It should be recollected that most of the early peoples had no rigid formularies of faith like the Christian creeds. The writings preserved to us are often rather fragments of individual speculations and hopes than rehearsals of public dogmas. Plato is far from revealing the contemporaneous belief of Greece in the sense in which Thomas Aquinas reveals the contemporaneous belief of Christendom. In Egypt, Persia, Rome, among every cultured people, there were different classes of minds, the philosophers, the priests, the poets, the warriors, the common multitude, whose modes of thinking were in contrast, whose methods of interpreting their ancestral traditions and the phenomena of human destiny were widely apart, whose respective beliefs had far different boundaries. The openly skeptical Euripides and Lucian are to be borne in mind as well as the apparently credulous Hesiod and Homer. Of course the Fables of Asop were not literally credited. Neither, as a general thing, were the Metamorphoses of Ovid. With the ancients, while there was a general national cast of faith, there were likewise varieties of individual and sectarian belief and unbelief, skepticism and credulity, solemn reason and recreative fancy.

The people of Lystra, as we read in the Acts of the Apostles, actually thought Barnabas and Paul were Zeus and Hermes, and brought oxen and garlands to offer them the sacrifices appropriate to those deities. Peisistratus obtained rule over Athens by dressing a stately woman, by the name of Phye, as Athene, and passing off her commands as those of the tutelary goddess. Herodotus ridicules the people for unsuspiciously accepting her.2 The incredibleness of a doctrine is no obstacle to a popular belief in it. Whosoever thinks of the earnest reception of the dogma of transubstantiation the conversion of a wheaten wafer into the infinite God by nearly three quarters of Christendom at this moment, must permit the paradox to pass unchallenged. Doubtless the closing eye of many an expiring Greek reflected the pitiless old oarsman plying his frost cold boat across the Stygian ferry, and his failing ear caught the rush of the Phlegethonian surge. It is equally certain that, at the same time, many another laughed at these things as childish fictions, fitted only to scare "the baby of a girl."

Stricken memory, yearning emotion, kindled fancy, a sensitive and timorous observation of natural phenomena, rustling leaves, wavering shadows, apparent effects of unknown causes, each is a superstitious mother of beliefs. The Sonora Indians say that departed souls dwell among the caves and rocks of the cliffs, and that the echoes often heard there are their voices. Ruskin suggests that the cause of the Greeks surrounding the lower world residence of Persephone with poplar groves was that "the frailness, fragility, and inconstancy of the leafage of the poplar tree resembled the fancied ghost people." We can very easily imagine how, in the breeze at the entrance to some subterranean descent,

"A ghostly rank Of poplars, like a halted train of shades, Trembled."

The operations of fierce passions, hate, fright, and rage, in a brain boiling with blood and fire, make pictures which the savage afterwards holds in remembrance as facts. He does not by reflection consciously distinguish the internal acts and sights of the mind from objective verities. Barbarians as travellers and psychologists have repeatedly observed usually pay great attention to the vagaries of madmen, the doings and utterances of the insane. These persons are regarded as possessed by higher beings. Their words are oracles: the horrible shapes, the grotesque scenes, which their disordered and inflamed faculties conjure up, are eagerly caught at, and such accounts of them as they are able to make out are treasured up as revelations. This fact is of no slight importance as an element in the hinting basis of the beliefs of uncultivated tribes. Many a vision of delirium, many a raving medley of insanity, has been accepted as truth.3 Another phenomenon, closely allied to the former, has wrought in a similar manner and still more widely. It has been a common superstition with barbarous nations in every part of the world, from Timbuctoo to 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 the body lies, a dormant shell, wrapped in slumber. The power of this influence in nourishing a copious credulity may easily be imagined.

The origin of many notions touching a future state, found in literature, is to be traced to those rambling thoughts and poetic reveries with which even the most philosophical minds, in certain moods, indulge themselves. For example, Sir Isaac Newton "doubts whether there be not superior intelligencies who, subject to the Supreme, oversee and control the revolutions of the heavenly bodies." And Goethe, filled with sorrow by the death of Wieland, musing on the fate of his departed friend, solemnly surmised that he had become the soul of a world in some far realm of space. The same mental exercises which supply the barbarian superstitions reappear in disciplined minds, on a higher plane and in more refined forms. Culture and science do not deliver us from all illusion and secure us sober views conformed to fact. Still, what we think amid the solid realities of waking life, fancy in her sleep disjointedly reverberates from hollow fields of dream. The metaphysician or theologian, instead of resting contented with mere snatches and glimpses, sets himself deliberately to reason out a complete theory. In these elaborate efforts many an opinion and metaphor, plausible or absurd, sweet or direful, is born and takes its place. There is in the human mind a natural passion for congruity and completeness, a passion extremely fertile in complementary products. For example, the early Jewish notion of literally sitting down at table with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, in the resurrection, was gradually developed by accretion of assisting particulars into all the details of a consummate banquet, at which Leviathan was to be the fish, Behemoth the roast, and so on.4 In the construction of doctrines or of discourses, one thought suggests, one premise or conclusion necessitates, another. This genetic application is sometimes plainly to be seen even in parts of incoherent schemes. For instance, the conception that man has returned into this life from anterior experiences of it is met by the opposing fact that he does not remember any preceding career. The explanatory idea is at once hit upon of a fountain of oblivion a river Lethe from which the disembodied soul drinks ere it reappears. Once establish in the popular imagination the conception of the Olympian synod of gods, and a thousand dramatic tales of action and adventure, appropriate to the characters of the divine personages, will inevitably follow.

The interest, cunning, and authority of priesthoods are another source of prevailing opinions concerning a life to come. Many nations, early and late, have been quite under the spiritual direction of priests, and have believed almost every thing they said. Numerous motives conspire to make the priest concoct fictions and exert his power to gain credence for them. He must have an alluringly colored elysium to reward his obedient disciples. When his teachings are rejected and his authority mocked, his class isolation and incensed pride find a natural satisfaction in threatening the reprobate aliens that a rain of fire will one day wash them down the smoking gulfs of sulphur. The Maronites, a sect of Catholic Christians in Syria, purchase of their priests a few yards of land in heaven, to secure a residence there when

4 Corrodi, Gesch. des Chiliasmns, th. i. abschn. 15: Gastmahl des Leviathan.

they die.5 The Siamese Buddhists accumulate silver and bury it in secret, to supply the needs of the soul during its wandering in the separate state. "This foolish opinion robs the state of immense sums. The lords and rich men erect pyramids over these treasures, and for their greater security place them in charge of the talapoins!"6 When, for some reason or other, either as a matter of neatness and convenience, or as a preventive of mutual clawing, or for some to us unimaginable end, the authoritative Skald wished to induce the Northmen to keep their nails close cut, he devised the awful myth of the ship Nagelfra, and made his raw minded people swallow it as truth. The same process was followed unquestionably in a thousand other cases, in different particulars of thought and aim, in different parts of the world.

