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of a fundamental moral order concealed beneath the perplexing anomalies of the world.

To deal with these in order.

I. In the Law, even in its final shape, no doctrine of the soul's existence after death is definitely taught. What is characteristic of Mosaism is its deliberate and entire exclusion of any distinct conception of the state after death. Dr. Mozley points out how favourably this absence of any clear conception contrasts with the false and unworthy notions which we meet with in contemporary paganism. Mosaism is on the whole marked by a chilling, negative idea of death-an idea no doubt in many ways suitable to a dispensation of which the aim and tendency was to reveal the divine holiness and abhorrence of sin. The word She'ol-the place of departed spirits— is variously derived, but perhaps the best account of the word is that it is connected with the verb by to be hollow it would thus have the primary meaning of 'hollow place' or 'pit.' It occurs even in the earliest writers, and is very frequent in the Psalms and Prophets, being often poetically personified1. The only definite statements as to their condition are to the effect that the state of the departed is one of utter privation of all or of most that belongs to life; in She'ol there is darkness instead of light, forgetfulness and sleep instead of waking and conscious thought; there is neither hope nor joy, nor power of praise, nor any longer the solace of communion with God. To descend into She'ol is to go down into the depths of the earth, to a place of corruption and of the worm, to a horrible pit, to the dust of death 2. But on the other hand, there is not supposed to be any annihilation of personality in She'ol; the soul exists in a state of consciousness; the identity of personal being continues. In She'ol the dead are

1 Cp. Schultz, ii. 324.

2 See Job x. 22; Eccl. ix. 5 foll.; Ps. xxii. 15; lxxxviii. 12; cxv. 17; Isa. xiv. 10, II.

gathered without distinction, in tribes and families; men are said to be gathered to their fathers not as sharing necessarily a common tomb, but as having a certain social existence even after death. To some extent there is a reproduction in the place of the departed of the circumstances and conditions of the upper world: kings are thought of as sitting on thrones; the righteous rest in their beds. Such ideas contradict the supposition that death to an ancient Hebrew meant annihilation1. The dead were believed still to exist, though their condition was shadowy and phantom-like. Moreover, the practice of necromancy implies a belief that the departed have a higher measure of knowledge than the living, and are consequently able to foretell future events 3. But the prevalent view is that their condition is one of loss, and of final withdrawal from all the activities, hopes and rewards of life. In She'ol, according to the Preacher, there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom. There, forgetful and forgotten, the dead lie like sheep, cut away from the hand of God. It is evident indeed, without further illustration, that the ordinary Hebrew conception of the state of death, which results from the discipline of the Law, is based on the visible phenomena connected with death. All the effects of dissolution, as they impressed the imagination of the devout Israelite, are of course undeniable, and are intended no doubt to produce a certain impression on the human mind. 'The order of nature,' says Dr. Mozley 5, 'is a melancholy revelation on the subject of death, placing one sepulchral picture before our eyes of generation after

1 See Isa. xiv. 9; lvii. 2; 1 Sam. xxviii. 15; Ezek. xxxii. 21, 24.

They are called D'ND", 'weak' or 'pithless ones,' 'shades.' Cp. the Homeric eïdwλa kaμóvτwv. Job xxvi. 5; Isa. xxvi. 14, &c. See Oehler, § 78; Renan, Histoire, &c., bk. i. ch. 9.

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Cp. Riehm, ATI. Theologie, p. 190. The practice of necromancy is forbidden in Lev. xix. 31; xx. 6, 27; Deut. xviii. 11. On the other hand, Eccl. ix. 5, 'The dead know not anything,' &c.

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generation of men entirely disappearing, and being
heard of and seen no more. Now in the case of the
Jew the appeal of nature was as strong as it is now,
the opposing one of Scripture much weaker. The
consequence was that the order of nature, an order
intended to affect the mind in a particular way under
all dispensations-for God does not make even
appearances for nothing, but intends that joyful ones
should duly gladden and mournful ones duly depress
us-affected the Jew more strongly than it does the
Christian. As such was his lot, he bowed meekly
to it and received the whole of that melancholy
impress upon his passive soul.' The Old Testament
horizon, in point of fact, lies wholly on this side the
grave. A continued existence in his descendants—
this was the utmost that a pious Israelite could
reasonably hope for; the loss of life was in a sense
a 'withdrawal of the highest good. Consequently,
even devout hearts look forward with dread and
unconcealed bitterness of spirit to the monotony and
dreariness of She'ol. The highest blessedness, the
supreme reward of covenant faithfulness, is long life
in the land which is God's gift to His people.
Nothing that death could give-rest from the storms
of life, and final deliverance from suffering, oppression
or contumely-seemed to be any compensation for
the total loss of the blessings of continued earthly
existence, to which the Jew clung with a pathetic

eagerness.

