year for souls torise out into the upper world.43 Apuleius describes, in histreatise on "the god of Socrates," the Roman conceptions of thedeparted spirits of men. They called all disembodied human souls"lemures." Those of good men were "lares," those of bad men"larva." And when it was uncertain whether the specified soul wasa lar or a larva, it was named "manes." The lares were mildhousehold gods to their posterity. The larva were wandering,frightful shapes, harmless to the pious, but destructive to thereprobate.44
The belief in necromancy is well known to have prevailedextensively among the Greeks and Romans. Aristophanes representsthe coward, Pisander, going to a necromancer and asking to "seehis own soul, which had long departed, leaving him a man withbreath alone."45 In Latin literature no popular terror is morefrequently alluded to or exemplified than the dread of seeingghosts. Every one will recall the story of the phantom thatappeared in the tent of Brutus before the battle of Philippi. Itpervades the "Haunted House" of Plautus. Callimachus wrote thefollowing couplet as an epitaph on the celebrated misanthrope:
"Timon, hat'st thou the world or Hades worse? Speak clear! Hades,
O fool, because there are more of us here!" 46
Pythagoras is said once to have explained an earthquake as beingcaused by a synod of ghosts assembled under ground! It is one ofthe best of the numerous jokes attributed to the great Samian; agood nut for the spirit rappers to crack. There is an epigram byDiogenes Laertius, on one Lycon, who died of the gout:
"He who before could not so much as walk alone, The whole longroad to Hades travell'd in one night!"
Philostratus declares that the shade of Apollonius appeared to askeptical disciple of his and said, "The soul is immortal."47 Itis unquestionable that the superstitious fables about the underworld and ghosts had a powerful hold, for a very long period, uponthe Greek and Roman imagination, and were widely accepted asfacts.
At the same time, there were many persons of more advanced cultureto whom such coarse and fanciful representations had becomeincredible, but who still held loyally to the simple idea of thesurvival of the soul. They cherished a strong expectation ofanother life, although they rejected the revolting form anddrapery in which the doctrine was usually set forth. Xenophon putsthe following speech into the mouth of the expiring Cyrus: "I wasnever able, my children, to persuade myself that the soul, as longas it was in a mortal body, lived, but when it was removed fromthis, that it died; neither could I believe that the soul ceasedto think when separated from the unthinking and senseless body;but it seemed to me most probable that when pure and free from anyunion with the body, then it became most
43 De Significatione Verborum, verbum "Manalis."
44 Lessing, Wie die Alten den Tod gebildet.
45 Ayes, I. 1485.
46 Epigram IV.
47 Vita Apollonii, lib. viii. cap. 31.
wise."48 Every one has read of the young man whose faith andcuriosity were so excited by Plato's writings that he committedsuicide to test the fact of futurity. Callimachus tells the storyneatly:
"Cleombrotus, the Ambracian, having said, 'Farewell, O sun!'leap'd from a lofty wall into the world Of ghosts. No deadly illhad chanced to him at all; But he had read in Plato's book uponthe soul." 49
The falling of Cato on his sword at Utica, after carefullyperusing the Phado, is equally familiar.
In the case of Cicero, too, notwithstanding his fluctuations offeeling and the obvious contradictions of sentiment in some of hisletters and his more deliberate essays, it is, upon the whole,plain enough that, while he always regarded the vulgar notions aspuerile falsehoods, the hope of a glorious life to come waspowerful in him. This may be stated as the result of a patientinvestigation and balancing of all that he says on the subject,and of the circumstances under which he says it. To cite andcriticize the passages here would occupy too much space to toolittle profit.
At the siege of Jerusalem, Titus made a speech to his soldiers, inthe course of it saying to them, "Those souls which are severedfrom their fleshly bodies by the sword in battle, are received bythe pure ether and joined to that company which are placed amongthe stars."50 The beautiful story of Cupid and Psyche, thatloveliest of all the myths concerning the immortality of the soul,was a creation by no means foreign to the prevalent ideas andfeelings of the time when it was written. The "Dissertations" ofMaximus Tyrius abound with sentences like the following. "Thisvery thing which the multitude call death is the birth of a newlife, and the beginning of immortality."51 "When Pherecydes laysick, conscious of spiritual energy, he cared not for bodilydisease, his soul standing erect and looking for release from itscumbersome vestment. So a man in chains, seeing the walls of hisprison crumbling, waits for deliverance, that from the darkness inwhich he has been buried he may soar to the ethereal regions andbe filled with glorious light."52
The conception of man as a member of the cosmic family of gods andgenii was known to all the classic philosophers, and was cherishedby the larger portion of them. Pindar affirms one origin for godsand men. Plato makes wise souls accompany the gods in theirexcursions about the sky. Cicero argues that heaven, and notHades, is the destination of the soul at death, because the soul,being lighter than the earthly elements surrounding it here, wouldrise aloft through the natural force of gravitation.53 Plutarchsays, "Demons are the spies and scouts of the gods, wandering andcircuiting around on their commands." Disembodied souls
48 Cyropadia, lib. viii. cap. 7.
49 Epigram XXIV.
50 Josephus, De Bell. lib. vi. cap. 1.
51 Diss. XXV.
52 Diss. XLI.
53 Tusc. Quest. lib i. cap. 17.
and demons were the same. The prevalence of such ideas as theseproduced in the Greek and Roman imagination a profound sense ofinvisible beings, a sense which was further intensified by thepopular personifications of all natural forces, as in fountainsand trees, full of lapsing naiads and rustling dryads. Anillustrative fact is furnished by an effect of the tradition thatThetis, snatching the body of Achilles from the funeral pile,conveyed him to Leuke, an island in the Black Sea. The marinerssailing by often fancied they saw his mighty shade flitting alongthe shore in the dusk of evening.54 But a passage in Hesiod yieldsa more adequate illustration: "When the mortal remains of thosewho flourished during the golden age were hidden beneath theearth, their souls became beneficent demons, still hovering overthe world they once inhabited, and still watching, clothed in thinair and gliding rapidly through every region of the earth, asguardians over the affairs of men."55
But there were always some who denied the common doctrine of afuture life and scoffed at its physical features. Through theabsurd extravagances of poets and augurs, and through the growthof critical thought, this unbelief went on increasing from thedays of Anaxagoras, when it was death to call the sun a ball offire, to the days of Catiline, when Julius Casar could be chosenPontifex Maximus, almost before the Senate had ceased toreverberate his voice openly asserting that death was the utterend of man. Plutarch dilates upon the wide skepticism of theGreeks as to the infernal world, at the close of his essay on themaxim, "Live concealed." The portentous growth of irreverentunbelief, the immense change of feeling from awe to ribaldry, ismade obvious by a glance from the known gravity of Hesiod's"Descent of Theseus and Pirithous into Hades," to Lucian's"Kataplous," which represents the cobbler Mycillus leaping fromthe banks of the Styx, swimming after Charon's boat, climbing intoit upon the shoulders of the tyrant Megapenthes and tormenting himthe whole way. Pliny, in his Natural History, affirms that deathis an everlasting sleep.56 The whole great sect of the Epicureansunited in supporting that belief by the combined force of ridiculeand argument. Their views are the most fully and ably defended bythe consummate Lucretius, in his masterly poem on the "Nature ofThings." Horace,57 Juvenal,58 Persius,59 concur in scouting at thetales which once, when recited on the stage, had made vastaudiences perceptibly tremble.60 And Cicero asks, "What old womanis so insane as to fear these things?"61
There were two classes of persons who sought differently to freemankind from the terrors which had invested the whole prospect ofdeath and another world. The first were the materialists, whoendeavored to prove that death was to man the absolute end ofevery thing. Secondly, there were the later Platonists, whomaintained that this world is the only Hades, that heaven is ourhome, that all death is ascent to better life. "To remain on highwith the gods is life; to descend into this world is death, adescent into Orcus," they said. The following couplet, of anunknown date, is translated from the Greek Anthology:
"Diogenes, whose tub stood by the road, Now, being dead, has thestars for his abode."
54 Muller, Greek Literature, ch. vi.
55 Works and Days, lib. i. II. 120-125.
56 Lib. ii. cap. 7.
57 Lib. i. epist. 16.
58 Sat. II.
59 Sat. II.
60 Tusc. Quest. lib. i. cap. 16.
61 Ibid. cap. 21.
Macrobius writes, in his commentary on the "Dream of Scipio,""Here, on earth, is the cavern of Dis, the infernal region. Theriver of oblivion is the wandering of the mind forgetting themajesty of its former life and thinking a residence in the bodythe only life. Phlegethon is the fires of wrath and desire.Acheron is retributive sadness. Cocytus is wailing tears. Styx isthe whirlpool of hatreds. The vulture eternally tearing the liveris the torment of an evil conscience."62
To the ancient Greek in general, death was a sad doom. When helost a friend, he sighed a melancholy farewell after him to thefaded shore of ghosts. Summoned himself, he departed with alingering look at the sun, and a tearful adieu to the bright dayand the green earth. To the Roman, death was a grim reality. Tomeet it himself he girded up his loins with artificial firmness.But at its ravages among his friends he wailed in anguishedabandonment. To his dying vision there was indeed a future; butshapes of distrust and shadow stood upon its disconsolate borders;and, when the prospect had no horror, he still shrank from itspoppied gloom.
62 Lib. i. cap. 9, 10.
CHAPTER XI.
MOHAMMEDAN DOCTRINE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
ISLAM has been a mighty power in the earth since the middle of theseventh century. A more energetic and trenchant faith than it wasfor eight hundred years has not appeared among men. Finallyexpelled from its startling encampments in Spain and theArchipelago, it still rules with tenacious hold over Turkey, apart of Tartary, Palestine, Persia, Arabia, and large portions ofAfrica. At this moment, as to adherence and influence, it issubordinate only to the two foremost religious systems in theworld, Buddhism and Christianity. The dogmatic structure of Islamas a theology and its practical power as an experimental religionoffer a problem of the gravest interest. But we must hasten on togive an exposition of merely those elements in it which areconnected with its doctrine of a future life.
It is a matter of entire notoriety that there is but the leastamount of originality in the tenets of the Mohammedan faith. Theblending together of those tenets was distinctive, the unifyingsoul breathed into them was a new creation, and the great aim towhich the whole was subordinated was peculiar; but the componentdoctrines themselves, with slight exception, existed before asavowed principles in the various systems of belief and practicethat prevailed around. Mohammed adopted many of the notions andcustoms of the pagan Arabs, the central dogma of the Jews as tothe unity of God, most of the traditions of the Hebrew Scriptures,innumerable fanciful conceits of the Rabbins,1 whole doctrines ofthe Magians with their details, some views of the Gnostics, andextensive portions of a corrupted Christianity, grouping themtogether with many modifications of his own, and such additions ashis genius afforded and his exigencies required. The motleystrangely results in a compact and systematic working faith.
The Islamites are divided into two great sects, the Sunnees andthe Sheeahs. The Arabs, Tartars, and Turks are Sunnees, aredominant in numbers and authority, are strict literalists, and arecommonly considered the orthodox believers. The Persians areSheeahs, are inferior in point of numbers, are somewhat freer incertain interpretations, placing a mass of tradition, like theJewish Mischna, on a level with the Koran,2 and are usuallyregarded as heretical. To apply our own ecclesiastical phraseologyto them, the latter are the Moslem Protestants, the former theMoslem Catholics. Yet in relation to almost every thing whichshould seem at all fundamental or vital they agree in theirteachings. Their differences in general are upon trivial opinions,or especially upon ritual particulars. For instance, the Sheeahssend all the Sunnees to hell because in their ablutions they washfrom the elbow to the finger tips; the Sunnees return thecompliment to their rival sectarists because they wash from thefinger tips to the elbow. Within these two grand denominations ofSheeah and
1 Rabbi Abraham Geiger, Prize Essay upon the question, proposed bythe University of Bonn, "Was hat Mohammed aus dem Judenthumaufgenommen?"
2 Merrick, Translation of the Sheeah Traditions of Mohammed in theHyat ul Kuloob, note x.
Sunnee are found a multitude of petty sects, separated from eachother on various questions of speculative faith and ceremonialpractice. Some take the Koran alone, and that in its plain literalsense, as their authority. Others read the Koran in theexplanatory light of a vast collection of parables, proverbs,legends, purporting to be from Mohammed. There is no less than ascore of mystic allegorizing sects3 who reduce almost every thingin the Koran to symbol, or spiritual signification, and some ofwhom as the Sufis are the most rapt and imaginative of all theenthusiastic devotees in the world.
A cardinal point in the Mohammedan faith is the asserted existenceof angels, celestial and infernal. Eblis is Satan. He was an angelof lofty rank; but when God created Adam and bade all the angelsworship him, Eblis refused, saying, "I was created of fire, he ofclay: I am more excellent and will not bow to him."4 Upon this Godcondemned Eblis and expelled him from Paradise. He then became theunappeasable foe and seducing destroyer of men. He is the fatherof those swarms of jins, or evil spirits, who crowd all hearts andspace with temptations and pave the ten thousand paths to hellwith lures for men.
The next consideration preliminary to a clear exhibition of ourspecial subject, is the doctrine of predestination, theunflinching fatalism which pervades and crowns this religion. Thebreath of this appalling faith is saturated with fatality, and itsvery name of Islam means "Submission." In heaven the prophet saw aprodigious wax tablet, called the "Preserved Table," on which werewritten the decrees of all events between the morning of creationand the day of judgment. The burning core of Mohammed's preachingwas the proclamation of the one true God whose volition bears theirresistible destiny of the universe; and inseparably associatedwith this was an intense hatred of idolatry, fanned by the wingsof God's wrath and producing a fanatic sense of a divinecommission to avenge him on his insulters and vindicate for himhis rightful worship from every nation. There is an apparentconflict between the Mohammedan representations of God's absolutepredestination of all things, and the abundant exhortations to allmen to accept the true faith and bring forth good works, and thusmake sure of an acceptable account in the day of judgment. Theformer make God's irreversible will all in all. The latter seem toplace alternative conditions before men, and to imply in them apower of choice. But this is a contradiction inseparable from thediscussion of God's infinite sovereignty and man's individualfreedom. The inconsistency is as gross in Augustine and Calvinismas it is in the Arabian lawgiver and the creed of the Sunnees. TheKoran, instead of solving the difficulty, boldly cuts it, and doesthat in exactly the same way as the thorough Calvinist. God hasrespectively elected and reprobated all the destined inhabitantsof heaven and hell, unalterably, independently of their choice oraction. At the same time, reception of the true faith, and a lifeconformed to it, are virtually necessary for salvation, because itis decreed that all the elect shall profess and obey the truefaith. Their obedient reception of it proves them to be elected.On the other hand, it is foreordained that none of the reprobateshall become disciples and followers of the Prophet. Theirrejection of
3 Churchill, Mount Lebanon, vol. i. ch. xv.
4 Sale's Translation of the Koran, ch. vii.
him, their wicked misbelief, is the evidence of their originalreprobation. As the Koran itself expresses it, salvation is for"all who are willing to be warned; but they shall not be warnedunless God please:"5 "all who shall be willing to walk uprightly;but they shall not be willing unless God willeth."6
But such fine drawn distinctions are easily lost from sight orspurned in the eager affray of affairs and the imminent straits ofthe soul. While in dogma and theory the profession of an orthodoxbelief, together with scrupulous prayer, fasting, alms, and thepilgrimage to Mecca, or the absence of these things, simplydenotes the foregone determinations of God in regard to the givenindividuals, in practice and feeling the contrasted beliefs andcourses of conduct are held to obtain heaven and hell. And wefind, accordingly, that Mohammed spoke as if God's primevalordination had fixed all things forever, whenever he wished toawaken in his followers reckless valor and implicit submission."Whole armies cannot slay him who is fated to die in his bed." Onthe contrary, when he sought to win converts, to move his hearersby threatenings and persuasions, he spoke as if every thingpertaining to human weal and woe, present and future, rested onconditions within the choice of men. Say, "'There is but one God,and Mohammed is his prophet,' and heaven shall be your portion;but cling to your delusive errors, and you shall be companions ofthe infernal fire." Practically speaking, the essence ofpropagandist Islam was a sentiment like this. All men who do notfollow Mohammed are accursed misbelievers. We are God's chosenavengers, the commissioned instruments for reducing his foes tosubmission. Engaged in that work, the hilts of all our scimitarsare in his hand. He snatches his servant martyr from the battlefield to heaven. Thus the weapons of the unbelievers send theirslain to paradise, while the weapons of the believers send theirslain to hell. Up, then, with the crescent banner, and, drippingwith idolatrous gore, let it gleam over mountain and plain tillour sickles have reaped the earth! "The sword is the key of heavenand the key of hell. A drop of blood shed in the cause of Allah, anight spent in arms, is of more avail than two months of fastingand prayer. Whoever falls in battle, his sins are forgiven. In theday of judgment his wounds shall be resplendent as vermilion andodoriferous as musk."7 An infuriated zeal against idolaters andunbelievers inflamed the Moslem heart, a fierce martial enthusiasmfilled the Moslem soul, and tangible visions of paradise and hellfloated, illuminate, throughtheMoslem imagination. And so from thePersian Gulf to the Caucasus, from Sierra Leone to the Pyrenees,the polity of Mohammed overran the nations, with the Koran in itsleft hand, the exterminating blade in its right, one thunder shoutstill breaking from its awful lips: "Profess Islam, and live, withthe clear prospect of eternal bliss beyond life; reject it, anddie, with the full certainty of eternal anguish beyond death."When the crusading Christians and the Saracenic hosts met inbattle, the conflict was the very frenzy of fanaticism. "There thequestion of salvation or damnation lay on the ground between themarshalled armies, to be fought for and carried by the stronger."Christ and Allah encountered, and the endless fate of theiropposed
5 Koran, ch. lxxiv.
6 Ibid. ch. lxxxi.
7 Gibbon, Decline and Fall of Rome, ch. 1.
followers hung on the swift turning issue. "Never have theappalling ideas of the invisible world so much and so distinctlymingled with the fury of mortal strife as in this instance. To theeyes of Turk and Arab the smoke of the infernal pit appeared tobreak up from the ground in the rear of the infidel lines. As thesquadrons of the faithful moved on to the charge, that pit yawnedto receive the miscreant host; and in chasing the foe theprophet's champions believed they were driving their antagonistsdown the very slopes of perdition. When at length steel clashedupon steel and the yell of death shook the air, the strife was notso much between arm and arm as between spirit and spirit, and eachdeadly thrust was felt to pierce the life at once of the body andof the soul."8
That terrible superstition prevails almost universally among theMussulmans, designated the "Beating in the Sepulchre," or theexamination and torture of the body in the grave. As soon as acorpse is interred, two black and livid angels, called theExaminers, whose names are Munkeer and Nakeer, appear, and orderthe dead person to sit up and answer certain questions as to hisfaith. If he give satisfactory replies, they suffer him to rest inpeace, refreshed by airs from paradise; but if he prove to havebeen an unbeliever or heretic, they beat him on the temples withiron maces till he roars aloud with pain and terror. They thenpress the earth on the body, which remains gnawed and stung bydragons and scorpions until the last day. Some sects give afigurative explanation of these circumstances. The utter denial ofthe whole representation is a schismatic peculiarity of the sectof Motozallites. But all true believers, both Sunnee and Sheeah,devoutly accept it literally. The commentators declare that it isimplied in the following verse of the Koran itself: "How,therefore, will it be with them when they die and the angels shallstrike their faces and their backs?" 9
The intermediate state of souls from the time of death until theresurrection has been the subject of extensive speculation andargument with the Islamites. The souls of the prophets, it isthought, are admitted directly to heaven. The souls of martyrs,according to a tradition received from Mohammed, rest in heaven inthe crops of green birds who eat of the fruits and drink of therivers there. As to the location of the souls of the common crowdof the faithful, the conclusions are various. Some maintain thatthey and the souls of the impious alike sleep in the dust untilthe end, when Israfil's blasts will stir them into life to bejudged. But the general and orthodox impression is that they tarryin one of the heavens, enjoying a preparatory blessedness. Thesouls of the wicked, it is commonly held, after being refused aplace in the tomb and also being repulsed from heaven, are carrieddown to the lower abyss, and thrown into a dungeon under a greenrock, or into the jaw of Eblis, there to be treated withforetastes of their final doom until summoned to the judgment.10
A very prominent doctrine in the Moslem creed is that of theresurrection of the body. This is a central feature in theorthodox faith. It is expounded in all the emphatic details of itsgross literality by their authoritative doctors, and is dwelt uponwith unwearied reiteration by the Koran. True, some minorheretical sects give it a spiritual interpretation; but the great
8 Taylor, Hist. of Fanaticism, sect. vii.
9 Ch. xlvii.
10 Sale, Preliminary Discourse, sect. iv.
body of believers accept it unhesitatingly in its most physicalshape. The intrinsic unnaturalness and improbability of the dogmawere evidently felt by Mohammed and his expositors; and all themore they strove to bolster it up and enforce its reception byvehement affirmations and elaborate illustrations. In the secondchapter of the Koran it is related that, in order to remove theskepticism of Abraham as to the resurrection, God wrought themiracle of restoring four birds which had been cut in pieces andscattered. In chapter seventh, God says, "We bring rain upon awithered country and cause the fruits to spring forth. Thus willwe bring the dead from their graves." The prophet frequentlyrebukes those who reject this belief. "What aileth them, that theybelieve not the resurrection?"11 "Is not He who created man ableto quicken the dead?"12 "The scoffers say, 'Shall we be raised tolife, and our forefathers too, after we have become dust andbones? This is nothing but sorcery.'"13 First, Israfil will blowthe blast of consternation. After an interval, he will blow theblast of examination, at which all creatures will die and thematerial universe will melt in horror. Thirdly, he will blow theblast of resurrection. Upon that instant, the assembled souls ofmankind will issue from his trumpet, like a swarm of bees, andfill the atmosphere, seeking to be reunited to their formerbodies, which will then be restored, even to their very hairs.
The day of judgment immediately follows. This is the dreadful dayfor which all other days were made; and it will come withblackness and consternation to unbelievers and evil doers, butwith peace and delight to the faithful. The total race of man willbe gathered in one place. Mohammed will first advance in front, tothe right hand, as intercessor for the professors of Islam. Thepreceding prophets will appear with their followers. Gabriel willhold suspended a balance so stupendous that one scale will coverparadise, the other hell. "Hath the news of the overwhelming dayof judgment reached thee?"14 "Whoever hath wrought either good orevil of the weight of an ant shall in that day behold the same."15An infallible scrutiny shall search and weigh every man's deeds,and exact justice shall be done, and no foreign help can avail anyone. "One soul shall not be able to obtain any thing in behalf ofanother soul."16 "Every man of them on that day shall havebusiness enough of his own to employ his thoughts."17 In all theMohammedan representations of this great trial and of theprinciples which determine its decisions, no reference is made tothe doctrine of predestination, but all turns on strict equity.Reckoning a reception or rejection of the true faith as a crowningmerit or demerit, the only question is, Do his good worksoutweigh, by so much as a hair, his evil works? If so, he goes tothe right; if not, he must take the left. The solitary trace offatalism or rather favoritism is this: that no idolater, once inhell, can ever possibly be released, while no Islamite, howeverwicked, can be damned eternally. The punishment of unbelievers iseverlasting, that of believers limited. The opposite of thisopinion is a great heresy with the generality of the Moslems. Somesay the judgment will require but the twinkling of an eye; othersthat it will occupy fifty thousand years, during which time thesun will be drawn from its sheath and burn insufferably, and thewicked will stand looking up, their feet shod with shoes of fire,and their skulls boiling like pots. At last,
11 Ch. lxxxiv.
12 Ch. lxxv.
13 Ch. xxxvii., lvi.
14 Koran, ch. lxxxviii.
15 Ibid. ch. xcix.
16 Ibid. ch. lxxxii.
17 Ibid. ch. lxxx.
when sentence has been passed on them, all souls are forced to trythe passage of al Sirat, a bridge thinner than a hair, sharperthan a razor, and hotter than flame, spanning in one frail archthe immeasurable distance, directly over hell, from earth toparadise. Some affect a metaphorical solution of this air severingcauseway, and take it merely as a symbol of the true Sirat, orbridge of this world, namely, the true faith and obedience; butevery orthodox Mussulman firmly holds it as a physical fact to besurmounted in the last day.18 Mohammed leading the way, thefaithful and righteous will traverse it with ease and as quicklyas a flash of lightning. The thin edge broadens beneath theirsteps, the surrounding support of convoying angels' wings hidesthe fire lake below from their sight, and they are swiftlyenveloped in paradise. But as the infidel with his evil deedsessays to cross, thorns entangle his steps, the lurid glarebeneath blinds him, and he soon topples over and whirls into theblazing abyss. In Dr. Frothingham's fine translation fromRuckert,
"When the wicked o'er it goes, stands the bridge all sparkling;And his mind bewilder'd grows, and his eye swims darkling.Wakening, giddying, then comes in, with a deadly fright, Memory ofall his sin, rushing on his sight. But when forward steps thejust, he is safe e'en here: Round him gathers holy trust, anddrives back his fear. Each good deed's a mist, that wide, goldenborders gets; And for him the bridge, each side, shines withparapets."
Between hell and paradise is an impassable wall, al Araf,separating the tormented from the happy, and covered with thosesouls whose good works exactly counterpoise their evil works, andwho are, consequently, fitted for neither place. The prophet andhis expounders have much to say of this narrow intermediateabode.19 Its lukewarm denizens are contemptuously spoken of. It issaid that Araf seems hell to the blessed but paradise to thedamned; for does not every thing depend on the point of view?
The Mohammedan descriptions of the doom of the wicked, thetorments of hell, are constantly repeated and are copious andvivid. Reference to chapter and verse would be superfluous, sincealmost every page of the Koran abounds in such tints and tones asthe following. "The unbelievers shall be companions of hell fireforever." "Those who disbelieve we will surely cast to be broiledin hell fire: so often as their skins shall be well burned we willgive them other skins in exchange, that they may taste the sharpertorment." "I will fill hell entirely full of genii and men." "Theyshall be dragged on their faces into hell, and it shall be saidunto them, 'Taste ye that torment of hell fire which ye rejectedas a falsehood.'" "The unbelievers shall be driven into hell bytroops." "They shall be taken by the forelocks and the feet andflung into hell, where they shall drink scalding water." "Theironly entertainment shall be boiling water, and they shall be fuelfor hell." "The smoke of hell shall cast forth sparks as big astowers, resembling yellow camels in color." "They who believe notshall
18 W. C. Taylor, Mohammedanism and its Sects.
19 Koran, ch. viii. Sale, Preliminary Discourse, p. 125.
have garments of fire fitted on them, and they shall be beatenwith maces of red hot iron." "The true believers, lying oncouches, shall look down upon the infidels in hell and laugh themto scorn."
There is a tradition that a door shall be shown the damned openinginto paradise, but when they approach it, it shall be suddenlyshut, and the believers within will laugh. Pitiless and horribleas these expressions from the Koran are, they are mercifulcompared with the pictures in the later traditions, of womensuspended by their hair, their brains boiling, suspended by theirtongues, molten copper poured down their throats, bound hands andfeet and devoured piecemeal by scorpions, hung up by their heelsin flaming furnaces and their flesh cut off on all sides withscissors of fire. 20 Their popular teachings divide hell intoseven stories, sunk one under another. The first and mildest isfor the wicked among the true believers. The second is assigned tothe Jews. The third is the special apartment of the Christians.They fourth is allotted to the Sabians, the fifth to the Magians,and the sixth to the most abandoned idolaters; but the seventh thedeepest and worst belongs to the hypocrites of all religions. Thefirst hell shall finally be emptied and destroyed, on the releaseof the wretched believers there; but all the other hells willretain their victims eternally.
If the visions of hell which filled the fancies of the faithfulwere material and glowing, equally so were their conceptions ofparadise. On this world of the blessed were lavished all thecharms so fascinating to the Oriental luxuriousness of sensuallanguor, and which the poetic Oriental imagination knew so wellhow to depict. As soon as the righteous have passed Sirat, theyobtain the first taste of their approaching felicity by arefreshing draught from "Mohammed's Pond." This is a square lake,a month's journey in circuit, its water whiter than milk or silverand more fragrant than to be comparable to any thing known bymortals. As many cups are set around it as there are stars in thefirmament; and whoever drinks from it will never thirst more. Thencomes paradise, an ecstatic dream of pleasure, filled withsparkling streams, honeyed fountains, shady groves, preciousstones, all flowers and fruits, blooming youths, circulatinggoblets, black eyed houris, incense, brilliant birds, delightsomemusic, unbroken peace.21 A Sheeah tradition makes the prophetpromise to Ali twelve palaces in paradise, built of gold andsilver bricks laid in a cement of musk and amber. The pebblesaround them are diamonds and rubies, the earth saffron, itshillocks camphor. Rivers of honey, wine, milk, and water flowthrough the court of each palace, their banks adorned with variousresplendent trees, interspersed with bowers consisting each of onehollow transparent pearl. In each of these bowers is an emeraldthrone, with a houri upon it arrayed in seventy green robes andseventy yellow robes of so fine a texture, and she herself sotransparent, that the marrow of her ankle, notwithstanding robes,flesh, and bone, is as distinctly visible as a flame in a glassvessel. Each houri has seventy locks of hair, every one under thecare of a maid, who perfumes it with a censer which God has madeto smoke with incense without the presence of fire; and no mortalhas ever breathed such fragrance as is there exhaled. 22
20 Hyat ul Kuloob, ch. x. p. 206.
21 Koran, ch. lv. ch. lvi.
22 Hyat ul Kuloob, ch. xvi. p. 286.
Such a doctrine of the future life as that here set forth, it isplain, was strikingly adapted to win and work fervidly on theminds of the imaginative, voluptuous, indolent, passionate racesof the Orient. It possesses a nucleus of just and natural moralconviction and sentiment, around which is grouped a composite of ascore of superstitions afloat before the rise of Islam, set offwith the arbitrary drapery of a poetic fancy, colored by thepeculiar idiosyncrasies of Mohammed, emphasized to suit hisspecial ends, and all inflamed with a vindictive and propagandistanimus. Any word further in explanation of the origin, or inrefutation of the soundness, of this system of belief once soimminently aggressive and still so widely established would seemto be superfluous.
CHAPTER XII.
EXPLANATORY SURVEY OF THE FIELD AND ITS MYTHS.
SURVEYING the thought of mankind upon the subject of a futurelife, as thus far examined, one can hardly fail to be struck bythe multitudinous variety of opinions and pictures it presents.Whence and how arose this heterogeneous mass of notions?
In consequence of the endowments with which God has created man,the doctrine of a future life arises as a normal fact in thedevelopment of his experience. But the forms and accompaniments ofthe doctrine, the immense diversity of dress and colors it appearsin, are subject to all the laws and accidents that mould andclothe the products within any other department of thought andliterature. We must refer the ethnic conceptions of a future stateto the same sources to which other portions of poetry andphilosophy are referred, namely, to the action of sentiment,fancy, and reason, first; then to the further action, reaction,and interaction of the pictures, dogmas, and reasonings ofauthoritative poets, priests, and philosophers on one side, and ofthe feeling, faith, and thought of credulous multitudes and docilepupils on the other. In the light of these great centres ofintellectual activity, parents of intellectual products, there isnothing pertaining to the subject before us, however curious,which may not be intelligibly explained, seen naturally to springout of certain conditions of man's mind and experience as relatedwith the life of society and the phenomena of the world.
So far as the views of the future life set forth in the religionsof the ancient nations constitute systematically developed andarranged schemes of doctrine and symbol, the origin of themtherefore needs no further explanation than is furnished by acontemplation of the regulated exercise of the speculative andimaginative faculties. But so far as those representations containunique, grotesque, isolated particulars, their production isaccounted for by this general law: In the early stages of humanculture, when the natural sensibilities are intensely preponderantin power, and the critical judgment is in abeyance, whateverstrongly moves the soul causes a poetical secretion on the part ofthe imagination.1 Thus the rainbow is personified; a waterfall issupposed to be haunted by spiritual beings; a volcano with fierycrater is seen as a Cyclops with one flaming eye in the centre ofhis forehead. This law holds not only in relation to impressiveobjects or appearances in nature, but also in relation tooccurrences, traditions, usages. In this way innumerable mythsarise, explanatory or amplifying thoughts secreted by thestimulated imagination and then narrated as events. Sometimesthese tales are given and received in good faith for truth, asGrote abundantly proves in his volume on Legendary Greece;sometimes they are clearly the gleeful play of the fancy, as whenit is said that the hated infant Herakles having been put toHera's breast as she lay asleep in heaven, she, upon waking,thrust him away, and the lacteal fluid, streaming athwart thefirmament, originated the Milky Way! To apply this law to ourspecial subject:
1 Chambers's Papers for the People, vol. i.: The Myth, p. 1.
What would be likely to work more powerfully on the minds of acrude, sensitive people, in an early stage of the world, with noelaborate discipline of religious thought, than the facts andphenomena of death? Plainly, around this centre there must bedeposited a vast quantity of ideas and fantasies. The task is todiscriminate them, trace their individual origin, and classifythem.
One of the most interesting and difficult questions connected withthe subject before us is this: What, in any given time and place,were the limits of the popular belief? How much of the currentrepresentations in relation to another life were held as strictverity? What portions were regarded as fable or symbolism? It isobvious enough that among the civilized nations of antiquity thedistinctions of literal statement, allegory, historic report,embellished legend, satire, poetic creation, philosophicalhypothesis, religious myth, were more or less generally known. Forexample, when Aschylus makes one of his characters say, "Yondercomes a herald: so Dust, Clay's thirsty sister, tells me," thepersonification, unquestionably, was as purposed and conscious asit is when a poet in the nineteenth century says, "Thirst divedfrom the brazen glare of the sky and clutched me by the throat."So, too, when Homer describes the bag of Aolus, the winds, inpossession of the sailors on board Ulysses' ship, the halfhumorous allegory cannot be mistaken for religious faith. It isequally obvious that these distinctions were not always carefullyobserved, but were often confounded. Therefore, in respect to thefaith of primitive times, it is impossible to draw any broad,fixed lines and say conclusively that all on this side wasconsciously considered as fanciful play or emblem, all on thatside as earnest fact. Each particular in each case must beexamined by itself and be decided on its own merits by the lightand weight of the moral probabilities. For example, if there wasany historic basis for the myth of Herakles dragging Cerberus outof Hades, it was that this hero forcibly entered the Mysteries anddragged out to light the enactor of the part of the three headeddog. The aged North man, committing martial suicide rather thandie in his peaceful bed, undoubtedly accepted the ensanguinedpicture of Valhalla as a truth. Virgil, dismissing Aneas from theTartarean realm through "the ivory gate by which false dreams andfictitious visions are wont to issue," plainly wrought as a poeton imaginative materials.
It should be recollected that most of the early peoples had norigid formularies of faith like the Christian creeds. The writingspreserved to us are often rather fragments of individualspeculations and hopes than rehearsals of public dogmas. Plato isfar from revealing the contemporaneous belief of Greece in thesense in which Thomas Aquinas reveals the contemporaneous beliefof Christendom. In Egypt, Persia, Rome, among every culturedpeople, there were different classes of minds, the philosophers,the priests, the poets, the warriors, the common multitude, whosemodes of thinking were in contrast, whose methods of interpretingtheir ancestral traditions and the phenomena of human destiny werewidely apart, whose respective beliefs had far differentboundaries. The openly skeptical Euripides and Lucian are to beborne in mind as well as the apparently credulous Hesiod andHomer. Of course the Fables of Asop were not literally credited.Neither, as a general thing, were the Metamorphoses of Ovid. Withthe ancients, while there was a general national cast of faith,there were likewise varieties of individual and sectarian beliefand unbelief, skepticism and credulity, solemn reason andrecreative fancy.
The people of Lystra, as we read in the Acts of the Apostles,actually thought Barnabas and Paul were Zeus and Hermes, andbrought oxen and garlands to offer them the sacrifices appropriateto those deities. Peisistratus obtained rule over Athens bydressing a stately woman, by the name of Phye, as Athene, andpassing off her commands as those of the tutelary goddess.Herodotus ridicules the people for unsuspiciously accepting her.2The incredibleness of a doctrine is no obstacle to a popularbelief in it. Whosoever thinks of the earnest reception of thedogma of transubstantiation the conversion of a wheaten wafer intothe infinite God by nearly three quarters of Christendom at thismoment, must permit the paradox to pass unchallenged. Doubtlessthe closing eye of many an expiring Greek reflected the pitilessold oarsman plying his frost cold boat across the Stygian ferry,and his failing ear caught the rush of the Phlegethonian surge. Itis equally certain that, at the same time, many another laughed atthese things as childish fictions, fitted only to scare "the babyof a girl."
Stricken memory, yearning emotion, kindled fancy, a sensitive andtimorous observation of natural phenomena, rustling leaves,wavering shadows, apparent effects of unknown causes, each is asuperstitious mother of beliefs. The Sonora Indians say thatdeparted souls dwell among the caves and rocks of the cliffs, andthat the echoes often heard there are their voices. Ruskinsuggests that the cause of the Greeks surrounding the lower worldresidence of Persephone with poplar groves was that "thefrailness, fragility, and inconstancy of the leafage of thepoplar tree resembled the fancied ghost people." We can veryeasily imagine how, in the breeze at the entrance to somesubterranean descent,
"A ghostly rank Of poplars, like a halted train of shades,
Trembled."
The operations of fierce passions, hate, fright, and rage, in abrain boiling with blood and fire, make pictures which the savageafterwards holds in remembrance as facts. He does not byreflection consciously distinguish the internal acts and sights ofthe mind from objective verities. Barbarians as travellers andpsychologists have repeatedly observed usually pay great attentionto the vagaries of madmen, the doings and utterances of theinsane. These persons are regarded as possessed by higher beings.Their words are oracles: the horrible shapes, the grotesquescenes, which their disordered and inflamed faculties conjure up,are eagerly caught at, and such accounts of them as they are ableto make out are treasured up as revelations. This fact is of noslight importance as an element in the hinting basis of thebeliefs of uncultivated tribes. Many a vision of delirium, many araving medley of insanity, has been accepted as truth.3 Anotherphenomenon, closely allied to the former, has wrought in a similarmanner and still more widely. It has been a common superstitionwith barbarous nations in every part of the world, from Timbuctooto Siberia, to suppose that dreams are real
2 Lib. i. cap. 60.
3 De Boismont, Rational History of Hallucinations, ch. 15:Of Hallucinations considered in a Psychological, Historical,and Religious Point of View.
adventures which the soul passes through, flying abroad while thebody lies, a dormant shell, wrapped in slumber. The power of thisinfluence in nourishing a copious credulity may easily beimagined.
The origin of many notions touching a future state, found inliterature, is to be traced to those rambling thoughts and poeticreveries with which even the most philosophical minds, in certainmoods, indulge themselves. For example, Sir Isaac Newton "doubtswhether there be not superior intelligencies who, subject to theSupreme, oversee and control the revolutions of the heavenlybodies." And Goethe, filled with sorrow by the death of Wieland,musing on the fate of his departed friend, solemnly surmised thathe had become the soul of a world in some far realm of space. Thesame mental exercises which supply the barbarian superstitionsreappear in disciplined minds, on a higher plane and in morerefined forms. Culture and science do not deliver us from allillusion and secure us sober views conformed to fact. Still, whatwe think amid the solid realities of waking life, fancy in hersleep disjointedly reverberates from hollow fields of dream. Themetaphysician or theologian, instead of resting contented withmere snatches and glimpses, sets himself deliberately to reasonout a complete theory. In these elaborate efforts many an opinionand metaphor, plausible or absurd, sweet or direful, is born andtakes its place. There is in the human mind a natural passion forcongruity and completeness, a passion extremely fertile incomplementary products. For example, the early Jewish notion ofliterally sitting down at table with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob,in the resurrection, was gradually developed by accretion ofassisting particulars into all the details of a consummatebanquet, at which Leviathan was to be the fish, Behemoth theroast, and so on.4 In the construction of doctrines or ofdiscourses, one thought suggests, one premise or conclusionnecessitates, another. This genetic application is sometimesplainly to be seen even in parts of incoherent schemes. Forinstance, the conception that man has returned into this life fromanterior experiences of it is met by the opposing fact that hedoes not remember any preceding career. The explanatory idea is atonce hit upon of a fountain of oblivion a river Lethe from whichthe disembodied soul drinks ere it reappears. Once establish inthe popular imagination the conception of the Olympian synod ofgods, and a thousand dramatic tales of action and adventure,appropriate to the characters of the divine personages, willinevitably follow.
The interest, cunning, and authority of priesthoods are anothersource of prevailing opinions concerning a life to come. Manynations, early and late, have been quite under the spiritualdirection of priests, and have believed almost every thing theysaid. Numerous motives conspire to make the priest concoctfictions and exert his power to gain credence for them. He musthave an alluringly colored elysium to reward his obedientdisciples. When his teachings are rejected and his authoritymocked, his class isolation and incensed pride find a naturalsatisfaction in threatening the reprobate aliens that a rain offire will one day wash them down the smoking gulfs of sulphur. TheMaronites, a sect of Catholic Christians in Syria, purchase oftheir priests a few yards of land in heaven, to secure a residencethere when
4 Corrodi, Gesch. des Chiliasmns, th. i. abschn. 15: Gastmahl desLeviathan.
they die.5 The Siamese Buddhists accumulate silver and bury it insecret, to supply the needs of the soul during its wandering inthe separate state. "This foolish opinion robs the state ofimmense sums. The lords and rich men erect pyramids over thesetreasures, and for their greater security place them in charge ofthe talapoins!"6 When, for some reason or other, either as amatter of neatness and convenience, or as a preventive of mutualclawing, or for some to us unimaginable end, the authoritativeSkald wished to induce the Northmen to keep their nails close cut,he devised the awful myth of the ship Nagelfra, and made his rawminded people swallow it as truth. The same process was followedunquestionably in a thousand other cases, in different particularsof thought and aim, in different parts of the world.
In a bird's eye survey of the broad field we have traversed, onecannot help noticing the marked influence of the present sceneryand habits, history and associations, of a people in deciding thecharacter of their anticipations of the future. The Esquimauxparadise is surrounded by great pots full of boiled walrus meat.The Turk's heaven is a gorgeously idealized pleasure garden orcelestial harem. As the apparition of a man wanders into the nextstate, a shadow of his present state floats over into the futurewith him. The Hereafter is the image flung by the Now. Heaven andhell are the upward and downward echoes of the earth. Like thespectre of the Brocken on the Hartz Mountains, our ideas ofanother life are a reflection of our present experience thrown incolossal on the cloud curtains of futurity. Charles Lamb, pushingthis elucidating observation much further, says, "The shapings ofour heavens are the modifications of our constitutions." A tribeof savages has been described who hoped to go after death to theirforefathers in an under ground elysium whose glory consisted ineternal drunkenness, that being their highest conception of blissand glory. What can be more piteous than the contemplation ofthose barbarians whose existence here is so wretched that eventheir imagination and faith have lost all rebound, and whoconceive of the land of souls only as poorer and harder than this,expecting to be tasked and beaten there by stronger spirits, andto have nothing to eat? The relation of master and servant, thetyranny of class, is reflected over into the other life in thosearistocratic notions which break out frequently in the history ofour subject. The Pharisees some of them, at least excluded therabble from the resurrection. The Peruvians confined their heavento the nobility. The New Zealanders said the souls of the Atuas,the nobles, were immortal, but the Cookees perished entirely.Meiners declares that the Russians, even so late as the times ofPeter the Great, believed that only the Czar and the boyars couldreach heaven. It was almost a universal custom among savagenations when a chieftain died to slay his wives and servants, thattheir ghosts might accompany his to paradise, to wait on him thereas here. Even among the Greeks, as Bulwer has well remarked, "theHades of the ancients was not for the many; and the dwellers ofElysium are chiefly confined to the oligarchy of earth."