In a bird's eye survey of the broad field we have traversed, one cannot help noticing the marked influence of the present scenery and habits, history and associations, of a people in deciding the character of their anticipations of the future. The Esquimaux paradise is surrounded by great pots full of boiled walrus meat. The Turk's heaven is a gorgeously idealized pleasure garden or celestial harem. As the apparition of a man wanders into the next state, a shadow of his present state floats over into the future with him. The Hereafter is the image flung by the Now. Heaven and hell are the upward and downward echoes of the earth. Like the spectre of the Brocken on the Hartz Mountains, our ideas of another life are a reflection of our present experience thrown in colossal on the cloud curtains of futurity. Charles Lamb, pushing this elucidating observation much further, says, "The shapings of our heavens are the modifications of our constitutions." A tribe of savages has been described who hoped to go after death to their forefathers in an under ground elysium whose glory consisted in eternal drunkenness, that being their highest conception of bliss and glory. What can be more piteous than the contemplation of those barbarians whose existence here is so wretched that even their imagination and faith have lost all rebound, and who conceive of the land of souls only as poorer and harder than this, expecting to be tasked and beaten there by stronger spirits, and to have nothing to eat? The relation of master and servant, the tyranny of class, is reflected over into the other life in those aristocratic notions which break out frequently in the history of our subject. The Pharisees some of them, at least excluded the rabble from the resurrection. The Peruvians confined their heaven to 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 of Peter the Great, believed that only the Czar and the boyars could reach heaven. It was almost a universal custom among savage nations when a chieftain died to slay his wives and servants, that their ghosts might accompany his to paradise, to wait on him there as here. Even among the Greeks, as Bulwer has well remarked, "the Hades of the ancients was not for the many; and the dwellers of Elysium are chiefly confined to the oligarchy of earth."

The coarse and selfish assumption on the part of man of superiority over woman, based on his brawniness and tyranny, has sometimes 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 highest heaven possible for man. The former statement has been vulgarly attributed to the Moslem creed, but with utter falsity. A pious and aged female disciple once asked Mohammed concerning her future condition in heaven. The prophet replied, "There will not be any old women in heaven." She wept and bewailed her fate, but was comforted upon the gracious assurance from the prophet's lips, "They will all be young again when there." The Buddhists relate that Gotama once directed queen Prajapati, his foster mother, to prove by a miracle the error of those who supposed it impossible for a woman to attain Nirwana. She immediately made as many repetitions of her own form as filled the skies of all the sakwalas, and, after performing various wonders, died and rose into Nirwana, leading after her five hundred virtuous princesses.7

How spontaneously the idiosyncrasies of men in the present are flung across the abysm into the future state is exhibited amusingly, and with a rough pathos, in an old tradition of a dialogue between Saint Patrick and Ossian. The bard contrasts the apostle's pitiful psalms with his own magnificent songs, and says that the virtuous Fingal is enjoying the rewards of his valor in the aerial existence. The saint rejoins, No matter for Fingal's worth; being a pagan, assuredly he roasts in hell. In hot wrath the honest Caledonian poet cries, "If the children of Morni and the tribes of the clan Ovi were alive, we would force brave Fingal out of hell, or the same habitation should be our own."8

Many of the most affecting facts and problems in human experience and destiny have found expression, hypothetic solution, in striking myths preserved in the popular traditions of nations. The mutual resemblances in these legends in some cases, though among far separated peoples, are very significant and impressive. They denote that, moved by similar motives and exercised on the same soliciting themes, human desire and thought naturally find vent in similar theories, stories, and emblems. The imagination of man, as Gfrorer says, runs in ruts which not itself but nature has beaten.

The instinctive shrinking from death felt by man would, sooner or later, quite naturally suggest the idea that death was not an original feature in the divine plan of the world, but a retributive additional discord. Benignant nature meant her children should live on in happy contentment here forever; but sin and Satan came in, and death was the vengeance that followed their doings. The Persians fully developed this speculation. The Hebrews either also originated it, or borrowed it from the Persians; and afterwards the Christians adopted it. Traces of the same conception appear among the remotest and rudest nations. The Caribbeans have a myth to the effect that the whole race of men were doomed to be mortal because Carus, the first man, offended the great god Tiri. The Cherokees ascribe to the Great Spirit the intention of making men immortal on earth; but, they say, the sun when he passed over told them there was not room enough, and that people had better die! They also say that the Creator attempted to make the first man and woman out of two stones, but failed, and afterwards fashioned them of clay; and therefore it is that they are 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 a while, at first, among men. As he was leaving them, he turned around in his canoe and said, "Ye shall never die, but shall shed your skins." An old woman would not believe what he said; he therefore recalled his promise and vowed that they should die.

The thought of more than one death that the composite man is simplified by a series of separating deaths has repeatedly found place. The New Testament speaks of "the second death;" but that is a metaphorical phrase, descriptive, as there employed, of condemnation and suffering. It is a thought of Plato that the Deity put intellect in soul, and soul in a material envelope. Following this hint, Plutarch says, in his essay on the Face in the Moon, that the earth furnishes the body, the moon the soul, the sun the mind. The first death we die, he continues, makes us two from three; the second makes us one from two. The Feejees tell how one of their warriors, seeing the spectre of a recently deceased enemy of his, threw his war club at it and killed it. They believed the spirit itself was thus destroyed. There is something pathetic in this accumulation of dissolution upon dissolution, this pursuit of death after death. We seem to hear, in this thin succession of the ghosts of ghosts, the fainter growing echoes of the body fade away.

Many narratives reveal the fond hovering of the human mind over the problem of avoiding death altogether. The Hebrew Scriptures have made us familiar with the translation of Enoch and the ascension of Elijah without tasting death. The Hindus tell of Divadassa, who, as a reward for his exceeding virtue and piety, was permitted to ascend to heaven alive.10 They also say that the good Trisanku, having pleased a god, was elevated in his living body to heaven.11 The Buddhists of Ceylon preserve a legend of the elevation of one of the royal descendants of Maha Sammata to the superior heavens without undergoing death.12 There are Buddhist traditions, furthermore, of four other persons who were taken up to Indra's heaven in their bodies without tasting death, namely, the musician Gattila, and the kings Sadhina, Nirni, and Mandhatu.13 A beautiful myth of the translation of Cyrus is found in Firdousi's Shah Nameh:

"Ky Khosru bow'd himself before his God: In the bright water he wash'd his head and his limbs; And he spake to himself the Zend Avesta's prayers; And he turn'd to the friends of his life and exclaim'd, 'Fare ye well, fare ye well for evermore! When to morrow's sun lifts its blazing banner, And the sea is gold, and the land is purple, This world and I shall be parted forever. Ye will never see me again, save in Memory's dreams.'When the sun uplifted his head from the mountain, The king had vanish'd from the eyes of his nobles. They roam'd around in vain attempts to find 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 farewell to the king of the world. Never hath any one seen such a marvel No, though he live long in the world That a man should go alive into 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."14 Philostratus relates a tradition of the Cretans, affirming that, Apollonius having entered a temple to worship, a sound was heard as of a chorus of virgins singing, "Come from the earth; come into heaven; come." And he was taken up, never having been seen afterwards. Here may be cited also the exquisite fable of Endymion. Zeus promised to grant what he should request. He begged for immortality, eternal sleep, and never fading youth. Accordingly, in all his surpassing beauty he slumbers on the summit of Latmus, where every night the enamored moon stoops to kiss his spotless forehead. One of the most remarkable fragments in the traditions of the American aborigines is that concerning the final departure of Tarenyawagon, a mythic chief of supernatural knowledge and power, who instructed and united the Iroquois. He sprang across vast chasms between the cliffs, and shot over the lakes with incredible speed, in a spotless white canoe. At last the Master of Breath summoned him. Suddenly the sky was 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 vanished beyond the summer clouds, and all was still.15

Another mythological method of avoidingdeath is by bathing in some immortal fountain. The Greeks tell of Glaucus, who by chance discovered and plunged in a spring of this charmed virtue, but was so chagrined at being unable to point it out to others that he flung himself into the ocean. He could not die, and so became a marine deity, and was annually seen off the headlands sporting with whales. The search for the "Fountain of Youth" by the Spaniards who landed in Florida is well known. How with a vain eagerness did Ponce de Leon, the battered old warrior, seek after the magic wave beneath which he should sink to emerge free from scars and stains, as fresh and fair as when first he donned the knightly harness! Khizer, the Wandering Jew of the East, accompanied Iskander Zulkarnain (the Oriental name for Alexander the Great) in his celebrated expedition to find the fountain of life.16 Zulkarnain, coming to a place where there were three hundred and sixty fountains, despatched three hundred and sixty men, ordering each man to select one of the fountains in which to wash a dry salted fish wherewith he was furnished. The instant Khizer's fish touched the water of the fountain which he had chosen, it sprang away, alive. Khizer leaped in after it and drank. Therefore he cannot die till the last trump sounds. Meanwhile, clad in a green garb, he roams through the world, a personified spring of the year.