What then, it might be asked, did the Mosaic dispensation contribute towards the idea of a future life, of personal immortality for the individual? The answer is-it impressed on the Israelite's mind the truth of man's covenant-relationship to God, his dignity as admitted to the life of fellowship with

1 Stade ap. Schultz, ii. 327. Even after the exile, the pious Jew 'did not as yet venture to express the hope of a life after death, of a resurrection of the body. The utmost he hoped for was a memorial in Jeru salem (Neh. ii. 20), a monument within its walls which was better than sons and daughters (Isa. lvi. 6).' Hunter, op. cit. i. p. 83.

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God. Man's personality was of permanent worth and importance, inasmuch as he was created capable of standing in an essential relation to the source of all good and to the moral law as the reflection of God's being. It is this side of the Mosaic teaching which is developed in the Psalms. Meanwhile, we may notice in passing that Jewish faith was not entirely unvisited by anticipatory gleams of consolation and hope: to sustain this faith there existed the tradition of Enoch, who walked with God, and he was not, for God took him; the narrative of Elijah's translation to the unseen world in a chariot of fire; and that of the return of Samuel from the abode of the departed to prophesy the doom of Saul1. These are at least testimonies to an anticipation which later reflection was destined. to render more explicit. Moreover, the Jew could always find rest in his fundamental assurance that a holy God existed-a truth which implied the reality of an invisible world of which God was the centre. Further, it was certain that Jehovah had willed to make a covenant of grace with men, in order to bring them into a living fellowship with Himself. Jehovah was the Almighty God of the patriarchs; and herein lay an implicit pledge-a latent prophecy-that He would continue through and beyond death the existence of a creature to whom He had displayed such condescending love. Our Lord seems to draw the conclusion which the unbelief of the Sadducees hesitated to deduce in His recorded answer to their captious questioning: Now that the dead are raised, even Moses showed at the bush, when he calleth the Lord the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. For he is not a God of the dead, but of the living; for all live unto him. In the belief of holy Israelites that God continued to stand in an unbroken and eternal relationship of grace to the forefathers of the nation, lay an implicit sense

1 Gen. v. 24; 2 Kings ii. 11; 1 Sam. xxviii. 11 foll.
2 Luke xx. 38.

of the enduring dignity and preciousness of human nature-a sense which formed a suitable foundation for the idea of personal immortality1. Nor must it be forgotten that the Law itself, in appealing sternly to man's faculty of obedience, implicitly recognized his worth as a being capable of response to moral commands. Mosaism recognizes, so to speak, the theomorphic structure of man; it treats him as a spiritual being; it recognizes his moral freedom, his capacity for perfection and for fellowship with God. Indeed it might be maintained that upon this view of human nature 'the whole religion of Israel, with its idea of the kingdom of God, its worship and its prophecy, is founded 2.'

The Mosaic conception of human nature is inherited and further developed by the prophets and psalmists. In the writings of the prophets the individual relationship of man to God is contemplated from the moral side. Thus Jeremiah and Ezekiel qualify the doctrine of inherited guilt by insistence on the truth of individual accountability. The former prophet in his vision of the future new covenant includes the idea of personal salvation: In those days they shall say no more, The fathers have eaten a sour grape, and the children's teeth are set on edge. But every one shall die for his own iniquity. And the thought is expanded in detail by Ezekiel: The soul that sinneth, it shall die. The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son: the righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him. (It may have been Ezekiel's sense of the heavy personal responsibility

1 Cp. Riehm, ATI. Theologie, p. 192: Lag in der Gewissheit, dass der Fromme in der Gnadengemeinschaft mit dem ewigen Gott sterbe, der triebkräftige Keim, aus welchem sich die Hoffnung des ewigen Lebens entwickeln, und in jenem Glauben an Gottes Macht über Tod und Totenreich lag das Fundament auf welches der Auferstehungsglaube gegründet werden konnte.'

3

Schultz, ii. 263.
Jer. xxxi. 29 foll.
Ezek. xviii. 20. Cp. Kirkpatrick, The Doctrine of the Prophets,

pp. 340 foll.

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