The coarse and selfish assumption on the part of man ofsuperiority over woman, based on his brawniness and tyranny, hassometimes appeared in the form of an assertion that
5 Churchill, Mt. Lebanon, vol. iii. ch. 7.
6 Pallegoix, Description du Royaume de Siam, ch. xx. p. 113.
women have no souls, or at least cannot attain to the highestheaven possible for man. The former statement has been vulgarlyattributed to the Moslem creed, but with utter falsity. A piousand aged female disciple once asked Mohammed concerning her futurecondition in heaven. The prophet replied, "There will not be anyold women in heaven." She wept and bewailed her fate, but wascomforted upon the gracious assurance from the prophet's lips,"They will all be young again when there." The Buddhists relatethat Gotama once directed queen Prajapati, his foster mother, toprove by a miracle the error of those who supposed it impossiblefor a woman to attain Nirwana. She immediately made as manyrepetitions of her own form as filled the skies of all thesakwalas, and, after performing various wonders, died and roseinto Nirwana, leading after her five hundred virtuous princesses.7
How spontaneously the idiosyncrasies of men in the present areflung across the abysm into the future state is exhibitedamusingly, and with a rough pathos, in an old tradition of adialogue between Saint Patrick and Ossian. The bard contrasts theapostle's pitiful psalms with his own magnificent songs, and saysthat the virtuous Fingal is enjoying the rewards of his valor inthe aerial existence. The saint rejoins, No matter for Fingal'sworth; being a pagan, assuredly he roasts in hell. In hot wraththe honest Caledonian poet cries, "If the children of Morni andthe tribes of the clan Ovi were alive, we would force brave Fingalout of hell, or the same habitation should be our own."8
Many of the most affecting facts and problems in human experienceand destiny have found expression, hypothetic solution, instriking myths preserved in the popular traditions of nations. Themutual resemblances in these legends in some cases, though amongfar separated peoples, are very significant and impressive. Theydenote that, moved by similar motives and exercised on the samesoliciting themes, human desire and thought naturally find vent insimilar theories, stories, and emblems. The imagination of man, asGfrorer says, runs in ruts which not itself but nature has beaten.
The instinctive shrinking from death felt by man would, sooner orlater, quite naturally suggest the idea that death was not anoriginal feature in the divine plan of the world, but aretributive additional discord. Benignant nature meant herchildren should live on in happy contentment here forever; but sinand Satan came in, and death was the vengeance that followed theirdoings. The Persians fully developed this speculation. The Hebrewseither also originated it, or borrowed it from the Persians; andafterwards the Christians adopted it. Traces of the sameconception appear among the remotest and rudest nations. TheCaribbeans have a myth to the effect that the whole race of menwere doomed to be mortal because Carus, the first man, offendedthe great god Tiri. The Cherokees ascribe to the Great Spirit theintention of making men immortal on earth; but, they say, the sunwhen he passed over told them there was not room enough, and thatpeople had better die! They also say that the Creator attempted tomake the first man and woman out of two stones, but failed, andafterwards fashioned them of clay; and therefore it is that theyare perishable.9 The
7 Hardy, Manual of Buddhism, p. 314.
8 Logan, Scottish Gael, ch. xiv.
9 Squier, Serpent Symbol, p. 67, note c.
Indians of the Oronoco declare that the Great Spirit dwelt for awhile, at first, among men. As he was leaving them, he turnedaround in his canoe and said, "Ye shall never die, but shall shedyour skins." An old woman would not believe what he said; hetherefore recalled his promise and vowed that they should die.
The thought of more than one death that the composite man issimplified by a series of separating deaths has repeatedly foundplace. The New Testament speaks of "the second death;" but that isa metaphorical phrase, descriptive, as there employed, ofcondemnation and suffering. It is a thought of Plato that theDeity put intellect in soul, and soul in a material envelope.Following this hint, Plutarch says, in his essay on the Face inthe Moon, that the earth furnishes the body, the moon the soul,the sun the mind. The first death we die, he continues, makes ustwo from three; the second makes us one from two. The Feejees tellhow one of their warriors, seeing the spectre of a recentlydeceased enemy of his, threw his war club at it and killed it.They believed the spirit itself was thus destroyed. There issomething pathetic in this accumulation of dissolution upondissolution, this pursuit of death after death. We seem to hear,in this thin succession of the ghosts of ghosts, the faintergrowing echoes of the body fade away.
Many narratives reveal the fond hovering of the human mind overthe problem of avoiding death altogether. The Hebrew Scriptureshave made us familiar with the translation of Enoch and theascension of Elijah without tasting death. The Hindus tell ofDivadassa, who, as a reward for his exceeding virtue and piety,was permitted to ascend to heaven alive.10 They also say that thegood Trisanku, having pleased a god, was elevated in his livingbody to heaven.11 The Buddhists of Ceylon preserve a legend of theelevation of one of the royal descendants of Maha Sammata to thesuperior heavens without undergoing death.12 There are Buddhisttraditions, furthermore, of four other persons who were taken upto Indra's heaven in their bodies without tasting death, namely,the musician Gattila, and the kings Sadhina, Nirni, andMandhatu.13 A beautiful myth of the translation of Cyrus is foundin Firdousi's Shah Nameh:
"Ky Khosru bow'd himself before his God: In the bright water hewash'd his head and his limbs; And he spake to himself the ZendAvesta's prayers; And he turn'd to the friends of his life andexclaim'd, 'Fare ye well, fare ye well for evermore! When tomorrow's sun lifts its blazing banner, And the sea is gold, andthe land is purple, This world and I shall be parted forever. Yewill never see me again, save in Memory's dreams.'When the sunuplifted his head from the mountain, The king had vanish'd fromthe eyes of his nobles. They roam'd around in vain attempts tofind him;
10 Vans Kennedy, Ancient and Hindu Mythology, p. 431.
11 Vishnu Purana, p. 371.
12 Upham, Sacred Books of Ceylon, vol. i. Introduction, p. 17.
13 Hardy, Manual of Buddhism, p. 25, note.
And every one, as he came back to the place, Bade a long farewellto the king of the world. Never hath any one seen such a marvelNo, though he live long in the world That a man should go aliveinto the presence of God."
There is a Greek story that Empedocles, "after a sacred festival,was drawn up to heaven in a splendor of celestial effulgence."14Philostratus relates a tradition of the Cretans, affirming that,Apollonius having entered a temple to worship, a sound was heardas of a chorus of virgins singing, "Come from the earth; come intoheaven; come." And he was taken up, never having been seenafterwards. Here may be cited also the exquisite fable ofEndymion. Zeus promised to grant what he should request. He beggedfor immortality, eternal sleep, and never fading youth.Accordingly, in all his surpassing beauty he slumbers on thesummit of Latmus, where every night the enamored moon stoops tokiss his spotless forehead. One of the most remarkable fragmentsin the traditions of the American aborigines is that concerningthe final departure of Tarenyawagon, a mythic chief ofsupernatural knowledge and power, who instructed and united theIroquois. He sprang across vast chasms between the cliffs, andshot over the lakes with incredible speed, in a spotless whitecanoe. At last the Master of Breath summoned him. Suddenly the skywas filled with melody. While all eyes were turned up,Tarenyawagon was seen, seated in his snow white canoe, in mid air,rising with every burst of the heavenly music, till he vanishedbeyond the summer clouds, and all was still.15
Another mythological method of avoidingdeath is by bathing in someimmortal fountain. The Greeks tell of Glaucus, who by chancediscovered and plunged in a spring of this charmed virtue, but wasso chagrined at being unable to point it out to others that heflung himself into the ocean. He could not die, and so became amarine deity, and was annually seen off the headlands sportingwith whales. The search for the "Fountain of Youth" by theSpaniards who landed in Florida is well known. How with a vaineagerness did Ponce de Leon, the battered old warrior, seek afterthe magic wave beneath which he should sink to emerge free fromscars and stains, as fresh and fair as when first he donned theknightly harness! Khizer, the Wandering Jew of the East,accompanied Iskander Zulkarnain (the Oriental name for Alexanderthe Great) in his celebrated expedition to find the fountain oflife.16 Zulkarnain, coming to a place where there were threehundred and sixty fountains, despatched three hundred and sixtymen, ordering each man to select one of the fountains in which towash a dry salted fish wherewith he was furnished. The instantKhizer's fish touched the water of the fountain which he hadchosen, it sprang away, alive. Khizer leaped in after it anddrank. Therefore he cannot die till the last trump sounds.Meanwhile, clad in a green garb, he roams through the world, apersonified spring of the year.
14 Lewes, Biographical History of Philosophy, vol. i. p. 135, (1stEng. edit.)
15 Schoolcraft, Notes on the Iroquois, ch. ix.
16 Adventures of Hatim Tai, p. 125.
The same influences which have caused death to be interpreted as apunitive after piece in the creation, and which have inventedcases wherein it was set aside, have also fabricated tales ofreturns from its shrouded realm. The Thracian lover's harp,"drawing iron tears down Pluto's cheek," won his mistress half wayto the upper light, and would have wholly redeemed her had he notin impatience looked back. The grim king of Hades, yielding topassionate entreaties, relented so far as to let the haplessProtesilaus return to his mourning Laodameia for three hours. Atthe swift end of this poor period he died again; and this time shedied with him. Erus, who was killed in battle, and Timarchus,whose soul was rapt from him in the cave of Trophonius, bothreturned, as we read in Plato and Plutarch, to relate withcircumstantial detail what they saw in the other world. Alcestis,who so nobly died to save her husband's life, was brought backfrom the region of the dead, by the interposition of Herakles, tospend happy years with her grateful Admetus. The cunning Sisyphus,who was so notorious for his treachery, by a shrewd plot obtainedleave, after his death, to visit the earth again. Safely up in thelight, he vowed he would stay; but old Hermes psychopompusforcibly dragged him down.
When Columbus landed at San Salvador, the natives thought he haddescended from the sun, and by signs inquired if he had not. TheHawaiians took Captain Cook for the god Lono, who was once theirking but was afterwards deified, and who had prophesied, as he wasdying, that he should in after times return. Te Wharewara, a NewZealand youth, relates a long account of the return of his auntfrom the other world, with a minute description of her adventuresand observations there.17 Schoolcraft gives a picturesquenarrative of a journey made by a Wyandot brave to and from theland of souls.18
There is a group of strangely pleasing myths, closely allied tothe two preceding classes, showing how the popular heart andimagination glorify their heroes, and, fondly believing them toogodlike to die, fancy them only removed to some secret place,where they still live, and whence in the time of need they willcome again to rescue or to bless their people. Greece dreamed thather swift footed Achilles was yet alive in the White Island.Denmark long saw king Holger lingering on the old warrior cairnsof his country. Portugal trusted that her beauteous princeSebastian had escaped from the fatal field to the East, and wouldone day return to claim his usurped realm.19 So, too, of Roderickthe Goth, who fell in disastrous battle with the Arabs, theVisiogothic traditions and faith of the people long insisted thathe would reappear. The Swiss herdsmen believe the founders oftheir confederacy still sleep in a cavern on the shores ofLucerne. When Switzerland is in peril, the Three Tells, slumberingthere in their antique garb, will wake to save her. Sweetly andoften, the ancient British lays allude to the puissant Arthurborne away to the mystic vales of Avalon, and yet to be hailed inhis native kingdom, Excalibur once more gleaming in his hand. Thestrains of the Troubadours swell and ring as they tell ofCharlemagne sleeping beneath
17 Shortland, Traditions of the New Zealanders, p. 128.
18 History, &c. of Indian Tribes, part ii. p. 235.
19 There is a fanatic sect of Sebastianists in Brazil now. See"Brazil and the Brazilians," by Kidier and Fletcher, pp. 519-521.
the Untersberg, biding his appointed time to rise, resume hisunrivalled sceptre, and glorify the Frank race. And what grand andweird ballads picture great Barbarossa seated in the vaults ofKyffhauser, his beard grown through the stone table in front ofhim, tarrying till he may come forth, with his minstrels andknights around him, in the crisis hour of Germany's fortunes! TheIndians of Pecos, in New Mexico, still anxiously expect the returnof Montezuma; while in San Domingo, on the Rio Grande, a sentinelevery morning ascends to the top of the highest house, at sunrise,and looks out eastward for the coming of the great chief.20 Thepeasants of Brittany maintain as a recent traveller testifies thatNapoleon is still alive in concealment somewhere, and will one daybe heard of or seen in pomp and victory. One other dead man therehas been who was expected to return. the hated Nero, the popularhorror of whom shows itself in the shuddering belief expressed inthe Apocalypse and in the Sibylline Oracles that he was stillalive and would reappear.21
Alian, in his Various History, recounts the following singularcircumstances concerning the Meropes who inhabited the valley ofAnostan.22 It would seem to prove that no possible conceit ofspeculation pertaining to our subject has been unthought of. Ariver of grief and a river of pleasure, he says, lapsed throughthe valley, their banks covered with trees. If one ate of thefruit growing on the trees beside the former stream, he burst intoa flood of tears and wept till he died. But if he partook of thathanging on the shore of the latter, his bliss was so great that heforgot all desires; and, strangest of all, he returned over thetrack of life to youth and infancy, and then gently expired. Heturned
"Into his yesterdays, and wander'd back To distant childhood, andwent out to God By the gate of birth, not death."
Mohammed, during his night journey, saw, in the lower heaven,Adam, the father of mankind, a majestic old man, with all hisposterity who were destined for paradise on one side, and all whowere destined for hell on the other. When he looked on the righthe smiled and rejoiced, but as often as he looked on the left hemourned and wept. How finely this reveals the stupendous pathosthere is in the theological conception of a Federal Head ofhumanity!
The idea of a great terminal crisis is met with so often inreviewing the history of human efforts to grasp and solve theproblem of the world's destiny, that we must consider it a normalconcomitant of such theorizings. The mind reels and loses itselfin trying to conceive of the everlasting continuance of thepresent order, or of any one fixed course of things, but findsrelief in the notion of a revolution, an end, and a fresh start.The Mexican Cataclysm or universal crash, the close of the HinduCalpa, the Persian Resurrection, the Stoic Conflagration, theScandinavian Ragnarokur, the Christian Day of Judgment, all embodythis one thought. The Drama of Humanity is played out, the curtainfalls, and when it rises again
20 Abbe Domenech's Seven Years' Residence in the Great Deserts ofNorth America; Vol. I. ch. viii.
21 Stuart, Commentary on the Apocalypse: Excursus upon ch. xiii.v. 18.
22 Lib. iii. cap. 18.
all is commenced afresh. The clock of creation runs down and hasto be wound up anew. The Brahmans are now expecting the tenthavatar of Vishnu. The Parsees look for Sosiosch to come, toconsummate the triumph of good, and to raise the dead upon arenewed earth. The Buddhists await the birth of Maitri Buddha, whois tarrying in the dewa loka Tusita until the time of his adventupon earth. The Jews are praying for the appearance of theMessiah. And many Christians affirm that the second advent ofJesus draws nigh.
One more fact, even in a hasty survey of some of the most peculiaropinions current in bygone times as to a future life, can scarcelyfail to attract notice. It is the so constant linking of thesoul's fate with the skyey spaces and the stars, in fondexplorings and astrologic dreams. Nowhere are the kingly greatnessand the immortal aspiring of man more finely shown. The loadstoneof his destiny and the prophetic gravitation of his thoughts areupward, into the eternal bosom of heaven's infinite hospitality.
"Ye stars, which are the poetry of heaven!
If in your bright leaves we would read the fate
Of men and empires, 'tis to be forgiven,
That, in our aspirations to be great,
Our destinies o'erleap their mortal state
And claim a kindred with you; for ye are
A beauty and a mystery, and create
In us such love and reverence from afar
That fortune, fame, power, life, have named themselves a star."
What an immeasurable contrast between the dying Cherokee, whowould leap into heaven with a war whoop on his tongue and a stringof scalps in his hand, and the dying Christian, who sublimelymurmurs, "Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit!" What a sweepof thought, from the poor woman whose pious notion of heaven wasthat it was a place where she could sit all day in a clean whiteapron and sing psalms, to the far seeing and sympathetic naturalphilosopher whose loving faith embraces all ranks of creatures andwho conceives of paradise as a spiritual concert of the combinedworlds with all their inhabitants in presence of their Creator!Yet from the explanatory considerations which have been set forthwe can understand the derivation of the multifarious swarm ofnotions afloat in the world, as the fifteen hundred varieties ofapple now known have all been derived from the solitary whitecrab. Differences of fancy and opinion among men are as natural asfancies and opinions are. The mind of a people grows from theearth of its deposited history, but breathes in the air of itsliving literature.23 By his philosophic learning and poeticsympathy the cosmopolitan scholar wins the last victory of mindover matter, frees himself from local conditions and temporaltinges, and, under the light of universal truth, traces, throughthe causal influences of soil and clime and history, and thecolored threads of great individualities, the formation ofpeculiar national creeds. Through sense the barbarian mind feedson the raw pabulum furnished by the immediate phenomena of theworld and of its own life. Through culture the civilized mindfeeds on the elaborated substance of literature,
23 Schouw, Earth, Plants, and Man, ch. xxx.
science, and art. Plants eat inorganic, animals eat organized,material. The ignorant man lives on sensations obtained directlyfrom nature; the educated man lives also on sensations obtainedfrom the symbols of other people's sensations. The illiteratesavage hunts for his mental living in the wild forest ofconsciousness; the erudite philosopher lives also on the psychicalstores of foregone men.
NOTE. To the ten instances, stated on pages 210, 211, ofremarkable men who after their death were popularly imagined to bestill alive, and destined to appear again, an eleventh may beadded. The Indians of Pecos, in New Mexico, anxiously expect thereturn of Montezuma. In San Domingo, on the Rio Grande, a sentinelevery morning ascends to the roof of the highest house at sunriseand looks out eastward for the coming of the great chief. See theAbbe Domenech's "Seven Years' Residence in the Great Deserts ofNorth America," vol. ii. ch. viii.
PART THIRD.
NEW TESTAMENT TEACHINGS CONCERNING AFUTURE LIFE.
CHAPTER I.
PETER'S DOCTRINE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
IN entering upon an investigation of the thoughts of the NewTestament writers concerning the fate of man after his bodilydissolution, we may commence by glancing at the various allusionscontained in the record to opinions on this subject prevalent atthe time of the Savior or immediately afterwards, but which formedno part of his religion, or were mixed with mistakes.
There are several incidents recorded in the Gospels which showthat a belief in the transmigration of the soul was received amongthe Jews. As Jesus was passing near Siloam with his disciples, hesaw a man who had been blind from his birth; and the disciplessaid to him, "Master, who did sin, this man or his parents, thathe was born blind?" The drift of this question is, Did the parentsof this man commit some great crime, for which they were punishedby having their child born blind, or did he come into the worldunder this calamity in expiation of the iniquities of a previouslife? Jesus denies the doctrine involved in this interrogation, atleast, as far as his reply touches it at all; for he rarely entersinto any discussion or refutation of incidental errors. He says,Neither hath this man sinned nor his parents as the cause of hisblindness; but the regular workings of the laws of God are mademanifest in him: moreover, it is a providential occasion offeredme that I should show the divinity of my mission by giving himsight.
When Herod heard of the miracles and the fame of Jesus, he said,This is John the Baptist, whom I beheaded: he is risen from thedead; and therefore mighty works are wrought by him. This briefstatement plainly shows that the belief in the reappearance of adeparted spirit, in bodily form, to run another career, was extantin Judea at that period. The Evangelists relate anothercircumstance to the same effect. Jesus asked his disciples who thepeople thought he was. And they replied, Some think that thou artJohn the Baptist, some Elias, and some Jeremiah or some other ofthe old prophets, a forerunner of the Messiah. Then Jesus asked,But who think ye that I am? And Simon Peter said, Thou art thepromised Messiah himself. There was a prophetic tradition amongthe Jews, drawn from the words of Malachi, that before the Messiahwas revealed Elias would appear and proclaim his coming.
Therefore, when the disciples of Christ recognised him as thegreat Anointed, they were troubled about this prophecy, and saidto their Master, Why do the Scribes say that Elias must firstcome? He replies to them, in substance, It is even so: theprophet's words shall not fail: they are already fulfilled. Butyou must interpret the prophecy aright. It does not mean that theancient prophet himself, in physical form, shall come upon earth,but that one with his office, in his spirit and power, shall gobefore me. If ye are able to understand the true import of thepromise, it has been realized. John the Baptist is the Elias whichwas to come. The New Testament, therefore, has allusions to thedoctrine of transmigration, but gives it no warrant.
The Jewish expectations in regard to the Messiah, the nature ofhis kingdom, and the events which they supposed would attend hiscoming or transpire during his reign, were the source andfoundation of the phraseology of a great many passages in theChristian Scriptures and of the sense of not a few. The nationalideas and hopes of the Jews at that time were singularly intenseand extensive. Their influence over the immediate disciples ofJesus and the authors of the New Testament is often very evidentin the interpretations they put upon his teachings, and in theirown words. Still, their intellectual and spiritual obtuseness tothe true drift of their Master's thoughts was not so great, theirmistakes are neither so numerous nor so gross, as it is frequentlysupposed they were. This is proved by the fact that when they usethe language of the Messianic expectations of the Jews in theirwritings they often do it, not in the material, but in a spiritualsense. When they first came under the instruction of Jesus, theywere fully imbued with the common notions of their nation and age.By his influence their ideas were slowly and with great difficultyspiritualized and made to approach his own in some degree. But itis unquestionably true that they never not even after his deatharrived at a clear appreciation of the full sublimity, the purespirituality, the ultimate significance, of his mission and hiswords. Still, they did cast off and rise above the grossly carnalexpectations of their countrymen. Partially instructed in thespiritual nature of Christ's kingdom, and partially biassed bytheir Jewish prepossessions, they interpreted a part of hislanguage figuratively, according to his real meaning, and a partof it literally, according to their own notions. The result ofthis was several doctrines neither taught by Christ nor held bythe Jews, but formed by conjoining and elaborating a portion ofthe conceptions of both. These doctrines are to be found in theNew Testament; but it should be distinctly understood that thereligion of Christ is not responsible for them, is to be separatedfrom them.
The fundamental and pervading aim of that epistle of Peter thegenuineness of which is unquestioned and the same is true in agreat degree of his speeches recorded in the Acts of the Apostlesis to exhort the Christians to whom it is written to purifythemselves by faith, love, and good works; to stand firmly amidstall their tribulations, supported by the expectations and preparedto meet the conditions of a glorious life in heaven at the closeof this life. Eschatology, the doctrine of the Last Things, withits practical inferences, all inseparably interwoven with themission of Christ, forms the basis and scope of the wholedocument.
Peter believed that when Christ had been put to death his spirit,surviving, descended into the separate state of departed souls.Having cited from the sixteenth Psalm the declaration, "Thou wiltnot leave my soul in the under world," he says it was a prophecyconcerning Christ, which was fulfilled in his resurrection. "Thesoul of this Jesus was not left in the under world, but God hathraised him up, whereof we all are witnesses." When it is writtenthat his soul was not left in the subterranean abode ofdisembodied spirits, of course the inference cannot be avoidedthat it was supposed to have been there for a time.
In the next place, we are warranted by several considerations inasserting that Peter believed that down there, in the gloomy realmof shades, were gathered and detained the souls of all the deadgenerations. We attribute this view to Peter from the combinedforce of the following reasons: because such was, notoriously, thebelief of his ancestral and contemporary countrymen; because hespeaks of the resurrection of Jesus as if it were a wonderfulprophecy or unparalleled miracle, a signal and most significantexception to the universal law; because he says expressly of Davidthat "he is not yet ascended into the heavens," and if David wasstill retained below, undoubtedly all were; because the samedoctrine is plainly inculcated by other of the New Testamentwriters; and, finally, because Peter himself, in another part ofthis epistle, declares, in unequivocal terms, that the soul ofChrist went and preached to the souls confined in the underworld, for such is the perspicuous meaning of the famous text,"being put to death in the body, but kept alive in the soul, inwhich also he went and preached [went as a herald] to the spiritsin prison." The meaning we have attributed to this celebratedpassage is the simple and consistent explanation of the words andthe context, and is what must have been conveyed to those familiarwith the received opinions of that time. Accordingly, we findthat, with the exception of Augustine, it was so understood andinterpreted by the whole body of the Fathers.1 It is likewise soheld now by an immense majority of the most authoritative moderncommentators. Rosenmuller says, in his commentary on this text,"That by the spirits in prison is meant souls of men separatedfrom their bodies and detained as in custody in the under world,which the Greeks call Hades, the Hebrews Sheol, can hardly bedoubted," (vix dubitari posse videtur.) Such has ever been andstill is the common conclusion of nearly all the best criticaltheologians, as volumes of citations might easily be made to show.The reasons which led Augustine to give a different exposition ofthe text before us are such as should make, in this case, even hisgreat name have little or no weight. He firmly held, as revealedand unquestionable truth,2 the whole doctrine which we maintain isimplied in the present passage; but he was so perplexed by certaindifficult queries3 as to locality and method and circumstance,addressed to him with reference to this text, that he, waveringly,and at last, gave it an allegorical interpretation. His exegesisis not only arbitrary and opposed to the catholic doctrine of theChurch; it is also so far fetched and forced as to be destitute of
1 See, for example, Clem. Alex. Stromata, lib. vi.; Cyprian, Test.adv. Judaos, lib. ii. cap. 27, Lactantius, Divin. Instit. lib.vii. cap. 20.
2 Epist. XCIX.
3 Ibid.
plausibility. He says the spirits in prison may be the souls ofmen confined in their bodies here in this life, to preach to whomChrist came from heaven. But the careful reader will observe thatPeter speaks as if the spirits were collected and kept in onecommon custody, refers to the spirits of a generation long agodeparted to the dead, and represents the preaching as taking placein the interval between Christ's death and his resurrection. Aglance from the eighteenth to the twenty second verse inclusiveshows indisputably that the order of events narrated by theapostle is this: First, Christ was put to death in the flesh,suffering for sins, the just for the unjust; secondly, he wasquickened in the spirit; thirdly, he went and preached to thespirits in prison; fourthly, he rose from the dead; fifthly, heascended into heaven. How is it possible for any one to doubt thatthe text under consideration teaches his subterranean missionduring the period of his bodily burial?
In the exposition of the Apostles' Creed put forth by the Churchof England under Edward VI., this text in Peter was referred to asan authoritative proof of the article on Christ's descent into theunder world; and when, some years later, thatreference wasstricken out, notoriously it was not because the Episcopal rulerswere convinced of a mistake, but because they had become afraid ofthe associated Romish doctrine of purgatory.
If Peter believed as he undoubtedly did that Christ after hiscrucifixion descended to the place of departed spirits, what didhe suppose was the object of that descent? Calvin's theory wasthat he went into hell in order that he might there suffervicariously the accumulated agonies due to the LOST, thusplacating the just wrath of the Father and purchasing the releaseof the elect. A sufficient refutation of that dogma, as to itsphilosophical basis, is found in its immorality, its forensictechnicality. As a mode of explaining the Scriptures, it isrefuted by the fact that it is nowhere plainly stated in the NewTestament, but is arbitrarily constructed by forced and indirectinferences from various obscure texts, which texts can beperfectly explained without involving it at all. For what purpose,then, was it thought that Jesus went to the imprisoned souls ofthe under world? The most natural supposition the conception mostin harmony with the character and details of the rest of thescheme and with the prevailing thought of the time would be thathe went there to rescue the captives from their sepulchralbondage, to conquer death and the devil in their own domain, openthe doors, break the chains, proclaim good tidings of comingredemption to the spirits in prison, and, rising thence, to ascendto heaven, preparing the way for them to follow with him at hisexpected return. This, indeed, is the doctrine of the Judaizingapostles, the unbroken catholic doctrine of the Church. Paulwrites to the Colossians, and to the Ephesians, that, when Christ"had spoiled the principalities and powers" of the world of thedead, "he ascended up on high, leading a multitude of captives."Peter himself declares, a little farther on in his epistle, "thatthe glad tidings were preached to the dead, that, though they hadbeen persecuted and condemned in the flesh by the will of men,they might be blessed in the spirit by the will of God."4 Christfulfilled the law of
4 See Rosenmuller's explanation in hoc loco.
death,5 descending to the place of separate spirits, that he mightdeclare deliverance to the quick and the dead by comingtriumphantly back and going into heaven, an evident token of theremoval of the penalty of sin which hitherto had fatally doomedall men to the under world.6
Let us see if this will not enable us to explain Peter's languagesatisfactorily. Death, with the lower residence succeeding it, letit be remembered, was, according to the Jewish and apostolicbelief, the fruit of sin, the judgment pronounced on sin. ButChrist, Peter says, was sinless. "He was a lamb without blemishand without spot." "He did no sin, neither was guile found in hismouth." Therefore he was not exposed to death and the under worldon his own account. Consequently, when it is written that "he boreour sins in his own body on the tree," that "he suffered for sins,the just for the unjust," in order to give the words their clear,full meaning it is not necessary to attribute to them the sense ofa vicarious sacrifice offered to quench the anger of God or tofurnish compensation for a broken commandment; but this sense,namely, that although in his sinlessness he was exempt from death,yet he "suffered for us," he voluntarily died, thus undergoing forour sakes that which was to others the penalty of their sin. Theobject of his dying was not to conciliate the alienated Father orto adjust the unbalanced law: it was to descend into the realm ofthe dead, heralding God's pardon to the captives, and to returnand rise into heaven, opening and showing to his disciples the waythither. For, owing to his moral sinlessness, or to his delegatedomnipotence, if he were once in the abode of the dead, he mustreturn: nothing could keep him there. Epiphanius describes thedevil complaining, after Christ had burst through his nets anddungeons, "Miserable me! what shall I do? I did not know God wasconcealed in that body. The son of Mary has deceived me. Iimagined he was a mere man."7 In an apocryphal writing of veryearly date, which shows some of the opinions abroad at that time,one of the chief devils, after Christ had appeared in hell,cleaving its grisly prisons from top to bottom and releasing thecaptives, is represented upbraiding Satan in these terms: "Oprince of all evil, author of death, why didst thou crucify andbring down to our regions a person righteous and sinless? Therebythou hast lost all the sinners of the world."8 Again, in anancient treatise on the Apostles' Creed, we read as follows: "Inthe bait of Christ's flesh was secretly inserted the hook of hisdivinity. This the devil knew not, but, supposing he must staywhen he was
5 See King's History of the Apostles' Creed, 3d ed., pp. 234-239."The purpose of Christ's descent was to undergo the laws of death,pass through the whole experience of man, conquer the devil, breakthe fetters of the captives, and fix a time for theirresurrection." To the same effect, old Hilary, Bishop ofPoictiers, in his commentary on Psalm cxxxviii., says, "It is alaw of human necessity that, the body being buried, the soulshould descend ad interos."
6 Ambrose, De Fide, etc., lib. iv. cap. 1, declares that "no oneascended to heaven until Christ, by the pledge of hisresurrection, solved the chains of the under world and translatedthe souls of the pious." Also Cyril, Bishop of Jerusalem, in hisfourth catechetical lecture, sect. 11, affirms "that Christdescended into the under world to deliver those who, from Adamdownwards, had been imprisoned there."
7 In Assumptionem Christi.
8 Evan. Nicodemi, cap. xviii.
devoured, greedily swallowed the corpse, and the bolts of thenether world were wrenched asunder, and the ensnared dragonhimself dragged from the abyss."9 Peter himself explicitlydeclares, "It was not possible that he should be held by death."Theodoret says, "Whoever denies the resurrection of Christ rejectshis death."10 If he died, he must needs rise again. And hisresurrection would demonstrate the forgiveness of sins, theopening of heaven to men, showing that the bond which had bound indespair the captives in the regions of death for so many voicelessages was at last broken. Accordingly, "God, having loosed thechains of the under world, raised him up and set him at his ownright hand."11
And now the question, narrowed down to the smallest compass, isthis: What is the precise, real signification of the sacrificialand other connected terms employed by Peter, those phrases whichnow, by the intense associations of a long time, convey so stronga Calvinistic sense to most readers? Peter says, "Ye know that yewere redeemed with the precious blood of Christ." If there werenot so much indeterminateness of thought, so much unthinkingreception of traditional, confused impressions of Scripture texts,it would be superfluous to observe that by the word blood here,and in all parallel passages, is meant simply and literally death:the mere blood, the mere shedding of the blood, of Christ, ofcourse, could have no virtue, no moral efficacy, of any sort. Whenthe infuriated Jews cried, "His blood be on us, and on ourchildren!" they meant, Let the responsibility of his death rest onus. When the English historian says, "Sidney gave his blood forthe cause of civil liberty," the meaning is, he died for it. So,no one will deny, whenever the New Testament speaks in any way ofredemption by the blood of the crucified Son of Man, theunquestionable meaning is, redemption by his death. What, then,does the phrase "redemption by the death of Christ" mean? Let itbe noted here let it be particularly noticed that the NewTestament nowhere in explicit terms explains the meaning of thisand the kindred phrases: it simply uses the phrases withoutinterpreting them. They are rhetorical figures of speech,necessarily, upon whatever theological system we regard them. Nosinner is literally washed from his transgressions and guilt inthe blood of the slaughtered Lamb. These expressions, then, arepoetic images, meant to convey a truth in the language ofassociation and feeling, the traditionary language of imagination.The determination of their precise significance is wholly a matterof fallible human construction and inference, and not a matter ofinspired statement or divine revelation. This is so, beyond aquestion, because, we repeat, they are figures of speech, havingno direct explanation in the records where they occur. TheCalvinistic view of the atonement was a theory devised to explainthis scriptural language. It was devised without sufficientconsideration of the peculiar notions and spirit, the peculiargrade of culture, and the time, from which that language sprang.We freely admit the inadequacy of the Unitarian
9 Ruffinus, Expos. in Symb. Apost.
10 Comm. in 2 Tim. ii. 19.
11 By a mistake and a false reading, the common version has "thepains of death," instead of "the chains of the under world." Thesense requires the latter. Besides, numerous manuscripts read[non ASCII characters]. See, furthermore, Rosenmuller's thoroughcriticism in loc. Likewise see Robinson's New Testament GreekLexicon, in [NAC].
doctrine of the atonement to explain the figures of speech inwhich the apostles declare their doctrine. But, since theCalvinistic scheme was devised by human thought to explain the NewTestament language, any scheme which explains that language aswell has equal Scripture claims to credence; any which betterexplains it, with sharper, broader meaning and fewer difficulties,has superior claims to be received.
We are now prepared to state what we believe was the meaningoriginally associated with, and meant to be conveyed by, thephrases equivalent to "redemption by the death of Christ." Inconsequence of sin, the souls of all mankind, after leaving thebody, were shut up in the oblivious gloom of the under world.Christ alone, by virtue of his perfect holiness, was not subjectto any part of this fate. But, in fulfilment of the Father'sgracious designs, he willingly submitted, upon leaving the body,to go among the dead, that he might declare the good tidings tothem, and burst the bars of darkness, and return to life, and riseinto heaven as a pledge of the future translation of the faithfulto that celestial world, instead of their banishment into thedismal bondage below, as hitherto. The death of Christ, then, wasthe redemption of sinners, in that his death implied his ascent,"because it was not possible that he should be holden of death;"and his ascension visibly demonstrated the truth that God hadforgiven men their sins and would receive their souls to his ownabode on high.
Three very strong confirmations of the correctness of thisinterpretation are afforded in the declarations of Peter. First,he never even hints, in the faintest manner, that the death ofChrist was to have any effect on God, any power to change hisfeeling or his government. It was not to make a purchasingexpiation for sins and thus to reconcile God to us; but it was, bya revelation of the Father's freely pardoning love, to give uspenitence, purification, confidence, and a regenerating piety, andso to reconcile us to God. He says in one place, in emphaticwords, that the express purpose of Christ's death was simply "thathe might lead us to God." In the same strain, in another place, hedefines the object of Christ's death to be "that we, beingdelivered from sins, should live unto righteousness." It is plainthat in literal reality he refers our marvellous salvation to thevoluntary goodness of God, and not to any vicarious ransom paid inthe sacrifice of Christ, when he says, "The God of all grace hathcalled us unto his eternal glory by Jesus Christ." The death ofChrist was not, then, to appease the fierce justice of God byrectifying the claims of his inexorable law, but it was to callout and establish in men all moral virtues by the power of faithin the sure gift of eternal life sealed to them through theascension of the Savior.
For, secondly, the practical inferences drawn by Peter from thedeath of Christ, and the exhortations founded upon it, areinconsistent with the prevailing theory of the atonement. Uponthat view the apostle would have said, "Christ has paid the debtand secured a seat in heaven for you, elected ones: thereforebelieve in the sufficiency of his offerings, and exult." But notso. He calls on us in this wise: "Forasmuch as Christ hathsuffered for us, arm yourselves with the same mind." "Christsuffered for you, leaving an example that ye should follow hissteps." The whole burden of his practical argument based on themission of Christ is, the obligation of a religious spirit and ofpure morals. He does not speak, as many modern sectarists havespoken, of the "filthy rags of righteousness;" but he says, "Liveno longer in sins," "have a meek and quiet spirit, which is inthe sight of God of great price," "be ye holy in all manner ofconversation," "purify your souls by obedience to the truth,""be ye a holy priesthood to offer up spiritual sacrifices," "havea good conscience," "avoid evil and do good," "above all, havefervent love, for love will cover a multitude of sins." No candidperson can peruse the epistle and not see that the great moraldeduced in it from the mission of Christ is this: Since heavenis offered you, strive by personal virtue to be prepared for itat the judgment which shall soon come. The disciple is not toldto trust in the merits of Jesus; but he is urged to "abstainfrom evil," and "sanctify the Lord God in his heart," and"love the brethren," and "obey the laws," and "do well,""girding up the loins of his mind in sobriety and hope."This is not Calvinism.
The third fortification of this exposition is furnished by thefollowing fact. According to our view, the death of Christ isemphasized, not on account of any importance in itself, but as thenecessary condition preliminary to his resurrection, thehumiliating prelude to his glorious ascent into heaven. The reallyessential, significant thing is not his suffering, vicariousdeath, but his triumphing, typical ascension. Now, the plain,repeated statements of Peter strikingly coincide with thisrepresentation. He says, "God raised Christ up from the dead, andgave him glory, [that is, received him into heaven,] that yourfaith and hope might be in God." Again he writes, "Blessed be God,who according to his abundant mercy hath begotten us again unto alively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead untoan incorruptible inheritance in heaven." Still again, he declaresthat "the figure of baptism, signifying thereby the answer of agood conscience toward God, saves us by the resurrection of JesusChrist, who is gone into heaven." According to the commonlyreceived doctrine, instead of these last words the apostle oughtto have said, "saves us by the death of him who suffered inexpiation of our sins." He does not say so. Finally, in theintrepid speech that Peter made before the Jewish council,referring to their wicked crucifixion of Jesus, he says, "Him hathGod raised up to his own right hand, to be a Leader and a Savior,to give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins." How plainlyremission of sins is here predicated, not through Christ'signominious suffering, but through his heavenly exaltation! Thatexaltation showed in dramatic proof that by God's grace thedominion of the lower world was about to be broken and an accessto the celestial world to be vouchsafed.
If Christ bought off our merited punishment and earned ouracceptance, then salvation can no more be "reckoned of grace, butof debt." But the whole New Testament doctrine is, "that sinnersare justified freely through the redemption that is in ChristJesus." "The redemption that is in Christ"! Take these wordsliterally, and they yield no intelligible meaning. The senseintended to be conveyed or suggested by them depends oninterpretation; and here disagreement arises. The Calvinist saysthey mean the redemption undertaken, achieved, by Christ. We saythey mean the redemption proclaimed, brought to light, by Christ.The latter explanation is as close to the language as the former.Neither is unequivocally established by the statement itself. Weought therefore to adopt the one which is at once most rationaland plausible in itself, and most in harmony with the peculiaropinions and culture of the person by whom, and of the time when,the document was written. All these considerations, historical,philosophical, and moral, undeniably favor our interpretation,leaving nothing to support the other save the popular theologicalbelief of modern Protestant Christendom, a belief which is thegradual product of a few great, mistaken teachers like Augustineand Calvin.
We do not find the slightest difficulty in explaining sharply andbroadly, with all its niceties of phraseology, each one of thetexts urged in behalf of the prevalent doctrine of the atonement,without involving the essential features of that doctrine. Threedemonstrable assertions of fact afford us all the requisitematerials. First, it was a prevalent belief with the Jews, that,since death was the penalty of sin, the suffering of death was initself expiatory of the sins of the dying man.12 Lightfoot says,"It is a common and most known doctrine of the Talmudists, thatrepentance and ritual sacrifice expiate some sins, death the rest.Death wipes off all unexpiated sins."13 Tholuck says, "It was aJewish opinion that the death of the just atoned for thepeople."14 He quotes from the Talmud an explicit assertion to thateffect, and refers to several learned authorities for furthercitations and confirmations.
Secondly, the apostles conceived Christ to be sinless, andconsequently not on his own account exposed to death and subjectto Hades. If, then, death was an atonement for sins, and he wassinless, his voluntary death was expiatory for the sins of theworld; not in an arbitrary and unheard of way, according to theCalvinistic scheme, but in the common way, according to aPharisaic notion. And thirdly, it was partly a Jewish expectationconcerning the Messiah that he would,15 and partly an apostolicconviction concerning Christ that he did, break the bolts of theold Hadean prison and open the way for human ascent to heaven. AsJerome says, "Before Christ Abraham was in hell, after Christ thecrucified thief was in paradise;"16 for "until the advent ofChrist all alike went down into the under world, heaven being shutuntil Christ threw aside the flaming sword that turned everyway."17
These three thoughts that death is the expiatory penalty of sin,that Christ was himself sinless, that he died as God's envoy torelease the prisoners of gloom and be their pioneer to bliss leavenothing to be desired in explaining the sacrificial terms andkindred phrases employed by the apostles in reference to hismission.
Without question, Peter, like his companions, looked for thespeedy return of Christ from heaven to judge all, and to save theworthy. Indications of this belief are numerously afforded in hiswords. "The end of all things is at hand: be ye therefore soberand watch unto prayer." "You shall give account to him that isready to judge the quick and the dead." Here the common idea ofthat time namely, that the resurrection of the captives of the
12 Witsius, Dissertatio de Seculo hoc et futuro, sect. 8.
13 Lightfoot on Matt. xii. 32.
14 Comm. on John i. 29.
15 "God shall liberate the Israelites from the under world."Bertholdt's Christologia Judaorum, sect. xxxiv., (De descensuMessia ad Inferos,) note 2. "The captives shall ascend from theunder world, Shechinah at their head." Schoettgen de Messia, lib.vi. cap. 5, sect. 1.
16 See his Letter to Heliodorus, Epiat. XXXV., Benedict. ed.
17 Comm. in Eccles. cap. iii. 21, et cap. ix.
under world would occur at the return of Christ is undoubtedlyimplied. "Salvation is now ready to be revealed in the last time.""That your faith may be found unto praise and honor and glory atthe appearing of Jesus Christ." "Be sober, and hope to the end forthe grace that is to be brought unto you at the revelation ofJesus Christ." "Be ye examples to the flock, and when the chiefShepherd shall appear ye shall receive an unfading crown ofglory." "God shall send Jesus Christ, . . . whom the heavens mustreceive until the times of the restitution of all things." It isevident that the author of these passages expected the secondcoming of the Lord Jesus to consummate the affairs of his kingdom.