14 Lewes, Biographical History of Philosophy, vol. i. p. 135, (1st Eng. 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 a punitive after piece in the creation, and which have invented cases wherein it was set aside, have also fabricated tales of returns from its shrouded realm. The Thracian lover's harp, "drawing iron tears down Pluto's cheek," won his mistress half way to the upper light, and would have wholly redeemed her had he not in impatience looked back. The grim king of Hades, yielding to passionate entreaties, relented so far as to let the hapless Protesilaus return to his mourning Laodameia for three hours. At the swift end of this poor period he died again; and this time she died with him. Erus, who was killed in battle, and Timarchus, whose soul was rapt from him in the cave of Trophonius, both returned, as we read in Plato and Plutarch, to relate with circumstantial detail what they saw in the other world. Alcestis, who so nobly died to save her husband's life, was brought back from the region of the dead, by the interposition of Herakles, to spend happy years with her grateful Admetus. The cunning Sisyphus, who was so notorious for his treachery, by a shrewd plot obtained leave, after his death, to visit the earth again. Safely up in the light, he vowed he would stay; but old Hermes psychopompus forcibly dragged him down.

When Columbus landed at San Salvador, the natives thought he had descended from the sun, and by signs inquired if he had not. The Hawaiians took Captain Cook for the god Lono, who was once their king but was afterwards deified, and who had prophesied, as he was dying, that he should in after times return. Te Wharewara, a New Zealand youth, relates a long account of the return of his aunt from the other world, with a minute description of her adventures and observations there.17 Schoolcraft gives a picturesque narrative of a journey made by a Wyandot brave to and from the land of souls.18

There is a group of strangely pleasing myths, closely allied to the two preceding classes, showing how the popular heart and imagination glorify their heroes, and, fondly believing them too godlike to die, fancy them only removed to some secret place, where they still live, and whence in the time of need they will come again to rescue or to bless their people. Greece dreamed that her swift footed Achilles was yet alive in the White Island. Denmark long saw king Holger lingering on the old warrior cairns of his country. Portugal trusted that her beauteous prince Sebastian had escaped from the fatal field to the East, and would one day return to claim his usurped realm.19 So, too, of Roderick the Goth, who fell in disastrous battle with the Arabs, the Visiogothic traditions and faith of the people long insisted that he would reappear. The Swiss herdsmen believe the founders of their confederacy still sleep in a cavern on the shores of Lucerne. When Switzerland is in peril, the Three Tells, slumbering there in their antique garb, will wake to save her. Sweetly and often, the ancient British lays allude to the puissant Arthur borne away to the mystic vales of Avalon, and yet to be hailed in his native kingdom, Excalibur once more gleaming in his hand. The strains of the Troubadours swell and ring as they tell of Charlemagne 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 his unrivalled sceptre, and glorify the Frank race. And what grand and weird ballads picture great Barbarossa seated in the vaults of Kyffhauser, his beard grown through the stone table in front of him, tarrying till he may come forth, with his minstrels and knights around him, in the crisis hour of Germany's fortunes! The Indians of Pecos, in New Mexico, still anxiously expect the return of Montezuma; while in San Domingo, on the Rio Grande, a sentinel every morning ascends to the top of the highest house, at sunrise, and looks out eastward for the coming of the great chief.20 The peasants of Brittany maintain as a recent traveller testifies that Napoleon is still alive in concealment somewhere, and will one day be heard of or seen in pomp and victory. One other dead man there has been who was expected to return. the hated Nero, the popular horror of whom shows itself in the shuddering belief expressed in the Apocalypse and in the Sibylline Oracles that he was still alive and would reappear.21

Alian, in his Various History, recounts the following singular circumstances concerning the Meropes who inhabited the valley of Anostan.22 It would seem to prove that no possible conceit of speculation pertaining to our subject has been unthought of. A river of grief and a river of pleasure, he says, lapsed through the valley, their banks covered with trees. If one ate of the fruit growing on the trees beside the former stream, he burst into a flood of tears and wept till he died. But if he partook of that hanging on the shore of the latter, his bliss was so great that he forgot all desires; and, strangest of all, he returned over the track of life to youth and infancy, and then gently expired. He turned

"Into his yesterdays, and wander'd back To distant childhood, and went 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 his posterity who were destined for paradise on one side, and all who were destined for hell on the other. When he looked on the right he smiled and rejoiced, but as often as he looked on the left he mourned and wept. How finely this reveals the stupendous pathos there is in the theological conception of a Federal Head of humanity!

The idea of a great terminal crisis is met with so often in reviewing the history of human efforts to grasp and solve the problem of the world's destiny, that we must consider it a normal concomitant of such theorizings. The mind reels and loses itself in trying to conceive of the everlasting continuance of the present order, or of any one fixed course of things, but finds relief in the notion of a revolution, an end, and a fresh start. The Mexican Cataclysm or universal crash, the close of the Hindu Calpa, the Persian Resurrection, the Stoic Conflagration, the Scandinavian Ragnarokur, the Christian Day of Judgment, all embody this one thought. The Drama of Humanity is played out, the curtain falls, and when it rises again

20 Abbe Domenech's Seven Years' Residence in the Great Deserts of North 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 has to be wound up anew. The Brahmans are now expecting the tenth avatar of Vishnu. The Parsees look for Sosiosch to come, to consummate the triumph of good, and to raise the dead upon a renewed earth. The Buddhists await the birth of Maitri Buddha, who is tarrying in the dewa loka Tusita until the time of his advent upon earth. The Jews are praying for the appearance of the Messiah. And many Christians affirm that the second advent of Jesus draws nigh.

One more fact, even in a hasty survey of some of the most peculiar opinions current in bygone times as to a future life, can scarcely fail to attract notice. It is the so constant linking of the soul's fate with the skyey spaces and the stars, in fond explorings and astrologic dreams. Nowhere are the kingly greatness and the immortal aspiring of man more finely shown. The loadstone of his destiny and the prophetic gravitation of his thoughts are upward, 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, who would leap into heaven with a war whoop on his tongue and a string of scalps in his hand, and the dying Christian, who sublimely murmurs, "Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit!" What a sweep of thought, from the poor woman whose pious notion of heaven was that it was a place where she could sit all day in a clean white apron and sing psalms, to the far seeing and sympathetic natural philosopher whose loving faith embraces all ranks of creatures and who conceives of paradise as a spiritual concert of the combined worlds with all their inhabitants in presence of their Creator! Yet from the explanatory considerations which have been set forth we can understand the derivation of the multifarious swarm of notions afloat in the world, as the fifteen hundred varieties of apple now known have all been derived from the solitary white crab. Differences of fancy and opinion among men are as natural as fancies and opinions are. The mind of a people grows from the earth of its deposited history, but breathes in the air of its living literature.23 By his philosophic learning and poetic sympathy the cosmopolitan scholar wins the last victory of mind over matter, frees himself from local conditions and temporal tinges, and, under the light of universal truth, traces, through the causal influences of soil and clime and history, and the colored threads of great individualities, the formation of peculiar national creeds. Through sense the barbarian mind feeds on the raw pabulum furnished by the immediate phenomena of the world and of its own life. Through culture the civilized mind feeds 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 directly from nature; the educated man lives also on sensations obtained from the symbols of other people's sensations. The illiterate savage hunts for his mental living in the wild forest of consciousness; the erudite philosopher lives also on the psychical stores of foregone men.

NOTE. To the ten instances, stated on pages 210, 211, of remarkable men who after their death were popularly imagined to be still alive, and destined to appear again, an eleventh may be added. The Indians of Pecos, in New Mexico, anxiously expect the return of Montezuma. In San Domingo, on the Rio Grande, a sentinel every morning ascends to the roof of the highest house at sunrise and looks out eastward for the coming of the great chief. See the Abbe Domenech's "Seven Years' Residence in the Great Deserts of North 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 New Testament writers concerning the fate of man after his bodily dissolution, we may commence by glancing at the various allusions contained in the record to opinions on this subject prevalent at the time of the Savior or immediately afterwards, but which formed no part of his religion, or were mixed with mistakes.

There are several incidents recorded in the Gospels which show that a belief in the transmigration of the soul was received among the Jews. As Jesus was passing near Siloam with his disciples, he saw a man who had been blind from his birth; and the disciples said to him, "Master, who did sin, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?" The drift of this question is, Did the parents of this man commit some great crime, for which they were punished by having their child born blind, or did he come into the world under this calamity in expiation of the iniquities of a previous life? Jesus denies the doctrine involved in this interrogation, at least, as far as his reply touches it at all; for he rarely enters into any discussion or refutation of incidental errors. He says, Neither hath this man sinned nor his parents as the cause of his blindness; but the regular workings of the laws of God are made manifest in him: moreover, it is a providential occasion offered me that I should show the divinity of my mission by giving him sight.

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 the dead; and therefore mighty works are wrought by him. This brief statement plainly shows that the belief in the reappearance of a departed spirit, in bodily form, to run another career, was extant in Judea at that period. The Evangelists relate another circumstance to the same effect. Jesus asked his disciples who the people thought he was. And they replied, Some think that thou art John the Baptist, some Elias, and some Jeremiah or some other of the old prophets, a forerunner of the Messiah. Then Jesus asked, But who think ye that I am? And Simon Peter said, Thou art the promised Messiah himself. There was a prophetic tradition among the Jews, drawn from the words of Malachi, that before the Messiah was revealed Elias would appear and proclaim his coming.

Therefore, when the disciples of Christ recognised him as the great Anointed, they were troubled about this prophecy, and said to their Master, Why do the Scribes say that Elias must first come? He replies to them, in substance, It is even so: the prophet's words shall not fail: they are already fulfilled. But you must interpret the prophecy aright. It does not mean that the ancient prophet himself, in physical form, shall come upon earth, but that one with his office, in his spirit and power, shall go before me. If ye are able to understand the true import of the promise, it has been realized. John the Baptist is the Elias which was to come. The New Testament, therefore, has allusions to the doctrine of transmigration, but gives it no warrant.

The Jewish expectations in regard to the Messiah, the nature of his kingdom, and the events which they supposed would attend his coming or transpire during his reign, were the source and foundation of the phraseology of a great many passages in the Christian Scriptures and of the sense of not a few. The national ideas and hopes of the Jews at that time were singularly intense and extensive. Their influence over the immediate disciples of Jesus and the authors of the New Testament is often very evident in the interpretations they put upon his teachings, and in their own words. Still, their intellectual and spiritual obtuseness to the true drift of their Master's thoughts was not so great, their mistakes are neither so numerous nor so gross, as it is frequently supposed they were. This is proved by the fact that when they use the language of the Messianic expectations of the Jews in their writings they often do it, not in the material, but in a spiritual sense. When they first came under the instruction of Jesus, they were fully imbued with the common notions of their nation and age. By his influence their ideas were slowly and with great difficulty spiritualized and made to approach his own in some degree. But it is unquestionably true that they never not even after his death arrived at a clear appreciation of the full sublimity, the pure spirituality, the ultimate significance, of his mission and his words. Still, they did cast off and rise above the grossly carnal expectations of their countrymen. Partially instructed in the spiritual nature of Christ's kingdom, and partially biassed by their Jewish prepossessions, they interpreted a part of his language figuratively, according to his real meaning, and a part of it literally, according to their own notions. The result of this was several doctrines neither taught by Christ nor held by the Jews, but formed by conjoining and elaborating a portion of the conceptions of both. These doctrines are to be found in the New Testament; but it should be distinctly understood that the religion of Christ is not responsible for them, is to be separated from them.

The fundamental and pervading aim of that epistle of Peter the genuineness of which is unquestioned and the same is true in a great degree of his speeches recorded in the Acts of the Apostles is to exhort the Christians to whom it is written to purify themselves by faith, love, and good works; to stand firmly amidst all their tribulations, supported by the expectations and prepared to meet the conditions of a glorious life in heaven at the close of this life. Eschatology, the doctrine of the Last Things, with its practical inferences, all inseparably interwoven with the mission of Christ, forms the basis and scope of the whole document.

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 wilt not leave my soul in the under world," he says it was a prophecy concerning Christ, which was fulfilled in his resurrection. "The soul of this Jesus was not left in the under world, but God hath raised him up, whereof we all are witnesses." When it is written that his soul was not left in the subterranean abode of disembodied spirits, of course the inference cannot be avoided that it was supposed to have been there for a time.

In the next place, we are warranted by several considerations in asserting that Peter believed that down there, in the gloomy realm of shades, were gathered and detained the souls of all the dead generations. We attribute this view to Peter from the combined force of the following reasons: because such was, notoriously, the belief of his ancestral and contemporary countrymen; because he speaks of the resurrection of Jesus as if it were a wonderful prophecy or unparalleled miracle, a signal and most significant exception to the universal law; because he says expressly of David that "he is not yet ascended into the heavens," and if David was still retained below, undoubtedly all were; because the same doctrine is plainly inculcated by other of the New Testament writers; and, finally, because Peter himself, in another part of this epistle, declares, in unequivocal terms, that the soul of Christ went and preached to the souls confined in the under world, for such is the perspicuous meaning of the famous text, "being put to death in the body, but kept alive in the soul, in which also he went and preached [went as a herald] to the spirits in prison." The meaning we have attributed to this celebrated passage is the simple and consistent explanation of the words and the context, and is what must have been conveyed to those familiar with the received opinions of that time. Accordingly, we find that, with the exception of Augustine, it was so understood and interpreted by the whole body of the Fathers.1 It is likewise so held now by an immense majority of the most authoritative modern commentators. Rosenmuller says, in his commentary on this text, "That by the spirits in prison is meant souls of men separated from their bodies and detained as in custody in the under world, which the Greeks call Hades, the Hebrews Sheol, can hardly be doubted," (vix dubitari posse videtur.) Such has ever been and still is the common conclusion of nearly all the best critical theologians, as volumes of citations might easily be made to show. The reasons which led Augustine to give a different exposition of the text before us are such as should make, in this case, even his great name have little or no weight. He firmly held, as revealed and unquestionable truth,2 the whole doctrine which we maintain is implied in the present passage; but he was so perplexed by certain difficult 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 exegesis is not only arbitrary and opposed to the catholic doctrine of the Church; 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 of men confined in their bodies here in this life, to preach to whom Christ came from heaven. But the careful reader will observe that Peter speaks as if the spirits were collected and kept in one common custody, refers to the spirits of a generation long ago departed to the dead, and represents the preaching as taking place in the interval between Christ's death and his resurrection. A glance from the eighteenth to the twenty second verse inclusive shows indisputably that the order of events narrated by the apostle is this: First, Christ was put to death in the flesh, suffering for sins, the just for the unjust; secondly, he was quickened in the spirit; thirdly, he went and preached to the spirits in prison; fourthly, he rose from the dead; fifthly, he ascended into heaven. How is it possible for any one to doubt that the text under consideration teaches his subterranean mission during the period of his bodily burial?