If the apostle had formed definite conclusions as to the finalfate of unbelieving, wicked, reprobate men, he has not statedthem. He undeniably implies certain general facts upon thesubject, but leaves all the details in obscurity. He adjures hisreaders with exceeding earnestness he over and over again adjuresthem to forsake every manner of sinful life, to strive for everykind of righteous conversation, that by faith and goodness theymay receive the salvation of their souls. He must have supposed anopposite fate in some sort to impend over those who did otherwise,rejecting Christ, "revelling in lasciviousness and idolatry."Everywhere he makes the distinction between the faithful and thewicked prominent, and presents the idea that Christ shall come tojudge them both, and shall reward the former with gladness,crowns, and glory; while it is just as clearly implied as if hehad said it that the latter shall be condemned and punished. Whena judge sits in trial on the good and the bad, and accepts those,plainly the inference is that he rejects these, unless thecontrary be stated. What their doom is in its nature, what in itsduration, is neither declared, nor inferrible from what isdeclared. All that the writer says on this point is substantiallyrepeated or contained in the fourth chapter of his epistle, fromverses 12 to 19. A slight explanatory paraphrase of it will makethe position clear so far as it can be made clear. "Christianbelievers, in the fiery trials which are to try you, stand firm,even rejoicing that you are fellow sufferers with Christ, a pledgethat when his glory is revealed you shall partake of it with him.See to it that you are free from crime, free from sins for whichyou ought to suffer; then, if persecuted and slain for yourChristian profession and virtues, falter not. The terrible timepreceding the second advent of your Master is at hand. Thesufferings of that time will begin with the Christian household;but how much more dreadful will be the sufferings of the close ofthat time among the disobedient that spurn the gospel of God! Ifthe righteous shall with great difficulty be snatched from theperils and woes encompassing that time, surely it will happen verymuch worse with ungodly sinners. Therefore let all who suffer inobedience to God commit the keeping of their souls to him in welldoing."
The souls of men were confined in the under world for sin. Christcame to turn men from sin and despair to holiness and areconciling faith in God. He went to the dead to declare to themthe good tidings of pardon and approaching deliverance through thefree grace of God. He rose into heaven to demonstrate and visiblyexhibit the redemption of men from the under world doom ofsinners. He was soon to return to the earth to complete theunfinished work of his commissioned kingdom. His accepted onesshould then be taken to glory and reward. The rejected onesshould Their fate is left in gloom, without a definite clew.
CHAPTER II.
DOCTRINE OF A FUTURE LIFE IN THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS.
THE Epistle to the Hebrews was written by some person who wasoriginally a Jew, afterwards a zealous Christian. He wasunquestionably a man of remarkable talent and eloquence and oflofty religious views and feelings. He lived in the time of theimmediate followers of Jesus, and apparently was acquainted withthem. The individual authorship it is now impossible to determinewith certainty. Many of the most learned, unprejudiced, and ablecritics have ascribed it to Apollos, an Alexandrian Jew, a compeerof Paul and a fellow citizen of Philo. This opinion is moreprobable than any other. Indeed, so numerous are the resemblancesof thoughts and words in the writings of Philo to those in thisepistle, that even the wild conjecture has been hazarded thatPhilo himself at last became a Christian and wrote to his Hebrewcountrymen the essay which has since commonly passed for Paul's.No one can examine the hundreds of illustrations of the epistlegathered from Philo by Carpzov, in his learned but ill reasonedwork, without being greatly impressed. The supposition which hasrepeatedly been accepted and urged, that this composition wasfirst written in Hebrew, and afterwards translated into Greek byanother person, is absurd, in view of the masterly skill andeloquence, critical niceties, and felicities in the use oflanguage, displayed in it. We could easily fill a paragraph withthe names of those eminent in the Church such as Tertullian,Hippolytus, Erasmus, Luther, Le Clerc, and Neander who haveconcluded that, whoever the author of the Epistle to the Hebrewswas, he was not Paul. The list of those names would reach from theEgyptian Origen, whose candor and erudition were without parallelin his age, to the German Bleek, whose masterly and exhaustivework is a monument of united talent and toil, leaving little to bedesired. It is not within our present aim to argue this point: wewill therefore simply refer the reader to the thorough andunanswerable discussion and settlement of it by Norton.1
The general object of the composition is, by showing thesuperiority of the Christian system to the Hebrew, to arm theconverts from Judaism to whom it is addressed against thetemptations to desert the fulfilling faith of Christ and to returnto the emblematic faith of their fathers. This aim gives apervading cast and color to the entire treatment to the reasoningand especially to the chosen imagery of the epistle. Omitting, forthe most part, whatever is not essentially interwoven with thesubject of death, the resurrection, and future existence, and withthe mission of Christ in relation to those subjects, we advance tothe consideration of the views which the epistle presents orimplies concerning those points. It is to be premised that we areforced to construct from fragments and hints the theologicalfabric that stood in the mind of the writer. The suggestion alsois quite obvious that, since the letter is addressed solely to theHebrews and describes Christianity as the completion of
1 Christian Examiner, vols. for 1827 29.
Judaism, an acquaintance with the characteristic Hebrew opinionsand hopes at that time may be indispensable for a fullcomprehension of its contents.
The view of the intrinsic nature and rank of Christ on which theepistle rests seems very plainly to be that great Logos doctrinewhich floated in the philosophy of the apostolic age and is sofully developed in the Gospel of John: "The Logos of God, alive,energetic, irresistibly piercing, to whose eyes all things arebare and open;" "first begotten of God;" "faithful to Him thatmade him;" inferior to God, superior to all beside; "by whom Godmade the worlds;" whose seat is at the right hand of God, theangels looking up to him, and "the world to come put in subjectionto him." The author, thus assuming the immensely super human rankand the pre existence of Christ, teaches that, by the good will ofGod, he descended to the world in the form of a man, to save themthat were without faith and in fear, them that were lost throughsin. God "bringeth in the first begotten into the world." "When hecometh into the world he saith, Sacrifice and offering thouwouldest not, but a body hast thou prepared for me." "Jesus wasmade a little while inferior to the angels." "Forasmuch, then, asthe children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himselflikewise partook of the same;" that is, in order to pass throughan experience like that of those whom he wished to deliver, heassumed their nature. "He taketh not hold of angels, but he takethhold of the seed of Abraham:" in other words, he aimed not toassist angels, but men. These passages, taken in connection withthe whole scope and drift of the document in which they are found,declare that Jesus was a spirit in heaven, but came to the earth,taking upon him a mortal frame of flesh and blood.
Why he did this is the question that naturally arises next. We donot see how it is possible for any person to read the epistlethrough intelligently, in the light of an adequate knowledge ofcontemporary Hebrew opinions, and not perceive that the author'sanswer to that inquiry is, that Christ assumed the guise and fateof humanity in order to die; and died in order to rise from thedead; and rose from the dead in order to ascend to heaven; andascended to heaven in order to reveal the grace of God opening theway for the celestial exaltation and blessedness of the souls offaithful men. We will commence the proof and illustration of thesestatements by bringing together some of the principal passages inthe epistle which involve the objects of the mission of Christ,and then stating the thought that chiefly underlies and explainsthem.
"We see Jesus who was made a little while inferior to the angels,in order that by the kindness of God he might taste death forevery man through the suffering of death crowned with glory andhonor." With the best critics, we have altered the arrangement ofthe clauses in the foregoing verse, to make the sense clearer. Theexact meaning is, that the exaltation of Christ to heaven afterhis death authenticated his mission, showed that his death had adivine meaning for men; that is, showed that they also should riseto heaven. "When he had by himself made a purification of oursins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high." "Forthis cause he is the Mediator of the new covenant, that, his deathhaving occurred, (for the redemption of the transgressions underthe first covenant,) they which are called might enter uponpossession of the promised eternal inheritance." The force of thislast passage, with its context, turns on the double sense of theGreek word for covenant, which likewise means a will. Severalstatements in the epistle show the author's belief that thesubjects of the old dispensation had the promise of immortal lifein heaven, but had never realized the thing itself.2 Now, hemaintains the purpose of the new dispensation to be the actualrevelation and bestowment of the reality which anciently was onlypromised and typically foreshadowed; and in the passage before ushe figures Christ the author of the Christian covenant as themaker of a will by which believers are appointed heirs of aheavenly immortality. He then following the analogy oftestamentary legacies and legatees describes those heirs as"entering on possession of that eternal inheritance" "by the deathof the Testator." He was led to employ precisely this language bytwo obvious reasons: first, for the sake of that paronomasia ofwhich he was evidently fond; secondly, by the fact that it reallywas the death of Christ, with the succeeding resurrection andascension, which demonstrated both the reality of the thingpromised in the will and the authority of the Testator to bestowit.
All the expressions thus far cited, and kindred ones scatteredthrough the work, convey a clear and consistent meaning, withsharp outlines and coherent details, if we suppose their authorentertained the following general theory; and otherwise theycannot be satisfactorily explained. A dreadful fear of death,introduced by sin, was tyrannizing over men. In consequence ofconscious alienation from God through transgressions, theyshuddered at death. The writer does not say what there was indeath that made it so feared; but we know that the prevailingHebrew conception was, that death led the naked soul into thesilent, dark, and dreary region of the under world, a dolefulfate, from which they shrank with sadness at the best, guiltconverting that natural melancholy into dread foreboding. In theabsence of any evidence or presumption whatever to the contrary,we are authorized, nay, rather forced, to conclude that such aconception is implied in the passages we are considering. Now, themission of Jesus was to deliver men from that fear and bondage, byassuring them that God would forgive sin and annul itsconsequence. Instead of banishing their disembodied spirits intothe sepulchral Sheol, he would take them to himself into the gloryabove the firmament. This aim Christ accomplished by literallyexemplifying the truths it implies; that is, by personallyassuming the lot of man, dying, rising from among the spirits ofthe dead, and ascending beyond the veil into heaven. By his deathand victorious ascent "he purged our sins," "redeemedtransgressions," "overthrew him that has the power of death," inthe sense that he thereby, as the writer thought, swept away thesupposed train of evils caused by sin, namely, all theconcomitants of a banishment after death into the cheerlesssubterranean empire.
It will be well now to notice more fully, in the author's scheme,the idea that Christ did locally ascend into the heavens, "intothe presence of God," "where he ever liveth," and
2 xi. 13, 16, et al. See chap. x. 36,
where to receive the promise most plainly means to obtain the thingpromised, as it does several times in the epistle.
So Paul, in his speech at Antioch, (Acts xiii. 32, 33,) says,"We declare unto you glad tidings, how that the promise whichwas made unto the fathers, God hath fulfilled the same unto ustheir children, in that he hath raised up Jesus again" that bythis ascent he for the first time opened the way for others toascend to him where he is, avoiding the doom of Hades.
"We have a great High Priest, who has passed through theheavens, Jesus, the Son of God." "Christ is not entered into themost holy place, made with hands, the figure of the true, but intoheaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us."Indeed, that Jesus, in a material and local sense, rose to heaven,is a conception fundamental to the epistle and prominent on allits face. It is much more necessary for us to show that the authorbelieved that the men who had previously died had not risenthither, but that it was the Savior's mission to open the way fortheir ascension.
It is extremely significant, in the outset, that Jesus is called"the first leader and the bringer to the end of our faith;" forthe words in this clause which the common version renders "author"and "finisher"3 mean, from their literal force and the latentfigure they contain, "a guide who runs through the course to thegoal so as to win and receive the prize, bringing us after him tothe same consummation." Still more striking is the passage weshall next adduce. Having enumerated a long list of the choicestworthies of the Old Testament, the writer adds, "These all, havingobtained testimony through faith, did not realize the promise,4God having provided a better thing for us, that they without usshould not be perfected," should not be brought to the end, theend of human destiny, that is, exaltation to heaven. Undoubtedlythe author here means to say that the faithful servants of Godunder the Mosaic dispensation were reserved in the under worlduntil the ascension of the Messiah. Augustine so explains the textin hand, declaring that Christ was the first that ever rose fromthe under world.5 The same exposition is given by Origen,6 andindeed by nearly every one of the Fathers who has undertaken togive a critical interpretation of the passage. This doctrineitself was held by Catholic Christendom for a thousand years; isnow held by the Roman, Greek, and English Churches; but is, forthe most part, rejected or forgotten by the dissenting sects, fromtwo causes. It has so generally sunk out of sight among us, first,from ignorance, ignorance of the ancient learning and opinions onwhich it rested and of which it was the necessary completion;secondly, from rationalistic speculations, which, leading men todiscredit the truth of the doctrine, led them arbitrarily to denyits existence in the Scripture, making them perversely force thetexts that state it and wilfully blink the texts that hint it.Whether this be a proper and sound method of proceeding incritical investigations any one may judge. To us it seems equallyunmanly and immoral. We know of but one justifiable course, andthat is, with patience, with earnestness, and with all possibleaids, to labor to discern the real and full meaning of the wordsaccording to the understanding and intention of the author. We doso elsewhere, regardless of consequences. No other method, in thecase of the Scriptures, is exempt from guilt.
The meaning (namely, to bring to the end) which we have aboveattributed to the word [NAC](translated in the common version tomake perfect) is the first meaning and the
3 Robinson's Lexicon, first edition, under [NAC]; also see Philo,cited there.
4 Ch. x. 36.
5 Epist. CLXIV. sect. ix., ed. Benedictina.
6 De Principiis, lib. ii. cap. 2.
etymological force of the word. That we do not refine upon itover nicely in the present instance, the following examples fromvarious parts of the epistle unimpeachably witness. "For it wasproper that God, in bringing many sons unto glory, should make himwho was the first leader of their salvation perfect [reach theend] through sufferings;" that is, should raise him to heavenafter he had passed through death, that he, having himself arrivedat the glorious heavenly goal of human destiny, might bring othersto it. "Christ, being made perfect," (brought through all theintermediate steps to the end,) "became the cause of eternalsalvation to all them that obey him; called of God an highpriest." The context, and the after assertion of the writer thatthe priesthood of Jesus is exercised in heaven, show that the word"perfected," as employed here, signifies exalted to the right handof God. "Perfection" (bringing unto the end) "was not by theLevitical priesthood." "The law perfected nothing, but it was theadditional introduction of a better hope by which we draw nearunto God." "The law maketh men high priests which have infirmity,which are not suffered to continue, by reason of death; but theword of the oath after the law maketh the Son perfect forevermore," bringeth him to the end, namely, an everlastingpriesthood in the heavens. That Christian believers are not underthe first covenant, whereby, through sin, men commencing with theblood of Abel, the first death were doomed to the lower world, butare under the second covenant, whereby, through the graciouspurpose of God, taking effect in the blood of Christ, the firstresurrection, they are already by faith, in imagination,translated to heaven, this is plainly what the author teaches inthe following words: "Ye are not come to the palpable mount thatburneth with fire, and to blackness and tempest, where so terriblewas the sight that Moses exceedingly trembled, but ye are come toMount Zion, to the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerablecompany of angels, and to God, and to the spirits of the perfectedjust, and to Jesus, the mediator of the new covenant, and to thelustral blood which speaks better things than that of Abel." Theconnection here demonstrates that the souls of the righteous arecalled "perfected," as having arrived at the goal of their destinyin heaven. Again, the author, when speaking of the sure andsteadfast hope of eternal life, distinguishes Jesus as a[non-ASCII characters], one who runs before as a scout or leader:"the Forerunner, who for us has entered within the veil," that is,has passed beyond the firmament into the presence of God. The Jewscalled the outward or lowermost heaven the veil.7 But the mostconclusive consideration upon the opinion we are arguing for andit must be entirely convincing is to be drawn from the first halfof the ninth chapter. To appreciate it, it is requisite toremember that the Rabbins with whose notions our author wasfamiliar and some of which he adopts in his reasoning wereaccustomed to compare the Jewish temple and city with the templeand city of Jehovah above the sky, considering the former asminiature types of the latter. This mode of thought was originallylearned by philosophical Rabbins from the Platonic doctrine ofideas, without doubt, and was entertained figuratively,spiritually; but in the unreflecting, popular mind the Hebraicviews to which it gave rise were soon grossly materialized andlocated. They also derived the same conception from God's commandto Moses when he was about to build the tabernacle:
7 Schoettgen, Hora Hebraica et Talmudica in 2 Cor. xii. 2.
"See thou make all things according to the pattern showed to theein the mount." They refined upon these words with many conceits.They compared the three divisions of the temple to the threeheavens: the outer Court of the Gentiles corresponded with thefirst heaven, the Court of the Israelites with the second heaven,and the Holy of Holies represented the third heaven or the veryabode of God. Josephus writes, "The temple has three compartments:the first two for men, the third for God, because heaven isinaccessible to men."8 Now, our author says, referring to thistriple symbolic arrangement of the temple, "The priests wentalways into the first tabernacle, accomplishing the service, butinto the second went the high priest alone, once every year, notwithout blood; this, which was a figure for the time then present,signifying that the way into the holiest of all9 was not yet laidopen; but Christ being come, an high priest of the future goodthings, by his own blood he entered in once into the holy place,having obtained eternal deliverance." The points of the comparisonhere instituted are these: On the great annual day of atonement,after the death of the victim, the Hebrew high priest went intothe adytum of the earthly temple, but none could follow; Jesus,the Christian high priest, went after his own death into theadytum of the heavenly temple, and enabled the faithful to enterthere after him. Imagery like the fore going, which implies aSanctum Sanctorum above, the glorious prototype of that below, isfrequent in the Talmud.10 To remove all uncertainty from theexposition thus presented, if any doubt linger, it is onlynecessary to cite one more passage from the epistle. "We have,therefore, brethren, by the blood of Jesus, leading into theholiest, a free road, a new and blessed road, which he hathinaugurated for us through the veil, that is to say, through hisflesh." As there was no entrance for the priest into the holiestof the temple save by the removal of the veil, so Christ could notenter heaven except by the removal of his body. The blood of Jesushere, as in most cases in the New Testament, means the death ofJesus, involving his ascension. Chrysostom, commenting on theseverses, says, in explanation of the word [non-ASCII characters],"Christ laid out the road and was the first to go over it.The first way was of death, leading [ad inferos] to the underworld; the other is of life," leading to heaven.
The interpretation we have given of these passages reconcilesand blends that part of the known contemporary opinions whichapplies to them, and explains and justifies the natural forceof the imagery and words employed.
Its accuracy seems to us unquestionable by any candid person who iscompetently acquainted with the subject. The substance of it is,that Jesus came from God to the earth as a man, laid down his lifethat he might rise from the dead into heaven again, into the realSanctum Sanctorum of the universe, thereby proving that faithfulbelievers also shall rise thither, being thus delivered, after thepattern of his evident deliverance, from the imprisonment of therealm of death below.
We now proceed to quote and unfold five distinct passages, not yetbrought forward, from the epistle, each of which proves that weare not mistaken in attributing to the writer
8 Antiq. lib. iii. cap. 6, sect. 4; ibid. cap. 7, sect. 7.
9 Philo declares, "The whole universe is one temple of God, inwhich the holiest of all is heaven." De Monarchia, p. 222, ed.Mangey.
10 Schoettgen, Dissertatio de Hierosolyma Coelesti, cap. 2, sect.9.
of it the above stated general theory. In the first verse which weshall adduce it is certain that the word "death" includes theentrance of the soul into the subterranean kingdom of ghosts. Itis written of Christ that, "in the days of his flesh, when he hadearnestly prayed to Him that was able to do it, to save him fromdeath, he was heard," and was advanced to be a high priest in theheavens, "was made higher than the heavens." Now, obviously, Goddid not rescue Christ from dying, but he raised him, [non-ASCIIcharacters], from the world of the dead.
So Chrysostom declares, referring to this very text, "Not to beretained in the region of the dead, but to be delivered from it,is virtually not to die."11 Moreover, the phrase above translated"to save him from death" may be translated, with equal propriety,"to bring him back safe from death."
The Greek verb [non-ASCII characters], to save, is often so usedto denote the safe restoration of a warrior from an incursion intoan enemy's domain. The same use made here by our author of the term"death" we have also found made by Philo Judaus. "The wise," Philosays, "inherit the Olympic and heavenly region to dwell in, alwaysstudying to go above; the bad inherit the innermost parts of theunder world, always laboring to die."12 The antithesis betweengoing above and dying, and the mention of the under world inconnection with the latter, prove that to die here means, or atleast includes, going below after death.
The Septuagint version of the Old Testament twice translates Sheolby the word "death."13 The Hebrew word for death, maveth, isrepeatedly used for the abode of the dead.14 And the nail of theinterpretation we are urging is clenched by this sentence fromOrigen: "The under world, in which souls are detained by death,is called death."15 Bretschneider cites nearly a dozen passagesfrom the New Testament where, in his judgment, death is used todenote Hades.
Again: we read that Christ took human nature upon him "in orderthat by means of [his own] death he might render him that has thepower of death that is, the devil idle, and deliver those whothrough fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage."It is apparent at once that the mere death of Christ, so far fromending the sway of Death, would be giving the grim monster a newvictory, incomparably the most important he had ever achieved.Therefore, the only way to make adequate sense of the passage isto join with the Savior's death what followed it, namely, hisresurrection and ascension. It was the Hebrew belief that sin,introduced by the fraud of the devil, was the cause of death, andthe doomer of the disembodied spirits of men to the lower cavernsof darkness and rest. They personified Death as king, tyrannizingover mankind; and, unless in severe affliction, they dreaded thehour when they must lie down under his sceptre and sink into hisvoiceless kingdom of shadows. Christ broke the power of Satan,closed his busy reign, rescued the captive souls, and relieved thetimorous hearts of the faithful, by rising triumphantly from
11 Homil. Epist. ad Heb. in hoc loc.
12 Quod a Deo mitt. Somn., p. 643, ed. Mangey.
13 2 Sam. xxii. 6; Prov. xxiii. 14.
14 Ps. ix. 13. Prov. vii, 27.
15 Comm. in Epist. ad Rom., lib. vi. cap. 6, sect. 6.: "Infernilocus in quo anima detinebantur a morte mors appellatur."
the long bound dominion of the grave, and ascending in a new pathof light, pioneering the saints to immortal glory.
In another part of the epistle, the writer, having previouslyexplained that as the high priest after the death of the expiatorygoat entered the typical holy place in the temple, so Christ afterhis own death entered the true holy place in the heavens, goes onto guard against the analogy being forced any further to deny thenecessity of Christ's service being repeated, as the priest's wasannually repeated, saying, "For then he must have died many timessince the foundation of the world; but, on the contrary, [itsuffices that] once, at the close of the ages, through thesacrifice of himself he hath appeared [in heaven] for theabrogation of sin."16 The rendering and explanation we give ofthis language are those adopted by the most distinguishedcommentators, and must be justified by any one who examines theproper punctuation of the clauses and studies the context. Thesimple idea is, that, by the sacrifice of his body through death,Christ rose and showed himself in the presence of God. The authoradds that this was done "unto the annulling of sin." It is withreference to these last words principally that we have cited thepassage. What do they mean? In what sense can the passing ofChrist's soul into heaven after death be said to have done awaywith sin? In the first place, the open manifestation of Christ'sdisenthralled and risen soul in the supernal presence of God didnot in any sense abrogate sin itself, literally considered,because all kinds of sin that ever were upon the earth among menbefore have been ever since, and are now. In the second place,that miraculous event did not annul and remove human guilt, theconsciousness of sin and responsibility for it, because, in fact,men feel the sting and load of guilt now as badly as ever; and thevery epistle before us, as well as the whole New Testament,addresses Christians as being exposed to constant and varieddanger of incurring guilt and woe. But, in the third place, theascension of Jesus did show very plainly to the apostles and firstChristians that what they supposed to be the great outward penaltyof sin was annulled; that it was no longer a necessity for thespirit to descend to the lower world after death; that fatal doom,entailed on the generations of humanity by sin, was now abrogatedfor all who were worthy. Such, we have not a doubt, is the truemeaning of the declaration under review.
This exposition is powerfully confirmed by the two succeedingverses, which we will next pass to examine. "As it is appointedfor men to die once, but after this the judgment, so Christ,having been offered once to bear the sins of many, shall appear asecond time, without sin, for salvation unto those expecting him."Man dies once, and then passes into that state of separateexistence in the under world which is the legal judgment for sin.Christ, taking upon himself, with the nature of man, the burden ofman's lot and doom, died once, and then rose from the dead by thegracious power of the Father, bearing away the outward penalty ofsin. He will come again into the world, uninvolved, the next time,with any of the accompaniments or consequences of sin, to savethem that look for him, and victoriously lead them into heavenwith him. In this instance, as all through the writings of theapostles,
16 Griesbach in loc.; and Rosenmuller.
sin, death, and the under world are three segments of a circle,each necessarily implying the others. The same remark is to bemade of the contrasted terms righteousness, grace, immortal lifeabove the sky; 17 the former being traced from the sinful andfallen Adam, the latter from the righteous and risen Christ.
The author says, "If the blood of bulls and goats sanctifies untothe purification of the flesh, how much more shall the blood ofChrist, who having18 an eternal spirit offered himself faultlessto God, cleanse your consciousness!" The argument, fullyexpressed, is, if the blood of perishable brutes cleanses thebody, the blood of the immortal Christ cleanses the soul. Theimplied inference is, that as the former fitted the outward manfor the ritual privileges of the temple, so the latter fitted theinward man for the spiritual privileges of heaven. This appearsclearly from what follows in the next chapter, where the writersays, in effect, that "it is not possible for the blood of bullsand of goats to take away sins, however often it is offered, butthat Christ, when he had offered one sacrifice for sins, foreversat down at the right hand of God." The reason given for theefficacy of Christ's offering is that he sat down at the righthand of God. When the chosen animals were sacrificed for sins,they utterly perished, and there was an end. But when Christ wasoffered, his soul survived and rose into heaven, an evident signthat the penalty of sin, whereby men were doomed to the underworld after death, was abolished. This perfectly explains thelanguage; and nothing else, it seems to us, can perfectly explainit.
That Christ would speedily reappear from heaven in triumph, tojudge his foes and save his disciples, was a fundamental articlein the primitive Church scheme of the last things. There areunmistakable evidences of such a belief in our author. "For yet alittle while, and the coming one will come, and will not delay.""Provoke one another unto love and good works, . . . so much themore as ye see the day drawing near." There is another referenceto this approaching advent, which, though obscure, affordsimportant testimony. Jesus, when he had ascended, "sat down at theright hand of God, henceforward waiting till his enemies be madehis footstool." That is to say, he is tarrying in heaven for theappointed time to arrive when he shall come into the world againto consummate the full and final purposes of his mission. We mayleave this division of the subject established beyond allquestion, by citing a text which explicitly states the idea in somany words: "Unto them that look for him he shall appear thesecond time." That expectation of the speedy second coming of theMessiah which haunted the early Christians, therefore,unquestionably occupied the mind of the composer of the Epistle tothe Hebrews.
If the writer of this epistolary essay had a firm and detailedopinion as to the exact fate to be allotted to wicked andpersistent unbelievers, his allusions to that opinion are too fewand vague for us to determine precisely what it was. We willbriefly quote the substance of what he says upon the subject, andadd a word in regard to the inferences it does, or it does not,warrant. "If under the Mosaic dispensation every transgressionreceived a just recompense, how shall we escape if we neglect sogreat a salvation, first proclaimed by the
17 Neander, Planting and Training of the Church, Ryland's trans.p. 298.
18 [Non-ASCII characters] is often used in the sense of with,or possessing. See Wahl's New Testament Lexicon.
Lord?" "As the Israelites that were led out of Egypt by Moses, onaccount of their unbelief and provocations, were not permitted toenter the promised land, but perished in the wilderness, so let usfear, lest, a promise being left us of entering into his rest, anyof you should seem to come short of it." Christ "became the causeof eternal salvation to all them that obey him." "He hath broughtunto the end forever them that are sanctified." It will beobserved that these last specifications are partial, and thatnothing is said of the fate of those not included under them. "Itis impossible for those who were once enlightened, . . . if theyshall fall away, to renew them again unto repentance. . . . But,beloved, we are persuaded better things of you, even things thataccompany salvation." "We are not of them who draw back unto thedestruction, but of them who believe unto the preservation, of thesoul." "If we sin wilfully after we have received the knowledge ofthe truth, there is no longer left a sacrifice for sins, but acertain fearful looking for of judgment, and of fiery indignationto devour the adversaries." "It is a fearful thing to fall intothe hands of the living God." "If they escaped not who refused himthat spoke on earth, [Moses,] much more we shall not escape if weturn away from him that speaks from heaven," (Christ.) In view ofthe foregoing passages, which represent the entire teaching of theepistle in relation to the ultimate destination of sinners, wemust assert as follows. First, the author gives no hint of thedoctrine of literal torments in a local hell. Secondly, he isstill further from favoring nay, he unequivocally denies thedoctrine of unconditional, universal salvation. Thirdly, he eitherexpected that the reprobate would be absolutely destroyed at thesecond coming of Christ, which does not seem to be declared; orthat they would be exiled forever from the kingdom of glory intothe sad and slumberous under world, which is not clearly implied;or that they would be punished according to their evil, and then,restored to Divine favor, be exalted into heaven with the originalelect, which is not written in the record; or, lastly, that theywould be disposed of in some way unknown to him, which he does notavow. He makes no allusion to such a terrific conception as isexpressed by our modern use of the word hell: he emphaticallypredicates conditionality of salvation, he threatens sinners ingeneral terms with severe judgment. Further than this he hasneglected to state his faith. If it reached any further, he haspreferred to leave the statement of it in vague and impressivegloom.
Let us stop a moment and epitomize the steps we have taken. Jesus,the Son of God, was a spirit in heaven. He came upon the earth inthe guise of humanity to undergo its whole experience and to beits redeemer. He died, passed through the vanquished kingdom ofthe grave, and rose into heaven again, to exemplify to men thatthrough the grace of God a way was opened to escape the underworld, the great external penalty of sin, and reach a bettercountry, even a heavenly. From his seat at God's right hand, heshould ere long descend to complete God's designs in his mission,judge his enemies and lead his accepted followers to heaven. Theall important thought running through the length and breadth ofthe treatise is the ascension of Christ from the midst of the dead[non-ASCII characters]into the celestial presence, as the pledge ofour ascent. "Among the things of which we are speaking, this is thecapital consideration, [non-ASCII characters] the most essentialpoint, "that we have such a high priest, who hath sat down at theright hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens." Neandersays, though apparently without perceiving the extent of itsulterior significance, "The conception of the resurrection inrelation to the whole Christian system lies at the basis of thisepistle."
A brief sketch and exposition of the scope of the epistle ingeneral will cast light and confirmation upon the interpretationwe have given of its doctrine of a future life in particular. Theone comprehensive design of the writer, it is perfectly clear, isto prove to the Christian converts from the Hebrews thesuperiority of Christianity to Judaism, and thus to arm themagainst apostasy from the new covenant to the ancient one. Hebegins by showing that Christ, the bringer of the gospel, isgreater than the angels, by whom the law was given,19 andconsequently that his word is to be reverenced still more thantheirs.20 Next he argues that Jesus, the Christian Mediator, asthe Son of God, is crowned with more authority and is worthy ofmore glory than Moses, the Jewish mediator, as the servant of God;and that as Moses led his people towards the rest of Canaan, soChrist leads his people towards the far better rest of heaven. Hethen advances to demonstrate the superiority of Christ to theLevitical priesthood. This he establishes by pointing out thefacts that the Levitical priest had a transient honor, being afterthe law of a carnal commandment, his offerings referring to theflesh, while Christ has an unchangeable priesthood, being afterthe power of an endless life, his offering referring to the soul;that the Levitical priest once a year went into the symbolic holyplace in the temple, unable to admit others, but Jesus rose intothe real holy place itself above, opening a way for all faithfuldisciples to follow; and that the Hebrew temple and ceremonieswere but the small type and shadow of the grand archetypal templein heaven, where Christ is the immortal High Priest, fulfilling inthe presence of God the completed reality of what Judaism merelyminiatured, an emblematic pattern that could make nothing perfect."By him therefore let us continually offer to God the sacrifice ofpraise." The author intersperses, and closes with, exhortations tosteadfast faith, pure morals, and fervent piety.
There is one point in this epistle which deserves, in itsessential connection with the doctrine of the future life, aseparate treatment. It is the subject of the Atonement. Thecorrespondence between the sacrifices in the Hebrew ritual and thesufferings and death of Christ would, from the nature of the case,irresistibly suggest the sacrificial terms and metaphors which ourauthor uses in a large part of his argument. Moreover, his preciseaim in writing compelled him to make these resemblances asprominent, as significant, and as effective as possible. Griesbachsays well, in his learned and able essay, "When it was impossiblefor the Jews, lately brought to the Christian faith, to tear awaythe attractive associations of their ancestral religion, whichwere twined among the very roots of their minds, and they wereconsequently in danger of falling away from Christ, the mostingenious author of this epistle met the case by a masterlyexpedient. He instituted a careful comparison, showing thesuperiority of Christianity to Judaism even in regard to the verypoint where the latter seemed so much more glorious, namely, inpriesthoods, temples,
19 Heb. i. 4 14, ii. 2; Acts vii. 53; Gal. iii.
20 Heb. ii. 1 3.
altars, victims, lustrations, and kindred things."21 That thesecomparisons are sometimes used by the writer analogically,figuratively, imaginatively, for the sake of practicalillustration and impression, not literally as logical expressionsand proofs of a dogmatic theory of atonement, is made sufficientlyplain by the following quotations. "The bodies of those beastswhose blood is brought into the holy place by the high priest forsin are burned without the camp. Wherefore Jesus also, that hemight sanctify the people through his own blood, suffered withoutthe gate. Let us go forth therefore unto him without the camp,bearing his reproach." Every one will at once perceive that thesesentences are not critical statements of theological truths, butare imaginative expressions of practical lessons, spiritualexhortations. Again, we read, "It was necessary that the patternsof the heavenly things should be purified with sacrificed animals,but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices thanthese." Certainly it is only by an exercise of the imagination,for spiritual impression, not for philosophical argument, thatheaven can be said to be defiled by the sins of men on earth so asto need cleansing by the lustral blood of Christ. The writer alsoappeals to his readers in these terms: "To do good and tocommunicate forget not; for with such sacrifices God is wellpleased." The purely practical aim and rhetorical method withwhich the sacrificial language is employed here are evidentenough. We believe it is used in the same way wherever it occursin the epistle.
The considerations which have convinced us, and which we thinkought to convince every unprejudiced mind, that the Calvinisticscheme of a substitutional expiation for sin, a placation ofDivine wrath by the offering of Divine blood, was not in the mindof the author, and does not inform his expressions when they arerightly understood, may be briefly presented. First, the notionthat the suffering of Christ in itself ransomed lost souls, boughtthe withheld grace and pardon of God for us, is confessedlyforeign and repulsive to the instinctive moral sense and tonatural reason, but is supposed to rest on the authority ofrevelation. Secondly, that doctrine is nowhere specifically statedin the epistle, but is assumed, or inferred, to explain languagewhich to a superficial look seems to imply it, perhaps even seemsto be inexplicable without it;22 but in reality such a view isinconsistent with that language when it is accurately studied. Forexample, notice the following passage: "When Christ cometh intothe world," he is represented as saying, "I come to do thy will, OGod." "By the which will," the writer continues, "we aresanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus." That is,the death of Christ, involving his resurrection and ascension intoheaven, fulfils and exemplifies the gracious purpose of God, notpurchases for us an otherwise impossible benignity. The abovecited explicit declaration is irreconcilable
21 Opuscula: De Imaginibus Judaicis in Epist. ad Hebraos.
22 That these texts were not originally understood as implying anyvicarious efficacy in Christ's painful death, but as attributing atypical power to his triumphant resurrection, his glorious returnfrom the world of the dead into heaven, appears very plainly inthe following instance, Theodoret, one of the earliest explanatorywriters on the New Testament, says, while expressly speaking ofChrist's death, the sufferings through which he was perfected,"His resurrection certified a resurrection for us all." Comm. inEpist. ad Heb. cap. 2, v. 10.
with the thought that Christ came into the world to die that hemight appease the flaming justice and anger of God, and byvicarious agony buy the remission of human sins: it conveys theidea, on the contrary, that God sent Christ to prove andillustrate to men the free fulness of his forgiving love. Thirdly,the idea, which we think was the idea of the author of the Epistleto the Hebrews, that Christ, by his death, resurrection, andascent, demonstrated to the faith of men God's merciful removal ofthe supposed outward penalty of sin, namely, the banishment ofsouls after death to the under world, and led the way, as theirforerunner, into heaven, this idea, which is not shocking to themoral sense nor plainly absurd to the moral reason, as theAugustinian dogma is, not only yields a more sharply defined,consistent, and satisfactory explanation of all the relatedlanguage of the epistle, but is also which cannot be said of theother doctrine in harmony with the contemporary opinions of theHebrews, and would be the natural and almost inevitabledevelopment from them and complement of them in the mind of aPharisee, who, convinced of the death and ascension of the sinlessJesus, the appointed Messiah, had become a Christian.
In support of the last assertion, which is the only one that needsfurther proof, we submit the following considerations. In thefirst place, every one familiar with the eschatology of theHebrews knows that at the time of Christ the belief prevailed thatthe sin of Adam was the cause of death among men. In the secondplace, it is equally well known that they believed the destinationof souls upon leaving the body to be the under world. Thereforedoes it not follow by all the necessities of logic? they believedthat sin was the cause of the descent of disembodied spirits tothe dreary lower realm. In the third place, it is notorious andundoubted that the Jews of that age expected that, when theMessiah should appear, the dead of their nation, or at least aportion of them, would be raised from the under world and bereclothed with bodies, and would reign with him for a period onearth and then ascend to heaven. Now, what could be more naturalthan that a person holding this creed, who should be brought tobelieve that Jesus was the true Messiah and after his death hadrisen from among the dead into heaven, should immediately concludethat this was a pledge or illustration of the abrogation of thegloomy penalty of sin, the deliverance of souls from thesubterranean prison, and their admission to the presence of Godbeyond the sky? We deem this an impregnable position. Everyrelevant text that we consider in its light additionally fortifiesit by the striking manner in which such a conception fits, fills,and explains the words. To justify these interpretations, and tosustain particular features of the doctrine which they express,almost any amount of evidence may be summoned from the writingsboth of the most authoritative and of the simplest Fathers of theChurch, beginning with Justin Martyr,23 philosopher of Neapolis,at the close of the apostolic age, and ending with John Hobart,24Bishop of New York, in the early part of the nineteenth century.We refrain from adducing the throng of such authorities here,because they will be more appropriately brought forward in futurechapters.
23 Dial. cum Tryph. cap. v. et cap. lxxx.24 State of the Departed.
The intelligent reader will observe that the essential point ofdifference distinguishing our exposition of the fundamentaldoctrine of the composition in review, on the one hand, from theCalvinistic interpretation of it, and, on the other hand, from theUnitarian explanation of it, is this. Calvinism says that Christ,by his death, his vicarious pains, appeased the wrath of God,satisfied the claims of justice, and purchased the salvation ofsouls from an agonizing and endless hell. Unitarianism says thatChrist, by his teachings, spirit, life, and miracles, revealed thecharacter of the Father, set an example for man, gave certainty togreat truths, and exerted moral influences to regenerate men,redeem them from sin, and fit them for the blessed kingdom ofimmortality. We understand the writer of the Epistle to theHebrews really to say in subtraction from what the Calvinist, inaddition to what the Unitarian, says that Christ, by hisresurrection from the tyrannous realm of death, and ascent intothe unbarred heaven, demonstrated the fact that God, in hissovereign grace, in his free and wondrous love, would forgivemankind their sins, remove the ancient penalty of transgression,no more dooming their disembodied spirits to the noiseless andeverlasting gloom of the under world, but admitting them to hisown presence, above the firmamental floor, where the beams of hischambers are laid, and where he reigneth forever, covered withlight as with a garment.
CHAPTER III.
DOCTRINE OF A FUTURE LIFE IN THE APOCALYPSE.
BEFORE attempting to exhibit the doctrine of a future lifecontained in the Apocalypse, we propose to give a brief account ofwhat is contained, relating to this subject, in the Epistle ofJames, the Epistle of Jude, and the (so called) Second Epistle ofPeter.
The references made by James to the group of points included underthe general theme of the Future Life are so few and indirect, orvague, that it is impossible to construct any thing like acomplete doctrine from them, save by somewhat arbitrary anduncertain suppositions. His purpose in writing, evidently, waspractical exhortation, not dogmatic instruction. His epistlecontains no expository outline of a system; but it has allusionsand hints which plainly imply some partial views belonging to asystem, while the other parts of it are left obscure. He says that"evil desire brings forth sin, and sin, when it is finished,brings forth death." But whether he intended this text as a moralmetaphor to convey a spiritual meaning, or as a literal statementof a physical fact, or as a comprehensive enunciation includingboth these ideas, there is nothing in the context positively todetermine. He offers not the faintest clew to his conception ofthe purpose of the death and resurrection of Christ. He uses theword for the Jewish hell but once, and then, undeniably, in afigurative sense, saying that a "curbless and defiling tongue isset on fire of Gehenna." He appears to adopt the common notion ofhis contemporary countrymen in regard to demoniacal existences,when he declares that "the devils believe there is one God, andtremble," and when he exclaims, "Resist the devil, and he willflee from you." He insists on the necessity of a faith thatevinces itself in good works and in all the virtues, as the meansof acceptance with God. He compares life to a vanishing vapor,denounces terribly the wicked and dissolute rich men who wanton incrimes and oppress the poor. Then he calls on the sufferingbrethren to be patient under their afflictions "until the comingof the Lord;" to abstain from oaths, be fervent in prayer, andestablish their hearts, "for the coming of the Lord draweth nigh.""Grudge not one against another, brethren, lest ye be condemned:behold, the Judge standeth before the door." Here the return ofChrist, to finish his work, sit in judgment, accept some, andreject others, is clearly implied. And if James held this elementof the general scheme of eschatology held by the other apostles asshown in their epistles, it is altogether probable that he alsoembraced the rest of that scheme. There are no means of definitelyascertaining whether he did or did not; though, according to avery learned and acute theologian, another fundamental part ofthat general system of doctrine is to be found in the last verseof the epistle, where James says that "he who converts a sinnerfrom the error of his ways shall save a soul from death and hide amultitude of sins." Bretschneider thinks that saving a soul fromdeath here means rescuing it from a descent into the under world,the word death being often used in the New Testament as by theRabbins to denote the subterranean abode of the dead.1 This
1 Bretschneider, Religiose Glaubenslehre, sect. 59.
interpretation may seem forced to an unlearned reader, whoexamines the text for personal profit, but will not seem at allimprobable to one who, to learn its historic meaning, reads thetext in the lighted foreground of a mind over whose backgroundlies a fitly arranged knowledge of all the materials requisite foran adequate criticism. For such a man was Bretschneider himself.
The eschatological implications and references in the Epistle ofJude are of pretty much the same character and extent as thosewhich we have just considered. A thorough study and analysis ofthis brief document will show that it may be fairly divided intothree heads and be regarded as having three objects. First, thewriter exhorts his readers "to contend earnestly for the faithonce delivered to the saints," "to remember the words of Christ'sapostles," "to keep themselves in the love of God, looking foreternal life." He desires to stir them up to diligence in effortsto preserve their doctrinal purity and their personal virtue.Secondly, he warns them of the fearful danger of depravity, pride,and lasciviousness. This warning he enforces by several examplesof the terrible judgments of God on the rebellious and wicked inother times. Among these instances is the case of the Cities ofthe Plain, eternally destroyed by a storm of fire for theiruncleanness; also the example of the fallen angels, "who kept nottheir first estate, but left their proper habitation, and arereserved in everlasting chains and darkness unto the judgment ofthe great day." The writer here adopts the doctrine of fallenangels, and the connected views, as then commonly received amongthe Jews. This doctrine is not of Christian origin, but was drawnfrom Persian and other Oriental sources, as is abundantly shown,with details, in almost every history of Jewish opinions, inalmost every Biblical commentary.2 In this connection Jude cites alegend from an apocryphal book, called the "Ascension of Moses,"of which Origen gives an account.3 The substance of the traditionis, that, at the decease of Moses, Michael and Satan contendedwhether the body should be given over to death or be taken up toheaven. The appositeness of this allusion is, that, while in thisstrife the archangel dared not rail against Satan, yet the wickedmen whom Jude is denouncing do not hesitate to blaspheme theangels and to speak evil of the things which they know not. "Woeunto such ungodly men: gluttonous spots, dewless clouds, fruitlesstrees plucked up and twice dead, they are ordained tocondemnation." Thirdly, the epistle announces the second coming ofChrist, in the last time, to establish his tribunal. The Prophecyof Enoch an apocryphal book, recovered during the present centuryis quoted as saying, "Behold, the Lord cometh, with ten thousandof his saints, to execute judgment upon all, and to convict theungodly of their ungodly deeds."4 Jude, then, anticipated thereturn of the Lord, at "the judgment of the great day," to judgethe world; considered the under world, or abode of the dead, notas a region of fire, but a place of imprisoning gloom, wherein "todefiled and blaspheming dreamers is reserved the blackness ofdarkness forever;"
2 E. g. Stuart's Dissertation on the Angelology of the Scriptures,published in vol. i. of the Bibliotheca Sacra.
3 De Principiis, lib. iii. cap 2. See, also, in Michaelis'sIntroduction to the New Testament, sect. 4 of the chapter on Jude.