In the exposition of the Apostles' Creed put forth by the Church of England under Edward VI., this text in Peter was referred to as an authoritative proof of the article on Christ's descent into the under world; and when, some years later, thatreference was stricken out, notoriously it was not because the Episcopal rulers were convinced of a mistake, but because they had become afraid of the associated Romish doctrine of purgatory.

If Peter believed as he undoubtedly did that Christ after his crucifixion descended to the place of departed spirits, what did he suppose was the object of that descent? Calvin's theory was that he went into hell in order that he might there suffer vicariously the accumulated agonies due to the LOST, thus placating the just wrath of the Father and purchasing the release of the elect. A sufficient refutation of that dogma, as to its philosophical basis, is found in its immorality, its forensic technicality. As a mode of explaining the Scriptures, it is refuted by the fact that it is nowhere plainly stated in the New Testament, but is arbitrarily constructed by forced and indirect inferences from various obscure texts, which texts can be perfectly explained without involving it at all. For what purpose, then, was it thought that Jesus went to the imprisoned souls of the under world? The most natural supposition the conception most in harmony with the character and details of the rest of the scheme and with the prevailing thought of the time would be that he went there to rescue the captives from their sepulchral bondage, to conquer death and the devil in their own domain, open the doors, break the chains, proclaim good tidings of coming redemption to the spirits in prison, and, rising thence, to ascend to heaven, preparing the way for them to follow with him at his expected return. This, indeed, is the doctrine of the Judaizing apostles, the unbroken catholic doctrine of the Church. Paul writes to the Colossians, and to the Ephesians, that, when Christ "had spoiled the principalities and powers" of the world of the dead, "he ascended up on high, leading a multitude of captives." Peter himself declares, a little farther on in his epistle, "that the glad tidings were preached to the dead, that, though they had been persecuted and condemned in the flesh by the will of men, they might be blessed in the spirit by the will of God."4 Christ fulfilled the law of

4 See Rosenmuller's explanation in hoc loco.

death,5 descending to the place of separate spirits, that he might declare deliverance to the quick and the dead by coming triumphantly back and going into heaven, an evident token of the removal of the penalty of sin which hitherto had fatally doomed all men to the under world.6

Let us see if this will not enable us to explain Peter's language satisfactorily. Death, with the lower residence succeeding it, let it be remembered, was, according to the Jewish and apostolic belief, the fruit of sin, the judgment pronounced on sin. But Christ, Peter says, was sinless. "He was a lamb without blemish and without spot." "He did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth." Therefore he was not exposed to death and the under world on his own account. Consequently, when it is written that "he bore our 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 of a vicarious sacrifice offered to quench the anger of God or to furnish 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 for our sakes that which was to others the penalty of their sin. The object of his dying was not to conciliate the alienated Father or to adjust the unbalanced law: it was to descend into the realm of the dead, heralding God's pardon to the captives, and to return and rise into heaven, opening and showing to his disciples the way thither. For, owing to his moral sinlessness, or to his delegated omnipotence, if he were once in the abode of the dead, he must return: nothing could keep him there. Epiphanius describes the devil complaining, after Christ had burst through his nets and dungeons, "Miserable me! what shall I do? I did not know God was concealed in that body. The son of Mary has deceived me. I imagined he was a mere man."7 In an apocryphal writing of very early 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 the captives, is represented upbraiding Satan in these terms: "O prince of all evil, author of death, why didst thou crucify and bring down to our regions a person righteous and sinless? Thereby thou hast lost all the sinners of the world."8 Again, in an ancient treatise on the Apostles' Creed, we read as follows: "In the bait of Christ's flesh was secretly inserted the hook of his divinity. This the devil knew not, but, supposing he must stay when 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, break the fetters of the captives, and fix a time for their resurrection." To the same effect, old Hilary, Bishop of Poictiers, in his commentary on Psalm cxxxviii., says, "It is a law of human necessity that, the body being buried, the soul should descend ad interos."

6 Ambrose, De Fide, etc., lib. iv. cap. 1, declares that "no one ascended to heaven until Christ, by the pledge of his resurrection, solved the chains of the under world and translated the souls of the pious." Also Cyril, Bishop of Jerusalem, in his fourth catechetical lecture, sect. 11, affirms "that Christ descended into the under world to deliver those who, from Adam downwards, had been imprisoned there."

7 In Assumptionem Christi.

8 Evan. Nicodemi, cap. xviii.

devoured, greedily swallowed the corpse, and the bolts of the nether world were wrenched asunder, and the ensnared dragon himself dragged from the abyss."9 Peter himself explicitly declares, "It was not possible that he should be held by death." Theodoret says, "Whoever denies the resurrection of Christ rejects his death."10 If he died, he must needs rise again. And his resurrection would demonstrate the forgiveness of sins, the opening of heaven to men, showing that the bond which had bound in despair the captives in the regions of death for so many voiceless ages was at last broken. Accordingly, "God, having loosed the chains of the under world, raised him up and set him at his own right hand."11

And now the question, narrowed down to the smallest compass, is this: What is the precise, real signification of the sacrificial and other connected terms employed by Peter, those phrases which now, by the intense associations of a long time, convey so strong a Calvinistic sense to most readers? Peter says, "Ye know that ye were redeemed with the precious blood of Christ." If there were not so much indeterminateness of thought, so much unthinking reception 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, of course, could have no virtue, no moral efficacy, of any sort. When the infuriated Jews cried, "His blood be on us, and on our children!" they meant, Let the responsibility of his death rest on us. When the English historian says, "Sidney gave his blood for the cause of civil liberty," the meaning is, he died for it. So, no one will deny, whenever the New Testament speaks in any way of redemption by the blood of the crucified Son of Man, the unquestionable meaning is, redemption by his death. What, then, does the phrase "redemption by the death of Christ" mean? Let it be noted here let it be particularly noticed that the New Testament nowhere in explicit terms explains the meaning of this and the kindred phrases: it simply uses the phrases without interpreting them. They are rhetorical figures of speech, necessarily, upon whatever theological system we regard them. No sinner is literally washed from his transgressions and guilt in the blood of the slaughtered Lamb. These expressions, then, are poetic images, meant to convey a truth in the language of association and feeling, the traditionary language of imagination. The determination of their precise significance is wholly a matter of fallible human construction and inference, and not a matter of inspired statement or divine revelation. This is so, beyond a question, because, we repeat, they are figures of speech, having no direct explanation in the records where they occur. The Calvinistic view of the atonement was a theory devised to explain this scriptural language. It was devised without sufficient consideration of the peculiar notions and spirit, the peculiar grade 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 "the pains of death," instead of "the chains of the under world." The sense requires the latter. Besides, numerous manuscripts read [non ASCII characters]. See, furthermore, Rosenmuller's thorough criticism in loc. Likewise see Robinson's New Testament Greek Lexicon, in [NAC].

doctrine of the atonement to explain the figures of speech in which the apostles declare their doctrine. But, since the Calvinistic scheme was devised by human thought to explain the New Testament language, any scheme which explains that language as well has equal Scripture claims to credence; any which better explains 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 meaning originally associated with, and meant to be conveyed by, the phrases equivalent to "redemption by the death of Christ." In consequence of sin, the souls of all mankind, after leaving the body, were shut up in the oblivious gloom of the under world. Christ alone, by virtue of his perfect holiness, was not subject to any part of this fate. But, in fulfilment of the Father's gracious designs, he willingly submitted, upon leaving the body, to go among the dead, that he might declare the good tidings to them, and burst the bars of darkness, and return to life, and rise into heaven as a pledge of the future translation of the faithful to that celestial world, instead of their banishment into the dismal bondage below, as hitherto. The death of Christ, then, was the 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 had forgiven men their sins and would receive their souls to his own abode on high.

Three very strong confirmations of the correctness of this interpretation are afforded in the declarations of Peter. First, he never even hints, in the faintest manner, that the death of Christ was to have any effect on God, any power to change his feeling or his government. It was not to make a purchasing expiation for sins and thus to reconcile God to us; but it was, by a revelation of the Father's freely pardoning love, to give us penitence, purification, confidence, and a regenerating piety, and so to reconcile us to God. He says in one place, in emphatic words, that the express purpose of Christ's death was simply "that he might lead us to God." In the same strain, in another place, he defines the object of Christ's death to be "that we, being delivered from sins, should live unto righteousness." It is plain that in literal reality he refers our marvellous salvation to the voluntary goodness of God, and not to any vicarious ransom paid in the sacrifice of Christ, when he says, "The God of all grace hath called us unto his eternal glory by Jesus Christ." The death of Christ was not, then, to appease the fierce justice of God by rectifying the claims of his inexorable law, but it was to call out and establish in men all moral virtues by the power of faith in the sure gift of eternal life sealed to them through the ascension of the Savior.

For, secondly, the practical inferences drawn by Peter from the death of Christ, and the exhortations founded upon it, are inconsistent with the prevailing theory of the atonement. Upon that view the apostle would have said, "Christ has paid the debt and secured a seat in heaven for you, elected ones: therefore believe in the sufficiency of his offerings, and exult." But not so. He calls on us in this wise: "Forasmuch as Christ hath suffered for us, arm yourselves with the same mind." "Christ suffered for you, leaving an example that ye should follow his steps." The whole burden of his practical argument based on the mission of Christ is, the obligation of a religious spirit and of pure morals. He does not speak, as many modern sectarists have spoken, of the "filthy rags of righteousness;" but he says, "Live no longer in sins," "have a meek and quiet spirit, which is in the sight of God of great price," "be ye holy in all manner of conversation," "purify your souls by obedience to the truth," "be ye a holy priesthood to offer up spiritual sacrifices," "have a good conscience," "avoid evil and do good," "above all, have fervent love, for love will cover a multitude of sins." No candid person can peruse the epistle and not see that the great moral deduced in it from the mission of Christ is this: Since heaven is offered you, strive by personal virtue to be prepared for it at the judgment which shall soon come. The disciple is not told to trust in the merits of Jesus; but he is urged to "abstain from 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 the following fact. According to our view, the death of Christ is emphasized, not on account of any importance in itself, but as the necessary condition preliminary to his resurrection, the humiliating prelude to his glorious ascent into heaven. The really essential, significant thing is not his suffering, vicarious death, but his triumphing, typical ascension. Now, the plain, repeated statements of Peter strikingly coincide with this representation. He says, "God raised Christ up from the dead, and gave him glory, [that is, received him into heaven,] that your faith and hope might be in God." Again he writes, "Blessed be God, who according to his abundant mercy hath begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead unto an incorruptible inheritance in heaven." Still again, he declares that "the figure of baptism, signifying thereby the answer of a good conscience toward God, saves us by the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who is gone into heaven." According to the commonly received doctrine, instead of these last words the apostle ought to have said, "saves us by the death of him who suffered in expiation of our sins." He does not say so. Finally, in the intrepid speech that Peter made before the Jewish council, referring to their wicked crucifixion of Jesus, he says, "Him hath God raised up to his own right hand, to be a Leader and a Savior, to give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins." How plainly remission of sins is here predicated, not through Christ's ignominious suffering, but through his heavenly exaltation! That exaltation showed in dramatic proof that by God's grace the dominion of the lower world was about to be broken and an access to the celestial world to be vouchsafed.

If Christ bought off our merited punishment and earned our acceptance, then salvation can no more be "reckoned of grace, but of debt." But the whole New Testament doctrine is, "that sinners are justified freely through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus." "The redemption that is in Christ"! Take these words literally, and they yield no intelligible meaning. The sense intended to be conveyed or suggested by them depends on interpretation; and here disagreement arises. The Calvinist says they mean the redemption undertaken, achieved, by Christ. We say they 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. We ought therefore to adopt the one which is at once most rational and plausible in itself, and most in harmony with the peculiar opinions 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 theological belief of modern Protestant Christendom, a belief which is the gradual product of a few great, mistaken teachers like Augustine and Calvin.

We do not find the slightest difficulty in explaining sharply and broadly, with all its niceties of phraseology, each one of the texts urged in behalf of the prevalent doctrine of the atonement, without involving the essential features of that doctrine. Three demonstrable assertions of fact afford us all the requisite materials. First, it was a prevalent belief with the Jews, that, since death was the penalty of sin, the suffering of death was in itself expiatory of the sins of the dying man.12 Lightfoot says, "It is a common and most known doctrine of the Talmudists, that repentance and ritual sacrifice expiate some sins, death the rest. Death wipes off all unexpiated sins."13 Tholuck says, "It was a Jewish opinion that the death of the just atoned for the people."14 He quotes from the Talmud an explicit assertion to that effect, and refers to several learned authorities for further citations and confirmations.

Secondly, the apostles conceived Christ to be sinless, and consequently not on his own account exposed to death and subject to Hades. If, then, death was an atonement for sins, and he was sinless, his voluntary death was expiatory for the sins of the world; not in an arbitrary and unheard of way, according to the Calvinistic scheme, but in the common way, according to a Pharisaic notion. And thirdly, it was partly a Jewish expectation concerning the Messiah that he would,15 and partly an apostolic conviction concerning Christ that he did, break the bolts of the old Hadean prison and open the way for human ascent to heaven. As Jerome says, "Before Christ Abraham was in hell, after Christ the crucified thief was in paradise;"16 for "until the advent of Christ all alike went down into the under world, heaven being shut until Christ threw aside the flaming sword that turned every way."17

These three thoughts that death is the expiatory penalty of sin, that Christ was himself sinless, that he died as God's envoy to release the prisoners of gloom and be their pioneer to bliss leave nothing to be desired in explaining the sacrificial terms and kindred phrases employed by the apostles in reference to his mission.