4 Book of Enoch, translated by Dr. R. Laurence, cap. ii.
thought it imminently necessary for men to be diligent in strivingto secure their salvation, because "all sensual mockers, nothaving the spirit, but walking after their own ungodly lusts,"would be lost. He probably expected that, when all freecontingencies were past and Christ had pronounced sentence, thecondemned would be doomed eternally into the black abyss, and theaccepted would rise into the immortal glory of heaven. He closeshis letter with these significant words, which plainly imply muchof what we have just been setting forth: "Everlasting honor andpower, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be unto God, who is able tokeep you from falling and to present you faultless before the faceof his glory with exceeding joy."5
The first chapter of the so called Second Epistle of Peter is notoccupied with theological propositions, but with historical,ethical, and practical statements and exhortations. These are,indeed, of such a character, and so expressed, that they clearlypresuppose certain opinions in the mind of the writer. First, heevidently believed that a merciful and holy message had been sentfrom God to men by Jesus Christ, whereby are given unto usexceeding great and precious promises." The substance of thesepromises was "a call to escape the corruption of the world, andenter into glory and be partakers of the Divine nature." Bypartaking of the Divine nature, we understand the writer to meanentering the Divine abode and condition, ascending into the safeand eternal joy of the celestial prerogatives. That the authorhere denotes heaven by the term glory, as the other New Testamentwriters frequently do, appears distinctly from the seventeenth andeighteenth verses of the chapter, where, referring to the incidentat the baptism of Jesus, he declares, "There came a voice from theexcellent glory, saying, 'This is my beloved Son;' and this voice,which came from heaven, we heard." Secondly, our author regardedthis glorious promise as contingent on the fulfilment of certainconditions. It was to be realized by means of "faith, courage,knowledge, temperance, patience, godliness, kindness, and love.""He that hath these things shall never fall," "but an entranceshall be ministered unto him abundantly into the everlastingkingdom of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ." The writerfurnishes us no clew to his idea of the particular part performedby Christ in our salvation. He says not a word concerning thesufferings or death of the Savior; and the extremely scanty andindefinite allusions made to the relation in which Christ wassupposed to stand between God and men, and the redemption andreconciliation of men with God, do not enable us to draw anydogmatic conclusions. He speaks of "false teachers, who shallbring in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that boughtthem." But whether by this last phrase he means to imply a ransomof imprisoned souls from the under world by Christ's descentthither and victory over its powers, or a purchased exemption ofsinners from their merited doom by the vicarious sufferings ofChrist's death, or a practical regenerative redemption ofdisciples from their sins by the moral influences of his mission,his teachings, example, and character, there is nothing in theepistle clearly to decide; though, forming our judgment by the aidof other sources of information, we should conclude in favor ofthe first of these three conceptions as most probably expressingthe writer's thought.
5 Griesbuch's reading of the 25th verse of Jude.
The second chapter of the epistle is almost an exact parallel withthe Epistle of Jude: in many verses it is the same, word for word.It threatens "unclean, self willed, unjust, and blaspheming men,"that they shall "be reserved unto the day of judgment, to bepunished." It warns such persons by citing the example of therebellious "angels, who were thrust down into Tartarus, andfastened in chains of darkness until the judgment." It speaks of"cursed children, to whom is reserved the mist of darknessforever." Herein, plainly enough, is betrayed the common notion ofthe Jews of that time, the conception of a dismal under world,containing the evil angels of the Persian theology, and where thewicked were to be remanded after judgment and eternallyimprisoned.
The third and last chapter is taken up with the doctrine of thesecond coming of Christ. "Be mindful of the words of the prophetsand apostles, knowing this first, that in the last days thereshall be scoffers, who will say, 'Where is the promise of hiscoming? for since the fathers fell asleep all things continue asfrom the beginning.'" The writer meets this skeptical assertionwith denial, and points to the Deluge, "whereby the world thatthen was, being overflowed with water, perished." His argument is,the world was thus destroyed once, therefore it may be destroyedagain. He then goes on to assert positively relying for authorityon old traditions and current dogmas that "the heavens and theearth which are now are kept by the word of God in store to bedestroyed by fire in the day of judgment, when the perdition ofungodly men shall be sealed." "The delay of the Lord to fulfil hispromise is not from procrastination, but from his long sufferingwho is not willing that any should perish." He waits "that all maycome to repentance." But his patience will end, and "the day ofGod come as a thief in the night, when the heavens, being on fire,shall pass away with a crash, and the elements melt with ferventheat." There are two ways in which these declarations may beexplained, though in either case the events they refer to are tooccur in connection with the physical reappearance of Christ.First, they may be taken in a highly figurative sense, as meaningthe moral overthrow of evil and the establishment of righteousnessin the world. Similar expressions were often used thus by theancient Hebrew prophets, who describe the triumphs of Israel andthe destruction of their enemies, the Edomites or the Assyrians,by the interposition of Jehovah's arm, in such phrases as these."The mountains melt, the valleys cleave asunder like wax before afire, like waters poured over a precipice." "The heavens shall berolled up like a scroll, all their hosts shall melt away and falldown; for Jehovah holdeth a great slaughter in the land of Edom:her streams shall be turned into pitch, and her dust intobrimstone, and her whole land shall become burning pitch." Thesuppression of Satan's power and the setting up of the Messiah'skingdom might, according to the prophetic idiom, be expressed inawful images of fire and woe, the destruction of the old, and thecreation of a new, heaven and earth. But, secondly, thisphraseology, as used by the writer of the epistle before us, mayhave a literal significance, may have been intended to predictstrictly that the world shall be burned and purged by fire at thesecond coming of the Lord. That such a catastrophe would takeplace in the last day, or occurred periodically, was notoriouslythe doctrine of the Persians and of the Stoics.6 For our own part,we are convinced that the latter is the real meaning of thewriter. This seems to be shown alike by the connection of hisargument, by the prosaic literality of detail with which hespeaks, and by the earnest exhortations he immediately bases onthe declaration he has made. He reasons that, since the world wasdestroyed once by water, it may be again by fire. The deluge hecertainly regarded as literal: was not, then, in his conception,the fire, too, literal? He says, with calm, prosaic precision,"The earth and the works that are therein shall be burned up.Seeing, then, that all these things shall be dissolved, whatmanner of persons ought ye to be in all holiness, looking for anew heaven and a new earth, and striving that ye may be found byhim in peace, without spot, and blameless!" We do not suppose thiswriter expected the annihilation of the physical creation, butonly that the fire would destroy all unransomed creatures from itssurface, and thoroughly purify its frame, and make it clean andfit for a new race of sinless and immortal men.
"Tears shall not break from their full source,
Nor Anguish stray from her Tartarean den,
The golden years maintain a course
Not undiversified, though smooth and even,
We not be mock'd with glimpse and shadow then,
Bright seraphs mix familiarly with men,
And earth and sky compose a universal heaven."
We have now arrived at the threshold of the last book in the NewTestament, that book which, in the words of Lucke, "lies like aSphinx at the lofty outgate of the Bible." There are three modesof interpreting the Apocalypse, each of which has had numerous anddistinguished advocates. First, it may be regarded as a congeriesof inspired prophecies, a scenic unfolding, with infallibleforesight, of the chief events of Christian history from the firstcentury till now, and onwards. This view the combined effect ofthe facts in the case and of all the just considerationsappropriate to the subject compels us to reject. There is noevidence to support it; the application of it is crowded withegregious follies and absurdities. We thus simply state the resultof our best investigation and judgment, for there is no space hereto discuss it in detail. Secondly, the book may be taken as asymbolic exhibition of the transitional crises, exposures,struggles, and triumphs of the individual soul, a description ofpersonal experience, a picture of the inner life of the Christianin a hostile world. The contents of it can be made to answer tosuch a characterization only by the determined exercise of anunrestrained fancy, or by the theory of a double sense, as theSwedenborgians expound it. This method of interpreting theRevelation is adopted, not by scholarly thinkers, who, by thelight of learning and common sense, seek to discern what thewriter meant to express, but by those persons who go to theobscure document, with traditional superstition and lawlessimaginations, to see what lessons they can find there for theirexperimental guidance and edification. We suppose that everyintelligent and informed student who has
6 Cicero de Nat. Deorum, lib. ii. cap. 46. Also Ovid, MinuciusFelix, Seneca, and other authorities, as quoted by Rosenmuller on2 Peter iii. 7.
examined the subject with candid independence holds it as anexegetical axiom that the Apocalypse is neither a pure prophecy,blazing full illumination from Patmos along the track of thecoming centuries, nor an exhaustive vision of the experience ofthe faithful Christian disciple. We are thus brought to the thirdand, as we think, the correct mode of considering this remarkablework. It is an outburst from the commingled and seething mass ofopinions, persecutions, hopes, general experience, and expectationof the time when it was written. This is the view which wouldnaturally arise in the mind of an impartial student from thenature of the case, and from contemplating the fervid faith,suffering, lowering elements, and thick coming events of theapostolic age. It also strikingly corresponds with numerousexpress statements and with the whole obvious spirit and plan ofthe work; for its descriptions and appeals have the vivid colors,the thrilling tones, the significantly detailed allusions toexperiences and opinions and anticipations notoriously existing atthe time, which belong to present or immediately impending scenes.This way of considering the Apocalypse likewise enables one who isacquainted with the early Jewish Christian doctrines, legends, andhopes, to explain clearly a large number of passages in it whoseobscurity has puzzled many a commentator. We should be glad togive various illustrations of this, if our limits did not confineus strictly to the one class of texts belonging to the doctrine ofa future life. Furthermore, nearly all the most gifted critics,such as Ewald, Bleek, Lucke, De Wette, those whose words on suchmatters as these are weightiest, now agree in concluding that theRevelation of John was a product springing out of the intenseJewish Christian belief and experience of the age, and referring,in its dramatic scenery and predictions, to occurrences supposedto be then transpiring or very close at hand. Finally, this viewin regard to the Apocalypse is strongly confirmed by a comparisonof that production with the several other works similar to it incharacter and nearly contemporaneous in origin. These apocryphalproductions were written or compiled according to the prettygeneral agreement of the great scholars who have criticized themsomewhere between the beginning of the first century before, andthe middle of the second century after, Christ. We merely proposehere, in the briefest manner, to indicate the doctrine of a futurelife contained in them, as an introduction to an exposition ofthat contained in the New Testament Apocalypse.
In the TESTAMENT OF THE TWELVE PATRIARCHS it is written that "theunder world shall be spoiled through the death of the MostExalted."7 Again, we read, "The Lord shall make battle against thedevil, and conquer him, and rescue from him the captive souls ofthe righteous. The just shall rejoice in Jerusalem, where the Lordshall reign himself, and every one that believes in him shallreign in truth in the heavens."8 Farther on the writer says of theLord, after giving an account of his crucifixion, "He shall riseup from the under world and ascend into heaven."9 These extractsseem to imply the common doctrine of that time, that Christdescended into the under world, freed the captive saints, and roseinto heaven, and would soon return to establish his throne inJerusalem, to reign there for a time with his accepted followers.
7 See this book in Fabricii Codex Pseudepigraphus VeterisTestamenti, Test. Lev. sect. iv.
8 Ibid. Test. Dan. sect. v.
9 Ibid. Test. Benj. sect. ix.
The FOURTH BOOK OF EZRA contains scattered declarations and hintsof the same nature.10 It describes a vision of the Messiah, onMount Zion, distributing crowns to those confessors of his namewho had died in their fidelity.11 The world is said to be full ofsorrows and oppressions; and as the souls of the just ask when theharvest shall come,12 for the good to be rewarded and the wickedto be punished, they are told that the day of liberation is notfar distant, though terrible trials and scourges must yet precedeit. "My Son Jesus shall be revealed." "My Son the Christ shalldie; and then a new age shall come, the earth shall give up thedead, sinners shall be plunged into the bottomless abyss, andParadise shall appear in all its glory."13 The "Son of God willcome and consume his enemies with fire; but the elect will beprotected and made happy."14
The ASCENSION OF ISAIAH is principally occupied with an account ofthe rapture of the soul of that prophet through the seven heavens,and of what he there saw and learned. It describes the descent ofChrist, the beloved Son of God, through all the heavens, to theearth; his death; his resurrection after three days; his victoryover Satan and his angels, who dwell in the welkin or higherregion of the air; and his return to the right hand of God.15 Itpredicts great apostasy and sin among the disciples of theapostles, and much dissension respecting the nearness of thesecond advent of Christ.16 It emphatically declares that "Christshall come with his angels, and shall drag Satan and his powersinto Gehenna. Then all the saints shall descend from heaven intheir heavenly clothing, and dwell in this world; while the saintswho had not died shall be similarly clothed, and after a timeleave their bodies here, that they may assume their station inheaven. The general resurrection and judgment will follow, whenthe ungodly will be devoured by fire."17 The author as Gesenius,with almost all the rest of the critics, says was unquestionably aJewish Christian, and his principal design was to set forth thespeedy second coming of Christ, and the glorious triumph of thesaints that would follow with the condign punishment of thewicked.
The first book of the SIBYLLINE ORACLES contains a statement thatin the golden age the souls of all men passed peacefully into theunder world, to tarry there until the judgment; a prediction of afuture Messiah; and an account of his death, resurrection, andascension. The second book begins with a description of thehorrors that will precede the last time, threats against thepersecuting tyrants, and promises to the faithful, especially tothe martyrs, and closes with an account of the general judgment,when Elijah shall come from heaven, consuming flames break out,all souls be summoned to the tribunal of God at whose right handChrist will sit, the bodies of the dead be raised, the righteousbe purified, and the wicked be plunged into final ruin.
The fundamental thought and aim of the apocryphal BOOK OF ENOCHare the second coming of Christ to judge the world, theencouragement of the Christians, and the warning
10 See the abstract of it given in section vi. of Stuart'sCommentary on the Apocalypse.
11 Cap. ii. 12 Cap. iv. 13 Cap. v., vii. 14 Cap. xiii., xvi.
15 Ascensio Isaia Vatis, a Ricardo Laurence, cap. ix., x., xi.
16 Ibid. cap. ii., iii.
17 Ibid. cap. iv. 13-18.
of their oppressors by declarations of approaching deliverance tothose and vengeance to these. This is transparent at frequentintervals through the whole book.18 "Ye righteous, wait withpatient hope: your cries have cried for judgment, and it shallcome, and the gates of heaven shall be opened to you." "Woe toyou, powerful oppressors, false witnesses! for you shall suddenlyperish." "The voices of slain saints accusing their murderers, theoppressors of their brethren, reach to heaven with intercedingcries for swift justice."19 When that justice comes, "the horseshall wade up to his breast, and the chariot shall sink to itsaxle, in the blood of sinners."20 The author teaches that thesouls of men at death go into the under world, "a place deep anddark, where all souls shall be collected;" "where they shallremain in darkness till the day of judgment," the spirits of therighteous being in peace and joy, separated from the tormentedspirits of the wicked, who have spurned the Messiah and persecutedhis disciples.21 A day of judgment is at hand. "Behold, he cometh,with ten thousand of his saints, to execute judgment." Then therighteous shall rise from the under world, be approved, become asangels, and ascend to heaven. But the wicked shall not rise: theyremain imprisoned below forever.22 The angels descend to earth todwell with men, and the saints ascend to heaven to dwell withangels.23 "From beginning to end, like the Apocalypse, the book isfilled," says Professor Stuart, (and the most careless reader mustremark it,) "with threats for the wicked persecutors andconsolations for the suffering pious." A great number ofremarkable correspondences between passages in this book andpassages in the Apocalypse solicit a notice which our presentsingle object will not allow us to give them here. An under worlddivided into two parts, a happy for the good, a wretched for thebad; temporary woes prevailing on the earth; the speedy advent ofChrist for a vindication of his power and his servants; theresurrection of the dead; the final translation of the acceptedinto heaven, and the hopeless dooming of the rejected into theabyss, these are the features in the book before us which we arenow to remember.
There is one other extant apocryphal book whose contents arestrictly appropriate to the subject we have in hand, namely, theAPOCALYPSE OF JOHN.24 It claims to be the work of the Apostle Johnhimself. It represents John as going to Mount Tabor after theascension of Christ, and there praying that it may be revealed tohim when the second coming of Christ will occur, and what will bethe consequences of it. In answer to his request, a long andminute disclosure is made. The substance of it is, that, afterfamines and woes, Antichrist will appear and reign three years.Then Enoch and Elijah will come to expose him; but they will die,and all men with them. The earth will be purified with fire, thedead will rise, Christ
18 Book of Enoch, translated into English by Dr. R. Laurence. Seeparticularly the following places: i. 1 5; lii. 7; liv. 12; lxi.15; lxii. 14, 15; xciv.; xcv.; civ.
19 Ibid. cap. ix. 9 11; xxii. 5 8; xlvii. 1-4.
20 Ibid. cap. xcviii. 3.
21 Ibid. cap. x. 6 9, 15, 16; xxii. 2 5, 11 13; cii. 6; ciii. 5.
22 Ibid. cap. xxii. 14, 15; xlv. 2; xlvi. 4; 1. 1-4.
23 cap. xxxviii. xl.
24 See the abstract of it given in Lucke's Einleit. in dieOffenbar. Joh., cap. 2, sect. 17.
will descend in pomp, with myriads of angels, and the judgmentwill follow. The spirits of Antichrist will be hurled into a gulfof outer darkness, so deep that a heavy stone would not plunge tothe bottom in three years. Unbelievers, sinners, hypocrites, willbe cast into the under world; while true Christians are placed atthe right hand of Christ, all radiant with glory. The good andaccepted will then dwell in an earthly paradise, with angels, andbe free from all evils.
In addition to these still extant Apocalypses, we have referencesin the works of the Fathers to a great many others long sinceperished; especially the Apocalypses of Adam, Abraham, Moses,Elijah, Hystaspes, Paul, Peter, Thomas, Cerinthus, and Stephen. Sofar as we have any clew, by preserved quotations or otherwise, tothe contents of these lost productions, they seem to have beenmuch occupied with the topics of the avenging and redeeming adventof the Messiah, the final judgment of mankind, the supernal andsubterranean localities, the resurrection of the dead, theinauguration of an earthly paradise, the condemnation of thereprobate to the abyss beneath, the translation of the elect tothe Angelic realm on high. These works, all taken together, wereplainly the offspring of the mingled mass of glowing faiths,sufferings, fears, and hopes, of the age they belonged to. Anacquaintance with them will help us to appreciate and explain manythings in our somewhat kindred New Testament Apocalypse, byplacing us partially in the circumstances and mental attitude ofthe writer and of those for whom it was written.
The Persian Jewish and Jewish Christian notions andcharacteristics of the Book of Revelation are marked andprevailing, as every prepared reader must perceive. The threefolddivision of the universe into the upper world of the angels, themiddle world of men, and the under world of the dead; the keys ofthe bottomless pit; the abode of Satan, the accuser, in heaven;his revolt; the war in the sky between his seduced host and theangelic army under Michael, and the thrusting down of the former;the banquet of birds on the flesh of kings, mighty men, andhorses; the battle of Gog and Magog; the tarrying of souls underthe altar of God; the temple in heaven containing the ark of thecovenant, and the scene of a various ritual service; the twelvegates of the celestial city bearing the names of the twelve tribesof the children of Israel, and the twelve foundations of the wallshaving the names of the twelve Apostles of the Lamb; the bodilyresurrection and general judgment, and the details of its sequel,all these doctrines and specimens of imagery, with a hundredothers, carry us at once into the Zend Avesta, the Talmud, and theEbionitish documents of the earliest Christians, who mixed theirinterpretations of the mission and teaching of Christ with thepoetic visions of Zoroaster and the cabalistic dogmatics of thePharisees. 25
It is astonishing that any intelligent person can peruse theApocalypse and still suppose that it is occupied with propheciesof remote events, events to transpire successively in distant agesand various lands. Immediateness, imminency, hazardous urgency,swiftness, alarms, are written all over the book. A suspense,frightfully thrilling, fills it, as if the world were holding itsbreath in view of the universal crash that was coming withelectric velocity.
25 See, e. g., Corrodi, Kritische Geschichte des Chiliasmus, bandii. th. 3 7; Gfrorer, Geschichte Urchristenthums, abth. ii. kap.8 10; Schottgen in Apoc. xii. 6 9; ibid. in 2 Cor. v. 2.
Four words compose the key to the Apocalypse: Rescue, Reward,Overthrow, Vengeance. The followers of Christ are now persecutedand slain by the tyrannical rulers of the earth. Let them be ofgood cheer: they shall speedily be delivered. Their tyrants shallbe trampled down in "blood flowing up to the horse bridles," andthey shall reign in glory. "Here is the faith and the patience ofthe saints," trusting that, if "true unto death, they shall have acrown of life," and "shall not be hurt of the second death," butshall soon rejoice over the triumphant establishment of theMessiah's kingdom and the condign punishment of his enemies whoare now "making themselves drunk with the blood of the martyrs ofJesus." The Beast, described in the thirteenth chapter, isunquestionably Nero; and this fact shows the expectedimmediateness of the events pictured in connection with the riseand destruction of that monstrous despot.26 The truth of thisrepresentation is sealed by the very first verses of the book,indicating the nature of its contents and the period to which theyrefer: "The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto him,to show unto his servants things which must shortly come to pass:Blessed are they who hear the words of this prophecy and keepthem; for the time is at hand."
This rescue and reward of the faithful, this overthrow andpunishment of the wicked, were to be effected by the agency of aunique and sublime personage, who was expected very soon toappear, with an army of angels from heaven, for this purpose. Theconception of the nature, rank, and offices of Jesus Christ whichexisted in the mind of the writer of the Apocalypse is in somerespects but obscurely hinted in the words he employs; yet therelationship of those words to other and fuller sources ofinformation in the contemporaneous notions of his countrymen issuch as to give us great help in arriving at his ideas. Herepresents Christ as distinct from and subordinate to God. Hemakes Christ say, "To him that overcometh I will give power overthe nations, even as I received of my Father." He characterizeshim as "the beginning of the creation of God," and describes himas "mounted on a white horse, leading the heavenly armies to war,and his name is called the Logos of God." These terms evidentlycorrespond to the phrases in the introduction to the Gospel ofJohn, and in the Book of the Wisdom of Solomon, where are unfoldedsome portions of that great doctrine, so prevalent among the earlyFathers, which was borrowed and adapted by them from the PersianHonover, the Hebrew Wisdom, and the Platonic Logos.27 "In thebeginning was the Logos, and the Logos was with God, and allthings were made by him;… and the Logos was made flesh and dweltamong us."28 "God of our fathers, and Lord of mercy, who hast madeall things by thy Logos."29 "Thine almighty Logos leaped down fromheaven from his royal throne, a fierce warrior, into the midst ofa land of destruction."30 "Plainly enough, the Apocalyptic view ofChrist is based on that profound Logos doctrine so copiously
26 See the excursus by Stuart in his Commentary on the Apoc. xiii.18, which conclusively shows that the Beast could be no other thanNero.
27 Lucke, Einleitung in das Evang. Joh.
28 Evang. Joh. i. 1, 3, 14.
29 Wisdom of Solomon, ix. 1, 2.
30 Ibid. xviii. 15.
developed in the writings of Philo Judaus and so distinctlyendorsed in numerous passages of the New Testament. First, thereis the absolute God. Next, there is the Logos, the first begottenSon and representative image of God, the instrumental cause of thecreation, the head of all created beings. This Logos, born intoour world as a man, is Christ. Around him are clustered all thefeatures and actions that compose the doctrine of the last things.The vast work of redemption and judgment laid upon him has in partbeen already executed, and in part remains yet to be done.
We are first to inquire, then, into the significance of what thewriter of the Apocalypse supposes has already been effected byChrist in his official relations between God and men, so far asregards the general subject of a life beyond the grave. A fewbrief and vague but comprehensive expressions include all that hehas written which furnishes us a guide to his thoughts on thisparticular. He describes Jesus, when advanced to his nativesupereminent dignity in heaven, as the "Logos, clothed in avesture dipped in blood," and also as "the Lamb that was slain,"to whom the celestial throng sing a new song, saying, "Thou hastredeemed us unto God by thy blood." Christ, he says, "loved us,and washed us from our sins in his own blood." He represents therisen Savior as declaring, "I am he that liveth, and was dead,and, behold, I am alive for evermore, and have the keys of theunder world and of death." "Jesus Christ," again he writes, "isthe faithful witness, the first begotten from the dead." What,now, is the real meaning of these pregnant phrases? What is thecomplete doctrine to which fragmentary references are here made?We are confident that it is this. Mankind, in consequence of sin,were alienated from God, and banished, after death, to Hades, thesubterranean empire of shadows. Christ, leaving his exalted statein heaven, was born into the world as a messenger, or "faithfulwitness," of surprising grace to them from God, and died that hemight fulfil his mission as the agent of their redemption, bydescending into the great prison realm of the dead, and, exertinghis irresistible power, return thence to light and life, andascend into heaven as the forerunner and pledge of the deliveranceand ascension of others. Moses Stuart, commenting on the clause"first begotten from the dead," says, "Christ was in fact thefirst who enjoyed the privilege of a resurrection to eternal gloryand he was constituted the leader of all who should afterwards bethus raised from the dead."31 All who had died, with the soleexception of Christ, were yet in the under world. He, since histriumphant subdual of its power and return to heaven, possessedauthority over it, and would ere long summon its hosts toresurrection, as he declares: "I was dead, and, behold, I am alivefor ever more, and have the keys of the under world." The figureis that of a conqueror, who, returning from a captured and subduedcity, bears the key of it with him, a trophy of his triumph and apledge of its submission. The text "Thou hast redeemed us unto Godby thy blood" is not received in an absolutely literal sense byany theological sect whatever. The severest Calvinist does notsuppose that the physical blood shed on the cross is meant; but heexplains it as denoting the atoning efficacy of the vicarioussufferings of Christ. But this interpretation is as forced andconstructive an exposition as the one we have given, and is not
31 Stuart, Comm. in Apoc. i. 5.
warranted by the theological opinions of the apostolic age, whichdo, on the contrary, support and necessitate the other. The directstatement is, that men were redeemed unto God by the blood ofChrist. All agree that in the word "blood" is wrapped up afigurative meaning. The Calvinistic dogma makes it denote thesatisfaction of the law of retributive justice by a substitutionalanguish. We maintain that a true historical exegesis, with farless violence to the use of language, and consistently with knowncontemporaneous ideas, makes it denote the death of Christ, andthe events which were supposed to have followed his death, namely,his appearance among the dead, and his ascent to heaven,preparatory to their ascent, when they should no longer be exiledin Hades, but should dwell with God. Out of an abundance ofillustrative authorities we will cite a few.
Augustine describes "the ancient saints" as being "in the underworld, in places most remote from the tortures of the impious,waiting for Christ's blood and descent to deliver them."32Epiphanius says, "Christ was the first that rose from the underworld to heaven from the time of the creation."33 Lactantiusaffirms, "Christ's descent into the under world and ascent intoheaven were necessary to give man the hope of a heavenlyimmortality."34 Hilary of Poictiers says, "Christ went down intoHades for two reasons: first, to fulfil the law imposed on mankindthat every soul on leaving the body shall descend into the underworld, and, secondly, to preach the Christian religion to thedead."35 Chrysostom writes, "When the Son of God cometh, the earthshall burst open, and all the men that ever were born, from Adam'sbirth up to that day, shall rise up out of the earth."36 Irenaustestifies, "I have heard from a certain presbyter, who heard itfrom those who had seen the apostles and received theirinstructions, that Christ descended into the under world, andpreached the gospel and his own advent to the souls there, andremitted the sins of those who believed on him."37 Eusebiusrecords that, "after the ascension of Jesus, Thomas sent Thaddeus,one of the Seventy, to Abgarus, King of Edessa. This disciple toldthe king how that Jesus, having been crucified, descended into theunder world, and burst the bars which had never before beenbroken, and rose again, and also raised with himself the dead thathad slept for ages; and how he descended alone, but ascended witha great multitude to his Father; and how he was about to comeagain to judge the living and the dead."38 Finally, we cite thefollowing undeniable statement from Daille's famous work on the"Right Use of the Fathers:" "That heaven shall not be opened tillthe second coming of Christ and the day of judgment, that duringthis time the souls of all men, with a few exceptions, are shut upin the under world, was held by Justin Martyr, Irenaus,Tertullian, Augustine, Origen, Lactantius, Victorinus, Ambrose,Chrysostom, Theodoret, OEcumenius, Aretas, Prudentius,Theophylact, Bernard,
32 De Civitate Dei, lib. xx. cap. 15.
33 In Resurrectionem Christi.
34 Divin. Instit. lib. iv. cap. 19, 20.
35 Hilary in Ps. cxviii. et cxix.
36 Homil. in Rom. viii. 25.
37 Adv. Hares. lib. iv. sect. 45.
38 Ecc. Hist. lib. i. cap. 13.
and many others, as is confessed by all. This doctrine isliterally held by the whole Greek Church at the present day. Nordid any of the Latins expressly deny any part of it until theCouncil of Florence, in the year of our Lord 1439."39
In view of these quotations, and of volumes of similar ones whichmight be adduced, we submit to the candid reader that the meaningmost probably in the mind of the writer of the Apocalypse when hewrote the words "redemption by the Blood of Christ" was this, therescue certified to men by the commissioned power and devotedself sacrifice of Christ in dying, going down to the mightycongregation of the dead, proclaiming good tidings, breaking thehopeless bondage of death and Hades, and ascending as the pioneerof a new way to God. If before his death all men were supposed togo down to helpless confinement in the under world on account ofsin, but after his resurrection the promise of an ascension toheaven was made to them through his gospel and exemplification,then well might the grateful believers, fixing their hearts on hiswilling martyrdom in their behalf, exclaim, "He loved us, andwashed us from our sins in his own blood, and hath made us kingsand priests unto God." It is certainly far more natural, far morereasonable, to suppose that the scriptural phrase "the blood ofChrist" means "the death of Christ," with its historicalconsequences, than to imagine that it signifies a complicated andmysterious scheme of sacerdotal or ethical expiation, especiallywhen that scheme is unrelated to contemporaneous opinion,irreconcilable withmorality,and confessedly nowhere plainly statedin Scripture, but a matter of late and laborious construction andinference. We have not spoken of the strictly moral and subjectivemission and work of Christ, as conceived by the author of theApocalypse, his influences to cleanse the springs of character,purify and inspire the heart, rectify and elevate the motives,regenerate and sanctify the soul and the life, because all this isplain and unquestioned. But he also believed in somethingadditional to this, an objective function: and what that was wethink is correctly explained above.
We are next to inquire more immediately into the closing parts ofthe doctrine of the last things. Christ has appeared, declared thetidings of grace, died, visited the dead, risen victoriously, andgone back to heaven, where he now tarries. But there remain manythings for him, as the eschatological King, yet to do. What arethey? and what details are connected with them? First of all, heis soon to return from heaven, visiting the earth a second time.The first chapter of the book begins by declaring that it is "arevelation of things which must shortly come to pass," and"blessed is he that readeth; for the time is at hand." The lastchapter is full of such repetitions as these: "things which mustshortly be done;" "Behold, I come quickly;" "The time is at hand;""He that is unjust, let him be unjust still, and he that is holy,let him be holy still;" "Surely I come quickly;" "Even so, come,Lord Jesus." Herder says, in his acute and eloquent work on theApocalypse, "There is but one voice in it, through all itsepistles, seals, trumpets, signs, and plagues, namely, THE LORD ISCOMING!" The souls of the martyrs, impatiently waiting, under thealtar, the completion of the great drama, cry, "How long, O Lord,dost thou delay to avenge our blood?" and they are told that "theyshall
39 Lib. ii. cap. 4, pp. 272, 273 of the English translation.
rest only for a little season." Tertullian writes, without a traceof doubt, "Is not Christ quickly to come from heaven with aquaking of the whole universe, with a shuddering of the world,amidst the wailings of all men save the Christians?" TheApocalyptic seer makes Christ say, "Behold, I come as a thief inthe night: blessed is he that watcheth." Accordingly, "a sentinelgazed wherever a Christian prayed, and, though all the watchmendied without the sight," the expectation lingered for centuries.The Christians of the New Testament time to borrow the words ofone of the most competent of living scholars "carried forward tothe account of Christ in years to come the visions which his stay,as they supposed, was too short to realize, and assigned to him aquick return to finish what was yet unfulfilled. The suffering,the scorn, the rejection of men, the crown of thorns, were overand gone; the diadem, the clarion, the flash of glory, the troopof angels, were ready to burst upon the world, and might be lookedfor at midnight or at noon."40
Secondly, when Christ returned, he was to avenge the sufferingsand reward the fidelity of his followers, tread the heathentyrants in the wine press of his wrath, and crown the persecutedsaints with a participation in his glory. When "the time of hiswrath is come, he shall give reward to the prophets, and to thesaints, and to them that fear his name, and shall destroy themthat destroy the earth." "The kings, captains, mighty men, richmen, bondmen, and freemen, shall cry to the mountains and rocks,Fall on us, and hide us from the wrath of the Lamb." "To him thatovercometh, and doeth my works, I will give power over theGentiles;" "I will give him the morning star;" "I will grant himto sit with me on my throne." Independently, moreover, of thesedistinct texts, the whole book is pervaded with the thought that,at the speedy second advent of the Messiah, all his enemies shallbe fearfully punished, his servants eminently compensated andglorified.41
Thirdly, the writer of the Apocalypse expected in accordance withthat Jewish anticipation of an earthly Messianic kingdom which wasadopted with some modifications by the earliest Christians thatJesus, on his return, having subdued his foes, would reign for aseason, in great glory, on the earth, surrounded by the saints. "Adoor was opened in heaven," and the seer looked in, and saw avision of the redeemed around the throne, and heard them "singinga new song unto the Lamb that was slain," in the course of which,particularizing the favors obtained for them by him, they say, "Weshall reign upon the earth." Again, the writer says that "theworshippers of the beast and of his image shall be tormented withfire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels, and in thepresence of the Lamb." Now, the lake of sulphurous fire into whichthe reprobate were to be thrust was located, not in the sky, butunder the surface of the earth. The foregoing statement,therefore, implies that Christ and his angels would be tarrying onthe earth when the final woe of the condemned was inflicted. Butwe need not rely on indirect arguments. The writer explicitlydeclares
40 Martineau, Sermon, "The God of Revelation his own Interpreter."
41 It seems to have been a Jewish expectation that when theMessiah should appear he would thrust his enemies into Hades. In apassage of the Talmud Satan is represented as seeing the Messiahunder the Throne of Glory: he falls on his face at the sight,exclaiming, "This is the Messiah, who will precipitate me and allthe Gentiles into the under world." Bertholdt, Christologia, sect.36.
that, in his vision of what was to take place, the Christianmartyrs, "those who were slain for the witness of Jesus, lived andreigned with Christ a thousand years, while the rest of the deadlived not again until the thousand years were finished. This isthe first resurrection. Then Satan was loosed out of his prison,and gathered the hosts of Gog and Magog to battle, and went up onthe breadth of the earth and compassed the camp of the saintsabout, and fire came down out of heaven and devoured them." Itseems impossible to avoid seeing in this passage a plain statementof the millennial reign of Christ on the earth with his risenmartyrs.
Fourthly, at the termination of the period just referred to, theauthor of the Apocalypse thought all the dead would be raised andthe tribunal of the general judgment held. As Lactantius says,"All souls are detained in custody in the under world until thelast day; then the just shall rise and reign; afterwards therewill be another resurrection of the wicked."42 "The time of thedead is come, that they should be judged." "And I saw the dead,small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened, andthe dead were judged out of those things which were written in thebooks, according to their works. And the sea gave up the deadwhich were in it, and death and the under world delivered up thedead which were in them, and they were judged, every man accordingto his works." "Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the firstresurrection: on such the second death hath no power, but theyshall be priests of God and of Christ, and reign with him athousand years." This text, with its dark and tacit reference bycontrast to those who have no lot in the millennial kingdom,brings us to the next step in our exposition.
For, fifthly, after the general resurrection and judgment at theclose of the thousand years, the sentence of a hopeless doom tohell is to be executed on the condemned. "Whosoever was not foundwritten in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire." "Thefearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, andwhoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shallhave their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone;which is the second death." The "second death" is a term used byOnkelos in his Targum,43 and sometimes in the Talmud, and by theRabbins generally. It denotes, as employed by them, the return ofthe wicked into hell after their summons thence for judgment.44 Inthe Apocalypse, its relative meaning is this. The martyrs, whowere slain for their allegiance to the gospel, died once, anddescended into the under world, the common realm of death. At thecoming of Christ they were to rise and join him, and to die nomore. This was the first resurrection. At the close of themillennium, all the rest of the dead were to rise and be judged,and the rejected portion of them were to be thrust back againbelow. This was a second death for them, a fate from which therighteous were exempt. There was a difference, greatly for theworse in the latter, between their condition in the two deaths. Inthe former they descended to the dark under world, the silent andtemporary abode of the universal dead; but in the latter they wentdown "into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the devil and thebeast and the false prophet are, and shall be tormented day andnight for
42 Divin. Instit. lib. vii. cap. 20, 21, 26.
43 on Deut. xxxiii. 6.
44 Gfrorer, Geschichte des Urchristenthums, kap. 10. s. 289.
ever and ever." For "Death and Hades, having delivered up the deadwhich were in them, were cast into the lake of fire. This is thesecond death." It is plain that here the common locality ofdeparted souls is personified as two demons, Death and Hades, andthe real thought meant to be conveyed is, that this region is tobe sunk beneath a "Tartarean drench," which shall henceforth rollin burning billows over its victims there, "the smoke of theirtorment ascending up for ever and ever." This awful imagery of alake of flaming sulphur, in which the damned were plunged, was ofcomparatively late origin or adoption among the Jews, from whomthe Christians received it. The native Hebrew conception of thestate of the dead was that of the voiceless gloom and dismalslumber of Sheol, whither all alike went. The notion of fierytortures inflicted there on the wicked was either conceived by thePharisees from the loathed horrors of the filth fire kept in thevale of Hinnom, outside of Jerusalem, (which is the opinion ofmost commentators,) or was imagined from the sea of burningbrimstone that showered from heaven and submerged Sodom andGomorrah in a vast fire pool, (which is maintained byBretschneider and others,) or was derived from the Egyptians, orthe Persians, or the Hindus, or the Greeks, all of whom had lakesand rivers of fire in their theological hells, long before historyreveals the existence of such a belief among the Jews, (which isthe conclusion of many learned authors and critics.)
We have now reached the last feature in the scheme of eschatologyshadowed forth in the Apocalypse, the most obscure and difficultpoint of all, namely, the locality and the principal elements ofthe final felicity of the saved. The difficulty of clearlysettling this question is twofold, arising, first, from the swiftand partial glimpses which are all that the writer yields us onthe subject, and, secondly, from the impossibility of decidingwith precision how much of his language is to be regarded asfigurative and how much as literal, where the poetic presentationof symbol ends and where the direct statement of fact begins. Alarge part of the book is certainly written in prophetic figuresand images, spiritual visions, never meant to be accepted in aprosaic sense with severe detail. And yet, at the same time, allthese imaginative emblems were, unquestionably, intended toforeshadow, in various kinds and degrees, doctrinal conceptions,hopes, fears, threats, promises, historical realities, past,present, or future. But to separate sharply the dress and thesubstance, the superimposed symbols and the underlying realities,is always an arduous, often an impossible, achievement. The writerof the Apocalypse plainly believed that the souls of all, exceptthe martyrs, at death descended to the under world, and wouldremain there till after the second coming of Christ. But whetherhe thought that the martyrs were excepted, and would at deathimmediately rise into heaven and there await the fulfilment oftime, is a disputed point. For our own part, we think it extremelydoubtful, and should rather decide in the negative. In the firstplace, his expressions on this subject seem essentiallyfigurative. He describes the prayers of the saints as being pouredout from golden vials and burned as incense on a golden altar inheaven before the throne of God. "Under that altar," he says, "Isaw the souls of them that were slain for the word of God." If thesouls of the martyrs, in his belief, were really admitted intoheaven, would he have conceived of them as huddled under the altarand not walking at liberty? Does not the whole idea appear ratherlike a rhetorical image than like a sober theological doctrine?True, the scene is pictured in heaven; but then it is a picture,and not a conclusion. With De Wette, we regard it, not as adogmatic, but as a poetical and prophetic, representation. Andin regard to the seer's vision of the innumerable company of theredeemed in heaven, surrounding the throne and celebrating thepraises of God and the Lamb, surely it is obvious enough thatthis, like the other affiliated visions, is a vision, byinspired insight, in the present tense, of what is yet tooccur in the successive unfolding of the rapid scenes in thegreat drama of Christ's redemptive work, a prophetic vision ofthe future, not of what already is. We know that in Tertullian'stime the idea was entertained by some that Christian martyrs, asa special allotment, should pass at once from their sufferings toheaven, without going, as all others must, into the under world;but the evidence preponderates with us, upon the whole, that nosuch doctrine is really implied in the Apocalypse. In thefourteenth chapter, the author describes the hundred and fortyfour thousand who were redeemed from among men, as standing withthe Lamb on Mount Zion and hearing a voice from heaven singing anew song, which no man, save the hundred and forty four thousand,could learn. The probabilities are certainly strongest that thisgreat company of the selected "first fruits unto God and theLamb," now standing on the earth, had not yet been in heaven; forthey only learn the heavenly song which is sung before the throneby hearing it chanted down from heaven in a voice likemultitudinous thunders.
Finally, the most convincing proof that the writer did not supposethat the martyrs entered heaven before the second advent ofChrist a proof which, taken by itself, would seem to leave nodoubt on the subject is this. In the famous scene detailed in thetwentieth chapter usually called by commentators the martyr sceneit is said that "the souls of them that were beheaded for the wordof God, and which had not worshipped the beast, lived and reignedwith Christ a thousand years. This is the first resurrection."Now, is it not certain that if the writer supposed these souls hadnever been in the under world, but in heaven, he could not havedesignated their preliminary descent from above as "the firstresurrection," the first rising up? That phrase implies, we think,that all the dead were below: the faithful and chosen ones were torise first to reign a while with Jesus, and after that the restshould rise to be judged. After that judgment, which was expectedto be on earth in presence of the descended Lamb and his angels,the lost were to be plunged, as we have already seen, into thesubterranean pit of torture, the unquenchable lake of fire. Butwhat was to become of the righteous and redeemed? Whether, by theApocalyptic representation, they were to remain forever on earth,or to ascend into heaven, is a question which has been zealouslydebated for over sixteen hundred years, and in some theologicalcircles is still warmly discussed. Were the angels who came downto the earth with Christ to the judgment never to return to theirnative seats? Were they permanently to transfer their deathlesscitizenship from the sky to Judea? Were the constitution of humannature and the essence of human society to be abrogated, and themembers of the human family to cease enlarging, lest they shouldoverflow the borders of the world? Was God himself literally todesert his ancient abode, and, with the celestial city and all itsangelic hierarchy, float from the desolated firmament to MountZion, there to set up the central eternity of his throne. Wecannot believe that such is the meaning, which the seer of theApocalypse wished to convey by his symbolic visions and pictures,any more than we can believe that he means literally to say thathe saw "a woman in heaven clothed with the sun, and the moon underher feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars," or thatthere were actually "armies in heaven, seated on white horsesand clothed in fine linen, white and clean, which is therighteousness of saints." Our conviction is that he expectedthe Savior would ascend with his angels and the redeemedinto heaven, the glorious habitation of God above the sky. Hespeaks in one place of the "temple of God in heaven, into which noman could enter until the seven plagues were fulfilled," and inanother place says that the "great multitude of the redeemed arebefore the throne of God in heaven, and serve him day and night inhis temple;" and in still another place he describes two prophets,messengers of God, who had been slain, as coming to life, "andhearing a great voice from heaven saying to them, 'Come uphither;' and they ascended up to heaven in a cloud, and theirenemies beheld them." De Wette writes, "It is certain that anabstract conception of heavenly blessedness with God duskilyhovers over the New Testament eschatology." We think this is trueof the Book of Revelation.
It was a Persian Jewish idea that the original destination of man,had he not sinned, was heaven. The apostles thought it was a partof the mission of Christ to restore that lost privilege. We thinkthe writer of the Apocalypse shared in that belief. His allusionsto a new heaven and a new earth, and to the descent of a NewJerusalem from heaven, and other related particulars, are symbolsneither novel nor violent to Jewish minds, but both familiar andexpressive, to denote a purifying glorification of the world, theinstallation of a divine kingdom, and the brilliant reign ofuniversal righteousness and happiness among men, as if under thevery eyes of the Messiah and the very sceptre of God. TheChristians shall reign in Jerusalem, which shall be adorned withindescribable splendors and shall be the centre of a world widedominion, the saved nations of the earth surrounding it and"walking in the light of it, their kings bringing their glory andhonor into it." "God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes,and there shall be no more death." That is, upon the whole, as weunderstand the scattered hints relevant to the subject to imply,when Christ returns to the Father with his chosen, he will leave aregenerated earth, with Jerusalem for its golden and peerlesscapital, peopled, and to be peopled, with rejoicing and immortalmen, who will keep the commandments, be exempt from ancient evils,hold intimate communion with God and the Lamb, and, fromgeneration to generation, pass up to heaven through that swift andpainless change, alluded to by Paul, whereby it was intended atthe first that sinless man, his corruptible and mortal putting onincorruption and immortality, should be fitted for thecompanionship of angels in the pure radiance of the celestialworld, and should be translated thither without tasting thebitterness of death, which was supposed to be the subterraneanbanishment of the disembodied ghost.
CHAPTER IV.
PAUL'S DOCTRINE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
THE principal difficulty in arriving at the system of thought andfaith in the mind of Paul arises from the fragmentary character ofhis extant writings. They are not complete treatises drawn out inindependent statements,butspecial letters full of latentimplications. They were written to meet particular emergencies, togive advice, to convey or ask information and sympathy, to argueor decide concerning various matters to a considerable extent of apersonal or local and temporal nature. Obviously their authornever suspected they would be the permanent and immenselyinfluential documents they have since become. They were notcomposed as orderly developments or full presentations of a creed,but rather as supplements to more adequate oral instructionpreviously imparted. He says to the Thessalonians, "Brethren,stand fast and hold the traditions which ye have been taught,whether by word or by our epistle." Several of his letters alsoperhaps many have been lost. He exhorts the Colossians to "readlikewise the epistle from Laodicea." In his present First Epistleto the Corinthians he intimates that he had previouslycorresponded with them, in the words, "I wrote to you in aletter." There are good reasons, too, for supposing that hetransmitted other epistles of which we have now no account. Owing,therefore, to the facts that his principal instructions were givenby word of mouth, and that his surviving writings set forth nosystematic array of doctrines, we have no choice left, if wedesire to know what his opinions concerning the future life were,when deduced and arranged, but to exercise our learning and ourfaculties upon the imperfect discussions and the significant hintsand clews in his extant epistles. Bringing these together, in thelight of contemporary Pharisaic and Christian conceptions andopinions, we may construct a system from them which will representhis theory; somewhat as the naturalist from a few fragmentarybones describes the entire skeleton to which they belonged. As weproceed to follow this process, we must particularly remember theleading notions in the doctrinal belief of the Jews at thatperiod, and the fact that Paul himself was "brought up at the feetof Gamaliel," "after the most straitest order of the sect, aPharisee." When on trial at Jerusalem, he cried, "Men andbrethren, I am a Pharisee, the son of a Pharisee: of the hope ofthe resurrection of the dead I am called in question." We canhardly suppose that he would entirely throw off the influence andform of the Pharisaic dogmas and grasp Christianity in its purespirituality. It is most reasonable to expect what we shall findactually the fact that he would mix the doctrinal and emotionalresults of his Pharisaic training with the teachings of Christ,thus forming a composite system considerably modified from anythen existing. Indeed, a great many obscure texts in Paul may bemade perspicuous by citations from the old Talmudists. Consideringthe value and the importance of this means of illustrating the NewTestament, it is neglected by modern commentators in a veryremarkable manner.
In common with his countrymen and the Gentiles, Paul undoubtedlybelieved in a world of light and bliss situated over the sky,where the Deity, surrounded by his angels, reigns in immortalsplendor. According to the Greeks, Zeus and the other gods,with a few select heroes, there lived an imperishable life.According to the Hebrews, there was "the house of Jehovah," "thehabitation of eternity," "the world of holy angels." The OldTestament contains many sublime allusions to this place. Jacob inhis dream saw a ladder set up that reached unto heaven, and theangels were ascending and descending upon it. Fixing his eyes uponthe summit, the patriarch exclaimed, not referring, as is commonlysupposed, to the ground on which he lay, but to the opening in thesky through which the angels were passing and repassing, "Surelythis is the house of God and this the gate of heaven." Jehovah isdescribed as "riding over the heaven of heavens;" as "treadingupon the arch of the sky." The firmament is spoken of as the solidfloor of his abode, where "he layeth the beams of his chambers inthe waters," the "waters above," which the Book of Genesis sayswere "divided from the waters beneath." Though this divine worldon high was in the early ages almost universally regarded as alocal reality, it was not conceived by Jews or Gentiles to be thedestined abode of human souls. It was thought to be exclusivelyoccupied by Jehovah and his angels, or by the gods and theirmessengers. Only here and there were scattered a few dimtraditions, or poetic myths, of a prophet, a hero, a god descendedman, who, as a special favor, had been taken up to the supernalmansions. The common destination of the disembodied spirits of menwas the dark,stupendous realms of the under world. As Augustineobserves, "Christ died after many; he rose before any: by dying hesuffered what many had suffered before; by rising he did what noone had ever done before."1 These ideas of the celestial and theinfernal localities and of the fate of man were of courseentertained by Paul when he became a Christian. A few texts by wayof evidence of this fact will here suffice. "That at the name ofJesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, and those onearth, and those under the earth." "He that descended first intothe lower parts of the earth is the same also that ascended up farabove all heavens." The untenableness of that explanation whichmakes the descent into the lower parts of the earth refer toChrist's descent to earth from his pre existent state in heavenmust be evident, as it seems to us, to every mind. Irenaus,discussing this very text from Ephesians, exposes the absurdityand stigmatizes the heresy of those who say that the infernalworld is this earth, ("qui dicunt inferos quidem esse huncmundum.")2 "I knew a man caught up to the third heaven, . . .caught up into paradise." The threefold heaven of the Jews, herealluded to, was, first, the region of the air, supposed to beinhabited by evil spirits. Paul repeatedly expresses this idea, aswhen he speaks of "the prince of the power of the air, the spiritthat worketh in the children of disobedience," and when he says,"For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but againstprincipalities, against powers, against the rulers of thedarkness, against wicked spirits in heavenly places." The secondheaven comprised the region of the planetary bodies. The third laybeyond the firmament, and was the actual residence of God and theangelic hosts. These quotations, sustained as they are by thewell known previous opinions of the Jews, as well as by numerousunequivocal texts in the writings of the other apostles and bymany additional ones in those
1 Enarratio in Psalmum XC.
2 Adv. Hares. lib. v. cap. 31.
of Paul, are conclusive evidence that he believed in the receivedheaven above the blue ether and stellar dome, and in the receivedHadean abyss beneath the earth. In the absence of all evidence tothe contrary, every presumption justifies the supposition that healso believed as we know all his orthodox contemporaries did thatthat under world was the abode of all men after death, and thatthat over world was solely the dwelling place of God and theangels. Nay, we are not left to conjecture; for he expresslydeclares of God that he "dwelleth in the light which no man canapproach unto." This conclusion will be abundantly established inthe course of the following exposition.
With these preliminaries, we are prepared to see what was Paul'sdoctrine of death and of salvation. There are two prevalenttheories on this subject, both of which we deem partly scriptural,neither of them wholly so. On the one extreme, the consistentdisciple of Augustine the historic Calvinist attributes to theapostle the belief that the sin of Adam was the sole cause ofliteral death, that but for Adam's fall men would have lived onthe earth forever or else have been translated bodily to heavenwithout any previous process of death. That such really was notthe view held by Paul we are convinced. Indeed, there is oneprominent feature in his faith which by itself proves that thedisengagement of the soul from the material frame did not seem tohim an abnormal event caused by the contingency of sin. We referto his doctrine of two bodies, the "outward man" and the "inwardman," the "earthly house" and the "heavenly house," the "naturalbody" and the "spiritual body." Neander says this is "an expressassertion" of Paul's belief that man was not literally made mortalby sin, but was naturally destined to emerge from the flesh into ahigher form of life.3 Paul thought that, in the original plan ofGod, man was intended to drop his gross, corruptible body and puton an incorruptible one, like the "glorious body" of the risenChrist. He distinctly declares, "Flesh and blood cannot inheritthe kingdom of God." Therefore, we cannot interpret the word"death" to mean merely the separation of the soul from its presenttabernacle, when he says, "By one man sin entered into the world,and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men." On the otherextreme, the fully developed Pelagian the common Unitarian holdsthat the word "death" is always used in the arguments of Paul in aspiritual or figurative sense, merely meaning moral alienationfrom God in guilt, misery, and despair. Undoubtedly it is usedthus in many instances, as when it is written, "I was alivewithout the law once; but, when the commandment came, sin rose tolife, and I died." But in still more numerous cases it meanssomething more than the consciousness of sin and the resultingwretchedness in the breast, and implies something external,mechanical, visible, as it were. For example, "Since by man camedeath, by man came also the resurrection of the dead." Any one whoreads the context of this sentence may see that the terms "death"and "resurrection" antithetically balance each other, and refernot to an inward experience, but to an outward event, not to amoral change, but to the physical descent and resurrection. It iscertain that here the words are not employed in a moral sense. Thephraseology Paul uses in stating the connection of the sin of Adamwith death, the connection of the resurrection of Christ withimmortal life, is too peculiar, emphatic, and extensive not to beloaded with
3 Planting and Training, Ryland's trans. p. 240.
a more general and vivid significance than the simple unhappinessof a sense of guilt, the simple peace and joy of a reconciledconscience. The advocates, then, of both theories the Calvinistasserting that Paul supposed sin to be the only reason why we donot live eternally in the world with our present organization, andthe Rationalist asserting that the apostle never employs the word"death" except with a purely interior signification are alikebeset by insuperable difficulties, perplexed by passages whichdefy their fair analysis and force them either to use a violentinterpretation or to confess their ignorance.
We must therefore seek out some third view, which, rejecting theerrors, shall combine the truths and supply the defects of the twoformer. We have now to present such a view, a theory of thePauline doctrine of the last things which obviously explains andfills out all the related language of the epistles. We suppose heunfolded it fully in his preaching, while in his supplementary andpersonal letters he only alludes to such disconnected parts of itas then rose upon his thoughts. A systematic development of it asa whole, with copious allusions and labored defences, was notneeded then, as it might seem to us to have been. For thefundamental notions on which it rested were the common belief ofthe nation and age. Geology and astronomy had not disturbed thecredit of a definitely located Hades and heaven, nor had freemetaphysics sharpened the common mind to skeptical queries. Theview itself, as we conceive it occupied the mind of Paul, is this.Death was a part of the creative plan for us from the first,simply loosing the spirit from its corruptible body, clothing itwith an ethereal vehicle, and immediately translating it toheaven. Sin marred this plan, alienated us from the Divine favor,introduced all misery, physical and moral, and doomed the soul,upon the fall of its earthly house, to descend into the slumberousgloom of the under world. Thus death was changed from a pleasantorganic fulfilment and deliverance, spiritual investiture andheavenly ascent, to a painful punishment condemning the nakedghost to a residence below the grave. As Ewald says, throughAdam's sin "death acquired its significance as pain andpunishment."4 Herein is the explanation of the word "death" asused by Paul in reference to the consequence of Adam's offence.Christ came to reveal the free grace and gift of God in redeemingus from our doom and restoring our heavenly destiny. This heexemplified, in accordance with the Father's will, by dying,descending into the dreary world of the dead, vanquishing theforces there, rising thence, and ascending to the right hand ofthe throne of heaven as our forerunner. On the very verge of thetheory just stated as Paul's, Neander hovers in his exposition ofthe apostle's views, but fails to grasp its theological scope andconsequences. Krabbe declares that "death did not arise from thenative perishableness of the body, but from sin."5 This statementNeander controverts, maintaining that "sin introduced no essentialchange in the physical organization of man, but merely in themanner in which his earthly existence terminates. Had it not beenfor sin, death would have been only the form of a higherdevelopment of life."6 Exactly so. With innocence, the soul atdeath
4 Sendschreiben des Apostels Paulus, s. 210.
5 Die Lehre von oer Sunde und vom Tode, cap. xi, s. 192.
6 Neander's Planting and Training, book vi. ch. 1.
would have ascended pleasantly, in a new body, to heaven; but sincompelled it to descend painfully, without any body, to Hades. Wewill cite a few of the principal texts from which this generaloutline has been inferred and constructed.
The substance of the fifth chapter of the Epistle to the Romansmay be thus stated. As by the offence of one, sin entered into theworld, and the judgment of the law came upon all men in a sentenceof condemnation unto death, so by the righteousness of one, thefree gift of God came upon all men in a sentence of justificationunto life; that as sin, by Adam's offence, hath reigned untodeath, so grace, by Christ's righteousness, might reign untoeternal life. Now, we maintain that the words "death" and "life"cannot in the present instance be entirely explained, in aspiritual sense, as signifying disturbance and woe in the breast,or peace and bliss there, because the whole connected discourse isnot upon the internal contingent experience of individuals, butupon the common necessity of the race, an objective sentencepassed upon humanity, followed by a public gift of reversal andannulment. So, too, we deny that the words can be justly taken, intheir strictly literal sense, as meaning cessation or continuanceof physical existence on the earth, because, in the first place,that would be inconsistent with the doctrine of a spiritual bodywithin the fleshly one and of a glorious inheritance reserved inheaven, a doctrine by which Paul plainly shows that he recogniseda natural organic provision, irrespective of sin, for a change inthe form and locality of human existence. Secondly, we submit thatdeath and life here cannot mean departure from the body orcontinuance in it, because that is a matter with which Christ'smission did in no way interfere, but left exactly as it wasbefore; whereas, in the thing really meant by Paul, Christ isrepresented as standing, at least partially, in the same relationbetween life and men that Adam stands in between death and men.The reply to the question, What is that relation? will at oncedefine the genuine signification of the terms "death" and "life"in the instance under review. And thus it is to be answered. Thedeath brought on mankind by Adam was not only internalwretchedness, but also the condemnation of the disembodied soul tothe under world; the life they were assured of by Christ was notonly internal blessedness, but also the deliverance of the soulfrom its subterranean prison and its reception into heaven in a"body celestial," according to its original destiny had sin notbefallen. This interpretation is explicitly put forth by Theodoretin his comments on this same passage, (Rom. v. 15-18.) He says,"There must be a correspondence between the disease and theremedy. Adam's sin subjected him to the power of death and thetyranny of the devil. In the same manner that Adam was compelledto descend into the under world, we all are associates in hisfate. Thus, when Christ rose, the whole humankind partook in hisvivification."7 Origen also and who, after the apostlesthemselves, knew their thoughts and their use of language betterthan he? emphatically declares in exposition of the expression ofPaul, "the wages of sin is death" that "the
7 Impatib., dialogue iii. pp. 132, 133, ed. Sirmondi.
under world in which souls are detained is called death."8
"As in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive."These words cannot be explained, "As in Adam the necessity ofphysical death came on all, so in Christ that necessity shall beremoved," because Christ's mission did not touch physical death,which was still reigning as ever, before Paul's eyes. Neither canthe passage signify, "As through Adam wretchedness is the portionof every heart of man, so through Christ blessedness shall begiven to every heart," because, while the language itself does nothint that thought, the context demonstrates that the realreference is not to an inward experience, but to an outwardevent, not to the personal regeneration of the soul, but to ageneral resurrection of the dead. The time referred to is thesecond coming of Christ; and the force of the text must be this:As by our bodily likeness to the first man and genetic connectionwith him through sin we all die like him, that is, leave the bodyand go into the under world, and remain there, so by our spirituallikeness to the second man and redeeming connection with himthrough the free grace of God we shall all rise thence like him,revived and restored. Adam was the head of a condemned race,doomed to Hades by the visible occurrence of death in linealdescent from him; Christ is the head of a pardoned race, destinedfor heaven in consonance with the plain token of his resurrectionand ascension. Again, the apostle writes, "In the twinkling of aneye, at the last trump, the dead shall be raised incorruptible,and we (who are then living) shall be changed; for thiscorruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal immortality.Then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, 'Deathis swallowed up in victory?" O Death, where is thy sting? O Hades,where is thy victory?'" The writer evidently exults in the thoughtthat, at the second coming of Christ, death shall lose itsretributive character and the under world be baffled of itsexpected prisoners, because the living shall instantly experiencethe change of bodies fitting them to ascend to heaven with thereturning and triumphant Lord. Paul also announces that "JesusChrist hath abolished death and hath brought life and immortalityto light." The word "death" here cannot mean physical dissolution,because Christ did not abolish that. It cannot denote personal sinand unhappiness, because that would not correspond with andsustain the obvious meaning of the contrasted member of thesentence. Its adequate and consistent sense is this. God intendedthat man should pass from a preliminary existence on earth to aneternal life in heaven; but sin thwarted this glorious design andaltered our fate to a banishment into the cheerless under world.But now, by the teachings and resurrection of Christ, we areassured that God of his infinite goodness has determined freely toforgive us and restore our original destination. Our descent andabode below are abolished and our heavenly immortality made clear."We earnestly desire to be clothed upon with our house which isfrom heaven, if so be that, being clothed, we shall not be foundnaked. Not that we desire to be unclothed, but clothed upon, thatmortality may be swallowed up of life."
8 Comm. in Epist. ad Rom. lib. vi. cap. 6, sect. 6. Also seeJerome, Comm. in Ecc. iii. 21. Professor Mau, in his able treatise"Von dem Tode dem Solde der Sunden, and der Aufhebung desselbendurch die Auferstehung Christi," cogently argues, against Krabbe,that death as the punishment of sin is not bodily dissolution, butwretchedness and condemnation to the under world, (amandatioOrcum.) In Pelt's Theologische Mitarbeiten, 1838, heft ii. ss.107-108.
In these remarkable words the apostle expresses several particularsof what we have already presented as his general doctrine. Hestates his conviction that, when his "earthly house of thistabernacle" dissolves, there is a "divinely constructed, heavenly,and eternal house" prepared for him. He expresses his desire atthe coming of the Lord not to be dead, but still living, and thento be divested of his earthly body and invested with the heavenlybody, that thus, being fitted for translation to the incorruptiblekingdom of God, he might not be found a naked shadow or ghost inthe under world. Ruckert says, in his commentary, and the bestcritics agree with him, "Paul herein desires to become immortalwithout passing the gates of death." Language similar to theforegoing in its peculiar phrases is found in the Jewish Cabbala.The Zohar describes the ascent of the soul to heaven clothed withsplendor, and afterwards illustrates its meaning in these terms:"As there is given to the soul a garment with which she is clothedin order to establish her in this world, so there is given her agarment of heavenly splendor in order to establish her in thatworld."9 So in the "Ascension of Isaiah the Prophet" an apocryphalbook written by some Jewish Christian as early, without doubt, asthe close of the second century the following passages occur.Speaking of what was revealed to him in heaven, the prophet says,"There I saw all the saints, from Adam, without the clothing ofthe flesh: I viewed them in their heavenly clothing like theangels who stood there in great splendor." Again he says, "All thesaints from heaven in their heavenly clothing shall descend withthe Lord and dwell in this world, while the saints who have notdied shall be clothed like those who come from heaven. Then thegeneral resurrection will take place and they will ascend togetherto heaven."10 Schoettgen, commenting on this text, (2 Cor. v. 2, )likewise quotes a large number of examples of like phraseologyfrom Rabbinical writers. The statements thus far made and proofsoffered will be amply illustrated and confirmed as we go on toconsider the chief component parts of the Pauline scheme of thelast things. For, having presented the general outline, it will beuseful, in treating so complex and difficult a theme, to analyzeit by details.
We are met upon the threshold of our inquiry by the essentialquestion, What, according to Paul, was the mission of Christ? Whatdid he accomplish? A clear reply to this question comprises threedistinct propositions. First, the apostle plainly represents theresurrection, and not the crucifixion, as the efficacious featurein Christ's work of redemption. When we recollect the almostuniversal prevalence of the opposite notion among existing sects,it is astonishing how clear it is that Paul generally dwells uponthe dying of Christ solely as the necessary preliminary to hisrising. "If Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, andyour faith also is vain: ye are yet in your sins." These words areirreconcilable with that doctrine which connects our"justification" with the atoning death, and not with the typicalresurrection, of Christ. "That Christ died for our sins, and thathe was buried, and that he rose again the third day." To place avicarious stress upon the first clause of this text is asarbitrary as it would be to place it upon the second; butnaturally emphasize the third clause,
9 Laurence, Ascensio Isaia Vatis, appendix, p. 168.
10 Laurence, Ascensio Isaia atis, cap. 9, v. 7, 9; cap. 4.
and all is clear. The inferences and exhortations drawn from themission of Christ are not usually connected in any essentialmanner with his painful death, but directly with his gloriousresurrection out from among the dead unto the heavenlyblessedness. "If we have been planted together in the likeness ofhis death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection."Sinking into the water, when "buried by baptism into the death ofChrist," was, to those initiated into the Christian religion, asymbol of the descent of Christ among the dead; rising out of thewater was a symbol of the ascent of Christ into heaven. "If yethen be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above,where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God." When Paul cries,exultingly, "Thanks be to God, who through Christ giveth us thevictory over the sting of death and the strength of sin," Jeromesays, "We cannot and dare not interpret this victory otherwisethan by the resurrection of the Lord."11 Commenting on the text"To this end Christ both died and lived again, that he might reignboth over the dead and the living," Theodoret says that Christ,going through all these events, "promised a resurrection to usall." Paul makes no appeal to us to believe in the death ofChrist, to believe in the atoning sacrifice of Christ, but heunequivocally affirms, "If thou shalt believe in thine heart thatGod hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved." Paulconceived that Christ died in order to rise again and convince menthat the Father would freely deliver them from the bondage ofdeath in the under world. All this took place on account of sin,was only made requisite by sin, one of whose consequences was thesubterranean confinement of the soul, which otherwise, upondeserting its clayey tent, would immediately have been clothedwith a spiritual body and have ascended to heaven. That is to say,Christ "was delivered because of our offences and was raised againbecause of our justification." In Romans viii. 10 the prepositionoccurs twice in exactly the same construction as in the textjust quoted. In the latter case the authors of the common versionhave rendered it "because of." They should have done so in theother instance, in accordance with the natural force andestablished usage of the word in this connection. The meaning is,Our offences had been committed, therefore Christ was deliveredinto Hades; our pardon had been decreed, therefore Christ wasraised into heaven. Such as we have now stated is the realmaterial which has been distorted and exaggerated into theprevalent doctrine of the vicarious atonement, with all its dreadconcomitants.12 The believers of that doctrine suppose themselvesobliged to accept it by the language of the epistles. But the viewabove maintained as that of Paul solves every difficulty and givesan intelligent and consistent meaning to all the phrases usuallythought to legitimate the Calvinistic scheme of redemption. Whilewe deny the correctness of the Calvinistic interpretation of thosepassages in which occur such expressions as "Christ gave himselffor us," "died for our sins," we also affirm the inadequacy
11 Comm. in Osee, lib. iii. cap. 13.
12 Die Lehre von Christi Hollenfahrt nach der Heil. Schrift, deraltesten Kirche, den Christlichen Symbolen, und nach ihrerunendlichen Wichtigkeit und vielumfassenden Bedeutung dargestellt,von Joh. Ludwig Konig. The author presents in this work anirresistible array of citations and authorities. In an appendix hegives a list of a hundred authors on the theme of Christ's descentinto hell.
of the explanations of them proposed by Unitarians, and assertthat their genuine force is this. Christ died and rose that wemight be freed through faith from the great entailed consequenceof sin, the bondage of the under world; beholding, through hisascension, our heavenly destination restored. "God made him, whoknew no sin, to be sin on our account, that we might become therighteousness of God in him," might through faith in him beassured of salvation. In other words, Christ, who was not exposedto the evils brought on men by sin, did not think his divineestate a thing eagerly to be retained, but descended to the estateof man, underwent the penalties of sin as if he were himself asinner, and then rose to the right hand of God, by this token toassure men of God's gracious determination to forgive them andreinstate them in their forfeited primal privileges. "If we bereconciled by his death, much more shall we be saved by his life."That is, if Christ's coming from heaven as an ambassador from Godto die convinces us of God's pardoning good will towards us, muchmore does his rising again into heaven, where he now lives,deliver us from the fear of the under world condemnation andassure us of the heavenly salvation. Except in the light and withthe aid of the theory we have been urging, a large number of textslike the foregoing cannot, as we think, be interpreted withoutconstructive violence, and even with that violence cannot conveytheir full point and power.
Secondly, in Paul's doctrine of the redeeming work of Christ werecognise something distinct from any subjective effect inanimating and purifying the hearts and lives of men. "Christ hathredeemed us from the curse of the law." "In Christ we haveredemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins."Nothing but the most desperate exegesis can make these and manysimilar texts signify simply the purging of individual breastsfrom their offences and guilt. Seeking the genuine meaning ofPaul, we are forced to agree with the overwhelming majority of thecritics and believers of all Christendom, from the very times ofthe apostles till now, and declare that these passages refer to anoutward deliverance of men by Christ, the removal by him of acommon doom resting on the race in consequence of sin. What Paulsupposed that doom was, and how he thought it was removed, let ustry to see. It is necessary to premise that in Paul's writings thephrase "the righteousness of God" is often used by metonymy tomean God's mode of accounting sinners righteous, and is equivalentto "the Christian method of salvation." "By the deeds of the lawno flesh shall be justified; but the righteousness of God withoutthe law is manifested, freely justifying them through theredemption that is in Christ." How evidently in this verse "therighteousness of God" denotes God's method of justifying theguilty by a free pardon proclaimed through Christ! The apostleemploys the word "faith" in a kindred technical manner, sometimesmeaning by it "promise," sometimes the whole evangelic apparatusused to establish faith or prove the realization of the promise."What if some did not believe? Shall their unbelief make the faithof God without effect?" Evidently by "faith" is intended "promise"or "purpose." "Is the law against the promises of God? God forbid!But before faith came we were kept under the law, shut up unto thefaith which should afterwards be revealed." Here "faith" plainlymeans the object of faith, the manifested fulfilment of thepromises: it means the gospel. Again, "Whereof he hath offeredfaith to all, in that he hath raised him from the dead." "Hathoffered faith" here signifies, unquestionably, as the commonversion well expresses it, "hath given assurance," or hathexemplified the proof. "Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster tobring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith. Butafter that faith is come, we are no longer under a schoolmaster."In this instance "faith" certainly means Christianity, incontradistinction to Judaism, and "justification by faith" isequivalent to "salvation by the grace of God, shown through themission of Christ." It is not so much internal and individual inits reference as it is public and general. We believe that no man,sacredly resolved to admit the truth, can study with a purposedreference to this point all the passages in Paul's epistles wherethe word "faith" occurs, without being convinced that for the mostpart it is used in an objective sense, in contradistinction to thelaw, as synonymous with the gospel, the new dispensation of grace.Therefore "justification by faith" does not usually mean salvationthrough personal belief, either in the merits of the Redeemer orin any thing else, but it means salvation by the plan revealed inthe gospel, the free remission of sins by the forbearance of God.In those instances where "faith" is used in a subjective sense forpersonal belief, it is never described as the effectual cause ofsalvation, but as the condition of personal assurance ofsalvation. Grace has outwardly come to all; but only the believersinwardly know it. This Pauline use of terms in technical senseslies broadly on the face of the Epistles to the Romans and theGalatians. New Testament lexicons and commentaries, by the bestscholars of every denomination, acknowledge it and illustrate it.Mark now these texts. "And by him all that believe are justifiedfrom all things from which ye could not be justified by the law ofMoses." "To declare his righteousness, that he might be just andthe justifier of him that believeth in Jesus." "What things weregain to me [under Judaism] I counted loss in comparison withChrist, that I may be found in him, not having mine ownrighteousness, which is of the law, but the righteousness which isof God through faith in Christ." "By the deeds of the law no mancan be justified," "but ye are saved through faith." We submitthat these passages, and many others in the epistles, find aperfect explanation in the following outline of faith, commencedin the mind of Paul while he was a Pharisee, completed when he wasa Christian. The righteousness of the law, the method of salvationby keeping the law, is impossible. The sin of the first man brokethat whole plan and doomed all souls helplessly to the underworld. If a man now should keep every tittle of the law withoutreservation, it would not release him from the bondage below andsecure for him an ascent to heaven. But what the law could not dois done for us in Christ. Sin having destroyed the righteousnessof the law, that is, the fatal penalty of Hades having renderedsalvation by the law impossible, the righteousness of God, thatis, a new method of salvation, has been brought to light. God hassent his Son to die, descend into the under world, rise again, andreturn to heaven, to proclaim to men the glorious tidings ofjustification by faith, that is, a dispensation of grace freelyannulling the great consequence of sin and inviting them to heavenin the Redeemer's footsteps. Paul unequivocally declares thatChrist broke up the bondage of the under world by his irresistibleentrance and exit, in the following text: "When he had descendedfirst into the lower parts of the earth, he ascended up on high,leading a multitude of captives." What can be plainer than that?The same thought is also contained in another passage, a passagewhich was the source of those tremendous pictures so frequent inthe cathedrals of the Middle Age, Christus spoliat Infernum: "Godhath forgiven you all trespasses, blotting out the handwriting ofordinances that was against us, and took it away, nailing it toChrist's cross; and, having spoiled principalities and powers, hemade a show of them, openly triumphing over them in Christ." Theentire theory which underlies the exposition we have just setforth is stated in so many words in the passage we next cite. Forthe word "righteousness" in order to make the meaning moreperspicuous we simply substitute "method of salvation," which isunquestionably its signification here. "They [the Jews] beingignorant of God's method of salvation, and going about toestablish their own method, have not submitted themselves untoGod's. For Christ is the end of the law for a way of salvation toevery one that believeth. For Moses describeth the method ofsalvation which is of the law, that the man who doeth these thingsshall be blessed in them. But the method of salvation which is offaith ["faith" here means the gospel, Christianity] speaketh onthis wise: Say not in thy heart, 'Who shall ascend into heaven?'that is, to bring Christ down; or, 'Who shall descend into theunder world?' that is, to bring up Christ again from among thedead." This has been done already, once for all. "And if thoushalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from thedead, thou shalt be saved." The apostle avows that his "heart'sdesire and his prayer unto God for Israel is, that they may besaved;" and he asserts that they cannot be saved by the law ofMoses, but only by the gospel of Christ; that is, "faith;" thatis, "the dispensation of grace."
Paul's conception of the foremost feature in Christ's mission isprecisely this. He came to deliver men from the stern law ofJudaism, which could not wipe away their transgressions nor savethem from Hades, and to establish them in the free grace ofChristianity, which justifies them from all past sin and sealsthem for heaven. What could be a more explicit declaration of thisthan the following? "When the fulness of the time was come, Godsent forth his Son to redeem them that were under the law." Hereinis the explanation of that perilous combat which Paul waged somany years, and in which he proved victorious, the great battlebetween the Gentile Christians and the Judaizing Christians; asubject of altogether singular importance, without a minuteacquaintance with which a large part of the New Testament cannotbe understood. "Christ gave himself for our sins, that he mightdeliver us from this present evil world, according to the will ofGod." Now, the Hebrew terms corresponding with the English terms"present world" and "future world" were used by the Jews to denotethe Mosaic and the Messianic dispensations. We believe withSchoettgen and other good authorities that such is the sense ofthe phrase "present world" in the instance before us. Not only isthat interpretation sustained by the usus loquendi, it is also theonly defensible meaning; for the effect of the establishment ofthe gospel was not to deliver men from the present world, thoughit did deliver them from the hopeless bondage of Judaism, whereinsalvation was by Christians considered impossible. And that isprecisely the argument of the Epistle to the Galatians, in whichthe text occurs. In a succeeding chapter, while speaking expresslyof the external forms of the Jewish law, Paul says, "By the crossof Christ the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world;"and he instantly adds, by way of explanation, "for in Christ Jesusneither circumcision availeth any thing, nor uncircumcision."Undeniably, "world" here means "Judaism;" as Rosenmuller phrasesit, Judaica vanitas. In another epistle, while expostulating withhis readers on the folly of subjecting themselves to observances"in meat and drink, and new moons and sabbaths," after "thehandwriting of ordinances that was against them had been blottedout, taken away, nailed to the cross," Paul remonstrates with themin these words: "Wherefore, if ye be dead with Christ from therudiments of the world, why, as though living in the world, are yesubject to ordinances?" We should suppose that no intelligentperson could question that this means, "Now that by the gospel ofChrist ye are emancipated from the technical requisitions ofJudaism, why are ye subject to its ordinances, as if ye were stillliving under its rule?" as many of the best commentators agree insaying, "tanquam viventes adhuc in Judaismo." From thesecollective passages, and from others like them, we draw theconclusion, in Paul's own words, that, "When we were children, wewere in bondage under the rudiments of the world," "the weak andbeggarly elements" of Judaism; but, now that "the fulness of thetime has come, and God has sent forth his Son to redeem us," weare called "to receive the adoption of sons" and "become heirs ofGod," inheritors of a heavenly destiny.
We think that the intelligent and candid reader, who is familiarwith Paul's epistles, will recognise the following features in hisbelief and teaching. First, all mankind alike were under sin andcondemnation. "Jews and Gentiles all are under sin." "All theworld is subject to the sentence of God." And we maintain thatthat condemning sentence consisted, partly at least, in thebanishment of their disembodied souls to Hades. Secondly, "apromise was given to Abraham," before the introduction of theMosaic dispensation, "that in his seed [that is, in Christ] allthe nations of the earth should be blessed." When Paul speaks, ashe does in numerous instances, of "the hope of eternal life whichGod, who cannot lie, promised before the world began," "thepromise given before the foundation of the world," "the promisemade of God unto the fathers, that God would raise the dead," thedate referred to is not when the decree was formed in the eternalcounsels of God, previous to the origin of the earth, but when thecovenant was made with Abraham, before the establishment of theJewish dispensation. The thing promised plainly was, according toPaul's idea, a redemption from Hades and an ascension to heaven;for this is fully implied in his "expectation of the resurrectionof the dead" from the intermediate state, and their being "clothedin celestial bodies." This promise made unto Abraham by God, to befulfilled by Christ, "the law, which was four hundred and thirtyyears afterwards, could not disannul." That is, as any one may seeby the context, the law could not secure the inheritance of thething promised, but was only a temporary arrangement on account oftransgressions, "until the seed should come to whom the promisewas made." In other words, there was "no mode of salvation by thelaw;" "the law could not give life;" for if it could it would have"superseded the promise," made it without effect, whereas theinviolable promise of God was, that in the one seed of Abrahamthat is, in Christ alone should salvation be preached to all thatbelieved. "For if they which are of the law be heirs, faith ismade useless, and the promise is made useless." In the mean time,until Christ be come, all are shut up under sin. Thirdly, thespecial "advantage of the Jews was, that unto them this promise ofGod was committed," as the chosen covenant people.
The Gentiles, groaning under the universal sentence of sin,were ignorant of the sure promise of a common salvation yetto be brought. While the Jews indulged in glowing and exclusiveexpectations of the Messiah who was gloriously to redeem them, theGentiles were "aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, strangersfrom the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God inthe world." Fourthly, in the fulness of time long after "theScripture, foreseeing that God would justify the heathen, hadpreached the gospel beforehand unto Abraham, saying, In thy seedshall all nations be blessed" "Christ redeemed us from the curseof the law, being made a curse for us, that the blessing promisedto Abraham might come upon the Gentiles." It was the precisemission of Christ to realize and exemplify and publish to thewhole world the fulfilment of that promise. The promise itselfwas, that men should be released from the under world through theimputation of righteousness by grace that is, through freeforgiveness and rise to heaven as accredited sons and heirs ofGod. This aim and purpose of Christ's coming were effected in hisresurrection. But how did the Gentiles enter into belief andparticipation of the glad tidings? Thus, according to Paul: Thedeath, descent, resurrection, and ascent of Jesus, and hisresidence in heaven in a spiritual form, divested him of hisnationality.13 He was "then to be known no more after the flesh."He was no longer an earthly Jew, addressing Jews, but a heavenlyspirit and son of God, a glorified likeness of the spirits of allwho were adopted as sons of God, appealing to them all as jointheirs with himself of heaven. He has risen into universality, andis accessible to the soul of every one that believeth. "In himthere is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision,barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free." The experience resulting in aheart raised into fellowship with him in heaven is the inward sealassuring us that our faith is not vain. "Ye Gentiles, who formerlywere afar off, are now made nigh by the blood of Christ; for hehath broken down the middle wall of partition between Jews andGentiles, having abolished in his flesh the enmity, namely, thelaw of commandments in ordinances, in order to make in himself oftwain one new man. For through him we both have access by onespirit unto the Father. Now, therefore, ye are no more strangersand foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and of thehousehold of God." Circumcision was of the flesh; and the vainhope of salvation by it was confined to the Jews. Grace was of thespirit; and the revealed assurance of salvation by it was given tothe Gentiles too, when Christ died to the nationalizing flesh,rose in the universalizing spirit, and from heaven impartiallyexhibited himself, through the preaching of the gospel, to theappropriating faith of all.
The foregoing positions might be further substantiated by applyingthe general theory they contain to the explication of scores ofindividual texts which it fits and unfolds, and which, we think,cannot upon any other view be interpreted without forcedconstructions unwarranted by a thorough acquaintance with the mindof Paul and with the mind of his age. But we must be content withone or two such applications as specimens. The word "mystery"often occurs in the letters of Paul. Its current meaning in histime was "something concealed," something into which one must beinitiated in order to understand it.
13 Martineau, Liverpool Controversy: Inconsistency of the Schemeof Vicarious Redemption.
The Eleusinian Mysteries, for instance, were not necessarily any thingintrinsically dark and hard to be comprehended, but things hiddenfrom public gaze and only to be known by initiation into them.Paul uses the term in a similar way to denote the peculiar schemeof grace, which "had been kept secret from the beginning of theworld," "hidden from ages and generations, but now made manifest."No one denies that Paul means by "this mystery" the very heart andessence of the gospel, precisely that which distinguishes it fromthe law and makes it a universal method of salvation, a wondroussystem of grace. So much is irresistibly evident from the way andthe connection in which he uses the term. He writes thus inexplanation of the great mystery as it was dramatically revealedthrough Christ: "Who was manifested in the flesh, [i. e. seen inthe body during his life on earth,] justified in the spirit,[i. e. freed after death from the necessity of imprisonment inHades,] seen of angels, [i. e. in their fellowship after hisresurrection,] preached unto the Gentiles, [i. e. after the giftof tongues on Pentecost day,] believed on in the world, [i. e. hisgospel widely accepted through the labors of his disciples,]received up into glory, [i. e. taken into heaven to the presenceof God.]" "The revelation of the mystery" means, then, the visibleenactment and exhibition, through the resurrection of Christ, ofGod's free forgiveness of men, redeeming them from the Hadeangloom to the heavenly glory. The word "glory" in the New Testamentconfessedly often signifies the illumination of heaven, thedefined abode of God and his angels. Robinson collects, in hisLexicon, numerous examples wherein he says it means "that statewhich is the portion of those who dwell with God in heaven." Now,Paul repeatedly speaks of the calling of believers to glory as oneof the chief blessings and new prerogatives of the gospel. "Beingjustified by faith, we rejoice in hope of the glory of God." "Walkworthy of God, who hath called you unto his glory." "We speakwisdom to the initiates, the hidden wisdom of God in a mystery,which before the world [the Jewish dispensation] God ordained forour glory." "Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God:behold, I show you a mystery: we shall all be changed in a moment,and put on immortality." In the first chapter of the letter to theColossians, Paul speaks of "the hope which is laid up for you inheaven, whereof ye have heard in the gospel;" also of "theinheritance of the saints in light:" then he says, "God would nowmake known among the Gentiles the mystery, which is, Christ amongyou, the hope of glory." In the light of what has gone before, howsignificant and how clear is this declaration! "All have sinned,and failed to attain unto the glory of God; but now, through thefaith of Jesus Christ, [through the dispensation brought to lightby Christ,] the righteousness of God [God's method of salvation]is unto all that believe." That is, by the law all were shut up inHades, but by grace they are now ransomed and to be received toheaven. The same thought or scheme is contained in that remarkablepassage in the Epistle to the Galatians where Paul says the freeIsaac and the bond woman Hagar were an allegory, teaching thatthere were two covenants, one by Abraham, the other by Moses. TheMosaic covenant of the law "answers to the Jerusalem which is onearth, and is in bondage with her children," and belongs only tothe Jews. The Abrahamic covenant of promise answers to "theJerusalem which is above, and is free, and is the mother of usall." In the former, we were "begotten unto bondage." In thelatter, "Christ hath made us free."
We will notice but one more text in passing: it is, of all theproof texts of the doctrine of a substitutional expiation, the onewhich has ever been regarded as the very Achilles. And yet it canbe made to support that doctrine only by the aid of arbitraryassumptions and mistranslations, while by its very terms itperfectly coincides with nay, expressly declares the theory whichwe have been advocating as the genuine interpretation of Paul. Theusual commentators, in their treatment of this passage, haveexhibited a long continued series of perversions and sophisms,affording a strong example of unconscious prejudice. The correctGreek reading of the text is justly rendered thus: "Whom God setforth, a mercy seat through the faith in his blood, to exhibit hisrighteousness through the remission of former sins by theforbearance of God." For rendering [non-ASCII characters]"mercy seat," the usus loquendi and the internal harmony of meaningare in our favor, and also the weight of many orthodox authorities,such as Theodoret, Origen, Theophylact, OEcumenius, Erasmus, Luther,and from Pelagius to Bushnell. Still, we are willing to admit therendering of it by "sin offering." That makes no importantdifference in the result. Christ was a sin offering, in theconception of Paul, in this sense: that when he was not himselfsubject to death, which was the penalty of sin, he yet died inorder to show God's purpose of removing that penalty of sinthrough his resurrection. For rendering [non-ASCII characters]"through," no defence is needed: the only wonder is, how it evercould have been here translated "for." Now, let two or three factsbe noticed.
First, the New Testament phrase "the faith of Christ," "the faith ofJesus," is very unfairly and unwarrantably made to mean aninternal affection towards Christ, a belief of men in him. Itsgenuine meaning is the same as "the gospel of Christ," or thereligion of Christ, the system of grace which he brought.14 Whocan doubt that such is the meaning of the word in these instances?"Contend for the faith once delivered to the saints;" "Greet themthat love us in the faith;" "Have not the faith of our Lord JesusChrist with respect of persons." So, in the text now under ournotice, "the faith which is in his blood" means the dispensationof pardon and justification, the system of faith, which wasconfirmed and exemplified to us in his death and resurrection.Secondly, "the righteousness of God," which is here said to be"pointed out" by Christ's death, denotes simply, in ProfessorStuart's words, "God's pardoning mercy," or "acquittal," or"gratuitous justification," "in which sense," he says truly, "itis almost always used in Paul's epistles."15 It signifies neithermore nor less than God's method of salvation by freely forgivingsins and treating the sinner as if he were righteous, the methodof salvation now carried into effect and revealed in the gospelbrought by Christ, and dramatically enacted in his passion andascension. Furthermore, we ask attention to the fact that theordinary interpreter, hard pressed by his unscriptural creed,interpolates a disjunctive conjunction in the opposing teeth ofPaul's plain statement. Paul says, as the common version has it,God is "just, and [i. e. even] the justifier." The creed boundcommentators read it,
14 Robinson has gathered a great number of instances in hisLexicon, under the word "Faith," wherein it can only mean, as hesays, "the system of Christian doctrines, the gospel."
15 Stuart's Romans i. 17, iii. 25, 26, &c.
"just and yet the justifier." We will now present the true meaningof the whole passage, in our view of it, according to Paul's ownuse of language. To establish a conviction of the correctness ofthe exposition, we only ask the ingenuous reader carefully tostudy the clauses of the Greek text and recollect the foregoingdata. "God has set Christ forth, to be to us a sure sign that wehave been forgiven and redeemed through the faith that was provedby his triumphant return from death, the dispensation of graceinaugurated by him. Herein God has exhibited his method of savingsinners, which is by the free remission of their sins through hiskindness. Thus God is proved to be disposed to save, and to besaving, by the system of grace shown through Jesus, him thatbelieveth." In consequence of sin, men were under sentence ofcondemnation to the under world. In the fulness of time Godfulfilled his ancient promise to Abraham. He freely justifiedmen, that is, forgave them, redeemed them from their doom, andwould soon open the sky for their abode with him. This scheme ofredemption was carried out by Christ. That is to say, Godproclaimed it to men, and asked their belief in it, by "settingforth Christ" to die, descend among the dead, rise thence, andascend into heaven, as an exemplifying certification of the truthof the glad tidings.
Thirdly, Paul teaches that one aim of Christ's mission was topurify, animate, and exalt the moral characters of men, andrectify their conduct, to produce a subjective sanctification inthem, and so prepare them for judgment and fit them for heaven.The establishment of this proposition will conclude the presentpart of our subject. He writes, "Our Saviour, Jesus Christ, gavehimself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity andpurify unto himself a peculiar people zealous of good works." "Letevery one that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity." Invarious ways he often represents the fact that believers have beensaved by grace through Christ as the very reason, the intensifiedmotive, why they should scrupulously keep every tittle of themoral law and abstain even from the appearance of evil, walkingworthy of their high vocation. "The grace of God that bringethsalvation to all men hath appeared, teaching us that, denying allungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly,righteously, and godly in this present world." Bad men, "that obeynot the gospel of Christ," such characters as "thieves,extortioners, drunkards, adulterers, shall not inherit the kingdomof God." He proclaims, in unmistakable terms, "God will render toevery man according to his deeds, wrath and tribulation to theevil doer, honor and peace to the well doer, whether Jew orGentile." The conclusion to be drawn from these and other likedeclarations is unavoidable. It is that "every one, Jew andGentile, shall stand before the judgment seat of Christ andreceive according to the deeds done in the body; for there is norespect of persons." And one part of Christ's mission was to exerta hallowing moral influence on men, to make them righteous, thatthey might pass the bar with acquittal. But the reader whorecollects the class of texts adduced a little while since willremember that an opposite conclusion was as unequivocally drawnfrom them. Then Paul said, "By faith ye are justified, without thedeeds of the law." Now he says, "For not the hearers of the laware just before God, but the doers of the law shall be justifiedin the day when God shall judge the secrets of men by JesusChrist." Is there a contradiction, then, in Paul? Only inappearance. Let us distinguish and explain. In the two quotationsabove, the apostle is referring to two different things.
First, he would say, By the faith of Christ, the free grace of Goddeclared in the gospel of Christ, ye are justified, gratuitouslydelivered from that necessity of imprisonment in Hades which isthe penalty of sin doomed upon the whole race from Adam, and fromwhich no amount of personal virtue could avail to save men.Secondly, when he exclaims, "Know ye not that the unrighteousshall not inherit the kingdom of God?" his thought is of aspiritual qualification of character, indispensable for positiveadmission among the blest in heaven. That is to say, the impartialpenalty of primeval sin consigned all men to Hades. They could notby their own efforts escape thence and win heaven. That fatedinability God has removed, and through Christ revealed itsremoval; but, that one should actually obtain the offered andpossible prize of heaven, personal purity, faith, obedience,holiness, are necessary. In Paul's conception of the scheme ofChristian salvation, then, there were two distinct parts: one,what God had done for all; the other, what each man was to do forhimself. And the two great classes of seemingly hostile textsfilling his epistles, which have puzzled so many readers, becomeclear and harmonious when we perceive and remember that by"righteousness" and its kindred terms he sometimes means theexternal and fulfilled method of redeeming men from thetransmitted necessity of bondage in the under world, and sometimesmeans the internal and contingent qualifications for actuallyrealizing that redemption. In the former instance he refers to theobjective mode of salvation and the revelation of it in Christ. Inthe latter, he refers to the subjective fitness for that salvationand the certitude of it in the believer. So, too, the words"death" and "life," in Paul's writings, are generally charged, bya constructio proegnans, with a double sense, one spiritual,individual, contingent, the other mechanical, common, absolute.Death, in its full Pauline force, includes inward guilt,condemnation, and misery, and outward descent into the underworld. Life, in its full Pauline force, includes inward rectitude,peace, and joy, and outward ascent into the upper world. Holinessis necessary, "for without it no one can see the Lord;" yet byitself it can secure only inward life: it is ineffectual to winheaven. Grace by itself merely exempts from the fatality of thecondemnation to Hades: it offers eternal life in heaven only uponcondition of "patient continuance in well doing" by "faith,obedience to the truth, and sanctification of the spirit." ButGod's free grace and man's diligent fidelity, combined, give thefull fruition of blessedness in the heart and of glory andimmortality in the sky.
Such, as we have set forth in the foregoing three divisions, wasPaul's view of the mission of Christ and of the method ofsalvation. It has been for centuries perverted and mutilated. Thetoil now is by unprejudiced inspection to bring it forward in itsgenuine completeness, as it stood in Paul's own mind and in theminds of his contemporaries. The essential view, epitomized in asingle sentence, is this. The independent grace of God hasinterfered, first, to save man from Hades, and secondly, to enablehim, by the co operation of his own virtue, to get to heaven. Hereare two separate means conjoined to effect the end, salvation.Now, compare, in the light of this statement, the three greattheological theories of Christendom. The UNITARIAN, overlookingthe objective justification, or offered redemption from the deathrealm to the sky home, which whether it be a truth or an error issurely in the epistles, makes the subjective sanctification all inall. The CALVINIST, in his theory, comparatively scorns thesubjective sanctification, which Paul insists on as a necessityfor entering the kingdom of God, and, having perverted theobjective justification from its real historic meaning,exaggerates it into the all in all. The ROMAN CATHOLIC holds thatChrist simply removed the load of original sin and its entaileddoom, and left each person to stand or fall by his own merits, inthe helping communion of the Church. He also maintains that a partof Christ's office was to exert an influence for the moralimprovement and consecration of human character. His error, as aninterpreter of Paul's thought, is, that he, like the Calvinist,attributes to Christ's death a vicarious efficacy by suffering thepangs of mankind's guilt to buy their ransom from the inexorablejustice of God; whereas the apostle really represents Christ'sredeeming mission as consisting simply in a dramaticexemplification of the Father's spontaneous love and purpose topardon past offences, unbolt the gates of Hades, and receive theworthy to heaven. Moreover, while Paul describes the heavenlysalvation as an undeserved gift from the grace of God, theCatholic often seems to make it a prize to be earned, under theChristian dispensation, by good works which may fairly challengethat reward. However, we have little doubt that this apparentopposition is rather in the practical mode of exhortation than inany interior difference of dogma; for Paul himself makes personalsalvation hinge on personal conditions, the province of gracebeing seen in the new extension to man of the opportunity andinvitation to secure his own acceptance. And so the Roman Catholicexposition of Paul's doctrine is much more nearly correct than anyother interpretation now prevalent. We should expect, a priori,that it would be, since that Church, containing two thirds ofChristendom, is the most intimately connected, by its scholars,members, and traditions, with the apostolic age.
A prominent feature in the belief of Paul, and one deservingdistinct notice as necessarily involving a considerable part ofthe theory which we have attributed to him, is the suppositionthat Christ was the first person, clothed with humanity andexperiencing death, admitted into heaven. Of all the hosts who hadlived and died, every soul had gone down into the dusky underworld. There they all were held in durance, waiting for the GreatDeliverer. In the splendors of the realm over the sky, God and hisangels dwelt alone. That we do not err in ascribing this belief toPaul we might summon the whole body of the Fathers to testify inalmost unbroken phalanx, from Polycarp to St. Bernard. The Roman,Greek, and English Churches still maintain the same dogma. But theapostle's own plain words will be sufficient for our purpose."That Christ should suffer, and that he should be the first thatshould rise from among the dead." "Now is Christ risen from amongthe dead and become the first fruits of them that slept." "He isthe beginning, the first born from among the dead, that among allhe might have the pre eminence." "God raised Christ from among thedead, and set him at his own right hand16 in the heavenly places,far above every principality, and power, and might, and dominion."The last words refer to different orders of spirits, supposed
16 Griesbach argues at length, and shows unanswerably, that thispassage cannot bear a moral interpretation, but necessarily has aphysical and local sense. Griesbachii Opuscula Academica, ed.Gabler, vol. ii. pp. 145-149.
by the Jews to people the aerial region below the heaven of God."God hath" (already in our anticipating faith) "raised us uptogether with Christ and made us sit in heavenly places with him."These testimonies are enough to show that Paul believed Jesus tohave been raised up to the abode of God, the first man everexalted thither, and that this was done as a pledge andillustration of the same exaltation awaiting those who believe."If we be dead with Christ, we believe we shall also live withhim." And the apostle teaches that we are not only connected withChrist's resurrection by the outward order and sequence of events,but also by an inward gift of the spirit. He says that to everyobedient believer is given an experimental "knowledge of the powerof the resurrection of Christ," which is the seal of God withinhim, the pledge of his own celestial destination. "After that yebelieved, ye were sealed with that holy spirit of promise which isthe earnest of our inheritance until the redemption of thepurchased possession." The office of this gift of the spirit is toawaken in the believing Christian a vivid realization of thethings in store for him, and a perfect conviction that he shallyet possess them in the unclouded presence of God, beyond thecanopy of azure and the stars. "Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard,nor the heart of man conceived, the things which God hath preparedfor them that love him. But he hath revealed them unto us; for wehave received his spirit, that we might know them." "The spiritbeareth witness with our spirit that we are children and heirs ofGod, even joint heirs with Christ, that we may be glorified [i. e.advanced into heaven] with him."
We will leave this topic with a brief paraphrase of the celebratedpassage in the eighth chapter of the Epistle to the Romans. "Notonly do the generality of mankind groan in pain in this decayingstate, under the bondage of perishable elements, travailing foremancipation from the flesh into the liberty of the heavenly gloryappointed for the sons and heirs of God, but even we, who have thefirst fruits of the spirit, [i. e. the assurance springing fromthe resurrection of Christ,] we too wait, painfully longing forthe adoption, that is, our redemption from the body." By longingfor the adoption, or filiation, is meant impatient desire to bereceived into heaven as children to the enjoyment of theprivileges of their Father's house. "God predetermined that thosecalled should be conformed to the image of his Son, [i. e. shouldpass through the same course with Christ and reach the heavenlygoal,] that he might be the first born among many brethren." Tothe securing of this end, "whom he called, them he also justified,[i. e. ransomed from Hades;17] and whom he justified, them he alsoglorified," (i. e. advanced to the glory of heaven.) It is evidentthat Paul looked for the speedy second coming of the Lord in theclouds of heaven, with angels and power and glory. He expectedthat at that time all enemies would be overthrown and punished,the dead would be raised, the living would be changed, and allthat were Christ's would be translated to heaven.18 "The LordJesus shall be revealed from
17 That "justify" often means, in Paul's usage, to absolve fromHades, we have concluded from a direct study of his doctrines andlanguage. We find that Bretschneider gives it the same definitionin his Lexicon of the New Testament. See [non ASCII characters]
18 "Every one shall rise in his own division" of the great army ofthe dead, "Christ, the first fruits; afterwards, they that areChrist's, at his coming."
heaven, with his mighty angels, in flaming fire, taking vengeanceon them that know not God and obey not the gospel of Christ." "Weshall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, atthe last trump." "We who are alive and remain until the coming ofthe Lord shall not anticipate those that are asleep. For the Lordhimself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice ofthe archangel, and with the trump of God;19 and the dead in Christshall rise first. Then we who are alive and remain shall be caughtup with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air; and so weshall always be with the Lord. Brethren, you need not that Ishould specify the time to you; for yourselves are perfectly awarethat the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night." "Thetime is short." "I pray God your whole spirit, soul, and body bepreserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ." "Athis appearing he shall judge the living and the dead." "The Lordis at hand." The author of these sentences undeniably looked forthe great advent soon. Than Paul, indeed, no one more earnestlybelieved (or did more to strengthen in others that belief) in thatspeedy return of Christ, the anticipation of which thrilled allearly Christendom with hope and dread, and kept the disciples dayand night on the stretch and start of expectation to hear theawful blast of the judgment trump and to see the glorious visionof the Son of God descending amidst a convoy of angels. Whatsublime emotions must have rushed through the apostle's soul whenhe thought that he, as a survivor of death's reign on earth, mightbehold the resurrection without himself entering the grave! Upon atime when he should be perchance at home, or at Damascus, or, itmight be, at Jerusalem, the sun would become as blood, the moon assackcloth of hair, the last trump would swell the sky, and,
"Lo! the nations of the dead, Which do outnumber all earth'sraces, rise, And high in sumless myriads overhead Sweep past himin a cloud, as 'twere the skirts Of the Eternal passing by."
The resurrection which Paul thought would attend the second comingof Christ was the rising of the summoned spirits of the deceasedfrom their rest in the under world. Most certainly it was not therestoration of their decomposed bodies from their graves, althoughthat incredible surmise has been generally entertained. He says,while answering the question, How are the dead raised up, and withwhat body do they come? "That which thou sowest, thou sowest notthat body which shall be, but naked grain: God giveth it a body asit hath pleased him." The comparison is, that so the naked soul issown in the under world, and God, when he raiseth it, giveth it afitting body. He does not hesitate to call the man "a fool" whoexpects the restoration of the same body that was buried. Hiswhole argument is explicitly against that idea. "There are bodiescelestial, as well as bodies terrestrial: the first man was
19 Rabbi Akiba says, in the Talmud, "God shall take and blow atrumpet a thousand godlike yards in length, whose echo shall soundfrom end to end of the world. At the first blast the earth shalltremble. At the second, the dust shall part. At the third, thebones shall come together. At the fourth, the members shall growwarm. At the fifth, they shall be crowned with the head. At thesixth, the soul shall re enter the body. And at the seventh, theyshall stand erect." Corrodi, Geschichte des Chiliasmus, band i. s.355.
of the earth, earthy; the second man was the Lord from heaven; andas we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear theimage of the heavenly; for flesh and blood cannot inherit thekingdom of God." In view of these declarations, it is astonishingthat any one can suppose that Paul believed in the resurrection ofthese present bodies and in their transference into heaven. "Inthis tabernacle we groan, being burdened," and, "Who shall deliverme from this body of death?" he cries. If ever there was a manwhose goading experience, keen intellectual energies, and moralsensibilities, made him weary of this slow, gross body, andpassionately to long for a more corresponding, swift, and pureinvestiture, it was Paul. And in his theory of "the glorious bodyof Christ, according to which our vile body shall be changed," herelieved his impatience and fed his desire. What his conception ofthat body was, definitely, we cannot tell; but doubtless it wasthe idea of a vehicle adapted to his mounting and ardent soul, andin many particulars very unlike this present groaning load ofclay. The epistles of Paul contain no clear implication of thenotion of a millennium, a thousand years' reign of Christ with hissaints on the earth after his second advent. On the contrary, inmany places, particularly in the fourth chapter of the FirstEpistle to the Thessalonians, (supposing that letter to be his,)he says that the Lord and they that are his will directly passinto heaven after the consummation of his descent from heaven andtheir resurrection from the dead. But the declaration "He mustreign till he hath put all enemies under his feet," taken with itscontext, is thought, by Bertholdt, Billroth, De Wette, and others,to imply that Christ would establish a millennial kingdom onearth, and reign in it engaged in vanquishing all hostile forces.Against this exegesis we have to say, first, that, so far as thatgoes, the vast preponderance of critical authorities is opposed toit. Secondly, if this conquest were to be secured on earth, thereis nothing to show that it need occupy much time: one hour mightanswer for it as well as a thousand years. There is nothing hereto show that Paul means just what the Rabbins taught. Thirdly,even if Paul supposed a considerable period must elapse before"all enemies" would be subdued, during which period Christ mustreign, it does not follow that he believed that reign would be onearth: it might be in heaven. The "enemies" referred to are, inpart at least, the wicked spirits occupying the regions of theupper air; for he specifies these "principalities, authorities,and powers."20 And the author of the Epistle to the Hebrewsrepresents God as saying to Jesus, "Sit thou on my right hand,until I make thine enemies thy footstool." Fourthly, it seemscertain that, if in the apostle's thought a thousand years wereinterpolated between Christ's second coming and the delivering ofhis mediatorial sceptre to God, he would have said so, at leastsomewhere in his writings. He would naturally have dwelt upon it alittle, as the Chiliasts did so much. Instead of that, herepeatedly contradicts it. Upon the whole, then, with Ruckert, wecannot
20 The apocryphal "Ascension of Isaiah," already spoken of, givesa detailed description of the upper air as occupied by Satan andhis angels, among whom fighting and evil deeds rage; but Christ inhis ascent conquers and spoils them all, and shows himself avictor ever brightening as he rises successively through the wholeseven heavens to the feet of God. Ascensio Vatis Isaia, cap. vi x.
see any reason for not supposing that, according to Paul, "theend" was immediately to succeed "the coming," as [non-ASCIIcharacters] would properly indicate.
The doctrine of a long earthly reign of Christ is not deducedfrom this passage, by candid interpretation, because it must bethere, but foisted into it, by Rabbinical information, becauseit may be there.
Paul distinctly teaches that the believers who died before thesecond coming of the Savior would remain in the under world untilthat event, when they and the transformed living should ascend"together with the Lord." All the relevant expressions in hisepistles, save two, are obviously in harmony with this conceptionof a temporary subterranean sojourn, waiting for the appearance ofJesus from heaven to usher in the resurrection. But in the fifthchapter of the Second Epistle to the Corinthians he writes,"Abiding in the body we are absent from the Lord." It is usuallyinferred, from these words and those which follow them, that theapostle expected whenever he died to be instantly with Christ.Certainly they do mean pretty nearly that; but they mean it inconnection with the second advent and the accompanyingcircumstances and events; for Paul believed that many of thedisciples possibly himself would live until Christ's coming. Allthrough these two chapters (the fourth and fifth) it is obvious,from the marked use of the terms "we" and "you," and from otherconsiderations, that "we" here refers solely to the writer, theindividual Paul. It is the plural of accommodation used by commoncustom and consent. In the form of a slight paraphrase we mayunfold the genuine meaning of the passage in hand. "In this body Iam afflicted: not that I would merely be released from it, forthen I should be a naked spirit. But I earnestly desire,unclothing myself of this earthly body, at the same time to clothemyself with my heavenly body, that I may lose all my mortal partand its woes in the full experience of heaven's eternal life. Godhas determined that this result shall come to me sooner or later,and has given me a pledge of it in the witnessing spirit. But itcannot happen so long as I tarry in the flesh, the Lord delayinghis appearance. Having the infallible earnest of the spirit, I donot dread the change, but desire to hasten it. Confident ofacceptance in that day at the judgment seat of Christ, beforewhich we must all then stand, I long for the crisis when, divestedof this body and invested with the immortal form wrought for me byGod, I shall be with the Lord. Still, knowing the terror whichshall environ the Lord at his coming to judgment, I plead with mento be prepared." Whoever carefully examines the whole connectedpassage, from iv. 6 to v. 16, will see, we think, that the aboveparaphrase truly exposes its meaning.
The other text alluded to as an apparent exception to the doctrineof a residence in the lower land of ghosts intervening betweendeath and the ascension, occurs in the Epistle to thePhilippians: "I am in a strait betwixt two, having a desire todepart and to be with Christ, which is far better; but that Ishould abide in the flesh is more needful for you." There arethree possible ways of regarding this passage. First, we maysuppose that Paul, seeing the advent of the Lord postponed longerand longer, changed his idea of the intermediate state of deceasedChristians, and thought they would spend that period of waiting inheaven, not in Hades. Neander advocates this view. But there islittle to sustain it, and it is loaded with fatal difficulties. Achange of faith so important and so bright in its view as thismust have seemed under the circumstances would have been clearlyand fully stated. Attention would have been earnestly invited toso great a favor and comfort; exultation and gratitude would havebeen expressed over so unheard of a boon. Moreover, what hadoccurred to effect the alleged new belief? The unexpected delay ofChrist's coming might make the apostle wish that his departedfriends were tarrying above the sky instead of beneath thesepulchre; but it could furnish no ground to warrant a suddenfaith in that wish as a fulfilled fact. Besides, the truth is thatPaul never ceased, even to the last, to expect the speedy arrivalof the Lord and to regard the interval as a comparative trifle. Inthis very epistle he says, "The Lord is at hand: be careful fornothing." Secondly, we may imagine that he expected himself, as adivinely chosen and specially favored servant, to go to Christ inheaven as soon as he died, if that should happen before the Lord'sappearance, while the great multitude of believers would abide inthe under world until the general resurrection. The death he wasin peril of and is referring to was that of martyrdom for thegospel at the hands of Nero. And many of the Fathers maintainedthat in the case of every worthy Christian martyr there was anexception to the general doom, and that he was permitted to enterheaven at once. Still, to argue such a thought in the text beforeus requires an hypothesis far fetched and unsupported by a singleclear declaration of the apostle himself. Thirdly, we may assumeand it seems to us by far the least encumbered and the mostplausible theory that attempts to meet the case that Paul believedthere would be vouchsafed to the faithful Christian during histransient abode in the under world a more intimate and blessedspiritual fellowship with his Master than he could experiencewhile in the flesh. "For I am persuaded that neither death[separation from the body] nor depth [the under world] shall beable to separate us from God's love, which he has manifestedthrough Christ." He may refer, therefore, by his hopes of beingstraightway with Christ on leaving the body, to a spiritualcommunion with him in the disembodied state below, and not to hisphysical presence in the supernal realm, the latter not beingattainable previous to the resurrection. Indeed, a little fartheron in this same epistle, he plainly shows that he did notanticipate being received to heaven until after the second comingof Christ. He says, "We look for the Savior from heaven, who shallchange our vile body and fashion it like unto his own gloriousbody." This change is the preliminary preparation to ascent toheaven, which change he repeatedly represents as indispensable.
What Paul believed would be the course and fate of things on earthafter the final consummation of Christ's mission is a matter ofinference from his brief and partial hints. The most probable andconsistent view which can be constructed from those hints is this.He thought all mankind would become reconciled and obedient toGod, and that death, losing its punitive character, would becomewhat it was originally intended to be, the mere change of theearthly for a heavenly body preparatory to a direct ascension."Then shall the Son himself be subject unto Him that put allthings under him, that God may be all in all." Then placid virtuesand innocent joys should fill the world, and human life be what itwas in Eden ere guilt forbade angelic visitants and converse withheaven.21 "So when" without a
21 Neander thinks Paul's idea was that "the perfected kingdom ofGod would then blend itself harmoniously throughout his unboundeddominions." We believe his apprehension is correct. This globewould become a part of the general paradise, an ante room or a lower story to the Temple of the Universe.
previous descent into Hades, as the context proves "this mortalshall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass thesaying which is written, 'Death shall be swallowed up in victory.O Death, thou last enemy, where is thy sting? O Hades, thou gloomyprison, where is thy victory?'" The exposition just offered isconfirmed by its striking adaptedness to the whole Pauline scheme.It is also the interpretation given by the earliest Fathers, andby the Church in general until now. This idea of men being changedand rising into heaven without at all entering the disembodiedstate below was evidently in the mind of Milton when he wrote thefollowing lines:
"And from these corporeal nutriments, perhaps. Your bodies may atlast turn all to spirit, And, wing'd, ascend ethereal, may, atchoice, Here, or in heavenly paradise, dwell."
It now remains to see what Paul thought was to be the finalportion of the hardened and persevering sinner. One class ofpassages in his writings, if taken by themselves, would lead us tobelieve that on that point he had no fixed convictions in regardto particulars, but, thinking these beyond the present reach ofreason, contented himself with the general assurance that all suchpersons would meet their just deserts, and there left the subjectin obscurity. "God will render to every man to the Jew first, andalso to the Greek according to his deeds." "Whatsoever a mansoweth, that shall he also reap." "So then every one of us shallgive an account of himself to God." "At the judgment seat ofChrist every one shall receive the things done in his body,according to that he hath done, whether it be good or whether itbe bad." From these and a few kindred texts we might infer thatthe author, aware that he "knew but in part," simply held thebelief without attempting to pry into special methods, details,and results that at the time of the judgment all should have exactjustice. He may, however, have unfolded in his preaching minutiaof faith not explained in his letters.
A second class of passages in the epistles of Paul would naturallycause the common reader to conclude that he imagined that theunregenerate those unfit for the presence of God were to beannihilated when Christ, after his second coming, should return toheaven with his saints. "Those who know not God and obey not thegospel of Christ shall be punished with everlasting destructionfrom the presence and glory of the Lord when he shall come." "Theend of the enemies of the cross of Christ is destruction." "Thevessels of wrath fitted for destruction." "As many as have sinnedwithout law shall perish without law." But it is to be observedthat the word here rendered "destruction" need not signifyannihilation. It often, even in Paul's epistles, plainly meanssevere punishment, dreadful misery, moral ruin, and retribution.For example, "foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown men indestruction and perdition," "piercing them through with manysorrows." It may or may not have that sense in the instances abovecited. Their meaning is intrinsically uncertain: we must bringother passages and distinct considerations to aid ourinterpretation.
From a third selection of texts in Paul's epistles it is notstrange that some persons have deduced the doctrine ofunconditional, universal salvation. "As in Adam all die, even soin Christ shall all be made alive." But the genuine explanation ofthis sentence, we are constrained to believe, is as follows: "As,following after the example of Adam, all souls descend below, so,following after Christ, all shall be raised up," that is, at thejudgment, after which event some may be taken to heaven, othersbanished again into Hades. "We trust in the living God, who is theSavior of all men, especially of them that believe." This meansthat all men have been saved now from the unconditional sentenceto Hades brought on them by the first sin, but not all know theglad tidings: those who receive them into believing hearts arealready exulting over their deliverance and their hopes of heaven.All are objectively saved from the unavoidable and universalnecessity of Hadean imprisonment; the obedient believers are alsosubjectively saved from the contingent and personal risk ofincurring that doom. "God hath shut them all up together inunbelief, that he might have mercy upon all." "All" here meansboth Jews and Gentiles; and the reference is to the universalannulment of the universal fatality, and the impartial offer ofheaven to every one who sanctifies the truth in his heart. In somecases the word "all" is used with rhetorical looseness, not withlogical rigidness, and denotes merely all Christians. Ruckertshows this well in his commentary on the fifteenth chapter ofFirst Corinthians. In other instances the universality, which isindeed plainly there, applies to the removal from the race of theinherited doom; while a conditionality is unquestionably impliedas to the actual salvation of each person. We say Paul doesconstantly represent personal salvation as depending onconditions, as beset by perils and to be earnestly striven for."Lest that by any means I myself should be a castaway." "Deliversuch an one to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that thespirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus." "Wherefore welabor, that, whether present or absent, we may be accepted of thelord." "To them that are saved we are a savor of life unto life;to them that perish, a savor of death unto death." "Charge themthat are rich that they be humble and do good, laying up in storea good foundation, that they may lay hold on eternal life." It isclear, from these and many similar passages of Paul, that he didnot believe in the unconditional salvation, the positivemechanical salvation, of all individuals, but held personalsalvation to be a contingent problem, to be worked out, throughthe permitting grace of God, by Christian faith, works, andcharacter. How plainly this is contained, too, in his doctrine of"a resurrection of the just and the unjust," and of a day ofjudgment, from whose august tribunal Christ is to pronouncesentence according to each man's deeds! At the same time, theundeniable fact deserves particular remembrance that he says, andapparently knows, nothing whatever of a hell, in the presentacceptation of that term, a prison house of fiery tortures. Heassigns the realm of Satan and the evil spirits to the air, thevexed region between earth and heaven, according to the demonologyof his age and country. 22
Finally, there is a fourth class of passages, from which we mightinfer that the apostle's faith merely excluded the reprobate fromparticipating in the ascent with Christ, just as some of thePharisees excluded the Gentiles from their resurrection, and thereleft the subject in darkness.
22 A detailed and most curious account of this region, which hecalls Tartarus, is given by Angustine. De Gen. ad. lit. lib. iii.cap. 14, 15, ed. Benedictina.
"They that are Christ's," "the dead in Christ, shall rise.""No sensualist, extortioner, idolater, hath any inheritancein the kingdom of Christ and of God." "There is laid up a crown ofrighteousness, which the Lord shall give in that day to all themthat love his appearing." In all these, and in many other cases,there is a marked omission of any reference to the ultimatepositive disposal of the wicked. Still, against the supposition ofhis holding the doctrine that all except good Christians would beleft below eternally, we have his repeated explicit avowals. "Ihave hope towards God that there shall be a resurrection both ofthe just and the unjust." "We must all appear before the judgmentseat of Christ." These last statements, however, prove only thatPaul thought the bad as well as the good would be raised up andjudged: they are not inconsistent with the belief that thecondemned would afterwards either be annihilated, or remandedeverlastingly to the under world. This very belief, we think, iscontained in that remarkable passage where Paul writes to thePhilippians that he strives "if by any means he may attain untothe resurrection." Now, the common resurrection of the dead forjudgment needed not to be striven for: it would occur to allunconditionally. But there is another resurrection, or anotherpart remaining to complete the resurrection, namely, after thejudgment, a rising of the accepted to heaven. All shall rise fromHades upon the earth to judgment. This Paul calls simply theresurrection, [Non ASCII Characters] After the judgment, theaccepted shall rise to heaven. This Paul calls, with distinctiveemphasis, [Non ASCII Characters] the pre eminent or completeresurrection, the prefix being used as an intensive. This is whatthe apostle considers uncertain and labors to secure, "stretchingforward and pressing towards the goal for the prize of that callupwards," [Non ASCII Characters] (that invitation to heaven,)"which God has extended through Christ." Those who are condemnedat the judgment can have no part in this completion of theresurrection, cannot enter the heavenly kingdom, but must be"punished with everlasting destruction from the presence and gloryof the Lord," that is, as we suppose is signified, be thrust intothe under world for evermore. As unessential to our object, wehave omitted an exposition of the Pauline doctrine of the naturalrank and proper or delegated offices of Christ in the universe;also an examination of the validity of the doubts and argumentsbrought against the genuineness of the lesser epistles ascribed toPaul. In close, we will sum up in brief array the leadingconceptions in his view of the last things. First, there is aworld of immortal light and bliss over the sky, the exclusiveabode of God and the angels from of old; and there is a drearyworld of darkness and repose under the earth, the abode of alldeparted human spirits. Secondly, death was originally meant tolead souls into heaven, clothed in new and divine bodies,immediately on the fall of the present tabernacle; but sin brokethat plan and doomed souls to pass disembodied into Hades.Thirdly, the Mosaic dispensation of law could not deliver men fromthat sentence; but God had promised Abraham that through one ofhis posterity they should be delivered. To fulfil that promiseChrist came. He illustrated God's unpurchased love and forgivenessand determination to restore the original plan, as if men hadnever sinned. Christ effected this aim, in conjunction with histeachings, by dying, descending into Hades, as if the doom of asinful man were upon him also, subduing the powers of that prisonhouse, rising again, and ascending into heaven, the first one everadmitted there from among the dead, thus exemplifying thefulfilled "expectation of the creature that was groaning andtravailing in pain" to be born into the freedom of the heavenlyglory of the sons of God. Fourthly, "justification by faith,"therefore, means the redemption from Hades by acceptance of thedispensation of free grace which is proclaimed in the gospel.Fifthly, every sanctified believer receives a pledge or earnest ofthe spirit sealing him as God's and assuring him of acceptancewith Christ and of advance to heaven. Sixthly, Christ is speedilyto come a second time, come in glory and power irresistible, toconsummate his mission, raise the dead, judge the world, establisha new order of things, and return into heaven with his chosenones. Seventhly, the stubbornly wicked portion of mankind will bereturned eternally into the under world. Eighthly, after thejudgment the subterranean realm of death will be shut up, no moresouls going into it, but all men at their dissolution beinginstantly invested with spiritual bodies and ascending to theglories of the Lord. Finally, Jesus having put down all enemiesand restored the primeval paradise will yield up his mediatorialthrone, and God the Father be all in all.
The preparatory rudiments of this system of the last thingsexisted in the belief of the age, and it was itself composed bythe union of a theoretic interpretation of the life of Christ andof the connected phenomena succeeding his death, with the elementsof Pharasaic Judaism, all mingled in the crucible of the soul ofPaul and fused by the fires of his experience. It illustrates agreat number of puzzling passages in the New Testament, withoutthe necessity of recourse to the unnatural, incredible,unwarranted dogmas associated with them by the unique, isolatedpeculiarities of Calvinism. The interpretation given above, moreover,has this strong confirmation of its accuracy, namely, that it isarrived at from the stand point of the thought and life of theApostle Paul in the first century, not from the stand point of thetheology and experience of the educated Christian of thenineteenth century.
CHAPTER V.
JOHN'S DOCTRINE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
WE are now to see if we can determine and explain what were theviews of the Apostle John upon the subject of death and life,condemnation and salvation, the resurrection and immortality. Tounderstand his opinions on these points, it is obviously necessaryto examine his general system of theological thought. John isregarded as the writer of the proem to the fourth Gospel, also ofthree brief epistles. There are such widely spread doubts of hisbeing the author of the Apocalypse that it has seemed better toexamine that production separately, leaving each one free toattribute its doctrine of the last things to whatever person knownor unknown he believes wrote the book. It is true that theauthorship of the fourth Gospel itself is powerfully disputed; butan investigation of that question would lead us too far and detainus too long from our real aim, which is not to discuss thegenuineness or the authority of the New Testament documents, butto show their meaning in what they actually contain and implyconcerning a future life. It is necessary to premise that we thinkit certain that John wrote with some reference to the sproutingphilosophy of his time, the Platonic and Oriental speculations soearly engrafted upon the stock of Christian doctrine. For thepeculiar theories which were matured and systematized in thesecond and third centuries by the Gnostic sects were floatingabout, in crude and fragmentary forms, at the close of the firstcentury, when the apostle wrote. They immediately awakeneddissension and alarm, cries of heresy and orthodoxy, in theChurch. Some modern writers deny the presence in the New Testamentof any allusion to such views; but the weight of evidence on theother side internal, from similarity of phrase, and external, fromthe testimony of early Fathers is, when accumulated andappreciated, overwhelming. Among these Gnostic notions the mostdistinctive and prominent was the belief that the world wascreated and the Jewish dispensation given, not by the true andinfinite God, but by a subordinate and imperfect deity, theabsolute God remaining separate from all created things, unknownand afar, in the sufficiency of his aboriginal pleroma or fulness.The Gnostics also maintained that Creative Power, Reason, Life,Truth, Love, and other kindred realities, were individual beings,who had emanated from God, and who by their own efficiencyconstructed, illuminated, and carried on the various provinces ofcreation and races of existence. Many other opinions, fanciful,absurd, or recondite, which they held, it is not necessary here tostate. The evangelist, without alluding perhaps to any particularteachers or systems of these doctrines, but only to their generalscope, traverses by his declarations partially the same ground ofthought which they cover, stating dogmatically the positive factsas he apprehended them. He agrees with some of the Gnosticdoctrines and differs from others, not setting himself to followor to oppose them indiscriminately, but to do either as the truthseemed to him to require.
There are two methods of seeking the meaning of the introductionto the fourth Gospel where the Johannean doctrine of the Logos iscondensed. We may study it grammatically, or historically;morally, or metaphysically; from the point of view of experimentalreligious faith, or from that of contemporary speculativephilosophy. He who omits either of these ways of regarding thesubject must arrive at an interpretation essentially defective.Both modes of investigation are indispensable for acquiring a fullcomprehension of the expressions employed and the thoughtsintended. But to be fitted to understand the theme in itshistorical aspect which, in this case, for purposes of criticism,is by far the more important one must be intelligently acquaintedwith the Hebrew personification of the Wisdom, also of the Word,of God; with the Platonic conception of archetypal ideas; with theAlexandrian Jewish doctrine of the Divine Logos; and with therelevant Gnostic and Christian speculation and phraseology of thefirst two centuries. Especially must the student be familiar withPhilo, who was an eminent Platonic Jewish philosopher and acelebrated writer, flourishing previous to the composition of thefourth Gospel, in which, indeed, there is scarcely a singlesuperhuman predicate of Christ which may not be paralleled withstriking closeness from his extant works. In all these fields arefound, in imperfect proportions and fragments, the materials whichare developed in John's belief of the Logos become flesh. Topresent all these materials here would be somewhat out of placeand would require too much room. We shall, therefore, simplystate, as briefly and clearly as possible, the final conclusionsto which a thorough study has led us, drawing such illustrationsas we do advance almost entirely from Philo.1
1 The reader who wishes to see in smallest compass and most lucidorder the facts requisite for the formation of a judgment isreferred to Lucke's "Dissertation on the Logos," to Norton's"Statement of Reasons," and to Neander's exposition of theJohannean theology in his "Planting and Training of the Church."Nearly every thing important, both external and internal, iscollected in these three sources taken together, and set forthwith great candor, power, and skill. Differing in their conclusions,they supply pretty adequate means for the independent student toconclude for himself.
In the first place, what view of the Father himself, the absoluteDeity, do these writings present? John conceives of God no one canwell collate the relevant texts in his works without perceivingthis as the one perfect and eternal Spirit, in himself invisibleto mortal eyes, the Personal Love, Life, Truth, Light, "in whom isno darkness at all." This corresponds entirely with the purest andhighest idea the human mind can form of the one untreated infiniteGod. The apostle, then, going back to the period anterior to thematerial creation, and soaring to the contemplation of the soleGod, does not conceive of him as being utterly alone, but ashaving a Son with him, an "only begotten Son," a beloved companion"before the foundation of the world." "In the beginning was theLogos, and the Logos was with God, and the Logos was God. He wasin the beginning with God. All things were made through him, andwithout him was nothing made that was made." The true explanationof these words, according to their undeniable historical and theirunforced grammatical. There is an English translation of it, byProfessor G. R. Noyes, in the numbers of the Christian Examinerfor March and May, 1849, meaning, is as follows. Before thematerial creation, when God was yet the sole being, his firstproduction, the Logos, was a Son, at once the image of himself andthe idea of the yet uncreated world. By him this personal Idea,Son, or Logos all things were afterward created; or, more exactly,through him, by means of him, all things became, that is, werebrought, from their being in a state of conception in the mind ofGod, into actual existence in space and time. Thus Philo says,"God is the most generic; second is the Logos of God."2 "The Logosis the first begotten Son."3 "The Logos of God is above the wholeworld, and is the most ancient and generic of all that had abeginning."4 "Nothing intervenes between the Logos and God on whomhe rests."5 "This sensible world is the junior son of God; theSenior is the Idea,"6 or Logos. "The shadow and seeming portraitof God is his Logos, by which, as by an assumed instrument, hemade the world. As God is the original of the image here calledshadow, so this image becomes the original of other things."7 "Theintelligible world, or world of archetypal ideas, is the Logos ofthe world creating God; as an intelligible or ideal city is thethought of the architect reflecting to build a sensible city."8"Of the world, God is the cause by which, the four elements thematerial from which, the Logos the instrument through which, thegoodness of the Creator the end for which, it was made."9 Thesecitations from Philo clearly show, in various stages ofdevelopment, that doctrine of the Logos which began first arguingto the Divine Being from human analogies with separating theconception of a plan in the mind of God from its execution infact; proceeded with personifying that plan, or sum of ideas, as amediating agent between motive and action, between impulse andfulfilment; and ended with hypostatizing the arranging power ofthe Divine thought as a separate being, his intellectual image orSon, his first and perfect production. They unequivocally expressthese thoughts: that God is the only being who was from eternity;that the Logos was the first begotten, antemundane being, that hewas the likeness, image, immediate manifestation, of the Father;that he was the medium of creation, the instrumental means in theoutward formation of the world. History shows us this doctrineunfolded by minute steps, which it would be tedious to follow,from the Book of Proverbs to Philo Judaus and John, from Plato toJustin Martyr and Athanasius. But the rapid sketch just presentedmay be sufficient now.
When it is written, "and the Logos was God," the meaning is notstrictly literal. To guard against its being so considered, theauthor tautologically repeats what he had said immediately before,"the same was in the beginning with God." Upon the suppositionthat the Logos is strictly identical with God, the verses makeutter nonsense. "In the beginning was God, and God was with God,and God was God. God was in the beginning with God." But supposethe Logos to mean an ante mundane but subordinate being, who was aperfect image or likeness of God, and the sense is both clear andsatisfactory, and no violence is done either to historical data orto grammatical demands. "And the Logos was God," that is, was themirror or facsimile of God. So, employing the same idiom, we areaccustomed to say
2 Mangey's edition of Philo, vol. i. p. 82.
3 Ibid. p. 308.
4 Ibid. p. 121.
5 Ibid. p. 560.
6 Ibid. p. 277.
7 Ibid. p. 106.
8 Ibid. p. 5.
9 Ibid. p. 162.
of an accurate representation of a person, It is the very manhimself! Or, without the use of this idiom, we may explain theexpression "the Logos was God" thus: He stands in the place of Godto the lower creation: practically considered, he is as God to us.As Philo writes, "To the wise and perfect the Most High is God;but to us, imperfect beings, the Logos God's interpreter isGod."10
The inward significance of the Logos doctrine, in all its degreesand phases, circumstantially and essentially, from first to last,is the revelation of God. God himself, in himself, is conceived asabsolutely withdrawn beyond the apprehension of men, in boundlessimmensity and inaccessible secrecy. His own nature is hidden, as athought is hidden in the mind; but he has the power of revealingit, as a thought is revealed by speaking it in a word. Thatuttered word is the Logos, and is afterwards conceived as aperson, and as creative, then as building and glorifying theworld. All of God that is sent forth from passive concealment intoactive manifestation is the Logos. "The term Logos comprehends,"Norton says, "all the attributes of God manifested in the creationand government of the universe." The Logos is the hypostasis of"the unfolded portion," "the revealing power," "the self showingfaculty," "the manifesting action," of God. The essential idea,then, concerning the Logos is that he is the means through whichthe hidden God comes to the cognizance of his creatures. Inharmony with this prevailing philosophy one who believed the Logosto have been incarnated in Christ would suppose the purpose of hisincarnation to be the fuller revelation of God to men. AndMartineau says, "The view of revelation which is implicated in thefolds of the Logos doctrine that everywhere pervades the fourthGospel, is that it is the appearance to beings who have somethingof a divine spirit within them, of a yet diviner without them,leading them to the divinest of all, who embraces them both." Thisis a fine statement of the practical religious aspect of John'sconception of the nature and office of the Savior.