Without question, Peter, like his companions, looked for the speedy return of Christ from heaven to judge all, and to save the worthy. Indications of this belief are numerously afforded in his words. "The end of all things is at hand: be ye therefore sober and watch unto prayer." "You shall give account to him that is ready to judge the quick and the dead." Here the common idea of that 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 descensu Messia ad Inferos,) note 2. "The captives shall ascend from the under 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 undoubtedly implied. "Salvation is now ready to be revealed in the last time." "That your faith may be found unto praise and honor and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ." "Be sober, and hope to the end for the grace that is to be brought unto you at the revelation of Jesus Christ." "Be ye examples to the flock, and when the chief Shepherd shall appear ye shall receive an unfading crown of glory." "God shall send Jesus Christ, . . . whom the heavens must receive until the times of the restitution of all things." It is evident that the author of these passages expected the second coming of the Lord Jesus to consummate the affairs of his kingdom.

If the apostle had formed definite conclusions as to the final fate of unbelieving, wicked, reprobate men, he has not stated them. He undeniably implies certain general facts upon the subject, but leaves all the details in obscurity. He adjures his readers with exceeding earnestness he over and over again adjures them to forsake every manner of sinful life, to strive for every kind of righteous conversation, that by faith and goodness they may receive the salvation of their souls. He must have supposed an opposite 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 the wicked prominent, and presents the idea that Christ shall come to judge them both, and shall reward the former with gladness, crowns, and glory; while it is just as clearly implied as if he had said it that the latter shall be condemned and punished. When a judge sits in trial on the good and the bad, and accepts those, plainly the inference is that he rejects these, unless the contrary be stated. What their doom is in its nature, what in its duration, is neither declared, nor inferrible from what is declared. All that the writer says on this point is substantially repeated or contained in the fourth chapter of his epistle, from verses 12 to 19. A slight explanatory paraphrase of it will make the position clear so far as it can be made clear. "Christian believers, in the fiery trials which are to try you, stand firm, even rejoicing that you are fellow sufferers with Christ, a pledge that 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 which you ought to suffer; then, if persecuted and slain for your Christian profession and virtues, falter not. The terrible time preceding the second advent of your Master is at hand. The sufferings of that time will begin with the Christian household; but how much more dreadful will be the sufferings of the close of that time among the disobedient that spurn the gospel of God! If the righteous shall with great difficulty be snatched from the perils and woes encompassing that time, surely it will happen very much worse with ungodly sinners. Therefore let all who suffer in obedience to God commit the keeping of their souls to him in well doing."

The souls of men were confined in the under world for sin. Christ came to turn men from sin and despair to holiness and a reconciling faith in God. He went to the dead to declare to them the good tidings of pardon and approaching deliverance through the free grace of God. He rose into heaven to demonstrate and visibly exhibit the redemption of men from the under world doom of sinners. He was soon to return to the earth to complete the unfinished work of his commissioned kingdom. His accepted ones should then be taken to glory and reward. The rejected ones should 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 was originally a Jew, afterwards a zealous Christian. He was unquestionably a man of remarkable talent and eloquence and of lofty religious views and feelings. He lived in the time of the immediate followers of Jesus, and apparently was acquainted with them. The individual authorship it is now impossible to determine with certainty. Many of the most learned, unprejudiced, and able critics have ascribed it to Apollos, an Alexandrian Jew, a compeer of Paul and a fellow citizen of Philo. This opinion is more probable than any other. Indeed, so numerous are the resemblances of thoughts and words in the writings of Philo to those in this epistle, that even the wild conjecture has been hazarded that Philo himself at last became a Christian and wrote to his Hebrew countrymen the essay which has since commonly passed for Paul's. No one can examine the hundreds of illustrations of the epistle gathered from Philo by Carpzov, in his learned but ill reasoned work, without being greatly impressed. The supposition which has repeatedly been accepted and urged, that this composition was first written in Hebrew, and afterwards translated into Greek by another person, is absurd, in view of the masterly skill and eloquence, critical niceties, and felicities in the use of language, displayed in it. We could easily fill a paragraph with the names of those eminent in the Church such as Tertullian, Hippolytus, Erasmus, Luther, Le Clerc, and Neander who have concluded that, whoever the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews was, he was not Paul. The list of those names would reach from the Egyptian Origen, whose candor and erudition were without parallel in his age, to the German Bleek, whose masterly and exhaustive work is a monument of united talent and toil, leaving little to be desired. It is not within our present aim to argue this point: we will therefore simply refer the reader to the thorough and unanswerable discussion and settlement of it by Norton.1

The general object of the composition is, by showing the superiority of the Christian system to the Hebrew, to arm the converts from Judaism to whom it is addressed against the temptations to desert the fulfilling faith of Christ and to return to the emblematic faith of their fathers. This aim gives a pervading cast and color to the entire treatment to the reasoning and especially to the chosen imagery of the epistle. Omitting, for the most part, whatever is not essentially interwoven with the subject of death, the resurrection, and future existence, and with the mission of Christ in relation to those subjects, we advance to the consideration of the views which the epistle presents or implies concerning those points. It is to be premised that we are forced to construct from fragments and hints the theological fabric that stood in the mind of the writer. The suggestion also is quite obvious that, since the letter is addressed solely to the Hebrews and describes Christianity as the completion of

1 Christian Examiner, vols. for 1827 29.

Judaism, an acquaintance with the characteristic Hebrew opinions and hopes at that time may be indispensable for a full comprehension of its contents.

The view of the intrinsic nature and rank of Christ on which the epistle rests seems very plainly to be that great Logos doctrine which floated in the philosophy of the apostolic age and is so fully developed in the Gospel of John: "The Logos of God, alive, energetic, irresistibly piercing, to whose eyes all things are bare and open;" "first begotten of God;" "faithful to Him that made him;" inferior to God, superior to all beside; "by whom God made the worlds;" whose seat is at the right hand of God, the angels looking up to him, and "the world to come put in subjection to him." The author, thus assuming the immensely super human rank and the pre existence of Christ, teaches that, by the good will of God, he descended to the world in the form of a man, to save them that were without faith and in fear, them that were lost through sin. God "bringeth in the first begotten into the world." "When he cometh into the world he saith, Sacrifice and offering thou wouldest not, but a body hast thou prepared for me." "Jesus was made a little while inferior to the angels." "Forasmuch, then, as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise partook of the same;" that is, in order to pass through an experience like that of those whom he wished to deliver, he assumed their nature. "He taketh not hold of angels, but he taketh hold of the seed of Abraham:" in other words, he aimed not to assist angels, but men. These passages, taken in connection with the 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 do not see how it is possible for any person to read the epistle through intelligently, in the light of an adequate knowledge of contemporary Hebrew opinions, and not perceive that the author's answer to that inquiry is, that Christ assumed the guise and fate of humanity in order to die; and died in order to rise from the dead; and rose from the dead in order to ascend to heaven; and ascended to heaven in order to reveal the grace of God opening the way for the celestial exaltation and blessedness of the souls of faithful men. We will commence the proof and illustration of these statements by bringing together some of the principal passages in the epistle which involve the objects of the mission of Christ, and then stating the thought that chiefly underlies and explains them.