Since he regarded God as personal love, life, truth, and light,and Christ, the embodied Logos, as his only begotten Son, an exactimage of him in manifestation, it follows that John regardedChrist, next in rank below God, as personal love, life, truth, andlight; and the belief that he was the necessary medium ofcommunicating these Divine blessings to men would naturallyresult. Accordingly, we find that John repeats, as falling fromthe lips of Christ, all the declarations required by andsupporting such an hypothesis. "I am the way, the truth, and thelife." "No man cometh unto the Father but by me." But Philo, too,had written before in precisely the same strain. Witness thecorrespondences between the following quotations respectively fromJohn and Philo. "I am the bread which came down from heaven togive life to the world."11 Whoso eateth my body and drinketh myblood hath eternal life."12 "Behold, I rain bread upon you fromheaven: the heavenly food of the soul is the word of God, and theDivine Logos, from whom all eternal instructions and wisdomsflow."13 "The bread the Lord gave us to eat was his word."14"Except ye eat my flesh and drink my blood, ye have no life
10 Mangey's edition of Philo, vol. ii. p. 128.
11 John vi. 33. 41.
12 Ibid. 54.
13 Quoted by G. Scheffer in his Treatise "De UsuPhilonis in Interpretatione Novi Testamenti," p. 82.
14 lbid. p. 81.
in you."15 "He alone can become the heir of incorporeal and divinethings whose whole soul is filled with the salubrious Word."16"Every one that seeth the Son and believeth on him shall haveeverlasting life."17 "He strains every nerve towards the highestDivine Logos, who is the fountain of wisdom, in order that,drawing from that spring, he may escape death and win everlastinglife."18 "I am the living bread which came down from heaven: ifany man eat of this bread he shall live forever."19 "Lifting uphis eyes to the ether, man receives manna, the Divine Logos,heavenly and immortal nourishment for the right desiring soul."20"God is the perennial fountain of life; God is the fountain of themost ancient Logos."21 "As the living Father hath sent me, and Ilive by the Father, so he that eateth me, even he shall live byme."22 Does it not seem perfectly plain that John's doctrine ofthe Christ is at bottom identical with Philo's doctrine of theLogos? The difference of development in the two doctrines, so faras there is a difference, is that the latter view isphilosophical, abstract; the former, practical, historical. Philodescribes the Logos ideally, filling the supersensible sphere,mediating between the world and God; John presents him really,incarnated as a man, effecting the redemption of our race. Thesame dignity, the same offices, are predicated of him by both.John declares, "In him [the Divine Logos] was life, and the lifewas the light of men."23 Philo asserts, "Nothing is more luminousand irradiating than the Divine Logos, by the participation ofwhom other things expel darkness and gloom, earnestly desiring topartake of living light."24 John speaks of Christ as "the onlybegotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father."25 Philo says,"The Logos is the first begotten Son of God," "between whom andGod nothing intervenes."26 John writes, "The Son of man will giveyou the food of everlasting life; for him hath God the Fathersealed."27 Philo writes, "The stamp of the seal of God is theimmortal Logos."28 We have this from John: "He was manifested totake away our sins; and in him is no sin."29 And this from Philo:"The Divine Logos is free from all sins, voluntary andinvoluntary."30
The Johannean Christ is the Philonean Logos born into the world asa man. "And the Logos was made flesh, and dwelt among us, full ofgrace and truth." The substance of what has thus far beenestablished may now be concisely stated. The essential thought,whether the subject be metaphysically or practically considered,is this. God is the eternal, infinite personality of love andtruth, life and light. The Logos is his first born Son, his exactimage, the reproduction of his being, the next lower personalityof love and truth, life and light, the instrument for creating andruling the world, the revelation of God, the medium ofcommunication between God and his works. Christ is that Logos comeupon the earth as a man to save the perishing, proving his preexistence and superhuman nature by his miraculous knowledge andworks. That the belief expressed in the last sentence is correctlyattributed to John will
15 John vi. 53.
16 Philo, vol. i. p. 482.
17 John vi. 40.
18 Philo, vol. i. p. 560.
19 John vi. 51.
20 Philo, vol. i. p. 498.
21 Ibid. pp. 575, 207.
22 John vi. 57.
23 John i. 4.
24 Philo, vol. i. p. 121.
25 John i. 18.
26 Philo, vol. i. pp. 427, 560.
27 John vi. 27.
28 Philo, vol. ii. p. 606.
29 1 John iii. 5.
30 Philo, vol. i. p. 562.
be repeatedly substantiated before the close of this chapter: inregard to the statements in the preceding sentences no furtherproof is thought necessary.
With the aid of a little repetition, we will now attempt to make astep of progress. The tokens of energy, order, splendor,beneficence, in the universe, are not, according to John, as wehave seen, the effects of angelic personages, emanating gods,Gnostic aons, but are the workings of the self revealing power ofthe one true and eternal God, this power being conceived by John,according to the philosophy of his age, as a proper person, God'sinstrument in creation. Reason, life, light, love, grace,righteousness, kindred terms so thickly scattered over his pages,are not to him, as they were to the Gnostics, separate beings, butare the very working of the Logos, consubstantial manifestationsof God's nature and attributes. But mankind, fallen into folly andvice, perversity and sin, lying in darkness, were ignorant thatthese Divine qualities were in reality mediate exhibitions of God,immediate exhibitions of the Logos. "The light was shining indarkness, and the darkness comprehended it not." Then, to revealto men the truth, to regenerate them and conjoin them throughhimself with the Father in the experience of eternal life, thehypostatized Logos left his transcendent glory in heaven and cameinto the world in the person of Jesus. "No man hath seen God atany time: the only begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father,he hath revealed him." "I came down from heaven to do the will ofHim that sent me." This will is that all who see and believe onthe Son shall have everlasting life. "God so loved the world thathe gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in himshould not perish, but have everlasting life." "The bread of Godis He who cometh down from heaven and giveth life to the world."The doctrine of the pre existence of souls, and of their beingborn into the world in the flesh, was rife in Judea when thisGospel was written, and is repeatedly alluded to in it.31 ThatJohn applies this doctrine to Christ in the following and in otherinstances is obvious. "Before Abraham was, I am." "I came forthfrom the Father and am come into the world." "Father, glorify thoume with the glory which I had with thee before the world was.""What and if ye shall see the Son of Man ascend up where he wasbefore?" As for ourselves, we do not see how it is possible forany unprejudiced person, after studying the fourth Gospelfaithfully with the requisite helps, to doubt that the writer ofit believed that Jesus pre existed as the Divine Logos, and thathe became incarnate to reveal the Father and to bring men into theexperience of true eternal life. John declares this, in his firstepistle, in so many words, saying, "The living Logos, the eternallife which was with the Father from the beginning, was manifestedunto us;" and, "God sent his only begotten Son into the world thatwe might live through him." Whether the doctrine thus set forthwas really entertained and taught by Jesus himself, or whether itis the interpretation put on his language by one whose mind wasfull of the notions of the age, are distinct questions. With thesettlement of these questions we are not now concerned: such adiscussion would be more appropriate when examining the genuinemeaning of the words of Christ. All that is necessary here is thesuggestion that when we show the theological system of John itdoes not necessarily follow that that is the true
31 John i. 21; ix. 2.
teaching of Christ. Having adopted the Logos doctrine, it mighttinge and turn his thoughts and words when reporting from memory,after the lapse of many years, the discourses of his Master. Hemight unconsciously, under such an influence, represent literallywhat was figuratively intended, and reflect from his own mindlights and shades, associations and meanings, over all or much ofwhat he wrote. There are philosophical and literary peculiaritieswhich have forced many of the best critics to make thisdistinction between the intended meaning of Christ's declarationsas he uttered them, and their received meaning as this evangelistreported them. Norton says, "Whether St. John did or did not adoptthe Platonic conception of the Logos is a question not importantto be settled in order to determine our own judgment concerningits truth."32 Lucke has written to the same effect, but morefully: "We are allowed to distinguish the sense in which Johnunderstood the words of Christ, from the original sense in whichChrist used them."33
It is to be observed that in all that has been brought forward,thus far, there is not the faintest hint of the now current notionof the Trinity. The idea put forth by John is not at all alliedwith the idea that the infinite God himself assumed a human shapeto walk the earth and undergo mortal sufferings. It is simply saidthat that manifested and revealing portion of the Divineattributes which constituted the hypostatized Logos was incarnatedand displayed in a perfect, sinless sample of man, thus exhibitingto the world a finite image of God. We will illustrate thisdoctrine with reference to the inferences to be drawn from it inregard to human nature. John repeatedly says, in effect, "God istruth," "God is light," "God is love," "God is life." He likewisesays of the Savior, "In him was life, and the life was the lightof men," and reports him as saying of himself, "I am the truth,""I am the life," "I am the light of the world." The fundamentalmeaning of these declarations so numerous, striking, and varied inthe writings of John is, that all those qualities which theconsciousness of humanity has recognised as Divine areconsubstantial with the being of God; that all the reflections ofthem in nature and man belong to the Logos, the eldest Son, thefirst production, of God; and that in Jesus their personality, thevery Logos himself, was consciously embodied, to be brought nearerto men, to be exemplified and recommended to them. Reason, power,truth, light, love, blessedness, are not individual aons, membersof a hierarchy of deities, but are the revealing elements of theone true God. The personality of the abstract and absolute fulnessof all these substantial qualities is God. The personality of thediscerpted portion of them shown in the universe is the Logos.Now, that latter personality Christ was. Consequently, while hewas a man, he was not merely a man, but was also a supernaturalmessenger from heaven, sent into the world to impersonate theimage of God under the condition of humanity, free from everysinful defect and spot. Thus, being the manifesting representativeof the Father, he could say, "He that hath seen me hath[virtually] seen the Father." Not that they were identical inperson, but that they were similar in nature and character, spiritand design: both were eternal holiness, love, truth, and life. "Iand my Father are one thing," (in essence, not in personality.)Nothing can be more
32 Statement of Reasons, 1st ed. p. 239.
33 Christian Examiner, May, 1849, p. 431.
unequivocally pronounced than the subordination of the Son to theFather that the Father sent him, that he could do nothing withoutthe Father, that his Father was greater than he, that histestimony was confirmed by the Father's in a hundred places byJohn, both as author writing his own words and as interpreterreporting Christ's. There is not a text in the record that impliesChrist's identity with God, but only his identity with the Logos.The identity of the Logos with God is elementary, not personal.From this view it follows that every man who possesses, knows, andexhibits the elements of the Divine life, the characteristics ofGod, is in that degree a son of God, Christ being pre eminentlythe Son on account of his pre eminent likeness, his supernaturaldivinity, as the incarnate Logos.
That the apostle held and taught this conclusion appears, first,from the fact, otherwise inexplicable, that he records the samesublime statements concerning all good Christians, with no otherqualification than that of degree, that he does concerning Christhimself. Was Jesus the Son of God? "To as many as received him hegave power to become the sons of God." There is in Philo a passagecorresponding remarkably with this one from John: "Those who haveknowledge of the truth are properly called sons of God: he who isstill unfit to be named a son of God should endeavor to fashionhimself to the first born Logos of God."34 Was Jesus "from above,"while wicked men were "from beneath"? "They are not of the world,even as I am not of the world." Was Jesus sent among men with aspecial commission? "As thou hast sent me into the world, even sohave I also sent them into the world." Was Jesus the subject of apeculiar glory, bestowed upon him by the Father? "The glory whichthou gavest me I have given them, that they may be one, even as weare one." Had Jesus an inspiration and a knowledge not vouchsafedto the princes of this world? "Ye have an unction from the HolyOne, and ye know all things." Did Jesus perform miraculous works?"He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also."In the light of the general principle laid down, that God is theactual fulness of truth and love and light and blessedness; thatChrist, the Logos, is the manifested impersonation of them; andthat all men who receive him partake of their Divine substance andenjoy their prerogative, the texts just cited, and numerous othersimilar ones, are transparent. It is difficult to see how on anyother hypothesis they can be made to express an intelligible andconsistent meaning.
Secondly, we are brought to the same conclusion by the synonymoususe and frequent interchange of different terms in the Johanneanwritings. Not only it is said, "Whoever is born of God cannotsin," but it is also written, "Every one that doeth righteousnessis born of God;" and again, "Whosoever believeth that Jesus is theChrist is born of God." In other words, having a good characterand leading a just life, heartily receiving and obeying therevelation made by Christ, are identical phrases. "He that haththe Son hath life." "Whosoever transgresseth and abideth not inthe doctrine of Christ hath not God." "This is the victory thatovercometh the world, even our faith" in the doctrine of Christ."He that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God and God in him." "Hethat keepeth the commandments dwelleth in God and God in him." "Hethat confesseth that Jesus is the Son of God, God
34 Philo, vol. i. p. 427.
dwelleth in him and he in God." "He that doeth good is of God.""God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son.""The Son of God is come, and hath given us an understanding thatwe may know the true God and eternal life." From these citations,and from other passages which will readily occur, we gather thefollowing pregnant results. To "do the truth," "walk in thetruth," "walk in the light," "keep the commandments," "dorighteousness," "abide in the doctrine of Christ," "do the will ofGod," "do good," "dwell in love," "abide in Christ," "abide inGod," "abide in life," all are expressions meaning precisely thesame thing. They all signify essentially the conscious possessionof goodness; in other words, the practical adoption of the lifeand teachings of Jesus; or, in still other terms, the personalassimilation of the spiritual realities of the Logos, which arelove, life, truth, light. Jesus having been sent into the world toexemplify the characteristics and claims of the Father, and toregenerate men from unbelief and sin to faith and righteousness,those who were walking in darkness, believers of lies and doers ofunrighteousness, those who were abiding in alienation and death,might by receiving and following him be restored to the favor ofGod and pass from darkness and death into life and light. "This iseternal life, that they should know thee, the only true God, andJesus Christ whom thou hast sent."
The next chief point in the doctrine of John is his belief in anevil being, the personality of wickedness, and the relationbetween him and bad men. There have been, from the earlycenturies, keen disputes on the question whether this apostle usesthe terms devil and evil one with literal belief or withfigurative accommodation. We have not a doubt that the former isthe true view. The popular denial of the existence of evilspirits, with an arch demon over them, is the birth of aphilosophy much later than the apostolic age. The use of the term"devil" merely as the poetic or ethical personification of theseductive influences of the world is the fruit of theologicalspeculation neither originated nor adopted by the Jewish prophetsor by the Christian apostles. Whoso will remember the prevailingfaith of the Jews at that time, and the general state ofspeculative opinion, and will recollect the education of John, andnotice the particular manner in which he alludes to the subjectthroughout his epistles and in his reports of the discourses ofJesus, we think will be convinced that the Johannean systemincludes a belief in the actual existence of Satan according tothe current Pharisaic dogma of that age. It is not to bedisguised, either, that the investigations of the ablest criticshave led an overwhelming majority of them to this interpretation."I write unto you, young men, because ye have overcome the evilone." "He that is begotten of God guardeth himself, and the evilone toucheth him not." "He that committeth sin is of the devil,for the devil sinneth from the beginning." "Whosoever is born ofGod cannot sin. In this the children of God are manifest, and thechildren of the devil." "Ye are of your father the devil, and hislusts ye will do." There can be no doubt that these, and otherpassages of a kindred and complementary nature, yield thefollowing view. Good men are allied to God, because theircharacteristics are the same as his, truth, light, love, life,righteousness. "As he is, so are we in this world." Bad men areallied to the devil, because their characteristics are the same ashis, falsehood, darkness, hatred, death, sin. "Cain, who slew hisbrother, was of the evil one." The facts, then, of the great moralproblem of the world, according to John, were these. God is theinfinite Father, whose nature and attributes comprehend all holy,beautiful, desirable realities, and who would draw mankind to hisblessed embrace forever. The goodness, illumination, and joy ofholy souls reflect his holiness and display his reign. The devilis the great spirit of wickedness, whose attributes comprehend allevil, dark, fearful realities, and who entices mankind to sin. Thewickedness, gloom, and misery of corrupt souls reveal his likenessand his kingdom.
The former manifests himself in the glories of the world and inthe divine qualities of the soul. The latter manifests himself inthe whole history of temptation and sin and in the vicioustendencies of the heart. Good men, those possessing pre eminentlythe moral qualities of God, are his children, are born of him,that is, are inspired and led by him. Bad men, those possessing ina ruling degree the qualities of the devil, are his children, areborn of him, that is, are animated and governed by his spirit.
Whether the evangelist gave to his own mind any philosophicalaccount of the origin and destiny of the devil or not is aquestion concerning which his writings are not explicit enough forus to determine. In the beginning he represents God as making, bymeans of the Logos, all things that were made, and his light asshining in darkness that comprehended it not. Now, he may haveconceived of matter as uncreated, eternally existing in formlessnight, the ground of the devil's being, and may have limited thework of creation to breaking up the sightless chaos, defining itinto orderly shapes, filling it with light and motion, andpeopling it with children of heaven. Such was the Persian faith,familiar at that time to the Jews. Neander, with others, objectsto this view that it would destroy John's monotheism and make hima dualist, a believer in two self existents, aboriginal andeverlasting antagonists. It only needs to be observed, in reply,that John was not a philosopher of such thorough dialectictraining as to render it impossible for inconsistencies to coexistin his thoughts. In fact, any one who will examine the beliefs ofeven such men as Origen and Augustine will perceive that such anobjection is not valid. Some writers of ability and eminence havetried to maintain that the Johannean conception of Satan was ofsome exalted archangel who apostatized from the law of God andfell from heaven into the abyss of night, sin, and woe. They couldhave been led to such an hypothesis only by preconceived notionsand prejudices, because there is not in John's writings even theobscurest intimation of such a doctrine. On the contrary, it iswritten that the devil is a liar and the father of lies from thebeginning, the same phrase used to denote the primitivecompanionship of God and his Logos anterior to the creation. Thedevil is spoken of by John, with prominent consistency, as bearingthe same relation to darkness, falsehood, sin, and death that Godbears to light, truth, righteousness, and life, that is, as beingtheir original personality and source. Whether the belief itselfbe true or not, be reconcilable with pure Christianity or not, inour opinion John undoubtedly held the belief of the personality ofthe source of wickedness, and supposed that the great body ofmankind had been seduced by him from the free service of heaven,and had become infatuated in his bondage.
Just here in the scheme of Christianity arises the necessity,appears the profound significance in the apostolic belief, of thatdisinterested interference of God through his revelation in Christwhich aimed to break the reigning power of sin and redeem lostmen from the tyranny of Satan. "For this purpose the Son of Godwas manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil."
That is to say, the revelation of the nature and will of God inthe works of the creation and in the human soul was not enough,even when aided by the law of Moses, to preserve men in thetruth and the life. They had been seduced by the evil one intosin, alienated from the Divine favor, and plunged in darknessand death. A fuller, more powerful manifestation of thecharacter, claims, attractions of the Father was necessary torecall the benighted wanderers from their lost state and restorethem to those right relations and to that conscious communion withGod in which alone true life consists. Then, and for that purpose,Jesus Christ was commissioned to appear, a pre existent being ofmost exalted rank, migrating from the super stellar sphere intothis world, to embody and mirror forth through the flesh thosecharacteristics which are the natural attributes of God the Fatherand the essential conditions of heaven the home. In him theglorious features of the Divinity were miniatured on a finitescale and perfectly exhibited, "thus revealing," (as Neander says,in his exposition of John's doctrine,) "for the first time, in acomprehensible manner, what a being that God is whose holypersonality man was created to represent." So Philo says, "TheLogos is the image of God, and man is the image of the Logos."35Therefore, according to this view, man is the image of the imageof God. The dimmed, imperfect reflection of the Father, originallyshining in nature and the soul, would enable all who had notsuppressed it and lost the knowledge of it, to recognise at onceand adore the illuminated image of Him manifested and movingbefore them in the person of the Son; the faint gleams of Divinequalities yet left within their souls would spontaneously blendwith the full splendors irradiating the form of the inspired andimmaculate Christ. Thus they would enter into a new andintensified communion with God, and experience an unparalleleddepth of peace and joy, an inspired assurance of eternal life. Butthose who, by worldliness and wickedness, had obscured anddestroyed all their natural knowledge of God and their affinitiesto him, being without the inward preparation and susceptibilityfor the Divine which the Savior embodied and manifested, would notbe able to receive it, and thus would pass an infallible sentenceupon themselves. "When the Comforter is come, he will convict theworld of sin, because they believe not on me." "He that believethon the Son hath eternal life; but he that believeth not iscondemned already, in that he loveth darkness rather than light.""Hereby know we the spirit of truth and the spirit of error: hethat knoweth God heareth us; he that is not of God heareth notus." "Who is a liar but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ?"The idea is, that such a denial must be caused by inwarddepravity, could only spring from an evil character.
In the ground thought just presented we may find the explanationof the seemingly obscure and confused use of terms in thefollowing instances, and learn to understand more fully John'sidea of the effect of spiritual contact with Christ. "He thatdoeth righteousness is born of God." "He that believeth Jesus tobe the Christ is born of God." "He that denieth the Son, the samehath not the Father." "He that hath the Son hath life." Thesepassages all become perspicuous and concordant in view of John'sconception of the inward unity of
35 Philo, vol. i. p. 106.
truth, or the universal oneness of the Divine life, in God, inChrist, in all souls that partake of it. A character in harmonywith the character of God will, by virtue of its inherent lightand affinity, recognise the kindred attributes or characteristicsof God, wherever manifested. He who perceives and embraces theDivinity in the character of Christ proves thereby that he wasprepared to receive it by kindred qualities residing in himself,proves that he was distinctively of God. He who fails to perceivethe peculiar glory of Christ proves thereby that he was alienatedand blinded by sin and darkness, distinctively of the evil one.Varying the expression to illustrate the thought, if the light andwarmth of a living love of God were in a soul, it wouldnecessarily, when brought into contact with the concentratedradiance of Divinity incarnated and beaming in Christ, effect amore fervent, conscious, and abiding union with the Father thancould be known before he was thus revealed. But if iniquities,sinful lusts, possessing the soul, had made it hard and cold, eventhe blaze of spotless virtues and miraculous endowments in themanifesting Messiah would be the radiation of light upon darknessinsensible to it. Therefore, the presentation of the Divinecontents of the soul or character of Jesus to different personswas an unerring test of their previous moral state: the good wouldapprehend him with a thrill of unison, the bad would not. To havethe Son, to have the Father, to have the truth, to have eternallife, all are the same thing: hence, where one is predicated ordenied all are predicated or denied.
Continuing our investigation, we shall find the distinction drawnof a sensual or perishing life and a spiritual or eternal life.The term world (kosmos) is used by John apparently in twodifferent senses. First, it seems to signify all mankind, dividedsometimes into the unbelievers and the Christians. "Christ is thepropitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for thesins of the whole world." "God sent not his Son to condemn theworld, but that the world through him might be saved." It isundeniable that "world" here means not the earth, but the men onthe earth. Secondly, "world" in the dialect of John means all theevil, all the vitiating power, of the material creation. "Nowshall the Prince of this world be cast out." It is not meant thatthis is the devil's world, because John declares in the beginningthat God made it; but he means that all diabolic influence comesfrom the darkness of matter fighting against the light ofDivinity, and by a figure he says "world," meaning the evils inthe world, meaning all the follies, vanities, sins, seductiveinfluences, of the dark and earthy, the temporal and sensual. Inthis case the love of the world means almost precisely what isexpressed by the modern word worldliness. "Love not the world,neither the things that are in the world. If any man love theworld, the love of the Father is not in him."
In a vein strikingly similar, Philo writes, "It is impossible forthe love of the world and the love of God to coexist, as it isimpossible for light and darkness to coexist."36 "For all that isin the world," says John, "the lust of the flesh, and the greed ofthe eyes, and the pomp of living, is not of the Father, but is ofthe world. And the world passes away, with the lust thereof: buthe that does the will of God abides forever." He who is taken upand absorbed in the gauds and pleasures of time and sense has nodeep spring of religious experience:
36 Philo, vol. ii. p. 649.
his enjoyments are of the decaying body; his heart and his thoughtsare set on things which soon fly away. But the earnest believer inGod pierces through all these superficial and transitory objectsand pursuits, and fastens his affections to imperishable verities:he feels, far down in his soul, the living well of faith andfruition, the cool fresh fountain of spiritual hope and joy, whosestream of life flows unto eternity. The vain sensualist and hollowworldling has no true life in him: his love reaches not beyond thegrave. The loyal servant of duty and devout worshipper of God hasa spirit of conscious superiority to death and oblivion: thoughthe sky fall, and the mountains melt, and the seas fade, he knowshe shall survive, because immaterial truth and love are deathless.The whole thought contained in the texts we are considering isembodied with singular force and beauty in the following passagefrom one of the sacred books of the Hindus: "Who would haveimmortal life must beware of outward things, and seek inwardtruth, purity, and faith; for the treacherous and evanescent worldflies from its votaries, like the mirage, or devil car, whichmoves so swiftly that one cannot ascend it." The mere negation ofreal life or blessedness is predicated of the careless worldling;positive death or miserable condemned unrest is predicated of thebad hearted sinner. Both these classes of men, upon acceptingChrist, that is, upon owning the Divine characteristics incarnatein him, enter upon a purified, exalted, and new experience. "Hethat hates his brother is a murderer and abides in death." "Weknow that we have passed from death unto life, because we love thebrethren." This new experience is distinctively, emphatically,life; it is spiritual peace, joy, trust, communion with God, andtherefore immortal. It brings with it its own sufficient evidence,leaving its possessor free from misgiving doubts, conscious of hiseternity. "He that believeth on the Son of God hath the witness inhimself." "Hereby know we that we dwell in him and he in us,because he hath given us of his spirit." "That ye may know that yehave eternal life."
The objects of Christ's mission, so far as they refer to thetwofold purpose of revealing the Father by an impersonation of hisimage, and giving new moral life to men by awakening within them aconscious fellowship with Divine truth and goodness, have alreadybeen unfolded. But this does not include the whole: all this mighthave been accomplished by his appearance, authoritative teachings,miracles, and return to heaven, without dying. Why, then, did hedie? What was the meaning or aim of his death and resurrection?The apostle conceives that he came not only to reveal God and toregenerate men, but also to be a "propitiation" for men's sins, toredeem them from the penalty of their sins; and it was for thisend that he must suffer the doom of physical death. "Ye know thathe was manifested to take away our sins." It is the more difficultto tell exactly what thoughts this language was intended by Johnto convey, because his writings are so brief and miscellaneous, sounsystematic and incomplete. He does not explain his own terms,but writes as if addressing those who had previously received suchoral instruction as would make the obscurities clear, the hintscomplete, and the fragments whole. We will first quote from Johnall the important texts bearing on the point before us, and thenendeavor to discern and explain their sense. "If we walk in thelight as God is in the light, the blood of Jesus Christ, his Son,cleanseth us from all sin." "He is the propitiation for our sins.""Your sins are forgiven through his name."
"The whole world is subject to the evil one." These texts, few andvague as they are, comprise every thing directly said by John uponthe atonement and redemption: other relevant passages merelyrepeat the same substance. Certainly these statements do not ofthemselves teach any thing like the Augustinian doctrine ofexpiatory sufferings to placate the Father's indignation at sinand sinners, or to remove, by paying the awful debt of justice,the insuperable bars to forgiveness. Nothing of that sort isanywhere intimated in the Johannean documents, even in thefaintest manner. So far from saying that there was unwillingnessor inability in the Father to take the initiative for our ransomand pardon, he expressly avows, "Herein is love, not that we lovedGod, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiationfor our sins." Instead of exclaiming, with the majority of moderntheologians, "Believe in the atoning death, the substitutionalsufferings, of Christ, and your sins shall then all be washedaway, and you shall be saved," he explicitly says, "If we confessour sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins." Andagain: "Whosoever believeth in him" not in his death, but in him"shall have eternal life." The allusions in John to the doctrineof redemption and reconciliation do not mean, it is plain enough,the buying off of the victims of eternal condemnation by thevicarious pains of Jesus. What, then, do they mean? They are toofew, short, and obscure for us to decide this questionconclusively by their own light alone. We must get assistance fromabroad.
The reader will remember that it was the Jewish belief, and theretained belief of the converts to Christianity, at that time,that men's souls, in consequence of sin, were doomed upon leavingthe body to descend into the under world. This was the objectivepenalty of sin, inherited from Adam. Now, Christ in hissuperangelic state in heaven was not involved in sin or in itsdoom of death and subterranean banishment. Yet at the will of theFather he became a man, went through our earthly experiences, diedlike a sinner, and after death descended into the prison ofdisembodied souls below, then rose again and ascended into heavento the Father, to show men that their sins were forgiven, thepenalty taken away, and the path opened for them too to rise toeternal life in the celestial mansions with Christ "and be withhim where he is." Christ's death, then, cleanses men from sin, heis a propitiation for their sins, in two ways. First, by hisresurrection from the power of death and his ascent to heaven heshowed men that God had removed the great penalty of sin: by hisdeath and ascension he was the medium of giving them thisknowledge. Secondly, the joy, gratitude, love to God, awakened inthem by such glorious tidings, would purify their natures, exalttheir souls into spiritual freedom and virtue, into a blessed andDivine life. According to this view, Christ was a vicarioussacrifice, not in the sense that he suffered instead of theguilty, to purchase their redemption from the iron justice of God,but in the sense that, when he was personally free from any needto suffer, he died for the sake of others, to reveal to them themighty boon of God's free grace, assuring them of the wondrousgift of a heavenly immortality. This representation perfectlyfills and explains the language, without violence or arbitrarysuppositions, does it in harmony with all the exegeticalconsiderations, historical and grammatical; which no other viewthat we know of can do.
There are several independent facts which lend strong confirmationto the correctness of the exposition now given. We know that wehave not directly proved the justice of that exposition, onlyconstructively, inferentially, established it; not shown it to betrue, only made it appear plausible. But that plausibility becomesan extreme probability nay, shall we not say certainty? when weweigh the following testimonies for it. First, this precisedoctrine is unquestionably contained in other parts of the NewTestament. We have in preceding chapters demonstrated itsexistence in Paul's epistles, in Peter's, in the Epistle to theHebrews, and in the Apocalypse. Therefore, since John'sphraseology is better explained by it than by any otherhypothesis, it is altogether likely that his real meaning was thesame.
Secondly, the terms "light" and "darkness," so frequent in thisevangelist, were not originated by him, but adopted. They wereregarded by the Persian theology, by Plato, by Philo, by theGnostics, as having a physical basis as well as a spiritualsignificance. In their conceptions, physical light, as well asspiritual holiness, was an efflux or manifestation from thesupernal God; physical darkness, as well as spiritual depravity,was an emanation or effect from the infernal Satan, or principleof evil. Is it not so in the usage of John? He uses the terms, itis true, prevailingly in a moral sense: still, there is much inhis statements that looks as if he supposed they had a physicalground. If so, then how natural is this connection of thought! Allgood comes from the dazzling world of God beyond the sky; all evilcomes from the nether world of his adversary, the prince ofdarkness. That John believed in a local heaven on high, theresidence of God, is made certain by scores of texts too plain tobe evaded. Would he not, then, in all probability, believe in alocal hell? Believing, as he certainly did, in a devil, the authorand lord of darkness, falsehood, and death, would he not conceivea kingdom for him? In the development of ideas reached at thattime, it is evident that the conception of God implied an upperworld, his resplendent abode, and that the conception of Satanequally implied an under world, his gloomy realm. To the latterhuman souls were doomed by sin. From the former Christ came, andreturned to it again, to show that the Father would forgive oursins and take us there.
Thirdly, John expected that Christ, after death, would return tothe Father in heaven. This appears from clear and reiteratedstatements in his reports of the Savior's words. But after theresurrection he tells us that Jesus had not yet ascended to theFather, but was just on the point of going. "Touch me not, for Iam not yet ascended to my Father; but go to my brethren, and sayunto them, I ascend unto my Father." Where, then, did he supposethe soul of his crucified Master had been during the intervalbetween his death and his resurrection? Dormant in the body, deadwith the body, laid in the tomb? That is opposed to the doctrineof uninterrupted life which pervades his writings. Besides, such abelief was held only by the Sadducees, whom the New Testamentstigmatizes. To assume that such was John's conception of the factis an arbitrary supposition, without the least warrant from anysource whatever. If he imagined the soul of Jesus during that timeto have been neither in heaven nor in the sepulchre, is it notpretty sure that he supposed it was in the under world, the commonreceptacle of souls, where, according to the belief of that age,every man went after death?
Fourthly, it is to be observed, in favor of this generalinterpretation, that the doctrine it unfolds is in harmony withthe contemporary opinions, a natural development from them, adevelopment which would be forced upon the mind of a JewishChristian accepting the resurrection of Christ as a fact. It wasthe Jewish opinion that God dwelt with his holy angels in a worldof everlasting light above the firmament. It was the Jewishopinion that the departed souls of men, on account of sin, wereconfined beneath the earth in Satan's and death's dark andslumberous cavern of shadows. It was the Jewish opinion that theMessiah would raise the righteous dead and reign with them onearth. Now, the first Christians clung to the Jewish creed andexpectations, with such modifications merely as the variation ofthe actual Jesus and his deeds from the theoretical Messiah andhis anticipated achievements compelled. Then, when Christ havingbeen received as the bringer of glad tidings from the Father died,and after three days rose from the dead and ascended to God,promising his brethren that where he was they should come, mustthey not have regarded it all as a dramatic exemplification of thefact that the region of death was no longer a hopeless dungeon,since one mighty enough to solve its chains and burst its gateshad returned from it? must they not have considered him as apledge that their sins were forgiven, their doom reversed, andheaven attainable?
John, in common with all the first Christians, evidently expectedthat the second advent of the Lord would soon take place, toconsummate the objects he had left unfinished, to raise the deadand judge them, justifying the worthy and condemning the unworthy.There was a well known Jewish tradition that the appearance ofAntichrist would immediately precede the triumphant coming of theMessiah. John says, "Even now are there many Antichrists: therebywe know that it is the last hour."37 "Abide in him, that, when heshall appear, we may not be ashamed before him at his coming.""That we may have boldness in the day of judgment." Theevangelist's outlook for the return of the Savior is also shown atthe end of his Gospel. "Jesus said not unto him, 'He shall notdie;' but, 'If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that tothee?'" That the doctrine of a universal resurrection which theJews probably derived, through their communication with thePersians, from the Zoroastrian system, and, with variousmodifications, adopted is embodied in the following passage, whocan doubt? "The hour is coming when all that are in the gravesshall hear the voice of the Son of Man and shall come forth." Thata general resurrection would literally occur under the auspices ofJesus was surely the meaning of the writer of those words. Whetherthat thought was intended to be conveyed by Christ in the exactterms he really used or not is a separate question, with which weare not now concerned, our object being simply to set forth John'sviews. Some commentators, seizing the letter and neglecting thespirit, have inferred from various texts that John expected thatthe resurrection would be limited to faithful Christians, just asthe more rigid of the Pharisees confined it to the righteous Jews."Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, yehave no life in you. Whoso eateth my flesh and drinketh my bloodhath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day."
37 See the able and impartial discussion of John's belief on thissubject contained in Lucke's Commentary on the First Epistle ofJohn, i. 18-28.
To force this figure into a literal meaning is a mistake; for inthe preceding chapter it is expressly said that "They that havedone good shall come forth unto the resurrection of life; theythat have done evil unto the resurrection of condemnation." Bothshall rise to be judged; but as we conceive the most probablesense of the phrases the good shall be received to heaven, the badshall be remanded to the under world. "Has no life in him" ofcourse cannot mean is absolutely dead, annihilated, but means hasnot faith and virtue, the elements of blessedness, thequalifications for heaven. The particular figurative use of wordsin these texts may be illustrated by parallel idioms from Philo,who says, "Of the living some are dead; on the contrary, the deadlive. For those lost from the life of virtue are dead, though theyreach the extreme of old age; while the good, though they aredisjoined from the body, live immortally."38 Again he writes,"Deathless life delivers the dying pious; but the dying impiouseverlasting death seizes."39 And a great many passages plainlyshow that one element of Philo's meaning, in such phrases asthese, is, that he believed that, upon their leaving the body, thesouls of the good would ascend to heaven, while the souls of thebad would descend to Hades. These discriminated events he supposedwould follow death at once. His thorough Platonism had weaned himfrom the Persian Pharisaic doctrine of a common intermediate statedetaining the dead below until the triumphant advent of a Redeemershould usher in the great resurrection and final judgment.40
John declares salvation to be conditional. "The blood of Christ"that is, his death and what followed "cleanses us from all sin, ifwe walk in the light as he is in the light;" not otherwise. "Hethat believeth not the Son shall not see eternal life, but thewrath of God abideth on him." "If any man see his brother commit asin which is not unto death, he shall pray, and shall receive lifefor them that sin not unto death. There is a sin unto death: I donot say that he shall pray for it." "Beloved, now are we the sonsof God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be; but we knowthat when he [Christ] shall appear we shall be like him, for weshall see him as he is. Every man that hath this hope in himpurifieth himself, even as he is pure." The heads of the doctrinewhich seems to underlie these statements are as follow. Christshall come again. All the dead shall rise for judicial ordeal.Those counted worthy shall be accepted, be transfigured into theresemblance of the glorious Redeemer and enter into eternalblessedness in heaven. The rest shall be doomed to the darkkingdom of death in the under world, to remain there for aughtthat is hinted to the contrary forever. From these premises twopractical inferences are drawn in exhortations. First, we shouldearnestly strive to fit ourselves for acceptance by moral purity,brotherly love, and pious faith. Secondly, we should seek pardonfor our sins by confession and prayer, and take heed lest byaggravated sin we deprave our souls beyond recovery. There arethose who sin unto death, for whom it is hopeless to pray. Light,truth, and the divine life of heaven can never receive them;darkness, falsehood, and the deep realm of death irrevocablyswallow them.
And now we may sum up in a few words the essential results of thiswhole inquiry into the principles of John's theology, especiallyas composing and shown in his doctrine of a
38 Vol. i. p. 554.
39 Ibid. p. 233.
40 See vol. i. pp. 139, 416, 417, 555, 643, 648; vol. ii. pp. 178,433.
future life. First, God is personal love, truth, light, holiness,blessedness. These realities, as concentrated in theirincomprehensible absoluteness, are the elements of his infinitebeing. Secondly, these spiritual substances, as diffused throughthe worlds of the universe and experienced in the souls of moralcreatures, are the medium of God's revelation of himself, thedirect presence and working of his Logos. Thirdly, the persons whoprevailingly partake of these qualities are God's loyal subjectsand approved children, in peaceful communion with the Father,through the Son, possessing eternal life. Fourthly, Satan ispersonal hatred, falsehood, darkness, sin, misery. Theserealities, in their abstract nature and source, are his being; intheir special manifestations they are his efflux and power.Fifthly, the persons who partake rulingly of these qualities arethe devil's enslaved subjects and lineal children: in sinfulbondage to him, in depraved communion with him, they dwell in astate of hostile banishment and unhappiness, which is moral death.Sixthly, Christ was the Logos who, descending from his anteriorglory in heaven, and appearing in mortal flesh, embodied all theDivine qualities in an unflawed model of humanity, gathered up andexhibited all the spiritual characteristics of the Father in astainless and perfect soul supernaturally filled and illumined,thus to bear into the world a more intelligible and effectiverevelation of God the Father than nature or common humanityyielded, to shine with regenerating radiance upon the deadlydarkness of those who were groping in lying sins, "that they mighthave life and that they might have it more abundantly." Seventhly,the fickle and perishing experience of unbelieving and wicked men,the vagrant life of sensuality and worldliness, the shallow lifein vain and transitory things, gives place in the soul of aChristian to a profoundly earnest, unchanging experience of truthand love, a steady and everlasting life in Divine and everlastingthings. Eighthly, the experimental reception of the revealed graceand verity by faith and discipleship in Jesus is accompanied byinternal convincing proofs and seals of their genuineness,validity, and immortality. They awaken a new consciousness, a newlife, inherently Divine and self warranting. Ninthly, Christ, byhis incarnation, death, resurrection, and ascension, was apropitiation for our sins, a mercy seat pledging forgiveness; thatis, he was the medium of showing us that mercy of God whichannulled the penalty of sin, the descent of souls to the gloomyunder world, and opened the celestial domains for the ransomedchildren of earth to join the sinless angels of heaven. Tenthly,Christ was speedily to make a second advent. In that last day thedead should come forth for judgment, the good be exalted tounfading glory with the Father and the Son, and the bad be left inthe lower region of noiseless shadows and dreams. These ten pointsof view, we believe, command all the principal features of thetheological landscape which occupied the mental vision of thewriter of the Gospel and epistles bearing the superscription,John.
CHAPTER VI.
CHRIST'S TEACHINGS CONCERNING THE FUTURE LIFE.
IN approaching the teachings of the Savior himself concerning thefuture fate of man, we should throw off the weight of creeds andprejudices, and, by the aid of all the appliances in our power,endeavor to reach beneath the imagery and unessential particularsof his instructions to learn their bare significance in truth.This is made difficult by the singular perversions his religionhas undergone; by the loss of a complete knowledge of thepeculiarities of the Messianic age in the lapse of the ages since;by the almost universal change in our associations, modes offeeling and thought, and styles of speech; and by the gradualaccretion and hardening of false doctrines and sectarian biasesand wilfulness. As we examine the words of Christ to find theirreal meaning, there are four prominent considerations to beespecially weighed and borne in mind.
First, we must not forget the poetic Eastern style common to theJewish prophets; their symbolic enunciations in bold figures ofspeech: "I am the door;" "I am the bread of life;" "I am thevine;" "My sheep hear my voice;" "If these should hold theirpeace, the stones would immediately cry out." This daringemblematic language was natural to the Oriental nations; and theBible is full of it. Is the overthrow of a country foretold? It isnot said, "Babylon shall be destroyed," but "The sun shall bedarkened at his going forth, the moon shall be as blood, the starsshall fall from heaven, and the earth shall stagger to and fro asa drunken man." If we would truly understand Christ'sdeclarations, we must not overlook the characteristics offigurative language. For "he spake to the multitude in parables,and without a parable spake he not unto them;" and a parable, ofcourse, is not to be taken literally, but holds a latent sense andpurpose which are to be sought out. The greatest injustice is doneto the teachings of Christ when his words are studied as those ofa dry scholastic, a metaphysical moralist, not as those of aprofound poet, a master in the spiritual realm.
Secondly, we must remember that we have but fragmentary reports ofa small part of the teachings of Christ. He was engaged in theactive prosecution of his mission probably about three years, atthe shortest over one year; while all the different words of hisrecorded in the New Testament would not occupy more than fivehours. Only a little fraction of what he said has been transmittedto us; and though this part may contain the essence of the whole,yet it must naturally in some instances be obscure and difficultof apprehension. We must therefore compare different passages witheach other, carefully probe them all, and explain, so far aspossible, those whose meaning is recondite by those whose meaningis obvious. Some persons may be surprised to think that we havebut a small portion of the sayings of Jesus. The fact, however, isunquestionable. And perhaps there is no more reason that we shouldhave a full report of his words than there is that we should havea complete account of his doings; and the evangelist declares,"There are also many other things which Jesus did, the which, ifthey should every one be written, I suppose that even the worlditself could not contain the books."
Thirdly, when examining the instructions of Jesus, we shouldrecollect that he adopted, and applied to himself and to hiskingdom, the common Jewish phraseology concerning the Messiah andthe events that were expected to attend his advent and reign. Buthe did not take up these phrases in the perverted sense held inthe corrupt opinions and earthly hopes of the Jews: he used themspiritually, in the sense which accorded with the true Messianicdispensation as it was arranged in the forecasting providence ofGod. No investigation of the New Testament should be unaccompaniedby an observance of the fundamental rule of interpretation,namely, that the strident of a book, especially of an ancient,obscure, and fragmentary book, should imbue himself as thoroughlyas he can with the knowledge and spirit of the opinions, events,influences, circumstances, of the time when the document waswritten, and of the persons who wrote it. The inquirer must beequipped for his task by a mastery of the Rabbinism of Gamaliel,at whose feet Paul was brought up; for the Jewish mind of that agewas filled, and its religious language directed, by thisRabbinism. Guided by this principle, furnished with the necessaryinformation, in the helpful light of the best results of moderncritical scholarship, we shall be able to explain many dark texts,and to satisfy ourselves, at least in a degree, as to the genuinesubstance of Christ's declarations touching the future destiniesof men.
Finally, he who studies the New Testament with patientthoroughness and with honest sharpness will arrive at adistinction most important to be made and to be kept in view,namely, a distinction between the real meaning of Christ's wordsin his own mind and the actual meaning understood in them by hisauditors and reporters.1 Here we approach a most delicate andvital point, hitherto too little noticed, but destined yet tobecome prominent and fruitful. A large number of religious phraseswere in common use among the Jews at the time of Jesus. He adoptedthem, but infused into them a deeper, a correct meaning, asCopernicus did into the old astronomic formulas. But thebystanders who listened to his discourses, hearing the familiarterms, seized the familiar meaning, and erroneously attributed itto him. It is certain that the Savior was often misunderstood andoften not understood at all. When he declared himself the Messiah,the people would have made him a king by force! Even the apostlesfrequently grossly failed to appreciate his spirit and aims,wrenched unwarrantable inferences from his words, and quarrelledfor the precedency in his coming kingdom and for seats at hisright hand. In numerous cases it is glaringly plain that his ideaswere far from their conceptions of them. We have no doubt the samewas true in many other instances where it is not so clear. Herepeatedly reproves them for folly and slowness because they didnot perceive the sense of his instructions. Perhaps there was aslight impatience in his tones when he said, "How is it that ye donot understand that I spake it not to you concerning bread, thatye should beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and of theSadducees?" Jesus uttered in established phrases new andprofoundly spiritual thoughts. The apostles educated in, and fullof, as they evidently were, the dogmas, prejudices, and
1 See this distinction affirmed by De Wette, in the preface to hisCommentatio de Morte Jesus Christi Expiatoria. See also Thurn,Jesus und seine Apostel in Widerspruch in Ansehung der Lehre vonder Ewigcn Verdamnniss. In Scherer's Schriftforsch. sect. i. nr.4.
hopes of their age and land would naturally, to some extent,misapprehend his meaning. Then, after a tumultuous interval,writing out his instructions from memory, how perfectly naturalthat their own convictions and sentiments would have a powerfulinfluence in modifying and shaping the animus and the verbalexpressions in their reports! Under the circumstances, that weshould now possess the very equivalents of his words with strictliteralness, and conveying his very intentions perfectlytranslated from the Aramaan into the Greek tongue, would imply themost sustained and amazing of all miracles. There is nothingwhatever that indicates any such miraculous intervention. There isnothing to discredit the fair presumption that the writers wereleft to their own abilities, under the inspiration of an earnestconsecrating love and truthfulness. And we must, with duelimitations, distinguish between the original words and consciousmeaning of the sublime Master, illustrated by the emphasis anddiscrimination of his looks, tones, and gestures, and theapprehended meaning recorded long afterwards, shaped and coloredby passing through the minds and pens of the sometimes dissentientand always imperfect disciples. He once declared to them, "I havemany things to say unto you, but ye are not able to bear them."Admitting his infallibility, as we may, yet asserting theirfallibility, as we must, and accompanied, too, as his words noware by many very obscuring circumstances, it is extremelydifficult to lay the hand on discriminated texts and say,"[non ASCII characters]"
The Messianic doctrine prevalent among the Jews in the time ofJesus appears to have been built up little by little, by religiousfaith, national pride, and priestly desire, out of literalinterpretations of figurative prophecy, and Cabalisticinterpretations of plain language, and Rabbinical traditions andspeculations, additionally corrupted in some particulars byintercourse with the Persians. Under all this was a centralspiritual germ of a Divine promise and plan. A Messiah was reallyto come. It was in answering the questions, what kind of a king hewas to be, and over what sort of a kingdom he was to reign, thatthe errors crept in. The Messianic conceptions which have comedown to us through the Prophets, the Targums, incidental allusionsin the New Testament, the Talmud, and the few other traditions andrecords yet in existence, are very diverse and sometimescontradictory. They agreed in ardently looking for an earthlysovereign in the Messiah, one who would rise up in the line ofDavid and by the power of Jehovah deliver his people, punish theirenemies, subdue the world to his sceptre, and reign with Divineauspices of beneficence and splendor. They also expected that thena portion of the dead would rise from the under world and assumetheir bodies again, to participate in the triumphs and blessingsof his earthly kingdom. His personal reign in Judea was what theyusually meant by the phrases "the kingdom of heaven," "the kingdomof God." The apostles cherished these ideas, and expressed them inthe terms common to their countrymen. But we cannot doubt thatJesus employed this and kindred language in a purer and deepersense, which we must take pains to distinguish from the early andlingering errors associated with it.
Upon the threshold of our subject we meet with predictions of asecond coming of Christ from heaven, with power and glory, to siton his throne and judge the world. The portentous imagery in whichthese prophecies are clothed is taken from the old prophets; andto them
we must turn to learn its usage and force. The Hebrews called anysignal manifestation of power especially any dreadful calamity acoming of the Lord. It was a coming of Jehovah when his vengeancestrewed the ground with the corpses of Sennacherib's host; whenits storm swept Jerusalem as with fire, and bore Israel intobondage; when its sword came down upon Idumea and was bathed inblood upon Edom. "The day of the Lord" is another term ofprecisely similar import. It occurs in the Old Testament aboutfifteen times. In every instance it means some mightymanifestation of God's power in calamity. These occasions arepictured forth with the most astounding figures of speech. Isaiahdescribes the approaching destruction of Babylon in these terms:"The stars of heaven and the constellations thereof shall give nolight; the sun shall be darkened, the moon shall not shine, theheavens shall shake, and the earth shall remove out of her placeand be as a frightened sheep that no man taketh up." The Jewsexpected that the coming of the Messiah would be preceded by manyfearful woes, in the midst of which he would appear with peerlesspomp and might. The day of his coming they named emphatically theday of the Lord. Jesus actually appeared, not, as they expected, awarrior travelling in the greatness of his strength, with dyedgarments from Bozrah, staining his raiment with blood as hetrampled in the wine vat of vengeance, but the true Messiah, God'sforeordained and anointed Son, despised and rejected of men,bringing good tidings, publishing peace. It must have beenimpossible for the Jews to receive such a Messiah withoutexplanations. Those few who became converts apprehended hisMessianic language, at least to some extent, in the sense whichpreviously occupied their minds. He knew that often he was notunderstood; and he frequently said to his followers, "Who hathears to hear, let him hear." His disciples once asked him, "Whatshall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world?" Hereplied, substantially, "There shall be wars, famines, andunheard of trials; and immediately after the sun shall bedarkened, the moon shall not give her light, the stars shall fallfrom heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken. Thenshall they see the Son of Man coming in the clouds of heaven withgreat power. And he shall sit upon the throne of his glory, andall nations shall be gathered before him, and he shall separatethem one from another." That this language was understood by theevangelists and the early Christians, in accordance with theirPharisaic notions, as teaching literally a physical reappearanceof Christ on the earth, a resurrection, and a general judgment, wefully believe. Those ideas were prevalent at the time, areexpressed in scores of places in the New Testament, and are thedirect strong assertion of the words themselves. But that such wasthe meaning of Christ himself we much more than doubt.
In the first place, in his own language in regard to his secondcoming there is not the least hint of a resurrection of the dead:the scene is confined to the living, and to the earth. Secondly,the figures which he employs in this connection are the same asthose used by the Jewish prophets to denote great and signalevents on the earth, and may be so taken here without violence tothe idiom. Thirdly, he expressly fixed the date of the events hereferred to within that generation; and if, therefore, he spokeliterally, he was grossly in error, and his prophecies failed offulfilment, a conclusion which we cannot adopt. To suppose that hepartook in the false, mechanical dogmas of the carnal Jews wouldbe equally irreconcilable with the common idea of his Divineinspiration, and with the profound penetration and spiritualityof his own mind.
He certainly used much of the phraseology of his contemporarycountrymen, metaphorically, to convey his own purer thoughts. Wehave no doubt he did so in regard to the descriptions of hissecond coming. Let us state in a form of paraphrase what his realinstructions on this point seem to us to have been: "You cannotbelieve that I am the Messiah, because I do not deliver you fromyour oppressors and trample on the Gentiles. Your minds areclouded with errors. The Father hath sent me to found the kingdomof peace and righteousness, and hath given me all power to rewardand punish. By my word shall the nations of the earth be honoredand blessed, or be overwhelmed with fire; and every man must standbefore my judgment seat. The end of the world is at the doors. TheMosaic dispensation is about to be closed in the fearfultribulations of the day of the Lord, and my dispensation to be setup. When you see Jerusalem encompassed with armies, know that theday is at hand, and flee to the mountains; for not one stone shallbe left upon another. Then the power of God will be shown on mybehalf, and the sign of the Son of Man be seen in heaven. Mytruths shall prevail, and shall be owned as the criteria of Divinejudgment. According to them, all the righteous shall bedistinguished as my subjects, and all the iniquitous shall beseparated from my kingdom. Some of those standing here shall nottaste death till all these things be fulfilled. Then it will beseen that I am the Messiah, and that through the eternalprinciples of truth which I have proclaimed I shall sit upon athrone of glory, not literally, in person, as you thought,blessing the Jews and cursing the Gentiles, but spiritually, inthe truth, dispensing joy to good men and woe to bad men,according to their deserts." Such we believe to be the meaning ofChrist's own predictions of his second coming. He figurativelyidentifies himself with his religion according to that idiom bywhich it is written, "Moses hath in every city them that read him,being read in the synagogues every Sabbath day." His figure ofhimself as the universal judge is a bold personification; for heelsewhere says, "He that believeth in me believeth not in me, butin Him that sent me." And again, "He that rejecteth me, I judgehim not: the word that I have spoken, that shall judge him." Hiscoming in the clouds of heaven with great power and glory waswhen, at the destruction of Jerusalem, the old age closed and thenew began, the obstacles to his religion were removed and histhrone established on the earth.2 The apostles undoubtedlyunderstood the doctrine differently; but that such was his ownthought we conclude, because he did sometimes undeniably usefigurative language in that way, and because the other meaning isan error, not in harmony either with his character, his mind, orhis mission.
This interpretation is so important that it may need to beillustrated and confirmed by further instances: "When the Son ofMan sits on the throne of his glory, and all nations are gatheredbefore him, his angels shall sever the wicked from among the just,and shall cast them into a furnace of fire: there shall be weepingand gnashing of teeth." A few such picturesque phrases have led tothe general belief in a great world judgment at the end of the
2 Norton, Statement of Reasons, Appendix.
appointed time, after which the condemned are to be thrown intothe tortures of an unquenchable world of flame. How arbitrary andviolent a conclusion this is, how unwarranted and gross aperversion of the language of Christ it is, we may easily see. Thefact that the old prophets often described fearful misfortunes andwoes in images of clouds and flame and falling stars, and otherportentous symbols, and that this style was therefore familiar tothe Jews, would make it very natural for Jesus, in foretellingsuch an event as the coming destruction of Jerusalem, inconflagration and massacre, with the irretrievable subversion ofthe old dispensation, to picture it forth in a similar way. Firewas to the Jews a common emblem of calamity and devastation; andjudgments incomparably less momentous than those gathered aboutthe fall of Jerusalem and the dispersion of the self boastedfavorites of Jehovah were often described by the prophets inappalling images of darkened planets, shaking heavens, clouds,fire, and blackness. Joel, speaking of a "day of the Lord," whenthere should be famine and drought, and a horrid army ofdestroying insects, "before whom a fire devoureth, and behind thema flame burneth," draws the scene in these terrific colors: "Theearth shall quake before them; the sun and moon shall be dark, andthe stars shall withdraw their shining; and the Lord shall utterhis voice before his terrible army of locusts, caterpillars, anddestroying worms:" Ezekiel represents God as saying, "The house ofIsrael is to me become dross: therefore I will gather you into themidst of Jerusalem: as they gather silver, brass, iron, tin, andlead into the midst of the furnace to blow the fire upon it, sowill I gather you, and blow upon you in the fire of my wrath, andye shall be melted in the midst thereof." We read in Isaiah, "TheAssyrian shall flee, and his princes shall be afraid, saith theLord, whose fire is in Zion and his furnace in Jerusalem." Malachialso says, "The day cometh that shall burn as a furnace, and allthat do wickedly shall be stubble, and shall be burned up root andbranch. They shall be trodden as ashes beneath the feet of therighteous." The meaning of these passages, and of many othersimilar ones, is, in every instance, some severe temporalcalamity, some dire example of Jehovah's retributions among thenations of the earth. Their authors never dreamed of teaching thatthere is a place of fire beyond the grave in which the wicked deadshall be tormented, or that the natural creation is finally to bedevoured by flame. It is perfectly certain that not a single textin the Old Testament was meant to teach any such doctrine as that.The judgments shadowed forth in kindred metaphors by Christ are tobe understood in the light of this fact. Their meaning is, thatall unjust, cruel, false, impure men shall endure severepunishments. This general thought is fearfully distinct; but everything beyond all details are left in utter obscurity.
In the august scene of the King in judgment, when the sentence hasbeen pronounced on those at the left hand, "Depart from me, yecursed, into everlasting fire prepared for the devil and hisangels," it is written, "and they shall go away into everlastingpunishment." It is obvious to remark that the imagery of a fieryprison built for Satan and the fallen angels, and into which thebad shall be finally doomed, is poetical language, or language ofaccommodation to the current notions of the time. These startlingOriental figures are used to wrap and convey the assertion thatthe wicked shall be severely punished according to their deserts.No literal reference seems to be made either to the particulartime, to the
special place, or to the distinctive character, of the punishment;but the mere fact is stated in a manner to fill the consciencewith awe and to stamp the practical lesson vividly on the memory.But admitting the clauses apparently descriptive of the nature ofthis retribution to be metaphorical, yet what shall we think ofits duration? Is it absolutely unending? There is nothing in therecord to enable a candid inquirer to answer that questiondecisively. So far as the letter of Scripture is concerned, thereare no data to give an indubitable solution to the problem. It istrue the word "everlasting" is repeated; but, when impartiallyweighed, it seems a sudden rhetorical expression, of indefiniteforce, used to heighten the impressiveness of a sublime dramaticrepresentation, rather than a cautious philosophical term employedto convey an abstract conception. There is no reason whatever forsupposing that Christ's mind was particularly directed to themetaphysical idea of endlessness, or to the much more metaphysicalidea of timelessness. The presumptive evidence is that he spokepopularly. Had he been charged to reveal a doctrine so tremendous,so awful, so unutterably momentous in its practical relations, asthat of the endless close of all probation at death, is itconceivable that he would merely have couched it in a fewfigurative expressions and left it as a matter of obscureinference and uncertainty? No: in that case, he would haveiterated and reiterated it, defined, guarded, illustrated it, andhave left no possibility of honest mistake or doubt of it.
The Greek word [non-ASCII characters], and the same is true of thecorresponding Hebrew word, translated "everlasting" in the EnglishBible, has not in its popular usage the rigid force of eternalduration, but varies, is now applied to objects as evanescent asman's earthly life, now to objects as lasting as eternity.3Its power in any given case is to be sought from the context andthe reason of the thing.
Isaiah, having threatened the unrighteous nations that they"should conceive chaff and bring forth stubble, that their ownbreath should be fire to devour them, and that they should beburnt like lime, like thorns cut up in the fire," makes theterror smitten sinners and hypocrites cry, "Who among us can dwellin devouring fire? Who among us can dwell in everlastingburnings?" Yet his reference is solely to an outward, temporaljudgment in this world. The Greek adjective rendered "everlasting"is etymologically, and by universal usage, a term of duration, butindefinite, its extent of meaning depending on the subjects ofwhich it is predicated. Therefore, when Christ connects this wordwith the punishment of the wicked, it is impossible to say withany certainty, judging from the language itself, whether heimplies that those who die in their sins are hopelessly lost,perfectly irredeemable forever, or not, though the probabilitiesare very strongly in the latter direction. "Everlastingpunishment" may mean, in philosophical strictness, a punishmentabsolutely eternal, or may be a popular expression denoting, withgeneral indefiniteness, a very long duration. Since in all Greekliterature, sacred and profane, [non-ASCII characters] is appliedto things that end, ten times as often as it is to things immortal,no fair critic can assert positively that when it is connectedwith future punishment it has the stringent meaning ofmetaphysical endlessness. On the other hand, no one has anycritical
3 See Christian Examiner for March, 1854, pp. 280-297.
right to say positively that in such cases it has not thatmeaning. The Master has not explained his words on this point, buthas left them veiled. We can settle the question itself concerningthe limitedness or the unlimitedness of future punishment only onother grounds than those of textual criticism, even on grounds ofenlightened reason postulating the cardinal principles ofChristianity and of ethics. Will not the unimpeded Spirit ofChrist lead all free minds and loving hearts to one conclusion?But that conclusion is to be held modestly as a trusted inference,not dogmatically as a received revelation.
Another point in the Savior's teachings which it is of the utmostimportance to understand is the sense in which he used the Jewishphrases "Resurrection of the Dead" and "Resurrection at the LastDay." The Pharisees looked for a restoration of the righteous fromtheir graves to a bodily life. This event they supposed would takeplace at the appearance of the Messiah; and the time of his comingthey called "the last day." So the Apostle John says, "Already arethere many antichrists; whereby we know that it is the last time."Now, Jesus claimed to be the Messiah, clothed in his functions,though he interpreted those functions as carrying an interior andmoral, not an outward and physical, force. "This is the will ofHim that sent me, that every one which seeth the Son and believethon him should have everlasting life; and I will raise him up atthe last day." Again, when Martha told Jesus that "she knew herbrother Lazarus would rise again in the resurrection at the lastday," he replied, "I am the resurrection and the life: he thatbelieveth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live; andwhosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die." Thisutterance is surely metaphorical; for belief in Jesus does notprevent physical dissolution. The thoughts contained in thevarious passages belonging to this subject, when drawn out,compared, and stated in general terms, seem to us to be asfollows: "You suppose that in the last day your Messiah willrestore the dead to live again upon the earth. I am the Messiah,and the last days have therefore arrived. I am commissioned by theFather to bestow eternal life upon all who believe on me; but notin the manner you have anticipated. The true resurrection is notcalling the body from the tomb, but opening the fountains ofeternal life in the soul. I am come to open the spiritual world toyour faith. He that believeth in me and keepeth my commandmentshas passed from death unto life, become conscious that thoughseemingly he passes into the grave, yet really he shall live withGod forever. The true resurrection is, to come into the experienceof the truth that 'God is not the God of the dead, but of theliving; for all live unto him.' Over the soul that is filled withsuch an experience, death has no power. Verily, I say unto, you,the hour is coming, and now is, when the dead, the ignorant andguilty, buried in trespasses and sins, shall hear these truthsdeclared, and they that believe shall lay hold of the life thusoffered and be blessed. The Father hath given me authority toexecute judgment, that is, to lay down the principles by which menshall be judged according to their deserts. All mankind shall bejudged in the spiritual state by the spirit and precepts of myreligion as veritably as if in their graves the generations of thedead heard my voice and came forth, the good to blessedness, theevil to misery. The judgment which is, as it were, committed untome, is not really committed unto me, but unto the truth which Ideclare; for of mine own self I can do nothing." We believe thisparaphrase expresses the essential meaning of Christ's owndeclarations concerning a resurrection and an associated judgment.Coming to bring from the Father authenticated tidings ofimmortality, and to reveal the laws of the Divine judgment,he declared that those who believed and kept his words weredelivered from the terror of death, and, knowing that an endlesslife of blessedness was awaiting them, immediately entered uponits experience. He did not teach the doctrine of a bodilyrestoration, but said, "In the resurrection," that is, in thespiritual state succeeding death, "they neither marry nor aregiven in marriage, but are as the angels of heaven."
He did not teach the doctrine of a temporary sleep in the grave,but said to the penitent thief on the cross, "This day shalt thoube with me in Paradise:" instantly upon leaving the body theirsouls would be together in the state of the blessed.
It is often said that the words of Jesus in relation to the deadhearing his voice and coming forth must be taken literally; forthe metaphor is of too extreme violence. But it is in keeping withhis usage. He says, "Let the dead bury their dead." It is far lessbold than "This is my body; this is my blood." It is not nearly sostrong as Paul's adjuration, "Awake, thou that sleepest, and risefrom the dead, and Christ shall give thee light." It is not moredaringly imaginative than the assertion that "the heroes sleepingin Marathon's gory bed stirred in their graves when Leonidasfought at Thermopyla; or than Christ's own words, "If thou hadstfaith like a grain of mustard seed, thou couldst say to thismountain, Be thou cast into yonder sea, and it should obey you."So one might say,
"Where'er the gospel comes,
It spreads diviner light;
It calls dead sinners from their tombs
And gives the blind their sight."
And in the latter days, when it has done its work, and theglorious measure of human redemption is full, liberty,intelligence, and love shall stand hand in hand on the mountainsummits and raise up the long generations of the dead to beholdthe completed fruits of their toils. In this figurative moralsense Jesus probably spoke when he said, "Thou shalt berecompensed at the resurrection of the just." He referred simplyto the rewards of the virtuous in the state beyond the grave. Thephraseology in which he clothed the thought he accommodatinglyadopted from the current speech of the Pharisees. Theyunquestionably meant by it the group of notions contained in theirdogma of the destined physical restoration of the dead from theirsepulchres at the advent of the Messiah. And it seems perfectlyplain to us, on an impartial study of the record, that theevangelist, in reporting his words, took the Pharisaic dogma, andnot merely the Christian truth, with them. But that Jesus himselfmodified and spiritualized the meaning of the phrase when heemployed it, even as he did the other contemporaneous languagedescriptive of the Messianic offices and times, we conclude fortwo reasons. First, he certainly did often use language in thatspiritual way, dressing in bold metaphors moral thoughts ofinspired insight and truth. Secondly, the moral doctrine is theonly one that is true, or that is in keeping with his penetrativethought. The notion of a physical resurrection is an errorborrowed most likely from the Persians by the Pharisees, and notbelonging to the essential elements of Christianity. The notionbeing prevalent at the time in Judea, and being usually expressedin certain appropriated phrases, when Christ used those phrases ina true spiritual sense the apostles would naturally apprehend fromthem the carnal meaning which already filled their minds in commonwith the minds of their countrymen.
The word Hades, translated in the English New Testament by theword "hell," a word of nearly the same etymological force, but nowconveying a quite different meaning, occurs in the discourses ofJesus only three several times. The other instances of its use arerepetitions or parallels. First, "And thou, Capernaum, which artexalted to heaven, shalt be brought down to the under world;" thatis, the great and proud city shall become powerless, a heap ofruins. Second, "Upon this rock I will found my Church, and thegates of the under world shall not prevail against it;" that is,the powers of darkness, the opposition of the wicked, the strengthof evil, shall not destroy my religion; in spite of them it shallassert its organization and overcome all obstacles.
The remaining example of the Savior's use of this word is in theparable of Dives and Lazarus. The rich man is described, afterdeath, as suffering in the under world. Seeing the beggar afar offin Abraham's bosom, he cries, "Father Abraham, pity me, and sendLazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water and coolmy tongue; for I am tormented in this flame." Well known fanciesand opinions are here wrought up in scenic form to convey certainmoral impressions. It will be noticed that the implied division ofthe under world into two parts, with a gulf between them,corresponds to the common Gentile notion of an Elysian region ofdelightful meadows for the good and a Tartarean region ofblackness and fire for the bad, both included in one subterraneankingdom, but divided by an interval. 4
The dramatic details of the account Lazarus being borne into blissby angels, Dives asking to have a messenger sent from bale to warnhis surviving brothers rest on opinions afloat among the Jews ofthat age, derived from the Persian theology. Zoroaster prays,"When I shall die, let Aban and Bahman carry me to the bosom ofjoy."5 And it was a common belief among the Persians that soulswere at seasons permitted to leave purgatory and visit theirrelatives on earth.6 It is evident that the narrative before us isnot a history to be literally construed, but a parable to becarefully analyzed. The imagery and the particulars are to be laidaside, and the central thoughts to be drawn forth. Take the wordsliterally, that the rich man's immaterial soul, writhing inflames, wished the tip of a finger dipped in water to cool histongue, and they are ridiculous. Take them figuratively, as a typeof unknown spiritual anguish, and they are awful. Besides, hadChrist intended to teach the doctrine of a local burning hell, hesurely would have enunciated it in plain words, with solemniteration and explanatory amplifications, instead of merelyinsinuating it incidentally, in metaphorical
4 See copious illustrations by Rosenmuller, in Luc. cap. xvi. 22,
23.
"Hic locus est partes ubi se via findit in ambas:
Dextera, qua Ditis magni sub moenia tendit;
Hac iter Elysium nobis: at lava malorum
Exercet poenas, et ad impia Tartara mittit."
5 Rhode, Heilige Sage des Zendvolks, s. 408.
6 Ibid. s. 410.
terms, in a professed parable. The sense of the parable is, thatthe formal distinctions of this world will have no influence inthe allotments of the future state, but will often be reversedthere; that a righteous Providence, knowing every thing here,rules hereafter, and will dispense compensating justice to all;that men should not wait for a herald to rise from the dead towarn them, but should heed the instructions they already have, andso live in the life that now is, as to avoid a miserablecondemnation, and secure a blessed acceptance, in the life that isto come. By inculcating these truths in a striking manner, throughthe aid of a parable based on the familiar poetical conceptions ofthe future world and its scenery, Christ no more endorses thoseconceptions than by using the Messianic phrases of the Jews heapproves the false carnal views which they joined with thatlanguage. To interpret the parable literally, then, and suppose itmeant to teach the actual existence of a located hell of fire forsinners after death, is to disregard the proprieties of criticism.
"Gehenna," or the equivalent phrase, "Gehenna of fire,"unfortunately translated into our tongue by the word "hell," is tobe found in the teachings of Christ in only five independentinstances, each of which, after tracing the original Jewish usageof the term, we will briefly examine. Gehenna, or the Vale ofHinnom, is derived from two Hebrew words, the first meaning avale, the second being the name of its owner. The place thuscalled was the eastern part of the beautiful valley that forms thesouthern boundary of Jerusalem. Here Moloch, the horrid idol godworshipped by the Ammonites, and by the Israelites during theiridolatrous lapses, was set up. This monstrous idol had the head ofan ox and the body of a man. It was hollow; and, being filled withfire, children were laid in its arms and devoured alive by theheat. This explains the terrific denunciations uttered by theprophets against those who made their children pass through thefire to Moloch. The spot was sometimes entitled Tophet, a place ofabhorrence; its name being derived, as some think, from a wordmeaning to vomit with loathing, or, as others suppose, from a wordsignifying drum, because drums were beaten to drown the shrieks ofthe burning children. After these horrible rites were abolished byJosiah, the place became an utter abomination. All filth, theoffal of the city, the carcasses of beasts, the bodies of executedcriminals, were cast indiscriminately into Gehenna. Fires werekept constantly burning to prevent the infection of the atmospherefrom the putrifying mass. Worms were to be seen preying on therelics. The primary meaning, then, of Gehenna, is a valley outsideof Jerusalem, a place of corruption and fire, only to be thoughtof with execration and shuddering.
Now, it was not only in keeping with Oriental rhetoric, but alsonatural in itself, that figures of speech should be taken fromthese obvious and dreadful facts to symbolize any dire evil. Forexample, how naturally might a Jew, speaking of some foul wretch,and standing, perhaps, within sight of the place, exclaim, "Hedeserves to be hurled into the fires of Gehenna!" So the termwould gradually become an accepted emblem of abominablepunishment. Such was the fact; and this gives a perspicuousmeaning to the word without supposing it to imply a fiery prisonhouse of anguish in the future world. Isaiah threatens the King ofAssyria with ruin in these terms: "Tophet is ordained of old, andprepared for the king: it is made deep and large; the pile thereofis fire and much wood; the breath of Jehovah, like a stream ofbrimstone, doth kindle it." The prophet thus portrays, with thedread imagery of Gehenna, approaching disaster and overthrow. Athorough study of the Old Testament shows that the Jews, duringthe period which it covers, did not believe in future rewards andpunishments, but expected that all souls without discriminationwould pass their shadowy dream lives in the silence of Sheol.
Between the termination of the Old Testament history and thecommencement of the New, various forms of the doctrine of futureretribution had been introduced or developed among the Jews. Butduring this period few, if any, decisive instances can be found inwhich the image of penal fire is connected with the future state.On the contrary, "darkness," "gloom," "blackness," "profound andperpetual night," are the terms employed to characterize the abodeand fate of the wicked.
Josephus says that, in the faith of the Pharisees, "the worstcriminals were banished to the darkest part of the under world."Philo represents the depraved and condemned as "groping in thelowest and darkest part of the creation. The word Gehenna israrely found in the literature of this time, and when it is itcommonly seems to be used either simply to denote the detestableVale of Hinnom, or else plainly as a general symbol of calamityand horror, as in the elder prophets.
But in some of the Targums, or Chaldee paraphrases of the HebrewScriptures, especially in the Targum of Jonathan ben Uzziel, wemeet repeated applications of the word Gehenna to signify apunishment by fire in the future state.7 This is a fact aboutwhich there can be no question. And to the documents showing sucha usage of the word, the best scholars are pretty well agreed inassigning a date as early as the days of Christ. The evidenceafforded by these Targums, together with the marked application ofthe term by Jesus himself, and the similar general use of itimmediately after both by Christians and Jews, render it notimprobable that Gehenna was known to the contemporaries of theSavior as the metaphorical name of hell, a region of fire, in theunder world, where the reprobate were supposed to be punishedafter death. But admitting that, before Christ began to teach, theJews had modified their early conception of the under world as thesilent and sombre abode of all the dead in common, and had dividedit into two parts, one where the wicked suffer, called Gehenna,one where the righteous rest, called Paradise, still, thatmodification having been borrowed, as is historically evident,from the Gentiles, or, if developed among themselves, at allevents unconnected with revelation, of course Christianity is notinvolved with the truth or falsity of it, is not responsible forit. It does not necessarily follow that Jesus gave precisely thesame meaning to the word Gehenna that his contemporaries orsuccessors did. He may have used it in a modified emblematicsense, as he did many other current terms. In studying hislanguage, we should especially free our minds both from thetyranny of pre Christian notions and dogmas and from theassociations and influences of modern creeds, and seek tointerpret it in the light of his own instructions and in thespirit of his own mind.
We will now examine the cases in which Christ uses the term
Gehenna, and ask what it means.
First: "Whosoever shall say to his brother, Thou vile wretch!shall be in danger of the fiery Gehenna." Interpret thisliterally, and it teaches that whosoever calls his brother a
7 Gesenius, Hebrew Thesaurus, Ge Hinnom.
wicked apostate is in danger of being thrown into the filthyflames in the Vale of Hinnom. But no one supposes that such wasits meaning. Jesus would say, as we understand him, "I am not cometo destroy, but to fulfil, the law; to show how at the culminationof the old dispensation a higher and stricter one opens. I sayunto you, that, unless your righteousness exceeds that of thePharisees, you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven. The conditionsof acceptance under the new order are far more profound anddifficult than under the old. That said, Whosoever commits murdershall be exposed to legal punishment from the public tribunal.This says, An invisible inward punishment, as much to be dreadedas the judgments of the Sanhedrim, shall be inflicted upon thosewho harbor the secret passions that lead to crime; whosoever, outof an angry heart, insults his brother, shall be exposed tospiritual retributions typified by the horrors of yon flamingvalley. They of old time took cognizance of outward crimes byoutward penalties. I take cognizance of inward sins by inwardreturns more sure and more fearful."
Second: "If thy right eye be a source of temptation to thee, pluckit out and fling it away; for it is better for thee that one ofthy members perish than that thy whole body should be cast intoGehenna." Give these words a literal interpretation, and theymean, "If your eyes or your hands are the occasions of crime, ifthey tempt you to commit offences which will expose you to publicexecution, to the ignominy and torture heaped upon felons put to ashameful death and then flung among the burning filth of Gehenna,pluck them out, cut them off betimes, and save yourself from sucha frightful end; for it is better to live even thus maimed than,having a whole body, to be put to a violent death." No one cansuppose that Jesus meant to convey such an idea as that when heuttered these words. We must, then, attribute a deeper, anexclusively moral, significance to the passage. It means, "If youhave some bosom sin, to deny and root out which is like tearingout an eye or cutting off a hand, pause not, but overcome anddestroy it immediately, at whatever cost of effort and suffering;for it is better to endure the pain of fighting and smothering abad passion than to submit to it and allow it to rule until itacquires complete control over you, pervades your whole naturewith its miserable unrest, and brings you at last into a state ofwoe of which Gehenna and its dreadful associations are a fitemblem." A verse spoken, according to Mark, in immediateconnection with the present passage, confirms the figurative sensewe have attributed to it: "Whosoever shall cause one of theselittle ones that believe in me to fall, it were better for himthat a millstone were hanged around his neck and he were plungedinto the midst of the sea;" that is, in literal terms, a man hadbetter meet a great calamity, even the loss of life, than commit afoul crime and thus bring the woe of guilt upon his soul.
The phrase, "their worm dieth not, and their fire is notquenched," is a part of the imagery naturally suggested by thescene in the Valley of Hinnom, and was used to give greatervividness and force to the moral impression of the discourse. Byan interpretation resulting either from prejudice or ignorance, itis generally held to teach the doctrine of literal fire tormentsenduring forever. It is a direct quotation from a passage inIsaiah which signifies that, in a glorious age to come, Jehovahwill cause his worshippers to go forth from new moon to new moonand look upon the carcasses of the wicked, and see them devouredby fire which shall not be quenched and gnawed by worms whichshall not die, until the last relics of them are destroyed.
Third: "Fear not them that kill the body but are not able to killthe soul; but rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul andbody in Gehenna." A similar use of figurative language, in a stillbolder manner, is found in Isaiah. Intending to say nothing morethan that Assyria should be overthrown and crushed, the prophetbursts out, "Under the glory of the King of Assyria Jehovah shallkindle a burning like the burning of a fire; and it shall burn anddevour his thorns and his briers in one day, and shall consume theglory of his forest and of his fruitful field, both soul andbody." Reading the whole passage in Matthew with a single eye, itsmeaning will be apparent. We may paraphrase it thus. Jesus says tohis disciples, "You are now going forth to preach the gospel. Myreligion and its destinies are intrusted to your hands. As you gofrom place to place, be on your guard; for they will persecuteyou, and scourge you, and deliver you up to death. But fear themnot. It is enough for the disciple that he be as his master; andif they have done so unto me, how much more shall they unto you!Do not, through fear of hostile men, who can only kill your bodiesand are not able in any wise to injure your souls, shrink fromdanger and prove recreant to the momentous duties imposed uponyou; but be inspired to proclaim the principles of the heavenlykingdom with earnestness and courage, in the face of all perils,by fearing God, him who is able to plunge both your souls and yourbodies in abomination and agony, him who, if you prove unfaithfuland become slothful servants or wicked traitors, will leave yourbodies to a violent death and after that your souls to bittershame and anguish. Fear not the temporal, physical power of yourenemies, to be turned from your work by it; but rather fear theeternal, spiritual power of your God, to be made faithful by it."
Fourth: "Woe unto you, Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for yecompass sea and land to make one proselyte; and, when he is made,ye make him twofold more a child of Gehenna than yourselves." Thatis, "Ye make him twice as bad as yourselves in hypocrisy, bigotry,extortion, impurity, and malice, a subject of double guilt and ofdouble retribution."
Finally, Jesus exclaims to the children of those who killed theprophets, "Serpents, brood of vipers! how can ye escape thecondemnation of Gehenna?" That is to say, "Venomous creatures, badmen! you deserve the fate of the worst criminals; you are worthyof the polluted fires of Gehenna; your vices will surely befollowed by condign punishment: how can such depravity escape theseverest retributions?"
These five are all the distinct instances in which Jesus uses theword Gehenna. It is plain that he always uses the wordmetaphorically. We therefore conclude that Christianity, correctlyunderstood, never implies that eternal fire awaits sinners in thefuture world, but that moral retributions, according to theirdeeds, are the portion of all men here and hereafter. There is nomore reason to suppose that essential Christianity contains thedoctrine of a fiery infernal world than there is to suppose thatit really means to declare that God is a glowing mass of flame,when it says, "Our God is a consuming fire." We must remember themetaphorical character of much scriptural language. Wickedness isa fire, in that it preys upon men and draws down the displeasureof the Almighty, and consumes them.
As Isaiah writes, "Wickedness burneth as the fire, the anger ofJehovah darkens the land, and the people shall be the food of thefire." And James declares to proud extortioners, "The rust of yourcankered gold and silver shall eat your flesh as it were fire."
When Jesus says, "It shall be more tolerable for Sodom andGomorrah in the day of judgment than for that city" which will notlisten to the preaching of my kingdom, but drives my disciplesaway, he uses a familiar figure to signify that Sodom and Gomorrahwould at such a call have repented in sackcloth and ashes. Theguilt of Chorazin and Bethsaida was, therefore, more hardened thantheirs, and should receive a severer punishment; or, makingallowance for the natural exaggeration of this kind of language,he means, That city whose iniquities and scornful unbelief lead itto reject my kingdom when it is proffered shall be brought tojudgment and be overwhelmed with avenging calamities. Two parallelillustrations of this image are given us by the old prophets.Isaiah says, "Babylon shall be as when God overthrew Sodom andGomorrah." And Jeremiah complains, "The punishment of Jerusalem isgreater than the punishment of Sodom." It is certainly remarkablethat such passages should ever have been thought to teach thedoctrine of a final, universal judgment day breaking on the worldin fire.
The subject of our Lord's teachings in regard to the punishment ofthe wicked is included in two classes of texts, and may be summedup in a few words. One class of texts relate to the visibleestablishment of Christianity as the true religion, the Divinelaw, at the destruction of the Jewish power, and to the frightfulwoes which should then fall upon the murderers of Christ, thebitter enemies of his cause. All these things were to come uponthat generation, were to happen before some of them then standingthere tasted death. The other class of texts and they are by farthe more numerous signify that the kingdom of Truth is nowrevealed and set up; that all men are bound to accept and obey itwith reverence and love, and thus become its blessed subjects, thehappy and immortal children of God; that those who spurn itsoffers, break its laws, and violate its pure spirit shall bepunished, inevitably and fearfully, by moral retributionsproportioned to the degrees of their guilt. Christ does not teachthat the good are immortal and that the bad shall be annihilated,but that all alike, both the just and the unjust, enter thespiritual world. He does not teach that the bad shall be eternallymiserable, cut off from all possibility of amendment, but simplythat they shall be justly judged. He makes no definitive referenceto duration, but leaves us at liberty, peering into the gloom asbest we can, to suppose, if we think it most reasonable, that theconditions of our spiritual nature are the same in the future asnow, and therefore that the wicked may go on in evil hereafter,or, if they will, all turn to righteousness, and the universefinally become as one sea of holiness and as one flood of praise.
Another portion of Christ's doctrine of the future life hinges onthe phrase "the kingdom of heaven." Much is implied in this termand its accompaniments, and may be drawn out by answering thequestions, What is heaven? Who are citizens of, and who are aliensfrom, the kingdom of God? Let us first examine the subordinatemeanings and shades of meaning with which the Savior sometimesuses these phrases.
"Ye shall see heaven open and the angels of God ascending anddescending upon the Son of Man." No confirmation of the literalsense of this that is afforded by any incident found in theGospels. There is every reason for supposing that he meant by it,"There shall be open manifestations of supernatural power andfavor bestowed upon me by God, evident signs of directcommunications between us." His Divine works and instructionsjustified the statement. The word "heaven" as here used, then,does not mean any particular place, but means the approvingpresence of God. The instincts and natural language of man promptus to consider objects of reverence as above us. We kneel belowthem. The splendor, mystery, infinity, of the starry regions helpon the delusion. But surely no one possessing clear spiritualperceptions will think the literal facts in the case mustcorrespond to this, that God must dwell in a place overhead calledheaven. He is an Omnipresence.
"Blessed are ye when men shall revile you and persecute you for mysake: rejoice, for great is your reward in heaven." This passageprobably means, "In the midst of tribulation be exceeding glad;because you shall be abundantly rewarded in a future state for allyour present sufferings in my cause." In that case, heavensignifies the spiritual world, and does not involve reference toany precisely located spot. Or it may mean, "Be not disheartenedby insults and persecutions met in the cause of God; for you shallbe greatly blessed in your inward life: the approval ofconscience, the immortal love and pity of God, shall be yours: themore you are hated and abused by men unjustly, the closer andsweeter shall be your communion with God." In that case, heavensignifies fellowship with the Father, and is independent of anyparticular time or place.
"Our Father, who art in heaven." Jesus was not the author of thissentence. It was a part of the Rabbinical synagogue service, andwas based upon the Hebrew conception of God as having his abode inan especial sense over the firmament. The Savior uses it as thelanguage of accommodation, as is evident from his conversationwith the woman of Samaria; for he told her that no exclusive spotwas an acceptable place of worship, since "God is a Spirit; andthey that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth." Noone who comprehends the meaning of the words can suppose that theInfinite Spirit occupies a confined local habitation, and that menmust literally journey there to be with him after death. Whereverthey may be now, they are away from him or with him, according totheir characters. After death they are more banished from him ormore immediately with him, instantly, wherever they are, accordingto the spirit they are of.
"Lay not up for yourselves treasures on earth, but in heaven." Inother words, Be not absorbed in efforts to accumulate hoards ofgold and silver, and to get houses and lands, which will soon passaway; but rather labor to acquire heavenly treasures, wisdom,love, purity, and faith, which will never pass from yourpossession nor cease from your enjoyment.
"I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a placefor you, I will come again and receive you unto myself, that whereI am there ye may be also." To understand this text, we mustcarefully study the whole four chapters of the connection in whichit stands. They abound in bold symbols. An instance of this isseen where Jesus, having washed his disciples' feet, says to them,"Ye are clean, but not all. For he knew who should betray him.Therefore said he, Ye are not all clean." The actual meaning ofthe passage before us may be illustrated by a short paraphrase ofit with the context: "Let not your hearts be troubled by thethought that I must die and be removed from you; for there areother states of being besides this earthly life. When they crucifyme, as I have said to you before, I shall not perish, but shallpass into a higher state of existence with my Father. Whither I goye know, and the way ye know: my Father is the end, and the truthsthat I have declared point out the way. If ye loved me, ye wouldrejoice because I say that I go to the Father. And if I go to him,if, when they have put me to death, I pass into an unseen state ofblessedness and glory (as I prophesy unto you that I shall,) Iwill reveal myself unto you again, and tell you. I go before youas a pioneer, and will surely come back and confirm, withirresistible evidence, the reality of what I have already toldyou. Therefore, trouble not your hearts, but be of good cheer."
"There is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinnerthat repenteth." The sentiment of this Divine declaration simplyimplies that all good beings sympathize with every triumph ofgoodness; that the living chain of mutual interest runs throughthe spiritual universe, making one family of those on earth andthose in the invisible state.
"Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to my Father." "Cling notto me, detain me not, for I have not yet left the world forever,to be in the spiritual state with my Father; and ere I do this Imust seek my disciples, to convince them of my resurrection and togive them my parting commission and blessing." He used the commonlanguage, for it was the only language which she whom he addressedwould understand; and although, literally interpreted, it conveyedthe idea of a local heaven on high, yet at the same time itconveyed, and in the only way intelligible to her, all the truththat was important, namely, that when he disappeared he wouldstill be living, and be, furthermore, with God.
When Christ finally went from his disciples, he seemed to them torise and vanish towards the clouds. This would confirm theirprevious material conceptions, and the old forms of speech wouldbe handed down, strengthened by these phenomena, misunderstood inthemselves and exaggerated in their importance. We generally speaknow of God's "throne," of "heaven," as situated far away in theblue ether; we point upward to the world of bliss, and say, Therethe celestial hosannas roll; there the happy ones, the unforgottenones of our love, wait to welcome us. These forms of speech areentirely natural; they are harmless; they aid in givingdefiniteness to our thoughts and feelings, and it is well tocontinue their use; it would be difficult to express our thoughtswithout them. However, we must understand that they are notstrictly and exclusively true. God is everywhere; and wherever heis there is heaven to the spirits that are like him and,consequently, see him and enjoy his ineffable blessedness.
Jesus sometimes uses the phrase "kingdom of heaven" as synonymouswith the Divine will, the spiritual principles or laws which hewas inspired to proclaim. Many of his parables were s