"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 for every man through the suffering of death crowned with glory and honor." With the best critics, we have altered the arrangement of the clauses in the foregoing verse, to make the sense clearer. The exact meaning is, that the exaltation of Christ to heaven after his death authenticated his mission, showed that his death had a divine meaning for men; that is, showed that they also should rise to heaven. "When he had by himself made a purification of our sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high." "For this cause he is the Mediator of the new covenant, that, his death having occurred, (for the redemption of the transgressions under the first covenant,) they which are called might enter upon possession of the promised eternal inheritance." The force of this last passage, with its context, turns on the double sense of the Greek word for covenant, which likewise means a will. Several statements in the epistle show the author's belief that the subjects of the old dispensation had the promise of immortal life in heaven, but had never realized the thing itself.2 Now, he maintains the purpose of the new dispensation to be the actual revelation and bestowment of the reality which anciently was only promised and typically foreshadowed; and in the passage before us he figures Christ the author of the Christian covenant as the maker of a will by which believers are appointed heirs of a heavenly immortality. He then following the analogy of testamentary legacies and legatees describes those heirs as "entering on possession of that eternal inheritance" "by the death of the Testator." He was led to employ precisely this language by two obvious reasons: first, for the sake of that paronomasia of which he was evidently fond; secondly, by the fact that it really was the death of Christ, with the succeeding resurrection and ascension, which demonstrated both the reality of the thing promised in the will and the authority of the Testator to bestow it.

All the expressions thus far cited, and kindred ones scattered through the work, convey a clear and consistent meaning, with sharp outlines and coherent details, if we suppose their author entertained the following general theory; and otherwise they cannot be satisfactorily explained. A dreadful fear of death, introduced by sin, was tyrannizing over men. In consequence of conscious alienation from God through transgressions, they shuddered at death. The writer does not say what there was in death that made it so feared; but we know that the prevailing Hebrew conception was, that death led the naked soul into the silent, dark, and dreary region of the under world, a doleful fate, from which they shrank with sadness at the best, guilt converting that natural melancholy into dread foreboding. In the absence of any evidence or presumption whatever to the contrary, we are authorized, nay, rather forced, to conclude that such a conception is implied in the passages we are considering. Now, the mission of Jesus was to deliver men from that fear and bondage, by assuring them that God would forgive sin and annul its consequence. Instead of banishing their disembodied spirits into the sepulchral Sheol, he would take them to himself into the glory above the firmament. This aim Christ accomplished by literally exemplifying the truths it implies; that is, by personally assuming the lot of man, dying, rising from among the spirits of the dead, and ascending beyond the veil into heaven. By his death and victorious ascent "he purged our sins," "redeemed transgressions," "overthrew him that has the power of death," in the sense that he thereby, as the writer thought, swept away the supposed train of evils caused by sin, namely, all the concomitants of a banishment after death into the cheerless subterranean 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, "into the 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 thing promised, 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 which was made unto the fathers, God hath fulfilled the same unto us their children, in that he hath raised up Jesus again" that by this ascent he for the first time opened the way for others to ascend to him where he is, avoiding the doom of Hades.

"We have a great High Priest, who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God." "Christ is not entered into the most holy place, made with hands, the figure of the true, but into heaven 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 all its face. It is much more necessary for us to show that the author believed that the men who had previously died had not risen thither, but that it was the Savior's mission to open the way for their ascension.

It is extremely significant, in the outset, that Jesus is called "the first leader and the bringer to the end of our faith;" for the words in this clause which the common version renders "author" and "finisher"3 mean, from their literal force and the latent figure they contain, "a guide who runs through the course to the goal so as to win and receive the prize, bringing us after him to the same consummation." Still more striking is the passage we shall next adduce. Having enumerated a long list of the choicest worthies of the Old Testament, the writer adds, "These all, having obtained testimony through faith, did not realize the promise,4 God having provided a better thing for us, that they without us should not be perfected," should not be brought to the end, the end of human destiny, that is, exaltation to heaven. Undoubtedly the author here means to say that the faithful servants of God under the Mosaic dispensation were reserved in the under world until the ascension of the Messiah. Augustine so explains the text in hand, declaring that Christ was the first that ever rose from the under world.5 The same exposition is given by Origen,6 and indeed by nearly every one of the Fathers who has undertaken to give a critical interpretation of the passage. This doctrine itself was held by Catholic Christendom for a thousand years; is now held by the Roman, Greek, and English Churches; but is, for the most part, rejected or forgotten by the dissenting sects, from two causes. It has so generally sunk out of sight among us, first, from ignorance, ignorance of the ancient learning and opinions on which it rested and of which it was the necessary completion; secondly, from rationalistic speculations, which, leading men to discredit the truth of the doctrine, led them arbitrarily to deny its existence in the Scripture, making them perversely force the texts that state it and wilfully blink the texts that hint it. Whether this be a proper and sound method of proceeding in critical investigations any one may judge. To us it seems equally unmanly and immoral. We know of but one justifiable course, and that is, with patience, with earnestness, and with all possible aids, to labor to discern the real and full meaning of the words according to the understanding and intention of the author. We do so elsewhere, regardless of consequences. No other method, in the case of the Scriptures, is exempt from guilt.

The meaning (namely, to bring to the end) which we have above attributed to the word [NAC](translated in the common version to make 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 it over nicely in the present instance, the following examples from various parts of the epistle unimpeachably witness. "For it was proper that God, in bringing many sons unto glory, should make him who was the first leader of their salvation perfect [reach the end] through sufferings;" that is, should raise him to heaven after he had passed through death, that he, having himself arrived at the glorious heavenly goal of human destiny, might bring others to it. "Christ, being made perfect," (brought through all the intermediate steps to the end,) "became the cause of eternal salvation to all them that obey him; called of God an high priest." The context, and the after assertion of the writer that the priesthood of Jesus is exercised in heaven, show that the word "perfected," as employed here, signifies exalted to the right hand of God. "Perfection" (bringing unto the end) "was not by the Levitical priesthood." "The law perfected nothing, but it was the additional introduction of a better hope by which we draw near unto God." "The law maketh men high priests which have infirmity, which are not suffered to continue, by reason of death; but the word of the oath after the law maketh the Son perfect for evermore," bringeth him to the end, namely, an everlasting priesthood in the heavens. That Christian believers are not under the first covenant, whereby, through sin, men commencing with the blood of Abel, the first death were doomed to the lower world, but are under the second covenant, whereby, through the gracious purpose of God, taking effect in the blood of Christ, the first resurrection, they are already by faith, in imagination, translated to heaven, this is plainly what the author teaches in the following words: "Ye are not come to the palpable mount that burneth with fire, and to blackness and tempest, where so terrible was the sight that Moses exceedingly trembled, but ye are come to Mount Zion, to the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels, and to God, and to the spirits of the perfected just, and to Jesus, the mediator of the new covenant, and to the lustral blood which speaks better things than that of Abel." The connection here demonstrates that the souls of the righteous are called "perfected," as having arrived at the goal of their destiny in heaven. Again, the author, when speaking of the sure and steadfast 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 Jews called the outward or lowermost heaven the veil.7 But the most conclusive consideration upon the opinion we are arguing for and it must be entirely convincing is to be drawn from the first half of the ninth chapter. To appreciate it, it is requisite to remember that the Rabbins with whose notions our author was familiar and some of which he adopts in his reasoning were accustomed to compare the Jewish temple and city with the temple and city of Jehovah above the sky, considering the former as miniature types of the latter. This mode of thought was originally learned by philosophical Rabbins from the Platonic doctrine of ideas, without doubt, and was entertained figuratively, spiritually; but in the unreflecting, popular mind the Hebraic views to which it gave rise were soon grossly materialized and located. They also derived the same conception from God's command to Moses when he was about to build the tabernacle: