{"collection":"scripture-revelation","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_19082/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_19082","id":"gutenberg_19082","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/19082","summary":null,"tags":["Category: History - Other","Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Category: Religion/Spirituality","Future life -- Christianity -- Bibliography","Future life -- Christianity -- History of doctrines"],"text":"Produced by Edmund Dejowski\n\n\n\n\n\nTHE DESTINY OF THE SOUL.\n\nA CRITICAL HISTORY\nOF THE\nDOCTRINE OF A FUTURE LIFE,\n\nBY\nWILLIAM ROUNSEVILLE ALGER.\n\nTENTH EDITION,\n\nWITH SIX NEW CHAPTERS, AND\n\nA Complete Bibliography of the Subject.\n[Note: bibliography not included here]\n\nCOMPRISING 4977 BOOKS RELATING TO THE NATURE, ORIGIN, AND\nDESTINY OF THE SOUL. THE TITLES CLASSIFIED AND ARRANGED\nCHRONOLOGICALLY, WITH NOTES, AND INDEXES OF THE AUTHORS AND\nSUBJECTS.\n\nBY EZRA ABBOT,\n\nPROFESSOR OF NEW TESTAMENT CRITICISM AND INTERPRETATION IN\nTHE DIVINITY SCHOOL OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY.\n\n\nBOSTON:\nROBERTS BROTHERS.\n1880\n\nEntered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1860, by\nWILLIAM ROUNSEVILLE ALGER,\nin the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United\nStates for the District of Massachusetts.\n\nCopyright 1878, W.R. Alger\n\nELECTROTYPED BY JOHNSON & CO., PHILADA.\n\nUniversity Press: John Wilson & Son,\nCambridge.\n\n\nPREFACE TO THE TENTH EDITION.\n\n\nTHIS work has passed through nine editions, and has been out of\nprint now for nearly a year. During the twenty years which have\nelapsed since it was written, the question of immortality, the\nfaith and opinions of men and the drift of criticism and doubt\nconcerning it, have been a subject of dominant interest to me, and\nhave occupied a large space in my reading and reflection.\nAccordingly, now that my publisher, moved by the constant demand\nfor the volume, urges the preparation of a new edition introducing\nsuch additional materials as my continued researches have gathered\nor constructed, I gladly comply with his request.\n\nThe present work is not only historic but it is also polemic;\npolemic, however, not in the spirit or interest of any party or\nconventicle, but in the spirit and interest of science and\nhumanity. Orthodoxy insists on doctrines whose irrationality in\ntheir current forms is such that they can never be a basis for the\nunion of all men. Therefore, to discredit these, in preparation\nfor more reasonable and auspicious views, is a service to the\nwhole human race. This is my justification for the controversial\nquality which may frequently strike the reader.\n\nLooking back over his pages, after nearly a quarter of a century\nmore of investigation and experience, the author is grateful that\nhe finds nothing to retract or expunge. He has but to add such\nthoughts and illustrations as have occurred to him in the course\nof his subsequent studies. He hopes that the supplementary\nchapters now published will be found more suggestive and mature\nthan the preceding ones, while the same in aim and tone. For he\nstill believes, as he did in his earlier time, that there is much\nof error and superstition, bigotry and cruelty, to be purged out\nof the prevailing theological creed and sentiment of Christendom.\nAnd he still hopes, as he did then, to contribute something of\ngood influence in this direction. The large circulation of the\nwork, the many letters of thanks for it received by the author\nfrom laymen and clergymen of different denominations, the numerous\navowed and unavowed quotations from it in recent publications,\nall show that it has not been produced in vain, but has borne\nfruit in missionary service for reason, liberty, and charity.\n\nThis ventilating and illumining function of fearless and\nreverential critical thought will need to be fulfilled much longer\nin many quarters. The doctrine of a future life has been made so\nfrightful by the preponderance in it of the elements of material\ntorture and sectarian narrowness, that a natural revulsion of\ngenerous sentiment joins with the impulse of materialistic science\nto produce a growing disbelief in any life at all beyond the\ngrave. Nothing else will do so much to renew and extend faith in\nGod and immortality as a noble and beautiful doctrine of God and\nimmortality, freed from disfiguring terror, selfishness, and\nfavoritism.\n\nThe most popular preacher in England has recently asked his\nfellow believers, \"Can we go to our beds and sleep while China,\nIndia, Japan, and other nations are being damned?\" The proprietor\nof a great foundry in Germany, while he talked one day with a\nworkman who was feeding a furnace, accidentally stepped back, and\nfell headlong into a vat of molten iron. The thought of what\nhappened then horrifies the imagination. Yet it was all over in\ntwo or three seconds. Multiply the individual instance by\nunnumbered millions, stretch the agony to temporal infinity, and\nwe confront the orthodox idea of hell!\n\nProtesting human nature hurls off such a belief with indignant\ndisdain, except in those instances where the very form and\nvibration of its nervous pulp have been perverted by the hardening\nanimus of a dogmatic drill transmitted through generations. To\ntrace the origin of such notions, expose their baselessness,\nobliterate their sway, and replace them with conceptions of a more\nrational and benignant order, is a task which still needs to be\ndone, and to be done in many forms, over and over, again and\nagain. Though each repetition tell but slightly, it tells.\n\nEvery sound argument is instantly crowned with universal victory\nin the sight of God, and therefore must at last be so in the sight\nof mankind. However slowly the logic of events limps after the\nlogic of thoughts, it always follows. Let the mind of one man\nperceive the true meaning of the doctrine of the general\nresurrection and judgment and eternal life, as a natural evolution\nof history from within, and it will spread to the minds of all\nmen; and the misinterpretation of that doctrine so long prevalent,\nas a preternatural irruption of power from without, will be set\naside forever. For there is a providential plan of God, not\ninjected by arbitrary miracle, but inhering in the order of the\nworld, centred in the propulsive heart of humanity, which beats\nthrob by throb along the web of events, removing obstacles and\nclearing the way for the revelation of the completed pattern. When\nit is done no trumpets may be blown, no rocks rent, no graves\nopened. But all immortal spirits will be at their goals, and the\nuniverse will be full of music.\n\nNEW YORK, February 22, 1878.\n\nPREFACE.\n\n\nWHO follows truth carries his star in his brain. Even so bold a\nthought is no inappropriate motto for an intellectual workman, if\nhis heart be filled with loyalty to God, the Author of truth and\nthe Maker of stars. In this double spirit of independence and\nsubmission it has been my desire to perform the arduous task now\nfinished and offered to the charitable judgment of the reader. One\nmay be courageous to handle both the traditions and the novelties\nof men, and yet be modest before the solemn mysteries of fate and\nnature. He may place no veil before his eyes and no finger on his\nlips in presence of popular dogmas, and yet shrink from the\nconceit of esteeming his mind a mirror of the universe. Ideas,\nlike coins, bear the stamp of the age and brain they were struck\nin. Many a phantom which ought to have vanished at the first cock\ncrowing of reason still holds its seat on the oppressed heart of\nfaith before the terror stricken eyes of the multitude. Every\nthoughtful scholar who loves his fellow men must feel it an\nobligation to do what he can to remove painful superstitions, and\nto spread the peace of a cheerful faith and the wholesome light of\ntruth. The theories in theological systems being but philosophy,\nwhy should they not be freely subjected to philosophical\ncriticism? I have endeavored, without virulence, arrogance, or\nirreverence towards any thing sacred, to investigate the various\ndoctrines pertaining to the great subject treated in these pages.\nMany persons, of course, will find statements from which they\ndissent, sentiments disagreeable to them. But, where thought and\ndiscussion are so free and the press so accessible as with us, no\none but a bigot will esteem this a ground of complaint. May all\nsuch passages be charitably perused, fairly weighed, and, if\nunsound, honorably refuted! If the work be not animated with a\nmean or false spirit, but be catholic and kindly, if it be not\nsuperficial and pretentious, but be marked by patience and\nthoroughness, is it too much to hope that no critic will assail it\nwith wholesale condemnation simply because in some parts of it\nthere are opinions which he dislikes? One dispassionate argument\nis more valuable than a shower of missile names. The most vehement\nrevulsion from a doctrine is not inconsistent, in a Christian\nmind, with the sweetest kindness of feeling towards the persons\nwho hold that doctrine. Earnest theological debate may be carried\non without the slightest touch of ungenerous personality. Who but\nmust feel the pathos and admire the charity of these eloquent\nwords of Henry Giles?\n\n\"Every deep and reflective nature looking intently 'before and\nafter,' looking above, around, beneath, and finding silence and\nmystery to all his questionings of the Infinite, cannot but\nconceive of existence as a boundless problem, perhaps an\ninevitable darkness between the limitations of man and the\nincomprehensibility of God. A nature that so reflects, that\ncarries into this sublime and boundless obscurity 'the large\ndiscourse of Reason,' will not narrow its concern in the solution\nof the problem to its own petty safety, but will brood over it\nwith an anxiety which throbs for the whole of humanity. Such a\nnature must needs be serious; but never will it be arrogant: it\nwill regard all men with an embracing pity. Strange it should ever\nbe otherwise in respect to inquiries which belong to infinite\nrelations, that mean enmities, bitter hatreds, should come into\nplay in these fathomless searchings of the soul! Bring what\nsolution we may to this problem of measureless alternatives,\nwhether by Reason, Scripture, or the Church, faith will never\nstand for fact, nor the firmest confidence for actual\nconsciousness. The man of great and thoughtful nature, therefore,\nwho grapples in real earnest with this problem, however satisfied\nhe may be with his own solution of it, however implicit may be his\ntrust, however assured his convictions, will yet often bow down\nbefore the awful veil that shrouds the endless future, put his\nfinger on his lips, and weep in silence.\"\n\nThe present work is in a sense, an epitome of the thought of\nmankind on the destiny of man. I have striven to add value to it\nby comprehensiveness of plan, not confining myself, as most of my\npredecessors have confined themselves, to one province or a few\nnarrow provinces of the subject, but including the entire subject\nin one volume; by carefulness of arrangement,  not piling the\nmaterial together or presenting it in a chaos of facts and dreams,\nbut grouping it all in its proper relations; by clearness of\nexplanation, not leaving the curious problems presented wholly in\nthe dark with a mere statement of them, but as far as possible\ntracing the phenomena to their origin and unveiling their purport;\nby poetic life of treatment, not handling the different topics\ndryly and coldly, but infusing warmth and color into them; by\ncopiousness of information, not leaving the reader to hunt up\nevery thing for himself, but referring him to the best sources for\nthe facts, reasonings, and hints which he may wish; and by\npersevering patience of toil, not hastily skimming here and there\nand hurrying the task off, but searching and researching in every\navailable direction, examining and re examining each mooted point,\nby the devotion of twelve years of anxious labor. How far my\nefforts in these particulars have been successful is submitted to\nthe public.\n\nTo avoid the appearance of pedantry in the multiplication of foot\nnotes, I have inserted many authorities incidentally in the text\nitself, and have omitted all except such as I thought would be\ndesired by the reader. Every scholar knows how easy it is to\nincrease the number of references almost indefinitely, and also\nhow deceptive such an ostensible evidence of wide reading may be.\n\nWhen the printing of this volume was nearly completed, and I had\nin some instances made more references than may now seem needful,\nthe thought occurred to me that a full list of the books published\nup to the present time on the subject of a future life, arranged\naccording to their definite topics and in chronological order,\nwould greatly enrich the work and could not fail often to be of\nvast service. Accordingly, upon solicitation, a valued friend  Mr.\nEzra Abbot, Jr., a gentleman remarkable for his varied and\naccurate scholarship  undertook that laborious task for me; and he\nhas accomplished it in the most admirable manner. No reader,\nhowever learned, but may find much important information in the\nbibliographical appendix which I am thus enabled to add to this\nvolume. Every student who henceforth wishes to investigate any\nbranch of the historical or philosophical doctrine of the\nimmortality of the soul, or of a future life in general, may thank\nMr. Abbot for an invaluable aid.\n\nAs I now close this long labor and send forth the result, the\noppressive sense of responsibility which fills me is relieved by\nthe consciousness that I have herein written nothing as a bigoted\npartisan, nothing in a petty spirit of opinionativeness, but have\nintended every thought for the furtherance of truth, the honor of\nGod, the good of man.\n\nThe majestic theme of our immortality allures yet baffles us. No\nfleshly implement of logic or cunning tact of brain can reach to\nthe solution. That secret lies in a tissueless realm whereof no\nnerve can report beforehand. We must wait a little. Soon we shall\ngrope and guess no more, but grasp and know. Meanwhile, shall we\nnot be magnanimous to forgive and help, diligent to study and\nachieve, trustful and content to abide the invisible issue? In\nsome happier age, when the human race shall have forgotten, in\nphilanthropic ministries and spiritual worship, the bigotries and\ndissensions of sentiment and thought, they may recover, in its\nall embracing unity, that garment of truth which God made\noriginally \"seamless as the firmament,\" now for so long a time\ntorn in shreds by hating schismatics. Oh, when shall we learn that\na loving pity, a filial faith, a patient modesty, best become us\nand fit our state? The pedantic sciolist, prating of his clear\nexplanations of the mysteries of life, is as far from feeling the\ntruth of the case as an ape, seated on the starry summit of the\ndome of night, chattering with glee over the awful prospect of\ninfinitude. What ordinary tongue shall dare to vociferate\negotistic dogmatisms where an inspired apostle whispers, with\nreverential reserve, \"We see through a glass darkly\"? There are\nthree things, said an old monkish chronicler, which often make me\nsad. First, that I know I must die; second, that I know not when;\nthird, that I am ignorant where I shall then be.\n\n\"Est primum durum quod scio me moriturum: Secundum, timeo quia hoc\nnescio quando: Hine tertium, flebo quod nescio ubi manebo.\"\n\nMan is the lonely and sublime Columbus of the creation, who,\nwandering on this cloudy strand of time, sees drifted waifs and\nstrange portents borne far from an unknown somewhere, causing him\nto believe in another world. Comes not death as a means to bear\nhim thither? Accordingly as hope rests in heaven, fear shudders at\nhell, or doubt faces the dark transition, the future life is a\nsweet reliance, a terrible certainty, or a pathetic perhaps. But\nliving in the present in the humble and loving discharge of its\nduties, our souls harmonized with its conditions though aspiring\nbeyond them, why should we ever despair or be troubled overmuch?\nHave we not eternity in our thought, infinitude in our view, and\nGod for our guide?\n\n\nCONTENTS\n\n\nPart First.\n\nHISTORICAL AND CRITICAL INTRODUCTORY VIEWS.\n\nCHAPTER I.\n\nTHEORIES OF THE SOUL'S ORIGIN\n\nCHAPTER II.\n\nHISTORY OF DEATH\n\nCHAPTER III.\n\nGROUNDS OF THE BELIEF IN A FUTURE LIFE\n\nCHAPTER IV.\n\nTHEORIES OF THE SOUL'S DESTINATION\n\nPart Second.\n\nETHNIC THOUGHTS CONCERNING A FUTURE LIFE.\n\nCHAPTER I.\n\nBARBARIAN NOTIONS OF A FUTURE LIFE\n\nCHAPTER II.\n\nDRUIDIC DOCTRINE OF A FUTURE LIFE\n\nCHAPTER III.\n\nSCANDINAVIAN DOCTRINE OF A FUTURE LIFE\n\nCHAPTER IV.\n\nETRUSCAN DOCTRINE OF A FUTURE LIFE\n\nCHAPTER V.\n\nEGYPTIAN DOCTRINE OF A FUTURE LIFE\n\nCHAPTER VI.\n\nBRAMANIC AND BUDDHIST DOCTRINE OF A FUTURE LIFE\n\nCHAPTER VII.\n\nPERSIAN DOCTRINE OF A FUTURE LIFE\n\nCHAPTER VIII.\n\nHEBREW DOCTRINE OF A FUTURE LIFE\n\nCHAPTER IX.\n\nRABBINICAL DOCTRINE OF A FUTURE LIFE\n\nCHAPTER X.\n\nGREEK AND DOCTRINE OF A FUTURE LIFE\n\nCHAPTER XI.\n\nMOHAMMEDAN DOCTRINE OF A FUTURE LIFE\n\nCHAPTER XII.\n\nEXPLANATORY SURVEY OF THE FIELD AND ITS MYTHS\n\nPart Third.\n\nNEW TESTAMENT TEACHINGS CONCERNING A FUTURE LIFE.\n\nCHAPTER I.\n\nPETER'S DOCTRINE OF A FUTURE LIFE\n\nCHAPTER II.\n\nDOCTRINE OF A FUTURE LIFE IN THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS\n\nCHAPTER III.\n\nDOCTRINE OF A FUTURE LIFE IN THE APOCALYPSE\n\nCHAPTER IV.\n\nPAUL'S DOCTRINE OF A FUTURE LIFE\n\nCHAPTER V.\n\nJOHN'S DOCTRINE OF A FUTURE LIFE\n\nCHAPTER VI.\n\nCHRIST'S TEACHINGS CONCERNING THE FUTURE LIFE\n\nCHAPTER VII.\n\nRESURRECTION OF CHRIST\n\nCHAPTER VIII.\n\nESSENTIAL CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF DEATH AND LIFE\n\nPart Fourth.\n\nCHRISTIAN THOUGHTS CONCERNING A FUTURE LIFE.\n\nCHAPTER I.\n\nPATRISTIC DOCTRINE OF A FUTURE LIFE\n\nCHAPTER II.\n\nMEDIAVAL DOCTRINE OF A FUTURE LIFE\n\nCHAPTER III.\n\nMODERN DOCTRINE OF A FUTURE LIFE\n\nPart Fifth.\n\nHISTORICAL AND CRITICAL DISSERTATIONS CONCERNING A FUTURE LIFE.\n\nCHAPTER I.\n\nDOCTRINE OF A FUTURE LIFE IN THE ANCIENT MYSTERIES\n\nCHAPTER II.\n\nMETEMPSYCHOIS; OR, TRANSMIGRATION OF SOULS\n\nCHAPTER III.\n\nRESURRECTION OF THE FLESH\n\nCHAPTER IV.\n\nDOCTRINE OF FUTURE PUNISHMENT; OR, CRITICAL HISTORY OF THE IDEA OF\nA HELL\n\nCHAPTER V.\n\nTHE FIVE THEORETIC MODES OF SALVATION\n\nCHAPTER VI.\n\nRECOGNITION OF FRIENDS IN A FUTURE LIFE\n\nCHAPTER VII.\n\nLOCAL FATE OF MAN IN THE ASTRONOMIC UNIVERSE\n\nCHAPTER VIII.\n\nCRITICAL HISTORY OF DISBELIEF IN A FUTURE LIFE\n\nCHAPTER IX.\n\nMORALITY OF THE DOCTRINE OF A FUTURE LIFE\n\nPart Sixth.\n\nSUPPLEMENTARY CHAPTERS.\n\nCHAPTER I.\n\nTHE END OF THE WORLD\n\nCHAPTER II.\n\nTHE DAY OF JUDGMENT\n\nCHAPTER III.\n\nTHE MYTHOLOGICAL HELL AND THE TRUE ONE; OR, THE LAW OF PERDITION\n\nCHAPTER IV.\n\nTHE GATES OF HEAVEN; OR, THE LAW OF SALVATION IN ALL WORLDS\n\nCHAPTER V.\n\nRESUME OF THE SUBJECT: HOW THE QUESTION OF IMMORTALITY NOW STANDS\n\nCHAPTER VI.\n\nTHE TRANSIENT AND THE PERMANENT IN THE DESTINY OF THE SOUL\n\nPART FIRST.\n\n\nHISTORICAL AND CRITICAL INTRODUCTORY VIEWS.\n\nCHAPTER I.\n\nTHEORIES OF THE SOUL'S ORIGIN.\n\nPAUSING, in a thoughtful hour, on that mount of observation whence\nthe whole prospect of life is visible, what a solemn vision greets\nus! We see the vast procession of existence flitting across the\nlandscape, from the shrouded ocean of birth, over the illuminated\ncontinent of experience, to the shrouded ocean of death. Who can\nlinger there and listen, unmoved, to the sublime lament of things\nthat die? Although the great exhibition below endures, yet it is\nmade up of changes, and the spectators shift as often. Each rank\nof the host, as it advances from the mists of its commencing\ncareer, wears a smile caught from the morning light of hope, but,\nas it draws near to the fatal bourne, takes on a mournful cast\nfrom the shadows of the unknown realm. The places we occupy were\nnot vacant before we came, and will not be deserted when we go,\nbut are forever filling and emptying afresh.\n\n\"Still to every draught of vital breath\nRenew'd throughout the bounds of earth and ocean,\nThe melancholy gates of death\nRespond with sympathetic motion.\"\n\nWe appear, there is a short flutter of joys and pains, a bright\nglimmer of smiles and tears, and we are gone. But whence did we\ncome? And whither do we go? Can human thought divine the answer?\n\nIt adds no little solemnity and pathos to these reflections to\nremember that every considerate person in the unnumbered\nsuccessions that have preceded us, has, in his turn, confronted\nthe same facts, engaged in the same inquiry, and been swept from\nhis attempts at a theoretic solution of the problem into the real\nsolution itself, while the constant refrain in the song of\nexistence sounded behind him, \"One generation passeth away, and\nanother generation cometh; but the earth abideth forever.\" The\nevanescent phenomena, the tragic plot and scenery of human birth,\naction, and death, conceived on the scale of reality, clothed in\n\n\"The sober coloring taken from an eye That hath kept watch o'er\nman's mortality,\"\n\nand viewed in a susceptible spirit, are, indeed, overwhelmingly\nimpressive. They invoke the intellect to its most piercing\nthoughts. They swell the heart to its utmost capacity of emotion.\nThey bring us upon the bended knees of wonder and prayer.\n\n\"Between two worlds life hovers, like a star'\nTwixt night and morn upon the horizon's verge.\nHow little do we know that which we are!\nHow less what we may be! The eternal surge\nOf time and tide rolls on, and bears afar\nOur bubbles: as the old burst, new emerge,\nLash'd from the foam of ages: while the graves\nOf empires heave but like some passing waves.\"\n\nWidely regarding the history of human life from the beginning,\nwhat a visionary spectacle it is! How miraculously permanent in\nthe whole! how sorrowfully ephemeral in the parts! What pathetic\nsentiments it awakens! Amidst what awful mysteries it hangs! The\nsubject of the derivation of the soul has been copiously discussed\nby hundreds of philosophers, physicians, and poets, from Vyasa to\nDes Cartes, from Galen to Ennemoser, from Orpheus to Henry More,\nfrom Aristotle to Frohschammer. German literature during the last\nhundred years has teemed with works treating of this question from\nvarious points of view. The present chapter will present a sketch\nof these various speculations concerning the commencement and\nfortunes of man ere his appearance on the stage of this world.\n\nThe first theory to account for the origin of souls is that of\nemanation. This is the analogical theory, constructed from the\nresults of sensible observation. There is, it says, one infinite\nBeing, and all finite spirits are portions of his substance,\nexisting a while as separate individuals, and then reassimilated\ninto the general soul. This form of faith, asserting the efflux of\nall subordinate existence out of one Supreme Being, seems\nsometimes to rest on an intuitive idea. It is spontaneously\nsuggested whenever man confronts the phenomena of creation with\nreflective observation, and ponders the eternal round of birth and\ndeath. Accordingly, we find traces of this belief all over the\nworld; from the ancient Hindu metaphysics whose fundamental\npostulate is that the necessary life of God is one constant\nprocess of radiation and resorption, \"letting out and drawing in,\"\nto that modern English poetry which apostrophizes the glad and\nwinsome child as\n\n\"A silver stream\nBreaking with laughter from the lake Divine\nWhence all things flow.\"\n\nThe conception that souls are emanations from God is the most\nobvious way of accounting for the prominent facts that salute our\ninquiries. It plausibly answers some natural questions, and boldly\neludes others. For instance, to the early student demanding the\ncause of the mysterious distinctions between mind and body, it\nsays, the one belongs to the system of passive matter, the other\ncomes from the living Fashioner of the Universe. Again: this\ntheory relieves us from the burden that perplexes the finite mind\nwhen it seeks to understand how the course of nature, the\nsuccession of lives, can be absolutely eternal without involving\nan alternating or circular movement. The doctrine of emanation\nhas, moreover, been supported by the supposed analytic similarity\nof the soul to God. Its freedom, consciousness, intelligence,\nlove, correspond with what we regard as the attributes and essence\nof Deity. The inference, however unsound, is immediate, that souls\nare consubstantial with God, dissevered fragments of Him, sent\ninto bodies. But, in actual effect, the chief recommendation of\nthis view has probably been the variety of analogies and images\nunder which it admits of presentation. The annual developments of\nvegetable life from the bosom of the earth, drops taken from a\nfountain and retaining its properties in their removal, the\nseparation of the air into distinct breaths, the soil into\nindividual atoms, the utterance of a tone gradually dying away in\nreverberated echoes, the radiation of beams from a central light,\nthe exhalation of particles of moisture from the ocean, the\nevolution of numbers out of an original unity, these are among the\nillustrations by which an exhaustless ingenuity has supported the\nnotion of the emanation of souls from God. That \"something cannot\ncome out of nothing\" is an axiom resting on the ground of our\nrational instincts. And seeing all things within our comprehension\nheld in the chain of causes and effects, one thing always evolving\nfrom another, we leap to the conclusion that it is precisely the\nsame with things beyond our comprehension, and that God is the\naboriginal reservoir of being from which all the rills of finite\nexistence are emitted.\n\nAgainst this doctrine the current objections are these two. First,\nthe analogies adduced are not applicable. The things of spirit and\nthose of matter have two distinct sets of predicates and\ncategories. It is, for example, wholly illogical to argue that\nbecause the circuit of the waters is from the sea, through the\nclouds, over the land, back to the sea again, therefore the\nderivation and course of souls from God, through life, back to\nGod, must be similar. There are mysteries in connection with the\nsoul that baffle the most lynx eyed investigation, and on which no\nknown facts of the physical world can throw light. Secondly, the\nscheme of emanation depends on a vulgar error, belonging to the\ninfancy of philosophic thought, and inconsistent with some\nnecessary truths. It implies that God is separable into parts, and\ntherefore both corporeal and finite. Divisible substance is\nincompatible with the first predicates of Deity, namely,\nimmateriality and infinity. Before the conception of the\nillimitable, spiritual unity of God, the doctrine of the emanation\nof souls from Him fades away, as the mere figment of a dreaming\nmind brooding over the suggestions of phenomena and apparent\ncorrespondences.\n\nThe second explanation of the origin of souls is that which says\nthey come from a previous existence. This is the theory of\nimagination, framed in the free and seductive realm of poetic\nthought. It is evident that this idea does not propose any\nsolution of the absolute origination of the soul, but only offers\nto account for its appearance on earth. The pre existence of souls\nhas been most widely affirmed. Nearly the whole world of Oriental\nthinkers have always taught it. Many of the Greek philosophers\nheld it. No small proportion of the early Church Fathers believed\nit.1 And it is not without able advocates among the scholars and\nthinkers\n\n1 Keil, Opuscula; Be Pre existentia Animarum. Beausobre, Hist. du\nManicheisme, lib. vii. cap. iv.\n\n\nof our own age. There are two principal forms of this doctrine;\none asserting an ascent of souls from a previous existence below\nthe rank of man, the other a descent of souls from a higher\nsphere. Generation is the true Jacob's ladder, on which souls are\never ascending or descending. The former statement is virtually\nthat of the modern theory of development, which argues that the\nsouls known to us, obtaining their first organic being out of the\nground life of nature, have climbed up through a graduated series\nof births, from the merest elementary existence, to the plane of\nhuman nature. A gifted author, Dr. Hedge, has said concerning pre\nexistence in these two methods of conceiving it, writing in a\nhalf humorous, half serious, vein, \"It is to be considered as\nexpressing rather an exceptional than a universal fact. If here\nand there some pure liver, or noble doer, or prophet voice,\nsuggests the idea of a revenant who, moved with pity for human\nkind, and charged with celestial ministries, has condescended to\n\n'Soil his pure ambrosial weeds\nWith the rank vapors of this sin worn mould,'\n\nor if, on the other hand, the 'superfluity of naughtiness'\ndisplayed by some abnormal felon seems to warrant the supposition\nof a visit from the Pit, the greater portion of mankind, we\nsubmit, are much too green for any plausible assumption of a\nforegone training in good or evil. This planet is not their\nmissionary station, nor their Botany Bay, but their native soil.\nOr, if we suppose they pre existed at all, we must rather believe\nthey pre existed as brutes, and have travelled into humanity by\nthe fish fowl quadruped road with a good deal of the habitudes and\ndust of that tramp still sticking to them.\" The theory of\ndevelopment, deriving human souls by an ascension from the lower\nstages of rudimentary being, considered as a fanciful hypothesis\nor speculative toy, is interesting, and not destitute of plausible\naspects. But, when investigated as a severe thesis, it is found\ndevoid of proof. It is enough here to say that the most\nauthoritative voices in science reject it, declaring that, though\nthere is a development of progress in the plan of nature, from the\nmore general to the more specific, yet there is no advance from\none type or race to another, no hint that the same individual ever\ncrosses the guarded boundaries of genus from one rank and kingdom\nto another. Whatever progress there may be in the upward process\nof natural creation or the stages of life, yet to suppose that the\nlife powers of insects and brutes survive the dissolution of their\nbodies, and, in successive crossings of the death gulf, ascend to\nhumanity, is a bare assumption. It befits the delirious lips of\nBeddoes, who says,\n\n\"Had I been born a four legg'd child, methinks I might have found\nthe steps from dog to man And crept into his nature. Are there not\nThose that fall down out of humanity Into the story where the\nfour legg'd dwell?\"\n\nThe doctrine that souls have descended from an anterior life on\nhigh may be exhibited in three forms, each animated by a different\nmotive. The first is the view of some of the Manichean teachers,\nthat spirits were embodied by a hostile violence and cunning, the\nforce and fraud of the apostatized Devil. Adam and Eve were angels\nsent to observe the doings of Lucifer, the rebel king of matter.\nHe seized these heavenly spies and encased them in fleshly\nprisons. And then, in order to preserve a permanent union of these\ncelestial natures with matter, he contrived that their race should\nbe propagated by the sexes. Whenever by the procreative act the\ngerm body is prepared, a fiend hies from bale, or an angel stoops\nfrom bliss, or a demon darts from his hovering in the air, to\ninhabit and rule his growing clay house for a term of earthly\nlife. The spasm of impregnation thrills in fatal summons to hell\nor heaven, and resistlessly drags a spirit into the appointed\nreceptacle. Shakspeare, whose genius seems to have touched every\nshape of thought with adorning phrase, makes Juliet, distracted\nwith the momentary fancy that Romeo is a murderous villain, cry,\n\n\"O Nature! what hadst thou to do in hell\nWhen thou didst bower the spirit of a fiend\nIn mortal paradise of such sweet flesh?\"\n\nThe second method of explaining the descent of souls into this\nlife is by the supposition that the stable bliss, the uncontrasted\npeace and sameness, of the heavenly experience, at last wearies\nthe people of Paradise, until they seek relief in a fall. The\nperfect sweetness of heaven cloys, the utter routine and safety\ntire, the salient spirits, till they long for the edge and hazard\nof earthly exposure, and wander down to dwell in fleshly bodies\nand breast the tempest of sin, strife, and sorrow, so as to give a\nfresh charm once more to the repose and exempted joys of the\ncelestial realm. In this way, by a series of recurring lives below\nand above, novelty and change with larger experience and more\nvivid contentment are secured, the tedium and satiety of fixed\nhappiness and protection are modified by the relishing opposition\nof varied trials of hardship and pain, the insufferable monotony\nof immortality broken up and interpolated by epochs of surprise\nand tingling dangers of probation.\n\n\"Mortals, behold! the very angels quit\nTheir mansions unsusceptible of change,\nAmid your dangerous bowers to sit\nAnd through your sharp vicissitudes to range!\"\n\nThus round and round we run through an eternity of lives and\ndeaths. Surfeited with the unqualified pleasures of heaven, we\n\"straggle down to this terrene nativity:\" When, amid the sour\nexposures and cruel storms of the world, we have renewed our\nappetite for the divine ambrosia of peace and sweetness, we\nforsake the body and ascend to heaven; this constant recurrence\nillustrating the great truths, that alternation is the law of\ndestiny, and that variety is the spice of life.\n\nBut the most common derivation of the present from a previous life\nis that which explains the descent as a punishment for sin. In\nthat earlier and loftier state, souls abused their freedom, and\nwere doomed to expiate their offences by a banished, imprisoned,\nand burdensome life on the earth. \"The soul,\" Plutarch writes,\n\"has removed, not from Athens to Sardis, or from Corinth to\nLemnos, but from heaven to earth; and here, ill at ease, and\ntroubled in this new and strange place, she hangs her head like a\ndecaying plant.\"\n\nHundreds of passages to the same purport might easily be cited\nfrom as many ancient writers. Sometimes this fall of souls from\ntheir original estate was represented as a simultaneous event: a\npart of the heavenly army, under an apostate leader, having\nrebelled, were defeated, and sentenced to a chained bodily life.\nOur whole race were transported at once from their native shores\nin the sky to the convict land of this world. Sometimes the\ndescent was attributed to the fresh fault of each individual, and\nwas thought to be constantly happening. A soul tainted with impure\ndesire, drawn downwards by corrupt material gravitation, hovering\nover the fumes of matter, inhaling the effluvia of vice, grew\ninfected with carnal longings and contagions, became fouled and\nclogged with gross vapors and steams, and finally fell into a body\nand pursued the life fitted to it below. A clear human child is a\nshining seraph from heaven sunk thus low. Men are degraded\ncherubim.\n\n\"Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:\nThe soul that rises with us, our life's star,\nHath had elsewhere its setting,\nAnd cometh from afar.\"\n\nThe theory of the pre existence of the soul merely removes the\nmystery one stage further back, and there leaves the problem of\nour origin as hopelessly obscure as before. It is sufficiently\nrefuted by the open fact that it is absolutely destitute of\nscientific basis. The explanation of its wide prevalence as a\nbelief is furnished by two considerations. First, there were old\nauthoritative sages and poets who loved to speculate and dream,\nand who published their speculations and dreams to reign over the\nsubject fancies of credulous mankind. Secondly, the conception was\nintrinsically harmonious, and bore a charm to fascinate the\nimagination and the heart. The fragmentary visions, broken\nsnatches, mystic strains, incongruous thoughts, fading gleams,\nwith which imperfectrecollection comes laden from our childish\nyears and our nightly dreams, are referred by self pleasing fancy\nto some earlier and nobler existence. We solve the mysteries of\nexperience by calling them the veiled vestiges of a bright life\ndeparted, pathetic waifs drifted to these intellectual shores over\nthe surge of feeling from the wrecked orb of an anterior\nexistence. It gratifies our pride to think the soul \"a star\ntravelled stranger,\" a disguised prince, who has passingly\nalighted on this globe in his eternal wanderings. The gorgeous\nglimpses of truth and beauty here vouchsafed to genius, the\nwondrous strains of feeling that haunt the soul in tender hours,\nare feeble reminiscences of the prerogatives we enjoyed in those\neons when we trod the planets that sail around the upper world of\nthe gods. That ennui or plaintive sadness which in all life's deep\nand lonesome hours seems native to our hearts, what is it but the\nnostalgia of the soul remembering and pining after its distant\nhome? Vague and forlorn airs come floating into our consciousness,\nas from an infinitely remote clime, freighted with a luxury of\ndepressing melancholy.\n\n\"Ah! not the nectarous poppy lovers use,\nNot daily labor's dull Lethean spring,\nOblivion in lost angels can infuse\nOf the soil'd glory and the trailing wing.\"\n\nHow attractive all this must be to the thoughts of men, how\nfascinating to their retrospective and aspiring reveries, it\nshould be needless to repeat. How baseless it is as a\nphilosophical theory demanding sober belief, it should be equally\nsuperfluous to illustrate further.\n\nThe third answer to the question concerning the origin of the soul\nis that it is directly created by the voluntary power of God. This\nis the theory of faith, instinctively shrinking from the\ndifficulty of the problem on its scientific ground, and evading it\nby a wholesale reference to Deity. Some writers have held that all\nsouls were created by the Divine fiat at the beginning of the\nworld, and laid up in a secret repository, whence they are drawn\nas occasion calls. The Talmudists say, \"All souls were made during\nthe six days of creation; and therefore generation is not by\ntraduction, but by infusion of a soul into body.\" Others maintain\nthat this production of souls was not confined to any past period,\nbut is continued still, a new soul being freshly created for every\nbirth. Whenever certain conditions meet,\n\n\"Then God smites his hands together,\nAnd strikes out a soul as a spark,\nInto the organized glory of things,\nFrom the deeps of the dark.\"\n\nThis is the view asserted by Vincentius Victor in opposition to\nthe dogmatism of Tertullian on the one hand and to the doubts of\nAugustine on the other.2 It is called the theory of Insufflation,\nbecause it affirms that God immediately breathes a soul into each\nnew being: even as in the case of Adam, of whom we read that \"God\nbreathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and he became a\nliving soul.\" The doctrine drawn from this Mosaic text, that the\nsoul is a divine substance, a breath of God, miraculously breathed\nby Him into every creature at the commencement of its existence,\noften reappears, and plays a prominent part in the history of\npsychological opinions. It corresponds with the beautiful Greek\nmyth of Prometheus, who is fabled to have made a human image from\nthe dust of the ground, and then, by fire stolen from heaven, to\nhave animated it with a living soul. So man, as to his body, is\nmade of earthly clay; but the Promethean spark that forms his soul\nis the fresh breath of God. There is no objection to the real\nground and essence of this theory, only to its form and\naccompaniments. It is purely anthropomorphitic; it conceives God\nas working, after the manner of a man, intermittently,\narbitrarily. It insulates the origination of souls from the fixed\ncourse of nature, severs it from all connection with that common\nprocess of organic life which weaves its inscrutable web through\nthe universe, that system of laws which expresses the unchanging\nwill of God, and which constitutes the order by whose solemn logic\nalone He acts. The objection to this view is, in a word, that it\nlimits the creative action of God to human souls. We suppose that\nHe creates our bodies as well; that He is the immediate Author of\nall life in the same sense in which He is the immediate Author of\nour souls. The opponents of the creation theory, who strenuously\nfought it in the seventeenth century, were accustomed to urge\nagainst it the fanciful objection that \"it puts God to an invenust\n\n2 Augustine, De Anima et ejus Origine, lib. iv.\n\n\nemployment scarce consistent with his verecundious holiness; for,\nif it be true, whenever the lascivious consent to uncleanness and\nare pleased to join in unlawful mixture, God is forced to stand a\nspectator of their vile impurities, stooping from his throne to\nattend their bestial practices, and raining down showers of souls\nto animate the emissions of their concupiscence\"3\n\nA fourth reply to the inquiry before us is furnished in\nTertullian's famous doctrine of Traduction, the essential import\nof which is that all human souls have been transmitted, or brought\nover, from the soul of Adam. This is the theological theory: for\nit arose from an exigency in the dogmatic system generally held by\nthe patristic Church. The universal depravity of human nature, the\ninherited corruption of the whole race, was a fundamental point of\nbelief. But how reconcile this proposition with the conception,\nentertained by many, that each new born soul is a fresh creation\nfrom the \"substance,\" \"spirit,\" or \"breath\" of God? Augustine\nwrites to Jerome, asking him to solve this question.4 Tertullian,\nwhose fervid mind was thoroughly imbued with materialistic\nnotions, unhesitatingly cut this Gordian knot by asserting that\nour first parent bore within him the undeveloped germ of all\nmankind, so that sinfulness and souls were propagated together. 5\nThus the perplexing query, \"how souls are held in the chain of\noriginal sin,\" was answered. As Neander says, illustrating\nTertullian's view, \"The soul of the first man was the fountain\nhead of all human souls: all the varieties of individual human\nnature are but modifications of that one spiritual substance.\" In\nthe light of such a thought, we can see how Nature might, when\nsolitary Adam lived, fulfil Lear's wild conjuration, and\n\n\"All the germens spill\nAt once that make ingrateful man.\"\n\nIn the seventh chapter of the Koran it is written, \"The Lord drew\nforth their posterity from the loins of the sons of Adam.\" The\ncommentators say that God passed his hand down Adam's back, and\nextracted all the generations which should come into the world\nuntil the resurrection. Assembled in the presence of the angels,\nand endued with understanding, they confessed their dependence on\nGod, and were then caused to return into the loins of their great\nancestor. This is one of the most curious doctrines within the\nwhole range of philosophical history. It implies the strict\ncorporeality of the soul; and yet how infinitely fine must be its\nattenuation when it has been diffused into countless thousands of\nmillions! Der Urkeim theilt sich ins Unendliche.\n\n\"What! will the line stretch out to the crack of doom?\"\n\nThe whole thought is absurd. It was not reached by an induction of\nfacts, a study of phenomena, or any fair process of reasoning, but\nwas arbitrarily created to rescue a dogma from otherwise\ninevitable rejection. It was the desperate clutch of a heady\ntheologian reeling in a vortex of hostile argument, and ready to\nseize any fancy, however artificial, to save\n\n3 Edward Warren, No Pre Existence, p. 74.\n\n4 Epistola CLXVI.\n\n5 De Anima, cap. x. et xix.\n\n\nhimself from falling under the ruins of his system. Henry Woolner\npublished in London, in 1655, a book called \"Extraction of Soul: a\nsober and judicious inquiry to prove that souls are propagated;\nbecause, if they are created, original sin is impossible.\"\n\nThe theological dogma of traduction has been presented in two\nforms. First, it is declared that all souls are developed out of\nthe one substance of Adam's soul; a view that logically implies an\nultimate attenuating diffusion, ridiculously absurd. Secondly, it\nis held that \"the eating of the forbidden fruit corrupted all the\nvital fluids of Eve; and this corruption carried vicious and\nchaotic consequences into her ova, in which lay the souls of all\nher posterity, with infinitely little bodies, already existing.\"6\nThis form is as incredible as the other; for it equally implies a\nlimitless distribution of souls from a limited deposit. As Whewell\nsays, \"This successive inclusion of germs (Einschachtelungs\nTheorie) implies that each soul contains an infinite number of\ngerms.\"7 It necessarily excludes the formation of new spiritual\nsubstance: else original transmitted sin is excluded. The doctrine\nfinds no parallelism anywhere else in nature. Who, no matter how\nwedded to the theology of original sin and transmitted death,\nwould venture to stretch the same thesis over the animal races,\nand affirm that the dynamic principles, or animating souls, of all\nserpents, eagles, and lions, were once compressed in the first\npatriarchal serpent, eagle, or lion?\n\nThat the whole formative power of all the simultaneous members of\nour race was concentrated in the first cell germ of our original\nprogenitor, is a scientific impossibility and incredibleness. The\nfatal sophistry in the traducian account of the transmission of\nsouls may be illustrated in the following manner. The germs of all\nthe apple trees now in existence did not lie in the first apple\nseed. All the apple trees now existing were not derived by literal\ndevelopment out of the actual contents of the first apple seed.\nNo: but the truth is this. There was a power in the first apple\nseed to secure certain conditions; that is, to organize a certain\nstatus in which the plastic vegetative life of nature would posit\nnew and similar powers and materials. So not all souls were latent\nin Adam's, but only an organizing power to secure the conditions\non which the Divine Will that first began, would, in accordance\nwith His creative plan, forever continue, His spirit creation. The\ndistinction of this statement from that of traduction is the\ndifference between evolution from one original germ or stock and\nactual production of new beings. Its distinction from the third\ntheory the theory of immediate creation is the difference between\nan intermittent interposition of arbitrary acts and the continuous\nworking of a plan according to laws scientifically traceable.\n\nThere is another solution to the question of the soul's origin,\nwhich has been propounded by some philosophers and may be called\nthe speculative theory. Its statement is that the germs of souls\nwere created simultaneously with the formation of the material\nuniverse, and were copiously sown abroad through all nature,\nwaiting there to be successively taken up and furnished with the\nconditions of development.8 These latent seeds of souls, swarming\nin all places, are drawn in with the first breath or imbibed with\nthe earliest nourishment of the\n\n6 Hennings, Geschichte von den Seelen der Menschen, s. 500.\n\n7 Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, vol. I. b. ix. ch. iv.\nsect. 4.\n\n8 Ploucquet, De Origin atque Generatione Anima Humana ex\nPrincipiis Monadologicis stabilita.\n\nnew born child into the already constructed body which before has\nonly a vegetative life. The Germans call this representation\npanspermismus, or the dissemination theory. Leibnitz, in his\ncelebrated monadology, carries the same view a great deal further.\nHe conceives the whole created universe, visible and invisible, to\nconsist of monads, which are not particles of matter, but\nmetaphysical points of power. These monads are all souls. They are\nproduced by what he calls fulgurations of God. The distinction\nbetween fulguration and emanation is this: in the latter case the\nprocession is historically defined and complete; in the former\ncase it is momentaneous. The monads are radiated from the Divine\nWill, forth through the creation, by the constant flashes of His\nvolition. All nature is composed of them, and nothing is\ndepopulated and dead. Their naked being is force, and their\nindestructible predicates are perception, desire, tendency to\ndevelop. While they lie dormant, their potential capacities all\ninwrapped, they constitute what we entitle matter. When, by the\nrising stir of their inherent longing, they leave their passive\nstate and reach a condition of obscure consciousness, they become\nanimals. Finally, they so far unwind their bonds and evolve their\nfacultative potencies as to attain the rank of rational minds in\nthe grade of humanity. Generation is merely the method by which\nthe aspiring monad lays the organic basis for the grouped building\nof its body. Man is a living union of monads, one regent monad\npresiding over the whole organization. That king monad which has\nattained to full apperception, the free exercise of perfect\nconsciousness, is the immortal human soul. 9 Any labored attempt\nto refute this ingenious doctrine is needless, since the doctrine\nitself is but the developed structure of a speculative conception\nwith no valid basis of observed fact. It is a sheer hypothesis,\nspun out of the self fed bowels of a priori assumption and\nmetaphysic fancy. It solves the problems only by changes of their\nform, leaving the mysteries as numerous and deep as before. It is\na beautiful and sublime piece of latent poetry, the evolution and\narchitecture of which well display the wonderful genius of\nLeibnitz. It is a more subtle and powerful process of thought than\nAristotle's Organon, a more pure and daring work of imagination\nthan Milton's Paradise Lost. But it spurns the tests of\nexperimental science, and is entitled to rank only among the\nsplendid curiosities of philosophy; a brilliant and plausible\ntheorem, not a sober and solid induction.\n\nOne more method of treating the inquiry before us will complete\nthe list. It is what we may properly call the scientific theory,\nthough in truth it is hardly a theory at all, but rather a careful\nstatement of the observed facts, and a modest confession of\ninability to explain the cause of them. Those occupying this\nposition, when asked what is the origin of souls, do not pretend\nto unveil the final secret, but simply say, everywhere in the\nworld of life, from bottom to top, there is an organic growth in\naccordance with conditions. This is what is styled the theory of\nepigenesis, and is adopted by the chief physiologists of the\npresent day. Swammerdam, Malebranche, even Cuvier, had defended\nthe doctrine of successive inclusion; but Wolf, Blumenbach, and\nVon Baer established in its place the doctrine of epigenesis. 10\n\n9 Leibnitz, Monadologie.\n\n10 Ennemoser, Historisch psychologische Untersuchungen tiber den\nUrsprung der menschlichen Seelen, zweite Auflage.\n\n\nScrupulously confining themselves to the mass of collected facts\nand the course of scrutinized phenomena, they say there is a\nnatural production of new living beings in conformity to certain\nlaws, and give an exposition of the fixed conditions and sequences\nof this production. Here they humbly stop, acknowledging that the\ncausal root of power, which produces all these consequences, is an\ninexplicable mystery. Their attitude is well represented by\nSwedenborg when he says, in reference to this very subject, \"Any\none may form guesses; but let no son of earth pretend to penetrate\nthe mysteries of creation.\" 11\n\nLet us notice now the facts submitted to us. First, at the base of\nthe various departments of nature, we see a mass of apparently\nlifeless matter. Out of this crude substratum of the outward world\nwe observe a vast variety of organized forms produced by a\nvariously named but unknown Power. They spring in regular methods,\nin determinate shapes, exist on successive stages of rank, with\nmore or less striking demarcations of endowment, and finally fall\nback again, as to their physical constituents, into the inorganic\nstuff from which they grew. This mysterious organizing Power,\npushing its animate and builded receptacles up to the level of\nvegetation, creates the world of plants.\n\n\"Every clod feels a stir of might,\nAn instinct within it that reaches and towers,\nAnd, grasping blindly above it for light,\nClimbs to a soul in grass and flowers.\"\n\nOn the level of sensation, where the obscure rudiments of will,\nunderstanding, and sentiment commence, this life giving Power\ncreates the world of animals. And so, on the still higher level of\nreason and its concomitants, it creates the world of men. In a\nword, the great general fact is that an unknown Power call it what\nwe may, Nature, Vital Force, or God creates, on the various planes\nof its exercise, different families of organized beings. Secondly,\na more special fact is, that when we have overleaped the mystery\nof a commencement, every being yields seed according to its kind,\nwherefrom, when properly conditioned, its species is perpetuated.\nHow much, now, does this second fact imply? It is by adding to the\nobserved phenomena an indefensible hypothesis that the error of\ntraduction is obtained. We observe that human beings are begotten\nby a deposit of germs through the generative process. To affirm\nthat these germs are transmitted down the generations from the\noriginal progenitor of each race, in whom they all existed at\nfirst, is an unwarranted assertion and involves absurdities. It is\nrefuted both by Geoffrey St. Hilaire's famous experiments on eggs,\nand by the crossing of species.12 In opposition to this\ntheological figment, observation and science require the belief\nthat each being is endowed independently with a germ forming\npower.\n\nOrganic life requires three things: a fruitful germ; a quickening\nimpulse; a nourishing medium. Science plainly shows us that this\nprimal nucleus is given, in the human species, by the union of the\ncontents of a sperm cell with those of a germ cell; that this\ndynamic start is imparted from the life force of the parents; and\nthat this feeding environment is\n\n11 Tract on the Origin and Propagation of the Soul, chap. i.\n\n12 Flourens, Amount of Life on the Globe, part ii. ch. iii. sect. ii.\n\nfurnished by the circle of co ordinated relations. That the\nformative power of the new organism comes from, or at least is\nwholly conditioned by, the parent organism, should be believed,\nbecause it is the obvious conclusion, against which there is\nnothing to militate. That the soul of the child comes in some way\nfrom the soul of the parent, or is stamped by it, is also implied\nby the normal resemblance of children to parents, not more in\nbodily form than in spiritual idiosyncrasies. This fact alone\nfurnishes the proper qualification to the acute and significant\nlines of the Platonizing poet:\n\n\"Wherefore who thinks from souls new souls to bring,\nThe same let presse the sunne beames in his fist\nAnd squeeze out drops of light, or strongly wring\nThe rainbow till it die his hands, well prest.\"\n\n\"That which is born of the flesh is flesh: that which is born of\nthe spirit is spirit.\" As the body of the child is the derivative\nof a germ elaborated in the body of the parent, so the soul of the\nchild is the derivative of a developing impulse of power imparted\nfrom the soul of the parent. And as the body is sustained by\nabsorbing nutrition from matter, so the soul is sustained by\nassimilating the spiritual substances of the invisible kingdom.\nThe most ethereal elements must combine to nourish that consummate\nplant whose blossom is man's mind. This representation is not\nmaterialism; for spirit belongs to a different sphere and is the\nsubject of different predicates from matter, though equally under\na constitution of laws. Nor does this view pretend to explain what\nis inherently transcendent: it leaves the creation of the soul\nwithin as wide a depth and margin of mystery as ever. Neither is\nthis mode of exposing the problem atheistic. It refers the forms\nof life, all growths, all souls, to the indefinable Power that\nworks everywhere, creates each thing, vivifies, governs, and\ncontains the universe. And, however that Power be named, is it not\nGod? And thus we still reverently hold that it is God's own hands\n\"That reach through nature, moulding men.\" The ancient heroes of\nGreece and India were fond of tracing their genealogy up directly\nto their deities, and were proud to deem that in guarding them the\ngods stooped to watch over a race of kings, a puissant and\nimmortal stock,\n\n\"Whose glories stream'd from the same clond girt founts\nWhence their own dawn'd upon the infant world.\"\n\nAfter all the researches that have been made, we yet find the\nsecret of the beginning of the soul shrouded among the fathomless\nmysteries of the Almighty Creator, and must ascribe our birth to\nthe Will of God as piously as it was done in the eldest mythical\nepochs of the world. Notwithstanding the careless frivolity of\nskepticism and the garish light of science abroad in this modern\ntime, there are still stricken and yearning depths of wonder and\nsorrow enough, profound and awful shadows of night and fear\nenough, to make us recognise, in the golden joys that visit us\nrarely, in the illimitable visions that emancipate us often, in\nthe unearthly thoughts and dreams that ravish our minds,\nenigmatical intimations of our kinship with God, prophecies of\na super earthly destiny whose splendors already break through the\nclouds of ignorance, the folds of flesh, and the curtains of\ntime in which our spirits here sit pavilioned.\n\nAugustine pointedly observes, \"It is no evil that the origin of\nthe soul remains obscure, if only its redemption be made\ncertain.\"13 Non est periculum si origo animoe lateat, dum\nredemptio clareat. No matter how humanity originates, if its\nobject be to produce fruit, and that fruit be immortal souls. When\nour organism has perfected its intended product, willingly will we\nlet the decaying body return into the ground, if so be we are\nassured that the ripened spirit is borne into the heavenly garner.\nLet us, in close, reduce the problem of the soul's origin to its\nlast terms. The amount of force in the universe is uniform.14\nAction and reaction being equal, no new creation of force is\npossible: only its directions, deposits, and receptacles may be\naltered. No combination of physical processes can produce a\npreviously non existent subject: it can only initiate the\nmodification, development, assimilation, of realities already in\nbeing. Something cannot come out of nothing. The quickening\nformation of a man, therefore, implies the existence, first, of a\nmaterial germ, the basis of the body; secondly, of a power to\nimpart to that germ a dynamic impulse, in other words, to deposit\nin it a spirit atom, or monad of life force. Now, the fresh body\nis originally a detached product of the parent body, as an apple\nis the detached product of a tree. So the fresh soul is a\ntransmitted force imparted by the parent soul, either directly\nfrom itself, or else conditioned by it and drawn from the ground\nlife of nature, the creative power of God. If filial soul be\nbegotten by procession and severance of conscious force from\nparental soul, the spiritual resemblance of offspring and\nprogenitors is clearly explained. This phenomenon is also equally\nwell explained if the parent soul, so called, be a die striking\nthe creative substance of the universe into individual form. The\nlatter supposition seems, upon the whole, the more plausible and\nscientific. Generation is a reflex condition moving the life basis\nof the world to produce a soul, as a physical impression moves the\nsoul to produce a perception.15\n\nBut, however deep the mystery of the soul's origin, whatever our\nconclusion in regard to it, let us not forget that the inmost\nessence and verity of the soul is conscious power; and that all\npower defies annihilation. It is an old declaration that what\nbegins in time must end in time; and with the metaphysical shears\nof that notion more than once the burning faith in eternal life\nhas been snuffed out. Yet how obvious is its sophistry! A being\nbeginning in time need not cease in time, if the Power which\noriginated it intends and provides for its perpetuity. And that\nsuch is the Creative intention for man appears from the fact that\nthe grand forms of belief in all ages issuing from his mental\norganization have borne the stamp of an expected immortality. Our\nideas may disappear, but they are always recoverable. If the souls\nof men are ideas of God, must they not be as enduring as his mind?\n\n13 Epist. CLVI.\n\n14 Faraday, Conservation of Force, Phil. Mag., April, 1857.\n\n15 Dr. Frohschammer, Ursprang der menechlichen Seelen, sect. 115.\n\n\nThe naturalist who so immerses his thoughts in the physical phases\nof nature as to lose hold on indestructible centres of\npersonality, should beware lest he lose the motive which propels\nman to begin here, by virtue and culture, to climb that ladder of\nlife whose endless sides are affections, but whose discrete rounds\nare thoughts.\n\nCHAPTER II.\n\nHISTORY OF DEATH.\n\nDEATH is not an entity, but an event; not a force, but a state.\nLife is the positive experience, death the negation. Yet in nearly\nevery literature death has been personified, while no kindred\nprosopopoeia of life is anywhere to be found. With the Greeks,\nThanatos was a god; with the Romans, Mors was a goddess: but no\nstatue was ever moulded, no altar ever raised, to Zoe or Vita. At\nfirst thought, we should anticipate the reverse of this; but, in\ntruth, the fact is quite naturally as it is. Life is a continuous\nprocess; and any one who makes the effort will find how difficult\nit is to conceive of it as an individual being, with distinctive\nattributes, functions, and will. It is an inward possession which\nwe familiarly experience, and in the quiet routine of custom we\nfeel no shock of surprise at it, no impulse to give it imaginative\nshape and ornament. On the contrary, death is an impending\noccurrence, something which we anticipate and shudder at,\nsomething advancing toward us in time to strike or seize us. Its\nexternality to our living experience, its threatening approach,\nthe mystery and alarm enwrapping it, are provocative conditions\nfor fanciful treatment, making personifications inevitable.\n\nWith the Old Aryan race of India, death is Yama, the soul of the\nfirst man, departed to be the king of the subterranean realm of\nthe subsequent dead, and returning to call after him each of his\ndescendants in turn. To the good he is mild and lovely, but to the\nimpious he is clad in terror and acts with severity. The purely\nfanciful character of this thought is obvious; for, according to\nit, death was before death, since Yama himself died. Yama does not\nreally represent death, but its arbiter and messenger. He is the\nruler over the dead, who himself carries the summons to each\nmortal to become his subject.\n\nIn the Hebrew conception, death was a majestic angel, named\nSammael, standing in the court of heaven, and flying thence over\nthe earth, armed with a sword, to obey the behests of God. The\nTalmudists developed and dressed up the thought with many details,\nhalf sublime, half fantastic. He strides through the world at a\nstep. From the soles of his feet to his shoulders he is full of\neyes. Every person in the moment of dying sees him; and at the\nsight the soul retreats, running through all the limbs, as if\nasking permission to depart from them. From his naked sword fall\nthree drops: one pales the countenance, one destroys the vitality,\none causes the body to decay. Some Rabbins say he bears a cup from\nwhich the dying one drinks, or that he lets fall from the point of\nhis sword a single acrid drop upon the sufferer's tongue: this is\nwhat is called \"tasting the bitterness of death.\" Here again, we\nsee, it is not strictly death that is personified. The embodiment\nis not of the mortal act, but of the decree determining that act.\nThe Jewish angel of death is not a picture of death in itself, but\nof God's decree coming to the fated individual who is to die.\n\nThe Greeks sometimes depicted death and sleep as twin boys, one\nblack, one white, borne slumbering in the arms of their mother,\nnight. In this instance the phenomenon of dissolving\nunconsciousness which falls on mortals, abstractly generalized in\nthe mind, is then concretely symbolized. It is a bold and happy\nstroke of artistic genius; but it in no way expresses or suggests\nthe scientific facts of actual death. There is also a classic\nrepresentation of death as a winged boy with a pensive brow and\nan inverted torch, a butterfly at his feet. This beautiful image,\nwith its affecting accompaniments, conveys to the beholder not\nthe verity, nor an interpretation, of death, but the sentiments\nof the survivors in view of their bereavement. The sad brow denotes\nthe grief of the mourner, the winged insect the disembodied\npsyche, the reversed torch the descent of the soul to the under\nworld; but the reality of death itself is nowhere hinted.\n\nThe Romans give descriptions of death as a female figure in dark\nrobes, with black wings, with ravenous teeth, hovering everywhere,\ndarting here and there, eager for prey. Such a view is a\npersonification of the mysteriousness, suddenness, inevitableness,\nand fearfulness, connected with the subject of death in men's\nminds, rather than of death itself. These thoughts are grouped\ninto an imaginary being, whose sum of attributes are then\nignorantly both associated with the idea of the unknown cause and\nconfounded with the visible effect. It is, in a word, mere poetry,\ninspired by fear and unguided by philosophy.\n\nDeath has been shown in the guise of a fowler spreading his net,\nsetting his snares for men. But this image concerns itself with\nthe accidents of the subject, the unexpectedness of the fatal\nblow, the treacherous springing of the trap, leaving the root of\nthe matter untouched. The circumstances of the mortal hour are\ninfinitely varied, the heart of the experience is unchangeably the\nsame: there are a thousand modes of dying, but there is only one\ndeath. Ever so complete an exhibition of the occasions and\naccompaniments of an event is no explanation of what the inmost\nreality of the event is.\n\nThe Norse conception of death as a vast, cloudy presence, darkly\nsweeping on its victims, and bearing them away wrapped in its\nsable folds, is evidently a free product of imagination brooding\nnot so much on the distinct phenomena of an individual case as on\nthe melancholy mystery of the disappearance of men from the\nfamiliar places that knew them once but miss them now. In a\nsomewhat kindred manner, the startling magnificence of the sketch\nin the Apocalypse, of death on the pale horse, is a product of\npure imagination meditating on the wholesale slaughter which was\nto deluge the earth when God's avenging judgments fell upon the\nenemies of the Christians. But to consider this murderous warrior\non his white charger as literally death, would be as erroneous as\nto imagine the bare armed executioner and the guillotine to be\nthemselves the death which they inflict. No more appalling picture\nof death has been drawn than that by Milton, whose dire image has\nthis stroke of truth in it, that its adumbrate formlessness\ntypifies the disorganizing force which reduces all cunningly built\nbodies of life to the elemental wastes of being. The incestuous\nand mistreated progeny of Sin is thus delineated:\n\n\"The shape,\nIf shape it might be call'd that shape had none\nDistinguishable in member, joint, or limb,\nOr substance might be call'd that shadow seem'd,\nFor each seem'd either, black it stood as night,\nFierce as ten furies, terrible as hell,\nAnd shook a dreadful dart: what seem'd his head\nThe likeness of a kingly crown had on.\"\n\nBut the most common personification of death is as a skeleton\nbrandishing a dart; and then he is called the grisly king of\nterrors; and people tremble at the thought of him, as children do\nat the name of a bugbear in the dark. What sophistry this is! It\nis as if we should identify the trophy with the conqueror, the\nvestiges left in the track of a traveller with the traveller\nhimself. Death literally makes a skeleton of man; so man\nmetaphorically makes a skeleton of Death! All these\nrepresentations of death, however beautiful, or pathetic, or\nhorrible, are based on superficial appearances, misleading\nanalogies, arbitrary fancies, perturbed sensibilities, not on a\nfirm hold of realities, insight of truth, and philosophical\nanalysis. They are all to be brushed aside as phantoms of\nnightmare or artificial creations of fiction. Poetry has mostly\nrested, hitherto, on no veritable foundation of science, but on a\nvisionary foundation of emotion. It has wrought upon flitting,\nsensible phenomena rather than upon abiding substrata of facts.\nFor example, a tender Greek bard personified the life of a tree as\na Hamadryad, the moving trunk and limbs her undulating form and\nbeckoning arms, the drooping boughs her hair, the rustling foliage\nher voice. A modern poet, endowed with the same strength of\nsympathy, but acquainted with vegetable chemistry, might personify\nsap as a pale, liquid maiden, ascending through the roots and\nveins to meet air, a blue boy robed in golden warmth, descending\nthrough the leaves, with a whisper, to her embrace. So the\npersonifications of death in literature, thus far, give us no\npenetrative glance into what it really is, help us to no acute\ndefinition of it, but poetically fasten on some feature, or\naccident, or emotion, associated with it.\n\nThere are in popular usage various metaphors to express what is\nmeant by death. The principal ones are, extinction of the vital\nspark, departing, expiring, cutting the thread of life, giving up\nthe ghost, falling asleep. These figurative modes of speech spring\nfrom extremely imperfect correspondences. Indeed, the unlikenesses\nare more important and more numerous than the likenesses. They are\nsimply artifices to indicate what is so deeply obscure and\nintangible. They do not lay the secret bare, nor furnish us any\naid in reaching to the true essence of the question. Moreover,\nseveral of them, when sharply examined, involve a fatal error. For\nexample, upon the admitted supposition that in every case of dying\nthe soul departs from the body, still, this separation of the soul\nfrom the body is not what constitutes death. Death is the state of\nthe body when the soul has left it. An act is distinct from its\neffects. We must, therefore, turn from the literary inquiry to the\nmetaphysical and scientific method, to gain any satisfactory idea\nand definition of death.\n\nA German writer of extraordinary acumen and audacity has said,\n\"Only before death, but not in death, is death death. Death is so\nunreal a being that he only is when he is not, and is not when he\nis.\"1 This paradoxical and puzzling as it may appear is\nsusceptible of quite lucid interpretation and defence. For death\nis, in its naked significance, the state of not being. Of course,\nthen, it has no existence save in the conceptions of the living.\nWe compare a dead\n\n1 Feuerbach, Gedanken uber Tod and Unsterblichkeit, sect. 84.\n\n\nperson with what he was when living, and instinctively personify\nthe difference as death. Death, strictly analyzed, is only this\nabstract conceit or metaphysical nonentity. Death, therefore,\nbeing but a conception in the mind of a living person, when that\nperson dies death ceases to be at all. And thus the realization of\ndeath is the death of death. He annihilates himself, dying with\nthe dart he drives. Having in this manner disposed of the\npersonality or entity of death, it remains as an effect, an event,\na state. Accordingly, the question next arises, What is death when\nconsidered in this its true aspect?\n\nA positive must be understood before its related negative can be\nintelligible. Bichat defined life as the sum of functions by which\ndeath is resisted. It is an identical proposition in verbal\ndisguise, with the fault that it makes negation affirmation,\npassiveness action. Death is not a dynamic agency warring against\nlife, but simply an occurrence. Life is the operation of an\norganizing force producing an organic form according to an ideal\ntype, and persistently preserving that form amidst the incessant\nmolecular activity and change of its constituent substance. That\noperation of the organic force which thus constitutes life is a\ncontinuous process of waste, casting off the old exhausted matter,\nand of replacement by assimilation of new material. The close of\nthis process of organific metamorphosis and desquamation is death,\nwhose finality is utter decomposition, restoring all the bodily\nelements to the original inorganic conditions from which they were\ntaken. The organic force with which life begins constrains\nchemical affinity to work in special modes for the formation of\nspecial products: when it is spent or disappears, chemical\naffinity is at liberty to work in its general modes; and that is\ndeath. \"Life is the co ordination of actions; the imperfection of\nthe co ordination is disease, its arrest is death.\" In other\nwords, \"life is the continuous adjustment of relations in an\norganism with relations in its environment.\" Disturb that\nadjustment, and you have malady; destroy it, and you have death.\nLife is the performance of functions by an organism; death is the\nabandonment of an organism to the forces of the universe. No\nfunction can be performed without a waste of the tissue through\nwhich it is performed: that waste is repaired by the assimilation\nof fresh nutriment. In the balancing of these two actions life\nconsists. The loss of their equipoise soon terminates them both;\nand that is death. Upon the whole, then, scientifically speaking,\nto cause death is to stop \"that continuous differentiation and\nintegration of tissues and of states of consciousness\"\nconstituting life. 2 Death, therefore, is no monster, no force,\nbut the act of completion, the state of cessation; and all the\nbugbears named death are but poor phantoms of the frightened and\nchildish mind.\n\nLife consisting in the constant differentiation of the tissues by\nthe action of oxygen, and their integration from the blastema\nfurnished by the blood, why is not the harmony of these processes\npreserved forever? Why should the relation between the integration\nand disintegration going on in the human organism ever fall out of\ncorrespondence with the relation between the oxygen and food\nsupplied from its environment? That is to say, whence originated\nthe sentence of death upon man? Why do we not live immortally as\nwe are? The current reply is, we die because our first parent\nsinned. Death is a penalty inflicted upon the\n\n2 Spencer, Principles of Psychology, pp. 334-373.\n\n\nhuman race because Adam disobeyed his Maker's command. We must\nconsider this theory a little.\n\nThe narrative in Genesis, of the creation of man and of the events\nin the Garden of Eden, cannot be traced further back than to the\ntime of Solomon, three thousand years after the alleged\noccurrences it describes. This portion of the book of Genesis, as\nhas long been shown, is a distinct document, marked by many\npeculiarities, which was inserted in its present place by the\ncompiler of the elder Hebrew Scriptures somewhere between seven\nand ten centuries before Christ.3 Ewald has fully demonstrated\nthat the book of Genesis consists of many separate fragmentary\ndocuments of different ages, arranged together by a comparatively\nlate hand. Among the later of these pieces is the account of the\nprimeval pair in paradise. Grotefend argues, with much force and\nvariety of evidence, that this story was derived from a far more\nancient legend book, only fragments of which remained when the\nfinal collection was made of this portion of the Old Testament.4\nMany scholars have thought the account was not of Hebrew origin,\nbut was borrowed from the literary traditions of some earlier\nOriental nation. Rosenmuller, Von Bohlen, and others, say it bears\nunmistakable relationship to the Zendavesta which tells how\nAhriman, the old Serpent, beguiled the first pair into sin and\nmisery. These correspondences, and also that between the tree of\nlife and the Zoroastrian plant hom, which gives life and will\nproduce the resurrection, are certainly striking. Buttmann sees in\nGod's declaration to Adam, \"Behold, I have given you for food\nevery herb bearing seed, and every tree in which is fruit bearing\nseed,\" traces of a prohibition of animal food. This was not the\nvestige of a Hebrew usage, but the vegetarian tradition of some\nsect eschewing meat, a tradition drawn from South Asia, whence the\nfathers of the Hebrew race came.5 Gesenius says, \"Many things in\nthis narrative were drawn from older Asiatic tradition.\" 6 Knobel\nalso affirms that numerous matters in this relation were derived\nfrom traditions of East Asian nations.7 Still, it is not necessary\nto suppose that the writer of the account in Genesis borrowed any\nthing from abroad. The Hebrew may as well have originated such\nideas as anybody else. The Egyptians, the Phoenicians, the\nChaldeans, the Persians, the Etruscans, have kindred narratives\nheld as most ancient and sacred.8 The Chinese, the Sandwich\nIslanders, the North American Indians, also have their legends of\nthe origin and altered fortunes of the human race. The\nresemblances between many of these stories are better accounted\nfor by the intrinsic similarities of the subject, of the mind, of\nnature, and of mental action, than by the supposition of\nderivation from one another.\n\nRegarding the Hebrew narrative as an indigenous growth, then, how\nshall we explain its origin, purport, and authority? Of course we\ncannot receive it as a miraculous revelation conveying infallible\ntruth. The Bible, it is now acknowledged, was not given in the\nprovidence\n\n3 Tuch, Kommentar uber Genesis, s. xcviii.\n\n4 Zur altesten Sagenpoesie des Orients. Zeitschrift der deutschen\nMorgenlandischen Gesellschaft, band viii. ss. 772-779.\n\n5 Mythologus, (Schopfung and Sundenfall, ) band i. s. 137.\n\n6 Article \"Adam,\" in Encyclopadia by Ersch and Gruber.\n\n7 Die Genesis erklart, s. 28.\n\n8 Palfrey's Academical Lectures, vol. ii. pp. 21-28.\n\n\nof God to teach astronomy, geology, chronology, and the operation\nof organic forces, but to help educate men in morality and piety.\nIt is a religious, not a scientific, work. Some unknown Hebrew\npoet, in the early dawn of remembered time, knowing little\nmetaphysics and less science, musing upon the fortunes of man, his\nwickedness, sorrow, death, and impressed with an instinctive\nconviction that things could not always have been so, casting\nabout for some solution of the dim, pathetic problem, at last\nstruck out the beautiful and sublime poem recorded in Genesis,\nwhich has now for many a century, by Jews, Christians,\nMohammedans, been credited as authentic history. With his own\nhands God moulds from earth an image in his own likeness, breathes\nlife into it, and new made man moves, lord of the scene, and lifts\nhis face, illuminated with soul, in submissive love to his\nCreator. Endowed with free will, after a while he violated his\nMaker's command: the divine displeasure was awakened, punishment\nensued, and so rushed in the terrible host of ills under which we\nsuffer. The problem must early arise: the solution is, to a\ncertain stage of thought, at once the most obvious and the most\nsatisfactory conceivable. It is the truth. Only it is cast in\nimaginative, not scientific, form, arrayed in emblematic, not\nliteral, garb. The Greeks had a lofty poem by some early unknown\nauthor, setting forth how Prometheus formed man of clay and\nanimated him with fire from heaven, and how from Pandora's box the\nhorrid crew of human vexations were let into the world. The two\nnarratives, though most unequal in depth and dignity, belong in\nthe same literary and philosophical category. Neither was intended\nas a plain record of veritable history, each word a naked fact,\nbut as a symbol of its author's thoughts, each phrase the\nmetaphorical dress of a speculative idea.\n\nEichhorn maintains, with no slight plausibility, that the whole\naccount of the Garden of Eden was derived from a series of\nallegorical pictures which the author had seen, and which he\ntranslated from the language of painting into the language of\nwords. At all events, we must take the account as symbolic, a\nsuccession of figurative expressions. Many of the best minds have\nalways so considered it, from Josephus to Origen, from Ambrose to\nKant. What, then, are the real thoughts which the author of this\nHebrew poem on the primal condition of man meant to convey beneath\nhis legendary forms of imagery? These four are the essential ones.\nFirst, that God created man; secondly, that he created him in a\nstate of freedom and happiness surrounded by blessings; third,\nthat the favored subject violated his Sovereign's order; fourth,\nthat in consequence of this offence he was degraded from his\nblessed condition, beneath a load of retributive ills. The\ncomposition shows the characteristics of a philosopheme or a myth,\na scheme of conceptions deliberately wrought out to answer an\ninquiry, a story devised to account for an existing fact or\ncustom. The picture of God performing his creative work in six\ndays and resting on the seventh, may have been drawn after the\nseptenary division of time and the religious separation of the\nSabbath, to explain and justify that observance. The creation of\nEve out of the side of Adam was either meant by the author as an\nallegoric illustration that the love of husband and wife is the\nmost powerful of social bonds, or as a pure myth seeking to\nexplain the incomparable cleaving together of husband and wife by\nthe entirely poetic supposition that the first woman was taken out\nof the first man, bone of his bone, flesh of his flesh. All early\nliteratures teem with exemplifications of this process, a\nspontaneous secretion by the imagination to account for some\npresented phenomenon. Or perhaps this part of the relation\n\"and he called her woman [manness], because she was taken\nout of man\" may be an instance of those etymological myths with\nwhich ancient literature abounds. Woman is named Isha because she\nwas taken out of man, whose name is Ish. The barbarous treatment\nthe record under consideration has received, the utter\nbaselessness of it in the light of truth as foundation for literal\nbelief, find perhaps no fitter exposure than in the fact that for\nmany centuries it was the prevalent faith of Christendom that\nevery woman has one rib more than man, a permanent memorial of the\nDivine theft from his side. Unquestionably, there are many good\npersons now who, if Richard Owen should tell them that man has the\nsame number of ribs as woman, would think of the second chapter of\nGenesis and doubt his word!\n\nThere is no reason for supposing the serpent in this recital to be\nintended as a representative of Satan. The earliest trace of such\nan interpretation is in the Wisdom of Solomon, an anonymous and\napocryphal book composed probably a thousand years later. What is\nsaid of the snake is the most plainly mythical of all the\nportions. What caused the snake to crawl on his belly in the dust,\nwhile other creatures walk on feet or fly with wings? Why, the\nsly, winding creature, more subtle, more detestable, than any\nbeast of the field, deceived the first woman; and this is his\npunishment! Such was probably the mental process in the writer. To\nseek a profound and true theological dogma in such a statement is\nas absurd as to seek it in the classic myth that the lapwing with\nhis sharp beak chases the swallow because he is the descendant of\nthe enraged Tereus who pursued poor Progne with a drawn sword. Or,\nto cite a more apposite case, as well might we seek a reliable\nhistorical narrative in the following Greek myth. Zeus once gave\nman a remedy against old age. He put it on the back of an ass and\nfollowed on foot. It being a hot day, the ass grew thirsty, and\nwould drink at a fount which a snake guarded. The cunning snake\nknew what precious burden the ass bore, and would not, except at\nthe price of it, let him drink. He obtained the prize; but with\nit, as a punishment for his trick, he incessantly suffers the\nass's thirst. Thus the snake, casting his skin, annually renews\nhis youth, while man is borne down by old age.9 In all these cases\nthe mental action is of the same kind in motive, method, and\nresult.\n\nThe author of the poem contained in the third chapter of Genesis\ndoes not say that man was made immortal. The implication plainly\nis that he was created mortal, taken from the dust and naturally\nto return again to the dust. But by the power of God a tree was\nprovided whose fruit would immortalize its partakers. The penalty\nof Adam's sin was directly, not physical death, but being forced\nin the sweat of his brow to wring his subsistence from the sterile\nground cursed for his sake; it was indirectly literal death, in\nthat he was prevented from eating the fruit of the tree of life.\n\"God sent him out of the garden, lest he eat and live forever.\" He\nwas therefore, according to the narrative, made originally subject\nto death; but an immortalizing antidote was prepared for him,\nwhich he forfeited by his transgression. That the writer made use\nof the trees of life and knowledge as embellishing allegories is\nmost\n\n9 Alian, no Nat. Animal., lib. vi. cap. 51.\n\n\nprobable. But, if not, he was not the only devout poet who, in the\nearly times, with sacred reverence believed the wonders the\ninspiring muse gave him as from God. It is not clear from the\nBiblical record that Adam was imagined the first man. On the\ncontrary, the statement that Cain was afraid that those who met\nhim would kill him, also that he went to the land of Nod and took\na wife and builded a city, implies that there was another and\nolder race. Father Peyrere wrote a book, called \"Praadamita,\" more\nthan two hundred years ago, pointing out this fact and arguing\nthat there really were men before Adam. If science should\nthoroughly establish the truth of this view, religion need not\nsuffer; but the common theology, inextricably built upon and\nintertangled with the dogma of \"original sin,\" would be hopelessly\nruined. But the leaders in the scientific world will not on that\naccount shut their eyes nor refuse to reason. Christians should\nfollow their example of truth seeking, with a deeper faith in God,\nfearless of results, but resolved upon reaching reality.\n\nIt is a very singular and important fact that, from the appearance\nin Genesis of the account of the creation and sin and punishment\nof the first pair, not the faintest explicit allusion to it is\nsubsequently found anywhere in literature until about the time of\nChrist. Had it been all along credited in its literal sense, as a\ndivine revelation, could this be so? Philo Judaus gives it a\nthoroughly figurative meaning. He says, \"Adam was created mortal\nin body, immortal in mind. Paradise is the soul, piety the tree of\nlife, discriminative wisdom the tree of knowledge; the serpent is\npleasure, the flaming sword turning every way is the sun revolving\nround the world.\"10 Jesus himself never once alludes to Adam or to\nany part of the story of Eden. In the whole New Testament there\nare but two important references to the tradition, both of which\nare by Paul. He says, in effect, \"As through the sin of Adam all\nare condemned unto death, so by the righteousness of Christ all\nshall be justified unto life.\" It is not a guarded doctrinal\nstatement, but an unstudied, rhetorical illustration of the\naffiliation of the sinful and unhappy generations of the past with\ntheir offending progenitor, Adam, of the believing and blessed\nfamily of the chosen with their redeeming head, Christ. He does\nnot use the word death in the Epistle to the Romans prevailingly\nin the narrow sense of physical dissolution, but in a broad,\nspiritual sense, as appears, for example, in these instances: \"To\nbe carnally minded is death;\" \"The law of the spirit of life in\nChrist hath made me free from the law of sin and death.\" For the\nspiritually minded were not exempt from bodily death. Paul himself\ndied the bodily death. His idea of the relations of Adam and\nChrist to humanity is more clearly expressed in the other passage\nalready alluded to. It is in the Epistle to the Corinthians, and\nappears to be this. The first man, Adam, was of the earth, earthy,\nthe head and representative of a corruptible race whose flesh and\nblood were never meant to inherit the kingdom of God. The second\nman, Christ the Lord, soon to return from heaven, was a quickening\nspirit, head and representative of a risen spiritual race for whom\nis prepared the eternal inheritance of the saints in light. As by\nthe first man came death, whose germ is transmitted with the\nflesh, so by the second man comes the resurrection of the dead,\nwhose type is seen in his glorified ascension from Hades to\nheaven. \"As in Adam all die, even so in\n\n10 De Mundi Opificio, liv lvi. De Cherub. viii.\n\n\nChrist shall all be made alive.\" Upon all the line of Adam sin has\nentailed, what otherwise would not have been known, moral death\nand a disembodied descent to the under world. But the gospel of\nChrist, and his resurrection as the first fruits of them that\nslept, proclaim to all those that are his, at his speedy coming, a\nkindred deliverance from the lower gloom, an investiture with\nspiritual bodies, and an admission into the kingdom of God.\nAccording to Paul, then, physical death is not the retributive\nconsequence of Adam's sin, but is the will of the Creator in the\nlaw of nature, the sowing of terrestrial bodies for the gathering\nof celestial bodies, the putting off of the image of the earthy\nfor the putting on of the image of the heavenly. The specialty of\nthe marring and punitive interference of sin in the economy is, in\naddition to the penalties in moral experience, the interpolation,\nbetween the fleshly \"unclothing\" and the spiritual \"clothing\nupon,\" of the long, disembodied, subterranean residence, from the\ndescent of Abel into its palpable solitude to the ascent of Christ\nout of its multitudinous world. From Adam, in the flesh, humanity\nsinks into the grave realm; from Christ, in the spirit, it shall\nrise into heaven. Had man remained innocent, death, considered as\nchange of body and transition to heaven, would still have been his\nportion; but all the suffering and evil now actually associated\nwith death would not have been.\n\nLeaving the Scriptures, the first man appears in literature, in\nthe history of human thought on the beginning of our race, in\nthree forms. There is the Mythical Adam, the embodiment of\npoetical musings, fanciful conceits, and speculative dreams; there\nis the Theological Adam, the central postulate of a group of\ndogmas, the support of a fabric of controversial thought, the lay\nfigure to fill out and wear the hypothetical dresses of a\ndoctrinal system; and there is the Scientific Adam, the first\nspecimen of the genus man, the supposititious personage who, as\nthe earliest product, on this grade, of the Creative organic force\nor Divine energy, commenced the series of human generations. The\nfirst is a hypostatized legend, the second a metaphysical\npersonification, the third a philosophical hypothesis. The first\nis an attractive heap of imaginations, the next a dialectic mass\nof dogmatisms, the last a modest set of theories.\n\nPhilo says God made Adam not from any chance earth, but from a\ncarefully selected portion of the finest and most sifted clay, and\nthat, as being directly created by God, he was superior to all\nothers generated by men, the generations of whom deteriorate in\neach remove from him, as the attraction of a magnet weakens from\nthe iron ring it touches along a chain of connected rings. The\nRabbins say Adam was so large that when he lay down he reached\nacross the earth, and when standing his head touched the\nfirmament: after his fall he waded through the ocean, Orion like.\nEven a French Academician, Nicolas Fleurion, held that Adam was\none hundred and twenty three feet and nine inches in height. All\ncreatures except the angel Eblis, as the Koran teaches, made\nobeisance to him. Eblis, full of envy and pride, refused, and was\nthrust into hell by God, where he began to plot the ruin of the\nnew race. One effect of the forbidden fruit he ate was to cause\nrotten teeth in his descendants. He remained in Paradise but one\nday. After he had eaten from the prohibited tree, Eve gave of the\nfruit to the other creatures in Eden, and they all ate of it, and\nso became mortal, with the sole exception of the phoenix, who\nrefused to taste it, and consequently remained immortal.\n\nThe Talmud teaches that Adam would never have died had he not\nsinned. The majority of the Christian fathers and doctors, from\nTertullian and Augustine to Luther and Calvin, have maintained the\nsame opinion. It has been the orthodox that is, the prevailing\ndoctrine of the Church, affirmed by the Synod at Carthage in the\nyear four hundred and eighteen, and by the Council of Trent in the\nyear fifteen hundred and forty five. All the evils which afflict\nthe world, both moral and material, are direct results of Adam's\nsin. He contained all the souls of men in himself; and they all\nsinned in him, their federal head and legal representative. When\nthe fatal fruit was plucked,\n\n\"Earth felt the wound, and Nature from her seat, Sighing through\nall her works, gave signs of woe That all was lost.\"\n\nEarthquakes, tempests, pestilences, poverty, war, the endless\nbrood of distress, ensued. For then were\n\n\"Turn'd askance The poles of earth twice ten degrees and more\nFrom the sun's axle, and with labor push'd Oblique the centric\nglobe.\"\n\nAdam's transcendent faculties and gifts were darkened and\ndiminished in his depraved posterity, and all base propensities\nlet loose to torment, confuse, and degrade them. We can scarcely\nform a conception of the genius, the beauty, the blessedness, of\nthe first man, say the theologians in chorus.11 Augustine\ndeclares, \"The most gifted of our time must be considered, when\ncompared with Adam in genius, as tortoises to birds in speed.\"\nAdam, writes Dante, \"was made from clay, accomplished with every\ngift that life can teem with.\" Thomas Aquinas teaches that \"he was\nimmortal by grace though not by nature, had universal knowledge,\nfellowshipped with angels, and saw God.\" South, in his famous\nsermon on \"Man the Image of God,\" after an elaborate panegyric of\nthe wondrous majesty, wisdom, peacefulness, and bliss of man\nbefore the fall, exclaims, \"Aristotle was but the rubbish of an\nAdam, and Athens the rudiments of Paradise!\" Jean Paul has\namusingly burlesqued these conceits. \"Adam, in his state of\ninnocence, possessed a knowledge of all the arts and sciences,\nuniversal and scholastic history, the several penal and other\ncodes of law, and all the old dead languages, as well as the\nliving. He was, as it were, a living Pegasus and Pindus, a movable\nlodge of sublime light, a royal literary society, a pocket seat of\nthe Muses, and a short golden age of Louis the Fourteenth!\"\n\nAdam has been called the Man without a Navel, because, not being\nborn of woman, there could be no umbilical cord to cut. The\nthought goes deep. In addition to the mythico theological pictures\nof the mechanical creation and superlative condition of the first\nman, two forms of statement have been advanced by thoughtful\nstudents of nature. One is the theory of chronological progressive\ndevelopment; the other is the theory of the\n\n11 Strauss gives a multitude of apposite quotations in his\nChristliche Glaubenslehre, band i. s. 691, sect. 51, ff.\n\n\nsimultaneous creation of organic families of different species or\ntypical forms. The advocate of the former goes back along the\ninterminable vistas of geologic time, tracing his ancestral line\nthrough the sinking forms of animal life, until, with the aid of a\nmicroscope, he sees a closed vesicle of structureless membrane;\nand this he recognises as the scientific Adam. This theory has\nbeen brought into fresh discussion by Mr. Darwin in his rich and\nstriking work on the Origin of Species12 The other view contrasts\nwidely with this, and is not essentially different from the\naccount in Genesis. It shows God himself creating by regular\nmethods, in natural materials, not by a vicegerent law, not with\nthe anthropomorphitic hands of an external potter. Every organized\nfabric, however complex, originates in a single physiological\ncell. Every individual organism from the simple plant known as red\nsnow to the oak, from the zoophyte to man is developed from such a\ncell. This is unquestionable scientific knowledge. The phenomenal\nprocess of organic advancement is through growth of the cell by\nselective appropriation of material, self multiplication of the\ncell, chemical transformations of the pabulum of the cell,\nendowment of the muscular and nervous tissues produced by those\ntransformations with vital and psychical properties.\n\nBut the essence of the problem lies in the question, Why does one\nof these simple cells become a cabbage, another a rat, another a\nwhale, another a man? Within the limits of known observation\nduring historic time, every organism yields seed or bears progeny\nafter its own kind. Between all neighboring species there are\nimpassable, discrete chasms. The direct reason, therefore, why one\ncell stops in completion at any given vegetable stage, another at\na certain animal stage, is that its producing parent was that\nvegetable or that animal. Now, going back to the first individual\nof each kind, which had no determining parent like itself, the\ntheory of the gradually ameliorating development of one species\nout of the next below it is one mode of solving the problem.\nAnother mode more satisfactory at least to theologians and their\nallies is to conclude that God, the Divine Force, by whom the life\nof the universe is given, made the world after an ideal plan,\nincluding a systematic arrangement of all the possible\nmodifications. This plan was in his thought, in the unity of all\nits parts, from the beginning; and the animate creation is the\nexecution of its diagrams in organic life. Instead of the lineal\nextraction of the complicated scheme out of one cell, there has\nbeen, from epoch to epoch, the simultaneous production of all\nincluded in one of its sections. The Creator, at his chosen times,\ncalling into existence a multitude of cells, gave each one the\namount and type of organic force which would carry it to the\ndestined grade and form. In this manner may have originated, at\nthe same time, the first sparrow, the first horse, the first man,\nin short, a whole circle of congeners.\n\n\"The grassy clods now calved; now half appear'd\nThe tawny lion, pawing to get free\nHis hinder parts, then springs as broke from bonds,\nAnd rampant shakes his brinded mane.\"\n\n12 The most forcible defence of this hypothesis is that made by\nHerbert Spencer. See, in his volume of Essays, No. 2 of the\nHaythorne Papers. Also see Oken, Entstehung des ersten Menechen,\nIsis, 1819, ss. 1117-1123.\n\n\nEach creature, therefore, would be distinct from others from the\nfirst. \"Man, though rising from not man, came forth sharply\ndefined.\" The races thus originated in their initiative\nrepresentatives by the creative power of God, thenceforth possess\nin themselves the power, each one, in the generative act, to put\nits typical dynamic stamp upon the primordial cells of its\nimmediate descendants. Adam, then, was a wild man, cast in\nfavoring conditions of climate, endowed with the same faculties as\nnow, only not in so high a degree. For, by his peculiar power of\nforming habits, accumulating experience, transmitting acquirements\nand tendencies, he has slowly risen to his present state with all\nits wealth of wisdom, arts, and comforts.\n\nBy either of these theories, that of Darwin, or that of Agassiz,\nman, the head of the great organic family of the earth, and it\nmatters not at all whether there were only one Adam and Eve, or\nwhether each separate race had its own Adams and Eves,13 not\nmerely a solitary pair, but simultaneous hundreds, man, physically\nconsidered, is indistinguishably included in the creative plan\nunder the same laws and forces, and visibly subject to the same\ndestination, as the lower animals. He starts with a cell as they\ndo, grows to maturity by assimilative organization and endowing\ntransformation of foreign nutriment as they do, his life is a\ncontinuous process of waste and repair of tissues as theirs is,\nand there is, from the scientific point of view, no conceivable\nreason why he should not be subject to physical death as they are.\nThey have always been subject to death, which, therefore, is an\naboriginal constituent of the Creative plan. It has been\nestimated, upon data furnished by scientific observation, that\nsince the appearance of organic life on earth, millions of years\nago, animals enough have died to cover all the lands of the globe\nwith their bones to the height of three miles. Consequently, the\nhistoric commencement of death is not to be found in the sin of\nman. We shall discover it as a necessity in the first organic cell\nthat was ever formed.\n\nThe spherule of force which is the primitive basis of a cell\nspends itself in the discharge of its work. In other words, \"the\namount of vital action which can be performed by each living cell\nhas a definite limit.\" When that limit is reached, the exhausted\ncell is dead. To state the fact differently: no function can be\nperformed without \"the disintegration of a certain amount of\ntissue, whose components are then removed as effete by the\nexcretory processes.\" This final expenditure on the part of a cell\nof its modification of force is the act of molecular death, the\ngerminal essence of all decay. That this organic law should rule\nin every living structure is a necessity inherent in the actual\nconditions of the creation. And wherever we look in the realm of\nphysical man, even \"from the red outline of beginning Adam\" to the\namorphous adipocere of the last corpse when fate's black curtain\nfalls on our race, we shall discern death. For death is the other\nside of life. Life and death are the two hands with which the\norganic power works.\n\nThe threescore simple elements known to chemists die, that is,\nsurrender their peculiar powers and properties, and enter into new\ncombinations to produce and support higher forms of life.\nOtherwise these inorganic elemental wastes would be all that the\nmaterial universe could show.\n\n13 The Diversity of Origin of the Human Races, by Louis Agassiz,\nChristian Examiner, July, 1850.\n\n\nThe simple plant consists of single cells, which, in its\ndevelopment, give up their independent life for the production\nof a more exalted vegetable form. The formation of a perfectly\norganized plant is made possible only through the continuous dying\nand replacement of its cells. Similarly, in the development of an\nanimal, the constituent cells die for the good of the whole\ncreature; and the more perfect the animal the greater the\nsubordination of the parts. The cells of the human body are\nincessantly dying, being borne off and replaced. The epidermis or\nscarf skin is made of millions of insensible scales, consisting of\nformer cells which have died in order with their dead bodies to\nbuild this guardian wall around the tender inner parts. Thus,\ndeath, operating within the individual, seen in the light of\nnatural science, is a necessity, is purely a form of self\nsurrendering beneficence, is, indeed, but a hidden and indirect\nprocess and completion of life.14\n\nAnd is not the death of the total organism just as needful, just\nas benignant, as the death of the component atoms? Is it not the\nsame law, still expressing the same meaning? The chemicalelements\nwherein individuality is wanting, as Wagner says, die that\nvegetable bodies may live. Individual vegetable bodies die that\nnew individuals of the species may live, and that they may supply\nthe conditions for animals to live. The individual beast dies that\nother individuals of his species may live, and also for the good\nof man. The plant lives by the elements and by other plants: the\nanimal lives by the elements, by the plants, and by other animals:\nman lives and reigns by the service of the elements, of the\nplants, and of the animals. The individual man dies if we may\ntrust the law of analogy for the good of his species, and that he\nmay furnish the conditions for the development of a higher life\nelsewhere. It is quite obvious that, if individuals did not die,\nnew individuals could not live, because there would not be room.\nIt is also equally evident that, if individuals did not die, they\ncould never have any other life than the present. The foregoing\nconsiderations, fathomed and appreciated, transform the\ninstitution of death from caprice and punishment into necessity\nand benignity. In the timid sentimentalist's view, death is\nhorrible. Nature unrolls the chart of organic existence, a\nconvulsed and lurid list of murderers, from the spider in the\nwindow to the tiger in the jungle, from the shark at the bottom of\nthe sea to the eagle against the floor of the sky. As the perfumed\nfop, in an interval of reflection, gazes at the spectacle through\nhis dainty eyeglass, the prospect swims in blood and glares with\nthe ghastly phosphorus of corruption, and he shudders with\nsickness. In the philosophical naturalist's view, the dying\npanorama is wholly different. Carnivorous violence prevents more\npain than it inflicts; the wedded laws of life and death wear the\nsolemn beauty and wield the merciful functions of God; all is\nbalanced and ameliorating; above the slaughterous struggle safely\nsoar the dove and the rainbow; out of the charnel blooms the rose\nto which the nightingale sings love; nor is there poison which\nhelps not health, nor destruction which supplies not creation with\nnutriment for greater good and joy.\n\nBy painting such pictures as that of a woman with \"Sin\" written on\nher forehead in great glaring letters, giving to Death a globe\nentwined by a serpent, or that of Death as a\n\n14 Hermann Wagner, Der Tod, beleuchtet vom Standpunkte der\nNaturwissenschaften.\n\nskeleton, waving a black banner over the world and sounding\nthrough a trumpet, \"Woe, woe to the inhabitants of the earth!\" by\ninterpreting the great event as punishment instead of fulfilment,\nextermination instead of transition, men have elaborated, in the\nfaith of their imaginations, a melodramatic death which nature\nnever made. Truly, to the capable observer, death bears the double\naspect of necessity and benignity: necessity, because it is an\nultimate fact, as the material world is made, that, since organic\naction implies expenditure of force, the modicum of force given to\nany physical organization must finally be spent; benignity,\nbecause a bodily immortality on earth would both prevent all the\nhappiness of perpetually rising millions and be an unspeakable\ncurse upon its possessors.\n\nThe benevolence of death appears from this fact, that it\nboundlessly multiplies the numbers who can enjoy the prerogatives\nof life. It calls up ever fresh generations, with wondering eyes\nand eager appetites, to the perennial banquet of existence. Had\nAdam not sinned and been expelled from Paradise, some of the\nChristian Fathers thought, the fixed number of saints foreseen by\nGod would have been reached and then no more would have been\nborn.15\n\nSuch would have been the necessity, there being no death. But, by\nthe removal of one company as they grow tired and sated, room is\nmade for a new company to approach and enjoy the ever renewing\nspectacle and feast of the world. Thus all the delightful boons\nlife has, instead of being cooped within a little stale circle,\nare ceaselessly diffused and increased. Vivacious claimants\nadvance, see what is to be seen, partake of what is furnished, are\nsatisfied, and retire; and their places are immediately taken by\nhungry successors. Thus the torch of life is passed briskly, with\npicturesque and stimulating effect, along the manifold race of\nrunning ages, instead of smouldering stagnantly forever in the\nmoveless grasp of one. The amount of enjoyment, the quantity of\nconscious experience, gained from any given exhibition by a\nmillion persons to each of whom it is successively shown for one\nhour, is, beyond all question, immensely greater and keener than\none person could have from it in a million hours. The generations\nof men seem like fire flies glittering down the dark lane of\nHistory; but each swarm had its happy turn, fulfilled its hour,\nand rightfully gave way to its followers. The disinterested\nbeneficence of the Creator ordains that the same plants, insects,\nmen, shall not unsurrenderingly monopolize and stop the bliss of\nbreath. Death is the echo of the voice of love reverberated from\nthe limit of life.\n\nThe cumulative fund of human experience, the sensitive affiliating\nline of history, like a cerebral cord of personal identity\ntraversing the centuries, renders a continual succession of\ngenerations equivalent to the endless existence of one generation;\nbut with this mighty difference, that it preserves all the edge\nand spice of novelty. For consider what would be the result if\ndeath were abolished and men endowed with an earthly immortality.\nAt first they might rejoice, and think their last, dreadest enemy\ndestroyed. But what a mistake! In the first place, since none are\nto be removed from the earth, of course none must come into it.\nThe space and material are all wanted by those now in possession.\nAll are soon mature men and women, not another infant ever to hang\nupon a mother's breast or be lifted in a father's arms.\n\n15 Augustine, Op. Imp. iii. 198.\n\n\nAll the prattling music, fond cares, yearning love, and\ngushing joys and hopes associated with the rearing of children,\ngone! What a stupendous fragment is stricken from the fabric of\nthose enriching satisfactions which give life its truest value and\nits purest charm! Ages roll on. They see the same everlasting\nfaces, confront the same returning phenomena, engage in the same\nworn out exercises, or lounge idly in the unchangeable conditions\nwhich bear no stimulant which they have not exhausted. Thousands\nof years pass. They have drunk every attainable spring of\nknowledge dry. Not a prize stirs a pulse. All pleasures,\npermutated till ingenuity is baffled, disgust them. No terror\nstartles them. No possible experiment remains untried; nor is\nthere any unsounded fortune left. No dim marvels and boundless\nhopes beckon them with resistless lures into the future. They have\nno future. One everlasting now is their all. At last the incessant\nrepetition of identical phenomena, the unmitigated sameness of\nthings, the eternal monotony of affairs, become unutterably\nburdensome and horrible. Full of loathing and immeasurable\nfatigue, a weariness like the weight of a universe oppresses them;\nand what would they not give for a change! any thing to break the\nnightmare spell of ennui, to fling off the dateless flesh, to\ndie, to pass into some unguessed realm, to lie down and sleep\nforever: it would be the infinite boon!\n\nTake away from man all that is dependent on, or interlinked with,\nthe appointment of death, and it would make such fundamental\nalterations of his constitution and relations that he would no\nlonger be man. It would leave us an almost wholly different race.\nIf it is a divine boon that men should be, then death is a good to\nus; for it enables us to be men. Without it there would neither be\nhusband and wife, nor parent and child, nor family hearth and\naltar; nor, indeed, would hardly any thing be as it is now. The\nexistent phenomena of nature and the soul would comprise all. And\nwhen the jaded individual, having mastered and exhausted this\nfinite sum, looked in vain for any thing new or further, the world\nwould be a hateful dungeon to him, and life an awful doom; and how\ngladly he would give all that lies beneath the sun's golden round\nand top of sovereignty to migrate into some untried region and\nstate of being, or even to renounce existence altogether and lie\ndown forever in the attractive slumber of the grave! Without\ndeath, mankind would undergo the fate of Sisyphus, no future, and\nin the present the oppression of an intolerable task with an\naching vacuum of motive. The certainty and the mystery of death\ncreate the stimulus and the romance of life. Give the human race\nan earthly immortality, and you exclude them from every thing\ngreater and diviner than the earth affords. Who could consent to\nthat? Take away death, and a brazen wall girds in our narrow life,\nagainst which, if we remained men, we should dash and chafe in the\nclimax of our miserable longing, as the caged lion or eagle beats\nagainst his bars.\n\nThe gift of an earthly immortality conferred on a single person a\nboon which thoughtless myriads would clasp with frantic triumph\nwould prove, perhaps, a still more fearful curse than if\ndistributed over the whole species.\n\nRetaining his human affections, how excruciating and remediless\nhis grief must be, to be so cut off from all equal community of\nexperience and destiny with mankind, to see all whom he loves,\ngeneration after generation, fading away, leaving him alone, to\nform new ties again to be dissolved, to watch his beloved ones\ngrowing old and infirm, while he stands without a change! His love\nwould be left, in agony of melancholy grandeur, \"a solitary angel\nhovering over a universe of tombs\" on the tremulous wings of\nmemory and grief, those wings incapacitated, by his madly coveted\nprerogative of deathlessness, ever to move from above the sad rows\nof funereal urns. Zanoni, in Bulwer's magnificent conception, says\nto Viola, \"The flower gives perfume to the rock on whose breast it\ngrows. A little while, and the flower is dead; but the rock still\nendures, the snow at its breast, the sunshine on its summit.\" A\ndeathless individual in a world of the dying, joined with them by\never bereaved affections, would be the wretchedest creature\nconceivable. As no man ever yet prayed for any thing he would pray\nto be released, to embrace dear objects in his arms and float away\nwith them to heaven, or even to lie down with them in the kind\nembrace of mother earth. And if he had no affections, but lived a\nstoic existence, exempt from every sympathy, in impassive\nsolitude, he could not be happy, he would not be man: he must be\nan intellectual marble of thought or a monumental mystery of woe.\n\nDeath, therefore, is benignity. When men wish there were no such\nappointed event, they are deceived, and know not what they wish.\nLiterature furnishes a strange and profound, though wholly\nunintentional, confirmation of this view. Every form in which\nliterary genius has set forth the conception of an earthly\nimmortality represents it as an evil. This is true even down to\nSwift's painful account of the Struldbrugs in the island of\nLaputa. The legend of the Wandering Jew,16 one of the most\nmarvellous products of the human mind in imaginative literature,\nis terrific with its blazoned revelation of the contents of an\nendless life on earth. This story has been embodied, with great\nvariety of form and motive, in more than a hundred works. Every\none is, without the writer's intention, a disguised sermon of\ngigantic force on the benignity of death. As in classic fable poor\nTithon became immortal in the dawning arms of Eos only to lead a\nshrivelled, joyless, repulsive existence; and the fair young witch\nof Cuma had ample cause to regret that ever Apollo granted her\nrequest for as many years as she held grains of dust in her hand;\nand as all tales of successful alchemists or Rosicrucians concur\nin depicting the result to be utter disappointment and revulsion\nfrom the accursed prize; we may take it as evidence of a\nspontaneous conviction in the depths of human nature a conviction\nsure to be brought out whenever the attempt is made to describe in\nlife an opposite thought that death is benign for man as he is\nconstituted and related on earth. The voice of human nature speaks\ntruth through the lips of Cicero, saying, at the close of his\nessay on Old Age, \"Quodsi non sumus immortales futuri, tamen\nexstingui homini suo tempore optabile est.\"\n\nIn a conversation at the house of Sappho, a discussion once arose\nupon the question whether death was a blessing or an evil. Some\nmaintained, the former alternative; but Sappho victoriously closed\nthe debate by saying, If it were a blessing to die, the immortal\ngods would experience it. The gods live forever: therefore, death\nis an evil.17 The reasoning was plausible and brilliant. Yet its\nsophistry is complete. To men, conditioned as they are in this\nworld, death may be the greatest blessing; while to the gods,\nconditioned so differently, it may have no similar application.\n\n16 Bibliographical notice of the legend of the wandering Jew, by\nPaul Lacroix; trans. into English by G.W. Thornbury. Grasse, Der\newige Jude.\n\n17 Fragment X. Quoted in Mare's Hist. Lit. Greece, book iii. chap.\nv. sect. 18.\n\n\nBecause an earthly eternity in the flesh would be a frightful\ncalamity, is no reason why a heavenly eternity in the spirit\nwould be other than a blissful inheritance.\n\nThus the remonstrance which may be fallaciously based on some of\nthe foregoing considerations namely, that they would equally make\nit appear that the immortality of man in any condition would be\nundesirable is met. A conclusion drawn from the facts of the\npresent scene of things, of course, will not apply to a scene\ninconceivably different. Those whose only bodies are their minds\nmay be fetterless, happy, leading a wondrous life, beyond our\ndeepest dream and farthest fancy, and eternally free from trouble\nor satiety.\n\nDeath is to us, while we live, what we think it to be. If we\nconfront it with analytic and defiant eye, it is that nothing\nwhich ever ceases in beginning to be. If, letting the\nsuperstitious senses tyrannize over us and cow our better part of\nman, we crouch before the imagination of it, it assumes the shape\nof the skeleton monarch who takes the world for his empire, the\nelectric fluid for his chariot, and time for his sceptre. In the\ncontemplation of death, hitherto, fancy inspired by fear has been\nby far too much the prominent faculty and impulse. The literature\nof the subject is usually ghastly, appalling, and absurd, with\npoint of view varying from that of the credulous Hindu,\npersonifying death as a monster with a million mouths devouring\nall creatures and licking them in his flaming lips as a fire\ndevours the moths or as the sea swallows the torrents,18 to that\nof the atheistic German dreamer, who converts nature into an\nimmeasurable corpse worked by galvanic forces, and that of the\nbold French philosopher, Carnot, whose speculations have led to\nthe theory that the sun will finally expend all its heat, and\nconstellated life cease, as the solar system hangs, like a dead\norrery, ashy and spectral, the ghost of what it was. So the\nextravagant author of Festus says,\n\n\"God tore the glory from the sun's broad brow And flung the\nflaming scalp away.\"\n\nThe subject should be viewed by the unclouded intellect, guided by\nserene faith, in the light of scientific knowledge. Then death is\nrevealed, first, as an organic necessity in the primordial life\ncell; secondly, as the cessation of a given form of life in its\ncompletion; thirdly, as a benignant law, an expression of the\nCreator's love; fourthly, as the inaugurating condition of another\nform of life. What we are to refer to sin is all the seeming\nlawlessness and untimeliness of death. Had not men sinned, all\nwould reach a good age and pass away without suffering. Death is\nbenignant necessity; the irregularity and pain associated with it\nare an inherited punishment. Finally, it is a condition of\nimprovement in life. Death is the incessant touch with which the\nartist, Nature, is bringing her works to perfection.\n\nPhysical death is experienced by man in common with the brute.\nUpon grounds of physiology there is no greater evidence for man's\nSpiritual survival through that overshadowed crisis than there is\nfor the brute's. And on grounds of sentiment man ought not to\nshrink from sharing his open future with these mute comrades. Des\nCartes and Malebranche taught that animals are mere machines,\nwithout souls, worked by God's arbitrary power. Swedenborg held\nthat \"the souls of brutes are extinguished with their bodies.\" 19\n\n\n18 Thomson's trans. of Bhagavad Gita, p. 77.\n\n19 Outlines of the Infinite, chap. ii. sect. iv. 13.\n\n\nLeibnitz, by his doctrine of eternal monads, sustains the\nimmortality of all creatures.\n\nColeridge defended the same idea. Agassiz, with much power and\nbeauty, advocates the thought that animals as well as men have a\nfuture life. 20 The old traditions affirm that at least four\nbeasts have been translated to heaven; namely, the ass that spoke\nto Balaam, the white foal that Christ rode into Jerusalem, the\nsteed Borak that bore Mohammed on his famous night journey, and\nthe dog that wakened the Seven Sleepers. To recognise, as Goethe\ndid, brothers in the green wood and in the teeming air, to\nsympathize with all lower forms of life, and hope for them an open\nrange of limitless possibilities in the hospitable home of God, is\nsurely more becoming to a philosopher, a poet, or a Christian,\nthan that careless scorn which commonly excludes them from regard\nand contemptuously leaves them to annihilation. This subject has\nbeen genially treated by Richard Dean in his \"Essay on the Future\nLife of Brutes.\"\n\nBut on moral and psychological grounds the distinction is vast\nbetween the dying man and the dying brute. Bretschneider, in a\nbeautiful sermon on this point, specifies four particulars. Man\nforesees and provides for his death: the brute does not. Man dies\nwith unrecompensed merit and guilt: the brute does not. Man dies\nwith faculties and powers fitted for a more perfect state of\nexistence: the brute does not. Man dies with the expectation of\nanother life: the brute does not. Three contrasts may be added to\nthese. First, man desires to die amidst his fellows: the brute\ncreeps away by himself, to die in solitude. Secondly, man inters\nhis dead with burial rites, rears a memorial over them, cherishes\nrecollections of them which often change his subsequent character:\nbut who ever heard of a deer watching over an expiring comrade, a\ndeer funeral winding along the green glades of the forest? The\nbarrows of Norway, the mounds of Yucatan, the mummy pits of\nMemphis, the rural cemeteries of our own day, speak the human\nthoughts of sympathetic reverence and posthumous survival, typical\nof something superior to dust. Thirdly, man often makes death an\nactive instead of a passive experience, his will as it is his\nfate, a victory instead of a defeat.21 As Mirabeau sank towards\nhis end, he ordered them to pour perfumes and roses on him, and to\nbring music; and so, with the air of a haughty conqueror, amidst\nthe volcanic smoke and thunder of reeling France, his giant spirit\nwent forth. The patriot is proud to lay his body a sacrifice on\nthe altar of his country's weal. The philanthropist rejoices to\nspend himself without pay in a noble cause, to offer up his life\nin the service of his fellow men. Thousands of generous students\nhave given their lives to science and clasped death amidst their\ntrophied achievements. Who can count the confessors who have\nthought it bliss and glory to be martyrs for truth and God?\nCreatures capable of such deeds must inherit eternity. Their\ntranscendent souls step from their rejected mansions through the\nblue gateway of the air to the lucid palace of the stars. Any\nmeaner allotment would be discordant and unbecoming their rank.\n\nContemplations like these exorcise the spectre host of the brain\nand quell the horrid brood of fear. The noble purpose of self\nsacrifice enables us to smile upon the grave, \"as some sweet\nclarion's breath stirs the soldier's scorn of danger.\"\n\n20 Contributions to the Natural History of the United States, vol.\ni. pp. 64-66. Umbreit, fiber das Sterben ais einen Akt menschlich\npersonlicher Selbststandigkeit. Studien und Kritiken, 1837.\n\n\nDeath parts with its false frightfulness, puts on its true beauty,\nand becomes at once the evening star of memory and the morning\nstar of hope, the Hesper of the sinking flesh, the Phosphor of\nthe rising soul. Let the night come, then: it shall be welcome.\nAnd, as we gird our loins to enter the ancient mystery, we will\nexclaim, with vanishing voice, to those we leave behind,\n\n\"Though I stoop Into a dark tremendous sea of cloud, It is but for\na time I press God's lamp Close to my breast: its splendor, soon\nor late, Will pierce the gloom: I shall emerge somewhere.\"\n\nCHAPTER III.\n\nGROUNDS OF THE BELIEF IN A FUTURE LIFE.\n\nIT is the purpose of the following chapter to describe the\noriginating supports of the common belief in a future life; not to\nprobe the depth and test the value of the various grounds out of\nwhich the doctrine grows, but only to give a descriptive sketch of\nwhat they are, and a view of the process of growth. The objections\nurged by unbelievers belong to an open discussion of the question\nof immortality, not to an illustrative statement of the suggesting\ngrounds on which the popular belief rests. When, after sufficient\ninvestigation, we ask ourselves from what causes the almost\nuniversal expectation of another life springs, and by what\ninfluences it is nourished, we shall not find adequate answer in\nless than four words: feeling, imagination, faith, and reflection.\nThe doctrine of a future life for man has been created by the\ncombined force of instinctive desire, analogical observation,\nprescriptive authority, and philosophical speculation. These are\nthe four pillars on which the soul builds the temple of its hopes;\nor the four glasses through which it looks to see its eternal\nheritage.\n\nFirst, it is obvious that man is endowed at once with\nforeknowledge of death and with a powerful love of life. It is not\na love of being here; for he often loathes the scene around him.\nIt is a love of self possessed existence; a love of his own soul\nin its central consciousness and bounded royalty. This is an\ninseparable element of his very entity. Crowned with free will,\nwalking on the crest of the world, enfeoffed with individual\nfaculties, served by vassal nature with tributes of various joy,\nhe cannot bear the thought of losing himself, of sliding into the\ngeneral abyss of matter. His interior consciousness is permeated\nwith a self preserving instinct, and shudders at every glimpse of\ndanger or hint of death. The soul, pervaded with a guardian\ninstinct of life, and seeing death's steady approach to destroy\nthe body, necessitates the conception of an escape into another\nstate of existence. Fancy and reason, thus set at work, speedily\nconstruct a thousand theories filled with details. Desire first\nfathers thought, and then thought woos belief.\n\nSecondly, man, holding his conscious being precious beyond all\nthings, and shrinking with pervasive anxieties from the moment of\ndestined dissolution, looks around through the realms of nature,\nwith thoughtful eye, in search of parallel phenomena further\ndeveloped, significant sequels in other creatures' fates, whose\nevolution and fulfilment may haply throw light on his own. With\neager vision and heart prompted imagination he scrutinizes\nwhatever appears related to his object. Seeing the snake cast its\nold slough and glide forth renewed, he conceives, so in death man\nbut sheds his fleshly exuvia, while the spirit emerges,\nregenerate. He beholds the beetle break from its filthy sepulchre\nand commence its summer work; and straightway he hangs a golden\nscarsbaus in his temples as an emblem of a future life. After\nvegetation's wintry deaths, hailing the returning spring that\nbrings resurrection and life to the graves of the sod, he dreams\nof some far off spring of Humanity, yet to come, when the frosts\nof man's untoward doom shall relent, and all the costly seeds sown\nthrough ages in the great earth tomb shall shoot up in celestial\nshapes. On the moaning sea shore, weeping some dear friend, he\nperceives, now ascending in the dawn, the planet which he lately\nsaw declining in the dusk; and he is cheered by the thought that\n\n\"As sinks the day star in the ocean bed, And yet anon repairs his\ndrooping head, And tricks his beams, and with new spangled\nore Flames in the forehead of the morning sky, So Lycidas, sunk\nlow, shall mount on high.\"\n\nSome traveller or poet tells him fabulous tales of a bird which,\ngrown aged, fills its nest with spices, and, spontaneously\nburning, soars from the aromatic fire, rejuvenescent for a\nthousand years; and he cannot but take the phoenix for a\nmiraculous type of his own soul springing, free and eternal, from\nthe ashes of his corpse. Having watched the silkworm, as it wove\nits cocoon and lay down in its oblong grave apparently dead, until\nat length it struggles forth, glittering with rainbow colors, a\nwinged moth, endowed with new faculties and living a new life in a\nnew sphere, he conceives that so the human soul may, in the\nfulness of time, disentangle itself from the imprisoning meshes of\nthis world of larva, a thing of spirit beauty, to sail through\nheavenly airs; and henceforth he engraves a butterfly on the\ntombstone in vivid prophecy of immortality. Thus a moralizing\nobservation of natural similitudes teaches man to hope for an\nexistence beyond death.\n\nThirdly, the prevailing belief in a future life is spread and\nupheld by the influence of authority. The doctrine of the soul's\nsurvival and transference to another world, where its experience\ndepends on conditions observed or violated here, conditions\nsomewhat within the control of a select class of men here, such a\ndoctrine is the very hiding place of the power of priest craft, a\nvast engine of interest and sway which the shrewd insight of\npriesthoods has often devised and the cunning policy of states\nsubsidized. In most cases of this kind the asserted doctrine is\nplaced on the basis of a divine revelation, and must be implicitly\nreceived. God proclaims it through his anointed ministers:\ntherefore, to doubt it or logically criticize it is a crime.\nHistory bears witness to such a procedure wherever an organized\npriesthood has flourished, from primeval pagan India to modern\npapal Rome. It is traceable from the dark Osirian shrines of Egypt\nand the initiating temple at Eleusis to the funeral fires of Gaul\nand the Druidic conclave in the oak groves of Mona; from the\nreeking altars of Mexico in the time of Montezuma to the masses\nfor souls in Purgatory said this day in half the churches of\nChristendom. Much of the popular faith in immortality which has\nprevailed in all ages has been owing to the authority of its\npromulgators, a deep and honest trust on the part of the people in\nthe authoritative dicta of their religious teachers.\n\nIn all the leading nations of the earth, the doctrine of a future\nlife is a tradition handed down from immemorial antiquity,\nembalmed in sacred books which are regarded as infallible\nrevelations from God. Of course the thoughtless never think of\nquestioning it; the reverent piously embrace it; all are educated\nto receive it. In addition to the proclamation of a future life by\nthe sacred books and by the priestly hierarchies, it has also been\naffirmed by countless individual saints, philosophers, and\nprophets. Most persons readily accept it on trust from them as a\ndemonstrated theory or an inspired knowledge of theirs. It is\nnatural for modest unspeculative minds, busied with worldly cares,\nto say, These learned sages, these theosophic seers, so much more\ngifted, educated, and intimate with the divine counsels and plan\nthan we are, with so much deeper experience and purer insight than\nwe have, must know the truth: we cannot in any other way do so well\nas to follow their guidance and confide in their assertions.\nAccordingly, multitudes receive the belief in a life to come on\nthe authority of the world's intellectual and religious leaders.\n\nFourthly, the belief in a future life results from philosophical\nmeditation, and is sustained by rational proofs.1 For the\ncompletion of the present outline, it now remains to give a brief\nexposition of these arguments. For the sake of convenience and\nclearness, we must arrange these reasonings in five classes;\nnamely, the physiological, the analogical, the psychological, the\ntheological, and the moral.\n\nThere is a group of considerations drawn from the phenomena of our\nbodily organization, life and death, which compose the\nphysiological argument for the separate existence of the soul. In\nthe first place, it is contended that the human organization, so\nwondrously vitalized, developed, and ruled, could not have grown\nup out of mere matter, but implies a pre existent mental entity, a\nspiritual force or idea, which constituted the primeval impulse,\ngrouped around itself the organic conditions of our existence, and\nconstrained the material elements to the subsequent processes and\nresults, according to a prearranged plan.2 This dynamic agent,\nthis ontological cause, may naturally survive when the fleshly\norganization which it has built around itself dissolves. Its\nindependence before the body began involves its independence after\nthe body is ended. Stahl has especially illustrated in physiology\nthis idea of an independent soul monad.\n\nSecondly, as some potential being must have preceded our birth, to\nassimilate and construct the physical system, so the great\nphenomena attending our conscious life necessitate, both to our\ninstinctive apprehension and in our philosophical conviction, the\ndistinctive division of man into body and soul, tabernacle and\ntenant. The illustrious Boerhaave wrote a valuable dissertation on\nthe distinction of the mind from the body, which is to be found\namong his works. Every man knows that he dwells in the flesh but\nis not flesh. He is a free, personal mind, occupying and using a\nmaterial body, but not identified with it. Ideas and passions of\npurely immaterial origin pervade every nerve with terrific\nintensity, and shake his encasing corporeity like an earthquake. A\nthought, a sentiment, a fancy, may prostrate him as effectually as\na blow on his brain from a hammer. He wills to move a palsied\nlimb: the soul is unaffected by the paralysis, but the muscles\nrefuse to obey his volition: the distinction between the person\nwilling and the instrument to be wielded is unavoidable.\n\nThirdly, the fact of death itself irresistibly suggests the\nduality of flesh and spirit. It is the removal of the energizing\nmind that leaves the frame so empty and meaningless. Think of the\nundreaming sleep of a corpse which dissolution is winding in its\nchemical embrace. A moment ago that hand was uplifted to clasp\nyours, intelligent accents were vocal on those\n\n1 Wohlfarth, Triumph des Glaubens an Unsterblichkeit und\nWiedersehen uber jeden Zweifel. Oporinus, Historia Critica\nDoctrina de Immortalitate Mortalium.\n\n2 Muller, Elements of Physiology, book vi. sect. i. ch. 1.\n\n\nlips, the light of love beamed in that eye. One shuddering sigh,\nand how cold, vacant, forceless, dead, lies the heap of clay! It\nis impossible to prevent the conviction that an invisible power\nhas been liberated; that the flight of an animating principle has\nproduced this awful change. Why may not that untraceable something\nwhich has gone still exist? Its vanishing from our sensible\ncognizance is no proof of its perishing. Not a shadow of genuine\nevidence has ever been afforded that the real life powers of any\ncreature are destroyed.3 In the absence of that proof, a multitude\nof considerations urge us to infer the contrary. Surely there is\nroom enough for the contrary to be true; for, as Jacobi profoundly\nobserves, \"life is not a form of body; but body is one form of\nlife.\" Therefore the soul which now exists in this form, not\nappearing to be destroyed on its departure hence, must be supposed\nto live hereafter in some other form.4\n\nA second series of observations and reflections, gathered from\npartial similarities elsewhere in the world, are combined to make\nthe analogical argument for a future life. For many centuries, in\nthe literature of many nations, a standard illustration of the\nthought that the soul survives the decay of its earthy investiture\nhas been drawn from the metamorphosis of the caterpillar into the\nbutterfly.5 This world is the scene of our grub state. The body is\nbut a chrysalis of soul. When the preliminary experience and\nstages are finished and the transformation is complete, the spirit\nemerges from its cast off cocoon and broken cell into the more\nethereal air and sunnier light of a higher world's eternal day.\nThe emblematic correspondence is striking, and the inference is\nobvious and beautiful. Nor is the change, the gain in endowments\nand privileges, greater in the supposed case of man than it is\nfrom the slow and loathsome worm on the leaf to the swift and\nglittering insect in the air.\n\nSecondly, in the material world, so far as we can judge, nothing\nis ever absolutely destroyed. There is no such thing as\nannihilation. Things are changed, transformations abound; but\nessences do not cease to be. Take a given quantity of any kind of\nmatter; divide and subdivide it in ten thousand ways, by\nmechanical violence, by chemical solvents. Still it exists, as the\nsame quantity of matter, with unchanged qualities as to its\nessence, and will exist when Nature has manipulated it in all her\nlaboratories for a billion ages. Now, as a solitary exception to\nthis, are minds absolutely destroyed? are will, conscience,\nthought, and love annihilated? Personal intelligence, affection,\nidentity, are inseparable components of the idea of a soul. And\nwhat method is there of crushing or evaporating these out of\nbeing? What force is there to compel them into nothing? Death is\nnot a substantive cause working effects. It is itself merely an\neffect. It is simply a change in the mode of existence. That this\nchange puts an end to existence is an assertion against analogy,\nand wholly unsupported.\n\nThirdly, following the analogy of science and the visible order of\nbeing, we are led to the conception of an ascending series of\nexistences rising in regular gradation from coarse to fine, from\nbrutal to mental, from earthly composite to simply spiritual, and\nthus pointing up the rounds of life's ladder, through all nature,\nto the angelic ranks of heaven. Then, feeling his kinship and\ncommon vocation with supernal beings, man is assured of a loftier\ncondition of\n\n3 Sir Humphry Davy, Proteus or Immortality.\n\n4 Bakewell, Natural Evidence of a Future State.\n\n5 Butler, Analogy, part i. ch. 1.\n\n\nof existence reserved for him. There are no such immense, vacantly\nyawning chasms, as that would be, between our fleshly estate and\nthe Godhead. Nature takes no such enormous jumps. Her scaling\nadvance is by staid and normal steps.\n\n\"There's lifeless matter.\nAdd the power of shaping,\nAnd you've the crystal: add again the organs\nWherewith to subdue sustenance to the form\nAnd manner of one's self, and you've the plant:\nAdd power of motion, senses, and so forth,\nAnd you've all kinds of beasts: suppose a pig.\nTo pig add reason, foresight, and such stuff,\nThen you have man.\nWhat shall, we add to man\nTo bring him higher?\"\n\nFreedom from the load of clay, emancipation of the spirit into the\nfull range and masterdom of a spirit's powers!\n\nFourthly, many strong similarities between our entrance into this\nworld and our departure out of it would make us believe that death\nis but another and higher birth.6 Any one acquainted with the\nstate of an unborn infant deriving its sole nutriment, its very\nexistence, from its vascular connection with its mother could\nhardly imagine that its separation from its mother would introduce\nit to a new and independent life. He would rather conclude that it\nwould perish, like a twig wrenched from its parent limb. So it may\nbe in the separation of the soul from the body. Further, as our\nlatent or dimly groping senses were useless while we were\ndeveloping in embryo, and then implied this life, so we now have,\nin rudimentary condition, certain powers of reason, imagination,\nand heart, which prophesy heaven and eternity; and mysterious\nintimations ever and anon reach us from a diviner sphere,\n\n\"Like hints and echoes of the world To spirits folded in the\nwomb.\"\n\nThe Persian poet, Buzurgi, says on this theme,\n\n\"What is the soul? The seminal principle from the loins of\ndestiny. This world is the womb: the body, its enveloping\nmembrane: The bitterness of dissolution, dame Fortune's pangs of\nchildbirth. What is death? To be born again, an angel of\neternity.\"\n\nFifthly, many cultivated thinkers have firmly believed that the\nsoul is not so young as is usually thought, but is an old stager\non this globe, having lived through many a previous existence,\nhere or elsewhere.7 They sustain this conclusion by various\nconsiderations, either drawn from premises presupposing the\nnecessary eternity of spirits, or resting on dusky reminiscences,\n\"shadowy recollections,\" of visions and events vanished long ago.\nNow, if the idea of foregone conscious lives, personal careers oft\nrepeated with unlost being, be admitted, as it frequently has been\nby such men as Plato and Wordsworth, all the\n\n6 Bretschneider, Predigten uber Tod, Unsterblichkeit, und\nAnferstehung.\n\n7 James Parker, Account of the Divine Goodness concerning the\nPre existence of Souls.\n\n\nconnected analogies of the case carry us to the belief that\nimmortality awaits us. We shall live through the next transition,\nas we have lived through the past ones.\n\nSixthly, rejecting the hypothesis of an anterior life, and\nentertaining the supposition that there is no creating and\noverruling God, but that all things have arisen by spontaneous\ndevelopment or by chance, still, we are not consistently obliged\nto expect annihilation as the fate of the soul. Fairly reasoning\nfrom the analogy of the past, across the facts of the present, to\nthe impending contingencies of the future, we may say that the\nnext stage in the unfolding processes of nature is not the\ndestruction of our consciousness, but issues in a purer life,\nelevates us to a spiritual rank. It is just to argue that if\nmindless law or boundless fortuity made this world and brought us\nhere, it may as well make, or have made, another world, and bear\nus there. Law or chance excluding God from the question may as\neasily make us immortal as mortal. Reasoning by analogy, we may\naffirm that, as life has been given us, so it will be given us\nagain and forever.\n\nSeventhly, faith in immortality is fed by another analogy, not\nbased on reflection, but instinctively felt. Every change of\nmaterial in our organism, every change of consciousness, is a kind\nof death. We partially die as often as we leave behind forgotten\nexperiences and lost states of being. We die successively to\ninfancy, childhood, youth, manhood. The past is the dead: but our\ncourse is still on, forever on. Having survived so many deaths, we\nexpect to survive all others and to be ourselves eternally.\n\nThere is a third cluster of reasonings, deduced from the\ndistinctive nature of spirit, constituting the psychological\nargument for the existence of the soul independent of the body. In\nthe outset, obviously, if the soul be an immaterial entity, its\nnatural immortality follows; because death and decay can only be\nsupposed to take effect in dissoluble combinations. Several\ningenious reasons have been advanced in proof of the soul's\nimmateriality, reasons cogent enough to have convinced a large\nclass of philosophers.8 It is sufficient here to notice the\nfollowing one. All motion implies a dynamic mover. Matter is\ndormant. Power is a reality entirely distinct from matter in its\nnature. But man is essentially an active power, a free will.\nConsequently there is in him an immaterial principle, since all\npower is immaterial. That principle is immortal, because\nsubsisting in a sphere of being whose categories exclude the\npossibility of dissolution.9\n\nSecondly, should we admit the human soul to be material, yet if it\nbe an ultimate monad, an indivisible atom of mind, it is immortal\nstill, defying all the forces of destruction. And that it actually\nis an uncompounded unit may be thus proved. Consciousness is\nsimple, not collective. Hence the power of consciousness, the\ncentral soul, is an absolute integer. For a living perceptive\nwhole cannot be made of dead imperceptive parts. If the soul were\ncomposite, each component part would be an individual, a\ndistinguishable consciousness. Such not being the fact, the\nconclusion results that the soul is one, a simple substance.10\n\n8 Astrue, Dissertation sur l'Immaterialite et l'Immortalite de\nl'Ame. Broughton, Defence of the Doctrine of the Human Soul as an\nImmaterial and Naturally Immortal Principle. Marstaller, Von der\nUnsterblichkeit der Menschlichen Seele.\n\n9 Andrew Baxter, Inquiry into the Nature of the Soul.\n\n10 Herbart, Lehrbuch zur Psychologie, sect. 150.\n\n\nOf course it is not liable to death, but is naturally eternal.\n\nThirdly, the indestructibleness of the soul is a direct inference\nfrom its ontological characteristics. Reason, contemplating the\nelements of the soul, cannot but embrace the conviction of its\nperpetuity and its essential independence of the fleshly\norganization. Our life in its innermost substantive essence is\nbest defined as a conscious force. Our present existence is the\norganic correlation of that personal force with the physical\nmaterials of the body, and with other forces. The cessation of\nthat correlation at death by no means involves, so far as we can\nsee, the destruction or the disindividualization of the primal\npersonal force. It is a fact of striking significance, often\nnoticed by psychologists, that we are unable to conceive ourselves\nas dead. The negation of itself is impossible to consciousness.\nThe reason we have such a dread of death is that we conceive\nourselves as still alive, only in the grave, or wandering through\nhorrors and shut out from wonted pleasures. It belongs to material\ngrowths to ripen, loosen, decay; but what is there in sensation,\nreflection, memory, volition, to crumble in pieces and rot away?\nWhy should the power of hope, and joy, and faith, change into\ninanity and oblivion? What crucible shall burn up the ultimate of\nforce? What material processes shall ever disintegrate the\nsimplicity of spirit? Earth and plant, muscle, nerve, and brain,\nbelong to one sphere, and are subject to the temporal fates that\nrule there; but reason, imagination, love, will, belong to\nanother, and, immortally fortressed there, laugh to scorn the\nfretful sieges of decay.\n\nFourthly, the surviving superiority of the soul, inferred from its\ncontrast of qualities to those of its earthy environment, is\nfurther shown by another fact, the mind's dream power, and the\nideal realm it freely soars or walks at large in when it\npleases.11 This view has often been enlarged upon, especially by\nBonnet and Sir Henry Wotton. The unhappy Achilles, exhausted with\nweeping for his friend, lay, heavily moaning, on the shore of the\nfar sounding sea, in a clear spot where the waves washed in upon\nthe beach, when sleep took possession of him. The ghost of\nmiserable Patroclus calve to him and said, \"Sleepest thou and art\nforgetful of me, O Achilles?\" And the son of Peleus cried, \"Come\nnearer: let us embrace each other, though but for a little while.\"\nThen he stretched out his friendly hands, but caught him not; for\nthe spirit, shrieking, vanished beneath the earth like smoke.\n\nAstounded, Achilles started up, clasped his hands, and said,\ndolefully, \"Alas! there is then indeed in the subterranean abodes\na spirit and image, but there is no body in it.\"12 The realm of\ndreams is a world of mystic realities, intangible, yet existent,\nand all prophetic, through which the soul nightly floats while the\ngross body slumbers. It is everlasting, because there is nothing\nin it for corruption to take hold of. The appearances and sounds\nof that soft inner sphere, veiled so remote from sense, are\nreflections and echoes from the spirit world. Or are they a direct\nvision and audience of it? The soul really is native resident in a\nworld of truth, goodness, and beauty, fellow citizen with divine\nideas and affections. Through the senses it has knowledge and\ncommunion with the hard outer world of matter. When the senses\nfall away, it is left, imperishable denizen of its own appropriate\nworld of idealities.\n\n11 Schubert, Die Symbolik des Traumes.\n\n12 Iliad, lib. xxiii. ll. 60 106.\n\n\nAnother assemblage of views, based on the character of God, form\nthe theological argument for the future existence of man.13\nStarting with the idea of a God of infinite perfections, the\nimmortality of his children is an immediate deduction from the\neternity of his purposes. For whatever purpose God originally gave\nman being, for the disinterested distribution of happiness, for\nthe increase of his own glory, or whatever else, will he not for\nthat same purpose continue him in being forever? In the absence of\nany reason to the contrary, we must so conclude. In view of the\nunlimited perfections of God, the fact of conscious responsible\ncreatures being created is sufficient warrant of their perpetuity.\nOtherwise God would be fickle. Or, as one has said, he would be a\nmere drapery painter, nothing within the dress.\n\nSecondly, leaving out of sight this illustration of an eternal\npurpose in eternal fulfilment, and confining our attention to the\nanalogy of the divine works and the dignity of the divine Worker,\nwe shall be freshly led to the same conclusion. Has God moulded\nthe dead clay of the material universe into gleaming globes and\nordered them to fly through the halls of space forever, and has he\ncreated, out of his own omnipotence, mental personalities\nreflecting his own attributes, and doomed them to go out in\nendless night after basking, poor ephemera, in the sunshine of a\nmomentary life? It is not to be imagined that God ever works in\nvain. Yet if a single consciousness be extinguished in everlasting\nnonentity, so far as the production of that consciousness is\nconcerned he has wrought for nothing. His action was in vain,\nbecause all is now, to that being, exactly the same as if it had\nnever been. God does nothing in sport or unmeaningly: least of all\nwould he create filial spirits, dignified with the solemn\nendowments of humanity, without a high and serious end.14 To make\nmen, gifted with such a transcendent largess of powers, wholly\nmortal, to rot forever in the grave after life's swift day, were\nwork far more unworthy of God than the task was to Michael Angelo\nset him in mockery by Pietro, the tyrant who succeeded Lorenzo the\nMagnificent in the dukedom of Florence, that he should scoop up\nthe snow in the Via Larga, and with his highest art mould a statue\nfrom it, to dissolve ere night in the glow of the Italian sun.\n\nThirdly, it is an attribute of Infinite Wisdom to proportion\npowers to results, to adapt instruments to ends with exact\nfitness. But if we are utterly to die with the ceasing breath,\nthen there is an amazing want of symmetry between our endowments\nand our opportunity; our attainments are most superfluously\nsuperior to our destiny. Can it be that an earth house of six feet\nis to imprison forever the intellect of a La Place, whose\ntelescopic eye, piercing the unfenced fields of immensity,\nsystematized more worlds than there are grains of dust in this\nglobe? the heart of a Borromeo, whose seraphic love expanded to\nthe limits of sympathetic being? the soul of a Wycliffe, whose\nundaunted will, in faithful consecration to duty, faced the fires\nof martyrdom and never blenched? the genius of a Shakspeare, whose\nimagination exhausted worlds and then invented new? There is vast\nincongruity between our faculties and the scope given them here.\nOn all it sees below the soul reads \"Inadequate,\" and rises\n\n13 Aebli, Unsterblichkeit der menschlichen Seele, sechster Brief.\n\n14 Ulrici, Unsterblichkeit der menschlichen Seele aus dem Wesen\nGottes erwiesen.\n\n\ndissatisfied from every feast, craving, with divine hunger and\nthirst, the ambrosia and nectar of a fetterless and immortal\nworld. Were we fated to perish at the goal of threescore, God\nwould have harmonized our powers with our lot. He would never have\nset such magnificent conceptions over against such poor\npossibilities, nor have kindled so insatiable an ambition for so\ntrivial a prize of dust to dust.\n\nFourthly, one of the weightiest supports of the belief in a future\nlife is that yielded by the benevolence of God. Annihilation is\ntotally irreconcilable with this. That He whose love for his\ncreatures is infinite will absolutely destroy them after their\nlittle span of life, when they have just tasted the sweets of\nexistence and begun to know the noble delights of spiritual\nprogress, and while illimitable heights of glory and blessedness\nare beckoning them, is incredible. We are unable to believe that\nwhile his children turn to him with yearning faith and gratitude,\nwith fervent prayer and expectation, he will spurn them into\nunmitigated night, blotting out those capacities of happiness\nwhich he gave them with a virtual promise of endless increase.\nWill the affectionate God permit humanity, ensconced in the field\nof being, like a nest of ground sparrows, to be trodden in by the\nhoof of annihilation? Love watches to preserve life. It were\nMoloch, not the universal Father, that could crush into death\nthese multitudes of loving souls supplicating him for life, dash\ninto silent fragments these miraculous personal harps of a\nthousand strings, each capable of vibrating a celestial melody of\npraise and bliss.\n\nFifthly, the apparent claims of justice afford presumptive proof,\nhard to be resisted, of a future state wherein there are\ncompensations for the unmerited ills, a complement for the\nfragmentary experiences, and rectification for the wrongs, of the\npresent life.15 God is just; but he works without impulse or\ncaprice, by laws whose progressive evolution requires time to show\ntheir perfect results. Through the brief space of this existence,\nwhere the encountering of millions of free intelligences within\nthe fixed conditions of nature causes a seeming medley of good and\nevil, of discord and harmony, wickedness often triumphs, villany\noften outreaches and tramples ingenuous nobility and helpless\ninnocence. Some saintly spirits, victims of disease and penury,\ndrag out their years in agony, neglect, and tears. Some bold\nminions of selfishness, with seared consciences and nerves of\niron, pluck the coveted fruits of pleasure, wear the diadems of\nsociety, and sweep through the world in pomp. The virtuous suffer\nundeservedly from the guilty. The idle thrive on the industrious.\nAll these things sometimes happen. In spite of the compensating\ntendencies which ride on all spiritual laws, in spite of the\nmysterious Nemesis which is throned in every bosom and saturates\nthe moral atmosphere with influence, the world is full of wrongs,\nsufferings, and unfinished justice.16 There must be another world,\nwhere the remunerating processes interiorly begun here shall be\nopenly consummated. Can it be that Christ and Herod, Paul and\nNero, Timour and Fenelon, drop through the blind trap of death\ninto precisely the same condition of unwaking sleep? Not if there\nbe a God!\n\n15 M. Jules Simon, La Religion Naturelle, liv. iii.:\nl'Immortalite.\n\n16 Dr. Chalmers, Bridgewater Treatise, chap. 10.\n\n\nThere is a final assemblage of thoughts pertaining to the\nlikelihood of another life, which, arranged together, may be\nstyled the moral argument in behalf of that belief.17 These\nconsiderations are drawn from the seeming fitness of things,\nclaims of parts beseeching completion, vaticinations of\nexperience. They form a cumulative array of probabilities whose\nguiding forefingers all indicate one truth, whose consonant voices\nswell into a powerful strain of promise. First, consider the\nshrinking from annihilation naturally felt in every breast. If man\nbe not destined for perennial life, why is this dread of non\nexistence woven into the soul's inmost fibres? Attractions are co\nordinate with destinies, and every normal desire foretells its own\nfulfilment. Man fades unwillingly from his natal haunts, still\nlonging for a life of eternal remembrance and love, and confiding\nin it. All over the world grows this pathetic race of forget me\nnots. Shall not Heaven pluck and wear them on her bosom? Secondly,\nan emphatic presumption in favor of a second life arises from the\npremature mortality prevalent to such a fearful extent in the\nhuman family. Nearly one half of our race perish before reaching\nthe age of ten years. In that period they cannot have fulfilled\nthe total purposes of their creation. It is but a part we see, and\nnot the whole. The destinies here seen segmentary will appear full\ncircle beyond the grave.\n\nThe argument is hardly met by asserting that this untimely\nmortality is the punishment for non observance of law; for,\ndenying any further life, would a scheme of existence have been\nadmitted establishing so awful a proportion of violations and\npenalties? If there be no balancing sphere beyond, then all should\npass through the experience of a ripe and rounded life. But there\nis the most perplexing inequality. At one fell swoop, infant,\nsage, hero, reveller, martyr, are snatched into the invisible\nstate. There is, as a noble thinker has said, an apparent \"caprice\nin the dispensation of death strongly indicative of a hidden\nsequel.\" Immortality unravels the otherwise inscrutable mystery.\n\nThirdly, the function of conscience furnishes another attestation\nto the continued existence of man. This vicegerent of God in the\nbreast, arrayed in splendors and terrors, which shakes and\nillumines the whole circumference of our being with its thunders\nand lightnings, gives the good man, amidst oppressions and woes, a\nserene confidence in a future justifying reward, and transfixes\nthe bad man, through all his retinue of guards and panoplied\ndefences, with icy pangs of fear and with a horrid looking for\njudgment to come. The sublime grandeur of moral freedom, the\nimperilling dignities of probation, the tremendous\nresponsibilities and hazards of man's felt power and position, are\nall inconsistent with the supposition that he is merely to cross\nthis petty stage of earth and then wholly expire. Such momentous\nendowments and exposures imply a corresponding arena and career.\nAfter the trial comes the sentence; and that would be as if a\npalace were built, a prince born, trained, crowned, solely that he\nmight occupy the throne five minutes! The consecrating, royalizing\nidea of duty cannot be less than the core of eternal life.\nConscience is the sensitive corridor along which the mutual\nwhispers of a divine communion pass and repass. A moral law and a\nfree will\n\n17 Crombie, Natural Theology, Essay IV.: The Arguments for\nImmortality. Bretschneider, Die Religiose Glaubenslehre, sect.\n20-21.\n\n\nare the root by which we grow out of God, and the stem by which we\nare grafted into him.\n\nFourthly, all probable surmisings in favor of a future life, or\nany other moral doctrine, are based on that primal postulate\nwhich, by virtue of our rational and ethical constitution, we are\nauthorized and bound to accept as a commencing axiom, namely, that\nthe scheme of creation is as a whole the best possible one,\nimpelled and controlled by wisdom and benignity. Whatever, then,\nis an inherent part of the plan of nature cannot be erroneous nor\nmalignant, a mistake nor a curse. Essentially and in the finality,\nevery fundamental portion and element of it must be good and\nperfect. So far as science and philosophy have penetrated, they\nconfirm by facts this a priori principle, telling us that there is\nno pure and uncompensated evil in the universe. Now, death is a\nregular ingredient in the mingled world, an ordered step in the\nplan of life. If death be absolute, is it not an evil? What can\nthe everlasting deprivation of all good be called but an immense\nevil to its subject? Such a doom would be without possible solace,\nstanding alone in steep contradiction to the whole parallel moral\nuniverse. Then might man utter the most moving and melancholy\nparadox ever expressed in human speech:\n\n\"What good came to my mind I did deplore, Because it perish must,\nand not live evermore.\"\n\nFifthly, the soul, if not outwardly arrested by some hostile\nagent, seems capable of endless progress without ever exhausting\neither its own capacity or the perfections of infinitude.18 There\nare before it unlimited truth, beauty, power, nobleness, to be\ncontemplated, mastered, acquired. With indefatigable alacrity,\ninsatiable faculty and desire, it responds to the infinite call.\nThe obvious inference is that its destiny is unending advancement.\nAnnihilation would be a sequel absurdly incongruous with the\nfacts. True, the body decays, and all manifested energy fails; but\nthat is the fault of the mechanism, not of the spirit. Were we to\nlive many thousands of years, as Martineau suggests, no one\nsupposes new souls, but only new organizations, would be needed.\nAnd what period can we imagine to terminate the unimpeded spirit's\nabilities to learn, to enjoy, to expand? Kant's famous\ndemonstration of man's eternal life on the grounds of practical\nreason is similar. The related ideas of absolute virtue and a\nmoral being necessarily imply the infinite progress of the latter\ntowards the former. That progress is impossible except on\ncondition of the continued existence of the same being. Therefore\nthe soul is immortal.19\n\nSixthly, our whole life here is a steady series of growing\npreparations for a continued and ascending life hereafter. All the\nspiritual powers we develop are so much athletic training, all the\nideal treasures we accumulate are so many preliminary attainments,\nfor a future life. They have this appearance and superscription.\nMan alone foreknows his own death and expects a succeeding\nexistence; and that foresight is given to prepare him. There are\nwondrous impulses in us, constitutional convictions prescient of\nfuturity, like those prevising instincts in birds leading them to\ntake preparatory flights before their actual migration.\n\n18 Addison, Spectator, Nos. 3 and 210.\n\n19 Jacob, Beweis fur die Unsterblichkeit der Seele aus dem\nBegriffe der Pflicht.\n\n\nEternity is the stuff of which our love, flying forward, builds\nits nest in the eaves of the universe. If we saw wings growing\nout upon a young creature, we should be forced to conclude that\nhe was intended some time to fly. It is so with man. By exploring\nthoughts, disciplinary sacrifices, supernal prayers, holy toils\nof disinterestedness, he fledges his soul's pinions, lays up\ntreasures in heaven, and at last migrates to the attracting clime.\n\n\"Here sits he, shaping wings to fly: His heart forebodes a\nmystery; He names the name eternity.\"\n\nSeventhly, in the degree these preparations are made in obedience\nto obscure instincts and the developing laws of experience, they\nare accompanied by significant premonitions, lucid signals of the\nfuture state looked to, assuring witnesses of its reality. The\nmore one lives for immortality, the more immortal things he\nassimilates into his spiritual substance, the more confirming\ntokens of a deathless inheritance his faith finds. He becomes\nconscious of his own eternity.20 When hallowed imagination weighs\nanchor and spreads sail to coast the dim shores of the other\nworld, it hears cheerful voices of welcome from the headlands and\ndiscerns beacons burning in the port. When in earnest communion\nwith our inmost selves, solemn meditations of God, mysterious\ninfluences shed from unseen spheres, fall on our souls, and many a\n\"strange thought, transcending our wonted themes, into glory\npeeps.\" A vague, constraining sense of invisible beings, by whom\nwe are engirt, fills us. We blindly feel that our rank and\ndestination are with them. Lift but one thin veil, we think, and\nthe occult Universe of Spirit would break to vision with cloudy\ncrowds of angels. Thousand \"hints chance dropped from nature's\nsphere,\" pregnant with friendly tidings, reassure us. \"Strange,\"\nsaid a gifted metaphysician once, \"that the barrel organ, man,\nshould terminate every tune with the strain of immortality!\" Not\nstrange, but divinely natural. It is the tentative prelude to the\nthrilling music of our eternal bliss written in the score of\ndestiny. When at night we gaze far out into immensity, along the\nshining vistas of God's abode, and are almost crushed by the\noverwhelming prospects that sweep upon our vision, do not some\npre monitions of our own unfathomed greatness also stir within us?\nYes: \"the sense of Existence, the ideas of Right and Duty, awful\nintuitions of God and immortality, these, the grand facts and\nsubstance of the spirit, are independent and indestructible. The\nbases of the Moral Law, they shall stand in every tittle, although\nthe stars should pass away. For their relations and root are in\nthat which upholds the stars, even with worlds unseen from the\nfinite, whose majestic and everlasting arrangements shall burst\nupon us as the heavens do through the night when the light of this\ngarish life gives place to the solemn splendors of eternity.\"\n\nEighthly, the belief in a life beyond death has virtually\nprevailed everywhere and always. And the argument from universal\nconsent, as it is termed, has ever been esteemed one of the\nforemost testimonies, if not indeed the most convincing testimony,\nto the truth of the doctrine. Unless the belief can be shown to be\nartificial or sinful, it must seem conclusive. Its innocence is\nself evident, and its naturalness is evidenced by its\nuniversality.\n\n20 Theodore Parker, Sermon of Immortal Life.\n\n\nThe rudest and the most polished, the simplest and the most\nlearned, unite in the expectation, and cling to it through\nevery thing. It is like the ruling presentiment implanted in\nthose insects that are to undergo metamorphosis. This believing\ninstinct, so deeply seated in our consciousness, natural,\ninnocent, universal, whence came it, and why was it given?\nThere is but one fair answer. God and nature deceive not.\n\nNinthly, the conscious, practical faith of civilized nations, to\nday, in a future life, unquestionably, in a majority of\nindividuals, rests directly on the basis of authority, trust in a\nforeign announcement. There are two forms of this authority. The\nauthority of revelation is most prominent and extensive. God has\nrevealed the truth from heaven. It has been exemplified by a\nmiraculous resurrection. It is written in an infallible book, and\nsealed with authenticating credentials of super natural purport.\nIt is therefore to be accepted with implicit trust. Secondly, with\nsome, the authority of great minds, renowned for scientific\nknowledge and speculative acumen, goes far. Thousands of such men,\nranking among the highest names of history, have positively\naffirmed the immortality of the soul as a reliable truth. For\ninstance, Goethe says, on occasion of the death of Wieland, \"The\ndestruction of such high powers is something which can never, and\nunder no circumstances, even come into question.\" Such a dogmatic\nexpression of conviction resting on bare philosophical grounds,\nfrom a mind so equipped, so acute, and so free, has great weight,\nand must influence a modest student who hesitates in confessed\nincompetence.21 The argument is justly powerful when but humanly\nconsidered, and when divinely derived, of course, it absolutely\nforecloses all doubts.\n\nTenthly, there is another life, because a belief in it is\nnecessary to order this world, necessary as a comfort and an\ninspiration to man now. A good old author writes, \"the very nerves\nand sinews of religion is hope of immortality.\" The conviction\nthat there is a retributive life hereafter is the moral cement of\nthe social fabric. Take away this truth, and one great motive of\npatriots, martyrs, thinkers, saints, is gone. Take it away, and to\nall low minded men selfishness becomes the law, earthly enjoyment\nthe only good, suffering and death the only evil. Life then is to\nbe supremely coveted and never put in risk for any stake. Self\nindulgence is to be secured at any hazard, little matter by what\nmeans. Abandon all hope of a life to come, and \"from that instant\nthere is nothing serious in mortality.\" In order that the world\nshould be governable, ethical, happy, virtuous, magnanimous, is it\npossible that it should be necessary for the world to believe in\nan untruth?\n\n\"So, thou hast immortality in mind?\nHast grounds that will not let thee doubt it?\nThe strongest ground herein I find:\nThat we could never do without it!\"\n\nFinally, the climax of these argumentations is capped by that\ngrand closing consideration which we may entitle the force of\ncongruity, the convincing results of a confluence of harmonious\nreasons. The hypothesis of immortality accords with the cardinal\nfacts of observation, meets all points of the case, and\nsatisfactorily answers every requirement.\n\n21 Lewis, Influence of Authority in Matters of Opinion.\n\n\nIt is the solution of the problem, as the fact of Neptune explained\nthe perturbations of the adjacent planets. Nothing ever gravitates\ntowards nothing; and it must be an unseen orb that so draws our\nyearning souls. If it be not so, then what terrible contradictions\nstagger us, and what a chilling doom awaits us! Oh, what mocking\nirony then runs through the loftiest promises and hopes of the\nworld! Just as the wise and good have learned to live, they\ndisappear amidst the unfeeling waves of oblivion, like snow flakes\nin the ocean. \"The super earthly desires of man are then created\nin him only, like swallowed diamonds, to cut slowly through his\nmaterial shell\" and destroy him.\n\nThe denial of a future life introduces discord, grief, and despair\nin every direction, and, by making each step of advanced culture\nthe ascent to a wider survey of tantalizing glory and experienced\nsorrow, as well as the preparation for a greater fall and a sadder\nloss, turns faithful affection and heroic thought into \"blind\nfuries slinging flame.\" Unless immortality be true, man appears a\ndark riddle, not made for that of which he is made capable and\ndesirous: every thing is begun, nothing ended; the facts of the\npresent scene are unintelligible; the plainest analogies are\nviolated; the delicately rising scale of existence is broken off\nabrupt; our best reasonings concerning the character and designs\nof God, also concerning the implications of our own being and\nexperience, are futile; and the soul's proud faculties tell\nglorious lies as thick as stars. Such, at least, is the usual way\nof thinking.\n\nHowever formidable a front may be presented by the spectral array\nof doubts and difficulties, seeming impediments to faith in\nimmortality, the faithful servant of God, equipped with\nphilosophical culture and a saintly life, will fearlessly advance\nupon them, scatter them right and left, and win victorious access\nto the prize. So the mariner sometimes, off Sicilian shores, sees\na wondrous island ahead, apparently stopping his way with its\ncypress and cedar groves, glittering towers, vine wreathed\nbalconies, and marble stairs sloping to the water's edge. He sails\nstraight forward, and, severing the pillared porticos and green\ngardens of Fata Morgana, glides far on over a glassy sea smiling\nin the undeceptive sun.\n\nCHAPTER IV.\n\nTHEORIES OF THE SOUL'S DESTINATION.\n\nBEFORE examining, in their multifarious detail, the special\nthoughts and fancies respecting a future life prevalent in\ndifferent nations and times, it may be well to take a sort of\nbird's eye view of those general theories of the destination of\nthe soul under which all the individual varieties of opinion may\nbe classified. Vast and incongruous as is the heterogeneous mass\nof notions brought forth by the history of this province of the\nworld's belief, the whole may be systematized, discriminated, and\nreduced to a few comprehensive heads. Such an architectural\ngrouping or outlining of the chief schemes of thought on this\nsubject will yield several advantages.\n\nShowing how the different views arose from natural speculations on\nthe correlated phenomena of the outward world and facts of human\nexperience, it affords an indispensable help towards a\nphilosophical analysis and explanation of the popular faith as to\nthe destiny of man after death, in all the immense diversity of\nits contents. An orderly arrangement and exposition of these\ncardinal theories also form an epitome holding a bewildering\nmultitude of particulars in its lucid and separating grasp,\nchanging the fruits of learned investigation from a cumbersome\nburden on the memory to a small number of connected formularies in\nthe reason. These theories serve as a row of mirrors hung in a\nline of historic perspective, reflecting every relevant shape and\nhue of meditation and faith humanity has known, from the ideal\nvisions of the Athenian sage to the instinctive superstitions of\nthe Fejee savage. When we have adequately defined these theories,\nof which there are seven, traced their origin, comprehended their\nsignificance and bearings, and dissected their supporting\npretensions, then the whole field of our theme lies in light\nbefore us; and, however grotesque or mysterious, simple or subtle,\nmay be the modes of thinking and feeling in relation to the life\nbeyond death revealed in our subsequent researches, we shall know\nat once where to refer them and how to explain them. The precise\nobject, therefore, of the present chapter is to set forth the\ncomprehensive theories devised to solve the problem, What becomes\nof man when he dies?\n\nBut a little while man flourishes here in the bosom of visible\nnature. Soon he disappears from our scrutiny, missed in all the\nplaces that knew him. Whither has he gone? What fate has befallen\nhim? It is an awful question. In comparison with its concentrated\ninterest, all other affairs are childish and momentary. Whenever\nthat solemn question is asked, earth, time, and the heart, natural\ntransformations, stars, fancy, and the brooding intellect, are\nfull of vague oracles. Let us see what intelligible answers can be\nconstructed from their responses.\n\nThe first theory which we shall consider propounds itself in one\nterrible word, annihilation. Logically this is the earliest,\nhistorically the latest, view. The healthy consciousness, the\neager fancy, the controlling sentiment, the crude thought, all the\nuncurbed instinctive conclusions of primitive human nature, point\nforcibly to a continued existence for the soul, in some way, when\nthe body shall have perished. And so history shows us in all the\nsavage nations a vivid belief in a future life. But to the\nphilosophical observer, who has by dint of speculation freed\nhimself from the constraining tendencies of desire, faith,\nimagination, and authority, the thought that man totally ceases\nwith the destruction of his visible organism must occur as the\nfirst and simplest settlement of the question.1 The totality of\nmanifested life has absolutely disappeared: why not conclude that\nthe totality of real life has actually lost its existence and is\nno more? That is the natural inference, unless by some means the\ncontrary can be proved. Accordingly, among all civilized people,\nevery age has had its skeptics, metaphysical disputants who have\nmournfully or scoffingly denied the separate survival of the soul.\nThis is a necessity in the inevitable sequences of observation and\ntheory; because, when the skeptic, suppressing or escaping his\nbiassed wishes, the trammels of traditional opinion, and the\nspontaneous convictions prophetic of his own uninterrupted being,\nfirst looks over the wide scene of human life and death, and\nreflectingly asks, What is the sequel of this strange, eventful\nhistory? obviously the conclusion suggested by the immediate\nphenomena is that of entire dissolution and blank oblivion. This\nresult is avoided by calling in the aid of deeper philosophical\nconsiderations and of inspiring moral truths. But some will not\ncall in that aid; and the whole superficial appearance of the\ncase regarding that alone, as they then will is fatal to our\nimperial hopes. The primordial clay claims its own from the\ndisanimated frame; and the vanished life, like the flame of an\noutburnt taper, has ceased to be. Men are like bubbles or foam\nflakes on the world's streaming surface: glittering in a momentary\nray, they break and are gone, and only the dark flood remains\nstill flowing forward. They are like tones of music, commencing\nand ending with the unpurposed breath that makes them. Nature is a\nvast congeries of mechanical substances pervaded by mindless\nforces of vitality. Consciousness is a production which results\nfrom the fermentation and elaboration of unconscious materials;\nand after a time it deceases, its conditions crumbling into their\ninorganic grounds again.\n\nFrom the abyss of silence and dust intelligent creatures break\nforth, shine, and sink back, like meteor flashes in a cloud. The\ngenerations of sentient being, like the annual growths of\nvegetation, by spontaneity of dynamic development, spring from\ndead matter, flourish through their destined cycle, and relapse\ninto dead matter. The bosom of nature is, therefore, at once the\nwondrous womb and the magnificent mausoleum of man. Fate, like an\niron skeleton seated at the summit of the world on a throne of\nfresh growing grass and mouldering skulls, presides over all, and\nannihilation is the universal doom of individual life. Such is the\natheistic naturalist's creed. However indefensible or shocking it\nis, it repeatedly appears in the annals of speculation; and any\nsynopsis of the possible conclusions in which the inquiry into\nman's destiny may rest that should omit this, would be grossly\nimperfect.\n\nThis scheme of disbelief is met by insuperable objections. It\nexcludes some essential elements of the case, confines itself to a\nwholly empirical view; and consequently the relentless solution it\nannounces applies only to a mutilated problem. To assert the\ncessation of the soul because its physical manifestations through\nthe body have ceased, is certainly to affirm without just warrant.\nIt would appear impossible for volition and intelligence to\n\n1 Lalande, Dictionnaire des Athees Anciens et Modernes.\n\n\noriginate save from a free parent mind. Numerous cogent evidences\nof design seem to prove the existence of a God by whose will all\nthings are ordered according to a plan. Many powerful impressions\nand arguments, instinctive, critical, or moral, combine to teach\nthat in the wreck of matter the spirit emerges, deathless, from\nthe closing waves of decay. The confirmation of that truth becomes\nirresistible when we see how reason and conscience, with delighted\navidity, seize upon its adaptedness alike to the brightest\nfeatures and the darkest defects of the present life, whose\nimperfect symmetries and segments are harmoniously filled out by\nthe adjusting complement of a future state.2\n\nThe next representation of the fate of the soul disposes of it by\nre absorption into the essence from which it emanated. There is an\neternal fountain of unmade life, from which all individual,\ntransient lives flow, and into which they return. This conception\narose in the outset from a superficial analogy which must have\nobtruded itself upon primitive notice and speculation; for man is\nled to his first metaphysical inquiries by a feeling contemplation\nof outward phenomena. Now, in the material world, when individual\nforms perish, each sensible component relapses into its original\nelement and becomes an undistinguishable portion of it. Our\nexhaled breath goes into the general air and is united with it:\nthe dust of our decaying frames becomes part of the ground and\nvegetation. So, it is strongly suggested, the lives of things, the\nsouls of men, when they disappear from us, are remerged in the\nnative spirit whence they came. The essential longing of every\npart for union with its whole is revealed and vocal throughout all\nnature. Water is sullen in stillness, murmurs in motion, and never\nceases its gloom or its complaining until it sleeps in the sea.\nLike spray on the rock, the stranding generations strike the\nsepulchre and are dissipated into universal vapor. As lightnings\nslink back into the charged bosom of the thunder cloud, as eager\nwaves, spent, subside in the deep, as furious gusts die away in\nthe great atmosphere, so the gleaming ranks of genius, the\nstruggling masses of toil, the pompous hosts of war, fade and\ndissolve away into the peaceful bosom of the all engulfing SOUL.\nThis simplest, earliest philosophy of mankind has had most\nextensive and permanent prevalence.3 For immemorial centuries it\nhas possessed the mind of the countless millions of India. Baur\nthinks the Egyptian identification of each deceased person with\nOsiris and the burial of him under that name, were meant to denote\nthe reception of the individual human life into the universal\nnature life. The doctrine has been implicitly held wherever\npantheism has found a votary, from Anaximander, to whom finite\ncreatures were \"disintegrations or decompositions from the\nInfinite,\" to Alexander Pope, affirming that\n\n\"All are but parts of one stupendous whole, Whose body nature is,\nand God the soul.\"\n\nThe first reasoners, who gave such an ineradicable direction and\ntinge to the thinking of after ages, were furthermore driven to\nthe supposition of a final absorption, from the\n\n2 Drossbach, Die Harmonie der Ergebnisse der Naturforschung mit\nden Forderungen des Menschlichen Gemuthes.\n\n3 Blount, Anima Mundi; or, The Opinions of the Ancients concerning\nMan's Soul after this Life.\n\n\nimpossibility, in that initiatory stage of thought, of grasping\nany other theory which would apparently meet the case so well or\nbe more satisfactory. They, of course, had not yet arrived at the\nidea that God is a personal Spirit whose nature is revealed in the\nconstitutive characteristics of the human soul, and who carries on\nhis works from eternity to eternity without monotonous repetition\nor wearisome stagnancy, but with perpetual variety in never\nceasingmotion. Whatever commences must also terminate, they said,\nforgetting that number begins with one but has no end. They did\nnot conceive of the universe of being as an eternal line, making\nimmortality desirable for its endless novelty, but imaged it to\nthemselves as a circle, making an everlasting individual\nconsciousness dreadful for its intolerable sameness, an immense\nround of existence, phenomena, and experience, going forth and\nreturning into itself, over and over, forever and ever. To escape\nso repulsive a contemplation, they made death break the fencing\nintegument of consciousness and empty all weary personalities into\nthe absolute abyss of being.\n\nAgain: the extreme difficulty of apprehending the truth of a\nCreator literally infinite, and of a limitless creation, would\nlead to the same result in another way. Without doubt, it seemed\nto the naive thinkers of antiquity, that if hosts of new beings\nwere continually coming into life and increasing the number of the\ninhabitants of the future state, the fountain from which they\nproceeded would some time be exhausted, or the universe grow\nplethoric with population. There would be no more substance below\nor no more room above. The easiest method of surmounting this\nproblem would be by the hypothesis that all spirits come out of a\ngreat World Spirit, and, having run their mortal careers, are\nabsorbed into it again. Many especially the deepest Oriental\ndreamers have also been brought to solace themselves with this\nconclusion by a course of reasoning based on the exposures, and\nassumed inevitable sufferings, of all finite being. They argue\nthat every existence below the absolute God, because it is set\naround with limitations, is necessarily obnoxious to all sorts of\nmiseries. Its pleasures are only \"honey drops scarce tasted in a\nsea of gall.\" This conviction, with its accompanying sentiment,\nruns through the sacred books of the East, is the root and heart\nof their theology, the dogma that makes the cruelest penances\npleasant if a renewed existence may thus be avoided. The sentiment\nis not alien to human longing and surmise, as witnesses the night\nthought of the English poet who, world sated, and sadly yearning,\ncries through the starry gloom to God,\n\n\"When shall my soul her incarnation quit, And, readopted to thy\nblest embrace, Obtain her apotheosis in thee?\"\n\nHaving stated and traced the doctrine of absorption, it remains to\ninvestigate the justice of its grounds. The doctrine starts from a\npremise partly true and ends in a conclusion partly false. We\nemanate from the creative power of God, and are sustained by the\nin flowing presence of his life, but are not discerptions from his\nown being, any more than beams of light are distinct substances\nshot out and shorn off from the sun to be afterwards drawn back\nand assimilated into the parent orb. We are destined to a\nharmonious life in his unifying love, but not to be fused and lost\nas insentient parts of his total consciousness. We are products of\n\nGod's will, not component atoms of his soul. Souls are to be in\nGod as stars are in the firmament, not as lumps of salt are in a\nsolvent. This view is confirmed by various arguments.\n\nIn the first place, it is supported by the philosophical\ndistinction between emanation and creation. The conception of\ncreation gives us a personal God who wills to certain ends; that\nof emanation reduces the Supreme Being to a ghastly array of laws,\nrevolving abysses, galvanic forces, nebular star dust, dead ideas,\nand vital fluids. According to the latter supposition, finite\nexistences flow from the Infinite as consequences from a\nprinciple, or streams from a fountain; according to the former,\nthey proceed as effects from a cause, or thoughts from a mind.\nThat is pantheistic, fatal, and involves absorption by a logical\nnecessity; this is creative, free, and does not presuppose any\ncircling return. Material things are thoughts which God\ntransiently contemplates and dismisses; spiritual creatures are\nthoughts which he permanently expresses in concrete immortality.\nThe soul is a thought; the body is the word in which it is\nclothed.\n\nSecondly, the analogy which first leads to belief in absorption is\nfalsely interpreted. Taken on its own ground, rightly appreciated,\nit legitimates a different conclusion.\n\nA grain of sand thrown into the bosom of Sahara does not lose its\nindividual existence. Distinct drops are not annihilated as to\ntheir simple atoms of water, though sunk in the midst of the sea.\nThe final particles or monads of air or granite are not\ndissolvingly blended into continuity of unindividualized\natmosphere or rock when united with their elemental masses, but\nare thrust unapproachably apart by molecular repulsion. Now, a\nmind, being, as we conceive, no composite, but an ultimate unity,\ncannot be crushed or melted from its integral persistence of\npersonality. Though plunged into the centre of a surrounding\nwilderness or ocean of minds, it must still retain itself unlost\nin the multitude. Therefore, if we admit the existence of an\ninclusive mundane Soul, it by no means follows that lesser souls\nreceived into it are deprived of their individuality. It is \"one\nnot otherwise than as the sea is one, by a similarity and\ncontiguity of parts, being composed of an innumerable host of\ndistinct spirits, as that is of aqueous particles; and as the\nrivers continually discharge into the sea, so the vehicular\npeople, upon the disruption of their vehicles, discharge and\nincorporate into that ocean of spirits making the mundane Soul.\"4\n\nThirdly, every consideration furnished by the doctrine of final\ncauses as applied to existing creatures makes us ask, What use is\nthere in calling forth souls merely that they may be taken back\nagain? To justify their creation, the fulfilment of some educative\naim, and then the lasting fruition of it, appear necessary. Why\nelse should a soul be drawn from out the unformed vastness, and\nhave its being struck into bounds, and be forced to pass through\nsuch appalling ordeals of good and evil, pleasure and agony? An\nindividual of any kind is as important as its race; for it\ncontains in possibility all that its type does. And the purposes\nof things, so far as we can discern them, the nature of our\nspiritual constitution, the meaning of our circumstances and\nprobation, the resulting tendencies of our experience, all seem to\nprophesy, not the destruction, but the perfection and\nperpetuation, of individual being.\n\n4 Tucker, Light of Nature, Part II. chap. xxii.\n\n\nFourthly, the same inference is yielded by applying a similar\nconsideration to the Creator. Allowing him consciousness and\nintentions, as we must, what object could he have either in\nexerting his creative power or in sending out portions of himself\nin new individuals, save the production of so many immortal\npersonalities of will, knowledge, and love, to advance towards the\nperfection of holiness, wisdom, and blessedness, filling his\nmansions with his children? By thus multiplying his own image he\nadds to the number of happy creatures who are to be bound together\nin bands of glory, mutually receiving and returning his affection,\nand swells the tide of conscious bliss which fills and rolls\nforever through his eternal universe.\n\nNor, finally, is it necessary to expect personal oblivion in God\nin order to escape from evil and win exuberant happiness. Those\nends are as well secured by the fruition of God's love in us as by\nthe drowning of our consciousness in his plenitude of delight.\nPrecisely herein consists the fundamental distinction of the\nChristian from the Brahmanic doctrine of human destiny. The\nChristian hopes to dwell in blissful union with God's will, not to\nbe annihilatingly sunk in his essence. To borrow an illustration\nfrom Scotus Erigena,5 as the air when thoroughly illumined by\nsunshine still keeps its aerial nature and does not become\nsunshine, or as iron all red in the flame still keeps its metallic\nsubstance and does not turn to fire itself, so a soul fully\npossessed and moved by God does not in consequence lose its own\nsentient and intelligent being. It is still a bounded entity,\nthough recipient of boundless divinity. Thus evil ceases, each\npersonality is preserved and intensely glorified, and, at the same\ntime, God is all in all. The totality of perfected, enraptured,\nimmortalized humanity in heaven may be described in this manner,\nadopting the masterly expression of Coleridge:\n\n\"And as one body seems the aggregate Of atoms numberless, each\norganized, So, by a strange and dim similitude, Infinite myriads\nof self conscious minds In one containing Spirit live, who fills\nWith absolute ubiquity of thought All his involved monads, that\nyet seem Each to pursue its own self centring end.\"\n\nA third mode of answering the question of human destiny is by the\nconception of a general resurrection. Souls, as fast as they leave\nthe body, are gathered in some intermediate state, a starless\ngrave world, a ghostly limbo. When the present cycle of things is\ncompleted, when the clock of time runs down and its lifeless\nweight falls in the socket, and \"Death's empty helmet yawns grimly\nover the funeral hatchment of the world,\" the gates of this long\nbarred receptacle of the deceased will be struck open, and its\npale prisoners, in accumulated hosts, issue forth, and enter on\nthe immortal inheritance reserved for them. In the sable land of\nHades all departed generations are bivouacking in one vast army.\nOn the resurrection morning, striking their shadowy tents, they\nwill scale the walls of the abyss, and, reinvested with their\nbodies, either plant their banners on the summits of the earth in\npermanent encampment, or storm the battlements of the sky and\ncolonize heaven with flesh and blood.\n\n5 Philosophy and Doctrines of Erigena, Universalist Quarterly\nReview, vol. vii. p. 100.\n\n\nAll advocates of the doctrine of psychopannychism, or the sleep\nof souls from death till the last day, in addition to the general\nbody of orthodox Christians, have been supporters of this\nconclusion.6\n\nThree explanations are possible of the origination of this belief.\nFirst, a man musing over the affecting panorama of the seasons as\nit rolls through the year, budding life alternating with deadly\ndesolation, spring still bringing back the freshness of leaves,\nflowers, and carolling birds, as if raising them from an annual\ninterment in winter's cold grave, and then thinking of the destiny\nof his own race, how many generations have ripened and decayed,\nhow many human crops have been harvested from the cradle and\nplanted in the tomb, might naturally  especially if he had any\nthing of the poet's associating and creative mind say to himself,\nAre we altogether perishable dust, or are we seed sown for higher\nfields, seed lying dormant now, but at last to sprout into swift\nimmortality when God shall make a new sunshine and dew\nomnipotently penetrate the dry mould where we tarry? No matter how\npartial the analogy, how forced the process, how false the result,\nsuch imagery would sooner or later occur; and, having occurred, it\nis no more strange that it should get literal acceptance than it\nis that many other popular figments should have secured the firm\nestablishment they have.\n\nSecondly, a mourner just bereaved of one in whom his whole love\nwas garnered, distracted with grief, his faculties unbalanced, his\nsoul a chaos, is of sorrow and fantasy all compact; and he solaces\nhimself with the ideal embodiment of his dreams, half seeing what\nhe thinks, half believing what he wishes. His desires pass through\nunconscious volition into supposed facts. Before the miraculous\npower of his grief wielded imagination the world is fluent, and\nfate runs in the moulds he conceives. The adored form on which\ncorruption now banquets, he sees again, animated, beaming, clasped\nin his arms. He cries, It cannot be that those holy days are\nforever ended, that I shall never more realize the blissful dream\nin which we trod the sunny world together! Oh, it must be that\nsome time God will give me back again that beloved one! the\nsepulchre closed so fast shall be unsealed, the dead be restored,\nand all be as it was before! The conception thus once born out of\nthe delirium of busy thought, anguished love, and regnant\nimagination, may in various ways win a fixed footing in faith.\n\nThirdly, the notion which we are now contemplating is one link in\na chain of thought which, in the course of time and the range of\nspeculation, the theorizing mind could not fail to forge. The\nconcatenation of reflections is this. Death is the separation of\nsoul and body. That separation is repulsive, an evil. Therefore it\nwas not intended by the Infinite Goodness, but was introduced by a\nfoe, and is a foreign, marring element. Finally God will vanquish\nhis antagonist, and banish from the creation all his thwarting\ninterferences with the primitive perfection of harmony and\nhappiness. Accordingly, the souls which Satan has caused to be\nseparated from their bodies are reserved apart until the fulness\nof time, when there shall be a universal resurrection and\nrestoration. So far as reason is competent to pronounce on this\nview considered as a sequel to the disembodying doom of man, it is\nan arbitrary piece of fancy. Philosophy ignores it. Science gives\nno hint of it.\n\n6 Baumgarten, Beantwortung des Sendschreibens Heyns vom Schlafe\nder abgeschiedenen Seelen. Chalmers. Astronomical Discourses, iv.\n\n\nIt sprang from unwarranted metaphors, perverted, exaggerated,\nbased on analogies not parallel. So far as it assumes to rest\non revelation it will be examined in another place.\n\nFourthly, after the notion of a great, epochal resurrection, as a\nreply to the inquiry, What is to become of the soul? a dogma is\nnext encountered which we shall style that of a local and\nirrevocable conveyance. The disembodied spirit is conveyed to some\nfixed region,7 a penal or a blissful abode, where it is to tarry\nunalterably. This idea of the banishment or admission of souls,\naccording to their deserts, or according to an elective grace,\ninto an anchored location called hell or heaven, a retributive or\nrewarding residence for eternity, we shall pass by with few words,\nbecause it recurs for fuller examination in other chapters. In the\nfirst place, the whole picture is a gross simile drawn from\noccurrences of this outward world and unjustifiably applied to the\nfortunes of the mind in the invisible sphere of the future. The\nfigment of a judicial transportation of the soul from one place or\nplanet to another, as if by a Charon's boat, is a clattering and\nrepulsive conceit, inadmissible by one who apprehends the\nnoiseless continuity of God's self executing laws. It is a jarring\nmechanical clash thrust amidst the smooth evolution of spiritual\ndestinies. It compares with the facts as the supposition that the\nplanets are swung around the sun by material chains compares with\nthe law of gravitation.\n\nMoral compensation is no better secured by imprisonment or freedom\nin separate localities than it is, in a common environment, by the\nfatal working of their interior forces of character, and their\nrelations with all things else. Moreover, these antagonist\nkingdoms, Tartarean and Elysian, defined as the everlasting\nhabitations of departed souls, have been successively driven, as\ndissipated visions, from their assumed latitudes and longitudes,\none after another, by progressive discovery, until now the\nintelligent mind knows of no assignable spot for them. Since we\nare not acquainted with any fixed locations to which the soul is\nto be carried, to abide there forever in appointed joy or woe, and\nsince there is no scientific necessity nor moral use for the\nsupposition of such places and of the transferrence of the\ndeparted to them, we cannot hesitate to reject the associated\nbelief as a deluding mistake. The truth, as we conceive it, is not\nthat different souls are borne by constabulary apparitions to two\nimmured dwellings, manacled and hurried into Tophet or saluted and\nushered into Paradise, but that all souls spontaneously pass into\none immense empire, drawn therein by their appropriate\nattractions, to assimilate a strictly discriminative experience.\nBut, as to this, let each thinker form his own conclusion.\n\nThe fifth view of the destination of the soul may be called the\ntheory of recurrence.8 When man dies, his surviving spirit is\nimmediately born again in a new body. Thus the souls, assigned in\na limited number to each world, continually return, each one still\nforgetful of his previous lives. This seems to be the specific\ncreed of the Druses, who affirm that all souls were created at\nonce, and that the number is unchanged, while they are born over\nand over. A Druse boy, dreadfully alarmed by the discharge of a\ngun, on being asked by a Christian the cause of his fear, replied,\n\"I was born murdered;\" that is, the soul of a man who had been\nshot\n\n7 Lange, Das Land der Herrlichkelt.\n\n8 Schmidius, Diss. de Multiplici Animarum Reditu in Corpora.\n\n\npassed into his body at the moment of his birth.9 The young\nmountaineer would seem, from the sudden violence with which he was\nsnatched out of his old house, to have dragged a trail of\nconnecting consciousness over into his new one. As a general rule,\nin distinction from such an exception, memory is like one of those\npasses which the conductors of railroad trains give their\npassengers, \"good for this trip only.\" The notion of an endless\nsuccession of lives on the familiar stage of this dear old world,\ncommencing each with clean wiped tablets, possesses for some minds\na fathomless allurement; but others wish for no return pass on\ntheir ticket to futurity, preferring an adventurous abandonment\n\"to fresh fields and pastures new,\" in unknown immensity, to a\nrenewed excursion through landscapes already traversed and\nexperiences drained before.\n\nFourier's doctrine of immortality belongs here. According to his\nidea, the Great Soul of this globe is a composite being,\ncomprising about ten billions of individual souls. Their\nconnection with this planet will be for nearly eighty thousand\nyears. Then the whole sum of them will swarm to some higher\nplanet, Fourier himself, perhaps, being the old gray gander that\nwill head the flock, pilot king of their flight. Each man is to\nenjoy about four hundred births on earth, poetic justice leading\nhim successively through all the grades and phases of fortune,\nfrom cripplehood and beggary to paragonship and the throne. The\ninvisible residence of spirits and the visible are both on this\nglobe, the former in the Great Soul, the latter in bodies. In the\nother life the soul becomes a sharer in the woes of the Great\nSoul, which is as unhappy as seven eighths of the incarnated\nsouls; for its fate is a compound of the fates of the human souls\ntaken collectively. Coming into this outward scene at birth, we\nlose anew all memory of past existence, but wake up again in the\nGreat Soul with a perfect recollection of all our previous lives\nboth in the invisible and in the visible world. These alternating\npassages between the two states will continue until the final\nswooping of total humanity from this exhausted planet in search of\na better abode.10\n\nThe idea of the recurrence of souls is the simplest means of\nmeeting a difficulty stated thus by the ingenious Abraham Tucker\nin his \"Light of Nature Pursued.\" \"The numbers of souls daily\npouring in from hence upon the next world seem to require a\nproportionable drain from it somewhere or other; for else the\ncountry might be overstocked.\" The objection urged against such a\nbelief from the fact that we do not remember having lived before\nis rebutted by the assertion that\n\n\"Some draught of Lethe doth await, As old mythologies relate, The\nslipping through from state to state.\"\n\nThe theory associated with this Lethean draught is confirmed by\nits responsive correspondence with many unutterable experiences,\nvividly felt or darkly recognised, in our deepest bosom. It seems\nas if occasionally the poppied drug or other oblivious antidote\n\n9 Churchill, Mount Lebanon, vol. ii. ch. 12.\n\n10 Fourier, Passions of the Human Soul, (Morell's translation,)\nIntroduction, vol. i. pp. 14-18; also pp. 233-236.\n\n\nadministered by nature had been so much diluted that reason, only\nhalf baffled, struggles to decipher the dim runes and vestiges of\na foregone state;\n\n\"And ever something is or seems That touches us with mystic\ngleams, Like glimpses of forgotten dreams.\"\n\nIn those excursive reveries, fed by hope and winged with dream,\nwhich scour the glens and scale the peaks of the land of thought,\nthis nook of hypothesis must some time be discovered. And, brought\nto light, it has much to interest and to please; but it is too\ndestitute of tangible proof to be successfully maintained against\nassault.11\n\nThere is another faith as to the fate of souls, best stated,\nperhaps, in the phrase perpetual migration. The soul, by\nsuccessive deaths and births, traverses the universe, an\neverlasting traveller through the rounds of being and the worlds\nof space, a transient sojourner briefly inhabiting each.12 All\nreality is finding its way up towards the attracting, retreating\nGodhead. Minerals tend to vegetables, these to animals, these to\nmen. Blind but yearning matter aspires to spirit, intelligent\nspirits to divinity. In every grain of dust sleep an army of\nfuture generations. As every thing below man gropes upward towards\nhis conscious estate, \"the trees being imperfect men, that seem to\nbemoan their imprisonment, rooted in the ground,\" so man himself\nshall climb the illimitable ascent of creation, every step a star.\nThe animal organism is a higher kind of vegetable, whose\ndevelopment begins with those substances with the production of\nwhich the life of an ordinary vegetable ends.13 The fact, too,\nthat embryonic man passes through ascending stages\nundistinguishable from those of lower creatures, is full of\nmeaning. Does it not betoken a preserved epitome of the long\nhistory of slowly rising existence? What unplummeted abysses of\ntime and distance intervene from the primary rock to the Victoria\nRegia! and again from the first crawling spine to the fetterless\nmind of a Schelling! But, snail pace by snail pace, those\nimmeasurable separations have been bridged over; and so every\nthing that now lies at the dark basis of dust shall finally reach\nthe transplendent apex of intellect. The objection of theological\nprejudice to this developing succession of ascents that it is\ndegrading is an unhealthy mistake. Whether we have risen or fallen\nto our present rank, the actual rank itself is not altered. And in\none respect it is better for man to be an advanced oyster than a\ndegraded god; for in the former case the path is upwards, in the\nlatter it is downwards. \"We wake,\" observes a profound thinker,\n\"and find ourselves on a stair: there are other stairs below us,\nwhich we seem to have ascended; there are stairs above us, many a\none, which go upward and out of sight.\" Such was plainly the trust\nof the author of the following exhortation:\n\n\"Be worthy of death; and so learn to live That every incarnation\nof thy soul In other realms, and worlds, and firmaments Shall be\nmore pure and high.\"\n\n11 Bertram, Prufung der Meinung von der Praexistenz der\nmenechlichen Seele.\n\n12 Nurnberger, Still Leben, oder uber die Unsterblichkeit der\nSeele.\n\n13 Liebig, Animal Chemistry, ch. ix.\n\n\nBulwer likewise has said, \"Eternity may be but an endless series\nof those emigrations which men call deaths, abandonments of home\nafter home, ever to fairer scenes and loftier heights. Age after\nage, the spirit that glorious nomad may shift its tent, fated not\nto rest in the dull Elysium of the heathen, but carrying with it\nevermore its twin elements, activity and desire.\"\n\nBut there is something unsatisfactory, even sad and dreary, in\nthis prospect of incessant migration. Must not the pilgrim pine\nand tire for a goal of rest? Exhausted with wanderings, sated with\nexperiments, will he not pray for the exempted lot of a contented\nfruition in repose? One must weary at last of being even so\nsublime a vagabond as he whose nightly hostelries are stars. And,\nbesides, how will sundered friends and lovers, between whom, on\nthe road, races and worlds interpose, ever over take each other,\nand be conjoined to journey hand in hand again or build a bower\ntogether by the way? A poet of finest mould, in happiest mood,\nonce saw a leaf drop from a tree which overhung a mirroring\nstream. The reflection of the leaf in the watery sky hollow far\nbelow seemed to rise from beneath as swiftly as the object fell\nfrom above; and the two, encountering at the surface, became one.\nThen he sang, touching with his strain the very marrow of deepest\nhuman desire,\n\n\"How speeds, from in the river's thought,\nThe spirit of the leaf that falls,\nIts heaven in that calm bosom wrought,\nAs mine among yon crimson walls!\nFrom the dry bough it spins, to greet\nIts shadow on the placid river:\nSo might I my companions meet,\nNor roam the countless worlds forever!\"\n\nMoreover, some elements of this theory are too grotesque, are the\ntoo rash inferences from a too crude induction, to win sober\ncredit to any extent. It is easy to devise and carry out in\nconsistent descriptive details the hypothesis that the soul has\nrisen, through ten thousand transitions, from the condition of red\nearth or a tadpole to its present rank, and that,\n\n\"As it once crawl'd upon the sod, It yet shall grow to be a god;\"\n\nbut what scientific evidence is there to confirm and establish the\nsupposition as a truth? Why, if it be so, to borrow the humorous\nsatire of good old Henry More,\n\n\"Then it will follow that cold stopping curd And harden'd moldy\ncheese, when they have rid Due circuits through the heart, at last\nshall speed Of life and sense, look thorough our thin eyes And\nview the close wherein the cow did feed Whence they were milk'd:\ngrosse pie crust will grow wise, And pickled cucumbers sans doubt\nphilosophize!\"\n\nThe form of this general outline stalks totteringly on stilts of\nfancy, and sprawls headlong with a logical crash at the first\ncritical probe.\n\nThe final theory of the destination of souls, now left to be set\nforth, may be designated by the word transition.14 It affirms that\nat death they pass from the separate material worlds, which are\ntheir initiating nurseries, into the common spiritual world, which\nis everywhere present. Thus the visible peoples the invisible,\neach person in his turn consciously rising from this world's\nrudimentary darkness to that world's universal light. Dwelling\nhere, free souls, housed in frames of dissoluble clay,\n\n\"We hold a middle rank 'twixt heaven and earth,\nOn the last verge of mortal being stand,\nlose to the realm where angels have their birth,\nJust on the boundaries of the spirit land.\"\n\nWhy has God \"broken up the solid material of the universe into\ninnumerable little globes, and swung each of them in the centre of\nan impassable solitude of space,\" unless it be to train up in the\nvarious spheres separate households for final union as a single\ndiversified family in the boundless spiritual world? 15 The\nsurmise is not unreasonable, but recommends itself strongly,\nthat,\n\n\"If yonder stars be fill'd with forms of breathing clay like ours,\nPerchance the space which spreads between is for a spirit's\npowers.\"\n\nThe soul encased in flesh is thereby confined to one home, its\nnatal nest; but, liberated at death, it wanders at will,\nunobstructed, through every world and cerulean deep; and\nwheresoever it is, there, in proportion to its own capacity and\nfitness, is heaven and is God.16 All those world spots so thickly\nscattered through the Yggdrasill of universal space are but the\nbrief sheltering places where embryo intelligences clip their\nshells, and whence, as soon as fledged through the discipline of\nearthly teaching and essays, the broodlet souls take wing into the\nmighty airs of immensity, and thus enter on their eternal\nemancipation. This conjecture is, of all which have been offered\nyet, perhaps the completest, least perplexed, best recommended by\nits harmony with our knowledge and our hope. And so one might wish\nto rest in it with humble trust.\n\nThe final destiny of an immortal soul, after its transition into\nthe other world, must be either unending progress towards infinite\nperfection, or the reaching of its perihelion at last and then\nrevolving in uninterrupted fruition. In the former case, pursuing\nan infinite aim, with each degree of its attainment the flying\ngoal still recedes. In the latter case, it will in due season\ntouch its bound and there be satisfied,\n\n\"When weak Time shall be pour'd out Into Eternity, and circular\njoys Dance in an endless round.\"\n\n14 Taylor, Physical Theory of Another Life, ch. xii.\n\n15 Taylor, Saturday Evening, pp. 95-111.\n\n16 Taylor, Physical Theory of Another Life, ch. xvii.\n\n\nThis result seems the more probable of the two; for the assertion\nof countless decillions of personalities all progressing beyond\nevery conceivable limit, on, still on, forever, is incredible. If\nendless linear progress were the destiny of each being, the whole\nuniverse would at last become a line! And though it is true that\nthe idea of an ever novel chase attracts and refreshes the\nimagination, while the idea of a monotonous revolution repels and\nwearies it, this is simply because we judge after our poor earthly\nexperience and its flagging analogies. It will not be so if that\nrevolution is the vivid realization of all our being's\npossibilities.\n\nAnnihilation, absorption, resurrection, conveyance, recurrence,\nmigration, transition,  these seven answers to the question of our\nfate, and of its relation to the course of nature, are thinkable\nin words. We may choose from among them, but can construct no real\neighth. First, there is a constant succession of growth and decay.\nSecond, there is a perpetual flow and ebb of personal emanation\nand impersonal resumption. Third, there is a continual return of\nthe same persistent entities. Fourth, all matter may be sublimated\nto spirit, and souls alone remain to occupy boundless space.\nFifth, the power of death may cease, all the astronomic orbs be\npopulated and enjoyed, each by one generation of everlasting\ninhabitants, the present order continuing in each earth until\nenough have lived to fill it, then all of them, physically\nrestored, dwelling on it, with no more births or deaths. Sixth, if\nmatter be not transmutable to soul, when that peculiar reality\nfrom which souls are developed is exhausted, and the last\ngeneration of incarnated beings have risen from the flesh, the\nmaterial creation may, in addition to the inter stellar region, be\neternally appropriated by the spirit races to their own free range\nand use, through adaptations of faculty unknown to us now; else it\nmay vanish as a phantasmal spectacle. Or, finally, souls may be\nabsolutely created out of nothing by the omnipotence of God, and\nthe universe may be infinite: then the process may proceed\nforever.\n\nBut men's beliefs are formed rather by the modes of thought they\nhave learned to adopt than by any proofs they have tested; not by\nargumentation about a subject, but by the way of looking at it.\nThe moralist regards all creation as the work of a personal God, a\ntheatre of moral ends, a just Providence watching over the parts,\nand the conscious immortality of the actors an inevitable\naccompaniment. The physicist contemplates the universe as\nconstituted of atoms of attraction and repulsion, which subsist in\nperfect mobility through space, but are concreted in the molecular\nmasses of the planets. The suns are vast engines for the\ndistribution of heat or motion, the equivalent of all kinds of\nforce. This, in its diffusion, causes innumerable circulations and\ncombinations of the original atoms. Organic growth, life, is the\nfruition of a force derived from the sun. Decay, death, is the\nrendering up of that force in its equivalents. Thus, the universe\nis a composite unity of force, a solidarity of ultimate unities\nwhich are indestructible, though in constant circulation of new\ngroupings and journeys. To the religious faith of the moralist,\nman is an eternal person, reaping what he has sowed. To the\nspeculative intellect of the physicist, man is an atomic force, to\nbe liberated into the ethereal medium until again harnessed in\nsome organism. In both cases he is immortal: but in that, as a\nfree citizen of the ideal world; in this, as a flying particle of\nthe dynamic immensity.\n\nPART SECOND.\n\n\nETHNIC THOUGHTS CONCERNING A FUTURE LIFE.\n\nCHAPTER I.\n\nBARBARIAN NOTIONS OF A FUTURE LIFE.\n\nPROCEEDING now to give an account of the fancies and opinions in\nregard to a future life which have been prevalent, in different\nages, in various nations of the earth, it will be best to begin by\npresenting, in a rapid series, some sketches of the conceits of\nthose uncivilized tribes who did not so far as our knowledge\nreaches possess a doctrine sufficiently distinctive and full, or\nimportant enough in its historical relations, to warrant a\ndetailed treatment in separate chapters.\n\nWe will glance first at the negroes. According to all accounts,\nwhile there are, among the numerous tribes, diversities and\ndegrees of superstition, there is yet, throughout the native pagan\npopulation of Africa, a marked general agreement of belief in the\nsurvival of the soul, in spectres, divination, and witchcraft; and\nthere is a general similarity of funeral usages. Early travellers\ntell us that the Bushmen conceived the soul to be immortal, and as\nimpalpable as a shadow, and that they were much afraid of the\nreturn of deceased spirits to haunt them. They were accustomed to\npray to their departed countrymen not to molest them, but to stay\naway in quiet. They also employed exorcisers to lay these ill\nomened ghosts. Meiners relates of some inhabitants of the Guinea\ncoast that their fear of ghosts and their childish credulity\nreached such a pitch that they threw their dead into the ocean, in\nthe expectation of thus drowning soul and body together.\n\nSuperstitions as gross and lawless still have full sway. Wilson,\nwhose travels and residence there for twenty years have enabled\nhim to furnish the most reliable information, says, in his recent\nwork,1 \"A native African would as soon doubt his present as his\nfuture state of being.\" Every dream, every stray suggestion of the\nmind, is interpreted, with unquestioning credence, as a visit from\nthe dead, a whisper from a departed soul. If a man wakes up with\npains in his bones or muscles, it is because his spirit has\nwandered abroad in the night and been flogged by some other\nspirit. On certain occasions the whole community start up at\nmidnight, with clubs, torches, and hideous yells, to drive the\nevil spirits out of the village. They seem to believe that the\nsouls of dead men take rank with good or bad spirits, as they have\nthemselves been good or bad in this life. They bury with the\ndeceased clothing, ornaments, utensils,\n\n1 Western Africa, ch. xii.\n\n\nand statedly convey food to the grave for the use of the\nrevisiting spirit. With the body of king Weir of the Cavalla\ntowns, who was buried in December of 1854, in presence of several\nmissionaries, was interred a quantity of rice, palm oil, beef, and\nrum: it was supposed the ghost of the sable monarch would come\nback and consume these articles. The African tribes, where their\nnotions have not been modified by Christian or by Mohammedan\nteachings, appear to have no definite idea of a heaven or of a\nhell; but future reward or punishment is considered under the\ngeneral conception of an association, in the disembodied state,\nwith the benignant or with the demoniacal powers.\n\nThe New Zealanders imagine that the souls of the dead go to a\nplace beneath the earth, called Reinga. The path to this region is\na precipice close to the sea shore at the North Cape. It is said\nthat the natives who live in the neighborhood can at night hear\nsounds caused by the passing of spirits thither through the air.\nAfter a great battle they are thus warned of the event long before\nthe news can arrive by natural means.2 It is a common superstition\nwith them that the left eye of every chief, after his death,\nbecomes a star. The Pleiades are seven New Zealand chiefs,\nbrothers, who were slain together in battle and are now fixed in\nthe sky, one eye of each, in the shape of a star, being the only\npart of them that is visible. It has been observed that the\nmythological doctrine of the glittering host of heaven being an\nassemblage of the departed heroes of earth never received a more\ningenious version.3 Certainly it is a magnificent piece of insular\negotism. It is noticeable here that, in the Norse mythology, Thor,\nhaving slain Thiasse, the giant genius of winter, throws his eyes\nup to heaven, and they become stars. Shungie, a celebrated New\nZealand king, said he had on one occasion eaten the left eye of a\ngreat chief whom he had killed in battle, for the purpose of thus\nincreasing the glory of his own eye when it should be transferred\nto the firmament. Sometimes, apparently, it was thought that there\nwas a separate immortality for each of the eyes of the dead, the\nleft ascending to heaven as a star, the right, in the form of a\nspirit, taking flight for Reinga.\n\nThe custom, common in Africa and in New Zealand, of slaying the\nslaves or the wives of an important person at his death and\nburying them with him, prevails also among the inhabitants of the\nFeejee Islands. A chief's wives are sometimes strangled on these\noccasions, sometimes buried alive. One cried to her brother, \"I\nwish to die, that I may accompany my husband to the land where he\nhas gone. Love me, and make haste to strangle me, that I may\novertake him.\"4 Departing souls go to the tribunal of Ndengei, who\neither receives them into bliss, or sends them back, as ghosts, to\nhaunt the scenes of their former existence, or distributes them as\nfood to devils, or imprisons them for a period and then dooms them\nto annihilation. The Feejees are also very much afraid of Samiulo,\nruler of a subterranean world, who sits at the brink of a huge\nfiery cavern, into which he hurls the souls he dislikes. In the\nroad to Ndengei stands an enormous giant, armed with an axe, who\ntries to maim and murder the passing souls. A powerful chief,\nwhose gun was interred with him, loaded it, and, when\n\n2 Shortland, Traditions of the New Zealanders, ch. vii.\n\n3 Library of Ent. Knowl.: The New Zealanders, pp. 223-237.\n\n4 Wilkes, Narrative of the U. S. Exploring Expedition, vol. iii.\nch. 3.\n\n\nhe came near the giant, shot at him, and ran by while the monster\nwas dodging the bullet.\n\nThe people of the Sandwich Islands held a confused medley of\nnotions as to another life. In different persons among them were\nfound, in regard to this subject, superstitious terror, blank\nindifference, positive unbelief. The current fancy was that the\nsouls of the chiefs were led, by a god whose name denotes the\n\"eyeball of the sun,\" to a life in the heavens, while plebeian\nsouls went down to Akea, a lugubrious underground abode. Some\nthought spirits were destroyed in this realm of darkness; others,\nthat they were eaten by a stronger race of spirits there; others\nstill, that they survived there, subsisting upon lizards and\nbutterflies.5 What a piteous life they must have led here whose\nimaginations could only soar to a future so unattractive as this!\n\nThe Kamtschadales send all the dead alike to a subterranean\nelysium, where they shall find again their wives, clothes, tools,\nhuts, and where they shall fish and hunt. All is there as here,\nexcept that there are no fire spouting mountains, no bogs,\nstreams, inundations, and impassable snows; and neither hunting\nnor fishing is ever pursued in vain there. This lower paradise is\nbut a beautified Kamtschatka, freed from discommoding hardships\nand cleansed of tormenting Cossacks and Russians. They have no\nhell for the rectification of the present wrong relations of\nvirtue and misery, vice and happiness. The only distinction they\nappear to make is that all who in Kamtschatka are poor, and have\nfew small and weak dogs, shall there be rich and be furnished with\nstrong and fat dogs. The power of imagination is very remarkable\nin this raw people, bringing the future life so near, and\nawakening such an impatient longing for it and for their former\ncompanions that they often, the sooner to secure a habitation\nthere, anticipate the natural time of their death by suicide.6\n\nThe Esquimaux betray the influence of their clime and habits, in\nthe formation of their ideas of the life to come, as plainly as\nthe Kamtschadales do. The employments and enjoyments of their\nfuture state are rude and earthy. They say the soul descends\nthrough successive places of habitation, the first of which is\nfull of pains and horrors. The good, that is, the courageous and\nskilful, those who have endured severe hardships and mastered many\nseals, passing through this first residence, find that the other\nmansions regularly improve. They finally reach an abode of perfect\nsatisfaction, far beneath the storms of the sea, where the sun is\nnever obscured by night, and where reindeer wander in great droves\nbeside waters that never congeal, and wherein the whale, the\nwalrus, and the best sea fowls always abound.7 Hell is deep, but\nheaven deeper still. Hell, they think, is among the roots, rocks,\nmonsters, and cold of the frozen or vexed and suffering waters;\nbut\n\n\"Beneath tempestuous seas and fields of ice\nTheir creed has placed a lowlier paradise.\"\n\nThe Greenlanders, too, located their elysium beneath the abysses\nof the ocean, where the good Spirit Torngarsuk held his reign in a\nhappy and eternal summer. The wizards, who pretended to visit this\nregion at will, described the disembodied souls as pallid, and, if\none\n\n5 Jarves, Hist. of the Sandwich Islands, p. 42.\n\n6 Christoph Meiners, Vermischte Philosophische Schriften, 169-173.\n\n7 Prichard, Physical Hist. of Mankind, vol. i. ch. 2.\n\n\nsought to seize them, unsubstantial.8 Some of these people,\nhowever, fixed the site of paradise in the sky, and regarded the\naurora borealis as the playing of happy souls. So Coleridge\npictures the Laplander\n\n\"Marking the streamy banners of the North, And thinking he those\nspirits soon should join Who there, in floating robes of rosy\nlight, Dance sportively.\"\n\nBut others believed this state of restlessness in the clouds was\nthe fate only of the worthless, who were there pinched with hunger\nand plied with torments. All agreed in looking for another state\nof existence, where, under diverse circumstances, happiness and\nmisery should be awarded, in some degree at least, according to\ndesert.9\n\nThe Peruvians taught that the reprobate were sentenced to a hell\nsituated in the centre of the earth, where they must endure\ncenturies of toil and anguish. Their paradise was away in the blue\ndome of heaven. There the spirits of the worthy would lead a life\nof tranquil luxury. At the death of a Peruvian noble his wives and\nservants frequently were slain, to go with him and wait on him in\nthat happy region.10 Many authors, including Prescott, yielding\ntoo easy credence to the very questionable assertions of the\nSpanish chroniclers, have attributed to the Peruvians a belief in\nthe resurrection of the body. Various travellers and writers have\nalso predicated this belief of savage nations in Central Africa,\nof certain South Sea islanders, and of several native tribes in\nNorth America. In all these cases the supposition is probably\nerroneous, as we think for the following reasons. In the first\nplace, the idea of a resurrection of the body is either a late\nconception of the associative imagination, or else a doctrine\nconnected with a speculative theory of recurring epochs in the\ndestiny of the world; and it is in both instances too subtle and\nelaborate for an uncultivated people. Secondly, in none of the\ncases referred to has any reliable evidence been given of the\nactual existence of the belief in question. It has merely been\ninferred, by persons to whose minds the doctrine was previously\nfamiliar, from phenomena by no means necessarily implying it. For\nexample, a recent author ascribes to the Feejees the belief that\nthere will be a resurrection of the body just as it was at the\ntime of death. The only datum on which he founds this astounding\nassertion is that they often seem to prefer to die in the full\nvigor of manhood rather than in decrepit old age! 11 Thirdly, we\nknow that the observation and statements of the Spanish monks and\nhistorians, in regard to the religion of the pagans of South\nAmerica, were of the most imperfect and reckless character. They\nperpetrated gross frauds, such as planting in the face of high\nprecipices white stones in the shape of the cross, and then\npointing to them in proof of their assertion that, before the\nChristians came, the Devil had here parodied the rites and\ndoctrines of the gospel. 12 They said the Mexican goddess, wife of\nthe sun, was Eve, or\n\n8 Egede, Greenland, ch. 18.\n\n9 Dr. Karl Andree, Gronland.\n\n10 Prescott, Conquest of Peru, vol. i. ch. 3.\n\n11 Erskine, Islands of the Western Pacific, p. 248.\n\n12 Schoolcraft, History, &c. of the Indian Tribes, part v. p. 93.\n\n\nthe Virgin Mary, and Quetzalcoatl was St. Thomas! 13 Such\naffirmers are to be cautiously followed. Finally, it is a quite\nsignificant fact that while some point to the pains which the\nPeruvians took in embalming their dead as a proof that they looked\nfor a resurrection of the body, Acosta expressly says that they\ndid not believe in the resurrection, and that this unbelief was\nthe cause of their embalming.14 Garcilaso de la Vega, in his\n\"Royal Commentaries of the Peruvian Incas,\" says that when he\nasked some Peruvians why they took so great care to preserve in\nthe cemeteries of the dead the nails and hair which had been cut\noff, they replied that in the day of resurrection the dead would\ncome forth with whatever of their bodies was left, and there would\nbe too great a press of business in that day for them to afford\ntime to go hunting round after their hair and nails.15 The fancy\nof a Christian is too plain here. If the answer were really made\nby the natives, they were playing a joke on their credulous\nquestioner, or seeking to please him with distorted echoes of his\nown faith.\n\nThe conceits as to a future life entertained by the Mexicans\nvaried considerably from those of their neighbors of Peru. Souls\nneither good nor bad, or whose virtues and vices balanced each\nother, were to enter a medium state of idleness and empty content.\nThe wicked, or those dying in any of certain enumerated modes of\ndeath, went to Mictlan, a dismal hell within the earth. The souls\nof those struck by lightning, or drowned, or dying by any of a\ngiven list of diseases, also the souls of children, were\ntransferred to a remote elysium, Tlalocan. There was a place in\nthe chief temple where, it was supposed, once a year the spirits\nof all the children who had been sacrificed to Tlaloc invisibly\ncame and assisted in the ceremonies. The ultimate heaven was\nreserved for warriors who bravely fell in battle, for women who\ndied in labor, for those offered up in the temples of the gods,\nand for a few others. These passed immediately to the house of the\nsun, their chief god, whom they accompanied for a term of years,\nwith songs, dances, and revelry, in his circuit around the sky.\nThen, animating the forms of birds of gay plumage, they lived as\nbeautiful songsters among the flowers, now on earth, now in\nheaven, at their pleasure.16 It was the Mexican custom to dress\nthe dead man in the garb appropriated to the guardian deity of his\ncraft or condition in life. They gave him a jug of water. They\nplaced with him slips of paper to serve as passports through\nguarded gates and perilous defiles in the other world. They made a\nfire of his clothes and utensils, to warm the shivering soul while\ntraversing a region of cold winds beyond the grave.17 The\nfollowing sentence occurs in a poem composed by one of the old\nAztec monarchs: \"Illustrious nobles, loyal subjects, let us aspire\nto that heaven where all is eternal and corruption cannot come.\nThe horrors of the tomb are but the cradle of the sun, and the\nshadows of death are brilliant lights for the stars.\" 18\n\n13 Squier, Serpent Symbol in America, p. 13.\n\n14 Acosta, Natural and Moral History of the Indies, book v. ch. 7.\n\n15 Book ii. ch. 7.\n\n16 Clavigero, History of Mexico, book vi. sect. 1.\n\n17 Prescott, Conquest of Mexico, vol. i. ch. 6.\n\n18 Ibid. sect. 39.\n\n\nAmidst the mass of whimsical conceptions entering into the faith\nof the widely spread tribes of North America, we find a ruling\nagreement in the cardinal features of their thought concerning a\nfuture state of existence. In common with nearly all barbarous\nnations, they felt great fear of apparitions. The Sioux were in\nthe habit of addressing the deceased at his burial, and imploring\nhim to stay in his own place and not come to distress them. Their\nfuneral customs, too, from one extremity of the continent to the\nother, were very much alike. Those who have reported their\nopinions to us, from the earliest Jesuit missionaries to the\nlatest investigators of their mental characteristics, concur in\nascribing to them a deep trust in a life to come, a cheerful view\nof its conditions, and a remarkable freedom from the dread of\ndying. Charlevoix says, \"The best established opinion among the\nnatives is the immortality of the soul.\" On the basis of an\naccount written by William Penn, Pope composed the famous passage\nin his \"Essay on Man:\"\n\nLo! the poor Indian, whose untutor'd mind\nSees God in clouds and hears him in the wind.\nHis soul proud Science never taught to stray\nFar as the solar walk or milky way:\nYet simple nature to his faith hath given,\nBehind the cloud topp'd hill, an humbler heaven,\nSome safer world in depth of woods embraced,\nOr happier island in the watery waste.\nTo be, contents his natural desire:\nHe asks no angel's wing, no seraph's fire,\nBut thinks, admitted to that equal sky,\nHis faithful dog shall bear him company.\"\n\nTheir rude instinctive belief in the soul's survival, and surmises\nas to its destiny, are implied in their funeral rites, which, as\nalready stated, were, with some exceptions, strikingly similar\neven in the remotest tribes.19\n\nIn the bark coffin, with a dead Indian the Onondagas buried a\nkettle of provisions, a pair of moccasins, a piece of deer skin\nand sinews of the deer to sew patches on the moccasins, which it\nwas supposed the deceased would wear out on his journey. They also\nfurnished him with a bow and arrows, a tomahawk and knife, to\nprocure game with to live on while pursuing his way to the land of\nspirits, the blissful regions of Ha wah ne u.20 Several Indian\nnations, instead of burying the food, suspended it above the\ngrave, and renewed it from time to time. Some writers have\nexplained this custom by the hypothesis of an Indian belief in two\nsouls, one of which departed to the realm of the dead, while the\nother tarried by the mound until the body was decayed, or until it\nhad itself found a chance to be born in a new body.21 The\nsupposition seems forced and extremely doubtful. The truth\nprobably lies in a simpler explanation, which will be offered\nfurther on.\n\n19 Baumgarten, Geschichte der Volker von America, xiii. haupts.:\nvom Tod, Vergribniss, und Trauer.\n\n20 Clarke, Onondaga, vol. l. p. 51.\n\n21 Muller, Geschichte der Amerikanischen Urreligionen, sect.\n66.\n\n\nThe Winnebagoes located paradise above, and called the milky way\nthe \"Road of the Dead.\" 22 It was so white with the crowds of\njourneying ghosts! But almost all, like the Ojibways, imagined\ntheir elysium to lie far in the West. The soul, freed from the\nbody, follows a wide beaten path westward, and enters a country\nabounding with all that an Indian covets. On the borders of this\nblessed land, in a long glade, he finds his relatives, for many\ngenerations back, gathered to welcome him.23 The Chippewas, and\nseveral other important tribes, always kindled fires on the fresh\ngraves of their dead, and kept them burning four successive\nnights, to light the wandering souls on their way.24 An Indian\nmyth represents the ghosts coming back from Ponemah, the land of\nthe Hereafter, and singing this song to the miraculous Hiawatha:\n\n\"Do not lay such heavy burdens\nOn the graves of those you bury,\nNot such weight of furs and wampum,\nNot such weight of pots and kettles;\nFor the spirits faint beneath them.\nOnly give them food to carry,\nOnly give them fire to light them.\nFour days is the spirit's journey\nTo the land of ghosts and shadows,\nFour its lonely night encampments.\nTherefore, when the dead are buried,\nLet a fire, as night approaches,\nFour times on the grave be kindled,\nThat the soul upon its journey\nMay not grope about in darkness.\" 25\n\nThe subject of a future state seems to have been by far the most\nprominent one in the Indian imagination. They relate many\ntraditions of persons who have entered it, and returned, and given\ndescriptions of it. A young brave, having lost his betrothed,\ndetermined to follow her to the land of souls. Far South, beyond\nthe region of ice and snows, he came to a lodge standing before\nthe entrance to wide blue plains. Leaving his body there, he\nembarked in a white stone canoe to cross a lake. He saw the souls\nof wicked Indians sinking in the lake; but the good gained an\nelysian shore, where all was warmth, beauty, ease, and eternal\nyouth, and where the air was food. The Master of Breath sent him\nback, but promised that he might at death return and stay. 26 The\nWyandots tell of a dwarf, Tcha ka bech, who climbed a tree which\ngrew higher as often as he blew on it. At last he reached heaven,\nand discovered it to be an excellent place. He descended the tree,\nbuilding wigwams at intervals in the branches. He then returned\nwith his sister and nephew, resting each night in one of the\nwigwams.\n\n22 Schoolcraft, History, &c. of the Indian Tribes, part iv. p.\n240.\n\n23 Ibid. part ii. p. 135.\n\n24 Ibid. part v. p. 64; part iv. p. 55.\n\n25 Longfellow, Song of Hiawatha, xix.: The Ghosts.\n\n26 Schoolcraft, Indian in his Wigwam. p 79.\n\n\nHe set his traps up there to catch animals. Rising in the night to\ngo and examine his traps, he saw one all on fire, and, upon\napproaching it, found that he had caught the sun!\n\nWhere the Indian is found believing in a Devil and a hell, it is\nthe result of his intercourse with Europeans. These elements of\nhorror were foreign to his original religion.27 There are in some\nquarters faint traces of a single purgatorial or retributive\nconception. It is a representation of paradise as an island, the\nordeal consisting in the passage of the dark river or lake which\nsurrounds it. The worthy cross with entire facility, the unworthy\nonly after tedious struggles. Some say the latter are drowned;\nothers, that they sink up to their chins in the water, where they\npass eternity in vain desires to attain the alluring land on which\nthey gaze.28 Even this notion may be a modification consequent\nupon European influence. At all events, it is subordinate in force\nand only occasional in occurrence. For the most part, in the\nIndian faith mercy swallows up the other attributes of the Great\nSpirit. The Indian dies without fear, looking for no punishments,\nonly for rewards.29 He regards the Master of Breath not as a holy\njudge, but as a kind father. He welcomes death as opening the door\nto a sweet land. Ever charmingly on his closing eyes dawns the\nprospect of the aboriginal elysium, a gorgeous region of soft\nshades, gliding streams, verdant groves waving in gentle airs,\nwarbling birds, herds of stately deer and buffalo browsing on\nlevel plains. It is the earth in noiseless and solemn\nmetamorphosis.30\n\nWe shall conclude this chapter by endeavoring to explain the\npurport and origin of the principal ceremonies and notions which\nhave now been set forth pertaining to the disembodied state. The\nfirst source of these particulars is to be sought, not in any\nclear mental perceptions, or conscious dogmatic belief, but in the\nnatural workings of affection, memory, and sentiment. Among almost\nevery people, from the Chinese to the Araucanians, from the\nEthiopians to the Dacotahs, rites of honor have been paid to the\ndead, various offerings have been placed at their graves. The\nVedas enjoin the offering of a cake to the ghosts of ancestors\nback to the third generation. The Greeks were wont to pour wine,\noil, milk, and blood into canals made in the graves of their dead.\nThe early Christians adopted these \"Feasts of the Dead\" as\nAugustine and Tertullian call them from the heathen, and\nCelebrated them over the graves of their martyrs and of their\nother deceased friends. Such customs as these among savages like\nthe Shillooks or the Choctaws are usually supposed to imply the\nbelief that the souls of the deceased remain about the places of\nsepulture and physically partake of the nourishment thus\nfurnished. The interpretation is farther fetched than need be, and\nis unlikely; or, at all events, if it be true in some cases, it is\nnot the whole truth. In the first place, these people see that the\nfood and drink remain untouched, the weapons and utensils are left\nunused in the grave. Secondly, there are often certain features in\nthe barbaric ritual obviously metaphorical, incapable of literal\nacceptance. For instance, the Winnebagoes light a small fire on\nthe grave of a deceased warrior to light him on his journey to the\nland of souls,\n\n27 Loskiel, Hist. Mission of United Brethren to N. A. Indians,\npart i. ch. 3.\n\n28 Schoolcraft, Indian in his Wigwam, p. 202. History, &c. of\nIndian Tribes, part iv. p. 173.\n\n29 Schoolcraft, History of Indian Tribes, part ii. p. 68.\n\n30 Ibid. pp. 403, 404.\n\n\nalthough they say that journey extends to a distance of four days\nand nights and is wholly invisible. They light and tend that\nwatch fire as a memorial of their departed companion and a rude\nexpression of their own emotions; as an unconscious emblem of\ntheir own struggling faith, not as a beacon to the straying ghost.\nAgain, the Indian mother, losing a nursing infant, spurts some of\nher milk into the fire, that the little spirit may not want for\nnutriment on its solitary path.31 Plato approvingly quotes\nHesiod's statement that the souls of noble men become guardian\ndemons coursing the air, messengers and agents of the gods in the\nworld. Therefore, he adds, \"we should reverence their tombs and\nestablish solemn rites and offerings there;\" though by his very\nstatement these places were not the dwellings or haunts of the\nfreely circuiting spirits.32\n\nNot by an intellectual doctrine, but by an instinctive\nassociation, when not resisted and corrected, we connect the souls\nof the dead in our thoughts with the burial places of their forms.\nThe New Zealand priests pretend by their spells to bring wandering\nsouls within the enclosed graveyards.33 These sepulchral folds are\nfull of ghosts. A sentiment native to the human breast draws\npilgrims to the tombs of Shakspeare and Washington, and, if not\nrestrained and guided by cultivated thought, would lead them to\nmake offerings there. Until the death of Louis XV., the kings of\nFrance lay in state and were served as in life for forty days\nafter they died.34 It would be ridiculous to attempt to wring any\ndoctrinal significance from these customs. The same sentiment\nwhich, in one form, among the Alfoer inhabitants of the Arru\nIslands, when a man dies, leads his relatives to assemble and\ndestroy whatever he has left, which, in another form, causes the\nPapist to offer burning candles, wreaths, and crosses, and to\nrecite prayers, before the shrines of the dead saints, which, in\nstill another form, moved Albert Durer to place all the pretty\nplaythings of his child in the coffin and bury them with it, this\nsame sentiment, in its undefined spontaneous workings, impelled\nthe Peruvian to embalm his dead, the Blackfoot to inter his\nbrave's hunting equipments with him, and the Cherokee squaw to\nhang fresh food above the totem on her husband's grave post. What\nshould we think if we could foresee that, a thousand years hence,\nwhen the present doctrines and customs of France and America are\nforgotten, some antiquary, seeking the reason why the mourners in\nPere la Chaise and Mount Auburn laid clusters of flowers on the\ngraves of their lamented ones, should deliberately conclude that\nit was believed the souls remained in the bodies in the tomb and\nenjoyed the perfume of the flowers? An American traveller, writing\nfrom Vienna on All Saints' Day, in 1855, describes the avenues of\nthe great cemetery filled with people hanging festoons of flowers\non the tombstones, and placing burning candles of wax on the\ngraves, and kneeling in devotion; it being their childish belief,\nhe says, that their prayers on this day have efficacy to release\ntheir deceased relatives from purgatory, and that the dim taper\nflickering on the sod lights the unbound soul to its heavenly\nhome. Of course these rites are not literal expressions of literal\nbeliefs, but are\n\n31 Andree, North America, p. 246.\n\n32 Republic, book v. ch. 15.\n\n33 R. Taylor, New Zealand, ch. 7.\n\n34 Meiners, Kritische Geschichte der Religionen, buch iii. absch.\n1.\n\n\nsymbols of ideas, emblems of sentiments, figurative and inadequate\nshadows of a theological doctrine, although, as is well known,\nthere is, among the most ignorant persons, scarcely any\ndeliberately apprehended distinction between image and entity,\nmaterial representation and spiritual verity.\n\nIf a member of the Oneida tribe died when they were away from\nhome, they buried him with great solemnity, setting a mark over\nthe grave; and whenever they passed that way afterwards they\nvisited the spot, singing a mournful song and casting stones upon\nit, thus giving symbolic expression to their feelings. It would be\nabsurd to suppose this song an incantation to secure the repose of\nthe buried brave, and the stones thrown to prevent his rising; yet\nit would not be more incredible or more remote from the facts than\nmany a commonly current interpretation of barbarian usages. An\namusing instance of error well enforcing the need of extreme\ncaution in drawing inferences is afforded by the example of those\nexplorers who, finding an extensive cemetery where the aborigines\nhad buried all their children apart from the adults, concluded\nthey had discovered the remains of an ancient race of pigmies! 35\n\nThe influence of unspeculative affection, memory, and sentiment\ngoes far towards accounting for the funeral ritual of the\nbarbarians. But it is not sufficient. We must call in further aid;\nand that aid we find in the arbitrary conceits, the poetic\nassociations, and the creative force of unregulated fancy and\nimagination. The poetic faculty which, supplied with materials by\nobservation and speculation, constructed the complex mythologies\nof Egypt and Greece, and which, turning on its own resources,\ncomposed the Arabian tales of the genii and the modern literature\nof pure fiction, is particularly active, fertile, and tyrannical,\nthough in a less continuous and systematic form, in the barbarian\nmind. Acting by wild fits and starts, there is no end to the\nextravagant conjectures and visions it bodies forth. Destitute of\nphilosophical definitions, totally unacquainted with critical\ndistinctions or analytic reflection, absurd notions, sober\nconvictions, dim dreams, and sharp perceptions run confusedly\ntogether in the minds of savages. There is to them no clear and\npermanent demarcation between rational thoughts and crazy fancies.\nNow, no phenomenon can strike more deeply or work more powerfully\nin human nature, stirring up the exploring activities of intellect\nand imagination, than the event of death, with its bereaving\nstroke and prophetic appeal. Accordingly, we should expect to find\namong uncultivated nations, as we actually do, a vast medley of\nfragmentary thoughts and pictures plausible, strange, lovely, or\nterrible relating to the place and fate of the disembodied soul.\nThese conceptions would naturally take their shaping and coloring,\nin some degree, from thescenery, circumstances, and experience\namidst which they were conceived and born. Sometimes these\nfigments were consciously entertained as wilful inventions,\ndistinctly contemplated as poetry. Sometimes they were\nsuperstitiously credited in all their grossness with full assent\nof soul. Sometimes all coexisted in vague bewilderment. These\nlines of separation unquestionably existed: the difficulty is to\nknow where, in given instances, to draw them. A few examples will\nserve at once to illustrate the\n\n35 Smithsonian Contributions, vol. ii. Squier's Aboriginal\nMonuments, appendix, pp. 127-131.\n\n\noperation of the principle now laid down, and to present still\nfurther specimens of the barbarian notions of a future life.\n\nSome Indian tribes made offerings to the spirits of their departed\nheroes by casting the boughs of various trees around the ash,\nsaying that the branches of this tree were eloquent with the\nghosts of their warrior sires, who came at evening in the chariot\nof cloud to fire the young to deeds of war.36 There is an Indian\nlegend of a witch who wore a mantle composed of the scalps of\nmurdered women. Taking this off, she shook it, and all the scalps\nuttered shrieks of laughter. Another describes a magician scudding\nacross a lake in a boat whose ribs were live rattlesnakes.37 An\nexercise of mind virtually identical with that which gave these\nstrokes made the Philippine Islanders say that the souls of those\nwho die struck by lightning go up the beams of the rainbow to a\nhappy place, and animated Ali to declare that the pious, on coming\nout of their sepulchres, shall find awaiting them white winged\ncamels with saddles of gold. The Ajetas suspended the bow and\narrows of a deceased Papuan above his grave, and conceived him as\nemerging from beneath every night to go a hunting.38 The fisherman\non the coast of Lapland was interred in a boat, and a flint and\ncombustibles were given him to light him along the dark cavernous\npassage he was to traverse. The Dyaks of Borneo believe that every\none whose head they can get possession of here will in the future\nstate be their servant: consequently, they make a business of\n\"head hunting,\" accumulating the ghastly visages of their victims\nin their huts.39 The Caribs have a sort of sensual paradise for\nthe \"brave and virtuous,\" where, it is promised, they shall enjoy\nthe sublimated experience of all their earthly satisfactions; but\nthe \"degenerate and cowardly\" are threatened with eternal\nbanishment beyond the mountains, where they shall be tasked and\ndriven as slaves by their enemies.40 The Hispaniolians locate\ntheir elysium in a pleasant valley abounding with guava, delicious\nfruits, cool shades, and murmuring rivulets, where they expect to\nlive again with their departed ancestors and friends.41 The\nPatagonians say the stars are their translated countrymen, and the\nmilky way is a field where the departed Patagonians hunt\nostriches. Clouds are the feathers of the ostriches they kill.42\nThe play is here seen of the same mythological imagination which,\nin Italy, pictured a writhing giant beneath Mount Vesuvius, and,\nin Greenland, looked on the Pleiades as a group of dogs\nsurrounding a white bear, and on the belt of Orion as a company of\nGreenlanders placed there because they could not find the way to\ntheir own country. Black Bird, the redoubtable chief of the O Ma\nHaws, when dying, said to his people, \"Bury me on yonder lofty\nbluff on the banks of the Missouri, where I can see the men and\nboats passing by on the river.\" 43 Accordingly, as soon as he\nceased\n\n36 Browne, Trees of America, p. 328.\n\n37 Schoolcraft, Hist. &c part i. pp. 32-34.\n\n38 Earl, The Papuans, p. 132.\n\n39 Earl, The Eastern Seas, ch. 8.\n\n40 Edwards, Hist. of the West Indies, book i. ch. 2.\n\n41 Ibid. ch. 3.\n\n42 Falkner, Patagonia, ch. 5.\n\n43 Catlin, North American Indians, vol. ii. p. 6.\n\n\nto breathe, they set him there, on his favorite steed, and heaped\nthe earth around him. This does not imply any believed doctrine,\nin our sense of the term, but is plainly a spontaneous\ntransference for the moment, by the poetic imagination, of the\nsentiments of the living man to the buried body.\n\nThe unhappy Africans who were snatched from their homes, enslaved\nand cruelly tasked in the far West India islands, pined under\ntheir fate with deadly homesickness. The intense longing moulded\ntheir plastic belief, just as the sensation from some hot bricks\nat the feet of a sleeping man shaped his dreams into a journey up\nthe side of Atna. They fancied that if they died they should\nimmediately live again in their fatherland. They committed suicide\nin great numbers. At last, when other means had failed to check\nthis epidemic of self destruction, a cunning overseer brought them\nropes and every facility for hanging, and told them to hang\nthemselves as fast as they pleased, for their master had bought a\ngreat plantation in Africa, and as soon as they got there they\nwould be set to work on it. Their helpless credulity took the\nimpression; and no more suicides occurred.44\n\nThe mutual formative influences exerted upon a people's notions\nconcerning the future state, by the imagination of their poets and\nthe peculiarities of their clime, are perhaps nowhere more\nconspicuously exhibited than in the case of the Caledonians who at\nan early period dwelt in North Britain. They had picturesque\ntraditions locating the habitation of ghosts in the air above\ntheir fog draped mountains. They promised rewards for nothing but\nvalor, and threatened punishments for nothing but cowardice; and\neven of these they speak obscurely. Nothing is said of an under\nworld. They supposed the ghosts at death floated upward naturally,\ntrue children of the mist, and dwelt forever in the air, where\nthey spent an inane existence, indulging in sorrowful memories of\nthe past, and, in unreal imitation of their mortal occupations,\nchasing boars of fog amid hills of cloud and valleys of shadow.\nThe authority for these views is Ossian, \"whose genuine strains,\"\nDr. Good observes, \"assume a higher importance as historical\nrecords than they can claim when considered as fragments of\nexquisite poetry.\"\n\n\"A dark red stream comes down from the hill. Crugal sat upon the\nbeam; he that lately fell by the hand of Swaran striving in the\nbattle of heroes. His face is like the beam of the setting moon;\nhis robes are of the clouds of the hill; his eyes are like two\ndecaying flames; dark is the wound on his breast. The stars dim\ntwinkled through his form, and his voice was like the sound of a\ndistant stream. Dim and in tears he stood, and stretched his pale\nhand over the hero. Faintly he raised his feeble voice, like the\ngale of the reedy Lego. 'My ghost, O'Connal, is on my native\nhills, but my corse is on the sands of Ullin. Thou shalt never\ntalk with Crugal nor find his lone steps on the heath. I am light\nas the blast of Cromla, and I move like the shadow of mist.\nConnal, son of Colgar, I see the dark cloud of death. It hovers\nover the plains of Lena. The sons of green Erin shall fall. Remove\nfrom the field of ghosts.' Like the darkened moon, he retired in\nthe midst of the whistling blast.\"\n\nWe recognise here several leading traits in all the early\nunspeculative faiths, the vapory form, the echoless motion, the\nmarks of former wounds, the feeble voice, the memory\n\n44 Meiners, Geschichte der Religionen, buch xiv. sect. 765.\n\n\nof the past, the mournful aspect, and the prophetic words. But the\nrhetorical imagery, the scenery, the location of the spirit world\nin the lower clouds, are stamped by emphatic climatic\npeculiarities, whose origination, easily traceable, throws light\non the growth of the whole mass of such notions everywhere.\n\nTwo general sources have now been described of the barbarian\nconceptions in relation to a future state. First, the natural\noperation of an earnest recollection of the dead; sympathy,\nregret, and reverence for them leading the thoughts and the heart\nto grope after them, to brood over the possibilities of their\nfate, and to express themselves in rites and emblems. Secondly,\nthe mythological or arbitrary creations of the imagination when it\nis set strongly at work, as it must be by the solemn phenomena\nassociated with death. But beyond these two comprehensive\nstatements there is, directly related to the matter, and worthy of\nseparate illustration, a curious action of the mind, which has\nbeen very extensively experienced and fertile of results. It is a\npeculiar example of the unconscious impartation of objective\nexistence to mental ideas. With the death of the body the man does\nnot cease to live in the remembrance, imagination, and heart of\nhis surviving friends. By an unphilosophical confusion, this\ninternal image is credited as an external existence. The dead pass\nfrom their customary haunts in our society to the imperishable\ndomain of ideas. This visionary world of memory and fantasy is\nprojected outward, located, furnished, and constitutes the future\nstate apprehended by the barbarian mind. Feuerbach says in his\nsubtle and able Thoughts on Death and Immortality, \"The Realm of\nMemory is the Land of Souls.\" Ossian, amid the midnight mountains,\nthinking of departed warriors and listening to the tempest, fills\nthe gale with the impersonations, of his thoughts, and exclaims,\n\"I hear the steps of the dead in the dark eddying blast.\"\n\nThe barbarian brain seems to have been generally impregnated with\nthe feeling that every thing else has a ghost as well as man. The\nGauls lent money in this world upon bills payable in the next.\nThey threw letters upon the funeral pile to be read by the soul of\nthe deceased.45 As the ghost was thought to retain the scars of\ninjuries inflicted upon the body, so, it appears, these letters\nwere thought, when destroyed, to leave impressions of what had\nbeen written on them. The custom of burning or burying things with\nthe dead probably arose, in some cases at least, from the\nsupposition that every object has its mancs. The obolus for\nCharon, the cake of honey for Cerberus, the shadows of these\narticles would be borne and used by the shadow of the dead man.\nLeonidas saying, \"Bury me on my shield: I will enter even Hades as\na Lacedamonian,\" 46 must either have used the word Hades by\nmetonymy for the grave, or have imagined that a shadowy fac simile\nof what was interred in the grave went into the grim kingdom of\nPluto. It was a custom with some Indian tribes, on the new made\ngrave of a chief, to slay his chosen horse; and when he fell they\nsupposed\n\n\"That then, upon the dead man's plain, The rider grasp'd his steed\nagain.\"\n\n45 Pomponius Mela, De Orbis Situ, iii. 2.\n\n46 Translation of Greek Anthology, in Bohn's Library, p. 58.\n\n\nThe hunter chases the deer, each alike a shade. A Feejee once, in\npresence of a missionary, took a weapon from the grave of a buried\ncompanion, saying, \"The ghost of the club has gone with him.\" The\nIroquois tell of a woman who was chased by a ghost. She heard his\nfaint war whoop, his spectre voice, and only escaped with her life\nbecause his war club was but a shadow wielded by an arm of air.\nThe Slavonians sacrificed a warrior's horse at his tomb.47 Nothing\nseemed to the Northman so noble as to enter Valhalla on horseback,\nwith a numerous retinue, in his richest apparel and finest armor.\nIt was firmly believed, Mallet says, that Odin himself had\ndeclared that whatsoever was burned or buried with the dead\naccompanied them to his palace.48 Before the Mohammedan era, on\nthe death of an Arab, the finest camel he had owned was tied to a\nstake beside his grave, and left to expire of hunger over the body\nof his master, in order that, in the region into which death had\nintroduced him, he should be supplied with his usual bearer.49 The\nChinese who surpass all other people in the offerings and worship\npaid at the sepulchres of their ancestors make little paper\nhouses, fill them with images of furniture, utensils, domestics,\nand all the appurtenances of the family economy, and then burn\nthem, thus passing them into the invisible state for the use of\nthe deceased whom they mourn and honor.50 It is a touching thought\nwith the Greenlanders, when a child dies, to bury a dog with him\nas a guide to the land of souls; for, they say, the dog is able to\nfind his way anywhere.51 The shadow of the faithful servant guides\nthe shadow of the helpless child to heaven. In fancy, not without\na moved heart, one sees this spiritual Bernard dog bearing the\nghost child on his back, over the spectral Gothard of death, safe\ninto the sheltering hospice of the Greenland paradise.\n\nIt is strange to notice the meeting of extremes in the rude\nantithetical correspondence between Plato's doctrine of archetypal\nideas, the immaterial patterns of earthly things, and the belief\nof savages in the ghosts of clubs, arrows, sandals, and\nprovisions. The disembodied soul of the philosopher, an eternal\nidea, turns from the empty illusions of matter to nourish itself\nwith the substance of real truth. The spectre of the Mohawk\ndevours the spectre of the haunch of roast venison hung over his\ngrave. And why should not the two shades be conceived, if either?\n\n\"Pig, bullock, goose, must have their goblins too,\nElse ours would have to go without their dinners:\nIf that starvation doctrine were but true,\nHow hard the fate of gormandizing sinners!\"\n\nThe conception of ghosts has been still further introduced also\ninto the realm of mathematics in an amusing manner. Bishop\nBerkeley, bantered on his idealism by Halley, retorted that he too\nwas an idealist; for his ultimate ratios terms only appearing with\nthe\n\n47 Wilkinson, Dalmatia and Montenegro, vol. i. ch. 1.\n\n48 Northern Antiquities, ch. 10.\n\n49 Lamartine, History of Turkey, book i. ch. 10.\n\n50 Kidd, China, sect. 3.\n\n51 Crantz, History of Greenland, book iii. ch. 6, sect. 47.\n\n\ndisappearance of the forms in whose relationship they consist were\nbut the ghosts of departed quantities! It may be added here that,\naccording to the teachings of physiological psychology, all\nmemories or recollected ideas are literally the ghosts of departed\nsensations.\n\nWe have thus seen that the conjuring force of fear, with its dread\napparitions, the surmising, half articulate struggles of\naffection, the dreams of memory, the lights and groups of poetry,\nthe crude germs of metaphysical speculation, the deposits of the\ninter action of human experience and phenomenal nature, now in\nisolated fragments, again, huddled indiscriminately together\nconspire to compose the barbarian notions of a future life.\n\nCHAPTER II.\n\nDRUIDIC DOCTRINE OF A FUTURE LIFE.\n\nTHAT strange body of men, commonly known as the Druids, who\nconstituted what may, with some correctness, be called the Celtic\npriesthood, were the recognised religious teachers throughout\nGaul, Armorica, a small part of Germany on the southern border,\nall Great Britain, and some neighboring islands. The notions in\nregard to a future life put forth by them are stated only in a\nvery imperfect manner by the Greek and Roman authors in whose\nsurviving works we find allusions to the Druids or accounts of the\nCelts. Several modern writers especially Borlase, in his\nAntiquities of Cornwall1 have collected all these references from\nDiodorus, Strabo, Procopius, Tacitus, Casar, Mela, Valerius\nMaximus, and Marcellinus. It is therefore needless to cite the\npassages here, the more so as, even with the aid of all the\nanalytic and constructive comments which can be fairly made upon\nthem, they afford us only a few general views, leaving all the\ndetails in profound obscurity. The substance of what we learn from\nthese sources is this. First, that the Druids possessed a body of\nscience and speculation comprising the doctrine of immortality,\nwhich they taught with clearness and authority. Secondly, that\nthey inculcated the belief in a future life in inseparable\nconnection with the great dogma of metempsychosis. Thirdly, that\nthe people held such cheerful and attractive views of the future\nstate, and held them with such earnestness, that they wept around\nthe newborn infant and smiled around the corpse; that they\nencountered death without fear or reluctance. This reversal of\nnatural sentiments shows the tampering of a priesthood who had\nmotives.\n\nA somewhat more minute conception of the Druidic view of the\nfuture life is furnished us by an old mythologic tale of Celtic\norigin.2 Omitting the story, as irrelevant to our purpose, we\nderive from it the following ideas. The soul, on being divested of\nits earthly envelop, is borne aloft. The clouds are composed of\nthe souls of lately deceased men. They fly over the heads of\narmies, inspiring courage or striking terror. Not yet freed from\nterrestrial affections, they mingle in the passions and affairs of\nmen. Vainly they strive to soar above the atmosphere; an\nimpassable wall of sapphire resists their wings. In the moon,\nmillions of souls traverse tremendous plains of ice, losing all\nperception but that of simple existence, forgetting the adventures\nthey have passed through and are about to recommence. During\neclipses, on long tubes of darkness they return to the earth, and,\nrevived by a beam of light from the all quickening sun, enter\nnewly formed bodies, and begin again the career of life. The disk\nof the sun consists of an assemblage of pure souls swimming in an\nocean of bliss. Souls sullied with earthly impurities are to be\npurged by repeated births and probations till the last stain is\nremoved, and they are all finally fitted to ascend to a succession\nof spheres still higher than the sun, whence they can never sink\nagain to reside in the circle of the lower globes and grosser\natmosphere.\n\n1 Book ii. ch. 14.\n\n2 Davies, Celtic Researches, appendix, pp. 558-561.\n\n\nThese representations are neither Gothic nor Roman, but Celtic.\n\nBut a far more adequate exposition of the Druidic doctrine of the\nsoul's destinies has been presented to us through the translation\nof some of the preserved treasures of the old Bardic lore of\nWales. The Welsh bards for hundreds of years were the sole\nsurviving representatives of the Druids. Their poems numerous\nmanuscripts of which, with apparent authentication of their\ngenuineness, have been published and explained contain quite full\naccounts of the tenets of Druidism, which was nowhere else so\nthoroughly systematized and established as in ancient Britain.3\nThe curious reader will find this whole subject copiously treated,\nand all the materials furnished, in the \"Myvyrian Archaology of\nWales,\" a work in two huge volumes, published at London at the\nbeginning of the present century. After the introduction and\ntriumph of Christianity in Britain, for several centuries the two\nsystems of thought and ritual mutually influenced each other,\ncorrupting and corrupted.4 A striking example in point is this.\nThe notion of a punitive and remedial transmigration belonged to\nDruidism. Now, Taliesin, a famous Welsh bard of the sixth century,\nlocates this purifying metempsychosis in the Hell of Christianity,\nwhence the soul gradually rises again to felicity, the way for it\nhaving been opened by Christ! Cautiously eliminating the Christian\nadmixtures, the following outline, which we epitomize from the\npioneer5 of modern scholars to the Welsh Bardic literature,\naffords a pretty clear knowledge of that portion of the Druidic\ntheology relating to the future life.\n\nThere are, says one of the Bardic triads, three circles of\nexistence. First, the Circle of Infinity, where of living or dead\nthere is nothing but God, and which none but God can traverse.\nSecondly, the Circle of Metempsychosis, where all things that live\nare derived from death. This circle has been traversed by man.\nThirdly, the Circle of Felicity, where all things spring from\nlife. This circle man shall hereafter traverse. All animated\nbeings originate in the lowest point of existence, and, by regular\ngradations through an ascending series of transmigrations, rise to\nthe highest state of perfection possible for finite creatures.\nFate reigns in all the states below that of humanity, and they are\nall necessarily evil. In the states above humanity, on the\ncontrary, unmixed good so prevails that all are necessarily good.\nBut in the middle state of humanity, good and evil are so balanced\nthat liberty results; and free will and consequent responsibility\nare born. Beings who in their ascent have arrived at the state of\nman, if, by purity, humility, love, and righteousness, they keep\nthe laws of the Creator, will, after death, rise into more\nglorious spheres, and will continue to rise still higher, until\nthey reach the final destination of complete and endless\nhappiness. But if, while in the state of humanity, one perverts\nhis reason and will, and attaches himself to evil, he will, on\ndying, fall into such a state of animal existence as corresponds\nwith the baseness of his soul. This baseness may be so great as to\nprecipitate him to the lowest point of being; but he shall climb\nthence through a series of births best fitted to free him from his\nevil propensities. Restored to the probationary state, he may fall\nagain; but, though this should occur again and again\n\n3 Sketch of British Bardism, prefixed to Owen's translation of the\nHeroic Elegies of Llywarch Hen.\n\n4 Herbert, Essay on the Neo Druidic Heresy in Britannia.\n\n5 Poems, Lyric and Pastoral, by Edward Williams, vol. ii. notes,\npp. 194-256.\n\n\nfor a million of ages, the path to happiness still remains open,\nand he shall at last infallibly arrive at his preordained\nfelicity, and fall nevermore. In the states superior to humanity,\nthe soul recovers and retains the entire recollection of its\nformer lives.\n\nWe will quote a few illustrative triads. There are three necessary\npurposes of metempsychosis: to collect the materials and\nproperties of every nature; to collect the knowledge of every\nthing; to collect power towards removing whatever is pernicious.\nThe knowledge of three things will subdue and destroy evil:\nknowledge of its cause, its nature, and its operation. Three\nthings continually dwindle away: the Dark, the False, the Dead.\nThree things continually increase: Light, Truth, Life.\n\nThese will prevail, and finally absorb every thing else. The soul\nis an inconceivably minute particle of the most refined matter,\nendowed with indestructible life, at the dissolution of one body\npassing, according to its merits, into a higher or lower stage of\nexistence, where it expands itself into that form which its\nacquired propensities necessarily give it, or into that animal in\nwhich such propensities naturally reside. The ultimate states of\nhappiness are ceaselessly undergoing the most delightful\nrenovations, without which, indeed, no finite being could endure\nthe tedium of eternity. These are not, like the death of the lower\nstates, accompanied by a suspension of memory and of conscious\nidentity. All the innumerable modes of existence, after being\ncleansed from every evil, will forever remain as beautiful\nvarieties in the creation, and will be equally esteemed, equally\nhappy, equally fathered by the Creator. The successive occupation\nof these modes of existence by the celestial inhabitants of the\nCircle of Felicity will be one of the ways of varying what would\notherwise be the intolerable monotony of eternity. The creation is\nyet in its infancy. The progressive operation of the providence of\nGod will bring every being up from the great Deep to the point of\nliberty, and will at last secure three things for them: namely,\nwhat is most beneficial, what is most desired, and what is most\nbeautiful. There are three stabilities of existence: what cannot\nbe otherwise, what should not be otherwise, what cannot be\nimagined better; and in these all shall end, in the Circle of\nFelicity.\n\nSuch is a hasty synopsis of what here concerns us in the theology\nof the Druids. In its ground germs it was, it seems to us,\nunquestionably imported into Celtic thought and Cymrian song from\nthat prolific and immemorial Hindu mind which bore Brahmanism and\nBuddhism as its fruit. Its ethical tone, intellectual elevation,\nand glorious climax are not unworthy that free hierarchy of\nminstrel priests whose teachings were proclaimed, as their\nassemblies were held, \"in the face of the sun and in the eye of\nthe light,\" and whose thrilling motto was, \"THE TRUTH AGAINST THE\nWORLD.\"\n\nThe latest publication on the subject of old Welsh literature is\n\"Taliesin; or, The Bards and Druids of Britain.\" The author, D. W.\nNash, is obviously familiar with his theme, and he throws much\nlight on many points of it. His ridicule of the arbitrary tenets\nand absurdities which Davies, Pughe, and others have taught in all\ngood faith as Druidic lore and practice is richly deserved. But,\ndespite the learning and acumen displayed in his able and valuable\nvolume, we must think Mr. Nash goes wholly against the record in\ndenying the doctrine of metempsychosis to the Druidic system, and\ngoes clearly beyond the record in charging Edward Williams and\nothers with forgery and fraud in their representations of ancient\nBardic doctrines.6 In support of such grave charges direct evidence\nis needed; only suspicious circumstances are adduced. The non\nexistence of public documents is perfectly reconcilable with\nthe existence of reliable oral accounts preserved by the initiated\nfew, one of whom Williams, with seeming sincerity, claimed to be.\n\n6 Taliesin, ch. iv.\n\n\nCHAPTER III.\n\nSCANDINAVIAN DOCTRINE OF A FUTURE LIFE.\n\nMANY considerations combine to make it seem likely that at an\nearly period a migration took place from Southern Asia to Northern\nEurope, which constituted the commencement of what afterwards grew\nto be the great Gothic family. The correspondence of many of the\nleading doctrines and symbols of the Scandinavian mythology with\nwell known Persian and Buddhist notions notions of a purely\nfanciful and arbitrary character is too peculiar, apparently, to\nadmit of any other explanation.1 But the germs of thought and\nimagination transplanted thus from the warm and gorgeous climes of\nthe East to the snowy mountains of Norway and the howling ridges\nof Iceland, obtained a fresh development, with numerous\nmodifications and strange additions, from the new life, climate,\nscenery, and customs to which they were there exposed. The\ntemptation to predatory habits and strife, the necessity for an\nintense though fitful activity arising from their geographical\nsituation, the fierce spirit nourished in them by their actual\nlife, the tremendous phenomena of the Arctic world around them,\nall these influences break out to our view in the poetry, and are\nreflected by their results in the religion, of the Northmen.\n\nFrom the flame world, Muspelheim, in the south, in which Surtur,\nthe dread fire king, sits enthroned, flowed down streams of heat.\nFrom the mist world, Niflheim, in the north, in whose central\ncaldron, Hvergelmir, dwells the gloomy dragon Nidhogg, rose floods\nof cold vapor. The fire and mist meeting in the yawning abyss,\nGinungagap, after various stages of transition, formed the earth.\nThere were then three principal races of beings: men, whose\ndwelling was Midgard; Jotuns, who occupied Utgard; and the Asir,\nwhose home was Asgard. The Jotuns, or demons, seem to have been\noriginally personifications of darkness, cold, and storm, the\ndisturbing forces of nature, whatever is hostile to fruitful life\nand peace. They were frost giants ranged in the outer wastes\naround the habitable fields of men. The Asir, or gods, on the\nother hand, appear to have been personifications of light, and\nlaw, and benignant power, the orderly energies of the universe.\nBetween the Jotuns and the Asir there is an implacable contest.2\nThe rainbow, Bifrost, is a bridge leading from earth up to the\nskyey dwelling place of the Asir; and their sentinel, Heimdall,\nwhose senses are so acute that he can hear the grass spring in the\nmeadows and the wool grow on the backs of the sheep, keeps\nincessant watch upon it. Their chief deity, the father Zeus of the\nNorthern pantheon, was Odin, the god of war, who wakened the\nspirit of battle by flinging his spear over the heads of the\npeople, its inaudible hiss from heaven being as the song of Ate\nlet loose on earth. Next in rank was Thor, the personification of\nthe exploding tempest. The crashing echoes of the thunder are his\nchariot wheels rattling through the cloudy halls of Thrudheim.\nWhenever the lightning strikes a cliff or an iceberg, then Thor\nhas flung his hammer, Mjolnir, at Joton's head.\n\n1 Vans Kennedy, Ancient and Hindu Mythology, pp. 452, 463-464.\n\n2 Thorpe, Northern Mythology, vol. ii.\n\n\nBalder was the god of innocence and gentleness, fairest,\nkindest, purest of beings. Light emanated from him, and\nall things loved him. After Christianity was established in the\nNorth, Jesus was called the White Christ, or the new Balder. The\nappearance of Balder amidst the frenzied and bloody divinities of\nthe Norse creed is beautiful as the dew cool moon hanging calmly\nover the lurid storm of Vesuvius. He was entitled the \"Band in the\nWreath of the Gods,\" because with his fate that of all the rest\nwas bound up. His death, ominously foretold from eldest antiquity,\nwould be the signal for the ruin of the universe. Asa Loki was the\nMomus Satan or Devil Buffoon of the Scandinavian mythology, the\nhalf amusing, half horrible embodiment of wit, treachery, and\nevil; now residing with the gods in heaven, now accompanying Thor\non his frequent adventures, now visiting and plotting with his own\nkith and kin in frosty Jotunheim, beyond the earth environing sea,\nor in livid Helheim deep beneath the domain of breathing\nhumanity.3\n\nWith a Jotun woman, Angerbode, or Messenger of Evil, Loki begets\nthree fell children. The first is Fenris, a savage wolf, so large\nthat nothing but space can hold him. The second is Jormungandur,\nwho, with his tail in his mouth, fills the circuit of the ocean.\nHe is described by Sir Walter Scott as\n\n\"That great sea snake, tremendous curl'd, Whose monstrous circle\ngirds the world.\"\n\nThe third is Hela, the grim goddess of death, whose ferocious\naspect is half of a pale blue and half of a ghastly white, and\nwhose empire, stretching below the earth through Niflheim, is full\nof freezing vapors and discomfortable sights. Her residence is the\nspacious under world; her court yard, faintness; her threshold,\nprecipice; her door, abyss; her hall, pain; her table, hunger; her\nknife, starvation; her man servant, delay; her handmaid, slowness;\nher bed, sickness; her pillow, anguish; and her canopy, curse.\nStill lower than her house is an abode yet more fearful and\nloathsome. In Nastrond, or strand of corpses, stands a hall, the\nconception of which is prodigiously awful and enormously\ndisgusting. It is plaited of serpents' backs, wattled together\nlike wicker work, whose heads turn inwards, vomiting poison. In\nthe lake of venom thus deposited within these immense wriggling\nwalls of snakes the worst of the damned wade and swim.\n\nHigh up in the sky is Odin's hall, the magnificent Valhalla, or\ntemple of the slain. The columns supporting its ceiling are\nspears. It is roofed with shields, and the ornaments on its\nbenches are coats of mail. The Valkyrs are Odin's battle maids,\nchoosers of heroes for his banquet rooms. With helmets on their\nheads, in bloody harness, mounted on shadowy steeds, surrounded by\nmeteoric lightnings, and wielding flaming swords, they hover over\nthe conflict and point the way to Valhalla to the warriors who\nfall. The valiant souls thus received to Odin's presence are\ncalled Einheriar, or the elect. The Valkyrs, as white clad virgins\nwith flowing ringlets, wait on them in the capacity of cup\nbearers. Each morning, at the crowing\n\n3 Oehlenschlager, Gods of the North. This celebrated and brilliant\npoem, with the copious notes in Frye's translation, affords the\nEnglish reader a full conception of the Norse pantheon and its\nsalient adventures.\n\n\nof a huge gold combed cock, the well armed Einheriar rush through\nValhalla's five hundred and forty doors into a great court yard,\nand pass the day in merciless fighting. However pierced and hewn\nin pieces in these fearful encounters, at evening every wound is\nhealed, and they return into the hall whole, and are seated,\naccording to their exploits, at a luxurious feast. The\nperennial boar Sehrimnir, deliciously cooked by Andrimnir, though\ndevoured every night, is whole again every morning and ready to be\nserved anew. The two highest joys these terrible berserkers and\nvikings knew on earth composed their experience in heaven: namely,\na battle by day and a feast by night. It is a vulgar error, long\nprevalent, that the Valhalla heroes drink out of the skulls of\ntheir enemies. This notion, though often refuted, still lingers in\nthe popular mind. It arose from the false translation of a phrase\nin the death song of Ragnar Lodbrok, the famous sea king, \"Soon\nshall we drink from the curved trees of the head,\" which, as a\nfigure for the usual drinking horns, was erroneously rendered by\nOlaus Wormius, \"Soon shall we drink from the hollow cups of\nskulls.\" It is not the heads of men, but the horns of beasts, from\nwhich the Einheriar quaff Heidrun's mead.4\n\nNo women being ever mentioned as gaining admission to Valhalla or\njoining in the joys of the Einheriar, some writers have affirmed\nthat, according to the Scandinavian faith, women had no immortal\nsouls, or, at all events, were excluded from heaven. The charge is\nas baseless in this instance as when brought against\nMohammedanism. Valhalla was the exclusive abode of the most daring\nchampions; but Valhalla was not the whole of heaven. Vingolf, the\nHall of Friends, stood beside the Hall of the Slain, and was the\nassembling place of the goddesses.5 There, in the palace of Freya,\nthe souls of noble women were received after death. The elder Edda\nsays that Thor guided Roska, a swift footed peasant girl who had\nattended him as a servant on various excursions, to Freya's bower,\nwhere she was welcomed, and where she remained forever. The virgin\ngoddess Gefjone, the Northern Diana, also had a residence in\nheaven, and all who died maidens repaired thither.6 The presence\nof virgin throngs with Gefjone, and the society of noble matrons\nin Vingolf, shed a tender gleam across the carnage and carousal of\nValhalla. More is said of the latter the former is scarcely\nvisible to us now because the only record we have of the Norse\nfaith is that contained in the fragmentary strains of ferocious\nSkalds, who sang chiefly to warriors, and the staple matter of\nwhose songs was feats of martial prowess or entertaining\nmythological stories. Furthermore, there is above the heaven of\nthe Asir a yet higher heaven, the abode of the far removed and\ninscrutable being, the rarely named Omnipotent One, the true All\nFather, who is at last to come forth above the ruins of the\nuniverse to judge and sentence all creatures and to rebuild a\nbetter world. In this highest region towers the imperishable gold\nroofed hall, Gimle, brighter than the sun. There is no hint\nanywhere in the Skaldic strains that good women are repulsed from\nthis dwelling.\n\nAccording to the rude morality of the people and the time, the\ncontrasted conditions of admission to the upper paradise or\ncondemnation to the infernal realm were the admired\n\n4 Pigott, Manual of Scandinavian Mythology, p. 65.\n\n5 Keyser, Religion of the Northmen, trans. by Pennock, p. 149.\n\n6 Pigott, p. 245.\n\n\nvirtues of strength, open handed frankness, reckless audacity, or\nthe hated vices of feebleness, cowardice, deceit, humility. Those\nwho have won fame by puissant feats and who die in battle are\nsnatched by the Valkyrs from the sod to Valhalla. To die in arms\nis to be chosen of Odin,\n\n\"In whose hall of gold The steel clad ghosts their wonted orgies\nhold. Some taunting jest begets the war of words: In clamorous\nfray they grasp their gleamy swords, And, as upon the earth, with\nfierce delight By turns renew the banquet and the fight.\"\n\nAll, on the contrary, who, after lives of ignoble labor or\ndespicable ease, die of sickness, sink from their beds to the\ndismal house of Hela. In this gigantic vaulted cavern the air\nsmells like a newly stirred grave; damp fogs rise, hollow sighs\nare heard, the only light comes from funeral tapers held by\nskeletons; the hideous queen, whom Thor eulogizes as the Scourger\nof Cowards, sits on a throne of skulls, and sways a sceptre, made\nof a dead man's bone bleached in the moonlight, over a countless\nmultitude of shivering ghosts.7 But the Norse moralists plunge to\na yet darker doom those guilty of perjury, murder, or adultery. In\nNastrond's grisly hail, which is shaped of serpents' spines, and\nthrough whose loop holes drops of poison drip, where no sunlight\never reaches, they welter in a venom sea and are gnawed by the\ndragon Nidhogg.8 In a word, what to the crude moral sense of the\nmartial Goth seemed piety, virtue, led to heaven; what seemed\nblasphemy, baseness, led to hell.\n\nThe long war between good and evil, light and darkness, order and\ndiscord, the Asir and the Jotuns, was at last to reach a fatal\ncrisis and end in one universal battle, called Ragnarokur, or the\n\"Twilight of the Gods,\" whose result would be the total\ndestruction of the present creation. Portentous inklings of this\ndread encounter were abroad among all beings. A shuddering\nanticipation of it sat in a lowering frown of shadow on the brows\nof the deities. In preparation for Ragnarokur, both parties\nanxiously secured all the allies they could. Odin therefore\njoyously welcomes every valiant warrior to Valhalla, as a recruit\nfor his hosts on that day when Fenris shall break loose. When\nHakon Jarl fell, the Valkyrs shouted, \"Now does the force of the\ngods grow stronger when they have brought Hakon to their home.\" A\nSkald makes Odin say, on the death of King Eirilc Blood Axe, as an\nexcuse for permitting such a hero to be slain, \"Our lot is\nuncertain: the gray wolf gazes on the host of the gods;\" that is,\nwe shall need help at Ragnarokur. But as all the brave and\nmagnanimous champions received to Valhalla were enlisted on the\nside of the Asir, so all the miserable cowards, invalids, and\nwretches doomed to Hela's house would fight for the Jotuns. From\nday to day the opposed armies, above and below, increase in\nnumbers. Some grow impatient, some tremble. When Balder dies, and\nthe ship Nagelfra is completed, the hour of infinite suspense will\nstrike. Nagelfra is a vessel for the conveyance of the hosts of\nfrost giants to the battle. It is to be built of dead men's nails:\ntherefore no one should die with unpaired nails, for if he does he\n\n7 Pigott, pp. 137, 138.\n\n8 The Voluspa, strophes 34, 35.\n\n\nfurnishes materials for the construction of that ship which men\nand gods wish to have finished as late as possible.9\n\nAt length Loki treacherously compasses the murder of Balder. The\nfrightful foreboding which at once flies through all hearts finds\nvoice in the dark \"Raven Song\" of Odin. Having chanted this\nobscure wail in heaven, he mounts his horse and rides down the\nbridge to Helheim. With resistless incantations he raises from the\ngrave, where she has been interred for ages, wrapt in snows, wet\nwith the rains and the dews, an aged vala or prophetess, and\nforces her to answer his questions. With appalling replies he\nreturns home, galloping up the sky. And now the crack of doom is\nat hand. Heimdall hurries up and down the bridge Bifrost, blowing\nhis horn till its rousing blasts echo through the universe. The\nwolf Skoll, from whose pursuit the frightened sun has fled round\nthe heavens since the first dawn, overtakes and devours his bright\nprey. Nagelfra, with the Jotun hosts on board, sails swiftly from\nUtgard. Loki advances at the head of the troops of Hela. Fenris\nsnaps his chain and rushes forth with jaws so extended that the\nupper touches the firmament, while the under rests on the earth;\nand he would open them wider if there were room. Jormungandur\nwrithes his entire length around Midgard, and, lifting his head,\nblows venom over air and sea. Suddenly, in the south, heaven\ncleaves asunder, and through the breach the sons of Muspel, the\nflame genii, ride out on horseback with Surtur at their head, his\nsword outflashing the sun. Now Odin leads forward the Asir and the\nEinheriar, and on the predestined plain of Vigrid the strife\ncommences. Heimdall and Loki mutually slay each other. Thor kills\nJormungandur; but as the monster expires he belches a flood of\nvenom, under which the matchless thunder god staggers and falls\ndead. Fenris swallows Odin, but is instantly rent in twain by\nVidar, the strong silent one, Odin's dumb son, who well avenges\nhis father on the wolf by splitting the jaws that devoured him.\nThen Surtur slings fire abroad, and the reek rises around all\nthings. Iggdrasill, the great Ash Tree of Existence, totters, but\nstands. All below perishes. Finally, the unnamable Mighty One\nappears, to judge the good and the bad. The former hie from fading\nValhalla to eternal Gimle, where all joy is to be theirs forever;\nthe latter are stormed down from Hela to Nastrond, there, \"under\ncurdling mists, in a snaky marsh whose waves freeze black and thaw\nin blood, to be scared forever, for punishment, with terrors ever\nnew.\" All strife vanishes in endless peace. By the power of All\nFather, a new earth, green and fair, shoots up from the sea, to be\ninhabited by a new race of men free from sorrow. The foul, spotted\ndragon Nidhogg flies over the plains, bearing corpses and Death\nitself away upon his wings, and sinks out of sight.10\n\nIt has generally been asserted, in consonance with the foregoing\nview, that the Scandinavians believed that the good and the bad,\nrespectively in Gimle and Nastrond, would experience everlasting\nrewards and punishments. But Blackwell, the recent editor of\nPercy's translation of Mallet's Northern Antiquities as published\nin Bohn's Antiquarian Library, argues with great force against the\ncorrectness of the assertion.11 The point is\n\n9 Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie, s. 775, note.\n\n10 Keyser, Religion of the Northmen, part i. ch. vi.\n\n11 Pp. 497-503.\n\n\ndubious; but it is of no great importance, since we know that the\nspirit and large outlines of their faith have been reliably set\nforth. That faith, rising from the impetuous blood and rude mind\nof the martial race of the North, gathering wonderful\nembellishments from the glowing imagination of the Skalds,\nreacting, doubly nourished the fierce valor and fervid fancy from\nwhich it sprang. It drove the dragon prows of the Vikings\nmarauding over the seas. It rolled the Goths' conquering squadrons\nacross the nations, from the shores of Finland and Skager Rack to\nthe foot of the Pyrenees and the gates of Rome. The very ferocity\nwith which it blazed consumed itself, and the conquest of the\nflickering faith by Christianity was easy. During the dominion of\nthis religion, the earnest sincerity with which its disciples\nreceived it appears alike from the fearful enterprises it prompted\nthem to, the iron hardihood and immeasurable contempt of death it\ninspired in them, and the superstitious observances which, with\npains and expenses, they scrupulously kept. They buried, with the\ndead, gold, useful implements, ornaments, that they might descend,\nfurnished and shining, to the halls of Hela. With a chieftain they\nburied a pompous horse and splendid armor, that he might ride like\na warrior into Valhalla. The true Scandinavian, by age or sickness\ndeprived of dying in battle, ran himself through, or flung himself\nfrom a precipice, in this manner to make amends for not expiring\nin armed strife, if haply thus he might snatch a late seat among\nthe Einheriar. With the same motive the dying sea king had himself\nlaid on his ship, alone, and launched away, with out stretched\nsails, with a slow fire in the hold, which, when he was fairly out\nat sea, should flame up and, as Carlyle says, \"worthily bury the\nold hero at once in the sky and in the ocean.\" Surely then, if\never, \"the kingdom of heaven suffered violence, and the violent\ntook it by force.\"\n\nCHAPTER IV.\n\nETRUSCAN DOCTRINE OF A FUTURE LIFE.\n\nALTHOUGH the living form and written annals of Etruria perished\nthousands of years ago, and although but slight references to her\naffairs have come down to us in the documents of contemporary\nnations, yet, through a comparatively recent acquisition of facts,\nwe have quite a distinct and satisfactory knowledge of her\ncondition and experience when her power was palmiest. We follow\nthe ancient Etruscans from the cradle to the tomb, perceiving\ntheir various national costumes, peculiar physiognomies, names and\nrelationships, houses, furniture, ranks, avocations, games, dying\nscenes, burial processions, and funeral festivals. And, further\nthan this, we follow their souls into the world to come, behold\nthem in the hands of good or evil spirits, brought to judgment and\nthen awarded their deserts of bliss or woe. This knowledge has\nbeen derived from their sepulchres, which still resist the\ncorroding hand of Time when nearly every thing else Etruscan has\nmingled with the ground.1 They hewed their tombs in the living\nrock of cliffs and hills, or reared them of massive masonry. They\npainted or carved the walls with descriptive and symbolic scenes,\nand crowded their interiors with sarcophagi, cinerary urns, vases,\ngoblets, mirrors, and a thousand other articles covered with\npaintings and sculptures rich in information of their authors.\nFrom a study of these things, lately disinterred in immense\nquantities, has been constructed, for the most part, our present\nacquaintance with this ancient people. Strange that, when the\nwhole scene of life has passed away, a sepulchral world should\nsurvive and open itself to reveal the past and instruct the\nfuture! We seem to see, rising from her tombs, and moving solemnly\namong the mounds where all she knew or cared for has for so many\nages been inurned, the ghost of a mighty people. With dejected air\nshe leans on a ruined temple and muses; and her shadowy tears fall\nsilently over what was and is not.\n\nThe Etruscans were accustomed to bury their deceased outside their\nwalls; and sometimes the city of the living was thus surrounded by\na far reaching city of the dead. At this day the decaying fronts\nof the houses of the departed, for miles upon miles along the\nroad, admonish the living traveller. These stone hewn sepulchres\ncrowd nearly every hill and glen. Whole acres of them are also\nfound upon the plains, covered by several feet of earth, where\nevery spring the plough passes over them, and every autumn the\nharvest waves; but the dust beneath reposes well, and knows\nnothing of this.\n\n\"Time buries graves. How strange! a buried grave! Death cannot\nfrom more death its own dead empire save.\"\n\nThe houses of the dead were built in imitation of the houses of\nthe living, only on a smaller scale; and the interior arrangements\nwere so closely copied that it is said the resemblance held in all\nbut the light of day and the sound and motion of life. The images\n\n1 Mrs. Gray, Sepulchres of Etruria.\n\n\npainted or etched on the urns and sarcophagi that fill the\nsepulchres were portraits of the deceased, accurate likenesses,\nvarying with age, sex, features, and expression. These personal\nportraits were taken and laid up here, doubtless, to preserve\ntheir remembrance when the original had crumbled to ashes. What a\ntouching voice is this from antiquity, telling us that our poor,\nfond human nature was ever the same! The heart longed to be kept\nstill in remembrance when the mortal frame was gone. But how vain\nthe wish beyond the vanishing circle of hearts that returned its\nlove! For, as we wander through those sepulchres now, thousands of\nfaces thus preserved look down upon us with a mute plea, when\nevery vestige of their names and characters is forever lost, and\ntheir very dust scattered long ago.\n\nAlong the sides of the burial chamber were ranged massive stone\nshelves, or sometimes benches, or tables, upon which the dead were\nlaid in a reclining posture, to sleep their long sleep. It often\nhappens that on these rocky biers lie the helmet, breastplate,\ngreaves, signet ring, and weapons, or, if it be a female, the\nnecklace, ear rings, bracelet, and other ornaments, each in its\nrelative place, when the body they once encased or adorned has not\nleft a single fragment behind. An antiquary once, digging for\ndiscoveries, chanced to break through the ceiling of a tomb. He\nlooked in; and there, to quote his own words, \"I beheld a warrior\nstretched on a couch of rock, and in a few minutes I saw him\nvanish under my eyes; for, as the air entered the cemetery, the\narmor, thoroughly oxydized, crumbled away into most minute\nparticles, and in a short time scarcely a trace of what I had seen\nwas left on the couch. It is impossible to express the effect this\nsight produced upon me.\"\n\nAn important element in the religion of Etruria was the doctrine\nof Genii, a system of household deities who watched over the\nfortunes of individuals and families, and who are continually\nshown on the engravings in the sepulchres as guiding, or actively\ninterested in, all the incidents that happen to those under their\ncare. It was supposed that every person had two genii allotted to\nhim, one inciting him to good deeds, the other to bad, and both\naccompanying him after death to the judgment to give in their\ntestimony and turn the scales of his fate. This belief, sincerely\nheld, would obviously wield a powerful influence over their\nfeelings in the conduct of life.\n\nThe doctrine concerning the gods that prevailed in this ancient\nnation is learned partly from the classic authors, partly from\nsepulchral monumental remains. It was somewhat allied to that of\nEgypt, but much more to that of Rome, who indeed derived a\nconsiderable portion of her mythology from this source. As in\nother pagan countries, a multitude of deities were worshipped\nhere, each having his peculiar office, form of representation, and\ncycle of traditions. It would be useless to specify all.2 The\ngoddess of Fate was pictured with wings, showing her swiftness,\nand with a hammer and nail, to typify that her decrees were\nunalterably fixed. The name of the supreme god was Tinia. He was\nthe central power of the world of divinities, and was always\nrepresented, like Jupiter Tonans, with a thunderbolt in his hand.\nThere were twelve great \"consenting gods,\" composing the council\nof Tinia, and called \"The Senators of Heaven.\" They were pitiless\nbeings, dwelling in the inmost recesses\n\n2 Muller, Die Etrusker, buch iii. kap. iv. sects. 7-14.\n\n\nof heaven, whose names it was not lawful to pronounce. Yet they\nwere not deemed eternal, but were supposed to rise and fall\ntogether. There was another class, called \"The Shrouded Gods,\"\nstill more awful, potent, and mysterious, ruling all things, and\nmuch like the inscrutable Necessity that filled the dark\nbackground of the old Greek religion. Last, but most feared and\nmost prominent in the Etruscan mind, were the rulers of the lower\nregions, Mantus and Mania, the king and queen of the under world.\nMantus was figured as an old man, wearing a crown, with wings at\nhis shoulders, and a torch reversed in his hand. Mania was a\nfearful personage, frequently propitiated with human sacrifices.\nMacrobius says boys were offered up at her annual festival for a\nlong time, till the heads of onions and poppies were substituted.3\nIntimately connected with these divinities was Charun, their chief\nminister, the conductor of souls into the realm of the future,\nwhose dread image, hideous as the imagination could conceive, is\nconstantly introduced in the sepulchral pictures, and who with his\nattendant demons well illustrates the terrible character of the\nsuperstition which first created, then deified, and then trembled\nbefore him. Who can become acquainted with such horrors as these\nwithout drawing a freer breath, and feeling a deeper gratitude to\nGod, as he remembers how, for many centuries now, the religion of\nlove has been redeeming man from subterranean darkness, hatred,\nand fright, to the happiness and peace of good will and trust in\nthe sweet, sunlit air of day!\n\nThat a belief in a future existence formed a prominent and\ncontrolling feature in the creed of the Etruscans4 is abundantly\nshown by the contents of their tombs. They would never have\nproduced and preserved paintings, tracings, types, of such a\ncharacter and in such quantities, had not the doctrines they\nshadow forth possessed a ruling hold upon their hopes and fears.\nThe symbolic representations connected with this subject may be\narranged in several classes. First, there is an innumerable\nvariety of death bed scenes, many of them of the most touching and\npathetic character, such as witnesses say can scarcely be looked\nupon without tears, others of the most appalling nature, showing\nperfect abandonment to fright, screams, sobbing, and despair. The\nlast hour is described under all circumstances, coming to all\nsorts of persons, prince, priest, peasant, man, mother, and child.\nPatriarchs are dying surrounded by groups in every posture of\ngrief; friends are waving a mournful farewell to their weeping\nlovers; wives are torn from the embrace of their husbands; some\nseem resigned and willingly going, others reluctant and driven in\nterror.\n\nThe next series of engravings contain descriptions and emblems of\nthe departure of the soul from this world, and of its passage into\nthe next. There are various symbols of this mysterious transition:\none is a snake with a boy riding upon its back, its amphibious\nnature plainly typifying the twofold existence allotted to man.\nThe soul is also often shown muffled in a veil and travelling\ngarb, seated upon a horse, and followed by a slave carrying a\nlarge sack of provisions, an emblem of the long and dreary journey\nabout to be taken. Horses are depicted harnessed to cars in which\ndisembodied spirits are seated, a token of the swift ride\n\n3 Saturnal. lib. i. cap. 7.\n\n4 Dennis, Cities and Cemeteries of Etruria, ch. xii.\n\n\nof the dead to their doom. Sometimes the soul is gently invited,\nor led, by a good spirit, sometimes beaten, or dragged away, by\nthe squalid and savage Charun, the horrible death king, or one of\nhis ministers; sometimes a good and an evil spirit are seen\ncontending for the soul; sometimes the soul is seen, on its knees,\nbeseeching the aid of its good genius and grasping at his\ndeparting wing, as, with averted face, he is retiring; and\nsometimes the good and the evil spirits are leading it away\ntogether, to abide the sentence of the tribunal of Mantus. Whole\ncompanies of souls are also set forth marching in procession,\nunder the guidance of a winged genius, to their subterranean\nabode.\n\nFinally, there is a class of representations depicting the\nultimate fate of souls after judgment has been passed. Some are\nshown seated at banquet, in full enjoyment, according to their\nideas of bliss. Some are shown undergoing punishment, beaten with\nhammers, stabbed and torn by black demons. There are no proofs\nthat the Etruscans believed in the translation of any soul to the\nabode of the gods above the sky, no signs of any path rising to\nthe supernal heaven; but they clearly expected just discriminations\nto be made in the under world. Into that realm many gates are shown\nleading, some of them peaceful, inviting, surrounded by apparent\nemblems of deliverance, rest, and blessedness; others yawning,\nterrific, engirt by the heads of gnashing beasts and furies\nthreatening their victim.\n\n\"Shown is the progress of the guilty soul\nFrom earth's worn threshold to the throne of doom;\nHere the black genius to the dismal goal\nDrags the wan spectre from the unsheltering tomb,\nWhile from the side it never more may warn\nThe better angel, sorrowing, flees forlorn.\nThere (closed the eighth) seven yawning gates reveal\nThe sevenfold anguish that awaits the lost.\nClosed the eighth gate, for there the happy dwell.\nNo glimpse of joy beyond makes horror less.\"\n\nIn these lines, from Bulwer's learned and ornate epic of King\nArthur, the dire severity of the Etruscan doctrine of a future\nlife is well indicated, with the local imagery of some parts of\nit, and the impenetrable obscurity which enwraps the great sequel.\n\nCHAPTER V.\n\nEGYPTIAN DOCTRINE OF A FUTURE LIFE.\n\nIN attempting to understand the conceptions of the ancient\ninhabitants of Egypt on the subject of a future life, we are first\nmet by the inquiry why they took such great pains to preserve the\nbodies of their dead. It has been supposed that no common motive\ncould have animated them to such lavish expenditure of money,\ntime, and labor as the process of embalming required. It has been\ntaken for granted that only some recondite theological\nconsideration could explain this phenomenon. Accordingly, it is\nnow the popular belief that the Egyptians were so scrupulous in\nembalming their dead and storing them in repositories of eternal\nstone, because they believed that the departed souls would at some\nfuture time come back and revivify their former bodies, if these\nwere kept from decay. This hypothesis seems to us as false as it\nis gratuitous. In the first place, there is no evidence of it\nwhatever,  neither written testimony nor circumstantial hint.\nHerodotus tells us, \"The Egyptians say the soul, on the\ndissolution of the body, always enters into some other animal then\nborn, and, having passed in rotation through the various\nterrestrial, aquatic, and arial beings, again enters the body of a\nman then born.\"1 There is no assertion that, at the end of the\nthree thousand years occupied by this circuit, the soul will re\nenter its former body. The plain inference, on the contrary, is\nthat it will be born in a new body, as at each preceding step in\nthe series of its transmigrations. Secondly, the mutilation of the\nbody in embalming forbids the belief in its restoration to life.\nThe brain was extracted, and the skull stuffed with cotton. The\nentrails were taken out, and sometimes, according to Porphyry2 and\nPlutarch,3 thrown into the Nile; sometimes, as modern examinations\nhave revealed, bound up in four packages and either replaced in\nthe cavity of the stomach or laid in four vases beside the mummy.\nIt is absurd to attribute, without clear cause, to an enlightened\npeople the belief that these stacks of brainless, eviscerated\nmummies, dried and shrunken in ovens, coated with pitch, bound up\nin a hundredfold bandages, would ever revive, and, inhabited by\nthe same souls that fled them thirty centuries before, again walk\nthe streets of Thebes! Besides, a third consideration demands\nnotice. By the theory of metempsychosis universally acknowledged\nto have been held by the Egyptians it is taught that souls at\ndeath, either immediately, or after a temporary sojourn in hell or\nheaven has struck the balance of their merits, are born in fresh\nbodies; never that they return into their old ones. But the point\nis set beyond controversy by the discovery of inscriptions,\naccompanying pictures of scenes illustrating the felicity of\nblessed souls in heaven, to this effect: \"Their bodies shall\nrepose in their tombs forever; they live in the celestial regions\neternally, enjoying the presence of the Supreme God.\" 4 A writer\non this subject says, \"A people who believed in the transmigration\n\n1 Herod. lib. ii. cap. 123.\n\n2 De Abstinentia, lib. iv. cap. 10.\n\n3 Banquet of the Seven Wise Men.\n\n4 Champollion, Descr. de l'Egypte, Antiq. tom ii. p. 132. Stuart's\nTrans. of Greppo's Essay, p. 262.\n\n\nof souls would naturally take extraordinary pains to preserve the\nbody from putrefaction, in the hope of the soul again joining the\nbody it had quitted.\" The remark is intrinsically untrue, because\nthe doctrine of transmigration coexists in reconciled belief with\nthe observed law of birth, infancy, and growth, not with the\nmiracle of transition into reviving corpses. The notion is\nlikewise historically refuted by the fact that the believers of\nthat doctrine in the thronged East have never preserved the body,\nbut at once buried or burned it. The whole Egyptian theology is\nmuch more closely allied to the Hindu, which excluded, than to the\nPersian, which emphasized, the resurrection of the body.\n\nAnother theory which has been devised to explain the purpose of\nEgyptian embalming, is that \"it was to unite the soul permanently\nto its body, and keep the vital principle from perishing or\ntransmigrating; the body and soul ran together through the journey\nof the dead and its dread ordeal.\" 5 This arbitrary guess is\nincredible. The preservation of the body does not appear in any\nway not even to the rawest fancy to detain or unite the soul with\nit; for the thought is unavoidable that it is precisely the\nabsence of the soul which constitutes death. Again: such an\nexplanation of the motive for embalming cannot be correct, because\nin the hieroglyphic representations of the passage to the judgment\nthe separate soul is often depicted as hovering over the body, 6\nor as kneeling before the judges, or as pursuing its adventures\nthrough the various realms of the creation. \"When the body is\nrepresented,\" Champollion says, \"it is as an aid to the spectator,\nand not as teaching a bodily resurrection. Sharpe's opinion that\nthe picture of a bird poised over the mouth of a mummy, with the\nemblems of breath and life in its claws, implies the doctrine of a\ngeneral physical resurrection, is an inferential leap of the most\nstartling character. What proof is there that the symbol denotes\nthis? Hundreds of paintings in the tombs show souls undergoing\ntheir respective allotments in the other world while their bodily\nmummies are quiet in the sepulchres of the present. In his\ntreatise on \"Isis and Osiris,\" Plutarch writes, \"The Egyptians\nbelieve that while the bodies of eminent men are buried in the\nearth their souls are stars shining in heaven.\" It is equally\nnonsensical in itself and unwarranted by evidence to imagine that,\nin the Egyptian faith, embalming either retained the soul in the\nbody or preserved the body for a future return of the soul. Who\ncan believe that it was for either of those purposes that they\nembalmed the multitudes of animals whose mummies the explorer is\nstill turning up? They preserved cats, hawks, bugs, crocodiles,\nmonkeys, bulls, with as great pains as they did men.7 When the\nCanary Islands were first visited, it was found that their\ninhabitants had a custom of carefully embalming the dead. The same\nwas the case among the Peruvians, whose vast cemeteries remain to\nthis day crowded with mummies. But the expectation of a return of\nthe souls into these preserved bodies is not to be ascribed to\nthose peoples. Herodotus informs us that \"the Ethiopians, having\ndried the bodies of their dead, coat them with white plaster,\nwhich they paint with colors to the likeness of the deceased and\nencase in a transparent substance. The dead, thus kept from being\noffensive, and yet plainly visible, are retained a\n\n5 Bonomi and Arundel on Egyptian Antiq., p. 46.\n\n6 Pl. xxxiii. in Lepsius' Todtenb. der. Agypter.\n\n7 Pettigrew, Hist of Egyptian Mummies, ch. xii.\n\n\nwhole year in the houses of their nearest relatives. Afterwards\nthey are carried out and placed upright in the tombs around the\ncity.\" 8 It has been argued, because the Egyptians expended so\nmuch in preparing lasting tombs and in adorning their walls with\nvaried embellishments, that they must have thought the soul\nremained in the body, a conscious occupant of the dwelling place\nprovided for it.9 As well might it be argued that, because the\nancient savage tribes on the coast of South America, who obtained\ntheir support by fishing, buried fish hooks and bait with their\ndead, they supposed the dead bodies occupied themselves in their\ngraves by fishing! The adornment of the tomb, so lavish and varied\nwith the Egyptians, was a gratification of the spontaneous\nworkings of fancy and affection, and needs no far fetched\nexplanation. Every nation has its funeral customs and its rites of\nsepulture, many of which would be as difficult of explanation as\nthose of Egypt. The Scandinavian sea king was sometimes buried, in\nhis ship, in a grave dug on some headland overlooking the ocean.\nThe Scythians buried their dead in rolls of gold, sometimes\nweighing forty or fifty solid pounds. Diodorus the Sicilian says,\n\"The Egyptians, laying the embalmed bodies of their ancestors in\nnoble monuments, see the true visages and expressions of those who\ndied ages before them. So they take almost as great pleasure in\nviewing their bodily proportions and the lineaments of their faces\nas if they were still living among them.\" 10 That instinct which\nleads us to obtain portraits of those we love, and makes us\nunwilling to part even with their lifeless bodies, was the cause\nof embalming. The bodies thus prepared, we know from the testimony\nof ancient authors, were kept in the houses of their children or\nkindred, until a new generation, \"who knew not Joseph,\" removed\nthem. Then nothing could be more natural than that the priesthood\nshould take advantage of the custom, so associated with sacred\nsentiments, and throw theological sanctions over it, shroud it in\nmystery, and secure a monopoly of the power and profit arising\nfrom it. It is not improbable, too, as has been suggested, that\nhygienic considerations, expressing themselves in political laws\nand priestly precepts, may at first have had an influence in\nestablishing the habit of embalming, to prevent the pestilences\napt to arise in such a climate from the decay of animal\nsubstances.\n\nThere is great diversity of opinion among Egyptologists on this\npoint. One thinks that embalming was supposed to keep the soul in\nthe body until after the funeral judgment and interment, but that,\nwhen the corpse was laid in its final receptacle, the soul\nproceeded to accompany the sun in its daily and nocturnal circuit,\nor to transmigrate through various animals and deities. Another\nimagines that the process of embalming was believed to secure the\nrepose of the soul in the other world, exempt from\ntransmigrations, so long as the body was kept from decay.11\nPerhaps the different notions on this subject attributed by modern\nauthors to the Egyptians may all have prevailed among them at\ndifferent times or among distinct sects. But it seems most likely,\nas we have said, that embalming first arose from physical and\nsentimental considerations naturally operating, rather than from\nany\n\n8 Lib. iii. cap. 24.\n\n9 Kenrick, Ancient Egypt, vol. i. ch. xxi. sect. iii.\n\n10 Lib. i. cap. 7.\n\n11 Library of Entertaining Knowledge, vol. ii. ch. iii.\n\n\ntheological doctrine carefully devised; although, after the\npriesthood appropriated the business, it is altogether probable\nthat they interwove it with an artificial and elaborate system of\nsacerdotal dogmas, in which was the hiding of the national power.\n\nThe second question that arises is, What was the significance of\nthe funeral ceremonies celebrated by the Egyptians over their\ndead? When the body had been embalmed, it was presented before a\ntribunal of forty two judges sitting in state on the eastern\nborders of the lake Acherusia. They made strict inquiry into the\nconduct and character of the deceased. Any one might make\ncomplaint against him, or testify in his behalf. If it was found\nthat he had been wicked, had died in debt, or was otherwise\nunworthy, he was deprived of honorable burial and ignominiously\nthrown into a ditch. This was called Tartar, from the wailings the\nsentence produced among his relatives. But if he was found to have\nled an upright life, and to have been a good man, the honors of a\nregular interment were decreed him. The cemetery a large plain\nenvironed with trees and lined with canals lay on the western side\nof the lake, and was named Elisout, or rest. It was reached by a\nboat, the funeral barge, in which no one could cross without an\norder from the judges and the payment of a small fee. In these and\nother particulars some of the scenes supposed to be awaiting the\nsoul in the other world were dramatically shadowed forth. Each\nrite was a symbol of a reality existing, in solemn correspondence,\nin the invisible state. What the priests did over the body on\nearth the judicial deities did over the soul in Amenthe. It seems\nplain that the Greeks derived many of their notions concerning the\nfate and state of the dead from Egypt. Hades corresponds with\nAmenthe; Pluto, with the subterranean Osiris; Mercury\npsychopompos, with Anubis, \"the usher of souls;\" Aacus, Minos, and\nRhadamanthos, with the three assistant gods who help in weighing\nthe soul and present the result to Osiris; Tartarus, to the ditch\nTartar; Charon's ghost boat over the Styx, to the barge conveying\nthe mummy to the tomb; Cerberus, to Oms; Acheron, to Acherusia;\nthe Elysian Fields, to Elisout.12 Kenrick thinks the Greeks may\nhave developed these views for themselves, without indebtedness to\nEgypt. But the notions were in existence among the Egyptians at\nleast twelve hundred years before they can be traced among the\nGreeks.13 And they are too arbitrary and systematic to have been\nindependently constructed by two nations. Besides, Herodotus\npositively affirms that they were derived from Egypt. Several\nother ancient authors also state this; and nearly every modern\nwriter on the subject agrees in it.\n\nThe triumphs of modern investigation into the antiquities of\nEgypt, unlocking the hieroglyphics and lifting the curtain from\nthe secrets of ages, have unveiled to us a far more full and\nsatisfactory view of the Egyptian doctrine of the future life than\ncan be constructed from the narrow glimpses afforded by the\naccounts of the old Greek authorities. Three sources of knowledge\nhave been laid open to us. First, the papyrus rolls, one of which\nwas placed in the bosom of every mummy. This roll, covered with\nhieroglyphics, is called the funeral ritual, or book of the dead.\nIt served as a passport through the burial rites. It contained the\nnames of the deceased and his parents, a series of prayers he was\nto recite\n\n12 Spineto on Egyptian Antiq, Lectures IV., V.\n\n13 Wilkinson, Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians, 2d\nSeries, vol. i. ch. 12.\n\n\nbefore the various divinities he would meet on his journey, and\nrepresentations of some of the adventures awaiting him in the\nunseen state.14 Secondly, the ornamental cases in which the\nmummies are enclosed are painted all over with scenes setting\nforth the realities and events to which the soul of the dead\noccupant has passed in the other life.15 Thirdly, the various\nfates of souls are sculptured and painted on the walls in the\ntombs, in characters which have been deciphered during the present\ncentury:16\n\n\"Those mystic, stony volumes on the walls long writ, Whose sense\nis late reveal'd to searching modern wit.\"\n\nCombining the information thus obtained, we learn that, according\nto the Egyptian representation, the soul is led by the god Thoth\ninto Amenthe, the infernal world, the entrance to which lies in\nthe extreme west, on the farther side of the sea, where the sun\ngoes down under the earth. It was in accordance with this\nsupposition that Herod caused to be engraved, on a magnificent\nmonument erected to his deceased wife, the line, \"Zeus, this\nblooming woman sent beyond the ocean.\" 17 At the entrance sits a\nwide throated monster, over whose head is the inscription, \"This\nis the devourer of many who go into Amenthe, the lacerator of the\nheart of him who comes with sins to the house of justice.\" The\nsoul next kneels before the forty two assessors of Osiris, with\ndeprecating asseverations and intercessions. It then comes to the\nfinal trial in the terrible Hall of the two Truths, the approving\nand the condemning; or, as it is differently named, the Hall of\nthe double Justice, the rewarding and the punishing. Here the\nthree divinities Horns, Anubis, and Thoth proceed to weigh the\nsoul in the balance. In one scale an image of Thmei, the goddess\nof Truth, is placed; in the other, a heart shaped vase,\nsymbolizing the heart of the deceased with all the actions of\nhis earthly life. Then happy is he \"Who, weighed 'gainst Truth,\ndown dips the awful scale.\"\n\nThoth notes the result on a tablet, and the deceased advances with\nit to the foot of the throne on which sits Osiris, lord of the\ndead, king of Amenthe. He pronounces the decisive sentence, and\nhis assistants see that it is at once executed. The condemned soul\nis either scourged back to the earth straightway, to live again in\nthe form of a vile animal, as some of the emblems appear to\ndenote; or plunged into the tortures of a horrid hell of fire and\ndevils below, as numerous engravings set forth; or driven into the\natmosphere, to be vexed and tossed by tempests, violently whirled\nin blasts and clouds, till its sins are expiated, and another\nprobation granted through a renewed existence in human form.\n\nWe have two accounts of the Egyptian divisions of the universe.\nAccording to the first view, they conceived the creation to\nconsist of three grand departments. First came the earth, or zone\nof trial, where men live on probation. Next was the atmosphere, or\nzone of temporal\n\n14 Das Todtenbuch der Agypter, edited with an introduction by Dr.\nLepsius.\n\n15 Ch. ix. of Pettigrew's History of Egyptian Mummies.\n\n16 Champollion's Letter, dated Thebes, May 16, 1829. An abstract\nof this letter may be found in Stuart's trans. of Greppo's Essay\non Champollion's Hieroglyphic System, appendix, note N.\n\n17 Basnage, Hist. of the Jews, lib. ii. ch. 12, sect. 19.\n\n\npunishment, where souls are afflicted for their sins. The ruler of\nthis girdle of storms was Pooh, the overseer of souls in penance.\nSuch a notion is found in some of the later Greek philosophers,\nand in the writings of the Alexandrian Jews, who undoubtedly drew\nit from the priestly science of Egypt. Every one will recollect\nhow Paul speaks of \"the prince of the power off the air.\" And\nShakspeare makes the timid Claudio shrink from the verge of death\nwith horror, lest his soul should, through ages,\n\n\"Be imprison'd in the viewless winds, And blown with restless\nviolence round about The pendent world.\"\n\nAfter their purgation in this region, all the souls live again on\nearth by transmigration.18 The third realm was in the serene blue\nsky among the stars, the zone of blessedness, where the accepted\ndwell in immortal peace and joy. Eusebius says, \"The Egyptians\nrepresented the universe by two circles, one within the other, and\na serpent with the head of a hawk twining his folds around them,\"\nthus forming three spheres, earth, firmament, divinity.\n\nBut the representation most frequent and imposing is that which\npictures the creation simply as having the earth in the centre,\nand the sun with his attendants as circulating around it in the\nbrightness of the superior, and the darkness of the infernal,\nfirmament. Souls at death pass down through the west into Amenthe,\nand are tried. If condemned, they are either sent back to the\nearth, or confined in the nether space for punishment. If\njustified, they join the blissful company of the Sun God, and rise\nwith him through the east to journey along his celestial course.\nThe upper hemisphere is divided into twelve equal parts,\ncorresponding with the twelve hours of the day. At the gate of\neach of these golden segments a sentinel god is stationed, to whom\nthe newly arriving soul must give its credentials to secure a\npassage. In like manner, the lower hemisphere is cut into the same\nnumber of gloomy sections, corresponding with the twelve hours of\nthe night. Daily the chief divinity, in robes of light, traverses\nthe beaming zones of the blessed, where they hunt and fish, or\nplough and sow, reap and gather, in the Fields of the Sun on the\nbanks of the heavenly Nile. Nightly, arrayed in deep black from\nhead to foot, he traverses the dismal zones of the damned, where\nthey undergo appropriate retributions. Thus the future destiny of\nman was sublimely associated with the march of the sun through the\nupper and lower hemispheres.19 Astronomy was a part of the\nEgyptian's theology. He regarded the stars not figuratively, but\nliterally, as spirits and pure genii; the great planets as\ndeities. The calendar was a religious chart, each month, week,\nday, hour, being the special charge and stand point of a god.20\n\nThere was much poetic beauty and ethical power in these doctrines\nand symbols. The necessity of virtue, the dread ordeals of the\ngrave, the certainty of retribution, the mystic circuits of\ntransmigration, a glorious immortality, the paths of planets and\ngods and souls through creation, all were impressively enounced,\ndramatically shown.\n\n18 Liber Metempsychosis Veterum Agyptiorum, edited and translated\ninto Latin from the funeral papyri by H. Brugsch.\n\n19 L'Univers, Egypte Ancienne, par Champollion Figeac, pp. 123\n145.\n\n20 Agyptische Glaubenslehre von Dr. Ed. Roth, ss. 171, 174.\n\n\n\"The Egyptain soul sail'd o'er the skyey sea\nIn ark of crystal, mann'd by beamy gods,\nTo drag the deeps of space and net the stars,\nWhere, in their nebulous shoals, they shore the void\nAnd through old Night's Typhonian blindness shine.\nThen, solarized, he press'd towards the sun,\nAnd, in the heavenly Hades, hall of God,\nHad final welcome of the firmament.\"\n\nThis solemn linking of the fate of man with the astronomic\nuniverse, this grand blending of the deepest of moral doctrines\nwith the most august of physical sciences, plainly betrays the\nbrain and hand of that hereditary hierarchy whose wisdom was the\nwonder of the ancient world. Osburn thinks the localization of\nAmenthe in the west may have arisen in the following way. Some\nsuperstitious Egyptians, travelling westwards, at twilight, on the\ngreat marshes haunted by the strange gray white ibis, saw troops\nof these silent, solemn, ghostlike birds, motionless or slow\nstalking, and conceived them to be souls waiting for the funeral\nrites to be paid, that they might sink with the setting sun to\ntheir destined abode.21\n\nThat such a system of belief was too complex and elaborate to have\nbeen a popular development is evident. But that it was really held\nby the people there is no room to doubt. Parts of it were publicly\nenacted on festival days by multitudes numbering more than a\nhundred thousand. Parts of it were dimly shadowed out in the\nsecret recesses of temples, surrounded by the most astonishing\naccompaniments that unrivalled learning, skill, wealth, and power\ncould contrive. Its authority commanded the allegiance, its charm\nfascinated the imagination, of the people. Its force built the\npyramids, and enshrined whole generations of Egypt's embalmed\npopulation in richly adorned sepulchres of everlasting rock. Its\nsubstance of esoteric knowledge and faith, in its form of exoteric\nimposture and exhibition, gave it vitality and endurance long. In\nthe vortex of change and decay it sank at last. And now it is only\nafter its secrets have been buried for thirty centuries that the\nexploring genius of modern times has brought its hidden\nhieroglyphics to light, and taught us what were the doctrines\noriginally contained in the altar lore of those priestly schools\nwhich once dotted the plains of the Delta and studded the banks of\neldest Nile, where now, disfigured and gigantic, the solemn\n\n\"Old Syhinxes lift their countenances bland Athwart the river sea\nand sea of sand.\"\n\n21 Monumental History of Egypt, vol. i. ch. 8.\n\n\nCHAPTER VI.\n\nBRAHMANIC AND BUDDHIST DOCTRINE OF A FUTURE LIFE.\n\nIN the Hindu views of the fate of the human soul, metaphysical\nsubtlety and imaginative vastness, intellect and fancy, slavish\ntradition and audacious speculation, besotted ritualism and\nheaven storming spirituality, are mingled together on a scale of\ngrandeur and intensity wholly without a parallel elsewhere in the\nliterature or faith of the world. Brahmanism, with its hundred\nmillion adherents holding sway over India, and Buddhism, with\nits four hundred million disciples scattered over a dozen\nnations, from Java to Japan, and from the Ceylonese to the\nSamoyedes, practically considered, in reference to their actually\nreceived dogmas and aims pertaining to a future life, agree\nsufficiently to warrant us in giving them a general examination\ntogether. The chief difference between them will be explained in\nthe sequel.\n\nThe most ancient Hindu doctrine of the future fate of man, as\ngiven in the Vedas, was simple, rude, and very unlike the forms in\nwhich it has since prevailed. Professor Wilson says, in the\nintroduction to his translation of the Rig Veda, that the\nreferences to this subject in the primeval Sanscrit scriptures are\nsparse and incomplete. But no one has so thoroughly elucidated\nthis obscure question as Roth of Tubingen, in his masterly paper\non the Morality of the Vedas, of which there is a translation, by\nProfessor Whitney, in the Journal of the American Oriental\nSociety.1 The results of his researches may be stated in few\nwords.\n\nWhen a man dies, the earth is invoked to wrap his body up, as a\nmother wraps her child in her garment, and to lie lightly on him.\nHe himself is addressed thus: \"Go forth, go forth on the ancient\npaths which our fathers in old times have trodden: the two rulers\nin bliss, Yama and Varuna, shalt thou behold.\" Varuna judges all.\nHe thrusts the wicked down into darkness; and not a hint or clew\nfurther of their doom is furnished. They were supposed either to\nbe annihilated, as Professor Roth thinks the Vedas imply, or else\nto live as demons, in sin, blackness, and woe. The good go up to\nheaven and are glorified with a shining spiritual body like that\nof the gods. Yama, the first man, originator of the human race on\nearth, is the beginner and head of renewed humanity in another\nworld, and is termed the Assembler of Men. It is a poetic and\ngrand conception that the first one who died, leading the way,\nshould be the patriarch and monarch of all who follow. The old\nVedic hymns imply that the departed good are in a state of exalted\nfelicity, but scarcely picture forth any particulars. The\nfollowing passage, versified with strict fidelity to the original,\nis as full and explicit as any:\n\nWhere glory never fading is, where is the world of heavenly light,\nThe world of immortality, the everlasting, set me there!\nWhere Yama reigns, Vivasvat's son, in the inmost sphere of heaven\nbright.\nWhere those abounding waters flow, oh, make me but immortal there!\nWhere there is freedom unrestrain'd, where the triple vault of\nheaven's in sight,\nWhere worlds of brightest glory are, oh, make me but immortal\nthere!\nWhere pleasures and enjoyments are, where bliss and raptures ne'er\ntake flight,\nWhere all desires are satisfied, oh, make me but immortal there!\n\n1 Vol iii. pp. 342-346.\n\n\nBut this form of doctrine long ago passed from the Hindu\nremembrance, lost in the multiplying developments and\nspecifications of a mystical philosophy, and a teeming\nsuperstition nourished by an unbounded imagination.\n\nBoth Brahmans and Buddhists conceive of the creation on the most\nenormous scale. Mount Meru rises from the centre of the earth to\nthe height of about two millions of miles. On its summit is the\ncity of Brahma, covering a space of fourteen thousand leagues, and\nsurrounded by the stately cities of the regents of the spheres.\nBetween Meru and the wall of stone forming the extreme\ncircumference of the earth are seven concentric circles of rocks.\nBetween these rocky bracelets are continents and seas. In some of\nthe seas wallow single fishes thousands of miles in every\ndimension. The celestial spaces are occupied by a large number of\nheavens, called \"dewa lokas,\" increasing in the glory and bliss of\ntheir prerogatives. The worlds below the earth are hells, called\n\"naraka.\" The description of twenty eight of these, given in the\nVishnu Purana,2 makes the reader \"sup full of horrors.\" The\nBuddhist \"Books of Ceylon\" 3 tell of twenty six heavens placed in\nregular order above one another in the sky, crowded with all\nimaginable delights. They also depict, in the abyss underneath the\nearth, eight great hells, each containing sixteen smaller ones,\nthe whole one hundred and thirty six composing one gigantic hell.\nThe eight chief hells are situated over one another, each\npartially enclosing and overlapping that next beneath; and the\nsufferings inflicted on their unfortunate occupants are of the\nmost terrific character. But these poor hints at the local\napparatus of reward and punishment afford no conception whatever\nof the extent of their mythological scheme of the universe.\n\nThey call each complete solar system a sakwala, and say that, if a\nwall were erected around the space occupied by a million millions\nof sakwalas, reaching to the highest heaven, and the entire space\nwere filled with mustard seeds, a god might take these seeds, and,\nlooking towards any one of the cardinal points, throw a single\nseed towards each sakwala until all the seeds were gone, and still\nthere would be more sakwalas, in the same direction, to which no\nseed had been thrown, without considering those in the other three\nquarters of the heavens. In comparison with this Eastern vision of\nthe infinitude of worlds, the wildest Western dreamer over the\nvistas opened by the telescope may hide his diminished head! Their\nother conceptions are of the same crushing magnitude, Thus, when\nthe demons, on a certain occasion, assailed the gods, Siva using\nthe Himalaya range for his bow, Vasuke for the string, Vishnu for\nhis arrow, the earth for his chariot with the sun and moon for its\nwheels and the Vedas for its horses, the starry canopy for his\nbanner with the tree of Paradise for its staff, Brahma for his\ncharioteer, and the mysterious monosyllable Om for his whip\nreduced them all to ashes.4\n\nThe five hundred million Brahmanic and Buddhist believers hold\nthat all the gods, men, demons, and various grades of animal life\noccupying this immeasurable array of worlds compose one cosmic\nfamily. The totality of animated beings, from a detestable gnat to\n\n2 Wilson's trans. pp. 207-209.\n\n3 Upham's trans. vol. iii. pp. 8, 66, 159.\n\n4 Vans Kennedy, Ancient and Hindu Mythology, p. 429.\n\n\nthundering Indra, from the meanest worm to the supreme Buddha,\nconstitute one fraternal race, by the unavoidable effects of the\nlaw of retribution constantly interchanging their residences in a\nsuccession of rising and sinking existences, ranging through all\nthe earths, heavens, and hells of the universe, bound by the\nterrible links of merit and demerit in the phantasmagoric dungeon\nof births and deaths. The Vishnu Purana declares, \"The universe,\nthis whole egg of Brahma, is everywhere swarming with living\ncreatures, all of whom are captives in the chains of acts.\" 5\n\nThe one prime postulate of these Oriental faiths the ground\nprinciple, never to be questioned any more than the central and\nstationary position of the earth in the Ptolemaic system is that\nall beings below the Infinite One are confined in the circle of\nexistence, the whirl of births and deaths, by the consequences of\ntheir virtues and vices. When a man dies, if he has an excess of\ngood desert, he is born, as a superior being, in one of the\nheavens. According to the nature and degree of his merit, his\nheavenly existence is prolonged, or perhaps repeated many times in\nsuccession; or, if his next birth occurs on earth, it is under\nhappy circumstances, as a sage or a king. But when he expires,\nshould there, on the other hand, be an overbalance of ill desert,\nhe is born as a demon in one of the hells, or may in repeated\nlives run the circuit of the hells; or, if he at once returns to\nthe earth, it is as a beggar, a leprous outcast, a wretched\ncripple, or in the guise of a rat, a snake, or a louse.\n\n\"The illustrious souls of great and virtuous men\nIn godlike beings shall revive again;\nBut base and vicious spirits wind their way\nIn scorpions, vultures, sharks, and beasts of prey.\nThe fair, the gay, the witty, and the brave,\nThe fool, the coward, courtier, tyrant, slave,\nEach one in a congenial form, shall find\nA proper dwelling for his wandering mind.\"\n\nA specific evil is never cancelled by being counterbalanced by a\ngreater good. The fruit of that evil must be experienced, and also\nof that greater good, by appropriate births in the hells and\nheavens, or in the higher and lower grades of earthly existence.\nThe two courses of action must be run through independently. This\nis what is meant by the phrases, so often met with in Oriental\nworks, \"eating the fruits of former acts,\" \"bound in the chains of\ndeeds.\" Merit or demerit can be balanced or neutralized only by\nthe full fruition of its own natural and necessary consequences.6\nThe law of merit and of demerit is fate. It works irresistibly,\nthrough all changes and recurrences, from the beginning to the\nend. The cessation of virtue or of vice does not put an end to its\neffects until its full force is exhausted; as an arrow continues\nin flight until all its imparted power is spent. A man faultlessly\nand scrupulously good through his present life may be guilty of\nsome foul crime committed a hundred lives before and not yet\nexpiated. Accordingly, he may now suffer for it, or his next birth\nmay take place in a hell. On the contrary, he may be credited with\nsome great merit acquired thousands of\n\n5 P. 286.\n\n6 Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. iv. p. 87.\n\n\ngenerations ago, whose fruit he has not eaten, and which may bring\nhim good fortune in spite of present sins, or on the rolling and\nmany colored wheel of metempsychosis may secure for him next a\ncelestial birthplace. In short periods, it will be seen, there is\nmoral confusion, but, in the long run, exact compensation.\n\nThe exuberant prodigiousness of the Hindu imagination is\nstrikingly manifest in its descriptions of the rewards of virtue\nin the heavens and of the punishments of sin in the hells. Visions\npass before us of beautiful groves full of fragrance and music,\nabounding in delicious fruits, and birds of gorgeous plumage,\ncrystal streams embedded with pearls, unruffled lakes where the\nlotus blooms, palaces of gems, crowds of friends and lovers,\nendless revelations of truth, boundless graspings of power, all\nthat can stir and enchant intellect, will, fancy, and heart. In\nsome of the heavens the residents have no bodily form, but enjoy\npurely spiritual pleasures. In others they are self resplendent,\nand traverse the ether. They are many miles in height, one being\ndescribed whose crown was four miles high and who wore on his\nperson sixty wagon loads of jewels. The ordinary lifetime of the\ninhabitants of the dewa loka named Wasawartti equals nine billions\ntwo hundred and sixteen millions of our years. They breathe only\nonce in sixteen hours.\n\nThe reverse of this picture is still more vigorously drawn, highly\ncolored, and diversified in contents. The walls of the Hindu hell\nare over a hundred miles thick; and so dazzling is their\nbrightness that it bursts the eyes which look at them anywhere\nwithin a distance of four hundred leagues.7 The poor creatures\nhere, wrapped in shrouds of fire, writhe and yell in frenzy of\npain. The very revelry and ecstasy of terror and anguish fill the\nwhole region. The skins of some wretches are taken off from head\nto foot, and then scalding vinegar is poured over them. A glutton\nis punished thus: experiencing an insatiable hunger in a body as\nlarge as three mountains, he is tantalized with a mouth no larger\nthan the eye of a needle.8 The infernal tormentors, throwing their\nvictims down, take a flexible flame in each hand, and with these\nlash them alternately right and left. One demon, Rahu, is seventy\nsix thousand eight hundred miles tall: the palm of his hand\nmeasures fifty thousand acres; and when he is enraged he rushes up\nthe sky and swallows the sun or the moon, thus causing an eclipse!\nIn the Asiatic Journal for 1840 is an article on \"The Chinese\nJudges of the Dead,\" which describes a series of twenty four\npaintings of hell found in a Buddhist temple. Devils in human\nshapes are depicted pulling out the tongues of slanderers with\nredhot wires, pouring molten lead down the throats of liars, with\nburning prongs tossing souls upon mountains planted with hooks of\niron reeking with the blood of those who have gone before,\nscrewing the damned between planks, pounding them in husking\nmortars, grinding them in rice mills, while other fiends, in the\nshape of dogs, lap up their oozing gore. But the hardest\nsensibility must by this time cry, Hold!\n\nWith the turmoil and pain of entanglement in the vortex of births,\nand all the repulsive exposures of finite life, the Hindus\ncontrast the idea of an infinite rest and bliss, an endless\n\n7 Hardy, Manual of Buddhism, p. 26.\n\n8 Coleman, Mythology of the Hindus, p. 198.\n\n\nexemption from evil and struggle, an immense receptivity of\nreposing power and quietistic contemplation. In consequence of\ntheir endlessly varied, constantly recurring, intensely earnest\nspeculations and musings over this contrast of finite restlessness\nand pain with infinite peace and blessedness, a contrast which\nconstitutes the preaching of their priests, saturates their sacred\nbooks, fills their thoughts, and broods over all their life, the\nOrientals are pervaded with a profound horror of individual\nexistence, and with a profound desire for absorption into the\nInfinite Being. A few quotations from their own authors will\nillustrate this:\n\n\"A sentient being in the repetition of birth and death is like a\nworm in the midst of a nest of ants, like a lizard in the hollow\nof a bamboo that is burning at both ends.\"9 \"Emancipation from all\nexistence is the fulness of felicity.\"10 \"The being who is still\nsubject to birth may now sport in the beautiful gardens of heaven,\nnow be cut to pieces in hell; now be Maha Brahma, now a degraded\noutcast; now sip nectar, now drink blood; now repose on a couch\nwith gods, now be dragged through a thicket of thorns; now reside\nin a mansion of gold, now be exposed on a mountain of lava; now\nsit on the throne of the gods, now be impaled amidst hungry dogs;\nnow be a king glittering with countless gems, now a mendicant\ntaking a skull from door to door to beg alms; now eat ambrosia as\nthe monarch of a dewa loka, now writhe and die as a bat in the\nshrivelling flame.\"11 \"The Supreme Soul and the human soul do not\ndiffer, and pleasure or pain ascribable to the latter arises from\nits imprisonment in the body. The water of the Ganges is the same\nwhether it run in the river's bed or be shut up in a decanter; but\na drop of wine added to the water in the decanter imparts its\nflavor to the whole, whereas it would be lost in the river. The\nSupreme Soul, therefore, is beyond accident; but the human soul is\nafflicted by sense and passion. Happiness is only obtained in\nreunion with the Supreme Soul, when the dispersed individualities\ncombine again with it, as the drops of water with the parent\nstream. Hence the slave should remember that he is separated from\nGod by the body alone, and exclaim, perpetually, 'Blessed be the\nmoment when I shall lift the veil from off that face! the veil of\nthe face of my Beloved is the dust of my body.'\"12 \"A pious man\nwas once born on earth, who, in his various transmigrations, had\nmet eight hundred and twenty five thousand Buddhas. He remembered\nhis former states, but could not enumerate how many times he had\nbeen a king, a beggar, a beast, an occupant of hell. He uttered\nthese words: 'A hundred thousand years of the highest happiness on\nearth are not equal to the happiness of one day in the dewa lokas;\nand a hundred thousand years of the deepest misery on earth are\nnot equal to the misery of one day in hell; but the misery of hell\nis reckoned by millions of centuries. Oh, how shall I escape, and\nobtain eternal bliss?'\" 13\n\n9 Eastern Monachism, p. 247.\n\n10 Vishnu Purana, p. 568.\n\n11 Hardy, Manual of Buddhism, p. 454.\n\n12 Asiatic Researches, vol. xvii. p. 298.\n\n13 Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. iv. p. 114.\n\n\nThe literary products of the Eastern mind wonderfully abound with\npainful descriptions of the compromises, uncleannesses, and\nafflictions inseparably connected with existence. Volumes would be\nrequired to furnish an adequate representation of the vivid and\ninexhaustible amplification with which they set forth the direful\ndisgusts and loathsome terrors associated with the series of ideas\nexpressed by the words conception, birth, life, death, hell, and\nregeneration. The fifth chapter in the sixth book of the Vishnu\nPurana affords a good specimen of these details; but, to\nappreciate them fully, one must peruse dispersed passages in a\nhundred miscellaneous works:\n\n\"As long as man lives, he is immersed in afflictions, like the\nseed of the cotton amidst the down. . . . Where could man,\nscorched by the fires of the sun of this world, look for felicity,\nwere it not for the shade afforded by the tree of emancipation? .\n. . Travelling the path of the world for many thousands of births,\nman attains only the weariness of bewilderment, and is smothered\nby the dust of imagination. When that dust is washed away by the\nbland water of real knowledge, then the weariness is removed. Then\nthe internal man is at peace, and obtains supreme felicity.\"14\n\nThe result of these views is the awakening of an unquenchable\ndesire to \"break from the fetters of existence,\" to be \"delivered\nfrom the whirlpool of transmigration.\" Both Brahmanism and\nBuddhism are in essence nothing else than methods of securing\nrelease from the chain of incarnated lives, and attaining to\nidentification with the Infinite. There is a text in the\nApocalypse which may be strikingly applied to this exemption from\nfurther metempsychosis: \"Him that overcometh I will make a pillar\nin the temple of my God, and he shall go no more out forever.\" The\ntestimony of all who have investigated the subject agrees with the\nfollowing assertion by Professor Wilson: \"The common end of every\nsystem studied by the Hindus is the ascertainment of the means by\nwhich perpetual exemption from the necessity of repeated births\nmay be won.\"15 In comparison with this aim, every thing else is\nutterly insignificant. Prahlada, on being offered by Vishnu any\nboon he might ask, exclaimed, \"Wealth, virtue, love, are as\nnothing; for even liberation is in his reach whose faith is firm\nin thee.\" And Vishnu replied, \"Thou shalt, therefore, obtain\nfreedom from existence.\"16 All true Orientals, however favored or\npersecuted by earthly fortune, still cry night and day upwards\ninto the infinite, with outstretched arms and yearning voice,\n\n\"O Lord, our separate lives destroy! Merge in thy gold our souls'\nalloy: Pain is our own, and Thou art Joy!\"\n\nAccording to the system of Brahmanism, the creation is regularly\ncalled into being and again destroyed at the beginning and end of\ncertain stupendous epochs called kalpas. Four thousand three\nhundred and twenty million years make a day of Brahma. At the end\nof this day the lower worlds are consumed by fire; and Brahma\nsleeps on the abyss for a night as long\n\n14 Vishnu Parana, p. 650.\n\n15 Sankhya Karika, preface, p. 3.\n\n16 Vishnu Purana, p. 144.\n\n\nas his day. During this night the saints, who in high Jana loka\nhave survived the dissolution of the lower portions of the\nuniverse, contemplate the slumbering deity until he wakes and\nrestores the mutilated creation. Three hundred and sixty of these\ndays and nights compose a year of Brahma; a hundred such years\nmeasure his whole life. Then a complete destruction of all things\ntakes place, every thing merging into the Absolute One, until he\nshall rouse himself renewedly to manifest his energies.17 Although\ncreated beings who have not obtained emancipation are destroyed in\ntheir individual forms at the periods of the general dissolution,\nyet, being affected by the good or evil acts of former existence,\nthey are never exempted from their consequences, and when Brahma\ncreates the world anew they are the progeny of his will, in the\nfourfold condition of gods, men, animals, and inanimate things.18\nAnd Buddhism embodies virtually the same doctrine, declaring \"the\nwhole universe of sakwalas to be subject alternately to\ndestruction and renovation, in a series of revolutions to which\nneither beginning nor end can be discovered.\"\n\nWhat is the Brahmanic method of salvation, or secret of\nemancipation? Rightly apprehended in the depth and purity of the\nreal doctrine, it is this. There is in reality but ONE SOUL: every\nthing else is error, illusion, misery. Whoever acquires the\nknowledge of this truth by personal perception is thereby\nliberated. He has won the absolute perfection of the unlimited\nGodhead, and shall never be born again. \"Whosoever views the\nSupreme Soul as manifold, dies death after death.\" God is\nformless, but seems to assume form; as moonlight, impinging upon\nvarious objects, appears crooked or straight.19 Bharata says to\nthe king of Sauriva, \"The great end of all is not union of self\nwith the Supreme Soul, because one substance cannot become\nanother. The true wisdom, the genuine aim of all, is to know that\nSoul is one, uniform, perfect, exempt from birth, omnipresent,\nundecaying, made of true knowledge, dissociated with\nunrealities.\"20 \"It is ignorance alone which enables Maya to\nimpress the mind with a sense of individuality; for as soon as\nthat is dispelled it is known that severalty exists not, and that\nthere is nothing but one undivided Whole.\" 21 The Brahmanic\nscriptures say, \"The Eternal Deity consists of true knowledge.\"\n\"Brahma that is Supreme is produced of reflection.\"22 The logic\nruns thus. There is only One Soul, the absolute God. All beside is\nempty deception. That One Soul consists of true knowledge. Whoever\nattains to true knowledge, therefore, is absolute God, forever\nfreed from the sphere of semblances.\n\nThe foregoing exposition is philosophical and scriptural\nBrahmanism. But there are numerous schismatic sects which hold\nopinions diverging from it in regard to the nature and destiny of\nthe human soul. They may be considered in two classes. First,\nthere are some who defend the idea of the personal immortality of\nthe soul. The Siva Gnana Potham \"establishes the doctrine of the\nsoul's eternal existence as an individual being.\" 23 The Saiva\nschool\n\n17 Vishnu Purana, p. 25. Hardy, Manual of Buddhism, p. 33, note.\n\n18 Vishnu Parana, pp. 39, 116.\n\n19 Colebrooke, Essays, vol. i. p. 359.\n\n20 Vishnu Purana, p. 252.\n\n21 Vans Kennedy, Ancient and Hindu Mythology, p. 201.\n\n22 Vishnu Purana, pp. 546, 642.\n\n23 Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. ii. p. 141.\n\n\nteach that when, at the close of every great period, all other\ndeveloped existences are rendered back to their primordial state,\nsouls are excepted. These, once developed and delivered from the\nthraldom of their merit and demerit, will ever remain intimately\nunited with Deity and clothed in the resplendent wisdom.24\nSecondly, there are others and probably at the present time they\ninclude a large majority of the Brahmans who believe in the real\nbeing both of the Supreme Soul and of separate finite souls,\nconceiving the latter to be individualized parts of the former and\ntheir true destiny to consist in securing absorption into it. The\nrelation of the soul to God, they maintain, is not that of ruled\nand ruler, but that of part and whole. \"As gold is one substance\nstill, however diversified as bracelets, tiaras, ear rings, or\nother things, so Vishnu is one and the same, although modified in\nthe forms of gods, animals, and men. As the drops of water raised\nfrom the earth by the wind sink into the earth again when the wind\nsubsides, so the variety of gods, men, and animals, which have\nbeen detached by the agitation of the qualities, are reunited,\nwhen the disturbance ceases, with the Eternal.\" 25 \"The whole\nobtains its destruction in God, like bubbles in water.\" The\nMadhava sect believe that there is a personal All Soul distinct\nfrom the human soul. Their proofs are detailed in one of the Maha\nUpanishads.26 These two groups of sects, however, agree perfectly\nwith the ancient orthodox Brahmans in accepting the fundamental\ndogma of a judicial metempsychosis, wherein each one is fastened\nby his acts and compelled to experience the uttermost consequences\nof his merit or demerit. They all coincide in one common\naspiration as regards the highest end, namely, emancipation from\nthe necessity of repeated births. The difference between the three\nis, that the one class of dissenters expect the fruition of that\ndeliverance to be a finite personal immortality in heaven; the\nother interpret it as an unwalled absorption in the Over Soul,\nlike a breath in the air; while the more orthodox believers regard\nit as the entire identity of the soul with the Infinite One.\n\nAgainst the opinion that there is only one Soul for all bodies, as\none string supports all the gems of a necklace, some Hindu\nphilosophers argue that the plurality of souls is proved by the\nconsideration that, if there were but one soul, then when any one\nwas born, or died, or was lame, or deaf, or occupied, or idle, all\nwould at once be born, die, be lame, deaf, occupied, or idle. But\nProfessor Wilson says, \"This doctrine of the multitudinous\nexistence or individual incorporation of Soul clearly contradicts\nthe Vedas. They affirm one only existent soul to be distributed in\nall beings. It is beheld collectively or dispersedly, like the\nreflection of the moon in still or troubled water. Soul, eternal,\nomnipresent, undisturbed, pure, one, is multiplied by the power of\ndelusion, not of its own nature.\"27\n\nAll the Brahmanic sects unite in thinking that liberation from the\nnet of births is to be obtained and the goal of their wishes to be\nreached by one means only; and that is knowledge, real wisdom, an\nadequate sight of the truth. Without this knowledge there is no\npossible emancipation; but there are three ways of seeking the\nneeded knowledge.\n\n24 Ibid. vol. iv. p. 15.\n\n25 Vishnu Purana, p. 287.\n\n26 Weber, Akademische Vorlesungen uber Indische\nLiteraturgeschichte, s. 160.\n\n27 Sankbya Karika, p. 70.\n\n\nSome strive, by direct intellectual abstraction and effort, by\nmetaphysical speculation, to grasp the true principles of being.\nOthers try, by voluntary penance, self abnegation, and pain, to\naccumulate such a degree of merit, or to bring the soul into such\na state of preparedness, as will compel the truth to reveal\nitself. And still others devote themselves to the worship of some\nchosen deity, by ritual acts and fervid contemplation, to obtain\nby his favor the needed wisdom. A few quotations may serve to\nillustrate the Brahmanic attempts at winning this one thing\nneedful, the knowledge which yields exemption from all incarnate\nlives.\n\nThe Sankhya philosophy is a regular system of metaphysics, to be\nstudied as one would study algebra. It presents to its disciples\nan exhaustive statement of the forms of being in twenty five\ncategories, and declares, \"He who knows the twenty five\nprinciples, whatever order of life he may have entered, and\nwhether he wear braided hair, a top knot only, or be shaven, he is\nliberated.\" \"This discriminative wisdom releases forever from\nworldly bondage.\"28 \"The virtuous is born again in heaven, the\nwicked is born again in hell; the fool wanders in error, the wise\nman is set free.\" \"By ignorance is bondage, by knowledge is\ndeliverance.\" \"When Nature finds that soul has discovered that it\nis to her the distress of migration is owing, she is put to shame\nby the detection, and will suffer herself to be seen no more.\"29\n\"Through knowledge the sage is absorbed into Supreme Spirit.\"30\n\"The Supreme Spirit attracts to itself him who meditates upon it,\nas the loadstone attracts the iron.\"31 \"He who seeks to obtain a\nknowledge of the Soul is gifted with it, the Soul rendering itself\nconspicuous to him.\" \"Man, having known that Nature which is\nwithout a beginning or an end, is delivered from the grasp of\ndeath.\" \"Souls are absorbed in the Supreme Soul as the reflection\nof the sun in water returns to him on the removal of the water.\"32\n\nThe thought underlying the last statement is that there is only\none Soul, every individual consciousness being but an illusory\nsemblance, and that the knowledge of this fact constitutes the\nall coveted emancipation. As one diffusive breath passing through\nthe perforations of a flute is distinguished as the several notes\nof the scale, so the Supreme Spirit is single, though, in\nconsequence of acts, it seems manifold. As every placid lakelet\nholds an unreal image of the one real moon sailing above, so each\nhuman soul is but a deceptive reflection of the one veritable\nSoul, or God. It may be worth while to observe that Plotinus, as\nis well known, taught the doctrine of the absolute identity of\neach soul with the entire and indistinguishable entity of God:\n\n\"Though God extends beyond creation's rim, Yet every being holds\nthe whole of him.\"\n\nIt belongs to an unextended substance, an immateriality, to be\neverywhere by totality, not by portions. If God be omnipresent, he\ncannot be so dividedly, a part of him here and a part\n\n28 Ibid. pp. 1, 16.\n\n29 Ibid. pp. 48, 142, 174.\n\n30 Vishnu Purana, p. 57.\n\n31 Ibid. p. 651.\n\n32 Rammohun Roy, Translations from the Veda, 2d ed., London, 1832,\npp. 69, 39, 10.\n\n\nof him there; but the whole of him must be in every particle of\nmatter, in every point of space, in all infinitude.\n\nThe Brahmanic religion is a philosophy; and it keeps an\nincomparably strong hold on the minds of its devotees. Its most\nvital and comprehensive principle is expressed in the following\nsentence: \"The soul itself is not susceptible of pain, or decay,\nor death; the site of these things is nature; but nature is\nunconscious; the consciousness that pain exists is restricted to\nthe soul, although the soul is not the actual seat of pain.\" This\nis the reason why every Hindu yearns so deeply to be freed from\nthe meshes of nature, why he so anxiously follows the light of\nfaith and penance, or the clew of speculation, through all mazes\nof mystery. It is that he may at last gaze on the central TRUTH,\nand through that sight seize the fruition of the supreme and\neternal good of man in the unity of his selfhood with the\nInfinite, and so be born no more and experience no more trouble.\nIt is very striking to contrast with this profound and gorgeous\ndream of the East, whatever form it assumes, the more practical\nand definite thought of the West, as expressed in these lines of\nTennyson's \"In Memoriam:\"\n\n\"That each, who seems a separate whole,\nShould move his rounds, and, fusing all\nThe skirts of self again, should fall\nRemerging in the general Soul,\nIs faith as vague as all unsweet:\nEternal form shall still divide\nThe eternal soul from all beside,\nAnd I shall know him when we meet.\"\n\nBut is it not still more significant to notice that, in the lines\nwhich immediately succeed, the love inspired and deep musing\ngenius of the English thinker can find ultimate repose only by\nrecurring to the very faith of the Hindu theosophist?\n\n\"And we shall sit at endless feast,\nEnjoying each the other's good:\nWhat vaster dream can hit the mood\nOf Love on earth! He seeks at least\nUpon the last and sharpest height,\nBefore the spirits fade away,\nSome landing place, to clasp and say,\nFarewell! We lose ourselves in light!\"\n\nWe turn now to the Buddhist doctrine of a future life as\ndistinguished from the Brahmanic. The \"Four Sublime Truths\" of\nBuddhism, as they are called, are these: first, that there is\nsorrow; secondly, that every living person necessarily feels it;\nthirdly, that it is desirable to be freed from it; fourthly, that\nthe only deliverance from it is by that pure knowledge which\ndestroys all cleaving to existence. A Buddha is a being who, in\nconsequence of having reached the Buddhaship, which implies the\npossession of infinite goodness, infinite power, and infinite\nwisdom, is able to teach men that true knowledge which secures\nemancipation.\n\nThe Buddhaship that is, the possession of Supreme Godhead is open\nto every one, though few ever acquire it. Most wonderful and\ntremendous is the process of its attainment. Upon a time, some\nbeing, perhaps then incarnate as a mosquito alighting on a muddy\nleaf in some swamp, pauses for a while to muse. Looking up through\ninfinite stellar systems, with hungry love and boundless ambition,\nto the throne and sceptre of absolute immensity, he vows within\nhimself, \"I will become a Buddha.\" The total influences of his\npast, the forces of destiny, conspiring with his purpose,\nomnipotence is in that resolution. Nothing shall ever turn him\naside from it. He might soon acquire for himself deliverance from\nthe dreadful vortex of births; but, determined to achieve the\npower of delivering others from their miseries as sentient beings,\nhe voluntarily throws himself into the stream of successive\nexistences, and with divine patience and fortitude undergoes every\nthing.\n\nFrom that moment, no matter in what form he is successively born,\nwhether as a disgusting bug, a white elephant, a monarch, or a\ngod, he is a Bodhisat, that is, a candidate pressing towards the\nBuddhaship. He at once begins practising the ten primary virtues,\ncalled paramitas, necessary for the securing of his aim. The\nperiod required for the full exercise of one of these virtues is a\nbhumi. Its duration is thus illustrated. Were a Bodhisat once in a\nthousand births to shed a single drop of blood, he would in the\nspace of a bhumi shed more blood than there is water in a thousand\noceans. On account of his merit he might always be born amidst the\npleasures of the heavens; but since he could there make no\nprogress towards his goal, he prefers being born in the world of\nmen. During his gradual advance, there is no good he does not\nperform, no hardship he does not undertake, no evil he does not\nwillingly suffer; and all for the benefit of others, to obtain the\nmeans of emancipating those whom he sees fastened by ignorance in\nthe afflictive circle of acts. Wherever born, acting, or\nsuffering, his eye is still turned towards that EMPTY THRONE, at\nthe apex of the universe, from which the last Buddha has vaulted\ninto Nirwana. The Buddhists have many scriptures, especially one,\ncalled the \"Book of the Five Hundred and Fifty Births,\" detailing\nthe marvellous adventures of the Bodhisat during his numerous\ntransmigrations, wherein he exhibits for each species of being to\nwhich he belongs a model character and life.\n\nAt length the momentous day dawns when the unweariable Bodhisat\nenters on his well earned Buddhaship. From that time, during the\nrest of his life, he goes about preaching discourses, teaching\nevery prepared creature he meets the method of securing eternal\ndeliverance. Leaving behind in these discourses a body of wisdom\nsufficient to guide to salvation all who will give attentive ear\nand heart, the Buddha then his sublime work of disinterested love\nbeing completed receives the fruition of his toil, the super\nessential prize of the universe, the Infinite Good. In a word, he\ndies, and enters Nirwana. There is no more evil of any sort for\nhim at all forever. The final fading echo of sorrow has ceased in\nthe silence of perfect blessedness; the last undulation of the\nwave of change has rolled upon the shore of immutability.\n\nThe only historic Buddha is Sakya Muni, or Gotama, who was born at\nKapila about six centuries before Christ. His teachings contain\nmany principles in common with those of the Brahmans. But he\nrevolted against their insufferable conceit and cruelty. He\nprotested against their claim that no one could obtain\nemancipation until after being born as a Brahman and passing\nthrough the various rites and degrees of their order. In the\nface of the most powerful and arrogant priesthood in the world,\nhe preached the perfect equality of all mankind, and the consequent\nabolition of castes. Whoever acquires a total detachment of\naffection from all existence is thereby released from birth and\nmisery; and the means of acquiring that detachment are freely\noffered to all in his doctrine.\n\nThus did Gotama preach. He took the monopoly of religion out of the\nhands of a caste, and proclaimed emancipation to every creature\nthat breathes. He established his system in the valley of the\nGanges near the middle of the sixth century before Christ. It soon\noverran the whole country, and held sway until about eight hundred\nyears after Christ, when an awful persecution and slaughter on the\npart of the uprising Brahmans drove it out of the land with sword\nand fire. \"The colossal figure which for fourteen centuries had\nbestridden the Indian continent vanished suddenly, like a rainbow\nat sunset.\"33\n\nGotama's philosophy, in its ontological profundity, is of a\nsubtlety and vastness that would rack the brain of a Fichte or a\nSchelling; but, popularly stated, so far as our present purpose\ndemands, it is this. Existence is the one all inclusive evil;\ncessation of existence, or Nirwana, is the infinite good. The\ncause of existence is ignorance, which leads one to cleave to\nexisting objects; and this cleaving leads to reproduction. If one\nwould escape from the chain of existence, he must destroy the\ncause of his confinement in it, that is, evil desire, or the\ncleaving to existing objects. The method of salvation in Gotama's\nsystem is to vanquish and annihilate all desire for existing\nthings. How is this to be done? By acquiring an intense perception\nof the miseries of existence, on the one hand, and an intense\nperception, on the other hand, of the contrasted desirableness of\nthe state of emancipation, or Nirwana. Accordingly, the discourses\nof Gotama, and the sacred books of the Buddhists, are filled with\nvivid accounts of every thing disgusting and horrible connected\nwith existence, and with vivid descriptions, consciously faltering\nwith inadequacy, of every thing supremely fascinating in\nconnection with Nirwana. \"The three reflections on the impermanency,\nsuffering, and unreality of the body are three gates leading to\nthe city of Nirwana.\" The constant claim is, that whosoever by\nadequate moral discipline and philosophical contemplation attains\nto a certain degree of wisdom, a certain degree of intellectual\ninsight, instead of any longer cleaving to existence, will shudder\nat the thought of it, and, instead of shrinking from death, will\nbe ravished with unfathomable ecstasy by the prospect of Nirwana.\nThen, when he dies, he is free from all liability to a return.\n\nWhen Gotama, early in life, had accidentally seen in succession a\nwretchedly decrepit old man, a loathsomely diseased man, and a\ndecomposing dead man, then the three worlds of passion, matter,\nand spirit seemed to him like a house on fire, and he longed to be\nextricated from the dizzy whirl of existence, and to reach the\nstill haven of Nirwana. Finding ere long that he had now, as the\nreward of his incalculable endurances through untold aons past,\nbecome Buddha, he said to himself, \"You have borne the misery of\nthe whole round of transmigrations, and have arrived at infinite\nwisdom, which is the highway to Nirwana, the\n\n33 Major Cunningham, Bbilsa Topes, or Buddhist Monuments of\nCentral India, p. 168.\n\n\ncity of peace. On that road you are the guide of all beings. Begin\nyour work and pursue it with fidelity.\" From that time until the\nday of his death he preached \"the three laws of mortality, misery,\nand mutability.\" Every morning he looked through the world to see\nwho should be caught that day in the net of truth, and took his\nmeasures accordingly to preach in the hearing of men the truths by\nwhich alone they could climb into Nirwana. When he was expiring,\ninvisible gods, with huge and splendid bodies, came and stood, as\nthick as they could be packed, for a hundred and twenty miles\naround the banyan tree under which he awaited Nirwana, to gaze on\nhim who had broken the circle of transmigration.34\n\nThe system of Gotama distinguishes seven grades of being: six\nsubject to repeated death and birth; one the condition of the\nrahats and the Buddhaship exempt therefrom. \"Who wins this has\nreached the shore of the stormy ocean of vicissitudes, and is in\nsafety forever.\" Baur says, \"The aim of Buddhism is that all may\nobtain unity with the original empty Space, so as to unpeople the\nworlds.\"35 This end it seeks by purification from all modes of\ncleaving to existing objects, and by contemplative discrimination,\nbut never by the fanatical and austere methods of Brahmanism.\nEdward Upham, in his History of Buddhism, declares this earth to\nbe the only ford to Nirwana. Others also make the same\nrepresentation:\n\n\"For all that live and breathe have once been men, And in\nsuccession will be such again.\"\n\nBut the Buddhist authors do not always adhere to this statement.\nWe sometimes read of men's entering the paths to Nirwana in some\nof the heavens, likewise of their entering the final fruition\nthrough a decease in a dewa loka. Still, it is the common view\nthat emancipation from all existence can be secured only by a\nhuman being on earth. The last birth must be in that form. The\nemblem of Buddha, engraved on most of his monuments, is a wheel,\ndenoting that he has finished and escaped from the circle of\nexistences. Henceforth he is named Tathagata, he who has gone.\n\nLet us notice a little more minutely what the Buddhists say of\nNirwana; for herein to them hides all the power of their\nphilosophy and lies the absorbing charm of their religion.\n\n\"The state that is peaceful, free from body, from passion, and\nfrom fear, where birth or death is not, that is Nirwana.\" \"Nirwana\nputs an end to coming and going, and there is no other happiness.\"\n\"It is a calm wherein no wind blows.\" \"There is no difference in\nNirwana.\" \"It is the annihilation of all the principles of\nexistence.\" \"Nirwana is the completion and opposite shore of\nexistence, free from decay, tranquil, knowing no restraint, and of\ngreat blessedness.\" \"Nirwana is unmixed satisfaction, entirely\nfree from sorrow.\" \"The wind cannot be squeezed in the hand, nor\ncan its color be told. Yet the wind is. Even so Nirwana is, but\nits properties cannot be told.\" \"Nirwana, like space, is\ncauseless, does not live nor die, and has no locality. It is the\nabode of those liberated from existence.\" \"Nirwana is not, except\nto the being who attains it.\"36\n\n34 Life of Gotama in Journal of the American Oriental Society,\nvol. iii.\n\n35 Symbolik and Mythologie, th. ii. abth. 2, s. 407.\n\n36 For these quotations, and others similar, see Hardy's valuable\nwork, \"Eastern Monachism,\" chap. xxii., on \"Nirwana, its Paths and\nFruition.\"\n\n\nSome scholars maintain that the Buddhist Nirwana is nothing but\nthe atheistic Annihilation. The subject is confessedly a most\ndifficult one. But it seems to us that the opinion just stated is\nthe very antithesis of the true interpretation of Nirwana. In the\nfirst place, it should be remembered that there are various sects\nof Buddhists. Now, the word Nirwana may be used in different\nsenses by different schools.37 A few persons a small party,\nrepresented perhaps by able writers may believe in annihilation in\nour sense of the term, just as has happened in Christendom, while\nthe common doctrine of the people is the opposite of that. In the\nsecond place, with the Oriental horror of individuated existence,\nand a highly poetical style of writing, nothing could be more\nnatural, in depicting their ideas of the most desirable state of\nbeing, than that they should carry their metaphors expressive of\nrepose, freedom from action and emotion, to a pitch conveying to\nour cold and literal thought the conceptions of blank\nunconsciousness and absolute nothingness.\n\nColebrooke says, \"Nirwana is not annihilation, but unceasing\napathy. The notion of it as a happy state seems derived from the\nexperience of ecstasies; or else the pleasant, refreshed feeling\nwith which one wakes from profound repose is referred to the\nperiod of actual sleep.\"38 A Buddhist author speculates thus:\n\"That the soul feels not during profound trance, is not for want\nof sensibility, but for want of sensible objects.\" Wilson,\nHodgson, and Vans Kennedy three able thinkers, as well as\nscholars, in this field agree that Nirwana is not annihilation as\nwe understand that word. Mr. Hodgson believes that the Buddhists\nexpect to be \"conscious in Nirwana of the eternal bliss of rest,\nas they are in this world of the ceaseless pain of activity.\"\nForbes also argues against the nihilistic explanation of the\nBuddhist doctrine of futurity, and says he is compelled to\nconclude that Nirwana denotes imperishable being in a blissful\nquietude.39 Many additional authorities in favor of this view\nmight be adduced, enough to balance, at least, the names on the\nother side. Koeppen, in his very fresh, vigorous, and lucid work,\njust published, entitled \"The Religion of Buddha, and its Origin,\"\nsays, \"Nirwana is the blessed Nothing. Buddhism is the Gospel of\nAnnihilation.\" But he forgets that the motto on the title page of\nhis volume is the following sentence quoted from Sakya Muni\nhimself: \"To those who know the concatenation of causes and\neffects, there is neither being nor nothing.\" To them Nirwana is.\nConsidering it, then, as an open question, unsettled by any\nauthoritative assertion, we will weigh the probabilities of the\ncase.\n\nNo definition of Nirwana is more frequent than the one given by\nthe Kalpa Sutra,40 namely, \"cessation from action and freedom from\ndesire.\" But this, like many of the other representations, such,\nfor instance, as the exclusion of succession, very plainly is not\na denial of all being, but only of our present modes of\nexperience. The dying Gotama is said to have \"passed through the\nseveral states, one after another, until he arrived at the state\nwhere there is no pain. He then continued to enter the other\nhigher states, and from the highest entered Nirwana.\" Can literal\nannihilation, the naked emptiness of nonentity, be better than\n\n37 Burnouf, Introduction a l'Histoire du Buddhisme Indien,\nAppendice No. I., Du mot Nirvana.\n\n38 Colebrooke, Essays, vol. i. p. 353.\n\n39 Eleven Years in Ceylon, vol. ii. chap. ix.\n\n40 Tanslation by Dr. Stevenson, p. 23.\n\n\nthe highest state of being? It can be so only when we view Nothing\non the positive side as identical with All, make annihilating\ndeprivation equivalent to universal bestowment, regard negation as\naffirmation, and, in the last synthesis of contradictions, see the\nabysmal Vacuum as a Plenum of fruition. As Oken says, \"The ideal\nzero is absolute unity; not a singularity, as the number one, but\nan indivisibility, a numberlessness, a homogeneity, a\ntranslucency, a pure identity. It is neither great nor small,\nquiescent nor moved; but it is, and it is not, all this.\"41\n\nFurthermore, if some of the Buddhist representations would lead us\nto believe that Nirwana is utter nothingness, others apparently\nimply the opposite. \"The discourses of Buddha are a charm to cure\nthe poison of evil desire; a succession of fruit bearing trees\nplaced here and there to enable the traveller to cross the desert\nof existence; a power by which every sorrow may be appeased; a\ndoor of entrance to the eternal city of Nirwana.\" \"The mind of the\nrahat\" (one who has obtained assurance of emancipation and is only\nwaiting for it to arrive) \"knows no disturbance, because it is\nfilled with the pleasure of Nirwana.\" \"The sight of Nirwana\nbestows perfect happiness.\" \"The rahat is emancipated from\nexistence in Nirwana, as the lotus is separated from the mud out\nof which it springs.\" \"Fire may be produced by rubbing together\ntwo sticks, though previously it had no locality: it is the same\nwith Nirawna.\" \"Nirwana is free from danger, peaceful, refreshing,\nhappy. When a man who has been broiled before a huge fire is\nreleased, and goes quickly into some open space, he feels the most\nagreeable sensation. All the evils of existence are that fire, and\nNirwana is that open space.\" These passages indicate the cessation\nin Nirwana of all sufferings, perhaps of all present modes of\nexistence, but not the total end of being. It may be said that\nthese are but figurative expressions. The reply is, so are the\ncontrasted statements metaphors, and it is probable that the\nexpressions which denote the survival of pure being in Nirwana are\ncloser approximations to the intent of their authors than those\nwhich hint at an unconscious vacancy. If Nirwana in its original\nmeaning was an utter and infinite blank, then, \"out of that very\nNothing,\" as Max Muller says, \"human nature made a new paradise.\"\n\nThere is a scheme of doctrine held by some Buddhist philosophers\nwhich may be thus stated. There are five constituent elements of\nsentient existence. They are called khandas, and are as follows:\nthe organized body, sensation, perception, discrimination, and\nconsciousness. Death is the dissolution and entire destruction of\nthese khandas, and apart from them there is no synthetical unit,\nsoul, or personality. Yet in a certain sense death is not the\nabsolute annihilation of a human existence, because it leaves a\npotentiality inherent in that existence. There is no identical ego\nto survive and be born again; but karma that is, the sum of a\nman's action, his entire merit and demerit produces at his death a\nnew being, and so on in continued series until Nirwana is\nattained. Thus the succession of being is kept up with transmitted\nresponsibility, as a flame is transferred from one wick to\nanother. It is evident enough, as is justly claimed by Hardy and\nothers, that the limitation of existence to the five khandas,\nexcluding the idea of any independent individuality, makes death\n\n41 Elements of Physiophilosophy, Tulk's trans. p. 9.\n\n\nannihilation, and renders the very conception of a future life for\nthose now living an absurdity. But we are convinced that this view\nis the speculative peculiarity of a sect, and by no means the\ncommon belief of the Buddhist populace or the teaching of Gotama\nhimself. This appears at the outset from the fact that Gotama is\nrepresented as having lived through millions of existences, in\ndifferent states and worlds, with preserved identity and memory.\nThe history of his concatenated advance towards the Buddhaship is\nthe supporting basis and the saturating spirit of documentary\nBuddhism. And the same idea pervades the whole range of narratives\nrelating to the repeated births and deaths of the innumerable\nBuddhist heroes and saints who, after so many residences on earth,\nin the hells, in the dewalokas, have at last reached emancipation.\nThey recollect their adventures; they recount copious portions of\ntheir experience stretching through many lives.\n\nAgain: the arguments cited from Buddha seem aimed to prove, not\nthat there is absolutely no self in man, but that the five khandas\nare not the self, that the real self is something distinct from\nall that is exposed to misery and change, something deep,\nwondrous, divine, infinite. For instance, the report of a debate\non this subject between Buddha and Sachaka closes with these\nwords: \"Thus was Sachaka forced to confess that the five khandas\nare impermanent, connected with sorrow, unreal, not the self.42\nThese terms appear to imply the reality of a self, only that it is\nnot to be confounded with the apprehensible elements of existence.\nBesides, the attainment of Nirwana is held up as a prize to be\nlaboriously sought by personal effort. To secure it is a positive\ntriumph quite distinct from the fated dissolution of the khandas\nin death. Now, if there be in man no personal entity, what is it\nthat with so much joy attains Nirwana? The genuine Buddhist\nnotion, as seems most probable, is that the conscious essence of\nthe rahat, when the exterior elements of existence fall from\naround him, passes by a transcendent climax and discrete leap\nbeyond the outermost limits of appreciable being, and becomes that\nINFINITE which knows no changes and is susceptible of no\ndefinitions. In the Ka gyur collection of Tibetan sacred books,\ncomprising a hundred volumes, and now belonging to the Cabinet of\nManuscripts in the Royal Library of Paris, there are two volumes\nexclusively occupied by a treatise on Nirwana. It is a significant\nfact that the title of these volumes is \"Nirwana, or Deliverance\nfrom Pain.\" If Nirwana be simply annihilation, why is it not so\nstated? Why should recourse be had to a phrase partially\ndescriptive of one feature, instead of comprehensively announcing\nor implying the whole case?\n\nStill further: it deserves notice that, according to the unanimous\naffirmation of Buddhist authors, if any Buddhist were offered the\nalternative of an existence as king of a dewa loka, keeping his\npersonality for a hundred million years in the uninterrupted\nenjoyment of perfect happiness, or of translation into Nirwana, he\nwould spurn the former as defilement, and would with unutterable\navidity choose the latter. We must therefore suppose that by\nNirwana he understands, not naked destruction, but some mysterious\ngood, too vast for logical comprehension, too obscure to\nOccidental thought to find expression in Occidental language.\n\n42 Hardy, Manual, p. 427.\n\n\nAt the moment when Gotama entered upon the Buddhaship, like\na vessel overflowing with honey, his mind overflowed with the\nnectar of oral instruction, and he uttered these stanzas:\n\n\"Through many different births I have run, vainly seeking The\narchitect of the desire resembling house. Painful are repeated\nbirths. O house builder! I have seen thee. Again a house thou\ncanst not build for me. I have broken thy rafters and ridge pole;\nI have arrived at the extinction of evil desire; My mind is gone\nto Nirwana.\"\n\nHardy, who stoutly maintains that the genuine doctrine of Buddha's\nphilosophy is that there is no transmigrating individuality in\nman, but that the karma creates a new person on the dissolution of\nthe former one, confesses the difficulties of this dogma to be so\ngreat that \"it is almost universally repudiated.\" M. Obry\npublished at Paris, in 1856, a small volume entirely devoted to\nthis subject, under the title of \"The Indian Nirwana, or the\nEnfranchisement of the Soul after Death.\" His conclusion, after a\ncareful and candid discussion, is, that Nirwana had different\nmeanings to the minds of the ancient Aryan priests, the orthodox\nBrahmans, the Sankhya Brahmans, and the Buddhists, but had not to\nany of them, excepting possibly a few atheists, the sense of\nstrict annihilation. He thinks that Burnouf and Barthelemy Saint\nHilaire themselves would have accepted this view if they had paid\nparticular attention to the definite inquiry, instead of merely\ntouching upon it in the course of their more comprehensive\nstudies.\n\nWhat Spinoza declares in the following sentence \"God is one,\nsimple, infinite; his modes of being are diverse, complex,\nfinite\" strongly resembles what the Buddhists say of Nirwana and\nthe contrasted vicissitudes of existence, and may perhaps throw\nlight on their meaning. The supposition of immaterial, unlimited,\nabsolutely unalterable being the scholastic ens sine qualitate\nanswers to the descriptions of it much more satisfactorily than\nthe idea of unqualified nothingness does. \"Nirwana is real; all\nelse is phenomenal.\" The Sankhyas, who do not hold to the\nnonentity nor to the annihilation of the soul, but to its eternal\nidentification with the Infinite One, use nevertheless nearly the\nsame phrases in describing it that the Buddhists do. For example,\nthey say, \"The soul is neither a production nor productive,\nneither matter nor form\"43 The Vishnu Purana says, \"The mundane\negg, containing the whole creation, was surrounded by seven\nenvelops, water, air, fire, ether, egotism, intelligence, and\nfinally the indiscrete principle\"44 Is not this Indiscrete\nPrinciple of the Brahmans the same as the Nirwana of the\nBuddhists? The latter explicitly claim that \"man is capable of\nenlarging his faculties to infinity.\"\n\n43 Sankhya Karika, pp. 16-18.\n\n44 Vishnu Purana, p. 19.\n\n\nNagasena says to the king of Sagal, \"Neither does Nirwana exist\npreviously to its reception, nor is that which was not, brought\ninto existence: still, to the being who attains it, there is\nNirwana.\" According to this statement, taken in connection with\nthe hundreds similar to it, Nirwana seems to be a simple mental\nperception, most difficult of acquirement, and, when acquired,\nassimilating the whole conscious being perfectly to itself. The\nAsangkrata Sutra, as translated by Mr. Hardy, says, \"From the\njoyful exclamations of those who have seen Nirwana, its character\nmay be known by those who have not made the same attainment.\" The\nsuperficial thinker, carelessly scanning the recorded sayings of\nGotama and his expositors in relation to Nirwana, is aware only of\na confused mass of metaphysical hieroglyphs and poetical\nmetaphors; but the Buddhist sages avow that whoso, by concentrated\nstudy and training of his faculties, pursues the inquiry with\nadequate perseverance, will at last elicit and behold the real\nmeaning of Nirwana, the achieved insight and revelation forming\nthe widest horizon of rapturous truth ever contemplated by the\nhuman mind. The memorable remark of Sir William Hamilton, that\n\"capacity of thought is not to be constituted into the measure of\nexistence,\" should show the error of those who so unjustifiably\naffirm that, since Nirwana is said to be neither corporeal nor\nincorporeal, nor at all describable, it is therefore absolutely\nnothing. A like remark is also to be addressed to those who draw\nthe same unwarrantable conclusion of the nothingness of Nirwana\nfrom the fact that it has no locality, or from the fact that it is\nsometimes said to exclude consciousness. Plato, in the Timaus,\nstigmatizes as a vulgar error the notion that what is not in any\nplace is a nonentity. Many a weighty philosopher has followed him\nin this opinion. The denial of place is by no means necessarily\nthe denial of being. So, too, with consciousness. It is\nconceivable that there is a being superior to all the modes of\nconsciousness now known to us. We are, indeed, unable to define\nthis, yet it may be. The profoundest analysis shows that\nconsciousness consists of co ordinated changes.45 \"Consciousness\nis a succession of changes combined and arranged in special ways.\"\nNow, in contrast to the Occidental thinker, who covets alternation\nbecause in his cold climate action is the means of enjoyment, the\nHindu, in the languid East, where repose is the condition of\nenjoyment, conceives the highest blessedness to consist in\nexemption from every disturbance, in an unruffled unity excluding\nall changes. Therefore, while in some of its forms his dream of\nNirwana admits not consciousness, still, it is not inconsistent\nwith a homogeneous state of being, which he, in his metaphysical\nand theosophie soarings, apprehends as the grandest and most\necstatic of all.\n\nThe etymological force of the word Nirwana is extinction, as when\nthe sun has set, a fire has burned out, or a lamp is extinguished.\nThe fair laws of interpretation do not compel us, in cases like\nthis, to receive the severest literal significance of a word as\nconveying the meaning which a popular doctrine holds in the minds\nof its believers. There is almost always looseness, vagueness,\nmetaphor, accommodation. But take the term before us in its\nstrictest sense, and mark the result. When a fire is extinguished,\nit is obvious that, while the flame has disappeared, the substance\nof the flame, whatever it was, has not ceased to be, has not been\n\n45 Herbert Spencer, Principles of Psychology, ch. xxv.\n\n\nactually annihilated. It has only ceased to be in a certain\nvisible form in which it existed before; but it still survives\nunder altered conditions. Now, to compare the putting out of a\nlamp to the death of a man, extinction is not actual destruction,\nbut a transition of the flame into another state of being. That\nother state, in the case of the soul, is Nirwana.\n\nThere is a final consideration, possibly of some worth in dealing\nwith this obscure theme. We will approach it through a preliminary\nquery and quotation. That nothing can extend beyond its limits is\nan identical proposition. How vast, then, must be the soul of man\nin form or in power!\n\n\"If souls be substances corporeal, Be they as big just as the body\nis? Or shoot they out to the height ethereal? Doth it not seem the\nimpression of a seal Can be no larger than the wax? The soul with\nthat vast latitude must move Which measures the objects that it\ndoth descry. So must it be upstretch'd unto the sky And rub\nagainst the stars.\"\n\nCousin asserts that man is conscious of infinity, that \"the\nunconditional, the absolute, the infinite, is immediately known in\nconsciousness by difference, plurality, and relation.\" Now, does\nnot the consciousness of infinity imply the infinity of\nconsciousness? If not, we are compelled into the contradiction\nthat a certain entity or force reaches outside of its outermost\nboundary. The Buddhist ideal is not self annihilation, but self\nuniversalization. It is not the absorption of a drop into the sea,\nbut the dilatation of a drop to the sea. Each drop swells to the\nwhole ocean, each soul becomes the Boundless One, each rahat is\nidentified with the total Nirwana. The rivers of emancipated men\nneither disembogue into the ocean of spirit nor evaporate into the\nabyss of nonentity, but are blended with infinitude as an\nontological integer. Nirwana is unexposed and illimitable space.\nBuddhism is perfect disinterestedness, absolute self surrender. It\nis the gospel of everlasting emancipation for all. It cannot be\nthat a deliberate suicide of soul is the ideal holding the deepest\ndesire of four hundred millions of people. Nirwana is not\nnegation, but a pure positive without alternation or foil.\n\nSome light may be thrown on the subject by contemplating the\nsuccessive states through which the dying Gotama passed. Max\nMuller describes them, after the Buddhist documents, thus: \"He\nenters into the first stage of meditation when he feels freedom\nfrom sin, acquires a knowledge of the nature of all things, and\nhas no desire except that of Nirvana. But he still feels pleasure;\nhe even uses his reasoning and discriminating powers. The use of\nthese powers ceases in the second stage of meditation, when\nnothing remains but a desire after Nirvana, and a general feeling\nof satisfaction arising from his intellectual perfection. That\nsatisfaction, also, is extinguished in the third stage.\nIndifference succeeds; yet there is still self consciousness, and\na certain amount of physical pleasure. In the fourth stage these\nlast remnants are destroyed; memory fades away, all pleasure and\npain are gone, and the doors of Nirvana now open before him. We\nmust soar still higher, and, though we may feel giddy\n\nand disgusted,46 we must sit out the tragedy till the curtain\nfalls. After the four stages of meditation are passed, the Buddha\n(and every being is to become a Buddha) enters first into the\ninfinity of space, then into the infinity of intelligence, and\nthence he passes into the third region, the realm of nothing. But\neven here there is no rest. There is still something left, the\nidea of the nothing in which he rejoices. That also must be\ndestroyed; and it is destroyed in the fourth and last region,\nwhere there is not even the idea of a nothing left, and where\nthere is complete rest, undisturbed by nothing, or what is not\nnothing.\"47 Analyze away all particulars until you reach an\nuncolored boundlessness of pure immateriality, free from every\npredicament; and that is Nirwana. This is one possible way of\nconceiving the fate of the soul; and the speculative mind must\nconceive it in every possible way. However closely the result\nresembles the vulgar notion of annihilation, the difference in\nmethod of approach and the difference to the contemplator's\nfeeling are immense. The Buddhist apprehends Nirwana as infinitude\nin absolute and eternal equilibrium: the atheist finds Nirwana in\na coffin. That is thought of with rapture, this, with horror.\n\nIt should be noticed, before we close this chapter, that some of\nthe Hindus give a spiritual interpretation to all the gross\nphysical details of their so highly colored and extravagant\nmythology. One of their sacred books says, \"Pleasure and pain are\nstates of the mind. Heaven is that which delights the mind, hell\nis that which gives it pain. Hence vice is called hell, and virtue\nis called heaven.\" Another author says, \"The fire of the angry\nmind produces the fire of hell, and consumes its possessor. A\nwicked person causes his evil deeds to impinge upon himself, and\nthat is hell.\" The various sects of mystics, allied in faith and\nfeeling to the Sufis, which are quite numerous in the East, agree\nin a deep metaphorical explanation of the vulgar notions\npertaining to Deity, judgment, heaven, and hell.\n\nIn conclusion, the most remarkable fact in this whole field of\ninquiry is the contrast of the Eastern horror of individuality and\nlonging for absorption with the Western clinging to personality\nand abhorrence of dissolution.48 The true Orientalist, whether\nBrahman, Buddhist, or Sufi, is in love with death. Through this\ngate he expects to quit his frail and pitiable consciousness,\nlosing himself, with all evil, to be born anew and find himself,\nwith all good, in God. All sense, passion, care, and grief shall\ncease with deliverance from the spectral semblances of this false\nlife. All pure contemplation, perfect repose, unsullied and\nunrippled joy shall begin with entrance upon the true life beyond.\nThus thinking, he feels that death is the avenue to infinite\nexpansion, freedom, peace, bliss; and he longs for it with an\nintensity not dreamed of by more frigid natures. He often compares\nhimself, in this world aspiring towards another, to an enamored\nmoth drawn towards the fire, and he exclaims, with a sigh and a\nthrill,\n\n46 Not disgust, but wonder and awe, fathomless intellectual\nemotion, at so unparalleled a phenomenon of our miraculous human\nnature.\n\n47 Buddhism and Buddhist Pilgrims, p. 19.\n\n48 Burnouf, Le Bhagavata Purana, tome i. livre iii. ch. 28:\nAcquisition de la Delivrance, ch. 31.\n\nMarche de l'ame individuelle. \"Highest nature wills the capture;\n'Light to light!' the instinct cries; And in agonizing rapture\nfalls the moth, and bravely dies. Think not what thou art,\nBeliever; think but what thou mayst become For the World is thy\ndeceiver, and the Light thy only home.\" 49\n\nThe Western mind approaches the subject of death negatively,\nstripping off the attributes of finite being; the Eastern mind,\npositively, putting on the attributes of infinite being. Negative\nacts, denying function, are antipathetic, and lower the sense of\nlife; positive acts, affirming function, are sympathetic, and\nraise the sense of life. Therefore the end to which those look,\nannihilation, is dreaded; that to which these look, Nirwana, is\ndesired. To become nothing, is measureless horror; to become all,\nis boundless ecstasy.\n\n49 Milnes, Palm Leaves.\n\n\nCHAPTER VII.\n\nPERSIAN DOCTRINE OF A FUTURE LIFE.\n\nTHE name of Zoroaster is connected, either as author or as\nreviser, with that remarkable system of rites and doctrines which\nconstituted the religion of the ancient Iranians, and which yet\nfinds adherents in the Ghebers of Persia and the Parsees of India.\nPliny, following the affirmation of Aristotle, asserts that he\nflourished six thousand years before Plato. Moyle, Gibbon, Volney,\nRhode, concur in throwing him back into this vast antiquity.\nFoucher, Holty, Heeren, Tychsen, Guizot, assign his birth to the\nbeginning of the seventh century before Christ. Hyde, Prideaux, Du\nPerron, Kleuker, Herder, Klaproth, and others, bring him down to\nabout a hundred and fifty years later. Meanwhile, several weighty\nnames press the scale in favor of the hypothesis of two or three\nZoroasters, living at separate epochs. So the learned men differ,\nand the genuine date in question cannot, at present at least, be\ndecided. It is comparatively certain that, if he was the author of\nthe work attributed to him, he must have flourished as early as\nthe sixth century before Christ. The probabilities seem, upon the\nwhole, that he lived four or five centuries earlier than that,\neven, \"in the pre historic time,\" as Spiegel says. However, the\nsettlement of the era of Zoroaster is not a necessary condition of\ndiscovering the era when the religion commonly traced to him was\nin full prevalence as the established faith of the Persian empire.\nThe latter may be conclusively fixed without clearing up the\nformer. And it is known, without disputation, that that religion\nwhether it was primarily Persian, Median, Assyrian, or Chaldean\nwas flourishing at Babylon in the maturity of its power in the\ntime of the Hebrew prophets Ezekiel, Jeremiah, and Daniel,\ntwenty five hundred years ago.\n\nThe celebrated work on the religion of the ancient Medes and\nPersians by Dr. Hyde, published in 1700, must be followed with\nmuch caution and be taken with many qualifications. The author was\nbiassed by unsound theories of the relation of the Hebrew theology\nto the Persian, and was, of course, ignorant of the most\nauthoritative ancient documents afterwards brought to light. His\nwork, therefore, though learned and valuable, considering the time\nwhen it was written, is vitiated by numerous mistakes and defects.\nIn 1762, Anquetil du Perron, returning to France from protracted\njourneying and abode in the East, brought home, among the fruits\nof his researches, manuscripts purporting to be parts of the old\nPersian Bible composed or collected by Zoroaster. It was written\nin a language hitherto unknown to European scholars, one of the\nprimitive dialects of Persia. This work, of which he soon\npublished a French version at Paris was entitled by him the \"Zend\nAvesta.\" It confirmed all that was previously known of the\nZoroastrian religion, and, by its allusions, statements, and\nimplications, threw great additional light upon the subject.\n\nA furious controversy, stimulated by personal rivalries and\nnational jealousy, immediately arose. Du Perron was denounced as\nan impostor or an ignoramus, and his publication stigmatized as a\nwretched forgery of his own, or a gross imposition palmed upon him\nby some lying pundit. Sir William Jones and John Richardson, both\ndistinguished English Orientalists, and Meiners in Germany, were\nthe chief impugners of the document in hand. Richardson\nobstinately went beyond his data, and did not live long enough to\nretract; but Sir William, upon an increase of information, changed\nhis views, and regretted his first inconsiderate zeal and somewhat\nmistaken championship. The ablest defender of Du Perron was\nKleuker, who translated the whole work from French into German,\nadding many corrections, new arguments, and researches of great\nability. His work was printed at Riga, in seven quarto volumes,\nfrom 1777 to 1783. The progress and results of the whole\ndiscussion are well enough indicated in the various papers which\nthe subject drew forth in the volumes of the \"Asiatic Researches\"\nand the numbers of the \"Asiatic Journal.\" The conclusion was that,\nwhile Du Perron had indeed betrayed partial ignorance and crudity,\nand had committed some glaring errors, there was not the least\nground for doubt that his asserted discovery was in every\nessential what it claimed to be. It is a sort of litany; a\ncollection of prayers and of sacred dialogues held between Ormuzd\nand Zoroaster, from which the Persian system of theology may be\ninferred and constructed with some approach to completeness.\n\nThe assailants of the genuineness of the \"Zend Avesta\" were\neffectually silenced when, some thirty years later, Professor\nRask, a well known Danish linguist, during his inquiries in the\nEast, found other copies of it, and gave to the world such\ninformation and proofs as could not be suspected. He, discovering\nthe close affinities of the Zend with Sanscrit, led the way to the\nmost brilliant triumph yet achieved by comparative philology.\nPortions of the work in the original character were published in\n1829, under the supervision of Burnouf at Paris and of Olshausen\nat Hamburg. The question of the genuineness of the dialect\nexhibited in these specimens, once so freely mooted, has been\ndiscussed, and definitively settled in the affirmative, by several\neminent scholars, among whom may be mentioned Bopp, whose\n\"Comparative Grammar of the Sanscrit, Zend,\nGreek, Latin, Lithuanian, Gothic, and German Languages\" is an\nastonishing monument of erudition and toil. It is the conviction\nof Major Rawlinson that the Zoroastrian books of the Parsees were\nimported to Bombay from Persia in their present state in the\nseventh century of our era, but that they were written at least\ntwelve centuries earlier.1\n\nBut the two scholars whose opinions upon any subject within this\ndepartment of learning are now the most authoritative are\nProfessor Spiegel of Erlangen, and Professor Westergaard of\nCopenhagen. Their investigations, still in progress, made with all\nthe aids furnished by their predecessors, and also with the\nadvantage of newly discovered materials and processes, are of\ncourse to be relied on in preference to the earlier, and in some\nrespects necessarily cruder, researches. It appears that the\nproper Zoroastrian Scriptures namely, the Yasna, the Vispered, the\nVendidad, the Yashts, the Nyaish, the Afrigans, the Gahs, the\nSirozah, and a few other fragments were composed in an ancient\nIranian dialect, which may as Professor\n\nW. D. Whitney suggests in his very lucid and able article in vol.\nv. of the Journal of the American Oriental Society most fitly be\ncalled the Avestan dialect. (No other book in this dialect, we\nbelieve, is known to be in existence now.) It is difficult to say\nwhen these\n\n1 Wilson, Parsi Religion Unfolded, p. 405.\n\n\ndocuments were written; but in view of all the relevant\ninformation now possessed, including that drawn from the\ndeciphered cuneiform inscriptions, the most probable date is about\na thousand years before Christ. Professor R. Roth of Tubingen\nwhose authority herein as an original investigator is perhaps\nhardly second to any other man's says the books of the Zoroastrian\nfaith were written a considerable time before the rise of the\nAchamenian dynasty. He is convinced that the whole substantial\ncontents of the Zend Avesta are many centuries older than the\nChristian era.2 Professor Muller of Oxford also holds the same\nopinion.3 And even those who set the date of the literary record a\nfew centuries later, as Spiegel does, freely admit the great\nantiquity of the doctrines and usages then first committed to\nmanuscript. In the fourth century before Christ, Alexander of\nMacedon overran the Persian empire. With the new rule new\ninfluences prevailed, and the old national faith and ritual fell\ninto decay and neglect. Early in the third century of the\nChristian era, Ardeshir overthrew the Parthian dominion in Persia\nand established the Sassanian dynasty. One of his first acts was,\nstimulated doubtless by the surviving Magi and the old piety of\nthe people, to reinaugurate the ancient religion. A fresh zeal of\nloyalty broke out, and all the prestige and vigor of the long\nsuppressed worship were restored. The Zoroastrian Scriptures were\nnow sought for, whether in manuscript or in the memories of the\npriests. It would seem that only remnants were found. The\ncollection, such as it was, was in the Avestan dialect, which had\ngrown partially obsolete and unintelligible. The authorities\naccordingly had a translation of it made in the speech of the\ntime, Pehlevi. This translation most of which has reached us\nwritten in with the original, sentence after sentence forms the\nreal Zend language, often confounded by the literary public with\nAvestan. The translation of the Avestan books, probably made under\nthese circumstances as early as A. D. 350, is called the\nHuzvaresch. In regard to some of these particulars there are\nquestions still under investigation, but upon which it is not\nworth our while to pause here. For example, Spiegel thinks the\nZend identical with the Pehlevi of the fourth century; Westergaard\nbelieves it entirely distinct from Pehlevi, and in truth only a\ndisguised mode of writing Parsee, the oldest form of the modern\nPersian language.\n\nThe source from which the fullest and clearest knowledge of the\nZoroastrian faith, as it is now held by the Parsees, is drawn, is\nthe Desatir and the Bundehesh. The former work is the unique\nvestige of an extinct dialect called the Mahabadian, accompanied\nby a Persian translation and commentary. It is impossible to\nascertain the century when the Mahabadian text was written; but\nthe translation into Persian was, most probably, made in the\nseventh century of the Christian era.4 Spiegel, in 1847, says\nthere can be no doubt of the spuriousness of the Desatir; but he\ngives no reasons for the statement, and we do not know that it is\nbased on any other arguments than those which, advanced by De\nSacy, were refuted by Von Hammer. The Bundehesh is in the Pehlevi\nor Zend language, and was written, it is\n\n2 Ueber die Heiligen Schriften der Arier. Jahrbucher fur Deutsche\nTheologie, 1857, band ii. ss. 146, 147.\n\n3 Essay on the Veda and the Zend Avesta, p. 24. See also Bunsen's\nChristianity and Mankind, vol. iii. p. 114.\n\n4 Baron von Hammer, in Heidelberger Jabrbucher der Literatur,\n1823. Id. in Journal Asiatique, Juillet, 1833. Dabistan,\nPreliminary Discourse, pp. xix.  lxv.\n\n\nthought, about the seventh century, but was derived, it is\nclaimed, from a more ancient work.5 The book entitled \"Revelations\nof Ardai Viraf\" exists in Pehlevi probably of the fourth century,\naccording to Troyer,6 and is believed to have been originally\nwritten in the Avestan tongue, though this is extremely doubtful.\nIt gives a detailed narrative of the scenery of heaven and hell,\nas seen by Ardai Viraf during a visit of a week which his soul\nleaving his body for that length of time paid to those regions.\nMany later and enlarged versions of this have appeared. One of\nthem, dating from the sixteenth century, was translated into\nEnglish by T. A. Pope and published in 1816. Sanscrit translations\nof several of the before named writings are also in existence. And\nseveral other comparatively recent works, scarcely needing mention\nhere, although considered as somewhat authoritative by the modern\nfollowers of Zoroaster, are to be found in Guzeratee, the present\ndialect of the Indian Parsees. A full exposition of the\nZoroastrian religion, with satisfactory proofs of its antiquity\nand documentary genuineness, is presented in the Preliminary\nDiscourse and Notes to the Dabistan. This curious and entertaining\nwork, a fund of strange and valuable lore, is an historico\ncritical view of the principal religions of the world, especially\nof the Oriental sects, schools, and manners. It was composed in\nPersian, apparently by Mohsan Fani, about the year 1645. An\nEnglish translation, with elaborate explanatory matter, by David\nShea and Anthony Troyer, was published at London and at Paris in\n1843.7\n\nIn these records there are obscurities, incongruities, and chasms,\nas might naturally be anticipated, admitting them to be strictly\nwhat they would pass for. These faults may be accounted for in\nseveral ways. First, in a rude stage of philosophical culture,\nincompleteness of theory, inconsistent conceptions in different\nparts of a system, are not unusual, but are rather to be expected,\nand are slow to become troublesome to its adherents. Secondly,\ndistinct contemporary thinkers or sects may give expression to\ntheir various views in literary productions of the same date and\npossessing a balanced authority. Or, thirdly, the heterogeneous\nconceptions in some particulars met with in these scriptures may\nbe a result of the fact that the collection contains writings of\ndistinct ages, when the same problems had been differently\napproached and had given birth to opposing or divergent\nspeculations. The later works of course cannot have the authority\nof the earlier in deciding questions of ancient belief: they are\nto be taken rather as commentaries, interpreting and carrying out\nin detail many points that lie only in obscure hints and allusions\nin the primary documents. But it is a significant fact that, in\nthe generic germs of doctrine and custom, in the essential\noutlines of substance, in rhetorical imagery, in practical morals,\nthe statements of all these books are alike: they only vary in\nsubordinate matters and in degrees of fulness.\n\nThe charge has repeatedly been urged that the materials of the\nmore recent of the Parsee Scriptures the Desatir and the\nBundehesh were drawn from Christian and Mohammedan sources. No\nevidence of value for sustaining such assertions has been adduced.\nUnder the circumstances, scarcely any motive for such an\nimposition appears. In view of the whole case,\n\n5 Dabistan, vol. i. p. 226, note.\n\n6 Ibid. p. 185, note.\n\n7 Reviewed in Asiatic Journal, 1844, pp. 582-595.\n\n\nthe reverse supposition is rather to be credited. In the first\nplace, we have ample evidence for the existence of the general\nZoroastrian system long anterior to the rise of Christianity. The\ntestimony of the classic authors to say nothing of the known\nantiquity of the language in which the system is preserved is\ndemonstrative on this point. Secondly, the striking agreement in\nregard to fundamental doctrines, pervading spirit, and ritual\nforms between the accounts in the classics and those in the\nAvestan books, and of both these with the later writings and\ntraditional practice of the Parsees, furnishes powerful\npresumption that the religion was a connected development,\npossessing the same essential features from the time of its\nnational establishment. Thirdly, we have unquestionable proofs\nthat, during the period from the Babylonish captivity to the\nadvent of Christ, the Jews borrowed and adapted a great deal from\nthe Persian theology, but no proof that the Persians took any\nthing from the Jewish theology. This is abundantly confessed by\nsuch scholars as Gesenius, Rosenmuller, Stuart, Lucke, De Wette,\nNeander; and it will hardly be challenged by any one who has\ninvestigated the subject. But the Jewish theology being thus\nimpregnated with germs from the Persian faith, and being in a\nsense the historic mother of Christian theology, it is far more\nreasonable, in seeking the origin of dogmas common to Parsees and\nChristians, to trace them through the Pharisees to Zoroaster, than\nto imagine them suddenly foisted upon the former by forgery on the\npart of the latter at a late period. Fourthly, it is notorious\nthat Mohammed, in forming his religion, made wholesale draughts\nupon previously existing faiths, that their adherents might more\nreadily accept his teachings, finding them largely in unison with\ntheir own. It is altogether more likely, aside from historic\nevidence which we possess, that he drew from the tenets and\nimagery of the Ghebers, than that they, when subdued by his armies\nand persecuted by his rule from their native land, introduced new\ndoctrines from the Koran into the ancestral creed which they so\nrevered that neither exile nor death could make them abjure it.\nFor, driven by those fierce proselytes, the victorious Arabs, to\nthe mountains of Kirman and to the Indian coast, they clung with\nunconquerable tenacity to their religion, still scrupulously\npractising its rites, proudly mindful of the time when every\nvillage, from the shore of the Caspian Sea to the outlet of the\nPersian Gulf, had its splendid fire temple,\n\n\"And Iran like a sunflower turn'd Where'er the eye of Mithra\nburn'd.\"\n\nWe therefore see no reason for believing that important Christian\nor Mohammedan ideas have been interpolated into the old\nZoroastrian religion. The influence has been in the other\ndirection. Relying then, though with caution, on what Dr. Edward\nRoth says, that \"the certainty of our possessing a correct\nknowledge of the leading ancient doctrines of the Persians is now\nbeyond all question,\" we will try to exhibit so much of the system\nas is necessary for appreciating its doctrine of a future life.\n\nIn the deep background of the Magian theology looms, in mysterious\nobscurity, the belief in an infinite First Principle, Zeruana\nAkerana. According to most of the scholars who have investigated\nit, the meaning of this term is \"Time without Bounds,\" or absolute\nduration. But Bohlen says it signifies the \"Untreated Whole;\" and\nSchlegel thinksit denotes the \"Indivisible One.\" The conception\nseems to have been to the people mostly an unapplied abstraction,\ntoo vast and remote to become prominent in their speculation or\ninfluential in their faith. Spiegel, indeed, thinks the conception\nwas derived from Babylon, and added to the system at a later\nperiod than the other doctrines. The beginning of vital theology,\nthe source of actual ethics to the Zoroastrians, was in the idea\nof the two antagonist powers, Ormuzd and Ahriman, the first\nemanations of Zeruana, who divide between them in unresting strife\nthe empire of the universe. The former is the Principle of Good,\nthe perfection of intelligence, beneficence, and light, the source\nof all reflected excellence. The latter is the Principle of Evil,\nthe contriver of misery and death, the king of darkness, the\ninstigator of all wrong. With sublime beauty the ancient Persian\nsaid, \"Light is the body of Ormuzd; Darkness is the body of\nAhriman.\" There has been much dispute whether the Persian theology\ngrew out of the idea of an essential and eternal dualism, or was\nbased on the conception of a partial and temporary battle; in\nother words, whether Ahriman was originally and necessarily evil,\nor fell from a divine estate.\n\nIn the fragmentary documents which have reached us, the whole\nsubject lies in confusion. It is scarcely possible to unravel the\ntangled mesh. Sometimes it seems to be taught that Ahriman was at\nfirst good, an angel of light who, through envy of his great\ncompeer, sank from his primal purity, darkened into hatred, and\nbecame the rancorous enemy of truth and love. At other times he\nappears to be considered as the pure primordial essence of evil.\nThe various views may have prevailed in different ages or in\ndifferent schools. Upon the whole, however, we hold the opinion\nthat the real Zoroastrian idea of Ahriman was moral and free, not\nphysical and fatal. The whole basis of the universe was good; evil\nwas an after perversion, a foreign interpolation, a battling\nmixture. First, the perfect Zeruana was once all in all: Ahriman,\nas well as Ormuzd, proceeded from him; and the inference that he\nwas pure would seem to belong to the idea of his origin. Secondly,\nso far as the account of Satan given in the book of Job perhaps\nthe earliest appearance of the Persian notion in Jewish\nliterature warrants any inference or supposition at all, it would\nlead to the image of one who was originally a prince in heaven,\nand who must have fallen thence to become the builder and\npotentate of hell. Thirdly, that matter is not an essential core\nof evil, the utter antagonist of spirit, and that Ahriman is not\nevil by an intrinsic necessity, will appear from the two\nconceptions lying at the base and crown of the Persian system:\nthat the creation, as it first came from the hands of Ormuzd, was\nperfectly good; and that finally the purified material world shall\nexist again unstained by a breath of evil, Ahriman himself\nbecoming like Ormuzd. He is not, then, aboriginal and\nindestructible evil in substance. The conflict between Ormuzd and\nhim is the temporary ethical struggle of light and darkness, not\nthe internecine ontological war of spirit and matter. Roth says,\n\"Ahriman was originally good: his fall was a determination of his\nwill, not an inherent necessity of his nature.\" 8 Whatever other\nconceptions may be found, whatever inconsistencies or\ncontradictions to this may appear, still, we believe the genuine\nZoroastrian view was such as we have now stated. The opposite\ndoctrine arose from the more abstruse lucubrations of a more\nmodern time, and is Manichaan, not Zoroastrian.\n\n8 Zoroastrische Glaubenslehre, ss. 397, 398.\n\n\nOrmuzd created a resplendent and happy world. Ahriman instantly\nmade deformity, impurity, and gloom, in opposition to it. All\nbeauty, virtue, harmony, truth, blessedness, were the work of the\nformer. All ugliness, vice, discord, falsehood, wretchedness,\nbelonged to the latter. They grappled and mixed in a million\nhostile shapes. This universal battle is the ground of ethics, the\nclarion call to marshal out the hostile hosts of good and ill; and\nall other war is but a result and a symbol of it. The strife thus\nindicated between a Deity and a Devil, both subordinate to the\nunmoved ETERNAL, was the Persian solution of the problem of evil,\ntheir answer to the staggering question, why pleasure and pain,\nbenevolence and malignity, are so conflictingly mingled in the\nworks of nature and in the soul of man. In the long struggle that\nensued, Ormuzd created multitudes of co operant angels to assail\nhis foe, stocking the clean empire of Light with celestial allies\nof his holy banner, who hang from heaven in great numbers, ready\nat the prayer of the righteous man to hie to his aid and work him\na thousandfold good. Ahriman, likewise, created an equal number of\nassistant demons, peopling the filthy domain of Darkness with\ncounterbalancing swarms of infernal followers of his pirate flag,\nwho lurk at the summit of hell, watching to snatch every\nopportunity to ply their vocation of sin and ruin. There are such\nhosts of these invisible antagonists sown abroad, and incessantly\nactive, that every star is crowded and all space teems with them.\nEach man has a good and a bad angel, a ferver and a dev, who are\nendeavoring in every manner to acquire control over his conduct\nand possession of his soul.\n\nThe Persians curiously personified the source of organic life in\nthe world under the emblem of a primeval bull. In this symbolic\nbeast were packed the seeds and germs of all the creatures\nafterwards to people the earth. Ahriman, to ruin the creation of\nwhich this animal was the life medium, sought to kill him. He set\nupon him two of his devs, who are called \"adepts of death.\" They\nstung him in the breast, and plagued him until he died of rage.\nBut, as he was dying, from his right shoulder sprang the\nandrogynal Kaiomorts, who was the stock root of humanity. His body\nwas made from fire, air, water, and earth, to which Ormuzd added\nan immortal soul, and bathed him with an elixir which rendered him\nfair and glittering as a youth of fifteen, and would have\npreserved him so perennially had it not been for the assaults of\nthe Evil One.9 Ahriman, the enemy of all life, determined to slay\nhim, and at last accomplished his object; but, as Kaiomorts fell,\nfrom his seed, through the power of Ormuzd, originated Meschia and\nMeschiane, male and female, the first human pair, from whom all\nour race have descended. They would never have died,10 but\nAhriman, in the guise of a serpent, seduced them, and they sinned\nand fell. This account is partly drawn from that later treatise,\nthe Bundehesh, whose mythological cosmogony reminds us of the\nScandinavian Ymer. But we conceive it to be strictly reliable as a\nrepresentation of the Zoroastrian faith in its essential\ndoctrines; for the earlier documents, the Yasna, the Yeshts, and\nthe Vendidad, contain the same things in obscure and undeveloped\nexpressions. They, too, make repeated mention of the mysterious\nbull, and of Kaiomorts.11 They invariably represent death as\nresulting\n\n9 Kleuker, Zend Avesta, band i. anhang 1, s. 263.\n\n10 Ibid. band i. s. 27.\n\n11 Yasna, 24th IIa.\n\n\nfrom the hostility of Ahriman. The earliest Avestan account of the\nearthly condition of men describes them as living in a garden\nwhich Yima or Jemschid had enclosed at the command of Ormuzd.12\nDuring the golden age of his reign they were free from heat and\ncold, sickness and death. \"In the garden which Yima made they led\na most beautiful life, and they bore none of the marks which\nAhriman has since made upon men.\" But Ahriman's envy and hatred\nknew no rest until he and his devs had, by their wiles, broken\ninto this paradise, betrayed Yima and his people into falsehood,\nand so, by introducing corruption into their hearts, put an end to\ntheir glorious earthly immortality. This view is set forth in the\nopening fargards of the Vendidad; and it has been clearly\nillustrated in an elaborate contribution upon the \"Old Iranian\nMythology\" by Professor Westergaard.13 Death, like all other\nevils, was an after effect, thrust into the purely good creation\nof Ormuzd by the cunning malice of Ahriman. The Vendidad, at its\ncommencement, recounts the various products of Ormuzd's beneficent\npower, and adds, after each particular, \"Thereupon Ahriman, who is\nfull of death, made an opposition to the same.\"\n\nAccording to the Zoroastrian modes of thought, what would have\nbeen the fate of man had Ahriman not existed or not interfered?\nPlainly, mankind would have lived on forever in innocence and joy.\nThey would have been blessed with all placid delights, exempt from\nhate, sickness, pain, and every other ill; and, when the earth was\nfull of them, Ormuzd would have taken his sinless subjects to his\nown realm of light on high. But when they forsook the true service\nof Ormuzd, falling into deceit and defilement, they became\nsubjects of Ahriman; and he would inflict on them, as the\ncreatures of his hated rival, all the calamities in his power,\ndissolve the masterly workmanship of their bodies in death, and\nthen take their souls as prisoners into his own dark abode. \"Had\nMeschia continued to bring meet praises, it would have happened\nthat when the time of man, created pure, had come, his soul,\ncreated pure and immortal, would immediately have gone to the seat\nof bliss.\"14 \"Heaven was destined for man upon condition that he\nwas humble of heart, obedient to the law, and pure in thought,\nword, and deed.\" But \"by believing the lies of Ahriman they became\nsinners, and their souls must remain in his nether kingdom until\nthe resurrection of their bodies.\"15 Ahriman's triumph thus\nculminates in the death of man and that banishment of the\ndisembodied soul into hell which takes the place of its\noriginally intended reception into heaven.\n\nThe law of Ormuzd, revealed through Zoroaster, furnishes to all\nwho faithfully observe it in purity of thought, speech, and\naction, \"when body and soul have separated, attainment of paradise\nin the next world,\"16 while the neglecters of it \"will pass into\nthe dwelling of the devs,\"17 \"after death will have no part in\nparadise, but will occupy the place of darkness\n\n12 Die Sage von Dschemschid. Von Professor R. Roth. In Zeitschrift\nder Deutschen Morgeulandischen Gesellschaft, band iv. ss. 417-431.\n\n13 Weber, Indische Studien, band iii. 8. 411.\n\n14 Yesht LXXXVII. Kleuker, band ii. sect. 211.\n\n15 Bundehesh, ch. xv.\n\n16 Avesta die Heiligen Schriften der Parsen. Von Dr. F. Spiegel,\nband i. s, 171.\n\n17 Ibid. s. 158.\n\n\ndestined for the wicked.\"18 The third day after death, the soul\nadvances upon \"the way created by Ormuzd for good and bad,\" to be\nexamined as to its conduct. The pure soul passes up from this\nevanescent world, over the bridge Chinevad, to the world of\nOrmuzd, and joins the angels. The sinful soul is bound and led\nover the way made for the godless, and finds its place at the\nbottom of gloomy hell.19 An Avestan fragment 20 and the Viraf\nNameh give the same account, only with more picturesque fulness.\nOn the soaring bridge the soul meets Rashne rast, the angel of\njustice, who tries those that present themselves before him. If\nthe merits prevail, a figure of dazzling substance, radiating\nglory and fragrance, advances and accosts the justified soul,\nsaying, \"I am thy good angel: I was pure at the first, but thy\ngood deeds have made me purer;\" and the happy one is straightway\nled to Paradise. But when the vices outweigh the virtues, a dark\nand frightful image, featured with ugliness and exhaling a noisome\nsmell, meets the condemned soul, and cries, \"I am thy evil spirit:\nbad myself, thy crimes have made me worse.\" Then the culprit\nstaggers on his uncertain foothold, is hurled from the dizzy\ncauseway, and precipitated into the gulf which yawns horribly\nbelow. A sufficient reason for believing these last details no\nlate and foreign interpolation, is that the Vendidad itself\ncontains all that is essential in them, Garotman, the heaven of\nOrmuzd, open to the pure, Dutsakh, the abode of devs, ready for\nthe wicked, Chinevad, the bridge of ordeal, upon which all must\nenter.21\n\nSome authors have claimed that the ancient disciples of Zoroaster\nbelieved in a purifying, intermediate state for the dead. Passages\nstating such a doctrine are found in the Yeshts, Sades, and in\nlater Parsee works. But whether the translations we now possess of\nthese passages are accurate, and whether the passages themselves\nare authoritative to establish the ancient prevalence of such a\nbelief, we have not yet the means for deciding. There was a yearly\nsolemnity, called the \"Festival for the Dead,\" still observed by\nthe Parsees, held at the season when it was thought that that\nportion of the sinful departed who had ended their penance were\nraised from Dutsakh to earth, from earth to Garotman. Du Perron\nsays that this took place only during the last five days of the\nyear, when the souls of all the deceased sinners who were\nundergoing punishment had permission to leave their confinement\nand visit their relatives; after which, those not yet purified\nwere to return, but those for whom a sufficient atonement had been\nmade were to proceed to Paradise. For proof that this doctrine was\nheld, reference is made to the following passage, with others:\n\"During these five days Ormuzd empties hell. The imprisoned souls\nshall be freed from Ahriman's plagues when they pay penance and\nare ashamed of their sins; and they shall receive a heavenly\nnature; the meritorious deeds of themselves and of their families\ncause this liberation: all the rest must return to Dutsakh.\"22\nRhode thinks this was a part of the old Persian faith, and the\nsource of\n\n18 Ibid. s. 127.\n\n19 Ibid. ss. 248-252. Vendidad, Fargard XIX.\n\n20 Kleuker, band i. ss. xxxi. xxxv.\n\n21 Spiegel, Vendidad, ss. 207, 229, 233, 250.\n\n22 Kleuker, band ii. s. 173.\n\n\nthe Roman Catholic doctrine of purgatory.23 But, whether so or\nnot, it is certain that the Zoroastrians regarded the whole\nresidence of the departed souls in hell as temporary.\n\nThe duration of the present order of the world was fixed at twelve\nthousand years, divided into four equal epochs. In the first three\nthousand years, Ormuzd creates and reigns triumphantly over his\nempire. Through the next cycle, Ahriman is constructing and\ncarrying on his hostile works. The third epoch is occupied with a\ndrawn battle between the upper and lower kings and their\nadherents. During the fourth period, Ahriman is to be victorious,\nand a state of things inconceivably dreadful is to prevail. The\nbrightness of all clear things will be shrouded, the happiness of\nall joyful creatures be destroyed, innocence disappear, religion\nbe scoffed from the world, and crime, horror, and war be rampant.\nFamine will spread, pests and plagues stalk over the earth, and\nshowers of black rain fall. But at last Ormuzd will rise in his\nmight and put an end to these awful scenes. He will send on earth\na savior. Sosiosch, to deliver mankind, to wind up the final\nperiod of time, and to bring the arch enemy to judgment. At the\nsound of the voice of Sosiosch the dead will come forth. Good,\nbad, indifferent, all alike will rise, each in his order.\nKaiomorts, the original single ancestor of men, will be the\nfirstling. Next, Meschia and Meschiane, the primal parent pair,\nwill appear. And then the whole multitudinous family of mankind\nwill throng up. The genii of the elements will render up the\nsacred materials intrusted to them, and rebuild the decomposed\nbodies. Each soul will recognise, and hasten to reoccupy, its old\ntenement of flesh, now renewed, improved, immortalized. Former\nacquaintances will then know each other. \"Behold, my father! my\nmother! my brother! my wife! they shall exclaim.\" 24\n\nIn this exposition we have following the guidance of Du Perron,\nFoucher, Kleuker, J. G. Muller, and other early scholars in this\nfield attributed the doctrine of a general and bodily resurrection\nof the dead to the ancient Zoroastrians. The subsequent researches\nof Burnouf, Roth, and others, have shown that several, at least,\nof the passages which Anquetil supposed to teach such a doctrine\nwere erroneously translated by him, and do not really contain it.\nAnd recently the ground has been often assumed that the doctrine\nof the resurrection does not belong to the Avesta, but is a more\nmodern dogma, derived by the Parsees from the Jews or the\nChristians, and only forced upon the old text by misinterpretation\nthrough the Pehlevi version and the Parsee commentary. A question\nof so grave importance demands careful examination. In the absence\nof that reliable translation of the entire original documents, and\nthat thorough elaboration of all the extant materials, which we\nare awaiting from the hands of Professor Spiegel, whose second\nvolume has long been due, and Professor Westergaard, whose second\nand third volumes are eagerly looked for, we must make the best\nuse of the resources actually available, and then leave the point\nin such plausible light as existing testimony and fair reasoning\ncan throw upon it. In the first place, it should be observed that,\nadmitting the doctrine to be nowhere mentioned in the Avesta,\nstill, it does not follow that the belief was not prevalent when\nthe\n\n23 Rhode, Heilige Sage des Zendvolks, s. 410.\n\n24 Bundehesh, ch. xxxi.\n\n\nAvesta was written. We know that the Christians of the first two\ncenturies believed a great many things of which there is no\nstatement in the New Testament. Spiegel holds that the doctrine in\ndebate is not in the Avesta, the text of which in its present form\nhe thinks was written after the time of Alexander.25 But he\nconfesses that the resurrection theory was in existence long\nbefore that time.26 Now, if the Avesta, committed to writing three\nhundred years before Christ, at a time when the doctrine of the\nresurrection is known to have been believed, contains no reference\nto it, the same relation of facts may just as well have existed if\nwe date the record seven centuries earlier. We possess only a\nsmall and broken portion of the original Zoroastrian Scriptures;\nas Roth says, \"songs, invocations, prayers, snatches of\ntraditions, parts of a code, the shattered fragments of a once\nstately building.\" If we could recover the complete documents in\ntheir earliest condition, it might appear that the now lost parts\ncontained the doctrine of the general resurrection fully formed.\nWe have many explicit references to many ancient Zoroastrian books\nno longer in existence. For example, the Parsees have a very early\naccount that the Avesta at first consisted of twenty one Nosks. Of\nthese but one has been preserved complete, and small parts of\nthree or four others. The rest are utterly wanting. The fifth\nNosk, whereof not any portion remains to us, was called the Do az\nah Hamast. It contained thirty two chapters, treating, among other\nthings, \"of the upper and nether world, of the resurrection, of\nthe bridge Chinevad, and of the fate after death.\" 27 If this\nevidence be true, and we know of no reason for not crediting it,\nit is perfectly decisive. But, at all events, the absence from the\nextant parts of the Zend Avesta of the doctrine under examination\nwould be no proof that that doctrine was not received when those\ndocuments were penned.\n\nSecondly, we have the unequivocal assertion of Theopompus, in the\nfourth century before Christ, that the Magi taught the doctrine of\na general resurrection.28 \"At the appointed epoch Ahriman shall be\nsubdued,\" and \"men shall live again and shall be immortal.\" And\nDiogenes adds, \"Eudemus of Rhodes affirms the same things.\"\nAristotle calls Ormuzd Zeus, and Ahriman Haides, the Greek names\nrespectively of the lord of the starry Olympians above, and the\nmonarch of the Stygian ghosts beneath. Another form also in which\nthe early Greek authors betray their acquaintance with the Persian\nconception of a conflict between Ormuzd and Ahriman is in the\nidea expressed by Xenophon in his Cyropadia, in the dialogue\nbetween Araspes and Cyrus of two souls in man, one a brilliant\nefflux of good, the other a dusky emanation of evil, each bearing\nthe likeness of its parent.29 Since we know from Theopompus that\ncertain conceptions, illustrated in the Bundehesh and not\ncontained in the fragmentary Avestan books which have reached us,\nwere actually received Zoroastrian\n\n25 Studien uber das Zend Avesta, in Zeitschrift der Deutschen\nMorgenlandischen Gesellschaft, 1855, band ix. s. 192.\n\n26 Spiegel, Avesta, band i. s. 16.\n\n27 Dabistan, vol. i. pp. 272-274.\n\n28 Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Philosophers, Introduction,\nsect. vi. Plutarch, concerning Isis and Osiris.\n\n29 Lib. vi. cap. i. sect. 41.\n\n\ntenets four centuries before Christ, we are strongly supported in\ngiving credence to the doctrinal statements of that book as\naffording, in spite of its lateness, a correct epitome of the old\nPersian theology.\n\nThirdly, we are still further warranted in admitting the antiquity\nof the Zoroastrian system as including the resurrection theory,\nwhen we consider the internal harmony and organic connection of\nparts in it; how the doctrines all fit together, and imply each\nother, and could scarcely have existed apart. Men were the\ncreatures of Ormuzd. They should have lived immortally under his\nfavor and in his realm. But Ahriman, by treachery, obtained\npossession of a large portion of them. Now, when, at the end of\nthe fourth period into which the world course was divided by the\nMagian theory, as Theopompus testifies, Ormuzd overcomes this\narch adversary, will he not rescue his own unfortunate creatures\nfrom the realm of darkness in which they have been imprisoned?\nWhen a king storms an enemy's castle, he delivers from the\ndungeons his own soldiers who were taken captives in a former\ndefeat. The expectation of a great prophet, Sosiosch, to come and\nvanquish Ahriman and his swarms, unquestionably appears in the\nAvesta itself.30 With this notion, in inseparable union, the\nParsee tradition, running continuously back, as is claimed, to a\nvery remote time, joins the doctrine of a general resurrection; a\ndoctrine literally stated in the Vendidad,31 and in many other\nplaces in the Avesta,32 where it has not yet been shown to be an\ninterpolation, but only supposed so by very questionable\nconstructive inferences. The consent of intrinsic adjustment and\nof historic evidence would, therefore, lead to the conclusion that\nthis was an old Zoroastrian dogma. In disproof of this conclusion\nwe believe there is no direct positive evidence whatever, and no\ninferential argument cogent enough to produce conviction.\n\nThere are sufficient reasons for the belief that the doctrine of a\nresurrection was quite early adopted from the Persians by the\nJews, not borrowed at a much later time from the Jews by the\nParsees. The conception of Ahriman, the evil serpent, bearing\ndeath, (die Schlange Angramainyus der voll Tod ist,) is\ninterwrought from the first throughout the Zoroastrian scheme. In\nthe Hebrew records, on the contrary, such an idea appears but\nincidentally, briefly, rarely, and only in the later books. The\naccount of the introduction of sin and death by the serpent in the\ngarden of Eden dates from a time subsequent to the commencement of\nthe Captivity. Von Bohlen, in his Introduction to the Book of\nGenesis, says the narrative was drawn from the Zend Avesta.\nRosenmuller, in his commentary on the passage, says the narrator\nhad in view the Zoroastrian notions of the serpent Ahriman and his\ndeeds. Dr. Martin Haug an acute and learned writer, whose opinion\nis entitled to great weight, as he is the freshest scholar\nacquainted with this whole field in the light of all that others\nhave done thinks it certain that Zoroaster lived in a remote\nantiquity, from fifteen hundred to two thousand years before\nChrist. He says that Judaism after the exile and, through Judaism,\nChristianity afterwards received an important influence from\nZoroastrianism,\n\n30 Spiegel, Avesta, band i. ss. 16, 244.\n\n31 Fargard XVIII, Spiegel's Uebersetzung, s. 236.\n\n32 Kleuker, band ii. ss. 123, 124, 164.\n\n\nan influence which, in regard to the doctrine of angels, Satan,\nand the resurrection of the dead, cannot be mistaken.33 The Hebrew\ntheology had no demonology, no Satan, until after the residence at\nBabylon. This is admitted. Well, is not the resurrection a pendant\nto the doctrine of Satan? Without the idea of a Satan there would\nbe no idea of a retributive banishment of souls into hell, and of\ncourse no occasion for a vindicating restoration of them thence to\ntheir former or a superior state.\n\nOn this point the theory of Rawlinson is very important. He\nargues, with various proofs, that the Dualistic doctrine was a\nheresy which broke out very early among the primitive Aryans, who\nthen were the single ancestry of the subsequent Iranians and\nIndians. This heresy was forcibly suppressed. Its adherents,\ndriven out of India, went to Persia, and, after severe conflicts\nand final admixture with the Magians, there established their\nfaith.34 The sole passage in the Old Testament teaching the\nresurrection is in the so called Book of Daniel, a book full of\nChaldean and Persian allusions, written less than two centuries\nbefore Christ, long after we know it was a received Zoroastrian\ntenet, and long after the Hebrews had been exposed to the whole\ntide and atmosphere of the triumphant Persian power. The\nunchangeable tenacity of the Medes and Persians is a proverb. How\noften the Hebrew people lapsed into idolatry, accepting Pagan\ngods, doctrines, and ritual, is notorious. And, in particular, how\ncompletely subject they were to Persian influence appears clearly\nin large parts of the Biblical history, especially in the Books of\nEsther and Ezekiel. The origin of the term Beelzebub, too, in the\nNew Testament, is plain. To say that the Persians derived the\ndoctrine of the resurrection from the Jews seems to us as\narbitrary as it would be to affirm that they also borrowed from\nthem the custom, mentioned by Ezekiel, of weeping for Tammuz in\nthe gates of the temple.\n\nIn view of the whole case as it stands, until further researches\neither strengthen it or put a different aspect upon it, we feel\nforced to think that the doctrine of a general resurrection was a\ncomponent element in the ancient Avestan religion. A further\nquestion of considerable interest arises as to the nature of this\nresurrection, whether it was conceived as physical or as\nspiritual. We have no data to furnish a determinate answer.\nPlutarch quotes from Theopompus the opinion of the Magi, that\nwhen, at the subdual of Ahriman, men are restored to life, \"they\nwill need no nourishment and cast no shadow.\" It would appear,\nthen, that they must be spirits. The inference is not reliable;\nfor the idea may be that all causes of decay will be removed, so\nthat no food will be necessary to supply the wasting processes\nwhich no longer exist; and that the entire creation will be so\nfull of light that a shadow will be impossible. It might be\nthought that the familiar Persian conception of angels, both good\nand evil, fervers and devs, and the reception of departed souls\ninto their company, with Ormuzd in Garotman, or with Ahriman in\nDutsakh, would exclude the belief in a future bodily resurrection.\nBut Christians and Mohammedans at this day believe in immaterial\nangels and devils, and in the immediate entrance of disembodied\nsouls upon reward or\n\n33 Die Lehre Zoroasters nach den alten Liedern des Zendavesta.\nZeitschrift der Morgenlandischen Gesellschaft, band ix. ss. 286,\n683-692.\n\n34 Rawlinson's Herodotus, vol. i. pp. 426-431.\n\n\npunishment in their society, and still believe in their final\nreturn to the earth, and in a restoration to them of their former\ntabernacles of flesh. Discordant, incoherent, as the two beliefs\nmay be, if their coexistence is a fact with cultivated and\nreasonable people now, much more was it possible with an\nundisciplined and credulous populace three thousand years in the\npast. Again, it has been argued that the indignity with which the\nancient Persians treated the dead body, refusing to bury it or to\nburn it, lest the earth or the fire should be polluted, is\nincompatible with the supposition that they expected a\nresurrection of the flesh. In the first place, it is difficult to\nreason safely to any dogmatic conclusions from the funeral customs\nof a people. These usages are so much a matter of capricious\npriestly ritual, ancestral tradition, unreasoning instinct, blind\nor morbid superstition, that any consistent doctrinal construction\nis not fairly to be put upon them. Secondly, the Zoroastrians did\nnot express scorn or loathing for the corpse by their manner of\ndisposing of it. The greatest pains were taken to keep it from\ndisgusting decay, by placing it in \"the driest, purest, openest\nplace,\" upon a summit where fresh winds blew, and where certain\nbeasts and birds, accounted most sacred, might eat the corruptible\nportion: then the clean bones were carefully buried. The dead body\nhad yielded to the hostile working of Ahriman, and become his\npossession. The priests bore it out on a bed or a carpet, and\nexposed it to the light of the sun. The demon was thus exorcised;\nand the body became further purified in being eaten by the sacred\nanimals, and no putrescence was left to contaminate earth, water,\nor fire.35 Furthermore, it is to be noticed that the modern\nParsees dispose of their dead in exactly the same manner depicted\nin the earliest accounts; yet they zealously hold to a literal\nresurrection of the body. If the giving of the flesh to the dog\nand the vulture in their case exists with this belief, it may have\ndone so with their ancestors before Nebuchadnezzar swept the Jews\nto Babylon. Finally, it is quite reasonable to conclude that the\nold Persian doctrine of a resurrection did include the physical\nbody, when we recollect that in the Zoroastrian scheme of thought\nthere is no hostility to matter or to earthly life, but all is\nregarded as pure and good except so far as the serpent Ahriman has\nintroduced evil. The expulsion of this evil with his ultimate\noverthrow, the restoration of all as it was at first, in purity,\ngladness, and eternal life, would be the obvious and consistent\ncarrying out of the system. Hatred of earthly life, contempt for\nthe flesh, the notion of an essential and irreconcilable warfare\nof soul against body, are Brahmanic and Manichaan, not\nZoroastrian. Still, the ground plan and style of thought may not\nhave been consistently adhered to. The expectation that the very\nsame body would be restored was known to the Jews a century or two\nbefore Christ. One of the martyrs whose history is told in the\nSecond Book of Maccabees, in the agonies of death plucked out his\nown bowels, and called on the Lord to restore them to him again at\nthe resurrection. Considering the notion of a resurrection of the\nbody as a sensuous burden on the idea of a resurrection of the\nsoul, it may have been a later development originating with the\nJews. But it seems to us decidedly more probable that the Magi\nheld it as a part of their creed before they came in contact with\nthe children of Israel. Such an opinion may be modestly held until\nfurther information is\n\n35 Spiegel, Avesta, ss. 82, 104, 109, 111, 122.\n\n\nafforded 36 or some new and fatal objection brought.\n\nAfter this resurrection a thorough separation will be made of the\ngood from the bad. \"Father shall be divided from child, sister\nfrom brother, friend from friend. The innocent one shall weep over\nthe guilty one, the guilty one shall weep for himself. Of two\nsisters one shall be pure, one corrupt: they shall be treated\naccording to their deeds.\" 37 Those who have not, in the\nintermediate state, fully expiated their sins, will, in sight of\nthe whole creation, be remanded to the pit of punishment. But the\nauthor of evil shall not exult over them forever. Their prison\nhouse will soon be thrown open. The pangs of three terrible days\nand nights, equal to the agonies of nine thousand years, will\npurify all, even the worst of the demons. The anguished cry of the\ndamned, as they writhe in the lurid caldron of torture, rising to\nheaven, will find pity in the soul of Ormuzd, and he will release\nthem from their sufferings. A blazing star, the comet Gurtzscher,\nwill fall upon the earth. In the heat of its conflagration, great\nand small mountains will melt and flow together as liquid metal.\nThrough this glowing flood all human kind must pass. To the\nrighteous it will prove as a pleasant bath, of the temperature of\nmilk; but on the wicked the flame will inflict terrific pain.\nAhriman will run up and down Chinevad in the perplexities of\nanguish and despair. The earth wide stream of fire, flowing on,\nwill cleanse every spot and every thing. Even the loathsome realm\nof darkness and torment shall be burnished and made a part of the\nall inclusive Paradise. Ahriman himself, reclaimed to virtue,\nreplenished with primal light, abjuring the memories of his\nenvious ways, and furling thenceforth the sable standard of his\nrebellion, shall become a ministering spirit of the Most High,\nand, together with Ormuzd, chant the praises of Time without\nBounds. All darkness, falsehood, suffering, shall flee utterly\naway, and the whole universe be filled by the illumination of good\nspirits blessed with fruitions of eternal delight. In regard to\nthe fate of man,\n\nSuch are the parables Zartushi address'd To Iran's faith, in the\nancient Zend Avest.\n\n36 Windischmann has now (1863) fully proved this, in his\nZoroastrische Studien. Spiegel frankly avows it: Avesta, band\niii., einleitung, s. lxxv.\n\n37 Rhode, Heilige Sage des Zendvolks, s. 467.\n\n\nCHAPTER VIII.\n\nHEBREW DOCTRINE OF A FUTURE LIFE.\n\nON the one extreme, a large majority of Christian scholars have\nasserted that the doctrine of a retributive immortality is clearly\ntaught throughout the Old Testament. Able writers, like Bishop\nWarburton, have maintained, on the other extreme, that it says\nnothing whatever about a future life, but rather implies the total\nand eternal end of men in death. But the most judicious,\ntrustworthy critics hold an intermediate position, and affirm that\nthe Hebrew Scriptures show a general belief in the separate\nexistence of the spirit, not indeed as experiencing rewards and\npunishments, but as surviving in the common silence and gloom of\nthe under world, a desolate empire of darkness yawning beneath all\ngraves and peopled with dream like ghosts.1\n\nA number of important passages have been cited from different\nparts of the Old Testament by the advocates of the view first\nmentioned above. It will be well for us to notice these and their\nmisuse before proceeding farther.\n\nThe translation of Enoch has been regarded as a revelation of the\nimmortality of man. It is singular that Dr. Priestley should\nsuggest, as the probable fact, so sheer and baseless a hypothesis\nas he does in his notes upon the Book of Genesis. He says, \"Enoch\nwas probably a prophet authorized to announce the reality of\nanother life after this; and he might be removed into it without\ndying, as an evidence of the truth of his doctrine.\" The gross\nmaterialism of this supposition, and the failure of God's design\nwhich it implies, are a sufficient refutation of it. And, besides\nthe utter unlikelihood of the thought, it is entirely destitute of\nsupport in the premises. One of the most curious of the many\nstrange things to be found in Warburton's argument for the Divine\nLegation of Moses an argument marked, as is well known, by\nprofound erudition, and, in many respects, by consummate ability\nis the use he makes of this account to prove that Moses believed\nthe doctrine of immortality, but purposely obscured the fact from\nwhich it might be drawn by the people, in order that it might not\ninterfere with his doctrine of the temporal special providence of\nJehovah over the Jewish nation. Such a course is inconsistent with\nsound morality, much more with the character of an inspired\nprophet of God.\n\nThe only history we have of Enoch is in the fifth chapter of the\nBook of Genesis. The substance of it is as follows: \"And Enoch\nwalked with God during his appointed years; and then he was not,\nfor God took him.\" The author of the Epistle to the Hebrews,\nfollowing the example of those Rabbins who, several centuries\nbefore his time, began to give mystical interpretations of the\nScriptures, infers from this statement that Enoch was borne into\nheaven without tasting death. But it is not certainly known who\nthe author of that epistle was; and, whoever he was, his opinion,\nof course, can have no authority upon a subject of criticism like\n\n1 Boettcher, De Inferis Rebusque post mortem futuris ex Hebraorum\net Gracoram Opinionibus.\n\nthis. Replying to the supposititious argument furnished by this\npassage, we say, Take the account as it reads, and it neither\nasserts nor implies the idea commonly held concerning it. It says\nnothing about translation or immortality; nor can any thing of the\nkind be legitimately deduced from it. Its plain meaning is no more\nnor less than this: Enoch lived three hundred and sixty five\nyears, fearing God and keeping his commandments, and then he died.\nMany of the Rabbins, fond as they are of finding in the Pentateuch\nthe doctrine of future blessedness for the good, interpret this\nnarrative as only signifying an immature death; for Enoch, it will\nbe recollected, reached but about half the average age of the\nothers whose names are mentioned in the chapter. Had this\noccurrence been intended as the revelation of a truth, it would\nhave been fully and clearly stated; otherwise it could not answer\nany purpose. As Le Clerc observes, \"If the writer believed so\nimportant a fact as that Enoch was immortal, it is wonderful that\nhe relates it as secretly and obscurely as if he wished to hide\nit.\" But, finally, even admitting that the account is to be\nregarded as teaching literally that God took Enoch, it by no means\nproves a revelation of the doctrine of general immortality. It\ndoes not show that anybody else would ever be translated or would\nin any way enter upon a future state of existence. It is not put\nforth as a revelation; it says nothing whatever concerning a\nrevelation. It seems to mean either that Enoch suddenly died, or\nthat he disappeared, nobody knew whither. But, if it really means\nthat God took him into heaven, it is more natural to think that\nthat was done as a special favor than as a sign of what awaited\nothers. No general cause is stated, no consequence deduced, no\nprinciple laid down, no reflection added. How, then, can it be\nsaid that the doctrine of a future life for man is revealed by it\nor implicated in it?\n\nThe removal of Elijah in a chariot of fire, of which we read in\nthe second chapter of the Second Book of Kings, is usually\nsupposed to have served as a miraculous proof of the fact that the\nfaithful servants of Jehovah were to be rewarded with a life in\nthe heavens. The author of this book is not known, and can hardly\nbe guessed at with any degree of plausibility. It was\nunquestionably written, or rather compiled, a long time probably\nseveral hundred years after the prophets whose wonderful\nadventures it recounts had passed away. The internal evidence is\nsufficient, both in quality and quantity, to demonstrate that the\nbook is for the most part a collection of traditions. This\ncharacteristic applies with particular force to the ascension of\nElijah. But grant the literal truth of the account: it will not\nprove the point in support of which it is advanced, because it\ndoes not purport to have been done as a revelation of the doctrine\nin question, nor did it in any way answer the purpose of such a\nrevelation. So far from this, in fact, it does not seem even to\nhave suggested the bare idea of another state of existence in a\nsingle instance. For when Elisha returned without Elijah, and told\nthe sons of the prophets at Jericho that his master had gone up in\na chariot of fire, which event they knew beforehand was going to\nhappen, they, instead of asking the particulars or exulting over\nthe revelation of a life in heaven, calmly said to him, \"Behold,\nthere be with thy servants fifty sons of strength: let them go, we\npray thee, and seek for Elijah, lest peradventure a whirlwind, the\nblast of the Lord, hath caught him up and cast him upon one of the\nmountains or into one of the valleys. And he said, Ye shall not\nsend. But when they urged him till he was ashamed, he said, Send.\"\nThis is all that is told us. Had it occurred as is stated, it\nwould not so easily have passed from notice, but mighty\ninferences, never to be forgotten, would have been drawn from it\nat once. The story as it stands reminds one of the closing scene\nin the career of Romulus, speaking of whom the historians say, \"In\nthe thirty seventh year of his reign, while he was reviewing an\narmy, a tempest arose, in the midst of which he was suddenly\nsnatched from the eyes of men. Hence some thought he was killed by\nthe senators, others, that he was borne aloft to the gods.\"2 If\nthe ascension of Elijah to heaven in a chariot of fire did really\ntake place, and if the books held by the Jews as inspired and\nsacred contained a history of it at the time of our Savior, it is\ncertainly singular that neither he nor any of the apostles allude\nto it in connection with the subject of a future life.\n\nThe miracles performed by Elijah and by Elisha in restoring the\ndead children to life related in the seventeenth chapter of the\nFirst Book of Kings and in the fourth chapter of the Second Book\nare often cited in proof of the position that the doctrine of\nimmortality is revealed in the Old Testament. The narration of\nthese events is found in a record of unknown authorship. The mode\nin which the miracles were effected, if they were miracles, the\nprophet measuring himself upon the child, his eyes upon his eyes,\nhis mouth upon his mouth, his hands upon his hands, and in one\ncase the child sneezing seven times, looks dubious. The two\naccounts so closely resemble each other as to cast still greater\nsuspicion upon both. In addition to these considerations, and even\nfully granting the reality of the miracles, they do not touch the\nreal controversy, namely, whether the Hebrew Scriptures contain\nthe revealed doctrine of a conscious immortality or of a future\nretribution. The prophet said, \"O Lord my God, let this child's\nsoul, I pray thee, come into his inward parts again.\" \"And the\nLord heard the voice of Elijah, and the soul of the child came\ninto him again, and he revived.\" Now, the most this can show is\nthat the child's soul was then existing in a separate state. It\ndoes not prove that the soul was immortal, nor that it was\nexperiencing retribution, nor even that it was conscious. And we\ndo not deny that the ancient Jews believed that the spirits of the\ndead retained a nerveless, shadowy being in the solemn vaults of\nthe under world. The Hebrew word rendered soul in the text is\nsusceptible of three meanings: first, the shade, which, upon the\ndissolution of the body, is gathered to its fathers in the great\nsubterranean congregation; second, the breath of a person, used as\nsynonymous with his life; third, a part of the vital breath of\nGod, which the Hebrews regarded as the source of the life of all\ncreatures, and the withdrawing of which they supposed was the\ncause of death. It is clear that neither of these meanings can\nprove any thing in regard to the real point at issue, that is,\nconcerning a future life of rewards and punishments.\n\nOne of the strongest arguments brought to support the proposition\nwhich we are combating at least, so considered by nearly all the\nRabbins, and by not a few modern critics is the account of the\nvivification of the dead recorded in the thirty seventh chapter of\nthe Book of Ezekiel. The prophet \"was carried in the spirit of\nJehovah\" that is, mentally, in a prophetic ecstasy into a valley\nfull of dry bones. \"The bones came together, the flesh\n\n2 Livy, i. 16; Dion. Hal. ii. 56.\n\n\ngrew on them, the breath came into them, and they lived and stood\non their feet, an exceeding great army.\" It should first be\nobserved that this account is not given as an actual occurrence,\nbut, after the manner of Ezekiel, as a prophetic vision meant to\nsymbolize something. Now, of what was it intended as the symbol? a\ndoctrine, or a coming event? a general truth to enlighten and\nguide uncertain men, or an approaching deliverance to console and\nencourage the desponding Jews? It is fair to let the prophet be\nhis own interpreter, without aid from the glosses of prejudiced\ntheorizers. It must be borne in mind that at this time the prophet\nand his countrymen were bearing the grievous burden of bondage in\na foreign nation. \"And Jehovah said to me, Son of man, these bones\ndenote the whole house of Israel. Behold, they say, Our bones are\ndried, and our hope is lost, and we are cut off.\" This plainly\ndenotes their present suffering in the Babylonish captivity, and\ntheir despair of being delivered from it. \"Therefore prophesy, and\nsay to them, Thus saith the Lord Jehovah, Behold, I will open your\ngraves and cause you to come up out of your graves, O my people,\nand bring you into the land of Israel.\" That is, I will rescue you\nfrom your slavery and restore you to freedom in your own land. The\ndry bones and their subsequent vivification, therefore, clearly\nsymbolize the misery of the Israelites and their speedy\nrestoration to happiness. Death is frequently used in a figurative\nsense to denote misery, and life to signify happiness. But those\nwho maintain that the doctrine of the resurrection is taught as a\nrevealed truth in the Hebrew Scriptures are not willing to let\nthis passage pass so easily. Mr. Barnes says, \"The illustration\nproves that the doctrine was one with which the people were\nfamiliar.\" Jerome states the argument more fully, thus: \"A\nsimilitude drawn from the resurrection, to foreshadow the\nrestoration of the people of Israel, would never have been\nemployed unless the resurrection itself were believed to be a fact\nof future occurrence; for no one thinks of confirming what is\nuncertain by what has no existence.\"\n\nIt is not difficult to reply to these objections with convincing\nforce. First, the vision was not used as proof or confirmation,\nbut as symbol and prophecy. Secondly, the use of any thing as an\nillustration does by no means imply that it is commonly believed\nas a fact. For instance, we are told in the ninth chapter of the\nBook of Judges that Jotham related an allegory to the people as an\nillustration of their conduct in choosing a king, saying, \"The\ntrees once on a time went forth to anoint a king over them; and\nthey said to the olive tree, Come thou and reign over us;\" and so\non. Does it follow that at that time it was a common belief that\nthe trees actually went forth occasionally to choose them a king?\nThirdly, if a given thing is generally believed as a fact, a\nperson who uses it expressly as a symbol, of course does not\nthereby give his sanction to it as a fact. And if a belief in the\nresurrection of the dead was generally entertained at the time of\nthe prophet, its origin is not implied, and it does not follow\nthat it was a doctrine of revelation, or even a true doctrine.\nFinally, there is one consideration which shows conclusively that\nthis vision was never intended to typify the resurrection; namely,\nthat it has nothing corresponding to the most essential part of\nthat doctrine. When the bones have come together and are covered\nwith flesh, God does not call up the departed spirits of these\nbodies from Sheol, does not bring back the vanished lives to\nanimate their former tabernacles, now miraculously renewed. No: he\nbut breathes on them with his vivifying breath, and straightway\nthey live and move. This is not a resurrection, but a new\ncreation. The common idea of a bodily restoration implies and,\nthat any just retribution be compatible with it, it necessarily\nimplies the vivification of the dead frame, not by the\nintroduction of new life, but by the reinstalment of the very same\nlife or spirit, the identical consciousness that before animated\nit. Such is not represented as being the case in Ezekiel's vision\nof the valley of dry bones. That vision had no reference to the\nfuture state.\n\nIn this connection, the revelation made by the angel in his\nprophecy, recorded in the twelfth chapter of the Book of Daniel,\nconcerning the things which should happen in the Messianic times,\nmust not be passed without notice. It reads as follows: \"And many\nof the sleepers of the dust of the ground shall awake, those to\nlife everlasting, and these to shame, to contempt everlasting. And\nthey that are wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament,\nand they that turn many to righteousness, as the stars for ever\nand ever.\" No one can deny that a judgment, in which reward and\npunishment shall be distributed according to merit, is here\nclearly foretold. The meaning of the text, taken with the\nconnection, is, that when the Messiah appears and establishes his\nkingdom the righteous shall enjoy a bodily resurrection upon the\nearth to honor and happiness, but the wicked shall be left below\nin darkness and death.3 This seems to imply, fairly enough, that\nuntil the advent of the Messiah none of the dead existed\nconsciously in a state of retribution. The doctrine of the\npassage, as is well known, was held by some of the Jews at the\nbeginning of the Christian era, and, less distinctly, for about\ntwo centuries previous. Before that time no traces of it can be\nfound in their history. Now, had a doctrine of such intense\ninterest and of such vast importance as this been a matter of\nrevelation, it seems hardly possible that it should have been\nconfined to one brief and solitary text, that it should have\nflashed up for a single moment so brilliantly, and then vanished\nfor three or four centuries in utter darkness. Furthermore, nearly\none half of the Book of Daniel is written in the Chaldee tongue,\nand the other half in the Hebrew,  indicating that it had two\nauthors, who wrote their respective portions at different periods.\nIts critical and minute details of events are history rather than\nprophecy. The greater part of the book was undoubtedly written as\nlate as about a hundred and sixty years before Christ, long after\nthe awful simplicity and solitude of the original Hebrew theology\nhad been marred and corrupted by an intermixture of the doctrines\nof those heathen nations with whom the Jews had been often brought\nin contact. Such being the facts in the case, the text is\nevidently without force to prove a divine revelation of the\ndoctrine it teaches.\n\nIn the twenty second chapter of the Gospel by Matthew, Jesus says\nto the Sadducees, \"But as touching the resurrection of the dead,\nhave ye not read that which was spoken unto you by God, saying, I\nam the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob?\nGod is not the God of the dead, but of the living.\" The passage to\nwhich reference is made is written in the third chapter of the\nBook of Exodus. In order to ascertain the force of the Savior's\nargument, the extent of meaning it had in his mind, and the amount\nof knowledge attributed by it to Moses, it will be necessary to\ndetermine first the definite purpose he had\n\n3 Wood, The Last Things, p. 45.\n\n\nin view in his reply to the Sadducees, and how he proposed to\naccomplish it. We shall find that the use he made of the text does\nnot imply that Moses had the slightest idea of any sort of future\nlife for man, much less of an immortal life of blessedness for the\ngood and of suffering for the bad. We should suppose, beforehand,\nthat such would be the case, since upon examining the declaration\ncited, with its context, we find it to be simply a statement made\nby Jehovah explaining who he was, that he was the ancient national\nguardian of the Jews, the Lord God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.\nThis does not seem to contain the most distant allusion to the\nimmortality of man, or to have suggested any such thought to the\nmind of Moses. It should be distinctly understood from the outset\nthat Jesus did not quote this passage from the Pentateuch as\nproving any thing of itself, or as enabling him to prove any thing\nby it directly, but as being of acknowledged authority to the\nSadducees themselves, to form the basis of a process of reasoning.\nThe purpose he had in view, plainly, was to convince the Sadducees\neither of the possibility or of the actuality of the resurrection\nof the dead: its possibility, if we assume that by resurrection he\nmeant the Jewish doctrine of a material restoration, the reunion\nof soul and body; its actuality, if we suppose he meant the\nconscious immortality of the soul separate from the body. If the\nresurrection was physical, Christ demonstrates to the Sadducees\nits possibility, by refuting the false notion upon which they\nbased their denial of it. They said, The resurrection of the body\nis impossible, because the principle of life, the consciousness,\nhas utterly perished, and the body cannot live alone. He replied,\nIt is possible, because the soul has an existence separate from\nthe body, and, consequently, may be reunited to it. You admit that\nJehovah said, after they were dead, I am the God of Abraham,\nIsaac, and Jacob: but he is the God of the living, and not of the\ndead, for all live unto him. You must confess this. The soul,\nthen, survives the body, and a resurrection is possible. It will\nbe seen that this implies nothing concerning the nature or\nduration of the separate existence, but merely the fact of it.\nBut, if Christ meant by the resurrection of the dead as we think\nhe did the introduction of the disembodied and conscious soul into\na state of eternal blessedness, the Sadducees denied its reality\nby maintaining that no such thing as a soul existed after bodily\ndissolution. He then proved to them its reality in the following\nmanner. You believe for Moses, to whose authority you implicitly\nbow, relates it that God said, \"I am the God of Abraham, Isaac,\nand Jacob,\" and this, long after they died. But evidently he\ncannot be said to be the God of that which does not exist:\ntherefore their souls must have been still alive. And if Jehovah\nwas emphatically their God, their friend, of course he will show\nthem his loving kindness. They are, then, in a conscious state of\nblessedness. The Savior does not imply that God said so much in\nsubstance, nor that Moses intended to teach, or even knew, any\nthing like it, but that, by adding to the passage cited a premise\nof his own, which his hearers granted to be true, he could deduce\nso much from it by a train of new and unanswerable reasoning. His\nopponents were compelled to admit the legitimacy of his argument,\nand, impressed by its surpassing beauty and force, were silenced,\nif not convinced. The credit of this cogent proof of human\nimmortality, namely, that God's love for man is a pledge and\nwarrant of his eternal blessedness a proof whose originality and\nsignificance set it far beyond all parallel is due to the dim\ngropings of no Hebrew prophet, but to the inspired insight of the\ngreat Founder of Christianity.\n\nThe various passages yet unnoticed which purport to have been\nuttered by Jehovah or at his command, and which are urged to show\nthat the reality of a retributive life after death is a revealed\ndoctrine of the Old Testament, will be found, upon critical\nexamination, either to owe their entire relevant force to\nmistranslation, or to be fairly refuted by the reasonings already\nadvanced. Professor Stuart admits that he finds only one\nconsideration to show that Moses had any idea of a future\nretribution; and that is, that the Egyptians expressly believed\nit; and he is not able to comprehend how Moses, who dwelt so long\namong them, should be ignorant of it.4 The reasoning is obviously\ninconsequential. It is not certain that the Egyptians held this\ndoctrine in the time of Moses: it may have prevailed among them\nbefore or after, and not during, that period. If they believed it\nat that time, it may have been an esoteric doctrine, with which he\ndid not become acquainted. If they believed it, and he knew it, he\nmight have classed it with other heathen doctrines, and supposed\nit false. And, even if he himself believed it, he might possibly\nnot have inculcated it upon the Israelites; and the question is,\nwhat he did actually teach, not what he knew.\n\nThe opinions of the Jews at the time of the Savior have no bearing\nupon the point in hand, because they were acquired at a later\nperiod than that of the writing of the records we are now\nconsidering. They were formed, and gradually grew in consistency\nand favor, either by the natural progress of thought among the\nJews themselves, or, more probably, by a blending of the\nintimations of the Hebrew Scriptures with Gentile speculations,\nthe doctrines of the Egyptians, Hindus, and Persians. We leave\nthis portion of the subject, then, with the following proposition.\nIn the canonic books of the Old Dispensation there is not a single\ngenuine text, claiming to come from God, which teaches explicitly\nany doctrine whatever of a life beyond the grave. That doctrine as\nit existed among the Jews was no part of their pure religion, but\nwas a part of their philosophy. It did not, as they held it, imply\nany thing like our present idea of the immortality of the soul\nreaping in the spiritual world what it has sowed in the physical.\nIt simply declared the existence of human ghosts amidst unbroken\ngloom and stillness in the cavernous depths of the earth, without\nreward, without punishment, without employment, scarcely\nwith consciousness, as will immediately appear.\n\nWe proceed to the second general division of the subject. What\ndoes the Old Testament, apart from the revelation claimed to be\ncontained in it, and regarding only those portions of it which are\nconfessedly a collection of the poetry, history, and philosophy of\nthe Hebrews, intimate concerning a future state of existence?\nExamining these writings with an unbiased mind, we discover that\nin different portions of them there are large variations and\nopposition of opinion. In some books we trace an undoubting belief\nin certain rude notions of the future condition of souls; in other\nbooks we encounter unqualified denials of every such thought. \"Man\nlieth down and riseth not,\" sighs the despairing Job. \"The dead\ncannot praise God, neither any that go down into darkness,\" wails\nthe repining Psalmist. \"All go to one place,\"\n\n4 Exegetical Essays, (Andover, 1830,) p. 108.\n\n\nand \"the dead know not any thing,\" asserts the disbelieving\nPreacher. These inconsistencies we shall not stop to point out and\ncomment upon. They are immaterial to our present purpose, which is\nto bring together, in their general agreement, the sum and\nsubstance of the Hebrew ideas on this subject.\n\nThe separate existence of the soul is necessarily implied by the\ndistinction the Hebrews made between the grave, or sepulchre, and\nthe under world, or abode of shades. The Hebrew words bor and\nkeber mean simply the narrow place in which the dead body is\nburied; while Sheol represents an immense cavern in the interior\nof the earth where the ghosts of the deceased are assembled. When\nthe patriarch was told that his son Joseph was slain by wild\nbeasts, he cried aloud, in bitter sorrow, \"I will go down to Sheol\nunto my son, mourning.\"\n\nHe did not expect to meet Joseph in the grave; for he supposed his\nbody torn in pieces and scattered in the wilderness, not laid in\nthe family tomb. The dead are said to be \"gathered to their\npeople,\" or to \"sleep with their fathers,\" and this whether they\nare interred in the same place or in a remote region. It is\nwritten, \"Abraham gave up the ghost, and was gathered unto his\npeople,\" notwithstanding his body was laid in a cave in the field\nof Machpelah, close by Hebron, while his people were buried in\nChaldea and Mesopotamia. \"Isaac gave up the ghost and died, and\nwas gathered unto his people;\" and then we read, as if it were\ndone afterwards, \"His sons, Jacob and Esau, buried him.\" These\ninstances might be multiplied. They prove that \"to be gathered\nunto one's fathers\" means to descend into Sheol and join there the\nhosts of the departed. A belief in the separate existence of the\nsoul is also involved in the belief in necromancy, or divination,\nthe prevalence of which is shown by the stern laws against those\nwho engaged in its unhallowed rites, and by the history of the\nwitch of Endor. She, it is said, by magical spells evoked the\nshade of old Samuel from below. It must have been the spirit of\nthe prophet that was supposed to rise; for his body was buried at\nRamah, more than sixty miles from Endor. The faith of the Hebrews\nin the separate existence of the soul is shown, furthermore, by\nthe fact that the language they employed expresses, in every\ninstance, the distinction of body and spirit. They had particular\nwords appropriated to each. \"As thy soul liveth,\" is a Hebrew\noath. \"With my spirit within me will I seek thee early.\" \"I,\nDaniel, was grieved in my spirit in the midst of my body:\" the\nfigure here represents the soul in the body as a sword in a\nsheath. \"Our bones are scattered at the mouth of the under world,\nas when one cutteth and cleaveth wood upon the earth;\" that is,\nthe soul, expelled from its case of clay by the murderer's weapon,\nflees into Sheol and leaves its exuvioe at the entrance. \"Thy\nvoice shall be as that of a spirit out of the ground:\" the word\n\"Lhere used signifies the shade evoked by a necromancer from the\nregion of death, which was imagined to speak in a feeble whisper.\n\nThe term rephaim is used to denote the manes of the departed. The\netymology of the word, as well as its use, makes it mean the weak,\nthe relaxed. \"I am counted as them that go down into the under\nworld; I am as a man that hath no strength.\" This faint, powerless\ncondition accords with the idea that they were destitute of flesh,\nblood, and animal life, mere umbroe. These ghosts are described as\nbeing nearly as destitute of sensation as they are of strength.\nThey are called \"the inhabitants of the land of stillness.\" They\nexist in an inactive, partially torpid state, with a dreamy\nconsciousness of past and present, neither suffering nor enjoying,\nand seldom moving. Herder says of the Hebrews, \"The sad and\nmournful images of their ghostly realm disturbed them, and were\ntoo much for their self possession.\" Respecting these images, he\nadds, \"Their voluntary force and energy were destroyed. They were\nfeeble as a shade, without distinction of members, as a nerveless\nbreath. They wandered and flitted in the dark nether world.\" This\n\"wandering and flitting,\" however, is rather the spirit of\nHerder's poetry than of that of the Hebrews; for the whole tenor\nand drift of the representations in the Old Testament show that\nthe state of disembodied souls is deep quietude. Freed from\nbondage, pain, toil, and care, they repose in silence. The ghost\nsummoned from beneath by the witch of Endor said, \"Why hast thou\ndisquieted me to bring me up?\" It was, indeed, in a dismal abode\nthat they took their long quiet; but then it was in a place \"where\nthe wicked ceased from troubling and the weary were at rest.\"\n\nThose passages which attribute active employments to the dwellers\nin the under world are specimens of poetic license, as the context\nalways shows. When Job says, \"Before Jehovah the shades beneath\ntremble,\" he likewise declares, \"The pillars of heaven tremble and\nare confounded at his rebuke.\" When Isaiah breaks forth in that\nstirring lyric to the King of Babylon,\n\n\"The under world is in commotion on account of thee, To meet thee\nat thy coming; It stirreth up before thee the shades, all the\nmighty of the earth; It arouseth from their thrones all the kings\nof the nations; They all accost thee, and say, Art thou too become\nweak as we?\"\n\nhe also exclaims, in the same connection,\n\n\"Even the cypress trees exult over thee, And the cedars of\nLebanon, saying, Since thou art fallen, No man cometh up to cut us\ndown.\"\n\nThe activity thus vividly described is evidently a mere figure of\nspeech: so is it in the other instances which picture the rephaim\nas employed and in motion. \"Why,\" complainingly sighed the\nafflicted patriarch, \"why died I not at my birth? For now should I\nlie down and be quiet; I should slumber; I should then be at\nrest.\" And the wise man says, in his preaching, \"There is no work,\nnor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in Sheol.\" What has already\nbeen said is sufficient to establish the fact that the Hebrews had\nan idea that the souls of men left their bodies at death and\nexisted as dim shadows, in a state of undisturbed repose, in the\nbowels of the earth.\n\nSheol is directly derived from a Hebrew word, signifying, first,\nto dig or excavate. It means, therefore, a cavity, or empty\nsubterranean place. Its derivation is usually connected, however,\nwith the secondary meaning of the Hebrew word referred to, namely,\nto ask, to desire, from the notion of demanding, since rapacious\nOrcus lays claim unsparingly to all; or, as others have fancifully\nconstrued it, the object of universal inquiry, the unknown mansion\nconcerning which all are anxiously inquisitive. The place is\nconceived on an immense scale, shrouded in accompaniments of\ngloomy grandeur and peculiar awe: an enormous cavern in the earth,\nfilled with night; a stupendous hollow kingdom, to which are\npoetically attributed valleys and gates, and in which are\ncongregated the slumberous and shadowy hosts of the rephaim, never\nable to go out of it again forever. Its awful stillness is\nunbroken by noise. Its thick darkness is uncheered by light. It\nstretches far down under the ground. It is wonderfully deep. In\nlanguage that reminds one of Milton's description of hell, where\nwas\n\n\"No light, but rather darkness visible,\"\n\nJob describes it as \"the land of darkness, like the blackness of\ndeath shade, where is no order, and where the light is as\ndarkness.\" The following passages, selected almost at random, will\nshow the ideas entertained of the place, and confirm and\nillustrate the foregoing statements. \"But he considers not that in\nthe valleys of Sheol are her guests.\" \"Now shall I go down into\nthe gates of Sheol.\" \"The ground slave asunder, and the earth\nopened her mouth, and swallowed them up, and their houses, and all\ntheir men, and all their goods: they and all that appertained to\nthem went down alive into Sheol, and the earth closed upon them.\"\nIts depth is contrasted with the height of the sky. \"Though they\ndig into Sheol, thence shall mine hand take them; though they\nclimb up to heaven, thence will I bring them down.\" It is the\ndestination of all; for, though the Hebrews believed in a world of\nglory above the solid ceiling of the dome of day, where Jehovah\nand the angels dwelt, there was no promise, hope, or hint that any\nman could ever go there. The dirge like burden of their poetry was\nliterally these words: \"What man is he that liveth and shall not\nsee death? Shall he deliver his spirit from the hand of Sheol?\"\nThe old Hebrew graves were crypts, wide, deep holes, like the\nhabitations of the troglodytes. In these subterranean caves they\nlaid the dead down; and so the Grave became the mother of Sheol, a\nrendezvous of the fathers, a realm of the dead, full of eternal\nghost life.\n\nThis under world is dreary and altogether undesirable, save as an\nescape from extreme anguish. But it is not a place of retribution.\nJahn says, \"That, in the belief of the ancient Hebrews, there were\ndifferent situations in Sheol for the good and the bad, cannot be\nproved.\"5 The sudden termination of the present life is the\njudgment the Old Testament threatens upon sinners; its happy\nprolongation is the reward it promises to the righteous. Texts\nthat prove this might be quoted in numbers from almost every page.\n\"The wicked shall be turned into Sheol, and all the nations that\nforget God,\" not to be punished there, but as a punishment. It is\ntrue, the good and the bad alike pass into that gloomy land; but\nthe former go down tranquilly in a good old age and full of days,\nas a shock of corn fully ripe cometh in its season, while the\nlatter are suddenly hurried there by an untimely and miserable\nfate. The man that loves the Lord shall have length of days; the\nunjust, though for a moment he flourishes, yet the wind bloweth,\nand where is he?\n\nWe shall perhaps gain a more clear and adequate knowledge of the\nideas the Hebrews had of the soul and of its fate, by marking the\ndifferent meanings of the words they used to\n\n5 Biblical Archeology, sect. 314.\n\n\ndenote it. Neshamah, primarily meaning breath or airy effluence,\nnext expresses the Spirit of God as imparting life and force,\nwisdom and love; also the spirit of man as its emanation,\ncreation, or sustained object. The citation of a few texts in\nwhich the word occurs will set this in a full light. \"The Lord God\nformed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his\nnostrils the spirit of existence, and man became a conscious\nbeing.\" \"It is the divine spirit of man, even the inspiration of\nthe Almighty, that giveth him understanding.\" \"The Spirit of God\nmade me, and his breath gave me life.\"\n\nRuah signifies, originally, a breathing or blowing. Two other\nmeanings are directly connected with this. First, the vital\nspirit, the principle of life as manifested in the breath of the\nmouth and nostrils. \"And they went in unto Noah into the ark, two\nand two of all flesh in whose nostrils was the breath of life.\"\nSecond, the wind, the motions of the air, which the Hebrews\nsupposed caused by the breath of God. \"By the blast of thine anger\nthe waters were gathered on an heap.\" \"The channels of waters were\nseen, and the foundations of the world were discovered, O Lord, at\nthe blast of the breath of thy nostrils.\" So they regarded the\nthunder as his voice. \"The voice of Jehovah cutteth out the fiery\nlightnings,\" and \"shaketh the wilderness of Kadesh.\" This word is\nalso frequently placed for the rational spirit of man, the seat of\nintellect and feeling. It is likewise sometimes representative of\nthe character and disposition of men, whether good or bad. Hosea\nspeaks of \"a spirit of vile lust.\" In the Second Book of\nChronicles we read, \"There came out a spirit, and stood before\nJehovah, and said, I will entice King Ahab to his destruction. I\nwill go out and be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his\nprophets.\" Belshazzar says to Daniel, \"I know that the spirit of\nthe holy gods is in thee.\" Finally, it is applied to Jehovah,\nsignifying the divine spirit, or power, by which all animate\ncreatures live, the universe is filled with motion, all\nextraordinary gifts of skill, genius, strength, or virtue are\nbestowed, and men incited to forsake evil and walk in the paths of\ntruth and piety. \"Thou sendest forth thy spirit, they are created,\nand thou renewest the face of the earth; thou takest away their\nbreath, they die and return to their dust.\" \"Jehovah will be a\nspirit of justice in them that sit to administer judgment.\" It\nseems to be implied that the life of man, having emanated from the\nspirit, is to be again absorbed in it, when it is said, \"Then\nshall the dust return to the earth as it was, and the spirit shall\nreturn unto God who gave it.\"\n\nNephesh is but partially a synonym for the word whose\nsignifications we have just considered. The different senses it\nbears are strangely interchanged and confounded in King James's\nversion. Its first meaning is breath, the breathing of a living\nbeing. Next it means the vital spirit, the indwelling life of the\nbody. \"If any mischief follow, thou shalt take life for life.\" The\nmost adequate rendering of it would be, in a great majority of\ninstances, by the term life. \"In jeopardy of his life [not soul]\nhath Adonijah spoken this.\" It sometimes represents the\nintelligent soul or mind, the subject of knowledge and desire. \"My\nsoul knoweth right well.\". Also the heart, is often used more\nfrequently perhaps than any other term as meaning the vital\nprinciple, and the seat of consciousness, intellect, will, and\naffection. Jehovah said to Solomon, in answer to his prayer, \"Lo,\nI have given thee a wise and an understanding heart.\" The later\nJews speculated much, with many cabalistic refinements, on these\ndifferent words. They said many persons were supplied with a\nNephesh without a Ruah, much more without a Neshamah. They\ndeclared that the Nephesh (Psyche) was the soul of the body, the\nRuah (Pneuma) the soul of the Nephesh, and the Neshamah (Nous) the\nsoul of the Ruah. Some of the Rabbins assert that the destination\nof the Nephesh, when the body dies, is Sheol; of the Ruah, the\nair; and of the Neshamah, heaven. 6\n\nThe Hebrews used all those words in speaking of brutes, to denote\ntheir sensitive existence, that they did in reference to men. They\nheld that life was in every instance an emission, or breath, from\nthe Spirit of God. But they do not intimate of brutes, as they do\nof men, that they have surviving shades. The author of the Book of\nEcclesiastes, however, bluntly declares that \"all have one breath,\nand all go to one place, so that a man hath no pre eminence above\na beast.\" As far as the words used to express existence, soul, or\nmind, legitimate any inference, it would seem to be, either that\nthe essential life is poured out at death as so much air, or else\nthat it is received again by God, in both cases implying\nnaturally, though not of philosophic necessity, the close of\nconscious, individual existence. But the examination we have made\nof their real opinions shows that, however obviously this\nconclusion might flow from their pneumatology, it was not the\nexpectation they cherished. They believed there was a dismal\nempire in the earth where the rephaim, or ghosts of the dead,\nreposed forever in a state of semi sleep.\n\n\"It is a land of shadows: yea, the land\nItself is but a shadow, and the race\nThat dwell therein are voices, forms of forms.\nAnd echoes of themselves.\"\n\nThat the Hebrews, during the time covered by their sacred records,\nhad no conception of a retributive life beyond the present, knew\nnothing of a blessed immortality, is shown by two conclusive\narguments, in addition to the positive demonstration afforded by\nthe views which, as we have seen, they did actually hold in regard\nto the future lot of man. First, they were puzzled, they were\ntroubled and distressed, by the moral phenomena of the present\nlife, the misfortunes of the righteous, the prosperity of the\nwicked. Read the Book of Ecclesiastes, the Book of Job, some of\nthe Psalms. Had they been acquainted with future reward and\npunishment, they could easily have solved these problems to their\nsatisfaction. Secondly, they regarded life as the one blessing,\ndeath as the one evil. Something of sadness, we may suppose, was\nin the wise man's tones when he said, \"A living dog is better than\na dead lion.\" Obey Jehovah's laws, that thy days may be long in\nthe land he giveth thee; the wicked shall not live out half his\ndays: such is the burden of the Old Testament. It was reserved for\na later age to see life and immortality brought to light, and for\nthe disciples of a clearer faith to feel that death is gain.\n\nThere are many passages in the Hebrew Scriptures generally\nsupposed and really appearing, upon a slight examination, not\nafterwards to teach doctrines different from those here stated. We\nwill give two examples in a condensed form. \"Thou wilt not leave\n\n6 Tractatus de Anima a R. Moscheh Korduero. In Kabbala Denudata.\ntom. i. pars ii.\n\n\nmy soul in Sheol: . . . at thy right hand are pleasures for\nevermore.\" This text, properly translated and explained, means,\nThou wilt not leave me to misfortune and untimely death: . . . in\nthy royal favor is prosperity and length of days. \"I know that my\nRedeemer liveth:. . . in my flesh I shall see God.\" The genuine\nmeaning of this triumphant exclamation of faith is, I know that\nGod is the Vindicator of the upright, and that he will yet justify\nme before I die. A particular examination of the remaining\npassages of this character with which erroneous conceptions are\ngenerally connected would show, first, that in nearly every case\nthese passages are not accurately translated; secondly, that they\nmay be satisfactorily interpreted as referring merely to this\nlife, and cannot by a sound exegesis be explained otherwise;\nthirdly, that the meaning usually ascribed to them is inconsistent\nwith the whole general tenor, and with numberless positive and\nexplicit statements, of the books in which they are found;\nfourthly, that if there are, as there dubiously seem to be in some\nof the Psalms, texts implying the ascent of souls after death to a\nheavenly life, for example, \"Thou shalt guide me with thy\ncountenance, and afterward receive me to glory,\" they were the\nproduct of a late period, and reflect a faith not native to the\nHebrews, but first known to them after their intercourse with the\nPersians.\n\nChristians reject the allegorizing of the Jews, and yet\ntraditionally accept, on their authority, doctrines which can be\ndeduced from their Scriptures in no other way than by the absurd\nhypothesis of a double or mystic sense. For example, scores of\nChristian authors have taught the dogma of a general resurrection\nof the dead, deducing it from such passages as God's sentence upon\nAdam: \"From the dust wast thou taken, and unto the dust shalt thou\nreturn;\" as Joel's patriotic picture of the Jews victorious in\nbattle, and of the vanquished heathen gathered in the valley of\nJehoshaphat to witness their installation as rulers of the earth;\nand as the declaration of the God of battles: \"I am he that kills\nand that makes alive, that wounds and that heals.\" And they\nmaintain that the doctrine of immortality is inculcated in such\ntexts as these: when Moses asks to see God, and the reply is, \"No\nman can see me and live;\" when Bathsheba bows and says, \"Let my\nlord King David live forever;\" and when the sacred poet praises\nGod, saying, \"Thou hast delivered my soul from death, mine eyes\nfrom tears, and my feet from falling.\" Such interpretations of\nScripture are lamentable in the extreme; their context shows them\nto be absurd. The meaning is forced into the words, not derived\nfrom them.\n\nSuch as we have now seen were the ancient Hebrew ideas of the\nfuture state. To those who received them the life to come was\ncheerless, offering no attraction save that of peace to the weary\nsufferer. On the other hand, it had no terror save the natural\nrevulsion of the human heart from everlasting darkness, silence,\nand dreams. In view of deliverance from so dreary a fate, by\ntranslation through Jesus Christ to the splendors of the world\nabove the firmament, there are many exultations in the Epistles of\nPaul, and in other portions of the New Testament.\n\nThe Hebrew views of the soul and its destiny, as discerned through\nthe intimations of their Scriptures are very nearly what, from a\nfair consideration of the case, we should suppose they would be,\nagreeing in the main with the natural speculations of other early\nnations upon the same subject. These opinions underwent but little\nalteration until a century or a century and a half before the dawn\nof the Christian era.\n\nThis is shown by the phraseology of the Septuagint version of\nthe Pentateuch, and by the allusions in the so called\nApocryphal books. In these, so far as there are any relevant\nstatements or implications, they are of the same character as\nthose which we have explained from the more ancient writings. This\nis true, with the notable exceptions of the Wisdom of Solomon and\nthe Second Maccabees, neither of which documents can be dated\nearlier than a hundred and twenty years before Christ. The former\ncontains the doctrine of transmigration. The author says, \"Being\nwise, I came into a body undefiled.\"7 But, with the exception of\nthis and one other passage, there is little or nothing in the book\nwhich is definite on the subject of a future life. It is difficult\nto tell what the author's real faith was: his words seem rather\nrhetorical than dogmatic. He says, \"To be allied unto wisdom is\nimmortality;\" but other expressions would appear to show that by\nimmortality he means merely a deathless posthumous fame, \"leaving\nan eternal memorial of himself to all who shall come after him.\"\nAgain he declares, \"The spirit when it is gone forth returneth\nnot; neither the soul received up cometh again.\" And here we find,\ntoo, the famous text, \"God created man to be immortal, and made\nhim to be an image of his own eternity. Nevertheless, through envy\nof the devil came death into the world, and they that hold of his\nside do find it.\"8 Upon the whole, it is pretty clear that the\nwriter believed in a future life; but the details are too\npartially and obscurely shadowed to be drawn forth. We may,\nhowever, hazard a conjecture on the passage last quoted,\nespecially with the help of the light cast upon it from its\nevident Persian origin. What is it, expressed by the term \"death,\"\nwhich is found by the adherents of the devil distinctively?\n\"Death\" cannot here be a metaphor for an inward state of sin and\nwoe, because it is contrasted with the plainly literal phrases,\n\"created to be immortal,\" \"an image of God's eternity.\" It cannot\nsignify simply physical dissolution, because this is found as well\nby God's servants as by the devil's. Its genuine meaning is, most\nprobably, a descent into the black kingdom of sadness and silence\nunder the earth, while the souls of the good were \"received up.\"\n\nThe Second Book of Maccabees with emphasis repeatedly asserts\nfuture retribution and a bodily resurrection. In the seventh\nchapter a full account is given of seven brothers and their mother\nwho suffered martyrdom, firmly sustained by faith in a glorious\nreward for their heroic fidelity, to be reaped at the\nresurrection. One of them says to the tyrant by whose order he was\ntortured, \"As for thee, thou shalt have no resurrection to life.\"\nNicanor, bleeding from many horrible wounds, \"plucked out his\nbowels and cast them upon the throng, and, calling upon the Lord\nof life and spirit to restore him those again, [at the day of\nresurrection,] he thus died.\"9 Other passages in this book to the\nsame effect it is needless to quote. The details lying latent in\nthose we have quoted will soon be illuminated and filled out when\nwe come to treat of the opinions of the Pharisees. 10\n\n7 Cap. viii. 20.\n\n8 Cap. ii. 23, 24.\n\n9 Cap. xiv. 46.\n\n10 See a very able discussion of the relation between the ideas\nconcerning immortality, resurrection, judgment, and retribution,\ncontained in the Old Testament Apocrypha, and those in the New\nTestament, by Frisch, inserted in Eichhorn's Allgemeine Bibliothek\nder Biblischen Literatur, band iv. stuck iv.\n\n\nThere lived in Alexandria a very learned Jew named Philo, the\nauthor of voluminous writings, a zealous Israelite, but deeply\nimbued both with the doctrines and the spirit of Plato. He was\nborn about twenty years before Christ, and survived him about\nthirty years. The weight of his character, the force of his\ntalents, the fascinating adaptation of his peculiar philosophical\nspeculations and of his bold and subtle allegorical expositions of\nScripture to the mind of his age and of the succeeding centuries,\ntogether with the eminent literary position and renown early\nsecured for him by a concurrence of causes, have combined to make\nhim exert according to the expressed convictions of the best\njudges, such as Lucke and Norton a greater influence on the\nhistory of Christian opinions than any single man, with the\nexception of the Apostle Paul, since the days of Christ. It is\nimportant, and will be interesting, to see some explanation of his\nviews on the subject of a future life. A synopsis of them must\nsuffice.\n\nPhilo was a Platonic Alexandrian Jew, not a Zoroastrian\nPalestinian Pharisee. It was a current saying among the Christian\nFathers, \"Vel Plato Philonizat, vel Philo Platonizat.\" He has\nlittle to say of the Messiah, nothing to say of the Messianic\neschatology. We speak of him in this connection because he was a\nJew, flourishing at the commencement of the Christian epoch, and\ncontributing much, by his cabalistic interpretations, to lead\nChristians to imagine that the Old Testament contained the\ndoctrine of a spiritual immortality connected with a system of\nrewards and punishments.\n\nThree principal points include the substance of Philo's faith on\nthe subject in hand. He rejected the notion of a resurrection of\nthe body and held to the natural immortality of the soul. He\nentertained the most profound and spiritual conceptions of the\nintrinsically deadly nature and wretched fruits of all sin, and of\nthe self contained welfare and self rewarding results of every\nelement of virtue, in themselves, independent of time and place\nand regardless of external bestowments of woe or joy. He also\nbelieved at the same time in contrasted localities above and\nbelow, appointed as the residences of the disembodied souls of\ngood and of wicked men. We will quote miscellaneously various\npassages from him in proof and illustration of these statements:\n\n\"Man's bodily form is made from the ground, the soul from no\ncreated thing, but from the Father of all; so that, although man\nwas mortal as to his body, he was immortal as to his mind.\"11\n\"Complete virtue is the tree of immortal life.\"12 \"Vices and\ncrimes, rushing in through the gate of sensual pleasure, changed a\nhappy and immortal life for a wretched and mortal one.\"13\nReferring to the allegory of the garden of Eden, he says, \"The\ndeath threatened for eating the fruit was not natural, the\nseparation of soul and body, but penal, the sinking of the soul in\nthe body.\"14 \"Death is twofold, one of man, one of the soul. The\ndeath of man is the separation of the soul from the body; the\ndeath of the soul is the corruption of virtue\n\n11 Mangey's edition of Philo's works, vol. i. p. 32.\n\n12 Ibid. p. 38.\n\n13 Ibid. p. 37.\n\n14 Ibid. p. 65.\n\n\nand the assumption of vice.\"15 \"To me, death with the pious is\npreferable to life with the impious. For those so dying, deathless\nlife delivers; but those so living, eternal death seizes.\"16 He\nwrites of three kinds of life, \"one of which neither ascends nor\ncares to ascend, groping in the secret recesses of Hades and\nrejoicing in the most lifeless life.\"17 Commenting on the promise\nof the Lord to Abram, that he should be buried in a good old age,\nPhilo observes that \"A polished, purified soul does not die, but\nemigrates: it is of an inextinguishable and deathless race, and\ngoes to heaven, escaping the dissolution and corruption which\ndeath seems to introduce.\"18 \"A vile life is the true Hades,\ndespicable and obnoxious to every sort of execration.\" 19\n\"Different regions are set apart for different things, heaven for\nthe good, the confines of the earth for the bad.\"20 He thinks the\nladder seen by Jacob in his dream \"is a figure of the air, which,\nreaching from earth to heaven, is the house of unembodied souls,\nthe image of a populous city having for citizens immortal souls,\nsome of whom descend into mortal bodies, but soon return aloft,\ncalling the body a sepulchre from which they hasten, and, on light\nwings seeking the lofty ether, pass eternity in sublime\ncontemplations.\"21 \"The wise inherit the Olympic and heavenly\nregion to dwell in, always studying to go above; the bad, the\ninnermost parts of Hades, always laboring to die.\"22 He literally\naccredits the account, in the sixteenth chapter of Numbers, of the\nswallowing of Korah and his company, saying, \"The earth opened and\ntook them alive into Hades.\"23 \"Ignorant men regard death as the\nend of punishments, whereas in the Divine judgment it is scarcely\nthe beginning of them.\"24 He describes the meritorious man as\n\"fleeing to God and receiving the most intimate honor of a firm\nplace in heaven; but the reprobate man is dragged below, down to\nthe very lowest place, to Tartarus itself and profound\ndarkness.\"25 \"He who is not firmly held by evil may by repentance\nreturn to virtue, as to the native land from which he has\nwandered. But he who suffers from incurable vice must endure its\ndire penalties, banished into the place of the impious until the\nwhole of eternity.\"26\n\nSuch, then, was the substance of Philo's opinions on the theme\nbefore us, as indeed many more passages, which we have omitted as\nsuperfluous, might be cited from him to show. Man was made\noriginally a mortal body and an immortal soul. He should have been\nhappy and pure while in the body, and on leaving it have soared up\nto the realm of light and bliss on high, to join the angels.\n\"Abraham, leaving his mortal part, was added to the people of God,\n\n15 Ibid. p. 65.\n\n16 Ibid. p. 233.\n\n17 Ibid. p. 479.\n\n18 Ibid. p. 513.\n\n19 Ibid. p. 527.\n\n20 Ibid. p. 555.\n\n21 Ibid. p. 641, 642.\n\n22 Ibid. p. 643.\n\n23 Ibid. vol. ii. p. 178.\n\n24 Ibid. p. 419.\n\n25 Mangey's edition of Philo's Works, vol. ii. p. 433.\n\n26 Ibid. vol. i. p. 139.\n\n\nenjoying immortality and made similar to the angels. For the\nangels are the army of God, bodiless and happy souls.\"27 But,\nthrough the power of evil, all who yield to sin and vice lose that\nestate of bright and blessed immortality, and become discordant,\nwretched, despicable, and, after the dissolution of the body, are\nthrust down to gloom and manifold just retribution in Hades. He\nbelieved in the pre existence, and in a limited transmigration, of\nsouls. Here he leaves the subject, saying nothing of a\nresurrection or final restoration, and not speculating as to any\nother of the details. 28\n\nWe pass on to speak of the Jewish sects at the time of Christ.\nThere were three of these, cardinally differing from each other in\ntheir theories of the future fate of man. First, there were the\nskeptical, materialistic Sadducees, wealthy, proud, few. They\nopenly denied the existence of any disembodied souls, avowing that\nmen utterly perished in the grave. \"The cloud faileth and passeth\naway: so he that goeth down to the grave doth not return.\"29 We\nread in the Acts of the Apostles, \"The Sadducees say there is no\nresurrection, neither angel nor spirit.\" At the same time they\naccepted the Pentateuch, only rejecting or explaining away those\nportions of it which relate to the separate existence of souls and\nto their subterranean abode. They strove to confound their\nopponents, the advocates of a future life, by such perplexing\nquestions as the one they addressed to Jesus, asking, in the case\nof a woman who had had seven successive husbands, which one of\nthem should be her husband in the resurrection. All that we can\ngather concerning the Sadducees from the New Testament is amply\nconfirmed by Josephus, who explicitly declares, \"Their doctrine is\nthat souls die with the bodies.\"\n\nThe second sect was the ascetical and philosophical Essenes, of\nwhom the various information given by Philo in his celebrated\npaper on the Therapeuta agrees with the account in Josephus and\nwith the scattered gleams in other sources. The doctrine of the\nEssenes on the subject of our present inquiry was much like that\nof Philo himself; and in some particulars it remarkably resembles\nthat of many Christians. They rejected the notion of the\nresurrection of the body, and maintained the inherent immortality\nof the soul. They said that \"the souls of men, coming out of the\nmost subtle and pure air, are bound up in their bodies as in so\nmany prisons; but, being freed at death, they do rejoice, and are\nborne aloft where a state of happy life forever is decreed for the\nvirtuous; but the vicious are assigned to eternal punishment in a\ndark, cold place.\" 30 Such sentiments appear to have inspired the\nheroic Eleazar, whose speech to his followers is reported by\nJosephus, when they were besieged at Masada, urging them to rush\non the foe, \"for death is better than life, is the only true life,\nleading the soul to infinite freedom and joy above.\"31\n\n27 Ibid. p. 164.\n\n28 See, in the Analekten of Keil and Tzschirner, band i stuck\nii., an article by Dr. Schreiter, entitled Philo's Ideen uber\nUnsterblichkeit, Auferstehung, und Vergeltung.\n\n29 Lightfoot in Matt. xxii. 23.\n\n30 Josephus, De Bell. lib. ii. cap. 8.\n\n31 Ibid. lib. vii. cap. 8.\n\n\nBut by far the most numerous and powerful of the Jewish sects at\nthat time, and ever since, were the eclectic, traditional,\nformalist Pharisees: eclectic, inasmuch as their faith was formed\nby a partial combination of various systems; traditional, since\nthey allowed a more imperative sway to the authority of the\nFathers, and to oral legends and precepts, than to the plain\nletter of Scripture; formalist, for they neglected the weightier\nspiritual matters of the law in a scrupulous tithing of mint,\ncumin, and anise seed, a pretentious wearing of broad\nphylacteries, an uttering of long prayers in the streets, and the\nvarious other hypocritical priestly paraphernalia of a severe\nmechanical ritual.\n\nFrom Josephus we learn that the Pharisees believed that the souls\nof the faithful that is, of all who punctiliously observed the law\nof Moses and the traditions of the elders would live again by\ntransmigration into new bodies; but that the souls of all others,\non leaving their bodies, were doomed to a place of confinement\nbeneath, where they must abide forever. These are his words: \"The\nPharisees believe that souls have an immortal strength in them,\nand that in the under world they will experience rewards or\npunishments according as they have lived well or ill in this life.\nThe righteous shall have power to live again, but sinners shall be\ndetained in an everlasting prison.\"32 Again, he writes, \"The\nPharisees say that all souls are incorruptible, but that only the\nsouls of good men are removed into other bodies.\"33 The fragment\nentitled \"Concerning Hades,\" formerly attributed to Josephus, is\nnow acknowledged on all sides to be a gross forgery. The Greek\nculture and philosophical tincture with which he was imbued led\nhim to reject the doctrine of a bodily resurrection; and this is\nprobably the reason why he makes no allusion to that doctrine in\nhis account of the Pharisees. That such a doctrine was held among\nthem is plain from passages in the New Testament, passages which\nalso shed light upon the statement actually made by Josephus.\nJesus says to Martha, \"Thy brother shall rise again.\" She replies,\n\"I know that he shall rise in the resurrection, at the last day.\"\nSome of the Pharisees, furthermore, did not confine the privilege\nor penalty of transmigration, and of the resurrection, to the\nrighteous. They once asked Jesus, \"Who did sin, this man or his\nparents, that he was born blind?\" Plainly, he could not have been\nborn blind for his own sins unless he had known a previous life.\nPaul, too, says of them, in his speech at Casarea, \"They\nthemselves also allow that there shall be a resurrection of the\ndead, both of the just and of the unjust.\" This, however, is very\nprobably an exception to their prevailing belief. Their religious\nintolerance, theocratic pride, hereditary national vanity, and\nsectarian formalism, often led them to despise and overlook the\nGentile world, haughtily restricting the boon of a renewed life to\nthe legal children of Abraham.\n\nBut the grand source now open to us of knowledge concerning the\nprevailing opinions of the Jews on our present subject at and\nsubsequent to the time of Christ is the Talmud. This is a\ncollection of the traditions of the oral law, (Mischna,) with the\ncopious precepts and comments (Gemara) of the most learned and\nauthoritative Rabbins. It is a wonderful monument of myths and\nfancies, profound speculations and ridiculous puerilities, antique\n\n32 Antiq. lib. xviii. cap. 1.33 De Bell. lib. ii. cap. 8.\n\n\nlegends and cabalistic subtleties, crowned and loaded with the\nnational peculiarities. The Jews reverence it extravagantly,\nsaying, \"The Bible is salt, the Mischna pepper, the Gemara balmy\nspice.\" Rabbi Solomon ben Joseph sings, in our poet's version,\n\n\"The Kabbala and Talmud hoar Than all the Prophets prize I more;\nFor water is all Bible lore, But Mischna is pure wine.\"\n\nThe rambling character and barbarous dialect of this work have\njoined with various other causes to withhold from it far too much\nof the attention of Christian critics. Saving by old Lightfoot and\nPocock, scarcely a contribution has ever been offered us in\nEnglish from this important field. The Germans have done far\nbetter; and numerous huge volumes, the costly fruits of their\ntoils, are standing on neglected shelves. The eschatological views\nderived from this source are authentically Jewish, however closely\nthey may resemble some portion of the popular Christian\nconceptions upon the same subject. The correspondences between\nsome Jewish and some Christian theological dogmas betoken the\ninflux of an adulterated Judaism into a nascent Christianity, not\nthe reflex of a pure Christianity upon a receptive Judaism. It is\nimportant to show this; and it appears from several\nconsiderations. In the first place, it is demonstrable, it is\nunquestioned, that at least the germs and outlines of the dogmas\nreferred to were in actual existence among the Pharisees before\nthe conflict between Christianity and Judaism arose.Secondly, in\nthe Rabbinical writings these dogmas are most fundamental, vital,\nand pervading, in relation to the whole system; but in the\nChristian they seem subordinate and incidental, have every\nappearance of being ingrafts, not outgrowths. Thirdly, in the\napostolic age Judaism was a consolidated, petrified system,\ndefended from outward influence on all sides by an invulnerable\nbigotry, a haughty exclusiveness; while Christianity was in a\nyoung and vigorous, an assimilating and formative, state.\nFourthly, the overweening sectarian vanity and scorn of the Jews,\ndespising, hating, and fearing the Christians, would not permit\nthem to adopt peculiarities of belief from the latter; but the\nChristians were undeniably Jews in almost every thing except in\nasserting the Messiahship of Jesus: they claimed to be the genuine\nJews, children of the law and realizers of the promise. The Jewish\ndogmas, therefore, descended to them as a natural lineal\ninheritance. Finally, in the Acts of the Apostles, the letters of\nPaul, and the progress of the Ebionites, (which sect included\nnearly all the Christians of the first century,) we can trace step\nby step the actual workings, in reliable history, of the process\nthat we affirm, namely, the assimilation of Jewish elements into\nthe popular Christianity.\n\nCHAPTER IX.\n\nRABBINICAL DOCTRINE OF A FUTURE LIFE.\n\nTHE starting point in the Talmud on this subject is with the\neffects of sin upon the human race. Man was made radiant, pure,\nimmortal, in the image of God. By sin he was obscured, defiled,\nburdened with mortal decay and judgment. In this representation\nthat misery and death were an after doom brought into the world by\nsin, the Rabbinical authorities strikingly agree. The testimony is\nirresistible. We need not quote confirmations of this statement,\nas every scholar in this department will accept it at once. But as\nto what is meant precisely by the term \"death,\" as used in such a\nconnection, there is no little obscurity and diversity of opinion.\nIn all probability, some of the Pharisaical fathers perhaps the\nmajority of them conceived that, if Adam had not sinned, he and\nhis posterity would have been physically immortal, and would\neither have lived forever on the earth, or have been successively\ntransferred to the home of Jehovah over the firmament. They call\nthe devil, who is the chief accuser in the heavenly court of\njustice, the angel of death, by the name of \"Sammael.\" Rabbi\nReuben says, \"When Sammael saw Adam sin, he immediately sought to\nslay him, and went to the heavenly council and clamored for\njustice against him, pleading thus: 'God made this decree, \"In the\nday thou eatest of the tree thou shalt surely die.\" Therefore give\nhim to me, for he is mine, and I will kill him; to this end was I\ncreated; and give me power over all his descendants.' When the\ncelestial Sanhedrim perceived that his petition was just, they\ndecreed that it should be granted.\"1 A great many expressions of\nkindred tenor might easily be adduced, leaving it hardly possible\nto doubt as indeed we are not aware that any one does doubt that\nmany of the Jews literally held that sin was the sole cause of\nbodily dissolution. But, on the other hand, there were as\ncertainly others who did not entertain that idea, but understood\nand explained the terms in which it was sometimes conveyed in a\ndifferent, a partially figurative, sense. Rabbi Samuel ben David\nwrites, \"Although the first Adam had not sinned, yet death would\nhave been; for death was created on the first day.\" The reference\nhere is, as Rabbi Berechias explains, to the account in Genesis\nwhere we read that \"darkness was upon the face of the deep,\" \"by\nwhich is to be understood the angel of death, who has darkened the\nface of man.\"2 The Talmudists generally believed also in the pre\nexistence of souls in heaven, and in a spiritual body investing\nand fitting the soul for heaven, as the present carnal body\ninvests and fits it for the earth. Schoettgen has collected\nnumerous illustrations in point, of which the following may serve\nas specimens.3 \"When the first Adam had not sinned, he was every\nway an angel of the Lord, perfect and spotless, and it was decreed\nthat he should live forever like one of the celestial ministers.\"\n\"The soul cannot ascend into Paradise except it be first invested\nwith a\n\n1 Schoettgen, Dissertatio de Hierosolyma Coelesti, cap. iii. sect.\n9.\n\n2 Schoettgen, Hora Biblica et Talmudica, in Rom. v. 12, et in\nJohan. iii. 19.\n\n3 Ibid. in 2 Cor. v. 2.\n\n\nclothing adapted to that world, as the present is for this world.\"\nThese notions do not harmonize with the thought that man was\noriginally destined for a physical eternity on this globe. All\nthis difficulty disappears, we think, and the true metaphorical\nforce often intended in the word \"death\" comes to view, through\nthe following conception, occupying the minds of a portion of the\nJewish Rabbins, as we are led to believe by the clews furnished in\nthe close connection between the Pharisaic and the Zoroastrian\neschatology, by similar hints in various parts of the New\nTestament, and by some quite explicit declarations in the Talmud\nitself, which we shall soon cite in a different connection. God at\nfirst intended that man should live for a time in pure blessedness\non the earth, and then without pain should undergo a glorious\nchange making him a perfect peer of the angels, and be translated\nto their lofty abode in his own presence; but, when he sinned, God\ngave him over to manifold suffering, and on the destruction of his\nbody adjudged his naked soul to descend to a doleful imprisonment\nbelow the grave. The immortality meant for man was a timely ascent\nto heaven in a paradisal clothing, without dying. The doom brought\non him by sin was the alteration of that desirable change of\nbodies and ascension to the supernal splendors, for a permanent\ndisembodiment and a dreaded descent to the subterranean glooms. It\nis a Talmudical as much as it is a Pauline idea, that the\ntriumphant power of the Messiah would restore what the unfortunate\nfall of Adam forfeited. Now, if we can show as we think we can,\nand as we shall try to do in a later part of this article that the\nlater Jews expected the Messianic resurrection to be the prelude\nto an ascent into heaven, and not the beginning of a gross earthly\nimmortality, it will powerfully confirm the theory which we have\njust indicated. \"When,\" says one of the old Rabbins, \"the dead in\nIsraelitish earth are restored alive,\" their bodies will be \"as\nthe body of the first Adam before he sinned, and they shall all\nfly into the air like birds.\"4\n\nAt all events, whether the general Rabbinical belief was in the\nprimitive destination of man to a heavenly or to an earthly\nimmortality, whether the \"death\" decreed upon him in consequence\nof sin was the dissolution of the body or the wretchedness of the\nsoul, they all agree that the banishment of souls into the realm\nof blackness under the grave was a part of the penalty of sin.\nSome of them maintained, as we think, that, had there been no sin,\nsouls would have passed to heaven in glorified bodies; others of\nthem maintained, as we think, that, had there been no sin, they\nwould have lived eternally upon earth in their present bodies; but\nall of them agreed, it is undisputed, that in consequence of sin\nsouls were condemned to the under world. No man would have seen\nthe dismal realm of the sepulchre had there not been sin. The\nearliest Hebrew conception was that all souls went down to a\ncommon abode, to spend eternity in dark slumber or nerveless\ngroping. This view was first modified soon after the Persian\ncaptivity, by the expectation that there would be discrimination\nat the resurrection which the Jews had learned to look for, when\nthe just should rise but the wicked should be left.\n\nThe next alteration of their notions on this subject was the\nsubdivision of the underworld into Paradise and Gehenna, a\nconception known among them probably as early as a century before\nChrist, and very prominent with them in the apostolic age. \"When\nRabbi\n\n4 Schoettgen, in 1 Cor. xv. 44.\n\n\nJochanan was dying, his disciples asked him, 'Light of Israel,\nmain pillar of the right, thou strong hammer, why dost thou weep?'\nHe answered, 'Two paths open before me, the one leading to bliss,\nthe other to torments; and I know not which of them will be my\ndoom.'\"5 \"Paradise is separated from hell by a distance no greater\nthan the width of a thread.\"6 So, in Christ's parable of Dives and\nLazarus, Abraham's bosom and hell are two divisions. \"There are\nthree doors into Gehenna: one in the wilderness, where Korah and\nhis company were swallowed; one in the sea, where Jonah descended\nwhen he 'cried out of the belly of hell;' one in Jerusalem, for\nthe Lord says, 'My furnace is in Jerusalem.'\"7 \"The under world is\ndivided into palaces, each of which is so large that it would take\na man three hundred years to roam over it. There are distinct\napartments where the hell punishments are inflicted. One place is\nso dark that its name is 'Night of Horrors.\"8 \"In Paradise there\nare certain mansions for the pious from the Gentile peoples, and\nfor those mundane kings who have done kindness to the\nIsraelites.\"9 \"The fire of Gehenna was kindled on the evening of\nthe first Sabbath, and shall never be extinguished.\"10 The\nEgyptians, Persians, Hindus, and Greeks, with all of whom the Jews\nheld relations of intercourse, had, in their popular\nrepresentations of the under world of the dead, regions of peace\nand honor for the good, and regions of fire for the bad. The idea\nmay have been adopted from them by the Jews, or it may have been\nat last developed among themselves, first by the imaginative\npoetical, afterwards by the literally believing, transference\nbelow of historical and local imagery and associations, such as\nthose connected with the ingulfing of Sodom and Gomorrah in fire\nand sulphur, and with the loathed fires in the valley of Hinnom.\n\nMany of the Rabbins believed in the transmigration or revolution\nof souls, an immemorial doctrine of the Fast, and developed it\ninto the most ludicrous and marvellous details.11 But, with the\nexception of those who adopted this Indian doctrine, the Rabbins\nsupposed all departed souls to be in the under world, some in the\ndivision of Paradise, others in that of hell. Here they fancied\nthese souls to be longingly awaiting the advent of the Messiah.\n\"Messiah and the patriarchs weep together in Paradise over the\ndelay of the time of the kingdom.\"12 In this quotation the Messiah\nis represented as being in the under world, for the Jews expected\nthat he would be a man, very likely some one who had already\nlived. For a delegation was once sent to ask Jesus, \"Art thou\nElias? art thou the Messiah? art thou that prophet?\" Light is thus\nthrown upon the Rabbinical saying that \"it was doubted whether the\nMessiah would come from the living, or the dead.\"13 Borrowing some\nPersian modes of thinking, and adding them to their own inordinate\nnational pride, the Rabbins soon began\n\n5 Talmud, tract. Berachoth.\n\n6 Eisenmenger, Entdecktes Judenthum, th. ii. cap. v. s. 315.\n\n7 Lightfoot, in Matt. v. 22.\n\n8 Schroder, Satzungen and Gebrauche des Talmudisch Rabbinischen\nJudenthums, s. 408.\n\n9 Schoettgen, in Johan. xiv. 2.\n\n10 Nov. Test. ex Talmude, etc. illustratum a J. G. Menschen, p.\n125.\n\n11 Basnage, Hist. of Jews, lib. iv. cap. 30. Also, Traditions of\nthe Rabbins, in Blackwood for April, 1833.\n\n12 Eisenmenger, th. ii. s. 304.\n\n13 Lightfoot, in Matt. ii. 16.\n\n\nto fancy that the observance or non observance of the Pharisaic\nritual, and kindred particulars, must exert a great effect in\ndetermining the destination of souls and their condition in the\nunder world. Observe the following quotations from the Talmud.\n\"Abraham sits at the gate of hell to see that no Israelite\nenters.\" \"Circumcision is so agreeable to God, that he swore to\nAbraham that no one who was circumcised should descend into\nhell.\"14 \"What does Abraham to those circumcised who have sinned\ntoo much? He takes the foreskins from Gentile boys who died\nwithout circumcision, and places them on those Jews who were\ncircumcised but have become godless, and then kicks them into\nhell.\"15 Hell here denotes that division in the under world where\nthe condemned are punished. The younger Buxtorf, in a preface to\nhis father's \"Synagoga Judaica,\" gives numerous specimens of\nJewish representations of \"the efficacy of circumcision being so\ngreat that no one who has undergone it shall go down into hell.\"\nChildren can help their deceased parents out of hell by their good\ndeeds, prayers, and offerings.16 \"Beyond all doubt,\" says Gfrorer,\n\"the ancient Jewish synagogue inculcated the doctrine of\nsupererogatory good works, the merit of which went to benefit the\ndeparted souls.\"17 Here all souls were, in the under world, either\nin that part of it called Paradise, or in that named Gehenna,\naccording to certain conditions. But in whichever place they were,\nand under whatever circumstances, they were all tarrying in\nexpectation of the advent of the Messiah.\n\nHow deeply rooted, how eagerly cherished, the Jewish belief in the\napproaching appearance of the Messiah was, and what a splendid\ngroup of ideas and imaginations they clustered around his reign,\nare well known facts. He was to be a descendant of royal David, an\ninspired prophet, priest, and king, was to subdue the whole earth\nbeneath his Jewish sceptre and establish from Jerusalem a\ntheocratic empire of unexampled glory, holiness, and delight. In\nso much the consent was general and earnest; though in regard to\nmany further details there would seem to have been an incongruous\ndiversity of opinions. They supposed the coming of the Messiah\nwould be preceded by ten frightful woes,18 also by the appearance\nof the prophet Elias as a forerunner.19 There are a few passages\nin the Rabbinical writings which, unless they were forged and\ninterpolated by Christians at a late period, show that there were\nin the Jewish mind anticipations of the personal descent of the\nMessiah into the under world.20 \"After this the Messiah, the son\nof David, came to the gates of the underworld. But when the bound,\nwho are in Gehenna, saw the light of the Messiah, they began\nrejoicing to receive him, saying, 'He shall lead us up from this\ndarkness.'\" \"The captives shall\n\n14 Schroder, s. 332.\n\n15 Eisenmenger, th. ii. kap. vi. s. 340.\n\n16 Ibid. s. 358.\n\n17 Geschichte des Urchristenthums, zweit. abth. s. 186. Maimonides\nalso asserts the doctrine of supererogatory works: see p. 237 of\nH. H. Bernard's Selections from the Yad Hachazakah of Maimonides.\n\n18 Surenhusius, Mischna, pars tertia, p. 308.\n\n19 Lightfoot, in Matt. xvii. 10.\n\n20 For a general view of the Jewish eschatology, see Gfrorer,\nGeschichte des Urchristenthums, kap. x.; Eisenmenger, Entdecktes\nJudenthum, th. ii. kap. xv. xvii.\n\n\nascend from the under world, Schechinah at their head.\"21 Gfrorer\nderives the origin of the doctrine that Christ rescued souls out\nof the under world, from a Jewish notion, preserved in the\nTalmud,22 that the just patriarchs sometimes did it.23 Bertholdt\nadduces Talmudical declarations to show that through the Messiah\n\"God would hereafter liberate the Israelites from the under world,\non account of the merit of circumcision\"24 Schoettgen quotes this\nstatement from the Sohar: \"Messia shall die, and shall remain in\nthe state of death a time, and shall rise.\"25 The so called Fourth\nBook of Ezra says, in the seventh chapter, \"My son, the Christ,\nshall die: then follow the resurrection and the judgment.\"\nAlthough it is clear, from various other sources, as well as from\nthe account in John xii. 34, that there was a prevalent\nexpectation among the Jews that \"the Messiah would abide forever,\"\nit also seems quite certain that there were at the same time at\nleast obscure presentiments, based on prophecies and traditions,\nthat he must die, that an important part of his mission was\nconnected with his death. This appears from such passages as we\nhave cited above, found in early Rabbinical writers, who would\ncertainly be very unlikely to borrow and adapt a new idea of such\na character from the Christians; and from the manner in which\nJesus assumes his death to be a part of the Messianic fate and\ninterprets the Scriptures as necessarily pointing to that effect.\nHe charges his disciples with being \"fools and blind\" in not so\nunderstanding the doctrine; thus seeming to imply that it was\nplainly known to some. But this question the origin of the idea of\na suffering, atoning, dying Messiah is confessedly a very nice and\nobscure one. The evidence, the silence, the inferences, the\npresumptions and doubts on the subject are such, that some of the\nmost thorough and impartial students say they are unable to decide\neither way.\n\nHowever the foregoing question be decided, it is admitted by all\nthat the Jews earnestly looked for a resurrection of the dead as\nan accompaniment of the Messiah's coming. Whether Christ was to go\ndown into the under world, or to sit enthroned on Mount Zion, in\neither case the dead should come up and live again on earth at the\nblast of his summoning trumpet. Rabbi Jeremiah commanded, \"When\nyou bury me, put shoes on my feet, and give me a staff in my hand,\nand lay me on one side, that when the Messiah comes I may be\nready.\"26 Most of the Rabbins made this resurrection partial.\n\"Whoever denies the resurrection of the dead shall have no part in\nit, for the very reason that he denies it.\"27 \"Rabbi Abbu says, \"A\nday of rain is greater than the resurrection of the dead; because\nthe rain is for all, while the resurrection is only for the\njust.\"28 \"Sodom and Gomorrah shall not rise in the resurrection of\nthe dead.\"29 Rabbi Chebbo says, \"The patriarchs so vehemently\ndesired to be buried in\n\n21 Schoettgen, De Messia, lib. vi. cap. v. sect. 1.\n\n22 Eisenmenger, th. ii. ss. 343, 364.\n\n23 Geschichte Urchrist. kap. viii. s. 184.\n\n24 Christologia Judaorum Jesu Apostolorumque Atate, sect. 34, (De\nDescensu Messia ad Inferos.)\n\n25 De Messia, lib. vi. cap. v. sect. 2.\n\n26 Lightfoot, in Matt. xxvii. 52.\n\n27 Witsius, Dissertatio de Seculo, etc. sect. 9.\n\n28 Nov. Test. Illustratum, etc. a Meuschen, p. 62.\n\n29 Schoettgen, in Johan. vi. 39.\n\n\nthe land of Israel, because those who are dead in that land shall\nbe the first to revive and shall devour his years, [the years of\nthe Messiah.] But for those just who are interred beyond the holy\nland, it is to be understood that God will make a passage in the\nearth, through which they will be rolled until they reach the land\nof Israel.\"30 Rabbi Jochanan says, \"Moses died out of the holy\nland, in order to show that in the same way that God will raise up\nMoses, so he will raise all those who observe his law.\" The\nnational bigotry of the Jews reaches a pitch of extravagance in\nsome of their views that is amusing. For instance, they declare\nthat \"one Israelitish soul is dearer and more important to God\nthan all the souls of a whole nation of the Gentiles!\" Again, they\nsay, \"When God judges the Israelites, he will stand, and make the\njudgment brief and mild; when he judges the Gentiles, he will sit,\nand make it long and severe!\" They affirm that the resurrection\nwill be effected by means of a dew; and they quote to that effect\nthis verse from Canticles: \"I sleep, but my heart waketh; my head\nis filled with dew, and my locks with drops of the night.\" Some\nassert that \"the resurrection will be immediately caused by God,\nwho never gives to any one the three keys of birth, rain, and the\nresurrection of the dead.\" Others say that the power to raise and\njudge the dead will be delegated to the Messiah, and even go so\nfar as to assert that the trumpet whose formidable blasts will\nthen shake the universe is to be one of the horns of that ram\nwhich Abraham offered up instead of his son Isaac! Some confine\nthe resurrection to faithful Jews, some extend it to the whole\nJewish nation, some think all the righteous of the earth will have\npart in it, and some stretch its pale around all mankind alike.31\nThey seem to agree that the reprobate would either be left in the\nwretched regions of Sheol when the just arose, or else be thrust\nback after the judgment, to remain there forever. It was believed\nthat the righteous after their resurrection would never die again,\nbut ascend to heaven. The Jews after a time, when the increase of\ngeographical knowledge had annihilated from the earth their old\nEden whence the sinful Adam was expelled, changed its location\ninto the sky. Thither, as the later fables ran, Elijah was borne\nin his chariot of fire by the horses thereof. Rabbi Pinchas says,\n\"Carefulness leads us to innocence, innocence to purity, purity to\nsanctity, sanctity to humility, humility to fear of sins, fear of\nsins to piety, piety to the holy spirit, the holy spirit to the\nresurrection of the dead, the resurrection of the dead to the\nprophet Elias.\"32 The writings of the early Christian Fathers\ncontain many allusions to this blessed habitation of saints above\nthe clouds. It is illustrated in the following quaint Rabbinical\nnarrative. Rabbi Jehosha ben Levi once besought the angel of death\nto take him up, ere he died, to catch a glimpse of Paradise.\nStanding on the wall, he suddenly snatched the angel's sword and\nsprang over, swearing by Almighty God that he would not come out.\nDeath was not allowed to enter Paradise, and the son of Levi did\nnot restore his sword until he had promised to be more gentle\ntowards the dying.33 The righteous were never to return to the\ndust, but \"at the end\n\n30 Schoettgen, De Messia, lib. vi. cap. vi. sect. 27.\n\n31 See an able dissertation on Jewish Notions of the Resurrection\nof the Dead, prefixed to Humphrey's Translation of Athenagoras on\nthe Resurrection.\n\n32 Surenhusius, Mischna, pars tertia, p. 309.\n\n33 Schroder, s. 419.\n\n\nof the thousand years,\" the duration of the Messiah's earthly\nreign, \"when the Lord is lifted up, God shall fit wings to the\njust, like the wings of eagles.\"34 In a word, the Messiah and his\nredeemed ones would ascend into heaven to the right hand of God.\nSo Paul, who said, \"I am a Pharisee, the son of a Pharisee,\"\ndeclares that when the dead have risen \"we shall be caught up in\nthe clouds to be forever with the Lord.\"\n\nWe forbear to notice a thousand curious details of speculation and\nfancy in which individual Rabbins indulged; for instance, their\ncommon notion concerning the bone luz, the single bone which,\nwithstanding dissolution, shall form the nucleus of the\nresurrection body. It was a prevalent belief with them that the\nresurrection would take place in the valley of Jehoshaphat, in\nproof of which they quote this text from Joel: \"Let the heathen be\nwakened and come up to the valley of Jehoshaphat; for there will I\nsit to judge the nations around.\" To this day, wherever scattered\nabroad, faithful Jews cling to the expectation of the Messiah's\ncoming, and associate with his day the resurrection of the dead.35\nThe statement in the Song of Solomon, \"The king is held in the\ngalleries,\" means, says a Rabbinical book, \"that the Messiah is\ndetained in Paradise, fettered by a woman's hair!\" Every day,\nthroughout the world, every consistent Israelite repeats the words\nof Moses Maimonides, the peerless Rabbi, of whom it is a proverb\nthat \"from Moses to Moses there arose not a Moses:\" \"I believe\nwith a perfect faith that the Messiah will come, and though he\ndelays, nevertheless, I will always expect him till he come.\" Then\nshall glory cover the living, and the risen, children of Israel,\nand confusion fall on their Gentile foes. In almost every inch of\nthe beautiful valley of Jehoshaphat a Jew has been buried. All\nover the slopes of the hill sides around lie the thick clustering\nsepulchral slabs, showing how eagerly the chosen people seek to\nsleep in the very spot where the first rising of the dead shall\nbe. Entranced and mute,\n\n\"In old Jehoshaphat's valley, they\nOf Israel think the assembled world\nWill stand upon that awful day,\nWhen the Ark's light, aloft unfurl'd,\nAmong the opening clouds shall shine,\nDivinity's own radiant shrine.\"\n\nAny one familiar with the Persian theology36 will at once notice a\nstriking resemblance between many of its dogmas and those, first,\nof Pharisaism, secondly, of the popular Christianity. Some\nexamination of this subject properly belongs here. There is, then,\nas is well known, a circle or group of ideas, particularly\npertaining to eschatology, which appear in the later Jewish\nwritings, and remarkably correspond to those held by the Parsees,\nthe followers of Zoroaster. The same notions also reappear in the\nearly Christianity as popularly understood. We will specify some\nof these correspondences. The doctrine of angels, received by the\nJews, their names, offices, rank, and destiny, was borrowed and\nformed\n\n34 Schoettgen, de Messia, lib. vi. cap. vi. sect. 23; cap. vii.\nss. 3, 4.\n\n35 John Allen, Modern Judaism, ch. vi. and xv.\n\n36 See Abriss der Religion Zoroasters nach den Zendbuchern, von\nAbbe Foucher, in Kleuker's Zend Avesta, band i. zweit anhang, ss.\n328-342.\n\n\nby them during and just after the Babylonish captivity, and is\nmuch like that which they found among their enslavers.37 The\nguardian angels appointed over nations, spoken of by Daniel, are\nPersian. The angels called in the Apocalypse \"the seven spirits of\nGod sent forth into all the earth,\" in Zechariah \"the seven eyes\nof God which run to and fro through all the earth,\" are the\nAmschaspands of the Persian faith. The wars of the angels are\ndescribed as minutely by the old Persians as by Milton. The Zend\nAvesta pictures Ahriman pregnant with Death, (die alte\nhollenschlange, todschwangere Ahriman,) as Milton describes the\nwomb of Sin bearing that fatal monster. The Gahs, or second order\nof angels, the Persians supposed,38 were employed in preparing\nclothing and laying it up in heaven to clothe the righteous after\nthe resurrection, a fancy frequent among the Rabbins and\nrepeatedly alluded to in the New Testament. With both the Persians\nand the Jews, all our race both sexes sprang from one original\nman. With both, the first pair were seduced and ruined by means of\nfruit which the devil gave to them. With both, there was a belief\nin demoniacal possessions, devils or bad spirits entering human\nbodies. With both, there was the expectation of a great\nDeliverer,  the Persian Sosiosch, the Jewish Messiah, whose coming\nwould be preceded by fearful woes, who would triumph over all\nevil, raise the dead, judge the world, separate the righteous and\nthe wicked, purge the earth with fire, and install a reign of\nglorious blessedness.39 \"The conception of an under world,\" says\nDr. Roth, \"was known centuries before Zoroaster; but probably he\nwas the first to add to the old belief the idea that the under\nworld was a place of purification, wherein souls were purged from\nall traces of sin.\"40 Of this belief in a subterranean purgatory\nthere are numerous unmistakable evidences and examples in the\nRabbinical writings.41\n\nThese notions and others the Pharisees early adopted, and wrought\ninto the texture of what they called the \"Oral Law,\" that body of\nverbally transmitted legends, precepts, and dogmas, afterwards\nwritten out and collected in the Mischna, to which Christ\nrepeatedly alluded with such severity, saying, \"Ye by your\ntraditions make the commandments of God of none effect.\" To some\ndoctrines of kindred character and origin with these Paul refers\nwhen he warns his readers against \"the worshipping of angels,\"\n\"endless genealogies,\" \"philosophy falsely so called,\" and various\nbesetting heresies of the time. But others were so woven and\nassimilated into the substance of the popular Judaism of the age,\nas inculcated by the Rabbins, that Paul himself held them, the\nlingering vestiges of his earnest Pharisaic education and\norganized experience. They naturally found their way into the\nApostolic Church, principally composed of Ebionites, Christians\nwho had been Jews; and from it they were never separated, but have\ncome to us in seeming orthodox garb, and are generally\n\n37 Schroder, p. 385.\n\n38 Yacna, Ha 411. Kleuker, zweit. auf. s. 198.\n\n39 Die Heiligen Schriften der Parsen, von Dr. F. Spiegel, kap. ii.\nss. 32-37. Studien and Kritiken, 1885, band i., \"Ist die Lehre von\nder Anferstehung des Leibes nicht ein alt Persische Lehre?\" F.\nNork, Mythen der Alten Perser als Quellen Christlicher\nGlaubenslehren und Ritualien.\n\n40 Die Zoroastrischen Glaubenslehre, von Dr. Eduard Roth. s. 450.\n\n41 See, In tom. i. Kabbala Denudata, Synopsis Dogmatum Libri Sohar\npp. 108, 109, 113.\n\n\nretained now. Still, they were errors. They are incredible to the\nthinking minds of to day. It is best to get rid of them by the\ntruth, that they are pagan growths introduced into Christianity,\nbut to be discriminated from it. By removing these antiquated and\nincredible excrescences from the real religion of Christ, we shall\nsave the essential faith from the suspicion which their\nassociation with it, their fancied identity with it, invites and\nprovokes.\n\nThe correspondences between the Persian and the Pharisaic faith,\nin regard to doctrines, are of too arbitrary and peculiar a\ncharacter to allow us for a moment to suppose them to have been an\nindependent product spontaneously developed in the two nations;\nthough even in that case the doctrines in question have no\nsanction of authority, not being Mosaic nor Prophetic, but only\nRabbinical. One must have received from the other. Which was the\nbestower and which the recipient is quite plain.42 There is not a\nwhit of evidence to show, but, on the contrary, ample presumption\nto disprove, that a certain cycle of notions were known among the\nJews previous to a period of most intimate and constant\nintercourse between them and the Persians. But before that period\nthose notions were an integral part of the Persian theology. Even\nPrideaux admits that the first Zoroaster lived and Magianism\nflourished at least a thousand years before Christ. And the dogmas\nwe refer to are fundamental features of the religion. These dogmas\nof the Persians, not derived from the Old Testament nor known\namong the Jews before the captivity, soon after that time began to\nshow themselves in their literature, and before the opening of the\nNew Testament were prominent elements of the Pharisaic belief. The\ninference is unavoidable that the confluence of Persian thought\nand feeling with Hebrew thought and feeling, joined with the\nmaterials and flowing in the channels of the subsequent experience\nof the Jews, formed a mingled deposit about the age of Christ,\nwhich deposit was Pharisaism. Again: the doctrines common to\nZoroastrianism and Pharisaism in the former seem to be prime\nsources, in the latter to be late products. In the former, they\ncompose an organic, complete, inseparable system; in the latter,\nthey are disconnected, mixed piecemeal, and, to a considerable\nextent, historically traceable to an origin beyond the native,\nnational mind. It is a significant fact that the abnormal symbolic\nbeasts described by several of the Jewish prophets, and in the\nApocalypse, were borrowed from Persian art. Sculptures\nrepresenting these have been brought to light by the recent\nresearches at Persepolis. Finally, all early ecclesiastical\nhistory incontestably shows that Persian dogmas exerted on the\nChristianity of the first centuries an enormous influence, a\npervasive and perverting power unspent yet, and which it is one of\nthe highest tasks of honest and laborious Christian students in\nthe present day to explain, define, and separate. What was that\nManichaanism which nearly filled Christendom for a hundred years,\nwhat was it, in great part, but an influx of tradition,\nspeculation, imagination, and sentiment, from Persia? The Gnostic\nChristians even had a scripture called \"Zoroaster's Apocalypse.\"43\n\"The wise men from the east,\" who knelt before the infant Christ,\n\"and opened their treasures, and gave him gifts, gold,\nfrankincense, and myrrh,\" were Persian Magi. We may imaginatively\nregard that sacred scene as an emblematical figure of the far\ndifferent tributes which\n\n42 Lucke, Einleitung in die Offenbarung des Johannes, kap. 2,\nsect. 8.\n\n43 Kleuker, Zend Avesta, band ii. anhang i. s. 12.\n\n\na little later came from their country to his religion, the\nunfortunate contributions that permeated and corrupted so much of\nthe form in which it thenceforth appeared and spread. In the pure\ngospel's pristine day, ere it had hardened into theological dogmas\nor become encumbered with speculations and comments, from the lips\nof God's Anointed Son repeatedly fell the earnest warning, \"Beware\nof the leaven of the Pharisees.\" There is far more need to have\nthis warning intelligently heeded now, coming with redoubled\nemphasis from the Master's own mouth, \"Beware of the leaven of the\nPharisees.\" For, as the gospel is now generally set forth and\nreceived, that leaven has leavened well nigh the whole lump of it.\n\nCHAPTER X.\n\nGREEK AND ROMAN DOCTRINE OF A FUTURE LIFE.\n\nTHE disembodied soul, as conceived by the Greeks, and after them\nby the Romans, is material, but of so thin a contexture that it\ncannot be felt with the hands. It is exhaled with the dying\nbreath, or issues through a warrior's wounds. The sword passes\nthrough its uninjured form as through the air. It is to the body\nwhat a dream is to waking action. Retaining the shape, lineaments,\nand motion the man had in life, it is immediately recognised upon\nappearing. It quits the body with much reluctance, leaving that\nwarm and vigorous investiture for a chill and forceless existence.\nIt glides along without noise and very swiftly, like a shadow. It\nis unable to enter the lower kingdom and be at peace until its\ndeserted body has been buried with sacred rites: meanwhile, naked\nand sad, it flits restlessly about the gates, uttering doleful\nmoans.\n\nThe early Greek authors describe the creation as a stupendous\nhollow globe cut in the centre by the plane of the earth. The\nupper hemisphere is lighted by beneficent luminaries; the lower\nhemisphere is filled with unvarying blackness. The top of the\nhigher sphere is Heaven, the bright dwelling of the Olympian gods;\nits bottom is the surface of the earth, the home of living men.\nThe top of the lower sphere is Hades, the abode of the ghosts of\nthe dead; its bottom is Tartarus, the prison of the Titans,\nrebellious giants vanquished by Zeus. Earth lies half way from the\ncope of Heaven to the floor of Tartarus. This distance is so great\nthat, according to Hesiod, it would take an anvil nine days to\nfall from the centre to the nadir. Some of the ancients seem to\nhave surmised the sphericity of the earth, and to have thought\nthat Hades was simply its dark side, the dead being our antipodes.\nIn the Odyssey, Ulysses reaches Hades by sailing across the ocean\nstream and passing the eternal night land of the Cimmerians,\nwhereupon he comes to the edge of Acheron, the moat of Pluto's\nsombre house. Virgil also says, \"One pole of the earth to us\nalways points aloft; but the other is seen by black Styx and the\ninfernal ghosts, where either dead night forever reigns or else\nAurora returns thither from us and brings them back the day.\"1 But\nthe prevalent notion evidently was that Hades was an immense\nhollow region not far under the surface of the ground, and that it\nwas to be reached by descent through some cavern, like that at\nAvernus.\n\nThis subterranean place is the destination of all alike, rapacious\nOrcus sparing no one, good or bad. It is wrapped in obscurity, as\nthe etymology of its name implies, a place where one cannot see.\n\n\"No sun e'er gilds the gloomy horrors there; No cheerful gales\nrefresh the stagnant air.\"\n\nThe dead are disconsolate in this dismal realm, and the living\nshrink from entering it, except as a refuge from intolerable\nafflictions. The shade of the princeliest hero dwelling there the\n\n1 Georg. lib. i. II. 242-250.\n\n\nswift footed Achilles says, \"I would wish, being on earth, to\nserve for hire another man of poor estate, rather than rule over\nall the dead.\" Souls carry there their physical peculiarities, the\nfresh and ghastly likenesses of the wounds which have despatched\nthem thither, so that they are known at sight. Companies of\nfellow countrymen, knots of friends, are together there,\npreserving their remembrance ofearthly fortunes and beloved\nrelatives left behind, and eagerly questioning each newly arriving\nsoul for tidings from above. When the soul of Achilles is told of\nthe glorious deeds of Neoptolemus, \"he goes away taking mighty\nsteps through the meadow of asphodel in joyfulness, because he had\nheard that his son was very illustrious.\"2 Sophocles makes the\ndying Antigone say, \"Departing, I strongly cherish the hope that I\nshall be fondly welcomed by my father, and by my mother, and by my\nbrother.\"3 It is important to notice that, according to the early\nand popular view, this Hades, the \"dark dwelling of the joyless\nimages of deceased mortals,\" is the destination of universal\nhumanity. In opposition to its dolorous gloom and repulsive\ninanity are vividly pictured the glad light of day, the glory and\nhappiness of life. \"Not worth so much to me as my life,\" says the\nincomparable son of Peleus, \"are all the treasures which populous\nTroy possessed, nor all which the stony threshold of Phoebus\nApollo contains in rocky Pytho. Oxen, and fat sheep, and trophies,\nand horses with golden manes, may be acquired by effort; but the\nbreath of man to return again is not to be obtained by plunder nor\nby purchase, when once it has passed the barrier of his teeth.\"\n\nIt is not probable that all the ornamental details associated by\nthe poets with the fate and state of the dead as they are set\nforth, for instance, by Virgil in the sixth book of the Aneid were\never credited as literal truth. But there is no reason to doubt\nthat the essential features of this mythological scenery were\naccepted in the vulgar belief. For instance, that the popular mind\nhonestly held that, in some vague sense or other, the ghost, on\nleaving the body, flitted down to the dull banks of Acheron and\noffered a shadowy obolus to Charon, the slovenly old ferryman, for\na passage in his boat, seems attested not only by a thousand\naverments to that effect in the current literature of the time,\nbut also by the invariable custom of placing an obolus in the dead\nman's mouth for that purpose when he was buried.\n\nThe Greeks did not view the banishment of souls in Hades as a\npunishment for sin, or the result of any broken law in the plan of\nthings. It was to them merely the fulfilment of the inevitable\nfate of creatures who must die, in the order of nature, like\nsuccessive growths of flowers, and whose souls were too feeble to\nrank with gods and climb into Olympus. That man should cease from\nhis substantial life on the bright earth and subside into sunless\nHades, a vapid form, with nerveless limbs and faint voice, a\nghostly vision bemoaning his existence with idle lamentation, or\nbusying himself with the misty mockeries of his former pursuits,\nwas melancholy enough; but it was his natural destiny, and not an\navenging judgment.\n\nBut that powerful instinct in man which desires to see villany\npunished and goodness rewarded could not fail, among so cultivated\na people as the Greeks, to develop a doctrine of future\ncompensation for the contrasted deserts of souls. The earliest\ntrace of the idea of\n\n2 Odyssey, lib. xi. II. 538, 539.\n\n3 Antigone, II. 872-874.\n\n\nretribution which we find carried forward into the invisible world\nis the punishment of the Titans, those monsters who tried by\npiling up mountains to storm the heavenly abodes, and to wrest the\nThunderer's bolts from his hand. This germ is slowly expanded; and\nnext we read of a few specified criminals, who had been\nexcessively impious, personally offending Zeus, condemned by his\ndirect indignation to a severe expiation in Tartarus. The insulted\ndeity wreaks his vengeance on the tired Sisyphus, the mocked\nTantalus, the gnawed Tityus, and others. Afterwards we meet the\nstatement that condign retribution is always inflicted for the two\nflagrant sins of perjury and blasphemy. Finally, we discern a\ngeneral prevalence of the belief that punishment is decreed, not\nby vindictive caprice, but on the grounds of universal morality,\nall souls being obliged in Hades to pass before Rhadamanthus,\nMinos, or Aacus, three upright judges, to be dealt with, according\nto their merits, with impartial accuracy. The distribution of\npoetic justice in Hades at last became, in many authors, so\nmelodramatic as to furnish a fair subject for burlesque. Some\nludicrous examples of this may be seen in Lucian's Dialogues of\nthe Dead. A fine instance of it is also furnished in the Emperor\nJulian's Symposium. The gods prepare for the Roman emperors a\nbanquet, in the air, below the moon. The good emperors are\nadmitted to the table with honors; but the bad ones are hurled\nheadlong down into Tartarus, amidst the derisive shouts of the\nspectators.\n\nAs the notion that the wrath of the gods would pursue their\nenemies in the future state gave rise to a belief in the\npunishments of Tartarus, so the notion that the distinguishing\nkindness of the gods would follow their favorites gave rise to the\nmyth of Elysium. The Elysian Fields were earliest portrayed lying\non the western margin of the earth, stretching from the verge of\nOceanus, where the sun set at eve. They were fringed with\nperpetual green, perfumed with the fragrance of flowers, and\neternally fanned by refreshing breezes. They were represented\nmerely as the select abode of a small number of living men, who\nwere either the mortal relatives or the special favorites of the\ngods, and who were transported thither without tasting death,\nthere to pass an immortality which was described, with great\ninconsistency, sometimes as purely happy, sometimes as joyless and\nwearisome. To all except a few chosen ones this region was utterly\ninaccessible. Homer says, \"But for you, O Menelaus, it is not\ndecreed by the gods to die; but the immortals will send you to the\nElysian plain, because you are the son in law of Zeus.\"4 Had the\ninheritance of this clime been proclaimed as the reward of heroic\nmerit, had it been really believed attainable by virtue, it would\nhave been held up as a prize to be striven for. The whole account,\nas it was at first, bears the impress of imaginative fiction as\nlegibly upon its front as the story of the dragon watched garden\nof Hesperus's daughters, whose trees bore golden apples, or the\nstory of the enchanted isle in the Arabian tales.\n\nThe early location of Elysium, and the conditions of admission to\nit, were gradually changed; and at length it reappeared, in the\nunder world, as the abode of the just. On one side of the\nprimitive Hades Tartarus had now been drawn up to admit the\ncondemned into its penal tortures, and on the other side Elysium\nwas lowered down to reward the justified by receiving them into\nits peaceful and perennial happiness; while, between the two,\nErebus\n\n4 Odyssey, lib. iv. II. 555-570.\n\n\nremained as an intermediate state of negation and gloom for\nunsentenced shades. The highly colored descriptions of this\nsubterranean heaven, frequently found thenceforth, it is to be\nsupposed were rarely accepted as solid verities. They were\nscarcely ever used, to our knowledge, as motives in life,\nincitement in difficulties, consolation in sorrow. They were\nmostly set forth in poems, works even professedly fictitious. They\nwere often denied and ridiculed in speeches and writings received\nwith public applause. Still, they unquestionably exerted some\ninfluence on the common modes of thought and feeling, had a\nshadowy seat in the popular imagination and heart, helped men to\nconceive of a blessed life hereafter and to long for it, and took\naway something of the artificial horror with which, under the\npower of rooted superstition, their departing ghosts hailed the\ndusky limits of futurity:\n\n\"Umbra Non tacitas Erebi sedes, Ditisque profundi Pallida regna\npetunt.\"\n\nFirst, then, from a study of the Greek mythology we find all the\ndead a dull populace of ghosts fluttering through the neutral\nmelancholy of Hades without discrimination. And finally we discern\nin the world of the dead a sad middle region, with a Paradise on\nthe right and a Hell on the left, the whole presided over by three\nincorruptible judges, who appoint the new corners their places in\naccordance with their deserts.\n\nThe question now arises, What did the Greeks think in relation to\nthe ascent of human souls into heaven among the gods? Did they\nexcept none from the remediless doom of Hades? Was there no path\nfor the wisest and best souls to climb starry Olympus? To dispose\nof this inquiry fairly, four distinct considerations must be\nexamined. First, Ulysses sees in the infernal regions the image of\nHerakles shooting the shadows of the Stymphalian birds, while his\nsoul is said to be rejoicing with fair legged Hebe at the banquets\nof the immortal gods in the skies. To explain this, we must\nremember that Herakles was the son of Alcmene, a mortal woman, and\nof Zeus, the king of the gods. Accordingly, in the flames on Mount\nOeta, the surviving ghost which he derived from his mother\ndescends to Hades, but the purified soul inherited from his father\nhas the proper nature and rank of a deity, and is received into\nthe Olympian synod.5 Of course no blessed life in heaven for the\ngenerality of men is here implied. Herakles, being a son and\nfavorite of Zeus, has a corresponding destiny exceptional from\nthat of other men.\n\nSecondly, another double representation, somewhat similar, but\nhaving an entirely different interpretation, occurs in the case of\nOrion, the handsome Hyrian hunter whom Artemis loved. At one time\nhe is described, like the spectre of the North American Indian,\nchasing over the Stygian plain the disembodied animals he had in\nhis lifetime killed on the mountains:\n\n\"Swift through the gloom a giant hunter flies: A ponderous brazen\nmace, with direful sway, Aloft he whirls to crush the savage prey;\n\n5 Ovid, Met. lib. ix. II. 245-272.\n\n\nGrim beasts in trains, that by his truncheon fell, Now, phantom\nforms, shoot o'er the lawn of hell.\"\n\nIn the common belief this, without doubt, was received as actual\nfact. But at another time Orion is deified and shown as one of the\ngrandest constellations of the sky,\n\n\"A belted giant, who, with arm uplift, Threatening the throne of\nZeus, forever stands, Sublimely impious.\"\n\nThis, obviously, is merely a poetic symbol, a beautiful artifice\nemployed by the poets to perpetuate a legend by associating it\nwith the imperishable hieroglyphs of the galaxy. It is not\ncredible that men imagined that group of stars only outlined in\nsuch shape by the help of arbitrary fancy to be literally the\ntranslated hunter himself. The meaning simply was that he was\nimmortalized through the eternal linking of his name and form with\na stellar cluster which would always shine upon men. \"The\nreverence and gratitude of a weak world for the heroes and\nbenefactors they could not comprehend, named them divinities, whom\nthey did star together to an idolatrous immortality which\nnationalized the heavens\" with the shining shapes of the great and\nbrave. These types of poetry, symbols lent to infant science, were\nnever meant to indicate a literal translation and metamorphosis of\nhuman souls, but were honors paid to the memories of illustrious\nmen, emblems and pledged securities of their unfading fame. With\nwhat glorious characters, with what forms of deathless beauty,\ndefiant of decay, the sky was written over! Go out this evening\nbeneath the old rolling dome, when the starry scroll is outspread,\nand you may still read the reveries of the marvelling minds of the\nantique world, as fresh in their magic loveliness as when the\nbards and seers of Olympus and the Agean first stamped them in\nheaven. There \"the great snake binds in his bright coil half the\nmighty host.\" There is Arion with his harp and the charmed\ndolphin. The fair Andromeda, still chained to her eternal rock,\nlooks mournfully towards the delivering hero whose conquering hand\nbears aloft the petrific visage of Medusa. Far off in the north\nthe gigantic Bootes is seen driving towards the Centaur and the\nScorpion. And yonder, smiling benignantly upon the crews of many a\nhome bound ship, are revealed the twin brothers, joined in the\nembrace of an undying friendship.\n\nThirdly, it is asserted by several Latin authors, in general\nterms, that the ghost goes to Hades but the soul ascends to\nheaven; and it has been inferred most erroneously that this\nstatement contains the doctrine of an abode for men after death on\nhigh with the gods. Ovid expresses the real thought in full,\nthus:\n\n\"Terra tegit carnem; tumulum circumvolat umbra; Orcus habet manes;\nspiritus astra petit.\"\n\n\"The earth conceals the flesh; the shade flits round the tomb; the\nunder world receives the image; the spirit seeks the stars.\" Those\nconversant with the opinions then prevalent will scarcely doubt\nthat these words were meant to express the return of the composite\nman to the primordial elements of which he was made. The\nparticulars of the dissolving individual are absorbed in the\ngeneral elements of the universe. Earth goes back to earth, ghost\nto the realm of ghosts, breath to the air, fiery essence of soul\nto the lofty ether in whose pure radiance the stars burn.\nEuripides expressly says that when man dies each part goes whence\nit came, \"the body to the ground, the spirit to the ether.\"6\nTherefore the often misunderstood phrase of the Roman writers,\n\"the soul seeks the stars,\" merely denotes the impersonal mingling\nafter death of the divine portion of man's being with the parent\nDivinity, who was supposed indeed to pervade all things, but more\nespecially to reside beyond the empyrean.\n\nFourthly: what shall be said of the apotheosis of their celebrated\nheroes and emperors by the Greeks and Romans, whereby these were\nelevated to the dignity of deities, and seats were assigned them\nin heaven? What was the meaning of this ceremony? It does not\nsignify that a celestial immortality awaits all good men; because\nit appears as a thing attainable by very few, is only allotted by\nvote of the Senate. Neither was it supposed actually to confer on\nits recipients equality of attributes with the great gods, making\nthem peers of Zeus and Apollo. The homage received as gods by\nAlexander and others during their lives, the deification of Julius\nCasar during the most learned and skeptical age of Rome, with\nother obvious considerations, render such a supposition\ninadmissible. In view of all the direct evidence and collateral\nprobabilities, we conclude that the genuine import of an ancient\napotheosis was this: that the soul of the deceased person so\nhonored was admitted, in deference to his transcendent merits, or\nas a special favor on the part of the gods, into heaven, into the\ndivine society. He was really a human soul still, but was called a\ngod because, instead of descending, like the multitude of human\nsouls, to Hades, he was taken into the abode and company of the\ngods above the sky. This interpretation derives support from the\nremarkable declaration of Aristotle, that \"of two friends one must\nbe unwilling that the other should attain apotheosis, because in\nsuch case they must be forever separated.\"7 One would be in\nOlympus, the other in Hades. The belief that any, even a favored\nfew, could ever obtain this blessing, was of quite limited\ndevelopment, and probably sprang from the esoteric recesses of the\nMysteries. To call a human soul a god is not so bold a speech as\nit may seem. Plotinus says. \"Whoever has wisdom and true virtue in\nsoul itself differs but little from superior beings, in this alone\nbeing inferior to them, that he is in body. Such an one, dying,\nmay therefore properly say, with Empedocles, 'Farewell! a god\nimmortal now am I.'\"\n\nThe expiring Vespasian exclaimed, \"I shall soon be a god.\"8 Mure\nsays that the doctrine of apotheosis belonged to the Graco\nPelasgic race through all their history.9 Seneca severely\nsatirizes the ceremony, and the popular belief which upheld it, in\nan elaborate lampoon called Apocolocyntosis, or the reception of\nClaudius among the pumpkins. The broad travesty of\n\n6 The Suppliants, l. 533.\n\n7 Nicomachean Ethics, lib. viii. cap. 7.\n\n8 Suetonius, cap. xxiii.\n\n9 Hist. Greek Literature, vol. i. ch. 2, sect. 5.\n\n\nDeification exhibited in Pumpkinification obviously measures the\ndistance from the honest credulity of one class and period to the\nkeen infidelity of another.\n\nOne of the most important passages in Greek literature, in\nwhatever aspect viewed, is composed of the writings of the great\nTheban lyrist. Let us see what representation is there made of the\nfate of man in the unseen world. The ethical perception, profound\nfeeling, and searching mind of Pindar could not allow him to\nremain satisfied with the undiscriminating views of the future\nstate prevalent in his time. Upon such a man the problem of death\nmust weigh as a conscious burden, and his reflections would\nnaturally lead him to improved conclusions. Accordingly, we find\nhim representing the Blessed Isles not as the haven of a few\nfavorites of the gods, but as the reward of virtue; and the\npunishments of the wicked, too, are not dependent on fickle\ninclinations, but are decreed by immutable right. He does not\ndescribe the common multitude of the dead, leading a dark sad\nexistence, like phantoms in a dream: his references to death and\nHades seem cheerful in comparison with those of many other ancient\nGreek authors. Dionysius the Rhetorician, speaking of his\nThrenes, dirges sung at funerals, says, \"Simonides lamented the\ndead pathetically, Pindar magnificently.\"\n\nHis conceptions of the life to come were inseparably connected\nwith certain definite locations. He believed Hades to be the\ndestination of all our mortal race, but conceived it subdivided\ninto a Tartarus for the impious and an Elysium for the righteous.\nHe thought that the starry firmament was the solid floor of a\nworld of splendor, bliss, and immortality, inhabited by the gods,\nbut fatally inaccessible to man. When he thinks of this place, it\nis with a sigh, a sigh that man's aspirations towards it are vain\nand his attempts to reach it irreverent. This latter thought he\nenforces by an earnest allusion to the myth of Bellerophon, who,\ndaring to soar to the cerulean seat of the gods on the winged\nsteed Pegasus, was punished for his arrogance by being hurled down\nheadlong. These assertions are to be sustained by citations of his\nown words. The references made are to Donaldson's edition.\n\nIn the second Pythian Ode10 Pindar repeats, and would appear to\nendorse, the old monitory legend of Ixion, who for his outrageous\ncrimes was bound to an ever revolving wheel in Hades and made to\nutter warnings against such offences as his own. In the first\nPythian we read, \"Hundred headed Typhon, enemy of the gods, lies\nin dreadful Tartarus.\"11 Among the preserved fragments of Pindar\nthe one numbered two hundred and twenty three reads thus: \"The\nbottom of Tartarus shall press thee down with solid necessities.\"\nThe following is from the first Isthmian Ode: \"He who, laying up\nprivate wealth, laughs at the poor, does not consider that he\nshall close up his life for Hades without honor.\"12 The latter\npart of the tenth Nemean Ode recounts, with every appearance of\ndevout belief, the history of Castor and Pollux, the god begotten\ntwins, who, reversing conditions with each other on successive\ndays and nights, spent their interchangeable immortality each\nalternately in heaven and in Hades. The astronomical\ninterpretation of this account may be correct; but its\napplicability to the wondering faith of the earlier poets is\nextremely doubtful.\n\n10 L. 39.\n\n11 LI. 15, 16.\n\n12 L. 68.\n\n\nThe seventh Isthmian contains this remarkable sentence: \"Unequal\nis the fate of man: he can think of great things, but is too\nephemeral a creature to reach the brazen floored seat of the\ngods.\"13 A similar sentiment is expressed in the sixth Nemean:\n\"Men are a mere nothing; while to the gods the brazen heaven\nremains a firm abode forever.\"14 The one hundred and second\nfragment is supposed to be a part of the dirge composed by Pindar\non the death of the grandfather of Pericles. It runs in this way:\n\"Whoso by good fortune has seen the things in the hollow under the\nearth knows indeed the end of life: he also knows the beginning\nvouchsafed by Zeus.\" It refers to initiation in the Eleusinian\nMysteries, and means that the initiate understands the life which\nfollows death. It is well known that a clear doctrine of future\nretribution was inculcated in the Mysteries long before it found\ngeneral publication. The ninety fifth fragment is all that remains\nto us of a dirge which appears, from the allusion in the first\nline, to have been sung at a funeral service performed at\nmidnight, or at least after sunset. \"While it is night here with\nus, to those below shines the might of the sun; and the red rosied\nmeadows of their suburbs are filled with the frankincense tree,\nand with golden fruits. Some delight themselves there with steeds\nand exercises, others with games, others with lyres; and among\nthem all fair blossoming fortune blooms, and a fragrance is\ndistilled through the lovely region, and they constantly mingle\nall kinds of offerings with the far shining fire on the altars of\nthe gods.\" This evidently is a picture of the happy scenes in the\nfields that stretch around the City of the Blessed in the under\nworld, and is introduced as a comfort to the mourners over the\ndead body.\n\nThe ensuing passage the most important one on our subject is from\nthe second Olympic Ode.15 \"An honorable, virtuous man may rest\nassured as to his future fate. The souls of the lawless, departing\nfrom this life, suffer punishment. One beneath the earth,\npronouncing sentence by a hateful necessity imposed upon him,\ndeclares the doom for offences committed in this realm of Zeus.\nBut the good lead a life without a tear, among those honored by\nthe gods for having always delighted in virtue: the others endure\na life too dreadful to look upon. Whoever has had resolution\nthrice in both worlds to stand firm, and to keep his soul pure\nfrom evil, has found the path of Zeus to the tower of Kronos,\nwhere the airs of the ocean breathe around the Isle of the\nBlessed, and where some from resplendent trees, others from the\nwater glitter golden flowers, with garlandsofwhich they wreathe\ntheir wrists and brows in the righteous assemblies of\nRhadamanthus, whom father Kronos has as his willing assistant.\"\nThe \"path of Zeus,\" in the above quotation, means the path which\nZeus takes when he goes to visit his father Kronos, whom he\noriginally dethroned and banished, but with whom he is now\nreconciled, and who has become the ruler of the departed spirits\nof the just, in a peaceful and joyous region.\n\nThe following passage constitutes the ninety eighth fragment. \"To\nthose who descend from a fruitless and ill starred life Persephone\n[the Queen of the Dead] will grant a compensation for their former\nmisfortune, after eight years [the judicial period of atonement\nand lustration for great crimes] granting them their lives again.\nThen, illustrious kings, strong,\n\n13 Ll. 42-44.\n\n14 Ll. 4-6.\n\n15 Ll. 55-78.\n\n\nswift, wise, they shall become the mightiest leaders; and\nafterwards they shall be invoked by men as sacred heroes.\" In this\npiece, as in the preceding one where reference is made to the\nthrice living man, is contained the doctrine, early brought from\nthe East, that souls may repeatedly return from the dead and in\nnew bodies lead new lives. One other fragment, the ninety sixth,\nadded to the foregoing, will make up all the important genuine\npassages in Pindar relating to the future life. \"By a beneficent\nallotment, all travel to an end freeing from toil. The body indeed\nis subject to the power of death; but the eternal image is left\nalive, and this alone is allied to the gods. When we are asleep,\nit shows in many dreams the approaching judgment concerning\nhappiness and misery.\" When our physical limbs are stretched in\ninsensible repose, the inward spirit, rallying its sleepless and\nprophetic powers, foretells the balancing awards of another world.\n\nWe must not wholly confound with the mythological schemes of the\nvulgar creed the belief of the nobler philosophers, many of whom,\nas is well known, cherished an exalted faith in the survival of\nthe conscious soul and in a just retribution. \"Strike!\" one of\nthem said, with the dauntless courage of an immortal, to a tyrant\nwho had threatened to have him brayed in a mortar: \"strike! you\nmay crush the shell of Anaxarchus: you cannot touch his life.\"\nThan all the maze of fabulous fancies and physical rites in which\nthe dreams of the poets and the guesses of the people were\nentangled, how much more\n\n\"Just was the prescience of the eternal goalThat gleamed, 'mid\nCyprian shades, on Zeno's soul, Or shone to Plato in the lonely\ncave, God in all space, and life in every grave!\"\n\nAn account of the Greek views on the subject of a future life\nwhich should omit the doctrine of Plato would be defective indeed.\nThe influence of this sublime autocrat in the realms of intellect\nhas transcended calculation. However coldly his thoughts may have\nbeen regarded by his contemporary countrymen, they soon obtained\ncosmopolitan audience, and surviving the ravages of time and\nignorance, overleaping the bars of rival schools and sects,\nappreciated and diffused by the loftiest spirits of succeeding\nages, closely blended with their own speculations by many\nChristian theologians have held an almost unparalleled dominion\nover the minds of millions of men for more than fifty generations.\n\nIn the various dialogues of Plato, written at different periods of\nhis life, there are numerous variations and inconsistencies of\ndoctrine. There are also many mythical passages obviously intended\nas symbolic statements, poetic drapery, by no means to be handled\nor looked at as the severe outlines of dialectic truth.\nFurthermore, in these works there are a vast number of opinions\nand expressions introduced by the interlocutors, who often belong\nto antagonistic schools of philosophy, and for which, of course,\nPlato is not to be held responsible. Making allowance for these\nfacts, and resolutely grappling with the many other difficulties\nof the task, we shall now attempt to exhibit what we consider were\nthe real teachings of Plato in relation to the fate of the soul.\nThis exposition, sketchy as it is, and open to question as it may\nbe in some particulars, is the carefully weighed result of\nearnest, patient, and repeated study of all the relevant passages.\n\nIn the first place, it is plain that Plato had a firm religious\nand philosophical faith in the immortality of the soul, which was\ncontinually attracting his thoughts, making it a favorite theme\nwith him and exerting no faint influence on his life. This faith\nrested both on ancient traditions, to which he frequently refers\nwith invariable reverence, and on metaphysical reasonings, which\nhe over and over presents in forms of conscientious elaboration.\nThere are two tests of his sincerity of faith: first, that he\nalways treats the subject with profound seriousness; secondly,\nthat he always uses it as a practical motive. \"I do not think,\"\nsaid Socrates, \"that any one who should now hear us, even though\nhe were a comic poet, would say that I am talking idly.\"16 Again,\nreferring to Homer's description of the judgments in Hades, he\nsays, \"I, therefore, Callicles, am persuaded by these accounts,\nand consider how I may exhibit my soul before the judge in the\nmost healthy condition.\"17 \"To a base man no man nor god is a\nfriend on earth while living, nor under it when dead,\" say the\nsouls of their ancestors to the living; \"but live honorably, and\nwhen your destined fate brings you below you shall come to us as\nfriends to friends.\"18 \"We are plants, not of earth, but of\nheaven.\"19 We start, then, with the affirmation that Plato\nhonestly and cordially believed in a future life.\n\nSecondly, his ethical and spiritual beliefs, like those of nearly\nall the ancients, were closely interwoven with physical theories\nand local relations. The world to him consisted of two parts, the\ncelestial region of ideas, and the mundane region of material\nphenomena,  corresponding pretty well, as Lewes suggests, to our\nmodern conception of heaven and earth. Near the close of the\nPhado, Socrates says that the earth is not of the kind and\nmagnitude usually supposed. \"We dwell in a decayed and corroded,\nmuddy and filthy region in the sediment and hollows of the earth,\nand imagine that we inhabit its upper parts; just as if one\ndwelling in the bottom of the sea should think that he dwelt on\nthe sea, and, beholding the sun through the water, should imagine\nthat the sea was the heavens. So, if we could fly up to the summit\nof the air as fishes emerging from the sea to behold what is on\nthe earth here and emerge hence, we should know that the true\nearth is there. The people there dwell with the gods, and see\nthings as they really are; and what the sea is to us the air is to\nthem, and what the air is to us the ether is to them.\" Again, in\nthe tenth book of the Republic, eleventh chapter, the soul is\nmetaphorically said in the sea of this corporeal life to get\nstones and shell fish attached to it, and, fed on earth, to be\nrendered to a great extent earthy, stony, and savage, like the\nmarine Glaucus, some parts of whose body were broken off and\nothers worn away by the waves, while such quantities of shells,\nsea weed, and stones had grown to him that he more resembled a\nbeast than a man. In keeping with the whole tenor of the Platonic\nteaching, this is a fine illustration of the fallen state of man\nin his vile environment of flesh here below. The soul, in its\nearthly sojourn, embodied here, is as much mutilated and degraded\nfrom its equipped and pure condition in its lofty natal home, the\narchetypal world of Truth above the base Babel of material\nexistence, as Glaucus was on\n\n16 Phado, 40.\n\n17 Gorgias, 173.\n\n18 Menexenus, 19.\n\n19 Timaus, 71.\n\n\ndescending from his human life on the sunny shore to his encrusted\nshape and blind prowling in the monstrous deep.\n\nAt another time Plato contrasts the situation of the soul on earth\nwith its situation in heaven by the famous comparison of the dark\ncave. He supposes men, unable to look upwards, dwelling in a\ncavern which has an opening towards the light extending lengthwise\nthrough the top of the cavern. A great many images, carrying\nvarious objects and talking aloud, pass and repass along the edge\nof the opening. Their shadows fall on the side of the cave below,\nin front of the dwellers there; also the echoes of their talk\nsound back from the wall. Now, the men, never having been or\nlooked out of the cave, would suppose these shadows to be the real\nbeings, these echoes the real voices. As respects this figure,\nsays Plato, we must compare ourselves with such persons. The\nvisible region around us is the cave, the sun is the light, and\nthe soul's ascent into the region of mind is the ascent out of the\ncave and the contemplation of things above.20\n\nStill again, Plato describes the ethereal paths and motions of the\ngods, who, in their chariots, which are the planets and stars,\nride through the universe, accompanied by all pure souls, \"the\nfamily of true science, contemplating things as they really are.\"\n\"Reaching the summit, they proceed outside, and, standing on the\nback of heaven, its revolution carries them round, and they behold\nthat supercelestial region which no poet here can ever sing of as\nit deserves.\" In this archetypal world all souls of men have\ndwelt, though \"few have memory enough left,\" \"after their fall\nhither,\" \"to call to mind former things from the present.\" \"Now,\nof justice and temperance, and whatever else souls deem precious,\nthere are here but faint resemblances, dull images; but beauty was\nthen splendid to look on when we, in company with the gods, beheld\nthat blissful spectacle, and were initiated into that most blessed\nof all mysteries, which we celebrated when we were unaffected by\nthe evils that awaited us in time to come, and when we beheld, in\nthe pure light, perfect and calm visions, being ourselves pure and\nas yet unmasked with this shell of a body to which we are now\nfettered.\"21\n\nTo suppose all this employed by Plato as mere fancy and metaphor\nis to commit an egregious error. In studying an ancient author, we\nmust forsake the modern stand point of analysis, and envelop\nourselves in the ancient atmosphere of thought, where poetry and\nscience were as indistinguishably blended in the personal beliefs\nas oxygen and nitrogen are in the common air. We have not a doubt\nthat Plato means to teach, literally, that the soul was always\nimmortal, and that in its anterior states of existence, in the\nrealm of ideas on high, it was in the midst of those essential\nrealities whose shifting shadows alone it can behold in its lapsed\ncondition and bodily imprisonment here. That he closely\nintertwisted ethical with physical theories, spiritual destinies\nwith insphering localities, the fortunes of men with the\nrevolutions of the earth and stars, is a fact which one can hardly\nread the Timaus and fail to see; a fact which continually\nreappears. It is strikingly shown in his idea of the consummation\nof all things at regular epochs determined by the recurrence of a\ngrand\n\n20 Republic, lib. vii. cap. 1 4.\n\n21 Phadrus, 56-58, 63, 64.\n\n\nrevolution of the universe, a period vulgarly known under the name\nof the \"Platonic Year.\"22 The second point, therefore, in the\npresent explanation of Plato's doctrine of another life, is the\nconception that there is in the empyrean a glorious world of\nincorruptible truth, beauty, and goodness, the place of the gods,\nthe native haunt of souls; and that human souls, having yielded to\nbase attractions and sunk into bodies, are but banished sojourners\nin this phenomenal world of evanescent shadows and illusions,\nwhere they are \"stung with resistless longings for the skies, and\nonly solaced by the vague and broken reminiscences of their former\nstate.\"\n\nThirdly, Plato taught that after death an unerring judgment and\ncompensation await all souls. Every soul bears in itself the plain\nevidence of its quality and deeds, its vices and virtues; and in\nthe unseen state it will meet inevitable awards on its merits. \"To\ngo to Hades with a soul full of crimes is the worst of all\nevils.\"23 \"When a man dies, he possesses in the other world a\ndestiny suited to the life which he has led in this.\"24 In the\nsecond book of the Republic he says, \"We shall in Hades suffer the\npunishment of our misdeeds here;\" and he argues at much length the\nabsolute impossibility of in any way escaping this. The fact of a\nfull reward for all wisdom and justice, a full retribution for all\nfolly and vice, is asserted unequivocally in scores of passages,\nmost of them expressly connecting the former with the notion of an\nascent to the bright region of truth and intellect, the latter\nwith a descent to the black penal realm of Hades. Let the citation\nof a single further example suffice. \"Some souls, being sentenced,\ngo to places of punishment beneath the earth; others are borne\nupward to some region in heaven.\"25 He proves the genuineness of\nhis faith in this doctrine by continually urging it, in the most\nearnest, unaffected manner, as an animating motive in the\nformation of character and the conduct of life, saying, \"He who\nneglects his soul will pass lamely through existence, and again\npass into Hades, aimless and unserviceable.\"26\n\nThe fourth and last step in this exposition is to show the\nparticular form in which Plato held his doctrine of future\nretribution, the way in which he supposed the consequences of\npresent good and evil would appear hereafter. He received the\nOriental theory of transmigration. Souls are born over and over.\nThe banishment of the wicked to Tartarus is provisional, a\npreparation for their return to incarnate life. The residence of\nthe good in heaven is contingent, and will be lost the moment they\nyield to carelessness or material solicitations. The circumstances\nunder which they are reborn, the happiness or misery of their\nrenewed existence, depend on their character and conduct in their\nprevious career; and thus a poetic justice is secured. At the\nclose of the Timaus, Plato describes the whole animal kingdom as\nconsisting of degraded human souls, from \"the tribe of birds,\nwhich were light minded souls, to the tribe of oysters, which have\nreceived the most remote habitations as a punishment of their\nextreme ignorance.\" \"After this manner, then, both formerly and\n\n22 Statesman, 14, 15.\n\n23 Gorgias, 165.\n\n24 Republic, lib. vi. cap. i.\n\n25 Phadrus, 61.\n\n26 Timaus, 18.\n\n\nnow, animals transmigrate, experiencing their changes through the\nloss or acquisition of intellect and folly.\" The general doctrine\nof metempsychosis is stated and implied very frequently in many of\nthe Platonic dialogues. Some recent writers have tried to explain\nthese representations as figures of speech, not intended to\nportray the literal facts, but merely to hint their moral\nequivalents. Such persons seem to us to hold Plato's pages in the\nfull glare of the nineteenth century and read them in the\nphilosophic spirit of Bacon and Comte, instead of holding them in\nthe old shades of the Academy and pondering them in the marvelling\nspirit of Pythagoras and Empedocles.\n\nWe are led by the following considerations to think that Plato\nreally meant to accredit the transmigration of souls literally.\nFirst, he often makes use of the current poetic imagery of Hades,\nand of ancient traditions, avowedly in a loose metaphorical way,\nas moral helps, calling them \"fables.\" But the metempsychosis he\nsets forth, without any such qualification or guard, with so much\nearnestness and frequency, as a promise and a warning, that we are\nforced, in the absence of any indication to the contrary, to\nsuppose that he meant the statements as sober fact and not as\nmythical drapery. As with a parable, of course we need not\ninterpret all the ornamental details literally; but we must accept\nthe central idea. And in the present case the fundamental thought\nis that of repeated births of the soul, each birth trailing\nretributive effects from the foregone. For example, the last four\nchapters of the tenth book of the Republic contain the account of\nErus, a Pamphylian, who, after lying dead on the battle field ten\ndays, revived, and told what he had seen in the other state. Plato\nin the outset explicitly names this recital an \"apologue.\" It\nrecounts a multitude of moral and physical particulars. These\ndetails may fairly enough be considered in some degreeas mythical\ndrapery, or as the usual traditional painting; but the essential\nconception running through the account, for the sake of which it\nis told, we are not at liberty to explain away as empty metaphor.\nNow, that essential conception is precisely this: that souls after\ndeath are adjudged to Hades or to heaven as a recompense for their\nsin or virtue, and that, after an appropriate sojourn in those\nplaces, they are born again, the former ascending, squalid and\nscarred, from beneath the earth, the latter descending, pure, from\nthe sky. In perfect consonance with this conclusion is the moral\ndrawn by Plato from the whole narrative. He simply says, \"If the\ncompany will be persuaded by me, considering the soul to be\nimmortal and able to bear all evil and good, we shall always\npersevere in the road which leads upwards.\"\n\nSecondly, the conception of the metempsychosis is thoroughly\ncoherent with Plato's whole philosophy. If he was in earnest about\nany doctrine, it was the doctrine that all knowledge is\nreminiscence. The following declarations are his. \"Soul is older\nthan body.\" \"Souls are continually born over again from Hades into\nthis life.\" \"To search and learn is simply to revive the images of\nwhat the soul saw in its pre existent state of being in the world\nof realities.\"27 Why should we hesitate to attribute a sincere\nbelief in the metempsychosis to the acknowledged author of the\ndoctrine that the soul lived in another world before appearing\nhere, and that its knowledge is but reminiscence? If born from the\nother world\n\n27 Menexenus, 15.\n\n\nonce, we may be many times; and then all that is wanted to\ncomplete the dogma of transmigration is the idea of a presiding\njustice. Had not Plato that idea?\n\nThirdly, the doctrine of a judicial metempsychosis was most\nprofoundly rooted in the popular faith, as a strict verity,\nthroughout the great East, ages before the time of Plato, and was\nfamiliarly known throughout Greece in his time. It had been\nimported thither by Musaus and Orpheus at an early period, was\nafterwards widely recommended and established by the Pythagoreans,\nand was unquestionably held by many of Plato's contemporaries. He\nrefers once to those \"who strongly believe that murderers who have\ngone to Hades will be obliged to come back and end their next\nlives by suffering the same fate which they had before inflicted\non others.\"28 It is also a remarkable fact that he states the\nconditions of transmigration, and the means of securing exemption\nfrom it, in the same way that the Hindus have from immemorial\ntime: \"The soul which has beheld the essence of truth remains free\nfrom harm until the next revolution; and if it can preserve the\nvision of the truth it shall always remain free from harm,\" that\nis, be exempt from birth; but \"when it fails to behold the field\nof truth it falls to the earth and is implanted in a body.\"29 This\nstatement and several others in the context corresponds precisely\nwith Hindu theology, which proclaims that the soul, upon attaining\nreal wisdom, that is, upon penetrating beneath illusions and\ngazing on reality, is freed from the painful necessity of repeated\nbirths. Now, since the Hindus and the Pythagoreans held the\ndoctrine as a severe truth, and Plato states it in the identical\nforms which they employed, and never implies that he is merely\npoetizing, we naturally conclude that he, too, veritably\ninculcates it as fact.\n\nFinally, we are the more confirmed in this supposition when we\nfind that his lineal disciples and most competent expounders, such\nas Proclus, and nearly all his later commentators, such as Ritter,\nhave so understood him. The great chorus of his interpreters, from\nPlotinus to Leroux, with scarcely a dissentient voice, approve the\nopinion pronounced by the learned German historian of philosophy,\nthat \"the conception of the metempsychosis is so closely\ninterwoven both with his physical system and with his ethical as\nto justify the conviction that Plato looked upon it as legitimate\nand valid, and not as a merely figurative exposition of the soul's\nlife after death.\" To sum up the whole in one sentence: Plato\ntaught with grave earnestness the immortality of the soul, subject\nto a discriminating retribution, which opened for its temporary\nresidences three local regions, heaven, earth, and Hades, and\nwhich sometimes led it through different grades of embodied being.\n\"O thou youth who thinkest that thou art neglected by the gods,\nthe person who has become more wicked departs to the more wicked\nsouls; but he who has become better departs to the better souls,\nboth in life and in all deaths.\"30\n\nWhether Aristotle taught or denied the immortality of the soul has\nbeen the subject of innumerable debates from his own time until\nnow. It is certainly a most ominous fact that his great name has\nbeen cited as authority for rejecting the doctrine of a future\nlife by so many\n\n28 The Laws, b. ix. ch. 10.\n\n29 Phadrus, 60-62.\n\n30 The Laws, lib. x. cap. 13.\n\n\nof his keenest followers; for this has been true of weighty\nrepresentatives of every generation of his disciples. Antagonistic\nadvocates have collected from his works a large number of varying\nstatements, endeavoring to distinguish between the literal and the\nfigurative, the esoteric and the popular. It is not worth our\nwhile here, either for their intrinsic interest or for their\nhistoric importance, to quote the passages and examine the\narguments. All that is required for our purpose may be expressed\nin the language of Ritter, who has carefully investigated the\nwhole subject: \"No passage in his extant works is decisive; but,\nfrom the general context of his doctrine, it is clear that he had\nno conception of the immortality of any individual rational\nentity.\"31\n\nIt would take a whole volume instead of a chapter to set forth the\nmultifarious contrasting tenets of individual Greek philosophers,\nfrom the age of Pherecydes to that of Iamblichus, in relation to a\nfuture life. Not a few held, with Empedocles, that human life is a\npenal state, the doom of such immortal souls as for guilt have\nbeen disgraced and expelled from heaven. \"Man is a fallen god\ncondemned to wander on the earth, sky aspiring but sense clouded.\"\nPurged by a sufficient penance, he returns to his former godlike\nexistence. \"When, leaving this body, thou comest to the free\nether, thou shalt be no longer a mortal, but an undying god.\"\nNotions of this sort fairly represent no small proportion of the\nspeculations upon the fate of the soul which often reappear\nthroughout the course of Greek literature. Another class of\nphilosophers are represented by such names as Marcus Antoninus,\nwho, comparing death to disembarkation at the close of a voyage,\nsays, \"If you land upon another life, it will not be empty of\ngods: if you land in nonentity, you will have done with pleasures,\npains, and drudgery.\"32 And again he writes, \"If souls survive,\nhow has ethereal space made room for them all from eternity? How\nhas the earth found room for all the bodies buried in it? The\nsolution of the latter problem will solve the former. The corpse\nturns to dust and makes space for another: so the spirit, let\nloose into the air, after a while dissolves, and is either renewed\ninto another soul or absorbed into the universe. Thus room is made\nfor succession.\"33 These passages, it will be observed, leave the\nsurvival of the soul at all entirely hypothetical, and, even\nsupposing it to survive, allow it but a temporary duration. Such\nwas the common view of the great sect of the Stoics. They all\nagreed that there was no real immortality for the soul; but they\ndiffered greatly as to the time of its dissolution. In the words\nof Cicero, \"Diu mansuros aiunt animos; semper, negant:\" they say\nsouls endure for a long time, but not forever. Cleanthes taught\nthat the intensity of existence after death would depend on the\nstrength or weakness of the particular soul. Chrysippus held that\nonly the souls of the wise and good would survive at all.34\nPanatius said the soul always died with the body, because it was\nborn with it, which he proved by the resemblances of children's\nsouls to those of their parents.35 Seneca has a great many\ncontradictory passages on this subject\n\n31 Hist. Anc. Phil. p. iii. b. ix. ch. 4.\n\n32 Meditations, lib. iii. cap. 3.\n\n33 Ibid. lib. iv. cap. 21.\n\n34 Plutarch, Plac. Phil. iv. 7.\n\n35 Tusc. Quast. lib. i. cap. 32.\n\n\nin his works; but his preponderant authority, upon the whole, is\nthat the soul and the body perish together.36 At one time he says,\n\"The day thou fearest as the last is the birthday of eternity.\"\n\"As an infant in the womb is preparing to dwell in this world, so\nought we to consider our present life as a preparation for the\nlife to come.\"37 At another time he says, with stunning bluntness,\n\"There is nothing after death, and death itself is nothing.\"\n\nPost mortem nihil est, ipsaque mors nihil. 38\n\nBesides the mystics, like Plotinus, who affirmed the strict\neternity of the soul, and the Stoics, like Poseidonius, who\nbelieved that the soul, having had a beginning, must have an end,\nalthough it might endure for a long period after leaving the body,\nthere were among the Greeks and Romans two other classes of\nbelievers in a future life, namely, the ignorant body of the\npeople, who credited, more or less fully, the common fables\nconcerning Hades; and an educated body of select minds, who, while\ncasting off the popular superstitions, yet clung tenaciously to\nthe great fact of immortality in some form or other, without\nattempting to define the precise mode of it.\n\nThere was among the illiterate populace, both Greek and Roman,\neven from the age of Eumolpus to that of Augustus, a good deal of\nfirm faith in a future life, according to the gross scheme and\nparticulars preserved to us still in the classic mythology. A\nthousand current allusions and statements in the general\nliterature of those times prove the actual existence of a common\nand literal belief in Hades with all its accompaniments. This was\nfar from being, in the average apprehension, a mere myth. Plato\nsays, \"Many, of their own accord, have wished to descend into\nHades, induced by the hope of there seeing and being with those\nthey have loved.\"39 He also says, \"When a man is about to die, the\nstories of future punishment which he had formerly ridiculed\ntrouble him with fears of their truth.\"40 And that frightful\naccounts of hell really swayed and terrified the people, even so\nlate as the time of the Roman republic, appears from the earnest\nand elaborate arguments employed by various writers to refute\nthem.\n\nThe same thing is shown by the religious ritual enacted at\nfunerals and festivals, the forms of public and private worship\nobserved till after the conversion of Constantine. The cake of\nrice and honey borne in the dead hand for Cerberus, the periodical\nofferings to the ghosts of the departed, as at the festivals\ncalled Feralia and Parentalia,41 the pictures of the scenery of\nthe under world, hung in the temples, of which there was a famous\none by Polygnotus,42 all imply a literal crediting of the vulgar\ndoctrine. Altars were set up on the spots where Tiberius and Caius\nGracchus were murdered, and services were there performed in honor\nof their manes. Festus, an old Roman lexicographer who lived in\nthe second or third century, tells us there was in the Comitium a\nstone covered pit which was supposed to be the\n\n36 Christoph Meiners, Vermischte Philosophische Schriften.\nCommentarius quo Stoicorum Sententia; de Animorum post mortem\nStatu satis illustrantur.\n\n37 Epist. 102.\n\n38 Troades, 1. 397.\n\n39 Phado, 34.\n\n40 Republic, lib. i. cap. 5.\n\n41 Ovid, Fasti, lib. ii. II. 530-580.\n\n42 Pausanias, lib. x. cap. 28.\n\n\nmouth of Orcus, and was opened three days in the year for souls to\nrise out into the upper world.43 Apuleius describes, in his\ntreatise on \"the god of Socrates,\" the Roman conceptions of the\ndeparted spirits of men. They called all disembodied human souls\n\"lemures.\" Those of good men were \"lares,\" those of bad men\n\"larva.\" And when it was uncertain whether the specified soul was\na lar or a larva, it was named \"manes.\" The lares were mild\nhousehold gods to their posterity. The larva were wandering,\nfrightful shapes, harmless to the pious, but destructive to the\nreprobate.44\n\nThe belief in necromancy is well known to have prevailed\nextensively among the Greeks and Romans. Aristophanes represents\nthe coward, Pisander, going to a necromancer and asking to \"see\nhis own soul, which had long departed, leaving him a man with\nbreath alone.\"45 In Latin literature no popular terror is more\nfrequently alluded to or exemplified than the dread of seeing\nghosts. Every one will recall the story of the phantom that\nappeared in the tent of Brutus before the battle of Philippi. It\npervades the \"Haunted House\" of Plautus. Callimachus wrote the\nfollowing couplet as an epitaph on the celebrated misanthrope:\n\n\"Timon, hat'st thou the world or Hades worse? Speak clear! Hades,\nO fool, because there are more of us here!\" 46\n\nPythagoras is said once to have explained an earthquake as being\ncaused by a synod of ghosts assembled under ground! It is one of\nthe best of the numerous jokes attributed to the great Samian; a\ngood nut for the spirit rappers to crack. There is an epigram by\nDiogenes Laertius, on one Lycon, who died of the gout:\n\n\"He who before could not so much as walk alone, The whole long\nroad to Hades travell'd in one night!\"\n\nPhilostratus declares that the shade of Apollonius appeared to a\nskeptical disciple of his and said, \"The soul is immortal.\"47 It\nis unquestionable that the superstitious fables about the under\nworld and ghosts had a powerful hold, for a very long period, upon\nthe Greek and Roman imagination, and were widely accepted as\nfacts.\n\nAt the same time, there were many persons of more advanced culture\nto whom such coarse and fanciful representations had become\nincredible, but who still held loyally to the simple idea of the\nsurvival of the soul. They cherished a strong expectation of\nanother life, although they rejected the revolting form and\ndrapery in which the doctrine was usually set forth. Xenophon puts\nthe following speech into the mouth of the expiring Cyrus: \"I was\nnever able, my children, to persuade myself that the soul, as long\nas it was in a mortal body, lived, but when it was removed from\nthis, that it died; neither could I believe that the soul ceased\nto think when separated from the unthinking and senseless body;\nbut it seemed to me most probable that when pure and free from any\nunion with the body, then it became most\n\n43 De Significatione Verborum, verbum \"Manalis.\"\n\n44 Lessing, Wie die Alten den Tod gebildet.\n\n45 Ayes, I. 1485.\n\n46 Epigram IV.\n\n47 Vita Apollonii, lib. viii. cap. 31.\n\n\nwise.\"48 Every one has read of the young man whose faith and\ncuriosity were so excited by Plato's writings that he committed\nsuicide to test the fact of futurity. Callimachus tells the story\nneatly:\n\n\"Cleombrotus, the Ambracian, having said, 'Farewell, O sun!'\nleap'd from a lofty wall into the world Of ghosts. No deadly ill\nhad chanced to him at all; But he had read in Plato's book upon\nthe soul.\" 49\n\nThe falling of Cato on his sword at Utica, after carefully\nperusing the Phado, is equally familiar.\n\nIn the case of Cicero, too, notwithstanding his fluctuations of\nfeeling and the obvious contradictions of sentiment in some of his\nletters and his more deliberate essays, it is, upon the whole,\nplain enough that, while he always regarded the vulgar notions as\npuerile falsehoods, the hope of a glorious life to come was\npowerful in him. This may be stated as the result of a patient\ninvestigation and balancing of all that he says on the subject,\nand of the circumstances under which he says it. To cite and\ncriticize the passages here would occupy too much space to too\nlittle profit.\n\nAt the siege of Jerusalem, Titus made a speech to his soldiers, in\nthe course of it saying to them, \"Those souls which are severed\nfrom their fleshly bodies by the sword in battle, are received by\nthe pure ether and joined to that company which are placed among\nthe stars.\"50 The beautiful story of Cupid and Psyche, that\nloveliest of all the myths concerning the immortality of the soul,\nwas a creation by no means foreign to the prevalent ideas and\nfeelings of the time when it was written. The \"Dissertations\" of\nMaximus Tyrius abound with sentences like the following. \"This\nvery thing which the multitude call death is the birth of a new\nlife, and the beginning of immortality.\"51 \"When Pherecydes lay\nsick, conscious of spiritual energy, he cared not for bodily\ndisease, his soul standing erect and looking for release from its\ncumbersome vestment. So a man in chains, seeing the walls of his\nprison crumbling, waits for deliverance, that from the darkness in\nwhich he has been buried he may soar to the ethereal regions and\nbe filled with glorious light.\"52\n\nThe conception of man as a member of the cosmic family of gods and\ngenii was known to all the classic philosophers, and was cherished\nby the larger portion of them. Pindar affirms one origin for gods\nand men. Plato makes wise souls accompany the gods in their\nexcursions about the sky. Cicero argues that heaven, and not\nHades, is the destination of the soul at death, because the soul,\nbeing lighter than the earthly elements surrounding it here, would\nrise aloft through the natural force of gravitation.53 Plutarch\nsays, \"Demons are the spies and scouts of the gods, wandering and\ncircuiting around on their commands.\" Disembodied souls\n\n48 Cyropadia, lib. viii. cap. 7.\n\n49 Epigram XXIV.\n\n50 Josephus, De Bell. lib. vi. cap. 1.\n\n51 Diss. XXV.\n\n52 Diss. XLI.\n\n53 Tusc. Quest. lib i. cap. 17.\n\n\nand demons were the same. The prevalence of such ideas as these\nproduced in the Greek and Roman imagination a profound sense of\ninvisible beings, a sense which was further intensified by the\npopular personifications of all natural forces, as in fountains\nand trees, full of lapsing naiads and rustling dryads. An\nillustrative fact is furnished by an effect of the tradition that\nThetis, snatching the body of Achilles from the funeral pile,\nconveyed him to Leuke, an island in the Black Sea. The mariners\nsailing by often fancied they saw his mighty shade flitting along\nthe shore in the dusk of evening.54 But a passage in Hesiod yields\na more adequate illustration: \"When the mortal remains of those\nwho flourished during the golden age were hidden beneath the\nearth, their souls became beneficent demons, still hovering over\nthe world they once inhabited, and still watching, clothed in thin\nair and gliding rapidly through every region of the earth, as\nguardians over the affairs of men.\"55\n\nBut there were always some who denied the common doctrine of a\nfuture life and scoffed at its physical features. Through the\nabsurd extravagances of poets and augurs, and through the growth\nof critical thought, this unbelief went on increasing from the\ndays of Anaxagoras, when it was death to call the sun a ball of\nfire, to the days of Catiline, when Julius Casar could be chosen\nPontifex Maximus, almost before the Senate had ceased to\nreverberate his voice openly asserting that death was the utter\nend of man. Plutarch dilates upon the wide skepticism of the\nGreeks as to the infernal world, at the close of his essay on the\nmaxim, \"Live concealed.\" The portentous growth of irreverent\nunbelief, the immense change of feeling from awe to ribaldry, is\nmade obvious by a glance from the known gravity of Hesiod's\n\"Descent of Theseus and Pirithous into Hades,\" to Lucian's\n\"Kataplous,\" which represents the cobbler Mycillus leaping from\nthe banks of the Styx, swimming after Charon's boat, climbing into\nit upon the shoulders of the tyrant Megapenthes and tormenting him\nthe whole way. Pliny, in his Natural History, affirms that death\nis an everlasting sleep.56 The whole great sect of the Epicureans\nunited in supporting that belief by the combined force of ridicule\nand argument. Their views are the most fully and ably defended by\nthe consummate Lucretius, in his masterly poem on the \"Nature of\nThings.\" Horace,57 Juvenal,58 Persius,59 concur in scouting at the\ntales which once, when recited on the stage, had made vast\naudiences perceptibly tremble.60 And Cicero asks, \"What old woman\nis so insane as to fear these things?\"61\n\nThere were two classes of persons who sought differently to free\nmankind from the terrors which had invested the whole prospect of\ndeath and another world. The first were the materialists, who\nendeavored to prove that death was to man the absolute end of\nevery thing. Secondly, there were the later Platonists, who\nmaintained that this world is the only Hades, that heaven is our\nhome, that all death is ascent to better life. \"To remain on high\nwith the gods is life; to descend into this world is death, a\ndescent into Orcus,\" they said. The following couplet, of an\nunknown date, is translated from the Greek Anthology:\n\n\"Diogenes, whose tub stood by the road, Now, being dead, has the\nstars for his abode.\"\n\n54 Muller, Greek Literature, ch. vi.\n\n55 Works and Days, lib. i. II. 120-125.\n\n56 Lib. ii. cap. 7.\n\n57 Lib. i. epist. 16.\n\n58 Sat. II.\n\n59 Sat. II.\n\n60 Tusc. Quest. lib. i. cap. 16.\n\n61 Ibid. cap. 21.\n\n\nMacrobius writes, in his commentary on the \"Dream of Scipio,\"\n\"Here, on earth, is the cavern of Dis, the infernal region. The\nriver of oblivion is the wandering of the mind forgetting the\nmajesty of its former life and thinking a residence in the body\nthe only life. Phlegethon is the fires of wrath and desire.\nAcheron is retributive sadness. Cocytus is wailing tears. Styx is\nthe whirlpool of hatreds. The vulture eternally tearing the liver\nis the torment of an evil conscience.\"62\n\nTo the ancient Greek in general, death was a sad doom. When he\nlost a friend, he sighed a melancholy farewell after him to the\nfaded shore of ghosts. Summoned himself, he departed with a\nlingering look at the sun, and a tearful adieu to the bright day\nand the green earth. To the Roman, death was a grim reality. To\nmeet it himself he girded up his loins with artificial firmness.\nBut at its ravages among his friends he wailed in anguished\nabandonment. To his dying vision there was indeed a future; but\nshapes of distrust and shadow stood upon its disconsolate borders;\nand, when the prospect had no horror, he still shrank from its\npoppied gloom.\n\n62 Lib. i. cap. 9, 10.\n\n\nCHAPTER XI.\n\nMOHAMMEDAN DOCTRINE OF A FUTURE LIFE.\n\nISLAM has been a mighty power in the earth since the middle of the\nseventh century. A more energetic and trenchant faith than it was\nfor eight hundred years has not appeared among men. Finally\nexpelled from its startling encampments in Spain and the\nArchipelago, it still rules with tenacious hold over Turkey, a\npart of Tartary, Palestine, Persia, Arabia, and large portions of\nAfrica. At this moment, as to adherence and influence, it is\nsubordinate only to the two foremost religious systems in the\nworld, Buddhism and Christianity. The dogmatic structure of Islam\nas a theology and its practical power as an experimental religion\noffer a problem of the gravest interest. But we must hasten on to\ngive an exposition of merely those elements in it which are\nconnected with its doctrine of a future life.\n\nIt is a matter of entire notoriety that there is but the least\namount of originality in the tenets of the Mohammedan faith. The\nblending together of those tenets was distinctive, the unifying\nsoul breathed into them was a new creation, and the great aim to\nwhich the whole was subordinated was peculiar; but the component\ndoctrines themselves, with slight exception, existed before as\navowed principles in the various systems of belief and practice\nthat prevailed around. Mohammed adopted many of the notions and\ncustoms of the pagan Arabs, the central dogma of the Jews as to\nthe unity of God, most of the traditions of the Hebrew Scriptures,\ninnumerable fanciful conceits of the Rabbins,1 whole doctrines of\nthe Magians with their details, some views of the Gnostics, and\nextensive portions of a corrupted Christianity, grouping them\ntogether with many modifications of his own, and such additions as\nhis genius afforded and his exigencies required. The motley\nstrangely results in a compact and systematic working faith.\n\nThe Islamites are divided into two great sects, the Sunnees and\nthe Sheeahs. The Arabs, Tartars, and Turks are Sunnees, are\ndominant in numbers and authority, are strict literalists, and are\ncommonly considered the orthodox believers. The Persians are\nSheeahs, are inferior in point of numbers, are somewhat freer in\ncertain interpretations, placing a mass of tradition, like the\nJewish Mischna, on a level with the Koran,2 and are usually\nregarded as heretical. To apply our own ecclesiastical phraseology\nto them, the latter are the Moslem Protestants, the former the\nMoslem Catholics. Yet in relation to almost every thing which\nshould seem at all fundamental or vital they agree in their\nteachings. Their differences in general are upon trivial opinions,\nor especially upon ritual particulars. For instance, the Sheeahs\nsend all the Sunnees to hell because in their ablutions they wash\nfrom the elbow to the finger tips; the Sunnees return the\ncompliment to their rival sectarists because they wash from the\nfinger tips to the elbow. Within these two grand denominations of\nSheeah and\n\n1 Rabbi Abraham Geiger, Prize Essay upon the question, proposed by\nthe University of Bonn, \"Was hat Mohammed aus dem Judenthum\naufgenommen?\"\n\n2 Merrick, Translation of the Sheeah Traditions of Mohammed in the\nHyat ul Kuloob, note x.\n\n\nSunnee are found a multitude of petty sects, separated from each\nother on various questions of speculative faith and ceremonial\npractice. Some take the Koran alone, and that in its plain literal\nsense, as their authority. Others read the Koran in the\nexplanatory light of a vast collection of parables, proverbs,\nlegends, purporting to be from Mohammed. There is no less than a\nscore of mystic allegorizing sects3 who reduce almost every thing\nin the Koran to symbol, or spiritual signification, and some of\nwhom as the Sufis are the most rapt and imaginative of all the\nenthusiastic devotees in the world.\n\nA cardinal point in the Mohammedan faith is the asserted existence\nof angels, celestial and infernal. Eblis is Satan. He was an angel\nof lofty rank; but when God created Adam and bade all the angels\nworship him, Eblis refused, saying, \"I was created of fire, he of\nclay: I am more excellent and will not bow to him.\"4 Upon this God\ncondemned Eblis and expelled him from Paradise. He then became the\nunappeasable foe and seducing destroyer of men. He is the father\nof those swarms of jins, or evil spirits, who crowd all hearts and\nspace with temptations and pave the ten thousand paths to hell\nwith lures for men.\n\nThe next consideration preliminary to a clear exhibition of our\nspecial subject, is the doctrine of predestination, the\nunflinching fatalism which pervades and crowns this religion. The\nbreath of this appalling faith is saturated with fatality, and its\nvery name of Islam means \"Submission.\" In heaven the prophet saw a\nprodigious wax tablet, called the \"Preserved Table,\" on which were\nwritten the decrees of all events between the morning of creation\nand the day of judgment. The burning core of Mohammed's preaching\nwas the proclamation of the one true God whose volition bears the\nirresistible destiny of the universe; and inseparably associated\nwith this was an intense hatred of idolatry, fanned by the wings\nof God's wrath and producing a fanatic sense of a divine\ncommission to avenge him on his insulters and vindicate for him\nhis rightful worship from every nation. There is an apparent\nconflict between the Mohammedan representations of God's absolute\npredestination of all things, and the abundant exhortations to all\nmen to accept the true faith and bring forth good works, and thus\nmake sure of an acceptable account in the day of judgment. The\nformer make God's irreversible will all in all. The latter seem to\nplace alternative conditions before men, and to imply in them a\npower of choice. But this is a contradiction inseparable from the\ndiscussion of God's infinite sovereignty and man's individual\nfreedom. The inconsistency is as gross in Augustine and Calvinism\nas it is in the Arabian lawgiver and the creed of the Sunnees. The\nKoran, instead of solving the difficulty, boldly cuts it, and does\nthat in exactly the same way as the thorough Calvinist. God has\nrespectively elected and reprobated all the destined inhabitants\nof heaven and hell, unalterably, independently of their choice or\naction. At the same time, reception of the true faith, and a life\nconformed to it, are virtually necessary for salvation, because it\nis decreed that all the elect shall profess and obey the true\nfaith. Their obedient reception of it proves them to be elected.\nOn the other hand, it is foreordained that none of the reprobate\nshall become disciples and followers of the Prophet. Their\nrejection of\n\n3 Churchill, Mount Lebanon, vol. i. ch. xv.\n\n4 Sale's Translation of the Koran, ch. vii.\n\n\nhim, their wicked misbelief, is the evidence of their original\nreprobation. As the Koran itself expresses it, salvation is for\n\"all who are willing to be warned; but they shall not be warned\nunless God please:\"5 \"all who shall be willing to walk uprightly;\nbut they shall not be willing unless God willeth.\"6\n\nBut such fine drawn distinctions are easily lost from sight or\nspurned in the eager affray of affairs and the imminent straits of\nthe soul. While in dogma and theory the profession of an orthodox\nbelief, together with scrupulous prayer, fasting, alms, and the\npilgrimage to Mecca, or the absence of these things, simply\ndenotes the foregone determinations of God in regard to the given\nindividuals, in practice and feeling the contrasted beliefs and\ncourses of conduct are held to obtain heaven and hell. And we\nfind, accordingly, that Mohammed spoke as if God's primeval\nordination had fixed all things forever, whenever he wished to\nawaken in his followers reckless valor and implicit submission.\n\"Whole armies cannot slay him who is fated to die in his bed.\" On\nthe contrary, when he sought to win converts, to move his hearers\nby threatenings and persuasions, he spoke as if every thing\npertaining to human weal and woe, present and future, rested on\nconditions within the choice of men. Say, \"'There is but one God,\nand Mohammed is his prophet,' and heaven shall be your portion;\nbut cling to your delusive errors, and you shall be companions of\nthe infernal fire.\" Practically speaking, the essence of\npropagandist Islam was a sentiment like this. All men who do not\nfollow Mohammed are accursed misbelievers. We are God's chosen\navengers, the commissioned instruments for reducing his foes to\nsubmission. Engaged in that work, the hilts of all our scimitars\nare in his hand. He snatches his servant martyr from the battle\nfield to heaven. Thus the weapons of the unbelievers send their\nslain to paradise, while the weapons of the believers send their\nslain to hell. Up, then, with the crescent banner, and, dripping\nwith idolatrous gore, let it gleam over mountain and plain till\nour sickles have reaped the earth! \"The sword is the key of heaven\nand the key of hell. A drop of blood shed in the cause of Allah, a\nnight spent in arms, is of more avail than two months of fasting\nand prayer. Whoever falls in battle, his sins are forgiven. In the\nday of judgment his wounds shall be resplendent as vermilion and\nodoriferous as musk.\"7 An infuriated zeal against idolaters and\nunbelievers inflamed the Moslem heart, a fierce martial enthusiasm\nfilled the Moslem soul, and tangible visions of paradise and hell\nfloated, illuminate, throughtheMoslem imagination. And so from the\nPersian Gulf to the Caucasus, from Sierra Leone to the Pyrenees,\nthe polity of Mohammed overran the nations, with the Koran in its\nleft hand, the exterminating blade in its right, one thunder shout\nstill breaking from its awful lips: \"Profess Islam, and live, with\nthe clear prospect of eternal bliss beyond life; reject it, and\ndie, with the full certainty of eternal anguish beyond death.\"\nWhen the crusading Christians and the Saracenic hosts met in\nbattle, the conflict was the very frenzy of fanaticism. \"There the\nquestion of salvation or damnation lay on the ground between the\nmarshalled armies, to be fought for and carried by the stronger.\"\nChrist and Allah encountered, and the endless fate of their\nopposed\n\n5 Koran, ch. lxxiv.\n\n6 Ibid. ch. lxxxi.\n\n7 Gibbon, Decline and Fall of Rome, ch. 1.\n\n\nfollowers hung on the swift turning issue. \"Never have the\nappalling ideas of the invisible world so much and so distinctly\nmingled with the fury of mortal strife as in this instance. To the\neyes of Turk and Arab the smoke of the infernal pit appeared to\nbreak up from the ground in the rear of the infidel lines. As the\nsquadrons of the faithful moved on to the charge, that pit yawned\nto receive the miscreant host; and in chasing the foe the\nprophet's champions believed they were driving their antagonists\ndown the very slopes of perdition. When at length steel clashed\nupon steel and the yell of death shook the air, the strife was not\nso much between arm and arm as between spirit and spirit, and each\ndeadly thrust was felt to pierce the life at once of the body and\nof the soul.\"8\n\nThat terrible superstition prevails almost universally among the\nMussulmans, designated the \"Beating in the Sepulchre,\" or the\nexamination and torture of the body in the grave. As soon as a\ncorpse is interred, two black and livid angels, called the\nExaminers, whose names are Munkeer and Nakeer, appear, and order\nthe dead person to sit up and answer certain questions as to his\nfaith. If he give satisfactory replies, they suffer him to rest in\npeace, refreshed by airs from paradise; but if he prove to have\nbeen an unbeliever or heretic, they beat him on the temples with\niron maces till he roars aloud with pain and terror. They then\npress the earth on the body, which remains gnawed and stung by\ndragons and scorpions until the last day. Some sects give a\nfigurative explanation of these circumstances. The utter denial of\nthe whole representation is a schismatic peculiarity of the sect\nof Motozallites. But all true believers, both Sunnee and Sheeah,\ndevoutly accept it literally. The commentators declare that it is\nimplied in the following verse of the Koran itself: \"How,\ntherefore, will it be with them when they die and the angels shall\nstrike their faces and their backs?\" 9\n\nThe intermediate state of souls from the time of death until the\nresurrection has been the subject of extensive speculation and\nargument with the Islamites. The souls of the prophets, it is\nthought, are admitted directly to heaven. The souls of martyrs,\naccording to a tradition received from Mohammed, rest in heaven in\nthe crops of green birds who eat of the fruits and drink of the\nrivers there. As to the location of the souls of the common crowd\nof the faithful, the conclusions are various. Some maintain that\nthey and the souls of the impious alike sleep in the dust until\nthe end, when Israfil's blasts will stir them into life to be\njudged. But the general and orthodox impression is that they tarry\nin one of the heavens, enjoying a preparatory blessedness. The\nsouls of the wicked, it is commonly held, after being refused a\nplace in the tomb and also being repulsed from heaven, are carried\ndown to the lower abyss, and thrown into a dungeon under a green\nrock, or into the jaw of Eblis, there to be treated with\nforetastes of their final doom until summoned to the judgment.10\n\nA very prominent doctrine in the Moslem creed is that of the\nresurrection of the body. This is a central feature in the\northodox faith. It is expounded in all the emphatic details of its\ngross literality by their authoritative doctors, and is dwelt upon\nwith unwearied reiteration by the Koran. True, some minor\nheretical sects give it a spiritual interpretation; but the great\n\n8 Taylor, Hist. of Fanaticism, sect. vii.\n\n9 Ch. xlvii.\n\n10 Sale, Preliminary Discourse, sect. iv.\n\n\nbody of believers accept it unhesitatingly in its most physical\nshape. The intrinsic unnaturalness and improbability of the dogma\nwere evidently felt by Mohammed and his expositors; and all the\nmore they strove to bolster it up and enforce its reception by\nvehement affirmations and elaborate illustrations. In the second\nchapter of the Koran it is related that, in order to remove the\nskepticism of Abraham as to the resurrection, God wrought the\nmiracle of restoring four birds which had been cut in pieces and\nscattered. In chapter seventh, God says, \"We bring rain upon a\nwithered country and cause the fruits to spring forth. Thus will\nwe bring the dead from their graves.\" The prophet frequently\nrebukes those who reject this belief. \"What aileth them, that they\nbelieve not the resurrection?\"11 \"Is not He who created man able\nto quicken the dead?\"12 \"The scoffers say, 'Shall we be raised to\nlife, and our forefathers too, after we have become dust and\nbones? This is nothing but sorcery.'\"13 First, Israfil will blow\nthe blast of consternation. After an interval, he will blow the\nblast of examination, at which all creatures will die and the\nmaterial universe will melt in horror. Thirdly, he will blow the\nblast of resurrection. Upon that instant, the assembled souls of\nmankind will issue from his trumpet, like a swarm of bees, and\nfill the atmosphere, seeking to be reunited to their former\nbodies, which will then be restored, even to their very hairs.\n\nThe day of judgment immediately follows. This is the dreadful day\nfor which all other days were made; and it will come with\nblackness and consternation to unbelievers and evil doers, but\nwith peace and delight to the faithful. The total race of man will\nbe gathered in one place. Mohammed will first advance in front, to\nthe right hand, as intercessor for the professors of Islam. The\npreceding prophets will appear with their followers. Gabriel will\nhold suspended a balance so stupendous that one scale will cover\nparadise, the other hell. \"Hath the news of the overwhelming day\nof judgment reached thee?\"14 \"Whoever hath wrought either good or\nevil of the weight of an ant shall in that day behold the same.\"15\nAn infallible scrutiny shall search and weigh every man's deeds,\nand exact justice shall be done, and no foreign help can avail any\none. \"One soul shall not be able to obtain any thing in behalf of\nanother soul.\"16 \"Every man of them on that day shall have\nbusiness enough of his own to employ his thoughts.\"17 In all the\nMohammedan representations of this great trial and of the\nprinciples which determine its decisions, no reference is made to\nthe doctrine of predestination, but all turns on strict equity.\nReckoning a reception or rejection of the true faith as a crowning\nmerit or demerit, the only question is, Do his good works\noutweigh, by so much as a hair, his evil works? If so, he goes to\nthe right; if not, he must take the left. The solitary trace of\nfatalism or rather favoritism is this: that no idolater, once in\nhell, can ever possibly be released, while no Islamite, however\nwicked, can be damned eternally. The punishment of unbelievers is\neverlasting, that of believers limited. The opposite of this\nopinion is a great heresy with the generality of the Moslems. Some\nsay the judgment will require but the twinkling of an eye; others\nthat it will occupy fifty thousand years, during which time the\nsun will be drawn from its sheath and burn insufferably, and the\nwicked will stand looking up, their feet shod with shoes of fire,\nand their skulls boiling like pots. At last,\n\n11 Ch. lxxxiv.\n\n12 Ch. lxxv.\n\n13 Ch. xxxvii., lvi.\n\n14 Koran, ch. lxxxviii.\n\n15 Ibid. ch. xcix.\n\n16 Ibid. ch. lxxxii.\n\n17 Ibid. ch. lxxx.\n\n\nwhen sentence has been passed on them, all souls are forced to try\nthe passage of al Sirat, a bridge thinner than a hair, sharper\nthan a razor, and hotter than flame, spanning in one frail arch\nthe immeasurable distance, directly over hell, from earth to\nparadise. Some affect a metaphorical solution of this air severing\ncauseway, and take it merely as a symbol of the true Sirat, or\nbridge of this world, namely, the true faith and obedience; but\nevery orthodox Mussulman firmly holds it as a physical fact to be\nsurmounted in the last day.18 Mohammed leading the way, the\nfaithful and righteous will traverse it with ease and as quickly\nas a flash of lightning. The thin edge broadens beneath their\nsteps, the surrounding support of convoying angels' wings hides\nthe fire lake below from their sight, and they are swiftly\nenveloped in paradise. But as the infidel with his evil deeds\nessays to cross, thorns entangle his steps, the lurid glare\nbeneath blinds him, and he soon topples over and whirls into the\nblazing abyss. In Dr. Frothingham's fine translation from\nRuckert,\n\n\"When the wicked o'er it goes, stands the bridge all sparkling;\nAnd his mind bewilder'd grows, and his eye swims darkling.\nWakening, giddying, then comes in, with a deadly fright, Memory of\nall his sin, rushing on his sight. But when forward steps the\njust, he is safe e'en here: Round him gathers holy trust, and\ndrives back his fear. Each good deed's a mist, that wide, golden\nborders gets; And for him the bridge, each side, shines with\nparapets.\"\n\nBetween hell and paradise is an impassable wall, al Araf,\nseparating the tormented from the happy, and covered with those\nsouls whose good works exactly counterpoise their evil works, and\nwho are, consequently, fitted for neither place. The prophet and\nhis expounders have much to say of this narrow intermediate\nabode.19 Its lukewarm denizens are contemptuously spoken of. It is\nsaid that Araf seems hell to the blessed but paradise to the\ndamned; for does not every thing depend on the point of view?\n\nThe Mohammedan descriptions of the doom of the wicked, the\ntorments of hell, are constantly repeated and are copious and\nvivid. Reference to chapter and verse would be superfluous, since\nalmost every page of the Koran abounds in such tints and tones as\nthe following. \"The unbelievers shall be companions of hell fire\nforever.\" \"Those who disbelieve we will surely cast to be broiled\nin hell fire: so often as their skins shall be well burned we will\ngive them other skins in exchange, that they may taste the sharper\ntorment.\" \"I will fill hell entirely full of genii and men.\" \"They\nshall be dragged on their faces into hell, and it shall be said\nunto them, 'Taste ye that torment of hell fire which ye rejected\nas a falsehood.'\" \"The unbelievers shall be driven into hell by\ntroops.\" \"They shall be taken by the forelocks and the feet and\nflung into hell, where they shall drink scalding water.\" \"Their\nonly entertainment shall be boiling water, and they shall be fuel\nfor hell.\" \"The smoke of hell shall cast forth sparks as big as\ntowers, resembling yellow camels in color.\" \"They who believe not\nshall\n\n18 W. C. Taylor, Mohammedanism and its Sects.\n\n19 Koran, ch. viii. Sale, Preliminary Discourse, p. 125.\n\n\nhave garments of fire fitted on them, and they shall be beaten\nwith maces of red hot iron.\" \"The true believers, lying on\ncouches, shall look down upon the infidels in hell and laugh them\nto scorn.\"\n\nThere is a tradition that a door shall be shown the damned opening\ninto paradise, but when they approach it, it shall be suddenly\nshut, and the believers within will laugh. Pitiless and horrible\nas these expressions from the Koran are, they are merciful\ncompared with the pictures in the later traditions, of women\nsuspended by their hair, their brains boiling, suspended by their\ntongues, molten copper poured down their throats, bound hands and\nfeet and devoured piecemeal by scorpions, hung up by their heels\nin flaming furnaces and their flesh cut off on all sides with\nscissors of fire. 20 Their popular teachings divide hell into\nseven stories, sunk one under another. The first and mildest is\nfor the wicked among the true believers. The second is assigned to\nthe Jews. The third is the special apartment of the Christians.\nThey fourth is allotted to the Sabians, the fifth to the Magians,\nand the sixth to the most abandoned idolaters; but the seventh the\ndeepest and worst belongs to the hypocrites of all religions. The\nfirst hell shall finally be emptied and destroyed, on the release\nof the wretched believers there; but all the other hells will\nretain their victims eternally.\n\nIf the visions of hell which filled the fancies of the faithful\nwere material and glowing, equally so were their conceptions of\nparadise. On this world of the blessed were lavished all the\ncharms so fascinating to the Oriental luxuriousness of sensual\nlanguor, and which the poetic Oriental imagination knew so well\nhow to depict. As soon as the righteous have passed Sirat, they\nobtain the first taste of their approaching felicity by a\nrefreshing draught from \"Mohammed's Pond.\" This is a square lake,\na month's journey in circuit, its water whiter than milk or silver\nand more fragrant than to be comparable to any thing known by\nmortals. As many cups are set around it as there are stars in the\nfirmament; and whoever drinks from it will never thirst more. Then\ncomes paradise, an ecstatic dream of pleasure, filled with\nsparkling streams, honeyed fountains, shady groves, precious\nstones, all flowers and fruits, blooming youths, circulating\ngoblets, black eyed houris, incense, brilliant birds, delightsome\nmusic, unbroken peace.21 A Sheeah tradition makes the prophet\npromise to Ali twelve palaces in paradise, built of gold and\nsilver bricks laid in a cement of musk and amber. The pebbles\naround them are diamonds and rubies, the earth saffron, its\nhillocks camphor. Rivers of honey, wine, milk, and water flow\nthrough the court of each palace, their banks adorned with various\nresplendent trees, interspersed with bowers consisting each of one\nhollow transparent pearl. In each of these bowers is an emerald\nthrone, with a houri upon it arrayed in seventy green robes and\nseventy yellow robes of so fine a texture, and she herself so\ntransparent, that the marrow of her ankle, notwithstanding robes,\nflesh, and bone, is as distinctly visible as a flame in a glass\nvessel. Each houri has seventy locks of hair, every one under the\ncare of a maid, who perfumes it with a censer which God has made\nto smoke with incense without the presence of fire; and no mortal\nhas ever breathed such fragrance as is there exhaled. 22\n\n20 Hyat ul Kuloob, ch. x. p. 206.\n\n21 Koran, ch. lv. ch. lvi.\n\n22 Hyat ul Kuloob, ch. xvi. p. 286.\n\n\nSuch a doctrine of the future life as that here set forth, it is\nplain, was strikingly adapted to win and work fervidly on the\nminds of the imaginative, voluptuous, indolent, passionate races\nof the Orient. It possesses a nucleus of just and natural moral\nconviction and sentiment, around which is grouped a composite of a\nscore of superstitions afloat before the rise of Islam, set off\nwith the arbitrary drapery of a poetic fancy, colored by the\npeculiar idiosyncrasies of Mohammed, emphasized to suit his\nspecial ends, and all inflamed with a vindictive and propagandist\nanimus. Any word further in explanation of the origin, or in\nrefutation of the soundness, of this system of belief once so\nimminently aggressive and still so widely established would seem\nto be superfluous.\n\nCHAPTER XII.\n\nEXPLANATORY SURVEY OF THE FIELD AND ITS MYTHS.\n\nSURVEYING the thought of mankind upon the subject of a future\nlife, as thus far examined, one can hardly fail to be struck by\nthe multitudinous variety of opinions and pictures it presents.\nWhence and how arose this heterogeneous mass of notions?\n\nIn consequence of the endowments with which God has created man,\nthe doctrine of a future life arises as a normal fact in the\ndevelopment of his experience. But the forms and accompaniments of\nthe doctrine, the immense diversity of dress and colors it appears\nin, are subject to all the laws and accidents that mould and\nclothe the products within any other department of thought and\nliterature. We must refer the ethnic conceptions of a future state\nto the same sources to which other portions of poetry and\nphilosophy are referred, namely, to the action of sentiment,\nfancy, and reason, first; then to the further action, reaction,\nand interaction of the pictures, dogmas, and reasonings of\nauthoritative poets, priests, and philosophers on one side, and of\nthe feeling, faith, and thought of credulous multitudes and docile\npupils on the other. In the light of these great centres of\nintellectual activity, parents of intellectual products, there is\nnothing pertaining to the subject before us, however curious,\nwhich may not be intelligibly explained, seen naturally to spring\nout of certain conditions of man's mind and experience as related\nwith the life of society and the phenomena of the world.\n\nSo far as the views of the future life set forth in the religions\nof the ancient nations constitute systematically developed and\narranged schemes of doctrine and symbol, the origin of them\ntherefore needs no further explanation than is furnished by a\ncontemplation of the regulated exercise of the speculative and\nimaginative faculties. But so far as those representations contain\nunique, grotesque, isolated particulars, their production is\naccounted for by this general law: In the early stages of human\nculture, when the natural sensibilities are intensely preponderant\nin power, and the critical judgment is in abeyance, whatever\nstrongly moves the soul causes a poetical secretion on the part of\nthe imagination.1 Thus the rainbow is personified; a waterfall is\nsupposed to be haunted by spiritual beings; a volcano with fiery\ncrater is seen as a Cyclops with one flaming eye in the centre of\nhis forehead. This law holds not only in relation to impressive\nobjects or appearances in nature, but also in relation to\noccurrences, traditions, usages. In this way innumerable myths\narise, explanatory or amplifying thoughts secreted by the\nstimulated imagination and then narrated as events. Sometimes\nthese tales are given and received in good faith for truth, as\nGrote abundantly proves in his volume on Legendary Greece;\nsometimes they are clearly the gleeful play of the fancy, as when\nit is said that the hated infant Herakles having been put to\nHera's breast as she lay asleep in heaven, she, upon waking,\nthrust him away, and the lacteal fluid, streaming athwart the\nfirmament, originated the Milky Way! To apply this law to our\nspecial subject:\n\n1 Chambers's Papers for the People, vol. i.: The Myth, p. 1.\n\n\nWhat would be likely to work more powerfully on the minds of a\ncrude, sensitive people, in an early stage of the world, with no\nelaborate discipline of religious thought, than the facts and\nphenomena of death? Plainly, around this centre there must be\ndeposited a vast quantity of ideas and fantasies. The task is to\ndiscriminate them, trace their individual origin, and classify\nthem.\n\nOne of the most interesting and difficult questions connected with\nthe subject before us is this: What, in any given time and place,\nwere the limits of the popular belief? How much of the current\nrepresentations in relation to another life were held as strict\nverity? What portions were regarded as fable or symbolism? It is\nobvious enough that among the civilized nations of antiquity the\ndistinctions of literal statement, allegory, historic report,\nembellished legend, satire, poetic creation, philosophical\nhypothesis, religious myth, were more or less generally known. For\nexample, when Aschylus makes one of his characters say, \"Yonder\ncomes a herald: so Dust, Clay's thirsty sister, tells me,\" the\npersonification, unquestionably, was as purposed and conscious as\nit is when a poet in the nineteenth century says, \"Thirst dived\nfrom the brazen glare of the sky and clutched me by the throat.\"\nSo, too, when Homer describes the bag of Aolus, the winds, in\npossession of the sailors on board Ulysses' ship, the half\nhumorous allegory cannot be mistaken for religious faith. It is\nequally obvious that these distinctions were not always carefully\nobserved, but were often confounded. Therefore, in respect to the\nfaith of primitive times, it is impossible to draw any broad,\nfixed lines and say conclusively that all on this side was\nconsciously considered as fanciful play or emblem, all on that\nside as earnest fact. Each particular in each case must be\nexamined by itself and be decided on its own merits by the light\nand weight of the moral probabilities. For example, if there was\nany historic basis for the myth of Herakles dragging Cerberus out\nof Hades, it was that this hero forcibly entered the Mysteries and\ndragged out to light the enactor of the part of the three headed\ndog. The aged North man, committing martial suicide rather than\ndie in his peaceful bed, undoubtedly accepted the ensanguined\npicture of Valhalla as a truth. Virgil, dismissing Aneas from the\nTartarean realm through \"the ivory gate by which false dreams and\nfictitious visions are wont to issue,\" plainly wrought as a poet\non imaginative materials.\n\nIt should be recollected that most of the early peoples had no\nrigid formularies of faith like the Christian creeds. The writings\npreserved to us are often rather fragments of individual\nspeculations and hopes than rehearsals of public dogmas. Plato is\nfar from revealing the contemporaneous belief of Greece in the\nsense in which Thomas Aquinas reveals the contemporaneous belief\nof Christendom. In Egypt, Persia, Rome, among every cultured\npeople, there were different classes of minds, the philosophers,\nthe priests, the poets, the warriors, the common multitude, whose\nmodes of thinking were in contrast, whose methods of interpreting\ntheir ancestral traditions and the phenomena of human destiny were\nwidely apart, whose respective beliefs had far different\nboundaries. The openly skeptical Euripides and Lucian are to be\nborne in mind as well as the apparently credulous Hesiod and\nHomer. Of course the Fables of Asop were not literally credited.\nNeither, as a general thing, were the Metamorphoses of Ovid. With\nthe ancients, while there was a general national cast of faith,\nthere were likewise varieties of individual and sectarian belief\nand unbelief, skepticism and credulity, solemn reason and\nrecreative fancy.\n\nThe people of Lystra, as we read in the Acts of the Apostles,\nactually thought Barnabas and Paul were Zeus and Hermes, and\nbrought oxen and garlands to offer them the sacrifices appropriate\nto those deities. Peisistratus obtained rule over Athens by\ndressing a stately woman, by the name of Phye, as Athene, and\npassing off her commands as those of the tutelary goddess.\nHerodotus ridicules the people for unsuspiciously accepting her.2\nThe incredibleness of a doctrine is no obstacle to a popular\nbelief in it. Whosoever thinks of the earnest reception of the\ndogma of transubstantiation the conversion of a wheaten wafer into\nthe infinite God by nearly three quarters of Christendom at this\nmoment, must permit the paradox to pass unchallenged. Doubtless\nthe closing eye of many an expiring Greek reflected the pitiless\nold oarsman plying his frost cold boat across the Stygian ferry,\nand his failing ear caught the rush of the Phlegethonian surge. It\nis equally certain that, at the same time, many another laughed at\nthese things as childish fictions, fitted only to scare \"the baby\nof a girl.\"\n\nStricken memory, yearning emotion, kindled fancy, a sensitive and\ntimorous observation of natural phenomena, rustling leaves,\nwavering shadows, apparent effects of unknown causes, each is a\nsuperstitious mother of beliefs. The Sonora Indians say that\ndeparted souls dwell among the caves and rocks of the cliffs, and\nthat the echoes often heard there are their voices. Ruskin\nsuggests that the cause of the Greeks surrounding the lower world\nresidence of Persephone with poplar groves was that \"the\nfrailness, fragility, and inconstancy of the leafage of the\npoplar tree resembled the fancied ghost people.\" We can very\neasily imagine how, in the breeze at the entrance to some\nsubterranean descent,\n\n\"A ghostly rank Of poplars, like a halted train of shades,\nTrembled.\"\n\nThe operations of fierce passions, hate, fright, and rage, in a\nbrain boiling with blood and fire, make pictures which the savage\nafterwards holds in remembrance as facts. He does not by\nreflection consciously distinguish the internal acts and sights of\nthe mind from objective verities. Barbarians as travellers and\npsychologists have repeatedly observed usually pay great attention\nto the vagaries of madmen, the doings and utterances of the\ninsane. These persons are regarded as possessed by higher beings.\nTheir words are oracles: the horrible shapes, the grotesque\nscenes, which their disordered and inflamed faculties conjure up,\nare eagerly caught at, and such accounts of them as they are able\nto make out are treasured up as revelations. This fact is of no\nslight importance as an element in the hinting basis of the\nbeliefs of uncultivated tribes. Many a vision of delirium, many a\nraving medley of insanity, has been accepted as truth.3 Another\nphenomenon, closely allied to the former, has wrought in a similar\nmanner and still more widely. It has been a common superstition\nwith barbarous nations in every part of the world, from Timbuctoo\nto Siberia, to suppose that dreams are real\n\n2 Lib. i. cap. 60.\n\n3 De Boismont, Rational History of Hallucinations, ch. 15:\nOf Hallucinations considered in a Psychological, Historical,\nand Religious Point of View.\n\n\nadventures which the soul passes through, flying abroad while the\nbody lies, a dormant shell, wrapped in slumber. The power of this\ninfluence in nourishing a copious credulity may easily be\nimagined.\n\nThe origin of many notions touching a future state, found in\nliterature, is to be traced to those rambling thoughts and poetic\nreveries with which even the most philosophical minds, in certain\nmoods, indulge themselves. For example, Sir Isaac Newton \"doubts\nwhether there be not superior intelligencies who, subject to the\nSupreme, oversee and control the revolutions of the heavenly\nbodies.\" And Goethe, filled with sorrow by the death of Wieland,\nmusing on the fate of his departed friend, solemnly surmised that\nhe had become the soul of a world in some far realm of space. The\nsame mental exercises which supply the barbarian superstitions\nreappear in disciplined minds, on a higher plane and in more\nrefined forms. Culture and science do not deliver us from all\nillusion and secure us sober views conformed to fact. Still, what\nwe think amid the solid realities of waking life, fancy in her\nsleep disjointedly reverberates from hollow fields of dream. The\nmetaphysician or theologian, instead of resting contented with\nmere snatches and glimpses, sets himself deliberately to reason\nout a complete theory. In these elaborate efforts many an opinion\nand metaphor, plausible or absurd, sweet or direful, is born and\ntakes its place. There is in the human mind a natural passion for\ncongruity and completeness, a passion extremely fertile in\ncomplementary products. For example, the early Jewish notion of\nliterally sitting down at table with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob,\nin the resurrection, was gradually developed by accretion of\nassisting particulars into all the details of a consummate\nbanquet, at which Leviathan was to be the fish, Behemoth the\nroast, and so on.4 In the construction of doctrines or of\ndiscourses, one thought suggests, one premise or conclusion\nnecessitates, another. This genetic application is sometimes\nplainly to be seen even in parts of incoherent schemes. For\ninstance, the conception that man has returned into this life from\nanterior experiences of it is met by the opposing fact that he\ndoes not remember any preceding career. The explanatory idea is at\nonce hit upon of a fountain of oblivion a river Lethe from which\nthe disembodied soul drinks ere it reappears. Once establish in\nthe popular imagination the conception of the Olympian synod of\ngods, and a thousand dramatic tales of action and adventure,\nappropriate to the characters of the divine personages, will\ninevitably follow.\n\nThe interest, cunning, and authority of priesthoods are another\nsource of prevailing opinions concerning a life to come. Many\nnations, early and late, have been quite under the spiritual\ndirection of priests, and have believed almost every thing they\nsaid. Numerous motives conspire to make the priest concoct\nfictions and exert his power to gain credence for them. He must\nhave an alluringly colored elysium to reward his obedient\ndisciples. When his teachings are rejected and his authority\nmocked, his class isolation and incensed pride find a natural\nsatisfaction in threatening the reprobate aliens that a rain of\nfire will one day wash them down the smoking gulfs of sulphur. The\nMaronites, a sect of Catholic Christians in Syria, purchase of\ntheir priests a few yards of land in heaven, to secure a residence\nthere when\n\n4 Corrodi, Gesch. des Chiliasmns, th. i. abschn. 15: Gastmahl des\nLeviathan.\n\nthey die.5 The Siamese Buddhists accumulate silver and bury it in\nsecret, to supply the needs of the soul during its wandering in\nthe separate state. \"This foolish opinion robs the state of\nimmense sums. The lords and rich men erect pyramids over these\ntreasures, and for their greater security place them in charge of\nthe talapoins!\"6 When, for some reason or other,  either as a\nmatter of neatness and convenience, or as a preventive of mutual\nclawing, or for some to us unimaginable end, the authoritative\nSkald wished to induce the Northmen to keep their nails close cut,\nhe devised the awful myth of the ship Nagelfra, and made his raw\nminded people swallow it as truth. The same process was followed\nunquestionably in a thousand other cases, in different particulars\nof thought and aim, in different parts of the world.\n\nIn a bird's eye survey of the broad field we have traversed, one\ncannot help noticing the marked influence of the present scenery\nand habits, history and associations, of a people in deciding the\ncharacter of their anticipations of the future. The Esquimaux\nparadise is surrounded by great pots full of boiled walrus meat.\nThe Turk's heaven is a gorgeously idealized pleasure garden or\ncelestial harem. As the apparition of a man wanders into the next\nstate, a shadow of his present state floats over into the future\nwith him. The Hereafter is the image flung by the Now. Heaven and\nhell are the upward and downward echoes of the earth. Like the\nspectre of the Brocken on the Hartz Mountains, our ideas of\nanother life are a reflection of our present experience thrown in\ncolossal on the cloud curtains of futurity. Charles Lamb, pushing\nthis elucidating observation much further, says, \"The shapings of\nour heavens are the modifications of our constitutions.\" A tribe\nof savages has been described who hoped to go after death to their\nforefathers in an under ground elysium whose glory consisted in\neternal drunkenness, that being their highest conception of bliss\nand glory. What can be more piteous than the contemplation of\nthose barbarians whose existence here is so wretched that even\ntheir imagination and faith have lost all rebound, and who\nconceive of the land of souls only as poorer and harder than this,\nexpecting to be tasked and beaten there by stronger spirits, and\nto have nothing to eat? The relation of master and servant, the\ntyranny of class, is reflected over into the other life in those\naristocratic notions which break out frequently in the history of\nour subject. The Pharisees some of them, at least excluded the\nrabble from the resurrection. The Peruvians confined their heaven\nto the nobility. The New Zealanders said the souls of the Atuas,\nthe nobles, were immortal, but the Cookees perished entirely.\nMeiners declares that the Russians, even so late as the times of\nPeter the Great, believed that only the Czar and the boyars could\nreach heaven. It was almost a universal custom among savage\nnations when a chieftain died to slay his wives and servants, that\ntheir ghosts might accompany his to paradise, to wait on him there\nas here. Even among the Greeks, as Bulwer has well remarked, \"the\nHades of the ancients was not for the many; and the dwellers of\nElysium are chiefly confined to the oligarchy of earth.\"\n\nThe coarse and selfish assumption on the part of man of\nsuperiority over woman, based on his brawniness and tyranny, has\nsometimes appeared in the form of an assertion that\n\n5 Churchill, Mt. Lebanon, vol. iii. ch. 7.\n\n6 Pallegoix, Description du Royaume de Siam, ch. xx. p. 113.\n\n\nwomen have no souls, or at least cannot attain to the highest\nheaven possible for man. The former statement has been vulgarly\nattributed to the Moslem creed, but with utter falsity. A pious\nand aged female disciple once asked Mohammed concerning her future\ncondition in heaven. The prophet replied, \"There will not be any\nold women in heaven.\" She wept and bewailed her fate, but was\ncomforted upon the gracious assurance from the prophet's lips,\n\"They will all be young again when there.\" The Buddhists relate\nthat Gotama once directed queen Prajapati, his foster mother, to\nprove by a miracle the error of those who supposed it impossible\nfor a woman to attain Nirwana. She immediately made as many\nrepetitions of her own form as filled the skies of all the\nsakwalas, and, after performing various wonders, died and rose\ninto Nirwana, leading after her five hundred virtuous princesses.7\n\nHow spontaneously the idiosyncrasies of men in the present are\nflung across the abysm into the future state is exhibited\namusingly, and with a rough pathos, in an old tradition of a\ndialogue between Saint Patrick and Ossian. The bard contrasts the\napostle's pitiful psalms with his own magnificent songs, and says\nthat the virtuous Fingal is enjoying the rewards of his valor in\nthe aerial existence. The saint rejoins, No matter for Fingal's\nworth; being a pagan, assuredly he roasts in hell. In hot wrath\nthe honest Caledonian poet cries, \"If the children of Morni and\nthe tribes of the clan Ovi were alive, we would force brave Fingal\nout of hell, or the same habitation should be our own.\"8\n\nMany of the most affecting facts and problems in human experience\nand destiny have found expression, hypothetic solution, in\nstriking myths preserved in the popular traditions of nations. The\nmutual resemblances in these legends in some cases, though among\nfar separated peoples, are very significant and impressive. They\ndenote that, moved by similar motives and exercised on the same\nsoliciting themes, human desire and thought naturally find vent in\nsimilar theories, stories, and emblems. The imagination of man, as\nGfrorer says, runs in ruts which not itself but nature has beaten.\n\nThe instinctive shrinking from death felt by man would, sooner or\nlater, quite naturally suggest the idea that death was not an\noriginal feature in the divine plan of the world, but a\nretributive additional discord. Benignant nature meant her\nchildren should live on in happy contentment here forever; but sin\nand Satan came in, and death was the vengeance that followed their\ndoings. The Persians fully developed this speculation. The Hebrews\neither also originated it, or borrowed it from the Persians; and\nafterwards the Christians adopted it. Traces of the same\nconception appear among the remotest and rudest nations. The\nCaribbeans have a myth to the effect that the whole race of men\nwere doomed to be mortal because Carus, the first man, offended\nthe great god Tiri. The Cherokees ascribe to the Great Spirit the\nintention of making men immortal on earth; but, they say, the sun\nwhen he passed over told them there was not room enough, and that\npeople had better die! They also say that the Creator attempted to\nmake the first man and woman out of two stones, but failed, and\nafterwards fashioned them of clay; and therefore it is that they\nare perishable.9 The\n\n7 Hardy, Manual of Buddhism, p. 314.\n\n8 Logan, Scottish Gael, ch. xiv.\n\n9 Squier, Serpent Symbol, p. 67, note c.\n\n\nIndians of the Oronoco declare that the Great Spirit dwelt for a\nwhile, at first, among men. As he was leaving them, he turned\naround in his canoe and said, \"Ye shall never die, but shall shed\nyour skins.\" An old woman would not believe what he said; he\ntherefore recalled his promise and vowed that they should die.\n\nThe thought of more than one death that the composite man is\nsimplified by a series of separating deaths has repeatedly found\nplace. The New Testament speaks of \"the second death;\" but that is\na metaphorical phrase, descriptive, as there employed, of\ncondemnation and suffering. It is a thought of Plato that the\nDeity put intellect in soul, and soul in a material envelope.\nFollowing this hint, Plutarch says, in his essay on the Face in\nthe Moon, that the earth furnishes the body, the moon the soul,\nthe sun the mind. The first death we die, he continues, makes us\ntwo from three; the second makes us one from two. The Feejees tell\nhow one of their warriors, seeing the spectre of a recently\ndeceased enemy of his, threw his war club at it and killed it.\nThey believed the spirit itself was thus destroyed. There is\nsomething pathetic in this accumulation of dissolution upon\ndissolution, this pursuit of death after death. We seem to hear,\nin this thin succession of the ghosts of ghosts, the fainter\ngrowing echoes of the body fade away.\n\nMany narratives reveal the fond hovering of the human mind over\nthe problem of avoiding death altogether. The Hebrew Scriptures\nhave made us familiar with the translation of Enoch and the\nascension of Elijah without tasting death. The Hindus tell of\nDivadassa, who, as a reward for his exceeding virtue and piety,\nwas permitted to ascend to heaven alive.10 They also say that the\ngood Trisanku, having pleased a god, was elevated in his living\nbody to heaven.11 The Buddhists of Ceylon preserve a legend of the\nelevation of one of the royal descendants of Maha Sammata to the\nsuperior heavens without undergoing death.12 There are Buddhist\ntraditions, furthermore, of four other persons who were taken up\nto Indra's heaven in their bodies without tasting death, namely,\nthe musician Gattila, and the kings Sadhina, Nirni, and\nMandhatu.13 A beautiful myth of the translation of Cyrus is found\nin Firdousi's Shah Nameh:\n\n\"Ky Khosru bow'd himself before his God: In the bright water he\nwash'd his head and his limbs; And he spake to himself the Zend\nAvesta's prayers; And he turn'd to the friends of his life and\nexclaim'd, 'Fare ye well, fare ye well for evermore! When to\nmorrow's sun lifts its blazing banner, And the sea is gold, and\nthe land is purple, This world and I shall be parted forever. Ye\nwill never see me again, save in Memory's dreams.'When the sun\nuplifted his head from the mountain, The king had vanish'd from\nthe eyes of his nobles. They roam'd around in vain attempts to\nfind him;\n\n10 Vans Kennedy, Ancient and Hindu Mythology, p. 431.\n\n11 Vishnu Purana, p. 371.\n\n12 Upham, Sacred Books of Ceylon, vol. i. Introduction, p. 17.\n\n13 Hardy, Manual of Buddhism, p. 25, note.\n\n\nAnd every one, as he came back to the place, Bade a long farewell\nto the king of the world. Never hath any one seen such a marvel\nNo, though he live long in the world That a man should go alive\ninto the presence of God.\"\n\nThere is a Greek story that Empedocles, \"after a sacred festival,\nwas drawn up to heaven in a splendor of celestial effulgence.\"14\nPhilostratus relates a tradition of the Cretans, affirming that,\nApollonius having entered a temple to worship, a sound was heard\nas of a chorus of virgins singing, \"Come from the earth; come into\nheaven; come.\" And he was taken up, never having been seen\nafterwards. Here may be cited also the exquisite fable of\nEndymion. Zeus promised to grant what he should request. He begged\nfor immortality, eternal sleep, and never fading youth.\nAccordingly, in all his surpassing beauty he slumbers on the\nsummit of Latmus, where every night the enamored moon stoops to\nkiss his spotless forehead. One of the most remarkable fragments\nin the traditions of the American aborigines is that concerning\nthe final departure of Tarenyawagon, a mythic chief of\nsupernatural knowledge and power, who instructed and united the\nIroquois. He sprang across vast chasms between the cliffs, and\nshot over the lakes with incredible speed, in a spotless white\ncanoe. At last the Master of Breath summoned him. Suddenly the sky\nwas filled with melody. While all eyes were turned up,\nTarenyawagon was seen, seated in his snow white canoe, in mid air,\nrising with every burst of the heavenly music, till he vanished\nbeyond the summer clouds, and all was still.15\n\nAnother mythological method of avoidingdeath is by bathing in some\nimmortal fountain. The Greeks tell of Glaucus, who by chance\ndiscovered and plunged in a spring of this charmed virtue, but was\nso chagrined at being unable to point it out to others that he\nflung himself into the ocean. He could not die, and so became a\nmarine deity, and was annually seen off the headlands sporting\nwith whales. The search for the \"Fountain of Youth\" by the\nSpaniards who landed in Florida is well known. How with a vain\neagerness did Ponce de Leon, the battered old warrior, seek after\nthe magic wave beneath which he should sink to emerge free from\nscars and stains, as fresh and fair as when first he donned the\nknightly harness! Khizer, the Wandering Jew of the East,\naccompanied Iskander Zulkarnain (the Oriental name for Alexander\nthe Great) in his celebrated expedition to find the fountain of\nlife.16 Zulkarnain, coming to a place where there were three\nhundred and sixty fountains, despatched three hundred and sixty\nmen, ordering each man to select one of the fountains in which to\nwash a dry salted fish wherewith he was furnished. The instant\nKhizer's fish touched the water of the fountain which he had\nchosen, it sprang away, alive. Khizer leaped in after it and\ndrank. Therefore he cannot die till the last trump sounds.\nMeanwhile, clad in a green garb, he roams through the world, a\npersonified spring of the year.\n\n14 Lewes, Biographical History of Philosophy, vol. i. p. 135, (1st\nEng. edit.)\n\n15 Schoolcraft, Notes on the Iroquois, ch. ix.\n\n16 Adventures of Hatim Tai, p. 125.\n\n\nThe same influences which have caused death to be interpreted as a\npunitive after piece in the creation, and which have invented\ncases wherein it was set aside, have also fabricated tales of\nreturns from its shrouded realm. The Thracian lover's harp,\n\"drawing iron tears down Pluto's cheek,\" won his mistress half way\nto the upper light, and would have wholly redeemed her had he not\nin impatience looked back. The grim king of Hades, yielding to\npassionate entreaties, relented so far as to let the hapless\nProtesilaus return to his mourning Laodameia for three hours. At\nthe swift end of this poor period he died again; and this time she\ndied with him. Erus, who was killed in battle, and Timarchus,\nwhose soul was rapt from him in the cave of Trophonius, both\nreturned, as we read in Plato and Plutarch, to relate with\ncircumstantial detail what they saw in the other world. Alcestis,\nwho so nobly died to save her husband's life, was brought back\nfrom the region of the dead, by the interposition of Herakles, to\nspend happy years with her grateful Admetus. The cunning Sisyphus,\nwho was so notorious for his treachery, by a shrewd plot obtained\nleave, after his death, to visit the earth again. Safely up in the\nlight, he vowed he would stay; but old Hermes psychopompus\nforcibly dragged him down.\n\nWhen Columbus landed at San Salvador, the natives thought he had\ndescended from the sun, and by signs inquired if he had not. The\nHawaiians took Captain Cook for the god Lono, who was once their\nking but was afterwards deified, and who had prophesied, as he was\ndying, that he should in after times return. Te Wharewara, a New\nZealand youth, relates a long account of the return of his aunt\nfrom the other world, with a minute description of her adventures\nand observations there.17 Schoolcraft gives a picturesque\nnarrative of a journey made by a Wyandot brave to and from the\nland of souls.18\n\nThere is a group of strangely pleasing myths, closely allied to\nthe two preceding classes, showing how the popular heart and\nimagination glorify their heroes, and, fondly believing them too\ngodlike to die, fancy them only removed to some secret place,\nwhere they still live, and whence in the time of need they will\ncome again to rescue or to bless their people. Greece dreamed that\nher swift footed Achilles was yet alive in the White Island.\nDenmark long saw king Holger lingering on the old warrior cairns\nof his country. Portugal trusted that her beauteous prince\nSebastian had escaped from the fatal field to the East, and would\none day return to claim his usurped realm.19 So, too, of Roderick\nthe Goth, who fell in disastrous battle with the Arabs, the\nVisiogothic traditions and faith of the people long insisted that\nhe would reappear. The Swiss herdsmen believe the founders of\ntheir confederacy still sleep in a cavern on the shores of\nLucerne. When Switzerland is in peril, the Three Tells, slumbering\nthere in their antique garb, will wake to save her. Sweetly and\noften, the ancient British lays allude to the puissant Arthur\nborne away to the mystic vales of Avalon, and yet to be hailed in\nhis native kingdom, Excalibur once more gleaming in his hand. The\nstrains of the Troubadours swell and ring as they tell of\nCharlemagne sleeping beneath\n\n17 Shortland, Traditions of the New Zealanders, p. 128.\n\n18 History, &c. of Indian Tribes, part ii. p. 235.\n\n19 There is a fanatic sect of Sebastianists in Brazil now. See\n\"Brazil and the Brazilians,\" by Kidier and Fletcher, pp. 519-521.\n\n\nthe Untersberg, biding his appointed time to rise, resume his\nunrivalled sceptre, and glorify the Frank race. And what grand and\nweird ballads picture great Barbarossa seated in the vaults of\nKyffhauser, his beard grown through the stone table in front of\nhim, tarrying till he may come forth, with his minstrels and\nknights around him, in the crisis hour of Germany's fortunes! The\nIndians of Pecos, in New Mexico, still anxiously expect the return\nof Montezuma; while in San Domingo, on the Rio Grande, a sentinel\nevery morning ascends to the top of the highest house, at sunrise,\nand looks out eastward for the coming of the great chief.20 The\npeasants of Brittany maintain as a recent traveller testifies that\nNapoleon is still alive in concealment somewhere, and will one day\nbe heard of or seen in pomp and victory. One other dead man there\nhas been who was expected to return. the hated Nero, the popular\nhorror of whom shows itself in the shuddering belief expressed in\nthe Apocalypse and in the Sibylline Oracles that he was still\nalive and would reappear.21\n\nAlian, in his Various History, recounts the following singular\ncircumstances concerning the Meropes who inhabited the valley of\nAnostan.22 It would seem to prove that no possible conceit of\nspeculation pertaining to our subject has been unthought of. A\nriver of grief and a river of pleasure, he says, lapsed through\nthe valley, their banks covered with trees. If one ate of the\nfruit growing on the trees beside the former stream, he burst into\na flood of tears and wept till he died. But if he partook of that\nhanging on the shore of the latter, his bliss was so great that he\nforgot all desires; and, strangest of all, he returned over the\ntrack of life to youth and infancy, and then gently expired. He\nturned\n\n\"Into his yesterdays, and wander'd back To distant childhood, and\nwent out to God By the gate of birth, not death.\"\n\nMohammed, during his night journey, saw, in the lower heaven,\nAdam, the father of mankind, a majestic old man, with all his\nposterity who were destined for paradise on one side, and all who\nwere destined for hell on the other. When he looked on the right\nhe smiled and rejoiced, but as often as he looked on the left he\nmourned and wept. How finely this reveals the stupendous pathos\nthere is in the theological conception of a Federal Head of\nhumanity!\n\nThe idea of a great terminal crisis is met with so often in\nreviewing the history of human efforts to grasp and solve the\nproblem of the world's destiny, that we must consider it a normal\nconcomitant of such theorizings. The mind reels and loses itself\nin trying to conceive of the everlasting continuance of the\npresent order, or of any one fixed course of things, but finds\nrelief in the notion of a revolution, an end, and a fresh start.\nThe Mexican Cataclysm or universal crash, the close of the Hindu\nCalpa, the Persian Resurrection, the Stoic Conflagration, the\nScandinavian Ragnarokur, the Christian Day of Judgment, all embody\nthis one thought. The Drama of Humanity is played out, the curtain\nfalls, and when it rises again\n\n20 Abbe Domenech's Seven Years' Residence in the Great Deserts of\nNorth America; Vol. I. ch. viii.\n\n21 Stuart, Commentary on the Apocalypse: Excursus upon ch. xiii.\nv. 18.\n\n22 Lib. iii. cap. 18.\n\n\nall is commenced afresh. The clock of creation runs down and has\nto be wound up anew. The Brahmans are now expecting the tenth\navatar of Vishnu. The Parsees look for Sosiosch to come, to\nconsummate the triumph of good, and to raise the dead upon a\nrenewed earth. The Buddhists await the birth of Maitri Buddha, who\nis tarrying in the dewa loka Tusita until the time of his advent\nupon earth. The Jews are praying for the appearance of the\nMessiah. And many Christians affirm that the second advent of\nJesus draws nigh.\n\nOne more fact, even in a hasty survey of some of the most peculiar\nopinions current in bygone times as to a future life, can scarcely\nfail to attract notice. It is the so constant linking of the\nsoul's fate with the skyey spaces and the stars, in fond\nexplorings and astrologic dreams. Nowhere are the kingly greatness\nand the immortal aspiring of man more finely shown. The loadstone\nof his destiny and the prophetic gravitation of his thoughts are\nupward, into the eternal bosom of heaven's infinite hospitality.\n\n\"Ye stars, which are the poetry of heaven!\nIf in your bright leaves we would read the fate\nOf men and empires, 'tis to be forgiven,\nThat, in our aspirations to be great,\nOur destinies o'erleap their mortal state\nAnd claim a kindred with you; for ye are\nA beauty and a mystery, and create\nIn us such love and reverence from afar\nThat fortune, fame, power, life, have named themselves a star.\"\n\nWhat an immeasurable contrast between the dying Cherokee, who\nwould leap into heaven with a war whoop on his tongue and a string\nof scalps in his hand, and the dying Christian, who sublimely\nmurmurs, \"Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit!\" What a sweep\nof thought, from the poor woman whose pious notion of heaven was\nthat it was a place where she could sit all day in a clean white\napron and sing psalms, to the far seeing and sympathetic natural\nphilosopher whose loving faith embraces all ranks of creatures and\nwho conceives of paradise as a spiritual concert of the combined\nworlds with all their inhabitants in presence of their Creator!\nYet from the explanatory considerations which have been set forth\nwe can understand the derivation of the multifarious swarm of\nnotions afloat in the world, as the fifteen hundred varieties of\napple now known have all been derived from the solitary white\ncrab. Differences of fancy and opinion among men are as natural as\nfancies and opinions are. The mind of a people grows from the\nearth of its deposited history, but breathes in the air of its\nliving literature.23 By his philosophic learning and poetic\nsympathy the cosmopolitan scholar wins the last victory of mind\nover matter, frees himself from local conditions and temporal\ntinges, and, under the light of universal truth, traces, through\nthe causal influences of soil and clime and history, and the\ncolored threads of great individualities, the formation of\npeculiar national creeds. Through sense the barbarian mind feeds\non the raw pabulum furnished by the immediate phenomena of the\nworld and of its own life. Through culture the civilized mind\nfeeds on the elaborated substance of literature,\n\n23 Schouw, Earth, Plants, and Man, ch. xxx.\n\n\nscience, and art. Plants eat inorganic, animals eat organized,\nmaterial. The ignorant man lives on sensations obtained directly\nfrom nature; the educated man lives also on sensations obtained\nfrom the symbols of other people's sensations. The illiterate\nsavage hunts for his mental living in the wild forest of\nconsciousness; the erudite philosopher lives also on the psychical\nstores of foregone men.\n\nNOTE. To the ten instances, stated on pages 210, 211, of\nremarkable men who after their death were popularly imagined to be\nstill alive, and destined to appear again, an eleventh may be\nadded. The Indians of Pecos, in New Mexico, anxiously expect the\nreturn of Montezuma. In San Domingo, on the Rio Grande, a sentinel\nevery morning ascends to the roof of the highest house at sunrise\nand looks out eastward for the coming of the great chief. See the\nAbbe Domenech's \"Seven Years' Residence in the Great Deserts of\nNorth America,\" vol. ii. ch. viii.\n\nPART THIRD.\n\n\nNEW TESTAMENT TEACHINGS CONCERNING AFUTURE LIFE.\n\n\nCHAPTER I.\n\nPETER'S DOCTRINE OF A FUTURE LIFE.\n\nIN entering upon an investigation of the thoughts of the New\nTestament writers concerning the fate of man after his bodily\ndissolution, we may commence by glancing at the various allusions\ncontained in the record to opinions on this subject prevalent at\nthe time of the Savior or immediately afterwards, but which formed\nno part of his religion, or were mixed with mistakes.\n\nThere are several incidents recorded in the Gospels which show\nthat a belief in the transmigration of the soul was received among\nthe Jews. As Jesus was passing near Siloam with his disciples, he\nsaw a man who had been blind from his birth; and the disciples\nsaid to him, \"Master, who did sin, this man or his parents, that\nhe was born blind?\" The drift of this question is, Did the parents\nof this man commit some great crime, for which they were punished\nby having their child born blind, or did he come into the world\nunder this calamity in expiation of the iniquities of a previous\nlife? Jesus denies the doctrine involved in this interrogation, at\nleast, as far as his reply touches it at all; for he rarely enters\ninto any discussion or refutation of incidental errors. He says,\nNeither hath this man sinned nor his parents as the cause of his\nblindness; but the regular workings of the laws of God are made\nmanifest in him: moreover, it is a providential occasion offered\nme that I should show the divinity of my mission by giving him\nsight.\n\nWhen Herod heard of the miracles and the fame of Jesus, he said,\nThis is John the Baptist, whom I beheaded: he is risen from the\ndead; and therefore mighty works are wrought by him. This brief\nstatement plainly shows that the belief in the reappearance of a\ndeparted spirit, in bodily form, to run another career, was extant\nin Judea at that period. The Evangelists relate another\ncircumstance to the same effect. Jesus asked his disciples who the\npeople thought he was. And they replied, Some think that thou art\nJohn the Baptist, some Elias, and some Jeremiah or some other of\nthe old prophets, a forerunner of the Messiah. Then Jesus asked,\nBut who think ye that I am? And Simon Peter said, Thou art the\npromised Messiah himself. There was a prophetic tradition among\nthe Jews, drawn from the words of Malachi, that before the Messiah\nwas revealed Elias would appear and proclaim his coming.\n\nTherefore, when the disciples of Christ recognised him as the\ngreat Anointed, they were troubled about this prophecy, and said\nto their Master, Why do the Scribes say that Elias must first\ncome? He replies to them, in substance, It is even so: the\nprophet's words shall not fail: they are already fulfilled. But\nyou must interpret the prophecy aright. It does not mean that the\nancient prophet himself, in physical form, shall come upon earth,\nbut that one with his office, in his spirit and power, shall go\nbefore me. If ye are able to understand the true import of the\npromise, it has been realized. John the Baptist is the Elias which\nwas to come. The New Testament, therefore, has allusions to the\ndoctrine of transmigration, but gives it no warrant.\n\nThe Jewish expectations in regard to the Messiah, the nature of\nhis kingdom, and the events which they supposed would attend his\ncoming or transpire during his reign, were the source and\nfoundation of the phraseology of a great many passages in the\nChristian Scriptures and of the sense of not a few. The national\nideas and hopes of the Jews at that time were singularly intense\nand extensive. Their influence over the immediate disciples of\nJesus and the authors of the New Testament is often very evident\nin the interpretations they put upon his teachings, and in their\nown words. Still, their intellectual and spiritual obtuseness to\nthe true drift of their Master's thoughts was not so great, their\nmistakes are neither so numerous nor so gross, as it is frequently\nsupposed they were. This is proved by the fact that when they use\nthe language of the Messianic expectations of the Jews in their\nwritings they often do it, not in the material, but in a spiritual\nsense. When they first came under the instruction of Jesus, they\nwere fully imbued with the common notions of their nation and age.\nBy his influence their ideas were slowly and with great difficulty\nspiritualized and made to approach his own in some degree. But it\nis unquestionably true that they never not even after his death\narrived at a clear appreciation of the full sublimity, the pure\nspirituality, the ultimate significance, of his mission and his\nwords. Still, they did cast off and rise above the grossly carnal\nexpectations of their countrymen. Partially instructed in the\nspiritual nature of Christ's kingdom, and partially biassed by\ntheir Jewish prepossessions, they interpreted a part of his\nlanguage figuratively, according to his real meaning, and a part\nof it literally, according to their own notions. The result of\nthis was several doctrines neither taught by Christ nor held by\nthe Jews, but formed by conjoining and elaborating a portion of\nthe conceptions of both. These doctrines are to be found in the\nNew Testament; but it should be distinctly understood that the\nreligion of Christ is not responsible for them, is to be separated\nfrom them.\n\nThe fundamental and pervading aim of that epistle of Peter the\ngenuineness of which is unquestioned and the same is true in a\ngreat degree of his speeches recorded in the Acts of the Apostles\nis to exhort the Christians to whom it is written to purify\nthemselves by faith, love, and good works; to stand firmly amidst\nall their tribulations, supported by the expectations and prepared\nto meet the conditions of a glorious life in heaven at the close\nof this life. Eschatology, the doctrine of the Last Things, with\nits practical inferences, all inseparably interwoven with the\nmission of Christ, forms the basis and scope of the whole\ndocument.\n\nPeter believed that when Christ had been put to death his spirit,\nsurviving, descended into the separate state of departed souls.\nHaving cited from the sixteenth Psalm the declaration, \"Thou wilt\nnot leave my soul in the under world,\" he says it was a prophecy\nconcerning Christ, which was fulfilled in his resurrection. \"The\nsoul of this Jesus was not left in the under world, but God hath\nraised him up, whereof we all are witnesses.\" When it is written\nthat his soul was not left in the subterranean abode of\ndisembodied spirits, of course the inference cannot be avoided\nthat it was supposed to have been there for a time.\n\nIn the next place, we are warranted by several considerations in\nasserting that Peter believed that down there, in the gloomy realm\nof shades, were gathered and detained the souls of all the dead\ngenerations. We attribute this view to Peter from the combined\nforce of the following reasons: because such was, notoriously, the\nbelief of his ancestral and contemporary countrymen; because he\nspeaks of the resurrection of Jesus as if it were a wonderful\nprophecy or unparalleled miracle, a signal and most significant\nexception to the universal law; because he says expressly of David\nthat \"he is not yet ascended into the heavens,\" and if David was\nstill retained below, undoubtedly all were; because the same\ndoctrine is plainly inculcated by other of the New Testament\nwriters; and, finally, because Peter himself, in another part of\nthis epistle, declares, in unequivocal terms, that the soul of\nChrist went and preached to the souls confined in the under\nworld, for such is the perspicuous meaning of the famous text,\n\"being put to death in the body, but kept alive in the soul, in\nwhich also he went and preached [went as a herald] to the spirits\nin prison.\" The meaning we have attributed to this celebrated\npassage is the simple and consistent explanation of the words and\nthe context, and is what must have been conveyed to those familiar\nwith the received opinions of that time. Accordingly, we find\nthat, with the exception of Augustine, it was so understood and\ninterpreted by the whole body of the Fathers.1 It is likewise so\nheld now by an immense majority of the most authoritative modern\ncommentators. Rosenmuller says, in his commentary on this text,\n\"That by the spirits in prison is meant souls of men separated\nfrom their bodies and detained as in custody in the under world,\nwhich the Greeks call Hades, the Hebrews Sheol, can hardly be\ndoubted,\" (vix dubitari posse videtur.) Such has ever been and\nstill is the common conclusion of nearly all the best critical\ntheologians, as volumes of citations might easily be made to show.\nThe reasons which led Augustine to give a different exposition of\nthe text before us are such as should make, in this case, even his\ngreat name have little or no weight. He firmly held, as revealed\nand unquestionable truth,2 the whole doctrine which we maintain is\nimplied in the present passage; but he was so perplexed by certain\ndifficult queries3 as to locality and method and circumstance,\naddressed to him with reference to this text, that he, waveringly,\nand at last, gave it an allegorical interpretation. His exegesis\nis not only arbitrary and opposed to the catholic doctrine of the\nChurch; it is also so far fetched and forced as to be destitute of\n\n1 See, for example, Clem. Alex. Stromata, lib. vi.; Cyprian, Test.\nadv. Judaos, lib. ii. cap. 27, Lactantius, Divin. Instit. lib.\nvii. cap. 20.\n\n2 Epist. XCIX.\n\n3 Ibid.\n\n\nplausibility. He says the spirits in prison may be the souls of\nmen confined in their bodies here in this life, to preach to whom\nChrist came from heaven. But the careful reader will observe that\nPeter speaks as if the spirits were collected and kept in one\ncommon custody, refers to the spirits of a generation long ago\ndeparted to the dead, and represents the preaching as taking place\nin the interval between Christ's death and his resurrection. A\nglance from the eighteenth to the twenty second verse inclusive\nshows indisputably that the order of events narrated by the\napostle is this: First, Christ was put to death in the flesh,\nsuffering for sins, the just for the unjust; secondly, he was\nquickened in the spirit; thirdly, he went and preached to the\nspirits in prison; fourthly, he rose from the dead; fifthly, he\nascended into heaven. How is it possible for any one to doubt that\nthe text under consideration teaches his subterranean mission\nduring the period of his bodily burial?\n\nIn the exposition of the Apostles' Creed put forth by the Church\nof England under Edward VI., this text in Peter was referred to as\nan authoritative proof of the article on Christ's descent into the\nunder world; and when, some years later, thatreference was\nstricken out, notoriously it was not because the Episcopal rulers\nwere convinced of a mistake, but because they had become afraid of\nthe associated Romish doctrine of purgatory.\n\nIf Peter believed as he undoubtedly did that Christ after his\ncrucifixion descended to the place of departed spirits, what did\nhe suppose was the object of that descent? Calvin's theory was\nthat he went into hell in order that he might there suffer\nvicariously the accumulated agonies due to the LOST, thus\nplacating the just wrath of the Father and purchasing the release\nof the elect. A sufficient refutation of that dogma, as to its\nphilosophical basis, is found in its immorality, its forensic\ntechnicality. As a mode of explaining the Scriptures, it is\nrefuted by the fact that it is nowhere plainly stated in the New\nTestament, but is arbitrarily constructed by forced and indirect\ninferences from various obscure texts, which texts can be\nperfectly explained without involving it at all. For what purpose,\nthen, was it thought that Jesus went to the imprisoned souls of\nthe under world? The most natural supposition the conception most\nin harmony with the character and details of the rest of the\nscheme and with the prevailing thought of the time would be that\nhe went there to rescue the captives from their sepulchral\nbondage, to conquer death and the devil in their own domain, open\nthe doors, break the chains, proclaim good tidings of coming\nredemption to the spirits in prison, and, rising thence, to ascend\nto heaven, preparing the way for them to follow with him at his\nexpected return. This, indeed, is the doctrine of the Judaizing\napostles, the unbroken catholic doctrine of the Church. Paul\nwrites to the Colossians, and to the Ephesians, that, when Christ\n\"had spoiled the principalities and powers\" of the world of the\ndead, \"he ascended up on high, leading a multitude of captives.\"\nPeter himself declares, a little farther on in his epistle, \"that\nthe glad tidings were preached to the dead, that, though they had\nbeen persecuted and condemned in the flesh by the will of men,\nthey might be blessed in the spirit by the will of God.\"4 Christ\nfulfilled the law of\n\n4 See Rosenmuller's explanation in hoc loco.\n\n\ndeath,5 descending to the place of separate spirits, that he might\ndeclare deliverance to the quick and the dead by coming\ntriumphantly back and going into heaven, an evident token of the\nremoval of the penalty of sin which hitherto had fatally doomed\nall men to the under world.6\n\nLet us see if this will not enable us to explain Peter's language\nsatisfactorily. Death, with the lower residence succeeding it, let\nit be remembered, was, according to the Jewish and apostolic\nbelief, the fruit of sin, the judgment pronounced on sin. But\nChrist, Peter says, was sinless. \"He was a lamb without blemish\nand without spot.\" \"He did no sin, neither was guile found in his\nmouth.\" Therefore he was not exposed to death and the under world\non his own account. Consequently, when it is written that \"he bore\nour sins in his own body on the tree,\" that \"he suffered for sins,\nthe just for the unjust,\" in order to give the words their clear,\nfull meaning it is not necessary to attribute to them the sense of\na vicarious sacrifice offered to quench the anger of God or to\nfurnish compensation for a broken commandment; but this sense,\nnamely, that although in his sinlessness he was exempt from death,\nyet he \"suffered for us,\" he voluntarily died, thus undergoing for\nour sakes that which was to others the penalty of their sin. The\nobject of his dying was not to conciliate the alienated Father or\nto adjust the unbalanced law: it was to descend into the realm of\nthe dead, heralding God's pardon to the captives, and to return\nand rise into heaven, opening and showing to his disciples the way\nthither. For, owing to his moral sinlessness, or to his delegated\nomnipotence, if he were once in the abode of the dead, he must\nreturn: nothing could keep him there. Epiphanius describes the\ndevil complaining, after Christ had burst through his nets and\ndungeons, \"Miserable me! what shall I do? I did not know God was\nconcealed in that body. The son of Mary has deceived me. I\nimagined he was a mere man.\"7 In an apocryphal writing of very\nearly date, which shows some of the opinions abroad at that time,\none of the chief devils, after Christ had appeared in hell,\ncleaving its grisly prisons from top to bottom and releasing the\ncaptives, is represented upbraiding Satan in these terms: \"O\nprince of all evil, author of death, why didst thou crucify and\nbring down to our regions a person righteous and sinless? Thereby\nthou hast lost all the sinners of the world.\"8 Again, in an\nancient treatise on the Apostles' Creed, we read as follows: \"In\nthe bait of Christ's flesh was secretly inserted the hook of his\ndivinity. This the devil knew not, but, supposing he must stay\nwhen he was\n\n5 See King's History of the Apostles' Creed, 3d ed., pp. 234-239.\n\"The purpose of Christ's descent was to undergo the laws of death,\npass through the whole experience of man, conquer the devil, break\nthe fetters of the captives, and fix a time for their\nresurrection.\" To the same effect, old Hilary, Bishop of\nPoictiers, in his commentary on Psalm cxxxviii., says, \"It is a\nlaw of human necessity that, the body being buried, the soul\nshould descend ad interos.\"\n\n6 Ambrose, De Fide, etc., lib. iv. cap. 1, declares that \"no one\nascended to heaven until Christ, by the pledge of his\nresurrection, solved the chains of the under world and translated\nthe souls of the pious.\" Also Cyril, Bishop of Jerusalem, in his\nfourth catechetical lecture, sect. 11, affirms \"that Christ\ndescended into the under world to deliver those who, from Adam\ndownwards, had been imprisoned there.\"\n\n7 In Assumptionem Christi.\n\n8 Evan. Nicodemi, cap. xviii.\n\n\ndevoured, greedily swallowed the corpse, and the bolts of the\nnether world were wrenched asunder, and the ensnared dragon\nhimself dragged from the abyss.\"9 Peter himself explicitly\ndeclares, \"It was not possible that he should be held by death.\"\nTheodoret says, \"Whoever denies the resurrection of Christ rejects\nhis death.\"10 If he died, he must needs rise again. And his\nresurrection would demonstrate the forgiveness of sins, the\nopening of heaven to men, showing that the bond which had bound in\ndespair the captives in the regions of death for so many voiceless\nages was at last broken. Accordingly, \"God, having loosed the\nchains of the under world, raised him up and set him at his own\nright hand.\"11\n\nAnd now the question, narrowed down to the smallest compass, is\nthis: What is the precise, real signification of the sacrificial\nand other connected terms employed by Peter,  those phrases which\nnow, by the intense associations of a long time, convey so strong\na Calvinistic sense to most readers? Peter says, \"Ye know that ye\nwere redeemed with the precious blood of Christ.\" If there were\nnot so much indeterminateness of thought, so much unthinking\nreception of traditional, confused impressions of Scripture texts,\nit would be superfluous to observe that by the word blood here,\nand in all parallel passages, is meant simply and literally death:\nthe mere blood, the mere shedding of the blood, of Christ, of\ncourse, could have no virtue, no moral efficacy, of any sort. When\nthe infuriated Jews cried, \"His blood be on us, and on our\nchildren!\" they meant, Let the responsibility of his death rest on\nus. When the English historian says, \"Sidney gave his blood for\nthe cause of civil liberty,\" the meaning is, he died for it. So,\nno one will deny, whenever the New Testament speaks in any way of\nredemption by the blood of the crucified Son of Man, the\nunquestionable meaning is, redemption by his death. What, then,\ndoes the phrase \"redemption by the death of Christ\" mean? Let it\nbe noted here let it be particularly noticed that the New\nTestament nowhere in explicit terms explains the meaning of this\nand the kindred phrases: it simply uses the phrases without\ninterpreting them. They are rhetorical figures of speech,\nnecessarily, upon whatever theological system we regard them. No\nsinner is literally washed from his transgressions and guilt in\nthe blood of the slaughtered Lamb. These expressions, then, are\npoetic images, meant to convey a truth in the language of\nassociation and feeling, the traditionary language of imagination.\nThe determination of their precise significance is wholly a matter\nof fallible human construction and inference, and not a matter of\ninspired statement or divine revelation. This is so, beyond a\nquestion, because, we repeat, they are figures of speech, having\nno direct explanation in the records where they occur. The\nCalvinistic view of the atonement was a theory devised to explain\nthis scriptural language. It was devised without sufficient\nconsideration of the peculiar notions and spirit, the peculiar\ngrade of culture, and the time, from which that language sprang.\nWe freely admit the inadequacy of the Unitarian\n\n9 Ruffinus, Expos. in Symb. Apost.\n\n10 Comm. in 2 Tim. ii. 19.\n\n11 By a mistake and a false reading, the common version has \"the\npains of death,\" instead of \"the chains of the under world.\" The\nsense requires the latter. Besides, numerous manuscripts read\n[non ASCII characters]. See, furthermore, Rosenmuller's thorough\ncriticism in loc. Likewise see Robinson's New Testament Greek\nLexicon, in [NAC].\n\n\ndoctrine of the atonement to explain the figures of speech in\nwhich the apostles declare their doctrine. But, since the\nCalvinistic scheme was devised by human thought to explain the New\nTestament language, any scheme which explains that language as\nwell has equal Scripture claims to credence; any which better\nexplains it, with sharper, broader meaning and fewer difficulties,\nhas superior claims to be received.\n\nWe are now prepared to state what we believe was the meaning\noriginally associated with, and meant to be conveyed by, the\nphrases equivalent to \"redemption by the death of Christ.\" In\nconsequence of sin, the souls of all mankind, after leaving the\nbody, were shut up in the oblivious gloom of the under world.\nChrist alone, by virtue of his perfect holiness, was not subject\nto any part of this fate. But, in fulfilment of the Father's\ngracious designs, he willingly submitted, upon leaving the body,\nto go among the dead, that he might declare the good tidings to\nthem, and burst the bars of darkness, and return to life, and rise\ninto heaven as a pledge of the future translation of the faithful\nto that celestial world, instead of their banishment into the\ndismal bondage below, as hitherto. The death of Christ, then, was\nthe redemption of sinners, in that his death implied his ascent,\n\"because it was not possible that he should be holden of death;\"\nand his ascension visibly demonstrated the truth that God had\nforgiven men their sins and would receive their souls to his own\nabode on high.\n\nThree very strong confirmations of the correctness of this\ninterpretation are afforded in the declarations of Peter. First,\nhe never even hints, in the faintest manner, that the death of\nChrist was to have any effect on God, any power to change his\nfeeling or his government. It was not to make a purchasing\nexpiation for sins and thus to reconcile God to us; but it was, by\na revelation of the Father's freely pardoning love, to give us\npenitence, purification, confidence, and a regenerating piety, and\nso to reconcile us to God. He says in one place, in emphatic\nwords, that the express purpose of Christ's death was simply \"that\nhe might lead us to God.\" In the same strain, in another place, he\ndefines the object of Christ's death to be \"that we, being\ndelivered from sins, should live unto righteousness.\" It is plain\nthat in literal reality he refers our marvellous salvation to the\nvoluntary goodness of God, and not to any vicarious ransom paid in\nthe sacrifice of Christ, when he says, \"The God of all grace hath\ncalled us unto his eternal glory by Jesus Christ.\" The death of\nChrist was not, then, to appease the fierce justice of God by\nrectifying the claims of his inexorable law, but it was to call\nout and establish in men all moral virtues by the power of faith\nin the sure gift of eternal life sealed to them through the\nascension of the Savior.\n\nFor, secondly, the practical inferences drawn by Peter from the\ndeath of Christ, and the exhortations founded upon it, are\ninconsistent with the prevailing theory of the atonement. Upon\nthat view the apostle would have said, \"Christ has paid the debt\nand secured a seat in heaven for you, elected ones: therefore\nbelieve in the sufficiency of his offerings, and exult.\" But not\nso. He calls on us in this wise: \"Forasmuch as Christ hath\nsuffered for us, arm yourselves with the same mind.\" \"Christ\nsuffered for you, leaving an example that ye should follow his\nsteps.\" The whole burden of his practical argument based on the\nmission of Christ is, the obligation of a religious spirit and of\npure morals. He does not speak, as many modern sectarists have\nspoken, of the \"filthy rags of righteousness;\" but he says, \"Live\nno longer in sins,\" \"have a meek and quiet spirit, which is in\nthe sight of God of great price,\" \"be ye holy in all manner of\nconversation,\" \"purify your souls by obedience to the truth,\"\n\"be ye a holy priesthood to offer up spiritual sacrifices,\" \"have\na good conscience,\" \"avoid evil and do good,\" \"above all, have\nfervent love, for love will cover a multitude of sins.\" No candid\nperson can peruse the epistle and not see that the great moral\ndeduced in it from the mission of Christ is this: Since heaven\nis offered you, strive by personal virtue to be prepared for it\nat the judgment which shall soon come. The disciple is not told\nto trust in the merits of Jesus; but he is urged to \"abstain\nfrom evil,\" and \"sanctify the Lord God in his heart,\" and\n\"love the brethren,\" and \"obey the laws,\" and \"do well,\"\n\"girding up the loins of his mind in sobriety and hope.\"\nThis is not Calvinism.\n\nThe third fortification of this exposition is furnished by the\nfollowing fact. According to our view, the death of Christ is\nemphasized, not on account of any importance in itself, but as the\nnecessary condition preliminary to his resurrection, the\nhumiliating prelude to his glorious ascent into heaven. The really\nessential, significant thing is not his suffering, vicarious\ndeath, but his triumphing, typical ascension. Now, the plain,\nrepeated statements of Peter strikingly coincide with this\nrepresentation. He says, \"God raised Christ up from the dead, and\ngave him glory, [that is, received him into heaven,] that your\nfaith and hope might be in God.\" Again he writes, \"Blessed be God,\nwho according to his abundant mercy hath begotten us again unto a\nlively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead unto\nan incorruptible inheritance in heaven.\" Still again, he declares\nthat \"the figure of baptism, signifying thereby the answer of a\ngood conscience toward God, saves us by the resurrection of Jesus\nChrist, who is gone into heaven.\" According to the commonly\nreceived doctrine, instead of these last words the apostle ought\nto have said, \"saves us by the death of him who suffered in\nexpiation of our sins.\" He does not say so. Finally, in the\nintrepid speech that Peter made before the Jewish council,\nreferring to their wicked crucifixion of Jesus, he says, \"Him hath\nGod raised up to his own right hand, to be a Leader and a Savior,\nto give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins.\" How plainly\nremission of sins is here predicated, not through Christ's\nignominious suffering, but through his heavenly exaltation! That\nexaltation showed in dramatic proof that by God's grace the\ndominion of the lower world was about to be broken and an access\nto the celestial world to be vouchsafed.\n\nIf Christ bought off our merited punishment and earned our\nacceptance, then salvation can no more be \"reckoned of grace, but\nof debt.\" But the whole New Testament doctrine is, \"that sinners\nare justified freely through the redemption that is in Christ\nJesus.\" \"The redemption that is in Christ\"! Take these words\nliterally, and they yield no intelligible meaning. The sense\nintended to be conveyed or suggested by them depends on\ninterpretation; and here disagreement arises. The Calvinist says\nthey mean the redemption undertaken, achieved, by Christ. We say\nthey mean the redemption proclaimed, brought to light, by Christ.\nThe latter explanation is as close to the language as the former.\nNeither is unequivocally established by the statement itself. We\nought therefore to adopt the one which is at once most rational\nand plausible in itself, and most in harmony with the peculiar\nopinions and culture of the person by whom, and of the time when,\nthe document was written. All these considerations, historical,\nphilosophical, and moral, undeniably favor our interpretation,\nleaving nothing to support the other save the popular theological\nbelief of modern Protestant Christendom, a belief which is the\ngradual product of a few great, mistaken teachers like Augustine\nand Calvin.\n\nWe do not find the slightest difficulty in explaining sharply and\nbroadly, with all its niceties of phraseology, each one of the\ntexts urged in behalf of the prevalent doctrine of the atonement,\nwithout involving the essential features of that doctrine. Three\ndemonstrable assertions of fact afford us all the requisite\nmaterials. First, it was a prevalent belief with the Jews, that,\nsince death was the penalty of sin, the suffering of death was in\nitself expiatory of the sins of the dying man.12 Lightfoot says,\n\"It is a common and most known doctrine of the Talmudists, that\nrepentance and ritual sacrifice expiate some sins, death the rest.\nDeath wipes off all unexpiated sins.\"13 Tholuck says, \"It was a\nJewish opinion that the death of the just atoned for the\npeople.\"14 He quotes from the Talmud an explicit assertion to that\neffect, and refers to several learned authorities for further\ncitations and confirmations.\n\nSecondly, the apostles conceived Christ to be sinless, and\nconsequently not on his own account exposed to death and subject\nto Hades. If, then, death was an atonement for sins, and he was\nsinless, his voluntary death was expiatory for the sins of the\nworld; not in an arbitrary and unheard of way, according to the\nCalvinistic scheme, but in the common way, according to a\nPharisaic notion. And thirdly, it was partly a Jewish expectation\nconcerning the Messiah that he would,15 and partly an apostolic\nconviction concerning Christ that he did, break the bolts of the\nold Hadean prison and open the way for human ascent to heaven. As\nJerome says, \"Before Christ Abraham was in hell, after Christ the\ncrucified thief was in paradise;\"16 for \"until the advent of\nChrist all alike went down into the under world, heaven being shut\nuntil Christ threw aside the flaming sword that turned every\nway.\"17\n\nThese three thoughts that death is the expiatory penalty of sin,\nthat Christ was himself sinless, that he died as God's envoy to\nrelease the prisoners of gloom and be their pioneer to bliss leave\nnothing to be desired in explaining the sacrificial terms and\nkindred phrases employed by the apostles in reference to his\nmission.\n\nWithout question, Peter, like his companions, looked for the\nspeedy return of Christ from heaven to judge all, and to save the\nworthy. Indications of this belief are numerously afforded in his\nwords. \"The end of all things is at hand: be ye therefore sober\nand watch unto prayer.\" \"You shall give account to him that is\nready to judge the quick and the dead.\" Here the common idea of\nthat time namely, that the resurrection of the captives of the\n\n12 Witsius, Dissertatio de Seculo hoc et futuro, sect. 8.\n\n13 Lightfoot on Matt. xii. 32.\n\n14 Comm. on John i. 29.\n\n15 \"God shall liberate the Israelites from the under world.\"\nBertholdt's Christologia Judaorum, sect. xxxiv., (De descensu\nMessia ad Inferos,) note 2. \"The captives shall ascend from the\nunder world, Shechinah at their head.\" Schoettgen de Messia, lib.\nvi. cap. 5, sect. 1.\n\n16 See his Letter to Heliodorus, Epiat. XXXV., Benedict. ed.\n\n17 Comm. in Eccles. cap. iii. 21, et cap. ix.\n\n\nunder world would occur at the return of Christ is undoubtedly\nimplied. \"Salvation is now ready to be revealed in the last time.\"\n\"That your faith may be found unto praise and honor and glory at\nthe appearing of Jesus Christ.\" \"Be sober, and hope to the end for\nthe grace that is to be brought unto you at the revelation of\nJesus Christ.\" \"Be ye examples to the flock, and when the chief\nShepherd shall appear ye shall receive an unfading crown of\nglory.\" \"God shall send Jesus Christ, . . . whom the heavens must\nreceive until the times of the restitution of all things.\" It is\nevident that the author of these passages expected the second\ncoming of the Lord Jesus to consummate the affairs of his kingdom.\n\nIf the apostle had formed definite conclusions as to the final\nfate of unbelieving, wicked, reprobate men, he has not stated\nthem. He undeniably implies certain general facts upon the\nsubject, but leaves all the details in obscurity. He adjures his\nreaders with exceeding earnestness he over and over again adjures\nthem to forsake every manner of sinful life, to strive for every\nkind of righteous conversation, that by faith and goodness they\nmay receive the salvation of their souls. He must have supposed an\nopposite fate in some sort to impend over those who did otherwise,\nrejecting Christ, \"revelling in lasciviousness and idolatry.\"\nEverywhere he makes the distinction between the faithful and the\nwicked prominent, and presents the idea that Christ shall come to\njudge them both, and shall reward the former with gladness,\ncrowns, and glory; while it is just as clearly implied as if he\nhad said it that the latter shall be condemned and punished. When\na judge sits in trial on the good and the bad, and accepts those,\nplainly the inference is that he rejects these, unless the\ncontrary be stated. What their doom is in its nature, what in its\nduration, is neither declared, nor inferrible from what is\ndeclared. All that the writer says on this point is substantially\nrepeated or contained in the fourth chapter of his epistle, from\nverses 12 to 19. A slight explanatory paraphrase of it will make\nthe position clear so far as it can be made clear. \"Christian\nbelievers, in the fiery trials which are to try you, stand firm,\neven rejoicing that you are fellow sufferers with Christ, a pledge\nthat when his glory is revealed you shall partake of it with him.\nSee to it that you are free from crime, free from sins for which\nyou ought to suffer; then, if persecuted and slain for your\nChristian profession and virtues, falter not. The terrible time\npreceding the second advent of your Master is at hand. The\nsufferings of that time will begin with the Christian household;\nbut how much more dreadful will be the sufferings of the close of\nthat time among the disobedient that spurn the gospel of God! If\nthe righteous shall with great difficulty be snatched from the\nperils and woes encompassing that time, surely it will happen very\nmuch worse with ungodly sinners. Therefore let all who suffer in\nobedience to God commit the keeping of their souls to him in well\ndoing.\"\n\nThe souls of men were confined in the under world for sin. Christ\ncame to turn men from sin and despair to holiness and a\nreconciling faith in God. He went to the dead to declare to them\nthe good tidings of pardon and approaching deliverance through the\nfree grace of God. He rose into heaven to demonstrate and visibly\nexhibit the redemption of men from the under world doom of\nsinners. He was soon to return to the earth to complete the\nunfinished work of his commissioned kingdom. His accepted ones\nshould then be taken to glory and reward. The rejected ones\nshould Their fate is left in gloom, without a definite clew.\n\nCHAPTER II.\n\nDOCTRINE OF A FUTURE LIFE IN THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS.\n\nTHE Epistle to the Hebrews was written by some person who was\noriginally a Jew, afterwards a zealous Christian. He was\nunquestionably a man of remarkable talent and eloquence and of\nlofty religious views and feelings. He lived in the time of the\nimmediate followers of Jesus, and apparently was acquainted with\nthem. The individual authorship it is now impossible to determine\nwith certainty. Many of the most learned, unprejudiced, and able\ncritics have ascribed it to Apollos, an Alexandrian Jew, a compeer\nof Paul and a fellow citizen of Philo. This opinion is more\nprobable than any other. Indeed, so numerous are the resemblances\nof thoughts and words in the writings of Philo to those in this\nepistle, that even the wild conjecture has been hazarded that\nPhilo himself at last became a Christian and wrote to his Hebrew\ncountrymen the essay which has since commonly passed for Paul's.\nNo one can examine the hundreds of illustrations of the epistle\ngathered from Philo by Carpzov, in his learned but ill reasoned\nwork, without being greatly impressed. The supposition which has\nrepeatedly been accepted and urged, that this composition was\nfirst written in Hebrew, and afterwards translated into Greek by\nanother person, is absurd, in view of the masterly skill and\neloquence, critical niceties, and felicities in the use of\nlanguage, displayed in it. We could easily fill a paragraph with\nthe names of those eminent in the Church such as Tertullian,\nHippolytus, Erasmus, Luther, Le Clerc, and Neander who have\nconcluded that, whoever the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews\nwas, he was not Paul. The list of those names would reach from the\nEgyptian Origen, whose candor and erudition were without parallel\nin his age, to the German Bleek, whose masterly and exhaustive\nwork is a monument of united talent and toil, leaving little to be\ndesired. It is not within our present aim to argue this point: we\nwill therefore simply refer the reader to the thorough and\nunanswerable discussion and settlement of it by Norton.1\n\nThe general object of the composition is, by showing the\nsuperiority of the Christian system to the Hebrew, to arm the\nconverts from Judaism to whom it is addressed against the\ntemptations to desert the fulfilling faith of Christ and to return\nto the emblematic faith of their fathers. This aim gives a\npervading cast and color to the entire treatment to the reasoning\nand especially to the chosen imagery of the epistle. Omitting, for\nthe most part, whatever is not essentially interwoven with the\nsubject of death, the resurrection, and future existence, and with\nthe mission of Christ in relation to those subjects, we advance to\nthe consideration of the views which the epistle presents or\nimplies concerning those points. It is to be premised that we are\nforced to construct from fragments and hints the theological\nfabric that stood in the mind of the writer. The suggestion also\nis quite obvious that, since the letter is addressed solely to the\nHebrews and describes Christianity as the completion of\n\n1 Christian Examiner, vols. for 1827 29.\n\n\nJudaism, an acquaintance with the characteristic Hebrew opinions\nand hopes at that time may be indispensable for a full\ncomprehension of its contents.\n\nThe view of the intrinsic nature and rank of Christ on which the\nepistle rests seems very plainly to be that great Logos doctrine\nwhich floated in the philosophy of the apostolic age and is so\nfully developed in the Gospel of John: \"The Logos of God, alive,\nenergetic, irresistibly piercing, to whose eyes all things are\nbare and open;\" \"first begotten of God;\" \"faithful to Him that\nmade him;\" inferior to God, superior to all beside; \"by whom God\nmade the worlds;\" whose seat is at the right hand of God, the\nangels looking up to him, and \"the world to come put in subjection\nto him.\" The author, thus assuming the immensely super human rank\nand the pre existence of Christ, teaches that, by the good will of\nGod, he descended to the world in the form of a man, to save them\nthat were without faith and in fear, them that were lost through\nsin. God \"bringeth in the first begotten into the world.\" \"When he\ncometh into the world he saith, Sacrifice and offering thou\nwouldest not, but a body hast thou prepared for me.\" \"Jesus was\nmade a little while inferior to the angels.\" \"Forasmuch, then, as\nthe children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself\nlikewise partook of the same;\" that is, in order to pass through\nan experience like that of those whom he wished to deliver, he\nassumed their nature. \"He taketh not hold of angels, but he taketh\nhold of the seed of Abraham:\" in other words, he aimed not to\nassist angels, but men. These passages, taken in connection with\nthe whole scope and drift of the document in which they are found,\ndeclare that Jesus was a spirit in heaven, but came to the earth,\ntaking upon him a mortal frame of flesh and blood.\n\nWhy he did this is the question that naturally arises next. We do\nnot see how it is possible for any person to read the epistle\nthrough intelligently, in the light of an adequate knowledge of\ncontemporary Hebrew opinions, and not perceive that the author's\nanswer to that inquiry is, that Christ assumed the guise and fate\nof humanity in order to die; and died in order to rise from the\ndead; and rose from the dead in order to ascend to heaven; and\nascended to heaven in order to reveal the grace of God opening the\nway for the celestial exaltation and blessedness of the souls of\nfaithful men. We will commence the proof and illustration of these\nstatements by bringing together some of the principal passages in\nthe epistle which involve the objects of the mission of Christ,\nand then stating the thought that chiefly underlies and explains\nthem.\n\n\"We see Jesus who was made a little while inferior to the angels,\nin order that by the kindness of God he might taste death for\nevery man through the suffering of death crowned with glory and\nhonor.\" With the best critics, we have altered the arrangement of\nthe clauses in the foregoing verse, to make the sense clearer. The\nexact meaning is, that the exaltation of Christ to heaven after\nhis death authenticated his mission, showed that his death had a\ndivine meaning for men; that is, showed that they also should rise\nto heaven. \"When he had by himself made a purification of our\nsins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high.\" \"For\nthis cause he is the Mediator of the new covenant, that, his death\nhaving occurred, (for the redemption of the transgressions under\nthe first covenant,) they which are called might enter upon\npossession of the promised eternal inheritance.\" The force of this\nlast passage, with its context, turns on the double sense of the\nGreek word for covenant, which likewise means a will. Several\nstatements in the epistle show the author's belief that the\nsubjects of the old dispensation had the promise of immortal life\nin heaven, but had never realized the thing itself.2 Now, he\nmaintains the purpose of the new dispensation to be the actual\nrevelation and bestowment of the reality which anciently was only\npromised and typically foreshadowed; and in the passage before us\nhe figures Christ the author of the Christian covenant as the\nmaker of a will by which believers are appointed heirs of a\nheavenly immortality. He then following the analogy of\ntestamentary legacies and legatees  describes those heirs as\n\"entering on possession of that eternal inheritance\" \"by the death\nof the Testator.\" He was led to employ precisely this language by\ntwo obvious reasons: first, for the sake of that paronomasia of\nwhich he was evidently fond; secondly, by the fact that it really\nwas the death of Christ, with the succeeding resurrection and\nascension, which demonstrated both the reality of the thing\npromised in the will and the authority of the Testator to bestow\nit.\n\nAll the expressions thus far cited, and kindred ones scattered\nthrough the work, convey a clear and consistent meaning, with\nsharp outlines and coherent details, if we suppose their author\nentertained the following general theory; and otherwise they\ncannot be satisfactorily explained. A dreadful fear of death,\nintroduced by sin, was tyrannizing over men. In consequence of\nconscious alienation from God through transgressions, they\nshuddered at death. The writer does not say what there was in\ndeath that made it so feared; but we know that the prevailing\nHebrew conception was, that death led the naked soul into the\nsilent, dark, and dreary region of the under world, a doleful\nfate, from which they shrank with sadness at the best, guilt\nconverting that natural melancholy into dread foreboding. In the\nabsence of any evidence or presumption whatever to the contrary,\nwe are authorized, nay, rather forced, to conclude that such a\nconception is implied in the passages we are considering. Now, the\nmission of Jesus was to deliver men from that fear and bondage, by\nassuring them that God would forgive sin and annul its\nconsequence. Instead of banishing their disembodied spirits into\nthe sepulchral Sheol, he would take them to himself into the glory\nabove the firmament. This aim Christ accomplished by literally\nexemplifying the truths it implies; that is, by personally\nassuming the lot of man, dying, rising from among the spirits of\nthe dead, and ascending beyond the veil into heaven. By his death\nand victorious ascent \"he purged our sins,\" \"redeemed\ntransgressions,\" \"overthrew him that has the power of death,\" in\nthe sense that he thereby, as the writer thought, swept away the\nsupposed train of evils caused by sin, namely, all the\nconcomitants of a banishment after death into the cheerless\nsubterranean empire.\n\nIt will be well now to notice more fully, in the author's scheme,\nthe idea that Christ did locally ascend into the heavens, \"into\nthe presence of God,\" \"where he ever liveth,\" and\n\n2 xi. 13, 16, et al. See chap. x. 36,\n\nwhere to receive the promise most plainly means to obtain the thing\npromised, as it does several times in the epistle.\n\nSo Paul, in his speech at Antioch, (Acts xiii. 32, 33,) says,\n\"We declare unto you glad tidings, how that the promise which\nwas made unto the fathers, God hath fulfilled the same unto us\ntheir children, in that he hath raised up Jesus again\" that by\nthis ascent he for the first time opened the way for others to\nascend to him where he is, avoiding the doom of Hades.\n\n\"We have a great High Priest, who has passed through the\nheavens, Jesus, the Son of God.\" \"Christ is not entered into the\nmost holy place, made with hands, the figure of the true, but into\nheaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us.\"\nIndeed, that Jesus, in a material and local sense, rose to heaven,\nis a conception fundamental to the epistle and prominent on all\nits face. It is much more necessary for us to show that the author\nbelieved that the men who had previously died had not risen\nthither, but that it was the Savior's mission to open the way for\ntheir ascension.\n\nIt is extremely significant, in the outset, that Jesus is called\n\"the first leader and the bringer to the end of our faith;\" for\nthe words in this clause which the common version renders \"author\"\nand \"finisher\"3 mean, from their literal force and the latent\nfigure they contain, \"a guide who runs through the course to the\ngoal so as to win and receive the prize, bringing us after him to\nthe same consummation.\" Still more striking is the passage we\nshall next adduce. Having enumerated a long list of the choicest\nworthies of the Old Testament, the writer adds, \"These all, having\nobtained testimony through faith, did not realize the promise,4\nGod having provided a better thing for us, that they without us\nshould not be perfected,\" should not be brought to the end, the\nend of human destiny, that is, exaltation to heaven. Undoubtedly\nthe author here means to say that the faithful servants of God\nunder the Mosaic dispensation were reserved in the under world\nuntil the ascension of the Messiah. Augustine so explains the text\nin hand, declaring that Christ was the first that ever rose from\nthe under world.5 The same exposition is given by Origen,6 and\nindeed by nearly every one of the Fathers who has undertaken to\ngive a critical interpretation of the passage. This doctrine\nitself was held by Catholic Christendom for a thousand years; is\nnow held by the Roman, Greek, and English Churches; but is, for\nthe most part, rejected or forgotten by the dissenting sects, from\ntwo causes. It has so generally sunk out of sight among us, first,\nfrom ignorance, ignorance of the ancient learning and opinions on\nwhich it rested and of which it was the necessary completion;\nsecondly, from rationalistic speculations, which, leading men to\ndiscredit the truth of the doctrine, led them arbitrarily to deny\nits existence in the Scripture, making them perversely force the\ntexts that state it and wilfully blink the texts that hint it.\nWhether this be a proper and sound method of proceeding in\ncritical investigations any one may judge. To us it seems equally\nunmanly and immoral. We know of but one justifiable course, and\nthat is, with patience, with earnestness, and with all possible\naids, to labor to discern the real and full meaning of the words\naccording to the understanding and intention of the author. We do\nso elsewhere, regardless of consequences. No other method, in the\ncase of the Scriptures, is exempt from guilt.\n\nThe meaning (namely, to bring to the end) which we have above\nattributed to the word [NAC](translated in the common version to\nmake perfect) is the first meaning and the\n\n3 Robinson's Lexicon, first edition, under [NAC]; also see Philo,\ncited there.\n\n4 Ch. x. 36.\n\n5 Epist. CLXIV. sect. ix., ed. Benedictina.\n\n6 De Principiis, lib. ii. cap. 2.\n\n\netymological force of the word. That we do not refine upon it\nover nicely in the present instance, the following examples from\nvarious parts of the epistle unimpeachably witness. \"For it was\nproper that God, in bringing many sons unto glory, should make him\nwho was the first leader of their salvation perfect [reach the\nend] through sufferings;\" that is, should raise him to heaven\nafter he had passed through death, that he, having himself arrived\nat the glorious heavenly goal of human destiny, might bring others\nto it. \"Christ, being made perfect,\" (brought through all the\nintermediate steps to the end,) \"became the cause of eternal\nsalvation to all them that obey him; called of God an high\npriest.\" The context, and the after assertion of the writer that\nthe priesthood of Jesus is exercised in heaven, show that the word\n\"perfected,\" as employed here, signifies exalted to the right hand\nof God. \"Perfection\" (bringing unto the end) \"was not by the\nLevitical priesthood.\" \"The law perfected nothing, but it was the\nadditional introduction of a better hope by which we draw near\nunto God.\" \"The law maketh men high priests which have infirmity,\nwhich are not suffered to continue, by reason of death; but the\nword of the oath after the law maketh the Son perfect for\nevermore,\" bringeth him to the end, namely, an everlasting\npriesthood in the heavens. That Christian believers are not under\nthe first covenant, whereby, through sin, men commencing with the\nblood of Abel, the first death were doomed to the lower world, but\nare under the second covenant, whereby, through the gracious\npurpose of God, taking effect in the blood of Christ, the first\nresurrection, they are already by faith, in imagination,\ntranslated to heaven, this is plainly what the author teaches in\nthe following words: \"Ye are not come to the palpable mount that\nburneth with fire, and to blackness and tempest, where so terrible\nwas the sight that Moses exceedingly trembled, but ye are come to\nMount Zion, to the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable\ncompany of angels, and to God, and to the spirits of the perfected\njust, and to Jesus, the mediator of the new covenant, and to the\nlustral blood which speaks better things than that of Abel.\" The\nconnection here demonstrates that the souls of the righteous are\ncalled \"perfected,\" as having arrived at the goal of their destiny\nin heaven. Again, the author, when speaking of the sure and\nsteadfast hope of eternal life, distinguishes Jesus as a\n[non-ASCII characters], one who runs before as a scout or leader:\n\"the Forerunner, who for us has entered within the veil,\" that is,\nhas passed beyond the firmament into the presence of God. The Jews\ncalled the outward or lowermost heaven the veil.7 But the most\nconclusive consideration upon the opinion we are arguing for and\nit must be entirely convincing is to be drawn from the first half\nof the ninth chapter. To appreciate it, it is requisite to\nremember that the Rabbins with whose notions our author was\nfamiliar and some of which he adopts in his reasoning were\naccustomed to compare the Jewish temple and city with the temple\nand city of Jehovah above the sky, considering the former as\nminiature types of the latter. This mode of thought was originally\nlearned by philosophical Rabbins from the Platonic doctrine of\nideas, without doubt, and was entertained figuratively,\nspiritually; but in the unreflecting, popular mind the Hebraic\nviews to which it gave rise were soon grossly materialized and\nlocated. They also derived the same conception from God's command\nto Moses when he was about to build the tabernacle:\n\n7 Schoettgen, Hora Hebraica et Talmudica in 2 Cor. xii. 2.\n\n\n\"See thou make all things according to the pattern showed to thee\nin the mount.\" They refined upon these words with many conceits.\nThey compared the three divisions of the temple to the three\nheavens: the outer Court of the Gentiles corresponded with the\nfirst heaven, the Court of the Israelites with the second heaven,\nand the Holy of Holies represented the third heaven or the very\nabode of God. Josephus writes, \"The temple has three compartments:\nthe first two for men, the third for God, because heaven is\ninaccessible to men.\"8 Now, our author says, referring to this\ntriple symbolic arrangement of the temple, \"The priests went\nalways into the first tabernacle, accomplishing the service, but\ninto the second went the high priest alone, once every year, not\nwithout blood; this, which was a figure for the time then present,\nsignifying that the way into the holiest of all9 was not yet laid\nopen; but Christ being come, an high priest of the future good\nthings, by his own blood he entered in once into the holy place,\nhaving obtained eternal deliverance.\" The points of the comparison\nhere instituted are these: On the great annual day of atonement,\nafter the death of the victim, the Hebrew high priest went into\nthe adytum of the earthly temple, but none could follow; Jesus,\nthe Christian high priest, went after his own death into the\nadytum of the heavenly temple, and enabled the faithful to enter\nthere after him. Imagery like the fore going, which implies a\nSanctum Sanctorum above, the glorious prototype of that below, is\nfrequent in the Talmud.10 To remove all uncertainty from the\nexposition thus presented, if any doubt linger, it is only\nnecessary to cite one more passage from the epistle. \"We have,\ntherefore, brethren, by the blood of Jesus, leading into the\nholiest, a free road, a new and blessed road, which he hath\ninaugurated for us through the veil, that is to say, through his\nflesh.\" As there was no entrance for the priest into the holiest\nof the temple save by the removal of the veil, so Christ could not\nenter heaven except by the removal of his body. The blood of Jesus\nhere, as in most cases in the New Testament, means the death of\nJesus, involving his ascension. Chrysostom, commenting on these\nverses, says, in explanation of the word [non-ASCII characters],\n\"Christ laid out the road and was the first to go over it.\nThe first way was of death, leading [ad inferos] to the under\nworld; the other is of life,\" leading to heaven.\n\nThe interpretation we have given of these passages reconciles\nand blends that part of the known contemporary opinions which\napplies to them, and explains and justifies the natural force\nof the imagery and words employed.\n\nIts accuracy seems to us unquestionable by any candid person who is\ncompetently acquainted with the subject. The substance of it is,\nthat Jesus came from God to the earth as a man, laid down his life\nthat he might rise from the dead into heaven again, into the real\nSanctum Sanctorum of the universe, thereby proving that faithful\nbelievers also shall rise thither, being thus delivered, after the\npattern of his evident deliverance, from the imprisonment of the\nrealm of death below.\n\nWe now proceed to quote and unfold five distinct passages, not yet\nbrought forward, from the epistle, each of which proves that we\nare not mistaken in attributing to the writer\n\n8 Antiq. lib. iii. cap. 6, sect. 4; ibid. cap. 7, sect. 7.\n\n9 Philo declares, \"The whole universe is one temple of God, in\nwhich the holiest of all is heaven.\" De Monarchia, p. 222, ed.\nMangey.\n\n10 Schoettgen, Dissertatio de Hierosolyma Coelesti, cap. 2, sect.\n9.\n\n\nof it the above stated general theory. In the first verse which we\nshall adduce it is certain that the word \"death\" includes the\nentrance of the soul into the subterranean kingdom of ghosts. It\nis written of Christ that, \"in the days of his flesh, when he had\nearnestly prayed to Him that was able to do it, to save him from\ndeath, he was heard,\" and was advanced to be a high priest in the\nheavens, \"was made higher than the heavens.\" Now, obviously, God\ndid not rescue Christ from dying, but he raised him, [non-ASCII\ncharacters], from the world of the dead.\n\nSo Chrysostom declares, referring to this very text, \"Not to be\nretained in the region of the dead, but to be delivered from it,\nis virtually not to die.\"11 Moreover, the phrase above translated\n\"to save him from death\" may be translated, with equal propriety,\n\"to bring him back safe from death.\"\n\nThe Greek verb [non-ASCII characters], to save, is often so used\nto denote the safe restoration of a warrior from an incursion into\nan enemy's domain. The same use made here by our author of the term\n\"death\" we have also found made by Philo Judaus. \"The wise,\" Philo\nsays, \"inherit the Olympic and heavenly region to dwell in, always\nstudying to go above; the bad inherit the innermost parts of the\nunder world, always laboring to die.\"12 The antithesis between\ngoing above and dying, and the mention of the under world in\nconnection with the latter, prove that to die here means, or at\nleast includes, going below after death.\n\nThe Septuagint version of the Old Testament twice translates Sheol\nby the word \"death.\"13 The Hebrew word for death, maveth, is\nrepeatedly used for the abode of the dead.14 And the nail of the\ninterpretation we are urging is clenched by this sentence from\nOrigen:  \"The under world, in which souls are detained by death,\nis called death.\"15 Bretschneider cites nearly a dozen passages\nfrom the New Testament where, in his judgment, death is used to\ndenote Hades.\n\nAgain: we read that Christ took human nature upon him \"in order\nthat by means of [his own] death he might render him that has the\npower of death that is, the devil idle, and deliver those who\nthrough fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage.\"\nIt is apparent at once that the mere death of Christ, so far from\nending the sway of Death, would be giving the grim monster a new\nvictory, incomparably the most important he had ever achieved.\nTherefore, the only way to make adequate sense of the passage is\nto join with the Savior's death what followed it, namely, his\nresurrection and ascension. It was the Hebrew belief that sin,\nintroduced by the fraud of the devil, was the cause of death, and\nthe doomer of the disembodied spirits of men to the lower caverns\nof darkness and rest. They personified Death as king, tyrannizing\nover mankind; and, unless in severe affliction, they dreaded the\nhour when they must lie down under his sceptre and sink into his\nvoiceless kingdom of shadows. Christ broke the power of Satan,\nclosed his busy reign, rescued the captive souls, and relieved the\ntimorous hearts of the faithful, by rising triumphantly from\n\n11 Homil. Epist. ad Heb. in hoc loc.\n\n12 Quod a Deo mitt. Somn., p. 643, ed. Mangey.\n\n13 2 Sam. xxii. 6; Prov. xxiii. 14.\n\n14 Ps. ix. 13. Prov. vii, 27.\n\n15 Comm. in Epist. ad Rom., lib. vi. cap. 6, sect. 6.: \"Inferni\nlocus in quo anima detinebantur a morte mors appellatur.\"\n\n\nthe long bound dominion of the grave, and ascending in a new path\nof light, pioneering the saints to immortal glory.\n\nIn another part of the epistle, the writer, having previously\nexplained that as the high priest after the death of the expiatory\ngoat entered the typical holy place in the temple, so Christ after\nhis own death entered the true holy place in the heavens, goes on\nto guard against the analogy being forced any further to deny the\nnecessity of Christ's service being repeated, as the priest's was\nannually repeated, saying, \"For then he must have died many times\nsince the foundation of the world; but, on the contrary, [it\nsuffices that] once, at the close of the ages, through the\nsacrifice of himself he hath appeared [in heaven] for the\nabrogation of sin.\"16 The rendering and explanation we give of\nthis language are those adopted by the most distinguished\ncommentators, and must be justified by any one who examines the\nproper punctuation of the clauses and studies the context. The\nsimple idea is, that, by the sacrifice of his body through death,\nChrist rose and showed himself in the presence of God. The author\nadds that this was done \"unto the annulling of sin.\" It is with\nreference to these last words principally that we have cited the\npassage. What do they mean? In what sense can the passing of\nChrist's soul into heaven after death be said to have done away\nwith sin? In the first place, the open manifestation of Christ's\ndisenthralled and risen soul in the supernal presence of God did\nnot in any sense abrogate sin itself, literally considered,\nbecause all kinds of sin that ever were upon the earth among men\nbefore have been ever since, and are now. In the second place,\nthat miraculous event did not annul and remove human guilt, the\nconsciousness of sin and responsibility for it, because, in fact,\nmen feel the sting and load of guilt now as badly as ever; and the\nvery epistle before us, as well as the whole New Testament,\naddresses Christians as being exposed to constant and varied\ndanger of incurring guilt and woe. But, in the third place, the\nascension of Jesus did show very plainly to the apostles and first\nChristians that what they supposed to be the great outward penalty\nof sin was annulled; that it was no longer a necessity for the\nspirit to descend to the lower world after death; that fatal doom,\nentailed on the generations of humanity by sin, was now abrogated\nfor all who were worthy. Such, we have not a doubt, is the true\nmeaning of the declaration under review.\n\nThis exposition is powerfully confirmed by the two succeeding\nverses, which we will next pass to examine. \"As it is appointed\nfor men to die once, but after this the judgment, so Christ,\nhaving been offered once to bear the sins of many, shall appear a\nsecond time, without sin, for salvation unto those expecting him.\"\nMan dies once, and then passes into that state of separate\nexistence in the under world which is the legal judgment for sin.\nChrist, taking upon himself, with the nature of man, the burden of\nman's lot and doom, died once, and then rose from the dead by the\ngracious power of the Father, bearing away the outward penalty of\nsin. He will come again into the world, uninvolved, the next time,\nwith any of the accompaniments or consequences of sin, to save\nthem that look for him, and victoriously lead them into heaven\nwith him. In this instance, as all through the writings of the\napostles,\n\n16 Griesbach in loc.; and Rosenmuller.\n\n\nsin, death, and the under world are three segments of a circle,\neach necessarily implying the others. The same remark is to be\nmade of the contrasted terms righteousness, grace, immortal life\nabove the sky; 17 the former being traced from the sinful and\nfallen Adam, the latter from the righteous and risen Christ.\n\nThe author says, \"If the blood of bulls and goats sanctifies unto\nthe purification of the flesh, how much more shall the blood of\nChrist, who having18 an eternal spirit offered himself faultless\nto God, cleanse your consciousness!\" The argument, fully\nexpressed, is, if the blood of perishable brutes cleanses the\nbody, the blood of the immortal Christ cleanses the soul. The\nimplied inference is, that as the former fitted the outward man\nfor the ritual privileges of the temple, so the latter fitted the\ninward man for the spiritual privileges of heaven. This appears\nclearly from what follows in the next chapter, where the writer\nsays, in effect, that \"it is not possible for the blood of bulls\nand of goats to take away sins, however often it is offered, but\nthat Christ, when he had offered one sacrifice for sins, forever\nsat down at the right hand of God.\" The reason given for the\nefficacy of Christ's offering is that he sat down at the right\nhand of God. When the chosen animals were sacrificed for sins,\nthey utterly perished, and there was an end. But when Christ was\noffered, his soul survived and rose into heaven, an evident sign\nthat the penalty of sin, whereby men were doomed to the under\nworld after death, was abolished. This perfectly explains the\nlanguage; and nothing else, it seems to us, can perfectly explain\nit.\n\nThat Christ would speedily reappear from heaven in triumph, to\njudge his foes and save his disciples, was a fundamental article\nin the primitive Church scheme of the last things. There are\nunmistakable evidences of such a belief in our author. \"For yet a\nlittle while, and the coming one will come, and will not delay.\"\n\"Provoke one another unto love and good works, . . . so much the\nmore as ye see the day drawing near.\" There is another reference\nto this approaching advent, which, though obscure, affords\nimportant testimony. Jesus, when he had ascended, \"sat down at the\nright hand of God, henceforward waiting till his enemies be made\nhis footstool.\" That is to say, he is tarrying in heaven for the\nappointed time to arrive when he shall come into the world again\nto consummate the full and final purposes of his mission. We may\nleave this division of the subject established beyond all\nquestion, by citing a text which explicitly states the idea in so\nmany words: \"Unto them that look for him he shall appear the\nsecond time.\" That expectation of the speedy second coming of the\nMessiah which haunted the early Christians, therefore,\nunquestionably occupied the mind of the composer of the Epistle to\nthe Hebrews.\n\nIf the writer of this epistolary essay had a firm and detailed\nopinion as to the exact fate to be allotted to wicked and\npersistent unbelievers, his allusions to that opinion are too few\nand vague for us to determine precisely what it was. We will\nbriefly quote the substance of what he says upon the subject, and\nadd a word in regard to the inferences it does, or it does not,\nwarrant. \"If under the Mosaic dispensation every transgression\nreceived a just recompense, how shall we escape if we neglect so\ngreat a salvation, first proclaimed by the\n\n17 Neander, Planting and Training of the Church, Ryland's trans.\np. 298.\n\n18 [Non-ASCII characters] is often used in the sense of with,\nor possessing. See Wahl's New Testament Lexicon.\n\n\nLord?\" \"As the Israelites that were led out of Egypt by Moses, on\naccount of their unbelief and provocations, were not permitted to\nenter the promised land, but perished in the wilderness, so let us\nfear, lest, a promise being left us of entering into his rest, any\nof you should seem to come short of it.\" Christ \"became the cause\nof eternal salvation to all them that obey him.\" \"He hath brought\nunto the end forever them that are sanctified.\" It will be\nobserved that these last specifications are partial, and that\nnothing is said of the fate of those not included under them. \"It\nis impossible for those who were once enlightened, . . . if they\nshall fall away, to renew them again unto repentance. . . . But,\nbeloved, we are persuaded better things of you, even things that\naccompany salvation.\" \"We are not of them who draw back unto the\ndestruction, but of them who believe unto the preservation, of the\nsoul.\" \"If we sin wilfully after we have received the knowledge of\nthe truth, there is no longer left a sacrifice for sins, but a\ncertain fearful looking for of judgment, and of fiery indignation\nto devour the adversaries.\" \"It is a fearful thing to fall into\nthe hands of the living God.\" \"If they escaped not who refused him\nthat spoke on earth, [Moses,] much more we shall not escape if we\nturn away from him that speaks from heaven,\" (Christ.) In view of\nthe foregoing passages, which represent the entire teaching of the\nepistle in relation to the ultimate destination of sinners, we\nmust assert as follows. First, the author gives no hint of the\ndoctrine of literal torments in a local hell. Secondly, he is\nstill further from favoring nay, he unequivocally denies the\ndoctrine of unconditional, universal salvation. Thirdly, he either\nexpected that the reprobate would be absolutely destroyed at the\nsecond coming of Christ,  which does not seem to be declared; or\nthat they would be exiled forever from the kingdom of glory into\nthe sad and slumberous under world, which is not clearly implied;\nor that they would be punished according to their evil, and then,\nrestored to Divine favor, be exalted into heaven with the original\nelect, which is not written in the record; or, lastly, that they\nwould be disposed of in some way unknown to him, which he does not\navow. He makes no allusion to such a terrific conception as is\nexpressed by our modern use of the word hell: he emphatically\npredicates conditionality of salvation, he threatens sinners in\ngeneral terms with severe judgment. Further than this he has\nneglected to state his faith. If it reached any further, he has\npreferred to leave the statement of it in vague and impressive\ngloom.\n\nLet us stop a moment and epitomize the steps we have taken. Jesus,\nthe Son of God, was a spirit in heaven. He came upon the earth in\nthe guise of humanity to undergo its whole experience and to be\nits redeemer. He died, passed through the vanquished kingdom of\nthe grave, and rose into heaven again, to exemplify to men that\nthrough the grace of God a way was opened to escape the under\nworld, the great external penalty of sin, and reach a better\ncountry, even a heavenly. From his seat at God's right hand, he\nshould ere long descend to complete God's designs in his mission,\njudge his enemies and lead his accepted followers to heaven. The\nall important thought running through the length and breadth of\nthe treatise is the ascension of Christ from the midst of the dead\n[non-ASCII characters]into the celestial presence, as the pledge of\nour ascent. \"Among the things of which we are speaking, this is the\ncapital consideration, [non-ASCII characters] the most essential\npoint, \"that we have such a high priest, who hath sat down at the\nright hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens.\" Neander\nsays, though apparently without perceiving the extent of its\nulterior significance, \"The conception of the resurrection in\nrelation to the whole Christian system lies at the basis of this\nepistle.\"\n\nA brief sketch and exposition of the scope of the epistle in\ngeneral will cast light and confirmation upon the interpretation\nwe have given of its doctrine of a future life in particular. The\none comprehensive design of the writer, it is perfectly clear, is\nto prove to the Christian converts from the Hebrews the\nsuperiority of Christianity to Judaism, and thus to arm them\nagainst apostasy from the new covenant to the ancient one. He\nbegins by showing that Christ, the bringer of the gospel, is\ngreater than the angels, by whom the law was given,19 and\nconsequently that his word is to be reverenced still more than\ntheirs.20 Next he argues that Jesus, the Christian Mediator, as\nthe Son of God, is crowned with more authority and is worthy of\nmore glory than Moses, the Jewish mediator, as the servant of God;\nand that as Moses led his people towards the rest of Canaan, so\nChrist leads his people towards the far better rest of heaven. He\nthen advances to demonstrate the superiority of Christ to the\nLevitical priesthood. This he establishes by pointing out the\nfacts that the Levitical priest had a transient honor, being after\nthe law of a carnal commandment, his offerings referring to the\nflesh, while Christ has an unchangeable priesthood, being after\nthe power of an endless life, his offering referring to the soul;\nthat the Levitical priest once a year went into the symbolic holy\nplace in the temple, unable to admit others, but Jesus rose into\nthe real holy place itself above, opening a way for all faithful\ndisciples to follow; and that the Hebrew temple and ceremonies\nwere but the small type and shadow of the grand archetypal temple\nin heaven, where Christ is the immortal High Priest, fulfilling in\nthe presence of God the completed reality of what Judaism merely\nminiatured, an emblematic pattern that could make nothing perfect.\n\"By him therefore let us continually offer to God the sacrifice of\npraise.\" The author intersperses, and closes with, exhortations to\nsteadfast faith, pure morals, and fervent piety.\n\nThere is one point in this epistle which deserves, in its\nessential connection with the doctrine of the future life, a\nseparate treatment. It is the subject of the Atonement. The\ncorrespondence between the sacrifices in the Hebrew ritual and the\nsufferings and death of Christ would, from the nature of the case,\nirresistibly suggest the sacrificial terms and metaphors which our\nauthor uses in a large part of his argument. Moreover, his precise\naim in writing compelled him to make these resemblances as\nprominent, as significant, and as effective as possible. Griesbach\nsays well, in his learned and able essay, \"When it was impossible\nfor the Jews, lately brought to the Christian faith, to tear away\nthe attractive associations of their ancestral religion, which\nwere twined among the very roots of their minds, and they were\nconsequently in danger of falling away from Christ, the most\ningenious author of this epistle met the case by a masterly\nexpedient. He instituted a careful comparison, showing the\nsuperiority of Christianity to Judaism even in regard to the very\npoint where the latter seemed so much more glorious, namely, in\npriesthoods, temples,\n\n19 Heb. i. 4 14, ii. 2; Acts vii. 53; Gal. iii.\n\n20 Heb. ii. 1 3.\n\n\naltars, victims, lustrations, and kindred things.\"21 That these\ncomparisons are sometimes used by the writer analogically,\nfiguratively, imaginatively, for the sake of practical\nillustration and impression, not literally as logical expressions\nand proofs of a dogmatic theory of atonement, is made sufficiently\nplain by the following quotations. \"The bodies of those beasts\nwhose blood is brought into the holy place by the high priest for\nsin are burned without the camp. Wherefore Jesus also, that he\nmight sanctify the people through his own blood, suffered without\nthe gate. Let us go forth therefore unto him without the camp,\nbearing his reproach.\" Every one will at once perceive that these\nsentences are not critical statements of theological truths, but\nare imaginative expressions of practical lessons, spiritual\nexhortations. Again, we read, \"It was necessary that the patterns\nof the heavenly things should be purified with sacrificed animals,\nbut the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than\nthese.\" Certainly it is only by an exercise of the imagination,\nfor spiritual impression, not for philosophical argument, that\nheaven can be said to be defiled by the sins of men on earth so as\nto need cleansing by the lustral blood of Christ. The writer also\nappeals to his readers in these terms: \"To do good and to\ncommunicate forget not; for with such sacrifices God is well\npleased.\" The purely practical aim and rhetorical method with\nwhich the sacrificial language is employed here are evident\nenough. We believe it is used in the same way wherever it occurs\nin the epistle.\n\nThe considerations which have convinced us, and which we think\nought to convince every unprejudiced mind, that the Calvinistic\nscheme of a substitutional expiation for sin, a placation of\nDivine wrath by the offering of Divine blood, was not in the mind\nof the author, and does not inform his expressions when they are\nrightly understood, may be briefly presented. First, the notion\nthat the suffering of Christ in itself ransomed lost souls, bought\nthe withheld grace and pardon of God for us, is confessedly\nforeign and repulsive to the instinctive moral sense and to\nnatural reason, but is supposed to rest on the authority of\nrevelation. Secondly, that doctrine is nowhere specifically stated\nin the epistle, but is assumed, or inferred, to explain language\nwhich to a superficial look seems to imply it,  perhaps even seems\nto be inexplicable without it;22 but in reality such a view is\ninconsistent with that language when it is accurately studied. For\nexample, notice the following passage: \"When Christ cometh into\nthe world,\" he is represented as saying, \"I come to do thy will, O\nGod.\" \"By the which will,\" the writer continues, \"we are\nsanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus.\" That is,\nthe death of Christ, involving his resurrection and ascension into\nheaven, fulfils and exemplifies the gracious purpose of God, not\npurchases for us an otherwise impossible benignity. The above\ncited explicit declaration is irreconcilable\n\n21 Opuscula: De Imaginibus Judaicis in Epist. ad Hebraos.\n\n22 That these texts were not originally understood as implying any\nvicarious efficacy in Christ's painful death, but as attributing a\ntypical power to his triumphant resurrection, his glorious return\nfrom the world of the dead into heaven, appears very plainly in\nthe following instance, Theodoret, one of the earliest explanatory\nwriters on the New Testament, says, while expressly speaking of\nChrist's death, the sufferings through which he was perfected,\n\"His resurrection certified a resurrection for us all.\" Comm. in\nEpist. ad Heb. cap. 2, v. 10.\n\n\nwith the thought that Christ came into the world to die that he\nmight appease the flaming justice and anger of God, and by\nvicarious agony buy the remission of human sins: it conveys the\nidea, on the contrary, that God sent Christ to prove and\nillustrate to men the free fulness of his forgiving love. Thirdly,\nthe idea, which we think was the idea of the author of the Epistle\nto the Hebrews, that Christ, by his death, resurrection, and\nascent, demonstrated to the faith of men God's merciful removal of\nthe supposed outward penalty of sin, namely, the banishment of\nsouls after death to the under world, and led the way, as their\nforerunner, into heaven, this idea, which is not shocking to the\nmoral sense nor plainly absurd to the moral reason, as the\nAugustinian dogma is, not only yields a more sharply defined,\nconsistent, and satisfactory explanation of all the related\nlanguage of the epistle, but is also which cannot be said of the\nother doctrine in harmony with the contemporary opinions of the\nHebrews, and would be the natural and almost inevitable\ndevelopment from them and complement of them in the mind of a\nPharisee, who, convinced of the death and ascension of the sinless\nJesus, the appointed Messiah, had become a Christian.\n\nIn support of the last assertion, which is the only one that needs\nfurther proof, we submit the following considerations. In the\nfirst place, every one familiar with the eschatology of the\nHebrews knows that at the time of Christ the belief prevailed that\nthe sin of Adam was the cause of death among men. In the second\nplace, it is equally well known that they believed the destination\nof souls upon leaving the body to be the under world. Therefore\ndoes it not follow by all the necessities of logic? they believed\nthat sin was the cause of the descent of disembodied spirits to\nthe dreary lower realm. In the third place, it is notorious and\nundoubted that the Jews of that age expected that, when the\nMessiah should appear, the dead of their nation, or at least a\nportion of them, would be raised from the under world and be\nreclothed with bodies, and would reign with him for a period on\nearth and then ascend to heaven. Now, what could be more natural\nthan that a person holding this creed, who should be brought to\nbelieve that Jesus was the true Messiah and after his death had\nrisen from among the dead into heaven, should immediately conclude\nthat this was a pledge or illustration of the abrogation of the\ngloomy penalty of sin, the deliverance of souls from the\nsubterranean prison, and their admission to the presence of God\nbeyond the sky? We deem this an impregnable position. Every\nrelevant text that we consider in its light additionally fortifies\nit by the striking manner in which such a conception fits, fills,\nand explains the words. To justify these interpretations, and to\nsustain particular features of the doctrine which they express,\nalmost any amount of evidence may be summoned from the writings\nboth of the most authoritative and of the simplest Fathers of the\nChurch, beginning with Justin Martyr,23 philosopher of Neapolis,\nat the close of the apostolic age, and ending with John Hobart,24\nBishop of New York, in the early part of the nineteenth century.\nWe refrain from adducing the throng of such authorities here,\nbecause they will be more appropriately brought forward in future\nchapters.\n\n23 Dial. cum Tryph. cap. v. et cap. lxxx.24 State of the Departed.\n\n\nThe intelligent reader will observe that the essential point of\ndifference distinguishing our exposition of the fundamental\ndoctrine of the composition in review, on the one hand, from the\nCalvinistic interpretation of it, and, on the other hand, from the\nUnitarian explanation of it, is this. Calvinism says that Christ,\nby his death, his vicarious pains, appeased the wrath of God,\nsatisfied the claims of justice, and purchased the salvation of\nsouls from an agonizing and endless hell. Unitarianism says that\nChrist, by his teachings, spirit, life, and miracles, revealed the\ncharacter of the Father, set an example for man, gave certainty to\ngreat truths, and exerted moral influences to regenerate men,\nredeem them from sin, and fit them for the blessed kingdom of\nimmortality. We understand the writer of the Epistle to the\nHebrews really to say in subtraction from what the Calvinist, in\naddition to what the Unitarian, says that Christ, by his\nresurrection from the tyrannous realm of death, and ascent into\nthe unbarred heaven, demonstrated the fact that God, in his\nsovereign grace, in his free and wondrous love, would forgive\nmankind their sins, remove the ancient penalty of transgression,\nno more dooming their disembodied spirits to the noiseless and\neverlasting gloom of the under world, but admitting them to his\nown presence, above the firmamental floor, where the beams of his\nchambers are laid, and where he reigneth forever, covered with\nlight as with a garment.\n\nCHAPTER III.\n\nDOCTRINE OF A FUTURE LIFE IN THE APOCALYPSE.\n\nBEFORE attempting to exhibit the doctrine of a future life\ncontained in the Apocalypse, we propose to give a brief account of\nwhat is contained, relating to this subject, in the Epistle of\nJames, the Epistle of Jude, and the (so called) Second Epistle of\nPeter.\n\nThe references made by James to the group of points included under\nthe general theme of the Future Life are so few and indirect, or\nvague, that it is impossible to construct any thing like a\ncomplete doctrine from them, save by somewhat arbitrary and\nuncertain suppositions. His purpose in writing, evidently, was\npractical exhortation, not dogmatic instruction. His epistle\ncontains no expository outline of a system; but it has allusions\nand hints which plainly imply some partial views belonging to a\nsystem, while the other parts of it are left obscure. He says that\n\"evil desire brings forth sin, and sin, when it is finished,\nbrings forth death.\" But whether he intended this text as a moral\nmetaphor to convey a spiritual meaning, or as a literal statement\nof a physical fact, or as a comprehensive enunciation including\nboth these ideas, there is nothing in the context positively to\ndetermine. He offers not the faintest clew to his conception of\nthe purpose of the death and resurrection of Christ. He uses the\nword for the Jewish hell but once, and then, undeniably, in a\nfigurative sense, saying that a \"curbless and defiling tongue is\nset on fire of Gehenna.\" He appears to adopt the common notion of\nhis contemporary countrymen in regard to demoniacal existences,\nwhen he declares that \"the devils believe there is one God, and\ntremble,\" and when he exclaims, \"Resist the devil, and he will\nflee from you.\" He insists on the necessity of a faith that\nevinces itself in good works and in all the virtues, as the means\nof acceptance with God. He compares life to a vanishing vapor,\ndenounces terribly the wicked and dissolute rich men who wanton in\ncrimes and oppress the poor. Then he calls on the suffering\nbrethren to be patient under their afflictions \"until the coming\nof the Lord;\" to abstain from oaths, be fervent in prayer, and\nestablish their hearts, \"for the coming of the Lord draweth nigh.\"\n\"Grudge not one against another, brethren, lest ye be condemned:\nbehold, the Judge standeth before the door.\" Here the return of\nChrist, to finish his work, sit in judgment, accept some, and\nreject others, is clearly implied. And if James held this element\nof the general scheme of eschatology held by the other apostles as\nshown in their epistles, it is altogether probable that he also\nembraced the rest of that scheme. There are no means of definitely\nascertaining whether he did or did not; though, according to a\nvery learned and acute theologian, another fundamental part of\nthat general system of doctrine is to be found in the last verse\nof the epistle, where James says that \"he who converts a sinner\nfrom the error of his ways shall save a soul from death and hide a\nmultitude of sins.\" Bretschneider thinks that saving a soul from\ndeath here means rescuing it from a descent into the under world,\nthe word death being often used in the New Testament as by the\nRabbins to denote the subterranean abode of the dead.1 This\n\n1 Bretschneider, Religiose Glaubenslehre, sect. 59.\n\n\ninterpretation may seem forced to an unlearned reader, who\nexamines the text for personal profit, but will not seem at all\nimprobable to one who, to learn its historic meaning, reads the\ntext in the lighted foreground of a mind over whose background\nlies a fitly arranged knowledge of all the materials requisite for\nan adequate criticism. For such a man was Bretschneider himself.\n\nThe eschatological implications and references in the Epistle of\nJude are of pretty much the same character and extent as those\nwhich we have just considered. A thorough study and analysis of\nthis brief document will show that it may be fairly divided into\nthree heads and be regarded as having three objects. First, the\nwriter exhorts his readers \"to contend earnestly for the faith\nonce delivered to the saints,\" \"to remember the words of Christ's\napostles,\" \"to keep themselves in the love of God, looking for\neternal life.\" He desires to stir them up to diligence in efforts\nto preserve their doctrinal purity and their personal virtue.\nSecondly, he warns them of the fearful danger of depravity, pride,\nand lasciviousness. This warning he enforces by several examples\nof the terrible judgments of God on the rebellious and wicked in\nother times. Among these instances is the case of the Cities of\nthe Plain, eternally destroyed by a storm of fire for their\nuncleanness; also the example of the fallen angels, \"who kept not\ntheir first estate, but left their proper habitation, and are\nreserved in everlasting chains and darkness unto the judgment of\nthe great day.\" The writer here adopts the doctrine of fallen\nangels, and the connected views, as then commonly received among\nthe Jews. This doctrine is not of Christian origin, but was drawn\nfrom Persian and other Oriental sources, as is abundantly shown,\nwith details, in almost every history of Jewish opinions, in\nalmost every Biblical commentary.2 In this connection Jude cites a\nlegend from an apocryphal book, called the \"Ascension of Moses,\"\nof which Origen gives an account.3 The substance of the tradition\nis, that, at the decease of Moses, Michael and Satan contended\nwhether the body should be given over to death or be taken up to\nheaven. The appositeness of this allusion is, that, while in this\nstrife the archangel dared not rail against Satan, yet the wicked\nmen whom Jude is denouncing do not hesitate to blaspheme the\nangels and to speak evil of the things which they know not. \"Woe\nunto such ungodly men: gluttonous spots, dewless clouds, fruitless\ntrees plucked up and twice dead, they are ordained to\ncondemnation.\" Thirdly, the epistle announces the second coming of\nChrist, in the last time, to establish his tribunal. The Prophecy\nof Enoch an apocryphal book, recovered during the present century\nis quoted as saying, \"Behold, the Lord cometh, with ten thousand\nof his saints, to execute judgment upon all, and to convict the\nungodly of their ungodly deeds.\"4 Jude, then, anticipated the\nreturn of the Lord, at \"the judgment of the great day,\" to judge\nthe world; considered the under world, or abode of the dead, not\nas a region of fire, but a place of imprisoning gloom, wherein \"to\ndefiled and blaspheming dreamers is reserved the blackness of\ndarkness forever;\"\n\n2 E. g. Stuart's Dissertation on the Angelology of the Scriptures,\npublished in vol. i. of the Bibliotheca Sacra.\n\n3 De Principiis, lib. iii. cap 2. See, also, in Michaelis's\nIntroduction to the New Testament, sect. 4 of the chapter on Jude.\n\n4 Book of Enoch, translated by Dr. R. Laurence, cap. ii.\n\n\nthought it imminently necessary for men to be diligent in striving\nto secure their salvation, because \"all sensual mockers, not\nhaving the spirit, but walking after their own ungodly lusts,\"\nwould be lost. He probably expected that, when all free\ncontingencies were past and Christ had pronounced sentence, the\ncondemned would be doomed eternally into the black abyss, and the\naccepted would rise into the immortal glory of heaven. He closes\nhis letter with these significant words, which plainly imply much\nof what we have just been setting forth: \"Everlasting honor and\npower, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be unto God, who is able to\nkeep you from falling and to present you faultless before the face\nof his glory with exceeding joy.\"5\n\nThe first chapter of the so called Second Epistle of Peter is not\noccupied with theological propositions, but with historical,\nethical, and practical statements and exhortations. These are,\nindeed, of such a character, and so expressed, that they clearly\npresuppose certain opinions in the mind of the writer. First, he\nevidently believed that a merciful and holy message had been sent\nfrom God to men by Jesus Christ, whereby are given unto us\nexceeding great and precious promises.\" The substance of these\npromises was \"a call to escape the corruption of the world, and\nenter into glory and be partakers of the Divine nature.\" By\npartaking of the Divine nature, we understand the writer to mean\nentering the Divine abode and condition, ascending into the safe\nand eternal joy of the celestial prerogatives. That the author\nhere denotes heaven by the term glory, as the other New Testament\nwriters frequently do, appears distinctly from the seventeenth and\neighteenth verses of the chapter, where, referring to the incident\nat the baptism of Jesus, he declares, \"There came a voice from the\nexcellent glory, saying, 'This is my beloved Son;' and this voice,\nwhich came from heaven, we heard.\" Secondly, our author regarded\nthis glorious promise as contingent on the fulfilment of certain\nconditions. It was to be realized by means of \"faith, courage,\nknowledge, temperance, patience, godliness, kindness, and love.\"\n\"He that hath these things shall never fall,\" \"but an entrance\nshall be ministered unto him abundantly into the everlasting\nkingdom of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.\" The writer\nfurnishes us no clew to his idea of the particular part performed\nby Christ in our salvation. He says not a word concerning the\nsufferings or death of the Savior; and the extremely scanty and\nindefinite allusions made to the relation in which Christ was\nsupposed to stand between God and men, and the redemption and\nreconciliation of men with God, do not enable us to draw any\ndogmatic conclusions. He speaks of \"false teachers, who shall\nbring in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought\nthem.\" But whether by this last phrase he means to imply a ransom\nof imprisoned souls from the under world by Christ's descent\nthither and victory over its powers, or a purchased exemption of\nsinners from their merited doom by the vicarious sufferings of\nChrist's death, or a practical regenerative redemption of\ndisciples from their sins by the moral influences of his mission,\nhis teachings, example, and character, there is nothing in the\nepistle clearly to decide; though, forming our judgment by the aid\nof other sources of information, we should conclude in favor of\nthe first of these three conceptions as most probably expressing\nthe writer's thought.\n\n5 Griesbuch's reading of the 25th verse of Jude.\n\n\nThe second chapter of the epistle is almost an exact parallel with\nthe Epistle of Jude: in many verses it is the same, word for word.\nIt threatens \"unclean, self willed, unjust, and blaspheming men,\"\nthat they shall \"be reserved unto the day of judgment, to be\npunished.\" It warns such persons by citing the example of the\nrebellious \"angels, who were thrust down into Tartarus, and\nfastened in chains of darkness until the judgment.\" It speaks of\n\"cursed children, to whom is reserved the mist of darkness\nforever.\" Herein, plainly enough, is betrayed the common notion of\nthe Jews of that time, the conception of a dismal under world,\ncontaining the evil angels of the Persian theology, and where the\nwicked were to be remanded after judgment and eternally\nimprisoned.\n\nThe third and last chapter is taken up with the doctrine of the\nsecond coming of Christ. \"Be mindful of the words of the prophets\nand apostles, knowing this first, that in the last days there\nshall be scoffers, who will say, 'Where is the promise of his\ncoming? for since the fathers fell asleep all things continue as\nfrom the beginning.'\" The writer meets this skeptical assertion\nwith denial, and points to the Deluge, \"whereby the world that\nthen was, being overflowed with water, perished.\" His argument is,\nthe world was thus destroyed once, therefore it may be destroyed\nagain. He then goes on to assert positively relying for authority\non old traditions and current dogmas that \"the heavens and the\nearth which are now are kept by the word of God in store to be\ndestroyed by fire in the day of judgment, when the perdition of\nungodly men shall be sealed.\" \"The delay of the Lord to fulfil his\npromise is not from procrastination, but from his long suffering\nwho is not willing that any should perish.\" He waits \"that all may\ncome to repentance.\" But his patience will end, and \"the day of\nGod come as a thief in the night, when the heavens, being on fire,\nshall pass away with a crash, and the elements melt with fervent\nheat.\" There are two ways in which these declarations may be\nexplained, though in either case the events they refer to are to\noccur in connection with the physical reappearance of Christ.\nFirst, they may be taken in a highly figurative sense, as meaning\nthe moral overthrow of evil and the establishment of righteousness\nin the world. Similar expressions were often used thus by the\nancient Hebrew prophets, who describe the triumphs of Israel and\nthe destruction of their enemies, the Edomites or the Assyrians,\nby the interposition of Jehovah's arm, in such phrases as these.\n\"The mountains melt, the valleys cleave asunder like wax before a\nfire, like waters poured over a precipice.\" \"The heavens shall be\nrolled up like a scroll, all their hosts shall melt away and fall\ndown; for Jehovah holdeth a great slaughter in the land of Edom:\nher streams shall be turned into pitch, and her dust into\nbrimstone, and her whole land shall become burning pitch.\" The\nsuppression of Satan's power and the setting up of the Messiah's\nkingdom might, according to the prophetic idiom, be expressed in\nawful images of fire and woe, the destruction of the old, and the\ncreation of a new, heaven and earth. But, secondly, this\nphraseology, as used by the writer of the epistle before us, may\nhave a literal significance,  may have been intended to predict\nstrictly that the world shall be burned and purged by fire at the\nsecond coming of the Lord. That such a catastrophe would take\nplace in the last day, or occurred periodically, was notoriously\nthe doctrine of the Persians and of the Stoics.6 For our own part,\nwe are convinced that the latter is the real meaning of the\nwriter. This seems to be shown alike by the connection of his\nargument, by the prosaic literality of detail with which he\nspeaks, and by the earnest exhortations he immediately bases on\nthe declaration he has made. He reasons that, since the world was\ndestroyed once by water, it may be again by fire. The deluge he\ncertainly regarded as literal: was not, then, in his conception,\nthe fire, too, literal? He says, with calm, prosaic precision,\n\"The earth and the works that are therein shall be burned up.\nSeeing, then, that all these things shall be dissolved, what\nmanner of persons ought ye to be in all holiness, looking for a\nnew heaven and a new earth, and striving that ye may be found by\nhim in peace, without spot, and blameless!\" We do not suppose this\nwriter expected the annihilation of the physical creation, but\nonly that the fire would destroy all unransomed creatures from its\nsurface, and thoroughly purify its frame, and make it clean and\nfit for a new race of sinless and immortal men.\n\n\"Tears shall not break from their full source,\nNor Anguish stray from her Tartarean den,\nThe golden years maintain a course\nNot undiversified, though smooth and even,\nWe not be mock'd with glimpse and shadow then,\nBright seraphs mix familiarly with men,\nAnd earth and sky compose a universal heaven.\"\n\nWe have now arrived at the threshold of the last book in the New\nTestament, that book which, in the words of Lucke, \"lies like a\nSphinx at the lofty outgate of the Bible.\" There are three modes\nof interpreting the Apocalypse, each of which has had numerous and\ndistinguished advocates. First, it may be regarded as a congeries\nof inspired prophecies, a scenic unfolding, with infallible\nforesight, of the chief events of Christian history from the first\ncentury till now, and onwards. This view the combined effect of\nthe facts in the case and of all the just considerations\nappropriate to the subject compels us to reject. There is no\nevidence to support it; the application of it is crowded with\negregious follies and absurdities. We thus simply state the result\nof our best investigation and judgment, for there is no space here\nto discuss it in detail. Secondly, the book may be taken as a\nsymbolic exhibition of the transitional crises, exposures,\nstruggles, and triumphs of the individual soul, a description of\npersonal experience, a picture of the inner life of the Christian\nin a hostile world. The contents of it can be made to answer to\nsuch a characterization only by the determined exercise of an\nunrestrained fancy, or by the theory of a double sense, as the\nSwedenborgians expound it. This method of interpreting the\nRevelation is adopted, not by scholarly thinkers, who, by the\nlight of learning and common sense, seek to discern what the\nwriter meant to express, but by those persons who go to the\nobscure document, with traditional superstition and lawless\nimaginations, to see what lessons they can find there for their\nexperimental guidance and edification. We suppose that every\nintelligent and informed student who has\n\n6 Cicero de Nat. Deorum, lib. ii. cap. 46. Also Ovid, Minucius\nFelix, Seneca, and other authorities, as quoted by Rosenmuller on\n2 Peter iii. 7.\n\n\nexamined the subject with candid independence holds it as an\nexegetical axiom that the Apocalypse is neither a pure prophecy,\nblazing full illumination from Patmos along the track of the\ncoming centuries, nor an exhaustive vision of the experience of\nthe faithful Christian disciple. We are thus brought to the third\nand, as we think, the correct mode of considering this remarkable\nwork. It is an outburst from the commingled and seething mass of\nopinions, persecutions, hopes, general experience, and expectation\nof the time when it was written. This is the view which would\nnaturally arise in the mind of an impartial student from the\nnature of the case, and from contemplating the fervid faith,\nsuffering, lowering elements, and thick coming events of the\napostolic age. It also strikingly corresponds with numerous\nexpress statements and with the whole obvious spirit and plan of\nthe work; for its descriptions and appeals have the vivid colors,\nthe thrilling tones, the significantly detailed allusions to\nexperiences and opinions and anticipations notoriously existing at\nthe time, which belong to present or immediately impending scenes.\nThis way of considering the Apocalypse likewise enables one who is\nacquainted with the early Jewish Christian doctrines, legends, and\nhopes, to explain clearly a large number of passages in it whose\nobscurity has puzzled many a commentator. We should be glad to\ngive various illustrations of this, if our limits did not confine\nus strictly to the one class of texts belonging to the doctrine of\na future life. Furthermore, nearly all the most gifted critics,\nsuch as Ewald, Bleek, Lucke, De Wette,  those whose words on such\nmatters as these are weightiest, now agree in concluding that the\nRevelation of John was a product springing out of the intense\nJewish Christian belief and experience of the age, and referring,\nin its dramatic scenery and predictions, to occurrences supposed\nto be then transpiring or very close at hand. Finally, this view\nin regard to the Apocalypse is strongly confirmed by a comparison\nof that production with the several other works similar to it in\ncharacter and nearly contemporaneous in origin. These apocryphal\nproductions were written or compiled according to the pretty\ngeneral agreement of the great scholars who have criticized them\nsomewhere between the beginning of the first century before, and\nthe middle of the second century after, Christ. We merely propose\nhere, in the briefest manner, to indicate the doctrine of a future\nlife contained in them, as an introduction to an exposition of\nthat contained in the New Testament Apocalypse.\n\nIn the TESTAMENT OF THE TWELVE PATRIARCHS it is written that \"the\nunder world shall be spoiled through the death of the Most\nExalted.\"7 Again, we read, \"The Lord shall make battle against the\ndevil, and conquer him, and rescue from him the captive souls of\nthe righteous. The just shall rejoice in Jerusalem, where the Lord\nshall reign himself, and every one that believes in him shall\nreign in truth in the heavens.\"8 Farther on the writer says of the\nLord, after giving an account of his crucifixion, \"He shall rise\nup from the under world and ascend into heaven.\"9 These extracts\nseem to imply the common doctrine of that time, that Christ\ndescended into the under world, freed the captive saints, and rose\ninto heaven, and would soon return to establish his throne in\nJerusalem, to reign there for a time with his accepted followers.\n\n7 See this book in Fabricii Codex Pseudepigraphus Veteris\nTestamenti, Test. Lev. sect. iv.\n\n8 Ibid. Test. Dan. sect. v.\n\n9 Ibid. Test. Benj. sect. ix.\n\n\nThe FOURTH BOOK OF EZRA contains scattered declarations and hints\nof the same nature.10 It describes a vision of the Messiah, on\nMount Zion, distributing crowns to those confessors of his name\nwho had died in their fidelity.11 The world is said to be full of\nsorrows and oppressions; and as the souls of the just ask when the\nharvest shall come,12 for the good to be rewarded and the wicked\nto be punished, they are told that the day of liberation is not\nfar distant, though terrible trials and scourges must yet precede\nit. \"My Son Jesus shall be revealed.\" \"My Son the Christ shall\ndie; and then a new age shall come, the earth shall give up the\ndead, sinners shall be plunged into the bottomless abyss, and\nParadise shall appear in all its glory.\"13 The \"Son of God will\ncome and consume his enemies with fire; but the elect will be\nprotected and made happy.\"14\n\nThe ASCENSION OF ISAIAH is principally occupied with an account of\nthe rapture of the soul of that prophet through the seven heavens,\nand of what he there saw and learned. It describes the descent of\nChrist, the beloved Son of God, through all the heavens, to the\nearth; his death; his resurrection after three days; his victory\nover Satan and his angels, who dwell in the welkin or higher\nregion of the air; and his return to the right hand of God.15 It\npredicts great apostasy and sin among the disciples of the\napostles, and much dissension respecting the nearness of the\nsecond advent of Christ.16 It emphatically declares that \"Christ\nshall come with his angels, and shall drag Satan and his powers\ninto Gehenna. Then all the saints shall descend from heaven in\ntheir heavenly clothing, and dwell in this world; while the saints\nwho had not died shall be similarly clothed, and after a time\nleave their bodies here, that they may assume their station in\nheaven. The general resurrection and judgment will follow, when\nthe ungodly will be devoured by fire.\"17 The author as Gesenius,\nwith almost all the rest of the critics, says was unquestionably a\nJewish Christian, and his principal design was to set forth the\nspeedy second coming of Christ, and the glorious triumph of the\nsaints that would follow with the condign punishment of the\nwicked.\n\nThe first book of the SIBYLLINE ORACLES contains a statement that\nin the golden age the souls of all men passed peacefully into the\nunder world, to tarry there until the judgment; a prediction of a\nfuture Messiah; and an account of his death, resurrection, and\nascension. The second book begins with a description of the\nhorrors that will precede the last time, threats against the\npersecuting tyrants, and promises to the faithful, especially to\nthe martyrs, and closes with an account of the general judgment,\nwhen Elijah shall come from heaven, consuming flames break out,\nall souls be summoned to the tribunal of God at whose right hand\nChrist will sit, the bodies of the dead be raised, the righteous\nbe purified, and the wicked be plunged into final ruin.\n\nThe fundamental thought and aim of the apocryphal BOOK OF ENOCH\nare the second coming of Christ to judge the world, the\nencouragement of the Christians, and the warning\n\n10 See the abstract of it given in section vi. of Stuart's\nCommentary on the Apocalypse.\n\n11 Cap. ii. 12 Cap. iv. 13 Cap. v., vii. 14 Cap. xiii., xvi.\n\n15 Ascensio Isaia Vatis, a Ricardo Laurence, cap. ix., x., xi.\n\n16 Ibid. cap. ii., iii.\n\n17 Ibid. cap. iv. 13-18.\n\n\nof their oppressors by declarations of approaching deliverance to\nthose and vengeance to these. This is transparent at frequent\nintervals through the whole book.18 \"Ye righteous, wait with\npatient hope: your cries have cried for judgment, and it shall\ncome, and the gates of heaven shall be opened to you.\" \"Woe to\nyou, powerful oppressors, false witnesses! for you shall suddenly\nperish.\" \"The voices of slain saints accusing their murderers, the\noppressors of their brethren, reach to heaven with interceding\ncries for swift justice.\"19 When that justice comes, \"the horse\nshall wade up to his breast, and the chariot shall sink to its\naxle, in the blood of sinners.\"20 The author teaches that the\nsouls of men at death go into the under world, \"a place deep and\ndark, where all souls shall be collected;\" \"where they shall\nremain in darkness till the day of judgment,\" the spirits of the\nrighteous being in peace and joy, separated from the tormented\nspirits of the wicked, who have spurned the Messiah and persecuted\nhis disciples.21 A day of judgment is at hand. \"Behold, he cometh,\nwith ten thousand of his saints, to execute judgment.\" Then the\nrighteous shall rise from the under world, be approved, become as\nangels, and ascend to heaven. But the wicked shall not rise: they\nremain imprisoned below forever.22 The angels descend to earth to\ndwell with men, and the saints ascend to heaven to dwell with\nangels.23 \"From beginning to end, like the Apocalypse, the book is\nfilled,\" says Professor Stuart, (and the most careless reader must\nremark it,) \"with threats for the wicked persecutors and\nconsolations for the suffering pious.\" A great number of\nremarkable correspondences between passages in this book and\npassages in the Apocalypse solicit a notice which our present\nsingle object will not allow us to give them here. An under world\ndivided into two parts, a happy for the good, a wretched for the\nbad; temporary woes prevailing on the earth; the speedy advent of\nChrist for a vindication of his power and his servants; the\nresurrection of the dead; the final translation of the accepted\ninto heaven, and the hopeless dooming of the rejected into the\nabyss, these are the features in the book before us which we are\nnow to remember.\n\nThere is one other extant apocryphal book whose contents are\nstrictly appropriate to the subject we have in hand, namely, the\nAPOCALYPSE OF JOHN.24 It claims to be the work of the Apostle John\nhimself. It represents John as going to Mount Tabor after the\nascension of Christ, and there praying that it may be revealed to\nhim when the second coming of Christ will occur, and what will be\nthe consequences of it. In answer to his request, a long and\nminute disclosure is made. The substance of it is, that, after\nfamines and woes, Antichrist will appear and reign three years.\nThen Enoch and Elijah will come to expose him; but they will die,\nand all men with them. The earth will be purified with fire, the\ndead will rise, Christ\n\n18 Book of Enoch, translated into English by Dr. R. Laurence. See\nparticularly the following places: i. 1 5; lii. 7; liv. 12; lxi.\n15; lxii. 14, 15; xciv.; xcv.; civ.\n\n19 Ibid. cap. ix. 9 11; xxii. 5 8; xlvii. 1-4.\n\n20 Ibid. cap. xcviii. 3.\n\n21 Ibid. cap. x. 6 9, 15, 16; xxii. 2 5, 11 13; cii. 6; ciii. 5.\n\n22 Ibid. cap. xxii. 14, 15; xlv. 2; xlvi. 4; 1. 1-4.\n\n23 cap. xxxviii. xl.\n\n24 See the abstract of it given in Lucke's Einleit. in die\nOffenbar. Joh., cap. 2, sect. 17.\n\n\nwill descend in pomp, with myriads of angels, and the judgment\nwill follow. The spirits of Antichrist will be hurled into a gulf\nof outer darkness, so deep that a heavy stone would not plunge to\nthe bottom in three years. Unbelievers, sinners, hypocrites, will\nbe cast into the under world; while true Christians are placed at\nthe right hand of Christ, all radiant with glory. The good and\naccepted will then dwell in an earthly paradise, with angels, and\nbe free from all evils.\n\nIn addition to these still extant Apocalypses, we have references\nin the works of the Fathers to a great many others long since\nperished; especially the Apocalypses of Adam, Abraham, Moses,\nElijah, Hystaspes, Paul, Peter, Thomas, Cerinthus, and Stephen. So\nfar as we have any clew, by preserved quotations or otherwise, to\nthe contents of these lost productions, they seem to have been\nmuch occupied with the topics of the avenging and redeeming advent\nof the Messiah, the final judgment of mankind, the supernal and\nsubterranean localities, the resurrection of the dead, the\ninauguration of an earthly paradise, the condemnation of the\nreprobate to the abyss beneath, the translation of the elect to\nthe Angelic realm on high. These works, all taken together, were\nplainly the offspring of the mingled mass of glowing faiths,\nsufferings, fears, and hopes, of the age they belonged to. An\nacquaintance with them will help us to appreciate and explain many\nthings in our somewhat kindred New Testament Apocalypse, by\nplacing us partially in the circumstances and mental attitude of\nthe writer and of those for whom it was written.\n\nThe Persian Jewish and Jewish Christian notions and\ncharacteristics of the Book of Revelation are marked and\nprevailing, as every prepared reader must perceive. The threefold\ndivision of the universe into the upper world of the angels, the\nmiddle world of men, and the under world of the dead; the keys of\nthe bottomless pit; the abode of Satan, the accuser, in heaven;\nhis revolt; the war in the sky between his seduced host and the\nangelic army under Michael, and the thrusting down of the former;\nthe banquet of birds on the flesh of kings, mighty men, and\nhorses; the battle of Gog and Magog; the tarrying of souls under\nthe altar of God; the temple in heaven containing the ark of the\ncovenant, and the scene of a various ritual service; the twelve\ngates of the celestial city bearing the names of the twelve tribes\nof the children of Israel, and the twelve foundations of the walls\nhaving the names of the twelve Apostles of the Lamb; the bodily\nresurrection and general judgment, and the details of its sequel,\nall these doctrines and specimens of imagery, with a hundred\nothers, carry us at once into the Zend Avesta, the Talmud, and the\nEbionitish documents of the earliest Christians, who mixed their\ninterpretations of the mission and teaching of Christ with the\npoetic visions of Zoroaster and the cabalistic dogmatics of the\nPharisees. 25\n\nIt is astonishing that any intelligent person can peruse the\nApocalypse and still suppose that it is occupied with prophecies\nof remote events, events to transpire successively in distant ages\nand various lands. Immediateness, imminency, hazardous urgency,\nswiftness, alarms, are written all over the book. A suspense,\nfrightfully thrilling, fills it, as if the world were holding its\nbreath in view of the universal crash that was coming with\nelectric velocity.\n\n25 See, e. g., Corrodi, Kritische Geschichte des Chiliasmus, band\nii. th. 3 7; Gfrorer, Geschichte Urchristenthums, abth. ii. kap.\n8 10; Schottgen in Apoc. xii. 6 9; ibid. in 2 Cor. v. 2.\n\n\nFour words compose the key to the Apocalypse: Rescue, Reward,\nOverthrow, Vengeance. The followers of Christ are now persecuted\nand slain by the tyrannical rulers of the earth. Let them be of\ngood cheer: they shall speedily be delivered. Their tyrants shall\nbe trampled down in \"blood flowing up to the horse bridles,\" and\nthey shall reign in glory. \"Here is the faith and the patience of\nthe saints,\" trusting that, if \"true unto death, they shall have a\ncrown of life,\" and \"shall not be hurt of the second death,\" but\nshall soon rejoice over the triumphant establishment of the\nMessiah's kingdom and the condign punishment of his enemies who\nare now \"making themselves drunk with the blood of the martyrs of\nJesus.\" The Beast, described in the thirteenth chapter, is\nunquestionably Nero; and this fact shows the expected\nimmediateness of the events pictured in connection with the rise\nand destruction of that monstrous despot.26 The truth of this\nrepresentation is sealed by the very first verses of the book,\nindicating the nature of its contents and the period to which they\nrefer: \"The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto him,\nto show unto his servants things which must shortly come to pass:\nBlessed are they who hear the words of this prophecy and keep\nthem; for the time is at hand.\"\n\nThis rescue and reward of the faithful, this overthrow and\npunishment of the wicked, were to be effected by the agency of a\nunique and sublime personage, who was expected very soon to\nappear, with an army of angels from heaven, for this purpose. The\nconception of the nature, rank, and offices of Jesus Christ which\nexisted in the mind of the writer of the Apocalypse is in some\nrespects but obscurely hinted in the words he employs; yet the\nrelationship of those words to other and fuller sources of\ninformation in the contemporaneous notions of his countrymen is\nsuch as to give us great help in arriving at his ideas. He\nrepresents Christ as distinct from and subordinate to God. He\nmakes Christ say, \"To him that overcometh I will give power over\nthe nations, even as I received of my Father.\" He characterizes\nhim as \"the beginning of the creation of God,\" and describes him\nas \"mounted on a white horse, leading the heavenly armies to war,\nand his name is called the Logos of God.\" These terms evidently\ncorrespond to the phrases in the introduction to the Gospel of\nJohn, and in the Book of the Wisdom of Solomon, where are unfolded\nsome portions of that great doctrine, so prevalent among the early\nFathers, which was borrowed and adapted by them from the Persian\nHonover, the Hebrew Wisdom, and the Platonic Logos.27 \"In the\nbeginning was the Logos, and the Logos was with God, and all\nthings were made by him;... and the Logos was made flesh and dwelt\namong us.\"28 \"God of our fathers, and Lord of mercy, who hast made\nall things by thy Logos.\"29 \"Thine almighty Logos leaped down from\nheaven from his royal throne, a fierce warrior, into the midst of\na land of destruction.\"30 \"Plainly enough, the Apocalyptic view of\nChrist is based on that profound Logos doctrine so copiously\n\n26 See the excursus by Stuart in his Commentary on the Apoc. xiii.\n18, which conclusively shows that the Beast could be no other than\nNero.\n\n27 Lucke, Einleitung in das Evang. Joh.\n\n28 Evang. Joh. i. 1, 3, 14.\n\n29 Wisdom of Solomon, ix. 1, 2.\n\n30 Ibid. xviii. 15.\n\n\ndeveloped in the writings of Philo Judaus and so distinctly\nendorsed in numerous passages of the New Testament. First, there\nis the absolute God. Next, there is the Logos, the first begotten\nSon and representative image of God, the instrumental cause of the\ncreation, the head of all created beings. This Logos, born into\nour world as a man, is Christ. Around him are clustered all the\nfeatures and actions that compose the doctrine of the last things.\nThe vast work of redemption and judgment laid upon him has in part\nbeen already executed, and in part remains yet to be done.\n\nWe are first to inquire, then, into the significance of what the\nwriter of the Apocalypse supposes has already been effected by\nChrist in his official relations between God and men, so far as\nregards the general subject of a life beyond the grave. A few\nbrief and vague but comprehensive expressions include all that he\nhas written which furnishes us a guide to his thoughts on this\nparticular. He describes Jesus, when advanced to his native\nsupereminent dignity in heaven, as the \"Logos, clothed in a\nvesture dipped in blood,\" and also as \"the Lamb that was slain,\"\nto whom the celestial throng sing a new song, saying, \"Thou hast\nredeemed us unto God by thy blood.\" Christ, he says, \"loved us,\nand washed us from our sins in his own blood.\" He represents the\nrisen Savior as declaring, \"I am he that liveth, and was dead,\nand, behold, I am alive for evermore, and have the keys of the\nunder world and of death.\" \"Jesus Christ,\" again he writes, \"is\nthe faithful witness, the first begotten from the dead.\" What,\nnow, is the real meaning of these pregnant phrases? What is the\ncomplete doctrine to which fragmentary references are here made?\nWe are confident that it is this. Mankind, in consequence of sin,\nwere alienated from God, and banished, after death, to Hades, the\nsubterranean empire of shadows. Christ, leaving his exalted state\nin heaven, was born into the world as a messenger, or \"faithful\nwitness,\" of surprising grace to them from God, and died that he\nmight fulfil his mission as the agent of their redemption, by\ndescending into the great prison realm of the dead, and, exerting\nhis irresistible power, return thence to light and life, and\nascend into heaven as the forerunner and pledge of the deliverance\nand ascension of others. Moses Stuart, commenting on the clause\n\"first begotten from the dead,\" says, \"Christ was in fact the\nfirst who enjoyed the privilege of a resurrection to eternal glory\nand he was constituted the leader of all who should afterwards be\nthus raised from the dead.\"31 All who had died, with the sole\nexception of Christ, were yet in the under world. He, since his\ntriumphant subdual of its power and return to heaven, possessed\nauthority over it, and would ere long summon its hosts to\nresurrection, as he declares: \"I was dead, and, behold, I am alive\nfor ever more, and have the keys of the under world.\" The figure\nis that of a conqueror, who, returning from a captured and subdued\ncity, bears the key of it with him, a trophy of his triumph and a\npledge of its submission. The text \"Thou hast redeemed us unto God\nby thy blood\" is not received in an absolutely literal sense by\nany theological sect whatever. The severest Calvinist does not\nsuppose that the physical blood shed on the cross is meant; but he\nexplains it as denoting the atoning efficacy of the vicarious\nsufferings of Christ. But this interpretation is as forced and\nconstructive an exposition as the one we have given, and is not\n\n31 Stuart, Comm. in Apoc. i. 5.\n\n\nwarranted by the theological opinions of the apostolic age, which\ndo, on the contrary, support and necessitate the other. The direct\nstatement is, that men were redeemed unto God by the blood of\nChrist. All agree that in the word \"blood\" is wrapped up a\nfigurative meaning. The Calvinistic dogma makes it denote the\nsatisfaction of the law of retributive justice by a substitutional\nanguish. We maintain that a true historical exegesis, with far\nless violence to the use of language, and consistently with known\ncontemporaneous ideas, makes it denote the death of Christ, and\nthe events which were supposed to have followed his death, namely,\nhis appearance among the dead, and his ascent to heaven,\npreparatory to their ascent, when they should no longer be exiled\nin Hades, but should dwell with God. Out of an abundance of\nillustrative authorities we will cite a few.\n\nAugustine describes \"the ancient saints\" as being \"in the under\nworld, in places most remote from the tortures of the impious,\nwaiting for Christ's blood and descent to deliver them.\"32\nEpiphanius says, \"Christ was the first that rose from the under\nworld to heaven from the time of the creation.\"33 Lactantius\naffirms, \"Christ's descent into the under world and ascent into\nheaven were necessary to give man the hope of a heavenly\nimmortality.\"34 Hilary of Poictiers says, \"Christ went down into\nHades for two reasons: first, to fulfil the law imposed on mankind\nthat every soul on leaving the body shall descend into the under\nworld, and, secondly, to preach the Christian religion to the\ndead.\"35 Chrysostom writes, \"When the Son of God cometh, the earth\nshall burst open, and all the men that ever were born, from Adam's\nbirth up to that day, shall rise up out of the earth.\"36 Irenaus\ntestifies, \"I have heard from a certain presbyter, who heard it\nfrom those who had seen the apostles and received their\ninstructions, that Christ descended into the under world, and\npreached the gospel and his own advent to the souls there, and\nremitted the sins of those who believed on him.\"37 Eusebius\nrecords that, \"after the ascension of Jesus, Thomas sent Thaddeus,\none of the Seventy, to Abgarus, King of Edessa. This disciple told\nthe king how that Jesus, having been crucified, descended into the\nunder world, and burst the bars which had never before been\nbroken, and rose again, and also raised with himself the dead that\nhad slept for ages; and how he descended alone, but ascended with\na great multitude to his Father; and how he was about to come\nagain to judge the living and the dead.\"38 Finally, we cite the\nfollowing undeniable statement from Daille's famous work on the\n\"Right Use of the Fathers:\" \"That heaven shall not be opened till\nthe second coming of Christ and the day of judgment, that during\nthis time the souls of all men, with a few exceptions, are shut up\nin the under world,  was held by Justin Martyr, Irenaus,\nTertullian, Augustine, Origen, Lactantius, Victorinus, Ambrose,\nChrysostom, Theodoret, OEcumenius, Aretas, Prudentius,\nTheophylact, Bernard,\n\n32 De Civitate Dei, lib. xx. cap. 15.\n\n33 In Resurrectionem Christi.\n\n34 Divin. Instit. lib. iv. cap. 19, 20.\n\n35 Hilary in Ps. cxviii. et cxix.\n\n36 Homil. in Rom. viii. 25.\n\n37 Adv. Hares. lib. iv. sect. 45.\n\n38 Ecc. Hist. lib. i. cap. 13.\n\n\nand many others, as is confessed by all. This doctrine is\nliterally held by the whole Greek Church at the present day. Nor\ndid any of the Latins expressly deny any part of it until the\nCouncil of Florence, in the year of our Lord 1439.\"39\n\nIn view of these quotations, and of volumes of similar ones which\nmight be adduced, we submit to the candid reader that the meaning\nmost probably in the mind of the writer of the Apocalypse when he\nwrote the words \"redemption by the Blood of Christ\" was this, the\nrescue certified to men by the commissioned power and devoted\nself sacrifice of Christ in dying, going down to the mighty\ncongregation of the dead, proclaiming good tidings, breaking the\nhopeless bondage of death and Hades, and ascending as the pioneer\nof a new way to God. If before his death all men were supposed to\ngo down to helpless confinement in the under world on account of\nsin, but after his resurrection the promise of an ascension to\nheaven was made to them through his gospel and exemplification,\nthen well might the grateful believers, fixing their hearts on his\nwilling martyrdom in their behalf, exclaim, \"He loved us, and\nwashed us from our sins in his own blood, and hath made us kings\nand priests unto God.\" It is certainly far more natural, far more\nreasonable, to suppose that the scriptural phrase \"the blood of\nChrist\" means \"the death of Christ,\" with its historical\nconsequences, than to imagine that it signifies a complicated and\nmysterious scheme of sacerdotal or ethical expiation, especially\nwhen that scheme is unrelated to contemporaneous opinion,\nirreconcilable withmorality,and confessedly nowhere plainly stated\nin Scripture, but a matter of late and laborious construction and\ninference. We have not spoken of the strictly moral and subjective\nmission and work of Christ, as conceived by the author of the\nApocalypse,  his influences to cleanse the springs of character,\npurify and inspire the heart, rectify and elevate the motives,\nregenerate and sanctify the soul and the life, because all this is\nplain and unquestioned. But he also believed in something\nadditional to this, an objective function: and what that was we\nthink is correctly explained above.\n\nWe are next to inquire more immediately into the closing parts of\nthe doctrine of the last things. Christ has appeared, declared the\ntidings of grace, died, visited the dead, risen victoriously, and\ngone back to heaven, where he now tarries. But there remain many\nthings for him, as the eschatological King, yet to do. What are\nthey? and what details are connected with them? First of all, he\nis soon to return from heaven, visiting the earth a second time.\nThe first chapter of the book begins by declaring that it is \"a\nrevelation of things which must shortly come to pass,\" and\n\"blessed is he that readeth; for the time is at hand.\" The last\nchapter is full of such repetitions as these: \"things which must\nshortly be done;\" \"Behold, I come quickly;\" \"The time is at hand;\"\n\"He that is unjust, let him be unjust still, and he that is holy,\nlet him be holy still;\" \"Surely I come quickly;\" \"Even so, come,\nLord Jesus.\" Herder says, in his acute and eloquent work on the\nApocalypse, \"There is but one voice in it, through all its\nepistles, seals, trumpets, signs, and plagues, namely, THE LORD IS\nCOMING!\" The souls of the martyrs, impatiently waiting, under the\naltar, the completion of the great drama, cry, \"How long, O Lord,\ndost thou delay to avenge our blood?\" and they are told that \"they\nshall\n\n39 Lib. ii. cap. 4, pp. 272, 273 of the English translation.\n\n\nrest only for a little season.\" Tertullian writes, without a trace\nof doubt, \"Is not Christ quickly to come from heaven with a\nquaking of the whole universe, with a shuddering of the world,\namidst the wailings of all men save the Christians?\" The\nApocalyptic seer makes Christ say, \"Behold, I come as a thief in\nthe night: blessed is he that watcheth.\" Accordingly, \"a sentinel\ngazed wherever a Christian prayed, and, though all the watchmen\ndied without the sight,\" the expectation lingered for centuries.\nThe Christians of the New Testament time to borrow the words of\none of the most competent of living scholars \"carried forward to\nthe account of Christ in years to come the visions which his stay,\nas they supposed, was too short to realize, and assigned to him a\nquick return to finish what was yet unfulfilled. The suffering,\nthe scorn, the rejection of men, the crown of thorns, were over\nand gone; the diadem, the clarion, the flash of glory, the troop\nof angels, were ready to burst upon the world, and might be looked\nfor at midnight or at noon.\"40\n\nSecondly, when Christ returned, he was to avenge the sufferings\nand reward the fidelity of his followers, tread the heathen\ntyrants in the wine press of his wrath, and crown the persecuted\nsaints with a participation in his glory. When \"the time of his\nwrath is come, he shall give reward to the prophets, and to the\nsaints, and to them that fear his name, and shall destroy them\nthat destroy the earth.\" \"The kings, captains, mighty men, rich\nmen, bondmen, and freemen, shall cry to the mountains and rocks,\nFall on us, and hide us from the wrath of the Lamb.\" \"To him that\novercometh, and doeth my works, I will give power over the\nGentiles;\" \"I will give him the morning star;\" \"I will grant him\nto sit with me on my throne.\" Independently, moreover, of these\ndistinct texts, the whole book is pervaded with the thought that,\nat the speedy second advent of the Messiah, all his enemies shall\nbe fearfully punished, his servants eminently compensated and\nglorified.41\n\nThirdly, the writer of the Apocalypse expected in accordance with\nthat Jewish anticipation of an earthly Messianic kingdom which was\nadopted with some modifications by the earliest Christians that\nJesus, on his return, having subdued his foes, would reign for a\nseason, in great glory, on the earth, surrounded by the saints. \"A\ndoor was opened in heaven,\" and the seer looked in, and saw a\nvision of the redeemed around the throne, and heard them \"singing\na new song unto the Lamb that was slain,\" in the course of which,\nparticularizing the favors obtained for them by him, they say, \"We\nshall reign upon the earth.\" Again, the writer says that \"the\nworshippers of the beast and of his image shall be tormented with\nfire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels, and in the\npresence of the Lamb.\" Now, the lake of sulphurous fire into which\nthe reprobate were to be thrust was located, not in the sky, but\nunder the surface of the earth. The foregoing statement,\ntherefore, implies that Christ and his angels would be tarrying on\nthe earth when the final woe of the condemned was inflicted. But\nwe need not rely on indirect arguments. The writer explicitly\ndeclares\n\n40 Martineau, Sermon, \"The God of Revelation his own Interpreter.\"\n\n41 It seems to have been a Jewish expectation that when the\nMessiah should appear he would thrust his enemies into Hades. In a\npassage of the Talmud Satan is represented as seeing the Messiah\nunder the Throne of Glory: he falls on his face at the sight,\nexclaiming, \"This is the Messiah, who will precipitate me and all\nthe Gentiles into the under world.\" Bertholdt, Christologia, sect.\n36.\n\n\nthat, in his vision of what was to take place, the Christian\nmartyrs, \"those who were slain for the witness of Jesus, lived and\nreigned with Christ a thousand years, while the rest of the dead\nlived not again until the thousand years were finished. This is\nthe first resurrection. Then Satan was loosed out of his prison,\nand gathered the hosts of Gog and Magog to battle, and went up on\nthe breadth of the earth and compassed the camp of the saints\nabout, and fire came down out of heaven and devoured them.\" It\nseems impossible to avoid seeing in this passage a plain statement\nof the millennial reign of Christ on the earth with his risen\nmartyrs.\n\nFourthly, at the termination of the period just referred to, the\nauthor of the Apocalypse thought all the dead would be raised and\nthe tribunal of the general judgment held. As Lactantius says,\n\"All souls are detained in custody in the under world until the\nlast day; then the just shall rise and reign; afterwards there\nwill be another resurrection of the wicked.\"42 \"The time of the\ndead is come, that they should be judged.\" \"And I saw the dead,\nsmall and great, stand before God; and the books were opened, and\nthe dead were judged out of those things which were written in the\nbooks, according to their works. And the sea gave up the dead\nwhich were in it, and death and the under world delivered up the\ndead which were in them, and they were judged, every man according\nto his works.\" \"Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first\nresurrection: on such the second death hath no power, but they\nshall be priests of God and of Christ, and reign with him a\nthousand years.\" This text, with its dark and tacit reference by\ncontrast to those who have no lot in the millennial kingdom,\nbrings us to the next step in our exposition.\n\nFor, fifthly, after the general resurrection and judgment at the\nclose of the thousand years, the sentence of a hopeless doom to\nhell is to be executed on the condemned. \"Whosoever was not found\nwritten in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire.\" \"The\nfearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and\nwhoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall\nhave their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone;\nwhich is the second death.\" The \"second death\" is a term used by\nOnkelos in his Targum,43 and sometimes in the Talmud, and by the\nRabbins generally. It denotes, as employed by them, the return of\nthe wicked into hell after their summons thence for judgment.44 In\nthe Apocalypse, its relative meaning is this. The martyrs, who\nwere slain for their allegiance to the gospel, died once, and\ndescended into the under world, the common realm of death. At the\ncoming of Christ they were to rise and join him, and to die no\nmore. This was the first resurrection. At the close of the\nmillennium, all the rest of the dead were to rise and be judged,\nand the rejected portion of them were to be thrust back again\nbelow. This was a second death for them, a fate from which the\nrighteous were exempt. There was a difference, greatly for the\nworse in the latter, between their condition in the two deaths. In\nthe former they descended to the dark under world, the silent and\ntemporary abode of the universal dead; but in the latter they went\ndown \"into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the devil and the\nbeast and the false prophet are, and shall be tormented day and\nnight for\n\n42 Divin. Instit. lib. vii. cap. 20, 21, 26.\n\n43 on Deut. xxxiii. 6.\n\n44 Gfrorer, Geschichte des Urchristenthums, kap. 10. s. 289.\n\n\never and ever.\" For \"Death and Hades, having delivered up the dead\nwhich were in them, were cast into the lake of fire. This is the\nsecond death.\" It is plain that here the common locality of\ndeparted souls is personified as two demons, Death and Hades, and\nthe real thought meant to be conveyed is, that this region is to\nbe sunk beneath a \"Tartarean drench,\" which shall henceforth roll\nin burning billows over its victims there, \"the smoke of their\ntorment ascending up for ever and ever.\" This awful imagery of a\nlake of flaming sulphur, in which the damned were plunged, was of\ncomparatively late origin or adoption among the Jews, from whom\nthe Christians received it. The native Hebrew conception of the\nstate of the dead was that of the voiceless gloom and dismal\nslumber of Sheol, whither all alike went. The notion of fiery\ntortures inflicted there on the wicked was either conceived by the\nPharisees from the loathed horrors of the filth fire kept in the\nvale of Hinnom, outside of Jerusalem, (which is the opinion of\nmost commentators,) or was imagined from the sea of burning\nbrimstone that showered from heaven and submerged Sodom and\nGomorrah in a vast fire pool, (which is maintained by\nBretschneider and others,) or was derived from the Egyptians, or\nthe Persians, or the Hindus, or the Greeks, all of whom had lakes\nand rivers of fire in their theological hells, long before history\nreveals the existence of such a belief among the Jews, (which is\nthe conclusion of many learned authors and critics.)\n\nWe have now reached the last feature in the scheme of eschatology\nshadowed forth in the Apocalypse, the most obscure and difficult\npoint of all, namely, the locality and the principal elements of\nthe final felicity of the saved. The difficulty of clearly\nsettling this question is twofold, arising, first, from the swift\nand partial glimpses which are all that the writer yields us on\nthe subject, and, secondly, from the impossibility of deciding\nwith precision how much of his language is to be regarded as\nfigurative and how much as literal, where the poetic presentation\nof symbol ends and where the direct statement of fact begins. A\nlarge part of the book is certainly written in prophetic figures\nand images, spiritual visions, never meant to be accepted in a\nprosaic sense with severe detail. And yet, at the same time, all\nthese imaginative emblems were, unquestionably, intended to\nforeshadow, in various kinds and degrees, doctrinal conceptions,\nhopes, fears, threats, promises, historical realities, past,\npresent, or future. But to separate sharply the dress and the\nsubstance, the superimposed symbols and the underlying realities,\nis always an arduous, often an impossible, achievement. The writer\nof the Apocalypse plainly believed that the souls of all, except\nthe martyrs, at death descended to the under world, and would\nremain there till after the second coming of Christ. But whether\nhe thought that the martyrs were excepted, and would at death\nimmediately rise into heaven and there await the fulfilment of\ntime, is a disputed point. For our own part, we think it extremely\ndoubtful, and should rather decide in the negative. In the first\nplace, his expressions on this subject seem essentially\nfigurative. He describes the prayers of the saints as being poured\nout from golden vials and burned as incense on a golden altar in\nheaven before the throne of God. \"Under that altar,\" he says, \"I\nsaw the souls of them that were slain for the word of God.\" If the\nsouls of the martyrs, in his belief, were really admitted into\nheaven, would he have conceived of them as huddled under the altar\nand not walking at liberty? Does not the whole idea appear rather\nlike a rhetorical image than like a sober theological doctrine?\nTrue, the scene is pictured in heaven; but then it is a picture,\nand not a conclusion. With De Wette, we regard it, not as a\ndogmatic, but as a poetical and prophetic, representation. And\nin regard to the seer's vision of the innumerable company of the\nredeemed in heaven, surrounding the throne and celebrating the\npraises of God and the Lamb, surely it is obvious enough that\nthis, like the other affiliated visions, is a vision, by\ninspired insight, in the present tense, of what is yet to\noccur in the successive unfolding of the rapid scenes in the\ngreat drama of Christ's redemptive work, a prophetic vision of\nthe future, not of what already is. We know that in Tertullian's\ntime the idea was entertained by some that Christian martyrs, as\na special allotment, should pass at once from their sufferings to\nheaven, without going, as all others must, into the under world;\nbut the evidence preponderates with us, upon the whole, that no\nsuch doctrine is really implied in the Apocalypse. In the\nfourteenth chapter, the author describes the hundred and forty\nfour thousand who were redeemed from among men, as standing with\nthe Lamb on Mount Zion and hearing a voice from heaven singing a\nnew song, which no man, save the hundred and forty four thousand,\ncould learn. The probabilities are certainly strongest that this\ngreat company of the selected \"first fruits unto God and the\nLamb,\" now standing on the earth, had not yet been in heaven; for\nthey only learn the heavenly song which is sung before the throne\nby hearing it chanted down from heaven in a voice like\nmultitudinous thunders.\n\nFinally, the most convincing proof that the writer did not suppose\nthat the martyrs entered heaven before the second advent of\nChrist a proof which, taken by itself, would seem to leave no\ndoubt on the subject is this. In the famous scene detailed in the\ntwentieth chapter usually called by commentators the martyr scene\nit is said that \"the souls of them that were beheaded for the word\nof God, and which had not worshipped the beast, lived and reigned\nwith Christ a thousand years. This is the first resurrection.\"\nNow, is it not certain that if the writer supposed these souls had\nnever been in the under world, but in heaven, he could not have\ndesignated their preliminary descent from above as \"the first\nresurrection,\" the first rising up? That phrase implies, we think,\nthat all the dead were below: the faithful and chosen ones were to\nrise first to reign a while with Jesus, and after that the rest\nshould rise to be judged. After that judgment, which was expected\nto be on earth in presence of the descended Lamb and his angels,\nthe lost were to be plunged, as we have already seen, into the\nsubterranean pit of torture, the unquenchable lake of fire. But\nwhat was to become of the righteous and redeemed? Whether, by the\nApocalyptic representation, they were to remain forever on earth,\nor to ascend into heaven, is a question which has been zealously\ndebated for over sixteen hundred years, and in some theological\ncircles is still warmly discussed. Were the angels who came down\nto the earth with Christ to the judgment never to return to their\nnative seats? Were they permanently to transfer their deathless\ncitizenship from the sky to Judea? Were the constitution of human\nnature and the essence of human society to be abrogated, and the\nmembers of the human family to cease enlarging, lest they should\noverflow the borders of the world? Was God himself literally to\ndesert his ancient abode, and, with the celestial city and all its\nangelic hierarchy, float from the desolated firmament to Mount\nZion, there to set up the central eternity of his throne. We\ncannot believe that such is the meaning, which the seer of the\nApocalypse wished to convey by his symbolic visions and pictures,\nany more than we can believe that he means literally to say that\nhe saw \"a woman in heaven clothed with the sun, and the moon under\nher feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars,\" or that\nthere were actually \"armies in heaven, seated on white horses\nand clothed in fine linen, white and clean, which is the\nrighteousness of saints.\" Our conviction is that he expected\nthe Savior would ascend with his angels and the redeemed\ninto heaven, the glorious habitation of God above the sky. He\nspeaks in one place of the \"temple of God in heaven, into which no\nman could enter until the seven plagues were fulfilled,\" and in\nanother place says that the \"great multitude of the redeemed are\nbefore the throne of God in heaven, and serve him day and night in\nhis temple;\" and in still another place he describes two prophets,\nmessengers of God, who had been slain, as coming to life, \"and\nhearing a great voice from heaven saying to them, 'Come up\nhither;' and they ascended up to heaven in a cloud, and their\nenemies beheld them.\" De Wette writes, \"It is certain that an\nabstract conception of heavenly blessedness with God duskily\nhovers over the New Testament eschatology.\" We think this is true\nof the Book of Revelation.\n\nIt was a Persian Jewish idea that the original destination of man,\nhad he not sinned, was heaven. The apostles thought it was a part\nof the mission of Christ to restore that lost privilege. We think\nthe writer of the Apocalypse shared in that belief. His allusions\nto a new heaven and a new earth, and to the descent of a New\nJerusalem from heaven, and other related particulars, are symbols\nneither novel nor violent to Jewish minds, but both familiar and\nexpressive, to denote a purifying glorification of the world, the\ninstallation of a divine kingdom, and the brilliant reign of\nuniversal righteousness and happiness among men, as if under the\nvery eyes of the Messiah and the very sceptre of God. The\nChristians shall reign in Jerusalem, which shall be adorned with\nindescribable splendors and shall be the centre of a world wide\ndominion, the saved nations of the earth surrounding it and\n\"walking in the light of it, their kings bringing their glory and\nhonor into it.\" \"God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes,\nand there shall be no more death.\" That is, upon the whole, as we\nunderstand the scattered hints relevant to the subject to imply,\nwhen Christ returns to the Father with his chosen, he will leave a\nregenerated earth, with Jerusalem for its golden and peerless\ncapital, peopled, and to be peopled, with rejoicing and immortal\nmen, who will keep the commandments, be exempt from ancient evils,\nhold intimate communion with God and the Lamb, and, from\ngeneration to generation, pass up to heaven through that swift and\npainless change, alluded to by Paul, whereby it was intended at\nthe first that sinless man, his corruptible and mortal putting on\nincorruption and immortality, should be fitted for the\ncompanionship of angels in the pure radiance of the celestial\nworld, and should be translated thither without tasting the\nbitterness of death, which was supposed to be the subterranean\nbanishment of the disembodied ghost.\n\nCHAPTER IV.\n\nPAUL'S DOCTRINE OF A FUTURE LIFE.\n\nTHE principal difficulty in arriving at the system of thought and\nfaith in the mind of Paul arises from the fragmentary character of\nhis extant writings. They are not complete treatises drawn out in\nindependent statements,butspecial letters full of latent\nimplications. They were written to meet particular emergencies, to\ngive advice, to convey or ask information and sympathy, to argue\nor decide concerning various matters to a considerable extent of a\npersonal or local and temporal nature. Obviously their author\nnever suspected they would be the permanent and immensely\ninfluential documents they have since become. They were not\ncomposed as orderly developments or full presentations of a creed,\nbut rather as supplements to more adequate oral instruction\npreviously imparted. He says to the Thessalonians, \"Brethren,\nstand fast and hold the traditions which ye have been taught,\nwhether by word or by our epistle.\" Several of his letters also\nperhaps many have been lost. He exhorts the Colossians to \"read\nlikewise the epistle from Laodicea.\" In his present First Epistle\nto the Corinthians he intimates that he had previously\ncorresponded with them, in the words, \"I wrote to you in a\nletter.\" There are good reasons, too, for supposing that he\ntransmitted other epistles of which we have now no account. Owing,\ntherefore, to the facts that his principal instructions were given\nby word of mouth, and that his surviving writings set forth no\nsystematic array of doctrines, we have no choice left, if we\ndesire to know what his opinions concerning the future life were,\nwhen deduced and arranged, but to exercise our learning and our\nfaculties upon the imperfect discussions and the significant hints\nand clews in his extant epistles. Bringing these together, in the\nlight of contemporary Pharisaic and Christian conceptions and\nopinions, we may construct a system from them which will represent\nhis theory; somewhat as the naturalist from a few fragmentary\nbones describes the entire skeleton to which they belonged. As we\nproceed to follow this process, we must particularly remember the\nleading notions in the doctrinal belief of the Jews at that\nperiod, and the fact that Paul himself was \"brought up at the feet\nof Gamaliel,\" \"after the most straitest order of the sect, a\nPharisee.\" When on trial at Jerusalem, he cried, \"Men and\nbrethren, I am a Pharisee, the son of a Pharisee: of the hope of\nthe resurrection of the dead I am called in question.\" We can\nhardly suppose that he would entirely throw off the influence and\nform of the Pharisaic dogmas and grasp Christianity in its pure\nspirituality. It is most reasonable to expect what we shall find\nactually the fact that he would mix the doctrinal and emotional\nresults of his Pharisaic training with the teachings of Christ,\nthus forming a composite system considerably modified from any\nthen existing. Indeed, a great many obscure texts in Paul may be\nmade perspicuous by citations from the old Talmudists. Considering\nthe value and the importance of this means of illustrating the New\nTestament, it is neglected by modern commentators in a very\nremarkable manner.\n\nIn common with his countrymen and the Gentiles, Paul undoubtedly\nbelieved in a world of light and bliss situated over the sky,\nwhere the Deity, surrounded by his angels, reigns in immortal\nsplendor. According to the Greeks, Zeus and the other gods,\nwith a few select heroes, there lived an imperishable life.\nAccording to the Hebrews, there was \"the house of Jehovah,\" \"the\nhabitation of eternity,\" \"the world of holy angels.\" The Old\nTestament contains many sublime allusions to this place. Jacob in\nhis dream saw a ladder set up that reached unto heaven, and the\nangels were ascending and descending upon it. Fixing his eyes upon\nthe summit, the patriarch exclaimed, not referring, as is commonly\nsupposed, to the ground on which he lay, but to the opening in the\nsky through which the angels were passing and repassing, \"Surely\nthis is the house of God and this the gate of heaven.\" Jehovah is\ndescribed as \"riding over the heaven of heavens;\" as \"treading\nupon the arch of the sky.\" The firmament is spoken of as the solid\nfloor of his abode, where \"he layeth the beams of his chambers in\nthe waters,\" the \"waters above,\" which the Book of Genesis says\nwere \"divided from the waters beneath.\" Though this divine world\non high was in the early ages almost universally regarded as a\nlocal reality, it was not conceived by Jews or Gentiles to be the\ndestined abode of human souls. It was thought to be exclusively\noccupied by Jehovah and his angels, or by the gods and their\nmessengers. Only here and there were scattered a few dim\ntraditions, or poetic myths, of a prophet, a hero, a god descended\nman, who, as a special favor, had been taken up to the supernal\nmansions. The common destination of the disembodied spirits of men\nwas the dark,stupendous realms of the under world. As Augustine\nobserves, \"Christ died after many; he rose before any: by dying he\nsuffered what many had suffered before; by rising he did what no\none had ever done before.\"1 These ideas of the celestial and the\ninfernal localities and of the fate of man were of course\nentertained by Paul when he became a Christian. A few texts by way\nof evidence of this fact will here suffice. \"That at the name of\nJesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, and those on\nearth, and those under the earth.\" \"He that descended first into\nthe lower parts of the earth is the same also that ascended up far\nabove all heavens.\" The untenableness of that explanation which\nmakes the descent into the lower parts of the earth refer to\nChrist's descent to earth from his pre existent state in heaven\nmust be evident, as it seems to us, to every mind. Irenaus,\ndiscussing this very text from Ephesians, exposes the absurdity\nand stigmatizes the heresy of those who say that the infernal\nworld is this earth, (\"qui dicunt inferos quidem esse hunc\nmundum.\")2 \"I knew a man caught up to the third heaven, . . .\ncaught up into paradise.\" The threefold heaven of the Jews, here\nalluded to, was, first, the region of the air, supposed to be\ninhabited by evil spirits. Paul repeatedly expresses this idea, as\nwhen he speaks of \"the prince of the power of the air, the spirit\nthat worketh in the children of disobedience,\" and when he says,\n\"For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against\nprincipalities, against powers, against the rulers of the\ndarkness, against wicked spirits in heavenly places.\" The second\nheaven comprised the region of the planetary bodies. The third lay\nbeyond the firmament, and was the actual residence of God and the\nangelic hosts. These quotations, sustained as they are by the\nwell known previous opinions of the Jews, as well as by numerous\nunequivocal texts in the writings of the other apostles and by\nmany additional ones in those\n\n1 Enarratio in Psalmum XC.\n\n2 Adv. Hares. lib. v. cap. 31.\n\n\nof Paul, are conclusive evidence that he believed in the received\nheaven above the blue ether and stellar dome, and in the received\nHadean abyss beneath the earth. In the absence of all evidence to\nthe contrary, every presumption justifies the supposition that he\nalso believed  as we know all his orthodox contemporaries did that\nthat under world was the abode of all men after death, and that\nthat over world was solely the dwelling place of God and the\nangels. Nay, we are not left to conjecture; for he expressly\ndeclares of God that he \"dwelleth in the light which no man can\napproach unto.\" This conclusion will be abundantly established in\nthe course of the following exposition.\n\nWith these preliminaries, we are prepared to see what was Paul's\ndoctrine of death and of salvation. There are two prevalent\ntheories on this subject, both of which we deem partly scriptural,\nneither of them wholly so. On the one extreme, the consistent\ndisciple of Augustine the historic Calvinist attributes to the\napostle the belief that the sin of Adam was the sole cause of\nliteral death, that but for Adam's fall men would have lived on\nthe earth forever or else have been translated bodily to heaven\nwithout any previous process of death. That such really was not\nthe view held by Paul we are convinced. Indeed, there is one\nprominent feature in his faith which by itself proves that the\ndisengagement of the soul from the material frame did not seem to\nhim an abnormal event caused by the contingency of sin. We refer\nto his doctrine of two bodies, the \"outward man\" and the \"inward\nman,\" the \"earthly house\" and the \"heavenly house,\" the \"natural\nbody\" and the \"spiritual body.\" Neander says this is \"an express\nassertion\" of Paul's belief that man was not literally made mortal\nby sin, but was naturally destined to emerge from the flesh into a\nhigher form of life.3 Paul thought that, in the original plan of\nGod, man was intended to drop his gross, corruptible body and put\non an incorruptible one, like the \"glorious body\" of the risen\nChrist. He distinctly declares, \"Flesh and blood cannot inherit\nthe kingdom of God.\" Therefore, we cannot interpret the word\n\"death\" to mean merely the separation of the soul from its present\ntabernacle, when he says, \"By one man sin entered into the world,\nand death by sin; and so death passed upon all men.\" On the other\nextreme, the fully developed Pelagian the common Unitarian holds\nthat the word \"death\" is always used in the arguments of Paul in a\nspiritual or figurative sense, merely meaning moral alienation\nfrom God in guilt, misery, and despair. Undoubtedly it is used\nthus in many instances, as when it is written, \"I was alive\nwithout the law once; but, when the commandment came, sin rose to\nlife, and I died.\" But in still more numerous cases it means\nsomething more than the consciousness of sin and the resulting\nwretchedness in the breast, and implies something external,\nmechanical, visible, as it were. For example, \"Since by man came\ndeath, by man came also the resurrection of the dead.\" Any one who\nreads the context of this sentence may see that the terms \"death\"\nand \"resurrection\" antithetically balance each other, and refer\nnot to an inward experience, but to an outward event, not to a\nmoral change, but to the physical descent and resurrection. It is\ncertain that here the words are not employed in a moral sense. The\nphraseology Paul uses in stating the connection of the sin of Adam\nwith death, the connection of the resurrection of Christ with\nimmortal life, is too peculiar, emphatic, and extensive not to be\nloaded with\n\n3 Planting and Training, Ryland's trans. p. 240.\n\n\na more general and vivid significance than the simple unhappiness\nof a sense of guilt, the simple peace and joy of a reconciled\nconscience. The advocates, then, of both theories the Calvinist\nasserting that Paul supposed sin to be the only reason why we do\nnot live eternally in the world with our present organization, and\nthe Rationalist asserting that the apostle never employs the word\n\"death\" except with a purely interior signification are alike\nbeset by insuperable difficulties, perplexed by passages which\ndefy their fair analysis and force them either to use a violent\ninterpretation or to confess their ignorance.\n\nWe must therefore seek out some third view, which, rejecting the\nerrors, shall combine the truths and supply the defects of the two\nformer. We have now to present such a view, a theory of the\nPauline doctrine of the last things which obviously explains and\nfills out all the related language of the epistles. We suppose he\nunfolded it fully in his preaching, while in his supplementary and\npersonal letters he only alludes to such disconnected parts of it\nas then rose upon his thoughts. A systematic development of it as\na whole, with copious allusions and labored defences, was not\nneeded then, as it might seem to us to have been. For the\nfundamental notions on which it rested were the common belief of\nthe nation and age. Geology and astronomy had not disturbed the\ncredit of a definitely located Hades and heaven, nor had free\nmetaphysics sharpened the common mind to skeptical queries. The\nview itself, as we conceive it occupied the mind of Paul, is this.\nDeath was a part of the creative plan for us from the first,\nsimply loosing the spirit from its corruptible body, clothing it\nwith an ethereal vehicle, and immediately translating it to\nheaven. Sin marred this plan, alienated us from the Divine favor,\nintroduced all misery, physical and moral, and doomed the soul,\nupon the fall of its earthly house, to descend into the slumberous\ngloom of the under world. Thus death was changed from a pleasant\norganic fulfilment and deliverance, spiritual investiture and\nheavenly ascent, to a painful punishment condemning the naked\nghost to a residence below the grave. As Ewald says, through\nAdam's sin \"death acquired its significance as pain and\npunishment.\"4 Herein is the explanation of the word \"death\" as\nused by Paul in reference to the consequence of Adam's offence.\nChrist came to reveal the free grace and gift of God in redeeming\nus from our doom and restoring our heavenly destiny. This he\nexemplified, in accordance with the Father's will, by dying,\ndescending into the dreary world of the dead, vanquishing the\nforces there, rising thence, and ascending to the right hand of\nthe throne of heaven as our forerunner. On the very verge of the\ntheory just stated as Paul's, Neander hovers in his exposition of\nthe apostle's views, but fails to grasp its theological scope and\nconsequences. Krabbe declares that \"death did not arise from the\nnative perishableness of the body, but from sin.\"5 This statement\nNeander controverts, maintaining that \"sin introduced no essential\nchange in the physical organization of man, but merely in the\nmanner in which his earthly existence terminates. Had it not been\nfor sin, death would have been only the form of a higher\ndevelopment of life.\"6 Exactly so. With innocence, the soul at\ndeath\n\n4 Sendschreiben des Apostels Paulus, s. 210.\n\n5 Die Lehre von oer Sunde und vom Tode, cap. xi, s. 192.\n\n6 Neander's Planting and Training, book vi. ch. 1.\n\n\nwould have ascended pleasantly, in a new body, to heaven; but sin\ncompelled it to descend painfully, without any body, to Hades. We\nwill cite a few of the principal texts from which this general\noutline has been inferred and constructed.\n\nThe substance of the fifth chapter of the Epistle to the Romans\nmay be thus stated. As by the offence of one, sin entered into the\nworld, and the judgment of the law came upon all men in a sentence\nof condemnation unto death, so by the righteousness of one, the\nfree gift of God came upon all men in a sentence of justification\nunto life; that as sin, by Adam's offence, hath reigned unto\ndeath, so grace, by Christ's righteousness, might reign unto\neternal life. Now, we maintain that the words \"death\" and \"life\"\ncannot in the present instance be entirely explained, in a\nspiritual sense, as signifying disturbance and woe in the breast,\nor peace and bliss there, because the whole connected discourse is\nnot upon the internal contingent experience of individuals, but\nupon the common necessity of the race, an objective sentence\npassed upon humanity, followed by a public gift of reversal and\nannulment. So, too, we deny that the words can be justly taken, in\ntheir strictly literal sense, as meaning cessation or continuance\nof physical existence on the earth, because, in the first place,\nthat would be inconsistent with the doctrine of a spiritual body\nwithin the fleshly one and of a glorious inheritance reserved in\nheaven, a doctrine by which Paul plainly shows that he recognised\na natural organic provision, irrespective of sin, for a change in\nthe form and locality of human existence. Secondly, we submit that\ndeath and life here cannot mean departure from the body or\ncontinuance in it, because that is a matter with which Christ's\nmission did in no way interfere, but left exactly as it was\nbefore; whereas, in the thing really meant by Paul, Christ is\nrepresented as standing, at least partially, in the same relation\nbetween life and men that Adam stands in between death and men.\nThe reply to the question, What is that relation? will at once\ndefine the genuine signification of the terms \"death\" and \"life\"\nin the instance under review. And thus it is to be answered. The\ndeath brought on mankind by Adam was not only internal\nwretchedness, but also the condemnation of the disembodied soul to\nthe under world; the life they were assured of by Christ was not\nonly internal blessedness, but also the deliverance of the soul\nfrom its subterranean prison and its reception into heaven in a\n\"body celestial,\" according to its original destiny had sin not\nbefallen. This interpretation is explicitly put forth by Theodoret\nin his comments on this same passage, (Rom. v. 15-18.) He says,\n\"There must be a correspondence between the disease and the\nremedy. Adam's sin subjected him to the power of death and the\ntyranny of the devil. In the same manner that Adam was compelled\nto descend into the under world, we all are associates in his\nfate. Thus, when Christ rose, the whole humankind partook in his\nvivification.\"7 Origen also and who, after the apostles\nthemselves, knew their thoughts and their use of language better\nthan he? emphatically declares in exposition of the expression of\nPaul, \"the wages of sin is death\" that \"the\n\n7 Impatib., dialogue iii. pp. 132, 133, ed. Sirmondi.\n\n\nunder world in which souls are detained is called death.\"8\n\n\"As in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.\"\nThese words cannot be explained, \"As in Adam the necessity of\nphysical death came on all, so in Christ that necessity shall be\nremoved,\" because Christ's mission did not touch physical death,\nwhich was still reigning as ever, before Paul's eyes. Neither can\nthe passage signify, \"As through Adam wretchedness is the portion\nof every heart of man, so through Christ blessedness shall be\ngiven to every heart,\" because, while the language itself does not\nhint that thought, the context demonstrates that the real\nreference is not to an inward experience, but to an outward\nevent, not to the personal regeneration of the soul, but to a\ngeneral resurrection of the dead. The time referred to is the\nsecond coming of Christ; and the force of the text must be this:\nAs by our bodily likeness to the first man and genetic connection\nwith him through sin we all die like him, that is, leave the body\nand go into the under world, and remain there, so by our spiritual\nlikeness to the second man and redeeming connection with him\nthrough the free grace of God we shall all rise thence like him,\nrevived and restored. Adam was the head of a condemned race,\ndoomed to Hades by the visible occurrence of death in lineal\ndescent from him; Christ is the head of a pardoned race, destined\nfor heaven in consonance with the plain token of his resurrection\nand ascension. Again, the apostle writes, \"In the twinkling of an\neye, at the last trump, the dead shall be raised incorruptible,\nand we (who are then living) shall be changed; for this\ncorruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal immortality.\nThen shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, 'Death\nis swallowed up in victory?\" O Death, where is thy sting? O Hades,\nwhere is thy victory?'\" The writer evidently exults in the thought\nthat, at the second coming of Christ, death shall lose its\nretributive character and the under world be baffled of its\nexpected prisoners, because the living shall instantly experience\nthe change of bodies fitting them to ascend to heaven with the\nreturning and triumphant Lord. Paul also announces that \"Jesus\nChrist hath abolished death and hath brought life and immortality\nto light.\" The word \"death\" here cannot mean physical dissolution,\nbecause Christ did not abolish that. It cannot denote personal sin\nand unhappiness, because that would not correspond with and\nsustain the obvious meaning of the contrasted member of the\nsentence. Its adequate and consistent sense is this. God intended\nthat man should pass from a preliminary existence on earth to an\neternal life in heaven; but sin thwarted this glorious design and\naltered our fate to a banishment into the cheerless under world.\nBut now, by the teachings and resurrection of Christ, we are\nassured that God of his infinite goodness has determined freely to\nforgive us and restore our original destination. Our descent and\nabode below are abolished and our heavenly immortality made clear.\n\"We earnestly desire to be clothed upon with our house which is\nfrom heaven, if so be that, being clothed, we shall not be found\nnaked. Not that we desire to be unclothed, but clothed upon, that\nmortality may be swallowed up of life.\"\n\n8 Comm. in Epist. ad Rom. lib. vi. cap. 6, sect. 6. Also see\nJerome, Comm. in Ecc. iii. 21. Professor Mau, in his able treatise\n\"Von dem Tode dem Solde der Sunden, and der Aufhebung desselben\ndurch die Auferstehung Christi,\" cogently argues, against Krabbe,\nthat death as the punishment of sin is not bodily dissolution, but\nwretchedness and condemnation to the under world, (amandatio\nOrcum.) In Pelt's Theologische Mitarbeiten, 1838, heft ii. ss.\n107-108.\n\n\nIn these remarkable words the apostle expresses several particulars\nof what we have already presented as his general doctrine. He\nstates his conviction that, when his \"earthly house of this\ntabernacle\" dissolves, there is a \"divinely constructed, heavenly,\nand eternal house\" prepared for him. He expresses his desire at\nthe coming of the Lord not to be dead, but still living, and then\nto be divested of his earthly body and invested with the heavenly\nbody, that thus, being fitted for translation to the incorruptible\nkingdom of God, he might not be found a naked shadow or ghost in\nthe under world. Ruckert says, in his commentary, and the best\ncritics agree with him, \"Paul herein desires to become immortal\nwithout passing the gates of death.\" Language similar to the\nforegoing in its peculiar phrases is found in the Jewish Cabbala.\nThe Zohar describes the ascent of the soul to heaven clothed with\nsplendor, and afterwards illustrates its meaning in these terms:\n\"As there is given to the soul a garment with which she is clothed\nin order to establish her in this world, so there is given her a\ngarment of heavenly splendor in order to establish her in that\nworld.\"9 So in the \"Ascension of Isaiah the Prophet\" an apocryphal\nbook written by some Jewish Christian as early, without doubt, as\nthe close of the second century the following passages occur.\nSpeaking of what was revealed to him in heaven, the prophet says,\n\"There I saw all the saints, from Adam, without the clothing of\nthe flesh: I viewed them in their heavenly clothing like the\nangels who stood there in great splendor.\" Again he says, \"All the\nsaints from heaven in their heavenly clothing shall descend with\nthe Lord and dwell in this world, while the saints who have not\ndied shall be clothed like those who come from heaven. Then the\ngeneral resurrection will take place and they will ascend together\nto heaven.\"10 Schoettgen, commenting on this text, (2 Cor. v. 2, )\nlikewise quotes a large number of examples of like phraseology\nfrom Rabbinical writers. The statements thus far made and proofs\noffered will be amply illustrated and confirmed as we go on to\nconsider the chief component parts of the Pauline scheme of the\nlast things. For, having presented the general outline, it will be\nuseful, in treating so complex and difficult a theme, to analyze\nit by details.\n\nWe are met upon the threshold of our inquiry by the essential\nquestion, What, according to Paul, was the mission of Christ? What\ndid he accomplish? A clear reply to this question comprises three\ndistinct propositions. First, the apostle plainly represents the\nresurrection, and not the crucifixion, as the efficacious feature\nin Christ's work of redemption. When we recollect the almost\nuniversal prevalence of the opposite notion among existing sects,\nit is astonishing how clear it is that Paul generally dwells upon\nthe dying of Christ solely as the necessary preliminary to his\nrising. \"If Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and\nyour faith also is vain: ye are yet in your sins.\" These words are\nirreconcilable with that doctrine which connects our\n\"justification\" with the atoning death, and not with the typical\nresurrection, of Christ. \"That Christ died for our sins, and that\nhe was buried, and that he rose again the third day.\" To place a\nvicarious stress upon the first clause of this text is as\narbitrary as it would be to place it upon the second; but\nnaturally emphasize the third clause,\n\n9 Laurence, Ascensio Isaia Vatis, appendix, p. 168.\n\n10 Laurence, Ascensio Isaia atis, cap. 9, v. 7, 9; cap. 4.\n\n\nand all is clear. The inferences and exhortations drawn from the\nmission of Christ are not usually connected in any essential\nmanner with his painful death, but directly with his glorious\nresurrection out from among the dead unto the heavenly\nblessedness. \"If we have been planted together in the likeness of\nhis death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection.\"\nSinking into the water, when \"buried by baptism into the death of\nChrist,\" was, to those initiated into the Christian religion, a\nsymbol of the descent of Christ among the dead; rising out of the\nwater was a symbol of the ascent of Christ into heaven. \"If ye\nthen be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above,\nwhere Christ sitteth on the right hand of God.\" When Paul cries,\nexultingly, \"Thanks be to God, who through Christ giveth us the\nvictory over the sting of death and the strength of sin,\" Jerome\nsays, \"We cannot and dare not interpret this victory otherwise\nthan by the resurrection of the Lord.\"11 Commenting on the text\n\"To this end Christ both died and lived again, that he might reign\nboth over the dead and the living,\" Theodoret says that Christ,\ngoing through all these events, \"promised a resurrection to us\nall.\" Paul makes no appeal to us to believe in the death of\nChrist, to believe in the atoning sacrifice of Christ, but he\nunequivocally affirms, \"If thou shalt believe in thine heart that\nGod hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.\" Paul\nconceived that Christ died in order to rise again and convince men\nthat the Father would freely deliver them from the bondage of\ndeath in the under world. All this took place on account of sin,\nwas only made requisite by sin, one of whose consequences was the\nsubterranean confinement of the soul, which otherwise, upon\ndeserting its clayey tent, would immediately have been clothed\nwith a spiritual body and have ascended to heaven. That is to say,\nChrist \"was delivered because of our offences and was raised again\nbecause of our justification.\" In Romans viii. 10 the preposition\noccurs twice in exactly the same construction as in the text\njust quoted. In the latter case the authors of the common version\nhave rendered it \"because of.\" They should have done so in the\nother instance, in accordance with the natural force and\nestablished usage of the word in this connection. The meaning is,\nOur offences had been committed, therefore Christ was delivered\ninto Hades; our pardon had been decreed, therefore Christ was\nraised into heaven. Such as we have now stated is the real\nmaterial which has been distorted and exaggerated into the\nprevalent doctrine of the vicarious atonement, with all its dread\nconcomitants.12 The believers of that doctrine suppose themselves\nobliged to accept it by the language of the epistles. But the view\nabove maintained as that of Paul solves every difficulty and gives\nan intelligent and consistent meaning to all the phrases usually\nthought to legitimate the Calvinistic scheme of redemption. While\nwe deny the correctness of the Calvinistic interpretation of those\npassages in which occur such expressions as \"Christ gave himself\nfor us,\" \"died for our sins,\" we also affirm the inadequacy\n\n11 Comm. in Osee, lib. iii. cap. 13.\n\n12 Die Lehre von Christi Hollenfahrt nach der Heil. Schrift, der\naltesten Kirche, den Christlichen Symbolen, und nach ihrer\nunendlichen Wichtigkeit und vielumfassenden Bedeutung dargestellt,\nvon Joh. Ludwig Konig. The author presents in this work an\nirresistible array of citations and authorities. In an appendix he\ngives a list of a hundred authors on the theme of Christ's descent\ninto hell.\n\n\nof the explanations of them proposed by Unitarians, and assert\nthat their genuine force is this. Christ died and rose that we\nmight be freed through faith from the great entailed consequence\nof sin, the bondage of the under world; beholding, through his\nascension, our heavenly destination restored. \"God made him, who\nknew no sin, to be sin on our account, that we might become the\nrighteousness of God in him,\" might through faith in him be\nassured of salvation. In other words, Christ, who was not exposed\nto the evils brought on men by sin, did not think his divine\nestate a thing eagerly to be retained, but descended to the estate\nof man, underwent the penalties of sin as if he were himself a\nsinner, and then rose to the right hand of God, by this token to\nassure men of God's gracious determination to forgive them and\nreinstate them in their forfeited primal privileges. \"If we be\nreconciled by his death, much more shall we be saved by his life.\"\nThat is, if Christ's coming from heaven as an ambassador from God\nto die convinces us of God's pardoning good will towards us, much\nmore does his rising again into heaven, where he now lives,\ndeliver us from the fear of the under world condemnation and\nassure us of the heavenly salvation. Except in the light and with\nthe aid of the theory we have been urging, a large number of texts\nlike the foregoing cannot, as we think, be interpreted without\nconstructive violence, and even with that violence cannot convey\ntheir full point and power.\n\nSecondly, in Paul's doctrine of the redeeming work of Christ we\nrecognise something distinct from any subjective effect in\nanimating and purifying the hearts and lives of men. \"Christ hath\nredeemed us from the curse of the law.\" \"In Christ we have\nredemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins.\"\nNothing but the most desperate exegesis can make these and many\nsimilar texts signify simply the purging of individual breasts\nfrom their offences and guilt. Seeking the genuine meaning of\nPaul, we are forced to agree with the overwhelming majority of the\ncritics and believers of all Christendom, from the very times of\nthe apostles till now, and declare that these passages refer to an\noutward deliverance of men by Christ, the removal by him of a\ncommon doom resting on the race in consequence of sin. What Paul\nsupposed that doom was, and how he thought it was removed, let us\ntry to see. It is necessary to premise that in Paul's writings the\nphrase \"the righteousness of God\" is often used by metonymy to\nmean God's mode of accounting sinners righteous, and is equivalent\nto \"the Christian method of salvation.\" \"By the deeds of the law\nno flesh shall be justified; but the righteousness of God without\nthe law is manifested, freely justifying them through the\nredemption that is in Christ.\" How evidently in this verse \"the\nrighteousness of God\" denotes God's method of justifying the\nguilty by a free pardon proclaimed through Christ! The apostle\nemploys the word \"faith\" in a kindred technical manner, sometimes\nmeaning by it \"promise,\" sometimes the whole evangelic apparatus\nused to establish faith or prove the realization of the promise.\n\"What if some did not believe? Shall their unbelief make the faith\nof God without effect?\" Evidently by \"faith\" is intended \"promise\"\nor \"purpose.\" \"Is the law against the promises of God? God forbid!\nBut before faith came we were kept under the law, shut up unto the\nfaith which should afterwards be revealed.\" Here \"faith\" plainly\nmeans the object of faith, the manifested fulfilment of the\npromises: it means the gospel. Again, \"Whereof he hath offered\nfaith to all, in that he hath raised him from the dead.\" \"Hath\noffered faith\" here signifies, unquestionably, as the common\nversion well expresses it, \"hath given assurance,\" or hath\nexemplified the proof. \"Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to\nbring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith. But\nafter that faith is come, we are no longer under a schoolmaster.\"\nIn this instance \"faith\" certainly means Christianity, in\ncontradistinction to Judaism, and \"justification by faith\" is\nequivalent to \"salvation by the grace of God, shown through the\nmission of Christ.\" It is not so much internal and individual in\nits reference as it is public and general. We believe that no man,\nsacredly resolved to admit the truth, can study with a purposed\nreference to this point all the passages in Paul's epistles where\nthe word \"faith\" occurs, without being convinced that for the most\npart it is used in an objective sense, in contradistinction to the\nlaw, as synonymous with the gospel, the new dispensation of grace.\nTherefore \"justification by faith\" does not usually mean salvation\nthrough personal belief, either in the merits of the Redeemer or\nin any thing else, but it means salvation by the plan revealed in\nthe gospel, the free remission of sins by the forbearance of God.\nIn those instances where \"faith\" is used in a subjective sense for\npersonal belief, it is never described as the effectual cause of\nsalvation, but as the condition of personal assurance of\nsalvation. Grace has outwardly come to all; but only the believers\ninwardly know it. This Pauline use of terms in technical senses\nlies broadly on the face of the Epistles to the Romans and the\nGalatians. New Testament lexicons and commentaries, by the best\nscholars of every denomination, acknowledge it and illustrate it.\nMark now these texts. \"And by him all that believe are justified\nfrom all things from which ye could not be justified by the law of\nMoses.\" \"To declare his righteousness, that he might be just and\nthe justifier of him that believeth in Jesus.\" \"What things were\ngain to me [under Judaism] I counted loss in comparison with\nChrist, that I may be found in him, not having mine own\nrighteousness, which is of the law, but the righteousness which is\nof God through faith in Christ.\" \"By the deeds of the law no man\ncan be justified,\" \"but ye are saved through faith.\" We submit\nthat these passages, and many others in the epistles, find a\nperfect explanation in the following outline of faith, commenced\nin the mind of Paul while he was a Pharisee, completed when he was\na Christian. The righteousness of the law, the method of salvation\nby keeping the law, is impossible. The sin of the first man broke\nthat whole plan and doomed all souls helplessly to the under\nworld. If a man now should keep every tittle of the law without\nreservation, it would not release him from the bondage below and\nsecure for him an ascent to heaven. But what the law could not do\nis done for us in Christ. Sin having destroyed the righteousness\nof the law, that is, the fatal penalty of Hades having rendered\nsalvation by the law impossible, the righteousness of God, that\nis, a new method of salvation, has been brought to light. God has\nsent his Son to die, descend into the under world, rise again, and\nreturn to heaven, to proclaim to men the glorious tidings of\njustification by faith, that is, a dispensation of grace freely\nannulling the great consequence of sin and inviting them to heaven\nin the Redeemer's footsteps. Paul unequivocally declares that\nChrist broke up the bondage of the under world by his irresistible\nentrance and exit, in the following text: \"When he had descended\nfirst into the lower parts of the earth, he ascended up on high,\nleading a multitude of captives.\" What can be plainer than that?\nThe same thought is also contained in another passage, a passage\nwhich was the source of those tremendous pictures so frequent in\nthe cathedrals of the Middle Age,  Christus spoliat Infernum: \"God\nhath forgiven you all trespasses, blotting out the handwriting of\nordinances that was against us, and took it away, nailing it to\nChrist's cross; and, having spoiled principalities and powers, he\nmade a show of them, openly triumphing over them in Christ.\" The\nentire theory which underlies the exposition we have just set\nforth is stated in so many words in the passage we next cite. For\nthe word \"righteousness\" in order to make the meaning more\nperspicuous we simply substitute \"method of salvation,\" which is\nunquestionably its signification here. \"They [the Jews] being\nignorant of God's method of salvation, and going about to\nestablish their own method, have not submitted themselves unto\nGod's. For Christ is the end of the law for a way of salvation to\nevery one that believeth. For Moses describeth the method of\nsalvation which is of the law, that the man who doeth these things\nshall be blessed in them. But the method of salvation which is of\nfaith [\"faith\" here means the gospel, Christianity] speaketh on\nthis wise: Say not in thy heart, 'Who shall ascend into heaven?'\nthat is, to bring Christ down; or, 'Who shall descend into the\nunder world?' that is, to bring up Christ again from among the\ndead.\" This has been done already, once for all. \"And if thou\nshalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the\ndead, thou shalt be saved.\" The apostle avows that his \"heart's\ndesire and his prayer unto God for Israel is, that they may be\nsaved;\" and he asserts that they cannot be saved by the law of\nMoses, but only by the gospel of Christ; that is, \"faith;\" that\nis, \"the dispensation of grace.\"\n\nPaul's conception of the foremost feature in Christ's mission is\nprecisely this. He came to deliver men from the stern law of\nJudaism, which could not wipe away their transgressions nor save\nthem from Hades, and to establish them in the free grace of\nChristianity, which justifies them from all past sin and seals\nthem for heaven. What could be a more explicit declaration of this\nthan the following? \"When the fulness of the time was come, God\nsent forth his Son to redeem them that were under the law.\" Herein\nis the explanation of that perilous combat which Paul waged so\nmany years, and in which he proved victorious, the great battle\nbetween the Gentile Christians and the Judaizing Christians; a\nsubject of altogether singular importance, without a minute\nacquaintance with which a large part of the New Testament cannot\nbe understood. \"Christ gave himself for our sins, that he might\ndeliver us from this present evil world, according to the will of\nGod.\" Now, the Hebrew terms corresponding with the English terms\n\"present world\" and \"future world\" were used by the Jews to denote\nthe Mosaic and the Messianic dispensations. We believe with\nSchoettgen and other good authorities that such is the sense of\nthe phrase \"present world\" in the instance before us. Not only is\nthat interpretation sustained by the usus loquendi, it is also the\nonly defensible meaning; for the effect of the establishment of\nthe gospel was not to deliver men from the present world, though\nit did deliver them from the hopeless bondage of Judaism, wherein\nsalvation was by Christians considered impossible. And that is\nprecisely the argument of the Epistle to the Galatians, in which\nthe text occurs. In a succeeding chapter, while speaking expressly\nof the external forms of the Jewish law, Paul says, \"By the cross\nof Christ the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world;\"\nand he instantly adds, by way of explanation, \"for in Christ Jesus\nneither circumcision availeth any thing, nor uncircumcision.\"\nUndeniably, \"world\" here means \"Judaism;\" as Rosenmuller phrases\nit, Judaica vanitas. In another epistle, while expostulating with\nhis readers on the folly of subjecting themselves to observances\n\"in meat and drink, and new moons and sabbaths,\" after \"the\nhandwriting of ordinances that was against them had been blotted\nout, taken away, nailed to the cross,\" Paul remonstrates with them\nin these words: \"Wherefore, if ye be dead with Christ from the\nrudiments of the world, why, as though living in the world, are ye\nsubject to ordinances?\" We should suppose that no intelligent\nperson could question that this means, \"Now that by the gospel of\nChrist ye are emancipated from the technical requisitions of\nJudaism, why are ye subject to its ordinances, as if ye were still\nliving under its rule?\" as many of the best commentators agree in\nsaying, \"tanquam viventes adhuc in Judaismo.\" From these\ncollective passages, and from others like them, we draw the\nconclusion, in Paul's own words, that, \"When we were children, we\nwere in bondage under the rudiments of the world,\" \"the weak and\nbeggarly elements\" of Judaism; but, now that \"the fulness of the\ntime has come, and God has sent forth his Son to redeem us,\" we\nare called \"to receive the adoption of sons\" and \"become heirs of\nGod,\" inheritors of a heavenly destiny.\n\nWe think that the intelligent and candid reader, who is familiar\nwith Paul's epistles, will recognise the following features in his\nbelief and teaching. First, all mankind alike were under sin and\ncondemnation. \"Jews and Gentiles all are under sin.\" \"All the\nworld is subject to the sentence of God.\" And we maintain that\nthat condemning sentence consisted, partly at least, in the\nbanishment of their disembodied souls to Hades. Secondly, \"a\npromise was given to Abraham,\" before the introduction of the\nMosaic dispensation, \"that in his seed [that is, in Christ] all\nthe nations of the earth should be blessed.\" When Paul speaks, as\nhe does in numerous instances, of \"the hope of eternal life which\nGod, who cannot lie, promised before the world began,\" \"the\npromise given before the foundation of the world,\" \"the promise\nmade of God unto the fathers, that God would raise the dead,\" the\ndate referred to is not when the decree was formed in the eternal\ncounsels of God, previous to the origin of the earth, but when the\ncovenant was made with Abraham, before the establishment of the\nJewish dispensation. The thing promised plainly was, according to\nPaul's idea, a redemption from Hades and an ascension to heaven;\nfor this is fully implied in his \"expectation of the resurrection\nof the dead\" from the intermediate state, and their being \"clothed\nin celestial bodies.\" This promise made unto Abraham by God, to be\nfulfilled by Christ, \"the law, which was four hundred and thirty\nyears afterwards, could not disannul.\" That is, as any one may see\nby the context, the law could not secure the inheritance of the\nthing promised, but was only a temporary arrangement on account of\ntransgressions, \"until the seed should come to whom the promise\nwas made.\" In other words, there was \"no mode of salvation by the\nlaw;\" \"the law could not give life;\" for if it could it would have\n\"superseded the promise,\" made it without effect, whereas the\ninviolable promise of God was, that in the one seed of Abraham\nthat is, in Christ alone should salvation be preached to all that\nbelieved. \"For if they which are of the law be heirs, faith is\nmade useless, and the promise is made useless.\" In the mean time,\nuntil Christ be come, all are shut up under sin. Thirdly, the\nspecial \"advantage of the Jews was, that unto them this promise of\nGod was committed,\" as the chosen covenant people.\n\nThe Gentiles, groaning under the universal sentence of sin,\nwere ignorant of the sure promise of a common salvation yet\nto be brought. While the Jews indulged in glowing and exclusive\nexpectations of the Messiah who was gloriously to redeem them, the\nGentiles were \"aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, strangers\nfrom the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in\nthe world.\" Fourthly, in the fulness of time long after \"the\nScripture, foreseeing that God would justify the heathen, had\npreached the gospel beforehand unto Abraham, saying, In thy seed\nshall all nations be blessed\" \"Christ redeemed us from the curse\nof the law, being made a curse for us, that the blessing promised\nto Abraham might come upon the Gentiles.\" It was the precise\nmission of Christ to realize and exemplify and publish to the\nwhole world the fulfilment of that promise. The promise itself\nwas, that men should be released from the under world through the\nimputation of righteousness by grace that is, through free\nforgiveness and rise to heaven as accredited sons and heirs of\nGod. This aim and purpose of Christ's coming were effected in his\nresurrection. But how did the Gentiles enter into belief and\nparticipation of the glad tidings? Thus, according to Paul: The\ndeath, descent, resurrection, and ascent of Jesus, and his\nresidence in heaven in a spiritual form, divested him of his\nnationality.13 He was \"then to be known no more after the flesh.\"\nHe was no longer an earthly Jew, addressing Jews, but a heavenly\nspirit and son of God, a glorified likeness of the spirits of all\nwho were adopted as sons of God, appealing to them all as joint\nheirs with himself of heaven. He has risen into universality, and\nis accessible to the soul of every one that believeth. \"In him\nthere is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision,\nbarbarian, Scythian, bond nor free.\" The experience resulting in a\nheart raised into fellowship with him in heaven is the inward seal\nassuring us that our faith is not vain. \"Ye Gentiles, who formerly\nwere afar off, are now made nigh by the blood of Christ; for he\nhath broken down the middle wall of partition between Jews and\nGentiles, having abolished in his flesh the enmity, namely, the\nlaw of commandments in ordinances, in order to make in himself of\ntwain one new man. For through him we both have access by one\nspirit unto the Father. Now, therefore, ye are no more strangers\nand foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and of the\nhousehold of God.\" Circumcision was of the flesh; and the vain\nhope of salvation by it was confined to the Jews. Grace was of the\nspirit; and the revealed assurance of salvation by it was given to\nthe Gentiles too, when Christ died to the nationalizing flesh,\nrose in the universalizing spirit, and from heaven impartially\nexhibited himself, through the preaching of the gospel, to the\nappropriating faith of all.\n\nThe foregoing positions might be further substantiated by applying\nthe general theory they contain to the explication of scores of\nindividual texts which it fits and unfolds, and which, we think,\ncannot upon any other view be interpreted without forced\nconstructions unwarranted by a thorough acquaintance with the mind\nof Paul and with the mind of his age. But we must be content with\none or two such applications as specimens. The word \"mystery\"\noften occurs in the letters of Paul. Its current meaning in his\ntime was \"something concealed,\" something into which one must be\ninitiated in order to understand it.\n\n13 Martineau, Liverpool Controversy: Inconsistency of the Scheme\nof Vicarious Redemption.\n\n\nThe Eleusinian Mysteries, for instance, were not necessarily any thing\nintrinsically dark and hard to be comprehended, but things hidden\nfrom public gaze and only to be known by initiation into them.\nPaul uses the term in a similar way to denote the peculiar scheme\nof grace, which \"had been kept secret from the beginning of the\nworld,\" \"hidden from ages and generations, but now made manifest.\"\nNo one denies that Paul means by \"this mystery\" the very heart and\nessence of the gospel, precisely that which distinguishes it from\nthe law and makes it a universal method of salvation, a wondrous\nsystem of grace. So much is irresistibly evident from the way and\nthe connection in which he uses the term. He writes thus in\nexplanation of the great mystery as it was dramatically revealed\nthrough Christ: \"Who was manifested in the flesh, [i. e. seen in\nthe body during his life on earth,] justified in the spirit,\n[i. e. freed after death from the necessity of imprisonment in\nHades,] seen of angels, [i. e. in their fellowship after his\nresurrection,] preached unto the Gentiles, [i. e. after the gift\nof tongues on Pentecost day,] believed on in the world, [i. e. his\ngospel widely accepted through the labors of his disciples,]\nreceived up into glory, [i. e. taken into heaven to the presence\nof God.]\" \"The revelation of the mystery\" means, then, the visible\nenactment and exhibition, through the resurrection of Christ, of\nGod's free forgiveness of men, redeeming them from the Hadean\ngloom to the heavenly glory. The word \"glory\" in the New Testament\nconfessedly often signifies the illumination of heaven, the\ndefined abode of God and his angels. Robinson collects, in his\nLexicon, numerous examples wherein he says it means \"that state\nwhich is the portion of those who dwell with God in heaven.\" Now,\nPaul repeatedly speaks of the calling of believers to glory as one\nof the chief blessings and new prerogatives of the gospel. \"Being\njustified by faith, we rejoice in hope of the glory of God.\" \"Walk\nworthy of God, who hath called you unto his glory.\" \"We speak\nwisdom to the initiates, the hidden wisdom of God in a mystery,\nwhich before the world [the Jewish dispensation] God ordained for\nour glory.\" \"Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God:\nbehold, I show you a mystery: we shall all be changed in a moment,\nand put on immortality.\" In the first chapter of the letter to the\nColossians, Paul speaks of \"the hope which is laid up for you in\nheaven, whereof ye have heard in the gospel;\" also of \"the\ninheritance of the saints in light:\" then he says, \"God would now\nmake known among the Gentiles the mystery, which is, Christ among\nyou, the hope of glory.\" In the light of what has gone before, how\nsignificant and how clear is this declaration! \"All have sinned,\nand failed to attain unto the glory of God; but now, through the\nfaith of Jesus Christ, [through the dispensation brought to light\nby Christ,] the righteousness of God [God's method of salvation]\nis unto all that believe.\" That is, by the law all were shut up in\nHades, but by grace they are now ransomed and to be received to\nheaven. The same thought or scheme is contained in that remarkable\npassage in the Epistle to the Galatians where Paul says the free\nIsaac and the bond woman Hagar were an allegory, teaching that\nthere were two covenants, one by Abraham, the other by Moses. The\nMosaic covenant of the law \"answers to the Jerusalem which is on\nearth, and is in bondage with her children,\" and belongs only to\nthe Jews. The Abrahamic covenant of promise answers to \"the\nJerusalem which is above, and is free, and is the mother of us\nall.\" In the former, we were \"begotten unto bondage.\" In the\nlatter, \"Christ hath made us free.\"\n\nWe will notice but one more text in passing: it is, of all the\nproof texts of the doctrine of a substitutional expiation, the one\nwhich has ever been regarded as the very Achilles. And yet it can\nbe made to support that doctrine only by the aid of arbitrary\nassumptions and mistranslations, while by its very terms it\nperfectly coincides with nay, expressly declares  the theory which\nwe have been advocating as the genuine interpretation of Paul. The\nusual commentators, in their treatment of this passage, have\nexhibited a long continued series of perversions and sophisms,\naffording a strong example of unconscious prejudice. The correct\nGreek reading of the text is justly rendered thus: \"Whom God set\nforth, a mercy seat through the faith in his blood, to exhibit his\nrighteousness through the remission of former sins by the\nforbearance of God.\" For rendering [non-ASCII characters]\n\"mercy seat,\" the usus loquendi and the internal harmony of meaning\nare in our favor, and also the weight of many orthodox authorities,\nsuch as Theodoret, Origen, Theophylact, OEcumenius, Erasmus, Luther,\nand from Pelagius to Bushnell. Still, we are willing to admit the\nrendering of it by \"sin offering.\" That makes no important\ndifference in the result. Christ was a sin offering, in the\nconception of Paul, in this sense: that when he was not himself\nsubject to death, which was the penalty of sin, he yet died in\norder to show God's purpose of removing that penalty of sin\nthrough his resurrection. For rendering [non-ASCII characters]\n\"through,\" no defence is needed: the only wonder is, how it ever\ncould have been here translated \"for.\" Now, let two or three facts\nbe noticed.\n\nFirst, the New Testament phrase \"the faith of Christ,\" \"the faith of\nJesus,\" is very unfairly and unwarrantably made to mean an\ninternal affection towards Christ, a belief of men in him. Its\ngenuine meaning is the same as \"the gospel of Christ,\" or the\nreligion of Christ, the system of grace which he brought.14 Who\ncan doubt that such is the meaning of the word in these instances?\n\"Contend for the faith once delivered to the saints;\" \"Greet them\nthat love us in the faith;\" \"Have not the faith of our Lord Jesus\nChrist with respect of persons.\" So, in the text now under our\nnotice, \"the faith which is in his blood\" means the dispensation\nof pardon and justification, the system of faith, which was\nconfirmed and exemplified to us in his death and resurrection.\nSecondly, \"the righteousness of God,\" which is here said to be\n\"pointed out\" by Christ's death, denotes simply, in Professor\nStuart's words, \"God's pardoning mercy,\" or \"acquittal,\" or\n\"gratuitous justification,\" \"in which sense,\" he says truly, \"it\nis almost always used in Paul's epistles.\"15 It signifies neither\nmore nor less than God's method of salvation by freely forgiving\nsins and treating the sinner as if he were righteous, the method\nof salvation now carried into effect and revealed in the gospel\nbrought by Christ, and dramatically enacted in his passion and\nascension. Furthermore, we ask attention to the fact that the\nordinary interpreter, hard pressed by his unscriptural creed,\ninterpolates a disjunctive conjunction in the opposing teeth of\nPaul's plain statement. Paul says, as the common version has it,\nGod is \"just, and [i. e. even] the justifier.\" The creed bound\ncommentators read it,\n\n14 Robinson has gathered a great number of instances in his\nLexicon, under the word \"Faith,\" wherein it can only mean, as he\nsays, \"the system of Christian doctrines, the gospel.\"\n\n15 Stuart's Romans i. 17, iii. 25, 26, &c.\n\n\n\"just and yet the justifier.\" We will now present the true meaning\nof the whole passage, in our view of it, according to Paul's own\nuse of language. To establish a conviction of the correctness of\nthe exposition, we only ask the ingenuous reader carefully to\nstudy the clauses of the Greek text and recollect the foregoing\ndata. \"God has set Christ forth, to be to us a sure sign that we\nhave been forgiven and redeemed through the faith that was proved\nby his triumphant return from death, the dispensation of grace\ninaugurated by him. Herein God has exhibited his method of saving\nsinners, which is by the free remission of their sins through his\nkindness. Thus God is proved to be disposed to save, and to be\nsaving, by the system of grace shown through Jesus, him that\nbelieveth.\" In consequence of sin, men were under sentence of\ncondemnation to the under world. In the fulness of time God\nfulfilled his ancient promise to Abraham. He freely justified\nmen, that is, forgave them, redeemed them from their doom, and\nwould soon open the sky for their abode with him. This scheme of\nredemption was carried out by Christ. That is to say, God\nproclaimed it to men, and asked their belief in it, by \"setting\nforth Christ\" to die, descend among the dead, rise thence, and\nascend into heaven, as an exemplifying certification of the truth\nof the glad tidings.\n\nThirdly, Paul teaches that one aim of Christ's mission was to\npurify, animate, and exalt the moral characters of men, and\nrectify their conduct, to produce a subjective sanctification in\nthem, and so prepare them for judgment and fit them for heaven.\nThe establishment of this proposition will conclude the present\npart of our subject. He writes, \"Our Saviour, Jesus Christ, gave\nhimself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity and\npurify unto himself a peculiar people zealous of good works.\" \"Let\nevery one that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity.\" In\nvarious ways he often represents the fact that believers have been\nsaved by grace through Christ as the very reason, the intensified\nmotive, why they should scrupulously keep every tittle of the\nmoral law and abstain even from the appearance of evil, walking\nworthy of their high vocation. \"The grace of God that bringeth\nsalvation to all men hath appeared, teaching us that, denying all\nungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly,\nrighteously, and godly in this present world.\" Bad men, \"that obey\nnot the gospel of Christ,\" such characters as \"thieves,\nextortioners, drunkards, adulterers, shall not inherit the kingdom\nof God.\" He proclaims, in unmistakable terms, \"God will render to\nevery man according to his deeds, wrath and tribulation to the\nevil doer, honor and peace to the well doer, whether Jew or\nGentile.\" The conclusion to be drawn from these and other like\ndeclarations is unavoidable. It is that \"every one, Jew and\nGentile, shall stand before the judgment seat of Christ and\nreceive according to the deeds done in the body; for there is no\nrespect of persons.\" And one part of Christ's mission was to exert\na hallowing moral influence on men, to make them righteous, that\nthey might pass the bar with acquittal. But the reader who\nrecollects the class of texts adduced a little while since will\nremember that an opposite conclusion was as unequivocally drawn\nfrom them. Then Paul said, \"By faith ye are justified, without the\ndeeds of the law.\" Now he says, \"For not the hearers of the law\nare just before God, but the doers of the law shall be justified\nin the day when God shall judge the secrets of men by Jesus\nChrist.\" Is there a contradiction, then, in Paul? Only in\nappearance. Let us distinguish and explain. In the two quotations\nabove, the apostle is referring to two different things.\n\nFirst, he would say, By the faith of Christ, the free grace of God\ndeclared in the gospel of Christ, ye are justified, gratuitously\ndelivered from that necessity of imprisonment in Hades which is\nthe penalty of sin doomed upon the whole race from Adam, and from\nwhich no amount of personal virtue could avail to save men.\nSecondly, when he exclaims, \"Know ye not that the unrighteous\nshall not inherit the kingdom of God?\" his thought is of a\nspiritual qualification of character, indispensable for positive\nadmission among the blest in heaven. That is to say, the impartial\npenalty of primeval sin consigned all men to Hades. They could not\nby their own efforts escape thence and win heaven. That fated\ninability God has removed, and through Christ revealed its\nremoval; but, that one should actually obtain the offered and\npossible prize of heaven, personal purity, faith, obedience,\nholiness, are necessary. In Paul's conception of the scheme of\nChristian salvation, then, there were two distinct parts: one,\nwhat God had done for all; the other, what each man was to do for\nhimself. And the two great classes of seemingly hostile texts\nfilling his epistles, which have puzzled so many readers, become\nclear and harmonious when we perceive and remember that by\n\"righteousness\" and its kindred terms he sometimes means the\nexternal and fulfilled method of redeeming men from the\ntransmitted necessity of bondage in the under world, and sometimes\nmeans the internal and contingent qualifications for actually\nrealizing that redemption. In the former instance he refers to the\nobjective mode of salvation and the revelation of it in Christ. In\nthe latter, he refers to the subjective fitness for that salvation\nand the certitude of it in the believer. So, too, the words\n\"death\" and \"life,\" in Paul's writings, are generally charged, by\na constructio proegnans, with a double sense, one spiritual,\nindividual, contingent, the other mechanical, common, absolute.\nDeath, in its full Pauline force, includes inward guilt,\ncondemnation, and misery, and outward descent into the under\nworld. Life, in its full Pauline force, includes inward rectitude,\npeace, and joy, and outward ascent into the upper world. Holiness\nis necessary, \"for without it no one can see the Lord;\" yet by\nitself it can secure only inward life: it is ineffectual to win\nheaven. Grace by itself merely exempts from the fatality of the\ncondemnation to Hades: it offers eternal life in heaven only upon\ncondition of \"patient continuance in well doing\" by \"faith,\nobedience to the truth, and sanctification of the spirit.\" But\nGod's free grace and man's diligent fidelity, combined, give the\nfull fruition of blessedness in the heart and of glory and\nimmortality in the sky.\n\nSuch, as we have set forth in the foregoing three divisions, was\nPaul's view of the mission of Christ and of the method of\nsalvation. It has been for centuries perverted and mutilated. The\ntoil now is by unprejudiced inspection to bring it forward in its\ngenuine completeness, as it stood in Paul's own mind and in the\nminds of his contemporaries. The essential view, epitomized in a\nsingle sentence, is this. The independent grace of God has\ninterfered, first, to save man from Hades, and secondly, to enable\nhim, by the co operation of his own virtue, to get to heaven. Here\nare two separate means conjoined to effect the end, salvation.\nNow, compare, in the light of this statement, the three great\ntheological theories of Christendom. The UNITARIAN, overlooking\nthe objective justification, or offered redemption from the death\nrealm to the sky home, which whether it be a truth or an error is\nsurely in the epistles, makes the subjective sanctification all in\nall. The CALVINIST, in his theory, comparatively scorns the\nsubjective sanctification, which Paul insists on as a necessity\nfor entering the kingdom of God, and, having perverted the\nobjective justification from its real historic meaning,\nexaggerates it into the all in all. The ROMAN CATHOLIC holds that\nChrist simply removed the load of original sin and its entailed\ndoom, and left each person to stand or fall by his own merits, in\nthe helping communion of the Church. He also maintains that a part\nof Christ's office was to exert an influence for the moral\nimprovement and consecration of human character. His error, as an\ninterpreter of Paul's thought, is, that he, like the Calvinist,\nattributes to Christ's death a vicarious efficacy by suffering the\npangs of mankind's guilt to buy their ransom from the inexorable\njustice of God; whereas the apostle really represents Christ's\nredeeming mission as consisting simply in a dramatic\nexemplification of the Father's spontaneous love and purpose to\npardon past offences, unbolt the gates of Hades, and receive the\nworthy to heaven. Moreover, while Paul describes the heavenly\nsalvation as an undeserved gift from the grace of God, the\nCatholic often seems to make it a prize to be earned, under the\nChristian dispensation, by good works which may fairly challenge\nthat reward. However, we have little doubt that this apparent\nopposition is rather in the practical mode of exhortation than in\nany interior difference of dogma; for Paul himself makes personal\nsalvation hinge on personal conditions, the province of grace\nbeing seen in the new extension to man of the opportunity and\ninvitation to secure his own acceptance. And so the Roman Catholic\nexposition of Paul's doctrine is much more nearly correct than any\nother interpretation now prevalent. We should expect, a priori,\nthat it would be, since that Church, containing two thirds of\nChristendom, is the most intimately connected, by its scholars,\nmembers, and traditions, with the apostolic age.\n\nA prominent feature in the belief of Paul, and one deserving\ndistinct notice as necessarily involving a considerable part of\nthe theory which we have attributed to him, is the supposition\nthat Christ was the first person, clothed with humanity and\nexperiencing death, admitted into heaven. Of all the hosts who had\nlived and died, every soul had gone down into the dusky under\nworld. There they all were held in durance, waiting for the Great\nDeliverer. In the splendors of the realm over the sky, God and his\nangels dwelt alone. That we do not err in ascribing this belief to\nPaul we might summon the whole body of the Fathers to testify in\nalmost unbroken phalanx, from Polycarp to St. Bernard. The Roman,\nGreek, and English Churches still maintain the same dogma. But the\napostle's own plain words will be sufficient for our purpose.\n\"That Christ should suffer, and that he should be the first that\nshould rise from among the dead.\" \"Now is Christ risen from among\nthe dead and become the first fruits of them that slept.\" \"He is\nthe beginning, the first born from among the dead, that among all\nhe might have the pre eminence.\" \"God raised Christ from among the\ndead, and set him at his own right hand16 in the heavenly places,\nfar above every principality, and power, and might, and dominion.\"\nThe last words refer to different orders of spirits, supposed\n\n16 Griesbach argues at length, and shows unanswerably, that this\npassage cannot bear a moral interpretation, but necessarily has a\nphysical and local sense. Griesbachii Opuscula Academica, ed.\nGabler, vol. ii. pp. 145-149.\n\n\nby the Jews to people the aerial region below the heaven of God.\n\"God hath\" (already in our anticipating faith) \"raised us up\ntogether with Christ and made us sit in heavenly places with him.\"\nThese testimonies are enough to show that Paul believed Jesus to\nhave been raised up to the abode of God, the first man ever\nexalted thither, and that this was done as a pledge and\nillustration of the same exaltation awaiting those who believe.\n\"If we be dead with Christ, we believe we shall also live with\nhim.\" And the apostle teaches that we are not only connected with\nChrist's resurrection by the outward order and sequence of events,\nbut also by an inward gift of the spirit. He says that to every\nobedient believer is given an experimental \"knowledge of the power\nof the resurrection of Christ,\" which is the seal of God within\nhim, the pledge of his own celestial destination. \"After that ye\nbelieved, ye were sealed with that holy spirit of promise which is\nthe earnest of our inheritance until the redemption of the\npurchased possession.\" The office of this gift of the spirit is to\nawaken in the believing Christian a vivid realization of the\nthings in store for him, and a perfect conviction that he shall\nyet possess them in the unclouded presence of God, beyond the\ncanopy of azure and the stars. \"Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard,\nnor the heart of man conceived, the things which God hath prepared\nfor them that love him. But he hath revealed them unto us; for we\nhave received his spirit, that we might know them.\" \"The spirit\nbeareth witness with our spirit that we are children and heirs of\nGod, even joint heirs with Christ, that we may be glorified [i. e.\nadvanced into heaven] with him.\"\n\nWe will leave this topic with a brief paraphrase of the celebrated\npassage in the eighth chapter of the Epistle to the Romans. \"Not\nonly do the generality of mankind groan in pain in this decaying\nstate, under the bondage of perishable elements, travailing for\nemancipation from the flesh into the liberty of the heavenly glory\nappointed for the sons and heirs of God, but even we, who have the\nfirst fruits of the spirit, [i. e. the assurance springing from\nthe resurrection of Christ,] we too wait, painfully longing for\nthe adoption, that is, our redemption from the body.\" By longing\nfor the adoption, or filiation, is meant impatient desire to be\nreceived into heaven as children to the enjoyment of the\nprivileges of their Father's house. \"God predetermined that those\ncalled should be conformed to the image of his Son, [i. e. should\npass through the same course with Christ and reach the heavenly\ngoal,] that he might be the first born among many brethren.\" To\nthe securing of this end, \"whom he called, them he also justified,\n[i. e. ransomed from Hades;17] and whom he justified, them he also\nglorified,\" (i. e. advanced to the glory of heaven.) It is evident\nthat Paul looked for the speedy second coming of the Lord in the\nclouds of heaven, with angels and power and glory. He expected\nthat at that time all enemies would be overthrown and punished,\nthe dead would be raised, the living would be changed, and all\nthat were Christ's would be translated to heaven.18 \"The Lord\nJesus shall be revealed from\n\n17 That \"justify\" often means, in Paul's usage, to absolve from\nHades, we have concluded from a direct study of his doctrines and\nlanguage. We find that Bretschneider gives it the same definition\nin his Lexicon of the New Testament. See [non ASCII characters]\n\n18 \"Every one shall rise in his own division\" of the great army of\nthe dead, \"Christ, the first fruits; afterwards, they that are\nChrist's, at his coming.\"\n\n\nheaven, with his mighty angels, in flaming fire, taking vengeance\non them that know not God and obey not the gospel of Christ.\" \"We\nshall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, at\nthe last trump.\" \"We who are alive and remain until the coming of\nthe Lord shall not anticipate those that are asleep. For the Lord\nhimself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of\nthe archangel, and with the trump of God;19 and the dead in Christ\nshall rise first. Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught\nup with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air; and so we\nshall always be with the Lord. Brethren, you need not that I\nshould specify the time to you; for yourselves are perfectly aware\nthat the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night.\" \"The\ntime is short.\" \"I pray God your whole spirit, soul, and body be\npreserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.\" \"At\nhis appearing he shall judge the living and the dead.\" \"The Lord\nis at hand.\" The author of these sentences undeniably looked for\nthe great advent soon. Than Paul, indeed, no one more earnestly\nbelieved (or did more to strengthen in others that belief) in that\nspeedy return of Christ, the anticipation of which thrilled all\nearly Christendom with hope and dread, and kept the disciples day\nand night on the stretch and start of expectation to hear the\nawful blast of the judgment trump and to see the glorious vision\nof the Son of God descending amidst a convoy of angels. What\nsublime emotions must have rushed through the apostle's soul when\nhe thought that he, as a survivor of death's reign on earth, might\nbehold the resurrection without himself entering the grave! Upon a\ntime when he should be perchance at home, or at Damascus, or, it\nmight be, at Jerusalem, the sun would become as blood, the moon as\nsackcloth of hair, the last trump would swell the sky, and,\n\n\"Lo! the nations of the dead, Which do outnumber all earth's\nraces, rise, And high in sumless myriads overhead Sweep past him\nin a cloud, as 'twere the skirts Of the Eternal passing by.\"\n\nThe resurrection which Paul thought would attend the second coming\nof Christ was the rising of the summoned spirits of the deceased\nfrom their rest in the under world. Most certainly it was not the\nrestoration of their decomposed bodies from their graves, although\nthat incredible surmise has been generally entertained. He says,\nwhile answering the question, How are the dead raised up, and with\nwhat body do they come? \"That which thou sowest, thou sowest not\nthat body which shall be, but naked grain: God giveth it a body as\nit hath pleased him.\" The comparison is, that so the naked soul is\nsown in the under world, and God, when he raiseth it, giveth it a\nfitting body. He does not hesitate to call the man \"a fool\" who\nexpects the restoration of the same body that was buried. His\nwhole argument is explicitly against that idea. \"There are bodies\ncelestial, as well as bodies terrestrial: the first man was\n\n19 Rabbi Akiba says, in the Talmud, \"God shall take and blow a\ntrumpet a thousand godlike yards in length, whose echo shall sound\nfrom end to end of the world. At the first blast the earth shall\ntremble. At the second, the dust shall part. At the third, the\nbones shall come together. At the fourth, the members shall grow\nwarm. At the fifth, they shall be crowned with the head. At the\nsixth, the soul shall re enter the body. And at the seventh, they\nshall stand erect.\" Corrodi, Geschichte des Chiliasmus, band i. s.\n355.\n\n\nof the earth, earthy; the second man was the Lord from heaven; and\nas we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the\nimage of the heavenly; for flesh and blood cannot inherit the\nkingdom of God.\" In view of these declarations, it is astonishing\nthat any one can suppose that Paul believed in the resurrection of\nthese present bodies and in their transference into heaven. \"In\nthis tabernacle we groan, being burdened,\" and, \"Who shall deliver\nme from this body of death?\" he cries. If ever there was a man\nwhose goading experience, keen intellectual energies, and moral\nsensibilities, made him weary of this slow, gross body, and\npassionately to long for a more corresponding, swift, and pure\ninvestiture, it was Paul. And in his theory of \"the glorious body\nof Christ, according to which our vile body shall be changed,\" he\nrelieved his impatience and fed his desire. What his conception of\nthat body was, definitely, we cannot tell; but doubtless it was\nthe idea of a vehicle adapted to his mounting and ardent soul, and\nin many particulars very unlike this present groaning load of\nclay. The epistles of Paul contain no clear implication of the\nnotion of a millennium, a thousand years' reign of Christ with his\nsaints on the earth after his second advent. On the contrary, in\nmany places, particularly in the fourth chapter of the First\nEpistle to the Thessalonians, (supposing that letter to be his,)\nhe says that the Lord and they that are his will directly pass\ninto heaven after the consummation of his descent from heaven and\ntheir resurrection from the dead. But the declaration \"He must\nreign till he hath put all enemies under his feet,\" taken with its\ncontext, is thought, by Bertholdt, Billroth, De Wette, and others,\nto imply that Christ would establish a millennial kingdom on\nearth, and reign in it engaged in vanquishing all hostile forces.\nAgainst this exegesis we have to say, first, that, so far as that\ngoes, the vast preponderance of critical authorities is opposed to\nit. Secondly, if this conquest were to be secured on earth, there\nis nothing to show that it need occupy much time: one hour might\nanswer for it as well as a thousand years. There is nothing here\nto show that Paul means just what the Rabbins taught. Thirdly,\neven if Paul supposed a considerable period must elapse before\n\"all enemies\" would be subdued, during which period Christ must\nreign, it does not follow that he believed that reign would be on\nearth: it might be in heaven. The \"enemies\" referred to are, in\npart at least, the wicked spirits occupying the regions of the\nupper air; for he specifies these \"principalities, authorities,\nand powers.\"20 And the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews\nrepresents God as saying to Jesus, \"Sit thou on my right hand,\nuntil I make thine enemies thy footstool.\" Fourthly, it seems\ncertain that, if in the apostle's thought a thousand years were\ninterpolated between Christ's second coming and the delivering of\nhis mediatorial sceptre to God, he would have said so, at least\nsomewhere in his writings. He would naturally have dwelt upon it a\nlittle, as the Chiliasts did so much. Instead of that, he\nrepeatedly contradicts it. Upon the whole, then, with Ruckert, we\ncannot\n\n20 The apocryphal \"Ascension of Isaiah,\" already spoken of, gives\na detailed description of the upper air as occupied by Satan and\nhis angels, among whom fighting and evil deeds rage; but Christ in\nhis ascent conquers and spoils them all, and shows himself a\nvictor ever brightening as he rises successively through the whole\nseven heavens to the feet of God. Ascensio Vatis Isaia, cap. vi x.\n\n\nsee any reason for not supposing that, according to Paul, \"the\nend\" was immediately to succeed \"the coming,\" as  [non-ASCII\ncharacters] would properly indicate.\n\nThe doctrine of a long earthly reign of Christ is not deduced\nfrom this passage, by candid interpretation, because it must be\nthere, but foisted into it, by Rabbinical information, because\nit may be there.\n\nPaul distinctly teaches that the believers who died before the\nsecond coming of the Savior would remain in the under world until\nthat event, when they and the transformed living should ascend\n\"together with the Lord.\" All the relevant expressions in his\nepistles, save two, are obviously in harmony with this conception\nof a temporary subterranean sojourn, waiting for the appearance of\nJesus from heaven to usher in the resurrection. But in the fifth\nchapter of the Second Epistle to the Corinthians he writes,\n\"Abiding in the body we are absent from the Lord.\" It is usually\ninferred, from these words and those which follow them, that the\napostle expected whenever he died to be instantly with Christ.\nCertainly they do mean pretty nearly that; but they mean it in\nconnection with the second advent and the accompanying\ncircumstances and events; for Paul believed that many of the\ndisciples  possibly himself would live until Christ's coming. All\nthrough these two chapters (the fourth and fifth) it is obvious,\nfrom the marked use of the terms \"we\" and \"you,\" and from other\nconsiderations, that \"we\" here refers solely to the writer, the\nindividual Paul. It is the plural of accommodation used by common\ncustom and consent. In the form of a slight paraphrase we may\nunfold the genuine meaning of the passage in hand. \"In this body I\nam afflicted: not that I would merely be released from it, for\nthen I should be a naked spirit. But I earnestly desire,\nunclothing myself of this earthly body, at the same time to clothe\nmyself with my heavenly body, that I may lose all my mortal part\nand its woes in the full experience of heaven's eternal life. God\nhas determined that this result shall come to me sooner or later,\nand has given me a pledge of it in the witnessing spirit. But it\ncannot happen so long as I tarry in the flesh, the Lord delaying\nhis appearance. Having the infallible earnest of the spirit, I do\nnot dread the change, but desire to hasten it. Confident of\nacceptance in that day at the judgment seat of Christ, before\nwhich we must all then stand, I long for the crisis when, divested\nof this body and invested with the immortal form wrought for me by\nGod, I shall be with the Lord. Still, knowing the terror which\nshall environ the Lord at his coming to judgment, I plead with men\nto be prepared.\" Whoever carefully examines the whole connected\npassage, from iv. 6 to v. 16, will see, we think, that the above\nparaphrase truly exposes its meaning.\n\nThe other text alluded to as an apparent exception to the doctrine\nof a residence in the lower land of ghosts intervening between\ndeath and the ascension, occurs in the Epistle to the\nPhilippians: \"I am in a strait betwixt two, having a desire to\ndepart and to be with Christ, which is far better; but that I\nshould abide in the flesh is more needful for you.\" There are\nthree possible ways of regarding this passage. First, we may\nsuppose that Paul, seeing the advent of the Lord postponed longer\nand longer, changed his idea of the intermediate state of deceased\nChristians, and thought they would spend that period of waiting in\nheaven, not in Hades. Neander advocates this view. But there is\nlittle to sustain it, and it is loaded with fatal difficulties. A\nchange of faith so important and so bright in its view as this\nmust have seemed under the circumstances would have been clearly\nand fully stated. Attention would have been earnestly invited to\nso great a favor and comfort; exultation and gratitude would have\nbeen expressed over so unheard of a boon. Moreover, what had\noccurred to effect the alleged new belief? The unexpected delay of\nChrist's coming might make the apostle wish that his departed\nfriends were tarrying above the sky instead of beneath the\nsepulchre; but it could furnish no ground to warrant a sudden\nfaith in that wish as a fulfilled fact. Besides, the truth is that\nPaul never ceased, even to the last, to expect the speedy arrival\nof the Lord and to regard the interval as a comparative trifle. In\nthis very epistle he says, \"The Lord is at hand: be careful for\nnothing.\" Secondly, we may imagine that he expected himself, as a\ndivinely chosen and specially favored servant, to go to Christ in\nheaven as soon as he died, if that should happen before the Lord's\nappearance, while the great multitude of believers would abide in\nthe under world until the general resurrection. The death he was\nin peril of and is referring to was that of martyrdom for the\ngospel at the hands of Nero. And many of the Fathers maintained\nthat in the case of every worthy Christian martyr there was an\nexception to the general doom, and that he was permitted to enter\nheaven at once. Still, to argue such a thought in the text before\nus requires an hypothesis far fetched and unsupported by a single\nclear declaration of the apostle himself. Thirdly, we may assume\nand it seems to us by far the least encumbered and the most\nplausible theory that attempts to meet the case that Paul believed\nthere would be vouchsafed to the faithful Christian during his\ntransient abode in the under world a more intimate and blessed\nspiritual fellowship with his Master than he could experience\nwhile in the flesh. \"For I am persuaded that neither death\n[separation from the body] nor depth [the under world] shall be\nable to separate us from God's love, which he has manifested\nthrough Christ.\" He may refer, therefore, by his hopes of being\nstraightway with Christ on leaving the body, to a spiritual\ncommunion with him in the disembodied state below, and not to his\nphysical presence in the supernal realm, the latter not being\nattainable previous to the resurrection. Indeed, a little farther\non in this same epistle, he plainly shows that he did not\nanticipate being received to heaven until after the second coming\nof Christ. He says, \"We look for the Savior from heaven, who shall\nchange our vile body and fashion it like unto his own glorious\nbody.\" This change is the preliminary preparation to ascent to\nheaven, which change he repeatedly represents as indispensable.\n\nWhat Paul believed would be the course and fate of things on earth\nafter the final consummation of Christ's mission is a matter of\ninference from his brief and partial hints. The most probable and\nconsistent view which can be constructed from those hints is this.\nHe thought all mankind would become reconciled and obedient to\nGod, and that death, losing its punitive character, would become\nwhat it was originally intended to be, the mere change of the\nearthly for a heavenly body preparatory to a direct ascension.\n\"Then shall the Son himself be subject unto Him that put all\nthings under him, that God may be all in all.\" Then placid virtues\nand innocent joys should fill the world, and human life be what it\nwas in Eden ere guilt forbade angelic visitants and converse with\nheaven.21 \"So when\" without a\n\n21 Neander thinks Paul's idea was that \"the perfected kingdom of\nGod would then blend itself harmoniously throughout his unbounded\ndominions.\" We believe his apprehension is correct. This globe\nwould become a part of the general paradise, an ante room or a l\nower story to the Temple of the Universe.\n\n\nprevious descent into Hades, as the context proves \"this mortal\nshall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the\nsaying which is written, 'Death shall be swallowed up in victory.\nO Death, thou last enemy, where is thy sting? O Hades, thou gloomy\nprison, where is thy victory?'\" The exposition just offered is\nconfirmed by its striking adaptedness to the whole Pauline scheme.\nIt is also the interpretation given by the earliest Fathers, and\nby the Church in general until now. This idea of men being changed\nand rising into heaven without at all entering the disembodied\nstate below was evidently in the mind of Milton when he wrote the\nfollowing lines:\n\n\"And from these corporeal nutriments, perhaps. Your bodies may at\nlast turn all to spirit, And, wing'd, ascend ethereal, may, at\nchoice, Here, or in heavenly paradise, dwell.\"\n\nIt now remains to see what Paul thought was to be the final\nportion of the hardened and persevering sinner. One class of\npassages in his writings, if taken by themselves, would lead us to\nbelieve that on that point he had no fixed convictions in regard\nto particulars, but, thinking these beyond the present reach of\nreason, contented himself with the general assurance that all such\npersons would meet their just deserts, and there left the subject\nin obscurity. \"God will render to every man to the Jew first, and\nalso to the Greek according to his deeds.\" \"Whatsoever a man\nsoweth, that shall he also reap.\" \"So then every one of us shall\ngive an account of himself to God.\" \"At the judgment seat of\nChrist every one shall receive the things done in his body,\naccording to that he hath done, whether it be good or whether it\nbe bad.\" From these and a few kindred texts we might infer that\nthe author, aware that he \"knew but in part,\" simply held the\nbelief without attempting to pry into special methods, details,\nand results that at the time of the judgment all should have exact\njustice. He may, however, have unfolded in his preaching minutia\nof faith not explained in his letters.\n\nA second class of passages in the epistles of Paul would naturally\ncause the common reader to conclude that he imagined that the\nunregenerate those unfit for the presence of God were to be\nannihilated when Christ, after his second coming, should return to\nheaven with his saints. \"Those who know not God and obey not the\ngospel of Christ shall be punished with everlasting destruction\nfrom the presence and glory of the Lord when he shall come.\" \"The\nend of the enemies of the cross of Christ is destruction.\" \"The\nvessels of wrath fitted for destruction.\" \"As many as have sinned\nwithout law shall perish without law.\" But it is to be observed\nthat the word here rendered \"destruction\" need not signify\nannihilation. It often, even in Paul's epistles, plainly means\nsevere punishment, dreadful misery, moral ruin, and retribution.\nFor example, \"foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown men in\ndestruction and perdition,\" \"piercing them through with many\nsorrows.\" It may or may not have that sense in the instances above\ncited. Their meaning is intrinsically uncertain: we must bring\nother passages and distinct considerations to aid our\ninterpretation.\n\nFrom a third selection of texts in Paul's epistles it is not\nstrange that some persons have deduced the doctrine of\nunconditional, universal salvation. \"As in Adam all die, even so\nin Christ shall all be made alive.\" But the genuine explanation of\nthis sentence, we are constrained to believe, is as follows: \"As,\nfollowing after the example of Adam, all souls descend below, so,\nfollowing after Christ, all shall be raised up,\" that is, at the\njudgment, after which event some may be taken to heaven, others\nbanished again into Hades. \"We trust in the living God, who is the\nSavior of all men, especially of them that believe.\" This means\nthat all men have been saved now from the unconditional sentence\nto Hades brought on them by the first sin, but not all know the\nglad tidings: those who receive them into believing hearts are\nalready exulting over their deliverance and their hopes of heaven.\nAll are objectively saved from the unavoidable and universal\nnecessity of Hadean imprisonment; the obedient believers are also\nsubjectively saved from the contingent and personal risk of\nincurring that doom. \"God hath shut them all up together in\nunbelief, that he might have mercy upon all.\" \"All\" here means\nboth Jews and Gentiles; and the reference is to the universal\nannulment of the universal fatality, and the impartial offer of\nheaven to every one who sanctifies the truth in his heart. In some\ncases the word \"all\" is used with rhetorical looseness, not with\nlogical rigidness, and denotes merely all Christians. Ruckert\nshows this well in his commentary on the fifteenth chapter of\nFirst Corinthians. In other instances the universality, which is\nindeed plainly there, applies to the removal from the race of the\ninherited doom; while a conditionality is unquestionably implied\nas to the actual salvation of each person. We say Paul does\nconstantly represent personal salvation as depending on\nconditions, as beset by perils and to be earnestly striven for.\n\"Lest that by any means I myself should be a castaway.\" \"Deliver\nsuch an one to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the\nspirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.\" \"Wherefore we\nlabor, that, whether present or absent, we may be accepted of the\nlord.\" \"To them that are saved we are a savor of life unto life;\nto them that perish, a savor of death unto death.\" \"Charge them\nthat are rich that they be humble and do good, laying up in store\na good foundation, that they may lay hold on eternal life.\" It is\nclear, from these and many similar passages of Paul, that he did\nnot believe in the unconditional salvation, the positive\nmechanical salvation, of all individuals, but held personal\nsalvation to be a contingent problem, to be worked out, through\nthe permitting grace of God, by Christian faith, works, and\ncharacter. How plainly this is contained, too, in his doctrine of\n\"a resurrection of the just and the unjust,\" and of a day of\njudgment, from whose august tribunal Christ is to pronounce\nsentence according to each man's deeds! At the same time, the\nundeniable fact deserves particular remembrance that he says, and\napparently knows, nothing whatever of a hell, in the present\nacceptation of that term, a prison house of fiery tortures. He\nassigns the realm of Satan and the evil spirits to the air, the\nvexed region between earth and heaven, according to the demonology\nof his age and country. 22\n\nFinally, there is a fourth class of passages, from which we might\ninfer that the apostle's faith merely excluded the reprobate from\nparticipating in the ascent with Christ, just as some of the\nPharisees excluded the Gentiles from their resurrection, and there\nleft the subject in darkness.\n\n22 A detailed and most curious account of this region, which he\ncalls Tartarus, is given by Angustine. De Gen. ad. lit. lib. iii.\ncap. 14, 15, ed. Benedictina.\n\n\n\"They that are Christ's,\" \"the dead in Christ, shall rise.\"\n\"No sensualist, extortioner, idolater, hath any inheritance\nin the kingdom of Christ and of God.\" \"There is laid up a crown of\nrighteousness, which the Lord shall give in that day to all them\nthat love his appearing.\" In all these, and in many other cases,\nthere is a marked omission of any reference to the ultimate\npositive disposal of the wicked. Still, against the supposition of\nhis holding the doctrine that all except good Christians would be\nleft below eternally, we have his repeated explicit avowals. \"I\nhave hope towards God that there shall be a resurrection both of\nthe just and the unjust.\" \"We must all appear before the judgment\nseat of Christ.\" These last statements, however, prove only that\nPaul thought the bad as well as the good would be raised up and\njudged: they are not inconsistent with the belief that the\ncondemned would afterwards either be annihilated, or remanded\neverlastingly to the under world. This very belief, we think, is\ncontained in that remarkable passage where Paul writes to the\nPhilippians that he strives \"if by any means he may attain unto\nthe resurrection.\" Now, the common resurrection of the dead for\njudgment needed not to be striven for: it would occur to all\nunconditionally. But there is another resurrection, or another\npart remaining to complete the resurrection, namely, after the\njudgment, a rising of the accepted to heaven. All shall rise from\nHades upon the earth to judgment. This Paul calls simply the\nresurrection, [Non ASCII Characters] After the judgment, the\naccepted shall rise to heaven. This Paul calls, with distinctive\nemphasis, [Non ASCII Characters] the pre eminent or complete\nresurrection, the prefix being used as an intensive. This is what\nthe apostle considers uncertain and labors to secure, \"stretching\nforward and pressing towards the goal for the prize of that call\nupwards,\" [Non ASCII Characters] (that invitation to heaven,)\n\"which God has extended through Christ.\" Those who are condemned\nat the judgment can have no part in this completion of the\nresurrection, cannot enter the heavenly kingdom, but must be\n\"punished with everlasting destruction from the presence and glory\nof the Lord,\" that is, as we suppose is signified, be thrust into\nthe under world for evermore. As unessential to our object, we\nhave omitted an exposition of the Pauline doctrine of the natural\nrank and proper or delegated offices of Christ in the universe;\nalso an examination of the validity of the doubts and arguments\nbrought against the genuineness of the lesser epistles ascribed to\nPaul. In close, we will sum up in brief array the leading\nconceptions in his view of the last things. First, there is a\nworld of immortal light and bliss over the sky, the exclusive\nabode of God and the angels from of old; and there is a dreary\nworld of darkness and repose under the earth, the abode of all\ndeparted human spirits. Secondly, death was originally meant to\nlead souls into heaven, clothed in new and divine bodies,\nimmediately on the fall of the present tabernacle; but sin broke\nthat plan and doomed souls to pass disembodied into Hades.\nThirdly, the Mosaic dispensation of law could not deliver men from\nthat sentence; but God had promised Abraham that through one of\nhis posterity they should be delivered. To fulfil that promise\nChrist came. He illustrated God's unpurchased love and forgiveness\nand determination to restore the original plan, as if men had\nnever sinned. Christ effected this aim, in conjunction with his\nteachings, by dying, descending into Hades, as if the doom of a\nsinful man were upon him also, subduing the powers of that prison\nhouse, rising again, and ascending into heaven, the first one ever\nadmitted there from among the dead, thus exemplifying the\nfulfilled \"expectation of the creature that was groaning and\ntravailing in pain\" to be born into the freedom of the heavenly\nglory of the sons of God. Fourthly, \"justification by faith,\"\ntherefore, means the redemption from Hades by acceptance of the\ndispensation of free grace which is proclaimed in the gospel.\nFifthly, every sanctified believer receives a pledge or earnest of\nthe spirit sealing him as God's and assuring him of acceptance\nwith Christ and of advance to heaven. Sixthly, Christ is speedily\nto come a second time, come in glory and power irresistible, to\nconsummate his mission, raise the dead, judge the world, establish\na new order of things, and return into heaven with his chosen\nones. Seventhly, the stubbornly wicked portion of mankind will be\nreturned eternally into the under world. Eighthly, after the\njudgment the subterranean realm of death will be shut up, no more\nsouls going into it, but all men at their dissolution being\ninstantly invested with spiritual bodies and ascending to the\nglories of the Lord. Finally, Jesus having put down all enemies\nand restored the primeval paradise will yield up his mediatorial\nthrone, and God the Father be all in all.\n\nThe preparatory rudiments of this system of the last things\nexisted in the belief of the age, and it was itself composed by\nthe union of a theoretic interpretation of the life of Christ and\nof the connected phenomena succeeding his death, with the elements\nof Pharasaic Judaism, all mingled in the crucible of the soul of\nPaul and fused by the fires of his experience. It illustrates a\ngreat number of puzzling passages in the New Testament, without\nthe necessity of recourse to the unnatural, incredible,\nunwarranted dogmas associated with them by the unique, isolated\npeculiarities of Calvinism. The interpretation given above, moreover,\nhas this strong confirmation of its accuracy, namely, that it is\narrived at from the stand point of the thought and life of the\nApostle Paul in the first century, not from the stand point of the\ntheology and experience of the educated Christian of the\nnineteenth century.\n\nCHAPTER V.\n\nJOHN'S DOCTRINE OF A FUTURE LIFE.\n\nWE are now to see if we can determine and explain what were the\nviews of the Apostle John upon the subject of death and life,\ncondemnation and salvation, the resurrection and immortality. To\nunderstand his opinions on these points, it is obviously necessary\nto examine his general system of theological thought. John is\nregarded as the writer of the proem to the fourth Gospel, also of\nthree brief epistles. There are such widely spread doubts of his\nbeing the author of the Apocalypse that it has seemed better to\nexamine that production separately, leaving each one free to\nattribute its doctrine of the last things to whatever person known\nor unknown he believes wrote the book. It is true that the\nauthorship of the fourth Gospel itself is powerfully disputed; but\nan investigation of that question would lead us too far and detain\nus too long from our real aim, which is not to discuss the\ngenuineness or the authority of the New Testament documents, but\nto show their meaning in what they actually contain and imply\nconcerning a future life. It is necessary to premise that we think\nit certain that John wrote with some reference to the sprouting\nphilosophy of his time, the Platonic and Oriental speculations so\nearly engrafted upon the stock of Christian doctrine. For the\npeculiar theories which were matured and systematized in the\nsecond and third centuries by the Gnostic sects were floating\nabout, in crude and fragmentary forms, at the close of the first\ncentury, when the apostle wrote. They immediately awakened\ndissension and alarm, cries of heresy and orthodoxy, in the\nChurch. Some modern writers deny the presence in the New Testament\nof any allusion to such views; but the weight of evidence on the\nother side internal, from similarity of phrase, and external, from\nthe testimony of early Fathers is, when accumulated and\nappreciated, overwhelming. Among these Gnostic notions the most\ndistinctive and prominent was the belief that the world was\ncreated and the Jewish dispensation given, not by the true and\ninfinite God, but by a subordinate and imperfect deity, the\nabsolute God remaining separate from all created things, unknown\nand afar, in the sufficiency of his aboriginal pleroma or fulness.\nThe Gnostics also maintained that Creative Power, Reason, Life,\nTruth, Love, and other kindred realities, were individual beings,\nwho had emanated from God, and who by their own efficiency\nconstructed, illuminated, and carried on the various provinces of\ncreation and races of existence. Many other opinions, fanciful,\nabsurd, or recondite, which they held, it is not necessary here to\nstate. The evangelist, without alluding perhaps to any particular\nteachers or systems of these doctrines, but only to their general\nscope, traverses by his declarations partially the same ground of\nthought which they cover, stating dogmatically the positive facts\nas he apprehended them. He agrees with some of the Gnostic\ndoctrines and differs from others, not setting himself to follow\nor to oppose them indiscriminately, but to do either as the truth\nseemed to him to require.\n\nThere are two methods of seeking the meaning of the introduction\nto the fourth Gospel where the Johannean doctrine of the Logos is\ncondensed. We may study it grammatically, or historically;\nmorally, or metaphysically; from the point of view of experimental\nreligious faith, or from that of contemporary speculative\nphilosophy. He who omits either of these ways of regarding the\nsubject must arrive at an interpretation essentially defective.\nBoth modes of investigation are indispensable for acquiring a full\ncomprehension of the expressions employed and the thoughts\nintended. But to be fitted to understand the theme in its\nhistorical aspect which, in this case, for purposes of criticism,\nis by far the more important  one must be intelligently acquainted\nwith the Hebrew personification of the Wisdom, also of the Word,\nof God; with the Platonic conception of archetypal ideas; with the\nAlexandrian Jewish doctrine of the Divine Logos; and with the\nrelevant Gnostic and Christian speculation and phraseology of the\nfirst two centuries. Especially must the student be familiar with\nPhilo, who was an eminent Platonic Jewish philosopher and a\ncelebrated writer, flourishing previous to the composition of the\nfourth Gospel, in which, indeed, there is scarcely a single\nsuperhuman predicate of Christ which may not be paralleled with\nstriking closeness from his extant works. In all these fields are\nfound, in imperfect proportions and fragments, the materials which\nare developed in John's belief of the Logos become flesh. To\npresent all these materials here would be somewhat out of place\nand would require too much room. We shall, therefore, simply\nstate, as briefly and clearly as possible, the final conclusions\nto which a thorough study has led us, drawing such illustrations\nas we do advance almost entirely from Philo.1\n\n1 The reader who wishes to see in smallest compass and most lucid\norder the facts requisite for the formation of a judgment is\nreferred to Lucke's \"Dissertation on the Logos,\" to Norton's\n\"Statement of Reasons,\" and to Neander's exposition of the\nJohannean theology in his \"Planting and Training of the Church.\"\nNearly every thing important, both external and internal, is\ncollected in these three sources taken together, and set forth\nwith great candor, power, and skill. Differing in their conclusions,\nthey supply pretty adequate means for the independent student to\nconclude for himself.\n\n\nIn the first place, what view of the Father himself, the absolute\nDeity, do these writings present? John conceives of God no one can\nwell collate the relevant texts in his works without perceiving\nthis as the one perfect and eternal Spirit, in himself invisible\nto mortal eyes, the Personal Love, Life, Truth, Light, \"in whom is\nno darkness at all.\" This corresponds entirely with the purest and\nhighest idea the human mind can form of the one untreated infinite\nGod. The apostle, then, going back to the period anterior to the\nmaterial creation, and soaring to the contemplation of the sole\nGod, does not conceive of him as being utterly alone, but as\nhaving a Son with him, an \"only begotten Son,\" a beloved companion\n\"before the foundation of the world.\" \"In the beginning was the\nLogos, and the Logos was with God, and the Logos was God. He was\nin the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and\nwithout him was nothing made that was made.\" The true explanation\nof these words, according to their undeniable historical and their\nunforced grammatical. There is an English translation of it, by\nProfessor G. R. Noyes, in the numbers of the Christian Examiner\nfor March and May, 1849, meaning, is as follows. Before the\nmaterial creation, when God was yet the sole being, his first\nproduction, the Logos, was a Son, at once the image of himself and\nthe idea of the yet uncreated world. By him this personal Idea,\nSon, or Logos all things were afterward created; or, more exactly,\nthrough him, by means of him, all things became, that is, were\nbrought, from their being in a state of conception in the mind of\nGod, into actual existence in space and time. Thus Philo says,\n\"God is the most generic; second is the Logos of God.\"2 \"The Logos\nis the first begotten Son.\"3 \"The Logos of God is above the whole\nworld, and is the most ancient and generic of all that had a\nbeginning.\"4 \"Nothing intervenes between the Logos and God on whom\nhe rests.\"5 \"This sensible world is the junior son of God; the\nSenior is the Idea,\"6 or Logos. \"The shadow and seeming portrait\nof God is his Logos, by which, as by an assumed instrument, he\nmade the world. As God is the original of the image here called\nshadow, so this image becomes the original of other things.\"7 \"The\nintelligible world, or world of archetypal ideas, is the Logos of\nthe world creating God; as an intelligible or ideal city is the\nthought of the architect reflecting to build a sensible city.\"8\n\"Of the world, God is the cause by which, the four elements the\nmaterial from which, the Logos the instrument through which, the\ngoodness of the Creator the end for which, it was made.\"9 These\ncitations from Philo clearly show, in various stages of\ndevelopment, that doctrine of the Logos which began first arguing\nto the Divine Being from human analogies with separating the\nconception of a plan in the mind of God from its execution in\nfact; proceeded with personifying that plan, or sum of ideas, as a\nmediating agent between motive and action, between impulse and\nfulfilment; and ended with hypostatizing the arranging power of\nthe Divine thought as a separate being, his intellectual image or\nSon, his first and perfect production. They unequivocally express\nthese thoughts: that God is the only being who was from eternity;\nthat the Logos was the first begotten, antemundane being, that he\nwas the likeness, image, immediate manifestation, of the Father;\nthat he was the medium of creation, the instrumental means in the\noutward formation of the world. History shows us this doctrine\nunfolded by minute steps, which it would be tedious to follow,\nfrom the Book of Proverbs to Philo Judaus and John, from Plato to\nJustin Martyr and Athanasius. But the rapid sketch just presented\nmay be sufficient now.\n\nWhen it is written, \"and the Logos was God,\" the meaning is not\nstrictly literal. To guard against its being so considered, the\nauthor tautologically repeats what he had said immediately before,\n\"the same was in the beginning with God.\" Upon the supposition\nthat the Logos is strictly identical with God, the verses make\nutter nonsense. \"In the beginning was God, and God was with God,\nand God was God. God was in the beginning with God.\" But suppose\nthe Logos to mean an ante mundane but subordinate being, who was a\nperfect image or likeness of God, and the sense is both clear and\nsatisfactory, and no violence is done either to historical data or\nto grammatical demands. \"And the Logos was God,\" that is, was the\nmirror or facsimile of God. So, employing the same idiom, we are\naccustomed to say\n\n2 Mangey's edition of Philo, vol. i. p. 82.\n\n3 Ibid. p. 308.\n\n4 Ibid. p. 121.\n\n5 Ibid. p. 560.\n\n6 Ibid. p. 277.\n\n7 Ibid. p. 106.\n\n8 Ibid. p. 5.\n\n9 Ibid. p. 162.\n\n\nof an accurate representation of a person, It is the very man\nhimself! Or, without the use of this idiom, we may explain the\nexpression \"the Logos was God\" thus: He stands in the place of God\nto the lower creation: practically considered, he is as God to us.\nAs Philo writes, \"To the wise and perfect the Most High is God;\nbut to us, imperfect beings, the Logos God's interpreter is\nGod.\"10\n\nThe inward significance of the Logos doctrine, in all its degrees\nand phases, circumstantially and essentially, from first to last,\nis the revelation of God. God himself, in himself, is conceived as\nabsolutely withdrawn beyond the apprehension of men, in boundless\nimmensity and inaccessible secrecy. His own nature is hidden, as a\nthought is hidden in the mind; but he has the power of revealing\nit, as a thought is revealed by speaking it in a word. That\nuttered word is the Logos, and is afterwards conceived as a\nperson, and as creative, then as building and glorifying the\nworld. All of God that is sent forth from passive concealment into\nactive manifestation is the Logos. \"The term Logos comprehends,\"\nNorton says, \"all the attributes of God manifested in the creation\nand government of the universe.\" The Logos is the hypostasis of\n\"the unfolded portion,\" \"the revealing power,\" \"the self showing\nfaculty,\" \"the manifesting action,\" of God. The essential idea,\nthen, concerning the Logos is that he is the means through which\nthe hidden God comes to the cognizance of his creatures. In\nharmony with this prevailing philosophy one who believed the Logos\nto have been incarnated in Christ would suppose the purpose of his\nincarnation to be the fuller revelation of God to men. And\nMartineau says, \"The view of revelation which is implicated in the\nfolds of the Logos doctrine that everywhere pervades the fourth\nGospel, is that it is the appearance to beings who have something\nof a divine spirit within them, of a yet diviner without them,\nleading them to the divinest of all, who embraces them both.\" This\nis a fine statement of the practical religious aspect of John's\nconception of the nature and office of the Savior.\n\nSince he regarded God as personal love, life, truth, and light,\nand Christ, the embodied Logos, as his only begotten Son, an exact\nimage of him in manifestation, it follows that John regarded\nChrist, next in rank below God, as personal love, life, truth, and\nlight; and the belief that he was the necessary medium of\ncommunicating these Divine blessings to men would naturally\nresult. Accordingly, we find that John repeats, as falling from\nthe lips of Christ, all the declarations required by and\nsupporting such an hypothesis. \"I am the way, the truth, and the\nlife.\" \"No man cometh unto the Father but by me.\" But Philo, too,\nhad written before in precisely the same strain. Witness the\ncorrespondences between the following quotations respectively from\nJohn and Philo. \"I am the bread which came down from heaven to\ngive life to the world.\"11 Whoso eateth my body and drinketh my\nblood hath eternal life.\"12 \"Behold, I rain bread upon you from\nheaven: the heavenly food of the soul is the word of God, and the\nDivine Logos, from whom all eternal instructions and wisdoms\nflow.\"13 \"The bread the Lord gave us to eat was his word.\"14\n\"Except ye eat my flesh and drink my blood, ye have no life\n\n10 Mangey's edition of Philo, vol. ii. p. 128.\n\n11 John vi. 33. 41.\n\n12 Ibid. 54.\n\n13 Quoted by G. Scheffer in his Treatise \"De Usu\nPhilonis in Interpretatione Novi Testamenti,\" p. 82.\n\n14 lbid. p. 81.\n\n\nin you.\"15 \"He alone can become the heir of incorporeal and divine\nthings whose whole soul is filled with the salubrious Word.\"16\n\"Every one that seeth the Son and believeth on him shall have\neverlasting life.\"17 \"He strains every nerve towards the highest\nDivine Logos, who is the fountain of wisdom, in order that,\ndrawing from that spring, he may escape death and win everlasting\nlife.\"18 \"I am the living bread which came down from heaven: if\nany man eat of this bread he shall live forever.\"19 \"Lifting up\nhis eyes to the ether, man receives manna, the Divine Logos,\nheavenly and immortal nourishment for the right desiring soul.\"20\n\"God is the perennial fountain of life; God is the fountain of the\nmost ancient Logos.\"21 \"As the living Father hath sent me, and I\nlive by the Father, so he that eateth me, even he shall live by\nme.\"22 Does it not seem perfectly plain that John's doctrine of\nthe Christ is at bottom identical with Philo's doctrine of the\nLogos? The difference of development in the two doctrines, so far\nas there is a difference, is that the latter view is\nphilosophical, abstract; the former, practical, historical. Philo\ndescribes the Logos ideally, filling the supersensible sphere,\nmediating between the world and God; John presents him really,\nincarnated as a man, effecting the redemption of our race. The\nsame dignity, the same offices, are predicated of him by both.\nJohn declares, \"In him [the Divine Logos] was life, and the life\nwas the light of men.\"23 Philo asserts, \"Nothing is more luminous\nand irradiating than the Divine Logos, by the participation of\nwhom other things expel darkness and gloom, earnestly desiring to\npartake of living light.\"24 John speaks of Christ as \"the only\nbegotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father.\"25 Philo says,\n\"The Logos is the first begotten Son of God,\" \"between whom and\nGod nothing intervenes.\"26 John writes, \"The Son of man will give\nyou the food of everlasting life; for him hath God the Father\nsealed.\"27 Philo writes, \"The stamp of the seal of God is the\nimmortal Logos.\"28 We have this from John: \"He was manifested to\ntake away our sins; and in him is no sin.\"29 And this from Philo:\n\"The Divine Logos is free from all sins, voluntary and\ninvoluntary.\"30\n\nThe Johannean Christ is the Philonean Logos born into the world as\na man. \"And the Logos was made flesh, and dwelt among us, full of\ngrace and truth.\" The substance of what has thus far been\nestablished may now be concisely stated. The essential thought,\nwhether the subject be metaphysically or practically considered,\nis this. God is the eternal, infinite personality of love and\ntruth, life and light. The Logos is his first born Son, his exact\nimage, the reproduction of his being, the next lower personality\nof love and truth, life and light, the instrument for creating and\nruling the world, the revelation of God, the medium of\ncommunication between God and his works. Christ is that Logos come\nupon the earth as a man to save the perishing, proving his pre\nexistence and superhuman nature by his miraculous knowledge and\nworks. That the belief expressed in the last sentence is correctly\nattributed to John will\n\n15 John vi. 53.\n\n16 Philo, vol. i. p. 482.\n\n17 John vi. 40.\n\n18 Philo, vol. i. p. 560.\n\n19 John vi. 51.\n\n20 Philo, vol. i. p. 498.\n\n21 Ibid. pp. 575, 207.\n\n22 John vi. 57.\n\n23 John i. 4.\n\n24 Philo, vol. i. p. 121.\n\n25 John i. 18.\n\n26 Philo, vol. i. pp. 427, 560.\n\n27 John vi. 27.\n\n28 Philo, vol. ii. p. 606.\n\n29 1 John iii. 5.\n\n30 Philo, vol. i. p. 562.\n\n\nbe repeatedly substantiated before the close of this chapter: in\nregard to the statements in the preceding sentences no further\nproof is thought necessary.\n\nWith the aid of a little repetition, we will now attempt to make a\nstep of progress. The tokens of energy, order, splendor,\nbeneficence, in the universe, are not, according to John, as we\nhave seen, the effects of angelic personages, emanating gods,\nGnostic aons, but are the workings of the self revealing power of\nthe one true and eternal God, this power being conceived by John,\naccording to the philosophy of his age, as a proper person, God's\ninstrument in creation. Reason, life, light, love, grace,\nrighteousness, kindred terms so thickly scattered over his pages,\nare not to him, as they were to the Gnostics, separate beings, but\nare the very working of the Logos, consubstantial manifestations\nof God's nature and attributes. But mankind, fallen into folly and\nvice, perversity and sin, lying in darkness, were ignorant that\nthese Divine qualities were in reality mediate exhibitions of God,\nimmediate exhibitions of the Logos. \"The light was shining in\ndarkness, and the darkness comprehended it not.\" Then, to reveal\nto men the truth, to regenerate them and conjoin them through\nhimself with the Father in the experience of eternal life, the\nhypostatized Logos left his transcendent glory in heaven and came\ninto the world in the person of Jesus. \"No man hath seen God at\nany time: the only begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father,\nhe hath revealed him.\" \"I came down from heaven to do the will of\nHim that sent me.\" This will is that all who see and believe on\nthe Son shall have everlasting life. \"God so loved the world that\nhe gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him\nshould not perish, but have everlasting life.\" \"The bread of God\nis He who cometh down from heaven and giveth life to the world.\"\nThe doctrine of the pre existence of souls, and of their being\nborn into the world in the flesh, was rife in Judea when this\nGospel was written, and is repeatedly alluded to in it.31 That\nJohn applies this doctrine to Christ in the following and in other\ninstances is obvious. \"Before Abraham was, I am.\" \"I came forth\nfrom the Father and am come into the world.\" \"Father, glorify thou\nme with the glory which I had with thee before the world was.\"\n\"What and if ye shall see the Son of Man ascend up where he was\nbefore?\" As for ourselves, we do not see how it is possible for\nany unprejudiced person, after studying the fourth Gospel\nfaithfully with the requisite helps, to doubt that the writer of\nit believed that Jesus pre existed as the Divine Logos, and that\nhe became incarnate to reveal the Father and to bring men into the\nexperience of true eternal life. John declares this, in his first\nepistle, in so many words, saying, \"The living Logos, the eternal\nlife which was with the Father from the beginning, was manifested\nunto us;\" and, \"God sent his only begotten Son into the world that\nwe might live through him.\" Whether the doctrine thus set forth\nwas really entertained and taught by Jesus himself, or whether it\nis the interpretation put on his language by one whose mind was\nfull of the notions of the age, are distinct questions. With the\nsettlement of these questions we are not now concerned: such a\ndiscussion would be more appropriate when examining the genuine\nmeaning of the words of Christ. All that is necessary here is the\nsuggestion that when we show the theological system of John it\ndoes not necessarily follow that that is the true\n\n31 John i. 21; ix. 2.\n\n\nteaching of Christ. Having adopted the Logos doctrine, it might\ntinge and turn his thoughts and words when reporting from memory,\nafter the lapse of many years, the discourses of his Master. He\nmight unconsciously, under such an influence, represent literally\nwhat was figuratively intended, and reflect from his own mind\nlights and shades, associations and meanings, over all or much of\nwhat he wrote. There are philosophical and literary peculiarities\nwhich have forced many of the best critics to make this\ndistinction between the intended meaning of Christ's declarations\nas he uttered them, and their received meaning as this evangelist\nreported them. Norton says, \"Whether St. John did or did not adopt\nthe Platonic conception of the Logos is a question not important\nto be settled in order to determine our own judgment concerning\nits truth.\"32 Lucke has written to the same effect, but more\nfully: \"We are allowed to distinguish the sense in which John\nunderstood the words of Christ, from the original sense in which\nChrist used them.\"33\n\nIt is to be observed that in all that has been brought forward,\nthus far, there is not the faintest hint of the now current notion\nof the Trinity. The idea put forth by John is not at all allied\nwith the idea that the infinite God himself assumed a human shape\nto walk the earth and undergo mortal sufferings. It is simply said\nthat that manifested and revealing portion of the Divine\nattributes which constituted the hypostatized Logos was incarnated\nand displayed in a perfect, sinless sample of man, thus exhibiting\nto the world a finite image of God. We will illustrate this\ndoctrine with reference to the inferences to be drawn from it in\nregard to human nature. John repeatedly says, in effect, \"God is\ntruth,\" \"God is light,\" \"God is love,\" \"God is life.\" He likewise\nsays of the Savior, \"In him was life, and the life was the light\nof men,\" and reports him as saying of himself, \"I am the truth,\"\n\"I am the life,\" \"I am the light of the world.\" The fundamental\nmeaning of these declarations so numerous, striking, and varied in\nthe writings of John is, that all those qualities which the\nconsciousness of humanity has recognised as Divine are\nconsubstantial with the being of God; that all the reflections of\nthem in nature and man belong to the Logos, the eldest Son, the\nfirst production, of God; and that in Jesus their personality, the\nvery Logos himself, was consciously embodied, to be brought nearer\nto men, to be exemplified and recommended to them. Reason, power,\ntruth, light, love, blessedness, are not individual aons, members\nof a hierarchy of deities, but are the revealing elements of the\none true God. The personality of the abstract and absolute fulness\nof all these substantial qualities is God. The personality of the\ndiscerpted portion of them shown in the universe is the Logos.\nNow, that latter personality Christ was. Consequently, while he\nwas a man, he was not merely a man, but was also a supernatural\nmessenger from heaven, sent into the world to impersonate the\nimage of God under the condition of humanity, free from every\nsinful defect and spot. Thus, being the manifesting representative\nof the Father, he could say, \"He that hath seen me hath\n[virtually] seen the Father.\" Not that they were identical in\nperson, but that they were similar in nature and character, spirit\nand design: both were eternal holiness, love, truth, and life. \"I\nand my Father are one thing,\" (in essence, not in personality.)\nNothing can be more\n\n32 Statement of Reasons, 1st ed. p. 239.\n\n33 Christian Examiner, May, 1849, p. 431.\n\n\nunequivocally pronounced than the subordination of the Son to the\nFather that the Father sent him, that he could do nothing without\nthe Father, that his Father was greater than he, that his\ntestimony was confirmed by the Father's in a hundred places by\nJohn, both as author writing his own words and as interpreter\nreporting Christ's. There is not a text in the record that implies\nChrist's identity with God, but only his identity with the Logos.\nThe identity of the Logos with God is elementary, not personal.\nFrom this view it follows that every man who possesses, knows, and\nexhibits the elements of the Divine life, the characteristics of\nGod, is in that degree a son of God, Christ being pre eminently\nthe Son on account of his pre eminent likeness, his supernatural\ndivinity, as the incarnate Logos.\n\nThat the apostle held and taught this conclusion appears, first,\nfrom the fact, otherwise inexplicable, that he records the same\nsublime statements concerning all good Christians, with no other\nqualification than that of degree, that he does concerning Christ\nhimself. Was Jesus the Son of God? \"To as many as received him he\ngave power to become the sons of God.\" There is in Philo a passage\ncorresponding remarkably with this one from John:  \"Those who have\nknowledge of the truth are properly called sons of God: he who is\nstill unfit to be named a son of God should endeavor to fashion\nhimself to the first born Logos of God.\"34 Was Jesus \"from above,\"\nwhile wicked men were \"from beneath\"? \"They are not of the world,\neven as I am not of the world.\" Was Jesus sent among men with a\nspecial commission? \"As thou hast sent me into the world, even so\nhave I also sent them into the world.\" Was Jesus the subject of a\npeculiar glory, bestowed upon him by the Father? \"The glory which\nthou gavest me I have given them, that they may be one, even as we\nare one.\" Had Jesus an inspiration and a knowledge not vouchsafed\nto the princes of this world? \"Ye have an unction from the Holy\nOne, and ye know all things.\" Did Jesus perform miraculous works?\n\"He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also.\"\nIn the light of the general principle laid down, that God is the\nactual fulness of truth and love and light and blessedness; that\nChrist, the Logos, is the manifested impersonation of them; and\nthat all men who receive him partake of their Divine substance and\nenjoy their prerogative, the texts just cited, and numerous other\nsimilar ones, are transparent. It is difficult to see how on any\nother hypothesis they can be made to express an intelligible and\nconsistent meaning.\n\nSecondly, we are brought to the same conclusion by the synonymous\nuse and frequent interchange of different terms in the Johannean\nwritings. Not only it is said, \"Whoever is born of God cannot\nsin,\" but it is also written, \"Every one that doeth righteousness\nis born of God;\" and again, \"Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the\nChrist is born of God.\" In other words, having a good character\nand leading a just life, heartily receiving and obeying the\nrevelation made by Christ, are identical phrases. \"He that hath\nthe Son hath life.\" \"Whosoever transgresseth and abideth not in\nthe doctrine of Christ hath not God.\" \"This is the victory that\novercometh the world, even our faith\" in the doctrine of Christ.\n\"He that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God and God in him.\" \"He\nthat keepeth the commandments dwelleth in God and God in him.\" \"He\nthat confesseth that Jesus is the Son of God, God\n\n34 Philo, vol. i. p. 427.\n\n\ndwelleth in him and he in God.\" \"He that doeth good is of God.\"\n\"God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son.\"\n\"The Son of God is come, and hath given us an understanding that\nwe may know the true God and eternal life.\" From these citations,\nand from other passages which will readily occur, we gather the\nfollowing pregnant results. To \"do the truth,\" \"walk in the\ntruth,\" \"walk in the light,\" \"keep the commandments,\" \"do\nrighteousness,\" \"abide in the doctrine of Christ,\" \"do the will of\nGod,\" \"do good,\" \"dwell in love,\" \"abide in Christ,\" \"abide in\nGod,\" \"abide in life,\" all are expressions meaning precisely the\nsame thing. They all signify essentially the conscious possession\nof goodness; in other words, the practical adoption of the life\nand teachings of Jesus; or, in still other terms, the personal\nassimilation of the spiritual realities of the Logos, which are\nlove, life, truth, light. Jesus having been sent into the world to\nexemplify the characteristics and claims of the Father, and to\nregenerate men from unbelief and sin to faith and righteousness,\nthose who were walking in darkness, believers of lies and doers of\nunrighteousness, those who were abiding in alienation and death,\nmight by receiving and following him be restored to the favor of\nGod and pass from darkness and death into life and light. \"This is\neternal life, that they should know thee, the only true God, and\nJesus Christ whom thou hast sent.\"\n\nThe next chief point in the doctrine of John is his belief in an\nevil being, the personality of wickedness, and the relation\nbetween him and bad men. There have been, from the early\ncenturies, keen disputes on the question whether this apostle uses\nthe terms devil and evil one with literal belief or with\nfigurative accommodation. We have not a doubt that the former is\nthe true view. The popular denial of the existence of evil\nspirits, with an arch demon over them, is the birth of a\nphilosophy much later than the apostolic age. The use of the term\n\"devil\" merely as the poetic or ethical personification of the\nseductive influences of the world is the fruit of theological\nspeculation neither originated nor adopted by the Jewish prophets\nor by the Christian apostles. Whoso will remember the prevailing\nfaith of the Jews at that time, and the general state of\nspeculative opinion, and will recollect the education of John, and\nnotice the particular manner in which he alludes to the subject\nthroughout his epistles and in his reports of the discourses of\nJesus, we think will be convinced that the Johannean system\nincludes a belief in the actual existence of Satan according to\nthe current Pharisaic dogma of that age. It is not to be\ndisguised, either, that the investigations of the ablest critics\nhave led an overwhelming majority of them to this interpretation.\n\"I write unto you, young men, because ye have overcome the evil\none.\" \"He that is begotten of God guardeth himself, and the evil\none toucheth him not.\" \"He that committeth sin is of the devil,\nfor the devil sinneth from the beginning.\" \"Whosoever is born of\nGod cannot sin. In this the children of God are manifest, and the\nchildren of the devil.\" \"Ye are of your father the devil, and his\nlusts ye will do.\" There can be no doubt that these, and other\npassages of a kindred and complementary nature, yield the\nfollowing view. Good men are allied to God, because their\ncharacteristics are the same as his, truth, light, love, life,\nrighteousness. \"As he is, so are we in this world.\" Bad men are\nallied to the devil, because their characteristics are the same as\nhis, falsehood, darkness, hatred, death, sin. \"Cain, who slew his\nbrother, was of the evil one.\" The facts, then, of the great moral\nproblem of the world, according to John, were these. God is the\ninfinite Father, whose nature and attributes comprehend all holy,\nbeautiful, desirable realities, and who would draw mankind to his\nblessed embrace forever. The goodness, illumination, and joy of\nholy souls reflect his holiness and display his reign. The devil\nis the great spirit of wickedness, whose attributes comprehend all\nevil, dark, fearful realities, and who entices mankind to sin. The\nwickedness, gloom, and misery of corrupt souls reveal his likeness\nand his kingdom.\n\nThe former manifests himself in the glories of the world and in\nthe divine qualities of the soul. The latter manifests himself in\nthe whole history of temptation and sin and in the vicious\ntendencies of the heart. Good men, those possessing pre eminently\nthe moral qualities of God, are his children, are born of him,\nthat is, are inspired and led by him. Bad men, those possessing in\na ruling degree the qualities of the devil, are his children, are\nborn of him, that is, are animated and governed by his spirit.\n\nWhether the evangelist gave to his own mind any philosophical\naccount of the origin and destiny of the devil or not is a\nquestion concerning which his writings are not explicit enough for\nus to determine. In the beginning he represents God as making, by\nmeans of the Logos, all things that were made, and his light as\nshining in darkness that comprehended it not. Now, he may have\nconceived of matter as uncreated, eternally existing in formless\nnight, the ground of the devil's being, and may have limited the\nwork of creation to breaking up the sightless chaos, defining it\ninto orderly shapes, filling it with light and motion, and\npeopling it with children of heaven. Such was the Persian faith,\nfamiliar at that time to the Jews. Neander, with others, objects\nto this view that it would destroy John's monotheism and make him\na dualist, a believer in two self existents, aboriginal and\neverlasting antagonists. It only needs to be observed, in reply,\nthat John was not a philosopher of such thorough dialectic\ntraining as to render it impossible for inconsistencies to coexist\nin his thoughts. In fact, any one who will examine the beliefs of\neven such men as Origen and Augustine will perceive that such an\nobjection is not valid. Some writers of ability and eminence have\ntried to maintain that the Johannean conception of Satan was of\nsome exalted archangel who apostatized from the law of God and\nfell from heaven into the abyss of night, sin, and woe. They could\nhave been led to such an hypothesis only by preconceived notions\nand prejudices, because there is not in John's writings even the\nobscurest intimation of such a doctrine. On the contrary, it is\nwritten that the devil is a liar and the father of lies from the\nbeginning, the same phrase used to denote the primitive\ncompanionship of God and his Logos anterior to the creation. The\ndevil is spoken of by John, with prominent consistency, as bearing\nthe same relation to darkness, falsehood, sin, and death that God\nbears to light, truth, righteousness, and life, that is, as being\ntheir original personality and source. Whether the belief itself\nbe true or not, be reconcilable with pure Christianity or not, in\nour opinion John undoubtedly held the belief of the personality of\nthe source of wickedness, and supposed that the great body of\nmankind had been seduced by him from the free service of heaven,\nand had become infatuated in his bondage.\n\nJust here in the scheme of Christianity arises the necessity,\nappears the profound significance in the apostolic belief, of that\ndisinterested interference of God through his revelation in Christ\nwhich aimed to break the reigning power of sin and redeem lost\nmen from the tyranny of Satan. \"For this purpose the Son of God\nwas manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil.\"\n\nThat is to say, the revelation of the nature and will of God in\nthe works of the creation and in the human soul was not enough,\neven when aided by the law of Moses, to preserve men in the\ntruth and the life. They had been seduced by the evil one into\nsin, alienated from the Divine favor, and plunged in darkness\nand death. A fuller, more powerful manifestation of the\ncharacter, claims, attractions of the Father was necessary to\nrecall the benighted wanderers from their lost state and restore\nthem to those right relations and to that conscious communion with\nGod in which alone true life consists. Then, and for that purpose,\nJesus Christ was commissioned to appear, a pre existent being of\nmost exalted rank, migrating from the super stellar sphere into\nthis world, to embody and mirror forth through the flesh those\ncharacteristics which are the natural attributes of God the Father\nand the essential conditions of heaven the home. In him the\nglorious features of the Divinity were miniatured on a finite\nscale and perfectly exhibited, \"thus revealing,\" (as Neander says,\nin his exposition of John's doctrine,) \"for the first time, in a\ncomprehensible manner, what a being that God is whose holy\npersonality man was created to represent.\" So Philo says, \"The\nLogos is the image of God, and man is the image of the Logos.\"35\nTherefore, according to this view, man is the image of the image\nof God. The dimmed, imperfect reflection of the Father, originally\nshining in nature and the soul, would enable all who had not\nsuppressed it and lost the knowledge of it, to recognise at once\nand adore the illuminated image of Him manifested and moving\nbefore them in the person of the Son; the faint gleams of Divine\nqualities yet left within their souls would spontaneously blend\nwith the full splendors irradiating the form of the inspired and\nimmaculate Christ. Thus they would enter into a new and\nintensified communion with God, and experience an unparalleled\ndepth of peace and joy, an inspired assurance of eternal life. But\nthose who, by worldliness and wickedness, had obscured and\ndestroyed all their natural knowledge of God and their affinities\nto him, being without the inward preparation and susceptibility\nfor the Divine which the Savior embodied and manifested, would not\nbe able to receive it, and thus would pass an infallible sentence\nupon themselves. \"When the Comforter is come, he will convict the\nworld of sin, because they believe not on me.\" \"He that believeth\non the Son hath eternal life; but he that believeth not is\ncondemned already, in that he loveth darkness rather than light.\"\n\"Hereby know we the spirit of truth and the spirit of error: he\nthat knoweth God heareth us; he that is not of God heareth not\nus.\" \"Who is a liar but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ?\"\nThe idea is, that such a denial must be caused by inward\ndepravity, could only spring from an evil character.\n\nIn the ground thought just presented we may find the explanation\nof the seemingly obscure and confused use of terms in the\nfollowing instances, and learn to understand more fully John's\nidea of the effect of spiritual contact with Christ. \"He that\ndoeth righteousness is born of God.\" \"He that believeth Jesus to\nbe the Christ is born of God.\" \"He that denieth the Son, the same\nhath not the Father.\" \"He that hath the Son hath life.\" These\npassages all become perspicuous and concordant in view of John's\nconception of the inward unity of\n\n35 Philo, vol. i. p. 106.\n\n\ntruth, or the universal oneness of the Divine life, in God, in\nChrist, in all souls that partake of it. A character in harmony\nwith the character of God will, by virtue of its inherent light\nand affinity, recognise the kindred attributes or characteristics\nof God, wherever manifested. He who perceives and embraces the\nDivinity in the character of Christ proves thereby that he was\nprepared to receive it by kindred qualities residing in himself,\nproves that he was distinctively of God. He who fails to perceive\nthe peculiar glory of Christ proves thereby that he was alienated\nand blinded by sin and darkness, distinctively of the evil one.\nVarying the expression to illustrate the thought, if the light and\nwarmth of a living love of God were in a soul, it would\nnecessarily, when brought into contact with the concentrated\nradiance of Divinity incarnated and beaming in Christ, effect a\nmore fervent, conscious, and abiding union with the Father than\ncould be known before he was thus revealed. But if iniquities,\nsinful lusts, possessing the soul, had made it hard and cold, even\nthe blaze of spotless virtues and miraculous endowments in the\nmanifesting Messiah would be the radiation of light upon darkness\ninsensible to it. Therefore, the presentation of the Divine\ncontents of the soul or character of Jesus to different persons\nwas an unerring test of their previous moral state: the good would\napprehend him with a thrill of unison, the bad would not. To have\nthe Son, to have the Father, to have the truth, to have eternal\nlife, all are the same thing: hence, where one is predicated or\ndenied all are predicated or denied.\n\nContinuing our investigation, we shall find the distinction drawn\nof a sensual or perishing life and a spiritual or eternal life.\nThe term world (kosmos) is used by John apparently in two\ndifferent senses. First, it seems to signify all mankind, divided\nsometimes into the unbelievers and the Christians. \"Christ is the\npropitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the\nsins of the whole world.\" \"God sent not his Son to condemn the\nworld, but that the world through him might be saved.\" It is\nundeniable that \"world\" here means not the earth, but the men on\nthe earth. Secondly, \"world\" in the dialect of John means all the\nevil, all the vitiating power, of the material creation. \"Now\nshall the Prince of this world be cast out.\" It is not meant that\nthis is the devil's world, because John declares in the beginning\nthat God made it; but he means that all diabolic influence comes\nfrom the darkness of matter fighting against the light of\nDivinity, and by a figure he says \"world,\" meaning the evils in\nthe world, meaning all the follies, vanities, sins, seductive\ninfluences, of the dark and earthy, the temporal and sensual. In\nthis case the love of the world means almost precisely what is\nexpressed by the modern word worldliness. \"Love not the world,\nneither the things that are in the world. If any man love the\nworld, the love of the Father is not in him.\"\n\nIn a vein strikingly similar, Philo writes, \"It is impossible for\nthe love of the world and the love of God to coexist, as it is\nimpossible for light and darkness to coexist.\"36 \"For all that is\nin the world,\" says John, \"the lust of the flesh, and the greed of\nthe eyes, and the pomp of living, is not of the Father, but is of\nthe world. And the world passes away, with the lust thereof: but\nhe that does the will of God abides forever.\" He who is taken up\nand absorbed in the gauds and pleasures of time and sense has no\ndeep spring of religious experience:\n\n36 Philo, vol. ii. p. 649.\n\n\nhis enjoyments are of the decaying body; his heart and his thoughts\nare set on things which soon fly away. But the earnest believer in\nGod pierces through all these superficial and transitory objects\nand pursuits, and fastens his affections to imperishable verities:\nhe feels, far down in his soul, the living well of faith and\nfruition, the cool fresh fountain of spiritual hope and joy, whose\nstream of life flows unto eternity. The vain sensualist and hollow\nworldling has no true life in him: his love reaches not beyond the\ngrave. The loyal servant of duty and devout worshipper of God has\na spirit of conscious superiority to death and oblivion: though\nthe sky fall, and the mountains melt, and the seas fade, he knows\nhe shall survive, because immaterial truth and love are deathless.\nThe whole thought contained in the texts we are considering is\nembodied with singular force and beauty in the following passage\nfrom one of the sacred books of the Hindus: \"Who would have\nimmortal life must beware of outward things, and seek inward\ntruth, purity, and faith; for the treacherous and evanescent world\nflies from its votaries, like the mirage, or devil car, which\nmoves so swiftly that one cannot ascend it.\" The mere negation of\nreal life or blessedness is predicated of the careless worldling;\npositive death or miserable condemned unrest is predicated of the\nbad hearted sinner. Both these classes of men, upon accepting\nChrist, that is, upon owning the Divine characteristics incarnate\nin him, enter upon a purified, exalted, and new experience. \"He\nthat hates his brother is a murderer and abides in death.\" \"We\nknow that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the\nbrethren.\" This new experience is distinctively, emphatically,\nlife; it is spiritual peace, joy, trust, communion with God, and\ntherefore immortal. It brings with it its own sufficient evidence,\nleaving its possessor free from misgiving doubts, conscious of his\neternity. \"He that believeth on the Son of God hath the witness in\nhimself.\" \"Hereby know we that we dwell in him and he in us,\nbecause he hath given us of his spirit.\" \"That ye may know that ye\nhave eternal life.\"\n\nThe objects of Christ's mission, so far as they refer to the\ntwofold purpose of revealing the Father by an impersonation of his\nimage, and giving new moral life to men by awakening within them a\nconscious fellowship with Divine truth and goodness, have already\nbeen unfolded. But this does not include the whole: all this might\nhave been accomplished by his appearance, authoritative teachings,\nmiracles, and return to heaven, without dying. Why, then, did he\ndie? What was the meaning or aim of his death and resurrection?\nThe apostle conceives that he came not only to reveal God and to\nregenerate men, but also to be a \"propitiation\" for men's sins, to\nredeem them from the penalty of their sins; and it was for this\nend that he must suffer the doom of physical death. \"Ye know that\nhe was manifested to take away our sins.\" It is the more difficult\nto tell exactly what thoughts this language was intended by John\nto convey, because his writings are so brief and miscellaneous, so\nunsystematic and incomplete. He does not explain his own terms,\nbut writes as if addressing those who had previously received such\noral instruction as would make the obscurities clear, the hints\ncomplete, and the fragments whole. We will first quote from John\nall the important texts bearing on the point before us, and then\nendeavor to discern and explain their sense. \"If we walk in the\nlight as God is in the light, the blood of Jesus Christ, his Son,\ncleanseth us from all sin.\" \"He is the propitiation for our sins.\"\n\"Your sins are forgiven through his name.\"\n\n\"The whole world is subject to the evil one.\" These texts, few and\nvague as they are, comprise every thing directly said by John upon\nthe atonement and redemption: other relevant passages merely\nrepeat the same substance. Certainly these statements do not of\nthemselves teach any thing like the Augustinian doctrine of\nexpiatory sufferings to placate the Father's indignation at sin\nand sinners, or to remove, by paying the awful debt of justice,\nthe insuperable bars to forgiveness. Nothing of that sort is\nanywhere intimated in the Johannean documents, even in the\nfaintest manner. So far from saying that there was unwillingness\nor inability in the Father to take the initiative for our ransom\nand pardon, he expressly avows, \"Herein is love, not that we loved\nGod, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation\nfor our sins.\" Instead of exclaiming, with the majority of modern\ntheologians, \"Believe in the atoning death, the substitutional\nsufferings, of Christ, and your sins shall then all be washed\naway, and you shall be saved,\" he explicitly says, \"If we confess\nour sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins.\" And\nagain: \"Whosoever believeth in him\" not in his death, but in him\n\"shall have eternal life.\" The allusions in John to the doctrine\nof redemption and reconciliation do not mean, it is plain enough,\nthe buying off of the victims of eternal condemnation by the\nvicarious pains of Jesus. What, then, do they mean? They are too\nfew, short, and obscure for us to decide this question\nconclusively by their own light alone. We must get assistance from\nabroad.\n\nThe reader will remember that it was the Jewish belief, and the\nretained belief of the converts to Christianity, at that time,\nthat men's souls, in consequence of sin, were doomed upon leaving\nthe body to descend into the under world. This was the objective\npenalty of sin, inherited from Adam. Now, Christ in his\nsuperangelic state in heaven was not involved in sin or in its\ndoom of death and subterranean banishment. Yet at the will of the\nFather he became a man, went through our earthly experiences, died\nlike a sinner, and after death descended into the prison of\ndisembodied souls below, then rose again and ascended into heaven\nto the Father, to show men that their sins were forgiven, the\npenalty taken away, and the path opened for them too to rise to\neternal life in the celestial mansions with Christ \"and be with\nhim where he is.\" Christ's death, then, cleanses men from sin, he\nis a propitiation for their sins, in two ways. First, by his\nresurrection from the power of death and his ascent to heaven he\nshowed men that God had removed the great penalty of sin: by his\ndeath and ascension he was the medium of giving them this\nknowledge. Secondly, the joy, gratitude, love to God, awakened in\nthem by such glorious tidings, would purify their natures, exalt\ntheir souls into spiritual freedom and virtue, into a blessed and\nDivine life. According to this view, Christ was a vicarious\nsacrifice, not in the sense that he suffered instead of the\nguilty, to purchase their redemption from the iron justice of God,\nbut in the sense that, when he was personally free from any need\nto suffer, he died for the sake of others, to reveal to them the\nmighty boon of God's free grace, assuring them of the wondrous\ngift of a heavenly immortality. This representation perfectly\nfills and explains the language, without violence or arbitrary\nsuppositions, does it in harmony with all the exegetical\nconsiderations, historical and grammatical; which no other view\nthat we know of can do.\n\nThere are several independent facts which lend strong confirmation\nto the correctness of the exposition now given. We know that we\nhave not directly proved the justice of that exposition, only\nconstructively, inferentially, established it; not shown it to be\ntrue, only made it appear plausible. But that plausibility becomes\nan extreme probability nay, shall we not say certainty? when we\nweigh the following testimonies for it. First, this precise\ndoctrine is unquestionably contained in other parts of the New\nTestament. We have in preceding chapters demonstrated its\nexistence in Paul's epistles, in Peter's, in the Epistle to the\nHebrews, and in the Apocalypse. Therefore, since John's\nphraseology is better explained by it than by any other\nhypothesis, it is altogether likely that his real meaning was the\nsame.\n\nSecondly, the terms \"light\" and \"darkness,\" so frequent in this\nevangelist, were not originated by him, but adopted. They were\nregarded by the Persian theology, by Plato, by Philo, by the\nGnostics, as having a physical basis as well as a spiritual\nsignificance. In their conceptions, physical light, as well as\nspiritual holiness, was an efflux or manifestation from the\nsupernal God; physical darkness, as well as spiritual depravity,\nwas an emanation or effect from the infernal Satan, or principle\nof evil. Is it not so in the usage of John? He uses the terms, it\nis true, prevailingly in a moral sense: still, there is much in\nhis statements that looks as if he supposed they had a physical\nground. If so, then how natural is this connection of thought! All\ngood comes from the dazzling world of God beyond the sky; all evil\ncomes from the nether world of his adversary, the prince of\ndarkness. That John believed in a local heaven on high, the\nresidence of God, is made certain by scores of texts too plain to\nbe evaded. Would he not, then, in all probability, believe in a\nlocal hell? Believing, as he certainly did, in a devil, the author\nand lord of darkness, falsehood, and death, would he not conceive\na kingdom for him? In the development of ideas reached at that\ntime, it is evident that the conception of God implied an upper\nworld, his resplendent abode, and that the conception of Satan\nequally implied an under world, his gloomy realm. To the latter\nhuman souls were doomed by sin. From the former Christ came, and\nreturned to it again, to show that the Father would forgive our\nsins and take us there.\n\nThirdly, John expected that Christ, after death, would return to\nthe Father in heaven. This appears from clear and reiterated\nstatements in his reports of the Savior's words. But after the\nresurrection he tells us that Jesus had not yet ascended to the\nFather, but was just on the point of going. \"Touch me not, for I\nam not yet ascended to my Father; but go to my brethren, and say\nunto them, I ascend unto my Father.\" Where, then, did he suppose\nthe soul of his crucified Master had been during the interval\nbetween his death and his resurrection? Dormant in the body, dead\nwith the body, laid in the tomb? That is opposed to the doctrine\nof uninterrupted life which pervades his writings. Besides, such a\nbelief was held only by the Sadducees, whom the New Testament\nstigmatizes. To assume that such was John's conception of the fact\nis an arbitrary supposition, without the least warrant from any\nsource whatever. If he imagined the soul of Jesus during that time\nto have been neither in heaven nor in the sepulchre, is it not\npretty sure that he supposed it was in the under world, the common\nreceptacle of souls, where, according to the belief of that age,\nevery man went after death?\n\nFourthly, it is to be observed, in favor of this general\ninterpretation, that the doctrine it unfolds is in harmony with\nthe contemporary opinions, a natural development from them, a\ndevelopment which would be forced upon the mind of a Jewish\nChristian accepting the resurrection of Christ as a fact. It was\nthe Jewish opinion that God dwelt with his holy angels in a world\nof everlasting light above the firmament. It was the Jewish\nopinion that the departed souls of men, on account of sin, were\nconfined beneath the earth in Satan's and death's dark and\nslumberous cavern of shadows. It was the Jewish opinion that the\nMessiah would raise the righteous dead and reign with them on\nearth. Now, the first Christians clung to the Jewish creed and\nexpectations, with such modifications merely as the variation of\nthe actual Jesus and his deeds from the theoretical Messiah and\nhis anticipated achievements compelled. Then, when Christ having\nbeen received as the bringer of glad tidings from the Father died,\nand after three days rose from the dead and ascended to God,\npromising his brethren that where he was they should come, must\nthey not have regarded it all as a dramatic exemplification of the\nfact that the region of death was no longer a hopeless dungeon,\nsince one mighty enough to solve its chains and burst its gates\nhad returned from it? must they not have considered him as a\npledge that their sins were forgiven, their doom reversed, and\nheaven attainable?\n\nJohn, in common with all the first Christians, evidently expected\nthat the second advent of the Lord would soon take place, to\nconsummate the objects he had left unfinished, to raise the dead\nand judge them, justifying the worthy and condemning the unworthy.\nThere was a well known Jewish tradition that the appearance of\nAntichrist would immediately precede the triumphant coming of the\nMessiah. John says, \"Even now are there many Antichrists: thereby\nwe know that it is the last hour.\"37 \"Abide in him, that, when he\nshall appear, we may not be ashamed before him at his coming.\"\n\"That we may have boldness in the day of judgment.\" The\nevangelist's outlook for the return of the Savior is also shown at\nthe end of his Gospel. \"Jesus said not unto him, 'He shall not\ndie;' but, 'If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to\nthee?'\" That the doctrine of a universal resurrection which the\nJews probably derived, through their communication with the\nPersians, from the Zoroastrian system, and, with various\nmodifications, adopted is embodied in the following passage, who\ncan doubt? \"The hour is coming when all that are in the graves\nshall hear the voice of the Son of Man and shall come forth.\" That\na general resurrection would literally occur under the auspices of\nJesus was surely the meaning of the writer of those words. Whether\nthat thought was intended to be conveyed by Christ in the exact\nterms he really used or not is a separate question, with which we\nare not now concerned, our object being simply to set forth John's\nviews. Some commentators, seizing the letter and neglecting the\nspirit, have inferred from various texts that John expected that\nthe resurrection would be limited to faithful Christians, just as\nthe more rigid of the Pharisees confined it to the righteous Jews.\n\"Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, ye\nhave no life in you. Whoso eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood\nhath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day.\"\n\n37 See the able and impartial discussion of John's belief on this\nsubject contained in Lucke's Commentary on the First Epistle of\nJohn, i. 18-28.\n\n\nTo force this figure into a literal meaning is a mistake; for in\nthe preceding chapter it is expressly said that \"They that have\ndone good shall come forth unto the resurrection of life; they\nthat have done evil unto the resurrection of condemnation.\" Both\nshall rise to be judged; but as we conceive the most probable\nsense of the phrases the good shall be received to heaven, the bad\nshall be remanded to the under world. \"Has no life in him\" of\ncourse cannot mean is absolutely dead, annihilated, but means has\nnot faith and virtue, the elements of blessedness, the\nqualifications for heaven. The particular figurative use of words\nin these texts may be illustrated by parallel idioms from Philo,\nwho says, \"Of the living some are dead; on the contrary, the dead\nlive. For those lost from the life of virtue are dead, though they\nreach the extreme of old age; while the good, though they are\ndisjoined from the body, live immortally.\"38 Again he writes,\n\"Deathless life delivers the dying pious; but the dying impious\neverlasting death seizes.\"39 And a great many passages plainly\nshow that one element of Philo's meaning, in such phrases as\nthese, is, that he believed that, upon their leaving the body, the\nsouls of the good would ascend to heaven, while the souls of the\nbad would descend to Hades. These discriminated events he supposed\nwould follow death at once. His thorough Platonism had weaned him\nfrom the Persian Pharisaic doctrine of a common intermediate state\ndetaining the dead below until the triumphant advent of a Redeemer\nshould usher in the great resurrection and final judgment.40\n\nJohn declares salvation to be conditional. \"The blood of Christ\"\nthat is, his death and what followed \"cleanses us from all sin, if\nwe walk in the light as he is in the light;\" not otherwise. \"He\nthat believeth not the Son shall not see eternal life, but the\nwrath of God abideth on him.\" \"If any man see his brother commit a\nsin which is not unto death, he shall pray, and shall receive life\nfor them that sin not unto death. There is a sin unto death: I do\nnot say that he shall pray for it.\" \"Beloved, now are we the sons\nof God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be; but we know\nthat when he [Christ] shall appear we shall be like him, for we\nshall see him as he is. Every man that hath this hope in him\npurifieth himself, even as he is pure.\" The heads of the doctrine\nwhich seems to underlie these statements are as follow. Christ\nshall come again. All the dead shall rise for judicial ordeal.\nThose counted worthy shall be accepted, be transfigured into the\nresemblance of the glorious Redeemer and enter into eternal\nblessedness in heaven. The rest shall be doomed to the dark\nkingdom of death in the under world, to remain there for aught\nthat is hinted to the contrary forever. From these premises two\npractical inferences are drawn in exhortations. First, we should\nearnestly strive to fit ourselves for acceptance by moral purity,\nbrotherly love, and pious faith. Secondly, we should seek pardon\nfor our sins by confession and prayer, and take heed lest by\naggravated sin we deprave our souls beyond recovery. There are\nthose who sin unto death, for whom it is hopeless to pray. Light,\ntruth, and the divine life of heaven can never receive them;\ndarkness, falsehood, and the deep realm of death irrevocably\nswallow them.\n\nAnd now we may sum up in a few words the essential results of this\nwhole inquiry into the principles of John's theology, especially\nas composing and shown in his doctrine of a\n\n38 Vol. i. p. 554.\n\n39 Ibid. p. 233.\n\n40 See vol. i. pp. 139, 416, 417, 555, 643, 648; vol. ii. pp. 178,\n433.\n\n\nfuture life. First, God is personal love, truth, light, holiness,\nblessedness. These realities, as concentrated in their\nincomprehensible absoluteness, are the elements of his infinite\nbeing. Secondly, these spiritual substances, as diffused through\nthe worlds of the universe and experienced in the souls of moral\ncreatures, are the medium of God's revelation of himself, the\ndirect presence and working of his Logos. Thirdly, the persons who\nprevailingly partake of these qualities are God's loyal subjects\nand approved children, in peaceful communion with the Father,\nthrough the Son, possessing eternal life. Fourthly, Satan is\npersonal hatred, falsehood, darkness, sin, misery. These\nrealities, in their abstract nature and source, are his being; in\ntheir special manifestations they are his efflux and power.\nFifthly, the persons who partake rulingly of these qualities are\nthe devil's enslaved subjects and lineal children: in sinful\nbondage to him, in depraved communion with him, they dwell in a\nstate of hostile banishment and unhappiness, which is moral death.\nSixthly, Christ was the Logos who, descending from his anterior\nglory in heaven, and appearing in mortal flesh, embodied all the\nDivine qualities in an unflawed model of humanity, gathered up and\nexhibited all the spiritual characteristics of the Father in a\nstainless and perfect soul supernaturally filled and illumined,\nthus to bear into the world a more intelligible and effective\nrevelation of God the Father than nature or common humanity\nyielded, to shine with regenerating radiance upon the deadly\ndarkness of those who were groping in lying sins, \"that they might\nhave life and that they might have it more abundantly.\" Seventhly,\nthe fickle and perishing experience of unbelieving and wicked men,\nthe vagrant life of sensuality and worldliness, the shallow life\nin vain and transitory things, gives place in the soul of a\nChristian to a profoundly earnest, unchanging experience of truth\nand love, a steady and everlasting life in Divine and everlasting\nthings. Eighthly, the experimental reception of the revealed grace\nand verity by faith and discipleship in Jesus is accompanied by\ninternal convincing proofs and seals of their genuineness,\nvalidity, and immortality. They awaken a new consciousness, a new\nlife, inherently Divine and self warranting. Ninthly, Christ, by\nhis incarnation, death, resurrection, and ascension, was a\npropitiation for our sins, a mercy seat pledging forgiveness; that\nis, he was the medium of showing us that mercy of God which\nannulled the penalty of sin, the descent of souls to the gloomy\nunder world, and opened the celestial domains for the ransomed\nchildren of earth to join the sinless angels of heaven. Tenthly,\nChrist was speedily to make a second advent. In that last day the\ndead should come forth for judgment, the good be exalted to\nunfading glory with the Father and the Son, and the bad be left in\nthe lower region of noiseless shadows and dreams. These ten points\nof view, we believe, command all the principal features of the\ntheological landscape which occupied the mental vision of the\nwriter of the Gospel and epistles bearing the superscription,\nJohn.\n\nCHAPTER VI.\n\nCHRIST'S TEACHINGS CONCERNING THE FUTURE LIFE.\n\nIN approaching the teachings of the Savior himself concerning the\nfuture fate of man, we should throw off the weight of creeds and\nprejudices, and, by the aid of all the appliances in our power,\nendeavor to reach beneath the imagery and unessential particulars\nof his instructions to learn their bare significance in truth.\nThis is made difficult by the singular perversions his religion\nhas undergone; by the loss of a complete knowledge of the\npeculiarities of the Messianic age in the lapse of the ages since;\nby the almost universal change in our associations, modes of\nfeeling and thought, and styles of speech; and by the gradual\naccretion and hardening of false doctrines and sectarian biases\nand wilfulness. As we examine the words of Christ to find their\nreal meaning, there are four prominent considerations to be\nespecially weighed and borne in mind.\n\nFirst, we must not forget the poetic Eastern style common to the\nJewish prophets; their symbolic enunciations in bold figures of\nspeech: \"I am the door;\" \"I am the bread of life;\" \"I am the\nvine;\" \"My sheep hear my voice;\" \"If these should hold their\npeace, the stones would immediately cry out.\" This daring\nemblematic language was natural to the Oriental nations; and the\nBible is full of it. Is the overthrow of a country foretold? It is\nnot said, \"Babylon shall be destroyed,\" but \"The sun shall be\ndarkened at his going forth, the moon shall be as blood, the stars\nshall fall from heaven, and the earth shall stagger to and fro as\na drunken man.\" If we would truly understand Christ's\ndeclarations, we must not overlook the characteristics of\nfigurative language. For \"he spake to the multitude in parables,\nand without a parable spake he not unto them;\" and a parable, of\ncourse, is not to be taken literally, but holds a latent sense and\npurpose which are to be sought out. The greatest injustice is done\nto the teachings of Christ when his words are studied as those of\na dry scholastic, a metaphysical moralist, not as those of a\nprofound poet, a master in the spiritual realm.\n\nSecondly, we must remember that we have but fragmentary reports of\na small part of the teachings of Christ. He was engaged in the\nactive prosecution of his mission probably about three years, at\nthe shortest over one year; while all the different words of his\nrecorded in the New Testament would not occupy more than five\nhours. Only a little fraction of what he said has been transmitted\nto us; and though this part may contain the essence of the whole,\nyet it must naturally in some instances be obscure and difficult\nof apprehension. We must therefore compare different passages with\neach other, carefully probe them all, and explain, so far as\npossible, those whose meaning is recondite by those whose meaning\nis obvious. Some persons may be surprised to think that we have\nbut a small portion of the sayings of Jesus. The fact, however, is\nunquestionable. And perhaps there is no more reason that we should\nhave a full report of his words than there is that we should have\na complete account of his doings; and the evangelist declares,\n\"There are also many other things which Jesus did, the which, if\nthey should every one be written, I suppose that even the world\nitself could not contain the books.\"\n\nThirdly, when examining the instructions of Jesus, we should\nrecollect that he adopted, and applied to himself and to his\nkingdom, the common Jewish phraseology concerning the Messiah and\nthe events that were expected to attend his advent and reign. But\nhe did not take up these phrases in the perverted sense held in\nthe corrupt opinions and earthly hopes of the Jews: he used them\nspiritually, in the sense which accorded with the true Messianic\ndispensation as it was arranged in the forecasting providence of\nGod. No investigation of the New Testament should be unaccompanied\nby an observance of the fundamental rule of interpretation,\nnamely, that the strident of a book, especially of an ancient,\nobscure, and fragmentary book, should imbue himself as thoroughly\nas he can with the knowledge and spirit of the opinions, events,\ninfluences, circumstances, of the time when the document was\nwritten, and of the persons who wrote it. The inquirer must be\nequipped for his task by a mastery of the Rabbinism of Gamaliel,\nat whose feet Paul was brought up; for the Jewish mind of that age\nwas filled, and its religious language directed, by this\nRabbinism. Guided by this principle, furnished with the necessary\ninformation, in the helpful light of the best results of modern\ncritical scholarship, we shall be able to explain many dark texts,\nand to satisfy ourselves, at least in a degree, as to the genuine\nsubstance of Christ's declarations touching the future destinies\nof men.\n\nFinally, he who studies the New Testament with patient\nthoroughness and with honest sharpness will arrive at a\ndistinction most important to be made and to be kept in view,\nnamely, a distinction between the real meaning of Christ's words\nin his own mind and the actual meaning understood in them by his\nauditors and reporters.1 Here we approach a most delicate and\nvital point, hitherto too little noticed, but destined yet to\nbecome prominent and fruitful. A large number of religious phrases\nwere in common use among the Jews at the time of Jesus. He adopted\nthem, but infused into them a deeper, a correct meaning, as\nCopernicus did into the old astronomic formulas. But the\nbystanders who listened to his discourses, hearing the familiar\nterms, seized the familiar meaning, and erroneously attributed it\nto him. It is certain that the Savior was often misunderstood and\noften not understood at all. When he declared himself the Messiah,\nthe people would have made him a king by force! Even the apostles\nfrequently grossly failed to appreciate his spirit and aims,\nwrenched unwarrantable inferences from his words, and quarrelled\nfor the precedency in his coming kingdom and for seats at his\nright hand. In numerous cases it is glaringly plain that his ideas\nwere far from their conceptions of them. We have no doubt the same\nwas true in many other instances where it is not so clear. He\nrepeatedly reproves them for folly and slowness because they did\nnot perceive the sense of his instructions. Perhaps there was a\nslight impatience in his tones when he said, \"How is it that ye do\nnot understand that I spake it not to you concerning bread, that\nye should beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and of the\nSadducees?\" Jesus uttered in established phrases new and\nprofoundly spiritual thoughts. The apostles educated in, and full\nof, as they evidently were, the dogmas, prejudices, and\n\n1 See this distinction affirmed by De Wette, in the preface to his\nCommentatio de Morte Jesus Christi Expiatoria. See also Thurn,\nJesus und seine Apostel in Widerspruch in Ansehung der Lehre von\nder Ewigcn Verdamnniss. In Scherer's Schriftforsch. sect. i. nr.\n4.\n\n\nhopes of their age and land would naturally, to some extent,\nmisapprehend his meaning. Then, after a tumultuous interval,\nwriting out his instructions from memory, how perfectly natural\nthat their own convictions and sentiments would have a powerful\ninfluence in modifying and shaping the animus and the verbal\nexpressions in their reports! Under the circumstances, that we\nshould now possess the very equivalents of his words with strict\nliteralness, and conveying his very intentions perfectly\ntranslated from the Aramaan into the Greek tongue, would imply the\nmost sustained and amazing of all miracles. There is nothing\nwhatever that indicates any such miraculous intervention. There is\nnothing to discredit the fair presumption that the writers were\nleft to their own abilities, under the inspiration of an earnest\nconsecrating love and truthfulness. And we must, with due\nlimitations, distinguish between the original words and conscious\nmeaning of the sublime Master, illustrated by the emphasis and\ndiscrimination of his looks, tones, and gestures, and the\napprehended meaning recorded long afterwards, shaped and colored\nby passing through the minds and pens of the sometimes dissentient\nand always imperfect disciples. He once declared to them, \"I have\nmany things to say unto you, but ye are not able to bear them.\"\nAdmitting his infallibility, as we may, yet asserting their\nfallibility, as we must, and accompanied, too, as his words now\nare by many very obscuring circumstances, it is extremely\ndifficult to lay the hand on discriminated texts and say,\n\"[non ASCII characters]\"\n\nThe Messianic doctrine prevalent among the Jews in the time of\nJesus appears to have been built up little by little, by religious\nfaith, national pride, and priestly desire, out of literal\ninterpretations of figurative prophecy, and Cabalistic\ninterpretations of plain language, and Rabbinical traditions and\nspeculations, additionally corrupted in some particulars by\nintercourse with the Persians. Under all this was a central\nspiritual germ of a Divine promise and plan. A Messiah was really\nto come. It was in answering the questions, what kind of a king he\nwas to be, and over what sort of a kingdom he was to reign, that\nthe errors crept in. The Messianic conceptions which have come\ndown to us through the Prophets, the Targums, incidental allusions\nin the New Testament, the Talmud, and the few other traditions and\nrecords yet in existence, are very diverse and sometimes\ncontradictory. They agreed in ardently looking for an earthly\nsovereign in the Messiah, one who would rise up in the line of\nDavid and by the power of Jehovah deliver his people, punish their\nenemies, subdue the world to his sceptre, and reign with Divine\nauspices of beneficence and splendor. They also expected that then\na portion of the dead would rise from the under world and assume\ntheir bodies again, to participate in the triumphs and blessings\nof his earthly kingdom. His personal reign in Judea was what they\nusually meant by the phrases \"the kingdom of heaven,\" \"the kingdom\nof God.\" The apostles cherished these ideas, and expressed them in\nthe terms common to their countrymen. But we cannot doubt that\nJesus employed this and kindred language in a purer and deeper\nsense, which we must take pains to distinguish from the early and\nlingering errors associated with it.\n\nUpon the threshold of our subject we meet with predictions of a\nsecond coming of Christ from heaven, with power and glory, to sit\non his throne and judge the world. The portentous imagery in which\nthese prophecies are clothed is taken from the old prophets; and\nto them\n\nwe must turn to learn its usage and force. The Hebrews called any\nsignal manifestation of power especially any dreadful calamity a\ncoming of the Lord. It was a coming of Jehovah when his vengeance\nstrewed the ground with the corpses of Sennacherib's host; when\nits storm swept Jerusalem as with fire, and bore Israel into\nbondage; when its sword came down upon Idumea and was bathed in\nblood upon Edom. \"The day of the Lord\" is another term of\nprecisely similar import. It occurs in the Old Testament about\nfifteen times. In every instance it means some mighty\nmanifestation of God's power in calamity. These occasions are\npictured forth with the most astounding figures of speech. Isaiah\ndescribes the approaching destruction of Babylon in these terms:\n\"The stars of heaven and the constellations thereof shall give no\nlight; the sun shall be darkened, the moon shall not shine, the\nheavens shall shake, and the earth shall remove out of her place\nand be as a frightened sheep that no man taketh up.\" The Jews\nexpected that the coming of the Messiah would be preceded by many\nfearful woes, in the midst of which he would appear with peerless\npomp and might. The day of his coming they named emphatically the\nday of the Lord. Jesus actually appeared, not, as they expected, a\nwarrior travelling in the greatness of his strength, with dyed\ngarments from Bozrah, staining his raiment with blood as he\ntrampled in the wine vat of vengeance, but the true Messiah, God's\nforeordained and anointed Son, despised and rejected of men,\nbringing good tidings, publishing peace. It must have been\nimpossible for the Jews to receive such a Messiah without\nexplanations. Those few who became converts apprehended his\nMessianic language, at least to some extent, in the sense which\npreviously occupied their minds. He knew that often he was not\nunderstood; and he frequently said to his followers, \"Who hath\nears to hear, let him hear.\" His disciples once asked him, \"What\nshall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world?\" He\nreplied, substantially, \"There shall be wars, famines, and\nunheard of trials; and immediately after the sun shall be\ndarkened, the moon shall not give her light, the stars shall fall\nfrom heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken. Then\nshall they see the Son of Man coming in the clouds of heaven with\ngreat power. And he shall sit upon the throne of his glory, and\nall nations shall be gathered before him, and he shall separate\nthem one from another.\" That this language was understood by the\nevangelists and the early Christians, in accordance with their\nPharisaic notions, as teaching literally a physical reappearance\nof Christ on the earth, a resurrection, and a general judgment, we\nfully believe. Those ideas were prevalent at the time, are\nexpressed in scores of places in the New Testament, and are the\ndirect strong assertion of the words themselves. But that such was\nthe meaning of Christ himself we much more than doubt.\n\nIn the first place, in his own language in regard to his second\ncoming there is not the least hint of a resurrection of the dead:\nthe scene is confined to the living, and to the earth. Secondly,\nthe figures which he employs in this connection are the same as\nthose used by the Jewish prophets to denote great and signal\nevents on the earth, and may be so taken here without violence to\nthe idiom. Thirdly, he expressly fixed the date of the events he\nreferred to within that generation; and if, therefore, he spoke\nliterally, he was grossly in error, and his prophecies failed of\nfulfilment, a conclusion which we cannot adopt. To suppose that he\npartook in the false, mechanical dogmas of the carnal Jews would\nbe equally irreconcilable with the common idea of his Divine\ninspiration, and with the profound penetration and spirituality\nof his own mind.\n\nHe certainly used much of the phraseology of his contemporary\ncountrymen, metaphorically, to convey his own purer thoughts. We\nhave no doubt he did so in regard to the descriptions of his\nsecond coming. Let us state in a form of paraphrase what his real\ninstructions on this point seem to us to have been: \"You cannot\nbelieve that I am the Messiah, because I do not deliver you from\nyour oppressors and trample on the Gentiles. Your minds are\nclouded with errors. The Father hath sent me to found the kingdom\nof peace and righteousness, and hath given me all power to reward\nand punish. By my word shall the nations of the earth be honored\nand blessed, or be overwhelmed with fire; and every man must stand\nbefore my judgment seat. The end of the world is at the doors. The\nMosaic dispensation is about to be closed in the fearful\ntribulations of the day of the Lord, and my dispensation to be set\nup. When you see Jerusalem encompassed with armies, know that the\nday is at hand, and flee to the mountains; for not one stone shall\nbe left upon another. Then the power of God will be shown on my\nbehalf, and the sign of the Son of Man be seen in heaven. My\ntruths shall prevail, and shall be owned as the criteria of Divine\njudgment. According to them, all the righteous shall be\ndistinguished as my subjects, and all the iniquitous shall be\nseparated from my kingdom. Some of those standing here shall not\ntaste death till all these things be fulfilled. Then it will be\nseen that I am the Messiah, and that through the eternal\nprinciples of truth which I have proclaimed I shall sit upon a\nthrone of glory, not literally, in person, as you thought,\nblessing the Jews and cursing the Gentiles, but spiritually, in\nthe truth, dispensing joy to good men and woe to bad men,\naccording to their deserts.\" Such we believe to be the meaning of\nChrist's own predictions of his second coming. He figuratively\nidentifies himself with his religion according to that idiom by\nwhich it is written, \"Moses hath in every city them that read him,\nbeing read in the synagogues every Sabbath day.\" His figure of\nhimself as the universal judge is a bold personification; for he\nelsewhere says, \"He that believeth in me believeth not in me, but\nin Him that sent me.\" And again, \"He that rejecteth me, I judge\nhim not: the word that I have spoken, that shall judge him.\" His\ncoming in the clouds of heaven with great power and glory was\nwhen, at the destruction of Jerusalem, the old age closed and the\nnew began, the obstacles to his religion were removed and his\nthrone established on the earth.2 The apostles undoubtedly\nunderstood the doctrine differently; but that such was his own\nthought we conclude, because he did sometimes undeniably use\nfigurative language in that way, and because the other meaning is\nan error, not in harmony either with his character, his mind, or\nhis mission.\n\nThis interpretation is so important that it may need to be\nillustrated and confirmed by further instances: \"When the Son of\nMan sits on the throne of his glory, and all nations are gathered\nbefore him, his angels shall sever the wicked from among the just,\nand shall cast them into a furnace of fire: there shall be weeping\nand gnashing of teeth.\" A few such picturesque phrases have led to\nthe general belief in a great world judgment at the end of the\n\n2 Norton, Statement of Reasons, Appendix.\n\n\nappointed time, after which the condemned are to be thrown into\nthe tortures of an unquenchable world of flame. How arbitrary and\nviolent a conclusion this is, how unwarranted and gross a\nperversion of the language of Christ it is, we may easily see. The\nfact that the old prophets often described fearful misfortunes and\nwoes in images of clouds and flame and falling stars, and other\nportentous symbols, and that this style was therefore familiar to\nthe Jews, would make it very natural for Jesus, in foretelling\nsuch an event as the coming destruction of Jerusalem, in\nconflagration and massacre, with the irretrievable subversion of\nthe old dispensation, to picture it forth in a similar way. Fire\nwas to the Jews a common emblem of calamity and devastation; and\njudgments incomparably less momentous than those gathered about\nthe fall of Jerusalem and the dispersion of the self boasted\nfavorites of Jehovah were often described by the prophets in\nappalling images of darkened planets, shaking heavens, clouds,\nfire, and blackness. Joel, speaking of a \"day of the Lord,\" when\nthere should be famine and drought, and a horrid army of\ndestroying insects, \"before whom a fire devoureth, and behind them\na flame burneth,\" draws the scene in these terrific colors: \"The\nearth shall quake before them; the sun and moon shall be dark, and\nthe stars shall withdraw their shining; and the Lord shall utter\nhis voice before his terrible army of locusts, caterpillars, and\ndestroying worms:\" Ezekiel represents God as saying, \"The house of\nIsrael is to me become dross: therefore I will gather you into the\nmidst of Jerusalem: as they gather silver, brass, iron, tin, and\nlead into the midst of the furnace to blow the fire upon it, so\nwill I gather you, and blow upon you in the fire of my wrath, and\nye shall be melted in the midst thereof.\" We read in Isaiah, \"The\nAssyrian shall flee, and his princes shall be afraid, saith the\nLord, whose fire is in Zion and his furnace in Jerusalem.\" Malachi\nalso says, \"The day cometh that shall burn as a furnace, and all\nthat do wickedly shall be stubble, and shall be burned up root and\nbranch. They shall be trodden as ashes beneath the feet of the\nrighteous.\" The meaning of these passages, and of many other\nsimilar ones, is, in every instance, some severe temporal\ncalamity, some dire example of Jehovah's retributions among the\nnations of the earth. Their authors never dreamed of teaching that\nthere is a place of fire beyond the grave in which the wicked dead\nshall be tormented, or that the natural creation is finally to be\ndevoured by flame. It is perfectly certain that not a single text\nin the Old Testament was meant to teach any such doctrine as that.\nThe judgments shadowed forth in kindred metaphors by Christ are to\nbe understood in the light of this fact. Their meaning is, that\nall unjust, cruel, false, impure men shall endure severe\npunishments. This general thought is fearfully distinct; but every\nthing beyond all details are left in utter obscurity.\n\nIn the august scene of the King in judgment, when the sentence has\nbeen pronounced on those at the left hand, \"Depart from me, ye\ncursed, into everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his\nangels,\" it is written, \"and they shall go away into everlasting\npunishment.\" It is obvious to remark that the imagery of a fiery\nprison built for Satan and the fallen angels, and into which the\nbad shall be finally doomed, is poetical language, or language of\naccommodation to the current notions of the time. These startling\nOriental figures are used to wrap and convey the assertion that\nthe wicked shall be severely punished according to their deserts.\nNo literal reference seems to be made either to the particular\ntime, to the\n\nspecial place, or to the distinctive character, of the punishment;\nbut the mere fact is stated in a manner to fill the conscience\nwith awe and to stamp the practical lesson vividly on the memory.\nBut admitting the clauses apparently descriptive of the nature of\nthis retribution to be metaphorical, yet what shall we think of\nits duration? Is it absolutely unending? There is nothing in the\nrecord to enable a candid inquirer to answer that question\ndecisively. So far as the letter of Scripture is concerned, there\nare no data to give an indubitable solution to the problem. It is\ntrue the word \"everlasting\" is repeated; but, when impartially\nweighed, it seems a sudden rhetorical expression, of indefinite\nforce, used to heighten the impressiveness of a sublime dramatic\nrepresentation, rather than a cautious philosophical term employed\nto convey an abstract conception. There is no reason whatever for\nsupposing that Christ's mind was particularly directed to the\nmetaphysical idea of endlessness, or to the much more metaphysical\nidea of timelessness. The presumptive evidence is that he spoke\npopularly. Had he been charged to reveal a doctrine so tremendous,\nso awful, so unutterably momentous in its practical relations, as\nthat of the endless close of all probation at death, is it\nconceivable that he would merely have couched it in a few\nfigurative expressions and left it as a matter of obscure\ninference and uncertainty? No: in that case, he would have\niterated and reiterated it, defined, guarded, illustrated it, and\nhave left no possibility of honest mistake or doubt of it.\n\nThe Greek word [non-ASCII characters], and the same is true of the\ncorresponding Hebrew word, translated \"everlasting\" in the English\nBible, has not in its popular usage the rigid force of eternal\nduration, but varies, is now applied to objects as evanescent as\nman's earthly life, now to objects as lasting as eternity.3\nIts power in any given case is to be sought from the context and\nthe reason of the thing.\n\nIsaiah, having threatened the unrighteous nations that they\n\"should conceive chaff and bring forth stubble, that their own\nbreath should be fire to devour them, and that they should be\nburnt like lime, like thorns cut up in the fire,\" makes the\nterror smitten sinners and hypocrites cry, \"Who among us can dwell\nin devouring fire? Who among us can dwell in everlasting\nburnings?\" Yet his reference is solely to an outward, temporal\njudgment in this world. The Greek adjective rendered \"everlasting\"\nis etymologically, and by universal usage, a term of duration, but\nindefinite, its extent of meaning depending on the subjects of\nwhich it is predicated. Therefore, when Christ connects this word\nwith the punishment of the wicked, it is impossible to say with\nany certainty, judging from the language itself, whether he\nimplies that those who die in their sins are hopelessly lost,\nperfectly irredeemable forever, or not, though the probabilities\nare very strongly in the latter direction. \"Everlasting\npunishment\" may mean, in philosophical strictness, a punishment\nabsolutely eternal, or may be a popular expression denoting, with\ngeneral indefiniteness, a very long duration. Since in all Greek\nliterature, sacred and profane, [non-ASCII characters] is applied\nto things that end, ten times as often as it is to things immortal,\nno fair critic can assert positively that when it is connected\nwith future punishment it has the stringent meaning of\nmetaphysical endlessness. On the other hand, no one has any\ncritical\n\n3 See Christian Examiner for March, 1854, pp. 280-297.\n\n\nright to say positively that in such cases it has not that\nmeaning. The Master has not explained his words on this point, but\nhas left them veiled. We can settle the question itself concerning\nthe limitedness or the unlimitedness of future punishment only on\nother grounds than those of textual criticism, even on grounds of\nenlightened reason postulating the cardinal principles of\nChristianity and of ethics. Will not the unimpeded Spirit of\nChrist lead all free minds and loving hearts to one conclusion?\nBut that conclusion is to be held modestly as a trusted inference,\nnot dogmatically as a received revelation.\n\nAnother point in the Savior's teachings which it is of the utmost\nimportance to understand is the sense in which he used the Jewish\nphrases \"Resurrection of the Dead\" and \"Resurrection at the Last\nDay.\" The Pharisees looked for a restoration of the righteous from\ntheir graves to a bodily life. This event they supposed would take\nplace at the appearance of the Messiah; and the time of his coming\nthey called \"the last day.\" So the Apostle John says, \"Already are\nthere many antichrists; whereby we know that it is the last time.\"\nNow, Jesus claimed to be the Messiah, clothed in his functions,\nthough he interpreted those functions as carrying an interior and\nmoral, not an outward and physical, force. \"This is the will of\nHim that sent me, that every one which seeth the Son and believeth\non him should have everlasting life; and I will raise him up at\nthe last day.\" Again, when Martha told Jesus that \"she knew her\nbrother Lazarus would rise again in the resurrection at the last\nday,\" he replied, \"I am the resurrection and the life: he that\nbelieveth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live; and\nwhosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.\" This\nutterance is surely metaphorical; for belief in Jesus does not\nprevent physical dissolution. The thoughts contained in the\nvarious passages belonging to this subject, when drawn out,\ncompared, and stated in general terms, seem to us to be as\nfollows: \"You suppose that in the last day your Messiah will\nrestore the dead to live again upon the earth. I am the Messiah,\nand the last days have therefore arrived. I am commissioned by the\nFather to bestow eternal life upon all who believe on me; but not\nin the manner you have anticipated. The true resurrection is not\ncalling the body from the tomb, but opening the fountains of\neternal life in the soul. I am come to open the spiritual world to\nyour faith. He that believeth in me and keepeth my commandments\nhas passed from death unto life, become conscious that though\nseemingly he passes into the grave, yet really he shall live with\nGod forever. The true resurrection is, to come into the experience\nof the truth that 'God is not the God of the dead, but of the\nliving; for all live unto him.' Over the soul that is filled with\nsuch an experience, death has no power. Verily, I say unto, you,\nthe hour is coming, and now is, when the dead, the ignorant and\nguilty, buried in trespasses and sins, shall hear these truths\ndeclared, and they that believe shall lay hold of the life thus\noffered and be blessed. The Father hath given me authority to\nexecute judgment, that is, to lay down the principles by which men\nshall be judged according to their deserts. All mankind shall be\njudged in the spiritual state by the spirit and precepts of my\nreligion as veritably as if in their graves the generations of the\ndead heard my voice and came forth, the good to blessedness, the\nevil to misery. The judgment which is, as it were, committed unto\nme, is not really committed unto me, but unto the truth which I\ndeclare; for of mine own self I can do nothing.\" We believe this\nparaphrase expresses the essential meaning of Christ's own\ndeclarations concerning a resurrection and an associated judgment.\nComing to bring from the Father authenticated tidings of\nimmortality, and to reveal the laws of the Divine judgment,\nhe declared that those who believed and kept his words were\ndelivered from the terror of death, and, knowing that an endless\nlife of blessedness was awaiting them, immediately entered upon\nits experience. He did not teach the doctrine of a bodily\nrestoration, but said, \"In the resurrection,\" that is, in the\nspiritual state succeeding death, \"they neither marry nor are\ngiven in marriage, but are as the angels of heaven.\"\n\nHe did not teach the doctrine of a temporary sleep in the grave,\nbut said to the penitent thief on the cross, \"This day shalt thou\nbe with me in Paradise:\" instantly upon leaving the body their\nsouls would be together in the state of the blessed.\n\nIt is often said that the words of Jesus in relation to the dead\nhearing his voice and coming forth must be taken literally; for\nthe metaphor is of too extreme violence. But it is in keeping with\nhis usage. He says, \"Let the dead bury their dead.\" It is far less\nbold than \"This is my body; this is my blood.\" It is not nearly so\nstrong as Paul's adjuration, \"Awake, thou that sleepest, and rise\nfrom the dead, and Christ shall give thee light.\" It is not more\ndaringly imaginative than the assertion that \"the heroes sleeping\nin Marathon's gory bed stirred in their graves when Leonidas\nfought at Thermopyla; or than Christ's own words, \"If thou hadst\nfaith like a grain of mustard seed, thou couldst say to this\nmountain, Be thou cast into yonder sea, and it should obey you.\"\nSo one might say,\n\n\"Where'er the gospel comes,\nIt spreads diviner light;\nIt calls dead sinners from their tombs\nAnd gives the blind their sight.\"\n\nAnd in the latter days, when it has done its work, and the\nglorious measure of human redemption is full, liberty,\nintelligence, and love shall stand hand in hand on the mountain\nsummits and raise up the long generations of the dead to behold\nthe completed fruits of their toils. In this figurative moral\nsense Jesus probably spoke when he said, \"Thou shalt be\nrecompensed at the resurrection of the just.\" He referred simply\nto the rewards of the virtuous in the state beyond the grave. The\nphraseology in which he clothed the thought he accommodatingly\nadopted from the current speech of the Pharisees. They\nunquestionably meant by it the group of notions contained in their\ndogma of the destined physical restoration of the dead from their\nsepulchres at the advent of the Messiah. And it seems perfectly\nplain to us, on an impartial study of the record, that the\nevangelist, in reporting his words, took the Pharisaic dogma, and\nnot merely the Christian truth, with them. But that Jesus himself\nmodified and spiritualized the meaning of the phrase when he\nemployed it, even as he did the other contemporaneous language\ndescriptive of the Messianic offices and times, we conclude for\ntwo reasons. First, he certainly did often use language in that\nspiritual way, dressing in bold metaphors moral thoughts of\ninspired insight and truth. Secondly, the moral doctrine is the\nonly one that is true, or that is in keeping with his penetrative\nthought. The notion of a physical resurrection is an error\nborrowed most likely from the Persians by the Pharisees, and not\nbelonging to the essential elements of Christianity. The notion\nbeing prevalent at the time in Judea, and being usually expressed\nin certain appropriated phrases, when Christ used those phrases in\na true spiritual sense the apostles would naturally apprehend from\nthem the carnal meaning which already filled their minds in common\nwith the minds of their countrymen.\n\nThe word Hades, translated in the English New Testament by the\nword \"hell,\" a word of nearly the same etymological force, but now\nconveying a quite different meaning, occurs in the discourses of\nJesus only three several times. The other instances of its use are\nrepetitions or parallels. First, \"And thou, Capernaum, which art\nexalted to heaven, shalt be brought down to the under world;\" that\nis, the great and proud city shall become powerless, a heap of\nruins. Second, \"Upon this rock I will found my Church, and the\ngates of the under world shall not prevail against it;\" that is,\nthe powers of darkness, the opposition of the wicked, the strength\nof evil, shall not destroy my religion; in spite of them it shall\nassert its organization and overcome all obstacles.\n\nThe remaining example of the Savior's use of this word is in the\nparable of Dives and Lazarus. The rich man is described, after\ndeath, as suffering in the under world. Seeing the beggar afar off\nin Abraham's bosom, he cries, \"Father Abraham, pity me, and send\nLazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water and cool\nmy tongue; for I am tormented in this flame.\" Well known fancies\nand opinions are here wrought up in scenic form to convey certain\nmoral impressions. It will be noticed that the implied division of\nthe under world into two parts, with a gulf between them,\ncorresponds to the common Gentile notion of an Elysian region of\ndelightful meadows for the good and a Tartarean region of\nblackness and fire for the bad, both included in one subterranean\nkingdom, but divided by an interval. 4\n\nThe dramatic details of the account Lazarus being borne into bliss\nby angels, Dives asking to have a messenger sent from bale to warn\nhis surviving brothers rest on opinions afloat among the Jews of\nthat age, derived from the Persian theology. Zoroaster prays,\n\"When I shall die, let Aban and Bahman carry me to the bosom of\njoy.\"5 And it was a common belief among the Persians that souls\nwere at seasons permitted to leave purgatory and visit their\nrelatives on earth.6 It is evident that the narrative before us is\nnot a history to be literally construed, but a parable to be\ncarefully analyzed. The imagery and the particulars are to be laid\naside, and the central thoughts to be drawn forth. Take the words\nliterally, that the rich man's immaterial soul, writhing in\nflames, wished the tip of a finger dipped in water to cool his\ntongue, and they are ridiculous. Take them figuratively, as a type\nof unknown spiritual anguish, and they are awful. Besides, had\nChrist intended to teach the doctrine of a local burning hell, he\nsurely would have enunciated it in plain words, with solemn\niteration and explanatory amplifications, instead of merely\ninsinuating it incidentally, in metaphorical\n\n4 See copious illustrations by Rosenmuller, in Luc. cap. xvi. 22,\n23.\n\"Hic locus est partes ubi se via findit in ambas:\nDextera, qua Ditis magni sub moenia tendit;\nHac iter Elysium nobis: at lava malorum\nExercet poenas, et ad impia Tartara mittit.\"\n\n5 Rhode, Heilige Sage des Zendvolks, s. 408.\n\n6 Ibid. s. 410.\n\n\nterms, in a professed parable. The sense of the parable is, that\nthe formal distinctions of this world will have no influence in\nthe allotments of the future state, but will often be reversed\nthere; that a righteous Providence, knowing every thing here,\nrules hereafter, and will dispense compensating justice to all;\nthat men should not wait for a herald to rise from the dead to\nwarn them, but should heed the instructions they already have, and\nso live in the life that now is, as to avoid a miserable\ncondemnation, and secure a blessed acceptance, in the life that is\nto come. By inculcating these truths in a striking manner, through\nthe aid of a parable based on the familiar poetical conceptions of\nthe future world and its scenery, Christ no more endorses those\nconceptions than by using the Messianic phrases of the Jews he\napproves the false carnal views which they joined with that\nlanguage. To interpret the parable literally, then, and suppose it\nmeant to teach the actual existence of a located hell of fire for\nsinners after death, is to disregard the proprieties of criticism.\n\n\"Gehenna,\" or the equivalent phrase, \"Gehenna of fire,\"\nunfortunately translated into our tongue by the word \"hell,\" is to\nbe found in the teachings of Christ in only five independent\ninstances, each of which, after tracing the original Jewish usage\nof the term, we will briefly examine. Gehenna, or the Vale of\nHinnom, is derived from two Hebrew words, the first meaning a\nvale, the second being the name of its owner. The place thus\ncalled was the eastern part of the beautiful valley that forms the\nsouthern boundary of Jerusalem. Here Moloch, the horrid idol god\nworshipped by the Ammonites, and by the Israelites during their\nidolatrous lapses, was set up. This monstrous idol had the head of\nan ox and the body of a man. It was hollow; and, being filled with\nfire, children were laid in its arms and devoured alive by the\nheat. This explains the terrific denunciations uttered by the\nprophets against those who made their children pass through the\nfire to Moloch. The spot was sometimes entitled Tophet, a place of\nabhorrence; its name being derived, as some think, from a word\nmeaning to vomit with loathing, or, as others suppose, from a word\nsignifying drum, because drums were beaten to drown the shrieks of\nthe burning children. After these horrible rites were abolished by\nJosiah, the place became an utter abomination. All filth, the\noffal of the city, the carcasses of beasts, the bodies of executed\ncriminals, were cast indiscriminately into Gehenna. Fires were\nkept constantly burning to prevent the infection of the atmosphere\nfrom the putrifying mass. Worms were to be seen preying on the\nrelics. The primary meaning, then, of Gehenna, is a valley outside\nof Jerusalem, a place of corruption and fire, only to be thought\nof with execration and shuddering.\n\nNow, it was not only in keeping with Oriental rhetoric, but also\nnatural in itself, that figures of speech should be taken from\nthese obvious and dreadful facts to symbolize any dire evil. For\nexample, how naturally might a Jew, speaking of some foul wretch,\nand standing, perhaps, within sight of the place, exclaim, \"He\ndeserves to be hurled into the fires of Gehenna!\" So the term\nwould gradually become an accepted emblem of abominable\npunishment. Such was the fact; and this gives a perspicuous\nmeaning to the word without supposing it to imply a fiery prison\nhouse of anguish in the future world. Isaiah threatens the King of\nAssyria with ruin in these terms: \"Tophet is ordained of old, and\nprepared for the king: it is made deep and large; the pile thereof\nis fire and much wood; the breath of Jehovah, like a stream of\nbrimstone, doth kindle it.\" The prophet thus portrays, with the\ndread imagery of Gehenna, approaching disaster and overthrow. A\nthorough study of the Old Testament shows that the Jews, during\nthe period which it covers, did not believe in future rewards and\npunishments, but expected that all souls without discrimination\nwould pass their shadowy dream lives in the silence of Sheol.\n\nBetween the termination of the Old Testament history and the\ncommencement of the New, various forms of the doctrine of future\nretribution had been introduced or developed among the Jews. But\nduring this period few, if any, decisive instances can be found in\nwhich the image of penal fire is connected with the future state.\nOn the contrary, \"darkness,\" \"gloom,\" \"blackness,\" \"profound and\nperpetual night,\" are the terms employed to characterize the abode\nand fate of the wicked.\n\nJosephus says that, in the faith of the Pharisees, \"the worst\ncriminals were banished to the darkest part of the under world.\"\nPhilo represents the depraved and condemned as \"groping in the\nlowest and darkest part of the creation. The word Gehenna is\nrarely found in the literature of this time, and when it is it\ncommonly seems to be used either simply to denote the detestable\nVale of Hinnom, or else plainly as a general symbol of calamity\nand horror, as in the elder prophets.\n\nBut in some of the Targums, or Chaldee paraphrases of the Hebrew\nScriptures,  especially in the Targum of Jonathan ben Uzziel, we\nmeet repeated applications of the word Gehenna to signify a\npunishment by fire in the future state.7 This is a fact about\nwhich there can be no question. And to the documents showing such\na usage of the word, the best scholars are pretty well agreed in\nassigning a date as early as the days of Christ. The evidence\nafforded by these Targums, together with the marked application of\nthe term by Jesus himself, and the similar general use of it\nimmediately after both by Christians and Jews, render it not\nimprobable that Gehenna was known to the contemporaries of the\nSavior as the metaphorical name of hell, a region of fire, in the\nunder world, where the reprobate were supposed to be punished\nafter death. But admitting that, before Christ began to teach, the\nJews had modified their early conception of the under world as the\nsilent and sombre abode of all the dead in common, and had divided\nit into two parts, one where the wicked suffer, called Gehenna,\none where the righteous rest, called Paradise, still, that\nmodification having been borrowed, as is historically evident,\nfrom the Gentiles, or, if developed among themselves, at all\nevents unconnected with revelation, of course Christianity is not\ninvolved with the truth or falsity of it, is not responsible for\nit. It does not necessarily follow that Jesus gave precisely the\nsame meaning to the word Gehenna that his contemporaries or\nsuccessors did. He may have used it in a modified emblematic\nsense, as he did many other current terms. In studying his\nlanguage, we should especially free our minds both from the\ntyranny of pre Christian notions and dogmas and from the\nassociations and influences of modern creeds, and seek to\ninterpret it in the light of his own instructions and in the\nspirit of his own mind.\n\nWe will now examine the cases in which Christ uses the term\nGehenna, and ask what it means.\n\nFirst: \"Whosoever shall say to his brother, Thou vile wretch!\nshall be in danger of the fiery Gehenna.\" Interpret this\nliterally, and it teaches that whosoever calls his brother a\n\n7 Gesenius, Hebrew Thesaurus, Ge Hinnom.\n\n\nwicked apostate is in danger of being thrown into the filthy\nflames in the Vale of Hinnom. But no one supposes that such was\nits meaning. Jesus would say, as we understand him, \"I am not come\nto destroy, but to fulfil, the law; to show how at the culmination\nof the old dispensation a higher and stricter one opens. I say\nunto you, that, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the\nPharisees, you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven. The conditions\nof acceptance under the new order are far more profound and\ndifficult than under the old. That said, Whosoever commits murder\nshall be exposed to legal punishment from the public tribunal.\nThis says, An invisible inward punishment, as much to be dreaded\nas the judgments of the Sanhedrim, shall be inflicted upon those\nwho harbor the secret passions that lead to crime; whosoever, out\nof an angry heart, insults his brother, shall be exposed to\nspiritual retributions typified by the horrors of yon flaming\nvalley. They of old time took cognizance of outward crimes by\noutward penalties. I take cognizance of inward sins by inward\nreturns more sure and more fearful.\"\n\nSecond: \"If thy right eye be a source of temptation to thee, pluck\nit out and fling it away; for it is better for thee that one of\nthy members perish than that thy whole body should be cast into\nGehenna.\" Give these words a literal interpretation, and they\nmean, \"If your eyes or your hands are the occasions of crime, if\nthey tempt you to commit offences which will expose you to public\nexecution, to the ignominy and torture heaped upon felons put to a\nshameful death and then flung among the burning filth of Gehenna,\npluck them out, cut them off betimes, and save yourself from such\na frightful end; for it is better to live even thus maimed than,\nhaving a whole body, to be put to a violent death.\" No one can\nsuppose that Jesus meant to convey such an idea as that when he\nuttered these words. We must, then, attribute a deeper, an\nexclusively moral, significance to the passage. It means, \"If you\nhave some bosom sin, to deny and root out which is like tearing\nout an eye or cutting off a hand, pause not, but overcome and\ndestroy it immediately, at whatever cost of effort and suffering;\nfor it is better to endure the pain of fighting and smothering a\nbad passion than to submit to it and allow it to rule until it\nacquires complete control over you, pervades your whole nature\nwith its miserable unrest, and brings you at last into a state of\nwoe of which Gehenna and its dreadful associations are a fit\nemblem.\" A verse spoken, according to Mark, in immediate\nconnection with the present passage, confirms the figurative sense\nwe have attributed to it: \"Whosoever shall cause one of these\nlittle ones that believe in me to fall, it were better for him\nthat a millstone were hanged around his neck and he were plunged\ninto the midst of the sea;\" that is, in literal terms, a man had\nbetter meet a great calamity, even the loss of life, than commit a\nfoul crime and thus bring the woe of guilt upon his soul.\n\nThe phrase, \"their worm dieth not, and their fire is not\nquenched,\" is a part of the imagery naturally suggested by the\nscene in the Valley of Hinnom, and was used to give greater\nvividness and force to the moral impression of the discourse. By\nan interpretation resulting either from prejudice or ignorance, it\nis generally held to teach the doctrine of literal fire torments\nenduring forever. It is a direct quotation from a passage in\nIsaiah which signifies that, in a glorious age to come, Jehovah\nwill cause his worshippers to go forth from new moon to new moon\nand look upon the carcasses of the wicked, and see them devoured\nby fire which shall not be quenched and gnawed by worms which\nshall not die, until the last relics of them are destroyed.\n\nThird: \"Fear not them that kill the body but are not able to kill\nthe soul; but rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and\nbody in Gehenna.\" A similar use of figurative language, in a still\nbolder manner, is found in Isaiah. Intending to say nothing more\nthan that Assyria should be overthrown and crushed, the prophet\nbursts out, \"Under the glory of the King of Assyria Jehovah shall\nkindle a burning like the burning of a fire; and it shall burn and\ndevour his thorns and his briers in one day, and shall consume the\nglory of his forest and of his fruitful field, both soul and\nbody.\" Reading the whole passage in Matthew with a single eye, its\nmeaning will be apparent. We may paraphrase it thus. Jesus says to\nhis disciples, \"You are now going forth to preach the gospel. My\nreligion and its destinies are intrusted to your hands. As you go\nfrom place to place, be on your guard; for they will persecute\nyou, and scourge you, and deliver you up to death. But fear them\nnot. It is enough for the disciple that he be as his master; and\nif they have done so unto me, how much more shall they unto you!\nDo not, through fear of hostile men, who can only kill your bodies\nand are not able in any wise to injure your souls, shrink from\ndanger and prove recreant to the momentous duties imposed upon\nyou; but be inspired to proclaim the principles of the heavenly\nkingdom with earnestness and courage, in the face of all perils,\nby fearing God, him who is able to plunge both your souls and your\nbodies in abomination and agony, him who, if you prove unfaithful\nand become slothful servants or wicked traitors, will leave your\nbodies to a violent death and after that your souls to bitter\nshame and anguish. Fear not the temporal, physical power of your\nenemies, to be turned from your work by it; but rather fear the\neternal, spiritual power of your God, to be made faithful by it.\"\n\nFourth: \"Woe unto you, Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye\ncompass sea and land to make one proselyte; and, when he is made,\nye make him twofold more a child of Gehenna than yourselves.\" That\nis, \"Ye make him twice as bad as yourselves in hypocrisy, bigotry,\nextortion, impurity, and malice, a subject of double guilt and of\ndouble retribution.\"\n\nFinally, Jesus exclaims to the children of those who killed the\nprophets, \"Serpents, brood of vipers! how can ye escape the\ncondemnation of Gehenna?\" That is to say, \"Venomous creatures, bad\nmen! you deserve the fate of the worst criminals; you are worthy\nof the polluted fires of Gehenna; your vices will surely be\nfollowed by condign punishment: how can such depravity escape the\nseverest retributions?\"\n\nThese five are all the distinct instances in which Jesus uses the\nword Gehenna. It is plain that he always uses the word\nmetaphorically. We therefore conclude that Christianity, correctly\nunderstood, never implies that eternal fire awaits sinners in the\nfuture world, but that moral retributions, according to their\ndeeds, are the portion of all men here and hereafter. There is no\nmore reason to suppose that essential Christianity contains the\ndoctrine of a fiery infernal world than there is to suppose that\nit really means to declare that God is a glowing mass of flame,\nwhen it says, \"Our God is a consuming fire.\" We must remember the\nmetaphorical character of much scriptural language. Wickedness is\na fire, in that it preys upon men and draws down the displeasure\nof the Almighty, and consumes them.\n\nAs Isaiah writes, \"Wickedness burneth as the fire, the anger of\nJehovah darkens the land, and the people shall be the food of the\nfire.\" And James declares to proud extortioners, \"The rust of your\ncankered gold and silver shall eat your flesh as it were fire.\"\n\nWhen Jesus says, \"It shall be more tolerable for Sodom and\nGomorrah in the day of judgment than for that city\" which will not\nlisten to the preaching of my kingdom, but drives my disciples\naway, he uses a familiar figure to signify that Sodom and Gomorrah\nwould at such a call have repented in sackcloth and ashes. The\nguilt of Chorazin and Bethsaida was, therefore, more hardened than\ntheirs, and should receive a severer punishment; or, making\nallowance for the natural exaggeration of this kind of language,\nhe means, That city whose iniquities and scornful unbelief lead it\nto reject my kingdom when it is proffered shall be brought to\njudgment and be overwhelmed with avenging calamities. Two parallel\nillustrations of this image are given us by the old prophets.\nIsaiah says, \"Babylon shall be as when God overthrew Sodom and\nGomorrah.\" And Jeremiah complains, \"The punishment of Jerusalem is\ngreater than the punishment of Sodom.\" It is certainly remarkable\nthat such passages should ever have been thought to teach the\ndoctrine of a final, universal judgment day breaking on the world\nin fire.\n\nThe subject of our Lord's teachings in regard to the punishment of\nthe wicked is included in two classes of texts, and may be summed\nup in a few words. One class of texts relate to the visible\nestablishment of Christianity as the true religion, the Divine\nlaw, at the destruction of the Jewish power, and to the frightful\nwoes which should then fall upon the murderers of Christ, the\nbitter enemies of his cause. All these things were to come upon\nthat generation,  were to happen before some of them then standing\nthere tasted death. The other class of texts and they are by far\nthe more numerous signify that the kingdom of Truth is now\nrevealed and set up; that all men are bound to accept and obey it\nwith reverence and love, and thus become its blessed subjects, the\nhappy and immortal children of God; that those who spurn its\noffers, break its laws, and violate its pure spirit shall be\npunished, inevitably and fearfully, by moral retributions\nproportioned to the degrees of their guilt. Christ does not teach\nthat the good are immortal and that the bad shall be annihilated,\nbut that all alike, both the just and the unjust, enter the\nspiritual world. He does not teach that the bad shall be eternally\nmiserable, cut off from all possibility of amendment, but simply\nthat they shall be justly judged. He makes no definitive reference\nto duration, but leaves us at liberty, peering into the gloom as\nbest we can, to suppose, if we think it most reasonable, that the\nconditions of our spiritual nature are the same in the future as\nnow, and therefore that the wicked may go on in evil hereafter,\nor, if they will, all turn to righteousness, and the universe\nfinally become as one sea of holiness and as one flood of praise.\n\nAnother portion of Christ's doctrine of the future life hinges on\nthe phrase \"the kingdom of heaven.\" Much is implied in this term\nand its accompaniments, and may be drawn out by answering the\nquestions, What is heaven? Who are citizens of, and who are aliens\nfrom, the kingdom of God? Let us first examine the subordinate\nmeanings and shades of meaning with which the Savior sometimes\nuses these phrases.\n\n\"Ye shall see heaven open and the angels of God ascending and\ndescending upon the Son of Man.\" No confirmation of the literal\nsense of this that is afforded by any incident found in the\nGospels. There is every reason for supposing that he meant by it,\n\"There shall be open manifestations of supernatural power and\nfavor bestowed upon me by God, evident signs of direct\ncommunications between us.\" His Divine works and instructions\njustified the statement. The word \"heaven\" as here used, then,\ndoes not mean any particular place, but means the approving\npresence of God. The instincts and natural language of man prompt\nus to consider objects of reverence as above us. We kneel below\nthem. The splendor, mystery, infinity, of the starry regions help\non the delusion. But surely no one possessing clear spiritual\nperceptions will think the literal facts in the case must\ncorrespond to this, that God must dwell in a place overhead called\nheaven. He is an Omnipresence.\n\n\"Blessed are ye when men shall revile you and persecute you for my\nsake: rejoice, for great is your reward in heaven.\" This passage\nprobably means, \"In the midst of tribulation be exceeding glad;\nbecause you shall be abundantly rewarded in a future state for all\nyour present sufferings in my cause.\" In that case, heaven\nsignifies the spiritual world, and does not involve reference to\nany precisely located spot. Or it may mean, \"Be not disheartened\nby insults and persecutions met in the cause of God; for you shall\nbe greatly blessed in your inward life: the approval of\nconscience, the immortal love and pity of God, shall be yours: the\nmore you are hated and abused by men unjustly, the closer and\nsweeter shall be your communion with God.\" In that case, heaven\nsignifies fellowship with the Father, and is independent of any\nparticular time or place.\n\n\"Our Father, who art in heaven.\" Jesus was not the author of this\nsentence. It was a part of the Rabbinical synagogue service, and\nwas based upon the Hebrew conception of God as having his abode in\nan especial sense over the firmament. The Savior uses it as the\nlanguage of accommodation, as is evident from his conversation\nwith the woman of Samaria; for he told her that no exclusive spot\nwas an acceptable place of worship, since \"God is a Spirit; and\nthey that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.\" No\none who comprehends the meaning of the words can suppose that the\nInfinite Spirit occupies a confined local habitation, and that men\nmust literally journey there to be with him after death. Wherever\nthey may be now, they are away from him or with him, according to\ntheir characters. After death they are more banished from him or\nmore immediately with him, instantly, wherever they are, according\nto the spirit they are of.\n\n\"Lay not up for yourselves treasures on earth, but in heaven.\" In\nother words, Be not absorbed in efforts to accumulate hoards of\ngold and silver, and to get houses and lands, which will soon pass\naway; but rather labor to acquire heavenly treasures, wisdom,\nlove, purity, and faith, which will never pass from your\npossession nor cease from your enjoyment.\n\n\"I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place\nfor you, I will come again and receive you unto myself, that where\nI am there ye may be also.\" To understand this text, we must\ncarefully study the whole four chapters of the connection in which\nit stands. They abound in bold symbols. An instance of this is\nseen where Jesus, having washed his disciples' feet, says to them,\n\"Ye are clean, but not all. For he knew who should betray him.\nTherefore said he, Ye are not all clean.\" The actual meaning of\nthe passage before us may be illustrated by a short paraphrase of\nit with the context: \"Let not your hearts be troubled by the\nthought that I must die and be removed from you; for there are\nother states of being besides this earthly life. When they crucify\nme, as I have said to you before, I shall not perish, but shall\npass into a higher state of existence with my Father. Whither I go\nye know, and the way ye know: my Father is the end, and the truths\nthat I have declared point out the way. If ye loved me, ye would\nrejoice because I say that I go to the Father. And if I go to him,\nif, when they have put me to death, I pass into an unseen state of\nblessedness and glory (as I prophesy unto you that I shall,) I\nwill reveal myself unto you again, and tell you. I go before you\nas a pioneer, and will surely come back and confirm, with\nirresistible evidence, the reality of what I have already told\nyou. Therefore, trouble not your hearts, but be of good cheer.\"\n\n\"There is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner\nthat repenteth.\" The sentiment of this Divine declaration simply\nimplies that all good beings sympathize with every triumph of\ngoodness; that the living chain of mutual interest runs through\nthe spiritual universe, making one family of those on earth and\nthose in the invisible state.\n\n\"Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to my Father.\" \"Cling not\nto me, detain me not, for I have not yet left the world forever,\nto be in the spiritual state with my Father; and ere I do this I\nmust seek my disciples, to convince them of my resurrection and to\ngive them my parting commission and blessing.\" He used the common\nlanguage, for it was the only language which she whom he addressed\nwould understand; and although, literally interpreted, it conveyed\nthe idea of a local heaven on high, yet at the same time it\nconveyed, and in the only way intelligible to her, all the truth\nthat was important, namely, that when he disappeared he would\nstill be living, and be, furthermore, with God.\n\nWhen Christ finally went from his disciples, he seemed to them to\nrise and vanish towards the clouds. This would confirm their\nprevious material conceptions, and the old forms of speech would\nbe handed down, strengthened by these phenomena, misunderstood in\nthemselves and exaggerated in their importance. We generally speak\nnow of God's \"throne,\" of \"heaven,\" as situated far away in the\nblue ether; we point upward to the world of bliss, and say, There\nthe celestial hosannas roll; there the happy ones, the unforgotten\nones of our love, wait to welcome us. These forms of speech are\nentirely natural; they are harmless; they aid in giving\ndefiniteness to our thoughts and feelings, and it is well to\ncontinue their use; it would be difficult to express our thoughts\nwithout them. However, we must understand that they are not\nstrictly and exclusively true. God is everywhere; and wherever he\nis there is heaven to the spirits that are like him and,\nconsequently, see him and enjoy his ineffable blessedness.\n\nJesus sometimes uses the phrase \"kingdom of heaven\" as synonymous\nwith the Divine will, the spiritual principles or laws which he\nwas inspired to proclaim. Many of his parables were spoken to\nillustrate the diffusive power and the incomparable value of the\ntruth he taught, as when he said, \"The kingdom of heaven is like a\ngrain of mustard seed, which becomes a great tree;\" it is \"like\nunto leaven, which a woman put in two measures of meal until the\nwhole was leavened;\" it is \"like a treasure hid in a field,\" or\n\"like a goodly pearl of great price, which, a man finding, he goes\nand sells all that he has and buys it.\" In these examples \"the\nkingdom of heaven\" is plainly a personification of the revealed\nwill of God, the true law of salvation and eternal life. In answer\nto the question why he spoke so many things to the people in\nparables, Jesus said to his disciples, \"Because it is given unto\nyou to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven; but unto them\nit is not given;\" that is, You are prepared to understand the\nhitherto concealed truths of God's government, if set forth\nplainly; but they are not prepared.\n\nHere as also in the parables of the vineyard let out to\nhusbandmen, and of the man who sowed good seed in his field, and\nin a few other cases \"the kingdom of heaven\" means God's\ngovernment, his mode of dealing with men, his method of\nestablishing his truths in the hearts of men. \"The kingdom of\nheaven\" sometimes signifies personal purity and peace, freedom\nfrom sensual solicitations. \"There be eunuchs which have made\nthemselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake. He that is\nable to receive it, let him receive it.\"\n\nChrist frequently uses the term \"kingdom of heaven\" in a somewhat\nrestricted, traditional sense, based in form but not in spirit\nupon the Jewish expectations of the Messiah's kingdom. \"Be ye sure\nof this, that the kingdom of God is come nigh unto you;\" \"I must\npreach the kingdom of God to other cities also;\" \"Repent, for the\nkingdom of heaven is at hand.\" Christ was charged to bear to men a\nnew revelation from God of his government and laws, that he might\nreign over them as a monarch over conscious and loyal subjects.\n\"Many shall come from the East and the West, and shall sit down\nwith Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven; but the\nchildren of the kingdom shall be cast out into outer darkness.\"\nThe sense of these texts is as follows. \"God is now offering unto\nyou, through me, a spiritual dispensation, a new kingdom; but,\nunless you faithfully heed it and fulfil its conditions, you shall\nbe rejected from it and lose the Divine favor. Although, by your\nposition as the chosen people, and in the line of revelation, you\nare its natural heirs, yet, unless you rule your spirits and lives\nby its commands, you shall see the despised Gentiles enjoying all\nthe privileges your faith allows to the revered patriarchs of your\nnation, while yourselves are shut out from them and overwhelmed\nwith shame and anguish. Your pride of descent, haughtiness of\nspirit, and reliance upon dead rites unfit you for the true\nkingdom of God, the inward reign of humility and righteousness;\nand the very publicans and harlots, repenting and humbling\nthemselves, shall go into it before you.\"\n\nTo be welcomed under this Messianic dispensation, to become a\ncitizen of this spiritual kingdom of God, the Savior declares that\nthere are certain indispensable conditions. A man must repent and\nforsake his sins. This was the burden of John's preaching, that\nthe candidate for the kingdom of heaven must first be baptized\nwith water unto repentance, as a sign that he abjures and is\ncleansed from all his old errors and iniquities. Then he must be\nbaptized with the Holy Spirit and with fire, that is, must learn\nthe positive principles of the coming kingdom, and apply them to\nhis own character, to purge away every corrupt thing. He must be\nborn again, born of water and of the Spirit: in other words, he\nmust be brought out from his impurity and wickedness into a new\nand Divine life of holiness, awakened to a conscious experience of\npurity, truth, and love, the great prime elements in the reign of\nGod. He must be guileless and lowly. \"Whosoever will not receive\nthe kingdom of God as a little child shall in no wise enter\ntherein.\"\n\nThe kingdom of heaven, the better dispensation which Christ came\nto establish, is the humility of contrite hearts, the innocence of\nlittle children, the purity of undefiled consciences, the fruit of\ngood works, the truth of universal laws, the love of God, and the\nconscious experience of an indestructible, blessed being. Those\nwho enter into these qualities in faith, in feeling, and in action\nare full citizens of that eternal kingdom; all others are aliens\nfrom it.\n\nHeaven, then, according to Christ's use of the word, is not\ndistinctively a world situated somewhere in immensity, but a\npurely spiritual experience, having nothing to do with any special\ntime or place. It is a state of the soul, or a state of society,\nunder the rule of truth, governed by God's will, either in this\nlife or in a future. He said to the young ruler who had walked\nfaithfully in the law, and whose good traits drew forth his love,\n\"Thou art not far from the kingdom of God.\" It is evident that\nthis does not mean a bounded place of abode, but a true state of\ncharacter, a virtuous mode of life \"My kingdom is not of this\nworld.\" \"Every one that is of the truth heareth my voice.\" That\nis, \"My kingdom is the realm of truth, the dominion of God's will,\nand all true men are my subjects.\" Evidently this is not a\nmaterial but a moral reign and therefore unlimited by seasons or\nplaces. Wherever purity, truth, love, obedience, prevail, there is\nGod, and that is heaven. It is not necessary to depart into some\ndistant sphere to meet the Infinite Holy One and dwell with him.\nHe is on the very dust we tread, he is the very centre of our\nsouls and breath of our lives, if we are only in a state that is\nfitted to recognise and enjoy him. \"He that hath sent me is with\nme: the Father hath not left me alone, for I always do those\nthings which please him.\" It is a fair inference from such\nstatements as this that to do with conscious adoration and love\nthose things that please God is to be with him, without regard to\ntime or place; and that is heaven. \"I speak that which I have seen\nwith my Father,\" God, \"and ye do that which ye have seen with your\nfather, the devil.\" No one will suppose that Jesus meant to tell\nthe wicked men whom he was addressing that they committed their\niniquities in consequence of lessons learned in a previous state\nof existence with an arch fiend, the parent of all evil. His\nmeaning, then, was, I bring forth in words and deeds the things\nwhich I have learned in my secret soul from inspired communion\nwith infinite goodness and perfection; you bring forth the things\nwhich you have learned from communion with the source of sin and\nwoe, that is, foul propensities, cruel passions, and evil\nthoughts.\n\n\"I come forth from the Father and am come into the world; again I\nleave the world and go unto the Father.\" \"I go unto Him that sent\nme.\" Since it is declared that God is an Omnipresent Spirit, and\nthat those who obey and love him see him and are with him\neverywhere, these striking words must bear one of the two\nfollowing interpretations. First, they may imply in general that\nman is created and sent into this state of being by the Father,\nand that after the termination of the present life the soul is\nadmitted to a closer union with the Parent Spirit. This gives a\nnatural meaning to the language which represents dying as going to\nthe Father. Not that it is necessary to travel to reach God, but\nthat the spiritual verity is most adequately expressed under such\na metaphor. But, secondly, and more probably, the phraseology\nunder consideration may be meant as an assertion of the Divine\norigin and authority of the special mission of Christ. \"Neither\ncame I of myself, but He sent me;\" \"The words that I speak unto\nyou I speak not of myself;\" \"As the Father hath taught me, I speak\nthese things.\" These passages do not necessarily teach the pre\nexistence of Christ and his descent from heaven in the flesh. That\nis a carnal interpretation which does great violence to the\ngenuine nature of the claims put forth by our Savior. They may\nmerely declare the supernatural commission of the Son of God, his\ndirect inspiration and authority. He did not voluntarily assume\nhis great work, but was Divinely ordered on that service. Compare\nthe following text: \"The baptism of John, whence was it, from\nHeaven, or of men?\" That is to say, was it of human or of Divine\norigin and authority? So when it is said that the Son of Man\ndescended from heaven, or was sent by the Father, the meaning in\nChrist's mind probably was that he was raised up, did his works,\nspoke his words, by the inspiration and with the sanction of God.\nThe accuracy of this interpretation is seen by the following\ncitation from the Savior's own words, when he is speaking in his\nprayer at the last supper of sending his disciples out to preach\nthe gospel: \"As thou hast sent me into the world, even so have I\nalso sent them into the world.\" The reference, evidently, is to a\nDivine choice and sealing, not to a descent upon the earth from\nanother sphere.\n\nThat the author of the Fourth Gospel believed that Christ\ndescended from heaven literally we have not the shadow of a doubt.\nHe repeatedly speaks of him as the great super angelic Logos, the\nfirst born Son and perfect image of God, the instrumental cause of\nthe creation. His mind was filled with the same views, the same\nlofty Logos theory that is so abundantly set forth in the writings\nof Philo Judaus. He reports and describes the Savior in conformity\nwith such a theological postulate. Possessed with the foregone\nconclusion that Jesus was the Divine Logos, descended from the\ncelestial abode, and born into the world as a man, in endeavoring\nto write out from memory, years after they were uttered, the\nSavior's words, it is probable that he unconsciously\nmisapprehended and tinged them according to his theory. The\nDelphic apothegm, \"Know thyself,\" was said to have descended from\nheaven:\n\n\"E coelo descendit [non ASCII characters].\"\n\nBy a familiar Jewish idiom, \"to ascend into heaven\" meant to learn\nthe will of God.8 And whatever bore the direct sancion of God was\nsaid to descend from heaven. When in these figurative terms Jesus\nasserted his Divine commission, it seems that some understood him\nliterally, and concluded perhaps in consequence of his miracles,\njoined with their own speculations that he was the Logos\nincarnated. That such a conclusion was an unwarranted inference\nfrom metaphorical language and from a foregone pagan dogma appears\nfrom his own explanatory and justifying words spoken to the Jews.\nFor when they accused him of making himself God, he replies, \"If\nin your law they are called gods to whom the word of God came,\ncharge ye him whom the Father hath sanctified and sent into the\nworld with blasphemy, because he says he is the Son of God?\"\nChrist's language in the Fourth Gospel\n\n8 Schoettgen, in John iii. 13.\n\n\nmay be fairly explained without implying his actual pre existence\nor superhuman nature. But it does not seem to us that John's\npossibly can be. His miracles, according to the common idea of\nthem, did not prove him to be the coequal fac simile, but merely\nproved him to be the delegated envoy, of God.\n\nWe may sum up the consideration of this point in a few words.\nChrist did not essentially mean by the term \"heaven\" the world of\nlight and glory located by the Hebrews, and by some other nations,\njust above the visible firmament. His meaning, when he spoke of\nthe kingdom of God or heaven, was always, in some form, either the\nreign of justice, purity, and love, or the invisible world of\nspirits. If that world, heaven, be in fact, and were in his\nconception, a sphere located in space, he never alluded to its\nposition, but left it perfectly in the dark, keeping his\ninstructions scrupulously free from any such commitment. He said,\n\"I go to Him that sent me;\" \"I will come again and receive you\nunto myself, that where I am there ye may be also.\" The references\nto locality are vague and mysterious. The nature of his words, and\ntheir scantiness, are as if he had said, We shall live hereafter;\nwe shall be with the Father; we shall be together. All the rest is\nmystery, even to me: it is not important to be known, and the\nFather hath concealed it. Such, almost, are his very words. \"A\nlittle while, and ye shall not see me; again, a little while, and\nye shall see me, because I go to the Father.\" \"Father, I will that\nthey also whom thou hast given me be with me where I am.\" Whether\nheaven be technically a material abode or a spiritual state it is\nof little importance to us to know; and the teachings of Jesus\nseem to have nothing to do with it. The important things for us to\nknow are that there is a heaven, and how we may prepare for it;\nand on these points the revelation is explicit. To suppose the\nSavior ignorant of some things is not inconsistent with his\nendowments; for he himself avowed his ignorance, saying, \"Of that\nday knoweth no man; no, not even the angels which are in heaven,\nneither the Son, but the Father.\" And it adds an awful solemnity,\nan indescribably exciting interest, to his departure from the\nworld, to conceive him hovering on the verge of the same mystery\nwhich has enveloped every passing mortal,  hovering there with\nchastened wonder and curiosity, inspired with an absolute trust\nthat in that fathomless obscurity the Father would be with him,\nand would unveil new realms of life, and would enable him to come\nback and assure his disciples. He certainly did not reveal the\ndetails of the future state: whether he was acquainted with them\nhimself or not we cannot tell.\n\nWe next advance to the most important portion of the words of\nChrist regarding the life and destiny of the soul, those parts of\nhis doctrine which are most of a personal, experimental character,\nsounding the fountains of consciousness, piercing to the dividing\nasunder of our being. It is often said that Jesus everywhere takes\nfor granted the fact of immortality, that it underlies and\npermeates all he does and says. We should know at once that such a\nbeing must be immortal; such a life could never be lived by an\nephemeral creature; of all possible proofs of immortality he is\nhimself the sublimest. This is true, but not the whole truth. The\nresistless assurance, the Divine inspiration, the sublime repose,\nwith which he enunciates the various thoughts connected with the\ntheme of endless existence, are indeed marvellous. But he not only\nauthoritatively assumes the truth of a future life: he speaks\ndirectly of it in many ways, often returns to it, continually\nhovers about it, reasons for it, exhorts upon it, makes most of\nhis instructions hinge upon it, shows that it is a favorite\nsubject of his communion. We may put the justice of these\nstatements in a clear light by bringing together and explaining\nsome of his scattered utterances.\n\nHis express language teaches that man in this world is a twofold\nbeing, leading a twofold life, physical and spiritual, the one\ntemporal, the other eternal, the one apt unduly to absorb his\naffections, the other really deserving his profoundest care. This\nseparation of the body and the soul, and survival of the latter,\nis brought to light in various striking forms and with various\npiercing applications. In view of the dangers that beset his\ndisciples on their mission, he exhorted and warned them thus:\n\"Fear not them which have power to kill the body and afterwards\nhave no more that they can do; but rather fear Him who can kill\nboth soul and body;\" \"Whosoever will save his life shall lose it;\nand whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it;\" that\nis, whosoever, for the sake of saving the life of his body,\nshrinks from the duties of this dangerous time, shall lose the\nhighest welfare of the soul; but whosoever loveth his lower life\nin the body less than he loves the virtues of a consecrated spirit\nshall win the true blessedness of his soul. Both of these passages\nshow that the soul has a life and interest separate from the\nmaterial tabernacle. With what pathos and convincing power was the\nsame faith expressed in his ejaculation from the cross, \"Father,\ninto thy hands I commend my spirit!\" an expression of trust which,\nunder such circumstances of desertion, horror, and agony, could\nonly have been prompted by that inspiration of God which he always\nclaimed to have.\n\nChrist once reasoned with the Sadducees \"as touching the dead,\nthat they rise;\" in other words, that the souls of men upon the\ndecease of the body pass into another and an unending state of\nexistence: \"Neither can they die any more; for they are equal with\nthe angels, and are children of God, being children of the\nresurrection.\" His argument was, that \"God is the God of the\nliving, not of the dead;\" that is, the spiritual nature of man\ninvolves such a relationship with God as pledges his attributes to\nits perpetuity. The thought which supports this reasoning\npenetrates far into the soul and grasps the moral relations\nbetween man and God. It is most interesting viewed as the\nunqualified affirmation by Jesus of the doctrine of a future life\nwhich shall be deathless.\n\nBut the Savior usually stood in a more imposing attitude and spoke\nin a more commanding tone than are indicated in the foregoing\nsentences. The prevailing stand point from which he spoke was that\nof an oracle giving responses from the inner shrine of the\nDivinity. The words and sentiments he uttered were not his, but\nthe Father's; and he uttered them in the clear tones of knowledge\nand authority, not in the whispering accents of speculation or\nsurmise. How these entrancing tidings came to him he knew not:\nthey were no creations of his; they rose spontaneously within him,\nbearing the miraculous sign and seal of God, a recommendation he\ncould no more question or resist than he could deny his own\nexistence. He was set apart as a messenger to men. The tide of\ninspiration welled up till it filled every nerve and crevice of\nhis being with conscious life and with an overmastering\nrecognition of its living relations with the Omnipresent and\nEverlasting Life. Straightway he knew that the Father was in\nhim and he in the Father, and that he was commissioned to\nreveal the mind of the Father to the world.\n\nHe knew, by the direct knowledge of inspiration and consciousness,\nthat he should live forever. Before his keen, full, spiritual\nvitality the thought of death fled away, the thought of\nannihilation could not come. So far removed was his soul from the\nperception of interior sleep and decay, so broad and powerful was\nhis consciousness of indestructible life, that he saw quite\nthrough the crumbling husks of time and sense to the crystal sea\nof spirit and thought. So absorbing was his sense of eternal life\nin himself that he even constructed an argument from his personal\nfeeling to prove the immortality of others, saying to his\ndisciples, \"Because I live, ye shall live also;\" \"Ye believe in\nGod, believe also in me.\" Ye believe what God declares, for he\ncannot be mistaken; believe what I declare for his inspiration\nmakes me infallible when I say there are many spheres of life for\nus when this is ended.\n\nIt was from the fulness of this experience that Jesus addressed\nhis hearers. He spoke not so much as one who had faith that\nimmortal life would hereafter be revealed and certified, but\nrather as one already in the insight and possession of it, as one\nwhose foot already trod the eternal floor and whose vision pierced\nthe immense horizon. \"Verily, verily, I say unto you, he that\nheareth my word and believeth on Him that sent me hath everlasting\nlife, and shall not come into condemnation, but is passed from\ndeath unto life.\" Being himself brought to this immovable\nassurance of immortal life by the special inspiration of God, it\nwas his aim to bring others to the same blessed knowledge. His\nefforts to effect this form a most constant feature in his\nteachings. His own definition of his mission was, \"I am come that\nthey might have life, and that they might have it more\nabundantly.\" We see by the persistent drift of his words that he\nstrove to lead others to the same spiritual point he stood at,\nthat they might see the same prospect he saw, feel the same\ncertitude he felt, enjoy the same communion with God and sense of\nimmortality he enjoyed. \"As the Father raiseth up the dead and\nquickeneth them, even so the Son quickeneth whom he will;\" \"For as\nthe Father hath life in himself, so hath he given the Son to have\nlife in himself;\" \"Father, glorify thy Son, that thy Son also may\nglorify thee; as thou hast given him power over all flesh, that he\nmight give eternal life to as many as thou hast given him: and\nthis is life eternal, that they might know thee, the only true\nGod, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent.\" In other words, the\nmission of Christ was to awaken in men the experience of immortal\nlife; and that would be produced by imparting to them reproducing\nin them the experience of his own soul. Let us notice what steps\nhe took to secure this end.\n\nHe begins by demanding the unreserved credence of men to what he\nsays, claiming to say it with express authority from God, and\ngiving miraculous credentials. \"Whatsoever I speak, therefore, as\nthe Father said to me, so I speak.\" This claim to inspired\nknowledge he advances so emphatically that it cannot be\noverlooked. He then announces, as an unquestionable truth, the\nsupreme claim of man's spiritual interests upon his attention and\nlabor, alike from their inherent superiority and their enduring\nsubsistence. \"For what shall it profit a man if he gain the whole\nworld and lose his own soul?\" \"Thou fool, this night thy soul\nshall be required of thee: then whose shall be those things thou\nhast gathered?\" \"Labor not for the meat which perisheth, but for\nthat meat which endureth unto everlasting life.\"\n\nThe inspiration which dictated these instructions evidently\nbased them upon the profoundest spiritual philosophy,  upon the\ntruth that man lives at once in a sphere of material objects which\nis comparatively unimportant because he will soon leave it, and in\na sphere of moral realities which is all important because he will\nlive in it forever. \"Man shall not live by bread alone, but by\nevery word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.\" The body,\nexisting in the sphere of material relations, is supported by\nmaterial bread; but the soul, existing in the sphere of spiritual\nrelations, is supported by truth, the nourishing breath of God's\nlove. We are in the eternal world, then, at present. Its laws and\ninfluences penetrate and rule us; its ethereal tides lave and bear\nus on; our experience and destiny in it are decided every moment\nby our characters. If we are pure in heart, have vital faith and\nforce, we shall see God and have new revelations made to us. Such\nare among the fundamental principles of Christianity.\n\nThere is another class of texts, based upon a highly figurative\nstyle of speech, striking Oriental idioms, the explanation of\nwhich will cast further light upon the branch of the subject\nimmediately before us. \"As the living Father hath sent me, and I\nlive by the Father, so he that eateth me, even he shall live by\nme;\" that is, As the blessed Father hath inspired me with the\nknowledge of him, and I am blessed with the consciousness of his\nimmortal love, so he that believes and assimilates these truths as\nI proclaim them, he shall experience the same blessedness through\nmy instruction. The words. \"I am the bread of life\" are explained\nby the words \"I am the truth.\" The declaration \"Whoso eateth my\nflesh hath eternal life\" is illustrated by the declaration\n\"Whosoever heareth my word and believeth on Him that sent me hath\neverlasting life.\" There is no difficulty in understanding what\nJesus meant when he said, \"I have meat to eat ye know not of: my\nmeat is to do the will of Him that sent me.\" Why should we not\nwith the same ease, upon the same principles, interpret his\nkindred expression, \"This is the bread which cometh down from\nheaven, that a man may eat thereof and not die\"? The idea to be\nconveyed by all this phraseology is, that whosoever understands,\naccepts, assimilates, and brings out in earnest experience, the\ntruths Christ taught, would realize the life of Christ, feel the\nsame assurance of Divine favor and eternal blessedness. \"He that\neateth my flesh and drinketh my blood dwelleth in me and I in\nhim;\" that is, we have the same character, are fed by the same\nnutriment, rest in the same experience. Fortunately, we are not\nleft to guess at the accuracy of this exegesis: it is demonstrated\nfrom the lips of the Master himself. When he knew that the\ndisciples murmured at what he had said about eating his flesh, and\ncalled it a hard saying, he said to them, \"It is the spirit that\nquickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak\nunto you, they are spirit and they are life. But there are some of\nyou that believe not.\" Any man who heartily believed what Christ\nsaid that he was Divinely authorized to declare, and did declare,\nthe pervading goodness of the Father and the immortal blessedness\nof the souls of his children, by the very terms was delivered from\nthe bondage of fear and commenced the consciousness of eternal\nlife. Of course, we are not to suppose that faith in Christ\nobtains immortality itself for the believer: it only rectifies and\nlights up the conditions of it, and awakens the consciousness of\nit. \"I am the resurrection and the life: whosoever liveth and\nbelieveth in me shall never die.\" We suppose this means, he shall\nknow that he is never to perish: it cannot refer to physical\ndissolution, for the believer dies equally with the unbeliever; it\ncannot refer to immortal existence in itself, for the unbeliever\nis as immortal as the believer: it must refer to the blessed\nnature of that immortality and to the personal assurance of it,\nbecause these Christ does impart to the disciple, while the\nunregenerate unbeliever in his doctrine, of course, has them not.\nComing from God to reveal his infinite love, exemplifying the\nDivine elements of an immortal nature in his whole career, coming\nback from the grave to show its sceptre broken and to point the\nway to heaven, well may Christ proclaim, \"Whosoever believes in\nme\" knows he \"shall never perish.\"\n\nAmong the Savior's parables is an impressive one, which we cannot\nhelp thinking  perhaps fancifully was intended to illustrate the\ndealings of Providence in ordering the earthly destiny of\nhumanity. \"So is the kingdom of God, as if a man should cast seed\ninto the ground and the seed should grow up; but when the fruit is\nripe he putteth in the sickle, because the harvest is come.\" Men\nare seed sown in this world to ripen and be harvested in another.\nThe figure, taken on the scale of the human race and the whole\nearth, is sublime. Whether such an image were originally suggested\nby the parable or not, the conception is consistent with Christian\ndoctrine. The pious Sterling prays,\n\n\"Give thou the life which we require, That, rooted fast in thee,\nFrom thee to thee we may aspire, And earth thy garden be.\"\n\nThe symbol shockingly perverted from its original beautiful\nmeaning by the mistaken belief that we sleep in our graves until a\ndistant resurrection day is often applied to burial grounds. Let\nits appropriate significance be restored. Life is the field, death\nthe reaper, another sphere of being the immediate garner. An\nenlightened Christian, instead of entitling a graveyard the garden\nof the dead, and looking for its long buried forms to spring from\nits cold embrace, will hear the angel saying again, \"They are not\nhere: they are risen.\" The line which written on Klopstock's tomb\nis a melancholy error, engraved on his cradle would have been an\ninspiring truth:  \"Seed sown by God to ripen for the harvest.\"\n\nSeveral fragmentary speeches, which we have not yet noticed, of\nthe most tremendous and even exhaustive import, are reported as\nhaving fallen from the lips of Christ at different times. These\nsentences, rapid and incomplete as they are in the form in which\nthey have reached us, do yet give us glimpses of the most\nmomentous character into the profoundest thoughts of his mind.\nThey are sufficient to enable us to generalize their fundamental\nprinciples, and construct the outlines, if we may so speak, of his\ntheology, his inspired conception of God, the universe, and man,\nand the resulting duties and destiny of man. We will briefly bring\ntogether and interpret these passages, and deduce the system which\nthey seem to presuppose and rest upon.\n\nJesus told the woman of Samaria that God was to be worshipped\nacceptably neither in that mountain nor at Jerusalem exclusively,\nbut anywhere, if it were worthily done. \"God is a Spirit; and they\nthat worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.\" This\npassage, with others, teaches the spirituality and omnipresence of\nGod. Christ conceived of God as an infinite Spirit. Again,\ncomforting his friends in view of his approaching departure, he\nsaid, \"In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so I\nwould have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.\" Here he\nplainly figures the universe as a house containing many\napartments, all pervaded and ruled by the Father's presence. He\nwas about taking leave of this earth to proceed to another part of\nthe creation, and he promised to come back to his followers and\nassure them there was another abode prepared for them. Christ\nconceived of the universe, with its innumerable divisions, as the\nhouse of God. Furthermore, he regarded truth or the essential laws\nand right tendencies of things and the will of God as identical.\nHe said he came into the world to do the will of Him that sent\nhim; that is, as he at another time expressed it, he came into the\nworld to bear witness unto the truth. Thus he prayed, \"Father,\nsanctify them through the truth: thy word is truth.\" Christ\nconceived of pure truth as the will of God. Finally, he taught\nthat all who obey the truth, or do the will of God, thereby\nconstitute one family of brethren, one family of the accepted\nchildren of God, in all worlds forever. \"He that doeth the truth\ncometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest that they\nare wrought in God;\" \"Whosoever shall do the will of God, the same\nis my brother, and my sister, and mother;\" \"Ye shall know the\ntruth, and the truth shall make you free. Whosoever committeth sin\nis the servant of sin. And the servant abideth not in the house\nforever; but the son abideth forever. If the Son, therefore, make\nyou free, ye shall be free indeed.\" That is to say, truth gives a\ngood man the freedom of the universe, makes him know himself an\nheir, immortally and everywhere at home; sin gives the wicked man\nover to bondage, makes him feel afraid of being an outcast, loads\nhim with hardships as a servant. Whoever will believe the\nrevelations of Christ, and assimilate his experience, shall lose\nthe wretched burdens of unbelief and fear and be no longer a\nservant, but be made free indeed, being adopted as a son.\n\nThe whole conception, then, is this: The universe is one vast\nhouse, comprising many subordinate mansions. All the moral beings\nthat dwell in it compose one immortal family. God is the universal\nFather. His will the truth is the law of the household. Whoever\nobeys it is a worthy son and has the Father's approbation; whoever\ndisobeys it is alienated and degraded into the condition of a\nservant. We may roam from room to room, but can never get lost\noutside the walls beyond the reach of the Paternal arms. Death is\nvariety of scenery and progress of life:\n\n\"We bow our heads At going out, we think, and enter straight\nAnother golden chamber of the King's, Larger than this we leave,\nand lovelier.\"\n\nWho can comprehend the idea, in its overwhelming magnificence and\nin its touching beauty, its sweeping amplitude embracing all\nmysteries, its delicate fitness meeting all wants, without being\nimpressed and stirred by it, even to the regeneration of his soul?\nIf there is any thing calculated to make man feel and live like a\nchild of God, it would surely seem to be this conception. Its\nunrivalled simplicity and verisimilitude compel the assent of the\nmind to its reality. It is the most adequate and sublime view of\nthings that ever entered the reason of man. It is worthy the\ninspiration of God, worthy the preaching of the Son of God. All\nthe artificial and arbitrary schemes of fanciful theologians are\nas ridiculous and impertinent before it as the offensive flaring\nof torches in the face of one who sees the steady and solemn\nsplendors of the sun. To live in the harmony of the truth of\nthings, in the conscious love of God and enjoyment of immortality,\nblessed children, everywhere at home in the hospitable mansions of\nthe everlasting Father, this is the experience to which Christ\ncalls his followers; and any eschatology inconsistent with such a\nconception is not his.\n\nThere are two general methods of interpretation respectively\napplied to the words of Christ, the literal, or mechanical, and\nthe spiritual, or vital. The former leads to a belief in his\nsecond visible advent with an army of angels from heaven, a bodily\nresurrection of the dead, a universal judgment, the burning up of\nthe world, eternal tortures of the wicked in an abyss of infernal\nfire, a heaven located on the arch of the Hebrew firmament. The\nlatter gives us a group of the profoundest moral truths clustered\nabout the illuminating and emphasizing mission of Christ, sealed\nwith Divine sanctions, truths of universal obligation and of all\nredeeming power. The former method is still adopted by the great\nbody of Christendom, who are landed by it in a system of doctrines\nwell nigh identical with those of the Pharisees, against which\nChrist so emphatically warned his followers, a system of\ntraditional dogmas not having the slightest support in philosophy,\nnor the least contact with the realities of experience, nor the\nfaintest color of inherent or historical probability. In this age\nthey are absolutely incredible to unhampered and studious minds.\nOn the other hand, the latter method is pursued by the growing\nbody of rational Christians, and it guides them to a consistent\narray of indestructible moral truths, simple, fundamental, and\nexhaustive, an array of spiritual principles commanding universal\nand implicit homage, robed in their own brightness, accredited by\ntheir own fitness, armed with the loveliness and terror of their\nown rewarding and avenging divinity, flashing in mutual lights and\nsounding in consonant echoes alike from the law of nature and from\nthe soul of man, as the Son of God, with miraculous voice, speaks\nbetween.\n\nCHAPTER VII.\n\nRESURRECTION OF CHRIST.\n\nOF all the single events that ever were supposed to have occurred\nin the world, perhaps the most august in its moral associations\nand the most stupendous in its lineal effects, both on the outward\nfortunes and on the inward experience of mankind, is the\nresurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. If, therefore, there\nis one theme in all the range of thought worthy of candid\nconsideration, it is this. There are two ways of examining it. We\nmay, as unquestioning Christians, inquire how the New Testament\nwriters represent it, what premises they assume, what statements\nthey make, and what inferences they draw. Thus, without\nperversion, without mixture of our own notions, we should\nconstruct the Scripture doctrine of the resurrection of the\nSavior. Again as critical scholars and philosophical thinkers, we\nmay study that doctrine in all its parts, scrutinize it in all its\nbearings, trace, as far as possible, the steps and processes of\nits formation, discriminate as well as we can, by all fair tests,\nwhether it be entirely correct, or wholly erroneous, or partly\ntrue and partly false. Both of these methods of investigation are\nnecessary to a full understanding of the subject. Both are\nobligatory upon the earnest inquirer. Whoso would bravely face his\nbeliefs and intelligently comprehend them, with their grounds and\ntheir issues, with a devout desire for the pure truth, whatsoever\nit may be, putting his trust in the God who made him, will never\nshrink from either of these courses of examination. Whoso does\nshrink from these inquiries is either a moral coward, afraid of\nthe results of an honest search after that truth of things which\nexpresses the will of the Creator, or a spiritual sluggard,\nfrightened by a call to mental effort and torpidly clinging to\nease of mind. And whoso, accepting the personal challenge of\ncriticism, carries on the investigation with prejudice and\npassion, holding errors because he thinks them safe and useful,\nand rejecting realities because he fancies them dangerous and\nevil, is an intellectual traitor, disloyal to the sacred laws by\nwhich God hedges the holy fields and rules the responsible\nsubjects of the realm of truth. We shall combine the two modes of\ninquiry, first singly asking what the Scriptures declare, then\ncritically seeking what the facts will warrant, it being\nunimportant to us whether these lines exactly coincide or diverge\nsomewhat, the truth itself being all. We now pass to an\nexamination of Christ's resurrection from five points of view:\nfirst, as a fact; second, as a fulfilment of prophecy; third, as a\npledge; fourth, as a symbol; and fifth, as a theory.\n\nThe writers of the New Testament speak of the resurrection of\nChrist, in the first place, as a fact. \"Jesus whom ye slew and\nhanged on a tree, him hath God raised up.\" It could not have been\nviewed by them in the light of a theory or a legend, nor, indeed,\nas any thing else than a marvellous but literal fact. This appears\nfrom their minute accounts of the scenes at the sepulchre and of\nthe disappearance of his body. Their declarations of this are most\nunequivocal, emphatic, iterated, \"The Lord is risen indeed.\" All\nthat was most important in their faith they based upon it, all\nthat was most precious to them in this life they staked upon it.\n\"Else why stand we in jeopardy every hour?\" They held it before\ntheir inner vision as a guiding star through the night of their\nsufferings and dangers, and freely poured out their blood upon the\ncruel shrines of martyrdom in testimony that it was a fact.\nThat they believed he literally rose from the grave in visible\nform also appears, and still more forcibly, from their descriptions\nof his frequent manifestations to them. These show that in their\nfaith he assumed at his resurrection the same body in which he had\nlived before, which was crucified and buried. All attempts, whether\nby Swedenborgians or others, to explain this Scripture language as\nsignifying that he rose in an immaterial body, are futile.1 He\nappeared to their senses and was recognised by his identical\nbodily form. He partook of physical food with them. \"They gave him\na piece of broiled fish and of an honey comb; and he ate before\nthem.\" The marks in his hands and side were felt by the\nincredulous Thomas, and convinced him. He said to them, \"Handle\nme, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones as ye see me\nhave.\" To a candid mind there can hardly be a question that the\ngospel records describe the resurrection of Christ as a literal\nfact, that his soul reanimated the deceased body, and that in it\nhe showed himself to his disciples. Yet that there are a few texts\nimplying the immateriality of his resurrection body that there are\ntwo accounts of it in the gospels we cannot deny.\n\nWe advance to see what is the historical evidence for the fact of\nthe resurrection of Christ. This argument, of course, turns\nchiefly on one point, namely, the competency of the witnesses, and\nthe validity of their testimony.2 We will present the usually\nexhibited scheme of proof as strongly as we can.3 In the first\nplace, those who testified to the resurrection were numerous\nenough, so far as mere numbers go, to establish the fact beyond\nquestion. Paul declares there were above five hundred who from\ntheir personal knowledge could affirm of the Lord's resurrection.\nBut particularly there were the eleven apostles, the two Marys,\nCleopas, and the disciples from whom Joseph and Matthias the\ncandidates for Judas Iscariot's apostleship were selected,\nconsisting probably of most of the seventy. If the evidence of any\nnumber of men ought to convince us of the alleged event, then,\nunder the existing circumstances, that of twelve ought. Important\nmatters of history are often unhesitatingly received on the\nauthority of a single historian. If the occurrences at the time\nwere sufficient to demonstrate to a reasonable mind the reality of\nthe resurrection, then the unanimous testimony of twelve men to\nthose occurrences should convince us. The oaths of a thousand\nwould be no stronger.\n\nThese men possessed sufficient abilities to be trusted, good\npowers of judgment, and varied experience. The selection of them\nby Him who \"knew what was in man,\" the boldness and efficiency of\ntheir lives, the fruits of their labors everywhere, amply prove\ntheir\n\n1 The opposite view is ably argued by Bush in his valuable\ntreatise on the Resurrection.\n\n2 Sherlock, Trial of the Witnesses.\n\n3 Ditton, Demonstration of the Resurrection of Christ. For a\nsternly faithful estimate of the cogency of this argument, it must\nbe remembered that all the data, every fact and postulate in each\nstep of the reasoning, rest on the historical authority of the\nfour Gospels, documents whose authorship and date are lost in\nobscurity. Even of \"orthodox\" theologians few, with any claims to\nscholarship, now hold that these Gospels, as they stand, were\nwritten by the persons whose names they bear. They wander and\nwaver in a thick fog. See Milman's \"History of Christianity,\" vol.\ni. ch. ii. appendix ii.\n\n\ngeneral intelligence and energy. And they had, too, the most\nabundant opportunities of knowledge in regard to the facts to\nwhich they bore witness. They were present in the places, at the\ntimes, when and where the events occurred. Every motive would\nconspire to make them scrutinize the subject and the attendant\ncircumstances. And it seems they did examine; for at first some\ndoubted, but afterwards believed. They had been close companions\nof Jesus for more than a year at the least. They had studied his\nevery feature, look, gesture. They must have been able to\nrecognise him, or to detect an impostor, if the absurd idea of an\nattempted imposition can be entertained. They saw him many times,\nnear at hand, in the broad light. Not only did they see him, but\nthey handled his wounded limbs and listened to his wondrous voice.\nIf these means of knowing the truth were not enough to make their\nevidence valid, then no opportunities could be sufficient.\n\nWhoso allows its full force to the argument thus far will admit\nthat the testimony of the witnesses to the resurrection is\nconclusive, unless he suspects that by some cause they were either\nincapacitated to weigh evidence fairly, or were led wilfully to\nstifle the truth and publish a falsehood. Very few persons have\never been inclined to make this charge, that the apostles were\neither wild enthusiasts of fancy, or crafty calculators of fraud;\nand no one has ever been able to support the position even with\nmoderate plausibility. Granting, in the first place,\nhypothetically, that the disciples were ever so great enthusiasts\nin their general character and conduct, still, they could not have\nbeen at all so in relation to the resurrection, because, before it\noccurred, they had no belief, expectations, nor thoughts about it.\nBy their own frank confessions, they did not understand Christ's\npredictions, nor the ancient supposed prophecies of that event.\nAnd without a strong faith, a burning hopeful desire, or something\nof the kind, for it to spring from, and rest on, and be nourished\nby, evidently no enthusiasm could exist. Accordingly, we find that\nprevious to the third day after Christ's death they said nothing,\nthought nothing, about a resurrection; but from that time, as by\nan inspiration from heaven, they were roused to both words and\ndeeds. The sudden astonishing change here alluded to is to be\naccounted for only by supposing that in the mean time they had\nbeen brought to a belief that the resurrection had occurred. But,\nsecondly, it is to be noticed that these witnesses were not\nenthusiasts on other subjects. No one could be the subject of such\nan overweening enthusiasm as the hypothesis supposes, without\nbetraying it in his conduct, without being overmastered and led by\nit as an insane man is by his mania. The very opposite of all this\nwas actually the case with the apostles. The Gospels are\nunpretending, dispassionate narratives, without rhapsody,\nadulation, or vanity. Their whole conduct disproves the charge of\nfanaticism. Their appeals were addressed more to reason than to\nfeeling; their deeds were more courageous than rash. They avoided\ntumult, insult, and danger whenever they could honorably do so;\nbut, when duty called, their noble intrepidity shrank not. They\nwere firm as the trunks of oaks to meet the agony and horror of a\nviolent death when it came; yet they rather shunned than sought to\nwear the glorious crown from beneath whose crimson circlet drops\nof bloody sweat must drip from a martyr's brows. The number of the\nwitnesses for the resurrection, the abilities they possessed,\ntheir opportunities for knowing the facts, prove the impossibility\nof their being duped, unless we suppose them to have been blind\nfanatics. This we have just shown they were not. Would it not,\nmoreover, be most marvellous if they were such heated fanatics,\nall of them, so many men?\n\nBut there is one further foothold for the disbeliever in the\nhistoric resurrection of Christ. He may say, \"I confess the\nwitnesses were capable of knowing, and undoubtedly did know, the\ntruth; but, for some reason, they suppressed it, and proclaimed a\ndeception.\" As to this charge, we not only deny the actuality, but\neven the possibility, of its truth. The narratives of the\nevangelists contain the strongest evidences of their honesty. The\nmany little unaccountable circumstances they recount, which are so\nmany difficulties in the way of critical belief, the real and the\napparent inconsistencies, none of these would have been permitted\nby fraudulent authors. They are the most natural things in the\nworld, supposing their writers unsuspiciously honest. They also\nfrankly confess their own and each others' errors, ignorance,\nprejudices, and faults. Would they have done this save from\nsimple hearted truthfulness? Would a designing knave voluntarily\nreveal to a suspicious scrutiny actions and traits naturally\nsubversive of confidence in him? The conduct of the disciples\nunder the circumstances, through all the scenes of their after\nlives, proves their undivided and earnest honesty. The cause they\nhad espoused was, if we deny its truth, to the last degree\nrepulsive in itself and in its concomitants, and they were\nsurrounded with allurements to desert it. Yet how unyielding,\nwonderful, was their disinterested devotedness to it, without\nexception! Not one, overcome by terror or bowed by strong anguish,\nshrank from his self imposed task and cried out, \"I confess!\" No;\nbut when they, and their first followers who knew what they knew,\nwere laid upon racks and torn, when they were mangled and devoured\nalive by wild beasts, when they were manacled fast amidst the\nflames till their souls rode forth into heaven in chariots of\nfire, amidst all this, not one of them ever acknowledged fraud or\nrenounced his belief in the resurrection of Jesus. Were they not\nhonest? Others have died in support of theories and opinions with\nwhich their convictions and passions had become interwoven: they\ndied rather than deny facts which were within the cognizance of\ntheir senses. Could any man, however firm and dauntless, under the\ncircumstances, go through the trials they bore, without a feeling\nof truth and of God to support him?\n\nThese remarks are particularly forcible in connection with the\ncareer of Paul. Endowed with brilliant talents, learned, living at\nthe time and place, he must have been able to form a reliable\nopinion. And yet, while all the motives that commonly actuate men\nloudmouthed consistency, fame, wealth, pride, pleasure, the rooted\nforce of inveterate prejudices  all were beckoning to him from the\ntemples and palaces of the Pharisaic establishment, he spurned the\nglowing visions of his ambition and dashed to earth the bright\ndreams of his youth. He ranged himself among the Christians, the\nfeeble, despised, persecuted Christians; and, after having suffered\nevery thing humanity could bear, having preached the resurrection\neverywhere with unflinching power, he was at last crucified, or\nbeheaded, by Nero; and there, expiring among the seven hills of\nRome, he gave the resistless testimony of his death to the\nresurrection of Jesus, gasping, as it were, with his last breath,\n\"It is true.\" Granting the honesty of these men, we could not have\nany greater proof of it than we have now.\n\nBut dishonesty in this matter was not merely untrue; it was also\nimpossible. If fraud is admitted, a conspiracy must have been\nformed among the witnesses. But that a conspiracy of such a\ncharacter should have been entered into by such men is in itself\nincredible, in the outset. And then, if it had been entered into,\nit must infallibly have broken through, been found out, or been\nbetrayed, in the course of the disasters, perils, terrible trials,\nto which it and its fabricators were afterwards exposed. Prove\nthat a body of from twelve to five hundred men could form a plan\nto palm off a gross falsehood upon the world, and could then\nadhere to it unfalteringly through the severest disappointments,\ndangers, sufferings, differences of opinion, dissension of feeling\nand action, without retiring from the undertaking, letting out the\nsecret, or betraying each other in a single instance in the course\nof years, prove this, and you prove that men may do and dare, deny\nand suffer, not only without motives, but in direct opposition to\ntheir duty, interest, desire, prejudice, and passion. The\ndisciples could not have pretended the resurrection from\nsensitiveness to the probable charge that they had been miserably\ndeceived; for they did not understand their Master to predict any\nsuch event, nor had they the slightest expectation of it. They\ncould not have pretended it for the sake of establishing and\ngiving authority to the good precepts and doctrines Jesus taught;\nbecause such a course would have been in the plainest antagonism\nto all those principles themselves, and because, too, they must\nhave known both the utter wickedness and the desperate hazards and\nforlornness of such an attempt to give a fictitious sanction to\nmoral truths. In such an enterprise there was before them not the\nfaintest probability of even the slightest success. Every selfish\nmotive would tend to deter them; for poverty, hatred, disgrace,\nstripes, imprisonment, contempt, and death stared in their faces\nfrom the first step that way. Dishonesty, deliberate fraud, then,\nin this matter, was not merely untrue, but was impossible. The\nconclusion from the whole view is, therefore, the conviction that\nthe evidence of the witnesses for the resurrection of Jesus is\nworthy of credence.\n\nThere are three considerations, further, worthy of notice in\nestimating the strength of the historic argument for the\nresurrection. First, the conduct of the Savior himself in relation\nto the subject. The charge of unbalanced enthusiasm is\ninconsistent with the whole character and life of Jesus; but\nsuppose on this point he was an enthusiast, and really believed\nthat three days after his death he would rise again. In that case,\nwould not his mind have dwelt upon the wonderful anticipated\nphenomenon? Would not his whole soul have been wrapped up in it,\nand his speech have been almost incessantly about it? Yet he spoke\nof it only three or four times, and then with obscurity. Again:\nsuppose he was an impostor. An impostor would hardly have risked\nhis reputation voluntarily on what he knew could never take place.\nHad he done so, his only reliance must have been upon the\ncredulous enthusiasm of his followers. He would then have made it\nthe chief topic, would have striven strenuously to make it a\nliving and intense hope, an immovable, all controlling faith,\nconcentrating on it their desires and expectations, heart and\nsoul. But he really did not do this at all. He did not even make\nthem understand what his vaticinations of the resurrection meant.\nAnd when they saw his untenanted body hanging on the cross, they\nslunk away in confusion and despair. Admit, again, that Christ was\nenthusiast, or impostor, or both: these qualities exist not in the\ngrave. Here was their end. They could neither raise him from the\ndead nor move him from the tomb. No considerations in any way\nconnected with Christ himself, therefore, can account for the\noccurrences that succeeded his death.\n\nSecondly, if the resurrection did not take place, what became of\nthe Savior's body? We have already given reasons why the disciples\ncould not have falsely pretended the resurrection. It is also\nimpossible that they obtained, or surreptitiously disposed of, the\ndead and interred body; because it was in a tomb of rock securely\nsealed against them, and watched by a guard which they could\nneither bribe nor overpower; because they were too much\ndisheartened and alarmed to try to get it; because they could not\npossibly want it, since they expected a temporal Messiah, and had\nno hope of a resurrection like that which they soon began\nproclaiming to the world. And as for the story told by the watch,\nor rather by the chief priests and Pharisees, it has not\nconsistency enough to hold together. Its foolish unlikelihood has\nalways been transparent. It is unreasonable to suppose that fresh\nguards would slumber at a post where the penalty of slumbering was\ndeath. And, if one or two did sleep, it is absurd to think all\nwould do so. Besides, if they slept, how knew they what transpired\nin the mean time? Could they have dreamed it? Dreams are not taken\nin legal depositions; and, furthermore, it would be an astounding,\ngratuitous miracle if they all dreamed the same thing at the same\ntime.\n\nFinally, a powerful collateral argument in proof of the\nresurrection of Christ is furnished by the conduct of the Jews. It\nmight seem that if the guards told the chief priests, scribes, and\nPharisees, of the miracles which occurred at the sepulchre, they\nmust immediately have believed and proclaimed their belief in the\nMessiahship and resurrection of the crucified Savior. But they had\npreviously remained invulnerable to as cogent proof as this would\nafford. They had acknowledged the miracles wrought by him when he\nwas alive, but attributed them even his works of beneficence to\ndemoniacal power. They said, \"He casteth out devils by the power\nof Beelzebub, the prince of devils.\" So they acted in the present\ncase, and, notwithstanding the peerless miracle related by the\nsentinels, still persisted in their alienation from the Christian\nfaith. Their intensely cherished preconceptions respecting the\nMessiah, their persecution and crucifixion of Jesus, the glaring\ninconsistency of his teachings and experience with most that they\nexpected, these things compelled their incredulity to every proof\nof the Messiahship of the contemned and murdered Nazarene. For, if\nthey admitted the facts on which such proof was based, they would\nmisinterpret them and deny the inferences justly drawn from them.\nThis was plainly the case. It may be affirmed that the Jews\nbelieved the resurrection, because they took no fair measures to\ndisprove it, but threatened those who declared it. Since they had\nevery inducement to demonstrate its falsity, and might, it seems,\nhave done so had it been false, and yet never made the feeblest\neffort to unmask the alleged fraud, we must suspect that they were\nthemselves secretly convinced of its truth, but dared not let it\nbe known, for fear it would prevail, become mighty in the earth,\nand push them from their seats. In the rage and blindness of their\nprejudices, they cried, \"His blood be on us and on our children!\"\nAnd from that generation to our own, their history has afforded a\nliving proof of the historic truth of the gospel, and of the\nstability of its chief corner stone, the resurrection of Christ.\nThe triumphal progress of Christianity from conquering to\nconquering, together with the baffled plans and complete\nsubjection of the Jews, show that their providential preparatory\nmission has been fulfilled. If God is in history, guiding the\nmoral drift of human affairs, then the dazzling success of the\nproclamation of the risen Redeemer is the Divine seal upon the\ntruth of his mission and the reality of his apotheosis. Planting\nhimself on this ground, surrounding himself with these evidences,\nthe reverential Christian will at least for a long time to come\ncling firmly to the accepted fact of the resurrection of Christ,\nregardless of whatever misgivings and perplexities may trouble the\nmind of the iconoclastic and critical truth seeker.\n\nThe Christian Scriptures, assuming the resurrection of Christ as a\nfact, describe it as a fulfilment of prophecy. Luke reports from\nthe risen Savior the words, \"O fools, and slow of heart to believe\nall that the prophets have spoken! Ought not Christ to have\nsuffered these things, and to enter into his glory?\" \"Thus it is\nwritten, and thus it behooved Christ to suffer, and to rise from\nthe dead the third day.\" Peter declares that the patriarch David\nbefore \"spake of the resurrection of Christ.\" And Paul also\naffirms, \"That the promise which was made unto the fathers, God\nhath fulfilled the same unto us their children, in that he hath\nraised up Jesus again.\" One can scarcely hesitate in deciding the\nmeaning of these words as they were used by the apostles. The\nunanimous opinion and interpretation of the Christians of the\nfirst centuries, and of all the Church Fathers, leave no shadow of\na doubt that it was believed that the resurrection of Jesus was\nrepeatedly foretold in the Old Testament, expected by the\nprophets, and fulfilled in the event as a seal of the inspired\nprophecy. Furthermore, Jesus himself repeatedly prophesied his own\nresurrection from the dead,  though his disciples did not\nunderstand his meaning until the event put a clear comment on the\nwords. He charged those who saw his transfiguration on the mount,\n\"Tell it to no man until the Son of Man be risen again from the\ndead.\" The chief priests told Pilate that they remembered that\nJesus said, while he was yet alive, \"After three days I will rise\nagain.\" Standing in the temple at Jerusalem, Jesus said once,\n\"Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.\"\n\"When, therefore, he was risen from the dead, his disciples\nremembered that he had said this unto them;\" and then they\nunderstood that \"he had spoken of the temple of his body.\" It is\nperfectly plain that the New Testament represents the resurrection\nof Christ as the fulfilment of prophecies, those prophecies having\nbeen so expounded by him.\n\nThere are few problems presented to the candid Christian scholar\nof to day more perplexing than the one involved in the subject of\nthese prophecies. Paul declares to King Agrippa, \"I say none other\nthings than those which the prophets and Moses did say should\ncome: that Christ should suffer, and that he should be the first\nthat should rise from the dead and should show light unto the\nGentiles.\" It is vain to attempt to disguise the fact that the\ningenuous student cannot find these prophecies in the Old\nTestament as we now have it. He will search it through in vain,\nunless his eyes create what they see. Let any man endeavor to\ndiscover a passage in the Hebrew Scriptures which, taken with its\ncontext, can fairly bear such a sense. There is not a shadow of\nvalid evidence of any kind to support the merely traditional\nnotions on this subject. The only way of discerning predictions of\na death, descent, and ascent, of the Messiah, in the law and the\nprophets, is by the application of Cabalistic methods of\ninterpretation, theories of occult types, double senses, methods\nwhich now are not tolerable to intelligent men. That Rabbinical\ninterpretation which made the story of Ishmael and Isaac, the two\nchildren borne to Abraham by Hagar and Sarah, an allegory\nreferring to the two covenants of Judaism and Christianity, could\neasily extract any desired meaning from any given text. Bearing in\nmind the prevalence of this kind of exegesis among the Jews, and\nremembering also that they possessed in the times of Jesus a vast\nbody of oral law, to which they attributed as great authority as\nto the written, there are two possible ways of honestly meeting\nthe difficulty before us.\n\nFirst: in God's counsels it was determined that a Messiah should\nafterwards arise among the Jews. The revealed hope of this stirred\nthe prophets and the popular heart. It became variously and\nvaguely hinted in their writings, still more variously and\ncopiously unfolded in their traditions. The conception of him\ngradually took form; and they began to look for a warrior prophet,\na national deliverer, a theocratic king. Jesus, being the true\nMessiah, though a very different personage from the one meant by\nthe writers and understood by the people, yet being the Messiah\nforeordained by God, applied these Messianic passages to himself,\nand explained them according to his experience and fate. This will\nsatisfactorily clear up the application of some texts. And others\nmay be truly explained as poetical illustrations, rhetorical\naccommodations, as when he applies to Judas, at the Last Supper,\nthe words of the Psalm, \"He that eateth with me lifteth up his\nheel against me;\" and when he refers to Jonah's tarry in the\nwhale's belly as a symbol of his own destined stay beneath the\ngrave for a similar length of time. Or, secondly, we may conclude\nthat the prophecies under consideration, referred to in the New\nTestament, were not derived from any sacred documents now in our\npossession, but either from perished writings, or from oral\nsources, which we know were abundant then. Justin Martyr says\nthere was formerly a passage in Jeremiah to this effect: \"The Lord\nremembered the dead who were sleeping in the earth, and went down\nto them to preach salvation to them.\" 4 There were floating in the\nJewish mind, at the time of Christ, at least some fragmentary\ntraditions, vague expectations, that the Messiah was to die,\ndescend to Sheol, rescue some of the captives, and triumphantly\nascend. It is true, this statement is denied by some; but the\nweight of critical authorities seems to us to preponderate in its\nfavor, and the intrinsic historical probabilities leave hardly a\ndoubt of it in our own minds.5 Now, three alternatives are offered\nus. Either Jesus interpreted Moses, the Psalms, and the Prophets,\non the Rabbinical ground of a double sense, with mystic\napplications; or he accepted the prophecies referred to, from oral\ntraditions held by his countrymen; or the apostles misunderstood,\nand in consequence partially misreported, him. All we can\npositively say is that these precise predictions are plainly not\nin the Jewish Scriptures, undoubtedly were in the oral law, and\nwere certainly received by the apostles as authoritative.\n\nContinuing our inquiry into the apostolic view of the resurrection\nof Christ, we shall perceive that it is most prominently set forth\nas the certificate of our redemption from the\n\n4 Dial. cum Tryph. sect. lxxii.\n\n5 Discussed, with full list of references, in Strauss's Life of\nJesus, part iii. cap. i. sect.\n112.\n\n\nkingdom of death to the same glorious destiny which awaited him\nupon his ascension into heaven. The apostles regarded his\nresurrection as a supernatural seal set on his mission, warranting\nhis claims as an inspired deliverer and teacher. Thereby, they\nthought, God openly sanctioned and confirmed his promises.\nThereby, they considered, was shown to men God's blessed grace,\nfreely forgiving their sins, and securing to them, by this pledge,\na deliverance from the doom of sin as he had risen from it, and an\nacceptance to a heavenly immortality as he had ascended to it. The\nresurrection of Christ, then, and not his death, was to them the\npoint of vital interest, the hinge on which all hung. Does not the\nrecord plainly show this to an impartial reader? Wherever the\napostles preach, whenever they write, they appeal not to the death\nof a veiled Deity, but to the resurrection of an appointed\nmessenger; not to a vicarious atonement or purchase effected by\nthe mortal sufferings of Jesus, but to the confirmation of the\ngood tidings he brought, afforded by the Father's raising him from\nthe dead. \"Whereof he hath given assurance unto all, in that he\nhath raised him from the dead,\" Paul proclaimed on Mars Hill. In\nthe discourses of the apostles recorded in the Book of Acts, we\nfind that, when they preached the new religion to new audiences,\nthe great doctrine in all cases set forth as fundamental and\nabsorbing is the resurrection; not an atoning death, but a\njustifying resurrection. \"He died for our sins, and rose for our\njustification.\" Some of the Athenians thought Paul \"a setter forth\nof two strange gods, Jesus and Resurrection.\" And when they desire\nto characterize Christ, the distinguishing culminating phrase\nwhich they invariably select shows on what their minds rested as\nof chief import: they describe him as the one \"whom God hath\nraised from the dead.\" \"If we believe that Jesus died and rose\nagain, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with\nhim.\" \"That ye may know what is the exceeding greatness of God's\npower toward us who believe, according to the working of his\nmighty power which he wrought in Christ when he raised him from\nthe dead and set him at his own right hand in heaven.\" It is plain\nhere that the dying of Christ is regarded merely as preliminary to\nhis rising, and that his resurrection and entrance into heaven are\nreceived as an assurance that faithful disciples, too, shall\nobtain admission into the heavenly kingdom.\n\nThe Calvinistic doctrine is that the unutterable vicarious agonies\nof the death of Christ placated the wrath of God, satisfied his\njustice, and ransomed the souls of the elect from the tortures of\nhell, and that his resurrection was simply his victorious return\nfrom a penal conflict with the powers of Satan. The Unitarian\ndoctrine is that the violent death of Christ was an expression of\nself sacrificing love, to exert a moral power on the hearts of\nmen, and that his resurrection was a miraculous proof of the\nauthority and truth of his teachings, a demonstration of human\nimmortality. We maintain that neither of these views fully\ncontains the true representation of the New Testament. The\nartificial horrors of the former cannot be forced into nor wrung\nout of the written words; while the natural simplicity and\nmeagerness of the latter cannot be made to fill up the written\nwords with adequate significance. There is a medium doctrine,\nbased on the conceptions prevalent at the time the Christian\nsystem was constructed and written; a doctrine which equally\navoids the credulous excess of the Calvinistic interpretation and\nthe skeptical poverty of the Unitarian; a doctrine which fully\nexplains all the relevant language of the New Testament without\nviolence; a doctrine which, for our own part, we feel sure\naccurately represents the ideas meant to be conveyed by the\nScripture authors. We will state it, and then quote, for its\nillustration and for their own explanation, the principal texts\nrelating to the resurrection of Jesus.\n\nOn account of sin, which had alienated man from God and unfitted\nhim for heaven, he was condemned after death to descend as a\ndisembodied soul into the dark kingdom of the grave, the under\nworld. In that cheerless realm of helpless shades and stillness\nall departed human spirits were prisoners, and must be, until the\nadvent of the Messiah, when they, or a part of them, should rise.\nThis was the Jewish belief. Now, the apostles were Jews, who had\nthe ideas of their countrymen, to which, upon becoming Christians,\nthey added the new conceptions formed in their minds by the\nteachings, character, deeds, death, resurrection, of Christ, mixed\nwith their own meditations and experience. Accepting, with these\nprevious notions, the resurrection of Christ as a fact and a\nfulfilment of prophecy, they immediately supposed that his\ntriumphant exit from the prison of the dead and return to heaven\nwere the prefiguration of the similar deliverance of others and\ntheir entrance into heaven. They considered him as \"the first born\nfrom the dead,\" \"the first fruits of the dead.\" They emphatically\ncharacterize his return to life as a \"resurrection out from among\nthe dead,\" \"[non-ASCII characters], plainly implying that the rest\nof the dead still remained below.6 They received his experience in\nthis respect as the revealing type of that which was awaiting his\nfollowers. So far as relates to the separate existence of the\nsoul, the restoration of the widow's son by Elijah, or the\nresurrection of Lazarus, logically implies all that is implied in\nthe mere resurrection of Christ. But certain notions of\nlocalities, of a redemptive ascent, and an opening of heaven for\nthe redeemed spirits of men to ascend thither, were associated\nexclusively with the last. When, through the will of God, Christ\nrose, \"then first humanity triumphant passed the crystal ports of\nlight, and seized eternal youth!\" Their view was not that Christ\neffected all this by means of his own; but that the free grace of\nGod decreed it, and that Christ came to carry the plan into\nexecution. \"God, for his great love to us, even when we were dead\nin sins, has quickened us together with Christ.\" This was effected\nas in dramatic show: Christ died, which was suffering the fate of\na sinner; he went in spirit to the subterranean abode of spirits,\nwhich was bearing the penalty of sin; he rose again, which was\nshowing the penalty of sin removed by Divine forgiveness; he\nascended into heaven,  which was revealing the way for our ascent\nthrown open. Such is the general scope of thought in close and\nvital connection with which the doctrine of the resurrection of\nChrist stands. We shall spare enlarging on those parts of it which\nhave been sufficiently proved and illustrated in preceding\nchapters, and confine our attention as much as may be to those\nportions which have direct relations with the resurrection of\nChrist. It is our object, then, to show what we think will plainly\nappear in the light of the above general statement that, to the\nNew Testament writers, the resurrection, and not the death, of\nChrist is the fact of central moment, is the assuring seal of our\nforgiveness, reconciliation, and heavenly adoption.\n\n6 Wood, The Last Things, pp. 31-44.\n\n\nThey saw two antithetical starting points in the history of\nmankind: a career of ruin, beginning with condemned Adam in the\ngarden of Eden at the foot of the forbidden tree, dragging a\nfleshly race down into Sheol; a career of remedy, beginning with\nvictorious Christ in the garden of Joseph at the mouth of the rent\nsepulchre, guiding a spiritual race up into heaven.\n\nThe Savior himself is reported as saying, \"I lay down my life that\nI may take it again:\" the dying was not for the sake of\nsubstitutional suffering, but for the sake of a resurrection.\n\"Except a corn of wheat die, it abideth alone; but, if it die, it\nbringeth forth much fruit.\" \"A woman when she is in travail hath\nsorrow; but as soon as she is delivered of the child she\nremembereth no more the anguish, for joy that a man is born into\nthe world.\" The context here shows the Savior's meaning to be that\nthe woe of his death would soon be lost in the weal of his\nresurrection. The death was merely the necessary antecedent to the\nsignificant resurrection. \"Blessed be the God and Father of our\nLord Jesus Christ, who, according to his abundant mercy, hath\nbegotten us again unto a living hope by the resurrection of Jesus\nChrist from the dead unto an inheritance, incorruptible,\nundefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for you\nwho are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation\nready to be revealed.\" \"Him hath God raised on high by his right\nhand, to give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins.\" How\nclear it is here that not the vicarious death of Christ buys off\nsinners, but his resurrection shows sins to be freely forgiven,\nthe penalty remitted! \"Remember that Jesus Christ was raised from\nthe dead, according to my gospel: therefore I endure all things\nfor the elect's sake, that they may obtain the salvation which is\nin Christ Jesus with eternal glory.\" \"Be it known unto you,\ntherefore, men, brethren, that through Him whom God raised again\nis preached unto you the forgiveness of sins.\" The passage in the\nEpistle to the Hebrews, ninth chapter, from the twenty third verse\nto the twenty seventh, most emphatically connects the annulling of\nsin through the sacrifice of Christ with his ascended appearance\nin heaven. \"Jesus who was delivered for our offences and was\nraised again for our justification:\" that is, Jesus died because\nhe had entered the condition of sinful humanity, the penalty of\nwhich was death; he was raised to show that God had forgiven us\nour sins and would receive us to heaven instead of banishing us to\nthe under world. \"If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord\nJesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him\nfrom the dead, thou shalt be saved.\" Belief in the resurrection of\nChrist is here undeniably made the great condition of salvation.\nNo text can be found in which belief in the death, or blood, or\natoning merits, of Christ is made that condition. And yet nine\ntenths of Christendom by their creeds are to day proclaiming,\n\"Believe in the vicarious sufferings of Christ, and thou shalt be\nsaved; believe not in them, and thou shalt be damned!\" \"God hath\nboth raised up the Lord and will also raise up us.\" \"If Christ be\nnot raised, your faith is vain: ye are yet in your sins.\" This\ntext cannot be explained upon the common Calvinistic or Unitarian\ntheories. Whether Christ was risen or not made no difference in\ntheir justification before God if his death had atoned for them,\nmade no difference in their moral condition, which was as it was;\nbut if Christ had not risen, then they were mistaken in supposing\nthat heaven had been opened for them: they were yet held in the\nnecessity of descending to the under world, the penalty of their\nsins. The careful reader will observe that, in many places in the\nScriptures where a burden and stress of importance seem laid upon\nthe death of Christ, there immediately follows a reference to his\nresurrection, showing that the dying is only referred to as the\npreparatory step to the rising, the resurrection being the\nessential thing. \"The Apostle Paul scarcely speaks of the death of\nthe Savior except in connection with his resurrection,\" Bleek\nsays, in his Commentary on the Epistle to the Hebrews. \"It is\nChrist that died, yea, rather, that is risen again and is now at\nthe right hand of God.\"\n\n\"If we believe that Jesus died and rose again.\" \"To this end\nChrist both died, and rose and lived again.\" \"He died for them and\nrose again.\" We confidently avow, therefore, that the Christian\nScriptures concentrate the most essential significance and value\nof the mission of Jesus in his resurrection, describing it as the\nDivine seal of his claims, the visible proof and pledge of our\nredemption, by God's freely forgiving grace, from the fatal\nbondage of death's sepulchral domain to the blessed splendors of\nheaven's immortal life.\n\nThere remain a class of passages to be particularly noticed, in\nwhich an extraordinary emphasis seems to be laid on Christ's\nsufferings, Christ's blood, Christ's death, three phrases that\nmean virtually the same thing and are used interchangeably. The\npeculiar prominence given to the idea of the sacrifice of Christ\nin the instances now referred to is such as might lead one to\nsuppose that some mysterious efficacy was meant to be attributed\nto it. But we think an accurate examination of the subject will\nshow that these texts are really in full harmony with the view we\nhave been maintaining. Admitting that the resurrection of Christ\nwas the sole circumstance of ultimate meaning and importance,\nstill, his violent and painful death would naturally be spoken of\nas often and strongly as it is, for two reasons. First, the chief\nground of wonder and claim for gratitude to him was that he should\nhave left his pre existent state of undisturbed bliss and glory,\nand submitted to such humiliation and anguish for others, for\nsinners. Secondly, it was the prerequisite to his resurrection,\nthe same, in effect, with it, since the former must lead to the\nlatter; for, as the foremost apostle said, \"It was not possible\nthat he should be holden in death.\"\n\nThe apostolical writers do not speak of salvation by the blood of\nChrist any more plainly than they do of salvation by the name of\nChrist, salvation by grace, and salvation by faith. If at one time\nthey identify him with the sacrificial \"lamb,\" at another time\nthey as distinctively identify him with the \"high priest offering\nhimself,\" and again with \"the great Shepherd of the sheep,\" and\nagain with \"the mediator of the new covenant,\" and again with \"the\nsecond Adam.\" These are all figures of speech, and, taken\nsuperficially, they determine nothing as to doctrine. The\npropriety and the genuine character and force of the metaphor are\nin each case to be carefully sought with the lights of learning\nand under the guidance of a docile candor. The thoughts that, in\nconsequence of transmitted sin, all departed souls of men were\nconfined in the under world that Christ, to carry out and\nrevealingly exemplify the free grace of the Father, came into the\nworld, died a cruel death, descended to the prison world of the\ndead, declared there the glad tidings, rose thence and ascended\ninto heaven, the forerunner of the ransomed hosts to follow, these\nthoughts enable us to explain, in a natural, forcible, and\nsatisfactory manner, the peculiar phraseology of the New Testament\nin regard to the death of Christ, without having recourse to the\narbitrary conceptions and mystical horror usually associated with\nit now.\n\nFor instance, consider the passage in the second chapter of the\nEpistle to the Ephesians, from the eleventh verse to the\nnineteenth. The writer here says that \"the Gentiles, who formerly\nwere far off, strangers from the covenants of promise, are now\nmade nigh by the blood of Christ.\" This language he clearly\nexplains as meaning that through the death and resurrection of\nChrist \"the middle wall of partition between Jews and Gentiles was\nbroken down\" and a universal religion inaugurated, free from all\ninvidious distinctions and carnal ordinances. In his bodily death\nand spiritual ascension the Jewish ritual law was abolished and\nthe world wide moral law alone installed. From his spirit, rising\ninto heaven, all national peculiarities fell away, and through him\nJews and Gentiles both had access, by communion with his ascended\nand cosmopolitan soul, unto the Father. A careful study of all the\npassages in the New Testament which speak of Christ as delivering\nmen from the wrath of God will lead, it seems to us, almost every\nunprejudiced person to agree with one of the ablest German\ncritics, who says that \"the technical phrase 'wrath of God' here\nmeans, historically, banishment of souls into the under world, and\nthat the fact of Christ's triumph and ascent was a precious pledge\nshowing to the Christians that they too should ascend to eternal\nlife in heaven.\"7 The doctrine of the descent of Christ among the\ndead and of his redemptive mission there has of late wellnigh\nfaded from notice; but if any one wishes to see the evidence of\nits universal reception and unparalleled importance in the\nChristian Church for fifteen hundred years, presented in\noverwhelming quantity and irresistible array, let him read the\nlearned work devoted to this subject recently published in\nGermany.8 He can hardly peruse this work and follow up its\nreferences without seeing that, almost without an exception, from\nthe days of Peter and Paul to those of Martin Luther, it has been\nheld that \"the death and resurrection of Christ are the two poles\nbetween which,\" as Guder says, \"his descent into the under world\nlies.\" The phrase \"blood of Christ\" is often used in Scripture in\na pregnant sense, including the force of meaning that would be\nexpressed by his death, descent, resurrection, and ascension, with\nall their concomitants. As a specimen of innumerable passages of\nlike import which might be cited, we will quote a single\nexpression from Epiphanius, showing that the orthodox teachers in\nthe fourth century attributed redeeming efficacy to Christ's\nresurrection rather than to his death.\" As the pelican restores\nits dead offspring by dropping its own blood upon their wounds, so\nour Lord Jesus Christ dropped his blood upon Adam, Eve, and all\nthe dead, and gave them life by his burial and resurrection.\" 9\n\nIt was a part of the Mosaic ritual, laid down in the sixteenth\nchapter of Leviticus, that on the great annual day of expiation\nthere should be two goats chosen by lot, one for the Lord and one\nfor Azazel. The former the high priest was to slay, and with his\nblood sprinkle\n\n7 Bretschneider, Religiose Glaubenslehre, sect. 59: Christus der\nErloser vom Tode.\n\n8 Guder, Die Lehre von der Erscheinung Jesu Christi unter den\nTodten: In ihrem Zusammenhange mit der Lehre von den Letzten\nDingen.\n\n9 Physiol., cap. 8: De Pelecano.\n\n\nthe mercy seat. The latter, when the high priest's hands had been\nlaid on his head and all the iniquities of the children of Israel\nconfessed over him, was to be sent into the wilderness and loosed.\nThe former goat is called \"a sin offering for the people.\" The\nlatter is called \"a scape goat to make an atonement with the\nLord.\" The blood of the sin offering could not have been supposed\nto be a substitute purchasing the pardon of men's offences,\nbecause there is no hint of any such idea in the record, and\nbecause it was offered to reconcile \"houses,\" \"tabernacles,\"\n\"altars,\" as well as to reconcile men. It had simply a ceremonial\nsignificance. Such rites were common in many of the early\nreligions. They were not the efficient cause of pardon, but were\nthe formal condition of reconciliation. And then, in regard to the\nscapegoat, it was not sacrificed as an expiation for sinners; it\nmerely symbolically carried off the sins already freely forgiven.\nAll these forms and phrases were inwrought with the whole national\nlife and religious language of the Jews. Now, when Jesus appeared,\na messenger from God, to redeem men from their sins and to promise\nthem pardon and heaven, and when he died a martyr's death in the\nfulfilment of his mission, how perfectly natural that this\nsacrificial imagery these figures of blood, propitiation,\nsprinkling the mercy seat should be applied to him, and to his\nwork and fate! The burden of sins forgiven by God's grace in the\nold covenant the scape goat emblematically bore away, and the\npeople went free. So if the words must be supposed to have an\nobjective and not merely a moral sense when the Baptist cried,\n\"Behold the Lamb of God, that beareth off the sin of the world,\"\nhis meaning was that Jesus was to bear off the penalty of sin that\nis, the Hadean doom which God's free grace had annulled and open\nheaven to the ranks of reconciled souls. There is not the least\nshadow of proof that the sacrifices in the Mosaic ritual were\nDivinely ordained as types pre figuring the great sacrifice of\nChrist. There is no such pretence in the record, no such tradition\namong the people, not the slightest foundation whatever of any\nsort to warrant that arbitrary presumption. All such applications\nof them are rhetorical; and their historical force and moral\nmeaning are clearly explicable on the views which we have\npresented in the foregoing pages, but are most violently strained\nand twisted by the Calvinistic theory to meet the severe\nexigencies of a theoretical dogma.\n\nIf any one, granting that the central efficacy of the mission of\nChrist, dogmatically and objectively considered, lay in his\ndescent into Hades and in his resurrection, maintains that still\ncertain passages in the New Testament do ascribe an expiatory\neffect directly to his death as such, we reply that this\ninterpretation is quite likely to be correct. And we can easily\ntrace the conception to its origin beyond the pale of revelation.\nIt was an idea prevalent among the Jews in the time of the\napostles, and before, that death was an atonement for all sins,\nand that the death of the righteous atoned for the sins of\nothers.10 Now, the apostles might adopt this view and apply it\npre eminently to the case of Christ. This is the very explanation\ngiven by Origen.11 De Wette quotes the following sentence, and\nmany others of the same purport,\n\n10 Gfrorer, Gesehichte des Urchristenthums, abth. ii. pp. 187\n190.\n\n11 Mosheim, Commentaries on Christianity in the First Three\nCenturies, Eng. trans., vol. ii. pp. 162-163.\n\nfrom the Talmud: \"The death of the just is the redemption of\nsinners.\"12 The blood of any righteous man was a little atonement;\nthat of Christ was a vast one. The former all Protestants call a\nheathen error. So they should the latter, because it sprung from\nthe same source and is the same in principle. If, then, there are\nany scriptural texts which imply that the mere death of Christ had\na vicarious, expiatory efficacy, they are, so far forth, the\nreflection of heathen and Jewish errors yet lingering in the minds\nof the writers, and not the inspired revelation of an isolated,\narbitrary after expedient contrived in the secret counsels of God\nand wonderfully interpolated into the providential history of the\nworld. But, if there are any such passages, they are few and\nunimportant. The great mass of the scriptural language on this\nsubject is fairly and fully explained by the historical theory\nwhose outlines we have sketched. The root of the matter is the\nresurrection of Christ out from among the dead and his ascent into\nheaven.\n\nIt has not been our purpose in this chapter, or in the preceding\nchapters, to present the history of the Christian doctrine of the\natonement, either in its intrinsic significance or in its\nrelations to subjective religious experience. We have only sought\nto explain it, according to the original understanding of it, in\nits objective relations to the fate of men in the future life. The\nimportance of the subject, its difficulty, and the profound\nprejudices connected with it, are so great as not only to excuse,\nbut even to require, much explanatory repetition to make the truth\nclear and to recommend it, in many lights, with various methods,\nand by accumulated authorities. Those who wish to see the whole\nsubject of the atonement treated with consummate fulness and\nability, leaving nothing to be desired from the historical point\nof view, have only to read the masterly work of Baur.13\n\nIn leaving this part of our subject here, we would submit the\nfollowing considerations to the candid judgment of the reader.\nAdmitting the truth of the common doctrine of the atonement, why\ndid Christ die? It does not appear how there could be any\nparticular efficacy in mere death. The expiation of sin which he\nhad undertaken required only a certain amount of suffering. It did\nnot as far as we can see on the theory of satisfaction by an\nequivalent substituted suffering require death. It seems as if\nlocal and physical ideas must have been associated with the\nthought of his death. And we find the author of the Epistle to the\nHebrews thus replying to the question, Why did Christ die? \"That\nthrough death he might destroy him that hath the power of death,\nthat is, the devil, and deliver those who through fear of death\nwere all their lifetime subject to bondage.\" Now, plainly, this\nend was accomplished by his resurrection bursting asunder the\nbonds of Hades and showing that it was no longer the hopeless\nprison of the dead. The justice of this explanation appears from\nthe logical necessity of the series of ideas, the internal\ncoherence and harmony of thought. It has been ably shown that\nsubstantially this view is the accurate interpretation of the New\nTestament doctrine by\n\n12 Comm. de Morte Christi Expiatoria, cap. iii.: Qua Judaorum\nRecentiorum Christologia de Passione ac Morte Messia docet.\n\n13 Die Christliche Lehre von der Versohnung in ihrer\nGeschichtlichen Entwicklung von der Alteaten Zeit bis auf die\nNeueste.\n\nSteinbart,14 Schott,15 Bretschneider,16 Klaiber,17 and others. The\ngradual deviations from this early view can be historically\ntraced, step by step, through the refining speculations of\ntheologians. First, in ecclesiastical history, after the New\nTestament times, it is thought the devil has a right over all\nsouls in consequence of sin. Christ is a ransom offered to the\ndevil to offset his claim. Sometimes this is represented as a fair\nbargain, sometimes as a deception practised on the devil,\nsometimes as a battle waged with him. Next, it is conceived that\nthe devil has no right over human souls, that it is God who has\ndoomed them to the infernal prison and holds them there for their\nsin. Accordingly, the sacrifice of Christ for their ransom is\noffered not to the tyrannical devil but to the offended God.\nFinally, in the progress of culture, the satisfaction theory\nappears; and now the suffering of Christ is neither to buy souls\nfrom the devil nor to appease God and soften his anger into\nforgiveness; but it is to meet the inexorable exigencies of the\nabstract law of infinite justice and deliver sinners by bearing\nfor them the penalty of sin. The whole course of thought, once\ncommenced, is natural, inevitable; but the starting point is from\nan error, and the pausing places are at false goals.\n\nThe view which we have asserted to be the scriptural view\nprevailed as the orthodox doctrine of the Church throughout the\nfirst three centuries, as Bahr has proved in his valuable treatise\non the subject.18 He shows that during that period Christ's death\nwas regarded as a revelation of God's love, a victory over the\ndevil, (through his resurrection,) a means of obtaining salvation\nfor men, but not as a punitive sacrifice, not as a vindication of\nGod's justice, not as a vicarious satisfaction of the law.19 If\nthe leading theologians of Christendom, such as Anselm, Calvin,\nand Grotius, have so thoroughly repudiated the original Christian\nand patristic doctrine of the atonement, and built another\ndoctrine upon their own uninspired speculations, why should our\nmodern sects defer so slavishly to them, and, instead of freely\ninvestigating the subject for themselves from the first sources of\nScripture and spiritual philosophy, timidly cling to the results\nreached by these biassed, morbid, and over sharp thinkers? In\nproportion as scholarly, unfettered minds engage in such a\ncriticism, we believe the exposition given in the foregoing pages\nwill be recognised as scriptural. Without involving this whole\ntheory, how can any one explain the unquestionable fact that\nduring the first four centuries the entire orthodox Church\nbelieved that Christ at his resurrection from the under world\ndelivered Adam from his imprisonment there?20 All acknowledge that\nthe phrase \"redemption by the blood of Christ\" is a metaphor. The\nonly question is, what meaning was it intended to convey? We\nmaintain its meaning to be that\n\n14 System der Reinen Philosophie, oder Gluckseligkeitslehre des\nChristenthums, u.s.f.\n\n15 Epitome Theologia Christiana Dogmatica.\n\n16 Die Lehren von Adam's Fall, der Erbsunde, und dem Opfer\nChristi.\n\n17 Studien der Evang. Geietlichkeit Wurtemburgs, viii. 1, 2.\nDoederlein, Morus, Knapp, Schwarze, and Reinhard affirm that the\ndeath of Christ was not the price of our pardon, but the\nconfirming declaration of free pardon from God. Hagenbach,\nDogmengeschichte, sect. 297, note 5.\n\n18 Die Lehre der Kirche vom Tode Jesu in den Ersten Drei\nJahrhunderteu.\n\n19 Die Lehre der Kirche vom Tode Jesu in den Ersten Drei\nJahrhunderten, ss. 176-180.\n\n20 Augustine, Epist. ad Evodium 99. Op. Imp. vi. 22, 30. Epist.\n164. Dante makes Adam say he had been 4302 years in Limbo when\nChrist, at his descent, rescued him. Paradise, canto xxvi.\n\n\nthrough all the events and forces associated with the death of\nChrist, including his descent to Hades and his resurrection, men\nare delivered from the doom of the under world. The common\ntheology explains it as teaching that there was an expiatory\nefficacy in the unmerited sufferings of Christ. The system known\nas Unitarianism says it denotes merely the exertion of a saving\nspiritual power on the hearts of men. The first interpretation\ncharges the figure of speech with a dramatic revelation of the\nlove of God freely rescuing men from their inherited fate. The\nsecond seems to make it a tank of gore, where Divine vengeance\nlegally laps to appease its otherwise insatiable appetite. The\nthird fills it with a regenerative moral influence to be\ndistributed upon the characters of believers. The two former also\ninclude the last; but it excludes them. Now, as it seems to us,\nthe first is the form of mistake in which the early Church,\nincluding the apostles, embodied the true significance of the\nmission of Christ. Owing to the circle of ideas in which they\nlived, this was the only possible form in which the disciples of\nJesus could receive the new doctrine of a blessed immortality\nbrought to light by Christianity.21 The second is the form of\nfalse theory in which a few scholastic brains elaborated the cruel\nresults of their diseased metaphysical speculations. The third is\nthe dry, meager, inadequate statement of the most essential truth\nin the case.\n\nThere is one more point of view in which the New Testament holds\nup the resurrection of Christ. It is regarded as a summons to a\nmoral and spiritual resurrection within the breast of the\nbeliever. As the great Forerunner had ascended to a spiritual and\nimmortal life in the heavens, so his followers should be inspired\nwith such a realizing sense of heavenly things, with such Divine\nfaith and fellowship, as would lift them above the world, with all\nits evanescent cares, and fix their hearts with God. This high\ncommunion with Christ, and intense assurance of a destined speedy\ninheritance with him, should render the disciple insensible to the\nclamorous distractions of earth, invulnerable to the open and\nsecret assaults of sin, as if in the body he were already dead,\nand only alive in the spirit to the obligations of holiness, the\nattractions of piety, and the promises of heaven. \"When we were\ndead in trespasses and sins, God loved us, and hath quickened us\ntogether with Christ, and hath raised us up together and made us\nsit together in heavenly places.\" \"If ye, then, be risen with\nChrist, set your affection on things above, not on earthly things;\nfor ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God.\" This\nmoral symbolic application of the resurrection is most beautiful\nand effective. Christ has risen, immaculate and immortal, into the\npure and holy heaven: then live virtuously and piously, that you\nmay be found worthy to be received unto him. \"He that hath this\nhope purifieth himself, even as He is pure.\" Paul enforces this\nthought through the striking figure that, since \"we are freed from\nthe law through the death of Christ, we should be married to his\nrisen spirit and bring forth fruit unto God.\" And again, when he\nspeaks in these words, \"Christ in you the hope of glory,\" we\nsuppose he refers to the spiritual image of the risen Redeemer\nformed in the disciples' imagination and heart, the prefiguring\nand witnessing pledge of their ascension also to heaven. The same\npractical use is made of the doctrine through the rite and sign of\nbaptism. \"Ye are buried with Christ in\n\n21 Bretschneider forcibly illustrates this in his Handbuch der\nDogmatik der Evang.  Luther. Kirche, sects. 156-158, band ii.\n\n\nbaptism, wherein also ye are risen with him through faith in the\nworking of God, who hath raised him from the dead.\" \"Wherefore, if\nye be dead with Christ, why are ye subject to worldly ordinances?\nand if ye be risen with him, seek those things which are above.\"\nWhen the disciple sunk beneath the baptizing waters, he was\ntypically dead and buried, as Jesus was in the tomb; when he rose\nfrom the waters into the air again, he figuratively represented\nChrist rising from the dead into heaven. Henceforth, therefore, he\nwas to consider himself as dead to all worldly sins and lusts,\nalive to all heavenly virtues and aspirations. \"Therefore,\" the\napostle says, \"we are buried with Christ by baptism unto death,\nthat like as Christ was raised up from the dead, even so we should\nwalk in newness of life.\" \"In that Christ died, he died unto sin\nonce; but in that he liveth, he liveth unto God. Likewise reckon\nye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto\nGod.\" \"Therefore, if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature:\nold things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.\"\nThis was strictly true to the immediate disciples of Jesus. When\nhe died, their hearts died within them; they shrank away in\nhopeless confusion and gloom. When he returned to life and\nascended to heaven, in feeling and imagination they went with him.\nEvery moral power and motive started into new life and energy.\n\n\"The day when from the dead Our Lord arose, then everywhere, Out\nof their darkness and despair, Triumphant over fears and foes, The\nsouls of his disciples rose.\"\n\nAn unheard of assurance of the Father's love and of their eternal\ninheritance flooded their being with its regenerating, uplifting\npower. To their absorbing anticipations the mighty consummation of\nall was at hand. In reflective imagination it was already past,\nand they, dead to the world, only lived to God. The material world\nand the lust thereof had sunk beneath them and vanished. They were\nmoving in the universe of imperishable realities unseen by the\nfleshly eye. To their faith already was unrolled over them that\nnew firmament in whose spanless welkin no cloudy tempests ever\ngather and break, and the serene lights never fade nor go down.\nThis experience of a spiritual exaltation above the sins and\ndegrading turmoils of passion, above the perishing baubles of the\nearth, into the religious principles which are independent and\nassured, peace, and bliss, and eternity, is attainable by all who\nwith the earnestness of their souls assimilate the moral truths of\nChristianity, pressing in pious trust after the steps of the risen\nMaster. And this, after all, is the vital essence of the doctrine\nof the resurrection as it makes practical appeal to us. This will\nstand, though gnawing time and hostile criticism should assail and\nshake all the rest. It is something not to be mechanically wrought\nupon us from without, but to be done within by our own voluntary\neffort and prayer, by God's help. To rise from sloth, unbelief,\nsin, from moral death, to earnestness, faith, beneficence, to\neternal life in the breast, is a real and most sublime\nresurrection, the indispensable preparation for that other and\nfinal one which shall raise us from the sepulchre to the sky.\nWhen, on Easter morning, Christian disciples throughout the world\nhear the joyous cry, \"Christ is risen,\" and their own\nhearts instinctively respond, with an unquenchable persuasion that\nhe is now alive somewhere in the heights of the universe, \"Christ\nis risen indeed,\" they should endeavor in spirit to rise too, rise\nfrom the deadly bondage and corruption of vice and indifference.\nWhile the earth remains, and men survive, and the evils which\nalienate them from God and his blessedness retain any sway over\nthem, so oft as that hallowed day comes round, this is the\nkindling message of Divine authority ever fresh, and of\ntranscendent import never old, that it bears through all the\nborders of Christendom to every responsible soul: \"Awake from your\nsleep, arise from your death, lift up your eyes to heaven, and the\nrisen Redeemer will give you the light of immortal life!\" Have\nthis awakening and deathless experience in the soul, and you will\nbe troubled by no doubts about an everlasting life succeeding the\nclose of the world. But so long as this spiritual resurrection in\nthe breast is unknown, you can have no knowledge of eternal life,\nno experimental faith in a future entrance from the grave into\nheaven, no, not though millions of resurrections had crowded the\ninterstellar space with ascending shapes. Rise, then, from your\nmoral graves, and already, by faith and imagination, sit in\nheavenly places with Christ Jesus.\n\nBefore leaving this subject, it belongs to us to look at it as a\ntheory; that is, to consider with critical scrutiny the\nconclusions which are supposed to flow from its central fact. We\nmust regard it from three distinct points of view, seeking its\nmeaning in sound logic, its force in past history, its value in\npresent experience. First, then, we are to inquire what really is\nthe logical significance of the resurrection of Christ. The\nlooseness and confusion of thought prevailing in relation to this\npoint are amazing. It seems as if mankind were contented with\ninvestigations careless, reasonings incoherent, and inferences\narbitrary, in proportion to the momentousness of the matter in\nhand. In regard to little details of sensible fact and daily\nbusiness their observation is sharp, their analysis careful, their\nreflection patient; but when they approach the great problems of\nmorality, God, immortality, they shrink from commensurate efforts\nto master those mighty questions with stern honesty, and remain\nsatisfied with fanciful methods and vague results. The\nresurrection of Christ is generally regarded as a direct\ndemonstration of the immortality of man, an argument of\nirrefragable validity. But this is an astonishing mistake. The\nargument was not so constructed by Paul. He did not seek directly\nto prove the immortality of the soul, but the resurrection of the\ndead. He took for granted the Pharisaic doctrine that all souls on\nleaving their bodies descended to Sheol, where they darkly\nsurvived, waiting to be summoned forth at the arrival of the\nMessianic epoch. Assuming the further premise that Christ after\ndeath went down among these imprisoned souls, and then rose thence\nagain, Paul infers, by a logical process strictly valid and\nirresistible to one holding those premises, that the general\ndoctrine of a resurrection from the dead is true, and that by this\nvisible pledge we may expect it soon, since the Messiah, who is to\nusher in its execution, has already come and finished the\npreliminary stages of his work. The apostle's own words plainly\nshow this to be his meaning. \"If there be no resurrection of the\ndead, then is Christ not risen. But now is Christ risen from the\ndead, become the first fruits of them that slept. For since by man\ncame death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. Every\nman shall be made alive in his own order: Christ the first fruits;\nthen they that are Christ's, at his coming; then the last remnant,\nwhen he shall have delivered up the kingdom to God.\" The notions\nof a universal imprisonment of souls in the intermediate state,\nand of a universal raising of them thence at an appointed time,\nhaving faded from a deep and vivid belief into a cold traditional\ndogma, ridiculed by many, cared for at all by few, realizingly\nheld by almost none, Paul's argument has been perverted and\nmisinterpreted, until it is now commonly supposed to mean this:\nChrist has risen from the dead: therefore the soul of man is\nimmortal. Whereas the argument really existed in his mind in the\nreverse form, thus: The souls of men are immortal and are\nhereafter to be raised up: therefore Christ has risen as an\nexample and illustration thereof. It is singular to notice that he\nhas himself clearly stated the argument in this form three times\nwithin the space of four consecutive verses, as follows: \"If there\nbe no resurrection of the dead, then is Christ not risen:\" \"God\nraised Christ not up, if so be that the dead rise not.\" \"For if\nthe dead rise not, then is Christ not raised.\" The fact of the\nresurrection of Christ, taken in connection with the related\nnotions previously held in the mind of Paul, formed the complement\nof an irresistible argument to prove the impending resurrection of\nthe dead, But if it be now perceived that those other notions were\nPharisaic errors, the argument, as he employed it, falls to the\nground.\n\nTaken by itself and analyzed by a severe logic, the resurrection\nof Christ proves nothing conclusively in regard to our\nimmortality. If it did of itself prove any thing, the direct\nlogical inference from it would be that henceforth all men, three\ndays after death, would rise bodily from the dead, appear for a\nseason on earth as before, and then ascend visibly into the sky.\nIf at the present time a man who had been put to death and\nentombed three days should openly come forth alive, considered as\nan isolated fact, what would it prove? It would merely prove that\na wonderful event had occurred. It would show that either by some\nmysterious means he had escaped death, or else that by some\napparently preternatural agency he had been restored to life from\nthe dead. Taken by itself, it could not prove whether the\noccurrence was caused by a demoniacal or by a Divine power, or by\nsome occult force of nature developed by a peculiar combination of\nconditions. The strange event would stand clear to our senses; but\nall beyond that would be but an hypothesis of our own, and liable\nto mistake. Consequently, we say, the resurrection, taken by\nitself, proves no doctrine. But we may so suppose the case that\nsuch an event would, from its relation to something else, acquire\nlogical meaning. For instance, if Christ had taught that he had\nsupernatural knowledge of truth, a Divine commission to reveal a\nfuture life, and said that, after he should have been dead and\nburied three days, God would restore him to life to authenticate\nhis words, and if, then, so stupendous a miracle occurred in\naccordance with his prediction, it would prove that his claims and\ndoctrine were true, because God is no accomplice in deception.\nSuch was the case with Jesus as narrated; and thus his\nresurrection appears, not as having doctrinal significance and\ndemonstrative validity in itself, but as a miraculous\nauthentication of his mission. That is to say, the Christian's\nfaith in immortality rests not directly on the resurrection of\nChrist, but on his teachings, which were confirmed and sealed by\nhis resurrection. It is true that, even in this modified form,\nsome persons of dialectical minds will deny all validity to the\nargument. What necessary connection is there, they will ask,\nbetween the exhibition of mechanico chemical wonders, physical\nfeats, however abnormal and inexplicable, and the possession of\ninfallibility of intellectual insight and moral utterance? If a\nman should say, God is falsehood and hatred, and in evidence of\nhis declaration should make a whole cemetery disembogue its dead\nalive, or cause the sun suddenly to sink from its station at noon\nand return again, would his wonderful performance prove his\nhorrible doctrine? Why, or how, then, would a similar feat prove\nthe opposite doctrine? Plainly, there is not, on rigid logical\nprinciples, any connecting tie or evidencing coherence between a\nphysical miracle and a moral doctrine.22 We admit the correctness\nof this, on philosophical grounds. But the validity of a miracle\nas proof of a doctrine rests on the spontaneous assumption that no\nman can work a miracle unless God specially delegate him the\npower: thereby God becomes the voucher of his envoy. And when a\nperson claiming to be a messenger from God appears, saying, \"The\nFather hath commanded me to declare that in the many mansions of\nhis house there is a blessed life for men after the close of this\nlife,\" and when he promises that, in confirmation of his claim,\nGod will restore him to life after he shall have been three days\ndead, and when he returns accordingly triumphant from the\nsepulchre, the argument will be unquestioningly received as valid\nby the instinctive common sense of all who are convinced of the\nfacts.\n\nWe next pass from the meaning of the resurrection in logic to its\nforce and working in history. When Jesus hung on the cross, and\nthe scornful shouts of the multitude murmured in his ears, the\ndisciples had fled away, disappointed, terror stricken,\ndespairing. His star seemed set in a hopeless night of shame and\ndefeat. The new religion appeared a failure. But in three days\naffairs had taken a new aspect. He that was crucified had risen,\nand the scattered disciples rallied from every quarter, and,\nanimated by faith and zeal, went forth to convert the world. As an\norganic centre of thought and belief, as a fervid and enduring\nincitement to action, in the apostolic times and all through the\nearly centuries, the received fact of the resurrection of Christ\nwielded an incomparable influence and produced incalculable\nresults. Christianity indeed rose upon it, and, to a great extent,\nflourished through it. The principal effect which the gospel has\nhad in bringing life and immortality to light throughout a large\npart of the world is to be referred to the proclaimed resurrection\nof Christ. For without the latter the former would not have been.\nIts historical value has therefore been immense. More than nine\ntenths of the dormant common faith of Christendom in a future life\nnow outwardly reposes on it from tradition and custom. The great\nmajority of Christians grow up, by education and habit, without\nany sharp conscientious investigation of their own, to an\nundisturbed belief in immortality, a belief passively resting on\nthe demonstration of the doctrine supposed to have been furnished\nby the resurrection of Christ in Judea two thousand years ago. The\nhistorical power of that fact has therefore been inexpressibly\nimportant; and its vast and happy consequences as food and basis\nof faith still remain. But this historic force is no longer what\nit once was as a living and present cause. It now operates mostly\nthrough traditional reception as an established doctrine to be\ntaken\n\n22 J. Blanco White, Letter on Miracles, in appendix to Martineau's\nRationale of Religious Inquiry.\n\n\nfor granted, without fresh individual inquiry. Education and\ncustom use it as an unexamined but trusted foundation to build on\nby common assumptions. And so the historic impetus is not yet\nspent. But it certainly has diminished; and it will diminish more.\nWhen faced with dauntless eyes and approached by skeptical\nmethods, it of course cannot have the silencing, all sufficient\nauthority, now that it is buried in the dim remoteness of nineteen\ncenturies and surrounded by obscuring accompaniments, that it had\nwhen its light blazed close at hand. The historical force of the\nalleged resurrection of Christ must evidently, other things being\nequal, lessen to an unprejudiced inquirer in some proportion to\nthe lengthening distance of the event from him in time, and the\ngrowing difficulties of ignorance, perplexity, doubt, manifold\nuncertainty, deficiency, infidel suggestions, and naturalistic\npossibilities, intervening between it and him. The shock of faith\ngiven by the miracle is dissipated in coming through such an abyss\nof time. The farther off and the longer ago it was, the more\nchances for error and the more circumstances of obscurity there\nare, and so much the worth and force of the historical belief in\nit will naturally become fainter, till they will finally fade\naway. An honest student may bow humbly before the august front of\nChristian history and join with the millions around in\nacknowledging the fact of the resurrection of Christ. But we\nmaintain that the essential fact in this historic act is not the\nvisible resuscitation of the dead body, but the celestial\nreception of the deathless spirit. So Paul evidently thought; for\nhe had never seen Christ in the flesh, yet he places himself, as a\nwitness to the resurrection of Christ, in the same rank with those\nwho had seen him on his reappearance in the body: \"Last of all he\nwas seen of me also.\" Paul had only seen him in vision as a\nglorified spirit of heaven.\n\nWe know that our belief in the fleshly resurrection of Jesus rests\non education and habit, on cherished associations of reverence and\nattachment, rather than on sifted testimony and convincing proof.\nIt is plain, too, that if a person takes the attitude, not of\npiety and receptive trust, but of skeptical antagonism, it is\nimpossible, as the facts within our reach are to day, to convince\nhim of the asserted reality in question. An unprejudiced mind\ncompetently taught and trained for the inquiry, but whose attitude\ntowards the declared fact is that of distrust, a mind which will\nadmit nothing but what is conclusively proved, cannot be driven\nfrom its position by all the extant material of evidence.\nEducation, associations, hopes, affections, leaning that way, he\nmay be convinced; but leaning the other way, or poised in\nindifference on a severe logical ground, he will honestly remain\nin his unbelief despite of all the arguments that can be\npresented. In the first place, he will say, \"The only history we\nhave of the resurrection is in the New Testament; and the\ntestimony of witnesses in their own cause is always suspicious;\nand it is wholly impossible now really to prove who wrote those\ndocuments, or precisely when and how they originated: besides\nthat, the obvious discrepancies in the accounts, and the utterly\nuncritical credulity and unscientific modes of investigation which\nsatisfied the writers, destroy their value as witnesses in any\nsevere court of reason.\" And in reply, although we may claim that\nthere is sufficient evidence to satisfy an humble Christian,\npreviously inclined to such a faith, that the New Testament\ndocuments were written by the persons whose names they bear, and\nthat their accounts are true, yet we cannot pretend that there is\nsufficient evidence effectually to convince a critical inquirer\nthat there is no possibility of ungenuineness and unauthenticity.\nIn the second place, such a person will say, \"Many fabulous\nmiracles have been eagerly credited by contemporaries of their\nprofessed authors, and handed down to the credulity of after\ntimes; many actual events, honestly, interpreted as miracles,\nwithout fraud in any party concerned, have been so accepted and\ntestified to.\n\nRoman Catholic Christendom claims to this day the performance of\nmiracles within the Church; while all Protestant Christendom\nscouts them as ridiculous tales: and this may be one of them. How\ncan we demonstrate that it does not fall within the same class on\nthe laws of evidence?\" And although our own moral beliefs and\nsympathies may force upon us the most profound conviction to the\ncontrary, it is plainly out of our power to disprove the\npossibility of this hypothesis being true. In the third place, he\nwill say, \"Of all who testify to the resurrection, there is\nnothing in the record admitting its entire reliableness as an\ningenuous statement of the facts as apprehended by the authors to\nshow that any one of them knew that Jesus was actually dead, or\nthat any one of them made any real search into that point. He may\nhave revived from a long insensibility, wandered forth in his\ngrave clothes, mingled afterwards with his disciples, and at last\nhave died from his wounds and exhaustion, in solitude, as he was\nused to spend seasons in lonely prayer by night. Then, with\nperfectly good faith, his disciples, involving no collusion or\ndeceit anywhere, may have put a miraculous interpretation upon it\nall, such additional particulars as his visible ascension into the\nsky being a later mythical accretion.\" This view may well seem\noffensive, even shocking, to the pious believer; but it is plainly\npossible. It is intrinsically more easily conceivable than the\naccredited miracle. It is impossible positively to refute it: the\navailable data do not exist. Upon the whole, then, we conclude\nthat the time is coming when the basis of faith in immortality, in\norder to stand the tests of independent scrutiny, must be\nhistorically as well as logically shifted from a blind dependence\non the miraculous resurrection of Christ to a wise reliance on\ninsight into the supernatural capacity and destiny of man, on the\ndeductions of moral reason and the prophecies of religious trust.\n\nFinally, we pause a moment, in closing this discussion, to weigh\nthe practical value of the resurrection of Christ as acknowledged\nin the experience of the present time. How does that event,\nadmitted as a fact, rest in the average personal experience of\nChristians now? We shall provoke no intelligent contradiction when\nwe say that it certainly does not often rest on laborious research\nand rigorous testing of evidence. We surely risk nothing in saying\nthat with the multitude of believers it rests on a docile\nreception of tradition, an unquestioning conformity to the\nestablished doctrine. And that reception and conformity in the\npresent instance depend, we shall find by going a step further\nback, upon a deep a priori faith in God and immortality. When Paul\nreasons that, if the dead are not to rise, Christ is not risen,\nbut that the dead are to rise, and therefore Christ is risen, his\nargument reposes on a spontaneous practical method of moral\nassumption, not on a judicial process of logical proof. So is it\nwith Christians now. The intense moral conviction that God is\ngood, and that there is another life, and that it would be\nsupremely worthy of God to send a messenger to teach that doctrine\nand to rise from the dead in proof of it, it is this earnest\nprevious faith that gives plausibility, vitality, and power to the\npreserved tradition of the actual event. If we trace the case home\nto the last resort, as it really lies in the experience developed\nin us by Christianity, we shall find that a deep faith in God is\nthe basis of our belief, first in general immortality, and\nsecondly in the special resurrection of Christ as related thereto.\nBut, by a confusion, or a want, of thought, the former is\nmistakenly supposed to rest directly and solely on the latter. The\ndoctrinal inferences built up around the resurrection of Christ\nfall within the province of faith, resting on moral grounds, not\nwithin that of knowledge, resting on logical grounds. For example:\nwhat direct proof is there that Christ, when he vanished from the\ndisciples, went to the presence of God in heaven, to die no more?\nIt was only seen that he disappeared: all beyond that except as it\nrests on belief in the previous words of Christ himself is an\ninference of faith, a faith kindled in the soul by God and not\ncreated by the miracle of the resurrection.\n\nThat imagination, tradition, feeling, and faith, have much more to\ndo with the inferences commonly drawn from the resurrection of\nChrist than any strict investigation of its logical contents has,\nappears clearly enough from the universal neglect to draw any\ninferences from, or to attribute any didactic importance to, the\nother resurrections recorded in the New Testament. We refer\nespecially to the resurrection narrated in the twenty seventh\nchapter of Matthew, \"the most stupendous miracle ever wrought upon\nearth,\" it has been termed; and yet hardly any one ever deigns to\nnotice it. Thus the evangelist writes: \"And the graves were\nopened, and many bodies of the saints which slept arose and came\nout of the graves after his resurrection, and went into the holy\ncity, and appeared unto many.\" Nothing is inferred from this\nalleged event but the power of God. Yet logically what separates\nit from the resurrection of Christ? In Greece there was the\naccredited account of the resurrection of Er, in Persia that of\nViraf, in Judea that of Lazarus, in other nations those of other\npersons. None of these ever produced great results. Yet the\nresurrection of one individual from the dead logically contains\nall that that of any other individual can. Why, then, has that of\nChrist alone made such a change in the faith of the world?\nBecause, through a combination of causes, it has appealed to the\nimagination and heart of the world and stirred their believing\nactivity, because the thought was here connected with a person, a\nhistory, a moral force, and a providential interposition, fit for\nthe grandest deductions and equal to the mightiest effects. It is\nnot accurate philosophical criticism that has done this, but\nhumble love and faith.\n\nIn the experience of earnest Christians, a personal belief in the\nresurrection of Christ, vividly conceived in the imagination and\ntaken home to the heart, is chiefly effective in its spiritual,\nnot in its argumentative, results. It stirs up the powers and\nawakens the yearnings of the soul, opens heaven to the gaze,\nlocates there, as it were visibly, a glorious ideal, and thus\nhelps one to enter upon an inward realization of the immortal\nworld. The one essential thing is not that Jesus appeared alive in\nthe flesh after his physical death, the revealer of superhuman\npower and possessor of infallibility, but that he divinely lives\nnow, the forerunner and type of our immortality.\n\nCHAPTER VIII.\n\nESSENTIAL CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF DEATH AND LIFE.\n\nLET US first notice the uncommon amount of meaning which Christ\nand the apostolic writers usually put into the words \"death,\"\n\"life,\" and other kindred terms. These words are scarcely ever\nused in their merely literal sense, but are charged with a vivid\nfulness of significance not to be fathomed without especial\nattention. \"If thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments.\"\nObviously this means more than simple life; because those who\nneglect the laws of virtue may live. It signifies, distinctively,\ntrue life, the experience of inward peace and of Divine favor.\n\"Whosoever hateth his brother hath not eternal life abiding in\nhim, but abideth in death;\" that is to say, a soul rankling with\nbad passions is \"in the gall of bitterness and the bond of\niniquity,\" but, when converted from hatred to love, it passes from\nwretchedness to blessedness. \"Let the dead bury their dead.\" No\none reading this passage with its context can fail to perceive\nthat it means, substantially, \"Let those who are absorbed in the\naffairs of this world, and indifferent to the revelation I have\nbrought from heaven, attend to the interment of the dead; but\ndelay not thou, who art kindled with a lively interest in the\ntruth, to proclaim the kingdom of God.\" When the returning\nprodigal had been joyfully received, the father said, in reply to\nthe murmurs of the elder son, \"Thy brother was dead and is alive\nagain;\" he was lost in sin and misery, he is found in penitence\nand happiness. Paul writes to the Romans, \"Without the law sin was\ndead, and I was alive; but when the law was made known, sin came\nto life, and I died.\" In other words, when a man is ignorant of\nthe moral law, immoral conduct does not prevent him from feeling\ninnocent and being at peace; but when a knowledge of the law shows\nthe wickedness of that conduct, he becomes conscious of guilt, and\nis unhappy. For instance, to state the thought a little\ndifferently, to a child knowing nothing of the law, the law, or\nits purposed violation, sin, does not exist, is dead: he therefore\nenjoys peace of conscience; but when he becomes aware of the law\nand its authority, if he then break it, sin is generated and\nimmediately stings, and spiritual happiness dies.\n\nThese passages are sufficient to show that Christianity uses the\nwords \"death\" and \"life\" in a spiritual sense, penetrating to the\nhidden realities of the soul. To speak thus of the guilty,\nunbelieving man as dead, and only of the virtuous, believing man\nas truly alive, may seem at first a startling use of figurative\nlanguage. It will not appear so when we notice its appropriateness\nto the case, or remember the imaginative nature of Oriental speech\nand recollect how often we employ the same terms in the same way\nat the present time. We will give a few examples of a similar use\nof language outside of the Scriptures. That which threatens or\nproduces death is sometimes, by a figure, identified with death.\nOrpheus, in the Argonautika, speaks of \"a terrible serpent whose\nyawning jaw is full of death.\" So Paul says he was \"in deaths\noft.\" Ovid says, \"The priests poured out a dog's hot life on the\naltar of Hecate at the crossing of two roads.\" The Pythagoreans,\nwhen one of their number became impious and abandoned, were\naccustomed to consider him dead, and to erect a tomb to him, on\nwhich his name and his age at the time of his moral decease were\nengraved. The Roman law regarded an excommunicated citizen as\ncivilis mortuus, legally dead. Fenelon writes, \"God has kindled a\nflame at the bottom of every heart, which should always burn as a\nlamp for him who hath lighted it; and all other life is as death.\"\nChaucer says, in one of his Canterbury Tales, referring to a man\nenslaved by dissolute habits,\n\n\"But certes, he that haunteth swiche delices Is ded while that he\nliveth in tho' vices.\"\n\nAnd in a recent poem the following lines occur:\n\n\"From his great eyes The light has fled: When faith departs, when\nhonor dies, The man is dead.\"\n\nTo be subjected to the lower impulses of our nature by degraded\nhabits of vice and criminality is wretchedness and death. The true\nlife of man consists, the Great Teacher declared, \"not in the\nabundance of the things which he possesseth, but rather in his\nbeing rich toward God,\" in conscious purity of heart, energy of\nfaith, and union with the Holy Spirit. \"He that lives in sensual\npleasure is dead while he lives,\" Paul asserts; but he that lives\nin spiritual righteousness has already risen from the dead. To sum\nup the whole in a single sentence, the service and the fruits of\nsin form an experience which Christianity calls death, because it\nis a state of insensibility to the elements and results of true\nlife, in the adequate sense of that term, meaning the serene\nactivity and religious joy of the soul.\n\nThe second particular in the essential doctrine of Christianity\nconcerning the states of human experience which it entitles death\nand life is their inherent, enduring nature, their independence on\nthe objects and changes of this world. The gospel teaches that the\nelements of our being and experience are transferred from the life\nthat now is into the life that is to come, or, rather, that we\nexist continuously forever, uninterrupted by the event of physical\ndissolution. \"Whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give\nhim,\" Jesus declares, \"shall never thirst; but the water that I\nshall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into\neverlasting life.\" John affirms, \"The world passeth away, and the\nlust thereof; but he that doeth the will of God abideth forever.\"\nPaul writes to the Christians at Rome, \"In that Christ died, he\ndied unto sin once; but in that he liveth, he liveth unto God.\nLikewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but\nalive unto God.\" Numerous additional texts of kindred import might\nbe cited. They announce the immortality of man, the unending\ncontinuance of the Christian consciousness, unless forfeited by\nvoluntary defection. They show that sin and woe are not\narbitrarily bounded by the limits of time and sense in the grave,\nand that nothing can ever exhaust or destroy the satisfaction of\ntrue life, faith in the love of God: it abides, blessed and\neternal, in the uninterrupted blessedness and eternity of its\nObject. The revelation and offer of all this to the acceptance of\nmen, its conditions, claims, and alternative sanctions, were first\ndivinely made known and planted in the heart of the world, as the\nScriptures assert, by Jesus Christ, who promulgated them by his\npreaching, illustrated them by his example, proved them by his\nworks, attested them by his blood, and crowned them by his\nresurrection.\n\nAnd now there is opened for all of us, through him, that is to\nsay, through belief and obedience of what he taught and\nexemplified, an access unto the Father, an assurance of his\nforgiveness of us and of our reconciliation with him. We thus\nenter upon the experience of that true life which is \"joy and\npeace in believing,\" and which remains indestructible through all\nthe vanishing vagrancy of sin, misery, and the world. \"This is\neternal life, that they might know thee, the only true God, and\nJesus Christ whom thou hast sent:\" that is, imperishable life is\nto be obtained by union with God in faith and love, through a\nhearty acceptance of the instructions of Christ.\n\nThe two points thus far considered are, first, that the sinful,\nunbelieving, wretched man abides in virtual death, while the\nrighteous, happy believer in the gospel has the experience of\ngenuine life; and, secondly, that these essential elements of\nhuman character and experience survive all events of time and\nplace in everlasting continuance.\n\nThe next consideration prominent in the Christian doctrine of\ndeath and life is the distinction continually made between the\nbody and the soul. Man is regarded under a twofold aspect, as\nflesh and spirit, the one a temporal accompaniment and dependent\nmedium, the other an immortal being in itself. The distinction is\na fundamental one, and runs through nearly all philosophy and\nreligion in their reference to man. In the Christian Scriptures it\nis not sharply drawn, with logical precision, nor always\naccurately maintained, but is loosely defined, with waving\noutlines, is often employed carelessly, and sometimes, if strictly\ntaken, inconsistently. Let us first note a few examples of the\ndistinction itself in the instructions of the Savior and of the\ndifferent New Testament writers.\n\n\"That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born\nof the spirit is spirit.\" \"Fear not them which kill the body but\nare not able to kill the soul.\" \"Though our outward man perish,\nyet the inward man is renewed.\" \"He that soweth to his flesh shall\nreap corruption; he that soweth to the spirit shall reap life\neverlasting.\" \"Being put to death in the flesh, but quickened in\nthe spirit.\" \"Knowing that I must shortly put off this\ntabernacle.\" \"The body without the spirit is dead.\" It would be\nuseless to accumulate examples. It is plain that these authors\ndistinguish the body and the soul as two things conjoined for a\nseason, the latter of which will continue to live when the other\nhas mixed with the dust. The facts and phenomena of our being from\nwhich this distinction springs are so numerous and so influential,\nso profound and so obvious, that it is impossible they should\nescape the knowledge of any thinking person. Indeed, the\ndistinction has found a recognition everywhere among men, from the\nignorant savage, whose instincts and imagination shadow forth a\ndim world in which the impalpable images of the departed dwell, to\nthe philosopher of piercing intellect and universal culture,\n\n\"Whose lore detects beneath our crumbling clay A soul, exiled, and\njourneying back to day.\"\n\n\"Labor not for the meat which perisheth,\" Jesus exhorts his\nfollowers, \"but labor for the meat which endureth unto everlasting\nlife.\" The body and the luxury that pampers it shall perish, but\nthe spirit and the love that feeds it shall abide forever.\n\nWe now pass to examine some metaphorical terms often erroneously\ninterpreted as conveying merely their literal force. Every one\nfamiliar with the language of the New Testament must remember how\nrepeatedly the body and the soul, or the flesh and the spirit, are\nset in direct opposition to each other, sin being referred to the\nformer, righteousness to the latter. \"I know that in my flesh\nthere is no good thing; but with my mind I delight in the law of\nGod.\" \"The flesh lusteth against the spirit, and the spirit\nlusteth against the flesh, and these are contrary the one to the\nother.\" All this language and it is extensively used in the\nepistles is quite generally understood in a fixed, literal sense;\nwhereas it was employed by its authors in a fluctuating,\nfigurative sense, as the critical student can hardly help\nperceiving. We will state the real substance of Christian teaching\nand phraseology on this point in two general formulas, and then\nproceed to illustrate them. First, both the body and the soul may\nbe corrupt, lawless, empty of Divine belief, full of restlessness\nand suffering, in a state of moral death; or both may be pure,\nobedient, acceptable in the sight of God, full of faith, peace,\nand joy, in a state of genuine life. Secondly, whatever tends in\nany way to the former result to make man guilty, feeble, and\nwretched, to deaden his spiritual sensibilities, to keep him from\nunion with God and from immortal reliances is variously\npersonified as \"the Flesh,\" \"Sin,\" \"Death,\" \"Mammon,\" \"the World,\"\n\"the Law of the Members,\" \"the Law of Sin and Death;\" whatever, on\nthe contrary, tends in any way to the latter result to purify man,\nto intensify his moral powers, to exalt and quicken his\nconsciousness in the assurance of the favor of God and of eternal\nbeing is personified as \"the Spirit,\" \"Life,\" \"Righteousness,\"\n\"the Law of God,\" \"the Law of the Inward Man,\" \"Christ,\" \"the Law\nof the Spirit of Life in Christ.\" Under the first class of terms\nare included all the temptations and agencies by which man is led\nto sin, and the results of misery they effect; under the second\nclass are included all the aspirations and influences by which he\nis led to righteousness, and the results of happiness they insure.\nFor example, it is written, in the Epistle to the Galatians, that\n\"the manifest works of the flesh are excessive sensuality,\nidolatry, hatred, emulations, quarrels, heresies, murders, and\nsuch like.\" Certainly some of these evils are more closely\nconnected with the mind than with the body. The term \"flesh\" is\nobviously used in a sense coextensive with the tendencies and\nmeans by which we are exposed to guilt and degradation. These\npersonifications, it will therefore be seen, are employed with\ngeneral rhetorical looseness, not with definite logical exactness.\n\nIt is self evident that the mind is the actual agent and author of\nall sins and virtues, and that the body in itself is unconscious,\nirresponsible, incapable of guilt. \"Every sin that man doeth is\nwithout the body.\" In illustration of this point Chrysostom says,\n\"If a tyrant or robber were to seize some royal mansion, it would\nnot be the fault of the house.\" And how greatly they err who think\nthat any of the New Testament writers mean to represent the flesh\nas necessarily sinful and the spirit as always pure, the following\ncases to the contrary from Paul, whose speech seems most to lean\nthat way, will abundantly show. \"Glorify God in your body and in\nyour spirit, which are his.\" \"Know ye not that your body is the\ntemple of the Holy Ghost?\" \"Yield not your members as instruments\nof unrighteousness unto sin, but as instruments of righteousness\nunto God.\" \"That the life of Jesus might be made manifest in our\nmortal flesh.\" \"Present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy,\nacceptable unto God.\" It is clear that the author of these\nsentences did not regard the body, or literal flesh, as\nnecessarily unholy, but as capable of being used by the man\nhimself in fulfilling the will of God. Texts that appear to\ncontradict this must be held as figures, or as impassioned\nrhetorical exclamations. We also read of \"the lusts of the mind,\"\nthe \"fleshly mind,\" \"filthiness of the spirit,\" \"seducing\nspirits,\" \"corrupt minds,\" \"mind and conscience defiled,\"\n\"reprobate mind,\"  showing plainly that the spirit was sometimes\nregarded as guilty and morally dead. The apostle writes, \"I pray\nthat your whole spirit and soul and body may be preserved\nblameless.\" The scriptural declarations now cited teach explicitly\nthat both the body and the soul may be subjected to the perfect\nlaw of God, or that both may abide in rebellion and wickedness,\nthe latter state being called, metaphorically, \"walking after the\nflesh,\" the former \"walking after the spirit,\" that being sin and\ndeath, this being righteousness and life.\n\nAn explanation of the origin of these metaphors will cast further\nlight upon the subject. The use of a portion of them arose from\nthe fact that many of the most easily besetting and pernicious\nvices, conditions and allurements of sin, defilements and clogs of\nthe spirit, come through the body, which, while it is itself\nevidently fated to perish, does by its earthly solicitations\nentice, contaminate, and debase the soul that by itself is invited\nto better things and seems destined to immortality. Not that these\nevils originate in the body, of course, all the doings of a man\nspring from the spirit of man which is in him, but that the body\nis the occasion and the aggravating medium of their manifestation.\nThis thought is not contradicted, it is only omitted, in the words\nof Peter: \"I beseech you, as strangers and pilgrims, abstain from\nfleshly lusts, which war against the soul.\" For such language\nwould be spontaneously suggested by the fact that to be in bondage\nto the baser nature is hostile alike to spiritual dignity and\npeace, and to physical health and strength. The principles of the\nmoral nature are at war with the passions of the animal nature;\nthe goading vices of the mind are at war with the organic\nharmonies of the body; and on the issues of these conflicts hang\nall the interests of life and death, in every sense the words can\nbe made to bear.\n\nAnother reason for the use of these figures of speech,\nundoubtedly, was the philosophy of the ineradicable hostility of\nmatter and spirit, the doctrine, so prevalent in the East from the\nearliest times, that matter is wholly corrupt and evil, the\nessential root and source of all vileness. An old, unknown Greek\npoet embodies the very soul of this faith in a few verses which we\nfind in the Anthology. Literally rendered, they run thus:\n\n\"The body is the torment, hell, fate, load, tyrant,\nDreadful pest, and punishing trial, of the soul\nWhich, when it quits the body, flies, as from the bonds\nOf death, to immortal God.\"\n\nIt was this idea that produced the wild asceticism prevalent in\nthe Christian Church during the Middle Age and previously, the\nfearful macerations, scourgings, crucifixions of the flesh. It\nshould be understood that, though some of the phraseology of the\nScriptures is tinged by the influence of this doctrine, the\ndoctrine itself is foreign to Christianity. Christ came eating and\ndrinking, not abjuring nature, but adopting its teachings, viewing\nit as a Divine work through which the providence of God is\ndisplayed and his glory gleams. He was no more of a Pharisee than\nnature is. As corn grows on the Sabbath, so it may be plucked and\neaten on the Sabbath. The apostles never recommend self inflicted\ntorments. The ascetic expressions found in their letters grew\ndirectly out of the perils besetting them and their expectation of\nthe speedy end of the world. Christianity, rightly understood,\nrenders even the body of a good man sacred and precious, through\nthe indwelling of the Infinite. \"We have this treasure in earthen\nvessels,\" and the poor, dying tenement of flesh is hallowed as\n\"A vase of earth, a trembling clod, Constrain'd to hold the breath\nof God.\"\n\nThe chief secret, however, of the origin of the peculiar phrases\nunder consideration consisted in their striking fitness to the\nnature and facts of the case, their adaptedness to express these\nfacts in a bold and vivid manner. The revelation of the\ntranscendent claims of holiness, of the pardoning love of God, of\nthe splendid boon of immortality, made by Christ and enforced by\nthe miraculous sanctions and the kindling motives presented in his\nexample, thrilled the souls of the first converts, shamed them of\ntheir degrading sins, opened before their imaginations a vision\nthat paled the glories of the world, and regenerated them,\nstirring up the depths of their religious sensibilities, and\nflooding their whole being with a warmth, an energy, a\nspirituality, that made their previous experience seem a gross\ncarnal slumber, a virtual death. \"And you hath he quickened, who\nwere dead in trespasses and sins.\" They were animated and raised\nto a new, pure, glad life, through the feeling of the hopes and\nthe practice of the virtues of the gospel of Christ. Unto those\nwho \"were formerly in the flesh, the servants of sin, bringing\nforth fruit unto death,\" but now obeying the new form of doctrine\ndelivered unto them, with renewed hearts and changed conduct, it\nis written, \"If Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin;\nbut the spirit is life because of righteousness;\" that is, If\nChristian truth reign in you, the body may still be tormented, or\npowerless, owing to your previous bad habits; but the soul will be\nredeemed from its abandonment to error and vice, and be assured of\npardon and immortal life by the witnessing spirit of God.\n\nThe apostle likewise says unto them, \"If the Spirit of God dwell\nin you, it shall also quicken your mortal bodies.\" This remarkable\nexpression was meant to convey a thought which the observation of\ncommon facts approves and explains. If the love of the pure\nprinciples of the gospel was established in them, their bodies,\ndebilitated and deadened by former abandonment to their lusts,\nshould be freed and reanimated by its influence. The body to a\ngreat extent reflects the permanent mind and life of a man. It is\nan aphorism of Solomon that \"a sound heart is the life of the\nflesh.\" And Plotinus declares, \"Temperance and justice are the\nsaviors of the body so far as they are received by it.\" Deficiency\nof thought and knowledge, laziness of spirit, animality of habits,\nbetray themselves plainly enough in the state and expression of\nthe physical frame: they render it coarse, dim, and insensible;\nthe person verges towards the condition of a clod; spiritual\nthings are clouded, the beacon fire of his destiny wanes, the\npossibilities of Christian faith lessen, \"the external and the\ninsensate creep in on his organized clay,\" he feels the chain of\nthe brute earth more and more, and finally gives himself up to\nutter death. On the other hand, the assimilation of Divine truth\nand goodness by a man, the cherishing love of all high duties and\naspirations, exert a purifying, energizing power both on the flesh\nand the mind, animate and strengthen them, like a heavenly flame\nburn away the defiling entanglements and spiritual fogs that fill\nand hang around the wicked and sensual, increasingly pervade his\nconsciousness with an inspired force and freedom, illuminate his\nface, touch the magnetic springs of health and healthful sympathy,\nmake him completely alive, and bring him into living connection\nwith the Omnipresent Life, so that he perceives the full testimony\nthat he shall never die. For, when brought into such a state by\nthe experience of live spirits in live frames, \"We feel through\nall this fleshly dresse Bright shootes of everlastingnesse.\"\n\nSpiritual sloth and sensual indulgence stupefy, blunt, and confuse\ntogether in lifeless meshes, the vital tenant and the mortal\ntenement; they grow incorporate, alike unclean, powerless, guilty,\nand wretched. Then \"Man lives a life half dead, a living death,\nHimself his sepulchre, a moving grave.\" Active virtue, profound\nlove, and the earnest pursuit, in the daily duties of life, of\n\"Those lofty musings which within us sow The seeds of higher kind\nand brighter being.\" Cleanse, vivify, and distinguish the body and\nthe soul, so that, when this tabernacle of clay crumbles from\naround it, the unimprisoned spirit soars into the universe at\nonce, and, looking back upon the shadowy king bearing his pale\nprey to the tomb, exclaims, \"O death, where is thy sting? O grave,\nwhere is thy victory?\" The facts, then, of sin, guilt, weakness,\nmisery, unbelief, decay, insensibility, and death, joined with the\nopposite corresponding class of facts, and considered in their\nmutual spiritual and physical relations and results, originally\nsuggested, and now interpret and justify, that peculiar\nphraseology of the New Testament which we have been investigating.\nIt has no recondite meaning drawn from arbitrary dogmas, but a\nplain meaning drawn from natural truths.\n\nIt remains next to see what is the Christian doctrine concerning\nliteral, physical death,  concerning the actual origin and\nsignificance of that solemn event. This point must be treated the\nmore at length on account of the erroneous notions prevailing upon\nthe subject. For that man's first disobedience was the procuring\ncause of organic, as well as of moral, death, is a doctrine quite\ngenerally believed. It is a fundamental article in the creeds of\nall the principal denominations of Christendom, and is\ntraditionally held, from the neglect of investigation, by nearly\nall Christians. By this theory the words of James who writes,\n\"Sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death\" are interpreted\nwith strict literalness. It is conceived that, had not evil\nentered the first man's heart and caused him to fall from his\nnative innocence, he would have roamed among the flowers of Eden\nto this day. But he violated the commandment of his Maker, and\nsentence of death was passed upon him and his posterity. We are\nnow to prove that this imaginative theory is far from the truth.\n\n1. The language in which the original account of Adam's sin and\nits punishment is stated shows conclusively that the penalty of\ntransgression was not literal death, but spiritual, that is,\ndegradation, suffering. God's warning in relation to the forbidden\ntree was, \"In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely\ndie.\" Of course, Jehovah's solemn declaration was fulfilled as he\nhad said. But in the day that man partook of the prohibited fruit\nhe did not die a physical death. He lived, driven from the\ndelights of Paradise, (according to the account,) upwards of eight\nhundred years, earning his bread by the sweat of his brow.\nConsequently, the death with which he had been threatened must\nhave been a moral death, loss of innocence and joy, experience of\nguilt and woe.\n\n2. The common usage of the words connected with this subject in\nthe New Testament still more clearly substantiates the view here\ntaken of it. There is a class of words, linked together by\nsimilarity of meaning and closeness of mutual relation, often used\nby the Christian writers loosely, figuratively, and sometimes\ninterchangeably, as has been shown already in another connection.\nWe mean the words \"sin,\" \"flesh,\" \"misery,\" \"death.\" The same\nremark may be made of another class of words of precisely opposite\nsignification,  \"righteousness,\" \"faith,\" \"life,\" \"blessedness,\"\n\"eternal life.\" These different words frequently stand to\nrepresent the same idea. \"As the law hath reigned through sin unto\ndeath, so shall grace reign through righteousness unto life.\" In\nother terms, as the recognition of the retributive law of God\nthrough rebellion and guilt filled the consciences of men with\nwretchedness, so the acceptance of the pardoning love of God\nthrough faith and conformity will fill them with blessedness. Sin\nincludes conscious distrust, disobedience, and alienation;\nrighteousness includes conscious faith, obedience, and\nreconciliation. Sin and death, it will be seen, are related just\nas righteousness and life are. The fact that they are sometimes\nrepresented in the relation of identity \"the minding of the flesh\nis death, but the minding of the spirit is life\" and sometimes in\nthe relation of cause and effect \"the fruit of sin is death, the\nfruit of righteousness is life\" proves that the words are used\nmetaphorically, and really mean conscious guilt and misery,\nconscious virtue and blessedness. No other view is consistent. We\nare urged to be \"dead unto sin, but alive unto God;\" that is, to\nbe in a state of moral perfection which turns a deaf and\ninvincible front to all the influences of evil, but is open and\njoyfully sensitive to every thing good and holy. Paul also wrote,\nin his letter to the Philippians, that he had \"not yet attained\nunto the resurrection,\" but was striving to attain unto it; that\nis, he had not yet reached, but was striving to reach, that lofty\nstate of holiness and peace invulnerable to sin, which no change\ncan injure, with which the event of bodily dissolution cannot\ninterfere, because its elements faith, truth, justice, and love\nare the immutable principles of everlasting life.\n\n3. In confirmation of this conclusion, an argument amounting to\ncertainty is afforded by the way in which the disobedience of Adam\nand its consequences, and the obedience of Christ and its\nconsequences, are spoken of together; by the way in which a sort\nof antithetical parallel is drawn between the result of Adam's\nfall and the result of Christ's mission. \"As by one man sin\nentered into the world, and death by sin, and so death passed upon\nall men, so much more shall all receive the gift of God by one\nman, Jesus Christ, and reign unto eternal life.\" This means, as\nthe writer himself afterwards explains, that \"as by one man's\ndisobedience many were made sinners\" and suffered the consequences\nof sin, figuratively expressed by the word \"death,\" \"so by the\nobedience of one shall many be made righteous\" and enjoy the\nconsequences of righteousness, figuratively expressed by the word\n\"life.\" Give the principal terms in this passage their literal\nforce, and no meaning which is not absolutely incompatible with\nthe plainest truths can be drawn from it. Surely literal death had\ncome equally and fully upon all men everywhere; literal life could\ndo no more. But render the idea in this way, the blessedness\noffered to men in the revelation of grace made by Jesus outweighs\nthe wretchedness brought upon them through the sin introduced by\nAdam, and the sense is satisfactory. That which Adam is\nrepresented as having lost, that, the apostle affirms, Christ\nrestored; that which Adam is said to have incurred, that Christ is\nsaid to have removed. But Christ did not restore to man a physical\nimmortality on the earth: therefore that is not what Adam\nforfeited; but he lost peace of conscience and trust in the Divine\nfavor. Furthermore, Christ did not free his followers from natural\ndecay and death: therefore that is not what Adam's transgression\nbrought upon his children; but it entailed upon them proclivities\nto evil, spiritual unrest, and woe. The basis of the comparison is\nevidently this: Adam's fall showed that the consequences of sin,\nthrough the stern operation of the law, were strife, despair, and\nmisery, all of which is implied in the New Testament usage of the\nword \"death;\" Christ's mission showed that the consequences of\nrighteousness, through the free grace of God, were faith, peace,\nand indestructible happiness, all of which is implied in the New\nTestament usage of the word \"life.\" In the mind of Paul there was\nundoubtedly an additional thought, connecting the descent of the\nsoul to the under world with the death of the sinful Adam, and its\nascent to heaven with the resurrection of the immaculate Christ;\nbut this does not touch the argument just advanced, because it\ndoes not refer to the cause of physical dissolution, but to what\nfollowed that event.\n\n4. It will not be out of place here to demonstrate that sin\nactually was not the origin of natural decay, by the revelations\nof science, which prove that death was a monarch on the earth for\nages before moral transgression was known. As the geologist\nwanders, and studies the records of nature, where earthquake,\ndeluge, and volcano have exposed the structure of the globe and\nits organic remains in strata piled on strata, upon these, as upon\nso many pages of the earth's autobiography, he reads the history\nof a hundred races of animals which lived and died, leaving their\nbones layer above layer, in regular succession, centuries before\nthe existence of man. It is evident, then, that, independent of\nhuman guilt, and from the very first, chemical laws were in force,\nand death was a part of God's plan in the material creation. As\nthe previous animals perished without sin, so without sin the\nanimal part of man too would have died. It was made perishable\nfrom the outset. The important point just here in the theology of\nPaul was, as previously implied, that death was intended to lead\nthe soul directly to heaven in a new \"spiritual body\" or \"heavenly\nhouse;\" but sin marred the plan, and doomed the soul to go into\nthe under world, a naked manes, when \"unclothed\" of \"the natural\nbody\" or \"earthly house.\" The mission of Christ was to restore the\noriginal plan; and it would be consummated at his second coming.\n\n5. There is a gross absurdity involved in the supposition that an\nearthly immortality was the intended destiny of man. That\nsupposition necessarily implies that the whole groundwork of God's\nfirst design was a failure, that his great purpose was thwarted\nand changed into one wholly different. And it is absurd to think\nsuch a result possible in the providence of the Almighty. Besides,\nhad there been no sin, could not man have been drowned if he fell\ninto the water without knowing how to swim? If a building tumbled\nupon him, would he not have been crushed? Nor is this theory free\nfrom another still more palpable absurdity; for, had there been no\ninterference of death to remove one generation and make room for\nanother, the world could not support the multitudes with which it\nwould now swarm. Moreover, the time would arrive when the earth\ncould not only not afford sustenance to its so numerous\ninhabitants, but could not even contain them. So that if this were\nthe original arrangement, unless certain other parts which were\nindisputable portions of it were cancelled, the surplus myriads\nwould have to be removed to some other world. That is just what\ndeath accomplishes. Consequently, death was a part of God's primal\nplan, and not a contingence accidentally caused by sin.\n\n6. If death be the result of sin, then, of course, it is a\npunishment inflicted upon man for his wickedness. In fact, this is\nan identical proposition. But death cannot be intended as a\npunishment, because, viewed in that light, it is unjust. It comes\nequally upon old and young, good and bad, joyous and wretched. It\ndoes not permit the best man to live longest; it does not come\nwith the greatest terror and agony to the most guilty. All these\nthings depend on a thousand contingencies strung upon an iron law,\nwhich inheres to the physical world of necessity, and has not its\nbasis and action in the spiritual sphere of freedom, character,\nand experience. The innocent babe and the hardened criminal are\nstruck at the same instant and die the same death. Solomon knew\nthis when he said, \"As dieth the fool, so the wise man dieth.\"\nDeath regarded as a retribution for sin is unjust, because it is\ndestitute of moral discrimination. It therefore is not a\nconsequence of transgression, but an era, incident, and step in\nhuman existence, an established part of the visible order of\nthings from the beginning. When the New Testament speaks of death\nas a punishment, it always uses the word in a symbolic sense,\nmeaning spiritual deadness and misery, which is a perfect\nretribution, because it discriminates with unerring exactness.\nThis has been conclusively proved by Klaiber,1 who shows that the\npeculiar language of Paul in regard to the trichotomist division\nof man into spirit, soul, and body necessarily involves the\nperception of physical death as a natural fact.\n\n7. Finally, natural death cannot be the penalty of\nunrighteousness, because it is not a curse and a woe, but a\nblessing and a privilege. Epictetus wrote, \"It would be a curse\nupon ears of corn not to be reaped; and we ought to know that it\nwould be a curse upon man not to die.\" 2 It cannot be the effect\nof man's sin, because it is the improvement of man's condition.\nWho can believe it would be better for man to remain on earth\nforever, under any\n\n1 Die Neutestamentliche Lehre von der Sunde and Erlosung, ss. 22\n45.\n\n2 Dissert. ii. 6, 2.\n\n\ncircumstances, than it is for him to go to heaven to such an\nexperience as the faithful follower of Christ supposes is there\nawaiting him? It is not to be thought by us that death is a\nfrowning enemy thrusting us into the gloom of eternal night or\ninto the flaming waves of irremediable torment, but rather a\nsmiling friend ushering us into the endless life of the spiritual\nworld and into the unveiled presence of God. According to the\narrangement and desire of God, for us to die is gain: every\npersonal exception to this if there be any exception is caused\nthrough the marring interference of personal wickedness with the\nCreator's intention and with natural order. Who has not sometimes\nfelt the bondage of the body and the trials of earth, and peered\nwith awful thrills of curiosity into the mysteries of the unseen\nworld, until he has longed for the hour of the soul's liberation,\nthat it might plume itself for an immortal flight? Who has not\nexperienced moments of serene faith, in which he could hardly help\nexclaiming, \"I would not live alway; I ask not to stay: Oh, who\nwould live alway away from his God?\"\n\nA favorite of Apollo prayed for the best gift Heaven could bestow\nupon man. The god said, \"At the end of seven days it shall be\ngranted: in the mean time, live happy.\" At the appointed hour he\nfell into a sweet slumber, from which he never awoke.3 He who\nregards death as upon the whole an evil does not take the\nChristian's view of it, not even the enlightened pagan's view, but\nthe frightened sensualist's view, the superstitious atheist's\nview. And if death be upon the whole normally a blessing, then\nassuredly it cannot be a punishment brought upon man by sin. The\ncommon hypothesis of our mortality namely, that sin, hereditarily\nlodged in the centre of man's life, spreads its dynamic virus\nthence until it appears as death in the periphery, expending its\nfinal energy within the material sphere in the dissolution of the\nphysical frame is totally opposed to the spirit of philosophy and\nto the most lucid results of science. Science announces death\nuniversally as the initial point of new life.4\n\nThe New Testament does not teach that natural death, organic\nseparation, is the fruit of sin, that, if man had not sinned, he\nwould have lived forever on the earth. But it teaches that moral\ndeath, misery, is the consequence of sin. The pains and\nafflictions which sometimes come upon the good without fault of\ntheirs do yet spring from human faults somewhere, with those\nexceptions alone that result from the necessary contingencies of\nfinite creatures, exposures outside the sphere of human\naccountability. With this qualification, it would be easy to show\nin detail that the sufferings of the private individual and of\nmankind at large are, directly or indirectly, the products of\nguilt, violated law. All the woes, for instance, of poverty are\nthe results of selfishness, pride, ignorance, and vice. And it is\nthe same with every other class of miseries.\n\n\"The world in Titanic immortality Writhes beneath the burning\nmountain of its sins.\"\n\n3 Herod. i. 31; Cic. Tusc. Quast. i. 47.\n\n4 Klencke, Das Buch vom Tode. Entwurf einer Lehre vom Sterben in\nder Natur und vom Tode des Mensehen insbesondere. Fur denkende\nFreunde der Wissenschaft.\n\n\nHad there been no sin, men's lives would have glided on like the\nplacid rivers that flow through the woodlands. They would have\nlived without strife or sorrow, grown old without sadness or\nsatiety, and died without a pang or a sigh. But, alas! sin so\nabounds in the world that \"there is not a just man that lives and\nsins not;\" and it is a truth whose omnipresent jurisdiction can\nneither be avoided nor resisted that every kind of sin, every\noffence against Divine order, shall somewhere, at some time, be\njudged as it deserves. He who denies this only betrays the\nignorance which conceals from him a pervading law of inevitable\napplication, only reveals the degradation and insensibility which\ndo not allow him to be conscious of his own experience. A\nharmonious, happy existence depends on the practice of pure morals\nand communion with the love of God. This great idea that the\nconscientious culture of the spiritual nature is the sole method\nof Divine life is equally a fundamental principle of the gospel\nand a conclusion of observation and reason: upon the devout\nobservance of it hinge the possibilities of true blessedness. The\npursuit of an opposite course necessitates the opposite\nexperience, makes its votary a restless, wretched slave, wishing\nfor freedom but unable to obtain it.\n\nThe thought just stated, we maintain, strikes the key note of the\nChristian Scriptures; and the voices of truth and nature accord\nwith it. That Christianity declares sin to be the cause of\nspiritual death, in all the deep and wide meaning of the term, has\nbeen fully shown; that this is also a fact in the great order of\nthings has been partially illustrated, but in justice to the\nsubject should be urged, in a more precise and adequate form. In\nthe first place, there is a positive punishment flowing evidently\nfrom sin, consisting both in outward inflictions of suffering and\ndisgrace through human laws and social customs, and in the private\nendurance of bodily and mental pains and of strange misgivings\nthat load the soul with fear and anguish. Subjection to the animal\nnature in the obedience of unrighteousness sensibly tends to bring\nupon its victim a woeful mass of positive ills, public and\npersonal, to put him under the vile tyranny of devouring lusts, to\ninduce deathlike enervation and disease in his whole being, to\npervade his consciousness with the wretched gnawings of remorse\nand shame, and with the timorous, tormenting sense of guilt,\ndiscord, alienation, and condemnation.\n\nIn the second place, there is a negative punishment for impurity\nand wrong doing, less gross and visible than the former, but\nequally real and much more to be dreaded. Sin snatches from a man\nthe prerogatives of eternal life, by brutalizing and deadening his\nnature, sinking the spirit with its delicate delights in the body\nand its coarse satisfactions, making him insensible to his highest\ngood and glory, lowering him in the scale of being away from God,\nshutting the gates of heaven against him, and leaving him to\nwallow in the mire. The wages of sin is misery, and its gift is a\ndegradation which prevents any elevation to true happiness. These\npositive and negative retributions, however delayed or disguised,\nwill come where they are deserved, and will not fail. Do a wrong\ndeed from a bad motive, and, though you fled on the pinions of the\ninconceivable lightning from one end of infinite space to the\nother, the fated penalty would chase you through eternity but that\nyou should pay its debt; or, rather, the penalty is grappling with\nyou from within on the instant, is a part of you.\n\nThirdly, if, by the searing of his conscience and absorption in\nthe world, a sinner escapes for a season the penal consequences\nthreatened in the law, and does not know how miserable he is, and\nthinks he is happy, yet let him remember that the remedial,\nrestorative process through which he must pass, either in this\nlife or in the next, involves a concentrated experience of\nexpiatory pangs, as is shown both by the reason of the thing and\nby all relevant analogies. When the bad man awakes as some time or\nother he will awake to the infinite perfections and unalterable\nlove of the Father whose holy commands he has trampled and whose\nkind invitations he has spurned, he will suffer agonies of\nremorseful sorrow but faintly shadowed in the bitterness of\nPeter's tears when his forgiving Master looked on him. Such is the\ncommon deadness of our consciences that the vices of our corrupt\ncharacters are far from appearing to us as the terrific things\nthey really are. Angels, looking under the fleshly garment we\nwear, and seeing a falsehood or a sin assimilated as a portion of\nour being, turn away with such feeling as we should experience at\nbeholding a leprous sore beneath the lifted ermine of a king. A\nwell taught Christian will not fail to contemplate physical death\nas a stupendous, awakening crisis, one of whose chief effects will\nbe the opening to personal consciousness, in the most vivid\nmanner, of all the realities of character, with their relations\ntowards things above and things below himself.\n\nThis thought leads us to a fourth and final consideration, more\nimportant than the previous. The tremendous fact that all the\ninwrought elements and workings of our being are self retributive,\ntheir own exceeding great and sufficient good or evil, independent\nof external circumstances and sequences, is rarely appreciated.\nMen overlook it in their superficial search after associations,\naccompaniments, and effects. When all tangible punishments and\nrewards are wanting, all outward penalties and prizes fail, if we\ngo a little deeper into the mysterious facts of experience we\nshall find that still goodness is rewarded and evil is punished,\nbecause \"the mind is its own place, and can itself,\" if virtuous,\n\"make a heaven of hell, if wicked, \"a hell of heaven.\" It is a\ntruth, springing from the very nature of God and his irreversible\nrelations towards his creatures, that his united justice and love\nshall follow both holiness and iniquity now and ever, pouring his\nbeneficence upon them to be converted by them into their food and\nbliss or into their bane and misery. There is, then, no essential\nneed of adventitious accompaniments or results to justify and pay\nthe good, or to condemn and torture the bad, here or hereafter. To\nbe wise, and pure, and strong, and noble, is glory and blessedness\nenough in itself. To be ignorant, and corrupt, and mean, and\nfeeble, is degradation and horror enough in itself. The one abides\nin true life, the other in moral death; and that is sufficient.\nEven now, in this world, therefore, the swift and diversified\nretributions of men's characters and lives are in them and upon\nthem, in various ways, and to a much greater extent than they are\naccustomed to think. History preaches this with all her revealing\nvoices. Philosophy lays it bare, and points every finger at the\nflaming bond that binds innocence to peace, guilt to remorse. It\nis the substance of the gospel, emphatically pronounced. And the\nclear experience of every sensitive soul confirms its truth,\nechoing through the silent corridors of the conscience the\ndeclarations which fell in ancient Judea from the lips of Jesus\nand the pen of Paul: \"The pure in heart shall see God;\" \"The wages\nof sin is death.\"\n\nWe will briefly sum up the principal positions of the ground we\nhave now traversed. To be enslaved by the senses in the violation\nof the Divine laws, neglecting the mind and abusing the members,\nis to be dead to the goodness of God, the joys of virtue, and the\nhopes of heaven, and alive to guilt, anguish, and despair. To obey\nthe will of God in love, keeping the body under, and cherishing a\npure soul, is to be dead to the evil of the world, the goading of\npassions, and the fears of punishment, and alive to innocence,\nhappiness, and faith. According to the natural plan of things from\nthe dawn of creation, the flesh was intended to fall into the\nground, but the spirit to rise into heaven. Suffering is the\nretributive result and accumulated merit of iniquity; while\nenjoyment is the gift of God and the fruit of conformity to his\nlaw. To receive the instructions of Christ and obey them with the\nwhole heart, walking after his example, is to be quickened from\nthat deadly misery into this living blessedness. The inner life of\ntruth and goodness thus revealed and proposed to men, its personal\nexperience being once obtained, is an immortal possession, a\nconscious fount springing up unto eternity through the beneficent\ndecree of the Father, to play forever in the light of his smile\nand the shadow of his arm. Such are the great component elements\nof the Christian doctrine of life and death, both present and\neternal.\n\nThe purely interior character of the genuine teachings of\nChristianity on this subject is strikingly evident in the\nforegoing epitome. The essential thing is simply that the hate\nlife of error and sin is inherent alienation from God, in slavery,\nwretchedness, death; while the love life of truth and virtue is\ninherent communion with God, in conscious freedom and blessedness.\nHere pure Christianity leaves the subject, declaring this with\nauthority, but not pretending to clear up the mysteries or set\nforth the details of the subject. Whatever in the New Testament\ngoes beyond this and meddles with minute external circumstances we\nregard as a corrupt addition or mixture drawn from various Gentile\nand Pharisaic sources and erroneously joined with the authentic\nwords of Christ. What we maintain in regard to the apostles and\nthe early Christians in general is not so much that they failed to\ngrasp the deep spiritual principles of the Master's teaching, not\nthat they were essentially in error, but that, while they held the\nsubstance of the Savior's true thoughts, they also held additional\nnotions which were errors retained from their Pharisaic education\nand only partially modified by their succeeding Christian culture,\na set of traditional and mechanical conceptions. These errors, we\nrepeat, concern not the heart and essence of ideas, but their form\nand clothing. For instance, Christ teaches that there is a heaven\nfor the faithful; the apostles suppose that it is a located region\nover the firmament. The dying Stephen said, \"Behold, I see the\nheavens opened, and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of\nGod.\" Again: Christ teaches that there is a banishment for the\nwicked; the apostles suppose that it is into a located region\nunder the earth. In accordance with the theological dogmas of\ntheir time and countrymen, with such modification as the peculiar\ncharacter, teachings, and life of Jesus enforced, they believed\nthat sin sent through the black gates of Sheol those who would\notherwise have gone through the glorious doors of heaven; that\nChrist would return from heaven soon, raise the dead from the\nunder world, judge them, rebanish the reprobate, establish his\nperfect kingdom on earth, and reascend to heaven with his elect.\nThat these distinctive notions came into the New Testament\nthrough the mistakes and imperfect knowledge of the apostles,\nhow can any candid and competent scholar doubt?5 In the\nfirst place, the process whereby these conceptions were\ntransmitted and assimilated from Zoroastrian Persia to Pharisaic\nJudea is historically traceable. Secondly, the brevity and\nvagueness of the apostolic references to eschatology, and their\nperfect harmony with known Pharisaic beliefs, prove their mutual\nconsonance and the derivation of the later from the earlier. If\nthe supposed Christian views had been unheard of before, their\npromulgators would have taken pains to define them carefully and\ngive detailed expositions of them. Thirdly, it was natural almost\ninevitable  that the apostles would retain at least some of their\noriginal peculiarities of belief, and mix them with their new\nideas, unless they were prevented by an infallible inspiration. Of\nthe presence of any such infallibility there is not a shadow of\nevidence; but, on the contrary, there is a demonstration of its\nabsence. For they differed among themselves, carried on violent\ncontroversies on important points. Paul says of Peter, \"I\nwithstood him to the face.\" The Gentile and Judaic dissensions\nshook the very foundations of the Apostolic Church. Paul and\nBarnabas \"had a sharp controversy, insomuch that they parted\nasunder.\" Almost every commentator and scholar worthy of notice\nhas been compelled to admit the error of the apostles in expecting\nthe visible return of Christ in their own day. And, if they erred\nin that, they might in other matters. The progress of positive\nscience and the improvement of philosophical thought have rendered\nthe mechanical dogmas popularly associated with Christianity\nincredible to enlightened minds. For this reason, as for many\nothers, it is the duty of the Christian teacher to show that those\ndogmas are not an integral part of the gospel, but only an\nadventitious element imported into it from an earlier and\nunauthoritative system. Take away these incongruous and outgrown\nerrors, and the pure religion of Christ will be seen, and will be\nseen to be the everlasting truth of God.\n\nIn attempting to estimate the actual influence of Christianity,\nwherever it has spread, in establishing among men a faith in\nimmortality, we must specify six separate considerations. First,\nthe immediate reception of the resurrection and ascension of\nChrist as a miraculous and typical fact, putting an infallible\nseal on his teachings, and demonstrating, even to the senses of\nmen, the reality of a heavenly life, was an extremely potent\ninfluence in giving form and vigor to faith, more potent for ages\nthan every thing else combined. The image of the victorious Christ\ntaken up to heaven and glorified there forever, this image,\npictured in every believer's mind, stimulated the imagination and\nkept an ideal vision of heaven in constant remembrance as an\napprehended reality. \"There is Jesus,\" they said, pointing up to\nheaven; \"and there one day we shall be with him.\"\n\nSecondly, the obloquy and desertion experienced by the early\nChristians threw them back upon a double strength of spiritual\nfaith, and opened to them an intensified communion with God. As\nworldly goods and pleasures were sacrificed, the more powerful\nbecame their\n\n5 Eschatologie, oder die Lebre von den Letzten Dingen. Mit\nbesonderer Rucksicht anf die gangbare Irriehre vom Hades. Basel,\n1840. De Wette interprets the doctrine of Christ's descent into\nHades as a myth derived from the idea that he was the Savior not\nonly of his living followers but also of the heathen and the dead.\nBibl. Dogmatik, s. 272.\n\n\nperception of moral truths and their grasp of invisible treasures.\nThe more fiercely they were assailed, the dearer became the cause\nfor which they suffered, and the more profoundly the moral springs\nof faith were stirred in their souls. The natural revulsion of\ntheir souls was from destitution, contempt, peril, and pain on\nearth to a more vivid and magnified trust in a great reward laid\nup for them in heaven.\n\nThirdly, the unflinching zeal kindled in the early confessors of\nChristianity, the sublime heroism shown by them amidst the awful\ntortures inflicted on them by the persecuting Jews and Romans,\nreacted on their brethren to give profounder firmness and new\nintensity to their faith in a glorious life beyond the grave. The\nChristians thrown into the amphitheatre to the lions calmly\nkneeled in prayer, and to the superstitious bystanders a bright\nnimbus seemed to play around their brows and heaven to be opened\nabove. As they perished at the stake, amidst brutal jeers and\nshrivelling flames, serenely maintaining their profession, and\ncalling on Christ, over the lurid vista of smoke and fire broke on\ntheir rapt vision the blessed splendors of Paradise; and their joy\nseemed, to the enthusiastic believers around, no less than a\nDivine inspiration, confirming their faith, and preaching, through\nthe unquestionable truthfulness of martyrdom, the certainty of\nimmortal life. The survivors celebrated the anniversaries of the\nmartyrs' deaths as their birthdays into the endless life.\n\nFourthly, another means by which Christianity operated to deepen\nand spread a belief in the future life was, indirectly, through\nits influence in calling out and cultivating the affections of the\nheart. The essence of the gospel in theory, as taught by all its\nteachers, in fact, as incarnated by Christ, and in practice, as\nworking in history is love. From the first it condemned and tended\nto destroy all the coldness and hatred of human hearts; and it\nstrove to elicit and foster every kindly sentiment and generous\nimpulse, to draw its disciples together by those yearning ties of\nsympathy and devotion which instinctively demand and divinely\nprophesy an eternal union in a better world. The more mightily two\nhuman hearts love each other, the stronger will be their\nspontaneous longing for immortality. The unrivalled revelation of\nthe disinterested love of God made by Christianity, and its effect\nin refining and increasing the love of men, have contributed in a\nmost important degree to sanction and diffuse the faith in a\nblessed life reserved for men hereafter. One remarkable\nspecification may be noticed. The only pagan description of\nchildren in the future life is that given by some of the classic\npoets, who picture the infant shades lingering in groups around\nthe dismal gates of the under world, weeping and wailing because\nthey could never find admittance.\n\n\"Continuo audita voces, vagitus et ingens, Infantumque\nanimaflentes in limine primo.\"\n\nGo the long round of the pagan heavens, you will find no trace of\na child. Children were withered blossoms blown to oblivion. The\nsoft breezes that fanned the Blessed Isles and played through the\nperennial summer of Elysium blew upon no infant brows. The grave\nheld all the children very fast. By the memorable words, \"Of such\nis the kingdom of heaven,\" Christ unbarred the portals of the\nfuture world and revealed therein hosts of angelic children. Ever\nsince then children have been seen in heaven. The poet has sung\nthat the angel child is first on the wing to welcome the parent\nhome. Painters have shown us, in their visions of the blessed\nrealms, crowds of cherubs, have shown us\n\n\"How at the Almighty Father's hand,\nNearest the throne of living light,\nThe choirs of infant seraphs stand,\nAnd dazzling shine where all are bright.\"\n\nFifthly, the triumphant establishment of Christianity in the world\nhas thrown the prestige of public opinion, the imposing authority\nof general affirmation and acceptance, around its component\ndoctrines chief among which is the doctrine of immortality and\nsecured in their behalf the resistless influences of current\ncustom and education. From the time the gospel was acknowledged by\na nation as the true religion, each generation grew up by habitual\ntutelage to an implicit belief in the future life. It became a\ndogma not to be questioned. And the reception of it was made more\nreasonable and easy by the great superiority of its moral features\nover those of the relative superstitions embodied in the ethnic\nreligions which Christianity displaced.\n\nFinally, Christianity has exerted no small influence both in\nexpressing and imparting faith in immortality by means of the art\nto which it has given birth. The Christian ritual and symbolism,\nwhich culminated in the Middle Age, from the very first had their\nvitality and significance in the truth of another life. Every\nphase and article of them implied, and with mute or vocal\narticulation proclaimed, the superiority and survival of mind and\nheart, the truth of the gospel history, the reality of the opened\nheaven. Who, in the excited atmosphere, amidst the dangers, living\ntraditions, and dramatic enactments of that time, could behold the\nsacraments of the Church, listen to a mighty chant, kneel beside a\nholy tomb, or gaze on a painting of a gospel scene, without\nfeeling that the story of Christ's ascent to God was true, being\nassured that elsewhere than on earth there was a life for the\nbeliever, and in rapt imagination seeing visions of the\nsupernatural kingdom unveiled?\n\nThe inmost thought or sentiment of mediaval art to adapt a\nremarkable passage from Heine6 was the depression of the body and\nthe elevation of the soul. Statues of martyrs, pictures of\ncrucifixions, dying saints, pale, faint sufferers, drooping heads,\nlong, thin arms, meager bones, poor, awkwardly hung dresses,\nemaciated features celestially illuminated by faith and love,\nexpressed the Christian self denial and unearthliness.\nArchitecture enforced the same lesson as sculpture and painting.\nEntering a cathedral, we at once feel the soul exalted, the flesh\ndegraded. The inside of the dome is itself a hollow cross, and we\nwalk there within the very witness work of martyrdom. The gorgeous\nwindows fling their red and green lights upon us like drops of\nblood and decay. Funereal music wails and fades away along the dim\narches. Under our feet are gravestones and corruption. With the\ncolossal columns the soul climbs aloft, loosing itself from the\nbody, which sinks to the floor as a weary weed. And when we look\non one of these vast Gothic structures from without, so airy,\ngraceful, tender, transparent, it seems cut out of one piece, or\nmay be taken for an ethereal lace work of marble.\n\n6 Die Romantische Schule, buch i.\n\n\nThen only do we feel the power of the inspiration which\ncould so subdue even stone that it shines spectrally possessed,\nand make the most insensate of materials voice forth the grand\nteaching of Christianity, the triumph of the spirit over the\nflesh.\n\nIn these six ways, therefore, by placing a tangible image of it in\nthe imagination through the resurrection of Christ, by the\npowerful stirring of the springs of moral faith through the\npersecutions that attended its confession, by the apparent\ninspiration of the martyrs who died in its strength, by calling\nout the latent force of the heart's affections that crave it, by\nthe moulding power of establishment, custom, and education, by the\nspiritualizing, vision conjuring effect of its worship and art,\nhas Christianity done a work of incalculable extent in\nstrengthening the world's belief in a life to come.7\n\nA remarkable evidence of the impression Christianity carried\nbefore it is furnished by an incident in the history of the\nmissionary Paulinus. He had preached before Edwin, King of\nNorthumbria. An old earl stood up and said, \"The life of man\nseems, when compared with what is hidden, like the sparrow, who,\nas you sit in your hall, with your thanes and attendants, warmed\nby the blazing fire, flies through. As he flies through from door\nto door, he enjoys a brief escape from the chilling storms of rain\nand snow without. Again he goes forth into the winter and\nvanishes. So seems the short life of man. If this new doctrine\nbrings us something more certain, in my mind it is worthy of\nadoption.\"8\n\nThe most glorious triumph of Christianity in regard to the\ndoctrine of a future life was in imparting a character of\nimpartialness and universality to the proud, oligarchic faith\nwhich had previously excluded from it the great multitude of men.\nThe lofty conceptions of the fate of the soul cherished by the\nillustrious philosophers of Greece and Rome were not shared by the\ncommonalty until the gospel its right hand touching the throne of\nGod, its left clasping humanity announced in one breath the\nresurrection of Jesus and the brotherhood of man.\n\n\"Their highest lore was for the few conceived, By schools\ndiscuss'd, but not by crowds believed. The angel ladder clomb the\nheavenly steep, But at its foot the priesthoods lay, asleep. They\ndid not preach to nations, 'Lo, your God!' No thousands follow'd\nwhere their footsteps trod: Not to the fishermen they said,\n'Arise!' Not to the lowly offer'd they the skies. Wisdom was\ntheirs: alas! what men most need Is no sect's wisdom, but the\npeople's creed. Then, not for schools, but for the human kind, The\nuncultured reason, the unletter'd mind, The poor, the oppress'd,\nthe laborer, and the slave, God said, 'Be light!' and light was on\nthe grave! No more alone to sage and hero given, For all wide oped\nthe impartial gates of heaven.\" 9\n\n7 Compare Bengal's essay, Quid Doctrina de Animarum Immortalitate\nReligioni Christiana debeat.\n\n8 Venerable Bede, book ii. ch. xiv.\n\n9 Bulwer, New Timon, part iv.\n\n\nPART FOURTH\n\n\nCHRISTIAN THOUGHTS CONCERNING A FUTURE LIFE.\n\nCHAPTER I.\n\nPATRISTIC DOCTRINE OF A FUTURE LIFE.\n\nWITH reference to the present subject, we shall consider the\nperiod of the Church Fathers as including the nine centuries\nsucceeding the close of the apostolic age. It extends from\nClement, Barnabas, and Hermas to OEcumenius and Gerbert.\n\nThe principal components of the doctrine of the future life held\nduring this period, though showing some diversities and changes,\nare in their prevailing features of one consistent type,\nconstituting the belief which would in any of those centuries have\nbeen generally recognised by the Church as orthodox.\n\nFor reasons previously given, we believe that Jesus himself taught\na purely moral doctrine concerning the future life, a doctrine\nfree from arbitrary, mechanical, or sacerdotal peculiarities. With\nexperimental knowledge, with inspired insight, with fullest\nauthority, he set forth conclusions agreeing with the wisest\nphilosophy and confirmatory of our noblest hopes, namely, that a\nconscious immortality awaits the soul in the many mansions of the\nFather's house, which it enters on leaving the body, and where its\nexperience will depend upon ethical and spiritual conditions. To\nthis simple and sublime doctrine announced by Jesus, so rational\nand satisfactory, we believe for reasons already explained that\nthe apostles joined various additional and modifying notions,\nJudaic and Gentile, such as the local descent of Christ into the\nprison world of the dead, his mission there, his visible second\ncoming, a bodily resurrection, a universal scenic judgment, and\nother kindred views. The sum of results thus reached the Fathers\ndeveloped in greater detail, distinguishing and emphasizing them,\nand also still further corrupting them with some additional\nconceptions and fancies, Greek and Oriental, speculative and\nimaginative. The peculiar theological work of the apostles in\nregard to this subject was the organizing of the Persian Jewish\ndoctrine of the Pharisees, with a Christian complement and\nmodifications, around the person of Christ, and fixing so near in\nthe immediate future the period when it was to be consummated that\nit might be looked for at any time. The peculiar theological work\nof the Fathers in regard to the doctrine thus formed by the\napostles was twofold. First, being disappointed of the expected\nspeedy second coming of Christ, they developed the intermediate\nstate of the dead more fully, and made it more prominent.\nSecondly, in the course of the long and vehement controversies\nwhich sprang up, they were led to complete and systematize their\ntheology, to define their terms, to explain and defend their\ndoctrines, comparing them together and attempting to harmonize\nthem with history, reason, and ethics, as well as with Scripture\nand tradition. In this way the patristic mind became familiar with\nmany processes of thought, with many special details, and with\nsome general principles, quite foreign to the apostolic mind.\nMeanwhile, defining and systematizing went on, loose notions\nhardened into rigid dogmas, free thought was hampered by\nauthority, the scheme generally received assumed the title of\northodox, anathematizing all who dared to dissent, and the\nfundamental outlines of the patristic eschatology were firmly\nestablished.1\n\nIn seeking to understand and to give an exposition of this scheme\nof faith, we have, besides various collateral aids, three chief\nguidances. First, we possess the symbols or confessions of faith\nput forth by several of the leading theologians of those times, or\nby general councils, and openly adopted as authority in many of\nthe churches, the creed falsely called the Apostles', extant as\nearly as the close of the third century, the creed of Arius, that\nof Cyril, the Nicene creed, the creed falsely named the\nAthanasian, and others. Secondly, we have the valuable assistance\nafforded by the treatises of Irenaus, Tertullian, Epiphanius,\nAugustine, and others still later, on the heresies that had arisen\nin the Church, treatises which make it easy to infer, by contrast\nand construction, what was considered orthodox from the statement\nof what was acknowledged heretical. And, thirdly, abundant\nresources are afforded us in the extant theological dissertations,\nand historical documents of the principal ecclesiastical authors\nof the time in review, a cycle of well known names, sweeping from\nTheophilus of Antioch to Photius of Byzantium, from Cyprian of\nCarthage to Maurus of Mentz. We think that any candid person,\nmastering these sources of information in the illustrating and\ndiscriminating light of a sufficient knowledge of the previous and\nthe succeeding related opinions, will recognise in the following\nabstract a fair representation of the doctrine of a future life as\nit was held by the orthodox Fathers of the Christian Church in the\nperiod extending from the first to the tenth century.\n\nBefore proceeding to set forth the common patristic scheme, a few\npreliminary remarks are necessary in relation to some of the\npeculiar, prominent features of Origen's theology, and in relation\nto the rival systems of Augustine and Pelagius. Origen was a man\nof vast learning, passionately fond of philosophy; and he\nmodifyingly mingled a great many Oriental and Platonic notions\nwith his theology. He imagined that innumerable worlds like this\nhad existed and perished before it, and that innumerable others\nwill do so after it in endless succession.2 He held that all souls\nwhether devils, men, angels, or of whatever rank were of the same\nnature; that all who exist in material bodies are imprisoned in\nthem as a punishment for sins committed in a previous state; the\nfig leaves in which Adam and Eve were dressed after their sin were\nthe fleshly bodies they were compelled to assume on being expelled\nfrom the Paradise of their previous existence; that in proportion\nto their sins they are confined in subtile or gross bodies of\nadjusted grades until by penance and wisdom they slowly win their\n\n1 Bretschneider, Was lehren die altesten Kirchenvater uber die\nEntstehung der Sude und des Todes, Adam's Vergehen und die\nVersohnung durch Christum. Oppositionsschrift, band viii. hft. 3,\nss. 380-407.\n\n2 De Principiis, lib. lit. cap. 5.\n\n\ndeliverance, this gradual descent and ascent of souls being\nfiguratively represented by Jacob's ladder; that all punishments\nand rewards are exactly fitted to the degree of sin or merit,\nwithout possibility of failure; that all suffering even that in\nthe lowest hell is benevolent and remedial, so that even the worst\nspirits, including Satan himself, shall after a time be restored\nto heaven; that this alternation of fall and restoration shall be\ncontinued so often as the cloy and satiety of heavenly bliss, or\nthe preponderant power of temptation, pervert free will into sin.3\nHe declared that it was impossible to explain the phenomena and\nexperience of human life, or to justify the ways of God, except by\nadmitting that souls sinned in a pre existent state. He was\nignorant of the modern doctrine of vicarious atonement, considered\nas placation or satisfaction, and regarded Christ's suffering not\nas a substitute for ours, but as having merely the same efficacy\nin kind as the death of any innocent person, only more eminent in\ndegree. He represents the mission of Christ to be to show men that\nGod can forgive and recall them from sin, banishment, and hell,\nand to furnish them, in various ways, helps and incitements to win\nsalvation. The foregoing assertions, and other kindred points, are\nwell established by Mosheim, in his exposition of the characteristic\nviews of Origen.4\n\nThe famous controversy between Augustine and Pelagius shook\nChristendom for a century and a half, and has rolled its echoing\nresults even to the theological shores of to day. Augustine was\nmore Calvinistic in his doctrines than the Fathers before him, and\neven than most of those after him. In a few particulars perhaps a\nmajority of the Fathers really agreed more nearly with Pelagius\nthan with him. But his system prevailed, and was publicly adopted\nfor all Christendom by the third general council at Ephesus in the\nyear 431. Yet some of its principles, in their full force, were\nactually not accepted. For instance, his dogma of unconditional\nelection that some were absolutely predestinated to eternal\nsalvation, others to eternal damnation has never been taught by\nthe Roman Catholic Church. When Gottschalk urged it in the ninth\ncentury, it was condemned as a heresy;5 and among the Protestants\nin the sixteenth century Calvin was obliged to fight for it\nagainst odds. Augustine's belief must therefore be taken as a\nrepresentation of the general patristic belief only with caution\nand with qualifications. The distinctive views of Augustine as\ncontrasted with those of Pelagius were as follow.6 Augustine held\nthat, by Adam's fault, a burden of sin was entailed on all souls,\ndooming them, without exception, to an eternal banishment in the\ninfernal world. Pelagius denied the doctrine of \"original sin,\"\nand made each one responsible only for his own personal sins.\nAugustine taught that baptism was necessary to free its subject\nfrom the power which the devil had over the soul on account of\noriginal sin, and that all would infallibly be doomed to hell who\nwere not baptized, except, first, the ancient saints, who foreknew\nthe evangelic doctrines and believed, and, secondly, the martyrs,\nwhose blood was their baptism. Pelagius claimed that Christian\nbaptism was only necessary to secure an\n\n3 Ibid. lib. ii. cap. 9, 10.\n\n4 Commentaries on the Affairs of the Christians in the First Three\nCenturies: Third Century sects. 27-29.\n\n5 Hagenbach, Dogmengeschichte, sect. 183.\n\n6 Wiggers, Augustinism and Pelagianism, trans. from the German by\nR. Emerson, ch. xix.; also pp. 62, 68, 75, 79.\n\n\nentrance into heaven: infants and good men, if unbaptized; would\nenjoy a happy immortality in Paradise, but they never could enter\nthe kingdom of heaven. Augustine affirmed that Adam's sin\ndestroyed the freedom of the will in the whole human race.\nPelagius asserted the freedom of the individual will. Augustine\ndeclared that a few were arbitrarily elected to salvation from\neternity, and that Christ died only for them. Pelagius taught that\nsalvation or reprobation depended on personal deserts, and that\nthe Divine election was merely through prescience of merits.\nAugustine said that saving grace was supernatural, irresistible,\nunattainable by human effort. Pelagius said it might be won or\nresisted by conformity to certain conditions in each person's\npower. Augustine believed that bodily death was inflicted as a\npunishment for sin;7 Pelagius, that it was the result of a natural\nlaw. The extensive, various learning, massive, penetrating mind,\nand remorseless logical consistency, of Augustine, enabled him to\ngather up the loose, floating theological elements and notions of\nthe time, and generalize them into a complete system, in striking\nharmony, indeed, with the general character and drift of patristic\nthought, but carried out more fully in its details and applied\nmore unflinchingly in its principles than had been done before,\nand therefore in some of its dogmas outstripping the current\nconvictions of his contemporaries. His dogma of election was too\nrevolting and immoral ever to win universal assent; and few could\nhave the heart to unite with him in stigmatizing the whole human\nrace in their natural state as \"one damned batch and mass of\nperdition!\" (conspersio damnata, massa perditionis.) With these\nhints, we are ready to advance to the general patristic scheme of\neschatology. The exceptional variations and heresies will be\nreferred to afterwards.\n\nFirst, in regard to the natural state of men under the law, from\nthe time of Adam's sin to the time of Christ's suffering, their\nmoral condition and destination, no one can deny that the Fathers\ncommonly supposed that the dissolution of the body and the descent\nof the soul to the under world were a penalty brought on all men\nthrough the sin of the first man. Wherever the lengthening line of\nhuman generations wandered, the trail of the serpent, stamp of\ndepravity, was on them, sealing them as Death's and marking them\nfor the Hadean prison. This was the indiscriminate and the\ninevitable doom. There is no need of citing proofs of this\nstatement, as it is well known that the writings of the Fathers\nare thronged both with indirect implications and with explicit\navowals of it.\n\nSecondly, they thought that Christ came from heaven to redeem men\nfrom their lost state and subterranean bondage and to guide them\nto heaven. Augustine, and perhaps some others, maintained that he\ncame merely to effectuate the salvation of a foreordained few; but\nundoubtedly the common belief was that he came to redeem all who\nwould conform to certain conditions which he proposed and made\nfeasible. The important question here is, What did the Fathers\nsuppose the essence of Christ's redemptive work to be? and how, in\ntheir estimation, did he achieve that work? Was it the renewal and\nsanctification of human character by the melting power of a\nproclamation of mercy and love from God, by the regenerating\ninfluences and motives of the truths and appeals spoken by his\nlips, illustrated\n\n7 In Gen. lib. ix. cap. 10, 11: \"Parents would have yielded to\nchildren not by death, but by translation, and would have become\nas the angels.\"\n\nin his life, and brought to a focus in his martyr death? Certainly\nthis was too plainly and prominently a part of the mission of\nChrist ever to be wholly overlooked. And yet one acquainted with\nthe writings of the Fathers can hardly mistake so widely as to\nthink that they esteemed this the principal element in Christ's\nredemptive work. Was the essence of that work, then, the making of\na vicarious atonement, according to the Calvinistic interpretation\nof that phrase, the offering of a substitutional anguish\nsufficient to satisfy the claims of inexorable justice, so that\nthe guilty might be pardoned? No. The modern doctrine of the\natonement the satisfaction theory, as it is called was unknown to\nthe Fathers. It was developed, step by step, after many\ncenturies.8 It did not receive its acknowledged form until it came\nfrom the mind of the great Archbishop of Canterbury, Anselm, as\nlate as the twelfth century. No scholar will question this\nconfessed fact. What, then, were the essence and method of\nChrist's redemptive mission according to the Fathers? In brief,\nthey were these. He was, as they believed, a superangelic being,\nthe only begotten Son of God, possessing a nature, powers, and\ncredentials transcending those delegated to any other being below\nGod himself. He became flesh, to seek and to save the lost. This\nsaving work was done not by his mortal sufferings alone, but by\nthe totality of labors extending through the whole period of his\nincarnation. The subjective or moral part of his redemptive\nmission was to regenerate the characters of men and fit them for\nheaven by his teachings and example; the objective or physical\npart was to deliver their souls from the fatal confinement of the\nunder world and secure for them the gracious freedom of the sky,\nby descending himself as the suppressing conqueror of death and\nthen ascending as the beckoning pioneer of his followers. The\nFathers did not select the one point or act of Christ's death as\nthe pivot of human redemption; but they regarded that redemption\nas wrought out by the whole of his humiliation, instruction,\nexample, suffering, and triumph, as the resultant of all the\ncombined acts of his incarnate drama. Run over the relevant\nwritings of Justin Martyr, Clement of Alexandria, Lactantius,\nCyril, Ambrose, Augustine himself, Jerome, Chrysostom, and the\nrest of the prominent authors of the first ten centuries, and you\ncannot fail to be struck with the fact that they invariably speak\nof redemption, not in connection with Christ's death alone, but\nemphatically in connection with the group of ideas, his\nincarnation, death, descent, resurrection, and ascension! For the\nmost part, they received it by tradition as a fact, without much\nphilosophizing, that, in consequence of the sin of Adam, all men\nwere doomed to die, that is, to leave their bodies and descend\ninto the shadowy realm of death. They also accepted it as a fact,\nwithout much attempt at theoretical explanation, that when Christ,\nthe sinless and resistless Son of God, died and went thither,\nbefore his immaculate Divinity the walls fell, the devils fled,\nthe prisoners' chains snapped, and the power of Satan was broken.\nThey received it as a fact that through the mediation of Christ\nthe original boon forfeited by Adam was to be restored, and that\nmen, instead of undergoing death and banishment to Hades, should\nbe translated to heaven. So far as they had a theory about the\ncause, it turned on two simple points: first, the free grace and\nlove of God; second, the self sacrifice and sufficient power of\n\n8 Hagenbach, Dogmengeschichte, sect. 68.\n\n\nChrist. In the progressive course of dogmatic controversy,\nmetaphysical speculation, and desire for system, explanations have\nbeen devised in a hundred different forms, from that of Aquinas to\nthat of Calvin; from that of Anselm to that of Grotius; from that\nof Socinus to that of Bushnell. Tertullian describes the profound\nabyss beneath the grave, in the bowels of the earth, where, he\nsays, all the dead are detained unto the day of judgment, and\nwhere Christ in his descent made the patriarchs and prophets his\ncompanions.9 Augustine says that nearly the whole Church agreed in\nbelieving that Christ delivered Adam from the under world when he\nrose thence himself.10 One must be very ignorant on the subject to\ndoubt that the Fathers attributed unrivalled importance to the\nliteral descent of Christ into the abode of the departed.11\n\nThirdly, after the advent of Christ, what were the conditions\nproposed for the actual attainment of personal salvation? It was\nthe orthodox belief that Christ led up into Paradise with him the\nancient saints who were awaiting his appearance in the under\nworld:12 but with this exception it was not supposed that he saved\nany outright: he only put it in their power to save themselves,\nremoving the previously insuperable obstacles. In the faith of\nthose who accepted the dogma of predestination, of course, the\npresupposed condition of actual personal salvation was that the\ngiven individual should become one of the elect number. But it\nseems to have been usually believed that baptism was indispensable\nto give final efficacy to the decree of election in each\nindividual case.13 Augustine says, \"All are born under the power\nof the devil, held in chains by him as a jailer: baptism alone,\nthrough the force of Christ's redemptive work, breaks these chains\nand secures heaven.\" In regard to this necessity of baptism\nPelagius agreed with his great adversary, saving an unessential\nmodification, as we have seen before. The same may be said of\nCyprian, Tertullian, and many other leading Fathers. Again, the so\ncalled Athanasian Creed, which shows the prevalent opinion of the\nChurch in the fifth and sixth centuries, asserts that whoso\nbelieves not in the Trinity and kindred dogmas as therein laid\ndown \"without doubt shall perish everlastingly.\" In other words,\nassent of mind to the established creed of the Church is a vital\ncondition of salvation. Finally, in the writings of nearly all of\nthe Fathers we find frequent declarations of the necessity of\nmoral virtue, righteous conduct, and piety, as a condition of\nadmission into the kingdom of heaven. For example, Augustine says,\n\"Such as have been baptized, partaken of the sacraments, and\nremained always in the catholic faith, but have led wicked lives,\ncan have no hope of escaping eternal damnation.\" 14 These points\nwere not sharply defined, authoritatively established, and\nconsistently adhered to; and yet there was a pretty general\nagreement among the body of the Fathers that for actual salvation\nthere were three practical necessary conditions, baptism, a sound\nfaith, a good life.\n\n9 De Anima, sects. 7 et 55.\n\n10 Epist. CLXIV.\n\n11 Huidekoper, Belief of the First Three Centuries concerning\nChrist's Mission to the Under World.\n\n12 Augustine, De Civ. Del. lib. xx. cap. xv. Wiedenfeld, De\nExorcismi Origine, Mutatione, deque hujus Actus peragendi Ratione\nNeander, Church History, vol. i. p. 3\n\n13 Torrey's trans.\n\n14 De Civ. Dei., lib. xxi. cap. xxv.\n\n\nFourthly, the Fathers believed that none of the righteous dead\ncould be admitted into heaven itself, the abode of God and his\nangels, until after the second coming of Christ and the holding of\nthe general judgment; neither were any of the reprobate dead,\naccording to their view, to be thrust into hell itself until after\nthose events; but meanwhile all were detained in an intermediate\nstate, the justified in a peaceful region of the under world\nenjoying some foretaste of their future blessedness, the condemned\nin a dismal region of the same under world suffering some\nforetaste of their future torment.15 After the numerous evidences\ngiven in previous chapters of the prevalence of this view among\nthe Fathers, it would be superfluous to cite further authorities\nhere. We will only reply to an objection which may be urged. It\nmay be said, the Fathers believed that Enoch and Elijah were\ntranslated to heaven, also that the patriarchs, whom Christ\nrescued on his descent to Hades, were admitted thither, and,\nfurthermore, that the martyrs by special privilege were granted\nentrance there. The point is an important one. The reply turns on\nthe broad distinction made by the Fathers between heaven and\nParadise. Some of the Fathers regarded Paradise as one division of\nthe under world; some located it in a remote and blessed region of\nthe earth; others thought it was high in the air, but below the\ndwelling place of God.16 Now, it was to \"Paradise,\" not to heaven,\nthat the dying thief, penitent on the cross, was promised\nadmission. It was of \"Paradise,\" not of heaven, that Tertullian\nsaid \"the blood of the martyrs is the perfect key.\" So, too, when\nJerome, Chrysostom, and others speak of a few favored ones\ndelivered from the common fate before the day of judgment, it is\n\"Paradise,\" and not heaven, that is represented as being thrown\nopen to them. Irenaus says, \"Those who were translated were\ntranslated to the Paradise whence disobedient Adam was driven into\nthe world.\"17\n\nA notable attempt has been repeatedly made for example, by the\nfamous Dr. Coward, by Dodwell, and by some other more obscure\nwriters to prove that the Fathers of the Greek Church, in\nopposition to the Latin Fathers, denied the consciousness of the\nsoul during the interval from death to the resurrection, and\nmaintained that the soul died with the body and would be restored\nwith it at the last day. But this is an error arising from the\nmisinterpretation of the figurative terms in which the Greek\nFathers express themselves. Tatian, Justin, Theophilus, and\nIrenaus do not differ from the others in reality, but only in\nwords. The opinion that the soul is literally mortal is\nerroneously attributed to those Greek Fathers, who in truth no\nmore held it than Tertullian did. \"The death\" they mean is, to\nborrow their own language, \"deprived of the rays of Divine light,\nto bear a deathly immortality,\" (in immortalitate mortem\ntolerantes,) an eternal existence in the ghostly under world.18\nThe con\n\n15 They feel, as Novatian says, (De Trinitate, 1,) a prajudicium\nfuturi judicii. See also Ernesti, Excurs. de Veter. Patrum\nOpinione de Statu Medio Animor. a Corpore sejunctorum. In his\nLect. Acad. in Ep. ad Hebr.\n\n16 E. g., see Ambrose, De Paradiso.\n\n17 Adv. Hares., lib. v. cap. v.\n\n18 See this point ably argued in an academic dissertation\npublished at Konigsberg, 1827, bearing the title \"Antiquissimorum\nEcclesia Grsecte Patrum de Immortalitate Anima Sententia\nRecensentur.\"\n\n\nThey held that the inner man was originally a spirit [non-ASCII\ncharacters omitted] and a soul [non-ASCII characters omitted]\nblended and immortal, that is, indestructibly united and blessed.\nBut by sin the soul loses the spirit and becomes subject to death.\nthat is, to ignorance of its Divine origin, alienation from God,\ndarkness, and an abode in Hades. By the influences flowing from the\nmission of Christ, man is elevated again to conscious communion with\nGod, and the spirit is restored to the soul. \"Si restituitur, manet\n[non-ASCII characters omitted] fit autem [non-ASCII characters\nomitted]; si non restituitur, manet [non-ASCII characters omitted],\nfit autem [non-ASCII characters omitted], quod haud differt a morte.\"\ncordant doctrine of the Fathers as to the intermediate state of the\ndead was that, with the exception of a few admitted to Paradise,\nthey were in the under world waiting the fulness of time, when the\nworld should be judged and their final destination be assigned to them.\nAs Tertullian says, \"constituimus omnem animam apud inferos\nseguestrari in diem Domini.\"\n\nFinally, the Fathers expected that Christ would return from\nheaven, hold a general day of judgment, and consummate all things.\nThe earliest disciples seem to have looked anxiously, almost from\nhour to hour, for that awful crisis. But, as years rolled on and\nthe last apostle died, and it came not, the date was fixed more\nremotely; and, as other years passed away, and still no clear\nsigns of its arrival appeared, the date grew more and more\nindefinite. Some still looked for the solemn dawn speedily to\nbreak; others assigned it to the year 1000; others left the time\nutterly vague; but none gave up the doctrine. All agreed that\nsooner or later a time would come when the deep sky would open,\nand Christ, clothed in terrors and surrounded by pomp of angels,\nwould alight on the globe, when:\n\n\"The angel of the trumpet Shall split the charnel earth With his\nblast so clear and brave, And quicken the charnel birth At the\nroots of the grave, Till the dead all stand erect.\"\n\nAugustine, representing the catholic faith, says, \"The coming of\nElias, the conversion of the Jews, Antichrist's persecution, the\nsetting up of Christ's tribunal, the raising of the dead, the\nsevering of the good and the bad, the burning of the world, and\nits renovation, this is the destined order of events.\"19 The saved\nwere to be transported bodily to the eternal bliss of heaven; the\ndamned, in like manner, were to be banished forever to a fiery\nhell in the centre of the earth, there to endure uncomprehended\nagonies, both physical and spiritual, without any respite, without\nany end. There were important, and for a considerable period quite\nextensive, exceptions, to the belief in this last dogma:\nnevertheless, such was undeniably the prevailing view, the\northodox doctrine, of the patristic Church. The strict literality\nwith which these doctrines were held is strikingly shown in\nJerome's artless question: \"If the dead be not raised with flesh\nand bones, how can the damned, after the judgment, gnash their\nteeth in hell?\"\n\nDuring the period now under consideration there were great\nfluctuations, growths, changes, of opinion on three subjects in\nregard to which the public creeds did not prevent all freedom of\nthought by laying down definite propositions. We refer to baptism,\nthe millennium, and purgatory. Christian baptism was first simply\na rite of initiation into the Christian religion. Then it became\nmore distinctly a symbol of faith in Christ and in his gospel, and\nan emblem of a new birth. Next it was imagined to be literally\nefficacious to\n\n19 De Civ. Del, lib. xx. cap. 30, sect. 5.\n\n\npersonal salvation, solving the chains of the devil, washing off\noriginal sin, and opening the door of heaven.20 To trace the\ndoctrine through its historical variations and its logical\nwindings would require a large volume, and is not requisite for\nour present purpose.\n\nAlmost all the early Fathers believingly looked for a millennium,\na reign of Christ on earth with his saints for a thousand years.\nDaille has shown that this belief was generally held, though with\ngreat diversities of conception as to the form and features of the\ndoctrine.21 It was a Jewish notion which crept among the\nChristians of the first century and has been transmitted even to\nthe present day. Some supposed the millennium would precede the\ndestruction of the world, others that it would follow that\nterrible event, after a general renovation. None but the faithful\nwould have part in it; and at its close they would pass up to\nheaven. Irenaus quotes a tradition, delivered by Papias, that \"in\nthe millennium each vine will bear ten thousand branches, each\nbranch ten thousand twigs, each twig ten thousand clusters, each\ncluster ten thousand grapes, each grape yielding a hogshead of\nwine; and if any one plucks a grape its neighbors will cry, Take\nme: I am better!\" This, of course, was a metaphor to show what the\nplenty and the joy of those times would be. According to the\nheretics Cerinthus and Marcion, the millennium was to consist in\nan abundance of all sorts of sensual riches and delights. Many of\nthe orthodox Fathers held the same view, but less grossly; while\nothers made its splendors and its pleasures mental and moral.22\nOrigen attacked the whole doctrine with vehemence and cogency. His\nadmirers continued the warfare after him, and the belief in this\ncelestial Cocaigne suffered much damage and sank into comparative\nneglect. The subject rose into importance again at the approaching\nclose of the first chiliad of Christianity, but soon died away as\nthe excitement of that ominous epoch passed with equal\ndisappointment to the hopes and the fears of the believers. A\ngalvanized controversy has been carried on about it again in the\npresent century, chiefly excited by the modern sect of Second\nAdventists. Large volumes have recently appeared, principally\naiming to decide whether the millennium is to precede or to follow\nthe second coming of Christ! 23 The doctrine itself is a Jewish\nChristian figment supported only by a shadowy basis of fancy. The\ntruth contained in it, though mutilated and disguised, is that\nwhen the religion of Christ is truly enthroned over the earth,\nwhen his real teachings and life are followed, the kingdom of God\nwill indeed cover the world, and not for a thousand years only,\nbut unimaginable glory and happiness shall fill the dwellings of\nthe successive generations of men forever.24\n\nThe doctrine of a purgatory a place intermediate between Paradise\nand hell, where souls not too sinful were temporarily punished,\nand where their condition and stay were in the power of the Church\non earth, a doctrine which in the Middle Age became practically\n\n20 Neander, Planting and Training, Eng. trans. p. 102.\n\n21 De Usu Patrum, lib. ii. cap. 4.\n\n22 Munscher, Entwickelung der Lehre vom Tausendjahrigen Reiche in\nden Drei Ersten Jahrhunderten. In Henke's Magaz. b. vi. ss. 233\n254.\n\n23 See e. g. The End, by Dr. Cumming. The Second Advent, by D.\nBrown.\n\n24 Bush, On the Millennium. Bishop Russell, Discourses on the\nMillennium. Carroll, Geschichte des Chiliasmus.\n\n\nthe foremost instrument of ecclesiastical influence and income was\nthrough the age of the Fathers gradually assuming shape and\nfirmness. It seems to have been first openly avowed as a Church\ndogma and effectively organized as a working power by Pope Gregory\nthe Great, in the latter part of the sixth century.25 No more\nneeds to be said here, as the subject more properly belongs to the\nnext chapter.\n\nIt but remains in close to notice those opinions relating to the\nfuture life which were generally condemned as heresies by the\nFathers. One of the earliest of these was the destruction of the\nintermediate state and the denial of the general judgment by the\nassertion, which Paul charges so early as in his day upon Hymeneus\nand Philetus, \"that the resurrection has passed already;\" that is,\nthat the soul, when it leaves the body, passes immediately to its\nfinal destination. This opinion reappeared faintly at intervals,\nbut obtained very little prevalence in the early ages of the\nChurch. Hierax, an author who lived at Leontopolis in Egypt early\nin the fourth century, denied the resurrection of the body, and\nexcluded from the kingdom of heaven all who were married and all\nwho died before becoming moral agents.\n\nAnother heretical notion which attracted some attention was the\nopposite extreme from the foregoing, namely, that the soul totally\ndies with the body, and will be restored to life with it in the\ngeneral resurrection at the end of the world; an opinion held by\nan Arabian sect of Christians, who were vanquished in debate upon\nit by Origen, and renounced it.26\n\nStill another doctrine known among the Fathers was the belief that\nChrist, when he descended into the under world, saved and led away\nin triumph all who were there, Jews, pagans, good, bad, all,\nindiscriminately. This is number seventy nine in Augustine's list\nof the heresies. And there is now extant among the writings of\nPope Boniface VI, of the ninth century, a letter furiously\nassailing a man who had recently maintained this \"damnable\ndoctrine.\"\n\nThe numerous Gnostic sects represented by Valentinus, Cerinthus,\nMarcion, Basilides, and other less prominent names, held a system\nof speculation copious, complex, and of intensely Oriental\ncharacter. That portion of it directly connected with our subject\nmay be stated in few words. They taught that all souls pre existed\nin a world of pure light, but, sinning through the instigation and\ncraft of demons, they fell, were mixed with darkness and matter,\nand bound in bodies. Through sensual lusts and ignorance, they\nwere doomed to suffer after death in hell for various periods, and\nthen to be born again. Jehovah was the enemy of the true God, and\nwas the builder of this world and of hell, wherein he contrives to\nkeep his victims imprisoned by deceiving them to worship him and\nto live in errors and indulgences. Christ came, they said, to\nreveal the true God, unmask the infernal character and wiles of\nJehovah, rescue those whom he had cruelly shut up in hell, and\nteach men the real way of salvation. Accordingly, Marcion declared\nthat when Christ descended into the under world he released and\ntook into his own kingdom Cain, and the Sodomites, and all the\n\n25 Flugge, Geschichte der Lehre vom Zustande des Menschen nach dem\nTode in der Christlichen Kirche, absch. v. ss. 320-352.\n\n26 Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. lib. vi. cap. 37.\n\nGentiles who had refused to obey the demon worshipped by the Jews,\nbut left there, unsaved, Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, and the other\npatriarchs, together with all the prophets.27 The Gnostics agreed\nin attributing evil to matter, and made the means of redemption to\nconsist in fastings and scourgings of the flesh, with denial of\nall its cravings, and in lofty spiritual contemplations. Of\ncourse, with one accord they vehemently assailed the dogma of the\nresurrection of the flesh. Their views, too, were inconsistent\nwith the strict eternity of future hell punishments. The\nfundamental basis of their system was the same as that of nearly\nall the Oriental philosophies and religions, requiring an ascetic\nwar against the world of sense. The notion that the body is evil,\nand the cause of evil, was rife even among the orthodox Fathers;\nbut they stopped guardedly far short of the extreme to which the\nGnostics carried it, and indignantly rejected all the strange\nimaginations which those heretics had devised to explain the\nsubject of evil in a systematic manner.28 Augustine said, \"If we\nsay all sin comes from the flesh, we make the fleshless devil\nsinless!\" Hermogenes, some of whose views at least were tinged\nwith Gnosticism, believed the abyss of hell was formed by the\nconfluence of matter, and that the devil and all his demons would\nat last be utterly resolved into matter.29\n\nThe theological system of the Manichaan sect was in some of its\ncardinal principles almost identical with those of the Gnostics,\nbut it was still more imaginative and elaborate.30 It started with\nthe Persian doctrine of two antagonist deities, one dwelling with\ngood spirits in a world of light and love, the other with demons\nin a realm of darkness and horror. Upon a time the latter,\nsallying forth, discovered, far away in the vastness of space, the\nworld of light. They immediately assailed it. They were conquered\nafter a terrible struggle and driven back; but they bore with them\ncaptive a multitude of the celestial souls, whom they instantly\nmixed with darkness and gross matter. The good God built this\nworld of mingled light and darkness to afford these imprisoned\nsouls an opportunity to purge themselves and be restored to him.\nIn arranging the material substances to form the earth, a mass of\nevil fire, with no particle of good in it, was found. It had been\nleft in their flight by the vanquished princes of darkness. This\nwas cast out of the world and shut up somewhere in the dark air,\nand is the Manichaan hell, presided over by the king of the\ndemons. If a soul, while in the body, mortify the flesh, observe a\nsevere ascetic moral discipline, fix its thoughts, affections, and\nprayers on God and its native home, it will on leaving the body\nreturn to the celestial light. But if it neglect these duties and\nbecome more deeply entangled in the toils of depraved matter, it\nis cast into the awful fire of hell, where the cleansing flames of\ntorture partially purify it; and then it is born again and put on\na new trial. If after ten successive births twice in each of five\ndifferent forms the soul be still unreclaimed, then it is\npermanently remanded to the furnace of hell. At last, when all the\ncelestial souls seized by the princes of darkness have returned to\nGod, save those just mentioned, this world will be burned. Then\nthe children\n\n27 Irenaus, Adv. Herres., lib. i. cap. 22.\n\n28 Account of the Gnostic Sects, in Moshelm's Comm., II. Century,\nsect. 65.\n\n29 Lardner, Hist. of Heretics, ch. xviii. sect. 9.\n\n30 Baur, Das Manichaische Religionssystem.\n\n\nof God will lead a life of everlasting blessedness with him in\ntheir native land of light; the prince of evil, with his fiends,\nwill exist wretchedly in their original realm of darkness. Then\nall those souls whose salvation is hopeless shall be drawn out of\nhell and be placed as a cordon of watchmen and a phalanx of\nsoldiers entirely around the world of darkness, to guard its\nfrontiers forever and to see that its miserable inhabitants never\nagain come forth to invade the kingdom of light.31\n\nThe Christian after Christ's own pattern, trusting that when the\nsoul left the body it would find a home in some other realm of\nGod's universe where its experience would be according to its\ndeserts, capacity, and fittedness, sought to do the Father's will\nin the present, and for the future committed himself in faith and\nlove to the Father's disposal. The apostolic Christian, conceiving\nthat Christ would soon return to raise the dead and reward his\nown, eagerly looked for the arrival of that day, and strove that\nhe might be among the saints who, delivered or exempt from the\nHadean imprisonment, should reign with the triumphant Messiah on\nearth and accompany him back to heaven. The patristic Christian,\nlooking forward to the divided under world where all the dead must\nspend the interval from their decease to the general resurrection,\nshuddered at the thought of Gehenna, and wrestled and prayed that\nhis tarrying might be in Paradise until Christ should summon his\nchosen ones, justified from the great tribunal, to the Father's\npresence. The Manichaan Christian, believing the soul to be\nimprisoned in matter by demons who fought against God in a\nprevious life, struggled, by fasting, thought, prayer, and\npenance, to rescue the spirit from its fleshly entanglements, from\nall worldly snares and illusions, that it might be freed from the\nnecessity of any further abode in a material body, and, on the\ndissolution of its present tabernacle, might soar to its native\nlight in the blissful pleroma of eternal being.\n\n31 Mosheim, Comm., III. Century, sects. 44-52.\n\n\nCHAPTER II.\n\nMEDIAVAL DOCTRINE OF A FUTURE LIFE.\n\nTHE period of time covered by the present chapter reaches from the\nclose of the tenth century to the middle of the sixteenth, from\nthe first full establishment of the Roman Catholic theology and\nthe last general expectation of the immediate end of the world to\nthe commencing decline of mediaval faith and the successful\ninauguration of the Protestant Reformation. The principal mental\ncharacteristic of that age, especially in regard to the subject of\nthe future life, was fear. \"Never,\" says Michelet, \"can we know in\nwhat terrors the Middle Age lived.\" There was all abroad a living\nfear of men, fear of the State, fear of the Church, fear of God,\nfear of the devil, fear of hell, fear of death. Preaching\nconsisted very much in the invitation, \"Submit to the guidance of\nthe Church while you live,\" enforced by the threat, \"or you shall\ngo to hell when you die.\" Christianity was practically reduced to\nsome cruel metaphysical dogmas, a mechanical device for rescuing\nthe devil's captives from him, and a system of ritual magic in the\nhands of a priesthood who wielded an authority of supernatural\nterrors over a credulous and shuddering laity. It is true that the\ngenuine spirit and contents of Christianity were never wholly\nsuppressed. The love of God, the blessed mediation of the\nbenignant Jesus, the lowly delights of the Beatitudes, the\nredeeming assurance of pardon, the consoling, triumphant\nexpectation of heaven, were never utterly banished even from the\nbelievers of the Dark Age. Undoubtedly many a guilty but repentant\nsoul found forgiveness and rest, many a meek and spotless breast\nwas filled with pious rapture, many a dying disciple was comforted\nand inspired, by the good tidings proclaimed from priestly lips\neven then. No doubt the sacred awe and guarded peace surrounding\ntheir precincts, the divine lessons inculcated within their walls,\nthe pathetic prayers breathed before their altars, the traditions\nof saintly men and women who had drawn angelic visitants down to\ntheir cells and had risen long ago to be angels themselves, the\nstrains of unearthly melody bearing the hearts of the kneeling\ncrowd into eternity, no doubt these often made cathedral and\nconvent seem \"islands of sanctity amidst the wild, roaring,\ngodless sea of the world.\" Still, the chief general feeling of the\ntime in relation to the future life was unquestionably fear\nspringing from belief, the wedlock of superstitious faith and\nhorror.\n\nDuring the six centuries now under review the Roman Catholic\nChurch and theology were the only Christianity publicly\nrecognised. The heretics were few and powerless, and the papal\nsystem had full sway. Since the early part of the period\nspecified, the working theology of the Roman Church has undergone\nbut few, and, as pertaining to our subject, unimportant, changes\nor developments. Previous to that time her doctrinal scheme was\ninchoate, gradually assimilating foreign elements and developing\nitself step by step. The principal changes now concerning us to\nnotice in the passage from patristic eschatology as deducible, for\ninstance, from the works of Chrysostom, or as seen in the\n\"Apostles' Creed\" to mediaval eschatology  as displayed in the\n\"Summa\" of Thomas Aquinas or in the Catechism of Trent are these.\nThe supposititious details of the under world have been definitely\narranged in greater subdivision; heaven has been opened for the\nregular admission of certain souls; the loose notions about\npurgatory have been completed and consolidated; and the whole\ncombined scheme has been organized as a working instrument of\necclesiastical power and profit.\n\nThese changes seem to have been wrought out, first, by\ncontinual assimilations of Christianity to paganism,1 both in\ndoctrine and ceremony, to win over the heathen; and, secondly, by\nmodifications and growths to meet the exigencies of doctrinal\nconsistency and practical efficiency, exigencies repeatedly\narising from philosophical discussion and political opposition.\n\nThe degree in which papal Christianity was conformed to the\nprejudices and customs of the heathen believers, whose allegiance\nwas sought, is astonishing. It extended to hundreds of\nparticulars, from the most fundamental principles of theological\nspeculation to the most trivial details of ritual service. We\nshall mention only a few instances of this kind immediately\nbelonging to the subject we are treating. In the first place, the\nhierophant in the pagan Mysteries, and the initiatory rites, were\nthe prototypes of the Roman Catholic bishop and the ceremonies\nunder his direction.2 Christian baptism was made to be the same as\nthe pagan initiation: both were supposed to cleanse from sin and\nto secure for their subject a better fate in the future life: they\nwere both, therefore, sometimes delayed until just before death.3\nThe custom of initiating children into the Mysteries was also\ncommon, as infant baptism became.4 When the public treasury was\nlow, the magistrates sometimes raised a fund by recourse to the\ninitiating fees of the Mysteries, as the Christian popes\nafterwards collected money from the sale of pardons.\n\nIn the second place, the Roman Catholic canonization was the same\nas the pagan apotheosis. Among the Gentiles, the mass of mankind\nwere supposed to descend to Hades at death; but a few favored ones\nwere raised to the sky, deified, and a sort of worship paid to\nthem. So the Roman Church taught that nearly all souls passed to\nthe subterranean abodes, but that martyrs and saints were admitted\nto heaven and might lawfully be prayed to.5\n\nThirdly, the heathen under world was subdivided into several\nregions, wherein different persons were disposed according to\ntheir deserts. The worst criminals were in the everlasting penal\nfire of Tartarus; the best heroes and sages were in the calm\nmeadows of Elysium; the hapless children were detained in the\ndusky borders outside the grim realm of torture; and there was a\npurgatorial place where those not too guilty were cleansed from\ntheir stains. In like manner, the Romanist theologians divided the\nunder world into four parts: hell for the final abode of the\nstubbornly wicked; one limbo for the painless, contented tarrying\nof the good patriarchs who died before the advent of Christ had\nmade salvation possible, and another limbo for the sad and pallid\nresting place of those children who died unbaptized; purgatory, in\nwhich expiation is offered in agony for sins committed on earth\nand unatoned for.6\n\n1 Middleton, Letter from Rome, showing an exact conformity between\nPopery and Paganism.\n\n2 Lobeck, Aglaophamus, lib. i. sect. 6. Mosheim's Comm., ch. i.\nsect. 13.\n\n3 Warburton, Div. Leg., book ii. sect. 4.\n\n4 Terence, Phormio, act i scene 1.\n\n5 Council of Trent, sess. vi. can. xxx. Sess. xxv.: Decree on\nInvocation of Saints.\n\n6 See Milman, Hist. Latin Christianity, book xiv. ch. ii.\n\n\nBefore proceeding further, we must trace the prevalence and\nprogress of the doctrine of purgatory a little as it was known\nbefore its embodiment in mediaval mythology, and then as it was\nembodied there. The fundamental doctrine of the Hindu hell was\nthat a certain amount of suffering undergone there would expiate a\ncertain amount of guilt incurred here. When the disembodied soul\nhad endured a sufficient quantity of retributive and purifying\npain, it was loosed, and sent on earth in a new body. It was\nlikewise a Hindu belief that the souls of deceased parents might\nbe assisted out of this purgatorial woe by the prayers and\nofferings of their surviving children.7 The same doctrine was held\nby the Persians. They believed souls could be released from\npurgatory by the prayers, sacrifices, and good deeds of righteous\nsurviving descendants and friends. \"Zoroaster said he could, by\nprayer, send any one he chose to heaven or to hell.\" 8 Such\nrepresentations are found obscurely in the Vendidad and more fully\nin the Bundehesh. The Persian doctrine that the living had power\nto affect the condition of the dead is further indicated in the\nfact that, from a belief that married persons were peculiarly\nhappy in the future state, they often hired persons to be espoused\nto such of their relatives as had died in celibacy.9 The doctrine\nof purgatory was known and accepted among the Jews too. In the\nSecond Book of Maccabees we read the following account:  \"Judas\nsent two thousand pieces of silver to Jerusalem to defray the\nexpense of a sin offering to be offered for the sins of those who\nwere slain, doing therein very well and honestly, in that he was\nmindful of the resurrection. For if he had not hoped that they who\nwere slain should rise again, it had been superfluous and vain to\npray for the dead. Whereupon he made an atonement for the dead,\nthat they might be delivered from sin.\"10 The Rabbins taught that\nchildren by sin offerings could help their parents out of their\nmisery in the infernal world.11 They taught, furthermore, that all\nsouls except holy ones, like those of Rabbi Akiba and his\ndisciples, must lave themselves in the fire river of Gehenna; that\ntherein they shall be like salamanders; that the just shall soon\nbe cleansed in the fire river, but the wicked shall be lastingly\nburned.12 Again, we find this doctrine prevailing among the\nRomans. In the great Forum was a stone called \"Lapis Manalis,\"\ndescribed by Festus, which was supposed to cover the entrance to\nhell. This was solemnly lifted three times a year, in order to let\nthose souls flow up whose sins had been purged away by their\ntortures or had been remitted in consideration of the offerings\nand services paid for them by the living. Virgil describes how\nsouls are purified by the action of wind, water, and fire.13 The\nfeast day of purgatory observed by papal Rome corresponds to the\nLemuria celebrated by pagan Rome, and rests on the same doctrinal\nbasis. In the Catholic countries of Europe at the present time, on\nAll Saints' Day, festoons of sweet smelling flowers are hung on\nthe tomb stones, and the people kneeling there repeat the prayer\nprescribed for releasing the souls of their relatives and friends\nfrom the plagues of purgatory. There is a notable coincidence\nbetween the Buddhist\n\n7 See references to \"Sraddha\" in index to Vishnu Purana.\n\n8 Atkinson's trans. of the Shah Nameh, p. 386.\n\n9 Richardson, Dissertation on the Language, Literature, and\nManners of the Eastern Nations, p. 347.\n\n10 Cap. xii. 42-45.\n\n11 Eisenmenger, Entdecktes Judenthum, th. ii. kap. vi. s. 357.\n\n12 Kabbala Denudata, tom ii. pars. i. pp. 108, 109, 113.\n\n13 Aneid, lib. vi. 1. 739.\n\n\nand the Romanist usages. Throughout the Chinese Empire, during the\nseventh moon of every year, prayers are offered up accompanied by\nilluminations and other rites for the release of souls in\npurgatory. At these times the Buddhist priests hang up large\npictures, showing forth the frightful scenes in the other world,\nto induce the people to pay them money for prayers in behalf of\ntheir suffering relatives and friends in purgatory.14\n\nTraces of belief in a purgatory early appear among the Christians.\nMany of the gravest Fathers of the first five centuries naturally\nconceived and taught, as is indeed intrinsically reasonable, that\nafter death some souls will be punished for their sins until they\nare cleansed, and then will be released from pain. The Manichaans\nimagined that all souls, before returning to their native heaven,\nmust be borne first to the moon, where with good waters they would\nbe washed pure from outward filth, and then to the sun, where they\nwould be purged by good fires from every inward stain.15 After\nthese lunar and solar lustrations, they were fit for the eternal\nworld of light. But the conception of purgatory as it was held by\nthe early Christians, whether orthodox Fathers or heretical sects,\nwas merely the just and necessary result of applying to the\nsubject of future punishment the two ethical ideas that punishment\nshould partake of degrees proportioned to guilt, and that it\nshould be restorative. Jeremy Taylor conclusively argues that the\nprayers for the dead used by the early Christians do not imply any\nbelief in the Papal purgatory.16 The severity and duration of the\nsufferings of the dead were not supposed to be in the power of the\nliving, either their relatives or the clergy, but to depend on the\nmoral and physical facts of the case according to justice and\nnecessity, qualified only by the mercy of God.\n\nPope Gregory the Great, in the sixth century, either borrowing\nsome of the more objectionable features of the purgatory doctrine\npreviously held by the heathen, or else devising the same things\nhimself from a perception of the striking adaptedness of such\nnotions to secure an enviable power to the Church, constructed,\nestablished, and gave working efficiency to the dogmatic scheme of\npurgatory ever since firmly defended by the papal adherents as an\nintegral part of the Roman Catholic system.17 The doctrine as\nmatured and promulgated by Gregory, giving to the representatives\nof the Church an almost unlimited power over purgatory, rapidly\ngrew into favor with the clergy and sank with general conviction\ninto the hopes and fears of the laity. Venerable Bede, in the\neighth century, gives a long account of the fully developed\ndoctrine concerning purgatory, hell, paradise, and heaven. It is\nnarrated in the form of a vision seen by Drithelm, who, in a\ntrance, visits the regions which, on his return, he describes. The\nwhole thing is gross, literal, horrible, closely resembling\nseveral well known descriptions given under similar circumstances\nand preserved in ancient heathen writers.18 The Church, seeing how\nadmirably this instrument was calculated to promote her interest\nand deepen her power, left hardly any means untried to enlarge its\nsweep and intensify its operation. Accordingly, from the ninth to\nthe sixteenth century, no doctrine was so central, prominent, and\neffective in the common teaching and\n\n14 Asiatic Journal, 1840, p. 210, note.\n\n15 Mosheim, Comm., III. Century, sect. 49, note 3.\n\n16 Dissuasive from Popery, part ii. book ii. sect. 2.\n\n17 Edgar, Variations of Popery, ch. xvi.\n\n18 Hist. Ecc., lib. v. cap. xii. See also lib. iii. cap. xix.\n\n\npractice of the Church, no fear was so widely spread and vividly\nfelt in the bosom of Christendom, as the doctrine and the fear of\npurgatory.\n\nThe Romanist theory of man's condition in the future life is this,\nin brief. By the sin of Adam, heaven was closed against him and\nall his posterity, and the devil acquired a right to shut up their\ndisembodied souls in the under world. In consequence of the\n\"original sin\" transmitted from Adam, every human being, besides\nsuffering the other woes flowing from sin, was helplessly doomed\nto the under world after death. In addition to this penalty, each\none must also answer for his own personal sins. Christ died to\n\"deliver mankind from sin,\" \"discharge the punishment due them,\"\nand \"rescue them from the tyranny of the devil.\" He \"descended\ninto the under world,\" \"subdued the devil,\" \"despoiled the\ndepths,\" \"rescued the Fathers and just souls,\" and \"opened\nheaven.\"19 \"Until he rose, heaven was shut against every child of\nAdam, as it still is to those who die indebted.\" \"The price paid\nby the Son of God far exceeded our debts.\" The surplus balance of\nmerits, together with the merits accruing from the supererogatory\ngood works of the saints and from the Divine sacrifice continually\noffered anew by the sacrament of the mass, constituted a reserved\ntreasure upon which the Church was authorized to draw in behalf of\nany one she chose to favor. The localities of the future life were\nthese:20 Limbus Patrum, or Abraham's Bosom, a place of peace and\nwaiting, where the good went who died before Christ; Limbus\nInfantum, a mild, palliated hell, where the children go who, since\nChrist, have died unbaptized; Purgatory, where all sinners suffer\nuntil they are purified, or are redeemed by the Church, or until\nthe last day; Hell, or Gehenna, whither the hopelessly wicked have\nalways been condemned; and Heaven, whither the spotlessly good\nhave been admitted since the ascension of Jesus. At the day of\njudgment the few human souls who have reached Paradise, together\nwith the multitudes that crowd the regions of Gehenna, Purgatory,\nand Limbo, will reassume their bodies: the intermediate states\nwill then be destroyed, and when their final sentence is\npronounced all will depart forever,  the acquitted into heaven,\nthe condemned into hell. In the mean time, the poor victims of\npurgatory, by the prayers of the living for them, by the transfer\nof good works to their account, above all, by the celebration of\nmasses in their behalf, may be relieved, rescued, translated to\nparadise. The words breathed by the spirit of the murdered King of\nDenmark in the ears of the horror stricken Hamlet paint the\npopular belief of that age in regard to the grisly realm where\nguilty souls were plied with horrors whereof, but that they were\nforbidden:\n\n\"To tell the secrets of their prison house, They could a tale\nunfold whose lightest word Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy\nyoung blood, Make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their\nspheres, Thy knotted and combined locks to part, And each\nparticular hair to stand on end Like quills upon the fretful\nporcupine.\"\n\n19 Catechism of the Council of Trent.\n\n20 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologia, pars Suppl. Quast. 69.\n\n\nA few specimens of the stories embodying the ideas and\nsuperstitions current in the Middle Age may better illustrate the\ncharacteristic belief of the time than much abstract description.\nAn unquestioning faith in the personality, visibility, and\nextensive agency of the devil was almost universal. Ascetics,\nsaints, bishops, peasants, philosophers, kings, Gregory the Great,\nMartin Luther, all testified that they had often seen him. The\nmediaval conception of the devil was sometimes comical, sometimes\nawful. Grimm says, \"He was Jewish, heathenish, Christian,\nidolatrous, elfish, titanic, spectral, all at once.\" He was \"a\nsoul snatching wolf,\" a \"hell hound,\" a \"whirlwind hammer;\" now an\ninfernal \"parody of God\" with \"a mother who mimics the Virgin\nMary,\" and now the \"impersonated soul of evil.\"21 The well known\nstory of Faust and the Devil, which in so many forms spread\nthrough Christendom, is so deeply significant of the faith and\nlife of the age in which it arose that a volume would be required\nto unfold all its import. There was an old tradition that the\nstudents of necromancy or the black art, on reaching a certain\npitch of proficiency, were obliged to run through a subterranean\nhall, where the devil literally caught the hindmost unless he sped\nso swiftly that the arch enemy could only seize his shadow, and in\nthat case, a veritable Peter Schlemihl, he never cast a shadow\nafterwards! A man stood by his furnace one day casting eyes for\nbuttons. The devil came up and asked what he was doing. \"Casting\neyes,\" replied the man. \"Can you cast a pair for me?\" quoth the\ndevil. \"That I can,\" says the man: \"will you have them large or\nsmall?\" \"Oh, very large,\" answered the devil. He then ties the\nfiend on a bench and pours the molten lead into his eyes. Up jumps\nthe devil, with the bench on his back, flees howling, and has\nnever been seen since! There was also in wide circulation a wild\nlegend to the effect that a man made a compact with the devil on\nthe condition that he should secure a new victim for hell once in\na century. As long as he did this he should enjoy life, riches,\npower, and a limited ubiquity; but failing a fresh victim at the\nend of each hundred years his own soul should be the forfeit. He\nlived four or five centuries, and then, in spite of his most\ndesperate efforts, was disappointed of his expected victim on the\nlast night of the century; and when the clock struck twelve the\ndevil burst into his castle on a black steed and bore him off in a\nstorm of lightning amidst the crash of thunders and the shrieks of\nfiends. St. Britius once during mass saw the devil in church\ntaking account of the sins the congregation were committing. He\ncovered the parchment all over, and, afraid of forgetting some of\nthe offences, seized the scroll in his teeth and claws to stretch\nit out. It snapped, and his head was smartly bumped against the\nwall. St. Britius laughed aloud. The officiating priest rebuked\nhim, but, on being told what had happened, improved the accident\nfor the edification of his hearers.22 On the bursting of a certain\nglacier on the Alps, it is said the devil was seen swimming down\nthe Rhone, a drawn sword in one hand, a golden ball in the other:\nopposite the town of Martigny, he cried, \"Rise,\" and instantly the\nobedient river swelled above its banks and destroyed the town.\n\nIgnes fatui, hovering about marshes and misty places, were thought\nto be the spirits of unbaptized children endeavoring to guide\ntravellers to the nearest water. A kindred fancy\n\n21 Deutsche Mythologie, cap. xxxiii.: Teufel.\n\n22 Quarterly Review, Jan. 1820: Pop. Myth. of the Middle Ages.\n\n\nalso heard a spectral pack, called \"yell hounds,\" afterwards\ncorrupted to \"hell hounds,\" composed of the souls of unbaptized\nchildren, which could not rest, but roamed and howled through the\nwoods all night.23 A touching popular myth said, the robin's\nbreast is so red because it flies into hell with drops of water in\nits bill to relieve the children there, and gets scorched.\n\nIn 1171, Silo, a philosopher, implored a dying pupil of his to\ncome back and reveal his state in the other world. A few days\nafter his death the scholar appeared in a cowl of flames covered\nwith logical propositions. He told Silo that he was from\npurgatory, that the cowl weighed on him worse than a tower, and\nsaid he was doomed to wear it for the pride he took in sophisms.\nAs he thus spoke he let fall a drop of sweat on his master's hand,\npiercing it through. The next day Silo said to his scholars, \"I\nleave croaking to frogs, cawing to crows, and vain things to the\nvain, and hie me to the logic which fears not death.\"\n\n\"Linquo coax ranis, cras corvis, vanaque vanis, Ad logicen pergo\nqua mortis non timet ergo.\" 24\n\nIn the long, quaint poem, \"Vision of William concerning Piers\nPloughman,\" written probably by Robert Langland about the year\n1362, there are many things illustrative of our subject. \"I,\nTrojanus, a true knight, after death was condemned to hell for\ndying unbaptized. But, on account of my mercy and truth in\nadministering the laws, the pope wished me to be saved; and God\nmercifully heard him and saved me without the help of masses.\"25\n\"Ever since the fall of Adam, Age has shaken the Tree of Human\nLife, and the devil has gathered the fruit into hell.\"26 The\nauthor gives a most spirited account of Christ's descent into the\nunder world after his death, his battle with the devils there, his\ntriumph over them, his rescue of Adam, and other particulars.27 In\nthis poem, as in nearly all the extant productions of that period,\nthere are copious evidences of the extent and power of the popular\nfaith in the devil and in purgatory, and in their close connection\nwith the present life, a faith nourishingly embodied in thousands\nof singular tales. Thomas Wright has collected many of these in\nhis antiquarian works. He relates an amusing incident that once\nbefell a minstrel who had been borne into hell by a devil. The\ndevils went forth in a troop to ensnare souls on earth. Lucifer\nleft the minstrel in charge of the infernal regions, promising, if\nhe let no souls escape, to treat him on the return with a fat monk\nroasted, or a usurer dressed with hot sauce. But while the fiends\nwere away St. Peter came, in disguise, and allured the minstrel to\nplay at dice, and to stake the souls which were in torture under\nhis care. Peter won, and carried them off in triumph. The devils,\ncoming back and finding the fires all out and hell empty, kicked\nthe hapless minstrel out, and Lucifer swore a big oath that no\nminstrel should ever darken the door of hell again!\n\nThe mediaval belief in a future life was practically concentrated,\nfor the most part, around the ideas of Satan, purgatory, the last\njudgment, hell. The faith in Christ, God,\n\n23 Allies, Antiquities of Worcestershire, 2d ed. p. 256.\n\n24 Michelet, Hist. de France, livre iv. chap. ix.\n\n25 Vision of Dowell, part iii.\n\n26 Vision of Dobet, part ii.\n\n27 Ibid., part iv.\n\n\nheaven, was much rarer and less influential. Neander says, \"The\ninmost distinction of mediaval experience was an awful sense of\nanother life and an invisible world.\" A most piteous illustration\nof the conjoined faith and fear of that age is furnished by an old\ndialogue between the \"Soul and the Body\" recently edited by\nHalliwell, an expression of humble trust and crouching horror\nirresistibly pathetic in its simplicity.28 A flood of revealing\nlight is given as to the energy with which the doctrine of\npurgatory impressed itself on the popular mind, by the two facts,\nfirst, that the Council of Auxerre, in 1578, prohibited the\nadministration of the eucharist to the dead; and, secondly, that\nin the eleventh and twelfth centuries \"crosses of absolution\" that\nis, crosses cut out of sheet lead, with the formula of absolution\nengraved on them were quite commonly buried with the dead.29 The\neager sincerity of the mediaval belief in another life is\nattested, too, by the correspondence of the representations of the\ndead in their legends to the appearance, disposition, and pursuits\nthey had in life. No oblivious draught, no pure spiritualization,\nhad freed the departed souls from earthly bonds and associations.\nLight pretexts drew them back to their wonted haunts. A buried\ntreasure allowed them no rest till they had led some one to raise\nit. An unfinished task, an uncancelled obligation, forced them\nagain to the upper world. In ruined castles the ghosts of knights,\nin their accustomed habiliments, held tournaments and carousals.\nThe priest read mass; the hunter pursued his game; the spectre\nrobber fell on the benighted traveller.30 It is hard for us now to\nreproduce, even in imagination, the fervid and frightful\nearnestness of the popular faith of the Middle Age in the\nramifying agency of the devil and in the horrors of purgatory. We\nwill try to do it, in some degree, by a series of illustrations\naiming to show at once how prevalent such a belief and fear were,\nand how they became so prevalent.\n\nFirst, we may specify the teaching of the Church whose authority\nin spiritual concerns bore almost unquestioned sway over the minds\nof more than eighteen generations. By the logical subtleties of\nher scholastic theologians, by the persuasive eloquence of her\npopular preachers, by the frantic ravings of her fanatic devotees,\nby the parading proclamation of her innumerable pretended\nmiracles, by the imposing ceremonies of her dramatic ritual,\nalmost visibly opening heaven and hell to the over awed\ncongregation, by her wonder working use of the relics of martyrs\nand saints to exorcise demons from the possessed and to heal the\nsick, and by her anathemas against all who were supposed to be\nhostile to her formulas, she infused the ideas of her doctrinal\nsystem into the intellect, heart, and fancy of the common people,\nand nourished the collateral horrors, until every wave of her wand\nconvulsed the world. In a pastoral letter addressed to the\nCarlovingian prince Louis, the grandson of Charlemagne,  a letter\nprobably composed by the famous Hincmar, bearing date 858, and\nsigned by the Bishops of Rheims and Rouen, a Gallic synod\nauthoritatively declared that Charles Martel was damned; \"that on\nthe opening of his tomb the spectators were affrighted by a smell\nof fire and the aspect of a horrid dragon, and that a saint of the\ntimes was indulged with a pleasant vision of the soul and body of\nthis great hero burning to all eternity in the abyss of hell.\"\n\n28 Early English Miscellanies, No. 2.\n\n29 London Antiquaries' Archaologis, vol. xxxv. art. 22.\n\n30 Thorpe, Northern Mythology, vol. i., appendix.\n\n\nA tremendous impulse, vivifying and emphasizing the eschatological\nnotions of the time, an impulse whose effects did not cease when\nit died, was imparted by that frightful epidemic expectation of\nthe impending end of the world which wellnigh universally\nprevailed in Christendom about the year 1000. Many of the charters\ngiven at that time commence with the words, \"As the world is now\ndrawing to a close.\" 31 This expectation drew additional strength\nfrom the unutterable sufferings famine, oppression, pestilence,\nwar, superstition  then weighing on the people. \"The idea of the\nend of the world,\" we quote from Michelet, \"sad as that world was,\nwas at once the hope and the terror of the Middle Age. Look at\nthose antique statues of the tenth and eleventh centuries, mute,\nmeager, their pinched and stiffened lineaments grinning with a\nlook of living suffering allied to the repulsiveness of death. See\nhow they implore, with clasped hands, that desired yet dreaded\nmoment when the resurrection shall redeem them from their\nunspeakable sorrows and raise them from nothingness into existence\nand from the grave to God.\"\n\nFurthermore, this superstitious character of the mediaval belief\nin the future life acquired breadth and intensity from the\nprofound general ignorance and trembling credulousness of that\nwhole period on all subjects. It was an age of marvels, romances,\nfears, when every landscape of life \"wore a strange hue, as if\nseen through the sombre medium of a stained casement.\" While\ncongregations knelt in awe beneath the lifted Host, and the image\nof the dying Savior stretched on the rood glimmered through clouds\nof incense, perhaps an army of Flagellants would march by the\ncathedral, shouting, \"The end of the world is at hand!\" filling\nthe streets with the echoes of their torture as they lashed their\nnaked backs with knotted cords wet with blood; and no soul but\nmust shudder with the infection of horror as the dreadful notes of\nthe \"Dies Iioe\" went sounding through the air. The narratives of\nthe desert Fathers, the miracles wrought in convent cells, the\nvisions of pillar saints, the thrilling accompaniments of the\nCrusades, and other kindred influences, made the world a perpetual\nmirage. The belching of a volcano was the vomit of uneasy hell.\nThe devil stood before every tempted man, Ghosts walked in every\nnightly dell. Ghastly armies were seen contending where the aurora\nborealis hung out its bloody banners. The Huns under Attila,\nravaging Southern Europe, were thought to be literal demons who\nhad made an irruption from the pit. The metaphysician was in peril\nof the stake as a heretic, the natural philosopher as a magician.\nA belief in witchcraft and a trust in ordeals were universal, even\nfrom Pope Eugenius, who introduced the trial by cold water, and\nKing James, who wrote volumes on magic, to the humblest monk who\nshuddered when passing the church crypt, and the simplest peasant\nwho quaked in his homeward path at seeing a will o' the wisp.\n\"Denounced by the preacher and consigned to the flames by the\njudge, the wizard received secret service money from the Cabinet\nto induce him to destroy the hostile armament as it sailed before\nthe wind.\" As a vivid writer has well said, \"A gloomy mist of\ncredulity enwrapped the cathedral and the hall of justice, the\ncottage and the throne. In the dank shadows of the universal\nignorance a thousand superstitions, like foul animals of night,\nwere propagated and nourished.\"\n\n31 Hallam, Middle Ages, ch. ix.\n\n\nThe beliefs and excitements of the mediaval period partook of a\nsort of epidemic character, diffusing and working like a\ncontagion.32 There were numberless throngs of pilgrims to famous\nshrines, immense crowds about the localities of popular legends,\nrelics, or special grace. In the magnetic sphere of such a fervid\nand credulous multitude, filled with the kindling interaction of\nenthusiasm, of course prodigies would abound, fables would\nflourish, and faith would be doubly generated and fortified. In\ncommemoration of a miraculous act of virtue performed by St.\nFrancis, the pope offered to all who should enter the church at\nAssisi between the eve of the 1st and the eve of the 2d of August\neach year that being the anniversary of the saint's achievement a\nfree pardon for all the sins committed by them since their\nbaptism. More than sixty thousand pilgrims sometimes flocked\nthither on that day. Every year some were crushed to death in the\nsuffocating pressure at the entrance of the church. Nearly two\nthousand friars walked in procession; and for a series of years\nthe pilgrimage to Portiuncula might have vied with that to the\ntemple of Juggernaut.33\n\nNothing tends more to strengthen any given belief than to see it\neverywhere carried into practice and to act in accordance with it.\nThus was it with the mediaval doctrine of the future life. Its\napplications and results were constantly and universally thrust\ninto notice by the sale of indulgences and the launching of\nexcommunications. Early in the ninth century, Charlemagne\ncomplained that the bishops and abbots forced property from\nfoolish people by promises and threats: \"Suadendo de coelestis\nregni beatitudine, comminando de oeterno supplicio inferni.\"34 The\nrival mendicant orders, the Franciscans and the Dominicans,\nacquired great riches and power by the traffic in indulgences.\nThey even had the impudence to affirm that the members of their\norders were privileged above all other men in the next world.\nMilton alludes to those who credited these monstrous assumptions:\n\"And they who, to be sure of Paradise, Dying, put on the weeds of\nDominic, Or in Franciscan think to pass disguised.\"\n\nThe Council of Basle censured the claim of the Franciscan monks\nthat their founder annually descended to purgatory and led thence\nto heaven the souls of all those who had belonged to his order.\nThe Carmelites also asserted that the Virgin Mary appeared to\nSimon Stockius, the general of their order, and gave him a solemn\npromise that the souls of such as left the world with the\nCarmelite scapulary upon their shoulders should be infallibly\npreserved from eternal damnation. Mosheim says that Pope Benedict\nXIV. was an open defender of this ridiculous fiction.35\n\nIf any one would appreciate the full mediaval doctrine of the\nfuture life, whether with respect to the hair drawn scholastic\nmetaphysics by which it was defended, or with respect to the\nconcrete forms in which the popular apprehension held it, let him\nread the Divina Commedia of Dante; for it is all there. Whoso with\nadequate insight and sympathy peruses\n\n32 Hecker, Epidemics of the Middle Ages.\n\n33 Quarterly Review, July, 1819: article on Monachism.\n\n34 Perry, History of the Franks, p. 467.\n\n35 Eccl. Hist., XIII. Century, part ii. ch. 2, sect. 29.\n\n\nthe pages of the immortal Florentine at whom the people pointed as\nhe walked the streets, and said, \"There goes the man who has been\nin hell\" will not fail to perceive with what a profound sincerity\nthe popular breast shuddered responsive to ecclesiastical threats\nand purgatorial woes.\n\nThe tremendous moral power of this solitary work lies in the fact\nthat it is a series of terrific and fascinating tableaux,\nembodying the idea of inflexible poetic justice impartially\nadministered upon king and varlet, pope and beggar, oppressor and\nvictim, projected amidst the unalterable necessities of eternity,\nand moving athwart the lurid abyss and the azure cope with an\nintense distinctness that sears the gazer's eyeballs. The Divina\nCommedia, with a wonderful truth, also reflects the feeling of the\nage when it was written in this respect, that there is a grappling\nforce of attraction, a compelling realism, about its \"Purgatory\"\nand \"Hell\" which are to be sought in vain in the delineations of\nits \"Paradise.\" The mediaval belief in a future life had for its\ncentral thought the day of judgment, for its foremost emotion\nterror.36\n\nThe roots of this faith were unquestionably fertilized, and the\ndevelopment of this fear quickened, to a very great extent, by\ndeliberate and systematic delusions. One of the most celebrated of\nthese organized frauds was the gigantic one perpetrated under the\nauspices of the Dominican monks at Berne in 1509, the chief actors\nin which were unmasked and executed. Bishop Burnet has given an\nextremely interesting account of this affair in his volume of\ntravels. Suffice it to say, the monks appeared at midnight in the\ncells of various persons, now impersonating devils, in horrid\nattire, breathing flames and brimstone, now claiming to be the\nsouls of certain sufferers escaped from purgatory, and again\npretending to be celebrated saints, with the Virgin Mary at their\nhead. By the aid of mechanical and chemical arrangements, they\nwrought miracles, and played on the terror and credulity of the\nspectators in a frightful manner.37 There is every reason to\nsuppose that such deceptions  miracles in which secret speaking\ntubes, asbestos, and phosphorus were indispensable38 were most\nfrequent in those ages, and were as effective as the actors were\nunscrupulous and the dupes unsuspicious. Here is revealed one of\nthe foremost of the causes which made the belief of the Dark Age\nin the numerous appearances of ghosts and devils so common and so\nintense that it gave currency to the notion that the swarming\nspirits of purgatory were disembogued from dusk till dawn. So the\nDanish monarch, revisiting the pale glimpses of the moon, says to\nHamlet, \"I am thy father's spirit, Doom'd for a certain time to walk the\nnight, And for the day confined to fast in fires, Till the foul\ncrimes done in my days of nature Are burnt and purged away.\"\n\n36 If any one would see in how many forms the faith in hell and in\nthe devil appeared, let him look over the pages of the\n\"Dictionnaire Infernal,\" by J. Collin de Plancy.\n\n37 Maclaine's trans, of Mosheim's Eccl. Hist., vol. ii. p. 10,\nnote.\n\n38 Manufactures of the Ancients, pub. by Harper and Brothers,\n1845, part iv. ch. 3.\n\n\nWhen the shadows began to fall thick behind the sunken sun, these\npoor creatures were thought to spring from their beds of torture,\nto wander amidst the scenes of their sins or to haunt the living;\nbut at the earliest scent of morn, the first note of the cock,\nthey must hie to their fire again. Midnight was the high noon of\nghostly and demoniac revelry on the earth. As the hour fell with\nbrazen clang from the tower, the belated traveller, afraid of the\nrustle of his own dress, the echo of his own footfall, the\nwavering of his own shadow, afraid of his own thoughts, would\nbreathe the suppressed invocation, \"Angels and ministers of grace\ndefend us!\" as the idea crept curdling over his brain and through\nhis veins, \"It is the very witching time of night, When\nchurchyards yawn and hell itself breathes out Contagion to this\nworld.\"\n\nWorking in alliance with the foregoing forces of superstition was\nthe powerful influence of the various forms of insanity which\nremarkably abounded in the Middle Age. The insane person, it was\nbelieved, was possessed by a demon. His ravings, his narratives,\nwere eagerly credited; and they were usually full of infernal\nvisions, diabolical interviews, encounters with apparitions, and\nevery thing that would naturally arise in a deranged and\npreternaturally sensitive mind from the chief conceptions then\ncurrent concerning the invisible world.39\n\nThe principal works of art exposed to the people were such as\nserved to impress upon their imaginations the Church doctrine of\nthe future life in all its fearfulness, with its vigorous dramatic\npoints. In the cathedral at Antwerp there is a representation of\nhell carved in wood, whose marvellous elaborateness astonishes,\nand whose painful expressiveness oppresses, every beholder. With\nwhat excruciating emotions the pious crowds must have contemplated\nthe harrowingly vivid paintings of the Inferno, by Orcagna, still\nto be seen in the Campo Santo of Pisa! In the cathedral at\nCanterbury there was a window on which was painted a detailed\npicture of Christ vanquishing the devils in their own domain; but\nwe believe it has been removed. However, the visitor still sees on\nthe fine east window of York Cathedral the final doom of the\nwicked, hell being painted as an enormous mouth; also in the west\nfront of Lincoln Cathedral an ancient bas relief representing hell\nas a monstrous mouth vomiting flame and serpents, with two human\nbeings walking into it. The minster at Freyburg has a grotesque\nbas relief over its main portal, representing the Judgment. St.\nNicholas stands in the centre, and the Savior is seated above him.\nOn the left, an angel weighs mankind in a huge pair of scales, and\na couple of malicious imps try to make the human scale kick the\nbeam. Underneath, St. Peter is ushering the good into Paradise. On\nthe right is shown a devil, with a pig's head, dragging after him\na throng of the wicked. He also has a basket on his back filled\nwith figures whom he is in the act of flinging into a reeking\ncaldron stirred by several imps. Hell is typified, on one side, by\nthe jaws of a monster crammed to the teeth with reprobates, and\nSatan is seen sitting on his throne above them. A recent traveller\nwrites from\n\n39 De Boismont, Rational Hist. of Hallucivatious, ch. xiv.\n\n\nNaples, \"The favorite device on the church walls here is a\nvermilion picture of a male and a female soul, respectively up to\nthe waist [the waist of a soul!] in fire, with an angel over each\nwatering them from a water pot. This is meant to get money from\nthe compassionate to pay for the saying of masses in behalf of\nsouls in purgatory.\" Ruskin has described some of the church\npaintings of the Last Judgment by the old masters as possessing a\npower even now sufficient to stir every sensibility to its depths.\nSuch works, gazed on day after day, while multitudes were kneeling\nbeneath in the shadowy aisles, and clouds of incense were floating\nabove, and the organ was pealing and the choir chanting in full\naccord, must produce lasting effects on the imagination, and thus\ncontribute in return to the faith and fear which inspired them.\n\nVillani as also Sismondi gives a description of a horrible\nrepresentation of hell shown at Florence in 1304 by the\ninhabitants of San Priano, on the river Arno. The glare of flames,\nthe shrieks of men disguised as devils, scenes of infernal\ntorture, filled the night. Unfortunately, the scaffolding broke\nbeneath the crowd, and many spectators were burned or drowned, and\nthat which began as an entertaining spectacle ended as a direful\nreality. The whole affair is a forcible illustration of the\nliterality with which the popular mind and faith apprehended the\nnotion of the infernal world.\n\nAnother means by which the views we have been considering were\nboth expressed and recommended to the senses and belief of the\npeople was those miracle plays that formed one of the most\npeculiar features of the Middle Age. These plays, founded on, and\nmeant to illustrate, Scripture narratives and theological\ndoctrines, were at first enacted by the priests in the churches,\nafterwards by the various trading companies or guilds of\nmechanics. In 1210, Pope Gregory \"forbade the clergy to take any\npart in the plays in churches or in the mummings at festivals.\" A\nsimilar prohibition was published by the Council of Treves, in\n1227. The Bishop of Worms, in 1316, issued a proclamation against\nthe abuses which had crept into the festivities of Easter, and\ngives a long and curious description of them.40 There were two\npopular festivals, of which Michelet gives a full and amusing\ndescription, one called the \"Fete of the Tipsy Priests,\" when they\nelected a Bishop of Unreason, offered him incense of burned\nleather, sang obscene songs in the choir, and turned the altar\ninto a dice table; the other called the \"Fete of the Cuckolds,\"\nwhen the laymen crowned each other with leaves, the priests wore\ntheir surplices wrong side out and threw bran in each others'\neyes, and the bell ringers pelted each other with biscuits. There\nis a religious play by Calderon, entitled \"The Divine Orpheus,\" in\nwhich the entire Church scheme of man's fall the devil's empire,\nChrist's descent there, and the victorious sequel is embodied in a\nmost effective manner. In the priestly theology and in the popular\nheart of those times there was no other single particular one\ntenth part so prominent and vivid as that of Christ's entrance\nafter his death into hell to rescue the old saints and break down\nSatan's power.41\n\n40 Early Mysteries and Latin Poems of the XII. and XIII.\nCenturies, edited by Thomas Wright. See the eloquent sermon on\nthis subject preached by Luis de Granada in the sixteenth century.\nTicknor's Hist. Spanish Lit., vol. iii. pp. 123-127.\n\n\nPeter Lombard says, \"What did the Redeemer do to the despot who\nhad us in his bonds? He offered him the cross as a mouse trap, and\nput his blood on it as bait.\" 42 About that scene there was an\nincomparable fascination for every believer. Christ laid aside his\nGodhead and died. The devil thought he had secured a new victim,\nand humanity swooned in grief and despair. But, lo! the Crucified,\ndescending to the inexorable dungeons, puts on all his Divinity,\nand suddenly \"The captive world awakt, and founde The pris'ner\nloose, the jailer bounde!\" 43\n\nA large proportion of the miracle plays, or Mysteries, turned on\nthis event. In the \"Mystery of the Resurrection of Christ\" occurs\nthe following couplet: \"This day the angelic King has risen,\nLeading the pious from their prison.\" 44\n\nThe title of one of the principal plays in the Towneley Mysteries\nis \"Extractio Animarum ab Inferno.\" It describes Christ descending\nto the gates of hell to claim his own. Adam sees afar the gleam of\nhis coming, and with his companions begins to sing for joy. The\ninfernal porter shouts to the other demons, in alarm, \"Since first\nthat hell was made and I was put therein, Such sorrow never ere I\nhad, nor heard I such a din. My heart begins to start; my wit it\nwaxes thin; I am afraid we can't rejoice, these souls must from\nus go. Ho, Beelzebub! bind these boys: such noise was never heard\nin hell.\"\n\nSatan vows he will dash Beelzebub's brains out for frightening him\nso. Meanwhile, Christ draws near, and says, \"Lift up your gates,\nye princes, and be ye lifted up, ye everlasting doors, and the\nKing of glory shall come in.\" The portals fly asunder. Satan\nshouts up to his friends, \"Dyng the dastard down;\" but Beelzebub\nreplies, \"That is easily said.\" Jesus and the devil soon meet,\nface to face. A long colloquy ensues, in the course of which the\nlatter tells the former that he knew his Father well by sight! At\nlast Jesus frees Adam, Eve, the prophets, and others, and ascends,\nleaving the devil in the lowest pit, resolving that hell shall\nsoon be fuller than before; for he will walk east and he will walk\nwest, and he will seduce thousands from their allegiance. Another\nplay, similar to the foregoing, but much more extensively known\nand acted, was called the \"Harrowing of Hell.\" Christ and Satan\nappear on the stage and argue in the most approved scholastic\nstyle for the right of possession in the human race. Satan says,\n\"Whoever purchases any thing, It belongs to him and to his\nchildren. Adam, hungry, came to me;\n\n42 Sententia, lib. iii. distinctio 19.\n\n43 Hone, Ancient Mysteries.\n\n44 \"Resurrexit hodie Rex angelorum Ducitur de tenebris turba\npiorum.\"\n\n\nI made him do me homage: For an apple, which I gave him, He and\nall his race belong to me.\" But Christ instantly puts a different\naspect on the argument, by replying, \"Satan! it was mine, The\napple thou gavest him. The apple and the apple tree Both were made\nby me. As he was purchased with my goods, With reason will I have\nhim.\" 45\n\nIn a religious Mystery exhibited at Lisbon as late as the close of\nthe eighteenth century, the following scene occurs. Cain kicks his\nbrother Abel badly and kills him. A figure like a Chinese\nmandarin, seated in a chair, condemns Cain and is drawn up into\nthe clouds. The mouth of hell then appears, like the jaws of a\ngreat dragon: amid smoke and lightning it casts up three devils,\none of them having a wooden leg. These take a dance around Cain,\nand are very jocose, one of them inviting him to hell to take a\ncup of brimstone coffee, and another asking him to make up a party\nat whist. Cain snarls, and they tumble him and themselves headlong\ninto the squib vomiting mouth.\n\nVarious books of accounts kept by the trading companies who\ncelebrated these Mysteries of the expenses incurred have been\npublished, and are exceedingly amusing. \"Item: payd for kepyng of\nfyer at hellmothe, four pence.\" \"For a new hoke to hang Judas, six\npence.\" \"Item: payd for mendyng and payntyng hellmouthe, two\npence.\" \"Girdle for God, nine pence.\" \"Axe for Pilatte's son, one\nshilling.\" \"A staff for the demon, one penny.\" \"God's coat of\nwhite leather, three shillings.\" The stage usually consisted of\nthree platforms. On the highest sat God, surrounded by his angels.\nOn the next were the saints in Paradise, the intermediate state of\nthe good after death. On the third were mere men yet living in the\nworld. On one side of the lowest stage, in the rear, was a fearful\ncave or yawning mouth filled with smoke and flames, and denoting\nhell. From this ever and anon would issue the howls and shrieks of\nthe damned. Amidst hideous yellings, devils would rush forth and\ncaper about and snatch hapless souls into this pit to their\ndoom.46 The actors, in their mock rage, sometimes leaped from the\npageant into the midst of the laughing, screaming, trembling\ncrowd. The dramatis personoe included many queer characters, such\nas a \"Worm of Conscience,\" \"Deadman,\" (representing a soul\ndelivered from hell at the descent of Christ,) numerous \"Damned\nSouls,\" dressed in flame colored garments, \"Theft,\" \"Lying,\"\n\"Gluttony.\" But the devil himself was the favorite character; and\noften, when his personified vices jumped on him and pinched and\ncudgelled him till he roared, the mirth of the honest audience\nknew no bounds. For there were in the Middle Age two sides to the\npopular idea of the devil and of all appertaining to him. He was a\nsoul harrowing bugbear or a rib shaking jest according to the hour\nand one's\n\n45 Halliwell's edition of the Harrowing of Hell, p. 18.\n\n46 Sharp, Essay on the Dramatic Mysteries, p. 24.\n\n\nhumor. Rabelais's Pantagruel is filled with irresistible\nburlesques of the doctrine of purgatory. The ludicrous side of\nthis subject may be seen by reading Tarlton's \"Jests\" and his\n\"Newes out of Purgatorie.\" 47 Glimpses of it are also to be caught\nthrough many of the humorous passages in Shakspeare. Dromio says\nof an excessively fat and greasy kitchen wench, \"If she lives till\ndoomsday she'll burn a week longer than the whole world!\" And\nFalstaff, cracking a kindred joke on Bardolph's carbuncled nose,\navows his opinion that it will serve as a flaming beacon to light\nlost souls the way to purgatory! Again, seeing a flea on the same\nflaming proboscis, the doughty knight affirmed it was \"a black\nsoul burning in hell fire.\" In this element of mediaval life, this\nfeature of mediaval literature, a terrible belief lay under the\ngay raillery. Here is betrayed, on a wide scale, that natural\nreaction of the faculties from excessive oppression to sportive\nwit, from deep repugnance to superficial jesting, which has often\nbeen pointed out by philosophical observers as a striking fact in\nthe psychological history of man.\n\nOne more active and mighty cause of the dreadful faith and fear\nwith which the Middle Age contemplated the future life was the\ninnumerable and frightful woes, crimes, tyrannies, instruments of\ntorture, engines of persecution, insane superstitions, which then\nexisted, making its actual life a hell. The wretchedness and\ncruelty of the present world were enough to generate frightful\nbeliefs and cast appalling shadows over the future. If the earth\nwas full of devils and phantoms, surely hell must swarm worse with\nthem. The Inquisition sat shrouded and enthroned in supernatural\nobscurity of cunning and awfulness of power, and thrust its\ninvisible daggers everywhere. The facts men knew here around them\ngave credibility to the imagery in which the hereafter was\ndepicted. The flaming stakes of an Auto da Fe around which the\nvictims of ecclesiastical hatred writhed were but faint emblems of\nwhat awaited their souls in the realm of demons whereto the tender\nmercies of the Church consigned them. Indeed, the fate of myriads\nof heretics and traitors could not fail to project the lurid\nvision of hell with all its paraphernalia into the imaginations of\nthe people of the Dark Age. The glowing lava of purgatory heated\nthe soil they trod, and a smell of its sulphur surcharged the air.\nA stupendous revelation of terror, bearing whole volumes of\ndireful meaning, is given in the single fact that it was a common\nbelief of that period that the holy Inquisitors would sit with\nChrist in the judgment at the last day.48 If king or noble took\noffence at some uneasy retainer or bold serf, he ordered him to be\nsecretly buried in the cell of some secluded fortress, and he was\nnever heard of more. So, if pope or priest hated or feared some\nstubborn thinker, he straightway, \"Would banish him to wear a\nburning chain In the great dungeons of the unforgiven, Beneath\nthe space deep castle walls of heaven.\"\n\nIt was an age of cruelty, never to be restored, when the world was\nboiling in tempest and men rode on the crests of fear.\n\n47 Recently edited by Halliwell and published by the Shakspeare\nSociety.\n\n48 Hagenbach, Dogmengeschichte, sect. 205.\n\n\nResearches made within the last century among the remains of\nfamous mediaval edifices, both ecclesiastic and state, have\nbrought to light the dismal records of forgotten horrors. In many\na royal palace, priestly building, and baronial castle, there were\nsecret chambers full of infernal machinery contrived for\ninflicting tortures, and under them concealed trap doors opening\ninto rayless dungeons with no outlet and whose floors were covered\nwith the mouldering bones of unfortunate wretches who had\nmysteriously disappeared long ago and tracelessly perished there.\nSometimes these trap doors were directly above profound pits of\nwater, in which the victim would drown as he dropped from the\nmangling hooks, racks, and pincers of the torture chamber. There\nwere horrible rumors current in the Middle Age of a machine called\nthe \"Virgin,\" used for putting men to death; but little was known\nabout it, and it was generally supposed to be a fable, until, some\nyears ago one of the identical machines was discovered in an old\nAustrian castle. It was a tall wooden woman, with a painted face,\nwhich the victim was ordered to kiss. As he approached to offer\nthe salute, he trod on a spring, causing the machine to fly open,\nstretch out a pair of iron arms, and draw him to its breast\ncovered with a hundred sharp spikes, which pierced him to death.49\n\nIgnorance and alarm, in a suffering and benighted age, surrounded\nby sounds of superstition and sights of cruelty, must needs breed\nand foster a horrid faith in regard to the invisible world.\nAccordingly, the common doctrine of the future life prevailing in\nChristendom from the ninth century till the sixteenth was as we\nhave portrayed it. Of course there are exceptions to be admitted\nand qualifications to be made; but, upon the whole, the picture is\nfaithful. Fortunately, intellect and soul could not slumber\nforever, nor the mediaval nightmares always keep their torturing\nseat on the bosom of humanity. Noble men arose to vindicate the\nrights of reason and the divinity of conscience. The world was\ncircumnavigated, and its revolution around the sun was\ndemonstrated. A thousand truths were discovered, a thousand\ninventions introduced. Papacy tottered, its prestige waned, its\ninfallibility sunk. The light of knowledge shone, the simplicity\nof nature was seen, and the benignity of God was surmised.\nThought, throwing off many restrictions and accumulating much\nmaterial, began to grow free, and began to grow wise. And so,\nbefore the calm, steady gaze of enlightened and cheerful reason,\nthe live and crawling smoke of hell, which had so long enwreathed\nthe mind of the time with its pendent and breathing horrors,\ngradually broke up and dissolved, \"Like a great superstitious\nsnake, uncurled From the pale temples of the awakening world.\"\n\n49 The Kiss of the Virgin, in the Archaologia published by the\nAntiquaries of London, vol. xxviii.\n\n\nCHAPTER III.\n\nMODERN DOCTRINE OF A FUTURE LIFE.\n\nTHE folly and paganism of some of the Church dogmas, the rapacious\nhaughtiness of its spirit, the tyranny of its rule, and the\nimmoral character of many of its practices, had often awakened the\nindignant protests and the determined opposition of men of\nenlightened minds, vigorous consciences, and generous hearts, both\nin its bosom and out of it. Many such men, vainly struggling to\npurify the Church from its iniquitous errors or to relieve mankind\nfrom its outrageous burdens, had been silenced and crushed by its\nrelentless might. Arnold, Wickliffe, Wessel, Savonarola, and a\nhost of others, are to be gratefully remembered forever as the\nheroic though unsuccessful forerunners of the mighty monk of\nWittenberg.1 The corruption of the mediaval Church grew worse, and\nbecame so great as to stir a very extensive disgust and revulsion.\nWholesale pardons for all their sins were granted indiscriminately\nto those who accepted the terms of the papal officials; while\nevery independent thinker, however evangelical his faith and\nexemplary his character, was hopelessly doomed to hell. Especially\nwere these pardons given to pilgrims and to the Crusaders. Bernard\nof Clairvaux, exhorting the people to undertake a new Crusade,\ntells them that \"God condescends to invite into his service\nmurderers, robbers, adulterers, perjurers, and those sunk in other\ncrimes; and whosoever falls in this cause shall secure pardon for\nthe sins which he has never confessed with contrite heart.\"2 At\nthe opening of \"Piers the Ploughman's Crede\" a person is\nintroduced saying, \"I saw a company of pilgrims on their way to\nRome, who came home with leave to lie all the rest of their\nlives!\" Nash, in his \"Lenten Stuff,\" speaks of a proclamation\nwhich caused \"three hundred thousand people to roam to Rome for\npurgatorie pills.\" Ecclesiasticism devoured ethics. Allegiance to\nmorality was lowered into devotion to a ritual. The sale of\nindulgences at length became too impudent and blasphemous to be\nany longer endured, when John Tetzel, a Dominican monk, travelled\nover Europe, and, setting up his auction block in the churches,\noffered for sale those famous indulgences of Leo X. which\npromised, to every one rich enough to pay the requisite price,\nremission of all sins, however enormous, and whether past,\npresent, or future!3 This brazen but authorized charlatan boasted\nthat \"he had saved more souls from hell by the sale of indulgences\nthan St. Peter had converted to Christianity by his preaching.\" He\nalso said that \"even if any one had ravished the Mother of God he\ncould sell him a pardon for it!\" The soul of Martin Luther took\nfire. The consequence to which a hundred combining causes\ncontributed was the Protestant Reformation. This great movement\nproduced, in relation to our subject, three important results. It\nnoticeably modified the practice and the popular preaching of the\nRoman Catholic Church.\n\n1 Ullmann, Reformatoren vor der Reformation.\n\n2 Epist. CCCLXIII. ad Orientalis Francia Clerum et Populum.\n\n3 D'Aubigne, Hist. Reformation, book iii.\n\n\nThe dogmas of the Romanist theology remained as they were before.\nBut a marked change took place in the public conduct of the papal\nfunctionaries. Morality was made more prominent, and mere\nritualism less obtrusive. Comparatively speaking, an emphasis was\ntaken from ecclesiastic confession and indulgence, and laid upon\nethical obedience and piety. The Council of Trent, held at this\ntime, says, in its decree concerning indulgences, \"In granting\nindulgences, the Church desires that moderation be observed, lest,\nby excessive facility, ecclesiastical discipline be enervated.\"\nImposture became more cautious, threats less frequent and less\nterrible; the teeth of persecution were somewhat blunted; miracles\ngrew rarer; the insufferable glare of purgatory and hell faded,\nand the open traffic in forgiveness of sins, or the compounding\nfor deficiencies, diminished. But among the more ignorant papal\nmultitudes the mediaval superstition holds its place still in all\nits virulence and grossness. \"Heaven and hell are as much a part\nof the Italian's geography as the Adriatic and the Apennines; the\nQueen of Heaven looks on the streets as clear as the morning star;\nand the souls in purgatory are more readily present to conception\nthan the political prisoners immured in the dungeons of Venice.\"\n\nA second consequence of the Reformation is seen in the numerous\ndissenting sects to which its issues gave rise. The chief\npeculiarities of the Protestant doctrines of the future life are\nembodied in the four leading denominations commonly known as\nLutheran, Calvinistic, Unitarian, and Universalist. Each of these\nincludes a number of subordinate parties bearing distinctive\nnames, (such as Arminian, Presbyterian, Methodist, Baptist,\nRestorationist, and many others;) but these minor differences are\ntoo trivial to deserve distinctive characterization here. The\nLutheran formula is that, through the sacrifice of Christ,\nsalvation is offered to all who will accept it by a sincere faith.\nSome will comply with these terms and secure heaven; others will\nnot, and so will be lost forever. Luther's views were not firmly\ndefined and consistent throughout his career; they were often\nobscure, and they fluctuated much. It is true he always insisted\nthat there was no salvation without faith, and that all who had\nfaith should be saved. But, while he generally seems to believe in\nthe current doctrine of eternal damnation, he sometimes appears to\nencourage the hope that all will finally be saved. In a remarkable\nletter to Hansen von Rechenberg, dated 1522, he says, in effect,\n\"Whoso hath faith in Christ shall be saved. God forbid that I\nshould limit the time for acquiring this faith to the present\nlife! In the depths of the Divine mercy, there may be opportunity\nto win it in the future state.\"\n\nThe Calvinistic formula is that heaven is attainable only for\nthose whom the arbitrary predestination of God has elected; all\nothers are irretrievably damned. Calvin was the first Christian\ntheologian who succeeded in giving the fearful doctrine of\nunconditional election and reprobation a lodgment in the popular\nbreast. The Roman Catholic Church had earnestly repudiated it.\nGotteschalk was condemned and died in prison for advocating it, in\nthe ninth century. But Calvin's character enabled him to believe\nit, and his talents and position gave great weight to his advocacy\nof it, and it has since been widely received. Catholicism,\nLutheranism, Calvinism, all agreed in the general proposition that\nby sin physical death came into the world, heaven was shut against\nman, and all men utterly lost. They differed only in some\nunessential details concerning the condition of that lost state.\nThey also agreed in the general proposition that Christ came, by\nhis incarnation, death, descent to hell, resurrection, and\nascension, to redeem men from their lost state. They only differed\nin regard to the precise grounds and extent of that redemption.\nThe Catholic said, Christ's atonement wiped off the whole score of\noriginal sin, and thus enabled man to win heaven by moral fidelity\nand the help of the Church. The Lutheran said, Christ's atonement\nmade all the sins of those who have faith, pardonable; and all may\nhave faith. The Calvinist said, God foresaw that man would fall\nand incur damnation, and he decreed that a few should be snatched\nas brands from the burning, while the mass should be left to\neternal torture; and Christ's atonement purchased the predestined\nsalvation of the chosen few. Furthermore, Lutherans and\nCalvinists, in all their varieties, agree with the Romanist in\nasserting that Christ shall come again, the dead be raised bodily,\na universal judgment be held, and that then the condemned shall\nsink into the everlasting fire of hell, and the accepted rise into\nthe endless bliss of heaven.\n\nThe Socinian doctrine relative to the future fate of man differed\nfrom the foregoing in the following particulars. First, it limited\nthe redeeming mission of Christ to the enlightening influences of\nthe truths which he proclaimed with Divine authority, the moral\npower of his perfect example, and the touching motives exhibited\nin his death. Secondly, it asserted a natural ability in every man\nto live a life conformed to right reason and sound morality, and\npromised heaven to all who did this in obedience to the\ninstructions and after the pattern of Christ. Thirdly, it declared\nthat the wicked, after suffering excruciating agonies, would be\nannihilated. Respecting the second coming of Christ, a physical\nresurrection of the dead, and a day of judgment, the Socinians\nbelieved with the other sects.4 Their doctrine scarcely\ncorresponds with that of the present Unitarians in any thing. The\ndissent of the Unitarian from the popular theology is much more\nfundamental, detailed, and consistent than that of the Socinian\nwas, and approaches much closer to the Rationalism of the present\nday.\n\nThe Universalist formula every soul created by God shall sooner or\nlater be saved from sin and woe and inherit everlasting happiness\nhas been publicly defended in every age of the Christian Church.5\nIt was first publicly condemned as a heresy at the very close of\nthe fourth century. It ranks among its defenders the names of\nClement of Alexandria, Origen, Gregory of Nazianzus, Gregory of\nNyssa, and several other prominent Fathers. Universalism has been\nheld in four forms, on four grounds. First, it has been supposed\nthat Christ died for all, and that, by the infinite efficacy of\nhis redeeming merits, all sins shall be cancelled and every soul\nbe saved. This was the scheme of those early Universalist\nChristians whom Epiphanius condemns as heretics; also of a few in\nmore modern times. Secondly, it has been thought that each person\nwould be punished in the future state according to the deeds done\nin the body, each sin be expiated by a proportionate amount of\nsuffering, the retribution of some souls being severe and long,\nthat of others light and brief; but, every penalty being at\n\n4 Flugge gives a full exposition of these points with references\nto the authorities. Lehre vom Zustande, u. s. f., abth. ii. ss.\n243-260.\n\n5 Dietelmaier, Commenti Fanatici [non-ASCII characters omitted] Hist.\nAntiquar.\n\n\nlength exhausted, the last victim would be restored. This was the\nnotion of Origen, the basis of the doctrine of purgatory, and the\nview of most of the Restorationists. Thirdly, it has been imagined\nthat, by the good pleasure and fixed laws of God, all men are\ndestined to an impartial, absolute, and instant salvation beyond\nthe grave: all sins are justly punished, all moral distinctions\nequitably compensated, in this life; in the future an equal glory\nawaits all men, by the gracious and eternal election of God, as\nrevealed to us in the benignant mission of Christ. This is the\npeculiar conception distinguishing some members of the\ndenomination now known as Universalists. Finally, it has been\nbelieved that the freedom and probation granted here extend into\nthe life to come; that the aim of all future punishment will be\nremedial, beneficent, not revengeful; that stronger motives will\nbe applied for producing repentance, and grander attractions to\nholiness be felt; and that thus, at some time or other, even the\nmost sunken and hardened souls will be regenerated and raised up\nto heaven in the image of God. Almost all Universalists, most\nUnitarians, and large number of individual Christians outwardly\naffiliated with other denominations, now accept and cherish this\ntheory.\n\nOne important variation from the doctrine of the dominant sects,\nin connection with the present subject, is worthy of special\nnotice. We refer to the celebrated controversy waged in England,\nin the first part of the eighteenth century, in regard to the\nintermediate state of the dead. The famous Dr. Coward and a few\nsupporters labored, with much zeal, skill, and show of learning,\nto prove the natural mortality of the soul. They asserted this to\nbe both a philosophical truth proved by scientific facts and a\nChristian doctrine declared in Scripture and taught by the\nFathers. They argued that the soul is not an independent entity,\nbut is merely the life of the body. Proceeding thus far on the\nprinciples of a materialistic science, they professed to complete\ntheir theory from Scripture, without doing violence to any\ndoctrine of the acknowledged religion.6 The finished scheme was\nthis. Man was naturally mortal; but, by the pleasure and will of\nGod, he would have been immortally preserved alive had he not\nsinned. Death is the consequence of sin, and man utterly perishes\nin the grave. But God will restore the dead, through Christ, at\nthe day of the general resurrection which he has foretold in the\ngospel.7 Some of the writers in this copious controversy\nmaintained that previous to the advent of Christ death was eternal\nannihilation to all except a few who enjoyed an inspired\nanticipatory faith in him, but that all who died after his coming\nwould be restored in the resurrection, the faithful to be advanced\nto heaven, the wicked to be the victims of unending torture.8\nClarke and Baxter both wrote with extreme ability in support of\nthe natural immortality and separate existence of the soul. On the\nother hand, the learned Henry Dodwell cited, from the lore of\nthree thousand years, a plausible body of authorities to show that\nthe soul is in itself but a mortal breath. He also contended, by a\nsingular perversion of figurative phrases from the New Testament\nand from some of the Fathers, that,\n\n6 Coward, Search after Souls.\n\n7 Hallet, No Resurrection, no Future State.\n\n8 Coward, Defence of the Search after Souls. Dodwell, Epistolary\nDiscourse. Peckard, Observations. Fleming, Survey of the Search\nafter Souls. Law, State of Separate Spirits. Layton, Treatise of\nDeparted Souls.\n\n\nin counteraction of man's natural mortality, all who undergo\nbaptism at the hands of the ordained ministers of the Church of\nEngland the only true priesthood in apostolic succession thereby\nreceive an immortalizing spirit brought into the world by Christ\nand committed to his successors. This immortalizing spirit\nconveyed by baptism would secure their resurrection at the last\nday. Those destitute of this spirit would never awake from the\noblivious sleep of death, unless as he maintained will actually be\nthe case with a large part of the dead they are arbitrarily\nimmortalized by the pleasure of God, in order to suffer eternal\nmisery in hell! Absurd and shocking as this fancy was, it obtained\nquite a number of converts, and made no slight impression at the\ntime. One of the writers in this controversy asserted that Luther\nhimself had been a believer in the death or sleep of the soul\nuntil the day of judgment.9 Certain it is that such a belief had\nat one period a considerable prevalence. Its advocates were called\nPsychopannychians. Calvin wrote a vehement assault on them. The\nopinion has sunk into general disrepute and neglect, and it would\nbe hard to find many avowed disciples of it. The nearly universal\nsentiment of Christendom would now exclaim, in the quaint words of\nHenry More,\n\n\"What! has old Adam snorted all this time Under some senselesse\nclod, with sleep ydead?\" 10\n\nJohn Asgill printed, in the year 1700, a tract called \"An argument\nto prove that by the new covenant man may be translated into\neternal life without tasting death.\" He argues that the law of\ndeath was a consequence of Adam's sin and was annulled by Christ's\nsacrifice. Since that time men have died only because of an\nobstinate habit of dying formed for many generations. For his\npart, he has the independence and resolution to withstand the\nuniversal pusillanimity and to refuse to die. He has discovered\n\"an engine in Divinity to convey man from earth to heaven.\" He\nwill \"play a trump on death and show himself a match for the\ndevil!\"\n\nWhile treating of the various Protestant views of the future life,\nit would be a glaring defect to overlook the remarkable doctrine\non that subject published by Emanuel Swedenborg and now held by\nthe intelligent, growing body of believers called after his name.\nIt would be impossible to exhibit this system adequately in its\nscientific bases and its complicated details without occupying\nmore space than can be afforded here. Nor is this necessary, now\nthat his own works have been translated and are easily accessible\neverywhere. His \"Heaven and Hell,\" \"Heavenly Arcana,\" \"Doctrine of\nInflux,\" and \"True Christian\n\n9 Blackburne, View of the Controversy Concerning an Intermediate\nState: appendix. It is probable that the great Reformer's opinion\non this point was not always the same. For he says, distinctly,\n\"The first man who died, when he awakes at the last day, will\nthink he has been asleep but an hour\" Beste, Dr. M. Luther's\nGlaubenslehre, cap. iv.: Die Lehre von den Letzen Dingen. Yet. J.\nS. Muller seems conclusively to prove the truth of the proposition\nwhich forms the title of his book, \"Dass Luther die Lehre vom\nSeelenschlafe nie geglaubt habe.\"\n\n10 The controversy concerning the natural immortality of the soul\nhas within a few years raged afresh. The principal combatants were\nDobney, Storrs, White, Morris, and Hinton. See Athanasia, by J. H.\nHinton, London, 1849.\n\n\nReligion,\" contain manifold statements and abundant illustrations\nof every thing important bearing on his views of the theme before\nus. We shall merely attempt to present a brief synopsis of the\nessential principles, accompanied by two or three suggestions of\ncriticism.\n\nSwedenborg conceives man to be an organized receptacle of truth\nand love from God. He is an imperishable spiritual body placed for\na season of probation in a perishable material body. Every moment\nreceiving the essence of his being afresh from God, and returning\nit through the fruition of its uses devoutly rendered in conscious\nobedience and joyous worship, he is at once a subject of personal,\nand a medium of the Divine, happiness. The will is the power of\nman's life, and the understanding is its form. When the will is\ndisinterested love and the understanding is celestial truth, then\nman fulfils the end of his being, and his home is heaven; he is a\nspirit frame into which the goodness of God perpetually flows, is\nhumbly acknowledged, gratefully enjoyed, and piously returned. But\nwhen his will is hatred or selfishness and his understanding is\nfalsehood or evil, then his powers are abused, his destiny\ninverted, and his fate hell. While in the body in this world he is\nplaced in freedom, on probation, between these two alternatives.\n\nThe Swedenborgian universe is divided into four orders of abodes.\nIn the highest or celestial world are the heavens of the angels.\nIn the lowest or infernal world are the hells of the demons. In\nthe intermediate or spiritual world are the earths inhabited by\nmen, and surrounded by the transition state through which souls,\nescaping from their bodies, after a while soar to heaven or sink\nto hell, according to their fitness and attraction. In this life\nman is free, because he is an energy in equilibrium between the\ninfluences of heaven and hell. The middle state surrounding man is\nfull of spirits, some good and some bad. Every man is accompanied\nby swarms of both sorts of spirits, striving to make him like\nthemselves. Now, there are two kinds of influx into man. Mediate\ninflux is when the spirits in the middle state flow into man's\nthoughts and affections. The good spirits are in communication\nwith heaven, and they carry what is good and true; the evil\nspirits are in communication with hell, and they carry what is\nevil and false. Between these opposed and reacting agencies man is\nin an equilibrium whose essence is freedom. Deciding for himself,\nif he turns with embracing welcome to the good spirits, he is\nthereby placed and lives in conjunction with heaven; but if he\nturns, on the contrary, with predominant love to the bad spirits,\nhe is placed in conjunction with hell and draws his life thence.\nFrom heaven, therefore, through the good spirits, all the elements\nof saving goodness flow sweetly down and are appropriated by the\nfreedom of the good man; while from hell, through the bad spirits,\nall the elements of damning evil flow foully up and are\nappropriated by the freedom of the bad man.\n\nThe other kind of influx is called immediate. This is when the\nLord himself, the pure substance of truth and good, flows into\nevery organ and faculty of man. This influx is perpetual, but is\nreceived as truth and good only by the true and good. It is\nrejected, suffocated, or perverted by those who are in love with\nfalsities and evils. So the light of the sun produces colors\nvarying with the substances it falls on, and water takes forms\ncorresponding to the vessels it is poured into.\n\nThe whole invisible world heaven, hell, and the middle state is\npeopled solely from the different families of the human race\noccupying the numerous material globes of the universe. The good,\non leaving the fleshly body, are angels, the bad, demons. There is\nno angel nor demon who was created such at first. Satan is not a\npersonality, but is a figurative term standing for the whole\ncomplex of hell. In the invisible world, time and space in one\nsense cease to be; in another sense they remain unchanged. They\nvirtually cease because all our present measures of them are\nannihilated;11 they virtually remain because exact correspondences\nto them are left. To spirits, time is no longer measured by the\nrevolution of planets, but by the succession of inward states;\nspace is measured not by way marks and the traversing of\ndistances, but by inward similitudes and dissimilitudes. Those who\nare unlike are sundered by gulfs of difference. Those who are\nalike are together in their interiors. Thought and love,\nforgetfulness and hate, are not hampered by temporal and spatial\nboundaries. Spiritual forces and beings spurn material\nimpediments, and are united or separate, reciprocally visible or\ninvisible, mutually conscious or unconscious, according to their\nown laws of kindred or alien adaptedness.\n\nThe soul the true man is its own organized and deathless body, and\nwhen it leaves its earthly house of flesh it knows the only\nresurrection, and the cast off frame returns to the dust forever.\nSwedenborg repeatedly affirms with emphasis that no one is born\nfor hell, but that all are born for heaven, and that when any one\ncomes into hell it is from his own free fault. He asserts that\nevery infant, wheresoever born, whether within the Church or out\nof it, whether of pious parents or of impious, when he dies is\nreceived by the Lord, and educated in heaven, and becomes an\nangel. A central principle of which he never loses sight is that\n\"a life of charity, which consists in acting sincerely and justly\nin every function, in every engagement, and in every work, from a\nheavenly motive, according to the Divine laws, is possible to\nevery one, and infallibly leads to heaven.\" It does not matter\nwhether the person leading such a life be a Christian or a\nGentile. The only essential is that his ruling motive be divine\nand his life be in truth and good.\n\nThe Swedenborgian doctrine concerning Christ and his mission is\nthat he was the infinite God incarnate, not incarnate for the\npurpose of expiating human sin and purchasing a ransom for the\nlost by vicarious sufferings, but for the sake of suppressing the\nrampant power of the hells, weakening the influx of the infernal\nspirits, setting an example to men, and revealing many important\ntruths. The advantage of the Christian over the pagan is that the\nformer is enlightened by the celestial knowledge contained in the\nBible, and animated by the affecting motives presented in the\ndrama of the Divine incarnation. There is no probation after this\nlife. Just as one is on leaving the earth he goes into the\nspiritual world. There his\n\n11 Philo the Jew says, (vol. i. p. 277, ed. Mangey,) \"God is the\nFather of the world: the world is the father of time, begetting it\nby its own motion: time, therefore, holds the place of grandchild\nto God.\" But the world is only one measure of time; another, and a\nmore important one, is the inward succession of the spirit's\nstates of consciousness. Between Philo and Swedenborg, it may be\nremarked here, there are many remarkable correspondences both of\nthought and language. For example, Philo says, (vol. i. p. 494,)\n\"Man is a small kosmos, the kosmos is a grand man.\"\n\n\nruling affection determines his destiny, and that affection can\nnever be extirpated or changed to all eternity. After death, evil\nlife cannot in any manner or degree be altered to good life, nor\ninfernal love be transmuted to angelic love, inasmuch as every\nspirit from head to foot is in quality such as his love is, and\nthence such as his life is, so that to transmute this life into\nthe opposite is altogether to destroy the spirit. It were easier,\nsays Swedenborg, to change a night bird into a dove, an owl into a\nbird of paradise, than to change a subject of hell into a subject\nof heaven after the line of death has been crossed. But why the\ncrossing of that line should make such an infinite difference he\ndoes not explain; nor does he prove it as a fact.\n\nThe moral reason and charitable heart of Swedenborg vehemently\nrevolted from the Calvinistic doctrines of predestination and\nvicarious atonement, and the group of thoughts that cluster around\nthem. He always protests against these dogmas, refutes them with\nvaried power and consistency; and the leading principles of his\nown system are creditable to human nature, and attribute no\nunworthiness to the character of God. A debt of eternal gratitude\nis due to Swedenborg that his influence, certainly destined to be\npowerful and lasting, is so clearly calculated to advance the\ninterests at once of philosophic intelligence, social affection,\nand true piety. The superiorities of his view of the future life\nover those which it seeks to supplant are weighty and numerous.\nThe following may be reckoned among the most prominent.\n\nFirst, without predicating of God any aggravated severity or\ncasting the faintest shadow on his benevolence, it gives us the\nmost appalling realization of the horribleness of sin and of its\nconsequences. God is commonly represented in effect, at least as\nflaming with anger against sinners, and forcibly flinging them\ninto the unappeasable fury of Tophet, where his infinite vengeance\nmay forever satiate itself on them. But, Swedenborg says, God is\nincapable of hatred or wrath: he casts no one into hell; but the\nwicked go where they belong by their own election, from the\ninherent fitness and preference of their ruling love. The evil man\ndesires to be in hell because there he finds his food, employment,\nand home; in heaven he would suffer unutterable agonies from every\ncircumstance. The wicked go into hell by the necessary and\nbenignant love of God, not by his indignation; and their\nretributions are in their own characters, not in their prison\nhouse. This does not flout and trample all magnanimity, nor shock\nthe heart of piety; and yet, showing us men compelled to prefer\nwallowing in the filth and iniquities of hell, clinging to the\nvery evils whose pangs transfix them, it gives us the direst of\nall the impressions of sin, and beneath the lowest deep of the\npopular hell opens to our shuddering conceptions a deep of\nloathsomeness immeasurably lower still.\n\nSecondly, the Swedenborgian doctrine of the conditions of\nsalvation or reprobation, when compared with the popular doctrine,\nis marked by striking depth of insight, justice, and liberality.\nEvery man is free. Every man has power to receive the influx of\ntruth and good from the Lord and convert it to its blessed and\nsaving uses, piety towards God, good will towards the neighbor,\nand all kinds of right works. Who does this, no matter in what\nland or age he lives, becomes an heir of heaven. Who perverts\nthose Divine gifts to selfishness and unrighteous deeds becomes a\nsubject of hell. No mere opinion, no mere profession, no mere\nritual services, no mere external obedience, not all these things\ntogether, can save a man, nor their absence condemn him; but the\ncontrolling motive of his life, the central and ruling love which\nconstitutes the substance of his being, this decides every man's\ndoom. The view is simple, reasonable, just, necessary. And so is\nthe doctrine of degrees accompanying it; namely, that there are in\nheaven different grades and qualities of exaltation and delight,\nand in hell of degradation and woe, for different men according to\ntheir capacities and deserts. A profoundly ethical character\npervades the scheme, and the great stamp of law is over it all.\n\nThirdly, a manifest advantage of Swedenborg's doctrine over the\npopular doctrine is the intimate connection it establishes between\nthe present and the future, the visible and the invisible, God and\nman. Heaven and hell are not distant localities, entrance into\nwhich is to be won or avoided by moral artifices or sacramental\nsubterfuges, but they are states of being depending on personal\ngoodness or evil. God is not throned at the heart or on the apex\nof the universe, where at some remote epoch we hope to go and see\nhim, but he is the Life feeding our lives freshly every instant.\nThe spiritual world, with all its hosts, sustains and arches,\nfills and envelops us. Death is the dropping of the outer body,\nthe lifting of an opaque veil, and we are among the spirits,\nunchanged, as we were before. Judgment is not a tribunal dawning\non the close of the world's weary centuries, but the momentary\nassimilation of a celestial or an infernal love leading to states\nand acts, rewards and retributions, corresponding. Before this\nview the dead universe becomes a live transparency overwritten\nwith the will, tremulous with the breath, and irradiate with the\nillumination of God.\n\nWe cannot but regret that the Swedenborgian view of the future\nlife should be burdened and darkened with the terrible error of\nthe dogma of eternal damnation, spreading over the state of all\nthe subjects of the hells the pall of immitigable hopelessness,\ndenying that they can ever make the slightest ameliorating\nprogress. We have never been able to see force enough in any of\nthe arguments or assertions advanced in support of this tremendous\nhorror to warrant the least hesitation in rejecting it. For\nourselves, we must regard it as incredible, and think that God\ncannot permit it. Instruction, reformation, progress, are the\nfinal aims of punishment. Aspiration is the concomitant of\nconsciousness, and the authentic voice of God. Surely, sooner or\nlater, in the boonful eternities of being, every creature capable\nof intelligence, allied to the moral law, drawing life from the\nInfinite, must begin to travel the ascending path of virtue and\nblessedness, and never retrograde again.\n\nNeither can we admit in general the claim made by Swedenborg and\nby his disciples that the way in which he arrived at his system of\ntheology elevates it to the rank of a Divine revelation. It is\nasserted that God opened his interior vision, so that he saw what\nhad hitherto been concealed from the eyes of men in the flesh,\nnamely, the inhabitants, laws, contents, and experiences of the\nspiritual world, and thus that his statements are not speculations\nor arguments, but records of unerring knowledge, his descriptions\nnot fanciful pictures of the imagination, but literal transcripts\nof the truth he saw. This, in view of the great range of known\nexperience, is not intrinsically probable, and we have seen no\nproof of it. Judging from what we know of psychological and\nreligious history, it is far more likely that a man should\nconfound his intangible reveries with solid fact than that he\nshould be inspired by God to reveal a world of mysterious truths.\nFurthermore, while we are impressed with the reasonableness,\nprobability, and consistency of most of the general principles of\nSwedenborg's exposition of the future life, we cannot but shrink\nfrom many of the details and forms in which he carries them out.\nNotwithstanding the earnest avowals of able disciples of his\nschool that all his details are strictly necessitated by his\npremises, and that all his premises are laws of truth, we are\ncompelled to regard a great many of his assertions as purely\narbitrary and a great many of his descriptions as purely fanciful.\nBut, denying that his scheme of eschatology is a scientific\nrepresentation of the reality, and looking at it as a poetic\nstructure reared by co working knowledge and imagination on the\nground of reason, nature, and morality,  whose foundation walls,\ncolumns, and grand outlines are truth, while many of its details,\nornaments, and images are fancy, it must be acknowledged to be one\nof the most wonderful examples of creative power extant in the\nliterature of the world. No one who has mastered it with\nappreciative mind will question this. There are, expressed and\nlatent, in the totality of Swedenborg's accounts of hell and\nheaven, more variety of imagery, power of moral truth and appeal,\nexhibition of dramatic justice, transcendent delights of holiness\nand love, curdling terrors of evil and woe, strength of\nphilosophical grasp, and sublimity of emblematic conception, than\nare to be found in Dante's earth renowned poem. We say this of the\nsubstance of his ideas, not of the shape and clothing in which\nthey are represented. Swedenborg was no poet in language and form,\nonly in conception.\n\nTake this picture. In the topmost height of the celestial world\nthe Lord appears as a sun, and all the infinite multitudes of\nangels, swarming up through the innumerable heavens, wherever they\nare, continually turn their faces towards him in love and joy. But\nat the bottom of the infernal world is a vast ball of blackness,\ntowards which all the hosts of demons, crowding down through the\nsuccessive hells, forever turn their eager faces away from God. Or\nconsider this. Every thing consists of a great number of perfect\nleasts like itself: every heart is an aggregation of little\nhearts, every lung an aggregation of little lungs, every eye an\naggregation of little eyes. Following out the principle, every\nsociety in the spiritual world is a group of spirits arranged in\nthe form of a man, every heaven is a gigantic man composed of an\nimmense number of individuals, and all the heavens together\nconstitute one Grand Man, a countless number of the most\nintelligent angels forming the head, a stupendous organization of\nthe most affectionate making the heart, the most humble going to\nthe feet, the most useful attracted to the hands, and so on\nthrough every part.\n\nWith exceptions, then, we regard Swedenborg's doctrine of the\nfuture life as a free poetic presentment, not as a severe\nscientific statement, of views true in moral principle, not of\nfacts real in literal detail. His imagination and sentiment are\nmathematical and ethical instead of asthetic and passionate. Milk\nseems to run in his veins instead of blood, but he is of\ntruthfulness and charity all compact. We think it most probable\nthat the secret of his supposed inspiration was the abnormal\nfrequent or chronic turning of his mind into what is called the\necstatic or clairvoyant state. This condition being spontaneously\ninduced, while he yet, in some unexplained manner, retained\nconscious possession and control of his usual faculties, he\ntreated his subjective conceptions as objective realities,\nbelieved his interior contemplations were accurate visions of\nfacts, and took the strange procession of systematic reveries\nthrough his teeming brain for a scenic revelation of the\nexhaustive mysteries of heaven and hell. \"Each wondrous guess\nbeheld the truth it sought, And inspiration flash'd from what was\nthought.\"\n\nThis hypothesis, taken in conjunction with the comprehensiveness\nof his mind, the vastness of his learning, the integral\ncorrectness of his conscience, and his disciplined habits of\nthought, will go far towards explaining the unparalleled\nphenomenon of his theological works; and, though it leaves many\nthings unaccounted for, it seems to us more credible than any\nother which has yet been suggested.\n\nThe last of the three prominent phenomena which as before said\nfollowed the Protestant Reformation was rationalism, an attempt to\ntry all religious questions at the tribunal of reason and by the\ntests of conscience. The great movement led by Luther was but one\nelement in a numerous train of influences and events all yielding\ntheir different contributions to that resolute rationalistic\ntendency which afterwards broke out so powerfully in England,\nFrance, and Germany, and, spreading thence into every country in\nChristendom, has been, in secret and in public, with slow, sure\nsteps, irresistibly advancing ever since. In the history of\nscholasticism there were three distinct epochs. The first period\nwas characterized by the servile submission and conformity of\nphilosophy to the theology dictated by the Church. The second\nperiod was marked by the formal alliance and attempted\nreconciliation of philosophy and theology. The third period saw an\never increasing jealousy and separation between the philosophers\nand the theologians.12 Many an adventurous thinker pushed his\nspeculations beyond the limits of the established theology, and\ndeliberately dissented from the orthodox standards in his\nconclusions. Perhaps Abelard, who openly strove to put all the\nChurch dogmas in forms acceptable to philosophy, and who did not\nhesitate to reject in many instances what seemed to him\nunreasonable, deserves to be called the father of rationalism. The\nworks of Des Cartes, Leibnitz, Wolf, Kant's \"Religion within the\nBounds of Pure Reason,\" together with the influence and the\nwritings of many other eminent philosophers, gradually gave\nmomentum to the impulse and popularity to the habits of free\nthought and criticism even in the realm of theology. The dogmatic\nscheme of the dominant Church was firmly seized, many errors\nshaken out to the light and exposed, and many long received\nopinions questioned and flung into doubt.13 The authenticity of\nmany of the popular doctrines regarding the future life could not\nfail to be denied as soon as it was attempted as was extensively\ndone about the middle of the eighteenth century to demonstrate\nthem by mathematical methods, with all the array of axioms,\ntheorems, lemmas, doubts, and solutions. Flugge has historically\nillustrated the employment of this method at considerable\nlength.14\n\n12 Cousin, Hist. Mod. Phil., lect. ix.\n\n13 Staudlin, Geschichte des Rationalismus. Saintes, Histoire\nCritique du Rationalisme en Allemagne, Eng. trans. by Dr. Beard.\n\n14 Geschichte des Glaubens an Unsterblichkeit, u. s. f., th. iii.\nabth. ii. ss. 281-289.\n\n\nThe essence of rationalism is the affirmation that neither the\nFathers, nor the Church, nor the Scriptures, nor all of them\ntogether, can rightfully establish any proposition opposed to the\nlogic of sound philosophy, the principles of reason, and the\nevident truth of nature. Around this thesis the battle has been\nfought and the victory won; and it will stand with spreading favor\nas long as there are unenslaved and cultivated minds in the world.\nThis position is, in logical necessity, and as a general thing in\nfact, that of the large though loosely cohering body of believers\nknown as \"Liberal Christians;\" and it is tacitly held by still\nlarger and ever growing numbers nominally connected with sects\nthat officially eschew it with horror. The result of the studies\nand discussions associated with this principle, so far as it\nrelates to the subject before us, has been the rejection of the\nfollowing popular doctrines:  the plenary inspiration of the\nScriptures as an ultimate authority in matters of belief;\nunconditional predestination; the satisfaction theory of the\nvicarious atonement; the visible second coming of Christ, in\nperson, to burn up the world and to hold a general judgment; the\nintermediate state of souls; the resurrection of the body; a local\nhell of material fire in the bowels of the earth; the eternal\ndamnation of the wicked. These old dogmas,15 scarcely changed,\nstill remain in the stereotyped creeds of all the prominent\ndenominations; but they slumber there to an astonishing extent\nunrealized, unnoticed, unthought of, by the great multitude of\ncommon believers, while every consciously rational investigator\nvehemently repudiates them. To every candid mind that has really\nstudied their nature and proofs their absurdity is now transparent\non all the grounds alike of history, metaphysics, morals, and\nscience.\n\nThe changes of the popular Christian belief in regard to three\nsalient points have been especially striking. First, respecting\nthe immediate fate of the dead, an intermediate state. The\npredominant Jewish doctrine was that all souls went indiscriminately\ninto a sombre under world, where they awaited a resurrection.\n\nThe earliest Christian view prevalent was the same, with the\nexception that it divided that place of departed spirits\ninto two parts, a painful for the bad, a pleasant for the good.\nThe next opinion that prevailed the Roman Catholic was the same as\nthe foregoing, with two exceptions: it established a purgatory in\naddition to the previous paradise and hell, and it opened heaven\nitself for the immediate entrance of a few spotless souls. Pope\nJohn XXII., as Gieseler shows, was accused of heresy by the\ntheological doctors of Paris because he declared that no soul\ncould enter heaven and enjoy the beatific vision until after the\nresurrection. Pope Benedict XII. drew up a list of one hundred and\nseventeen heretical opinions held by the Armenian Christians. One\nof these notions was that the souls of all deceased adults wander\nin the air until the Day of Judgment, neither hell, paradise, nor\nheaven being open to them until after that day. Thomas Aquinas\nsays, \"Each soul at death immediately flies to its appointed\nplace, whether in hell or in heaven, being without the body until\nthe resurrection, with it afterwards.\"16 Then came the\n\n15 They are defended in all their literal grossness in the two\nfollowing works, both recent publications. The World to Come; by\nthe Rev. James Cochrane. Der Tod, das Todtenreich, und der Zustand\nder abgeschiedenen Seelen; von P. A. Maywahlen.\n\n16 Summa iii. in Suppl. 69. 2.\n\ndogma of the orthodox Protestants, slightly varying in the\ndifferent sects, but generally agreeing that at death all redeemed\nsouls pass instantly to heaven and all unredeemed souls to hell.17\nThe principal variation from this among believers within the\nProtestant fellowship has been the notion that the souls of all\nmen die or sleep with the body until the Day of Judgment, a notion\nwhich peeps out here and there in superstitious spots along the\npages of ecclesiastical history, and which has found now and then\nan advocate during the last century and a half. The Council of\nElvin, in Spain, forbade the lighting of tapers in churchyards,\nlest it should disturb the souls of the deceased buried there. At\nthis day, in prayers and addresses at funerals, no phrases are\nmore common than those alluding to death as a sleep, and implying\nthat the departed one is to slumber peacefully in his grave until\nthe resurrection. And yet, at the same time, by the same persons\ncontrary ideas are frequently expressed. The truth is, the\nsubject, owing to the contradictions between their creed and their\nreason, is left by most persons in hopeless confusion and\nuncertainty. They have no determinately reconciled and conscious\nviews of their own. Rationalism sweeps away all the foregoing\nincongruous medley at once, denying that we know any thing about\nthe precise localities of heaven and hell, or the destined order\nof events in the hidden future of separate souls; affirming that\nall we should dare to say is simply that the souls whether of good\nor of bad men, on leaving the body, go at once into a spiritual\nstate of being, where they will live immortally, as God decrees,\nnever returning to be reinvested with the vanished charnel houses\nof clay they once inhabited.\n\nSecondly, the thought that Christ after his death descended into\nthe under world to ransom mankind, or a part of mankind, from the\ndoom there, is in the foundation of the apostolic theology. It was\na central element in the belief of the Fathers, and of the Church\nfor fourteen hundred years. None of the prominent Protestant\nreformers thought of denying it. Calvin lays great stress on it.18\nApinus and others, at Hamburg, maintained that Christ's descent\nwas a part of his humiliation, and that in it he suffered\nunutterable pains for us. On the other hand, Melancthon and the\nWittenbergers held that the descent was a part of Christ's\ntriumph, since by it he won a glorious victory over the powers of\nhell.19 But gradually the importance and the redeeming effects\nattached to Christ's descent into hell were transferred to his\ndeath on the cross. Slowly the primitive dogma dwindled away, and\nfinally sunk out of sight, through an ever encroaching disbelief\nin the physical conditions on which it rested and in the pictorial\nenvironments by which it was recommended. And now it is scarcely\never heard of, save when brought out from old scholastic tomes by\nsome theological delver. Baumgarten Crusius has learnedly\nillustrated the important place long held by this notion, and well\nshown its gradual retreat into the unnoticed background.20\n\n17 Confession of Faith of the Church of Scotland, ch. xxxii.\nCalvin, Institutes, lib. iii. cap. xxv.; and his Psychopannychia.\nQuenstedt also affirms it. Likewise the Confession of Faith of the\nWestminster Divines, art. xxxii., says, \"Souls neither die nor\nsleep, but go immediately to heaven or hell.\"\n\n18 Institutes, lib. ii. cap. 16, sects. 16, 19.\n\n19 Ledderhose, Life of Melancthon, Eng. trans. by Krotel, ch. xxx.\n\n20 Compendium der Christliche Dogmengeschichte, thl. ii. sects.\n100-109.\n\n\nThe other particular doctrine which we said had undergone\nremarkable change is in regard to the number of the saved. A\nblessed improvement has come over the popular Christian feeling\nand teaching in respect to this momentous subject. The Jews\nexcluded from salvation all but their own strict ritualists. The\napostles, it is true, excluded none but the stubbornly wicked. But\nthe majority of the Fathers virtually allowed the possibility of\nsalvation to few indeed. Chrysostom doubted if out of the hundred\nthousand souls constituting the Christian population of Antioch in\nhis day one hundred would be saved! 21 And when we read, with\nshuddering soul, the calculations of Cornelius a Lapide, or the\ncelebrated sermon of Massillon on the \"Small Number of the Saved,\"\nwe are compelled to confess that they fairly represent the almost\nuniversal sentiment and conviction of Christendom for more than\nseventeen hundred years. A quarto volume published in London in\n1680, by Du Moulin, called \"Moral Reflections upon the Number of\nthe Elect,\" affirmed that not one in a million, from Adam down to\nour times, shall be saved. A flaming execration blasted the whole\nheathen world, 22 and a metaphysical quibble doomed ninety nine of\nevery hundred in Christian lands. Collect the whole relevant\ntheological literature of the Christian ages, from the birth of\nTertullian to the death of Jonathan Edwards, strike the average\npitch of its doctrinal temper, and you will get this result: that\nin the field of human souls Satan is the harvester, God the\ngleaner; hell receives the whole vintage in its wine press of\ndamnation, heaven obtains only a few straggling clusters plucked\nfor salvation. The crowded wains roll staggering into the iron\ndoorways of Satan's fire and brimstone barns; the redeemed\nvestiges of the world crop of men are easily borne to heaven in\nthe arms of a few weeping angels. How different is the prevailing\ntone of preaching and belief now! What a cheerful ascent of views\nfrom the mournful passage of the dead over the river of oblivion\nfancied by the Greeks, or the excruciating passage of the river of\nfire painted by the Catholics, to the happy passage of the river\nof balm, healing every weary bruise and sorrow, promised by the\nUniversalists! It is true, the old harsh exclusiveness is still\norganically imbedded in the established creeds, all of which deny\nthe possibility of salvation beyond the little circle who vitally\nappropriate the vicarious atonement of Christ; but then this is,\nfor the most part, a dead letter in the creeds. In the hearts and\nin the candid confessions of all but one in a thousand it is\ndiscredited and sincerely repelled as an abomination to human\nnature, a reflection against God, an outrage upon the substance of\nethics. Remorseless bigots may gloat and exult over the thought\nthat those who reject their dogmas shall be thrust into the\nroaring fire gorges of hell; but a better spirit is the spirit of\nthe age we live in; and, doubtless, a vast majority of the men we\ndaily meet really believe that all who try to the best of their\nability, according to their light and circumstances, to do what is\nright, in the love of God and man, shall be saved. In that moving\nscene of the great dramatist where the burial of the innocent and\nhapless Ophelia is represented, and Lacrtes vainly seeks to win\nfrom the Church official\n\n21 In Acta Apostolorum, homil. xxiv.\n\n22 Gotze, Ueber die Neue Meinung von der Seligkeit der angeblich\nguten und redlichen Seelen unter Juden, Heiden, und Turken durch\nChristum, ohne dass sie an ihn glauben.\n\n\nthe full funeral rites of religion over her grave, the priest may\nstand for the false and cruel ritual spirit, the brother for the\njust and native sentiment of the human heart. Says the priest,\n\"We should profane the service of the dead To sing a requiem and\nsuch rest to her As to peace parted souls.\" And Laertes replies,\n\"Lay her in the earth; And from her fair and unpolluted flesh\nShall violets spring. I tell thee, churlish priest, A ministering\nangel shall my sister be When thou liest howling.\"\n\nIndeed, who that has a heart in his bosom would not be ashamed not\nto sympathize with the gentle hearted Burns when he expresses even\nto the devil himself the quaint and kindly wish, \"Oh wad ye tak' a\nthought and mend!\"\n\nThe creeds and the priests, in congenial alliance with many evil\nthings, may strive to counteract this progressive self\nemancipation from cruel falsehoods and superstitions, but in vain.\nThe terms of salvation are seen lying in the righteous will of a\ngracious God, not in the heartless caprice of a priesthood nor in\nthe iron gripe of a set of dogmas. The old priestly monopoly over\nthe way to heaven has been taken off in the knowledge of the\nenlightened present, and, for all who have unfettered feet to walk\nwith, the passage to God is now across a free bridge. The ancient\nexactors may still sit in their toll house creeds and confessionals;\nbut their authority is gone, and the virtuous traveller, stepping\nfrom the ground of time upon the planks that lead over into eternity,\nsmiles as he passes scot free by their former taxing terrors.\n\nThe reign of sacramentalists and dogmatists rapidly declines.\nReason, common sentiment, the liberal air, the best and\nstrongest tendencies of the people, are against them to\nday, and will be more against them in every coming day. Every\nsuccessive explosion of the Second Adventist fanaticism will leave\nless of that element behind. Its rage in America, under the\nauspices of Miller, in the nineteenth century, was tame and feeble\nwhen compared with the terror awakened in Europe in the fifteenth\ncentury by Stofler's prediction of an approaching comet.23 Every\nnew discovery of the harmonies of science, and of the perfections\nof nature, and of the developments of the linear logic of God\nconsistently unfolding in implicated sequences of peaceful order\nunperturbed by shocks of failure and epochs of remedy, will\nincrease and popularize an intelligent faith in the original\nordination and the intended permanence of the present constitution\nof things. Finally men will cease to be looking up to see the blue\ndome cleave open for the descent of angelic squadrons headed by\nthe majestic Son of God, the angry breath of his mouth consuming\nthe world, cease to\n\n23 Bayle, Historical Dictionary, art. Stofler, note B.\n\n\nexpect salvation by any other method than that of earnest and\ndevout truthfulness, love, good works, and pious submissiveness to\nGod, cease to fancy that their souls, after waiting through the\nlong sleep or separation of death, will return and take on their\nold bodies again. Recognizing the Divine plan for training souls\nin this lower and transient state for a higher and immortal state,\nthey will endeavor, in natural piety and mutual love, while they\nlive, to exhaust the genuine uses of the world that now is, and\nthus prepare themselves to enter with happiest auspices, when they\ndie, the world prepared for them beyond these mortal shores.\n\nThese cheerful prophecies must be verified in the natural course\nof things. The rapid spread of the doctrine of a future life\ntaught by the \"Spirit rappers\" is a remarkable revelation of the\ngreat extent to which the minds of the common people have at last\nbecome free from the long domination of the ecclesiastical dogmas\non that subject. The leading representatives of the \"Spiritualists\"\naffirm, with much unanimity, the most comforting conclusions\nas to the condition of the departed. They exclude all wrath\nand favoritism from the disposition of the Deity. They have\nlittle in fact, they often have nothing whatever to say of hell.\nThey emphatically repudiate the ordinarily taught terms of\nsalvation, and deny the doctrine of hopeless reprobation. All\ndeath is beautiful and progressive. \"Every form and thing is\nconstantly growing lovelier and every sphere purer.\" The abode of\neach soul in the future state is determined, not by decrees or\ndogmas or forms of any kind, but by qualities of character,\ndegrees of love, purity, and wisdom. There are seven ascending\nspheres, each more abounding than the one below it in beauties,\nglories, and happiness. \"The first sphere is the natural; the\nsecond, the spiritual; the third, the celestial; the fourth, the\nsupernatural; the fifth, the superspiritual; the sixth, the\nsupercelestial; the seventh, the Infinite Vortex of Love and\nWisdom.\"24 Whatever be thought of the pretensions of this doctrine\nto be a Divine revelation, whatever be thought of its various\npsychological, cosmological, and theological characteristics, its\nethics are those of natural reason. It is wholly irreconcilable\nwith the popular ecclesiastical system of doctrines. Its epidemic\ndiffusion until now burdened as it is with such nauseating\naccompaniments of crudity and absurdity, it reckons its adherents\nby millions is a tremendous evidence of the looseness with which\nthe old, cruel dogmas sit on the minds of the masses of the\npeople, and of their eager readiness to welcome more humane views.\n\nIn science the erroneous doctrines of the Middle Age are now\ngenerally discarded. The mention of them but provokes a smile or\nawakens surprise. Yet, as compared with the historic annals of our\nrace, it is but recently that the true order of the solar system\nhas been unveiled, the weight of the air discovered, the\ncirculation of the blood made known, the phenomena of insanity\nintelligently studied, the results of physiological chemistry\nbrought to light, the symmetric domain and sway of calculable law\npushed far out in every direction of nature and experience. It\nused to be supposed that digestion was effected by means of a\nmechanical power equal to many tons. Borelli asserted that the\nmuscular force of the heart was one hundred and eighty thousand\npounds. These absurd estimates only disappeared when the\n\n24 Andrew Jackson Davis, Nature's Divine Revelations, sects. 192\n203.\n\n\nproperties of the gastric juice were discerned. The method in\nwhich we distinguish the forms and distances of objects was not\nunderstood until Berkeley published his \"New Theory of Vision.\"\nFew persons are aware of the opposition of bigotry, stolidity, and\nauthority against which the brilliant advances of scientific\ndiscovery and mechanical invention and social improvement have\nbeen forced to contend, and in despite of which they have slowly\nwon their way. Excommunications, dungeons, fires, sneers, polite\npersecution, bitter neglect, tell the story, from the time the\nAthenians banned Anaxagoras for calling the sun a mass of fire, to\nthe day an English mob burned the warehouses of Arkwright because\nhe had invented the spinning jenny. But, despite all the hostile\nenergies of establishment, prejudice, and scorn, the earnest\nvotaries of philosophical truth have studied and toiled with ever\naccumulating victories, until now a hundred sciences are ripe with\nemancipating fruits and perfect freedom to be taught. Railroads\ngird the lands with ribs of trade, telegraphs thread the airs with\nelectric tidings of events, and steamships crease the seas with\nchannels of foam and fire. There is no longer danger of any one\nbeing put to death, or even being excluded from the \"best\nsociety,\" for saying that the earth moves. An eclipse cannot be\nregarded as the frown of God when it is regularly foretold with\ncertainty. The measurement of the atmosphere exterminated the\nwiseacre proverb, \"Nature abhors a vacuum,\" by the burlesque\naddition, \"but only for the first thirty two feet.\" The madman\ncannot be looked on as divinely inspired, his words to be caught\nas oracles, or as possessed by a devil, to be chained and\nscourged, since Pinel's great work has brought insanity within the\nrange of organic disease. When Franklin's kite drew electricity\nfrom the cloud to his knuckle, the superstitious theory of thunder\ndied a natural death.\n\nThe vast progress effected in all departments of physical science\nduring the last four centuries has not been made in any kindred\ndegree in the prevailing theology. Most of the harsh, unreasonable\ntenets of the elaborately morbid and distorted mediaval\ntheologyare still retained in the creeds of the great majority of\nChristendom. The causes of this difference are plain. The\nestablishment of newly discovered truths in material science being\nless intimately connected with the prerogatives of the ruling\nclasses, less clearly hostile to the permanence of their power,\nthey have not offered so pertinacious an opposition to progress in\nthis province: they have yielded a much larger freedom to\nphysicists than to moralists, to discoverers of mathematical,\nchemical, and mechanical law than to reformers of political and\nreligious thought. Livy tells us that, in the five hundred and\nseventy third year of Rome, some concealed books of Numa were\nfound, which, on examination by the priests, being thought\ninjurious to the established religion, were ordered to be\nburned.25 The charge was not that they were ungenuine, nor that\ntheir contents were false; but they were dangerous. In the second\ncentury, an imperial decree forbade the reading of the Sibylline\nOracles, because they contained prophecies of Christ and doctrines\nof Christianity. By an act of the English Parliament, in the\nmiddle of the seventeenth century, every copy of the Racovian\nCatechism (an exposition of the Socinian doctrine) that could be\nobtained was burned in the streets.\n\n25 Lib. xl. cap. xxix.\n\n\nThe Index Expurgatorius for Catholic countries is still freshly\nfilled every year. And in Protestant countries a more subtle and a\nmore effectual influence prevents, on the part of the majority,\nthe candid perusal of all theological discussions which are not\npitched in the orthodox key. Certain dogmas are the absorbed\nthought of the sects which defend them: no fresh and independent\nthinking is to be expected on those subjects, no matter how purely\nfictitious these secretions of the brain of the denomination or of\nsome ancient leader may be, no matter how glaringly out of keeping\nwith the intelligence and liberty which reign in other realms of\nfaith and feeling. There is nowhere else in the world a tyranny so\npervasive and despotic as that which rules in the department of\ntheological opinion. The prevalent slothful and slavish surrender\nof the grand privileges and duties of individual thought,\nindependent personal conviction and action in religious matters,\nis at once astonishing, pernicious, and disgraceful. The effect of\nentrenched tradition, priestly directors, a bigoted, overawing,\nand persecuting sectarianism, is nowhere else a hundredth part so\npowerful or so extensive.\n\nIn addition to the bitter determination by interested persons to\nsuppress reforming investigations of the doctrines which hold\ntheir private prejudices in supremacy, and to the tremendous\nsocial prestige of old establishment, another cause has been\nactive to keep theology stationary while science has been making\nsuch rapid conquests. Science deals with tangible quantities,\ntheology with abstract qualities. The cultivation of the former\nyields visible practical results of material comfort; the\ncultivation of the latter yields only inward spiritual results of\nmental welfare. Accordingly, science has a thousand resolute\nvotaries where theology has one unshackled disciple. At this\nmoment, a countless multitude, furnished with complex apparatus,\nare ransacking every nook of nature, and plucking trophies, and\nthe world with honoring attention reads their reports. But how few\nwith competent preparation and equipment, with fearless\nconsecration to truth, unhampered, with fresh free vigor, are\nscrutinizing the problems of theology, enthusiastically bent upon\nrefuting errors and proving verities! And what reception do the\nconclusions of those few meet at the hands of the public? Surely\nnot prompt recognition, frank criticism, and grateful acknowledgment\nor courteous refutation. No; but studied exclusion from notice,\nor sophistical evasions and insulting vituperation.\n\nWhat a striking and painful contrast is afforded by the generous\nencouragement given to the students of science by the annual\nbestowment of rewards by the scientific societies such as the\nCuvier Prize, the Royal Medal, the Rumford Medal and the jealous\ncontempt and assaults visited by the sectarian authorities upon\nthose earnest students of theology who venture to propose any\ninnovating improvement! Suppose there were annually awarded an\nAquinas Prize, a Fenelon Medal, a Calvin Medal, a Luther Medal, a\nChanning Medal, not to the one who should present the most\ningenious defence of any peculiar tenet of one of those masters,\nbut to him who should offer the most valuable fresh contribution\nto theological truth! What should we think if the French Institute\noffered a gold medal every year to the astronomer who presented\nthe ablest essay in support of the Ptolemaic system, or if the\nRoyal Society voted a diploma for the best method of casting\nnativities? Such is the course pursued in regard to dogmatic\ntheology. The consequence has been that while elsewhere the\nultimate standard by which to try a doctrine is, What do the\nmost competent judges say? What does unprejudiced reason dictate?\nWhat does the great harmony of truth require? in theology it is,\nWhat do the committed priests say? How does it comport with the\nold traditions?\n\nWe read in the Hak ul Yakeen that the envoy of Herk, Emperor of\nRum, once said to the prophet, \"You summon people to a Paradise\nwhose extent includes heaven and earth: where, then, is hell?\"\nMohammed replied, \"When day comes, where is night?\" That is to\nsay, according to the traditionary glosses, as day and night are\nopposite, so Paradise is at the zenith and hell at the nadir. Yes;\nbut if Paradise be above the heavens, and hell below the seventh\nearth, then how can Sirat be extended over hell for people to pass\nto Paradise? \"We reply,\" say the authors of the Hak ul Yakeen,\n\"that speculation on this subject is not necessary, nor to be\nregarded. Implicit faith in what the prophets have revealed must\nbe had; and explanatory surmises, which are the occasion of\nSatanic doubts, must not be indulged.\"26 Certainly this exclusion\nof reason cannot always be suffered. It is fast giving way\nalready. And it is inevitable that, when reason secures its right\nand bears its rightful fruits in moral subjects as it now does in\nphysical subjects, the mediaval theology must be rejected as\nmediaval science has been. It is the common doctrine of the Church\nthat Christ now sits in heaven in a human body of flesh and blood.\nCalvin separated the Divine nature of Christ from this human body;\nbut Luther made the two natures inseparable and attributed\nubiquity to the body in which they reside, thus asserting the\nomnipresence of a material human body, a bulk of a hundred and\nfifty pounds' weight more or less. He furiously assailed Zwingle's\nobjection to this monstrous nonsense, as \"a devil's mask and\ngrandchild of that old witch, mistress Reason.\" 27 The Roman\nChurch teaches, and her adherents devoutly believe, that the house\nof the Virgin Mary was conveyed on the wings of angels from\nNazareth to the eastern slope of the Apennines above the Adriatic\nGulf.28 The English Church, consistently interpreted, teaches that\nthere is no salvation without baptism by priests in the line of\napostolic succession. These are but ordinary specimens of\nteachings still humbly received by the mass of Christians. The\ncommon distrust with which the natural operations of reason are\nregarded in the Church, the extreme reluctance to accept the\nconclusions of mere reason, seem to us discreditable to the\ntheological leaders who represent the current creeds of the\napproved sects. Many an influential theologian could learn\ninvaluable lessons from the great guides in the realm of science.\nThe folly which acute learned wise men will be guilty of the\nmoment they turn to theological subjects, where they do not allow\nreason to act, is both ludicrous and melancholy. The victim of\nlycanthropy used to be burned alive; he is now placed under the\ncareful treatment of skilful and humane physicians. But the\nheretic or infidel is still thought to be inspired by the devil, a\nfit subject for discipline here and hell hereafter. The light shed\nabroad by the rising spirit of rational investigation must\ngradually dispel the delusions which lurk in the vales of\ntheology, as it already has dispelled those that formerly haunted\nthe hills of science. The spectres which have so long terrified a\nchildish world will successively vanish\n\n26 Merrick, Hyat ul Kuloob, note 74.\n\n27 Hagenbach, Dogmengeschichte, sect. 265, note 2.\n\n28 Christian Remembrancer, April, 1855. A full and able history of\nthe \"Holy House of Loretto.\"\n\n\nfrom the path of man as advancing reason, in the name of the God\nof truth, utters its imperial \"Avaunt!\"\n\nHenry More wrote a book on the \"Immortality of the Soul,\" printed\nin London in 1659, just two hundred years ago. It is full of\nbeauty, acumen, and power. He was one of the first men of the\ntime. Yet he seriously elaborates an argument like this: \"The scum\nand spots that lie on the sun are as great an Argument that there\nis no Divinity in him as the dung of Owls and Sparrows that is\nfound on the faces and shoulders of Idols in Temples are clear\nevidences that they are no true Deities.\"29 He also in good faith\ntells a story like this: \"That a Woman with child, seeing a\nButcher divide a Swine's head with a Cleaver, brought forth her\nChild with its face cloven in the upper jaw, the palate, and upper\nlip to the very nose.\"30 The progress marked by the contrast of\nthe scientific spirit of the present time with the ravenous\ncredulity of even two centuries back must continue and spread into\nevery province. Some may vilify it; but in vain. Some may\nsophisticate against it; but in vain. Some may invoke authority\nand social persecution to stop it; but in vain. Some may appeal to\nthe prejudices and fears of the timid; but in vain. Some may close\ntheir own eyes, and hold their hands before their neighbors' eyes,\nand attempt to shut out the light; but in vain. It will go on. It\nis the interest of the world that it should go on. It is the manly\nand the religious course to help this progress with prudence and\nreverence. Truth is the will of God, the way he has made things to\nbe and to act, the way he wishes free beings to exist and to act.\nHe has ordained the gradual discovery of truth. And despite the\nstruggles of selfish tyranny, and the complacence of luxurious\nease, and the terror of ignorant cowardice, truth will be more and\nmore brought to universal acceptance. Some men have fancied their\nbodies composed of butter or of glass; but when compelled to move\nout into the sunlight or the crowd they did not melt nor break.31\nEsquirol had a patient who did not dare to bend her thumb, lest\nthe world should come to an end. When forced to bend it, she was\nsurprised that the crack of doom did not follow.\n\nThe mechanico theatrical character of the popular theology is\nenough to reveal its origin and its fundamental falsity. The\ndifference between its lurid and phantasmal details and the calm\neternal verities in the divinely constituted order of nature is as\ngreat as the difference between those stars which one sees in\nconsequence of a blow on the forehead and those he sees by turning\nhis gaze to the nightly sky. To every competent thinker, the bare\nappreciation of such a passage as that which closes\nChateaubriand's chapter on the Last Judgment, with the huge bathos\nof its incongruous mixture of sublime and absurd, is its\nsufficient refutation: \"The globe trembles on its axis; the moon\nis covered with a bloody veil; the threatening stars hang half\ndetached from the vault of heaven, and the agony of the world\ncommences. Now resounds the trump of the angel. The sepulchres\nburst: the human race issues all at once, and fills the Valley of\nJehoshaphat! The Son of Man appears in the clouds; the powers of\nhell ascend from the infernal depths; the goats are separated from\nthe sheep; the wicked are plunged into the gulf; the just ascend\nto heaven; God returns to his repose,\n\n29 Preface, p. 10.\n\n30 Ibid. p. 392.\n\n31 Bucknill and Tuke, Psychological Medicine, ch. ix.\n\n\nand the reign of eternity begins.\"32 Nothing saves this whole\nscheme of doctrine from instant rejection except neglect of\nthought, or incompetence of thought, on the part of those who\ncontemplate it. The peculiar dogmas of the exclusive sects are the\nproducts of mental and social disease, psychological growths in\npathological moulds. The naked shapes of beautiful women floating\naround St. Anthony in full display of their maddening charms are\ninterpreted by the Romanist Church as a visible work of the devil.\nAn intelligent physician accounts for them by the laws of\nphysiology, the morbid action of morbid nerves. There is no doubt\nwhatever as to which of these explanations is correct. The\nabsolute prevalence of that explanation is merely a question of\ntime. Meanwhile, it is the part of every wise and devout man,\nwithout bigotry, without hatred for any, with strict fidelity to\nhis own convictions, with entire tolerance and kindness for all\nwho differ from him, sacredly to seek after verity himself and\nearnestly to endeavor to impart it to others. To such men forms of\nopinion, instead of being prisons, fetters, and barriers, will be\nbut as tents of a night while they march through life, the burning\nand cloudy column of inquiry their guide, the eternal temple of\ntruth their goal.\n\nThe actual relation, the becoming attitude, the appropriate\nfeeling, of man towards the future state, the concealed segment of\nhis destiny, are impressively shown in the dying scene of one of\nthe wisest and most gifted of men, one of the fittest representatives\nof the modern mind. In a good old age, on a pleasant spring day,\nwith a vast expanse of experience behind him, with an immensity of\nhope before him, he lay calmly expiring.\n\n\"More light!\" he cried, with departing breath; and Death, solemn\nwarder of eternity, led him, blinded, before the immemorial veil\nof awe and secrets. It uprolled as the flesh bandage fell from his\nspirit, and he walked at large, triumphant or appalled, amidst the\nunimagined revelations of God.\n\nAnd now, recalling the varied studies we have passed through, and\nseeking for the conclusion or root of the matter, what shall we\nsay? This much we will say. First, the fearless Christian, fully\nacquainted with the results of a criticism unsparing as the\nrequisitions of truth and candor, can scarcely, with intelligent\nhonesty, do more than place his hand on the beating of his heart,\nand fix his eye on the riven tomb of Jesus, and exclaim, \"Feeling\nhere the inspired promise of immortality, and seeing there the\nsign of God's authentic seal, I gratefully believe that Christ has\nrisen, and that my soul is deathless!\" Secondly, the trusting\nphilosopher, fairly weighing the history of the world's belief in\na future life, and the evidences on which it rests, can scarcely,\nwith justifying warrant, do less than lay his hand on his body,\nand turn his gaze aloft, and exclaim, \"Though death shatters this\nshell, the soul may survive, and I confidently hope to live\nforever.\" Meanwhile, the believer and the speculator, combining to\nform a Christian philosophy wherein doubt and faith, thought and\nfreedom, reason and sentiment, nature and revelation, all embrace,\neven as the truth of things and the experience of life demand, may\nboth adopt for their own the expression wrought for himself by a\npure and fervent poet in these freighted lines of pathetic beauty:\n\n32 Genius of Christianity, part ii. book vi. ch. vii.\n\n\n\"I gather up the scattered rays Of wisdom in the early days, Faint\ngleams and broken, like the light Of meteors in a Northern night,\nBetraying to the darkling earth The unseen sun which gave them\nbirth; I listen to the sibyl's chant, The voice of priest and\nhierophant; I know what Indian Kreeshna saith, And what of life\nand what of death The demon taught to Socrates, And what, beneath\nhis garden trees Slow pacing, with a dream like tread, The solemn\nthoughted Plato said; Nor Lack I tokens, great or small, Of God's\nclear light in each and all, While holding with more dear regard\nThan scroll of heathen seer and bard The starry pages, promise\nlit, With Christ's evangel overwrit, Thy miracle of life and\ndeath, O Holy One of Nazareth!\" 33\n\n33 Whittier, Questions of Life.\n\n\nPART FIFTH.\n\n\nHISTORICAL AND CRITICAL DISSERTATIONS CONCERNING A FUTURE LIFE.\n\n\nCHAPTER I.\n\nDOCTRINE OF A FUTURE LIFE IN THE ANCIENT MYSTERIES.\n\nTHE power of the old religions was for centuries concentrated in\nthe Mysteries. These were recondite institutions, sometimes\nwielded by the state, sometimes by a priesthood, sometimes by a\nramifying private society. None could be admitted into them save\nwith the permission of the hierarchs, by rites of initiation, and\nunder solemn seals of secrecy. These mysterious institutions,\ncharged with strange attractions, shrouded in awful wonder, were\nnumerous, and, agreeing in some of their fundamental features,\nwere spread nearly all over the world. The writings of the\nancients abound with references to them, mostly eulogistic. The\nmighty part played by these veiled bodies in the life of the\nperiods when they flourished, the pregnant hints and alluring\nobscurities amid which they stand in relation to the learning of\nmodern times, have repeatedly obtained wide attention, elicited\nopposite opinions, provoked fierce debates, and led different\ninquirers to various conclusions as to their true origin,\ncharacter, scope, meaning, and results.\n\nOne of the principal points in discussion by scholars concerning\nthe Mysteries has been whether they inculcated an esoteric\ndoctrine of philosophy, opposed to the popular religion. Some\nwriters have maintained that in their symbols and rites was\ncontained a pure system of monotheistic ethics and religion. Our\nown opinion is that in some of these institutions, at one period,\nhigher theological views and scientific speculations were\nunfolded, but in others never. Still, it is extremely difficult to\nprove any thing on this part of the general subject: there is much\nthat is plausible to be said on both sides of the question.\nAnother query to be noticed in passing is in regard to the degree\nof exclusiveness and concealment really attached to the form of\ninitiation. Lobeck, in his celebrated work, \"Aglaophamus,\" borne\naway by a theory, assumes the extravagant position that the\nEleusinian Mysteries were almost freely open to all.1 His error\nseems to lie in not distinguishing sufficiently between the Lesser\nand the Greater Mysteries, and in not separating the noisy shows\nof the public festal days from the initiatory and explanatory\nrites of personal admission within the mystic pale. The notorious\n\n1 Lib. i. sects. 4, 5.\n\n\nfacts that strict inquiry was made into the character and fitness\nof the applicant before his admission, and that many were openly\nrejected, that instant death was inflicted on all who intruded\nunprepared within the sacred circuits, and that death was the\npenalty of divulging what happened during the celebrations, all\nare inconsistent with the notion of Lobeck, and prove that the\nMysteries were hedged about with dread. Aschylus narrowly escaped\nbeing torn in pieces upon the stage by the people on suspicion\nthat in his play he had given a hint of something in the\nMysteries. He delivered himself by appealing to the Areopagus, and\nproving that he had never been initiated. Andocides also, a Greek\norator who lived about four hundred years before Christ, was\nsomewhat similarly accused, and only escaped by a strenuous\ndefence of himself in an oration, still extant, entitled\n\"Concerning the Mysteries.\"\n\nA third preliminary matter is as to the moral character of the\nservices performed by these companies. Some held that their\ncharacteristics were divinely pure, intellectual, exalting; others\nthat in abandoned pleasures they were fouler than the Stygian pit.\nThe Church Fathers, Clement, Irenaus, Tertullian, and the rest,\ninfluenced by a mixture of prejudice, hatred, and horror, against\nevery thing connected with paganism, declared, in round terms,\nthat the Mysteries were unmitigated sinks of iniquity and shame,\nlust, murder, and all promiscuous deviltry. Without pausing to\nexcept or qualify, or to be thoroughly informed and just, they\nincluded the ancient stern generations and their own degraded\ncontemporaries, the vile rites of the Corinthian Aphrodite and the\nsolemn service of Demeter, the furious revels of the Bacchanalians\nand the harmonious mental worship of Apollo, all in one\nindiscriminate charge of insane beastliness and idolatry. Their\nview of the Mysteries has been most circulated among the moderns\nby Leland's learned but bigoted work on the \"Use and Necessity of\na Divine Revelation.\" He would have us regard each one as a vortex\nof atheistic sensuality and crime. There should be discrimination.\nThe facts are undoubtedly these, as we might abundantly\ndemonstrate were it in the province of the present essay. The\noriginal Mysteries, the authoritative institutions co ordinated\nwith the state or administered by the poets and philosophers, were\npure: their purpose was to purify the lives and characters of\ntheir disciples. Their means were a complicated apparatus of\nsensible and symbolic revelations and instructions admirably\ncalculated to impress the most salutary moral and religious\nlessons. In the first place, is it credible that the state would\nfling its auspices over societies whose function was to organize\nlawlessness and debauchery, to make a business of vice and filth?\nAmong the laws of Solon is a regulation decreeing that the Senate\nshall convene in the Eleusinian temple, the day after the\nfestival, to inquire whether every thing had been done with\nreverence and propriety. Secondly, if such was the character of\nthese secrets, why was inquisition always made into the moral\nhabits of the candidate, that he might be refused admittance if\nthey were bad? This inquiry was severe, and the decision\nunrelenting. Alcibiades was rejected, as we learn from Plutarch's\nlife of him, on account of his dissoluteness and insubordination\nin the city. Nero dared not attend the Eleusinian Mysteries,\n\"because to the murder of his mother he had joined the slaughter\nof his paternal aunt.\"2 All accepted candidates were scrupulously\npurified in thought and body, and clad in white robes, for nine\ndays previous to their reception. Thirdly, it is intrinsically\nabsurd to suppose that an institution of gross immorality and\ncruelty could have flourished in the most polite and refined Greek\nnation, as the Eleusinian Mysteries did for over eighteen hundred\nyears, ranking among its members a vast majority of both sexes, of\nall classes, of all ages, and constantly celebrating its rites\nbefore immense audiences of them all. Finally, a host of men like\nPlato, Sophocles, Cimon, Lycurgus, Cicero, were members of these\nbodies, partook in their transactions, and have left on record\neulogies of them and of their influence. The concurrent testimony\nof antiquity is that in the Great Mysteries the desires were\nchastened, the heart purified, the mind calmed, the soul inspired,\nall the virtues of morality and hopes of religion taught and\nenforced with sublime solemnities. There is no just ground for\nsuspecting this to be false.\n\nBut there remains something more and different to be said also.\nWhile the authorized Mysteries were what we have asserted, there\ndid afterwards arise spurious Mysteries, in names, forms, and\npretensions partially resembling the genuine ones, under the\ncontrol of the most unprincipled persons, and in which\nunquestionably the excesses of unbelief, drunkenness, and\nprostitution held riot. These depraved societies were foreign\ngrafts from the sensual pantheism ever nourished in the voluptuous\nclimes of the remote East. They established themselves late in\nGreece, but were developed at Rome in such unbridled enormities as\ncompelled the Senate to suppress them. Livy gives a detailed and\nvivid account of the whole affair in his history.3 But the\ngladiators, scoundrels, rakes, bawds, who swarmed in these stews\nof rotting Rome, are hardly to be confounded with the noble men\nand matrons of the earlier time who openly joined in the pure\nMysteries with the approving example of the holiest bards, the\ngravest statesmen, and the profoundest sages, men like Pindar,\nPericles, and Pythagoras. Ample facilities are afforded in the\nnumerous works to which we shall refer for unmasking the different\norganizations that travelled over the earth in the guise of the\nMysteries, and of seeing what deceptive arts were practised in\nsome, what superhuman terrors paraded in others, what horrible\ncruelties perpetrated in others, what leading objects sought in\neach.\n\nThe Mysteries have many bearings on several distinct subjects; but\nin those aspects we have not space here to examine them. We\npurpose to consider them solely in their relation to the doctrine\nof a future life. We are convinced that the very heart of their\nsecret, the essence of their meaning in their origin and their\nend, was no other than the doctrine of an immortality succeeding a\ndeath. Gessner published a book at Gottingen, so long ago as the\nyear 1755, maintaining this very assertion. His work, which is\nquite scarce now, bears the title \"Dogma de perenni Animoruin\nNatura per Sacra pracipue Eleusinia Propagata.\" The consenting\ntestimony of more than forty of the most authoritative ancient\nwriters comes down to us in their surviving works to the effect\nthat those who were admitted into the Mysteries were thereby\npurified, led to holy lives, joined in communion with the gods,\nand\n\n2 Suetonius, Vita Neronis, cap. xxxiv.\n\n3 Lib. xxxix. cap. viii xvi.\n\n\nassured of a better fate than otherwise could be expected in the\nfuture state. Two or three specimens from these witnesses will\nsuffice. Aristophanes, in the second act of the Frogs, describes\nan elysium of the initiates after death, where he says they bound\n\"in sportive dances on rose enamelled meadows; for the light is\ncheerful only to those who have been initiated.\"4 Pausanias\ndescribes the uninitiated as being compelled in Hades to carry\nwater in buckets bored full of holes.5 Isocrates says, in his\nPanegyric, \"Demeter, the goddess of the Eleusinian Mysteries,\nfortifies those who have been initiated against the fear of death,\nand teaches them to have sweet hopes concerning eternity.\" The old\nOrphic verses cited by Thomas Taylor in his Treatise on the\nMysteries run thus: \"The soul that uninitiated dies Plunged in the\nblackest mire in Hades lies.\" 6\n\nThe same statement is likewise found in Plato, who, in another\nplace, also explicitly declares that a doctrine of future\nretribution was taught in the Mysteries and believed by the\nserious.7 Cicero says, \"Initiation makes us both live more\nhonorably and die with better hopes.\" 8 In seasons of imminent\ndanger as in a shipwreck it was customary for a man to ask his\ncompanion, Hast thou been initiated? The implication is that\ninitiation removed fear of death by promising a happy life to\nfollow.9 A fragment preserved from a very ancient author is plain\non this subject. \"The soul is affected in death just as it is in\nthe initiation into the great Mysteries: thing answers to thing.\nAt first it passes through darkness, horrors, and toils. Then are\ndisclosed a wondrous light, pure places, flowery meads, replete\nwith mystic sounds, dances, and sacred doctrines, and holy\nvisions. Then, perfectly enlightened, they are free: crowned, they\nwalk about worshipping the gods and conversing with good men.\"10\nThe principal part of the hymn to Ceres, attributed to Homer, is\noccupied with a narrative of her labors to endow the young\nDemophoon, mortal child of Metaneira, with immortality. Now, Ceres\nwas the goddess of the Mysteries; and the last part of this very\nhymn recounts how Persephone was snatched from the light of life\ninto Hades and restored again. Thus we see that the implications\nof the indirect evidence, the leanings and guidings of all the\nincidental clews now left us to the real aim and purport of the\nMysteries, combine to assure us that their chief teaching was a\ndoctrine of a future life in which there should be rewards and\npunishments. All this we shall more fully establish, both by\ndirect proofs and by collateral supports.\n\nIt is a well known fact, intimately connected with the different\nreligions of Greece and Asia Minor, that during the time of\nharvest in the autumn, and again at the season of sowing in the\nspring, the shepherds, the vintagers, and the people in general,\nwere accustomed to observe certain sacred festivals, the autumnal\nsad, the vernal joyous. These undoubtedly grew out of the deep\nsympathy between man and nature over the decay and disappearance,\nthe revival and return, of vegetation. When the hot season had\nwithered the verdure of the\n\n4 Scene iii.\n\n5 Lib. x. cap. xxxi.\n\n6 Phadon, sect. xxxviii.\n\n7 Leg., lib. ix. cap. x.\n\n8 De Leg., lib. ii. cap. xiv.\n\n9 St. John, Hellenes, ch. xi.\n\n10 Sentences of Stobaus, Sermo CXIX.\n\n\nfields, plaintive songs were sung, their wild melancholy notes and\nsnatches borne abroad by the breeze and their echoes dying at last\nin the distance. In every instance, these mournful strains were\nthe annual lamentation of the people over the death of some\nmythical boy of extraordinary beauty and promise, who, in the\nflower of youth, was suddenly drowned, or torn in pieces by wild\nbeasts, \"Some Hyacinthine boy, for whom Morn well might break and April\nbloom.\"\n\nAmong the Argives it was Linus. With the Arcadians it was\nScephrus. In Phrygia it was Lityerses. On the shore of the Black\nSea it was Bormus. In the country of the Bithynians it was Hylas.\nAt Pelusium it was Maneros. And in Syria it was Adonis. The\nuntimely death of these beautiful boys, carried off in their\nmorning of life, was yearly bewailed, their names re echoing over\nthe plains, the fountains, and among the hills. It is obvious that\nthese cannot have been real persons whose death excited a sympathy\nso general, so recurrent. \"The real object of lamentation,\" says\nMuller, \"was the tender beauty of spring destroyed by the raging\nheat, and other similar phenomena, which the imagination of those\nearly times invested with a personal form.\"11 All this was woven\ninto the Mysteries, whose great legend and drama were that every\nautumn Persephone was carried down to the dark realm of the King\nof Shadows, but that she was to return each spring to her mother's\narms. Thus were described the withdrawal and reappearance of\nvegetable life in the alternations of the seasons. But these\nchanges of nature typified the changes in the human lot; else\nPersephone would have been merely a symbol of the buried grain and\nwould not have become the Queen of the Dead.12 Her return to the\nworld of light, by natural analogy, denoted a new birth to men.\nAccordingly, \"all the testimony of antiquity concurs in saying\nthat these Mysteries inspired the most animating hopes with regard\nto the condition of the soul after death.\"13 That the fate of man\nshould by imagination and sentiment have been so connected with\nthe phenomena of nature in myths and symbols embodied in pathetic\nreligious ceremonies was a spontaneous product. For how \"Her fresh\nbenignant look Nature changes at that lorn season when, With\ntresses drooping o'er her sable stole, She yearly mourns the\nmortal doom of man, Her noblest work! So Israel's virgins erst\nWith annual moan upon the mountains wept Their fairest gone!\"\n\nAnd soon again the birds begin to warble, the leaves and blossoms\nput forth, and all is new life once more. In every age the gentle\nheart and meditative mind have been impressed by the mournful\ncorrespondence and the animating prophecy.\n\n11 History of the Literature of Ancient Greece, ch. iii. sects. 2\n3.\n\n12 For the connection of the Eleusinian goddesses with\nagriculture, the seasons, the under world, death, resurrection,\netc., see \"Demeter and Persephone,\" von Dr. Ludwig Preller, kap.\ni. sects. 9 11.\n\n13 Muller, Hist. Gr. Lit., ch. xvi. sect. 2.\n\n\nBut not only was the changing recurrence of dreary winter and\ngladsome summer joined by affecting analogies with the human doom\nof death and hope of another life. The phenomena of the skies, the\nimpressive succession of day and night, also were early seized\nupon and made to blend their shadows and lights, by means of\nimaginative suggestions, into an image of the decease and\nresurrection of man. Among the Mystical Hymns of Orpheus, so\ncalled, there is a hymn to Adonis, in which that personage is\nidentified with the sun alternately sinking to Tartarus and\nsoaring to heaven. It was customary with the ancients to speak of\nthe setting of a constellation as its death, its reascension in\nthe horizon being its return to life.14 The black abysm under the\nearth was the realm of the dead. The bright expanse above the\nearth was the realm of the living. While the daily sun rises\nroyally through the latter, all things rejoice in the warmth and\nsplendor of his smile. When he sinks nightly, shorn of his\nambrosial beams, into the former, sky and earth wrap themselves in\nmourning for their departed monarch, the dead god of light muffled\nin his bier and borne along the darkening heavens to his burial.\nHow naturally the phenomena of human fate would be symbolically\ninterwoven with all this! Especially alike are the exuberant joy\nand activity of full life and of day, the melancholy stillness and\nsad repose of midnight and of death.\n\nThe sun insists on gladness; but at night, When he is gone, poor\nNature loves to weep.\"\n\nThrough her yearly and her diurnal round alike, therefore, does\nmother Nature sympathize with man, and picture forth his fate, in\ntype of autumnal decay, and wintry darkness, and night buried\nseed, in sign of vernal bud, and summer light, and day bursting\nfruit.\n\nThese facts and phenomena of nature and man, together with\nexplanatory theories to which they gave rise, were, by the\npeculiar imaginative processes so powerfully operative among the\nearliest nations, personified in mythic beings and set forth as\nliteral history. Their doctrine was inculcated as truth once\nhistorically exemplified by some traditional personage. It was\ndramatically impersonated and enacted in the process of initiation\ninto the Mysteries. A striking instance of this kind of theatrical\nrepresentation is afforded by the celebration, every eight years,\nof the mythus of Apollo's fight with the Pythian dragon, his\nflight and expiatory service to Admetus, the subterranean king of\nthe dead. In mimic order, a boy slew a monster at Delphi, ran\nalong the road to Tempe, represented on the way the bondage of the\ngod in Hades, and returned, purified, bringing a branch of laurel\nfrom the sacred valley.15 The doctrine of a future life connected\nwith the legend of some hero who had died, descended into the\nunder world, and again risen to life, this doctrine, dramatically\nrepresented in the personal experience of the initiate, was the\nheart of every one of the secret religious societies of antiquity.\n\n\"Here rests the secret, here the keys, Of the old death bolted\nMysteries.\"\n\n14 Leitch's Eng. trans. of K. O. Muller's Introduction to a\nScientific System of Mythology, Appendix, pp. 339-342.\n\n15 Muller, Introduction to Mythology, pp. 97 and 241. Also his\nDorian, lib. ii. cap. vii. sect. 8.\n\n\nPerhaps this great system of esoteric rites and instructions grew\nup naturally, little by little. Perhaps it was constructed at\nonce, either as poetry, by a company of poets, or as a theology,\nby a society of priests, or as a fair method of moral and\nreligious teaching, by a company of philosophers. Or perhaps it\nwas gradually formed by a mixture of all these means and motives.\nMany have regarded it as the bedimmed relic of a brilliant\nprimeval revelation. This question of the origination, the first\ncauses and purposes, of the Mysteries is now sunk in hopeless\nobscurity, even were it of any importance to be known. One thing\nwe know, namely, that at an early age these societies formed\norganizations of formidable extent and power, and were vitally\nconnected with the prevailing religions of the principal nations\nof the earth.\n\nIn Egypt the legend of initiation was this.16 Typhon, a wicked,\ndestroying personage, once formed a conspiracy against his\nbrother, the good king Osiris. Having prepared a costly chest,\ninlaid with gold, he offered to give it to any one whose body\nwould fit it. Osiris unsuspiciously lay down in it. Typhon\ninstantly fastened the cover and threw the fatal chest into the\nriver. This was called the loss or burial of Osiris, and was\nannually celebrated with all sorts of melancholy rites. But the\nwinds and waves drove the funereal vessel ashore, where Isis, the\ninconsolable wife of Osiris, wandering in search of her husband's\nremains, at last found it, and restored the corpse to life. This\npart of the drama was called the discovery or resurrection of\nOsiris, and was also enacted yearly, but with every manifestation\nof excessive joy. \"In the losing of Osiris, and then in the\nfinding him again,\" Augustine writes, \"first their lamentation,\nthen their extravagant delight, are a mere play and fiction; yet\nthe fond people, though they neither lose nor find any thing, weep\nand rejoice truly.\"17 Plutarch speaks of the death, regeneration,\nand resurrection of Osiris represented in the great religious\nfestivals of Egypt. He explains the rites in commemoration of\nTyphon's murder of Osiris as symbols referring to four things, the\nsubsidence of the Nile into his channel, the cessation of the\ndelicious Etesian winds before the hot blasts of the South, the\nencroachment of the lengthening night on the shortening day, the\ndisappearance of the bloom of summer before the barrenness of\nwinter.18 But the real interest and power of the whole subject\nprobably lay in the direct relation of all these phenomena,\ntraditions, and ceremonies to the doctrine of death and a future\nlife for man.\n\nIn the Mithraic Mysteries of Persia, the legend, ritual, and\ndoctrine were virtually the same as the foregoing. They are\ncredulously said to have been established by Zoroaster himself,\nwho fitted up a vast grotto in the mountains of Bokhara, where\nthousands thronged to be initiated by him.19 This Mithraic cave\nwas an emblem of the universe, its roof painted with the\nconstellations of the zodiac, its depths full of the black and\nfiery terrors of grisly hell, its summit illuminated with the blue\nand starry splendors of heaven, its passages lined with dangers\nand instructions, now quaking with infernal shrieks, now breathing\ncelestial music. In the Persian Mysteries, the initiate, in\ndramatic show, died, was laid in a coffin, and\n\n16 Wilkinson, Egyptian Antiquities, series i. vol. i. ch. 3.\n\n17 De Civitate Dei, lib. vi. cap. 10.\n\n18 De Is. et Osir.\n\n19 Porphyry, De Antro Nympharum. Tertullian, Prescript. ad Her.,\ncap. xl., where he refers the mimic death and resurrection in the\nMithraic Mysteries to the teaching of Satan.\n\n\nafterwards rose unto a new life, all of which was a type of the\nnatural fate of man.20 The descent of the soul from heaven and its\nreturn thither were denoted by a torch borne alternately reversed\nand upright, and by the descriptions of the passage of spirits, in\nthe round of the metempsychosis, through the planetary gates of\nthe zodiac. The sun and moon and the morning and evening star were\ndepicted in brilliant gold or blackly muffled, according to their\njourneying in the upper or in the lower hemisphere.21\n\nThe hero of the Syrian Mysteries was Adonis or Thammuz, the\nbeautiful favorite of Aphrodite, untimely slain by a wild boar.\nHis death was sadly, his resurrection joyously, celebrated every\nyear at Byblus with great pomp and universal interest. The\nfestival lasted two days. On the first, all things were clad in\nmourning, sorrow was depicted in every face, and wails and weeping\nresounded. Coffins were exposed at every door and borne in\nnumerous processions. Frail stalks of young corn and flowers were\nthrown into the river to perish, as types of the premature death\nof blooming Adonis, cut off like a plant in the bud of his age.22\nThe second day the whole aspect of things was changed, and the\ngreatest exultation prevailed, because it was said Adonis had\nreturned from the dead.23 Venus, having found him dead, deposited\nhis body on a bed of lettuce and mourned bitterly over him. From\nhis blood sprang the adonium, from her tears the anemone.24 The\nJews were captivated by the religious rites connected with this\ntouching myth, and even enacted them in the gates of their holy\ntemple. Ezekiel says, \"Behold, at the gate of the Lord's house\nwhich was towards the north [the direction of night and winter]\nthere sat women weeping for Tammuz.\" It was said that Aphrodite\nprevailed on Persephone to let Adonis dwell one half the year with\nher on earth, and only the rest among the shades, a plain\nreference to vegetable life in summer and winter.25 Lucian, in his\nlittle treatise on the Syrian Goddess, says that \"the river\nAdonis, rising out of Mount Libanus, at certain seasons flows red\nin its channel: some say it is miraculously stained by the blood\nof the fresh wounded youth; others say that the spring rains,\nwashing in a red ore from the soil of the country, discolor the\nstream.\" Dupuis remarks that this redness was probably an artifice\nof the priests.26 Milton's beautiful allusion to this fable is\nfamiliar to most persons. Next came he \"Whose annual wound in\nLebanon allured The Syrian damsels to lament his fate In amorous\nditties all a summer's day, While smooth Adonis from his native\nrock Ran purple to the sea with Thammuz' blood.\"\n\n20 Julius Firmicus, De Errore Prof. Relig.\n\n21 Mithraica, Memoire Academique sur le Culte Solaire de Mithra,\npar Joseph de Hammer, pp: 66-68, 125-127. Tertullian, Prescript.\nad Her., cap. xl. Porphyry, De Abstinentia, lib. iv. sect. 16.\nHyde. Hist. Vet. Pers. Relig., p. 254.\n\n22 Hist. du Culte d'Adonis, Mem. Acad. des Inscript., vol. iv. p.\n136.\n\n23 Theocritus, Idyl XV.\n\n24 Bion, Epitaph Adon., l. 66.\n\n25 See references in Anthon's Class. Dict., art. Adonis.\n\n26 Dupuis, Orig. de Cultes, vol. iv. p. 121, ed. 1822.\n\n\nThere is no end to the discussions concerning the secret purport\nof this fascinating story. But, after all is said, it seems to us\nthat there are in it essentially two significations, one relating\nto the phenomena of the sun and the earth, the other to the mutual\nchanges of nature and the fate of humanity. Aphrodite bewailing\nAdonis is surviving Nature mourning for departed Man.\n\nIn India the story was told of Mahadeva searching for his lost\nconsort Sita, and, after discovering her lifeless form, bearing it\naround the world with dismal lamentations. Sometimes it was the\ndeath of Camadeva, the Hindu Cupid, that was mourned with solemn\ndirges.27 He, like Osiris, was slain, enclosed in a chest, and\ncommitted to the waves. He was afterwards recovered and\nresuscitated. Each initiate passed through the emblematic\nceremonies corresponding to the points of this pretended history.\nThe Phrygians associated the same great doctrine with the persons\nof Atys and Cybele. Atys was a lovely shepherd youth passionately\nloved by the mother of the gods.28 He suddenly died; and she, in\nfrantic grief, wandered over the earth in search of him, teaching\nthe people where she went the arts of agriculture. He was at\nlength restored to her. Annually the whole drama was performed by\nthe assembled nation with sobs of woe succeeded by ecstasies of\njoy.29 Similar to this, in the essential features, was the\nEleusinian myth. Aidoneus snatched the maiden Kore down to his\ngloomy empire. Her mother, Demeter, set off in search of her,\nscattering the blessings of agriculture, and finally discovered\nher, and obtained the promise of her society for half of every\nyear. These adventures were dramatized and explained in the\nmysteries which she, according to tradition, instituted at\nEleusis.\n\nThe form of the legend was somewhat differently incorporated with\nthe Bacchic Mysteries. It was elaborately wrought up by the Orphic\npoets. The distinctive name they gave to Bacchus or Dionysus was\nZagreus. He was the son of Zeus, and was chosen by him to sit on\nthe throne of heaven. Zeus gave him Apollo and the Curetes as\nguards; but the brutal Titans, instigated by jealous Hera,\ndisguised themselves and fell on the unfortunate youth while his\nattention was fixed on a splendid mirror, and, after a fearful\nconflict, overcame him and tore him into seven pieces. Pallas,\nhowever, saved his palpitating heart, and Zeus swallowed it.\nZagreus was then begotten again.30 He was destined to restore the\ngolden age. His devotees looked to him for the liberation of their\nsouls through the purifying rites of his Mysteries. The initiation\nshadowed out an esoteric doctrine of death and a future life, in\nthe mock murder and new birth of the aspirant, who impersonated\nZagreus.31\n\nThe Northmen constructed the same drama of death around the young\nBalder, their god of gentleness and beauty. This legend, as Dr.\nOliver has shown, constituted the secret of the Gothic\nMysteries.32 Obscure and dread prophecies having crept among the\ngods that the death of the beloved Balder was at hand, portending\nuniversal ruin, a consultation was held to devise means for\naverting the calamity. At the suggestion of Balder's mother,\nFreya, the Scandinavian Venus, an oath that they would not be\ninstrumental in causing his death was\n\n27 Asiatic Researches, vol. iii. p. 187.\n\n28 See article Atys in Smith's Class. Dict. with references.\n\n29 Lucretius, De Rerum Natura, lib. ii. 11. 605-655.\n\n30 Muller, Hist. Greek Lit., ch. xvi.\n\n31 Lobeck, Aglaophamus, lib. iii. cap. 5, sect. 13.\n\n32 History of Initiation, Lect. X.\n\n\nexacted from all things in nature except the mistletoe, which, on\naccount of its frailty and insignificance, was scornfully\nneglected. Asa Loke, the evil principle of the Norse faith, taking\nadvantage of this fatal exception, had a spear made of mistletoe,\nand with it armed Hodur, a strong but blind god. Freya, rejoicing\nin fancied security, to convince Balder of his charmed exemption\nfrom wounds, persuaded him to be the mark for the weapons of the\ngods. But, alas! when Hodur tilted at him, the devoted victim was\ntranspierced and fell lifeless to the ground. Darkness settled\nover the world, and bitter was the grief of men and gods over the\ninnocent and lovely Balder. A deputation imploring his release was\nsent to the queen of the dead. Hela so far relented as to promise\nhis liberation to the upper world on condition that every thing on\nearth wept for him. Straightway there was a universal mourning.\nMen, beasts, trees, metals, stones, wept. But an old withered\ngiantess Asa Loke in disguise shed no tears; and so Hela kept her\nbeauteous and lamented prey. But he is to rise again to eternal\nlife and joy when the twilight of the gods has passed.33 This\nentire fable has been explained by the commentators, in all its\ndetails, as a poetic embodiment of the natural phenomena of the\nseasons. But it is not improbable that, in addition, it bore a\nprofound doctrinal reference to the fate of man which was\ninterpreted to the initiates.\n\nA great deal has been written concerning the ceremonies and\nmeaning of the celebrated Celtic Mysteries established so long at\nSamothrace, and under the administration of the Druids throughout\nancient Gaul and Britain. The aspirant was led through a series of\nscenic representations, \"without the aid of words,\" mystically\nshadowing forth in symbolic forms the doctrine of the transmigration\nof souls. He assumed successively the shapes of a rabbit, a hen,\na grain of wheat, a horse, a tree, and so on through a wide range\nof metamorphoses enacted by the aid of secret dramatic machinery.\n\nHe died, was buried, was born anew, rising from his dark confinement\nto life again. The hierophant enclosed him in a little boat and\nset him adrift, pointing him to a distant rock, which he calls\n\"the harbor of life.\" Across the black and stormy waters he strives\nto gain the beaconing refuge.\n\nIn these scenes and rites a recondite doctrine of the physical\nand moral relations and destiny of man was shrouded, to be unveiled\nby degrees to their docile disciples by the Druidic mystagogues.34\n\nIt may appear strange that there should be in connection with so\nmany of the old religions of the earth these arcana only to be\napproached by secret initiation at the hands of hierophants. But\nit will seem natural when we remember that those religions were in\nthe exclusive keeping of priesthoods, which, organized with\nwondrous cunning and perpetuated through ages, absorbed the\nscience, art, and philosophy of the world, and, concealing their\nwisdom in the mystic signs of an esoteric language, wielded the\nmighty enginery of superstition over the people at will. The\nscenes and instructions through which the priests led the\nunenlightened candidate were the hiding of their power. Thus,\nwherever was a priesthood we should expect to find mysteries and\ninitiations. Historic fact justifies the\n\n33 Pigott, Manual of Scandinavian Mythology, pp. 288-300.\n\n34 Davies, Mythology and Rites of the British Druids, pp. 207-257;\n390-392; 420, 555, 572. The accuracy of many of Davies's\ntranslations has been called in question. His statements, even on\nthe matters affirmed above, must be received with some reservation\nof faith.\n\n\nsupposition; learning unveils the obscure places of antiquity, and\nshows us the templed or cavernous rites of the religious world,\nfrom Hindostan to Gaul, from Egypt to Norway, from Athens to\nMexico. And this brings us to the Mysteries of Vitzliputzli,\nestablished in South America. Dr. Oliver, in the twelfth lecture\nof his History of Initiation, gathering his materials from various\nsources, gives a terrific account of the dramatic ritual here\nemployed. The walls, floor, images, were smeared and caked with\nhuman blood. Fresh slaughters of victims were perpetrated at\nfrequent intervals. The candidate descended to the grim caverns\nexcavated under the foundations of the temple. This course was\ndenominated \"the path of the dead.\" Phantoms flitted before him,\nshrieks appalled him, pitfalls and sacrificial knives threatened\nhim. At last, after many frightful adventures, the aspirant\narrived at a narrow stone fissure terminating the range of\ncaverns, through which he was thrust, and was received in the open\nair, as a person born again, and welcomed with frantic shouts by\nthe multitudes who had been waiting for him without during the\nprocess of his initiation.\n\nEven among the savage tribes of North America striking traces have\nbeen found of an initiation into a secret society by a mystic\ndeath and resurrection. Captain Jonathan Carver, who spent the\nwinter of 1776 with the Naudowessie Indians, was an eye witness of\nthe admission of a young brave into a body which they entitled\nWakou Kitchewah, or Friendly Society of the Spirit. \"This singular\ninitiation,\" he says, \"took place within a railed enclosure in the\ncentre of the camp at the time of the new moon.\" First came the\nchiefs, clad in trailing furs. Then came the members of the\nsociety, dressed and painted in the gayest manner. When all were\nseated, one of the principal chiefs arose, and, leading the young\nman forward, informed the meeting of his desire to be admitted\ninto their circle. No objection being offered, the various\npreliminary arrangements were made; after which the director began\nto speak to the kneeling candidate, telling him that he was about\nto receive a communication of the spirit. This spirit would\ninstantly strike him dead; but he was told not to be terrified,\nbecause he should immediately be restored to life again, and this\nexperience was a necessary introduction to the advantages of the\ncommunity he was on the point of entering. Then violent agitation\ndistorted the face and convulsed the frame of the old chief. He\nthrew something looking like a small bean at the young man. It\nentered his mouth, and he fell lifeless as suddenly as if he had\nbeen shot. Several assistants received him, rubbed his limbs, beat\nhis back, stripped him of his garments and put a new dress on him,\nand finally presented him to the society in full consciousness as\na member.36\n\nAll the Mysteries were funereal. This is the most striking single\nphenomenon connected with them. They invariably began in darkness\nwith groans and tears, but as invariably ended in festive triumph\nwith shouts and smiles. In them all were a symbolic death, a\nmournful entombment, and a glad resurrection. We know this from\nthe abundant direct testimony of unimpeachable ancient writers,\nand also from their indirect descriptions of the ceremonies and\nallusions to them. For example, Apuleius says, \"The delivery of\nthe Mysteries is celebrated as a thing resembling a voluntary\ndeath: the initiate, being, after a manner, born\n\n36 Travels in the Interior of North America, ch. vii.\n\n\nagain, is restored to a new life.\" 36 Indeed, all who describe the\ncourse of initiation agree in declaring that the aspirant was\nburied for a time within some narrow space, a typical coffin or\ngrave. This testimony is confirmed by the evidence of the ruins of\nthe chief temples and sacred places of the pagan world. These\nabound with spacious caverns, labyrinthine passages, and curious\nrecesses; and in connection with them is always found some\nexcavation evidently fitted to enclose a human form. Such hollow\nbeds, covered with flat stones easily removed, are still to be\nseen amidst the Druidic remains of Britain and Gaul, as well as in\nnearly every spot where tradition has located the celebration of\nthe Mysteries, in Greece, India, Persia, Egypt.37\n\nIt becomes a most interesting question whence these symbols and\nrites had their origin, and what they were really meant to shadow\nforth. Bryant, Davies, Faber, Oliver, and several other well known\nmythologists, have labored, with no slight learning and ingenuity,\nto show that all these ceremonies sprang from traditions of the\nDeluge and of Noah's adventures at that time. The mystic death,\nburial, and resurrection of the initiate, they say, are a\nrepresentation of the entrance of the patriarch into the ark, his\ndark and lonesome sojourn in it, and his final departure out of\nit. The melancholy wailings with which the Mysteries invariably\nbegan, typified the mourning of the patriarchal family over their\nconfinement within the gloomy and sepulchral ark; the triumphant\nrejoicings with which the initiations always ended, referred to\nthe glad exit of the patriarchal family from their floating prison\ninto the blooming world. The advocates of this theory have\nlaboriously collected all the materials that favor it, and\nskilfully striven by their means to elucidate the whole subject of\nancient paganism, especially of the Mysteries. But, after reading\nall that they have written, and considering it in the light of\nimpartial researches, one is constrained to say that they have by\nno means made out their case. It is somewhat doubtful if there be\nany ground whatever for believing that traditions concerning\nNoah's deluge and the ark, and his doings in connection with them,\nin any way entered into the public doctrines and forms, or into\nthe secret initiations, of the heathen religions. At all events,\nthere can be no doubt that the Arkite theorists have exaggerated\nthe importance and extent of these views beyond all tolerable\nbounds, and even to absurdity. But our business with them now is\nonly so far as they relate to the Mysteries. Our own conviction is\nthat the real meaning of the rites in the Mysteries was based upon\nthe affecting phenomena of human life and death and the hope of\nanother life. We hold the Arkite theory to be arbitrary in\ngeneral, unsupported by proofs, and inconsistent in detail, unable\nto meet the points presented.\n\nIn the first place, a fundamental part of the ancient belief was\nthat below the surface of the earth was a vast, sombre under\nworld, the destination of the ghosts of men, the Greek Hades, the\nRoman Orcus, the Gothic Hell. A part of the service of initiation\nwas a symbolic descent into this realm. Apuleius, describing his\ninitiation, says, \"I approached to the confines\n\n36 Golden Ass, Eng. trans., by Thomas Taylor, p. 280.\n\n37 Copious instances are given in Oliver's History of Initiation,\nin Faber's Origin of Pagan Idolatry, and in Maurice's Indian\nAntiquities.\n\n\nof death and trod on the threshold of Proserpine.\" 38 Orpheus, to\nwhom the introduction of the Mysteries into Greece from the East\nwas ascribed, wrote a poem, now lost, called the \"Descent into\nHades.\" Such a descent was attributed to Hercules, Theseus,\nRhampsinitus, and many others.39 It is painted in detail by Homer\nin the adventure of his hero Ulysses, also by Virgil much more\nminutely through the journey of Aneas. Warburton labors with great\nlearning and plausibility, and, as it seems to us, with\nirresistible cogency, to show that these descents are no more nor\nless than exoteric accounts of what was dramatically enacted in\nthe esoteric recesses of the Mysteries.40 Any person must be\ninvincibly prejudiced who can doubt that the Greek Hades meant a\ncapacious subterranean world of shades. Now, to assert, as Bryant\nand his disciples do,41 that \"Hades means the interior of Noah's\nark,\" or \"the abyss of waters on which the ark floated, as a\ncoffin bearing the relics of dead Nature,\" is a purely arbitrary\nstep taken from undue attachment to a mere theory. Hades means the\nunder world of the dead, and not the interior of Noah's ark.\nIndeed, in the second place, Faber admits that in the Mysteries\n\"the ark itself was supposed to be in Hades, the vast central\nabyss of the earth.\" But such was not the location of Noah's\nvessel and voyage. They were on the face of the flood, above the\ntops of the mountains. It is beyond comparison the most reasonable\nsupposition in itself, and the one best supported by historic\nfacts, that the representations of a mystic burial and voyage in a\nship or boat shown in the ancient religions were symbolic rites\ndrawn from imagination and theory as applied to the impressive\nphenomena of nature and the lot of man. The Egyptians and some\nother early nations, we know, figured the starry worlds in the sky\nas ships sailing over a celestial sea. The earth itself was\nsometimes emblematized in the same way. Then, too, there was the\nsepulchral barge in which the Egyptian corpses were borne over the\nAcherusian lake to be entombed. Also the \"dark blue punt\" in which\nCharon ferried souls across the river of death. In these surely\nthere was no reference to Noah's ark. It seems altogether likely\nthat what Bryant and his coadjutors have constructed into the\nArkite system of interpretation was really but an emblematic\nshowing forth of a natural doctrine of human life and death and\nfuture fate. A wavering boat floating on the deep might, with\nstriking fitness, typify the frail condition of humanity in life,\nas when Hercules is depicted sailing over the ocean in a golden\ncup; and that boat, safely riding the flood, might also represent\nthe cheerful faith of the initiate in a future life, bearing him\nfearlessly through all dangers and through death to the welcoming\nsociety of Elysium, as when Danae and her babe, tossed over the\ntempestuous sea in a fragile chest, were securely wafted to the\nsheltering shore of Seriphus. No emblem of our human state and\nlot, with their mysteries, perils, threats, and promises, could be\neither more natural or more impressive than that of a vessel\nlaunched on the deep. The dying Socrates said \"that he should\ntrust his soul on the hope of a future life as upon a raft, and\nlaunch away into the unknown.\" Thus the imagination broods over\nand explores the shows and secrets, presageful warnings and\nalluring\n\n38 Golden Ass, Taylor's trans., p. 283.\n\n39 Herodotus, lib. il. cap. cxxii.\n\n40 Divine Legation of Moses, book ii. sect. iv.\n\n41 Faber, Mysteries of the Cabiri, ch. v.: On the Connection of\nthe Fabulous Hades with the Mysteries.\n\n\ninvitations, storms and calms, island homes and unknown havens, of\nthe dim seas of nature and of man, of time and of eternity.42\n\nThirdly, the defenders of the Arkite theory are driven into gross\ninconsistencies with themselves by the falsity of their views. The\ndilaceration of Zagreus into fragments, the mangling of Osiris and\nscattering of his limbs abroad, they say, refer to the throwing\nopen of the ark and the going forth of the inmates to populate the\nearth. They usually make Osiris, Zagreus, Adonis, and the other\nheroes of the legends enacted in the Mysteries, representatives of\nthe diluvian patriarch himself; but here, with no reason whatever\nsave the exigencies of their theory, they make these mythic\npersonages representatives of the ark, a view which is utterly\nunfounded and glaringly wanting in analogy. When Zagreus is torn\nin pieces, his heart is preserved alive by Zeus and born again\ninto the world within a human form. After the body of Osiris had\nbeen strewn piecemeal, the fragments were fondly gathered by Isis,\nand he was restored to life. There is no plausible correspondence\nbetween these cases and the sending out from the ark of the\npatriarchal family to repeople the world. Their real purpose would\nseem plainly to be to symbolize the thought that, however the body\nof man crumbles in pieces, there is life for him still, he does\nnot hopelessly die. They likewise say that the egg which was\nconsecrated in the Mysteries, at the beginning of the rites, was\nintended as an emblem of the ark resting on the abyss of waters,\nand that its latent hatching was meant to suggest the opening of\nthe ark to let the imprisoned patriarch forth. This hypothesis has\nno proof, and is needless. It is much more plausible to suppose\nthat the egg was meant as a symbol of a new life about to burst\nupon the candidate, a symbol of his resurrection from the mystic\ntomb wherein he was buried during one stage of initiation; for we\nknow that the initiation was often regarded as the commencement of\na fresh life, as a new birth. Apuleius says, \"I celebrated the\nmost joyful day of my initiation as my natal day.\"\n\nFaber argues, from the very close similarity of all the\ndifferently named Mysteries, that they were all Arkite, all\nderived from one mass of traditions reaching from Noah and\nembodying his history.43 The asserted fact of general resemblance\namong the instituted Mysteries is unquestionable; but the\ninference above drawn from it is unwarrantable, even if no better\nexplanation could be offered. But there is another explanation\nready, more natural in conception, more consistent in detail, and\nbetter sustained by evidence. The various Mysteries celebrated in\nthe ancient nations were so much alike not because they were all\nfounded on one world wide tradition about the Noachian deluge, but\nbecause they all grew out of the great common facts of human\ndestiny in connection with natural phenomena. The Mysteries were\nfunereal and festive, began in sorrow and ended in joy, not\nbecause they represented first Noah's sad entrance into the ark\nand then his glad exit from it, but because they began with\nshowing the initiate that he must die, and ended with showing him\nthat he should live again in a happier state. Even the most\nprejudiced advocates of the Arkite theory\n\n42 Procopius, in his History of the Gothic War, mentions a curious\npopular British superstition concerning the ferriage of souls among\nthe neighboring islands at midnight. See Grimm's Deutsche Mythologie,\nkap. xxvi. zweite ausgabe.\n\n43 Mysteries of the Cabiri, ch. 10: Comparison of the Various\nMysteries.\n\n\nare forced to admit, on the explicit testimony of the ancients,\nthat the initiates passed from the darkness and horrors of\nTartarus to the bliss and splendors of Elysium by a dramatic\nresurrection from burial in the black caverns of probation to\nadmission within the illuminated hall or dome of perfection.44\nThat the idea of death and of another life runs through all the\nMysteries as their cardinal tenet is well shown in connection with\nthe rites of the celebrated Cave of Trophonius at Lebadea in\nBoeotia. Whoso sought this oracle must descend head foremost over\nan inclined plane, bearing a honey cake in his hand. Aristophanes\nspeaks of this descent with a shudder of fear.45 The adventurer\nwas suddenly bereft of his senses, and after a while returned to\nthe upper air. What he could then remember composed the Divine\nrevelation which had been communicated to him in his unnatural\nstate below. Plutarch has given a full account of this experience\nfrom one Timarchus, who had himself passed through it.46 The\nsubstance of it is this. When Timarchus reached the bottom of the\ncave, his soul passed from his body, visited the under world of\nthe departed, saw the sphere of generation where souls were reborn\ninto the upper world, received some explanation of all these\nthings: then, returning into the body, he was taken up out of the\ncave. Here is no allusion to any traditions of the Deluge or the\nark; but the great purpose is evidently a doctrine of the destiny\nof man after death.\n\nBefore the eyes and upon the heart of all mankind in every age has\npassed in common vision the revolution of the seasons, with its\nbeautiful and sombre changes, phenomena having a power of\nsuggestion irresistible to stir some of the most profound\nsentiments of the human breast. The day rolls overhead full of\nlight and life and activity; then the night settles upon the scene\nwith silent gloom and repose. So man runs his busy round of toil\nand pleasure through the day of existence; then, fading, following\nthe sinking sun, he goes down in death's night to the pallid\npopulations of shade. Again: the fruitful bloom of summer is\nsucceeded by the bleak nakedness of winter. So the streams of\nenterprise and joy that flowed full and free along their banks in\nmaturity, overhung by blossoming trees, are shrivelled and frozen\nin the channels of age, and above their sepulchral beds the\nleafless branches creak in answer to the shrieks of the funereal\nblast. The flush of childish gayety, the bloom of youthful\npromise, when a new comer is growing up sporting about the hearth\nof home, are like the approach of the maiden and starry Spring,\n\"Who comes sublime, as when, from Pluto free, Came, through the\nflash of Zeus, Persephone.\" And then draw hastily on the long,\nlamenting autumnal days, when \"Above man's grave the sad winds\nwail and rain drops fall, And Nature sheds her leaves in yearly\nfuneral.\"\n\n44 Faber, Mysteries of the Cabiri, ch. 10, pp. 331-356. Dion\nChrysostom describes this scene: Oration XII.\n\n45 The Clouds, 1. 507.\n\n46 Essay on the Demon of Socrates. See also Pansanias, lib. ix.\ncap. xxxix.\n\n\nThe flowers are gone, the birds are gone, the gentle breezes are\ngone; and man too must go, go mingle with the pale people of\ndreams. But not wholly and forever shall he die. The sun soars\ninto new day from the embrace of night; summer restored hastens on\nthe heels of retreating winter; vegetation but retires and surely\nreturns, and the familiar song of the birds shall sweeten the\nrenewing woods afresh for a million springs. Apollo weeping over\nthe beauteous and darling boy, his slain and drooped Hyacinthus,\nis the sun shorn of his fierce beams and mourning over the annual\nwintry desolation: it is also Nature bewailing the remediless loss\nof man, her favorite companion. It was these general analogies and\nsuggestions, striking the imagination, affecting the heart,\nenlisting the reason, wrought out, personified, and dramatized by\npoets, taken up with a mass of other associated matter by priestly\nsocieties and organized in a scheme of legendary doctrine and an\nimposing ritual, that constituted the basis and the central\nmeaning of the old Mysteries; and not a vapid tradition about Noah\nand his ark.\n\nThe aim of these institutions as they were wielded was threefold;\nand in each particular they exerted tremendous power. The first\nobject was to stretch over the wicked the restraining influence of\na doctrine of future punishment, to fill them with a fearful\nlooking for judgment in the invisible world. And a considerable\nproportion of this kind of fear among the ancients is to be traced\nto the secret influence of the Mysteries, the revelations and\nterrors there applied. The second desire was to encourage the good\nand obedient with inspiring hopes of a happy fate and glorious\nrewards beyond the grave. Plutarch writes to his wife, (near the\nclose of his letter of consolation to her,) \"Some say the soul\nwill be entirely insensible after death; but you are too well\nacquainted with the doctrines delivered in the Mysteries of\nBacchus, and with the symbols of our fraternity, to harbor such an\nerror.\" The third purpose was, by the wonders and splendors, the\nsecret awe, the mysterious authority and venerable sanctions,\nthrown around the society and its ceremonies, to establish its\ndoctrines in the reverential acceptance of the people, and thus to\nincrease the power of the priesthood and the state. To compass\nthese ends, the hidden science, the public force, the vague\nsuperstition, the treasured wealth, and all the varied resources\navailable by the ancient world, were marshalled and brought to\nbear in the Mysteries. By chemical and mechanical secrets then in\ntheir exclusive possession, the mystagogues worked miracles before\nthe astonished novices.47 They had the powers of electricity,\ngunpowder, hydrostatic pressure, at their command.48 Their rites\nwere carried out on the most magnificent scale. The temple at\nEleusis could hold thirty thousand persons. Imagine what effect\nmight be produced, under such imposing and prepared circumstances,\non an ignorant multitude, by a set of men holding all the\nscientific secrets and mechanical inventions till then discovered,\nillumination flashing after darkness successively before their\nsmitten eyes, the floors seeming to heave and the walls to crack,\nthunders bellowing through the mighty dome; now yawning revealed\nbeneath them the ghostly chimera of Tartarus, with all the\nshrieking and horrid scenery gathered there; now\n\n47 Anthon's Class. Dict., art. \"Elicius.\"\n\n48 Salverte, Des Sciences Occultes, ou Essai sur la Magie. See\nalso editor's introduction to Thomson's Eng. trans. of Salverte's\nwork.\n\n\nthe mild beauties of Elysium dawning on their ravished vision,\namid strains of celestial music, through fading clouds of glory,\nwhile nymphs, heroes, and gods walked apparent. Clement of\nAlexandria tells us that one feature of the initiation was a\ndisplay of the grisly secrets of Hades.49 Apuleius, in his account\nof his own initiation, says, \"At midnight I saw the sun shining\nwith a resplendent light; and I manifestly drew near to the lower\nand to the upper gods and adored them in immediate presence.\" 50\nLobeck says that, on the lifting of the veil exposing the adytum\nto the gaze of the initiates, apparitions of the gods appeared to\nthem.51 Christie, in his little work on the Greek Mysteries, says\nthat the doctrines of the Eleusinian shows were explained by means\nof transparent scenes, many of which were faithfully copied upon\nthe painted Greek vases; and these vase accordingly, were\ndeposited in tombs to evidence the faith of the deceased in a\nfuture life. The foregoing conceptions may be illustrated by the\ndramatic representations, scenic shadows behind transparent\ncurtains, in Java, alluded to by Sir Stamford Raffles.52\n\nIt is remarkable how far the Mysteries spread over the earth, and\nwhat popularity they attained. They penetrated into almost every\nnation under the sun. They admitted, in some degree, nearly the\nwhole people. Herodotus informs us that there were collected in\nEgypt, at one celebration, seven hundred thousand men and women,\nbesides children.53 The greatest warriors and kings Philip,\nAlexander, Sulla, Antony esteemed it an honor to be welcomed\nwithin the mystic pale. \"Men,\" says Cicero, \"came from the most\ndistant shores to be initiated at Eleusis.\" Sophocles declares, as\nquoted by Warburton, \"True life is to be found only among the\ninitiates: all other places are full of evil.\" At the rise of the\nChristian religion, all the life and power left in the national\nreligion of Greece and Rome were in the Mysteries. Accordingly,\nhere was the most formidable foe of the new faith. Standing in its\nold entrenchments, with all its popular prestige around it, it\nfought with desperate determination for every inch it was\nsuccessively forced to yield. The brilliant effort of Julian to\nroll back the tide of Christianity and restore the pagan religion\nto more than its pristine splendor an effort beneath which the\nscales of the world's fortunes poised, tremulous, for a while was\nchiefly an endeavor to revive and enlarge the Mysteries. Such was\nthe attachment of the people to these old rites even in the middle\nof the fourth century of the Christian era, that a murderous riot\nbroke out at Alexandria, in which Bishop George and others were\nslain, on occasion of the profanation by Christians of a secret\nadytum in which the Mysteries of Mithra were celebrated.54 And\nwhen, a little later, the Emperor Valentinian had determined to\nsuppress all nocturnal rites, he was induced to withdraw his\nresolution by Pretextatus, proconsul in Greece, \"a man endowed\nwith every virtue, who represented to him that the\n\n49 Stromata, lib. iii., cited by a writer on the Mysteries in\nBlackwood, Feb. 1853, pp. 201-203.\n\n50 Taylor's trans. of Golden Ass, p. 283. In a note to p. 275 of\nthis work, the translator describes (with a citation of his\nauthorities) \"the breathing resemblances of the gods used in the\nMysteries, statues fabricated by the telesta, so as to be\nilluminated and to appear animated.\"\n\n51 Aglaophamus, lib. i. sect. 7.\n\n52 Discourse to the Lit. and Sci. Soc. of Java, 1815, pub. in\nValpy's Pamphleteer, No. 15.\n\n53 Lib. ii. cap. ix.\n\n54 Socrates, Ecc. Inst., lib. iii. cap. 2.\n\n\nGreeks would consider life insupportable if they were forbidden to\ncelebrate those most sacred Mysteries which bind together the\nhuman race.\"55 Upon the whole, we cannot fail to see that the\nMysteries must have exerted a most extensive and profound\ninfluence alike in fostering the good hopes of human nature\ntouching a life to come, and in giving credit and diffusion to the\npopular fables of the poets concerning the details of the future\nstate. Much of that belief which seems to us so absurd we can\neasily suppose they sincerely embraced, when we recollect what\nthey thought they had seen under supernatural auspices in their\ninitiations.\n\nIn the Greek and Roman faith there was gradually developed in\nconnection chiefly with the Mysteries, as we believe an\naristocratic doctrine which allotted to a select class of souls an\nabode in the sky as their distinguished destination after death,\nwhile the common multitude were still sentenced to the shadow\nregion below the grave. As Virgil writes, \"The descent to Avernus\nis easy. The gate of dark Dis is open day and night. But to rise\ninto the upper world is most arduous. Only the few heroes whom\nfavoring Jove loves or shining virtue exalts thither can effect\nit.\" 56 Numerous scattered, significant traces of a belief in this\nchange of the destination of some souls from the pit of Hades to\nthe hall of heaven are to be found in the classic authors. Virgil,\ncelebrating the death of some person under the fictitious name of\nDaphnis, exclaims, \"Robed in white, he admires the strange court\nof heaven, and sees the clouds and the stars beneath his feet. He\nis a god now.\" 57 Porphyry ascribes to Pythagoras the declaration\nthat the souls of departed men are gathered in the zodiac.58 Plato\nearnestly describes a region of brightness and unfading realities\nabove this lower world, among the stars, where the gods live, and\nwhither, he says, the virtuous and wise may ascend, while the\ncorrupt and ignorant must sink into the Tartarean realm.59 A\nsimilar conception of the attainableness of heaven seems to be\nsuggested in the old popular myths, first, of Hercules coming back\nin triumph from his visit to Pluto's seat, and, on dying, rising\nto the assembly of immortals and taking his equal place among\nthem; secondly, of Dionysus going into the under world, rescuing\nhis mother, the hapless Semele, and soaring with her to heaven,\nwhere she henceforth resides, a peeress of the eldest goddesses.\nCicero expresses the same thought when he affirms that \"a life of\njustice and piety is the path to heaven, where patriots, exemplary\nsouls, released from their bodies, enjoy endless happiness amidst\nthe brilliant orbs of the galaxy.\" 60 The same author also speaks\nof certain philosophers who flourished before his time, \"whose\nopinions encouraged the belief that souls departing from bodies\nwould arrive at heaven as their proper dwelling place.\" 61 He\nafterwards stigmatizes the notion that the life succeeding death\nis subterranean as an error,62 and in his own name addresses his\nauditor thus: \"I see you gazing upward and wishing to migrate into\nheaven.\" 63 It was the common belief of the Romans for ages that\nRomulus was taken up into heaven, where he would remain forever,\nclaiming Divine honors.64 The Emperor Julian says, in his Letter\non the\n\n55 Essay on Mysteries, by M. Ouvaroff, Eng. trans. by J. D. Price,\np. 55.\n\n56 Aneid, lib. vi. 11. 125-130.\n\n57 Ecl. v. 11. 57, 58, 64.\n\n58 De Antro Nympharum.\n\n59 Phado sects. 136-138.\n\n60 Soma. Scipionis.\n\n61 Tusc. Quast., lib. i. cap. xi.\n\n62 Ibid. cap. xvi.\n\n63 Ibid. cap. xxxiv.\n\n64 Ennius, e. g., sings, \"Romulus in coelo cum diis agit avum\"\n\n\nDuties of a Priest, \"God will raise from darkness and Tartarus the\nsouls of all of us who worship him sincerely: to the pious,\ninstead of Tartarus he promises Olympus.\" \"It is lawful,\" writes\nPlato, \"only for the true lover of wisdom to pass into the rank of\ngods.\" 65 The privilege here confined to philosophers we believe\nwas promised to the initiates in the Mysteries, as the special\nprerogative secured to them by their initiation. \"To pass into the\nrank of the gods\" is a phrase which, as here employed, means to\nascend into heaven and have a seat with the immortals, instead of\nbeing banished, with the souls of common mortals, to the under\nworld.\n\nIn early times the Greek worship was most earnestly directed to\nthat set of deities who resided at the gloomy centre of the earth,\nand who were called the chthonian gods.66 The hope of immortality\nfirst sprung up and was nourished in connection with this worship.\nBut in the progress of time and culture the supernal circle of\ndivinities who kept state on bright Olympus acquired a greater\nshare of attention, and at last received a degree of worship far\nsurpassing that paid to their swarthy compeers below. The\nadoration of these bright beings, with a growing trust in their\nbenignity, the fables of the poets telling how they had sometimes\nelevated human favorites to their presence, for instance,\nreceiving a Ganymede to the joys of their sublime society, the\nencouraging thoughts of the more religious and cheerful of the\nphilosophers, these facts, together with a natural shrinking from\nthe dismal gloom of the life of shades around the Styx, and a\nnative longing for admission to the serene pleasures of the\nunfading life led by the radiant lords of heaven, in conjunction,\nperhaps, with still other causes, effected an improvement of the\nold faith, altering and brightening it, little by little, until\nthe hope came in many quarters to be entertained that the faithful\nsoul would after death rise into the assemblage and splendor of\nthe celestial gods. The Emperor Julian, at the close of his\nseventh Oration, represents the gods of Olympus addressing him in\nthis strain:  \"Remember that your soul is immortal, and that if\nyou follow us you will be a god and with us will behold our\nFather.\" Several learned writers have strenuously labored to prove\nthat the ground secret of the Mysteries, the grand thing revealed\nin them, was the doctrine of apotheosis, shaking the established\ntheology by unmasking the historic fact that all the gods were\nmerely deified men. We believe the real significance of the\nvarious collective testimony, hints, and inferences by which these\nwriters have been brought to such a conclusion is this; the\ngenuine point of the Mysteries lay not in teaching that the gods\nwere once men, but in the idea that men may become gods. To teach\nthat Zeus, the universal Father, causing the creation to tremble\nat the motion of his brow, was formerly an obscure king of Crete,\nwhose tomb was yet visible in that island, would have been utterly\nabsurd. But to assert that the soul of man, the free, intelligent\nimage of the gods, on leaving the body, would ascend to live\neternally in the kingdom of its Divine prototypes, would have been\na brilliant step of progress in harmony both with reason and the\nheart. Such was probably the fact. Observe the following citation\nfrom Plutarch: \"There is no occasion against nature to send the\nbodies of good men to heaven; but we are to conclude that virtuous\nsouls, by nature and the Divine justice, rise from men to heroes,\nfrom heroes to genii; and if, as in the Mysteries, they are\n\n65 Phado, sect. lxxi.\n\n66 Muller, Mist. Greek Lit., cap. ii. sect. 5; cap. xvi. sect. 2.\n\n\npurified, shaking off the remains of mortality and the power of\nthe passions, they then attain the highest happiness, and ascend\nfrom genii to gods, not by the vote of the people, but by the just\nand established order of nature.\" 67\n\nThe reference in the last clause is to the decrees of the Senate\nwhereby apotheosis was conferred on various persons, placing them\namong the gods. This ceremony has often been made to appear\nunnecessarily ridiculous, through a perversion of its actual\nmeaning. When the ancients applied the term \"god\" to a human soul\ndeparted from the body, it was not used as the moderns\nprevailingly employ that word. It expressed a great deal less with\nthem than with us. It merely meant to affirm similarity of\nessence, qualities, and residence, but by no means equal dignity\nand power of attributes between the one and the others. It meant\nthat the soul had gone to the heavenly habitation of the gods and\nwas thenceforth a participant in the heavenly life.68 Heraclitus\nwas accustomed to say, \"Men are mortal gods; gods are immortal\nmen.\" Macrobius says, \"The soul is not only immortal, but a god.\"\n69 And Cicero declares, \"The soul of man is a Divine thing, as\nEuripides dares to say, a god.\" 70 Milton uses language precisely\nparallel, speaking of those who are \"unmindful of the crown true\nVirtue gives her servants, after their mortal change, among the\nenthroned gods on sainted seats.\" Theophilus, Bishop of Antioch in\nthe second century, says that \"to become a god means to ascend\ninto heaven.\" 71 The Roman Catholic ceremony of beatification and\ncanonization of saints, offering them incense and prayers\nthereafter, means exactly what was meant by the ancient\napotheosis, namely, that while the multitudes of the dead abide\nbelow, in the intermediate state, these favored souls have been\nadvanced into heaven. The papal functionaries borrowed this rite,\nwith most of its details, from their immediate pagan predecessors,\nwho themselves probably adopted it from the East, whence the\nMysteries came. It is well known that the Brahmans and Buddhists\nbelieved, centuries before the Christian era, in the contrasted\nfate of good men after death to enjoy the successive heavens above\nthe clouds, and of bad men to suffer the successive hells beneath\nthe earth. A knowledge of this attractive Oriental doctrine may\nhave united with the advance of their own speculations to win the\npartial acceptance obtained among the Greeks and Romans for the\nfaith which broke the universal doom to Hades and opened heaven to\ntheir hopeful aspirations. In a tragedy of Euripides the following\npassage occurs, addressed to the bereaved Admetus: \"Let not the\ntomb of thy wife be looked on as the mound of the ordinary dead.\nSome wayfarer, as he treads the sloping road, shall say, 'This\nwoman once died for her husband; but now she is a saint in\nheaven.'\" 72\n\nWhen the meaning of the cheerful promises given to the initiates\nof a more favored fate in the future life than awaited others\nnamely, as we think, that their spirits on leaving the body should\nscale Olympus instead of plunging to Tartarus had been concealed\nwithin the\n\n67 Lives, Romulus, sect. xxviii.\n\n68 See a valuable discussion of the ancient use of the terms theos\nand deus in note D vol. iii. of Norton's Genuineness of the\nGospels.\n\n69 Somn. Scip., lib. ii. cap. 12.\n\n70 Tusc. Quest., lib. i. cap. 26.\n\n71 We omit several other authorities, as the reader would probably\ndeem any further evidence superfluous.\n\n72 Alcestis, ll. 1015-1025, ed. Glasg.\n\n\nMysteries for a long time, it at length broke into public view in\nthe national apotheosis of ancient heroes, kings, and renowned\nworthies, the instances of which became so numerous that Cicero\ncries, \"Is not nearly all heaven peopled with the human race?\" 73\nOver the heads of the devout heathen, as they gazed up through the\nclear night air, twinkled the beams of innumerable stars, each\nchosen to designate the cerulean seat where some soul was\nrejoicing with the gods in heaven over the glorious issue of the\ntoils and sufferings in which he once painfully trod this earthly\nscene.\n\nHerodian, a Greek historian of some of the Roman emperors, has\nleft a detailed account of the rite of apotheosis.74 An image of\nthe person to be deified was made in wax, looking all sick and\npale, laid in state on a lofty bed of ivory covered with cloth of\ngold, surrounded on one side by choirs of noble lords, on the\nother side by their ladies stripped of their jewels and clad in\nmourning, visited often for several days by a physician, who still\nreports his patient worse, and finally announces his decease. Then\nthe Senators and haughtiest patricians bear the couch through the\nvia sacra to the Forum. Bands of noble boys and of proud women\nranged opposite each other chant hymns and lauds over the dead in\nsolemn melody. The bier is next borne to the Campus Martius, where\nit is placed upon a high wooden altar, a large, thin structure\nwith a tower like a lighthouse. Heaps of fragrant gums, herbs,\nfruits, and spices are poured out and piled upon it. Then the\nRoman knights, mounted on horseback, prance before it in beautiful\nbravery, wheeling to and fro in the dizzy measures of the Pyrrhic\ndance. Also, in a stately manner, purple clothed charioteers,\nwearing masks which picture forth the features of the most famous\nworthies of other days to the reverential recognition of the\nsilent hosts assembled, ride around the form of their descendant.\nSuddenly a torch is set to the pile, and it is wrapped in flames.\nFrom the turret, amidst the aromatic fumes, an eagle is let loose.\nPhoenix like symbol of the departed soul, he soars into the sky,\nand the seven hilled city throbs with pride, reverberating the\nshouts of her people. Thus into the residence of the gods \"Sic\nitur ad astra\" was borne the divinely favored mortal; \"And thus we\nsee how man's prophetic creeds Made gods of men when godlike were\ntheir deeds.\"\n\nFor it was only in times of degradation and by a violent\nperversion that the honor was allowed to the unworthy; and even in\nsuch cases it was usually nullified as soon as the people\nrecovered their senses and their freedom. There is extant among\nthe works of Seneca a little treatise called Apocolocuntosis, that\nis, pumpkinification, or the metamorphosis into a gourd, a sharp\nsatire levelled against the apotheosis of the Emperor Claudius.\nThe deification of mortals among the ancients has long been\nlaughed at. When the great Macedonian monarch applied for a decree\nfor his apotheosis while he was yet alive, the Lacedemonian\nSenate, with bitter sarcasm, voted, \"If Alexander desires to be a\ngod, let him be a god.\" The doctrine is often referred to among us\nin terms of mockery. But this is principally because it is not\nunderstood. It simply signifies the ascent of the soul after death\ninto the Olympian halls instead of descending into the Acheronian\ngulfs. And whether we\n\n73 Tusc. Quast., lib. i. cap. 12.\n\n74 Lib. iv.\n\n\nconsider the symbolic justice and beauty of the conception as a\npoetic image applied to the deathless heroes of humanity ensphered\nabove us forever in historic fame and natural worship, or regard\nits comparative probability as the literal location of the\nresidence of departed spirits, it must recommend itself to us as a\ndecided improvement on the ideas previously prevalent, and as a\nsort of anticipation, in part, of that bright faith in a heavenly\nhome for faithfuls souls, afterwards established in the world by\nHim of whom it was written, \"No man hath ascended up to heaven but\nhe that came down from heaven, even the Son of Man, who is now in\nheaven.\" Indeed, so forcible and close is the correspondence\nbetween the course of the aspirant in his initiation dramatically\ndying, descending into Hades, rising again to life, and ascending\ninto heaven with the apostolic presentation of the redemptive\ncareer of Christ, our great Forerunner, that some writers Nork,\nfor instance have suggested that the latter was but the exoteric\npublication to all the world of what in the former was\nesoterically taught to the initiates alone.\n\nThere was a striking naturalness, a profound propriety, in the\nobscurities of secrecy and awe with which the ancient Mysteries\nshrouded from a rash curiosity their instructions concerning the\nfuture life and only unfolded them by careful degrees to the\nprepared candidate. It is so with the reality itself in the nature\nof things. It is the great mystery of mysteries, darkly hinted in\ntypes, faintly gleaming in analogies, softly whispered in hopes,\npassionately asked in desires, patiently confirmed in arguments,\nsuddenly blazed and thundered in revelation. Man from the very\nbeginning of his race on earth has been thickly encompassed by\nmysteries, hung around by the muffling curtains of ignorance and\nsuperstition. Through one after another of these he has forced his\nway and gazed on their successive secrets laid bare. Once the\nOcean was an alluring and terrible mystery, weltering before him\nwith its endless wash of waves, into which the weary sun, in the\nwest, plunged at evening, and out of which, in the east, it\nbounded refreshed in the morning. But the daring prows of his\nships, guided by pioneering thought and skill, passed its islands\nand touched its ultimate shores. Once the Polar Circle was a\nfrightful and frozen mystery, enthroned on mountains of eternal\nice and wearing upon its snowy brow the flaming crown of the\naurora borealis. But his hardy navigators, inspired by enterprise\nand philanthropy, armed with science, and supplied by art, have\ndriven the awful phantom back, league by league, until but a small\nexpanse of its wonders remains untracked by his steps. Once the\ncrowded Sky was a boundless mystery, a maze of motions, a field\nwhere ghastly comets played their antics and shook down terrors on\nthe nations. But the theories of his reason, based on the gigantic\ngrasp of his calculus and aided by the instruments of his\ninvention, have solved perplexity after perplexity, blended\ndiscords into harmony, and shown to his delighted vision the calm\nperfection of the stellar system. So, too, in the moral world he\nhas lifted the shrouds from many a dark problem, and extended the\nempire of light and love far out over the ancient realm of\ndarkness and terror. But the secret of Death, the mystery of the\nFuture, remains yet, as of old, unfathomed and inscrutable to his\ninquiries. Still, as of old, he kneels before that unlifted veil\nand beseeches the oracles for a response to faith.\n\nThe ancient Mysteries in their principal ceremony but copied the\nordination and followed the overawing spirit of Nature herself.\nThe religious reserve and awe about the entrance into the adytum\nof their traditions were like those about the entrance into the\ninvisible scenes beyond the veils of time and mortality. Their\ninitiation was but a miniature symbol of the great initiation\nthrough which, and that upon impartial terms, every mortal, from\nKing Solomon to the idiot pauper, must sooner or later pass to\nimmortality. When a fit applicant, after the preliminary\nprobation, kneels with fainting sense and pallid brow before the\nveil of the unutterable Unknown, and the last pulsations of his\nheart tap at the door of eternity, and he reverentially asks\nadmission to partake in the secrets shrouded from profane vision,\nthe infinite Hierophant directs the call to be answered by Death,\nthe speechless and solemn steward of the celestial Mysteries. He\ncomes, pushes the curtain aside, leads the awe struck initiate in,\ntakes the blinding bandage of the body from his soul; and\nstraightway the trembling neophyte receives light in the midst of\nthat innumerable Fraternity of Immortals over whom the Supreme\nAuthor of the Universe presides.\n\nCHAPTER II.\n\nMETEMPSYCHOSIS; OR, TRANSMIGRATION OF SOULS.\n\nNO other doctrine has exerted so extensive, controlling, and\npermanent an influence upon mankind as that of the metempsychosis,\nthe notion that when the soul leaves the body it is born anew in\nanother body, its rank, character, circumstances, and experience\nin each successive existence depending on its qualities, deeds,\nand attainments in its preceding lives. Such a theory, well\nmatured, bore unresisted sway through the great Eastern world,\nlong before Moses slept in his little ark of bulrushes on the\nshore of the Egyptian river; Alexander the Great gazed with\namazement on the self immolation by fire to which it inspired the\nGymnosophists; Casar found its tenets propagated among the Gauls\nbeyond the Rubicon; and at this hour it reigns despotic, as the\nlearned and travelled Professor of Sanscrit at Oxford tells us,\n\"without any sign of decrepitude or decay, over the Burman,\nChinese, Tartar, Tibetan, and Indian nations, including at least\nsix hundred and fifty millions of mankind.\"1 There is abundant\nevidence to prove that this scheme of thought prevailed at a very\nearly period among the Egyptians, all classes and sects of the\nHindus, the Persian disciples of the Magi, and the Druids, and, in\na later age, among the Greeks and Romans as represented by Musaus,\nPythagoras, Plato, Plotinus, Macrobius, Ovid, and many others. It\nwas generally adopted by the Jews from the time of the Babylonian\ncaptivity. Traces of it have been discovered among the ancient\nScythians, the African tribes, some of the Pacific Islanders, and\nvarious aboriginal nations both of North and of South America.\nCharlevoix says some tribes of Canadian Indians believed in a\ntransmigration of souls; but, with a curious mixture of fancy and\nreflection, they limited it to the souls of little children, who,\nbeing balked of this life in its beginning, they thought would try\nit again. Their bodies, accordingly, were buried at the sides of\nroads, that their spirits might pass into pregnant women\ntravelling by. A belief in the metempsychosis limited in the same\nway to the souls of children also prevailed among the Mexicans.2\nThe Maricopas, by the Gila, believe when they die they shall\ntransmigrate into birds, beasts, and reptiles, and shall return to\nthe banks of the Colorado, whence they were driven by the Yumas.\nThey will live there in caves and woods, as wolves, rats, and\nsnakes; so will their enemies the Yumas; and they will fight\ntogether.3 On the western border of the United States, only three\nor four years ago, two Indians having been sentenced to be hung\nfor murder, the chiefs of their tribe came in and begged that they\nmight be shot or burned instead, as they looked upon hanging with\nthe utmost horror, believing that the spirit of a person who is\nthus strangled to death goes into the next world in a foul manner,\nand that it assumes a beastly form. The Sandwich Islanders\nsometimes threw their dead into the sea to be devoured by sharks,\nsupposing their souls would animate these monsters and cause them\n\n1 Wilson, Two Lectures on the Religious Opinions of the Hindus, p.\n64.\n\n2 Kingsborough, Antiquities of Mexico, vol. viii. p. 220.\n\n3 Bartlett, Personal Narrative of Explorations in Texas, New\nMexico, &c., ch. xxx.\n\n\nto spare the living whom accident should throw within their\nreach.4 Similar superstitions, but more elaborately developed, are\nrife among many tribes of African negroes.5 It was inculcated in\nthe early Christian centuries by the Gnostics and the Manichaans;\nalso by Origen and several other influential Fathers. In the\nMiddle Ages the sect of the Cathari, the Bogomiles, the famous\nscholastics Scotus Erigena and Bonaventura, as well as numerous\nless distinguished authors, advocated it. And in modern times it\nhas been earnestly received by Lessing and Fourier, and is not\nwithout its open defenders to day, as we can attest from our own\nknowledge, even in the prosaic and enlightened circles of European\nand American society.\n\nThere have been two methods of explaining the origin of the dogma\nof transmigration. First, it has been regarded as a retribution,\nthe sequel to sin in a pre existent state:\n\n\"All that flesh doth cover,\nSouls of source sublime,\nAre but slaves sold over\nTo the Master Time\nTo work out their ransom\nFor the ancient crime.\"\n\nWith the ancient Egyptians the doctrine was developed in\nconnection with the conception of a revolt and battle among the\ngods in some dim and disastrous epoch of the past eternity, when\nthe defeated deities were thrust out of heaven and shut up in\nfleshly prison bodies. So man is a fallen spirit, heaven his\nfatherland, this life a penance, sometimes necessarily repeated in\norder to be effectual.6 The pre existence of the soul, whether\ntaught by Pythagoras, sung by Empedocles, dreamed by Fludd, or\ncontended for by Beecher, is the principal foundation of the\nbelief in the metempsychosis. But, secondly, the transmigration of\nsouls has been considered as the means of their progressive\nascent. The soul begins its conscious course at the bottom of the\nscale of being, and, gradually rising through birth after birth,\nclimbs along a discriminated series of improvements in endless\naspiration. Here the scientific adaptation and moral intent are\nthought to lead only upwards, insect travelling to man, man\nsoaring to God; but by sin the natural order and working of means\nare inverted, and the series of births lead downward, until\nexpiation and merit restore the primal adjustment and direction.\n\nThe idea of a metempsychosis, or soul wandering, as the Germans\ncall it, has been broached in various forms widely differing in\nthe extent of their application. Among the Jews the writings of\nPhilo, the Talmud, and other documents, are full of it. They seem,\nfor the most part, to have confined the mortal residence of souls\nto human bodies. They say that God created all souls on the first\nday, the only day in which he made aught out of nothing; and they\nimply, in their doctrine of the revolution of souls, that these\nare born over and over, and will continue wandering thus until the\nMessiah comes and the resurrection occurs. The\n\n4 Jarves, Hist. Sandwich Islands, p. 82.\n\n5 Wilson, Western Africa, p. 210.\n\n6 Dr. Roth, Agyptische Glaubenslehre.\n\n\nRabbins distinguish two kinds of metempsychosis; namely, \"Gilgul,\"\nwhich is a series of single transmigrations, each lasting till\ndeath; and \"Ibbur,\" which is where one soul occupies several\nbodies, changing its residence at pleasure, or where several souls\noccupy one body.7 The latter kind is illustrated by examples of\ndemoniacal possession in the New Testament. The demons were\nsupposed to be the souls of deceased wicked men. Sometimes they\nare represented as solitary and flitting from one victim to\nanother; sometimes they swarm together in the same person, as\nseven were at once cast out of Mary Magdalene.\n\nMore frequently, however, the range of the soul's travels in its\nrepeated births has been so extended as to include all animal\nbodies, beasts, birds, fishes, reptiles, insects. In this extent\nthe doctrine was held by the Pythagoreans and Platonists, and in\nfact by a majority of its believers. Shakspeare's wit is not\nwithout historical warrant when he makes the clown say to\nMalvolio, \"Thou shalt fear to kill a woodcock, lest thou\ndispossess the soul of thy grandam.\" Many the Manichaans, for\ninstance taught that human souls transmigrated not only through\nthe lowest animal bodies but even through all forms of vegetable\nlife. Souls inhabit ears of corn, figs, shrubs. \"Whoso plucks the\nfruit or the leaves from trees, or pulls up plants or herbs, is\nguilty of homicide,\" say they; \"for in each case he expels a soul\nfrom its body.\" 8 And some have even gone so far as to believe\nthat the soul, by a course of ignorance, cruelty, and uncleanness\npursued through many lives, will at length arrive at an inanimate\nbody, and be doomed to exist for unutterable ages as a stone or as\na particle of dust. The adherents of this hypothesis regard the\nwhole world as a deposition of materialized souls. At every step\nthey tread on hosts of degraded souls, destined yet, though now by\nsin sunk thus low, to find their way back as redeemed and blessed\nspirits to the bosom of the Godhead.\n\nUpon the whole, the metempsychosis may be understood, as to its\ninmost meaning and its final issue, to be either a Development, a\nRevolution, or a Retribution, a Divine system of development\neternally leading creatures in a graduated ascension from the base\ntowards the apex of the creation, a perpetual cycle in the order\nof nature fixedly recurring by the necessities of a physical fate\nunalterable, unavoidable, eternal, a scheme of punishment and\nreward exactly fitted to the exigencies of every case, presided\nover by a moral Nemesis, and issuing at last in the emancipation\nof every purified soul into infinite bliss, when, by the upward\ngravitation of spirit, they shall all have been strained through\nthe successively finer growing filters of the worlds, from the\ncoarse grained foundation of matter to the lower shore of the\nDivine essence.\n\nIn seeking to account for the extent and the tenacious grasp of\nthis antique and stupendous belief, in looking about for the\nvarious suggestions or confirmations of such a dogma, we would\ncall attention to several considerations, each claiming some\ndegree of importance. First, among the earliest notions of a\nreflecting man is that of the separate existence of the soul after\nthe dissolution of the body. He instinctively distinguishes the\n\n7 Basnage, Hist. Jews, lib. iv. cap. xxx.: Schroder, Judenthum,\nbuch ii. kap. iii. Eisenmenger, Entdecktes Judenthum. th. ii. kap.\ni.\n\n8 Augustine, De Morlb. Manicha., lib. ii. cap. xvii.: De Hares..\ncap. xlvi.: Contra Faustum, lib. xvi. cap. xxviii.\n\n\nthinking substance he is from the material vestment he wears.\nConscious of an unchanged personal identity beneath the changes\nand decays everywhere visible around him, he naturally imagines\nthat \"As billows on the undulating main, That swelling fall and\nfalling swell again, So on the tide of time inconstant roll The\ndying body and the deathless soul.\"\n\nTo one thus meditating, and desiring, as he surely would, to\nperceive or devise some explanation of the soul's posthumous\nfortunes, the idea could hardly fail to occur that the destiny of\nthe soul might be to undergo a renewed birth, or a series of\nbirths in new bodies. Such a conception, appearing in a rude state\nof culture, before the lines between science, religion, and poetry\nhad been sharply drawn, recommending itself alike by its\nsimplicity and by its adaptedness to gratify curiosity and\nspeculation in the formation of a thousand quaint and engaging\nhypotheses, would seem plausible, would be highly attractive,\nwould very easily secure acceptance as a true doctrine.\n\nSecondly, the strange resemblances and sympathies between men and\nanimals would often powerfully suggest to a contemplative observer\nthe doctrine of the transmigration of souls.9 Looking over those\nvolumes of singular caricatures wherein certain artists have made\nall the most distinctive physiognomies of men and beasts mutually\nto approximate and mingle, one cannot avoid the fancy that the\nbodies of brutes are the masks of degraded men. Notice an ox\nreclining in the shade of a tree, patiently ruminating as if sadly\nconscious of many things and helplessly bound in some obscure\npenance, a mute world of dreamy experiences, a sombre mystery: how\neasy to imagine him an enchanted and transformed man! See how\ncertain animals are allied in their prominent traits to humanity,\nthe stricken deer, weeping big, piteous tears, the fawning\naffection and noble fidelity of the dog, the architectural skill\nof the beaver, the wise aspect of the owl, the sweet plaint of the\nnightingale, the shrieks of some fierce beasts, and the howls of\nothers startlingly like the cries of children and the moans of\npain, the sparkling orbs and tortuous stealthiness of the snake;\nand the hints at metempsychosis are obvious. Standing face to face\nwith a tiger, an anaconda, a wild cat, a monkey, a gazelle, a\nparrot, a dove, we alternately shudder with horror and yearn with\nsympathy, now expecting to see the latent devils throw off their\ndisguise and start forth in their own demoniac figures, now\nwaiting for the metamorphosing charm to be reversed, and for the\nenchanted children of humanity to stand erect, restored to their\nformer shapes. Pervading all the grades and forms of distinct\nanimal life there seems to be a rudimentary unity. The fundamental\nelements and primordial germs of consciousness, intellect, will,\npassion, appear the same, and the different classes of being seem\ncapable of passing into one another by improvement or deterioration.\n\nSpontaneously, then, might a primitive observer, unhampered by\nprejudices, think that the soul of man on leaving its present body\nwould find or construct another according to its chief intrinsic\nqualities and\n\n9 Scholz, Beweis, dass es eine Seelenwanderung bei den Thieren\ngiebt.\n\n\nforces, whether those were a leonine magnanimity of courage, a\nvulpine subtlety of cunning, or a pavonine strut of vanity. The\nspirit, freed from its fallen cell, \"Fills with fresh energy\nanother form, And towers an elephant, or glides a worm, Swims as\nan eagle in the eye of noon, Or wails, a screech owl, to the deaf,\ncold moon, Or haunts the brakes where serpents hiss and glare,\nOr hums, a glittering insect, in the air.\"\n\nThe hypothesis is equally forced on our thoughts by regarding the\nhuman attributes of some brutes and the brutal attributes of some\nmen. Thus Gratiano, enraged at the obstinate malignity of Shylock,\ncries to the hyena hearted Jew, \"Thou almost mak'st me waver in my\nfaith, To hold opinion, with Pythagoras, That souls of animals\ninfuse themselves Into the trunks of men: thy currish spirit\nGovern'd a wolf, who, hang'd for human slaughter, Even from the\ngallows did his fell soul fleet, And, whilst thou lay'st in thine\nunhallow'd dam, Infused itself in thee; for thy desires Are\nwolfish, bloody, starved, and ravenous.\"\n\nThirdly, there is a figurative metempsychosis, which may sometimes\nthe history of mythology abounds in examples of the same sort of\nthing have been turned from an abstract metaphor into a concrete\nbelief, or from a fanciful supposition have hardened into a\nreceived fact. There is a poetic animation of objects whereby the\nimaginative person puts himself into other persons, into trees,\nclouds, whirlwinds, or what not, and works them for the time in\nideal realization. The same result is put in speech sometimes as\nhumorous play: for example, a celebrated English author says,\n\"Nature meant me for a salamander, and that is the reason I have\nalways been discontented as a man: I shall be a salamander in the\nnext world!\" Such imagery stated to a mind of a literal order\nsolidifies into a meaning of prosaic fact. It is a common mode of\nspeech to say of an enthusiastic disciple that the spirit of his\nmaster possesses him. A receptive student enters into the soul of\nPlato, or is full of Goethe. We say that Apelles lived again in\nTitian. Augustine reappeared in Calvin, and Pelagius in Arminius,\nto fight over the old battle of election and freedom. Luther rose\nin Ronge. Take these figures literally, construct what they imply\ninto a dogma, and the product is the transmigration of souls. The\nresult thus arrived at finds effective support in the striking\nphysical resemblance, spiritual likeness, and similarity of\nmission frequently seen between persons in one age and those in a\nformer age. Columbus was the modern Jason sailing after the Golden\nFleece of a New World. Glancing along the portrait gallery of some\nancient family, one is sometimes startled to observe a face,\nextinct for several generations, suddenly confronting him again\nwith all its features in some distant descendant. A peculiarity of\nconformation, a remarkable trait of character, suppressed for a\ncentury, all at once starts into vivid prominence in a remote\nbranch of the lineage, and men say, pointing back to the ancestor,\n\"He has revived once more.\" Seeing Elisha do the same things that\nhis departed master had done before him, the people exclaimed,\n\"The spirit of Elijah is upon him.\" Beholding in John the Baptist\none going before him in the spirit of that expected prophet, Jesus\nsaid, \"If ye are able to receive it, this is he.\" Some of the\nlater Rabbins assert many entertaining things concerning the\nrepeated births of the most distinguished personages in their\nnational history. Abel was born again in Seth; Cain, in that\nEgyptian whom Moses slew; Abiram, in Ahithophel; and Adam, having\nalready reappeared once in David, will live again in the Messiah.\nThe performance by an eminent man of some great labor which had\nbeen done in an earlier age in like manner by a kindred spirit\nevokes in the imagination an apparition of the return of the dead\nto repeat his old work.\n\nFourthly, there are certain familiar psychological experiences\nwhich serve to suggest and to support the theory of transmigration,\nand which are themselves in return explained by such a surmise.\n\nThinking upon some unwonted subject, often a dim impression\narises in the mind, fastens upon us, and we cannot help\nfeeling, that somewhere, long ago, we have had these reflections\nbefore. Learning a fact, meeting a face, for the first time, we\nare puzzled with an obscure assurance that it is not the first\ntime. Travelling in foreign lands, we are ever and anon haunted by\na sense of familiarity with the views, urging us to conclude that\nsurely we have more than once trodden those fields and gazed on\nthose scenes; and from hoary mountain, trickling rill, and vesper\nbell, meanwhile, mystic tones of strange memorial music seem to\nsigh, in remembered accents, through the soul's plaintive echoing\nhalls, \"'Twas auld lang syne, my dear, 'Twas auld lang syne.\"\n\nPlato's doctrine of reminiscence here finds its basis. We have\nlived before, perchance many times, and through the clouds of\nsense and imagination now and then float the veiled visions of\nthings that were. Efforts of thought reveal the half effaced\ninscriptions and pictures on the tablets of memory. Snatches of\ndialogues once held are recalled, faint recollections of old\nfriendships return, and fragments of landscapes beheld and deeds\nperformed long ago pass in weird procession before the mind's half\nopened eye. We know a professional gentleman of unimpeachable\nveracity, of distinguished talents and attainments, who is a firm\nbeliever in his own existence on the earth previously to his\npresent life. He testifies that on innumerable occasions he has\nexperienced remembrances of events and recognitions of places,\naccompanied by a flash of irresistible conviction that he had\nknown them in a former state. Nearly every one has felt instances\nof this, more or less numerous and vivid. The doctrine at which\nsuch things hint that \"Not in entire forgetfulness, And not in\nutter nakedness,\" but trailing vague traces and enigmas from a\nbygone history, \"do we come\" yields the secret of many a mood and\ndream, the spell of inexplicable hours, the key and clew to\nbaffling labyrinths of mystery. The belief in the doctrine of the\nmetempsychosis, among a fanciful people and in an unscientific\nage, need be no wonder to any cultivated man acquainted with the\nmarvels of experience and aware that every one may say,\n\n\"Full oft my feelings make me start,\nLike footprints on some desert shore,\nAs if the chambers of my heart\nHad heard their shadowy step before.\"\n\nFifthly, the theory of the transmigration of souls is marvellously\nadapted to explain the seeming chaos of moral inequality,\ninjustice, and manifold evil presented in the world of human life.\nNo other conceivable view so admirably accounts for the\nheterogeneousness of our present existence, refutes the charge of\na groundless favoritism urged against Providence, and completely\njustifies the ways of God to man. The loss of remembrance between\nthe states is no valid objection to the theory; because such a\nloss is the necessary condition of a fresh and fair probation.\nBesides, there is a parallel fact of deep significance in our\nunquestionable experience; \"For is not our first year forgot? The\nhaunts of memory echo not.\"\n\nOnce admit the theory to be true, and all difficulties in regard\nto moral justice vanish. If a man be born blind, deaf, a cripple,\na slave, an idiot, it is because in a previous life he abused his\nprivileges and heaped on his soul a load of guilt which he is now\nexpiating. If a sudden calamity overwhelm a good man with\nunmerited ruin and anguish, it is the penalty of some crime\ncommitted in a state of responsible being beyond the confines of\nhis present memory. Does a surprising piece of good fortune accrue\nto any one, splendid riches, a commanding position, a peerless\nfriendship? It is the reward of virtuous deeds done in an earlier\nlife. Every flower blighted or diseased, every shrub gnarled,\nawry, and blasted, every brute ugly and maimed, every man\ndeformed, wretched, or despised, is reaping in these hard\nconditions of being, as contrasted with the fate of the favored\nand perfect specimens of the kind, the fruit of sin in a foregone\nexistence. When the Hindu looks on a man beautiful, learned,\nnoble, fortunate, and happy, he exclaims, \"How wise and good must\nthis man have been in his former lives!\" In his philosophy, or\nreligion, the proof of the necessary consequences of virtue and\nvice is deduced from the metempsychosis, every particular of the\noutward man being a result of some corresponding quality of his\nsoul, and every event of his experience depending as effect on his\nprevious merit as cause.10 Thus the principal physical and moral\nphenomena of life are strikingly explained; and, as we gaze around\nthe world, its material conditions and spiritual elements combine\nin one vast scheme of unrivalled order, and the total experience\nof humanity forms a magnificent picture of perfect poetic justice.\nWe may easily account for the rise and spread of a theory whose\nsole difficulty is a lack of positive proof, but whose\napplications are so consistent and fascinating alike to\nimagination and to conscience. Hierocles said, and distinguished\nphilosophers both before and since have said, \"Without the\ndoctrine of metempsychosis it is not possible to justify the ways\nof Providence.\"\n\n10 Colebrooke, Essays, vol. i. p. 286.\n\n\nFinally, this doctrine, having been suggested by the various\nforegoing considerations, and having been developed into a\npractical system of conceptions and motives by certain leading\nthinkers, was adopted by the principal philosophers and\npriesthoods of antiquity, and taught to the common people with\nauthority. The popular beliefs of four thousand years ago depended\nfor their prevalence, not so much on cogent arguments or intrinsic\nprobability, as upon the sanctions thrown around them by renowned\nteachers, priests, and mystagogues. Now, the doctrine of the\ntransmigration of souls was inculcated by the ancient teachers,\nnot as a mere hypothesis resting on loose surmises, but as an\nunquestionable fact supported by the experimental knowledge of\nmany individuals and by infallible revelation from God. The sacred\nbooks of the Hindus abound in detailed histories of transmigrations.\nKapila is said to have written out the Vedas from his remembrance\n of them in a former state of being.\n\nThe Vishnu Purana gives some very entertaining examples of\nthe retention of memory through several successive lives.11\nPythagoras pretended to recollect his adventures in previous lives;\nand on one occasion, as we read in Ovid, going into the temple of\nJuno, he recognised the shield he had worn as Euphorbus at the\nsiege of Troy.\n\nDiogenes Laertius also relates of him, that one day meeting a man\nwho was cruelly beating a dog, the Samian sage instantly detected\nin the piteous howls of the poor beast the cries of a dear friend\nof his long since deceased, and earnestly and successfully\ninterceded for his rescue.\n\nIn the life of Apollonius of Tyana by Philostratus, numerous\nextraordinary instances are told of his recognitions of\npersons he had known in preceding lives. Such examples as these\nexactly met the weakest point in the metempsychosis theory, and\nmust have had vast influence in fostering the common faith.\nPlotinus said, \"Body is the true river of Lethe; for souls plunged\nin it forget all.\" Pierre Leroux, an enthusiastic living defender\nof the idea of repeated births, attempts to reply to the objection\ndrawn from the absence of memory; but his reply is an appeal\nrather to authority and fancy than to reason, and leaves the\ndoubts unsolved.12 His supposition is that in each spirit life we\nremember all the bygone lives, both spiritual and earthly, but in\neach earth life we forget all that has gone before; just as, here,\nevery night we lose in sleep all memory of the past, but recover\nit each day again as we awake. Throughout the East this general\ndoctrine is no mere superstition of the masses of ignorant people:\nit is the main principle of all Hindu metaphysics, the foundation\nof all their philosophy, and inwrought with the intellectual\ntexture of their inspired books. It is upheld by the venerable\nauthority of ages, by an intense general conviction of it, and by\nmultitudes of subtle conceits and apparent arguments. It was also\nimpressed upon the initiates in the old Mysteries, by being there\ndramatically shadowed forth through masks, and quaint symbolic\nceremonies enacted at the time of initiation.13\n\nThis, then, is what we must say of the ancient and widely spread\ndoctrine of transmigration. As a suggestion or theory naturally\narising from empirical observation and confirmed by a variety of\nphenomena, it is plausible, attractive, and, in some stages of\n\n11 Professor Wilson's translation, p. 343.\n\n12 De l'Humanite, livre v. chap. xlii.\n\n13 Porphyry, De Abstinentis, lib. iv. sect. 16. Davies, Rites of\nthe Druids.\n\n\nknowledge, not only easy to be believed, but hard to be resisted.\nAs an ethical scheme clearing up on principles of poetic justice\nthe most perplexed and awful problems in the world, it throws\nstreams of light through the abysses of evil, gives dramatic\nsolution to many a puzzle, and, abstractly considered, charms the\nunderstanding and the conscience. As a philosophical dogma\nanswering to some strange, vague passages in human nature and\nexperience, it echoes with dreamy sweetness through the deep\nmystic chambers of our being. As the undisputed creed which has\ninspired and spell bound hundreds of millions of our race for\nperhaps over a hundred and fifty generations, it commands\ndeference and deserves study. But, viewing it as a thesis in the\nlight of to day, challenging intelligent scrutiny and sober\nbelief, we scarcely need to say that, based on shadows and on\narbitrary interpretations of superficial appearances, built of\nreveries and occult experiences, fortified by unreliable\ninferences, destitute of any substantial evidence, it is unable to\nface the severity of science.\n\nA real investigation of its validity by the modern methods\ndissipates it as the sun scatters fog. First, the mutual\ncorrespondences between men and animals are explained by the fact\nthat they are all living beings are the products of the same God\nand the same nature, and built according to one plan. They thus\npartake, in different degrees and on different planes, of many of\nthe same elements and characteristics. Lucretius, with his usual\nmixture of acuteness and sophistry, objects to the doctrine that,\nif it were true, when the soul of a lion passed into the body of a\nstag, or the soul of a man into the body of a horse, we should see\na stag with the courage of a lion, a horse with the intelligence\nof a man. But of course the manifestations of soul depend on the\norgans of manifestation. Secondly, the singular psychological\nexperiences referred to are explicable so far as we can expect\nwith our present limited data and powers to solve the dense\nmysteries of the soul by various considerations not involving the\ndoctrine in question. Herder has shown this with no little acumen\nin three \"Dialogues on the Metempsychosis,\" beautifully translated\nby the Rev. Dr. Hedge in his \"Prose Writers of Germany.\" The sense\nof pre existence the confused idea that these occurrences have\nthus happened to us before which is so often and strongly felt, is\nexplicable partly by the supposition of some sudden and obscure\nmixture of associations, some discordant stroke on the keys of\nrecollection, jumbling together echoes of bygone scenes, snatches\nof unremembered dreams, and other hints and colors in a weird and\nuncommanded manner. The phenomenon is accounted for still more\ndecisively by Dr. Wigand's theory of the \"Duality of the Mind.\"\nThe mental organs are double, one on each side of the brain. They\nusually act with perfect simultaneity. When one gets a slight\nstart of the other, as the thought reaches the slow side a\nbewildered sense of a previous apprehension of it arises in the\nsoul. And then, the fact that the supposition of a great system of\nadjusting transmigrations justifies the ways of Providence is no\nproof that the supposition is a true one. The difficulty is, that\nthere is no evidence of the objective truth of the assumption,\nhowever well the theory applies; and the justice and goodness of\nGod may as well be defended on the ground of a single life here\nand a discriminating retribution hereafter, as on the ground of an\nunlimited series of earthly births.\n\nThe doctrine evidently possesses two points of moral truth and\npower, and, if not tenable as strict science, is yet instructive\nas symbolic poetry. First, it embodies, in concrete shapes the\nmost vivid and unmistakable, the fact that beastly and demoniac\nqualities of character lead men down towards the brutes and\nfiends. Rage makes man a tiger; low cunning, a fox; coarseness and\nferocity, a bear; selfish envy and malice, a devil. On the\ncontrary, the attainment of better degrees of intellectual and\nethical qualities elevates man towards the angelic and the Divine.\nThere are three kinds of lives, corresponding to the three kinds\nof metempsychosis, ascending, circular, descending: the aspiring\nlife of progress in wisdom and goodness; the monotonous life of\nroutine in mechanical habits and indifference; the deteriorating\nlife of abandonment in ignorance and vice. Timaus the Locrian, and\nsome other ancient Pythagoreans, gave the whole doctrine a purely\nsymbolic meaning. Secondly, the theory of transmigrating souls\ntypifies the truth that, however it may fare with persons now,\nhowever ill their fortunes may seem to accord with their deserts\nhere, justice reigns irresistibly in the universe, and sooner or\nlater every soul shall be strictly compensated for every tittle of\nits merits in good or evil. There is no escaping the chain of acts\nand consequences.\n\nThis entire scheme of thought has always allured the Mystics to\nadopt it. In every age, from Indian Vyasa to Teutonic Boehme, we\nfind them contending for it. Boehme held that all material\nexistence was composed by King Satan out of the physical substance\nof his fallen followers.\n\nThe conception of the metempsychosis is strikingly fitted for the\npurposes of humor, satire, and ethical hortation; and literature\nabounds with such applications of it. In Plutarch's account of\nwhat Thespesius saw when his soul was ravished away into hell for\na time, we are told that he saw the soul of Nero dreadfully\ntortured, transfixed with iron nails. The workmen forged it into\nthe form of a viper; when a voice was heard out of an exceeding\nlight ordering it to be transfigured into a milder being; and they\nmade it one of those creatures that sing and croak in the sides of\nponds and marshes.14 When Rosalind finds the verses with which her\nenamored Orlando had hung the trees, she exclaimed, \"I was never\nso berhymed since Pythagoras' time, that I was an Irish rat, which\nI can hardly remember.\" One of the earliest popular introductions\nof this Oriental figment to the English public was by Addison,\nwhose Will Honeycomb tells an amusing story of his friend, Jack\nFreelove, how that, finding his mistress's pet monkey alone one\nday, he wrote an autobiography of his monkeyship's surprising\nadventures in the course of his many transmigrations. Leaving this\nprecious document in the monkey's hands, his mistress found it on\nher return, and was vastly bewildered by its pathetic and\nlaughable contents.15 The fifth number of the \"Adventurer\" gives a\nvery entertaining account of the \"Transmigrations of a Flea.\"\nThere is also a poem on this subject by Dr. Donne, full of\nstrength and wit. It traces a soul through ten or twelve births,\ngiving the salient points of its history in each. First, the soul\nanimates the apple our hapless mother Eve ate, bringing \"death\ninto the world and all our woe.\" Then it appeared\n\n14 Sera Numinis Vindicta: near the close.\n\n15 Spectator, No. 343.\n\n\nsuccessively as a mandrake, a cock, a herring, a whale, \"Who spouted\nrivers up as if he meant o join our seas with seas above\nthe firmament.\" Next, as a mouse, it crept up an elephant's sinewy\nproboscis to the soul's bedchamber, the brain, and, gnawing the\nlife cords there, died, crushed in the ruins of the gigantic\nbeast. Afterwards it became a wolf, a dog, an ape, and finally a\nwoman, where the quaint tale closes. Fielding is the author of a\nracy literary performance called \"A Journey from this World to the\nNext.\" The Emperor Julian is depicted in it, recounting in Elysium\nthe adventures he had passed through, living successively in the\ncharacter of a slave, a Jew, a general, an heir, a carpenter, a\nbeau, a monk, a fiddler, a wise man, a king, a fool, a beggar, a\nprince, a statesman, a soldier, a tailor, an alderman, a poet, a\nknight, a dancing master, and a bishop. Whoever would see how\nvividly, with what an honest and vigorous verisimilitude, the\ndoctrine can be embodied, should read \"The Modern Pythagorean,\" by\nDr. Macnish. But perhaps the most humorous passage of this sort is\nthe following description from a remarkable writer of the present\nday:\n\n\"In the mean while all the shore rang with the trump of bull\nfrogs, the sturdy spirits of ancient wine bibbers and wassailers,\nstill unrepentant, trying to sing a catch in their Stygian lake;\nwho would fain keep up the hilarious rules of their old festal\ntables, though their voices have waxed hoarse and solemnly grave,\nmocking at mirth, and the wine has lost its flavor. The most\naldermanic, with his chin upon a heart leaf, which serves for a\nnapkin to his drooling chaps, under this northern shore quaffs a\ndeep draught of the once scorned water, and passes round the cup\nwith the ejaculation tr r r oonk, tr r r oonk! and straightway\ncomes over the water from some distant cove the same password\nrepeated, where the next in seniority and girth has gulped down to\nhis mark; and when this observance has made the circuit of the\nshores, then ejaculates the master of ceremonies, with\nsatisfaction, tr r r conk! and each in his turn, down to the\nflabbiest paunched, repeats the same, that there be no mistake;\nand then the bowl goes round again and again, until the sun\ndisperses the morning mist, and only the patriarch is not under\nthe pond, but vainly bellowing troonk from time to time, and\npausing for a reply.\" 16\n\nThe doctrine of the metempsychosis, which was the priest's threat\nagainst sin, was the poet's interpretation of life. The former\ngave by it a terrible emphasis to the moral law; the latter\nimparted by it an unequalled tenderness of interest to the\ncontemplation of the world. To the believer in it in its fullest\ndevelopment, the mountains piled towering to the sky and the\nplains stretching into trackless distance were the conscious dust\nof souls; the ocean, heaving in tempest or sleeping in moonlight,\nwas a sea of spirits, every drop once a man. Each animated form\nthat caught his attention might be the dwelling of some ancestor,\nor of some once cherished companion of his own. Hence the Hindu's\nso sensitive kindness towards animals:\n\n16 Thoreau, Walden, or Life in the Woods, p. 137.\n\n\n\"Crush not the feeble, inoffensive worm: Thy sister's spirit wears\nthat humble form. Why should thy cruel arrow smite yon bird? In\nhim thy brother's plaintive song is beard. Let not thine anger on\nthy dog descend: That faithful animal was once thy friend.\"\n\nThere is a strange grandeur, an affecting mystery, in the view of\nthe creation from the stand point of the metempsychosis. It is an\nawful dream palace all aswarm with falling and climbing creatures\nclothed in ever shifting disguises. The races and changes of being\nconstitute a boundless masquerade of souls, whose bodies are\nvizards and whose fortunes poetic retribution. The motive\nfurnished by the doctrine to self denial and toil has a peerless\nsublimity. In our Western world, the hope of acquiring large\npossessions, or of attaining an exalted office, often stimulates\nmen to heroic efforts of labor and endurance. What, then, should\nwe not expect from the application to the imaginative minds of the\nEastern world of a motive which, transcending all set limits,\noffers unheard of prizes, to be plucked in life after life, and at\nthe end unveils, for the occupancy of the patient aspirant, the\nThrone of Immensity? No wonder that, under the propulsion of a\nmotive so exhaustless, a motive not remote nor abstract, but\nconcrete, and organized in indissoluble connection with the\nvisible chain of eternal causes and effects, no wonder we see such\ntremendous exhibitions of superstition, voluntary sufferings,\nsuperhuman deeds. Here is the secret fountain of that irresistible\nforce which enables the devotee to measure journeys of a thousand\nmiles by prostrations of his body, to hold up his arm until it\nwithers and remains immovably erect as a stick, or to swing\nhimself by red hot hooks through his flesh. The poorest wretch of\na soul that has wandered down to the lowest grade of animate\nexistence can turn his resolute and longing gaze up the\nresplendent ranks of being, and, conscious of the god head's germ\nwithin, feel that, though now unspeakably sunken, he shall one day\nspurn every vile integument and vault into seats of heavenly\ndominion. Crawling as an almost invisible bug in a heap of\ncarrion, he can still think within himself, holding fast to the\nlaw of righteousness and love, \"This is the infinite ladder of\nredemption, over whose rounds of purity, penance, charity, and\ncontemplation I may ascend, through births innumerable, till I\nreach a height of wisdom, power, and bliss that will cast into\nutter contempt the combined glory of countless millions of worlds,\nay, till I sit enthroned above the topmost summit of the universe\nas omnipotent Buddha.\" 17\n\n17 Those who wish to pursue the subject further will find the\nfollowing references useful: Hardy, \"Manual of Buddhism,\" ch. v.\nUpham, \"History of Buddhism,\" ch. iii. Beausobre, \"Histoire du\nManicheisme,\" livre vi. ch. iv. Helmont, \"De Revolution Animarum.\"\nRichter, \"Das Christenthum und die Kitesten Religionen des\nOrients,\" sects. 54-65. Sinner, \"Essai sur les Dogmes de la\nMetempsychose et du Purgatoire.\" Conz, \"Schicksale der\nSeelenwanderungshypothese unter verschiedenen Volkern und in\nverschiedenen Zeiten.\" Dubois, \"People of India,\" part iii. ch.\nvii. Werner, \"Commentatio Psychologica contra Metempsychosin.\"\n\n\nCHAPTER III.\n\nRESURRECTION OF THE FLESH.\n\nA DOCTRINE widely prevalent asserts that, at the termination of\nthis probationary epoch, Christ will appear with an army of angels\nin the clouds of heaven, descend, and set up his tribunal on the\nearth. The light of his advancing countenance will be the long\nwaited Aurora of the Grave. All the souls of men will be summoned\nfrom their tarrying places, whether in heaven, or hell, or\npurgatory, or the sepulchre; the fleshly tabernacles they formerly\ninhabited will be re created, a strong necromancy making the rooty\nand grave floored earth give up its dust of ruined humanity, and\nmoulding it to the identical shapes it formerly composed; each\nsoul will enter its familiar old house in company with which its\nsins were once committed; the books will be opened and judgment\nwill be passed; then the accepted will be removed to heaven, and\nthe rejected to hell, both to remain clothed with those same\nmaterial bodies forever, the former in celestial bliss, the latter\nin infernal torture.\n\nIn the present dissertation we propose to exhibit the sources,\ntrace the developments, explain the variations, and discuss the\nmerits, of this doctrine.\n\nThe first appearance of this notion of a bodily restoration which\noccurs in the history of opinions is among the ancient Hindus.\nWith them it appears as a part of a vast conception, embracing the\nwhole universe in an endless series of total growths, decays, and\nexact restorations. In the beginning the Supreme Being is one and\nalone. He thinks to himself, \"I will become many.\" Straightway the\nmultiform creation germinates forth, and all beings live. Then for\nan inconceivable period a length of time commensurate with the\nexistence of Brahma, the Demiurgus the successive generations\nflourish and sink. At the end of this period all forms of matter,\nall creatures, sages, and gods, fall back into the Universal\nSource whence they arose. Again the Supreme Being is one and\nalone. After an interval the same causes produce the same effects,\nand all things recur exactly as they were before.1\n\nWe find this theory sung by some of the Oriental poets:\n\"Every external form of things, and every object which\ndisappear'd, Remains stored up in the storehouse of fate: When the\nsystem of the heavens returns to its former order, God, the All\nJust, will bring them forth from the veil of mystery.\" 2\n\nThe same general conception, in a modified form, was held by the\nStoics of later Greece, who doubtless borrowed it from the East,\nand who carried it out in greater detail. \"God is an artistic\nfire, out of which the cosmopoeia issues.\" This fire proceeds in a\ncertain fixed course, in obedience to a fixed law, passing through\ncertain intermediate gradations and established periods, until it\nultimately returns into itself and closes with a universal\nconflagration. It is to this catastrophe that reference is made in\nthe following passage of Epictetus: \"Some say that when Zeus is\nleft alone at the time of the conflagration, he is solitary, and\nbewails himself\n\n1 Wilson, Lectures on the Hindus, pp. 53-56.\n\n2 The Dabistan, vol. iii. p. 169.\n\n\nthat he has no company.\"3 The Stoics supposed each succeeding\nformation to be perfectly like the preceding. Every particular\nthat happens now has happened exactly so a thousand times before,\nand will happen a thousand times again. This view they connected\nwith astronomical calculations, making the burning and re creating\nof the world coincide with the same position of the stars as that\nat which it previously occurred.4 This they called the restoration\nof all things. The idea of these enormous revolving identical\nepochs Day of Brahm, Cycle of the Stoics, or Great Year of Plato\nis a physical fatalism, effecting a universal resurrection of the\npast, by reproducing it over and over forever.\n\nHumboldt seems more than inclined to adopt the same thought. \"In\nsubmitting,\" he says, \"physical phenomena and historical events to\nthe exercise of the reflective faculty, and in ascending to their\ncauses by reasoning, we become more and more penetrated by that\nancient belief, that the forces inherent in matter, and those\nregulating the moral world, exert their action under the presence\nof a primordial necessity and according to movements periodically\nrenewed.\" The wise man of old said, \"The thing that hath been, it\nis that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall\nbe done, and there is no new thing under the sun.\" The conception\nof the destinies of the universe as a circle returning forever\ninto itself is an artifice on which the thinking mind early\nseizes, to evade the problem that is too mighty for its feeble\npowers. It concludes that the final aim of Nature is but the\ninfinite perfecting of her material in infinite transformations\never repeating the same old series. We cannot comprehend and\nmaster satisfactorily the eternal duration of one visible order,\nthe incessant rolling on of races and stars:\n\n\"And doth creation's tide forever flow, Nor ebb with like\ndestruction? World on world Are they forever heaping up, and still\nThe mighty measure never, never full?\"\n\nAnd so, when the contemplation of the staggering infinity\nthreatens to crush the brain, we turn away and find relief in the\nview of a periodical revolution, wherein all comes to an end from\ntime to time and takes a fresh start. It would be wiser for us\nsimply to resign the problem as too great. For the conception to\nwhich we have recourse is evidently a mere conceit of imagination,\nwithout scientific basis or philosophical confirmation.\n\nThe doctrine of a bodily resurrection, resting on a wholly\ndifferent ground, again emerges upon our attention in the\nZoroastrian faith of Persia. The good Ormuzd created men to be\npure and happy and to pass to a heavenly immortality. The evil\nAhriman insinuated his corruptions among them, broke their primal\ndestiny, and brought death upon them, dooming their material\nframes to loathsome dissolution, their unclothed spirits to a\npainful abode in hell. Meanwhile, the war between the Light God\nand the Gloom Fiend rages fluctuatingly. But at last the Good One\nshall prevail, and the Bad One sink in discomfiture, and all evil\ndeeds be neutralized, and the benignant arrangements decreed at\nfirst be restored. Then all\n\n3 Epictetus, lib. iii. cap. 13. Sonntag, De Palingenesia\nStoicorum.\n\n4 Ritter's Hist. of An. Phil., lib. xi. cap. 4.\n\n\nsouls shall be redeemed from hell and their bodies be rebuilt from\ntheir scattered atoms and clothed upon them again.5 This\nresurrection is not the consequence of any fixed laws or fate, nor\nis it an arbitrary miracle. It is simply the restoration by Ormuzd\nof the original intention which Ahriman had temporarily marred and\ndefeated. This is the great bodily resurrection, as it is still\nunderstood and looked for by the Parsees.\n\nThe whole system of views out of which it springs, and with which\nit is interwrought, is a fanciful mythology, based on gratuitous\nassumptions, or at most on a crude glance at mere appearances. The\nhypothesis that the creation is the scene of a drawn battle\nbetween two hostile beings, a Deity and a Devil, can face neither\nthe scrutiny of science, nor the test of morals, nor the logic of\nreason; and it has long since been driven from the arena of\nearnest thought. On this theory it follows that death is a violent\ncurse and discord, maliciously forced in afterwards to deform and\nspoil the beauty and melody of a perfect original creation. Now,\nas Bretschneider well says, \"the belief that death is an evil, a\npunishment for sin, can arise only in a dualistic system.\" It is\nunreasonable to suppose that the Infinite God would deliberately\nlay a plan and allow it to be thwarted and ruined by a demon. And\nit is unscientific to imagine that death is an accident, or an\nafter result foisted into the system of the world. Death that is,\na succession of generations is surely an essential part of the\nvery constitution of nature, plainly stamped on all those \"medals\nof the creation\" which bear the features of their respective ages\nand which are laid up in the archives of geological epochs.\nSuccessive growth and decay is a central part of God's original\nplan, as appears from the very structure of living bodies and the\nwhole order of the globe. Death, therefore, which furthermore\nactually reigned on earth unknown ages before the existence of\nman, could not have been a fortuitous after clap of human sin. And\nso the foregoing theory of a general resurrection as the\nrestoration of God's broken plan to its completeness falls to the\nground.\n\nThe Jews, in the course of their frequent and long continued\nintercourse with the Persians, did not fail to be much impressed\nwith the vivid melodramatic outlines of the Zoroastrian doctrine\nof the resurrection. They finally adopted it themselves, and\njoined it, with such modifications as it naturally underwent from\nthe union, with the great dogmas of their own faith. A few faint\nreferences to it are found in the Old Testament. Some explicit\ndeclarations and boasts of it are in the Apocrypha. In the\nTargums, the Talmud, and the associated sources, abundant\nstatements of it in copious forms are preserved. The Jews rested\ntheir doctrine of the resurrection on the same general ground as\nthe Persians did, from whom they borrowed it. Man was meant to be\nimmortal, either on earth or in heaven; but Satan seduced him to\nsin, and thus wrested from him his privilege of immortality, made\nhim die and descend into a dark nether realm which was to be\nfilled with the disembodied souls of his descendants. The\nresurrection was to annul all this and restore men to their\noriginal footing.\n\nWe need not labor any disproof of the truth or authority of this\ndoctrine as the Pharisees held it, because, admitting that they\nhad the record of a revelation from God, this doctrine was not a\npart of it. It is only to be found in their canonic scriptures by\nway of vague and hasty allusion, and is historically traceable to\nits derivation from the pagan oracles of Persia.\n\n5 Frazer, History of Persia, chap. iv. Baur, Symbolik und\nMythologice thl. ii. absch. ii. cap. ss. 394-404.\n\n\nOf course it is possible that the doctrine of the resurrection, as\nthe Hebrews held it, was developed by themselves, from imaginative\ncontemplations on the phenomena of burials and graves; spectres\nseen in dreams; conceptions of the dead as shadowy shapes in the\nunder world; ideas of God as the deliverer of living men from the\nopen gates of the under world when they experienced narrow escapes\nfrom destruction; vast and fanatical national hopes. Before\nadvancing another step, it is necessary only to premise that some\nof the Jews appear to have expected that the souls on rising from\nthe under world would be clothed with new, spiritualized,\nincorruptible bodies, others plainly expected that the identical\nbodies they formerly wore would be literally restored.\n\nNow, when Christianity, after the death of its Founder, arose and\nspread, it was in the guise of a new and progressive Jewish sect.\nIts apostles and its converts for the first hundred years were\nChristian Jews. Christianity ran its career through the apostolic\nage virtually as a more liberal Jewish sect. Most natural was it,\nthen, that infant Christianity should retain all the salient\ndogmas of Judaism, except those of exclusive nationality and\nbigoted formalism in the throwing off of which the mission of\nChristianity partly consisted. Among these Jewish dogmas retained\nby early Christianity was that of the bodily resurrection. In the\nNew Testament itself there are seeming references to this\ndoctrine. We shall soon recur to these. The phrase \"resurrection\nof the body\" does not occur in the Scriptures. Neither is it found\nin any public creed whatever among Christians until the fourth\ncentury.6 But these admissions by no means prove that the doctrine\nwas not believed from the earliest days of Christianity. The fact\nis, it was the same with this doctrine as with the doctrine of the\ndescent of Christ into Hades: it was not for a long time called in\nquestion at all. It was not defined, discriminated, lifted up on\nthe symbols of the Church, because that was not called for. As\nsoon as the doctrine came into dispute, it was vehemently and all\nbut unanimously affirmed, and found an emphatic place in every\ncreed. Whenever the doctrine of a bodily resurrection has been\ndenied, that denial has been instantly stigmatized as heresy and\nschism, even from the days of \"Hymeneus and Philetas, who\nconcerning the truth erred, saying that the resurrection was past\nalready.\" The uniform orthodox doctrine of the Christian Church\nhas always been that in the last day the identical fleshly bodies\nformerly inhabited by men shall be raised from the earth, sea, and\nair, and given to them again to be everlastingly assumed. The\nscattered exceptions to the believers in this doctrine have been\nfew, and have ever been styled heretics by their contemporaries.\n\nAny one who will glance over the writings of the Fathers with\nreference to this subject will find the foregoing statements amply\nconfirmed.7 Justin Martyr wrote a treatise on the resurrection, a\nfragment of which is still extant. Athenagoras has left us an\nextremely elaborate and able discussion of the whole doctrine, in\na separate work. Tertullian is author of a famous book on the\nsubject, entitled \"Concerning the Resurrection of the Flesh,\" in\nwhich he says, \"The teeth are providentially made eternal to serve\nas the seeds of the\n\n6 Dr. Sykes, Inquiry when the Article of the Resurrection of the\nBody or Flesh was first introduced into the Public Creeds.\n\n7 Mosheim, De Resurrectione Mortuorum.\n\n\nresurrection.\" Chrysostom has written fully upon it in two of his\neloquent homilies. All these, in company indeed with the common\nbody of their contemporaries, unequivocally teach a carnal\nresurrection with the grossest details. Augustine says, \"Every\nman's body, howsoever dispersed here, shall be restored perfect in\nthe resurrection. Every body shall be complete in quantity and\nquality. As many hairs as have been shaved off, or nails cut,\nshall not return in such enormous quantities to deform their\noriginal places; but neither shall they perish: they shall return\ninto the body into that substance from which they grew.\" 8 As if\nthat would not cause any deformity! 9 Some of the later Origenists\nheld that the resurrection bodies would be in the shape of a ball,\nthe mere heads of cherubs! 10\n\nIn the seventh century Mohammed flourished. His doctrinal system,\nit is well known, was drawn indiscriminately from many sources,\nand mixed with additions and colors of his own. Finding the dogma\nof a general bodily resurrection already prevailing among the\nParsees, the Jews, and the Christians, and perceiving, too, how\nwell adapted for purposes of vivid representation and practical\neffect it was, or perhaps believing it himself, the Arabian\nprophet ingrafted this article into the creed of his followers. It\nhas ever been with them, and is still, a foremost and controlling\narticle of faith, an article for the most part held in its literal\nsense, although there is a powerful sect which spiritualizes the\nwhole conception, turning all its details into allegories and\nimages. But this view is not the original nor the orthodox view.\n\nThe subject of the resurrection was a prominent theme in the\ntheology of the Middle Age. Only here and there a dissenting voice\nwas raised against the doctrine in its strict physical form. The\ngreat body of the Scholastics stood stanchly by it. In defence and\nsupport of the Church thesis they brought all the quirks and\nquiddities of their subtle dialectics. As we take down their\nponderous tomes from their neglected shelves, and turn over the\ndusty, faded old leaves, we find chapter after chapter in many a\nformidable folio occupied with grave discussions, carried on in\nacute logical terminology, of questions like these: \"Will the\nresurrection be natural or miraculous?\" \"Will each one's hairs and\nnails all be restored to him in the resurrection?\" \"When bodies\nare raised, will each soul spontaneously know its own and enter\nit? or will the power of God distribute them as they belong?\"\n\"Will the deformities and scars of our present bodies be retained\nin the resurrection?\" \"Will all rise of the same age?\" \"Will all\nhave one size and one sex?\" 11 And so on with hundreds of kindred\nquestions. For instance, Thomas Aquinas contended \"that no other\nsubstance would rise from the grave except that which belonged to\nthe individual in the moment of death.\"12 What dire prospects this\nproposition must conjure up before many minds! If one chance to\ngrow prodigiously obese before death, he must lug that enormous\ncorporeity wearily about forever; but if he happen to die when\nwasted, he must then flit through eternity as thin as a lath.\n\n8 De Civ. Dei, lib. xxii. cap. 19, 20.\n\n9 See the strange speculations of Opitz in his work \"De Statura et\nAtate Resurgentium.\n\n10 Redepenning, Origenes, b. ii. s. 463.\n\n11 Summa Theologia, Thoma Aquinatis, tertia pars, Supplementum,\nQuastiones 79-87.\n\n12 Hagenbuch, Dogmengeschichte, sect. 204.\n\n\nThose who have had the misfortune to be amputated of legs or arms\nmust appear on the resurrection stage without those very\nconvenient appendages. There will still be need of hospitals for\nthe battered veterans of Chelsea and Greenwich, mutilated heroes,\npensioned relics of deck and field. Then in the resurrection the\nrenowned \"Mynheer von Clam, Richest merchant in Rotterdam,\"\nwill again have occasion for the services of the \"patent cork leg\nmanufacturer,\" though it is hardly to be presumed he will accept\nanother unrestrainable one like that which led him so fearful a\nrace through the poet's verses.\n\nThe Manichaans denied a bodily resurrection. In this all the sects\ntheologically allied to them, who have appeared in ecclesiastical\nhistory, for instance, the Cathari, have agreed. There have also\nbeen a few individual Christian teachers in every century who have\nassailed the doctrine. But, as already declared, it has uniformly\nbeen the firm doctrine of the Church and of all who acknowledged\nher authority. The old dogma still remains in the creeds of the\nrecognised Churches, Papal, Greek, and Protestant. It has been\nterribly shattered by the attacks of reason and of progressive\nscience. It lingers in the minds of most people only as a dead\nletter. But all the earnest conservative theologians yet cling to\nit in its unmitigated grossness, with unrelaxing severity. We hear\nit in practical discourses from the pulpit, and read it in\ndoctrinal treatises, as offensively proclaimed now as ever.\nIndeed, it is an essential part of the compact system of the\nruling theology, and cannot be taken out without loosening the\nwhole dogmatic fabric into fragments. Thus writes to day a\ndistinguished American divine, Dr. Spring: \"Whether buried in the\nearth, or floating in the sea, or consumed by the flames, or\nenriching the battle field, or evaporate in the atmosphere, all,\nfrom Adam to the latest born, shall wend their way to the great\narena of the judgment. Every perished bone and every secret\nparticle of dust shall obey the summons and come forth. If one\ncould then look upon the earth, he would see it as one mighty\nexcavated globe, and wonder how such countless generations could\nhave found a dwelling beneath its surface.\" 13 This is the way the\nrecognised authorities in theology still talk. To venture any\nother opinion is a heresy all over Christendom at this hour.\n\nWe will next bring forward and criticize the arguments for and\nagainst the doctrine before us. It is contended that the doctrine\nis demonstrated in the example of Christ's own resurrection. \"The\nresurrection of the flesh was formerly regarded as incredible,\"\nsays Augustine; \"but now we see the whole world believing that\nChrist's earthly body was borne into heaven.\" 14 It is the faith\nof the Church that \"Christ rose into heaven with his body of flesh\nand blood, and wears it there now, and will forever.\" \"Had he been\nthere in body before, it would have been no such wonder that he\nshould have returned with it; but that the flesh of our flesh and\nbone of our bone should be seated at the right hand of God is\nworthy of the greatest admiration.\" 15 That is to say, Christ was\nfrom eternity God, the Infinite Spirit, in\n\n13 The Glory of Christ, vol. ii. p. 237.\n\n14 De Civ. Dei, lib. xxii. cap. 5.\n\n15 Pearson on the Creed, 12th ed., pp. 272-275.\n\n\nheaven; he came to earth and lived in a human body; on returning\nto heaven, instead of resuming his proper form, he bears with him,\nand will eternally retain, the body of flesh he had worn on earth!\nPaul says, \"Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God.\"\nThe Church, hastily following the senses, led by a carnal,\nillogical philosophy, has deeply misinterpreted and violently\nabused the significance of Christ's ascension. The drama of his\nresurrection, with all its connected parts, was not meant\nthroughout as a strict representation of our destiny. It was a\nseal upon his commission and teachings, not an exemplification of\nwhat should happen to others. It was outwardly a miracle, not a\ntype, an exceptional instance of super natural power, not a\nsignificant exhibition of the regular course of things. The same\nlogic which says, \"Christ rose and ascended with his fleshly body:\ntherefore we shall,\" must also say, \"Christ rose visibly on the\nthird day: therefore we shall.\" Christ's resurrection was a\nmiracle; and therefore we cannot reason from it to ourselves. The\ncommon conception of a miracle is that it is the suspension, not\nthe manifestation, of ordinary laws. We have just as much logical\nright to say that the physical appearance in Christ's resurrection\nwas merely an accommodation to the senses of the witnesses, and\nthat on his ascension the body was annihilated, and only his soul\nentered heaven, as we have to surmise that the theory embodied in\nthe common belief is true. The record is according to mere\nsensible appearances. The reality is beyond our knowledge. The\nrecord gives no explanation. It is wiser in this dilemma to follow\nthe light of reason than to follow the blind spirit of tradition.\nThe point in our reasoning is this. If Christ, on rising from the\nworld of the dead, assumed again his former body, he assumed it by\na miracle, and for some special purpose of revealing himself to\nhis disciples and of finishing his earthly work; and it does not\nfollow either that he bore that body into heaven, or that any\nothers will ever, even temporarily, reassume their cast off forms.\n\nThe Christian Scriptures do not in a single passage teach the\npopular doctrine of the resurrection of the body. Every text in\nthe New Testament finds its full and satisfactory explanation\nwithout implying that dogma at all. In the first place, it is\nundeniably implied throughout the New Testament that the soul does\nnot perish with the body. It also appears, in the next place, from\nnumerous explicit passages, that the New Testament authors, in\ncommon with their countrymen, supposed the souls of the departed\nto be gathered and tarrying in what the Church calls the\nintermediate state, the obscure under world. In this subterranean\nrealm they were imagined to be awaiting the advent of the Messiah\nto release them. Now, we submit that every requirement of the\ndoctrine of the resurrection as it is stated or hinted in the New\nTestament is fully met by the simple ascension of this\ncongregation of souls from the vaults of Sheol to the light of the\nupper earth, there to be judged, and then some to be sent up to\nheaven, some sent back to their prison. For, let it be carefully\nobserved, there is not one text in the New Testament, as before\nstated, which speaks of the resurrection of the \"body\" or of the\n\"flesh.\" The expression is simply the resurrection of \"the dead,\"\nor of \"them that slept.\" If by \"the dead\" was meant \"the bodies,\"\nwhy are we not told so? Locke, in the Third Letter of his\ncontroversy with the Bishop of Worcester on this subject, very\npointedly shows the absurdity of a literal interpretation of the\nwords \"All that are in their graves shall hear my voice and shall\ncome forth.\" Nothing can come out of the grave except what is in\nit. And there are no souls in the grave: they are in the separate\nstate. And there are no bodies in millions of graves: they long\nago, even to the last grain of dust, entered into the circulations\nof the material system. \"Coming forth from their graves unto the\nresurrection\" either denotes the rising of souls from the under\nworld, or else its meaning is something incredible. At all events,\nnothing is said about any resurrection of the body: that is a\nmatter of arbitrary inference. The angels are not thought to have\nmaterial bodies; and Christ declares, \"In the resurrection ye\nshall neither marry nor be given in marriage, but shall be as the\nangels of heaven.\" It seems clear to us that the author of the\nEpistle to the Hebrews also looked for no restoration of the\nfleshly body; for he not only studiously omits even the faintest\nallusion to any such notion, but positively describes \"the spirits\nof just men made perfect in the heavenly Jerusalem, with an\ninnumerable company of angels, and with the general assembly and\nchurch of the first born.\" The Jews and early Christians who\nbelieved in a bodily resurrection did not suppose the departed\ncould enter heaven until after that great consummation.\n\nThe most cogent proof that the New Testament does not teach the\nresurrection of the same body that is buried in the grave is\nfurnished by the celebrated passage in Paul's Epistle to the\nCorinthians. The apostle's premises, reasoning, and conclusion are\nas follows: \"Christ is risen from the dead, become the first\nfruits of them that slept.\" That is to say, all who have died,\nexcept Christ, are still tarrying in the great receptacle of souls\nunder the earth. As the first fruits go before the harvest, so the\nsolitary risen Christ is the forerunner to the general\nresurrection to follow. \"But some one will say, How are the dead\nraised up? and with what body do they come?\" Mark the apostle's\nreply, and it will appear inexplicable how any one can consider\nhim as arguing for the resurrection of the identical body that was\nlaid in the grave, particle for particle. \"Thou fool! that which\nthou sowest, thou sowest not that body that shall be, but naked\ngrain, and God giveth it a body as it hath pleased him.\" \"There\nare celestial bodies, and terrestrial bodies;\" \"there is a natural\nbody, and there is a spiritual body;\" \"the first man is of the\nearth, earthy; the second man is the Lord from heaven;\" \"flesh and\nblood cannot inherit the kingdom of God;\" \"we shall all be\nchanged,\" and \"bear the image of the heavenly, as we have borne\nthe image of the earthy.\" The analogy which has been so strangely\nperverted by most commentators is used by Paul thus. The germ\nwhich was to spring up to a new life, clothed with a new body, was\nnot any part of the fleshly body buried in the grave, but was the\nsoul itself, once contained in the old body, but released from its\nhull in the grave and preserved in the under world until Christ\nshall call it forth to be invested with a \"glorious,\" \"powerful,\"\n\"spiritual,\" \"incorruptible\" body. When a grain of wheat is sown,\nthat is not the body that shall be; but the mysterious principle\nof life, latent in the germ of the seed, springs up and puts on\nits body fashioned appropriately for it. So, according to Paul's\nconception, when a man is buried, the material corpse is not the\nresurrection body that shall be; but the living soul which\noccupied it is the germ that shall put on a new body of\nimmortality when the spring tide of Christ's coming draws the\nburied treasures of Hades up to the light of heaven.\n\nA species of proof which has been much used by the advocates of\nthe dogma of a bodily resurrection is the argument from analogy.\nThe intimate connection of human feeling and fancy with the\nchanging phenomena of Nature's seasons would naturally suggest to\na pensive mind the idea, Why, since she has her annual\nresurrection, may not humanity some time have one? And what first\narose as a poetic conceit or stray thought, and was expressed in\nglowing metaphors, might by an easy process pass abroad and harden\ninto a prosaic proposition or dogmatic formula.\n\n\"O soul of the spring time, now let us behold The stone from the\nmouth of the sepulchre roll'd, And Nature rise up from her death's\ndamp mould; Let our faith, which in darkness and coldness has\nlain, Revive with the warmth and the brightness again, And in\nblooming of flower and budding of tree The symbols and types of\nour destiny see.\"\n\nStanding by the graves of our loved and lost ones, our inmost\nsouls yearn over the very dust in which their hallowed forms\nrepose. We feel that they must come back, we must be restored to\neach other as we were before. Listening to the returned birds\nwhose warble fills the woods once more, gazing around on the\nverdant and flowery forms of renewed life that clothe the\nlandscape over again, we eagerly snatch at every apparent emblem\nor prophetic analogy that answers to our fond imagination and\ndesiring dream. Sentiment and fancy, especially when stimulated by\nlove and grief, and roving in the realms of reverie, free from the\ncold guidance and sharp check of literal fact and severe logic,\nare poor analysts, and then we easily confuse things distinct and\nwander to conclusions philosophy will not warrant. Before building\na dogmatic doctrine on analogies, we must study those analogies\nwith careful discrimination, must see what they really are, and to\nwhat they really lead. There is often an immense difference\nbetween the first appearance to a hasty observer and the final\nreality to a profound student. Let us, then, scrutinize a little\nmore closely those seeming analogies which, to borrow a happy\nexpression from Flugge, have made \"Resurrection a younger sister\nof Immortality.\"\n\nNature, the old, eternal snake, comes out afresh every year in a\nnew shining skin. What then? Of course this emblem is no proof of\nany doctrine concerning the fate of man. But, waiving that, what\nwould the legitimate correspondence to it be for man? Why, that\nhumanity should exhibit the fresh specimens of her living\nhandiwork in every new generation. And that is done. Nature does\nnot reproduce before us each spring the very flowers that perished\nthe previous winter: she makes new ones like them. It is not a\nresurrection of the old: it is a growth of the new. The passage of\nthe worm from its slug to its chrysalis state is surely no symbol\nof a bodily resurrection, but rather of a bodily emancipation, not\nresuming a deserted dead body, but assuming a new live one. Does\nthe butterfly ever come back to put on the exuvia that have\nperished in the ground? The law of all life is progress, not\nreturn, ascent through future developments, not descent through\nthe stages already traversed. \"The herb is born anew out of a\nseed, Not raised out of a bony skeleton. What tree is man the seed\nof? Of a soul.\"\n\nSir Thomas Browne, after others, argues for the restoration of\nman's body from the grave, from the fancied analogy of the\npalingenesis or resurrection of vegetables which the magicians of\nthe antique East and the mystic chemists of the Middle Age boasted\nof effecting. He having asserted in his \"Religion of a Physician\"\nthat \"experience can from the ashes of a plant revive the plant,\nand from its cinders recall it into its stalk and leaves again,\"\nDr. Henry Power wrote beseeching \"an experimental eviction of so\nhigh and noble a piece of chemistry, the reindividuality of an\nincinerated plant.\" We are not informed that Sir Thomas ever\ngranted him the sight. Of this beautiful error, this exquisite\nsuperstition, which undoubtedly arose from the crystallizations of\ncertain salts in arborescent forms which suddenly surprised the\nearly alchemists in some of their experiments, we have the\nfollowing account in Disraeli's \"Curiosities of Literature:\" \"The\nsemina of resurrection are concealed in extinct bodies, as in the\nblood of man. The ashes of roses will again revive into roses,\nthough smaller and paler than if they had been planted\nunsubstantial and unodoriferous, they are not roses which grew on\nrose trees, but their delicate apparitions; and, like apparitions,\nthey are seen but for a moment. This magical phoenix lies thus\nconcealed in its cold ashes till the presence of a certain\nchemical heat produces its resurrection.\" Any refutation of this\nnow would be considered childish. Upon the whole, then, while\nrecurrent spring, bringing in the great Easter of the year,\ntypifies to us indeed abundantly the development of new life, the\ngrowth of new bodies out of the old and decayed, but nowhere hints\nat the gathering up and wearing again of the dusty sloughs and\nrotted foliage of the past, let men cease to talk of there being\nany natural analogies to the ecclesiastical dogma of the\nresurrection of the flesh. The teaching of nature finds a truer\nutterance in the words of Aschylus: \"There is no resurrection for\nhim who is once dead.\" 16\n\nThe next argument is that based on considerations of reason and of\nethics. The supporters of the doctrine of the resurrection of the\nbody have often disingenuously evaded the burden of proof thrown\nupon them by retreating beneath loud assertions of God's power.\nFrom the earliest dawn of the hypothesis to the present time,\nevery perplexity arising from it, every objection brought against\nit, every absurdity shown to be involved in it, has been met and\nconfidently rebutted with declarations of God's abundant power to\neffect a physical resurrection, or to do any thing else he\npleases, however impossible it may appear to us. Now, it is true\nthe power of God is competent to innumerable things utterly beyond\nour skill, knowledge, or conception. Nevertheless, there is a\nprovince within which our reason can judge of probabilities, and\ncan, if not absolutely grasp infallible truth, at least reach\nsatisfactory convictions. God is able to restore the vast coal\ndeposits of the earth, and the ashes of all the fuel ever burned,\nto their original condition when they covered the world with\n\n16 Eumenides, 1. 648, Oxford edition.\n\n\ndense forests of ferns; but we have no reason to believe he will\ndo it. The truth or falsity of the popular theory of the\nresurrection is not a question of God's power; it is simply a\nquestion of God's will. A Jewish Rabbin relates the following\nconversation, as exultingly as if the quibbling evasion on which\nit turns positively settled the question itself, which in fact it\ndoes not approach. A Sadducee says, \"The resurrection of the dead\nis a fable: the dry, scattered dust cannot live again.\" A by\nstanding Pharisee makes this reply: \"There were in a city two\nartists: one made vases of water, the other made them of clay:\nwhich was the more wondrous artist?\" The Sadducee answered, \"The\nformer.\" The Pharisee rejoins, \"Cannot God, then, who formed man\nof water, (gutta seminis humida,) much more re form him of clay?\"\nSuch a method of reasoning is an irrelevant impertinence. God can\ncall Nebuchadnezzar from his long rest, and seat him on his old\nthrone again to morrow. What an absurdity to infer that therefore\nhe will do it! God can give us wings upon our bodies, and enable\nus to fly on an exploring trip among the planets. Will he do it?\nThe question, we repeat, is not whether God has the power to raise\nour dead bodies, but whether he has the will. To that question\nsince, as we have already seen, he has sent us no miraculous\nrevelation replying to it we can only find an answer by tracing\nthe indications of his intentions contained in reason, morals, and\nnature.\n\nOne of the foremost arguments urged by the Fathers for the\nresurrection was its supposed necessity for a just and complete\njudgment. The body was involved and instrumental in all the sins\nof the man: it must therefore bear part in his punishment. The\nRabbins tell this allegory: \"In the day of judgment the body will\nsay, The soul alone is to blame: since it left me, I have lain\nlike a stone in the grave. The soul will retort, The body alone is\nsinful: since released from it, I fly through the air like a bird.\nThe Judge will interpose with this myth: A king once had a\nbeautiful garden full of early fruits. A lame man and a blind man\nwere in it. Said the lame man to the blind man, Let me mount upon\nyour shoulders and pluck the fruit, and we will divide it. The\nking accused them of theft; but they severally replied, the lame\nman, How could I reach it? the blind man, How could I see it? The\nking ordered the lame man to be placed upon the back of the blind\nman, and in this position had them both scourged. So God in the\nday of judgment will replace the soul in the body, and hurl them\nboth into hell together.\" There is a queer tradition among the\nMohammedans implying, singularly enough, the same general thought.\nThe Prophet's uncle, Hamzah, having been slain by Hind, daughter\nof Atabah, the cursed woman cut out his liver and gnawed it with\nfiendish joy; but, lest any of it should become incorporated with\nher system and go to hell, the Most High made it as hard as a\nstone; and when she threw it on the ground, an angel restored it\nto its original nature and place in the body of the martyred hero,\nthat lion of God.\n\nThe Roman Catholic Church endorses the representation that the\nbody must be raised to be punished. In the Catechism of the\nCouncil of Trent, which is an authoritative exposition of Romanist\ntheology, we read that the \"identical body\" shall be restored,\nthough \"without deformities or superfluities;\" restored that \"as\nit was a partner in the man's deeds, so it may be a partner in his\npunishments.\" The same Catechism also gives in this connection the\nreason why a general judgment is necessary after each individual\nhas been judged at his death, namely, this: that they may be\npunished for the evil which has resulted in the world since they\ndied from the evil they did in the world while they lived! Is it\nnot astonishing how these theologians find out so much? A living\nPresbyterian divine of note says, \"The bodies of the damned in the\nresurrection shall be fit dwellings for their vile minds. With all\nthose fearful and horrid expressions which every base and\nmalignant passion wakes up in the human countenance stamped upon\nit for eternity and burned in by the flaming fury of their own\nterrific wickedness, they will be condemned to look upon their own\ndeformity and to feel their fitting doom.\" It is therefore urged\nthat the body must be raised to suffer the just penalty of the\nsins man committed while occupying it. Is it not an absurdity to\naffirm that nerves and blood, flesh and bones, are responsible,\nguilty, must be punished? Tucker, in his \"Light of Nature\nPursued,\" says, \"The vulgar notion of a resurrection in the same\nform and substance we carry about at present, because the body\nbeing partaker in the deed ought to share in the reward, as well\nrequires a resurrection of the sword a man murders with, or the\nbank note he gives to charitable uses.\" We suppose an intelligent\npersonality, a free will, indispensable to responsibleness and\nalone amenable to retributions. Besides, if the body must be\nraised to undergo chastisement for the offences done in it and by\nmeans of it, this insurmountable difficulty by the same logic\nconfronts us. The material of our bodies is in a constant change,\nthe particles becoming totally transferred every few years. Now,\nwhen a man is punished after the general judgment for a certain\ncrime, he must be in the very body he occupied when that crime was\nperpetrated. Since he was a sinner all his days, his resurrection\nbody must comprise all the matter that ever formed a part of his\ncorporeity, and each sinner may hereafter be as huge as the\nwrithing Titan, Tityus, whose body, it was fabled, covered nine\nacres. God is able to preserve the integral soul in being, and to\npunish it according to justice, without clothing it in flesh. This\nfact by itself utterly vacates and makes gratuitous the hypothesis\nof a physical resurrection from punitive considerations, an\nhypothesis which is also refuted by the truth contained in Locke's\nremark to Stillingfleet, \"that the soul hath no greater congruity\nwith the particles of matter which were once united to it, but are\nso no longer, than it hath with any other particles of matter.\"\nWhen the soul leaves the body, it would seem to have done with\nthat stage of its existence, and to enter upon another and higher\none, leaving the dust to mix with dust forever. The body wants not\nthe soul again; for it is a senseless clod and wants nothing. The\nsoul wants not its old body again: it prefers to have the freedom\nof the universe, a spirit. Philip the Solitary wrote, in the\ntwelfth century, a book called \"Dioptra,\" presenting the\ncontroversy between the soul and the body very quaintly and at\nlength. The same thing was done by Henry Nicholson in a\n\"Conference between the Soul and Body concerning the Present and\nFuture State.\" William Crashaw, an old English poet, translated\nfrom the Latin a poem entitled \"The Complaint: a Dialogue between\nthe Body and the Soul of a Damned Man.\"17 But any one who will\nperuse with intelligent heed the works that have been written on\nthis whole subject must be amazed to see how exclusively the\ndoctrine which we are opposing has rested on pure grounds of\ntradition and fancy, alike destitute of authority and reason. Some\nauthors have indeed attempted to support the doctrine with\narguments: for\n\n17 Also see Dialogue inter Corpus et Animam, p. 95 of Latin Poems\nattributed to Walter Mapes.\n\n\ninstance, there are two German works, one by Bertram, one by\nPflug, entitled \"The Resurrection of the Dead on Grounds of\nReason,\" in which recourse is had to every possible expedient to\nmake out a case, not even neglecting the factitious assistance of\nLeibnitz's scheme of \"Pre established Harmony.\" But it may be\ndeliberately affirmed that not one of their arguments is worthy of\nrespect. Apparently, they do not seek to reach truth, but to\nbolster up a foregone conclusion held merely from motives of\ntradition.\n\nThe Jews had a favorite tradition, developed by their Rabbins in\nmany passages, that there was one small, almond shaped bone,\n(supposed now to have been the bone called by anatomists the os\ncoccygis,) which was indestructible, and would form the nucleus\naround which the rest of the body would gather at the time of the\nresurrection. This bone, named Luz, was miraculously preserved\nfrom demolition or decay. Pound it furiously on anvils with heavy\nhammers of steel, burn it for ages in the fiercest furnaces, soak\nit for centuries in the strongest solvents, all in vain: its magic\nstructure still remained. So the Talmud tells. \"Even as there is a\nround dry grain In a plant's skeleton, which, being buried, Can\nraise the herb's green body up again; So is there such in man, a\nseed shaped bone, Aldabaron, call'd by the Hebrews Luz, Which,\nbeing laid into the ground, will bear, After three thousand years,\nthe grass of flesh, The bloody, soul possessed weed called man.\"\n\nThe Jews did not, as these singular lines represent, suppose this\nbone was a germ which after long burial would fructify by a\nnatural process and bear a perfect body: they regarded it only as\na nucleus around which the Messiah would by a miracle compel the\ndecomposed flesh to return as in its pristine life. All that the\nJews say of Luz the Mohammedans repeat of the bone Al Ajib.\n\nThis conceit of superstition has been developed by a Christian\nauthor of considerable reputation into a theory of a natural\nresurrection. The work of Mr. Samuel Drew on the \"Identity and\nGeneral Resurrection of the Human Body\" has been quite a standard\nwork on the subject of which it treats. Mr. Drew believes there is\na germ in the body which slowly ripens and prepares the\nresurrection body in the grave. As a seed must be buried for a\nseason in order to spring up in perfect life, so must the human\nbody be buried till the day of judgment. During this period it is\nnot idle, but is busily getting ready for its consummation. He\nsays, \"There are four distinct stages through which those parts\nconstituting the identity of the body must necessarily pass in\norder to their attainment of complete perfection beyond the grave.\nThe first of these stages is that of its elementary principles;\nthe second is that of an embryo in the womb; the third is that of\nits union with an immaterial spirit, and with the fluctuating\nportions of flesh and blood in our present state; and the fourth\nstage is that of its residence in the grave. All these stages are\nundoubtedly necessary to the full perfection of the body: they are\nalembics through which its parts must necessarily move to attain\nthat vigor which shall continue forever.\"18 To state this figment\nis enough. It would be folly to attempt any refutation of a fancy\nso obviously a pure contrivance to fortify a preconceived opinion,\na fancy, too, so preposterous, so utterly without countenance,\neither from experience, observation, science, reason, or\nScripture. The egg of man's divinity is not laid in the nest of\nthe grave.\n\nAnother motive for believing the resurrection of the body has been\ncreated by the exigencies of a materialistic philosophy. There was\nin the early Church an Arabian sect of heretics who were reclaimed\nfrom their errors by the powerful reasonings and eloquence of\nOrigen.19 Their heresy consisted in maintaining that the soul dies\nwith the body being indeed only its vital breath and will be\nrestored with it at the last day. In the course of the Christian\ncenturies there have arisen occasionally a few defenders of this\nopinion. Priestley, as is well known, was an earnest supporter of\nit. Let us scan the ground on which he held this belief. In the\nfirst place, he firmly believed that the fact of an eternal life\nto come had been supernaturally revealed to men by God through\nChrist. Secondly, as a philosopher he was intensely a materialist,\nholding with unwavering conviction to the conclusion that life,\nmind, or soul, was a concomitant or result of our physical\norganism, and wholly incapable of being without it. Death to him\nwas the total destruction of man for the time. There was therefore\nplainly no alternative for him but either to abandon one of his\nfundamental convictions as a Christian and a philosopher, or else\nto accept the doctrine of a future resurrection of the body into\nan immortal life. He chose the latter, and zealously taught always\nthat death is an annihilation lasting till the day of judgment,\nwhen all are to be summoned from their graves. To this whole\ncourse of thought there are several replies to be made. In the\nfirst place, we submit that the philosophy of materialism is\nfalse: standing in the province of science and reason, it may be\naffirmed that the soul is not dependent for its existence on the\nbody, but will survive it. We will not argue this point, but\nmerely state it. Secondly, it is certain that the doctrine which\nmakes soul perish with body finds no countenance in the New\nTestament. It is inconsistent with the belief in angelic spirits,\nin demoniac possessions, in Christ's descent as a spirit to preach\nto the spirits of departed men imprisoned in the under world, and\nwith other conceptions underlying the Gospels and the Epistles.\nBut, thirdly, admitting it to be true, then, we affirm, the\nlegitimate deduction from all the arrayed facts of science and all\nthe presumptive evidence of appearances is not that a future\nresurrection will restore the dead man to life, but that all is\nover with him, he has hopelessly perished forever. When the breath\nceases, if nothing survives, if the total man is blotted out, then\nwe challenge the production of a shadow of proof that he will ever\nlive again. The seeming injustice and blank awfulness of the fate\nmay make one turn for relief to the hypothesis of a future\narbitrary miraculous resurrection; but that is an artificial\nexpedient, without a shadow of justification. Once admit that the\nbody is all, its dissolution a total death, and you are gone\nforever. One intuition of the spirit, seizing the conscious\nsupports of eternal ideas, casts contempt on \"The doubtful\nprospects of our painted dust,\"\n\n18 Drew on Resurrection, ch. vi. sect. vii. pp. 326-332.\n\n19 Eusebius, Eccl. Hist. lib. vi. cap. xxxvii.\n\n\nand outvalues all the gross hopes of materialism. Between\nnonentity and being yawns the untraversable gulf of infinity. No:\nthe body of flesh falls, turns to dust and air; the soul,\nemancipated, rejoices, and soars heavenwards, and is its own\nincorruptible frame, mocking at death, a celestial house, whose\nmaker and builder is God.\n\nFinally, there remain to be weighed the bearings of the argument\nfrom chemical and physiological science on the resurrection. Here\nis the chief stumbling block in the way of the popular doctrine.\nThe scientific absurdities connected with that doctrine have been\nmarshalled against it by Celsus, the Platonist philosopher, by\nAvicenna, the Arabian physician, and by hundreds more, and have\nnever been answered, and cannot be answered. As long as man lives,\nhis bodily substance is incessantly changing; the processes of\nsecretion and absorption are rapidly going forward. Every few\nyears he is, as to material, a totally new man. Dying at the age\nof seventy, he has had at least ten different bodies. He is one\nidentical soul, but has lived in ten separate houses. With which\nshall he be raised? with the first? or the fifth? or the last? or\nwith all? But, further, the body after death decays, enters into\ncombination with water, air, earth, gas, vegetables, animals,\nother human bodies. In this way the same matter comes to have\nbelonged to a thousand persons. In the resurrection, whose shall\nit be? We reply, nearly in the language of Christ to the\nSadducees, \"Ye do err, not knowing the Scriptures, nor the will of\nGod: in the resurrection they have not bodies of earthly flesh,\nbut are spirits, as the angels of God.\"\n\nThe argument against the common theory of a material resurrection,\non account of numerous claimants for the same substance, has of\nlate derived a greatly increased force from the brilliant\ndiscoveries in chemistry. It is now found that only a small number\nof substances ever enter into the composition of animal bodies.20\nThe food of man consists of nitrogenized and non nitrogenized\nsubstances. The latter are the elements of respiration; the former\nalone compose the plastic elements of nutrition, and they are few\nin number and comparatively limited in extent. \"All life depends\non a relatively small quantity of matter. Over and over again, as\nthe modeller fashions his clay, are plant and animal formed out of\nthe same material.\" The particles that composed Adam's frame may\nbefore the end of the world have run the circuit of ten thousand\nbodies of his descendants: \"'Twas mine, 'tis his, and has been\nslave to thousands.\" To proclaim the resurrection of the flesh as\nis usually done, seems a flat contradiction of clear knowledge.21\nA late writer on this subject, Dr. Hitchcock, evades the\ninsuperable difficulty by saying, \"It is not necessary that the\nresurrection body should contain a single particle of the body\nlaid in the grave, if it only contain particles of the same kind,\nunited in the same proportion, and the compound be made to assume\nthe same form and structure as the natural body.\" 22 Then two men\nwho look exactly alike may in the resurrection exchange bodies\nwithout any harm! Here the theory of punishment clashes. Does not\nthe esteemed author see that this would not be a resurrection of\nthe old bodies, but a creation of new ones\n\n20 Liebig, Animal Chemistry, sect. xix.\n\n21 The Circulation of Matter, Blackwood's Magazine, May, 1853.\n\n22 The Resurrection of Spring, p. 26.\n\n\njust like them? And is not this a desertion of the orthodox\ndoctrine of the Church? If he varies so far from the established\nformularies out of a regard for philosophy, he may as well be\nconsistent and give up the physical doctrine wholly, because it\nrests solely on the tradition which he leaves and is every whit\nirreconcilable with philosophy. This device is as wilful an\nattempt to escape the scientific difficulty as that employed by\nCandlish to avoid the scriptural difficulty put in the way of the\ndoctrine by the apostolic words \"Flesh and blood cannot inherit\nthe kingdom of God.\" The eminent Scottish divine affirms that\n\"flesh and bones\"  that is, these present bodies made\nincorruptible can inherit the kingdom of God; although \"flesh and\nblood\" that is, these present bodies subject to decay cannot.23 It\nis surely hard to believe that the New Testament writers had such\na distinction in their minds. It is but a forlorn resource\nconjured up to meet a desperate exigency.\n\nAt the appearing of Christ in glory,\n\n\"When the Day of Fire shall have dawn'd, and sent Its deadly\nbreath into the firmament,\" as it is supposed, the great earth\ncemetery will burst open and its innumerable millions swarm forth\nbefore him. Unto the tremendous act of habeas corpus, then\nproclaimed, every grave will yield its prisoner. Ever since the\nascension of Jesus his mistaken followers have been anxiously\nexpecting that awful advent of his person and his power in the\nclouds; but in vain. \"All things remain as they were: where is the\npromise of his appearing?\" As the lookers out hitherto have been\ndisappointed, so they ever will be. Say not, Lo here! or, Lo\nthere! for, behold, he is within you. The reason why this carnal\nerror, Jewish conceit, retains a hold, is that men accept it\nwithout any honest scrutiny of its foundations or any earnest\nthought of their own about it. They passively receive the\ntradition. They do not realize the immensity of the thing, nor the\nludicrousness of its details. To their imaginations the awful\nblast of the trumpet calling the world to judgment, seems no more,\nas Feuerbach says, than a tone from the tin horn of a postillion,\nwho, at the post station of the Future, orders fresh horses for\nthe Curriculum Vita! President Hitchcock tells us that, \"when the\nlast trumpet sounds, the whole surface of the earth will become\ninstinct with life, from the charnels of battle fields alone more\nthan a thousand millions of human beings starting forth and\ncrowding upwards to the judgment seat.\" On the resurrection\nmorning, at the first tip of light over acres of opening monument\nand heaving turf, \"Each member jogs the other, And whispers, Live\nyou, brother?\"\n\nAnd how will it be with us then? Will Daniel Lambert, the mammoth\nof men, appear weighing half a ton? Will the Siamese twins then be\nagain joined by the living ligament of their congenital band?\nShall \"infants be not raised in the smallness of body in which\nthey died, but increase by the wondrous and most swift work of\nGod\"? 24\n\n23 Candlish, Life in a Risen Savior: Discourse XV.\n\n24 Augustine, De Civ. Dei, lib. xxii. cap. xiv.\n\n\nYoung sings, \"Now charnels rattle; scatter'd limbs, and all The\nvarious bones, obsequious to the call, Self moved, advance; the\nneck perhaps to meet The distant head; the distant head the feet.\nDreadful to view! see, through the dusky sky Fragments of bodies\nin confusion fly, To distant regions journeying, there to claim\nDeserted members and complete the frame.\"\n\nThe glaring melodramatic character, the startling mechanico\ntheatrical effects, of this whole doctrine, are in perfect keeping\nwith the raw imagination of the childhood of the human mind, but\nin profound opposition to the working philosophy of nature and the\nsublime simplicity of God.\n\nMany persons have never distinctly defined their views upon the\nsubject before us. In the minds even of many preachers and\nwriters, several different and irreconcilable theories would seem\nto exist together in confused mixture. Now they speak as if the\nsoul were sleeping with the body in the grave; again they appear\nto imply that it is detained in an intermediate state; and a\nmoment afterwards they say it has already entered upon its final\nreward or doom. Jocelyn relates, in his Life of St. Patrick, that\n\"as the saint one day was passing the graves of two men recently\nburied, observing that one of the graves had a cross over it, he\nstopped his chariot and asked the dead man below of what religion\nhe had been. The reply was, 'A pagan.' 'Then why was this cross\nput over you?' inquired St. Patrick. The dead man answered, 'He\nwho is buried near me is a Christian; and one of your faith,\ncoming hither, placed the cross at my head.' The saint stepped out\nof his chariot, rectified the mistake, and went his way.\" Calvin,\nin the famous treatise designated \"Psychopannychia,\" which he\nlevelled against those who taught the sleep of souls until the day\nof judgment, maintained that the souls of the elect go immediately\nto heaven, the souls of the reprobate to hell. Here they tarry in\nbliss and bale until the resurrection; then, coming to the earth,\nthey assume their bodies and return to their respective places.\nBut if the souls live so long in heaven and hell without their\nflesh, why need they ever resume it? The cumbrous machinery of the\nscheme seems superfluous and unmeaning. As a still further\nspecimen of the arbitrary thinking the unscientific and\nunphilosophical thinking carried into this department of thought\nby most who have cultivated it, reference may be made to Bishop\nBurnet's work \"De Statu Mortuorum et Resurgentium,\" which teaches\nthat at the first resurrection the bodies of the risen will be the\nsame as the present, but at the second resurrection, after the\nmillennium, from the rudiments of the present body a new spiritual\nbody will be developed.\n\nThe true idea of man's future destiny appears to be that no\nresurrection of the flesh is needed, because the real man never\ndies, but lives continuously forever. There are two reasonable\nways of conceiving what the vehicle of his life is when he leaves\nhis present frame. It may be that within his material system lurks\nan exquisite spiritual organization, invisibly pervading it and\nconstituting its vital power. This ethereal structure is\ndisengaged at last from its gross envelope, and, unfettered, soars\nto the Divine realms of ether and light. This theory of an \"inner\nbody\" is elaborately wrought out and sustained in Bonnet's\n\"Palingenesie Philosophique.\" Or it may be that there is in each\none a primal germ, a deathless monad, which is the organic\nidentity of man, root of his inmost stable being, triumphant,\nunchanging ruler of his flowing, perishable organism. This spirit\ngerm, born into the present life, assimilates and holds the\npresent body around it, out of the materials of this world; born\ninto the future life, it will assimilate and hold around it a\ndifferent body, out of the materials of the future world.25 Thus\nthere are bodies terrestrial and bodies celestial: the glory of\nthe terrestrial is one, fitted to this scene of things; the glory\nof the celestial is another, fitted to the scene of things\nhereafter to dawn. Each spirit will be clothed from the material\nfurnished by the world in which it resides. Not forever shall we\nbear about this slow load of weary clay, this corruptible mass,\nheir to a thousand ills. Our body shall rather be such  \"If\nlightning were the gross corporeal frame Of some angelic essence,\nwhose bright thoughts As far surpass'd in keen rapidity The\nlagging action of his limbs as doth Man's mind his clay; with like\nexcess of speed To animated thought of lightning flies That spirit\nbody o'er life's deeps divine, Far past the golden isles of\nmemory.\"\n\nWhat man knows constitutes his present world. All beyond that\nconstitutes another world. He can imagine two modes in which his\ndesire for a life after death may be gratified, a removal into the\nUnknown World, or a return into the Known World. With the latter\nsupposition the restoration of the flesh is involved.\n\nUpon the whole, our conclusion is, that in the original plan of\nthe world it was fixed that man should not live here forever, but\nthat the essence of his life should escape from the flesh and\ndepart to some other sphere of being, there either to fashion\nitself a new form, or to remain disembodied. If those who hold the\ncommon doctrine of a carnal resurrection should carry it out with\nphilosophical consistency, by extending the scheme it involves to\nall existing planetary races as well as to their own, should they\ncause that process of imagination which produced this doctrine to\ngo on to its legitimate completion, they would see in the final\nconsummation the sundered earths approach each other, and\nfirmaments conglobe, till at last the whole universe concentred in\none orb. On the surface of that world all the risen races of being\nwould be distributed, the inhabitants of a present solar system\nmaking a nation, the sum of gigantic nationalities constituting\none prodigious, death exempted empire, its solitary sovereign GOD.\nBut this is pure poetry, and not science nor philosophy.\n\n25 Lange on the Resurrection of the Body, Studien und Kritiken, 1836.\n\n\nCHAPTER IV.\n\nDOCTRINE OF FUTURE PUNISHMENT; OR, CRITICAL HISTORY OF THE IDEA OF\nA HELL.\n\nA HELL of fire and brimstone has been, perhaps still is, the most\nterrible of the superstitions of the world. We propose to give a\nhistoric sketch of the popular representations on this subject,\ntrace them to their origin, and discuss the merits of the question\nitself. To follow the doctrine through all its variations,\nillustrating the practical and controversial writings upon it,\nwould require a large volume; but, by a judicious arrangement, all\nthat is necessary to a fair understanding of the subject, or\nreally interesting, may be presented within the compass of an\nessay. Any one who should read the literature of this subject\nwould be astonished at the almost universal prevalence of the\ndoctrine and at the immense diversity of appalling descriptions of\nit, and would ask, Whence arises all this? How have these horrors\nobtained such a seated hold in the world?\n\nIn the first place, it is to be replied, as soon as reason is in\nfair possession of the idea of a continued individual existence\nbeyond the grave, the moral sense, discriminating the deeds,\ntempers, and characters of men, would teach that there must be\ndifferent allotments and experiences for them after death. It is\nnot right, say reason and conscience, for the coward, the idler,\nfool, knave, sot, murderer, to enter into the same realm and have\nthe same bliss with heroes, sages, and saints; neither are they\nable to do it. The spontaneous thought and sentiment of humanity\nwould declare, if the soul survives the body, passing into the\ninvisible world, its fortunes there must depend somewhat upon its\nfitness and deserts, its contained treasures and acquired habits.\nReason, judging the facts of observation according to the\nprinciples of ethics and the working of experienced spiritual\nlaws, at once decides that there is a difference hereafter between\nthe fate of the good heart and the bad one, the great soul and the\nmean one: in a word, there is, in some sense or other, a heaven\nand a hell.\n\nAgain: the same belief would be necessitated by the conception, so\ndeeply entertained by the primitive people of the earth, of\noverruling and inspecting gods. They supposed these gods to be in\na great degree like themselves, partial, fickle, jealous,\nrevengeful. Such beings, of course, would caress their favorites\nand torture their offenders. The calamities and blessings of this\nlife were regarded as tokens, revengeful or loving, of the ruling\ndeities, now pleased, now enraged. And when their votaries or\nvictims had passed into the eternal state, how natural to suppose\nthem still favored or cursed by the passionate wills of these\nirresponsible gods! Plainly enough, they who believe in gods that\nlaunch thunderbolts and upheave the sea in their rage and take\nvengeance for an insult by sending forth a pestilence, must also\nbelieve in a hell where Ixion may be affixed to the wheel and\nTantalus be tortured with maddening mockeries. These two\nconceptions of discriminating justice and of vengeful gods both\nlead to the theoretic construction of a hell, and to the growth of\ndoctrines and parables about it, though in a different sort, the\nformer illustrating a pervasive law which distributes men\naccording to their deserts, the latter speaking of beings with\nhuman passions, who inflict outward arbitrary penalties according\nto their pleasure.\n\nThirdly, when the general idea of a hell has once obtained\nlodgment, it is rapidly nourished, developed, and ornamented,\ncarried out into particulars by poets, rhetoricians, and popular\nteachers, whose fancies are stimulated and whose figurative views\nand pictures act and react both upon the sources and the products\nof faith. Representations based only on moral facts, emblems\naddressing the imagination, after a while are received in a\nliteral sense, become physically located and clothed with the\npower of horror. A Hindu poet says, \"The ungrateful shall remain\nin hell as long as the sun hangs in heaven.\" An old Jewish Rabbi\nsays that after the general judgment \"God shall lead all the\nblessed through hell and all the damned through paradise, and show\nto each one the place that was prepared for him in each region, so\nthat they shall not be able to say, 'We are not to be blamed or\npraised; for our doom was unalterably fixed beforehand.' Such\nutterances are originally moral symbols, not dogmatic assertions;\nand yet in a rude age they very easily pass into the popular mind\nas declaring facts literally to be believed. A Talmudic writer\nsays, \"There are in hell seven abodes, in each abode seven\nthousand caverns, in each cavern seven thousand clefts, in each\ncleft seven thousand scorpions; each scorpion has seven limbs, and\non each limb are seven thousand barrels of gall. There are also in\nhell seven rivers of rankest poison, so deadly that if one touches\nit he bursts.\" Hesiod, Homer, Virgil, have given minute\ndescriptions of hell and its agonies, descriptions which have\nunquestionably had a tremendous influence in cherishing and\nfashioning the world's faith in that awful empire. The poems of\nDante, Milton, and Pollok revel in the most vivid and terrific\npictures of the infernal kingdom and its imagined horrors; and the\npopular doctrine of future punishment in Christendom is far more\nclosely conformed to their revelations than to the declarations of\nthe New Testament. The English poet's \"Paradise Lost\" has\nundoubtedly exerted an influence on the popular faith comparable\nwith that of the Genevan theologian's \"Institutes of the Christian\nReligion.\" There is a horrid fiction, widely believed once by the\nJewish Rabbins and by the Mohammedans, that two gigantic fiends\ncalled the Searchers, as soon as a deceased person is buried, make\nhim sit up in the grave, examine the moral condition of his soul,\nand, if he is very guilty, beat in his temples with heavy iron\nmaces. It is obvious to observe that such conceptions are purely\narbitrary, the work of fancy, not based on any intrinsic fitness\nor probability; but they are received because unthinking ignorance\nand hungry superstition will greedily believe any thing they hear.\nJoseph Trapp, an English clergyman, in a long poem thus sets forth\nthe scene of damnation: \"Doom'd to live death and never to expire,\nIn floods and whirlwinds of tempestuous fire The damn'd shall\ngroan, fire of all kinds and forms, In rain and hail, in\nhurricanes and storms, Liquid and solid, livid, red, and pale, A\nflaming mountain here, and there a flaming vale; The liquid fire\nmakes seas, the solid, shores; Arch'd o'er with flames, the horrid\nconcave roars. In bubbling eddies rolls the fiery tide, And\nsulphurous surges on each other ride. The hollow winding vaults,\nand dens, and caves, Bellow like furnaces with flaming waves.\nPillars of flame in spiral volumes rise, Like fiery snakes, and\nlick the infernal skies. Sulphur, the eternal fuel, unconsumed,\nVomits redounding smoke, thick, unillumed.\"\n\nBut all other paintings of the fear and anguish of hell are vapid\nand pale before the preternatural frightfulness of those given at\nunmerciful length and in sickening specialty in some of the Hindu\nand Persian sacred books.1 Here worlds of nauseating disgusts, of\nloathsome agonies, of intolerable terrors, pass before us. Some\nare hung up by their tongues, or by their eyes, and slowly\ndevoured by fiery vermin; some scourged with whips of serpents\nwhose poisonous fangs lacerate their flesh at every blow; some\nforced to swallow bowls of gore, hair, and corruption, freshly\nfilled as fast as drained; some packed immovably in red hot iron\nchests and laid in raging furnaces for unutterable millions of\nages. One who is familiar with the imagery of the Buddhist hells\nwill think the pencils of Dante and Pollok, of Jeremy Taylor and\nJonathan Edwards, were dipped in water. There is just as much\nground for believing the accounts of the former to be true as\nthere is for crediting those of the latter: the two are\nfundamentally the same, and the pagan had earlier possession of\nthe field.\n\nFurthermore, in the early ages, and among people where castes were\nprominent, when the learning, culture, and power were confined to\none class at the expense of others, it is unquestionable that\ncopious and fearful descriptions of the future state were spread\nabroad by those who were interested in establishing such a dogma.\nThe haughtiness and selfishness of the hierarchic spirit, the\nexclusiveness, cruelty, and cunning tyranny of many of the ancient\npriesthoods, are well known. Despising, hating, and fearing the\npeople, whom they held in abject spiritual bondage, they sought to\ndevise, diffuse, and organize such opinions as would concentrate\npower in their own hands and rivet their authority. Accordingly,\nin the lower immensity they painted and shadowed forth the lurid\nand dusky image of hell, gathering around it all that was most\nabominated and awful. Then they set up certain fanciful\nconditions, without the strict observance of which no one could\navoid damnation. The animus of a priesthood in the structure of\nthis doctrine is shown by the glaring fact that in the old\nreligions the woes of hell were denounced not so much upon bad men\nwho committed crimes out of a wicked heart, as upon careless men\nwho neglected priestly guidance and violated the ritual. The\nomission of a prayer or an ablution, the neglect of baptism or\nconfession, a slight thrown upon a priest, a mental conception\ndiffering from the decree of the \"Church,\" would condemn a man far\nmore surely and deeply into the Egyptian, Hindu, Persian,\nPharisaic, Papal, or Calvinistic hell than any amount of moral\nculpability according to the standard of natural ethics.\n\n1 See Pope's translation of the Viraf Nameh. Also the Dabistan,\nvol. i. pp. 295-304, of the translation by Shea and Troyer; and\nColeman's Mythology of the Hindus, chapter on the hells.\n\n\nThe popular hells have ever been built on hierarchic selfishness,\ndogmatic pride, and personal cruelty, and have been walled around\nwith arbitrary and traditional rituals. Through the breaches made\nin these rituals by neglect, souls have been plunged in. The\nParsee priest describes a woman in hell \"beaten with stone clubs\nby two demons twelve miles in size, and compelled to continue\neating a basin of putridity, because once some of her hair, as she\ncombed it, fell into the sacred fire.\" The Brahmanic priest tells\nof a man who, for \"neglecting to meditate on the mystic\nmonosyllable Om before praying, was thrown down in hell on an iron\nfloor and cleaved with an axe, then stirred in a caldron of molten\nlead till covered all over with the sweated foam of torture like a\ngrain of rice in an oven, and then fastened, with head downwards\nand feet upwards, to a chariot of fire and urged onwards with a\nred hot goad.\" The Papal priest declares that the schismatic,\nthough the kindest and justest man, at death drops hopelessly into\nhell, while the devotee, though scandalously corrupt in heart and\nlife, who confesses and receives extreme unction, treads the\nprimrose path to paradise. The Episcopalian priest dooms the\ndissenter to everlasting woe in spite of every virtue, because he\nhas not known sacramental baptism in the apostolic line. The\nArminian priest turns the rationalist over to the penal fires of\neternity, because he is in mental error as to the explanation of\nthe Trinity and the Atonement. In every age it has been the\npriestly spirit, acting on ritual considerations, that has\ndeepened the foundations, enlarged the borders, and apportioned\nthe victims, of hell. The perversions and excesses of the doctrine\nhave grown out of cruel ambition and cunning on one side, and been\nreceived by docile ignorance and superstition on the other, and\nbeen mutually fed by traditions and fables between. The excessive\nvanity and theocratic pride of the Jews led them to exclude all\nthe Gentiles, whom they stigmatized as \"uncircumcised dogs,\" from\nthe Jewish salvation. The same spirit, aggravated if possible,\npassed lineally into Christendom, causing the Orthodox Church to\nexclude all the heathen, all heretics, and the unbaptized, from\nthe Christian salvation.\n\nA fifth explanation of the wholesale severity and multiplied\ndetails of horror, which came to be incorporated with the doctrine\nof hell, is to be found in the gloomy theories of certain\nphilosophers whose relentless speculations were tinged and moulded\nby their own recluse misanthropy and the prevailing superstitions\nof their time. Out of the old asceticism of the East the false\nspiritualism which regarded matter as the source of evil and this\nlife as a penance arose the dogma of metempsychosis. The\nconsequence of this theory, rigidly carried out, created a\ndescending congeries of hells, reaching from centre to nadir, in\ncorrespondence to an ascending congeries of heavens, reaching from\ncentre to zenith. Out of the myth of the Fall sprang the dogma of\ntotal depravity, dooming our whole race to hell forever, except\nthose saved by the subsequent artifice of the atonement. Theories\nconjured up and elaborated by fanciful and bloodless metaphysicians,\nin an age when the milk of public human kindness was thinned,\nsoured, poisoned, by narrow and tyrannical prejudices, might\neasily legitimate and establish any conclusions, however\nunreasonable and monstrous. The history of philosophy is\nthe broad demonstration of this. The Church philosophers, (with\nexceptions, of course,) receiving the traditions of the common\nfaith, partaking in the superstitions of their age, banished from\nthe bosoms of men by their monastic position, and inflamed with\nhierarchic pride, with but a faint connection or intercourse\nbetween conscience and intellect or between heart and fancy,\nstrove to spin out theories which would explain and justify the\northodox dogmas.\n\nWorking with metaphysical tools of abstract reason, not with the\npractical faculties of life, dealing with the fanciful materials\nof priestly tradition, not with the solid facts of ethical\nobservation, they would naturally be troubled with but few qualms\nand make but few reservations, however overwhelming the results of\nhorror at which they might arrive. Habituated for years to hair\ndrawn analyses and superstitious broodings upon the subject,\novershadowed by the supernatural hierarchy in which they lived,\nsurrounded by a thick night of ignorance, persecution, and\nslaughter, it was no wonder they could believe the system they\npreached, although in reality it was only a traditional\nabstraction metaphysically wrought up and vivified by themselves.\nBeing thus wrought out and animated by them, who were the sole\ndepositaries of learning and the undisputed lords of thought, the\nmass of the people, lying abjectly in the fetters of authority,\ncould not help accepting it. Ample illustrations of these\nassertions will occur to all who are familiar with the theological\nschemes and the dialectic subtleties of the early Church Fathers\nand of the later Church Scholastics.\n\nFinally, by the combined power, first, of natural conscience\naffirming a future distinction between the good and the bad;\nsecondly, of imperfect conceptions of God as a passionate avenger;\nthirdly, of the licentious fancies of poets drawing awful\nimaginative pictures of future woe; fourthly, of the cruel spirit\nand the ambitious plans of selfish priesthoods; and fifthly, of\nthe harsh and relentless theories of conforming metaphysicians,\nthe doctrine of hell, as a located place of manifold terrific\nphysical tortures drawing in vast majorities of the human race,\nbecame established in the ruling creeds and enthroned as an\northodox dogma. In some heathen nations the descriptions of the\npoets, in others the accounts of the priestly books, were held to\nbe inspired revelations. To call them in question was blasphemous.\nIn Christendom the scriptural representations of the subject,\nwhich were general moral adaptations, incidentally made, of\nrepresentations already existing, obtained a literal interpretation,\nhad the stamp of infallibility put on them and immense perverted\nadditions joined to them. Thus everywhere the dogma became\nassociated with the established authority. To deny it was heresy.\nHeretics were excommunicated, loaded with pains and penalties,\nand, for many centuries, often put to death with excruciating\ntortures. From that moment the doctrine was taken out of\nthe province of natural reason, out of the realm of ethical\ntruth. The absurdities, wrongs, and barbarities deducible from it\nwere a part and parcel of it, and not to be considered as any\nobjection to it. No free thought and honest criticism were\nallowed. Because taught by authority, it must be submissively\ntaken for granted. Henceforth we are not to wonder at the\nrevolting inhumanity of spirit and horribleness of gloating hatred\nshown in connection with the doctrine; for it was not the\nindependent thought and proper moral spirit of individuals, but\nthe petrified dogma and irresponsible corporate spirit of that\ntowering hierarchy, the Church.\n\nThe Church set forth certain conditional offers of salvation. When\nthose offers were spurned or neglected, the Church felt personally\ninsulted and aggrieved. Her servants hurled on the hated heretics\nand heathen the denunciations of bigotry and the threats of rage.\nRugged old Tertullian, in whose torrid veins the fire of his\nAfrican deserts seems infused, revels with infernal glee over the\ncontemplation of the sure damnation of the heathen. \"At that\ngreatest of all spectacles, the last and eternal judgment,\" he\nsays, \"how shall I admire, how laugh, how rejoice, how exult, when\nI behold so many proud monarchs groaning in the lowest abyss of\ndarkness; so many magistrates liquefying in fiercer flames than\nthey ever kindled against the Christians; so many sage\nphilosophers blushing in red hot fires with their deluded pupils;\nso many tragedians more tuneful in the expression of their own\nsufferings; so many dancers tripping more nimbly from anguish than\never before from applause.\"2 Hundreds of the most accredited\nChristian writers have shown the same fiendish spirit. Drexel the\nJesuit, preaching of Dives, exclaims, \"Instead of a lofty bed of\ndown on which he was wont to repose himself, he now lies frying in\nthe flames; his sparkling wine and delicious dainties are taken\nfrom him; he is burnt up with thirst, and has nothing for his food\nbut smoke and sulphur.\" Jeremy Taylor3 says, in that discourse on\nthe \"Pains of Hell\" where he has lavished all the stores of his\nmatchless learning and all the wealth of his gorgeous imagination\nin multiplying and adorning the paraphernalia of torture with\ninfinite accompaniments of unendurable pangs and insufferable\nabominations, \"We are amazed at the inhumanity of Phalaris, who\nroasted men in his brazen bull: this was joy in respect of that\nfire of hell which penetrates the very entrails without consuming\nthem;\" \"husbands shall see their wives, parents shall see their\nchildren, tormented before their eyes;\" \"the bodies of the damned\nshall be crowded together in hell like grapes in a wine press,\nwhich press one another till they burst;\" \"every distinct sense\nand organ shall be assailed with its own appropriate and most\nexquisite sufferings.\" Christopher Love belying his name says of\nthe damned, \"Their cursings are their hymns, howlings their tunes,\nand blasphemies their ditties.\" Calvin writes, \"Forever harassed\nwith a dreadful tempest, they shall feel themselves torn asunder\nby an angry God, and transfixed and penetrated by mortal stings,\nterrified by the thunderbolts of God, and broken by the weight of\nhis hand, so that to sink into any gulfs would be more tolerable\nthan to stand for a moment in these terrors.\" A living divine, Dr.\nGardiner Spring, declares, \"When the omnipotent and angry God, who\nhas access to all the avenues of distress in the corporeal frame\nand all the inlets to agony in the intellectual constitution,\nundertakes to punish, he will convince the universe that he does\nnot gird himself for the work of retribution in vain;\" \"it will be\na glorious deed when He who hung on Calvary shall cast those who\nhave trodden his blood under their feet, into the furnace of fire,\nwhere there shall be weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth.\"\nThousands of passages like these, and even worse, might easily be\ncollected from Christian authors, dating their utterance from the\ndays of St. Irenaus, Bishop of Lyons, who flamed against the\nheretics, to the days of Nehemiah Adams, Congregational preacher\nof Boston, who says, \"It is to be feared the forty two children\nthat mocked Elisha are now in hell.\" 4 There is an unmerciful\nanimus in them, a vindictiveness of thought and feeling, far oh,\nhow far! removed from the meek and loving\n\n2 De Spectaculis, cap. xxx., Gibbon's trans.\n\n3 Contemplations of the State of Man, ch. 6 8.\n\n4 Friends of Christ, p. 149.\n\n\nsoul of Jesus, who wept over Jerusalem, and loved the\n\"unevangelical\" young lawyer who was \"not far from the kingdom of\nheaven,\" and yearned towards the penitent Peter, and from the\ntenderness of his immaculate purity said to the adulteress,\n\"Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more.\" There are some\nsectarians in whom the arbitrary narrowness, fierceness, and\nrigidity of their received creeds have so demoralized and hardened\nconscience and sensibility in their native healthy directions, and\nartificially inflamed them in diseased channels, that we verily\nbelieve, if the decision of the eternal destiny of the human race\nwere placed in their hands, they would with scarcely a twinge of\npain perhaps some of them even with a horrid satisfaction and\ntriumph doom all except their own dogmatic coterie to hell. They\nare bound to do so. They profess to know infallibly that God will\ndo so: if, therefore, the case being in their arbitration, they\nwould decide differently, they thereby impeach the action of God,\nconfess his decrees irreconcilable with reason and justice, and\nset up their own goodness as superior to his. Burnet has preserved\nthe plea of Bloody Mary, which was in these words: \"As the souls\nof heretics are hereafter to be eternally burning in hell, there\ncan be nothing more proper than for me to imitate the Divine\nvengeance by burning them on earth.\" Thanks be to the infinite\nFather that our fate is in his hands, and not in the hands of men\nwho are bigots,\n\n\"Those pseudo Privy Councillors of God,\nWho write down judgments with a pen hard nibb'd:\nUshers of Beelzebub's black rod,\nCommending sinners, not to ice thick ribb'd,\nBut endless flames to scorch them up like flax,\nYet sure of heaven themselves, as if they'd cribb'd\nThe impression of St. Peter's keys in wax!\"\n\nIt may be thought that this doctrine and its awful concomitants,\nthough once promulgated, are now nearly obsolete. It is true that,\nin thinking minds and generous hearts, they are getting to be\nrepudiated. But by no means is it so in the recognised formularies\nof the established Churches and in the teachings of the popular\nclergy. All through the Gentile world, wherever there is a\nprevailing religion, the threats and horrors of a fearful doctrine\nof hell are still brandished over the trembling or careless\nmultitudes. In Christendom, the authoritative announcement of the\nRoman and Greek Churches, and the public creeds confessed by every\ncommunicant of all the denominations, save two or three which are\ncomparatively insignificant in numbers, show that the doctrine is\nyet held without mitigation. The Bishop of Toronto, only a year or\ntwo ago, published the authoritative declaration that \"every child\nof humanity, except the Virgin Mary, is from the first moment of\nconception a child of wrath, hated by the blessed Trinity,\nbelonging to Satan, and doomed to hell!\" Indeed, the doctrine, in\nits whole naked and frightful extent, is necessarily, in strict\nlogic, an integral part of the great system of the popular\nChristianity, that is, Christianity as falsely interpreted,\npaganized, and scholasticized. For if by the sin of Adam the\nentire race were totally depraved and condemned to a hopeless\nhell, and only those can be saved who personally appropriate by a\nrealizing faith the benefits of the subsequent artifice carried\nout in the atoning blood of the incarnate God, certainly the\nextremist advocate of the doctrine concerning hell has not\nexceeded the truth, and cannot exceed it. All the necessities of\nlogic rebuke the tame hearted theologians, and great Augustine's,\ngreat Calvin's, ghost walks unapproached among them, crying out\nthat they are slow and inefficient in describing the enormous\nsweep of the inherited penalty! Many persons who have not taken\npains to examine the subject suppose that the horrifying\ndescriptions given by Christian authors of the state and\nsufferings of the lost were not intended to be literally received,\nbut were meant as figures of speech, highly wrought metaphors\ncalculated to alarm and impress with physical emblems corresponding\nonly to moral and spiritual realities. The progress of\nthought and refinement has made it natural that recourse should\noften be had to such an explanation; but unquestionably it is a\nmistake. The annals of theology, both dogmatic and homiletic, from\nthe time of the earliest Fathers till now, abound in detailed\naccounts of the future punishment of the wicked, whereof the\ncontext, the train of thought, and all the intrinsic characteristics\nof style and coherence, do not leave a shadow of doubt that they\nwere written as faithful, though inadequate, accounts of facts.\nThe Church, the immense bulk of Christendom, has in theory always\nregarded hell and its dire concomitants as material facts,\nand not as merely spiritual experiences.\n\nTertullian says, \"The damned burn eternally without consuming, as\nthe volcanoes, which are vents from the stored subterranean fire\nof hell, burn forever without wasting.\" 5 Cyprian declares that\n\"the wretched bodies of the condemned shall simmer and blaze in\nthose living fires.\" Augustine argues at great length and with\ningenious varieties of reasoning to show how the material bodies\nof the damned may withstand annihilation in everlasting fire.6\nSimilar assertions, which cannot be figuratively explained, are\nmade by Irenaus, Jerome, Athanasius, Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventura,\nGerson, Bernard, and indeed by almost all the Christian writers.\nOrigen, who was a Platonist, and a heretic on many points, was\nseverely condemned for saying that the fire of hell was inward and\nof the conscience, rather than outward and of the body. For the\nstrict materiality of the fire of hell we might adduce volumes of\nauthorities from nearly every province of the Church. Dr. Barrow\nasserts that \"our bodies will be afflicted continually by a\nsulphurous flame, piercing the inmost sinews.\" John Whitaker\nthinks \"the bodies of the damned will be all salted with fire, so\ntempered and prepared as to burn the more fiercely and yet never\nconsume.\" Jeremy Taylor teaches that \"this temporal fire is but a\npainted fire in respect of that penetrating and real fire in\nhell.\" Jonathan Edwards soberly and believingly writes thus: \"The\nworld will probably be converted into a great lake or liquid globe\nof fire, a vast ocean of fire, in which the wicked shall be\noverwhelmed, which will always be in tempest, in which they shall\nbe tost to and fro, having no rest day or night, vast waves or\nbillows of fire continually rolling over their heads, of which\nthey shall forever be full of a quick sense within and without:\ntheir heads, their eyes, their tongues, their hands, their feet,\ntheir loins, and their vitals shall forever be full of a glowing,\nmelting fire, fierce enough to melt the very rocks and elements;\nand also they shall eternally be full of the most quick and lively\nsense\n\n5 Apol. cap. 47-48.\n\n6 De Civ. Dei, lib. xxi. cap. 2 4.\n\n\nto feel the torments; not for one minute, nor for one day, nor for\none age, nor for two ages, nor for a hundred ages, nor for ten\nthousands of millions of ages one after another, but for ever and\never, without any end at all, and never, never be delivered.\" 7\nCalvin says, \"Iterum quaro, unde factum est, ut tot gentes una cum\nliberis eorum infantibus aterna morti involveret lapsus Ada absque\nremedio, nisi quia Deo ita visum est? Decretum horribile fateor.\"\n8 Outraged humanity before the contemplation cries, \"O God, horror\nhath overwhelmed me, for thou art represented as an omnipotent\nFiend.\" It is not the Father of Christ, but his Antagonist, whose\nface glares down over such a scene as that! The above diabolical\npassage at the recital of which from the pulpit, Edwards's\nbiographers tell us, \"whole congregations shuddered and\nsimultaneously rose to their feet, smiting their breasts, weeping\nand groaning\" is not the arbitrary exaggeration of an individual,\nbut a fair representation of the actual tenets and vividly held\nfaith of the Puritans. It is also, in all its uncompromising\nliterality, a direct and inevitable part of the system of doctrine\nwhich, with insignificant exceptions, professedly prevails\nthroughout Christendom at this hour. We know most persons will\nhesitate at this statement; but let them look at the logic of the\ncase in the light of its history, and they must admit the\ncorrectness of the assertion. Weigh the following propositions,\nthe accuracy of which no one, we suppose, will question, and it\nwill appear at once that there is no possibility of avoiding the\nconclusion.\n\nFirst, it is the established doctrine of Christendom that no one\ncan be saved without a supernatural regeneration, or sincere faith\nin the vicarious atonement, or valid reception of sacramental\ngrace at the hands of a priest, conditions which it is not\npossible that one in a hundred thousand of the whole human race\nhas fulfilled. Secondly, it is the established doctrine of\nChristendom that there will be a general day of judgment, when all\nmen will be raised in the same bodies which they originally\noccupied on earth, when Christ and his angels will visibly descend\nfrom heaven, separate the elect from the reprobate, summon the\nsheep to the blissful pastures on the right hand, but \"Proclaim\nThe flocks of goats to folds of flame.\"\n\nThe world is to be burnt up, and the damned, restored to their\nbodies, are to be driven into the everlasting fire prepared for\nthem. The resurrection of the body, still held in all Christendom,\ntaken in connection with the rest of the associated scheme,\nnecessitates the belief in the materiality of the torments of\nhell. That eminent living divine, Dr. Gardiner Spring, says, \"The\nsouls of all who have died in their sins are in hell; and there\ntheir bodies too will be after the resurrection.\" 9 Mr. Spurgeon\nalso, in his graphic and fearful sermon on the \"Resurrection of\nthe Dead,\" uses the following language: \"When thou diest, thy soul\nwill be tormented alone; that will be a hell for it: but at the\nday of judgment thy body will join thy soul, and then thou wilt\nhave twin hells, thy soul sweating drops of blood, and thy body\nsuffused with agony. In fire exactly like that which we have on\nearth thy body will lie,\n\n7 Edwards's Works, vol. viii. p. 166.\n\n8 Instit., lib. iii. cap. xxiii. sect. 7.\n\n9 The Glory of Christ, vol. ii. p. 258.\n\n\nasbestos like, forever unconsumed, all thy veins roads for the\nfeet of pain to travel on, every nerve a string on which the devil\nshall forever play his diabolical tune of Hell's Unutterable\nLament!\" And, if this doctrine be true, no ingenuity, however\nfertile in expedients and however fiendish in cruelty, can\npossibly devise emblems and paint pictures half terrific enough to\npresent in imagination and equal in moral impression what the\nreality will be to the sufferers. It is easy to speak or hear the\nword \"hell;\" but to analyze its significance and realize it in a\nsensitive fancy is difficult; and whenever it is done the fruit is\nmadness, as the bedlams of the world are shrieking in testimony at\nthis instant. The Revivalist preachers, so far from exaggerating\nthe frightful contents latent in the prevalent dogma concerning\nhell, have never been able and no man is able to do any thing like\njustice to its legitimate deductions. Edwards is right in\ndeclaring, \"After we have said our utmost and thought our utmost,\nall that we have said and thought is but a faint shadow of the\nreality.\" Think of yourselves, seized, just as you are now, and\nflung into the roaring, glowing furnace of eternity; think of such\ntorture for an instant, multiply it by infinity, and then say if\nany words can convey the proper force of impression. It is true\nthese intolerable details are merely latent and unappreciated by\nthe multitude of believers; and when one, roused to fanaticism by\nearnest contemplation of his creed, dares to proclaim its logical\nconsequences and to exhort men accordingly, they shrink, and\ncharge him with excess. But they should beware ere they repudiate\nthe literal horrors of the historic orthodox doctrine for any\nfigurative and moral views accommodated to the advanced reason and\nrefinement of the times, beware how such an abandonment of a part\nof their system affects the rest.\n\nGive up the material fire, and you lose the bodily resurrection.\nRenounce the bodily resurrection, and away goes the visible coming\nof Christ to a general judgment. Abandon the general judgment, and\nthe climacteric completion of the Church scheme of redemption is\nwanting. Mar the wholeness of the redemption plan, and farewell to\nthe incarnation and vicarious atonement. Neglect the vicarious\natonement, and down crumbles the hollow and broken shell of the\npopular theology helplessly into its grave. The old literal\ndoctrine of a material hell, however awful its idea, as it has\nbeen set forth in flaming views and threats by all the accredited\nrepresentatives of the Church, must be uncompromisingly clung to,\nelse the whole popular system of theology will be mutilated,\nshattered, and lost from sight. The theological leaders understand\nthis perfectly well, and for the most part they act accordingly.\nWe have now under our hand numerous extracts, from writings\npublished within the last five years by highly influential\ndignitaries in the different denominations, which for frightfulness\nof outline and coloring, and for unshrinking assertions of\nliterality, will compare with those already quoted.\n\nEspecially read the following description of this kind from John\nHenry Newman: \"Oh, terrible moment for the soul, when it suddenly\nfinds itself at the judgment seat of Christ, when the Judge speaks\nand consigns it to the jailers till it shall pay the endless debt\nwhich lies against it! 'Impossible! I a lost soul? I separated\nfrom hope and from peace forever? It is not I of whom the Judge so\nspake! There is a mistake somewhere; Christ, Savior, hold thy\nhand: one minute to explain it! My name is Demas: I am but Demas,\nnot Judas, or Nicholas, or Alexander, or Philetus, or Diotrephes.\nWhat! eternal pain for me? Impossible! it shall not be!' And the\npoor soul struggles and wrestles in the grasp of the mighty demon\nwhich has hold of it, and whose every touch is torment. 'Oh,\natrocious!' it shrieks, in agony, and in anger too, as if the\nvery keenness of the infliction were a proof of its injustice.\n'A second! and a third! I can bear no more! Stop, horrible fiend!\ngive over: I am a man, and not such as thou! I am not food for\nthee, or sport for thee! I have been taught religion; I have had\na conscience; I have a cultivated mind; I am well versed in science\nand art; I am a philosopher, or a poet, or a shrewd observer of men,\nor a hero, or a statesman, or an orator, or a man of wit and humor.\nNay, I have received the grace of the Redeemer; I have attended the\nsacraments for years; I have been a Catholic from a child; I died\nin communion with the Church: nothing, nothing which I have ever\nbeen, which I have ever seen, bears any resemblance to thee, and\nto the flame and stench which exhale from thee: so I defy thee,\nand abjure thee, O enemy of man!'\n\n\"Alas! poor soul! and, whilst it thus fights with that destiny\nwhich it has brought upon itself and those companions whom it has\nchosen, the man's name perhaps is solemnly chanted forth, and his\nmemory decently cherished, among his friends on earth. Men talk of\nhim from time to time; they appeal to his authority; they quote\nhis words; perhaps they even raise a monument to his name, or\nwrite his history. 'So comprehensive a mind! such a power of\nthrowing light on a perplexed subject and bringing conflicting\nideas or facts into harmony!' 'Such a speech it was that he made\non such and such an occasion: I happened to be present, and never\nshall forget it;' or, 'A great personage, whom some of us knew;'\nor, 'It was a rule with a very worthy and excellent friend of\nmine, now no more;' or, 'Never was his equal in society, so just\nin his remarks, so lively, so versatile, so unobtrusive;' or, 'So\ngreat a benefactor to his country and to his kind;' or, 'His\nphilosophy so profound.' 'Oh, vanity! vanity of vanities! all is\nvanity! What profiteth it? What profiteth it? His soul is in hell,\nO ye children of men! While thus ye speak, his soul is in the\nbeginning of those torments in which his body will soon have part,\nand which will never die!\" 10\n\nSome theologians do not hesitate, even now, to say that \"in hell\nthe bodies of the damned shall be nealed, as we speak of glass, so\nas to endure the fire without being annihilated thereby.\" \"Made of\nthe nature of salamanders,\" they shall be \"immortal kept to feel\nimmortal fire.\" Well may we take up the words of the Psalmist and\ncry out of the bottomless depths of disgust and anguish, \"I am\noverwhelmed with horror!\"\n\nHolding this abhorrent mass of representations, so grossly carnal\nand fearful, up in the free light of to day, it cannot stand the\ntest of honest and resolute inquiry. It exists only by timid,\nunthinking sufferance. It is kept alive, among the superstitious\nvestiges of the outworn and out grown past, only by the power of\ntradition, authority, and custom. In refutation of it we shall not\npresent here a prolonged detail of learned researches and logical\nprocesses; for that would be useless to those who are enslaved to\nthe foregone conclusions of a creed and possessed by invulnerable\nprejudices, while those who are thoughtful and candid can make\n\n10 Sermon on \"Neglect of Divine Calls and warnings.\"\n\n\nsuch investigations themselves. We shall merely state, in a few\nclear and brief propositions, the results in which we suppose all\nfree and enlightened minds who have adequately studied the subject\nnow agree, leaving the reader to weigh these propositions for\nhimself, with such further examination as inclination and\nopportunity may cause him to bestow upon the matter.\n\nWe reject the common belief of Christians in a hell which is a\nlocal prison of fire where the wicked are to be tortured by\nmaterial instruments, on the following grounds, appealing to God\nfor the reverential sincerity of our convictions, and appealing to\nreason for their truth. First, the supposition that hell is an\nenormous region in the hollow of the earth is a remnant of ancient\nignorance, a fancy of poets who magnified the grave into Hades, a\nthought of geographers who supposed the earth to be flat and\nsurrounded by a brazen expanse bright above and black beneath.\nSecondly, the soul, on leaving the body, is a spiritual substance,\nif it be any substance at all, eluding our senses and all the\ninstruments of science. Therefore, in the nature of things, it\ncannot be chained in a dungeon, nor be cognizant of suffering from\nmaterial fire or other physical infliction, but its woes must be\nmoral and inward; and the figment that its former fleshly body is\nto be restored to it is utterly incredible, being an absurdity in\nscience, and not affirmed, as we believe, in Scripture. Thirdly,\nthe imagery of a subterranean hell of fire, brimstone, and undying\nworms, as used in the Scriptures of the New Testament, is the same\nas that drawn from heathen sources with modifications and employed\nby the Pharisees before the time of Christ and his disciples; and\nwe must therefore, since neither Persians nor Pharisees were\ninspired, either suppose that this imagery was adopted by the\napostles figuratively to convey moral truths, or else that they\nwere left, in common with their countrymen, at least partially\nunder the dominion of the errors of their time. Thus in every\nalternative we deny that the interior of the earth is, or ever\nwill be, an abode of souls, full of fire, a hell in which the\ndamned are to be confined and physically tormented.\n\nThe elements of the popular doctrine of future punishment which we\nthus reject are the falsities contributed by superstition and the\npriestly spirit. The truths remaining in the doctrine, furnished\nby conscience, reason, and Scripture, we will next exhibit, in\norder not to dismiss this head, on the nature of future\npunishment, with negations. What is the real character of the\nretributions in the future state? We do not think they are\nnecessarily connected with any peculiar locality or essentially\ndependent on any external circumstances. As Milton says, when\nspeaking of the best theologians, \"To banish forever into a local\nhell, whether in the air, or in the centre, or in that uttermost\nand bottomless gulf of chaos deeper from holy bliss than the\nworld's diameter multiplied, they thought not a punishment so\nproper and proportionate for God to inflict as to punish sin with\nsin.\"\n\nGod does not arbitrarily stretch forth his arm, like an enraged\nand vindictive man, and take direct vengeance on offenders; but by\nhis immutable laws, permeating all beings and governing all\nworlds, evil is, and brings, its own punishment. The intrinsic\nsubstances and forces of character and their organized\ncorrelations with the realities of eternity, the ruling\nprinciples, habits, and love of the soul, as they stand affected\ntowards the world to which they go, these are the conditions on\nwhich experience depends, herein is the hiding of retribution.\n\"Each one,\" as Origen says, \"kindles the flame of his own\nappropriate fire.\" Superior spirits must look on a corrupted human\nsoul with a sorrow similar, though infinitely profounder, to that\nwith which the lapidary contemplates a splendid pearl with a dark\nflaw in its centre. The Koran says, \"Men sleep while they live,\nand when they die they wake.\" The sudden infliction of pain in the\nfuture state comes from the sudden unveiling of secrets,\nquickening of the moral consciousness, and exposure of the naked\nsoul's fitnesses to the spiritual correspondences of its deserts.\nIt is said,  \"Death does Away disguise: souls see each other\nclear, At one glance, as two drops of rain in air Might look into\neach other had they life.\"\n\nThe quality of the soul's character decides the elements of the\nsoul's life; and, as this becomes known on crossing the death\ndrawn line of futurity, conscious retribution then arises in the\nguilty. This is a retribution which is reasonable, moral,\nunavoidable, before which we may well pause and tremble. The great\nmoral of it is that we should not so much dread being thrust into\nan eternal hell as we should fear carrying a hell with us when we\ngo into eternity. It is not so bad to be in hell as to be forced\ntruly to say, \"Which way I fly is hell; myself am hell.\"\n\nIf these general ideas are correct, it follows even as all common\nsense and reflection affirm that every real preparation for death\nand for what is to succeed must be an ingrained characteristic,\nand cannot consist in a mere opinion, mood, or act. Here we strike\nat one of the shallowest errors, one of the most extensive and\nrooted superstitions, of the world. Throughout the immense\nkingdoms of the East, where the Brahmanic and Buddhist religions\nhold sway over six hundred millions of men, the notion of\nyadasanna that is, the merit instantaneously obtained when at the\npoint of death fully prevails. They suppose that in that moment,\nregardless of their former lives and of their present characters,\nby bringing the mind and the heart into certain momentary states\nof thought and feeling, and meditating on certain objects or\nrepeating certain sacred words, they can suddenly obtain exemption\nfrom punishment in their next life.11 The notion likewise obtains\nalmost universally among Christians, incredible as it may seem.\nWith the Romanists, who are three fourths of the Christian world,\nit is a most prominent doctrine, everywhere vehemently proclaimed\nand acted on: that is the meaning of the sacrament of extreme\nunction, whereby, on submission to the Church and confession to a\npriest, the venal sins of the dying man are forgiven, purgatory\navoided or lessened, and heaven made sure. The ghost of the King\nof Denmark complains most of the unwarned suddenness of his\nmurder, not of the murder itself, but of its suddenness, which\nleft him no opportunity to save his soul: \"Sleeping, was I by a\nbrother's hand Cut off even in the blossoms of my sin,\n\n11 Hardy, Manual of Buddhism, p. 489.\n\n\nUnhousel'd, disappointed, unanel'd; No reckoning made, but sent to\nmy account With all my imperfections on my head.\"\n\nHamlet, urged by supernatural solicitings to vengeance, finds his\nmurderous uncle on his knees at prayer. Stealing behind him with\ndrawn sword, he is about to strike the fatal blow, when the\nthought occurs to him that the guilty man, if killed when at his\ndevotions, would surely go to heaven; and so he refrains until a\ndifferent opportunity. For to send to heaven the villain who had\nslain his father,\n\n\"That would be hire and salary, not revenge. He took my father\ngrossly full of bread, With all his crimes broad blown, as flush\nas May; And how his audit stands who knows save Heaven? But, in\nour circumstance and course of thought, 'Tie heavy with him. And\nam I then revenged To take him in the purging of his soul, When he\nis fit and season'd for his passage? No; but when he is drunk,\nasleep, enraged, Or in the incestuous pleasures of his bed, At\ngaming, swearing, or about some act That has no relish of\nsalvation in't: Then trip him, that his heels may kick at heaven,\nAnd that his soul may be as damn'd and black As hell, whereto it\ngoes.\"\n\nThis, though poetry, is a fair representation of the mediaval\nfaith held by all Christendom in sober prose. The same train of\nthought latently underlies the feelings of most Protestants too,\nthough it is true any one would now shrink from expressing it with\nsuch frankness and horrible gusto. But what else means the minute\nmorbid anatomy of death beds, the prurient curiosity to know how\nthe dying one bore himself in the solemn passage? How commonly, if\none dies without physical anguish, and with the artificial\nexultations of a fanatic, rejoiceful auguries are drawn! if he\ndies in physical suffering, and with apparent regret, a gloomy\nverdict is rendered! It is superstition, absurdity, and injustice,\nall. Not the accidental physical conditions, not the transient\nemotions, with which one passes from the earth, can decide his\nfate, but the real good or evil of his soul, the genuine fitness\nor unfitness of his soul, his soul's inherent merits of bliss or\nbale. There is no time nor power in the instant of death, by any\nmagical legerdemain, to turn away the impending retributions of\nwickedness and guilt. What is right, within the conditions of\nInfinite wisdom and goodness, will be done in spite of all\ntraditional juggles and spasmodic spiritual attitudinizations.\nWhat can it avail that a most vile and hardened wretch, when\ndying, convulsed with fright and possessed with superstition,\ncompels, or strives to compel, a certain sentiment into his soul,\nconjures, or tries to conjure, his mind into the relation of\nbelief towards a certain ancient and abstract dogma?\n\n\"Yet I've seen men who meant not ill, Compelling doctrine out of\ndeath, With hell and heaven acutely poised Upon the turning of a\nbreath.\"\n\nCruelly racking the soul with useless probes of theological\nquestions and statements, they stand by the dying to catch the\nwords of his last breath, and, in perfect consistence with their\nfaith, they pronounce sentence accordingly. If, as the pallid lips\nfaintly close, they hear the magic words, \"I put my trust in the\natoning blood of Christ,\" up goes the soul to heaven. If they hear\nthe less stereotyped words, \"I have tried to do as well as I\ncould: I hope God will be merciful towards me and receive me,\"\ndown goes the soul to hell. Strange and cruel superstition, that\nimagines God to act towards men only according to the evanescent\ntemper and technical phrase with which they leave the world! The\nmost popular English preacher of the present day, the Rev. Mr.\nSpurgeon, after referring to the fable that those before whom\nPerseus held the head of Medusa were turned into stone in the very\nact and posture of the moment when they saw it, says, \"Death is\nsuch a power. What I am when death is held before me, that I must\nbe forever. When my spirit goes, if God finds me hymning his\npraise, I shall hymn it in heaven: doth he find me breathing out\noaths, I shall follow up those oaths in hell. As I die, so shall I\nlive eternally!\" 12\n\nNo: the true preparation for death and the invisible realm of\nsouls is not the eager adoption of an opinion, the hurried\nassumption of a mood, or the frightened performance of an outward\nact: it is the patient culture of the mind with truth, the pious\npurification of the heart with disinterested love, the consecrated\ntraining of the life in holiness, the growth of the soul in habits\nof righteousness, faith, and charity, the organization of divine\nprinciples into character. Every real preparation of the soul for\ndeath must be a characteristic rightly related to the immortal\nrealities to which death is the introduction of the soul. An evil\nsoul is not thrust into a physical and fiery hell, fenced in and\nroofed over from the universal common; but it is revealed to\nitself, and consciously enters on retributive relations. In the\nspiritual world, whither all go at death, we suppose that like\nperceives like, and thus are they saved or damned, having, by the\nnatural attraction and elective seeing of their virtues or vices,\nthe beatific vision of God, or the horrid vision of iniquity and\nterror.\n\nIt cannot be supposed that God is a bounded shape so vast as to\nfill the entire circuits of the creation. Spirit transcends the\ncategories of body, and it is absurd to apply the language of\nfinite things to the illimitable One, except symbolically. When we\ndie, we do not sink or soar to the realm of spirits, but are in\nit, at once, everywhere; and the resulting experience will depend\non the prevailing elements of our moral being. If we are bad, our\nbadness is our banishment from God; if we are good, our goodness\nis our union with God. In every world the true nature and law of\nretribution lie in the recoil of conduct on character, and the\nassimilated results ensuing. Take a soul that is saturated with\nthe rottenness of depravity into the core of heaven, and it is in\nthe heart of hell still. Take a soul that is compacted of divine\n\n12 Sermons, 3d Series. Sermon XIV., Thoughts on the Last Battle.\n\n\nrealities to the very bottom of hell, and heaven is with it there.\n\nWe are treading on eternity, and infinitude is all around us. Now,\nas well as hereafter, to us, the universe is action, the soul is\nreaction, experience is the resultant. Death but unveils the\nfacts. Pass that great crisis, in the passage becoming conscious\nof universal realities and of individual relations to them, and\nthe Father will say to the discordant soul, \"Alienated one,\nincapable of my embrace, change and come to me;\" to the harmonious\nsoul, \"Son, thou art ever with me, and all that I have is thine.\"\n\nHaving thus considered the question as to the nature of future\npunishments, it now remains to discuss the question concerning\ntheir duration. The fact of a just and varied punishment for souls\nwe firmly believe in. The particulars of it in the future, or the\ndegrees of its continuance, we think, are concealed from the\npresent knowledge of man. These details we do not profess to be\nable to settle much about. We have but three general convictions\non the subject. First, that these punishments will be experienced\nin accordance with those righteous and inmost laws which\nindestructibly express the mind of God and rule the universe, and\nwill not be vindictively inflicted through arbitrary external\npenalties. Secondly, that they will be accurately tempered to the\njust deserts and qualifications of the individual sufferers. And\nthirdly, that they will be alleviated, remedial, and limited, not\nunmitigated, hopeless, and endless.\n\nUpon the first of these thoughts perhaps enough has already been\nsaid, and the second and third may be discussed together. Our\nbusiness, therefore, in the remainder of this dissertation, is to\ndisprove, if truth in the hands of reason and conscience will\nenable us to disprove, the popular dogma which asserts that the\nstate of the condemned departed is a state of complete damnation\nabsolutely eternal. Against that form of representing future\npunishment which makes it unlimited by conceiving the destiny of\nthe soul to be an eternal progress, in which their initiative\nsteps of good or evil in this life place different souls under\nadvantages or disadvantages never relatively to be lost, we have\nnothing to object. It is reasonable, in unison with natural law,\nand not frightful.13 But we are to deal, if we fairly can, a\nrefutation against the doctrine of an intense endless misery for\nthe wicked, as that doctrine is prevailingly taught and received.\n\nThe advocates of eternal damnation primarily plant themselves upon\nthe Christian Scriptures, and say that there the voice of an\ninfallible inspiration from heaven asserts it. First of all, let\nus examine this ground, and see if they do not stand there only\nupon erroneous premises sustained by prejudices. In the beginning,\nthen, we submit to candid minds that, if the literal eternity of\nfuture torment be proclaimed in the New Testament, it is not a\npart of the revelation contained in that volume; it is not a truth\nrevealed by inspiration; and that we maintain for this reason. The\nsame representations of the everlasting duration of future\npunishment in hell, the same expressions for an unlimited\nduration, which occur in the New Testament, were previously\nemployed by the Hindus, Greeks, and Pharisees, who were not\ninspired, but must have drawn the doctrine from fallible sources.\nNow, to say the least, it is as reasonable to suppose that these\nexpressions, when found in the New Testament, were\n\n13 Lessing, Ueber Leibnitz von den Ewigen Strafen.\n\n\nemployed by the Saviour and the evangelists in conformity with the\nprevailing thought and customary phraseology of their time, as to\nconclude that they were derived from an unerring inspiration. The\nformer is a natural and reasonable inference; the latter is a\ngratuitous hypothesis for which we have never heard of any\nevidence. If its advocates will honestly attempt really to prove\nit, we are convinced they will be forced to renounce it. The only\nway they continue to hold it is by taking it for granted. If,\ntherefore, the strict eternity of future woe be declared in the\nNew Testament, we regard it not as a part of the inspired\nutterance of Jesus, but as an error which crept in among others\nfrom the surrounding notions of a benighted pagan age.\n\nBut, in the next place, we do not admit by any means that the\nliteral eternity of future damnation is taught in the Scriptures.\nOn the contrary, we deny such an assertion, for several reasons.\nFirst, we argue from the usage of language before the New\nTestament was written. The Egyptians, Hindus, Greeks, often make\nmost emphatic use of phrases declaring the eternal sufferings of\nthe wicked in hell; but they must have meant by \"eternal\" only a\nvery long time, because a fundamental portion of the great system\nof thought on which their religions rested was the idea of\nrecurring epochs, sundered by immense periods statedly arriving,\nwhen all things were restored, the hells and heavens vanished\naway, and God was all in all. If the representations of the\neternal punishment of the wicked, made before the New Testament\nwas written, were not significant, with metaphysical severity, of\nan eternity of duration, but only, with popular looseness, of an\nextremely long period, the same may be true of the similar\nexpressions found in that record.\n\nSecondly, we argue from the usage of language in and after the New\nTestament age. The critics have collected, as any one desirous may\neasily find, and as every theological scholar well knows, scores\nof instances from the writings of authors contemporary with Christ\nand his apostles, and succeeding them, where the Greek word for\n\"eternal\" is used popularly, not strictly, in a rhetorical, not in\na philosophical, sense, not denoting a duration literally endless,\nbut one very prolonged. In all Greek literature the word is\nundoubtedly used in a careless and qualified sense at least a\nhundred times where it is used once with its close etymological\nforce. And the same is true of the corresponding Hebrew term. The\nwriter of the \"Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs,\" at the close\nof every chapter, describing the respective patriarch's death,\nsays, \"he slept the eternal sleep,\" though by \"eternal\" he can\nonly mean a duration reaching to the time of the resurrection, as\nplainly appears from the context. Iamblichus speaks of \"an eternal\neternity of eternities.\"14 Origen, and Gregory of Nyssa, and\nothers, the fact of whose belief in final universal salvation no\none pretends to deny, do not hesitate with earnestness and\nfrequency to affirm the \"eternal\" punishment of the wicked in\nhell. Now, if the contemporaries of the evangelists, and their\nsuccessors, often used the word \"eternal\" popularly, in a\nfigurative, limited sense, then it may be so employed when it\noccurs in the New Testament in connection with the future pains of\nthe bad.\n\nThirdly, we argue from the phraseology and other peculiarities of\nthe representation of the future woe of the condemned, given in\nthe New Testament itself, that its authors\n\n14 De Mysteriis Egyptiorum, cap. viii. sect. 10.\n\n\ndid not consciously intend to proclaim the rigid endlessness of\nthat woe.15 \"These shall go away into everlasting punishment.\"\nSince the word \"everlasting\" was often used simply to denote a\nlong period, what right has any one to declare that here it must\nmean an absolutely unending duration? How does any one know that\nthe mind of Jesus dialectically grasped the metaphysical notion of\neternity and deliberately intended to express it? Certainly the\nintrinsic probabilities are all the other way. Such a conclusion\nis hardly compatible with the highly tropical style of speech\nemployed throughout the discourse. Besides, had he wished to\nconvey the overwhelming idea that the doom of the guilty would be\nstrictly irremediable, their anguish literally infinite, would he\nnot have taken pains to say so in definite, guarded, explained,\nunmistakable terms? He might easily, by a precise prosaic\nutterance, by explanatory circumlocutions, have placed that\nthought beyond possibility of mistake.\n\nFourthly, we have an intense conviction not only that the leaving\nof such a doctrine by the Savior in impenetrable obscurity and\nuncertainty is irreconcilable with the supposition of his\ndeliberately holding it in his belief, but also that a belief in\nthe doctrine itself is utterly irreconcilable with the very\nessentials of his teachings and spirit, his inmost convictions and\nlife. He taught the infinite and unchangeable goodness of God:\nconfront the doctrine of endless misery with the parable of the\nprodigal son. He taught the doctrine of unconquerable forgiveness,\nwithout apparent qualification: bring together the doctrine of\nnever relenting punishment and his petition on the cross, \"Father,\nforgive them.\" He taught that at the great judgment heaven or hell\nwould be allotted to men according to their lives; and the notion\nof endless torment does not rest on the demerit of sinful deeds,\nwhich is the standard of judgment that he holds up, but on\nconceptions concerning a totally depraved nature, a God inflamed\nwith wrath, a vicarious atonement rejected, or some other ethnic\ntradition or ritual consideration equally foreign to his mind and\nhostile to his heart.\n\nFifthly, if we reason on the popular belief that the letter of\nScripture teaches only unerring truth, we have the strongest\nargument of all against the eternal hopelessness of future\npunishment. The doctrine of Christ's descent to hell underlies the\nNew Testament. We are told that after his death \"he went and\npreached to the spirits in prison.\" And again we read that \"the\ngospel was preached also to them that are dead.\" This New\nTestament idea was unquestionably a vital and important feature in\nthe apostolic and in the early Christian belief. It necessarily\nimplies that there is probation, and that there may be salvation,\nafter death. It is fatal to the horrid dogma which commands all\nwho enter hell to abandon every gleam of hope, utterly and\nforever. The symbolic force of the doctrine of Christ's descent\nand preaching in hell is this, as Guder says in his \"Appearance of\nChrist among the Dead,\"  that the deepest and most horrible depth\nof damnation is not too deep and horrible for the pitying love\nwhich wishes to save the lost: even into the veriest depth of hell\nreaches down the love of God, and his beatific call sounds to the\nmost distant distances. There is no outermost darkness to which\nhis heavenly and all conquering light cannot shine. The book which\nteaches that Christ went even into hell itself, to seek and to\nsave that which was lost,\n\n15 Corrodi, Ueber die Ewigkeit der Hollenetrafen. In den Beitragen\nzur Beforderung des Vernunft. Denk. n. s. w. heft vii. ss. 41-72.\n\n\ndoes not teach that from the instant of death the fate of the\nwicked is irredeemably fixed.\n\nUpon the whole, then, we reach the clear conclusion that the\nChristian Scriptures do not really declare the hopeless eternity\nof future punishment.16 They speak popularly, not scientifically,\nspeak in metaphors which cannot be analyzed and reduced to\nmetaphysical precision. The subject is left with fearful warnings\nin an impressive obscurity. There we must either leave it, in awe\nand faith, undecided; or, if not content to do that, we must\nexamine and decide it on other grounds than those of traditional\nauthority, and with other instruments than those of textual\ninterpretation.\n\nLet us next sift and weigh the arguments from reason by which the\ndogma of the eternity of future misery is respectively defended\nand assailed. The advocates of it have sought to support it by\nfour positions, which are such entire assumptions that only a word\nwill be requisite to expose each of them to logical rejection.\nFirst, it is said that sin is infinite and deserves an infinite\npenalty because it is an outrage against an infinite being.17 A\nmore absurd perversion of logic than this, a more glaring\nviolation of common sense, was never perpetrated. It directly\nreverses the facts and subverts the legitimate inference. Is the\nsin measured by the dignity of the lawgiver, or by the\nresponsibility of the law breaker? Does justice heed the wrath of\nthe offended, or the guilt of the offender? As well say that the\neye of man is infinite because it looks out into infinite space,\nas affirm that his sin is infinite because committed against an\ninfinite God. That man is finite, and all his acts finite, and\nconsequently not in justice to be punished infinitely, is a plain\nstatement of fact which compels assent. All else is empty\nquibbling, scholastic jugglery. The ridiculousness of the argument\nis amusingly apparent as presented thus in an old Miracle Play,\nwherein Justice is made to tell Mercy \"That man, havinge offended\nGod who is endlesse, His endlesse punchement therefore may nevyr\nseese.\"\n\nThe second device brought forward to sustain the doctrine in\nquestion is more ingenious, but equally arbitrary. It is based on\nthe foreknowledge of God. He foresaw that the wicked, if allowed\nto live on earth immortally in freedom, would go on forever in a\ncourse of constant sin. They were therefore constructively guilty\nof all the sin which they would have committed; but he saved the\nworld the ravages of their actual crimes by hurling them into hell\nbeneath the endless penalty of their latent infinite guilt. In\nreply to those who argue thus, it is obvious to ask, whence did\nthey learn all this? There is no such scheme drawn up or hinted in\nScripture; and surely it is not within the possible discoveries of\nreason. Plainly, it is not a known premise legitimating a result,\nnot a sound argument proving a conclusion: it is merely a conceit,\ndevised to explain and fortify a theory already embraced from\nother considerations. It is an imaginative hypothesis without\nconfirmation.\n\n16 Bretschneider, in his Systematische Entwickelung aller in der\nDogmatik vorkommenden Begriffe, gives the literature of this\nsubject in a list of thirty six distinct works. Sect. 139, Ewig\nkeit der Hollenstrafen.\n\n17 Thomas Aquinas, Summa, pars iii. suppl. qu. 99, art. 1.\n\n\nThirdly, it has been said that future punishment will be endless\nbecause sin will be so. The evil soul, growing ever more evil,\ngetting its habits of vice and passions of iniquity more deeply\ninfixed, and surrounded in the infernal realm with all the\nincentives to wickedness, will become confirmed in depravity\nbeyond all power of cure, and, sinning forever, be necessarily\ndamned and tortured forever. The same objection holds to this\nargument as to the former. Its premises are daring assumptions\nbeyond the province of our knowledge. They are assumptions, too,\ncontrary to analogy, probability, the highest laws of humanity,\nand the goodness of God. Without freedom of will there cannot be\nsin; and those who retain moral freedom may reform, cease to do\nevil and learn to do good. There are invitations and opportunities\nto change from evil to good here: why not hereafter? The will is\nfree now: what shall suddenly paralyze or annihilate that freedom\nwhen the soul leaves the body? Why may not such amazing\nrevelations be made, such regenerating motives be brought to bear,\nin the spiritual world, as will soften the hardest, convince the\nstubbornest, and, sooner or later, transform and redeem the worst?\nIt is true the law of sinful habit is dark and fearful; but it is\nfrequently neutralized. The argument as the support of a positive\ndogma is void because itself only hypothetical.\n\nSome have tried to prove eternal condemnation by an assumed\nnecessity of moral gravitation. There is a great deal of loose and\nhasty talk afloat about the law of affinities distributing souls\nhereafter in fitted companies. Similar characters will\nspontaneously come together. The same qualities and grades of\nsympathy will coalesce, the unlike will fly apart. And so all\nfuture existence will be arranged in circles of dead equality on\nstagnant levels of everlasting hopelessness of change. The law of\nspiritual attraction is no such force as that, produces no such\nresults. It is broken up by contrasts, changes, multiplicity of\nother interacting forces. We are not only drawn by affinity to\nthose like ourselves, but often still more powerfully, with\nrebuking and redeeming effect, to those above us that we may\nbecome like them, to those beneath us that we may pity and help\nthem. The law of affinity is not in moral beings a simple force\nnecessitating an endless uniformity of state, but a complex of\nforces, sometimes mingling the unlike by stimulants of wedded\nsimilarity and contrast to bless and advance all, now punishing,\nnow rewarding, but ever finally intended to redeem. Reasoning by\nsound analogy, the heavens and hells of the future state are not\nmonotonous circles each filled with mutually reflecting\npersonalities, but one fenceless spiritual world of distinctive,\never varying degrees, sympathetic and contrasted life, circulating\nfreshness, variety of attractions and repulsions, divine\nadvancement.\n\nFinally, it is maintained by many that endless misery is the fate\nof the reprobate because such is the sovereign pleasure of God.\nThis is no argument, but a desperate assertion. It virtually\nconfesses that the doctrine cannot be defended by reason, but is\nto be thrown into the province of wilful faith. A host of gloomy\ntheologians have taken this ground as the forlorn hope of their\nbelief. The damned are eternally lost because that is the\narbitrary decree of God. Those who thus abandon reason for\ndogmatic authority and trample on logic with mere reiterated\nassertion can only be met with the flat denial, such is not the\narbitrary pleasure of God. Then, as far as argument is concerned,\nthe controversy ends where it began.\n\nThese four hypotheses include all the attempted justifications of\nthe doctrine of eternal misery that we have ever seen offered from\nthe stand point of independent thought. We submit that, considered\nas proofs, they are utterly sophistical.\n\nThere are three great arguments in refutation of the endlessness\nof future punishment, as that doctrine is commonly held. The first\nargument is ethical, drawn from the laws of right; the second is\ntheological, drawn from the attributes of God; the third is\nexperimental, drawn from the principles of human nature. We shall\nsubdivide these and consider them successively.\n\nIn the first place, we maintain that the popular doctrine of\neternal punishment is unjust, because it overlooks the differences\nin the sins of men, launching on all whom it embraces one infinite\npenalty of undiscriminating damnation. The consistent advocates of\nthe doctrine, the boldest creeds, unflinchingly avow this, and\ndefend it by the plea that every sin, however trivial, is equally\nan offence against the law of the infinite God with the most\nterrible crime, and equally merits an infinite punishment. Thus,\nby a metaphysical quibble, the very basis of morals is overturned,\nand the child guilty of an equivocation through fear is put on a\nlevel with the pirate guilty of robbery and murder through cold\nblooded avarice and hate. In a hell where all are plunged in\nphysical fire for eternity there are no degrees of retribution,\nthough the degrees of evil and demerit are as numerous and various\nas the individuals. The Scriptures say, \"Every man shall receive\naccording to the deeds done in the body:\" some \"shall be beaten\nwith many stripes,\" others \"with few stripes.\"\n\nThe first principle of justice exact discrimination of judgment\naccording to deeds and character is monstrously violated and all\ndifferences blotted out by the common dogma of hell. A better\nthought is shown in the old Persian legend which tells that God\nonce permitted Zoroaster to accompany him on a visit to hell. The\nprophet saw many in grievous torments. Among the rest, he saw one\nwho was deprived of his right foot. Asking the meaning of this,\nGod replied, \"Yonder sufferer was a king who in his whole life did\nbut one kind action. Passing once near a dromedary which, tied up\nin a state of starvation, was vainly striving to reach some\nprovender placed just beyond its utmost effort, the king with his\nright foot compassionately kicked the fodder within the poor\nbeast's reach. That foot I placed in heaven: the rest of him is\nhere.\" 18\n\nAgain: there is the grossest injustice in the first assumption or\nfundamental ground on which the theory we are opposing rests. That\ntheory does not teach that men are actually damned eternally on\naccount of their own personal sins, but on account of original\nsin: the eternal tortures of hell are the transmitted penalty\nhurled on all the descendants of Adam, save those who in some way\navoid it, in consequence of his primal transgression. Language\ncannot characterize with too much severity, as it seems to us, the\ninjustice, the immorality, involved in this scheme. The belief in\na sin, called \"original,\" entailed by one act of one person upon a\nwhole immortal race of countless millions, dooming vast majorities\nof them helplessly to a hopeless torture prison, can rest only on\na sleep of reason and a delirium of\n\n18 Wilson's ed. of Mill's Hist. of British India, vol. i. p. 429,\nnote.\n\n\nconscience. Such a \"sin\" is no sin at all; and any penalty\ninflicted on it would not be the necessary severity of a holy God,\nbut a species of gratuitous vengeance. For sin, by the very\nessence of ethics, is the free, intelligent, wilful violation of a\nlaw known to be right; and every punishment, in order to be just,\nmust be the suffering deserved by the intentional fault, the\npersonal evil, of the culprit himself. The doctrine before us\nreverses all this, and sends untold myriads to hell forever for no\nother sin than that of simply having been born children of\nhumanity. Born totally depraved, hateful to God, helpless through\nan irresistible proclivity to sin and an ineradicable aversion to\nevangelical truth, and asked to save themselves, asked by a\nmockery like that of fettering men hand and foot, clothing them in\nleaden straitjackets, and then flinging them overboard, telling\nthem not to drown! What justice, what justice, is here in this?\n\nThirdly, the profound injustice of this doctrine is seen in its\nmaking the alternative of so unutterably awful a doom hinge upon\nsuch trivial particulars and upon merely fortuitous circumstances.\nOne is born of pious, orthodox parents, another of heretics or\ninfidels: with no difference of merit due to them, one goes to\nheaven, the other goes to hell. One happens to form a friendship\nwith an evangelical believer, another is influenced by a\nrationalist companion: the same fearful diversity of fate ensues.\nOne is converted by a single sermon: if he had been ill that day,\nor had been detained from church by any other cause, his fated bed\nwould have been made in hell, heaven closed against him forever.\nOne says, \"I believe in the Trinity of God, in the Deity of\nChrist;\" and, dying, he goes to heaven. Another says, \"I believe\nin the Unity of God and in the humanity of Christ:\" he, dying,\ngoes to hell. Of two children snatched away by disease when twenty\nfour hours old, one has been baptized, the other not: the angels\nof heaven welcome that, the demons of hell clutch this. The\ndoctrine of infant damnation, intolerably painful as it is, has\nbeen proclaimed thousands of times by authoritative teachers and\nby large parties in the Church, and is a logical sequence from the\npopular theology. It is not a great many years since people heard,\nit is said, the celebrated statement that \"hell is paved with the\nskulls of infants not a span long!\" Think of the everlasting bliss\nor misery of a helpless infant depending on the petty accident of\nwhether it was baptized or not! There are hypothetical cases like\nthe following: If one man had died a year earlier, when he was a\nsaint, he would not have fallen from grace, and renounced his\nfaith, and rolled in crimes, and sunk to hell. If another had\nlived a year later, he would have been smitten with conviction,\nand would have repented, and made his peace, and gone to heaven.\nTo the everlasting loss of each, an eternity of bliss against an\neternity of woe hung fatally poised on the time appointed for him\nto die. Oh how the bigoted pride, the exclusive dogmatism of self\nstyled saints, self flatterers equally satisfied of their own\nelection and of the rejection of almost everybody else, ought to\nsink and fade when they reflect on the slight chances, mere\nchances of time and place, by which the infinite contingency has\nbeen, or is to be, decided! They should heed the impregnable good\nsense and logic conveyed in the humane hearted poet's satirical\nhumor when he advises such persons to\n\n\"Consider well, before, like Hurlothrumbo,\nThey aim their clubs at any creed on earth,\nThat by the simple accident of birth\nThey might have been high priests to Mumbo Jumbo.\"\n\nIt is evidently but the rankest mockery of justice to suspend an\ninfinite woe upon an accident out of the power of the party\nconcerned.\n\nStill further: there is a tremendous injustice even in that form\nof the doctrine of endless punishment, the most favorable of all,\nwhich says that no one is absolutely foreordained to hell, but\nthat all are free, and that life is a fixed season of probation\nwherein the means of salvation are offered to all, and if they\nneglect or spurn them the fault is their own, and eternal pain\ntheir merited portion. The perfectly apparent inconsistency of\nthis theory with known facts is fatal to it, since out of every\ngeneration there are millions on millions of infants, idiots,\nmaniacs, heathen, within whose hearing or power the means of\nsalvation by a personal appropriation of the atoning merit of\nChrist's blood were never brought; so that life to them is no\nscene of Christian probation. But, waiving that, the probation is\nnot a fair one to anybody. If the indescribable horror of an\neternal damnation be the consequence that follows a certain course\nwhile we are on trial in this life, then a knowledge of that fact\nin all its bearings ought to be given us, clear, explicit, beyond\nany possibility of mistake or doubt. Otherwise the probation is\nnot fair. To place men in the world, as millions are constantly\nplaced, beset by allurements of every sort within and without, led\nastray by false teachings and evil examples, exposed in ignorance,\nbewildered with uncertainties of conflicting doubts and surmises,\neither never hearing of the way of salvation at all, or hearing of\nit only in terms that seem absurd in themselves and unaccompanied\nby sufficient, if by any, proof, and then, if under these fearful\nhazards they waver from strict purity of heart, rectitude of\nconduct, or orthodoxy of belief, to condemn them to a world of\neverlasting agony, would be the very climax of cruelty, with no\ntouch of mercy or color of right.\n\nBeneath such a rule the universe should be shrouded in the\nblackness of despair, and God be thought of with a convulsive\nshudder. Such a \"probation\" would be only like that on which the\nInquisitors put their victims who were studiously kept ignorant in\ntheir dungeons, waiting for the rack and the flame to be made\nready. Few persons will deny that, as the facts now are, a good,\nintelligent, candid man may doubt the reality of an endless\npunishment awaiting men in hell. But if the doctrine be true, and\nhe is on probation under it, is it fair that he should be left\nhonestly in ignorance or doubt about it? No: if it be true, it\nought to be burned into his brain and crushed into his soul with\nsuch terrific vividness and abiding constancy of impression as\nwould deter him ever from the wrong path, keep him in the right. A\ndistinguished writer has represented a condemned delinquent,\nsuffering on, and still interminably on, in hell, thus complaining\nof the unfairness of his probation: \"Oh, had it been possible for\nme to conceive even the most diminutive part of the weight and\nhorror of this doom, I should have shrunk from every temptation to\nsin, with the most violent recoil.\"19\n\n19 John Foster, Letter on the Eternity of Future Punishments.\n\nIf an endless hell is to be the lot of the sinner, he ought to\nhave an infallible certainty of it, with all possible helps and\nincentives to avoid it. Such is not the case; and therefore, since\nGod is just and generous, the doctrine is not true.\n\nFinally, the injustice of the dogma of everlasting punishment is\nmost emphatically shown by the fact that there is no sort of\ncorrespondence or possible proportion between the offence and the\npenalty, between the moment of sinning life and the eternity of\nsuffering death. If a child were told to hold its breath thirty\nseconds, and, failing to do it, should be confined in a dark\nsolitary dungeon for seventy years amidst loathsome horrors and\nspeechless afflictions, and be frightfully scourged six times a\nday for that entire period, there would be just proportion nay, an\ninexpressibly merciful proportion between the offence and the\npunishment, in comparison with that which, being an absolutely\ninfinite disproportion, does not really admit of any comparison,\nthe sentence to an eternal abode in hell as a penalty for the\nworst kind and the greatest amount of crime a man could possibly\ncrowd into a life of a thousand years. Think, then, of passing\nsuch a sentence on one who has struggled hard against temptation,\nand yielded but rarely, and suffered much, and striven to do as\nwell as he could, and borne up courageously, with generous\nresolves and affections, and died commending his soul to God in\nhope.\n\n\"Fearfully fleet is this life,\" says one, \"and yet in it eternal\nlife is lost or won: profoundly wretched is this life, yet in it\neternal bliss is lost or won.\" Weigh the words adequately, and say\nhow improbable is the thought, and how terribly unjust. Perhaps\nthere have already lived upon this earth, and died, and passed\ninto the invisible world, two hundred thousand millions of men,\nthe everlasting doom of every one of whom, it is imagined, was\nfixed unalterably during the momentary period of his mortal\ntransit from cradle to grave. In respect of eternity, six thousand\nyears and this duration must be reduced to threescore years and\nten, since that is all that each generation enjoyed is the same as\none hour. Suppose, now, that all these two hundred thousand\nmillions of men were called into being at once; that they were\nplaced on probation for one hour; that the result of their choice\nand action in that hour was to decide their irrevocable fate,\nactually forever, to ecstatic bliss or to ecstatic woe; that\nduring that hour they were left, as far as clear and stable\nconviction goes, in utter ignorance and uncertainty as to the\ngreat realities of their condition, courted by opposing theories\nand modes of action; and that, when the clock of time knelled the\nclose of that awful, that most evanescent hour, the roaring gulf\nof torture yawned, and its jaws of flame and blackness closed over\nninety nine hundredths of them for eternity! That is a fair\npicture of the popular doctrine of temporal probation and eternal\npunishment, when examined in the light of the facts of human life.\nOf course, no man at this day, who is in his senses and thinks\nhonestly upon the subject, can credit such a doctrine, unless\nindeed he believes that a lawless fiend sits on the throne of the\nuniverse and guides the helm of destiny. And lives there a man of\nunperverted soul who would not decidedly prefer to have no God\nrather than to have such a one? Ay, \"Rather than so, come FATE\ninto the list And champion us to the utterance.\"\n\nLet us be atheists, and bow to mortal Chance, believe there is no\npilot at all at the rudder of Creation's vessel, no channel before\nthe prow, but the roaring breakers of despair to right and left,\nand the granite bluff of annihilation full in front!\n\nIn the next place, then, we argue against the doctrine of eternal\ndamnation that it is incompatible with any worthy idea of the\ncharacter of God. God is love; and love cannot consent to the\nuseless torture of millions of helpless souls for eternity. The\ngross contradiction of the common doctrine of hell to the spirit\nof love is so obvious that its advocates, unable to deny or\nconceal it, have often positively proclaimed it, avowing that, in\nrespect to the wicked, God is changed into a consuming fire full\nof hatred and vengeance. But that is unmitigated blasphemy. God is\nunchangeable, his very nature being disinterested, immutable\ngoodness. The sufferings of the wicked are of their own\npreparation. If a pestilential exhalation is drawn from some\ndecaying substance, it is not the fault of any alteration in the\nsunlight. But a Christian writer assures us that when \"the damned\nare packed like brick in a kiln, so bound that they cannot move a\nlimb nor even an eyelid, God shall blow the fires of hell through\nthem for ever and ever.\"\n\nAnd another writer says, \"All in God is turned into fury: in hell\nhe draws out into the field all his forces, all his attributes,\nwhereof wrath is the leader and general.\"20 Such representations\nmay be left without a comment. Every enlightened mind will\ninstantly reject with horror the doctrine which necessitates a\nconception of God like that here pictured forth. God is a being of\ninfinite forgiveness and magnanimity. To the wandering sinner,\neven while a great way off, his arms are open, and his inviting\nvoice, penetrating the farthest abysses, says, \"Return.\" His sun\nshines and his rain falls on the fields of the unjust and\nunthankful. What is it, the instant mortals pass the line of\ndeath, that shall transform this Divinity of yearning pity and\nbeneficence into a devil of relentless hate and cruelty? It cannot\nbe. We shall find him dealing towards us in eternity as he does\nhere. An eminent theologian says, \"If mortal men kill the body\ntemporally in their anger, it is like the immortal God to damn the\nsoul eternally in his.\" \"God holds sinners in his hands over the\nmouth of hell as so many spiders; and he is dreadfully provoked,\nand he not only hates them, but holds them in utmost contempt, and\nhe will trample them beneath his feet with inexpressible\nfierceness, he will crush their blood out, and will make it fly so\nthat it will sprinkle his garments and stain all his raiment.\"21\nOh, ravings and blasphemies of theological bigotry, blinded with\nold creeds, inflamed with sectarian hate, soaked in the gall of\nbitterness, encompassed by absurd delusions, you know not what you\nsay!\n\nA daring writer of modern times observes that God can never say\nfrom the last tribunal, in any other than a limited and\nmetaphorical sense, \"Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting\nfire,\" because that would not be doing as he would be done by.\nSaving the appearance of irreverence, we maintain his assertion to\nbe just, based on impregnable morality. A recent religious poet\ndescribes Jesus, on descending into hell after his crucifixion,\n\n20 For these and several other quotations we are indebted to the\nRev. T. J. Sawyer's work, entitled \"Endless Punishment: its Origin\nand Grounds Examined.\"\n\n21 Edwards's works, vol. vii. p. 499.\n\n\nmeeting Judas, and when he saw his pangs and heard his stifled\nsobs, \"Pitying, Messiah gazed, and had forgiven, But Justice her\neternal bar opposed.\" 22\n\nThe instinctive sentiment is worthy of Jesus, but the deliberate\nthought is worthy of Calvin. Why is it so calmly assumed that God\ncannot pardon, and that therefore sinners must be given over to\nendless pains? By what proofs is so tremendous a conclusion\nsupported? Is it not a gratuitous fiction of theologians? The\nexemplification of God's character and conduct given in the\nspirit, teachings, and deeds of Christ is full of a free mercy, an\neager charity that rushes forward to forgive and embrace the\nsinful and wretched wanderers. He is a very different being whom\nthe evangelist represents saying of Jesus, \"This is my beloved\nSon, in whom I am well pleased,\" from Him whom Professor Park\ndescribes \"drawing his sword on Calvary and smiting down his Son!\"\n\nWhy may not pardon from unpurchased grace be vouchsafed as well\nafter death as before? What moral conditions alter the case then?\nAh! it is only the metaphysical theories of the theologians that\nhave altered the case in their fancies and made it necessary for\nthem to limit probation. The attributes of God are laws, his modes\nof action are the essentialities of his being, the same in all the\nworlds of boundless extension and all the ages of endless\nduration. How far some of the theologians have perverted the\nsimplicity of the gospel, or rather how utterly they have strayed\nfrom it, may be seen when we remember that Christ said concerning\nlittle children, \"Of such is the kingdom of heaven,\" and then\ncompare with this declaration such a statement as this: \"Reprobate\ninfants are vipers of vengeance which Jehovah will hold over hell\nin the tongs of his wrath, till they writhe up and cast their\nvenom in his face.\" We deliberately assert that no depraved,\ninsane, pagan imagination ever conceived of a fiend malignant and\nhorrible enough to be worthily compared with this Christian\nconception of God. Edwards repeatedly says, in his two sermons on\nthe \"Punishment of the Wicked\" and \"Sinners in the Hands of an\nAngry God,\" \"You cannot stand an instant before an infuriated\ntiger even: what, then, will you do when God rushes against you in\nall his wrath?\" Is this Christ's Father?\n\nThe God we worship is \"the Father of lights, with whom there is\nneither variableness nor shadow of turning, from whom cometh down\nevery good and every perfect gift.\" It is the Being referred to by\nthe Savior when he said, in exultant trust and love, \"I am not\nalone; for the Father is with me.\" It is the infinite One to whom\nthe Psalmist says, \"Though I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art\nthere.\" If God is in hell, there must be mercy and hope there,\nsome gleams of alleviation and promise there, surely; even as the\nLutheran creed says that \"early on Easter morning, before his\nresurrection, Christ showed himself to the damned in hell.\" If God\nis in hell, certainly it must be to soothe, to save. \"Oh, no,\"\nsays the popular theologian. Let us quote his words. \"Why is God\nhere? To keep the tortures of the damned freshly plied, and to see\nthat no one ever escapes!\" Can the climax of horror and\n\n22 Lord, Christ in Hades.\n\n\nblasphemy any further go? How much more reasonable, more moral and\nChrist like, to say, with one of the best authors of our time,\n\n\"What hell may be I know not: this I know: I cannot lose the\npresence of the Lord: One arm humility takes hold upon His dear\nHumanity; the other love Clasps his Divinity: so, where I go He\ngoes; and better fire wall'd Hell with him Than golden gated\nParadise without.\"\n\nThe irreconcilableness of the common doctrine of endless misery\nwith any worthy idea of God is made clear by a process of\nreasoning whose premises are as undeniable as its logic is\nirrefragable and its conclusion consolatory. God is infinite\njustice and goodness. His purpose in the creation, therefore, must\nbe the diffusion and triumph of holiness and blessedness. God is\ninfinite wisdom and power. His design, therefore, must be\nfulfilled. Nothing can avail to thwart the ultimate realization of\nall his intentions. The rule of his omnipotent love pervades\ninfinitude and eternity as a shining leash of law whereby he holds\nevery child of his creation in ultimate connection with his\nthrone, and will sooner or later bring even the worst soul to a\nreturning curve from the career of its wildest orbit. In the realm\nand under the reign of a paternal and omnipotent God every being\nmust be salvable. Remorse itself is a recoil which may fling the\npenitent into the lap of forgiving love. Any different thought\nappears narrow, cruel, heathen. The blackest fiend that glooms the\nmidnight air of hell, bleached through the merciful purgation of\nsorrow and loyalty, may become a white angel and be drawn into\nheaven.\n\nLavater writes of himself, and the same is true of many a good\nman, \"I embraced in my heart all that is called man, past,\npresent, and future times and nations, the dead, the damned, even\nSatan. I presented them all to God with the warmest wishes that he\nwould have mercy upon all.\" This is the true spirit of a good man.\nAnd is man better than his Maker? We will answer that question,\nand leave this head of the discussion, by presenting an Oriental\napologue.\n\nGod once sat on his inconceivable throne, and far around him, rank\nafter rank, angels and archangels, seraphim and cherubim, resting\non their silver wings and lifting their dazzling brows, rose and\nswelled, with the splendors of an illimitable sea of immortal\nbeings, gleaming and fluctuating to the remotest borders of the\nuniverse. The anthem of their praise shook the pillars of the\ncreation, and filled the vault of heaven with a pulsing flood of\nharmony. When, as they closed their hymn, stole up, faint heard,\nas from some most distant region of all space, in dim accents\nhumbly rising, a responsive \"Amen.\" God asked Gabriel, \"Whence\ncomes that Amen?\" The hierarchic peer replied, \"It rises from the\ndamned in hell.\" God took, from where it hung above his seat, the\nkey that unlocks the forty thousand doors of hell, and, giving it\nto Gabriel, bade him go release them. On wings of light sped the\nenraptured messenger, rescued the millions of the lost, and, just\nas they were, covered all over with the traces of their sin,\nfilth, and woe, brought them straight up into the midst of heaven.\nInstantly they were transformed, clothed in robes of glory, and\nplaced next to the throne; and henceforth, for evermore, the\ndearest strain to God's ear, of all the celestial music, was that\nborne by the choir his grace had ransomed from hell. And, because\nthere is no envy or other selfishness in heaven, this promotion\nsent but new thrills of delight and gratitude through the heights\nand depths of angelic life.\n\nWe come now to the last class of reasons for disbelieving the\ndogma of eternal damnation, namely, those furnished by the\nprinciples of human nature and the truths of human experience. The\ndoctrine, as we think can be clearly shown, is literally\nincredible to the human mind and literally intolerable to the\nhuman heart. In the first place, it is, viewed in the abstract,\nabsolutely incredible because it is inconceivable: no man can\npossibly grasp and appreciate the idea. The nearest approximation\nto it ever made perhaps is in De Quincey's gorgeous elaboration of\nthe famous Hindu myth of an enormous rock finally worn away by the\nbrushing of a gauze veil; and that is really no approximation at\nall, since an incommensurable chasm always separates the finite\nand the infinite. John Foster says, \"It is infinitely beyond the\nhighest archangel's faculty to apprehend a thousandth part of the\nhorror of the doom to eternal damnation.\" The Buddhists, who\nbelieve that the severest sentence passed on the worst sinner will\nbe brought to an end and his redemption be attained, use the\nfollowing illustration of the staggering periods that will first\nelapse. A small yoke is thrown into the ocean and borne about in\nevery direction by the various winds. Once in a hundred thousand\nyears a blind tortoise rises to the surface of the water. Will the\ntime ever come when that tortoise shall so rise up that its neck\nshall enter the hole of the yoke? It may, but the time required\ncannot be told; and it is equally difficult for the unwise man,\nwho has entered one of the great hells, to obtain deliverance.\nThere is a remarkable specimen of the attempt to set forth the\nidea of endless misery, by Suso, a mystic preacher who flourished\nseveral centuries ago. It runs thus. \"O eternity, what art thou?\nOh, end without end! O father, and mother, and all whom we love!\nMay God be merciful unto you for evermore! for we shall see you no\nmore to love you; we must be separated forever! O separation,\neverlasting separation, how painful art thou! Oh, the wringing of\nhands! Oh, sighing, weeping, and sobbing, unceasing howling and\nlamenting, and yet never to be pardoned! Give us a millstone, says\nthe damned, as large as the whole earth, and so wide in\ncircumference as to touch the sky all around, and let a little\nbird come in a hundred thousand years, and pick off a small\nparticle of the stone, not larger than the tenth part of a grain\nof millet, and after another hundred thousand years let him come\nagain, so that in ten hundred thousand years he would pick off as\nmuch as a grain of millet, we wretched sinners would desire\nnothing but that thus the stone might have an end, and thus our\npains also; yet even that cannot be.\"23 But, after all the\nstruggles of reason and all the illustrations of laboring\nimagination, the meaning of the phrase \"eternal suffering in hell\"\nremains remote, dim, unrealized, an abstraction in words. If we\ncould adequately apprehend it, if its full significance should\nburst upon us, as sometimes in fearful dreams the spaceless,\ntimeless, phantasmal, reeling sense of\n\n23 Hagenbach, Dogmengeschichte, sect. 210.\n\n\nthe infinite seems to be threatening to break into the brain, an\nannihilating shudder would seize and destroy the soul.\n\nWe say, therefore, that the doctrine of the eternity of future\npunishment is not believed as an intellectually conceived truth,\nbecause that is a metaphysical impossibility. But more: we affirm,\nin spite of the general belief in it publicly professed, that it\nis actually held by hardly any one as a practical vivid belief\neven within the limits wherein, as an intellectual conception, it\nis possible. When intellect and imagination do not fail, heart and\nconscience do, with sickened faintness and convulsive protest. In\nhis direful poem on the Last Day, Young makes one of the condemned\nvainly beg of God to grant \"This one, this slender, almost no,\nrequest: When I have wept a thousand lives away, When torment is\ngrown weary of its prey, When I have raved of anguish'd years in\nfire Ten thousand thousands, let me then expire.\"\n\nSuch a thought, when confronted with any generous holy sentiment\nor with any worthy conception of the Divine character, is\npractically incredible. The men all around us in whose Church\ncreed such a doctrine is written down do not truly believe it.\n\"They delude themselves,\" as Martineau well says, \"with the mere\nfancy and image of a belief. The death of a friend who departs\nfrom life in heresy affects them in the same way as the loss of\nanother whose creed was unimpeachable: while the theoretic\ndifference is infinite, the practical is virtually nothing.\" Who\nthat had a child, parent, wife, brother, or other precious friend,\ncondemned to be roasted to death by a slow fire, would not be\nfrantic with agony? But there are in the world literally millions\non millions, some of whose nearest and dearest ones have died\nunder circumstances which, by their professed creeds, can leave no\ndoubt that they must roast in the fires of hell in an anguish\nunutterably fiercer, and for eternity, and yet they go about as\nsmilingly, engage in the battle for money, in the race for fame,\nin all the vain shows and frivolous pleasures of life, as eagerly\nand as gayly as others. How often do we see the literal truth of\nthis exemplified! It is clear they do not believe in the dogma to\nwhose technical terms they formally subscribe.\n\nA small proportion of its professors do undeniably believe the\ndoctrine so far as it can be sanely believed; and accordingly the\nworld is to them robed in a sable shroud, and life is an awful\nmockery, under a flashing surface of sports concealing a\nbottomless pit of horror. Every observing person has probably\nknown some few in his life who, in a degree, really believed the\ncommon notions concerning hell, and out of whom, consequently, all\ngeniality, all bounding impulses, all magnanimous generosities,\nwere crushed, and their countenances wore the perpetual livery of\nmourning, despair, and misanthropy. We will quote the confessions\nof two persons who may stand as representatives of the class of\nsincere believers in the doctrine. The first is a celebrated\nFrench preacher of a century and a half ago, the other a very\neminent American divine of the present day. Saurin says, in his\ngreat sermon on Hell, \"I sink under the weight of this subject,\nand I find in the thought a mortal poison which diffuseth itself\ninto every period of my life, rendering society tiresome,\nnourishment insipid, pleasure disgustful, and life itself a cruel\nbitter.\" Albert Barnes writes, \"In the distress and anguish of my\nown spirit, I confess I see not one ray to disclose to me the\nreason why man should suffer to all eternity. I have never seen a\nparticle of light thrown on these subjects that has given a\nmoment's ease to my tortured mind. It is all dark dark dark to my\nsoul; and I cannot disguise it.\"\n\nSuch a state of mind is the legitimate result of an endeavor\nsincerely to grasp and hold the popularly professed belief. So\noften as that endeavor reaches a certain degree of success, and\nthe idea of an eternal hell is reduced from its vagueness to an\nembraced conception, the over fraught heart gives way, the brain,\nstretched on too high a tension, reels, madness sets in, and one\nmore case is added to that list of maniacs from religious causes\nwhich, according to the yearly reports of insane asylums, forms so\nlarge a class. Imagine what a vast and sudden change would come\nover the spirit and conduct of society if nineteen twentieths of\nChristendom believed that at the end of a week a horrible influx\nof demons, from some insurgent region, would rush into our world\nand put a great majority of our race to death in excruciating\ntortures! But the doctrine of future punishment professed by\nnineteen twentieths of Christendom is, if true, an evil\nincomparably worse than that, though every element of its\ndreadfulness were multiplied by millions beyond the power of\nnumeration; and yet all goes on as quietly, the most of these\nfancied believers live as chirpingly, as if heaven were sure for\neverybody! Of course in their hearts they do not believe the\nterrific formula which drops so glibly from their tongues.\n\nAgain: it is a fatal objection to the doctrine in question that if\nit be true it must destroy the happiness of the saved and fill all\nheaven with sympathetic woe. Jesus teaches that \"there is joy in\nheaven over every sinner that repenteth.\" By a moral necessity,\nthen, there is sorrow in heaven over the wretched, lost soul. That\nsorrow, indeed, may be alleviated, if not wholly quenched, by the\nknowledge that every retributive pang is remedial, and that God's\nglorious design will one day be fully crowned in the redemption of\nthe last prodigal. But what shall solace or end it if they know\nthat hell's borders are to be enlarged and to rage with avenging\nmisery forever? The good cannot be happy in heaven if they are to\nsee the ascending smoke and hear the resounding shrieks of a hell\nfull of their brethren, the children of a common humanity, among\nwhom are many of their own nearest relatives and dearest friends.\n\nTrue, a long list of Christian writers may be cited as maintaining\nthat this is to be a principal element in the felicity of the\nredeemed, gloating over the tortures of the damned, singing the\nsong of praise with redoubled emphasis as they see their parents,\ntheir children, their former bosom companions, writhing and\nhowling in the fell extremities of torture. Thomas Aquinas says,\n\"That the saints may enjoy their beatitude and the grace of God\nmore richly, a perfect sight of the punishment of the damned is\ngranted to them.\"24 Especially did the Puritans seem to revel in\nthis idea, that \"the joys of the blessed were to be deepened and\nsharpened by constant contrast with the sufferings of the damned.\"\nOne of them thus expresses the delectable thought: \"The sight of\nhell torments will exalt the happiness of the saints forever, as a\nsense of the opposite misery always increases the relish of any\npleasure.\"\n\n24 Summa, pars iii., Suppl. Qu. 93, art. i.\n\n\nBut perhaps Hopkins caps the climax of the diabolical pyramid of\nthese representations, saying of the wicked, \"The smoke of their\ntorment shall ascend up in the sight of the blessed for ever and\never, and serve, as a most clear glass always before their eyes,\nto give them a bright and most affecting view. This display of the\nDivine character will be most entertaining to all who love God,\nwill give them the highest and most ineffable pleasure. Should the\nfire of this eternal punishment cease, it would in a great measure\nobscure the light of heaven and put an end to a great part of the\nhappiness and glory of the blessed.\"25 That is to say, in plain\nterms, the saints, on entering their final state of bliss in\nheaven, are converted into a set of unmitigated fiends, out\nsataning Satan, finding their chief delight in forever comparing\ntheir own enjoyments with the pangs of the damned, extracting\nmorsels of surpassing relish from every convulsion or shriek of\nanguish they see or hear. It is all an exquisite piece of\ngratuitous horror arbitrarily devised to meet a logical exigency\nof the theory its contrivers held. When charged that the knowledge\nof the infinite woe of their friends in hell must greatly affect\nthe saints, the stern old theologians, unwilling to recede an inch\nfrom their dogmas, had the amazing hardihood to declare that, so\nfar from it, on the contrary their wills would so blend with God's\nthat the contemplation of this suffering would be a source of\necstasy to them. It is doubly a blank assumption of the most\ndaring character, first assuming, by an unparalleled blasphemy,\nthat God himself will take delight in the pangs of his creatures,\nand secondly assuming, by a violation of the laws of human nature\nand of every principle of morals, that the elect will do so too.\nIn this world a man actuated by such a spirit would be styled a\ndevil. On entering heaven, what magic shall work such a demoniacal\nchange in him? There is not a word, direct or indirect, in the\nScriptures to warrant the dreadful notion; nor is there any\nreasonable explanation or moral justification of it given by any\nof its advocates, or indeed conceivable. The monstrous hypothesis\ncannot be true. Under the omnipotent, benignant government of a\npaternal God, each change of character in his chosen children, as\nthey advance, must be for the better, not for the worse.\n\nWe once heard a father say, running his fingers the while among\nthe golden curls of his child's hair, \"If I were in heaven, and\nsaw my little daughter in hell, should not I be rushing down there\nafter her?\" There spoke the voice of human nature; and that love\ncannot be turned to hatred in heaven, but must grow purer and\nintenser there. The doctrine which makes the saints pleased with\ncontemplating the woes of the damned, and even draw much of their\nhappiness from the contrast, is the deification of the absolute\nselfishness of a demon. Human nature, even when left to its\nuncultured instincts, is bound to far other and nobler things.\nRadbod, one of the old Scandinavian kings, after long resistance,\nfinally consented to be baptized. After he had put one foot into\nthe water, he asked the priest if he should meet his forefathers\nin heaven. Learning that they, being unbaptized pagans, were\nvictims of endless misery, he drew his foot back, and refused the\nrite, choosing to be with his brave ancestors in hell rather than\nto be in heaven with the Christian priests. And, speaking from the\nstand point of the highest refinement of feeling and virtue, who\nthat has a heart in his\n\n25 Park, Memoir of Hopkins, pp. 201, 202.\n\n\nbosom would not say, \"Heaven can be no heaven to me, if I am to\nlook down on the quenchless agonies of all I have loved here!\" Is\nit not strictly true that the thought that even one should have\nendless woe \"Would cast a shadow on the throne of God And darken\nheaven\"?\n\nIf a monarch, possessing unlimited power over all the earth, had\ncondemned one man to be stretched on a rack and be freshly plied\nwith incessant tortures for a period of fifty years, and if\neverybody on earth could hear his terrible shrieks by day and\nnight, though they were themselves all, with this sole exception,\nblessed with perfect happiness, would not the whole human race,\nfrom Spitzbergen to Japan, from Rio Janeiro to Liberia, rise in a\nbody and go to implore the king's clemency for the solitary\nvictim? So, if hell had but one tenant doomed to eternal anguish,\na petition reaching from Sirius to Alcyone, signed by the universe\nof moral beings, borne by a convoy of angels representing every\nstar in space, would be laid and unrolled at the foot of God's\nthrone, and He would read thereon this prayer: \"FORGIVE HIM, AND\nRELEASE HIM, WE BESEECH THEE, O GOD.\" And can it be that every\nsoul in the universe is better than the Maker and Father of the\nuniverse?\n\nThe popular doctrine of eternal torment threatening nearly all our\nrace is refuted likewise by the impossibility of any general\nobservance of the obligations morally and logically consequent\nfrom it. In the first place, as the world is constituted, and as\nlife goes on, the great majority of men are upon the whole happy,\nevidently were meant to be happy. But every believer of the\ndoctrine in debate is bound to be unutterably wretched. If he has\nany gleam of generous sentiment or touch of philanthropy in his\nbosom, if he is not a frozen petrifaction of selfishness or an\nincarnate devil, how can he look on his family, friends,\nneighbors, fellow citizens, fellow beings, in the light of his\nfaith seeing them quivering over the dizzy verge of a blind\nprobation and momentarily dropping into the lake of fire and\nbrimstone that burns forever, how can he do this without being\nceaselessly stung with wretchedness and crushed with horror by the\nperception? For a man who appreciatingly believes that hell is\ndirectly under our meadows, streets, and homes, and that nine\ntenths of the dead are in it, and that nine tenths of the living\nsoon will be, for such a man to be happy and jocose is as horrible\nas it would be for a man, occupying the second story of a house,\nto light it up brilliantly with gas, and make merry with his\nfriends, eating tidbits, sipping wine, and tripping it on the\nlight fantastic toe to the strains of gay music, while,\nimmediately under him, men, women, and children, including his own\nparents and his own children, were stretched on racks, torn with\npincers, lacerated with surgical instruments, cauterized, lashed\nwith whips of fire, their half suppressed shrieks and groans\naudibly rising through the floor!\n\nSecondly, if the doctrine be true, then all unnecessary worldly\nenterprises, labors, and studies should at once cease. One moment\non earth, and then, accordingly as we spend that moment, an\neternity in heaven or in hell: in heaven, if we succeed in\nplacating God by a sound belief and ritual proprieties; in hell,\nif we are led astray by philosophy, nature, and the attractions of\nlife! On these suppositions, what time have we for any thing but\nreciting our creed, meditating on the atonement, and seeking to\nsecure an interest for ourselves with God by flouting at our\ncarnal reason, praying in church, and groaning, \"Lord, Lord, have\nmercy on us miserable sinners\"? What folly, what mockery, to be\nsearching into the motions of the stars, and the occult forces of\nmatter, and the other beautiful mysteries of science! There will\nbe no astronomy in hell, save vain speculations as to the distance\nbetween the nadir of the damned and the zenith of the saved; no\nchemistry in hell, save the experiments of infinite wrath in\ndistilling new torture poisons in the alembics of memory and\ndepositing fresh despair sediments in the crucibles of hope. If\nCalvin's doctrine be true, let no book be printed, save the\n\"Westminster Catechism;\" no calculation be ciphered, save how to\n\"solve the problem of damnation;\" no picture be painted, save\n\"pictures of hell;\" no school be supported, save \"schools of\ntheology;\" no business be pursued, save \"the business of\nsalvation.\" What have men who are in imminent peril, who are in\ntruth almost infallibly sure, of being eternally damned the next\ninstant, what have they to do with science, literature, art,\nsocial ambition, or commerce? Away with them all! Lures of the\ndevil to snare souls are they! The world reflecting from every\ncorner the lurid glare of hell, who can do any thing else but\nshudder and pray? \"Who could spare any attention for the\nvicissitudes of cotton and the price of shares, for the merits of\nthe last opera and the bets upon the next election, if the actors\nin these things were really swinging in his eye over such a verge\nas he affects to see?\"\n\nThirdly, those who believe the popular theory on this subject are\nbound to live in cheap huts, on bread and water, that they may\ndevote to the sending of missionaries among the heathen every cent\nof money they can get beyond that required for the bare\nnecessities of life. If our neighbor were perishing of hunger at\nour door, it would be our duty to share with him even to the last\ncrust we had. How much more, then, seeing millions of our poor\nhelpless brethren sinking ignorantly into the eternal fires of\nhell, are we bound to spare no possible effort until the\nconditions of salvation are brought within the reach of every one!\nAn American missionary to China said, in a public address after\nhis return, \"Fifty thousand a day go down to the fire that is not\nquenched. Six hundred millions more are going the same road.\nShould you not think at least once a day of the fifty thousand who\nthat day sink to the doom of the lost?\" The American Board of\nCommissioners of Foreign Missions say, \"To send the gospel to the\nheathen is a work of great exigency. Within the last thirty years\na whole generation of five hundred millions have gone down to\neternal death.\" Again: the same Board say, in their tract entitled\n\"The Grand Motive to Missionary Effort,\" \"The heathen are involved\nin the ruins of the apostasy, and are expressly doomed to\nperdition. Six hundred millions of deathless souls on the brink of\nhell! What a spectacle!\" How a man who thinks the heathen are thus\nsinking to hell by wholesale through ignorance of the gospel can\nlive in a costly house, crowded with luxuries and splendors,\nspending every week more money on his miserable body than he gives\nin his whole life to save the priceless souls for which he says\nChrist died, is a problem admitting but two solutions. Either his\nprofessed faith is an unreality to him, or else he is as selfish\nas a demon and as hard hearted as the nether millstone. If he\nreally believed the doctrine, and had a human heart, he must feel\nit to be his duty to deny himself every indulgence and give his\nwhole fortune and earnings to the missionary fund. And when he had\ngiven all else, he ought to give himself, and go to pagan lands,\nproclaiming the means of grace until his last breath. If he does\nnot that, he is inexcusable.\n\nShould he attempt to clear himself of this obligation by adopting\nthe theory of predestination, which asserts that all men were\nunconditionally elected from eternity, some to heaven, others to\nhell, so that no effort can change their fate, logical consistency\nreduces him to an alternative more intolerable in the eyes of\nconscience and common sense than the other was. For by this theory\nthe gates of freedom and duty are hoisted, and the dark flood of\nantinomian consequences rushes in. All things are fated. Let men\nyield to every impulse and wish. The result is fixed. We have\nnothing to do. Good or evil, virtue or crime, alter nothing.\n\nFourthly, if the common doctrine of eternal damnation be true,\nthen surely no more children should be brought into the world: it\nis a duty to let the race die out and cease. He who begets a\nchild, forcing him to run the fearful risk of human existence,\nwith every probability of being doomed to hell at the close of\nearth, commits a crime before whose endless consequences of horror\nthe guilt of fifty thousand deliberate murders would be as\nnothing. For, be it remembered, an eternity in hell is an infinite\nevil; and therefore the crime of thrusting such a fate on a single\nchild, with the unasked gift of being, is a crime admitting of no\njust comparison. Rather than populate an everlasting hell with\nhuman vipers and worms, a hell whose fires, alive and wriggling\nwith ghastly shapes of iniquity and anguish, shall swell with a\nvast accession of fresh recruits from every generation, rather\nthan this, let the sacred lights on the marriage altar go out, no\nmore bounding forms of childhood be seen in cottage or hall, the\nrace grow old, thin out, and utterly perish, all happy villages be\novergrown, all regal cities crumble down, and this world roll\namong the silent stars henceforth a globe of blasted deserts and\nrank wildernesses, resonant only with the shrieks of the wind, the\nyells of wild beasts, and the thunder's crash.\n\nFifthly, there is one more conclusion of moral duty deducible from\nthe prevalent theory of infinite torment. It is this. God ought\nnot to have permitted Adam to have any children. Let us not seem\npresumptuous and irreverent in speaking thus. We are merely\nreasoning on the popular theory of the theologians, not on any\nsupposition of our own or on any truth; and by showing the\nabsurdity and blasphemy of the moral consequences and duties\nflowing from that theory, the absurdity, blasphemy, and\nincredibility of the theory itself appear. We are not responsible\nfor the irreverence, but they are responsible for it who charge\nGod with the iniquity which we repel from his name. If the sin of\nAdam must entail total depravity and an infinite penalty of\nsuffering on all his posterity, who were then certainly innocent\nbecause not in existence, then, we ask, why did not God cause the\nrace to stop with Adam, and so save all the needless and cruel woe\nthat would otherwise surely be visited on the lengthening line of\ngenerations? Or, to go still further back, why did he not,\nforeseeing Adam's fall, refrain from creating even him? There was\nno necessity laid on God of creating Adam. No positive evil would\nhave been done by omitting to create him. An infinite evil,\nmultiplied by the total number of the lost, was done by creating\nhim. Why, then, was he not left in peaceful nonentity? On the\nAugustinian theory we see no way of escaping this awful dilemma.\nWho can answer the question which rises to heaven from the abyss\nof the damned?  \"Father of mercies, why from silent earth Didst\nthou awake and curse me into birth, Push into being a reverse of\nthee, And animate a clod with misery?\"\n\nSatan is a sort of sublime Guy Fawkes, lurking in the infernal\ncellar, preparing the train of that stupendous Gunpowder Plot by\nwhich he hopes, on the day of judgment, to blow up the world\nparliament of unbelievers with a general petard of damnation. Will\nthe King connive at this nefarious prowler and permit him to carry\nout his design?\n\nThe doctrine of eternal damnation, as it has prevailed in the\nChristian Church, appears to the natural man so unreasonable,\nimmoral, and harrowingly frightful, when earnestly contemplated,\nthat there have always been some who have shrunk from its\nrepresentations and sought to escape its conclusions. Many of its\nstrongest advocates in every age have avowed it to be a fearful\nmystery, resting on the inscrutable sovereignty of God, and beyond\nthe power of man's faculties to explain and justify. The dogma has\nbeen eluded in two ways. Some have believed in the annihilation of\nthe wicked after they should have undergone just punishment\nproportioned to their sins. This supposition has had a\nconsiderable number of advocates. It was maintained, among others,\nby Arnobius, at the close of the third century, by the Socini, by\nDr. Hammond, and by some of the New England divines.26 All that\nneed be said in opposition to it is that it is an arbitrary device\nto avoid the intolerable horror of the doctrine of endless misery,\nunsupported by proof, extremely unsatisfactory in many of its\nbearings, and really not needed to achieve the consummation\ndesired.\n\nOthers have more wisely maintained that all will finally be saved:\nhowever severely and long they may justly suffer, they will at\nlast all be mercifully redeemed by God and admitted to the common\nheaven. Defenders of the doctrine of ultimate universal salvation\nhave appeared from the beginning of Christian history.27 During\nthe last century and a half their numbers have rapidly\nincreased.28 A dignified and influential class of theologians,\nrepresented by such names as Tillotson. Bahrdt, and Less, say that\nthe threats of eternal punishment, in the Scriptures, are\nexaggerations to deter men from sin, and that God will not really\nexecute them, but will mercifully abate and limit them.29 Another\nclass of theologians, much more free, consistent, and numerous,\nbase their reception of the doctrine of final restoration on\nfigurative explanations of the scriptural language seemingly\nopposed to it, and on arguments drawn from the character of God,\nfrom reason, and from morals. This view of the subject is\nspreading fast. All independent, genial, and cultivated thought\nnaturally leads to it. The central principles of the gospel\nnecessitate it. The spirit of the age cries for it. Before it the\nold antagonistic dogma must fall and perish from respect. Dr.\nSpring says, in reference to the hopeless condemnation of the\nwicked to hell, \"It puts in requisition all our confidence\n\n26 This theory bas been resuscitated and advocated within a few\nyears by quite a number of writers, among whom may be specified\nthe Rev. C. F. Hudson, author of \"Debt and Grace,\" a learned,\nearnest, and able work, pervaded by an admirable spirit.\n\n27 Ballou, Ancient History of Universalism.\n\n28 Whittemore, Modern History of Universalism.\n\n29 Knapp, Christian Theology, Woods's translation, sect. 158.\n\n\nin God to justify this procedure of his government.\"30\n\nA few devout and powerful minds have sought to avoid the gross\nhorrors and unreasonableness of the usual view of this subject, by\nchanging the mechanical and arithmetical values of the terms for\nspiritual and religious values. They give the word \"eternity\" a\nqualitative instead of a quantitative meaning. The everlasting woe\nof the damned consists not in mechanical inflictions of torture\nand numerical increments of duration, but in spiritual discord,\nalienation from God, a wretched state of being, with which times\nand spaces have nothing to do.31\n\nHow much better were it for the advocates of the popular theory,\ninstead of forcing their moral nature to bear up against the awful\nperplexities and misgivings as to the justice and goodness of God\nnecessarily raised in them whenever they really face the dark\nproblems of their system of faith,32 resolutely to ask whether\nthere are any such problems in the actual government of God, or\nanywhere else, except in their own \"Bodies of Divinity\"! It is an\nextremely unfortunate and discreditable evasion of responsibility\nwhen any man, especially when a teacher, takes for granted the\nreceived formularies handed down to him, and, instead of honestly\nanalyzing their genuine significance and probing their foundations\nto see if they be good and true, spends his genius in contriving\nexcuses and supports for them.\n\nIt is the very worst policy at this day to strive to fasten the\ndogma of eternal misery to the New Testament. If both must be\ntaken or rejected together, an alternative which we emphatically\ndeny, what sincere and earnest thinker now, whose will is\nunterrifiedly consecrated to truth, can be expected to hesitate\nlong? The doctrine is sustained in repute at present principally\nfor two reasons. First, because it has been transmitted to us from\nthe Church of the past as the established and authoritative\ndoctrine. It is yet technically current and popular because it has\nbeen so: that is, it retains its place simply by right of\npossession. The question ought to be sincerely and universally\nraised whether it is true or false. Then it will swiftly lose its\nprestige and disappear. Secondly, it is upheld and patronized by\nmany as a useful instrument for frightening the people and through\ntheir fears deterring them from sin. We have ourselves heard\nclergymen of high reputation say that it would never do to admit,\nbefore the people, that there is any chance whatever of penitence\nand salvation beyond the grave, because they would be sure to\nabuse the hope as a sort of permission to indulge and continue in\nsin. Thus to ignore the only solemn and worthy standard of judging\nan abstract doctrine, namely, Is it a truth or a falsehood? and\nput it solely on grounds of working expediency, is disgraceful,\ncontemptible, criminal. Watts exposes with well merited rebuke a\ngross instance of pious frail in Burnet, who advised preachers to\nteach the eternity of future punishment whether they believed it\nor not.33 It is by such a course that error and superstition\nreign, that truckling conformity, intellectual disloyalty, moral\nindifference, vice, and infidelity, abound. It is practical\natheism, debauchery of conscience, and genuine spiritual\n\n30 Glory of Christ, vol. ii. p. 268.\n\n31 Lange, Positive Dogmatik, sect. 131: Die Aeonen der Verdammten.\nMaurice, Theological Essays: Future Punishment.\n\n32 See Beecher's Conflict of Ages, b. ii. ch. 4, 13.\n\n33 World to Come, Disc. XIII.\n\n\ndeath. Besides, the course we are characterizing is actually as\ninexpedient in practice as it is wrong in theory. Experience and\nobservation show it to be as pernicious in its result as it is\nimmoral in its origin. Is a threat efficacious over men in\nproportion to its intrinsic terror, or in proportion as it is\npersonally felt and feared by them? Do the menacing penalties of a\nsin deter a man from it in proportion to their awfulness, or in\nproportion to his belief in their reality and unavoidableness?\nEternal misery would be a threat of infinite frightfulness, if it\nwere realized and believed. But it is incredible. Some reject it\nwith indignation and an impetuous recoil that sends them much too\nfar towards antinomianism. Others let it float in the spectral\nbackground of imagination, the faint reflection of a disagreeable\nand fading dream. To all it is an unreality. An earnest belief in\na sure retribution exactly limited to desert must be far more\neffective. If an individual had a profound conviction that for\nevery sin he committed he must suffer a million centuries of\ninexpressible anguish, realizing that thought, would he commit a\nsin?\n\nIf he cannot appreciate that enormous penalty, much less can he\nthe infinite one, which is far more likely to shade off and blur\nout into a vague and remote nothing. Truth is an expression of\nGod's will, which we are bound exclusively to accept and employ\nregardless of consequences. When we do that, God, the author of\ntruth, is himself solely responsible for the consequences. But\nwhen, thinking we can devise something that will work better, we\nuse some theory of our own, we are responsible for the\nconsequences. Let every one beware how he ventures to assume that\ndread responsibility. It is surely folly as well as sin. For\nnothing can work so well as truth, the simple, calm, living truth,\nwhich is a chime in the infinite harmony of morals and things. It\nis only the morbid melodramatic tastes and incompetencies of an\nunfinished culture that make men think otherwise. The magnificent\npoetry of the day of judgment an audience of five hundred thousand\nmillions gathered in one throng as the Judge rises to pronounce\nthe last oration over a dissolving universe takes possession of\nthe fancy, and people conceive it so vividly, and are so moved by\nit, that they think they see it to be true.\n\nGrant for a moment the truth of the conception of hell as a\nphysical world of fiery torture full of the damned. Suppose the\nscene of probation over, hell filled with its prisoners shut up,\nbanished and buried in the blackest deeps of space. Can it be left\nthere forever? Can it be that the roar of its furnace shall rage\non, and the wail of the execrable anguish ascend, eternally?\nEndeavor to realize in some faint degree what these questions\nmean, and then answer. If anybody can find it in his heart or in\nhis head to say yes, and can gloat over the idea, and wish to have\nit continually brandished in terrorem over the heads of the\npeople, one feels impelled to declare that he of all men the most\nneeds to be converted to the Christian spirit. An unmitigated hell\nof depravity, pain, and horror, would be Satan's victory and God's\ndefeat; for the very wish of a Satanic being must be for the\neverlasting prevalence of sin and wretchedness. As above the\nweltering hosts of the lost, each dreadful second, the iron clock\nof hell ticked the thunder word \"eternity,\" how would the devil on\nhis sulphurous dais shout in triumph! But if such a world of fire,\ncrowded with the writhing damned, ever existed at all, could it\nexist forever?\n\nCould the saved be happy and passive in heaven when the muffled\nshrieks of their brethren, faint from the distance, fell on their\nears? In tones of love and pity that would melt the very\nmountains, they would plead with God to pardon and free the lost.\nMany a mourning lover would realize the fable of the Thracian poet\nwho wandered into Hades searching for his Eurydice; many a heroic\nson would emulate the legend of the Grecian god who burst through\nthe iron walls of Tartarus and rescued his mother, the unfortunate\nSemele, and led her in triumph up to heaven.\n\nCould the angels be contented when they contemplated the far off\nlurid orb and knew the agonies that fed its conscious conflagration?\nTheir gentle bosoms would be racked with commiserating pangs,\nthey would fly down and hover around that anguished world,\nto moisten its parched tongues with the dropping of their sympathetic\ntears and to cool its burning brows with the fanning of their wings.\n\nCould Christ be satisfied? he who once was rich but for our sakes\nbecame poor? he whose loving soul breathed itself forth in the\ntender words, \"Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy\nladen, and I will give you rest\"? he who poured his blood on\nJudea's awful summit, be satisfied? Not until he had tried the\nefficacy of ten thousand fresh crucifixions, on as many new\nCalvaries, would he rest.\n\nCould God suffer it? God! with the full rivers of superfluous\nbliss rolling around thy throne, couldst thou look down and hear\nthy creatures calling thee Father, and see them plunging in a sea\nof fire eternally eternally eternally and never speak the\npardoning word? It would not be like thee, it would be like thine\nadversary to do that. Not so wouldst thou do. But if Satan had\nmillions of prodigals, snatched from the fold of thy family, shut\nup and tortured in hell, paternal yearnings after them would fill\nthy heart. Love's smiles would light the dread abyss where they\ngroan. Pity's tears would fall over it, shattered by the radiance\ninto rainbows. And through that illumination THOU wouldst descend,\nmarching beneath the arch of its triumphal glories to the rescue\nof thy children! Therefore we rest in hope, knowing that \"Thou\nwilt not leave our souls in hell.\"\n\nCHAPTER V.\n\nTHE FIVE THEORETIC MODES OF SALVATION.\n\nTHE conceptions and fore feelings of immortality which men have\nentertained have generally been accompanied by a sense of\nuncertainty in regard to the nature of that inheritance, by a\nperception of contingent conditions, yielding a twofold fate of\nbliss and woe, poised on the perilous hinge of circumstance or\nfreedom. Almost as often and profoundly, indeed, as man has\nthought that he should live hereafter, that idea has been followed\nby the belief that if, on the one hand, salvation gleamed for him\nin the possible sky, on the other hand perdition yawned for him in\nthe probable abyss. Heaven and Hell are the light side and shade\nside of the doctrine of a future life. Few questions are more\ninteresting, as none can be more important, than that inquiry\nwhich is about the salvation of the soul. The inherent reach of\nthis inquiry, and the extent of its philosophical and literary\nhistory, are great. But, by arranging under certain heads the\nvarious principal schemes of salvation which Christian teachers\nhave from time to time presented for popular acceptance, and\npassing them before the mind in order and in mutual lights, we can\nvery much narrow the space required to exhibit and discuss them.\nWhen the word \"salvation\" occurs in the following investigation,\nit means unless something different be shown by the context the\nremoval of the soul's doom to misery beyond the grave, and the\nsecuring of its future blessedness. Heaven and hell are terms\nemployed with wide latitude and fluctuating boundaries of literal\nand figurative meaning; but their essential force is simply a\nfuture life of wretchedness, a future life of joy; and salvation,\nin its prevailing theological sense, is the avoidance of that and\nthe gaining of this. We shall not attempt to present the different\ntheories of redemption in their historical order of development,\nor to give an exhaustive account of their diversified prevalence,\nbut shall arrange them with reference to the most perspicuous\nexhibition of their logical contents and practical bearings.\n\nThe first scheme of Christian salvation to be noticed is the one\nby which it is represented that the interference and suffering of\nChrist, in itself, unconditionally saved all souls and emptied\nhell forever. This theory arose in the minds of those who received\nit as the natural and consistent completion of the view they held\nconcerning the nature and consequences of the fall of Adam, the\ncause and extent of the lost state of man. Adam, as the federal\nhead of humanity, represented and acted for his whole race: the\nresponsibility of his decision rested, the consequences of his\nconduct would legitimately descend, it was thought, upon all\nmankind. If he had kept himself obedient through that easy yet\ntremendous probation in Eden, he and all his children would have\nlived on earth eternally in perfect bliss. But, violating the\ncommandment of God, the burden of sin, with its terrible penalty,\nfell on him and his posterity. Every human being was henceforth to\nbe alien from the love of goodness and from the favor of God,\nhopelessly condemned to death and the pains of hell. The sin of\nAdam, it was believed, thoroughly corrupted the nature of man, and\nincapacitated him from all successful efforts to save his soul\nfrom its awful doom. The infinite majesty of God's will, the law\nof the universe, had been insulted by disobedience. The only just\nretribution was the suffering of an endless death. The adamantine\nsanctities of God's government made forgiveness impossible. Thus\nall men were lost, to be the prey of blackness, and fire, and the\nundying worm, through the remediless ages of eternity. Just then\nGod had pity on the souls he had made, and himself came to the\nrescue. In the person of Christ, he came into the world as a man,\nand freely took upon himself the infinite debt of man's sins, by\nhis death on the cross expiated all offences, satisfied the claims\nof offended justice, vindicated the inexpressible sacredness of\nthe law, and, at the same time, opened a way by which a full and\nfree reconciliation was extended to all. When the blood of Jesus\nflowed over the cross, it purchased the ransom of every sinner. As\nJerome says, \"it quenched the flaming sword at the entrance of\nParadise.\" The weary multitude of captives rose from their bed,\nshook off the fetters and stains of the pit, and made the cope of\nheaven snowy with their white winged ascent. The prison house of\nthe devil and his angels should be used no more to confine the\nguilty souls of men.1 Their guilt was all washed away in the blood\nof the Lamb. Their spirits, without exception, should follow to\nthe right hand of the Father, in the way marked out by the\nascending Redeemer. This is the first form of Universalism, the\nform in which it was held by several of the Fathers in the earlier\nages of the Church, and by the pioneers of that doctrine in modern\ntimes. Cyril of Jerusalem says, \"Christ went into the under world\nalone, but came out with many.\" 2 Cyril of Alexandria says that\nwhen Christ ascended from the under world he \"emptied it, and left\nthe devil there utterly alone.\" 3 The opinion that the whole\npopulation of Hades was released, is found in the lists of ancient\nheresies.4 It was advanced by Clement, an Irish priest, antagonist\nof Boniface the famous Archbishop of Mentz, in the middle of the\neighth century. He was deposed by the Council of Soissons, and\nafterwards anathematized by Pope Zachary. Gregory the Great also\nrefers in one of his letters with extreme severity to two\necclesiastics, contemporaries of his own, who held the same\nbelief. Indeed, this conclusion is a necessary result of a\nconsistent development of the creed of the Orthodox Church, so\ncalled. By the sin of one, even Adam, through the working of\nabsolute justice, hell became the portion of all, irrespective of\nany fault or virtue of theirs; so, by the voluntary sacrifice, the\ninfinite atonement, of one, even Christ, through the unspeakable\nmercy of God, salvation was effected for all, irrespective of any\nvirtue or fault of theirs. One member of the scheme is the exact\ncounterpoise of the other; one doctrine cries out for and\nnecessitates the other. Those who accept the commonly received\ndogmas of original sin, total depravity, and universal\ncondemnation entailed upon all men in lineal descent from Adam,\nand the dogmas of the Trinity, the Incarnation, and the Vicarious\nAtonement, are bound, by all the constructions of logic, to accept\nthe scheme of salvation just set forth, namely, that the death of\nChrist secured the deliverance of all unconditionally. We do not\nbelieve that doctrine, only because we do not believe the other\nassociated doctrines out of which it springs and of whose system\nit is the complement.\n\n1 Doederlein, De Redemptione a Potestate Diaboli. In Opuse.\nTheolog.\n\n2 Catechesis xis. 9.\n\n3 De Festis Paschalibus, homilia vii.\n\n4 Augustine, De Haresibus, lxxix.\n\n\nThe reasons why we do not believe that our race fell into helpless\ndepravity and ruin in the sin of the first man are, in essence,\nbriefly these: First, we have never been able to perceive any\nproof whatever of the truth of that dogma; and certainly the onus\nprobandi rests on the side of such an assumption. It arose\npartially from a misinterpretation of the language of the Bible;\nand so far as it has a basis in Scripture, we are compelled by\nforce of evidence to regard it as a Jewish adoption of a pagan\nerror without authority. Secondly, this doctrinal system seems to\nus equally irreconcilable with history and with ethics: it seems\nto trample on the surest convictions of reason and conscience, and\nspurn the clearest principles of nature and religion, to blacken\nand load the heart and doom of man with a mountain of gratuitous\nhorror, and shroud the face and throne of God in a pall of wilful\nbarbarity. How can men be guilty of a sin committed thousands of\nyears before they were born, and deserve to be sent to hopeless\nhell for it? What justice is there in putting on one sinless head\nthe demerits of a world of reprobates, and then letting the\ncriminal go free because the innocent has suffered? A third\nobjection to this whole view an objection which, if sustained,\nwill utterly annihilate it is this: It is quite possible that,\nmomentous as is the part he has played in theology, the Biblical\nAdam is not at all a historical personage, but only a significant\nfigment of poetry. The common belief of the most authoritative men\nof science, that the human race has existed on this earth for a\nvastly longer period than the Hebrew statement affirms, may yet be\ncompletely established. It may also yet be acknowledged that each\ndistinct race of men had its own Adam.5 Then the dogmatic\ntheology, based on the fall of our entire race into perdition in\nits primary representative, will, of course, crumble.\n\nThe second doctrine of Christian salvation is a modification and\nlimitation of the previous one. This theory, like the former,\npresupposes that a burden of original sin and natural depravity\ntransmitted from the first man had doomed, and, unless prevented\nin some supernatural manner, would forever press, all souls down\nto the realms of ruin and woe; also that an infinite graciousness\nin the bosom of the Godhead led Christ to offer himself as an\nexpiation for the sins, an atoning substitute for the condemnation,\nof men. But, according to the present view, this interference\nof Christ did not by itself save the lost: it only removed\nthe otherwise insuperable bar to forgiveness, and presented\nto a chosen portion of mankind the means of experiencing\na condition upon the realization of which, in each individual\ncase, the certainty of salvation depends. That condition is a\nmysterious conversion, stirring the depths of the soul through an\ninspired faith in personal election by the unchanging decree of\nGod. The difference, then, in a word, between the two methods of\nsalvation thus far explained, is this: While both assume that\nmankind are doomed to death and hell in consequence of the sin of\nAdam, the one asserts that the interference of Christ of itself\nsaved all souls, the other asserts that that interference cannot\nsave any soul except those whom God, of his sovereign pleasure,\nhad from eternity arbitrarily elected.6 This scheme grew directly\nout of the dogma of fatalism, which sinks human freedom in Divine\npredestination. God having solely of his\n\n5 Burdach, Carus, Oken, Bayrhoffer, Agassiz. See Bunsen,\nChristianity and Mankind, vol. iv. p. 28; Mott and Gliddon, Types\nof Mankind, p. 338.\n\n6 Confession of Faith of Westminster Divines, ch. iii. sect. 3.\n\n\nown will foreordained that a certain number of mankind should be\nsaved, Christ died in order to pay the penalty of their sins and\nrender it possible for them to be forgiven and taken into heaven\nwithout violating the awful bond of justice. The benefits of the\natonement, therefore, are limited to the elect. Nor is this to be\nregarded as an act of severity; on the contrary, it is an act of\nunspeakable benevolence. For by the sin of Adam the whole race of\nmen, without exception, were hateful to God, and justly sentenced\nto eternal damnation. When, consequently, he devised a plan of\nredemption by which he could himself bear the guilt, and suffer\nthe agony, and pay the debt of a few, and thus ransom them from\ntheir doom, the reprobates who were left had no right to complain,\nbut the chosen were a monument of disinterested love, because all\nalike deserved the endless tortures of hell. According to this\nconception, all men being by their ancestral act and inherited\nnature irretrievably lost, God's arbitrary pleasure was the cause,\nChrist's voluntary death was the means, by which a certain number\nwere to be saved. What individuals should compose this portion of\nthe race, was determined from eternity beyond all contingencies.\nThe effect of faith and conversion, and of the new birth, is not\nto save the soul, but simply to convince the soul that it is\nsaved. That is to say, a regenerating belief and love is not the\nefficient cause, it is merely the revealed assurance, of\nsalvation, proving to the soul that feels it, by the testimony of\nthe Holy Spirit, that it is of the chosen number. The preaching of\nthe gospel is to be extended everywhere, not for the purpose of\nsaving those who would otherwise be lost, but because its\npresentation will awaken in the elect, and in them alone, that\nresponsive experience which will reveal their election to them,\nand make them sure of it, already foretasting it; though it is\nthought that no one can be saved who is ignorant of the gospel: it\nis mysteriously ordered that the terms of the covenant shall be\npreached to all the elect. There are correlated complexities,\nmiracles, absurdities, in wrought with the whole theory,\ninseparable from it. The violence it does to nature, to thought,\nto love, to morals, its arbitrariness, its mechanical form, the\nwrenching exegesis by which alone it can be forced from the\nBible,7 its glaring partiality and eternal cruelty, are its\nsufficient refutation and condemnation. If the death of Christ has\nsuch wondrous saving efficacy, and nothing else has, what keeps\nhim from dying again to convince the unbelieving and to save the\nlost? What man is there who, if he knew that, after thirty years\nof suffering terminated by a fearful death, he should rise again\ninto boundless bliss and glory while rapt infinitude rung with the\npaans of an applauding universe, and that by means of his\nhumiliation he could redeem countless millions from eternal\ntorture, would not with a joyous spring undertake the task? And is\na common man better than Christ?\n\nThe third general plan of Christian salvation which we are to\nconsider differs from the foregoing one in several essential\nparticulars. It affirms the free will of man in opposition to a\nfatal predestination. It declares that the atonement is sufficient\nto redeem not only a portion of our race, but all who will put\nthemselves in right spiritual relations with it. In a word, while\nit admits that some will actually be lost forever, it asserts that\nno one is doomed\n\n7 Schweizer, Die Lehre des Apostels Paulus vom erlosenden Tode\nChristi. Theologische Studien und Kritiken, Jahrg. 1858, heft 3.\n\n\nto be lost, but that the offer of pardon is made to every soul,\nand that every one has power to accept or reject it. The sacrifice\nof the incarnate Deity vindicated the majesty of the law, appeased\nthe wrath of God, and purchased his saving favor towards all who,\nby a sound and earnest faith, seize the proffered justification,\nthrow off all reliance on their own works, and present themselves\nbefore the throne of mercy clothed in the righteousness and\nsprinkled with the blood of Christ. Here the appropriation of the\nmerits of Christ, through an orthodox and vivifying faith, is the\nreal cause as well as the experimental assurance of salvation.\nThis is free to all. As the brazen serpent was hoisted in the\nwilderness, and the scorpion bitten Israelites invited to look on\nit and be healed, so the crucified God is lifted up, and all men,\neverywhere, are urged to kneel before him, accept his atonement,\nand thus enable his righteousness to be imputed to them, and their\nsouls to be saved. The vital condition of salvation is an\nappropriating faith in the vicarious atonement. Without this no\none can be saved. Thus with one word and a single breath whole\nnations and races are whiffed into hell. All that the good hearted\nLuther could venture to say of Cicero, whom he deeply admired and\nloved, was the kind ejaculation, \"I hope God will be merciful to\nhim!\" To those who appreciate it with hostility, and look on all\nthings in its light, the thought that there can be no salvation\nexcept by belief in the expiatory death of Christ, hopelessly\ndooming all the heathen,8 and all infant children, unless baptized\nin a proxy faith,9 builds an altar of blood among the stars and\nmakes the universe reek with horror. Other crimes, though stained\nthrough with midnight dyes and heaped up to the brim of outrageous\nguilt, may be freely forgiven to him who comes heartily to credit\nthe vicarious death of the Savior; but he who does not trust in\nthat, though virtuous as man can be, must depart into the\nunappeasable fires. \"Why this unintelligible crime of not seeing\nthe atonement happens to be the only sin for which there is no\natonement, it is impossible to say.\" Though this view of the\nmethod, extent, and conditions of redemption is less revolting and\nincredible than the other, still, it does not seem to us that any\nperson whose mental and moral nature is unprejudiced, healthy, and\nenlightened, and who will patiently study the subject, can\npossibly accept either of them. The leading assumed doctrines\ncommon to them, out of which they severally spring, and on which\nthey both rest, are not only unsupported by adequate proofs, but\nreally have no evidence at all, and are absurd in themselves,\nconfounding the broadest distinctions in morals, and subverting\nthe best established principles of natural religion.10\n\nThe fourth scheme of Christian salvation is that which predicates\nthe power of insuring souls from hell solely of the Church. This\nis the sacramental theory. It is assumed that, in the state of\nnature subsequent to the transgression and fall of Adam, all men\nare alienated from God, and by the universal original sin\nuniversally exposed to damnation, indeed, the helpless victims of\neternal misery. In the fulness of time, Christ appeared, and\noffered himself to suffer in their stead to secure their\ndeliverance. His death cancelled the whole sum of\n\n8 Bretschneider, Entwickelung der Dogmatik, sect. 112, Nos. 37 50.\n\n9 So affirmed by the Council of Carthage, Canon II.\n\n10 The violence done to moral reason by these views is powerfully\nexposed in Bushnell's Discourse on the Atonement: God in Christ,\npp. 193-202.\n\n\noriginal sin, and only that, thus taking away the absolute\nimpossibility of salvation, and leaving every man in the world\nfree to stand or fall, incur hell or win heaven, by his personal\nmerits. From that time any person who lived a perfectly holy life\nwhich no man could find practically possible thereby secured\neternal blessedness; but the moment he fell into a single sin,\nhowever trivial, he sealed his condemnation: Christ's sacrifice,\nas was just said, merely removed the transmitted burden of\noriginal sin from all mankind, but made no provision for their\npersonal sins, so that practically, all men being voluntary as\nwell as hereditary sinners, their condition was as bad as before:\nthey were surely lost. To meet this state of the case, the Church,\nwhose priests, it is claimed, are the representatives of Christ,\nand whose head is the vicegerent of God on earth, was empowered by\nthe celebration of the mass to re enact, as often as it pleased,\nthe tragedy of the crucifixion. In this service Christ is supposed\nliterally to be put to death afresh, and the merit of his\nsubstitutional sufferings is supposed to be placed to the account\nof the Church.11 As Sir Henry Wotton says,  \"One rosy drop from\nJesus' heart Was worlds of seas to quench God's ire.\"\n\nIn one of the Decretals of Clement VI., called \"Extravagants,\" it\nis asserted that \"one drop of Christ's blood [una guttula\nsanguinis] being sufficient to redeem the whole human race, the\nremaining quantity which was shed in the garden and on the cross\nwas left as a legacy to the Church, to be a treasure whence\nindulgences were to be drawn and administered by the Roman\npontiffs.\" Furthermore, saints and martyrs, by their constant self\ndenial, voluntary sufferings, penances, and prayers, like Christ,\ndo more good works than are necessary for their own salvation; and\nthe balance of merit the works of supererogation is likewise\naccredited to the Church. In this way a great reserved fund of\nmerits is placed at the disposal of the priests. At their pleasure\nthey can draw upon this vicarious treasure and substitute it in\nplace of the deserved penalties of the guilty, and thus absolve\nthem and effect the salvation of their souls. All this dread\nmachinery is in the sole power of the Church. Outside of her pale,\nheretics, heathen, all alike, are unalterably doomed to hell. But\nwhoso will acknowledge her authority, confess his sins, receive\nthe sacrament of baptism, partake of the eucharist, obey the\npriests, shall be infallibly saved. The Church declares that those\nwho neglect to submit to her power and observe her rites are lost,\nby excommunicating such every year just before Easter, thereby\ntypifying that they shall have no part in the resurrection and\nascension. The scheme of salvation just exhibited we reject as\nalike unwarranted by the Scriptures, absurd to reason, absurd to\nconscience, fraught with evil practices, and traceable in history\nthrough the gradual and corrupt growths of the dogmatic policy of\nan interested body. There is not one text in the Bible which\naffords real argument, credit, or countenance to the haughty\npretensions of a Church to retain or absolve guilt, to have the\nexclusive control of the tangible keys of heaven and hell. It is\nincredible to a free and intelligent mind that the opposing fates\nforever of hundreds of millions of men should turn on a mere\naccident of time\n\n11 Thomas Aquinas, Summa, Suppl. pars iii. qu. 25, art. 1.\n\n\nand place, or at best on the moral contingence of their\nacknowledging or denying the doubtful authority of a tyrannical\nhierarchy, a mere matter of form and profession, independent of\ntheir lives and characters, and of no spiritual worth at all. One\nis here reminded of a passage in Plutarch's Essay \"How a Young Man\nought to hear Poems.\" The lines in Sophocles which declare that\nthe initiates in the Mysteries shall be happy in the future life,\nbut that all others shall be wretched, having been read to\nDiogenes, he exclaimed, \"What! Shall the condition of Pantacion,\nthe notorious robber, be better after death than that of\nEpaminondas, merely because he was initiated in the Mysteries?\" It\nis also a shocking violence to common sense, and to all proper\nappreciation of spiritual realities, to imagine the gross\nmechanical transference of blame and merit mutually between the\nbad and the good, as if moral qualities were not personal, but\nmight be shifted about at will by pecuniary considerations, as the\naccounts in the debt and credit columns of a ledger. The theoretic\nfalsities of such a scheme are as numerous and evident as its\npractical abuses have been enormous and notorious. How ridiculous\nthis ritual fetch to snatch souls from perdition appears as stated\nby Julian against Augustine! \"God and the devil, then, have\nentered into a covenant, that what is born the devil shall have,\nand what is baptized God shall have!\"12 We hesitate not to stake\nthe argument on one question. If there be no salvation save by\nbelieving and accepting the sacraments with the authority of the\nRomanist or the Episcopalian Church, then less than one in a\nhundred thousand of the world's population thus far can be saved.\nDeath steadily showers into hell, age after age, an overwhelming\nproportion of the souls of all mankind, a rain storm of agonized\ndrops of immortality to feed and freshen the quenchless fires of\ndamnation. Who can believe it, knowing what it is that he\nbelieves?\n\nWe advance next to a system of Christian salvation as remarkable\nfor its simplicity, boldness, and instinctive benevolence as those\nwe have previously examined are for complexity, unnaturalness, and\nseverity. The theory referred to promises the natural and\ninevitable salvation of every created soul. It bases itself on two\npositions, the denial that men are ever lost, except partially and\ntemporarily, and the exhibition of the irresistible power, perfect\nwisdom, and infinite goodness of God. The advocates of this\ndoctrine point first to observation and experience, and declare\nthat no person is totally reprobate, that every one is salvable;\nthose most corrupt and abandoned to wickedness, unbelief, and\nhardness, have yet a spark that may be kindled, a fount that may\nbe made to gush, unto the illumination and purification of the\nwhole being. A stray word, an unknown influence, a breath of the\nSpirit, is continually effecting such changes, such salvations.\nTrue, there are many fettered by vices, torn by sins, ploughed by\nthe caustic shares of remorse, lost to peaceful freedom, lost to\nspiritual joys, lost to the sweet, calm raptures of religious\nbelief and love, and, in that sense, plunged in damnation. But\nthis, they say, is the only hell there is. At the longest, it can\nendure but for the night of this life: deliverance and blessedness\ncome with the morning dawn of a better world. Exact retributions\nare awarded to all iniquity here; so\n\n12 Julian, lib. vi. ix.\n\n\nthat at the termination of the present state there is nothing to\nprevent the flowing of an equal bliss impartially over all. The\nsubstantive faculties and forces of the soul are always good and\nright: only their action is perverted to evil.13 This perversion\nwill cease with the accidents of the present state; and thus death\nis the door to salvation. God's desires and intentions for his\ncreatures, again they argue, must be purely gracious and blessed;\nfor Nature, the Bible, and the Soul blend their ultimate teachings\nin one affirmation that he is Love. Being omnipotent and of\nperfect wisdom, nothing can withstand his decrees or thwart his\nplans. His purpose, of course, must be fulfilled. There is every\nthing to prove, and nothing, rightly understood, to disprove, that\nthat purpose is the eternal blessedness of all his intelligent\noffspring after death. Therefore, they think they are justified in\nconcluding, the laws of nature, God's regular habits and course of\ngovernment, the normal arrangement and process of things, will of\nthemselves work out the inevitable salvation of all mankind. After\nthe uproar and darkness, the peril and fear, of a tempestuous\nnight, the all embracing smile of daylight gradually spreads over\nthe world, and the turmoil silently subsides, and the scene\nsleeps. So after the sins and miseries, the condemnation and hell,\nof this state of existence, shall succeed the redemption, the\nholiness and happy peace, of heaven, into which all pass by the\norder of nature, the original and undisturbed arrangement of the\ncreative Father. This view is advanced by some on grounds both of\nrevelation and reason. It is the doctrine of those Beghards who\ntaught that \"there is neither hell nor purgatory; that no one is\ndamned, neither Jew nor Saracen, because on the death of the body\nthe soul returns to God.\"14 But the proper doctrine of the\nUniversalist denomination is founded directly on Scripture, and\nseems now to be simply the absolute certainty of final salvation\nfor all. Balfour held that Christ, in obedience to the will of\nGod, secures eternal life for all men in the most literal manner,\nby causing the resurrection of the dead from their otherwise\nendless sleep in the grave, a doctrine nearly or quite fossil\nnow.15\n\nIt will be noticed that by this view salvation is an unlimited\nnecessity, not a contingency,  a boon thrown to all, and which no\none has power to reject:\n\n\"The road to heaven is broader than the world,\nAnd deeper than the kingdoms of the dead;\nAnd up its ample paths the nations tread\nWith all their banners furl'd.\"\n\nThis theory contains elements, it seems to us, both of truth and\nfalsehood. It casts off gross mistakes, announces some fundamental\nrealities, overlooks, perverts, exaggerates, some essential facts\nin the case. There is so much in it that is grateful and beautiful\nthat we cannot wonder at its reception where the tender instincts\nof the heart are stronger than the stern decisions of the\nconscience, where the kindly sentiments usurp the province of the\ncritical reason and sit in judgment upon evidence for the\nconstruction of a dogmatic creed. We\n\n13 Universalist Quarterly Review, vol. x. art. xvi.: Character and\nits Predicates.\n\n14 Hagenbach, Dogmengeschichte, sect. 209, note 14.\n\n15 See Ballou, Examination of the Doctrine of Future Punishment,\npp. 152-157. Williamson, Exposition of Universalism, Sermon XL:\nNature of Salvation. Cobb, Compend. of Divinity, ch. ix. sect. 3.\n\n\ncannot accept it as a whole, cannot admit its great unqualified\nconclusion, not only because there is no direct evidence for it,\nbut because there are many potent presumptions against it. It is\nnot built upon the facts of our consciousness and present\nexperience, but is resolutely constructed in defiance of them by\nan arbitrary process of assumption and inference; for since God's\nperfections are as absolute now as they ever can be, and he now\npermits sin and misery, there is no impossibility that they will\nbe permitted for a season hereafter. If they are necessary now,\nthey may be necessary hereafter. An experience of salvation by\nall, regardless of what they do or what they leave undone, would\nalso defeat what we have always considered the chief final cause\nof man, namely, the self determined resistance of Evil and choice\nof Good, the free formation of virtuous character. The plan of a\nnecessary and indiscriminate redemption likewise breaks the\nevident continuity of life, ignores the lineal causative power of\nexperience, whereby each moment partially produces and moulds the\nnext, destroys the probationary nature of our lot, and palsies the\nstrength of moral motive. It is furthermore the height of\ninjustice, awarding to all men the same condition, remorselessly\nswallowing up their infinite differences, making sin and virtue,\nsloth and toil, exactly alike in the end. Whose earnestly embraces\nthe theory, and meditates much upon it, and reasons closely, will\nbe likely to become an Antinomian. It overlooks the loud,\nomnipresent hints which tell us that the present state is\nincomplete and dependent, the part of a great whole, the visible\nsegment of a circle whose complement overarches the invisible\nworld to come, where future correspondences and fulnesses will\nsatisfy and complete present claims and deficiencies. We reject\nthis scheme, as to its distinctive feature, for all those reasons\nwhich lead us to accept that final view to which we now turn.\n\nThe theory of Christian redemption which seems to us correct,\nrepresents the good and evil forces of personal character,\nharmonious or discordant with the mind of God, as the conditions\nof salvation or of reprobation. Swedenborg, who teaches that man\nin the future state is the son of his own deeds in the present\nstate, says he once saw Melancthon in hell, writing, \"Faith alone\nsaves,\" the words fading out as fast as written, because\nexpressive of a falsehood! It is not belief, but love, that\ndominates the soul, not a mental act, but a spiritual substance.\nAccording as the realities of the soul are what they should be,\njust and pure, or what they should not be, perverted and corrupt,\nand according as the realities of the soul are in right relations\nwith truth, beauty, goodness, or in vitiated relations with them,\nso, and to that extent, is the soul saved or lost. This is not a\nmatter of arbitrary determination on one hand; and of helpless\nsubmission on the other: it is a matter of Divine permission on\none hand, and of free, though sometimes unintelligent and\nmistaken, choice on the other. The only perdition is to be out of\ntune with the right constitution and exercise of things and rules.\nThat, of itself, makes a man the victim of guilt and wretchedness.\nThe only salvation is the restoration of the balance and normal\nefficiency of the faculties, the restoration of their harmony with\nthe moral law, the recommencement of their action in unison with\nthe will of God. When a soul, through its exposure and freedom,\nbecomes and experiences what God did not intend and is not pleased\nwith, what his creative and executive arrangements are not\npurposely ordered for, it is, for the time, and so far forth,\nlost. It is saved, when knowledge of truth illuminates the mind,\nlove of goodness warms the heart, energy, purity, and aspiration\nfill and animate the whole being. Then, having realized in its\nexperience the purposes of Christ's mission, the original aims of\nits existence, it rejoices in the favor of God. In the harmonious\nfruition of its internal efficiencies and external relations, all\nthings work together for good unto it, and it basks in the beams\nof the sun of immortality. Perdition and hell are the condemnation\nand misery instantaneously deposited in experience whenever and\nwherever a perverted and corrupt soul touches its relations with\nthe universe. The meeting of its consciousness with the alienated\nmournful faces of things, with the hostile retributive forces of\nthings, produces unrest and suffering with the same natural\nnecessity that the meeting of certain chemical substances deposits\npoison and bitterness. Perdition being the degradation and\nwretchedness of the soul through ingrained falsehood, vice,\nimpurity, and hardness, salvation is the casting out of these\nevils, and the replacing them with truth, righteousness, a holy\nand sensitive life. To ransom from hell and translate to heaven is\nnot, then, so much to deliver from a local dungeon of gnawing\nfires and worms, and bear to a local paradise of luxuries, as it\nis to heal diseases and restore health. Hell is a wrong, diseased\ncondition of the soul, its indwelling wretchedness and\nretribution, wherever it may be, as when the light of day tortures\na sick eye. Heaven is a right, healthy condition of the soul, its\nindwelling integrity and concord, in whatever realms it may\nreside, as when the sunshine bathes the healthy orb of vision with\ndelight. Salvation is nothing more nor less than the harmonious\nblessedness of the soul by the fruition of all its right powers\nand relations. Remove a man who is writhing in the agonies of some\nphysical disease, from his desolate hut on the bleak mountain side\nto a gorgeous palace in a delicious tropical clime. He is just as\nbadly off as before. He is still, so to speak, in hell, wherever\nhe may be in location. Cure his sickness, and then he is, so to\nspeak, saved, in heaven. It is so with the soul. The conditions of\nsalvation and reprobation are not arbitrary, mechanical, fickle,\nbut are the interior and unalterable laws of the soul and of the\nuniverse. \"Every devil,\" Sir Thomas Browne says, \"holds enough of\ntorture in his own ubi, and needs not the torture of circumference\nto afflict him.\" If there are, as there may be, two entirely\nseparate regions in space, whose respective boundaries enclose\nhell and heaven, banishment into the one, or admission into the\nother, evidently is not what constitutes the essence of perdition\nor of salvation, is not the all important consideration; but the\ncharacteristic condition of the soul, which produces its\nexperience and decides its destination, that is the essential\nthing. The mild fanning of a zephyr in a summer evening is\nintolerable to a person in the convulsions of the ague, but most\nwelcome and delightful to others. So to a wicked soul all objects,\noperations, and influences of the moral creation become hostile\nand retributive, making a hell of the whole universe. Purify the\nsoul, restore it to a correct condition, and every thing is\ntransfigured: the universal hell becomes universal heaven.\n\nWe may gather up in a few propositions the leading principles of\nthis theory of salvation. First, Perdition is not an experience to\nwhich souls are helplessly born, not a sentence inflicted on them\nby an arbitrary decree, but is a result wrought out by free\nagency, in conformity to the unalterable laws of the spiritual\nworld. Secondly, heaven and hell are not essentially particular\nlocalities into which spirits are thrust, nor states of\nconsciousness produced by outward circumstances, but are an outward\n reflection from, and a reciprocal action upon, internal character.\n\nThirdly, condemnation, or justification, is not absolute and\ncomplete, equalizing all on each side of a given line, but is a\nthing of degrees, not exactly the same in any two individuals,\nor in the same person at all times. Fourthly, we have no reason\nto suppose that probation closes with the closing of the\npresent life; but every relevant consideration leads us to\nconclude that the same great constitution of laws pervades all\nworlds and reigns throughout eternity, so that the fate of souls\nis not unchangeably fixed at death. No analogy indicates that\nafter death all will be thoroughly different from what it is\nbefore death. Rather do all analogies argue that the hell and\nheaven of the future will be the aggravation, or mitigation, or\ncontinuation, of the perdition and salvation of the present. It is\naltogether a sentence of exact right according to character, a\nmatter of personal achievement depending upon freedom, an\nexperience of inward elements and states, a thing of degrees, and\na subject of continued probation.\n\nThe condition of the heathen nations in reference to salvation is\nsatisfactory only in the light of the foregoing theory. If a\nperson is what God wishes, as shown by his revealed will in the\nmodel of Christ, pure, loving, devout, wise, and earnest, he is\nsaved, whether he ever heard of Christ or not. Are Plato and\nAristides, Cato and Antoninus, to be damned, while Pope Alexander\nVI. and King Philip II are saved, because those glorious\ncharacters merely lived at the then height of attainable\nexcellence, but these fanatic scoundrels made a technical\nprofession of Christianity? The \"Athanasian\" creed asserts that\nwhoever doth not fully believe its dogmas \"shall without doubt\nperish everlastingly.\" And the eighteenth article in the creed of\nthe Church of England declares \"them accursed who presume to say\nthat any man can be saved by diligently framing his life according\nto the law or sect which he professeth, and the light of\nnature.\"16\n\nAnother particular in which the present view of salvation is\nsatisfactory, in opposition to the other theories, is in leaving\nthe personal nature of sin clear, the realm of personal\nresponsibility unconfused. Why should a system of thought be set\nup and adhered to in religion that would be instantly and\nuniversally scouted at if applied to any other subject? 17 \"No one\ndreams that the sin of an unexercised intellect, of gross\nignorance, can be pardoned only through faith in the sacrifice of\nsome incarnation of the Perfect Reason. No one expects to be told\nthat the violation of the bodily laws can be forgiven by the\nInfinite Creator only on the ground that some perfect physician\nhonors them by obedience and death. It is by opening the mind to\nGod's published truth, and by conformity to the discovered\nphilosophical\n\n16 Arnauld, Emes, Goeze, and others, have written volumes to prove\nthe indiscriminate damnation of the heathen. On the contrary,\nMuller, in his \"Diss. de Paganorum poet Mortem Conditione,\" and\nMarmontel, in his \"Belisaire,\" take a more favorable view of the\nfate of the ethnic world. The best work on the subject a work of\ngreat geniality and ability is Eberhard's \"Neue Apologie des\nSocrates.\" Also see Knapp's Christian Theology, sect. lxxxviii.\n\n17 Martineau, Studies of Christianity, pp. 153-176: Mediatorial\nReligion. Ibid. pp. 468-477: Sin What it is, What it is not.\n\n\norder, or the reception of the adopted remedy, that the mind and\nthe frame experience new life. And our souls are redeemed, not by\nany expiation on account of which penalties are lifted, but by\nreception of spiritual truth and consecration of will, which push\naway penalties by wholesome life.\" 18\n\nThe awful inviolability of justice is shown by the eternal course\nof God's laws bringing the exactly deserved penalty upon every\nsoul that sinneth. Whoever breaks a Divine decree puts all sacred\nthings in antagonism to him, and the precise punishment of his\noffences not the worth of worlds nor the blood of angels can\navert. The boundless mercy of God, his atoning love, is shown by\nthe absence of all vindictiveness from his judgments, their\nrestorative aim and tendency. Whenever the sinner repents,\nreforms, puts himself in a right attitude, God is waiting to\npardon and bless him, the sun shines and the happy heart is glad\nas at first, the cloudy screen of sin and fear and retributive\nalienation being removed. This view, when appreciated, affords as\nimpressive a sanction to law, and as affecting an exhibition of\nlove, as are theoretically ascribed to the doctrine of vicarious\nexpiation. The infinite sanctity of justice and the fathomless\nlove of God are certainly much more plainly and satisfactorily\nshown by the righteous nature and beneficent operation of the law,\nthan by its terrible severity and arbitrary subversion. According\nto the present view, the relation of Christ to human redemption is\nas simple and rational as it is divinely appointed and perfectly\nfulfilled. Accredited with miraculous seals, presenting the most\npathetic and inspiring motives, he reveals the truths and\nexemplifies the virtues which, when adopted, regenerate the\nsprings of faith and character, rectify the lines of conduct, and\nchange men from sinful and wretched to saintly and blessed. He\nstirs the stagnant soul, that man may replunge into his native\nself, and rise redeemed.\n\nFor the more distinct comprehension and remembrance of the schemes\nof Christian salvation we have been considering, it may be well to\nrecapitulate them.\n\nThe first theory is this: When, by the fall of Adam, all men were\nutterly lost and doomed to hell forever, the vicarious sufferings\nof Christ cancelled sin, and unconditionally purchased and saved\nall. This was the original development of Universalism. It sprang\nconsistently from Augustinian grounds. It was taught by a party in\nthe Church of the first centuries, was afterwards repeatedly\ncondemned as a heresy by popes and by councils, and was revived by\nKelly, Murray, and others. We are not aware that it now has any\navowed disciples.\n\nThe second conception is, in substance, that God, foreseeing from\neternity the fall of Adam and the consequent damnation of his\nposterity, arbitrarily elected a portion of them to salvation,\nleaving the rest to their fate; and the vicarious sufferings of\nChrist were the only possible means of carrying that decree into\neffect. This is the Augustinian and Calvinistic theology, and has\nhad a very extensive prevalence among Christians. Many church\ncreeds still embody the doctrine; but in its original,\nuncompromising form it is rapidly fading from belief. Even now few\npersons can be found to profess it without essential modifications,\nso\n\n18 T. S. King, Endless Punishment Unchristian and Unreasonable, p.\n65.\n\n\nqualifying it as to destroy its identity.\n\nThe third plan of delivering souls from the doom supposed to rest\non them attributes to the vicarious sufferings of Christ a\nconditional efficacy, depending upon personal faith. Every one who\nwill heartily believe in the substitutional death of Christ, and\ntrust in his atoning merits, shall thereby be saved. This was the\nsystem of Pelagius, Arminius, Luther. It prevails now in the so\ncalled Evangelical Churches more generally than any other system.\n\nThe fourth received method of salvation, assuming the same\npremises which the three foregoing schemes assume, namely, that\nthrough the fall all men are eternally sentenced to hell, declares\nthat, by Christ's vicarious sufferings, power is given to the\nChurch, a priestly hierarchy, to save such as confess her\nauthority and observe her rites. All others must continue lost.19\nThis theory early began to be constructed and broached by the\nFathers. It is held by the Roman Catholic Church, and by all the\nconsistent portion of the Episcopalian. A part of the Baptist\ndenomination also through their popular preachers, if not in their\nrecognised symbols assert the indispensableness of ritual baptism\nto salvation.\n\nThe fifth view of the problem is that no soul is lost or doomed\nexcept so far as it is personally, voluntarily depraved and\nsinful. And even to that extent, and in that sense, it can be\ncalled lost only in the present life. After death every soul is\nfreed from evil, and ushered at once into heaven. This is the\ndistinctive doctrine of the ultra Universalists. It is\ndisappearing from among its recent advocates. As a body they have\nalready exchanged its arbitrary conceptions of \"death and glory\"\nfor the more rational conclusions of the \"Restorationists.\" 20\n\nThe sixth and final scheme of Christian salvation teaches that, by\nthe immutable laws which the Creator has established in and over\nhis works and creatures, a free soul may choose good or evil,\ntruth or falsehood, love or hate, beneficence or iniquity. Just so\nfar and just so long as it partakes of the former it is saved; as\nit partakes of the latter it is lost, that is, alienates the favor\nof God, forfeits so much of the benefits of creation and of the\nblessings of being. The conditions and means of repentance,\nreformation, regeneration, are always within its power, the future\nstate being but the unencumbered, more favorable experience of the\nspiritual elements of the present, under the same Divine\nconstitution and laws. This is the common belief of Unitarians and\nUniversalists, the latter alone teaching it as a sure doctrine of\nRevelation.\n\nSalvation by purchase, by the redeeming blood of Christ; salvation\nby election, by the independent decree of God, sealed by the blood\nof Christ; salvation by faith, by an appropriating faith in the\nblood of Christ; salvation by the Church, by the sacraments made\nefficacious to that end by the blood of Christ; salvation by\nnature, by the irresistible working of the natural order of\nthings, declared by the teachings of Christ; salvation by a\nresurrection from the dead, miraculously effected by the delegated\npower of Christ; salvation by character, by conformity of\ncharacter to the spiritual laws of the universe, to the nature and\nwill of God, revealed, urged, exemplified, by the whole mission of\nChrist; these are the different theories\n\n19 Adams, Mercy to Babes. (A plea for the baptism of infants, that\nthey may not be damned.)\n\n20 Adin Ballou, Universalism and Restorationism Moral Contraries,\n1837.\n\n\nproposed for the acceptance of Christians.\n\nOutside of Christendom we discern, received and operative in\nvarious forms, all the theoretic modes of salvation acknowledged\nwithin it, and some others in addition. The creed and practice of\nthe Mohammedans afford a more unflinching embodiment of the\nconception of salvation by election than is furnished anywhere\nelse. Islam denotes Fate. All is predestinated and follows on in\ninevitable sequence. No modifying influence is possible. Can a\nbreath move Mount Kaf? The chosen of Allah shall believe; the\nrejected of Allah shall deny. Every believer's bower is blooming\nfor him in Paradise; every unbeliever's bed is burning for him in\nhell. And nothing whatever can avail to change the persons or the\ntotal number elected for each.\n\nThere is one theory of salvation scarcely heard of in the West,\nbut extensively held in the East. The Brahmanic as well as the\nBuddhist thinker relies on obtaining salvation by knowledge. Life\nin a continual succession of different bodies is his perdition.\nHis salvation is to be freed from the vortex of births and deaths,\nthe fret and storm of finite existence. Neither goodness nor piety\ncan ever release him. Knowledge alone can do it: an unsullied\nintellectual vision and a free intellectual grasp of truth and\nlove alone can rescue him from the turbid sea of forms and\nstruggles. \"As a lump of salt is of uniform taste within and\nwithout, so the soul is nothing but intelligence.\"21 If the soul\nbe an entire mass of intelligence, a current of ideas, its real\nsalvation depends on its becoming pure and eternal truth without\nmixture of falsehood or of emotional disturbance. He \"must free\nhimself from virtues as well as from sins; for the confinement of\nfetters is the same whether the chain be of gold or of iron.\"22\nAccordingly, the Hindu, to secure emancipation, planes down the\nmountainous thoughts and passions of his soul to a desert level of\nindifferent insight. And when, in direct personal knowledge, free\nfrom joy and sorrow, free from good and ill, he gazes into the\nlimitless abyss of Divine truth, then he is sure of the bosom of\nBrahm, the door of Nirwana. Then the wheel of the Brahmanic Ixion\nceases revolving, and the Buddhist Ahasuerus flings away his\nstaff; for salvation is attained.\n\nThe conception of salvation by ritual works based on faith either\nfaith in Deity or in some redemptive agency is exhibited all over\nthe world. Hani, a Hindu devotee, dwelt in a thicket, and repeated\nthe name of Krishna a hundred thousand times each day, 23 and thus\nsaved his soul. The saintly Muni Shukadev said, as is written in\nthe most popular religious authority of India, \"Who even\nignorantly sing the praises of Krishna undoubtedly obtain final\nbeatitude; just as, if one ignorant of the properties of nectar\nshould drink it, he would still become immortal. Whoever worships\nHari, with whatever disposition of mind, obtains beatitude.\"24\n\"The repetition of the names of Vishnu purifies from all sins,\neven when invoked by an evil minded person, as fire burns even him\nwho approaches it unwillingly.\"25 Nothing is more common in the\nsacred writings of the Hindus than the promise that \"whoever reads\nor hears this narrative with a devout mind shall receive final\nbeatitude.\" Millions on millions of these docile and abject\ndevotees undoubtingly expect salvation by such merely ritual\n\n21 Colebrooke, Essays, vol. i. p. 359.\n\n22 Ibid. p. 363.\n\n23 Asiatic Researches, vol. xvi. p. 115.\n\n24 Eastwick, Prem Sagar, p. 56.\n\n25 Vishnu Parans, p. 210, note 13.\n\n\nobservances. One cries \"Lord!\" \"Lord!\" Another thumbs a book, as\nif it were an omnipotent amulet. Another meditates on some mystic\ntheme, as if musing were a resistless spell of silent exorcism and\ninvocation. Another pierces himself with red hot irons, as if\nvoluntary pain endured now could accumulate merit for him and buy\noff future inflictions.\n\nIt is surprising to what an extent men's efforts for salvation\nseem underlaid by conceptions of propitiation, the placation of a\nhatred, the awakening of a love, in the objects of their worship.\nIn all these cases salvation is sought indirectly through works,\nthough not particularly good works. The savage makes an offering,\nmutters a prayer, or fiercely wounds his body, before the hideous\nidol of his choice. The fakir, swung upon sharp hooks, revolves\nslowly round a fire. The monk wears a hair shirt, and flagellates\nhimself until blood trickles across the floor of his cell. The\nPortuguese sailor in a storm takes a leaden saint from his bosom\nand kneels before it for safety. The offending Bushman crawls in\nthe dust and shudders as he seeks to avert the fury of the fetich\nwhich he has carved and set in a tree. The wounded brigand in the\nApennines, with unnumbered robberies and murders on his soul,\nfinds perfect ease to his conscience as his glazing eye falls on a\ncarefully treasured picture of the Virgin, and he expires in a\ntriumph of faith, saying, \"Sweet Mother of God, intercede for me.\"\nThe Calvinistic convert, about to be executed for his fearful\ncrimes, kneels at the foot of the gallows, and exclaims, as in a\nrecent well known instance, \"I hold the blood of Christ between my\nsoul and the flaming face of God, and die happy, assured that I am\ngoing to heaven.\"\n\nIt is all a terrible delusion, arising from perverted sentiment\nand degraded thought. Of the five theoretical modes of salvation\ntaught in the world, Election, Faith, Works, Knowledge, Harmony,\none alone is real and divine, although it contains principles\ntaken from all the rest and blended with its own. There is no\nsalvation by foregone election; for that would dethrone the moral\nlaws and deify caprice. There is no salvation by dogmatic faith;\nbecause faith is not a matter of will, but of evidence, not within\nman's own power, and a thousand varieties of faith are\nnecessitated among men. There is no salvation by determinate\nworks; for works are measurable quantities, whose rewards and\npunishments are meted and finally spent, but salvation is\nqualitative and infinite. There is no salvation by intellectual\nknowledge; for knowledge is sight, not being, an accident, not an\nessence, an attribute of one faculty, not a right state and ruling\nforce in all. The true salvation is by harmony; for harmony of all\nthe forces of the soul with themselves and with all related forces\nbeyond, harmony of the individual will with the Divine will,\nharmony of personal action with the universal activity, what other\nnegation of perdition is possible? what other definition and\naffirmation of salvation conceivable? By the Creator's fiat, man\nis first elected to be. By the guiding stimulus of faith, he is\nnext animated to spiritual exertion. By the performance of good\nworks, he then brings his moral nature into beautiful form and\nattitude. By knowledge of truth, he furthermore sees how to\ndirect, govern, and attune himself. And finally, by the\naccomplishment of all this in the organized harmony of a wise and\nholy soul, there results that state of being whose passive\nconditions constitute salvation, and whose active experience is\neternal life.\n\nCHAPTER VI.\n\nRECOGNITION OF FRIENDS IN A FUTURE LIFE.\n\nOF all the sorrows incident to human life, none is so penetrating\nto gentle hearts as that which fills them with aching regrets,\nand, for a time, writes hollowness and vanity on their dearest\ntreasures, when death robs them of those they love. And so, of all\nthe questions that haunt the soul, wringing its faculties for a\nsolution, beseeching the oracles of the universe for a response,\nnone can have a more intense interest than gathers about the\nirrepressible inquiry, \"Shall we ever meet again, and know, the\nfriends we have lost? somewhere in the ample creation and in the\nboundless ages, join, with the old familiar love, our long parted,\nfondly cherished, never forgotten dead?\" The grief of bereavement\nand the desire of reunion are experienced in an endless diversity\nof degrees by different persons, according as they are careless,\nhard, and sense bound, or thoughtful, sympathizing, and\nimaginative; undisciplined by the mysteries and afflictions of our\nmortal destiny, or profoundly tried by the disappointments and\nprophecies of time and fate; and as they are shadowed by the gloom\nof despair, or cheered by the radiance of belief. But to all who\nfeel, even the least, the uncertain but deep monitions of the\nsilent pall, the sad procession, and the burial mound, the\nimpressive problem must occur, with frequency and power, Does the\ngrave sunder us and the objects of our affection forever? or,\nacross that dark gulf, shall we be united again in purer bonds?\nOutside of the atheistic dissolution and the pantheistic\nabsorption, it is supposable that, surviving the blow of death,\nour spirits may return to God and run their endless course in\ndivine solitude. On the other hand, it is supposable that,\npossessed with all the memories of this probationary state,\nblessed by the companionship of our earthly friends, we may aspire\ntogether along the interminable gradations of the world to come.\nIf the former supposition be true, and the farewell of the dying\nis the announcement of an irrevocable separation, then the tears\nwe shed over the shrouded clay, once so prized, should be\ndistillations from Lethe's flood, to make us forget all. But if\nthe latter be true, then our deadly seeming losses are as the\npartings of travellers at night to meet in the morning; and, as\nfriend after friend retires, we should sigh to each departing\nspirit a kind adieu till we meet again, and let pleasing memories\nof them linger to mingle in the sacred day dreams of remaining\nlife.\n\nEvidently it is of much importance to a man which of these views\nhe shall take; for each exerts a distinctive influence in regard\nto his peace of mind, his moral strength, and his religious\ncharacter. On one who believes that hereafter, beyond all the\npartings in this land of tombs, he shall never meet the dear\ncompanions who now bless his lot, the death of friends must fall,\nif he be a person of strong sensibilities, as a staggering blow,\nawakening an agony of sorrow, taking from the sky and the earth a\nglory nothing can ever replace, and leaving in his heart a\nwretched void nothing can ever fill. Henceforth he will be\ndeprived mostly for all felt connection between them is hopelessly\nsundered of the good influences they exerted on him when present:\nhe must try, by all expedients, to forget them; think no more of\ntheir virtues, their welcome voices and kindly deeds; wipe from\nthe tablets of his soul all fond records of their united happy\ndays; look not to the future, let the past be as though it had\nnever been, and absorb his thoughts and feelings in the turmoil of\nthe present. This is his only course; and even then, if true to\nthe holiest instincts of his soul, he will find the fatal\nseparation has lessened his being and impoverished his life,\n\n\"For this losing is true dying; This is lordly man's down lying,\nThis his slow but sure reclining, Star by star his world\nresigning.\"\n\nBut to him who earnestly expects soon to be restored under fairer\nauspices and in a deathless world to those from whom he parted as\nhe laid their crumbling bodies in the earth, the death of friends\nwill come as a message from the Great Father, a message solemn yet\nkind, laden indeed with natural sadness yet brightened by sure\npromise and followed by heavenly compensations. If his tears flow,\nthey flow not in scalding bitterness from the Marah fountain of\ndespair, but in chastened joy from the smitten rock of faith. So\nfar from endeavoring to forget the departed, he will cling to\ntheir memories with redoubled tenderness, as a sacred trust and a\nredeeming power. They will be more precious to him than ever,\nstronger to purify and animate. Their saintly examples will\nattract him as never before, and their celestial voices plead from\non high to win him to virtue and to heaven. The constant thought\nof seeing them once more, and wafting in their arms through the\nenchanted spaces of Paradise, will wield a sanctifying force over\nhis spirit. They will make the invisible sphere a peopled reality\nto him, and draw him to God by the diffused bonds of a spiritual\nacquaintance and an eternal love.\n\nSince the result in which a man rests on this subject, believing\nor disbelieving that he shall recognise his beloved ones the other\nside of the grave, exerts a deep influence on him, in one case\ndisheartening, in the other uplifting, it is incumbent on us to\ninvestigate the subject, try to get at the truth, clear it up, and\nappreciate it as well as we can. It is a theme to interest us all.\nWho has not endeared relatives, choice friends, freshly or long\nago removed from this earth into the unknown clime? In a little\nwhile, as the ravaging reaper sweeps on his way, who will not have\nstill more there, or be there himself? Whether old acquaintance\nshall be all forgot or be well remembered there, is an inquiry\nwhich must profoundly interest all who have hearts to love their\ncompanions, and minds to perceive the creeping shadows of mystery\ndrawing over us as we approach the sure destiny of age and the dim\nconfines of the world. It is a theme, far removed from noisy\nstrifes and vain shows, penetrating that mysterious essence of\naffection and thought which we are. The thing of first importance\nis not the conclusion we reach, but the spirit in which we seek\nand hold it. The Christian says to his friend, \"Our souls will be\nunited in yonder heaven.\" Danton, with a horrible travesty, said\nto his comrades on the scaffold, \"Our heads will meet in that\nsack.\"\n\nBefore engaging directly in the discussion, it will be interesting\nto notice, for an instant, the verdict which history, in the\nspontaneous suppositions and rude speculations of ancient peoples,\npronounces on this subject.1 Among their various opinions about\nthe state after death, it is a prominent circumstance that they\ngenerally agree in conceiving it as a social state in which\npersonal likenesses and memories are retained, fellow countrymen\nare grouped together, and friends united. This is minutely true of\nthose nations with the details of whose faith we are acquainted,\nand is implied in the general belief of all others, except those\nwho expected the individual spirit to be absorbed in the soul of\nthe universe. Homer shows Ulysses and Virgil in like manner shows\nAneas upon his entrance into the other world mutually recognising\nhis old comrades and recognised by them. The two heroes whose\ninseparable friendship on earth was proverbial are still together\nin Elysium:\n\n\"Then, side by side, along the dreary coast Advanced Achilles' and\nPatroclus' ghost, A friendly pair.\"\n\nIn this representation that there was a full recognition of\nacquaintances, all the accounts of the other world given in Greek\nand Roman literature harmonize. The same is true of the accounts\ncontained in the literature of the ancient Hebrews. In the Book of\nGenesis, when Jacob hears of the death of his favorite child, he\nexclaims, \"I shall go down to my son Joseph in the under world,\nmourning.\" When the witch of Endor raised the ghost of Samuel,\nSaul knew him by the description she gave of him as he rose. The\nmonarch shades in the under world are pictured by Isaiah as\nrecognising the shade of the king of Babylon and rising from their\nsombre thrones to greet him with mockery. Ezekiel shows us each\npeople of the heathen nations in the under world in a company by\nthemselves. When David's child died, the king sorrowfully\nexclaimed, \"He will not return to me; but I shall go to him.\" All\nthese passages are based on the conception of a gloomy\nsubterranean abode where the ghosts of the dead are reunited after\ntheir separation at death on earth. An old commentator on the\nKoran says a Mohammedan priest was once asked how the blessed in\nparadise could be happy when missing some near relative or dear\nfriend whom they were thus forced to suppose in hell. He replied,\nGod will either cause believers to forget such persons or else to\nrest in expectation of their coming. The anecdote shows\naffectingly that the same yearning heart and curiosity are\npossessed by Moslem and Christian. A still more impressive case in\npoint is furnished by a picture in a Buddhist temple in China. The\npainting represents the story of the priest Lo Puh, who, on\npassing into paradise at death, saw his mother, Yin Te, in hell.\nHe instantly descended into the infernal court, Tsin Kwang Wang,\nwhere she was suffering, and, by his valor, virtues, and\nintercessions, rescued her. The picture vividly portraying the\nwhole story may be seen and studied at the present time by\nChristian missionaries who enter that temple of the benevolent\nBuddha.2 From the faith of many other nations illustrations might\nbe brought of the same fact, that the great common instinct which\nhas led men to believe in a future life has at the same time\ncaused them to believe that in that life there would be a union\nand recognition of friends. Let this far reaching historical fact\nbe taken at its just value,\n\n1 Alexius, Tod and Wiedersehen. Eine Gedankenfolge der besten\nSchriftsteller aller Zeiten und Volker.\n\n2 Asiatic Journal, 1840, p. 211.\n\n\nwhile we proceed to the labor in hand. The fact referred to is of\nsome value, because, being an expression of the heart of man as\nGod made it, it is an indication of his will, a prophecy.\n\nThere are three ways of trying the problem of future recognition.\nThe cool, skeptical class of persons will examine the present\nrelated facts of the case; argue from what they now know; test the\nquestion by induction and inference. Let us see to what results\nthey will thus be led. In the first place, we learn upon\nreflection that we now distinguish each other by the outward form,\nphysical proportion, and combination of looks, tones of voice, and\nother the like particulars. Every one has his individuality in\nthese respects, by which he is separable from others. It may be\nhastily inferred, then, that if we are to know our friends\nhereafter it will be through the retention or the recovery of\ntheir sensible peculiarities. Accordingly, many believe the soul\nto be a perfect reflection or immaterial fac simile of the body,\nthe exact correspondence in shadowy outline of its gross\ntabernacle, and consequently at once recognizable in the\ndisembodied state. The literature of Christendom we may almost say\nof the world teems with exemplifications of this idea. Others,\narguing from the same acknowledged premises, conclude that future\nrecognition will be secured by the resurrection of the material\nbody as it was in all its perfection, in renovated and unfading\nprime. But, leaving out of view the inherent absurdity of the\ndoctrine of a physical resurrection, there is a fatal difficulty\nin the way of both these supposititious modes of mutual knowledge\nin another world. It is this. The outward form, features, and\nexpression sometimes alter so thoroughly that it is impossible for\nus to recognise our once most intimate companions. Cases are not\nrare of this kind. Let one pass in absence from childhood to\nmaturity, and who that had not seen him in the mean time could\ntell that it was he? The trouble arising thence is finely\nillustrated by Shakspeare in the motherly solicitude of Constance,\nwho, on learning that her young son has been imprisoned by his\nuncle, King John, and will probably be kept until he pines to\ndeath, cries in anguish to her confessor,\n\n\"Father cardinal, I have  heard you say\nThat we shall see and know our friends in heaven:\nIf that be true, I shall see my boy again;\nFor, since the birth of Cain, the first male child,\nTo him that did but yesterday suspire,\nThere was not such a gracious creature born.\nBut now will canker sorrow eat my bud\nAnd chase the native beauty from his cheek,\nAnd he will look as hollow as a ghost,\nAs dim and meagre as an ague's fit;\nAnd so he'll die; and, rising so again,\nWhen I shall meet him in the court of heaven\nI shall not know him: therefore never, never\nMust I behold my pretty Arthur more.\"\n\nOwing to the changes of all sorts which take place in the body,\nfuture recognition cannot safely depend upon that or upon any\nresemblance of the spirit to it. Besides, not the faintest proof\ncan be adduced of any such perceptible correspondence subsisting\nbetween them.\n\nTurning again to the facts of experience, we find that it is not\nalone, nor indeed chiefly, by their visible forms and features\nthat we know our chosen ones. We also, and far more truly, know\nthem by the traits of their characters, the elements of their\nlives, the effluence of their spirits, the magic atmosphere which\nsurrounds them, the electric thrill and communication which vivify\nand conjoin our souls. And even in the exterior, that which most\nreveals and distinguishes each is not the shape, but the\nexpression, the lights and shades, reflected out from the immortal\nspirit shrined within. We know each other really by the mysterious\nmotions of our souls. And all these things endure and act\nuninterrupted though the fleshly frame alter a thousand times or\ndissolve in its native dust. The knowledge of a friend, then,\nbeing independent of the body, spirits may be recognised in the\nfuture state by the associations mutually surrounding them, the\nfeelings connecting them. Amidst all the innumerable thronging\nmultitudes, through all the immeasurable intervening heights and\ndepths, of the immaterial world, remembered and desired companions\nmay be selected and united by inward laws that act with the ease\nand precision of chemical affinities. We may therefore recognise\neach other by the feelings which now connect us, and which shall\nspontaneously kindle and interchange when we meet in heaven, as\nthe signs of our former communion.\n\nIt needs but little thought to perceive that by this view future\nrecognition is conditional, being made to depend on the permanence\nof our sympathies: there must be the same mutual relations,\naffinities, fitness to awaken the same emotions upon approaching\neach other's sphere, or we shall neither know nor be known. But in\nfact our sympathies and aversions change as much as our outward\nappearance does. The vices and virtues, loves and hatreds, of our\nhearts alter, the peculiar characteristics of our souls undergo as\ngreat a transformation, sometimes, as thorough a revolution, as\nthe body does in the interval between childhood and manhood. These\nchanges going on in our associates frequently change our feelings\ntowards them, heightening or diminishing our affection, creating a\nnew interest, destroying an old one, now making enemies lovers,\nand now thoroughly alienating very friends. Such fundamental\nalterations of character may occur in us, or in our friend, before\nwe meet in the unseen state, that we shall no more recognise each\nother's spirits than we should know each other on earth after a\nseparation in which our bodily appearances and voices had been\nentirely changed. These considerations would induce us to think\nthat recognition hereafter is not sure, but turns on the condition\nthat we preserve a remembrance, desire, and adaptedness for one\nanother.\n\nIf now the critical inquirer shall say there is no evidence, and\nit is incredible, that the body will be restored to a future life,\nor that the soul has any resemblance to the body by which it may\nbe identified, furthermore, if he shall maintain that the doctrine\nof the revelation and recognition of the souls of friends in\nanother life by an instinctive feeling, a mysterious attraction\nand response, is fanciful, an overdrawn conclusion of the\nimagination, not warranted by a stern induction of the average\nrealities of the subject, and if he shall then ask, how are we to\ndistinguish our former acquaintances among the hosts of heaven?\nthere is one more fact of experience which meets the case and\nanswers his demand. When long absence and great exposures have\nwiped off all the marks by which old companions knew each other,\nit has frequently happened that they have met and conversed with\nindifference, each being ignorant of whom the other was; and so it\nhas continued until, by some indirect means, some accidental\nallusion, or the agency of a third person, they have been suddenly\nrevealed. Then, with throbbing hearts, in tears and rapture, they\nhave rushed into each other's arms, with an instantaneous\nrecurrence of their early friendship in all its original warmth,\nfulness, and flooding associations. Many such instances are\nrelated in books of romance with strict truth to the actual\noccurrences of life. Several instances of it are authenticated in\nthe early history of America, when children, torn from their homes\nby the Indians, were recovered by their parents after twenty or\nthirty years had elapsed and they were identified by circumstantial\nevidence. Let any parent ask his heart, any true friend ask his heart,\nif, discovering by some foreign means the object of his love,\nhe would not embrace him with just as ardent a gratitude and\ndevotion as though there were no outward change and they had\nknown one another at sight. So, in the life beyond the\ngrave, if we are not able to recognise our earthly companions\ndirectly, either by spiritual sight or by intuitive feeling, we\nmay obtain knowledge of each other indirectly by comparison of\ncommon recollections, or by the mediation of angels, or by some\nother Divine arrangement especially prepared for that purpose. And\ntherefore, whether in heaven we look or feel as we do here or not,\nwhether there be any provision in our present constitution for\nfuture recognition or not, is of no consequence. In a thousand\nways the defect can be remedied, if such be the will of God. And\nthat such is his will every relevant fact and consideration would\nseem to prove. It is a consistent and seemingly requisite\ncontinuation and completion of that great scheme of which this\nlife is a part. It is an apparently essential element and\nfulfilment of the wonderful apparatus of retribution, reward, and\ndiscipline, intended to educate us as members of God's eternal\nfamily. Because from the little which we now understand we cannot\ninfer with plainness and certainty the precise means and method by\nwhich we can discriminate our friends in heaven need be no\nobstacle to believing the fact itself; for there are millions of\nundoubted truths whose conditions and ways of operation we can\nnowise fathom. Upon the whole, then, we conclude that we cannot by\nour mere understandings decide with certainty the question\nconcerning future recognition; but we are justified in trusting to\nthe accuracy of that doctrine, since it rests safely with the free\npleasure of God, who is both infinitely able and disposed to do\nwhat is best, and we cannot help believing that it is best for us\nto be with and love hereafter those whom we are with and love\nhere.3\n\nThere is a way of dealing with the general subject before us\nwholly different from the course thus far pursued. Ceasing to act\nthe philosopher, laying aside all arguments and theories, all dry\nspeculations, we may come as simple believers to the Christian\nScriptures and investigate their teachings to accept whatever they\npronounce as the word of God's truth. Let us see to what results\nwe shall thus be led. Searching the New Testament to learn its\ndoctrine\n\n3 Munch, Werden wir uns wiedersehen nach dem Tode. This work,\nbased on the Kantian philosophy, denies future recognition. There\nis an able reply to it by Vogel, Ueber die Hoffnung des\nWiedersehens.\n\n\nin regard to reunion in a future state, we are very soon struck\nwith surprise at the mysterious reserve, so characteristic of its\npages, on this entire theme. Instead of a full and minute\nrevelation blazing along the track of the gospel pens, a few\nfragmentary intimations, incidental hints, scattered here and\nthere, are the substance of all that it expressly says. But though\nlittle is directly declared, yet much is plainly implied:\nespecially the one great inference with which we are now concerned\nmay be unequivocally and repeatedly drawn. In the parable of the\nRich Man and the Beggar the Savior pictures forth the recognition\nof their souls in the disembodied state. Dives also is described\nas recollecting with intense interest, with the most anxious\nsympathy, his endangered brethren on earth. Although this occurs\nin a parable, yet it is likely that so prominent and vital a\nfeature of it would be moulded, as to its essential significance,\nin accordance with what the author intended should be received as\ntruth. Jesus also speaks of many who should come from the east and\nthe west and sit down with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the\nkingdom of heaven; from which it would appear that the patriarchs\nare together in fellowship and that the righteous of after times\nwere to be received with them in mutual acquaintance. On the Mount\nof Transfiguration the witnessing disciples saw Moses and Elias\ntogether with Jesus, and recognised them, probably from their\nresemblance to traditional descriptions of them. Jesus always\nrepresented the future state as a society. He said to his\nfollowers, \"I go to prepare a place for you, that where I am there\nye may be also;\" and he prayed to his Father that his disciples\nmight be with him where he was going. At another time he declared\nof little children, \"Their angels always behold the face of my\nFather in heaven:\" he also taught that \"there is joy in heaven\nover every sinner that repenteth;\" passages that presuppose such a\ncommunity of faculties, sympathies, in heaven and earth, in angels\nand men, as certainly implies the doctrine of continued knowledge\nand fellowship. When heaven was opened before the dying Stephen,\nhe saw and instantly knew his Divine Master, the Lord Jesus, and\ncalled to him to welcome his ascending spirit. Paul writes to the\nThessalonians that he would not have them sorrow concerning the\ndead as those who have no hope, assuring them that when Christ\nreappears they shall all be united again. In the Apocalypse, John\nsaw, in a vision, the souls of the martyrs, who had died for the\nfaith of the gospel, together, under the altar. From community of\nsuffering and a common abode together in heaven we may safely\ninfer their recognition of each other. The Gospels declare that\nChrist after his death remembered his disciples and came back to\nthem to assure them that they should rejoin him on high; and the\napostles assert that we are to be with Christ and to be like him\nin the future state. It follows from the admission of these\ndeclarations that we shall remember our friends and be united with\nthem in conscious knowledge. Few, and brief, and vague as the\nutterances of the Scriptures are in relation to this theme, they\nnecessarily involve all the results of an avowed doctrine. They\nundeniably involve the supposition that in the other life we shall\nbe conscious personalities as here, retaining our memories and\nconstituting a society. From these implications the fact of the\nfuture recognition of friends irresistibly results, unless there\nbe some special interference to prevent it; and such an\ninterposition there is no hint of and can be no reason for\nfearing.\n\nSuch is really all that we can learn from the Scriptures on the\nsubject of our inquiry.4 Its indirectness and brevity would\nconvince us that God did not intend to betray to us in clear light\nthe secrets of the shrouded future, that for some reason it is\nbest that his teaching should be so reserved, and leave us to the\nhaunting wonder, the anxious surmise, the appalling mystery, the\nalluring possibilities, that now meet our gaze on the unmoving\nveil of death. God intends we shall trust in him without\nknowledge, and by faith, not by sight, pursue his guidance into\nthe silent and unknown land.\n\nTherefore, after analyzing the relevant facts of present\nexperience and inferring what we can from them, and after studying\nthe Scriptures and finding what they say, there is yet another\nmethod of considering the problem of recognition in the future\nstate. That is without caring for critical discussion, without\ndeferring to extraneous authority, we may follow the gravitating\nforce of instinct, imagination, and moral reason. We are made to\nlove and depend on each other. The longer, the more profoundly, we\nknow and admire the good, the more our being becomes intertwined\nwith theirs, so much the more intensely we desire to be with them\nalways, and so much the more awful is the agony of separation.\nThis, what is it but great Nature's testimony, God's silent\navowal, that we are to meet in eternity? Can the fearful anguish\nof bereavement be gratuitous? can the yearning prophecies of the\nsmitten heart be all false? Belief in reunion hereafter is\nspontaneously adopted by humanity. We therefore esteem it divinely\nordered or true. Without that soothing and sustaining trust, the\nunrelieved, intolerable wretchedness in many cases would burst\nthrough the fortress of the mind, hurl reason from its throne, and\ntear the royal affections and their attendants in the trampled\ndust of madness. Many a rarely gifted soul, unknown in his\nnameless privacy of life, has been so conjoined with a worthy\npeer, through precious bonds of unutterable sympathy, that, rather\nthan be left behind, \"the divided half of such a friendship as had\nmastered time,\" he has prayed that they, dying at once, might,\ninvolved together, hover across the dolorous strait to the other\nshore, and\n\n\"Arrive at last the blessed goal\nWhere He that died in Holy Land\nMight reach them out the shining hand\nAnd take them as a single soul.\"\n\nDenied that inmost wish, the rest of his widowed life below has\nbeen one melancholy strain of \"In Memoriam.\" Many a faithful and\nnoble mourner, whose garnered love and hope have been blighted for\nthis world, would tell you that, without meeting his lost ones\nthere, heaven itself would be no heaven to him. In such a state of\nsoul we must expect to know again in an unfading clime the\ncherished dead. That belief is of Divine inspiration, an\narrangement to heal the deadly wounds of sorrow. It is madness not\nto think it a verity. Who believes, as he shall float through the\nambrosial airs of heaven, he could touch, in passing, the radiant\nrobes of his chosen friends without a thrill of recognition, the\nprelude to a blissful and immortal communion? Is there not truth\nin the poet's picture of the meeting of child and parent in heaven?\n\n4 Harbaugh, The Heavenly Recognition. Gisborne, Recollections of\nFriends in the World to Come. Muston, Perpetuation of Christian\nFriendship.\n\n\n\"It was not, mother, that I knew thy face: The luminous eclipse\nthat is on it now, Though it was fair on earth, would have made it\nstrange Even to one who knew as well as he loved thee; But my\nheart cried out in me, Mother!\"\n\nThink of the unfathomable yearnings, the infinite ecstasies of\ndesire and faith from age to age swelling in the very heart of the\nworld, all set on the one hope of future union, and who then can\nbelieve that God will coldly blast them all? They are innocent,\nthey are holy, they are meritorious, they are unspeakably dear. We\nwould not destroy them; and God will not.\n\nMan's life is the true fable of that beautiful youth, Narcissus,\nwho had a twin sister of remarkable loveliness, strongly\nresembling himself, and to whom he was most tenderly attached. She\ndies young. He frequents fountains to gaze upon his own image\nreflected in the waters, it seeming to him the likeness of her he\nhas lost. He is in pity transformed into a flower on the border of\na stream, where, bending on his fragile stem, he seeks his image\nin the waters murmuring by, until he fades and dies. Has not God,\nthe all loving Author who composed the sweet poem of Man and\nNature, written at the close a reconciling Elysium wherein these\npure lovers, the fond Narcissus and his echo mate, shall wander in\nperennial bliss, their embracing forms mirrored in unruffled\nfountains?\n\nLooking now for the conclusion of the whole matter, we find that\nit lies in three different aspects, both of inquiring thought and\nof practical morality, according to the lights and modes in which\nthree different classes of minds approach it. To the consistent\nmetaphysician, reasoning rigidly on grounds of science and\nphilosophy, every thing pertaining to the methods and circumstances\nof the future life is an affair of entire uncertainty and hypothesis.5\nIf in the future state the soul retains its individuality as an\nidentical force, form, life, and memory, and if associates in the\npresent state are brought together, it is probable that old friends\nwill recognise each other. But if they are oblivious of the past,\nif they are incommunicably separated in space or state, if one\nprogresses so much farther that the other can never overtake him,\nif the personal soul blends its individual consciousness with the\nunitary consciousness of the Over Soul, if it commences a new career\nfrom a fresh psychical germ, then, by the terms, there will be no\nmutual recognition. In that case his comfort and his duty are to\nknow that the anguish and longing he now feels will cease then; to\ntrust in the benignity of the Infinite Wisdom, who knows best what\nto appoint for his creatures; and to submit with harmonizing\nresignation to the unalterable decree, offering his private wish a\nvoluntary sacrifice on the altar of natural piety. That he shall\nknow his friends hereafter is not impossible, not improbable;\nneither is it certain. He may desire it, expect it, but not with\nspeculative pride dogmatically affirm it, nor with insisting\negotism presumptuously demand it.\n\n5 Gravell, Das Wiedersehen nach dem Tode. Wie es nur sein konne.\n\nTo the uncritical Christian the recognising reunion of friends in\nheaven is an unshaken assurance.6 There is nothing to disturb his\nimplicit reception of the plain teaching of Scripture. The\nlegitimate exhortations of his faith are these. Mourn not too\nbitterly nor too long over your absent dead; for you shall meet\nthem in an immortal clime. As the last hour comes for your dearest\nones or for yourself, be of good cheer; for an imperishable joy is\nyours. You:\n\n\"Cannot lose the hope that many a year\nHath shone on a gleaming way,\nWhen the walls of life are closing round\nAnd the sky grows sombre gray.\"\n\nPut not away the intruding thoughts of the departed, but let them\noften recur. The dead are constant. You know not how much they may\nthink of you, how near they may be to you. Will you pass to meet\nthem not having thought of them for years, having perhaps\nforgotten them? Let your mind have its nightly firmament of\nreligious communion, beneath which white and sable memories shall\nwalk, and the sphered spirits of your risen friends, like stars,\nshed down their holy rays to soothe your feverish cares and hush\nevery murmuring doubt to rest. From the dumb heavings of your\nloving and trustful heart, sometimes exclaim, Parents who nurtured\nand watched over me with unwearied affection, I would remember you\noft, and love you well, and so live that one day I may meet you at\nthe right hand of God. Early friends, so close and dear once, who\nin the light of young romance trod with me life's morning hills,\nneither your familiar faces nor your sweet communion are forgotten\nby me: I fondly think of you, and aspire towards you, and pray for\na purer soul, that I may mount to your celestial circle at last;\n\n\"For many a tear these eyes must weep,\nAnd many a sin must be forgiven,\nEre these pale lids shall sink to sleep,\nEre you and I shall meet in heaven.\"\n\nBlessed Jesus, elder Brother of our race, who sittest now by thy\nFather's throne, or pacest along the crystal coast as a leader,\nchief among ten thousand, whose condescending brow the bloody\nthorns no longer press, but the dazzling crown of thy Divinity\nencircles, oh, remember us, poor erring pilgrims after thine\nearthly steps; pity us, help us, and after death bring us to thy\nhome.\n\nTo the sympathetic poet, the man of sentiment and meditation, who\nviews the question from the position of the heart, in the glory\nand vistas of the imagination, but with all the known facts and\nrelations of the subject lying bare under his sight, the uniting\nrestoration, in another sphere, of earth's broken ties and parted\nfriends, is an unappeasable craving of the soul, in harmony with\nthe moral law, powerfully prophesied to his experience from all\nquarters, and seemingly confirmed to his hopes by every promise of\nGod and nature.7\n\n6 Grafe, Biblische Beitrage zu der Frage, Werden wir uns\nwiedersehen nach dem Tode.\n\n7 Engel, Wir werden uns wiedersehen. Halst, Beleuchtung der\nHauptgrunde fur den Glauben an Erinnerung und Wiedersehen nach dem\nTode. Streicher, Neue Beitrage zur Kritik des Glaubens an\nRuckerinnerung nach dem Tode.\n\n\nReceived as a truth, it is a well of inexhaustible comfort, making\nexperience a green oasis where it overflows. The denial of it as a\nproven falsehood is a withering blast of dust blowing on the\nfriendly caravan of sojourners in the desert of life. If existence\nis the enjoyment of a largess of social love, and death is to have\na solitary hand snatch it all away forever, how dismal is the\nprospect to the poor heart that loves and clings, loses and\ndespairs, and can only falter hopelessly on! It cannot be so. Love\nis the true prophet. Heaven will restore the treasures earth has\nlost.\n\nThe mourner by the grave! Eve convulsed over the form of Abel!\nJesus weeping where Lazarus lay! America embracing the urn of\nWashington! The Genius of Humanity at the Tomb of the Past! It is\nthe most pathetic spectacle of the world. As in the old myth the\npelican, hovering over her dead broodlets, pierced her own breast\nin agony and fluttered there until by the fanning of her wings\nabove them and the dropping of her warm blood on them they were\nbrought to life again, so the great Mother of men seems in history\nto brood over the ashes of departed ages, dropping the tears of\nher grief and faith into the future to restore her deceased\nchildren to life and draw them together within her embrace. And\nthat sublime Rachel will not easily be comforted except when her\nthoughts, migrating whither her offspring have gone, seem to find\nthem happy in some happy heaven.\n\nThe poet, lover of his race, who cannot trust his happier\ninstinct, but perforce believes that beyond the sepulchral line of\nmortality he shall know no more of his friends, may find, as helps\nto a willing acquiescence in what is fated, either one of two\npossible contemplations.8 He may sadly lay upon his heart the\nstifling solace, There will be no baffled wants nor unhappiness,\nbut all will be over when hic jacet is sculptured on the headstone\nof my grave. Or, with measureless rebound of faith, he may crowd\nthe capacity of his soul with the mysterious presentiment, In the\nunchangeable fulness of an infinite bliss, all specialties will be\nmerged and forgotten, and I shall be one of those to whom \"the\nwearisome disease\" of remembered sorrow and anticipated joy \"is an\nalien thing.\"\n\n8 Wieland's Euthanasia expresses disbelief in the preservation of\npersonality and consciousness after death. The same ground had\nbeen taken in the work published anonymously at Halle in 1775,\nPlato and Leibnitz jenseits des Styx. See, on the other side of\nthe question, Wohlfahrt, Tempel der Unsterblichkeit, oder neue\nAnthologie der wichtigsten Ausspruche, besonders neuerer Weisen\nuber Wiedersehen u. s. w.\n\nCHAPTER VII.\n\nLOCAL FATE OF MAN IN THE ASTRONOMIC UNIVERSE.\n\nACCORDING to the imagining of some speculative geologists, perhaps\nthis earth first floated in the abyss as a volume of vapor,\nwreathing its enormous folds of mist in fantastic shapes as it was\nborne along on the idle breath of law. Ages swept by, until this\nstupendous fog ball was condensed into an ocean of fire, whose\nbillows heaved their lurid bosoms and reared their ashy crests\nwithout a check, while their burning spray illuminated its track\naround the sable vault. During periods which stagger computation,\nthis molten world was gradually cooled down; constant rivers wrung\nfrom the densely swathing vapor poured over the heated mass and at\nlast submerged its crust in an immense sea. Then, for unknown\ncenturies, fire, water, and wind waged a Titanic war, that\nimagination shudders to think of, jets of flame licking the stars,\nmassive battlements and columns of fire piled to terrific heights,\nnow the basin of the sea suddenly turned into a glowing caldron\nand the atmosphere saturated with steam, again explosions hurling\nmountains far into space and tearing the earth open in ghastly\nrents to its very heart. At length the fire was partially subdued,\nthe peaceful deep glassed the sky in its bosom or rippled to the\nwhispers of the breeze, and from amidst the fertile slime and\nmould of its sheltered floor began to sprout the first traces of\norganic life, the germs of a rude species of marine vegetation.\nThousands of years rolled on. The world ocean subsided, the peaks\nof mountains, the breasts of islands, mighty continents, emerged,\nand slowly, after many tedious processes of preparation, a\ngigantic growth of grass, every blade as large as our vastest oak,\nshot from the soil, and the incalculable epoch of ferns commenced,\nwhose tremendous harvest clothed the whole land with a deep carpet\nof living verdure. While unnumbered growths of this vegetation\nwere successively maturing, falling, and hardening into the dark\nlayers of inexhaustible coal beds, the world, one waving\nwilderness of solemn ferns, swept in its orbit, voiceless and\nsilent, without a single bird or insect of any kind in all its\nmagnificent green solitudes, the air everywhere being heavily\nsurcharged with gases of the deadliest poison. Again innumerable\nages passed, and the era of mere botanic growths reaching its\nlimit, the lowest forms of animal life moved in the waters, the\nearliest creatures being certain marine reptiles, worms, and bugs\nof the sea. Then followed various untimed periods, during which\nanimal life rose by degrees from mollusk and jellyfish, by\nplesiosaurus and pterodactyl, horrible monsters, hundreds of feet\nin length, whose tramp crashed through the woods, or whose flight\nloaded the groaning air, to the dolphin and the whale in the sea,\nthe horse and the lion on the land, and the eagle, the\nnightingale, and the bird of paradise in the air. Finally, when\nmillions of aons had worn away, the creative process culminated in\nHumanity, the crown and perfection of all; for God said, \"Let us\nmake man in our own image;\" and straightway Adam, with upright\nform, kingly eye, and reason throned upon his brow, stood on the\nsummit of the world and gave names to all the races of creatures\nbeneath.1\n\nAt this stage two important questions arise. The first is, whether\nman is the final type of being intended in the Divine plan for\nthis world, or whether he too is destined in his turn to be\nsuperseded by a higher race, endowed with form, faculties, and\nattributes transcending our conceptions, even as our own\ntranscended the ideas of the previous orders of existence.\nUndoubtedly, had the ichthyosaurus, ploughing through the deep and\nmaking it boil like a pot, or one of those mammoth creatures of\nthe antediluvian age who browsed half a dozen trees for breakfast,\ncrunched a couple of oxen for luncheon and a whole flock of sheep\nfor his dinner, been consulted on a similar problem, he would have\nreplied, without hesitation, \"I exhaust the uses of the world.\nWhat animal can there be superior to me? beyond a question, my\nrace shall possess the earth forever!\" The mastodon could not know\nany uses of nature except those he was fitted to experience, nor\nimagine a being with the form and prerogatives of man. Therefore\nhe would not believe that the mastodon race would ever be\ndisplaced by the human. We labor under the same disqualification\nfor judgment. There may be in the system of nature around us\nadaptations, gifts, glories, as much higher than any we enjoy as\nour noblest powers and privileges are in advance of those of the\ntiger or the lark.\n\nIt is a remarkable fact that the mature states of the antediluvian\nraces correspond with the foetal states of the present races, and\nthat the foetal states of embryonic man are counterparts of the\nmature states of the lower races now contemporaneous with him.\nThis great discovery of modern science, though perhaps destitute\nof logical value, suggests to the imagination the thought that man\nmay be but the foetal state of a higher being, a regent\ntemporarily presiding here until the birth and inauguration of the\ntrue king of the world, and destined himself to be born from the\nwomb of this world into the free light and air of the spirit\nkingdom!\n\nThe resources of God are inexhaustible; and in the evolution of\nhis prearranged ages it may be that there will arise upon the\nearth a race of beings of unforetold majesty, who shall disinter\nthe remnant bones and ponder the wrecked monuments of forgotten\nman as we do those of the disgusting reptiles of the Saurian\nepoch. But this is a mere conceit of possibility; and, so far as\nthe data for forming an opinion are in our hands, it is altogether\nincredible. So far as appears, the adaptation between man and the\nearth is exhaustive. He is able to subdue all her forces, reign\nover all her provinces, enjoy all her delights, and gather into\nhis consciousness all her prophecies. And our practical conviction\nis absolute that the race of men is the climax of being destined\nfor this earth, and that they will occupy its hospitable bosom\nforever with their toils and their homes, their sports and their\ngraves.2\n\nThe other question is this: Was the subjection of the human race\nto physical death a part of the Creator's original plan, or the\nretributive result of a subsequent dislocation of that plan by\nsin? a part of the great harmony of nature, or a discord marring\nthe happy destiny\n\n1 Harris, The Pre Adamite Earth.\n\n2 Agassiz says no higher creature than man is to be expected on\nearth, because the capacities of the earthly plan of organic\ncreation are completed and exhausted with him. Introduction to\nStudy of Natural History, p. 57.\n\n\nof man? Approaching this problem on grounds of science and reason\nalone, there can be no hesitation as to the reply. There are but\ntwo considerations really bearing upon the point and throwing\nlight upon it; and they both force us to the same conclusion.\nFirst, it is a fact admitting no denial that death was the\npredetermined natural fate of the successive generations of the\nraces that preceded man. Now, what conceivable reason is there for\nsupposing that man, constructed from the same elements, living\nunder the same organic laws, was exempt from the same doom? There\nis not in the whole realm of science a single hint to that effect.\nSecondly, the reproductive element an essential feature in the\nhuman constitution, leading our kind to multiply and replenish the\nearth is a demonstration that the office of death entered into\nGod's original plan of the world. For otherwise the earth at this\nmoment could not hold a tithe of the inhabitants that would be\ndemanding room. When God had permitted this world to roll in space\nfor awful ages, a lifeless globe of gas, fire, water, earth, and\nthen let it be occupied for incommensurable epochs more by snails,\nvermin, and iguanodons, would he wind up the whole scene and\ndestroy it when the race of man, crowning glory of all, had only\nflourished for a petty two thousand years? It is not credible. And\nyet it must have been so unless it was decreed that the successive\ngenerations should pass away and thus leave space for, the new\ncomers. We conclude, then, that it is the will of God and was in\nthe beginning that the human race shall possess the earth through\nall the unknown periods of the future, the parents continually\npassing off the stage in death as the children rise upon it to\nmaturity. We cannot discern any authority in those old traditions\nwhich foretell the impending destruction of the world. On what\ngrounds are we to believe them? The great system of things is a\nstable harmony. There is no wear or tear in the perfect machinery\nof the creation, rolling noiseless in its blue bearings of ether.\nIt seems, comparatively speaking, to have just begun. Its\noscillations are self adjusted, and science prophesies for\nhumanity an illimitable career on this earthly theatre. The swift\nmelting of the elements and restoration of chaos is a mere heathen\nwhim or a poetic figment. It is the bards who sing,\n\n\"The earth shall shortly die. Her grave is dug. I see the worlds,\nnight clad, all gathering In long and dark procession. And the\nstars, Which stand as thick as glittering dewdrops on The fields\nof heaven, shall pass in blazing mist.\"\n\nSuch pictures are delusion winning the imagination, not truth\ncommanding the reason. In spite of all the Cassandra screams of\nthe priesthood, vaticinating universal ruin, the young old earth,\nfresh every spring, shall remain under God's preserving\nprovidence, and humanity's inexhaustible generations renewedly\nreign over its kingdoms, forever. Plotinus said, \"If God repents\nhaving made the world, why does he defer its destruction? If he\ndoes not yet repent, he never will, as being now accustomed to it,\nand becoming through time more friendly to it.\"\n\n3 Lucan says, \"Our bones and the stars shall be mingled on one\nfuneral pyre.\" Communis mundo superest rogus, ossibus astra\nMisturus.\n\nBut to receive such a good piece of poetry as veritable prevision\nis surely a puerile error which a mature mind in the nineteenth\ncentury should be ashamed to commit.\n\nThe most recently broached theory of the end of the world is that\ndeveloped from some remarkable speculations as to the composition\nand distribution of force. The view is briefly this. All force is\nderived from heat. All heat is derived from the sun.4 The\nmechanical value of a cubic mile of sunlight at the surface of the\nearth is one horse power for a third of a minute; at the sun it is\nfifteen thousand horse power for a minute. Now, it is calculated\nthat enough heat is radiated from the sun to require for its\nproduction the annual consumption of the whole surface of the sun\nto the depth of from ten to twenty miles. Of course, ultimately\nthe fuel will be all expended; then the forces of the system will\nexpire, and the creation will die.5 This brilliant and sublime\ntheorem assumes, first, that the heat of the sun arises from\nconsumption of matter, which may not be true; secondly, that it is\nnot a self replenishing process, as it certainly may be. Some have\neven surmised that the zodiacal light is an illuminated tornado of\nstones showering into the sun to feed its tremendous\nconflagration. The whole scheme is a fine toy, but a very faint\nterror. Even if it be true, then we are to perish at last from\nlack of fire, and not, as commonly feared, from its abundance!\n\nThe belief of mankind that a soul or ghost survives the body has\nbeen so nearly universal as to appear like the spontaneous result\nof an instinct. We propose to trace the history of opinions\nconcerning the physical destination of this disembodied spirit,\nits connection with localities, to give the historical topography\nof the future life.\n\nThe earliest conception of the abode of the dead was probably that\nof the Hebrew Sheol or the Greek Hades, namely, the idea born from\nthe silence, depth, and gloom of the grave of a stupendous\nsubterranean cavern full of the drowsy race of shades, the\nindiscriminate habitation of all who leave the land of the living.\nGradually the thought arose and won acceptance that the favorites\nof Deity, peerless heroes and sages, might be exempt from this\ndismal fate, and migrate at death to some delightful clime beyond\nsome far shore, there, amidst unalloyed pleasures, to spend\nimmortal days. This region was naturally located on the surface of\nthe earth, where the cheerful sun could shine and the fresh\nbreezes blow, yet in some untrodden distance, where the gauntlet\nof fact had not smitten the sceptre of fable. The paltry portion\nof this earth familiar to the ancients was surrounded by an\nunexplored region, which their fancy, stimulated by the legends of\nthe poets, peopled with mythological kingdoms, the rainbow bowers\nand cloudy synods of Olympus, from whose glittering peak the\nThunderer threw his bolts over the south; the Golden Garden of the\n\n3 Ennead ii. lib. ix.: Contra Gnosticos, cap. 4.\n\n4 Helmholtz, Edinburgh Phil. Msg., series iv. vol. xi.:\nInteraction of Natural Forces.\n\n5 Thomson, Ibid. Dec. 1854: Mechanical Energies of the Solar\nSystem.\n\n\nHesperides, whose dragons lay on guard in the remote west; the\ndivine cities of Meru, whose encircling towers pierced the eastern\nsky; the Banquet Halls of Ethiopia, gleaming through the fiery\ndesert; the fragrant Islands of Immortality, musical and luring in\nthe central ocean; the happy land of the Hyperboreans, beyond the\nsnowy summits of northern Caucasus:\n\n\"How pleasant were the wild beliefs That dwelt in legends old!\nAlas! to our posterity Will no such tales be told. We know too\nmuch: scroll after scroll Weighs down our weary shelves: Our only\npoint of ignorance Is centred in ourselves.\"\n\nThere was a belief among the Persians that Kaf, a mountain two\nthousand miles high, formed a rim to the flat world and prevented\ntravellers from ever falling off.6 The fact that the earth is a\nglobe inhabited on all sides is a comparatively recent piece of\nknowledge. So late as in the eighth century Pope Zachary accused\nVirgilius, an Irish mathematician and monk, of heresy for\nbelieving in the existence of antipodes.7 St. Boniface wrote to\nthe Pope against Virgilius; and Zachary ordered a council to be\nheld to expel him from the Church, for \"professing, against God\nand his own soul, so perverse and wicked a doctrine.\" To the\nancients all beyond the region they had traversed was an unknown\nland, clothed in darkness, crowded with mystery and allurement.\nAcross the weltering wastes of brine, in a halcyon sea, the Hindu\nplaced the White Isle, the dwelling of translated and immortalized\nmen.8 Under the attraction of a mystic curiosity, well might the\nold, wearied Ulysses say,\n\n\"Come, my friends, 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world. Push\noff, and, sitting well in order, smite The sounding furrows; for\nmy purpose holds To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths Of all\nthe western stars, until I die. It may be that the gulfs will wash\nus down: It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles, And see the\ngreat Achilles, whom we knew.\"\n\nDecius Brutus and his army, as Florus relates, reaching the coast\nof Portugal, where, for the first time, they saw the sun setting\nin the blood tinged ocean, turned back their standards with horror\nas they beheld \"the huge corpse of ruddy gold let down into the\ndeep.\" The Phoenician traders brought intelligence to Greece of a\npeople, the Cimmerians, who dwelt on the borders of Hades in the\numbered realms of perpetual night. To the dying Roman, on the\nfarthest verge of the known horizon hovered a vision of Elysian\nFields. And the American\n\n6 Adventures of Hatim Tai, p. 36, note.\n\n7 Whewell, Hist. Inductive Sciences, vol. i. book iv. ch. i. sect.\n7.\n\n8 Wilford, Essays on the Sacred Isles, In Asiatic Researches,\nvols. viii. xi.\n\n\nIndian, sinking in battle or the chase, caught glimpses of happier\nHunting Grounds, whose woods trooped with game, and where the\narrows of the braves never missed, and there was no winter. There\nwas a pretty myth received among some of the ancient Britons,\nlocating their paradise in a spot surrounded by tempests, far in\nthe Western Ocean, and named Flath Innis, or Noble Island.9 The\nfollowing legend is illustrative. An old man sat thoughtful on a\nrock beside the sea. A cloud, under whose squally skirts the\nwaters foamed, rushed down; and from its dark womb issued a boat,\nwith white sails bent to the wind, and hung round with moving\noars. Destitute of mariners, itself seemed to live and move. A\nvoice said, \"Arise, behold the boat of heroes: embark, and see the\nGreen Isle of those who have passed away!\" Seven days and seven\nnights he voyaged, when a thousand tongues called out, \"The Isle!\nthe Isle!\" The black billows opened before him, and the calm land\nof the departed rushed in light on his eyes. We are reminded by\nthis of what Procopius says concerning the conveyal of the soul of\nthe barbarian to his paradise. At midnight there is a knocking at\nthe door, and indistinct voices call him to come. Mysteriously\nimpelled, he goes to the sea coast, and there finds a frail, empty\nwherry awaiting him. He embarks, and a spirit crew row him to his\ndestination.10\n\n\"He finds with ghosts His boat deep freighted, sinking to the edge\nOf the dark flood, and voices hears, yet sees No substance; but,\narrived where once again His skiff floats free, hears friends to\nfriends Give lamentable welcome. The unseen Shore faint resounds,\nand all the mystic air Breathes forth the names of parent,\nbrother, wife.\"\n\nDuring that period of poetic credulity while the face of the earth\nremained to a great extent concealed from knowledge, wherever the\nHebrew Scriptures were known went the cherished traditions of the\nGarden of Eden from which our first parents were driven for their\nsin. Speculation naturally strove to settle the locality of this\nlost paradise. Sometimes it was situated in the mysterious bosom\nof India; sometimes in the flowery vales of Georgia, where roses\nand spices perfumed the gales; sometimes in the guarded recesses\nof Mesopotamia. Now it was the Grand Oasis in the Arabian desert,\nflashing on the wilted pilgrim, over the blasted and blazing\nwastes, with the verdure of palms, the play of waters, the smell\nand flavor of perennial fruits. Again it was at the equator, where\nthe torrid zone stretched around it as a fiery sword waving every\nway so that no mortal could enter. In the \"Imago Mundi,\" a Latin\ntreatise on cosmography written early in the twelfth century, we\nread, \"Paradise is the extreme eastern part of Asia, and is made\ninaccessible by a wall of fire surrounding it and rising unto\nheaven.\" At a later time the Canaries were thought to be the\nancient Elysium, and were accordingly named the Fortunate Isles.\nIndeed, among the motives that animated\n\n9 Macpherson, Introduction to the History of Great Britain and\nIreland, pp. 180-186.\n\n10 Procopius, Gothica, lib. iv.\n\n\nColumbus on his adventurous voyage no inferior place must be\nassigned to the hope of finding the primeval seat of Paradise.11\nThe curious traveller, exploring these visionary spots one by one,\nfound them lying in the light of common day no nearer heaven than\nhis own natal home; and at last all faith in them died out when\nthe whole surface of the globe had been surveyed, no nook left\nwherein romance and superstition might any longer play at hide and\nseek.\n\nContinuing our search after the local abode of the departed, we\nnow leave the surface of the earth and descend beneath it. The\nfirst haunted region we reach is the realm of the Fairies, which,\nas every one acquainted with the magic lore of old Germany or\nEngland knows, was situated just under the external ground, and\nwas clothed with every charm poets could imagine or the heart\ndream. There was supposed to be an entrance to this enchanted\ndomain at the Peak Cavern in Derbyshire, and at several other\nplaces. Sir Walter Scott has collected some of the best legends\nillustrative of this belief in his \"History of Demonology.\" Sir\nGawaine, a famous knight of the Round Table, was once admitted to\ndine, above ground, in the edge of the forest, with the King of\nthe Fairies:\n\n\"The banquet o'er, the royal Fay, intent\nTo do all honor to King Arthur's knight,\nSmote with his rod the bank on which they leant,\nAnd Fairy land flash'd glorious on the sight;\nFlash'd, through a silvery, soft, translucent mist,\nThe opal shafts and domes of amethyst;\nFlash'd founts in shells of pearl, which crystal walls\nAnd phosphor lights of myriad hues redouble.\nThere, in the blissful subterranean halls,\nWhen morning wakes the world of human trouble\nGlide the gay race; each sound our discord knows,\nFaint heard above, but lulls them to repose.\"\n\nTo this empire of moonlit swards and elfin dances, of jewelled\nbanks, lapsing streams, and enchanting visions, it was thought a\nfew favored mortals might now and then find their way. But this\nwas never an earnest general faith. It was a poetic superstition\nthat hovered over fanciful brains, a legendary dream that pleased\ncredulous hearts; and, with the other romance of the early world,\nit has vanished quite away.\n\nThe popular belief of Jews, Greeks, Etruscans, Romans, Germans,\nand afterwards of Christians, was that there was an immense world\nof the dead deep beneath the earth, subdivided into several\nsubordinate regions. The Greenlanders believed in a separated\nheaven and hell, both located far below the Polar Ocean. According\nto the old classic descriptions of the under world, what a scene\nof colossal gloom it is! Its atmosphere murmurs with a breath of\nplaintive sighs. Its population, impalpable ghosts timidly\nflitting at every motion,\n\n11 Irving, Life of Columbus: Appendix on the Situation of the\nTerrestrial Paradise. By far the most valuable book ever published\non this subject is that of Schulthess, Das Paradies, das irdische\nund uberirdische historische, mythische und mystische, nebst einer\nkritischen Revision der allgemelnen biblischen Geographie.\n\n\ncrowd the sombre landscapes in numbers surpassing imagination.\nThere Cocytus creeps to the seat of doom, his waves emitting\ndoleful wails. Styx, nine times enfolding the whole abode, drags\nhis black and sluggish length around. Charon, the slovenly old\nferryman, plies his noiseless boat to and fro laden with shadowy\npassengers. Far away in the centre grim Pluto sits on his ebony\nthrone and surveys the sad subjects of his dreadful domain. By his\nside sits his stolen and shrinking bride, Proserpine, her\nglimmering brows encircled with a wreath of poppies. Above the\nsubterranean monarch's head a sable rainbow spans the infernal\nfirmament; and when, with lifted hand, he announces his decrees,\nthe applause given by the twilight populace of Hades is a rustle\nof sighs, a vapor of tears, and a shudder of submission.\n\nThe belief in this dolorous kingdom was early modified by the\nreception of two other adjacent realms, one of reward, one of\ntorture; even as Goethe says, in allusion to the current Christian\ndoctrine, \"Hell was originally but one apartment: limbo and\npurgatory were afterwards added as wings.\" Passing through Hades,\nand turning in one direction, the spirit traveller would arrive at\nElysium or Abraham's bosom:\n\n\"To paradise the gloomy passage winds Through regions drear and\ndismal, and through pain, Emerging soon in beatific blaze Of\nlight.\"\n\nThere the blessed ones found respite and peaceful joys in flowery\nfields, pure breezes, social fellowship, and the similitudes of\ntheir earthly pursuits. In this placid clime, lighted by its own\nconstellations, favored souls roamed or reposed in a sort of\nineffectual happiness. According to the pagans, here were such\nheroes as Achilles, such sages as Socrates, to remain forever, or\nuntil the end of the world. And here, according to the Christians,\nthe departed patriarchs and saints were tarrying expectant of\nChrist's arrival to ransom them. Dante thus describes that great\nevent:\n\n\"Then he, who well my covert meaning knew,\nAnswer'd, Herein I had not long been bound,\nWhen an All puissant One I saw march through,\nWith victory's radiant sign triumphal crown'd.\nHe led from us our Father Adam's shade,\nAbel and Noah, whom God loved the most,\nLawgiving Moses, him who best obey'd,\nAbraam the patriarch, royal David's ghost;\nIsrael, his father, and his sons, and her\nWhom Israel served for, faithfully and long,\nRachel, with more, to bliss did He transfer:\nNo souls were saved before this chosen throng.\" 12\n\nAt the opposite extremity of Hades was supposed to be an opening\nthat led down into Tartarus, \"a place made underneath all things,\nso low and horrible that hell is its heaven.\" Here the old earth\ngiants, the looming Titans, lay, bound, transfixed with\nthunderbolts, their\n\n12 Parsons's trans. Dell' Inferno, canto iv. ii. 55-63.\n\n\nmountainous shapes half buried in rocks, encrusting lava, and\nashes. Rivers of fire seam the darkness, whose borders are braided\nwith sentinel furies. On every hand the worst criminals,\nperjurers, blasphemers, ingrates, groan beneath the pitiless\npunishments inflicted on them without escape. Any realization of\nthe terrific scenery of this whole realm would curdle the blood.13\nThere were fabled entrances to the dread under world at Acherusia,\nin Bithynia, at Avernus, in Campania, where Ulysses evoked the\ndead and traversed the grisly abodes, through the Sibyl's cave at\nCuma, at Hermione, in Argolis, where the people thought the\npassage below so near and easy that they neglected to give the\ndying an obolus to pay ferriage to Charon, at Tanarus, the\nsouthern most point of Peloponnesus, where Herakles went down and\ndragged the three headed dog up into day, at the cave of\nTrophonius, in Lebadea, and at several other places.\n\nSimilar conceptions have been embodied in the ecclesiastical\ndoctrine which has generally prevailed in Christendom. Locating\nthe scene in the hollow of the earth, thus has it been described\nby Milton,\n\n\"A dungeon horrible on all sides round As one great furnace\nflamed; yet from those flames No light, but rather darkness\nvisible, Served only to discover sights of woe, Regions of\nanguish, doleful shades, where peace Nor hope can come, but\ntorture without end Still urges, and a fiery deluge fed With ever\nburning sulphur unconsumed;\" wherein, confined by adamantine\nwalls, the fallen angels and all the damned welter overwhelmed\nwith floods and whirlwinds of tempestuous fire. Shapes once\ncelestially fair and proud, but now scarred from battle and\ndarkened by sin into faded forms of haggard splendor, support\ntheir uneasy steps over the burning marl. Everywhere shrieks and\nmoans resound, and the dusky vault of pandemonium is lighted by a\nblue glare cast pale and dreadful from the tossings of the flaming\nlake. This was hell, where the wicked must shrink and howl\nforever. Etna, Vesuvius, Stromboli, Hecla, were believed to be\nvent holes from this bottomless and living pit of fire. The famous\ntraveller, Sir John Maundeville, asserted that he found a descent\ninto hell \"in a perilous vale\" in the dominions of Prester John.\nMany a cavern in England still bears the name of \"Hell hole.\" In a\ndialogue between a clerk and a master, preserved in an old Saxon\ncatechism, the following question and reply occur: \"Why is the sun\nso red when she sets?\" \"Because she looks down upon hell.\"\nAntonius Rusca, a learned professor at Milan, in the year 1621,\npublished a huge quarto in five books, giving a detailed\ntopographical account of the interior of the earth, hell,\npurgatory, and limbo.14 There is a lake in the south of Ireland in\nwhich is an island containing a cavern said to open down into\nhell. This cave\n\n13 Descriptions of the sufferings of hell, according to the\npopular notions at different periods, are given in the work\npublished at Weimar in 1817, Das Rad der ewigen Hollenqual. In den\nCuriositaten der physisch literarisch artistisch historischen Vor\nund Mitwelt, band vi. st. 2.\n\n14 De Inferno et Statn Damonum ante Mundi Exitium.\n\n\nis called St. Patrick's Purgatory, and the pretence obtained quite\ngeneral credit for upwards of five centuries. Crowds of pilgrims\nvisited the place. Some who had the hardihood to venture in were\nseverely pinched, beaten, and burned, by the priests within,\ndisguised as devils, and were almost frightened out of their wits\nby the diabolical scenes they saw where\n\n\"Forth from the depths of flame that singed the gloom Despairing\nwails and piercing shrieks were heard.\"\n\nSeveral popes openly preached in behalf of this gross imposition;\nand the Church virtually authorized it by receiving the large\nrevenues accruing from it, until at last outraged common sense\ndemanded its repudiation and suppression.15\n\nFew persons now, as they walk the streets and fields, are much\ndisturbed by the thought that, not far below, the vivid lake of\nfire and brimstone, greedily roaring for new food, heaves its\ntortured surges convulsed and featured with souls. Few persons now\nshudder at a volcanic eruption as a premonishing message freshly\nbelched from hell.16 In fact, the old belief in a local physical\nhell within the earth has almost gone from the public mind of to\nday. It arose from pagan myths and figures of speech based on\nignorant observation and arbitrary fancy, and with the growth of\nscience and the enlightenment of reason it has very extensively\nfallen and faded away. No honest and intelligent inquirer into the\nmatter can find the slightest valid support for such a notion. It\nis now a mere tradition, upheld by groundless authority. And yet\nthe dim shadow of that great idea of a subterranean hell which\nonce burned so fierce and lurid in the brain of Christendom still\nvaguely haunts the modern world. The dogma still lies in the\nprevalent creeds, and is occasionally dragged out and brandished\nby fanatic preachers. The transmitted literature and influences of\nthe past are so full of it that it cannot immediately cease.\nAccordingly, while the common understanding no longer grasps it as\na definite verity, it lingers in the popular fancy as a half\ncredible image. The painful attempts made now and then by some\nantiquated or fanatical clergyman to compel attention to it and\nbelief in it as a tangible fact of science, as well as an\nunquestionable revelation of Scripture, scarcely win a passing\nnotice, but provoke a significant smile. Father Passaglia, an\neminent Jesuit theologian, in 1856 published in Italy a work on\nthe Literality of Hell Fire and the Eternity of the Punishments of\nthe Damned. He says, \"In this world fire burns by chemical\noperations; but in hell it burns by the breath of the Lord!\" The\nlearned and venerable Faber, a voluminous author and distinguished\nEnglish divine, published in the year 1851 a large octavo entitled\n\"The Many Mansions in the House of the Father,\" discussing with\nelaborate detail the question as to the locality of the scenes\nawaiting souls after death. His grand conclusion the unreasonableness\nof which will be apparent without comment is as follows:\n\"The saints having first risen with Christ into the highest\nregions of the air, out of reach of the dreadful heat, the\ntremendous flood of fire hitherto detained inside the earth will\nbe let loose, and an awful conflagration rage till the whole\nmaterial globe is dissipated into sublimated particles. Then the\nworld will be formed anew, in three parts. First, there will be\n\n15 Wright, St. Patrick's Purgatory: an Essay on the Legends of\nParadise, Hell, and Purgatory, current during the Middle Ages.\n\n16 Patuzzi, De Sede inferni in Terris quarenda.\n\n\na solid central sphere of fire the flaming nucleus of Gehenna two\nthousand miles in diameter. Secondly, there shall roll around this\ncentral ball on all sides an ignited ocean of liquid fire two\nthousand miles in depth, the peculiar residence of the wicked, the\nsulphurous lake spoken of in the Apocalypse. Thirdly, around this\ninfernal sea a vast spherical arch will hang, a thousand miles\nthick, a massive and unbroken shell, through which there are no\nspiracles, and whose external surface, beautiful beyond\nconception, becomes the heaven of the redeemed, where Christ\nhimself, perfect man as well as perfect God, fixes his residence\nand establishes the local sovereignty of the Universal Archangel.\"\n17 A comfortable thought it must be for the saints, as they roam\nthe flowery fields, basking in immortal bliss, to remember that\nunder the crust they tread, a soundless sea of fire is forever\nplunging on its circular course, all its crimson waves packed with\nthe agonized faces of the damned as thick as drops! The whole\nscheme is without real foundation. Science laughs at such a\ntheory. Its scriptural supports are either ethnic figments or\nrhetorical tropes. Reason, recollecting the immateriality of the\nsoul, dissipates the ghastly dream beyond the possibility of\nrestoration to belief.\n\nFollowing the historic locations of the abode of departed souls,\nwe next ascend from the interior of the earth, and above the\nsurface of the earth, into the air and the lofty realms of ether.\nThe ancient Caledonians fixed the site of their spirit world in\nthe clouds. Their bards have presented this conception in manifold\nforms and with the most picturesque details. In tempests the\nghosts of their famous warriors ride on the thunderbolts, looking\non the earth with eyes of fire, and hurling lances of lightning.\nThey float over the summits of the hills or along the valleys in\nwreaths of mist, on vapory steeds, waving their shadowy arms in\nthe moonlight, the stars dimly glimmering through their visionary\nshapes. The Laplanders also placed their heaven in the upper air,\nwhere the Northern Lights play. They regarded the auroral\nstreamers as the sport of departed spirits in the happy region to\nwhich they had risen. Such ideas, clad in the familiar imagery\nfurnished by their own climes, would naturally be suggested to the\nignorant fancy, and easily commended to the credulous thoughts, of\nthe Celts and Finns. Explanation and refutation are alike\nunnecessary.\n\nPlutarch describes a theory held by some of the ancients locating\nhell in the air, elysium in the moon.18 After death all souls are\ncompelled to spend a period in the region between the earth and\nthe moon, the wicked in severe tortures and for a longer time, the\ngood in a mild discipline soon purging away all their stains and\nfitting them for the lunar paradise. After tarrying a season\nthere, they were either born again upon the earth, or transported\nto the divine realm of the sun. Macrobius, too, says, \"The\nPlatonists reckon as the infernal\n\n17 Part iv. chap. ix. p. 417. Dr. Cumming (The End, Lect. X.)\nteaches the doctrine of the literal resurrection of the flesh, and\nthe subsequent residence of the redeemed on this globe as their\neternal heaven under the immediate rule of Christ. Quite a full\ndetail of the historic and present belief in this scheme may be\nfound in the recent work of its earnest advocate, D. T. Taylor,\nThe Voice of the Church on the Coming of the Redeemer, or a\nHistory of the Doctrine of the Reign of Christ on Earth.\n\n18 In his Essay on the Face in the Orb of the Moon.\n\n\nregion the whole space between the earth and the moon.\"19 He also\nadds, \"The tropical signs Cancer and Capricorn are called the\ngates of the sun, because there he meets the solstice and can go\nno farther. Cancer is the gate of men, because by it is the\ndescent to the lower regions; Capricorn is the gate of gods,\nbecause by it is a return for souls to the rank of gods in the\nseat of their proper immortality.\" 20 The Manicheans taught that\nsouls were borne to the moon on leaving their bodies, and there\nwashed from their sins in water, then taken to the sun and further\ncleansed in fire. They described the moon and sun as two splendid\nships prepared for transferring souls to their native country, the\nworld of perfect light in the heights of the creation.21\n\nThe ancient Hebrews thought the sky a solid firmament overarching\nthe earth, and supporting a sea of inexhaustible waters, beyond\nwhich God and his angels dwelt in monopolized splendor. Eliphaz\nthe Temanite says, \"Is not God in the height of heaven? And behold\nthe stars, how high they are; but he walketh upon the arch of\nheaven!\" And Job says, \"He covereth the face of his throne, and\nspreadeth his clouds under it. He hath drawn a circular bound upon\nthe waters to the confines of light and darkness.\" From the\ndazzling realm above this supernal ocean all men were supposed,\nuntil after the resurrection of Christ, to be excluded. But from\nthat time the belief gradually spread in Christendom that a way\nwas open for faithful souls to ascend thither. Ephraim the\nSyrian,22 and Ambrose, located paradise in the outermost East on\nthe highest summit of the earth, stretching into the serene\nheights of the sky. The ancients often conceived the universe to\nform one solid whole, whose different provinces were accessible\nfrom each other to gods and angels by means of bridges and golden\nstaircases. Hence the innumerable paradisal legends associated\nwith the mythic mountains of antiquity, such as Elborz, Olympus,\nMeru, and Kaf. Among the strange legends of the Middle Age,\nGervase of Tilbury preserves the following one, illustrative of\nthis belief in a sea over the sky: \"One Sunday the people of an\nEnglish village were coming out of church, a dark, gloomy day,\nwhen they saw the anchor of a ship hooked to one of the\ntombstones, the cable, tightly stretched, hanging down the air.\nPresently they saw a sailor sliding down the rope to unfix the\nanchor. When he had just loosened it the villagers seized hold of\nhim; and, while in their hands, he quickly died, as though he had\nbeen drowned!\" There is also a famous legend called \"St. Brandon's\nVoyage.\" The worthy saint set sail from the coast of Ireland, and\nheld on his way till he arrived at the moon, which he found to be\nthe location of hell. Here he saw Judas Iscariot in execrable\ntortures, regularly respited, however, every week from Saturday\neve till Sunday eve!\n\nThe thought so entirely in accordance with the first impression\nmade by the phenomenon of the night sky on the ignorant senses and\nimagination that the stars are set in a firm revolving dome, has\nwidely prevailed; and the thought that heaven lies beyond that\nsolid arch, in the unknown space is a popular notion lingering\nstill. The scriptural image declaring that the convulsions of the\nlast day will shake the stars from their sockets in the\n\n19 In Somnium Scipionis, lib. i. cap. xi.\n\n20 Ibid. cap. xii.\n\n21 Augustine, De Natura Boni, cap. xliv.\n\n22 De Paradiso Eden, Sermo I.\n\n\nheavenly floor, \"as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs when she\nis shaken of a mighty wind,\" although so obviously a figure of\nspeech, has been very generally credited as the description of a\nliteral fact yet to occur. And how many thousands of pious\nChristians have felt, with the sainted Doddridge,\n\n\"Ye stars are but the shining dust Of my Divine abode,  The\npavement of those heavenly courts Where I shall see my God!\"\n\nThe universal diffusion in civilized nations of the knowledge that\nthe visible sky is no substantial expanse, but only an illimitable\nvoid of space hung with successive worlds, has by no means\nbanished the belief, originally based on the opposite error, in a\nphysical heaven definitely located far overhead, the destination\nof all ransomed souls. This is undoubtedly the most common idea at\nthe present time. An English clergyman once wrote a book,\nafterwards translated into German, to teach that the sun is hell,\nand that the black spots often noticed on the disk of that orb are\ngatherings of damned souls.23 Isaac Taylor, on the contrary,\ncontends with no little force and ingenuity that the sun may be\nthe heaven of our planetary system, a globe of immortal\nblessedness and glory.24 The celebrated Dr. Whiston was convinced\nthat the great comet which appeared in his day was hell. He\nimagined it remarkably fitted for that purpose by its fiery vapor,\nand its alternate plunges, now into the frozen extremity of space,\nnow into the scorching breath of the sun. Tupper fastens the\nstigma of being the infernal prison house on the moon, in this\nstyle:\n\n\"I know thee well, O Moon, thou cavern'd realm, Sad satellite,\nthou giant ash of death, Blot on God's firmament, pale home of\ncrime, Scarr'd prison house of sin, where damned souls Feed upon\npunishment: Oh, thought sublime, That amid night's black deeds,\nwhen evil prowls Through the broad world, thou, watching sinners\nwell, Glarest o'er all, the wakeful eye of Hell!\"\n\nBailey's conception is the darker birth of a deeper feeling:\n\n\"There is a blind world, yet unlit by God, Rolling around the\nextremest edge of light, Where all things are disaster and decay:\nThat black and outcast orb is Satan's home That dusky world man's\nscience counteth not Upon the brightest sky. He never knows How\nnear it comes to him; but, swathed in clouds, As though in plumed\nand palled state, it steals, Hearse like and thief like, round the\nuniverse, Forever rolling, and returning not,\n\n23 Swinden, On the Nature and Location of Hell.\n\n24 Physical Theory of Another Life, chap. xvi.\n\n\nRobbing all worlds of many an angel soul,  With its light hidden\nin its breast, which burns With all concentrate and superfluent\nwoe.\"\n\nIn the average faith of individuals to day, heaven and hell exist\nas separate places located somewhere in the universe; but the\nnotions as to the precise regions in which they lie are most vague\nand ineffectual when compared with what they formerly were.\n\nThe Scandinavian kosmos contained nine worlds, arranged in the\nfollowing order:  Gimle, a golden region at the top of the\nuniverse, the eternal residence of Allfather and his chosen ones;\nnext below that, Muspel, the realm of the genii of fire; Asgard,\nthe abode of the gods in the starry firmament; Vindheim, the home\nof the air spirits; Manheim, the earth, or middle realm;\nJotunheim, the world of the giants, outside the sea surrounding\nthe earth; Elfheim, the world of the black demons and dwarfs, just\nunder the earth's surface; Helheim, the domain of the goddess of\ndeath, deep within the earth's bosom; and finally, Niflheim, the\nlowest kingdom of horror and pain, at the very bottom of the\ncreation. The Buddhist kosmos, in the simplest form, as some of\nthem conceived it, was composed of a series of concentric spheres\neach separated from the next by a space, and successively\noverarching and under arching each other with circular layers of\nbrightness above and blackness beneath; each starry hollow\noverhead being a heaven inhabited by gods and blessed souls, each\nlurid hollow underfoot being a hell filled with demons and wicked\nsouls in penance. The Arabian kosmos, beginning with the earth,\nascended to a world of water above the firmament, next to a world\nof air, then to a world of fire, followed in rising order by an\nemerald heaven with angels in the form of birds, a heaven of\nprecious stones with angels as eagles, a hyacinth heaven with\nangels as vultures, a silver heaven with angels as horses, a\ngolden and a pearl heaven each peopled with angel girls, a crystal\nheaven with angel men, then two heavens full of angels, and\nfinally a great sea without bound, each sphere being presided over\nby a chief ruler, the names of all of whom were familiar to the\nlearned Arabs. The Syrian kosmos corresponded closely to the\nforegoing. It soared up the mounting steps of earth, water, air,\nfire, and innumerable choruses successively of Angels, Archangels,\nPrincipalities, Powers, Virtues, Dominations, Thrones, Cherubim\nand Seraphim, unto the Expanse whence Lucifer fell; afterwards to\na boundless Ocean; and lastly to a magnificent Crown of Light\nfilling the uppermost space of all.25\n\nIt is hard for us to imagine the aspects of the universe to the\nancients and the impressions it produced in them, all seemed so\ndifferent then, in the dimness of crude observation, from the\npresent appearance in the light of astronomic science. Anaximander\nheld that the earth was of cylindrical form, suspended in the\nmiddle of the universe and surrounded by envelopes of water, air,\nand fire, as by the coats of an onion, but that the exterior\nstratum was broken up and collected into masses, and thus\noriginated the sun, moon, and stars, which are carried around by\nthe three spheres in which they are fixed.26 Many of the Oriental\nnations believed the planets to be animated beings, conscious\ndivinities, freely marching around their high realms, keeping\nwatch and ward over the creation, smiling their favorites on to\nhappy fortune,\n\n25 Dupuis, L'Origine de tous les Cultes, Planche No. 21.\n\n26 Arist. de Coel. ii. 13.\n\n\nfixing their baleful eyes and shedding disastrous eclipse on\n\"falling nations and on kingly lines about to sink forever.\" This\nbelief was cherished among the later Greek philosophers and Roman\npriests, and was vividly held by such men as Philo, Origen, and\neven Kepler. It is here that we are to look for the birth of\nastrology, that solemn lore, linking the petty fates of men with\nthe starry conjunctions, which once sank so deeply into the mind\nof the world, but is now wellnigh forgotten:\n\n\"No more of that, ye planetary lights! Your aspects, dignities,\nascendancies, Your partite quartiles, and your plastic trines, And\nall your heavenly houses and effects, Shall meet no more devout\nexpounders here.\n\nThe joy of Jupiter, The exaltation of the Dragon's head, The sun's\ntriplicity and glorious Day house on high, the moon's dim\ndetriment, And all the starry inclusions of all signs, Shall rise,\nand rule, and pass, and no one know That there are spirit rulers\nof all worlds, Which fraternize with earth, and, though unknown,\nHold in the shining voices of the stars Communion on high and\neverywhere.\"\n\nThe belief that the stars were living beings, combining with the\nfancy of an unscientific time, gave rise to the stellar apotheosis\nof heroes and legendary names, and was the source of those\nnumerous asterisms, out lined groups of stars, which still bedeck\nthe skies and form the landmarks of celestial topography. It was\nthese and kindred influences that wrought together\n\n\"To make the firmament bristle with shapes Of intermittent motion,\naspect vague, And mystic bearings, which o'ercreep the earth,\nKeeping slow time with horrors in the blood;\" the Gorgon's\npetrific Head, the Bear's frightful form, Berenice's streaming\nHair, the curdling length of Ophiuchus, and the Hydra's horrid\nshape. The poetic eye of old religion saw gods in the planets\nwalking their serene blue paths,\n\n\"Osiris, Bel, Odin, Mithras, Brahm, Zeus, Who gave their names to\nstars which still roam round The skies all worshipless, even from\nclimes Where their own altars once topp'd every hill.\"\n\nBy selected constellations the choicest legends of the antique\nworld are preserved in silent enactment. On the heavenly sea the\nArgonautss keep nightly sail towards the Golden Fleece. There\nHerakles gripes the hydra's heads and sways his irresistible club;\nArion with his harp rides the docile Dolphin; the Centaur's right\nhand clutches the Wolf; the Hare flees from the raging eye and\ninaudible bark of the Dog; and space crawls with the horrors of\nthe Scorpion.\n\nIn consequence of the earth's revolution in its orbit, the sun\nappears at different seasons to rise in connection with different\ngroups of stars. It seems as if the sun made an annual journey\naround the ecliptic. This circuit was divided into twelve parts\ncorresponding to the months, and each marked by a distinct\nconstellation. There was a singular agreement in regard to these\nsolar houses, residences of the gods, or signs of the zodiac,\namong the leading nations of the earth, the Persians, Chaldeans,\nHebrews, Syrians, Hindus, Chinese, Arabians, Japanese, Siamese,\nGoths, Javanese, Mexicans, Peruvians, and Scandinavians. 27 Among\nthe various explanations of the origin of these artificial signs,\nwe will notice only the one attributed by Volney to the Egyptians.\nThe constellations in which the sun successively appeared from\nmonth to month were named thus: at the time of the overflow of the\nNile, the stars of inundation, (Aquarius;) at the time of\nploughing, stars of the ox, (Taurus;) when lions, driven forth by\nthirst, appeared on the banks of the Nile, stars of the lion,\n(Leo;) at the time of reaping, stars of the sheaf, (Virgo;) stars\nof the lamb and two kids, (Aries,) when these animals were born;\nstars of the crab, (Cancer,) when the sun, touching the tropic,\nreturned backwards; stars of the wild goat, (Capricorn,) when the\nsun reached the highest point in his yearly track; stars of the\nbalance, (Libra,) when days and nights were in equilibrium; stars\nof the scorpion, (Scorpio,) when periodical simooms burned like\nthe venom of a scorpion; and so on of the rest.28\n\nThe progress of astronomical science from the wild time when men\nthought the stars were mere spangles stuck in a solid expanse not\nfar off, to the vigorous age when Ptolemy's mathematics spanned\nthe scope of the sky; from the first reverent observations of the\nChaldean shepherds watching the constellations as gods, to the\nmagnificent reasonings of Copernicus dashing down the innumerable\ncrystalline spheres, \"cycle on epicycle, orb on orb,\" with which\ncrude theorizers had crowded the stellar spaces; from the uncurbed\npoetry of Hyginus writing the floor of heaven over with romantic\nmyths in planetary words, to the more wondrous truth of Le Verrier\nmeasuring the steps from nimble Mercury flitting moth like in the\nbeard of the sun to dull Neptune sagging in his cold course twenty\nsix hundred million miles away; from the half inch orb of\nHipparchus's naked eye, to the six feet speculum of Rosse's awful\ntube; from the primeval belief in one world studded around with\nskyey torch lights, to the modern conviction of octillions of\ninhabited worlds all governed by one law constitutes the most\nastonishing chapter in the history of the human mind. Every step\nof this incredible progress has had its effect in modifying the\nconceptions of man's position and importance in nature and of the\nconnection of his future fate with localities. Of old, the entire\ncreation was thought to lie pretty much within the comprehension\nof man's unaided senses, and man himself was supposed to be the\nchief if not the sole object of Divine providence. The deities\noften came down in incarnations and mingled with their favorites\nand rescued the earth from evils. Every thing was anthropomorphized.\nMan's relative magnitude and power were believed to be such\nthat he fancied during an eclipse that, by screams, the crashing\nof gongs, and magic rites, he could scare away the monsters\n\n27 Pigott, Scandinavian Mythology, chap. i. p. 31.\n\n28 Volney, Ruins, chap. xxii. sect. 3. Maurice, Hist. Hindostan,\nvol. i. pp. 145-147.\n\n\nwho were swallowing the sun or the moon. Meteors shooting through\nthe evening air the Arabs believed were fallen angels trying to\nget back into heaven but hurled from the crystal battlements by\nthe flaming lances of the guardian watchers. Then the gazer saw\n\"The top of heaven full of fiery shapes, Of burning cressets.\"\n\nNow the student contemplates an abyss swarming with orbs each out\nweighing millions of our earth. Then they read their nativities in\nthe planets and felt how great must be the state overwatched by\nsuch resplendent servitors. Now \"They seek communion with the stars\nthat they may know How petty is this ball on which they come and go.\"\n\nThen the hugest view of the extent of the universal sphere was\nthat an iron mass would require nine days and nights to plunge\nfrom its Olympian height to its Tartarean depth. Now we are told\nby the masters of science that there are stars so distant that it\nwould take their light, travelling at a rate of nearly twelve\nmillion miles a minute, thirty million years to reach us. The\ntelescope has multiplied the size of the creation by hundreds of\nmillions, and the grandest conception of the stellar universe\npossible to the most capacious human mind probably bears no larger\nproportion to the fact than an orrery does to the solar system.\nOur earth is a hundred million miles from the sun, whose diameter\nis so monstrous that a hundred such orbs strung in a straight line\nwould occupy the whole distance. The sun, with all his attendant\nplanets and moons, is sweeping around his own centre supposed by\nsome to be Alcyone at the rate of four hundred thousand miles a\nday; and it will take him eighteen million years to complete one\nrevolution. Our firmamental cluster contains, it has been\ncalculated, in round numbers about twenty million stars. There are\nmany thousands of such nebula visible, some of them capable of\npacking away in their awful bosoms hundreds of thousands of our\ngalaxies. Measure off the abysmal space into seven hundred\nthousand stages each a hundred million miles wide, and you reach\nthe nearest fixed stars, for instance, the constellation of the\nLyre. Multiply that inconceivable distance by hundreds of\nthousands, and still you will discern enormous sand banks of stars\nobscurely glittering on the farthest verge of telescopic vision.\nAnd even all this is but a little corner of the whole.\n\nColeridge once said, \"To some infinitely superior Being, the whole\nuniverse may be as one plain, the distance between planet and\nplanet being only as the pores in a grain of sand, and the spaces\nbetween system and system no greater than the intervals between\none grain and the grain adjacent.\" One of the vastest thoughts yet\nconceived by any mortal mind is that of turning the universe from\na mechanical to a chemical problem, as illustrated by Prof.\nLovering.29 Assuming the acknowledged truths in physics, that the\nultimate particles of matter never actually touch each other, and\nthat water in evaporating expands into eighteen hundred times its\nprevious volume, he demonstrates that the porosity of our solar\nsystem is no greater than that of steam. \"The porosity of granite\nor gold may be equal to that of steam,\n\n29 Cambridge Miscellany, 1842.\n\n\nthe greater density being a stronger energy in the central\nforces.\" And the conclusion is scientifically reached that \"the\nvast interval between the sun and Herschel is an enormous pore,\nwhile the invisible distance that separates the most closely\nnestled atoms is a planetary space, a stupendous gulf when\ncompared with the little spheres between which it flows.\" Thus we\nmay think of the entire universe as a living organism, like a\nripening orange, its component atoms worlds, the sidereal\nmovements its vital circulation.\n\nSurely, when a man looks up from his familiar fields and household\nroof to such incommensurable objects as scientific imagination\nreveals in the sparkling sword handle of Perseus and the hazy\ngirdle of Andromeda, overpowering humility will fill his breast,\nan unutterable solemnity will \"fall on him as from the very\npresence chamber of the Highest.\" And will he not, when he\ncontemplates the dust like shoals of stars, the shining films of\nfirmaments, that retreat and hover through all the boundless\nheights, the Nubecula nebula, looking like a bunch of ribbons\ndisposed in a true love's knot, that most awful nebula whirled\ninto the shape and bearing the name of the Dumb Bell, the Crab\nnebula, hanging over the infinitely remote space, a sprawling\nterror, every point holding millions of worlds,  thinking of these\nall transcendent wonders, and then remembering his own\ninexpressible littleness, how that the visible existence of his\nwhole race does not occupy a single tick of the great Sidereal\nClock, will he not sink under helpless misgivings, will he not\nutterly despair of immortal notice and support from the King of\nall this? In a word, how does the solemn greatness of man, the\nsupposed eternal destiny of man, stand affected by the modern\nknowledge of the vastness of creation? Regarding the immensities\nreceding over him in unfathomable abysses bursting with dust heaps\nof suns, must not man be dwarfed into unmitigated contempt, his\nlife and character rendered absolutely insignificant, the utmost\nspan of his fortunes seeming but as the hum and glitter of an\nephemeron in a moment's sunshine? Doubtless many a one has at\ntimes felt the stupendous truths of astronomy thus palsying him\nwith a crushing sense of his own nothingness and burying him in\nfatalistic despair. Standing at night, alone, beneath the august\ndome studded from of old with its ever blazing lights, he gazes up\nand sees the innumerable armies of heaven marshalled forth above\nhim in the order and silence of their primeval pomp. Peacefully\nand forever they shine there. In nebula separated from nebula by\ntrillions of leagues, plane beyond plane, they stretch and glitter\nto the feet of God. Falling on his knees, he clasps his hands in\nspeechless adoration, but feels, with an intolerable ache of the\nheart, that in this infinitude such an one as he can be of no\nconsequence whatever. He waits passively for the resistless round\nof fate to bear him away, ah, whither? \"Conscious that he dwells\nbut as an atom of dust on the outskirts of a galaxy of\ninconceivable glory\" moving through eternity in the arms of law,\nhe becomes, in his own estimation, an insensible dot lost in the\nuncontainable wilderness of firmamental systems. But this\nconclusion of despair is a mistake as sophistical as it is\ninjurious, as baseless in reality as it is natural in seeming. Its\nantidote and corrective are found in a more penetrative thought\nand juster understanding of the subject, which will preserve the\ngreatness and the immortal destiny of man unharmed despite the\nfrowning vastitudes of creation. This will appear from fairly\nweighing the following considerations.\n\nIn the first place, the immensity of the material universe is an\nelement entirely foreign to the problem of human fate. When\nseeking to solve the question of human destiny, we are to study\nthe facts and prophecies of human nature, and to conclude\naccordingly. It is a perversion of reason to bring from far an\ninduction of nebular magnitudes to crush with their brute weight\nthe plain indications of the spirit of humanity. What though the\nnumber of telescopic worlds were raised to the ten thousandth\npower, and each orb were as large as all of them combined would\nnow be? what difference would that make in the facts of human\nnature and destiny? It is from the experience going on in man's\nbreast, and not from the firmaments rolling above his head, that\nhis importance and his final cause are to be inferred. The human\nmind, heart, and conscience, thought, love, faith, and piety,\nremain the same in their intrinsic rank and capacities whether the\nuniverse be as small as it appeared to the eyes of Abraham or as\nlarge as it seems in the cosmical theory of Humboldt. Thus the\nspiritual position of man really remains precisely what it was\nbefore the telescope smote the veils of distance and bared the\nouter courts of being.\n\nSecondly, if we do bring in the irrelevant realms of science to\nthe examination of our princely pretensions, it is but fair to\nlook in both directions. And then what we lose above we gain\nbelow. The revelations of the microscope balance those of the\ntelescope. The animalcula magnify man as much as the nebulsa\nbelittle him. We cannot help believing that He who frames and\nprovides for those infinitesimal animals quadrillions of whom\nmight inhabit a drop of water or a leaf and have ample room and\nverge enough, and whose vital and muscular organization is as\ncomplicated and perfect as that of an elephant, will much more\ntake care of man, no matter how numerous the constellations are.\nLet us see how far scientific vision can look beneath ourselves as\nthe question is answered by a few well known facts. In each drop\nof human blood there are three million vitalized corpuscular\ndisks. Considering all the drops made up in this way, man is a\nkosmos, his veins galaxies through whose circuits these red\nclustering planets perform their revolutions. How small the\nexhaling atoms of a grain of musk must be, since it will perfume\nevery breath of air blowing through a hall for a quarter of a\ncentury, and then not be perceptibly diminished. An ounce of gold\nmay be reduced into four hundred and thirty two billion parts,\neach microscopically visible.30 There is a deposit of slate in\nBohemia covering forty square miles to the depth of eight feet,\neach cubic inch of which Ehrenberg found by microscopic\nmeasurement to contain forty one thousand million infusorial\nanimals. Sir David Brewster says, \"A cubic inch of the Bilin\npolieschiefer slate contains above one billion seven hundred and\nfifty thousand millions of distinct individuals of Galionella\nferruginea.\"31 It is a fact that the size of one of these insects\nas compared with the bulk of a man is virtually as small as that\nof a man compared with the whole scheme of modern astronomy. Thus,\nif the problem of our immortal consequence is prejudicially\nvitiated by contemplating the immense extremity of vision, it is\nrectified by gazing on the opposite extremity. If man justly\nscrutinized, without comparisons, is fitted for and worthy of\neternity,\n\n30 Lardner, Hand Book of Natural Philosophy, book i. chap. v.31\nMore Worlds than One, ch. viii. note 3.\n\n\nno foreign facts, however magnificent or minute, should alter our\njudgment from the premises.\n\nThirdly, is it not evident that man's greatness keeps even pace\nalong the scale of magnitude with the widening creation, since it\nis his mind that sees and comprehends how wondrous the dimensions\nof the universe are? The number of stars and the limits of space\nare not more astounding than it is that he should be capable of\nknowing such things, enumerating and staking them off. When man\nhas measured the distance and weighed the bulk of Sirius, it is\nmore appropriate to kneel in amazement before the inscrutable\nmystery of his genius, the irrepressible soaring of his soul, than\nto sink in despair under the swinging of those lumps of dirt in\ntheir unapproachable spheres because they are so gigantic! The\nappearance of the creation to man is not vaster than his\nperception of it. They are exactly correlated by the very terms of\nthe statement. As the astronomic world expands, the astronomer's\nmind dilates and must be as large as it in order to contain it in\nthought. What we lose in relative importance from the enlargement\nof the boundaries of the universe we gain from the new revelation\nof our capacities that is made through these transcendent\nachievements of our science. That we are favorites of the Creator\nand destined for immortal glories is therefore logically and\nmorally just as credible after looking through Herschel's forty\nfeet reflector and reading La Place's Mecanique Celeste as it\nwould be were this planet, suspended in a hollow dome, the\nentirety of material being.\n\nFurthermore, we can reason only from the data we have; and, doing\nthat, we should conclude, from the intrinsic and incomparable\nsuperiority of spirit to matter, that man and his kindred\nscattered in families over all the orbs of space were the especial\nobjects of the infinite Author's care. They are fitted by their\nfilial attributes to commune with Him in praise and love. They\nknow the prodigious and marvellous works of mechanical nature;\nmechanical nature knows nothing. Man can return his Maker's\nblessing in voluntary obedience and thanks; matter is inanimate\nclay for the Potter's moulding. Turning from the gleaming\nwildernesses of star land to the intellect and heart, appreciating\nthe infinite problems and hopes with which they deal and aspire,\nwe feel the truth expressed by Wordsworth in his tremendous lines:\n\n\"I must, aloft ascending, breathe in worlds To which the heaven of\nheavens is but a veil. Not chaos, darkest pit of Erebus, Nor aught\nof blinder vacancy, scoop'd out By help of dreams, can breed such\nfear and awe As fall upon us often when we look Into our minds,\ninto the mind of man.\"\n\nIs not one noble thought of truth, one holy emotion of love, one\ndivine impulse of devotion, better than a whole planet of mud, a\nwhole solar system of gas and dust? Who would not rather be the\nsoul that gauges the deeps, groups the laws, foretells the\nmovements, of the universe, writing down in a brief mathematical\nformula a complete horoscope of the heavens as they will appear on\nany given night thousands of years hence, than to be all that\narray of swooping systems? To think the world is to be superior to\nthe world. That which appreciates is akin to that which makes; and\nso we are the Creator's children, and these crowding nebula,\npacked with orbs as thick as the ocean beach with sands, are the\nmany mansions of the House fitted up for His abode and ours. An\nonly prince would be of more consideration than a palace, although\nits foundation pressed the shoulders of Serpentarius, its turret\ntouched the brow of Orion, and its wings reached from the Great\nBear to the Phoenix. So a mind is of more importance than the\nmaterial creation, and the moral condition of a man is of greater\nmoment than the aspect of stellar firmaments.\n\nAnother illustration of the truth we are considering is to be\ndrawn from the idealist theory, to which so many of the ablest\nthinkers of the world have given their devoted adhesion, that\nmatter is merely phenomenal, no substantial entity, but a\ntransient show preserved in appearance for some ulterior cause,\nand finally, at the withdrawal or suspension of God's volition, to\nreturn into annihilating invisibility as swiftly as a flash of\nlightning. The solid seeming firmaments are but an exertion of\nDivine force projected into vision to serve for a season as a\ntheatre for the training of spirits. When that process is\ncomplete, in the twinkling of an eye the phantasmal exhibition of\nmatter will disappear, leaving only the ideal realm of\nindestructible things, souls with their inward treasures remaining\nin their native sphere of the infinite, while the outward universe\n\"Doth vanish like a ghost before the sun.\"\n\nThe same practical result may also be reached by a different path,\nmay be attained by the road of physics as well as by that of\ntranscendental metaphysics. For Newton has given in his Principia\na geometrical demonstration of the infinite compressibility of\nmatter. All the worlds, therefore, that cluster in yon swelling\nvault can be condensed into a single globe of the size of a\nwalnut; and then, on that petty lump of apparent substance, the\nenfranchised soul might trample in an exultation of magnanimous\nscorn upon the whole universe of earths, and soar through its own\nunlimited dominion, Monarch of Immortality, the snatched glory of\nshrunken firmaments flashing from its deathless wings.\n\nFinally, a proper comprehension of the idea of God will neutralize\nthe skepticism and despondency sometimes stealthily nourished or\ncrushingly impressed by contemplations of the immensity of nature.\nIf one, from regarding the cold and relentless mechanism of the\nsurrounding system, tremble for fear of there being no kind\nOverruler, let him gaze on the warm beauty that flushes the\ncountenance of day, the mystic meditativeness that hangs on the\npensive and starry brow of night, let him follow the commanding\ninstincts of his own heart, and he will find himself clinging in\nirresistible faith and filial love to the thought of an infinite\nFather. If still the atheistic sentiment obtrudes upon him and\noppresses him, let him observe how every spot of immensity whereon\nthe eye of science has fallen is crowded with unnumbered amazing\nexamples of design, love, beneficence, and he will perceive that\nthe irrefragable lines of argument drawn through the boundless\nspaces of creation light up the stupendous contour of God and show\nthe expression of his features to be love. It seems as though any\nman acquainted with the truths and magnitudes of astronomy, who,\nafter seeing the star strewn abysses, would look in his mirror and\nask if the image reflected there is that of the greatest being in\nthe universe, would need nothing further to convince him that a\nGod, the Creator, Preserver, Sovereign, lives. And then, if,\nmistakenly judging from his own limitations, he thinks that the\nparticular care of all the accumulated galaxies of worlds, every\nworld perhaps teeming with countless millions of conscious\ncreatures, would transcend the possibilities even of God, a\nmoment's reflection will dissolve that sophistry in the truth that\nGod is infinite, and that to his infinite attributes globule and\nglobe are alike, the oversight of the whole and of each part a\nmatter of instantaneous and equal ease. Still further: if this\nabstract truth be insufficient to support faith and bestow peace,\nwhat will he say to the visible fact that all the races of beings,\nand all the clusters of worlds, from the motes in a sunbeam to the\norbs of the remotest firmament, are now taken care of by Divine\nProvidence? God now keeps them all in being and order, unconfused\nby their multiplicity, unoppressed by their magnitude, and not for\nan instant forgetting or neglecting either the mightiest or the\nleast. Morbidly suspicious, perversely incredulous, must be the\nmind that denies, since it is so now in this state, that it may be\nso as well in the other state and forever! Grasping the conception\nof one God, who creates, rules, and loves all, man may\nunpresumptuously feel himself to be a child of the Infinite and a\nsafe heir of immortality. Looking within and without, and soaring\nin fancy amidst the blue and starry altitudes interspersed with\nblazing suns and nebulous oceans, he may cry, from a sober\nestimate of all the experimental and phenomenal facts within his\nreach,\n\n\"Even here I feel,\nAmong these mighty things, that as I am\nI am akin to God; that I am part\nOf the use universal, and can grasp\nSome portion of that reason in the which\nThe whole is ruled and founded; that I have\nA spirit nobler in its cause and end,\nLovelier in order, greater in its powers,\nThan all these bright and swift immensities.\"\n\nPerhaps the force of these arguments may be better condensed and\nexpressed by help of an individual illustration. While the pen is\nforming these words, the announcement of the death of Dr. Kane\nsaddens the world. Alas that the gallant heart no longer beats,\nthe story of whose noble generosity and indomitable prowess has\njust thrilled the dull nations of men of meaner mould! Who even\nthough standing before a telescope under the full architecture of\nthe heavens can believe that that maiden soul of heroism and\ndevotion is now but an extinguished spark, that the love, honor,\nintelligence, self sacrificing consecration which enswathed him as\nwith a saintly halo have all gone out? Turning from that pale\nform, stretched on the couch of death in fatal Cuba, through the\nreceding gulfs of space where incomputable systems of worlds are\nwheeling on their eternal courses, and then looking back again\nfrom the noiseless glitter and awful bulk of the creation, do you\ndespair of the immortal consequence of the poor sufferer whose\nfleshly moorings to existence are successively loosening at every\ngasp? Ah, remember that Matter and the Soul are not alone! Far\nabove that clay bound, struggling soul, and far above those\nmeasureless, firmamental masses, is God, the Maker of them both,\nand the Lover of his child. Glancing in His omniscience down upon\nthat human death couch, around which affectionate prayers are\nfloating from every part of the earth, and from whose pallid\noccupant confiding sighs are rising to His ear, He sees the\nunutterable mysteries of yearning thought, emotion, and power,\nwhich are the hidden being of man, and which so ally the filial\nspirit to the parent Divinity. As beneath His gaze the faithful\nsoul of Elisha Kane slowly extricating itself from its overwrought\ntabernacle, and also extricating itself from the holy network of\nheart strings which sixty millions of men speaking one speech have\nflung around him, if haply so they might retain him to earth to\ntake their love and waiting honors rises into the invisible,\nseeking to return, bearing its virgin purity with it, to the bosom\nof God, will He overlook it, or carelessly spurn it into night,\nbecause the banks of stars are piled up so thick and high that\nthey absorb His regards? My soul, come not thou into the counsels\nof them that think so! It should not be believed though astronomy\nwere a thousand times astronomy. But it shall rather be thought\nthat, ere now, the brave American has discovered the Mariner whom\nhe sought, though sailing on far other seas, where there is no\ndestroying winter and no need of rescue.\n\nIn association with the measureless spaces and countless worlds\nbrought to light by astronomic science naturally arises the\nquestion whether the other worlds are, like our earth, peopled\nwith responsible intelligences. In ancient times the stars were\nnot generally thought to be worlds, but to be persons, genii or\ngods. At the dawn of creation \"the morning stars sang together;\"\nthat is, \"the sons of God shouted for joy.\" The stars were the\nliving army of \"Jehovah of hosts.\" At the time when the\ntheological dogmas now prevalent were first conceived, the\ngreatness and glory of the universe were supposed to centre on\nthis globe. The fortunes of man wellnigh absorbed, it was\nimagined, the interest of angels and of God. The whole creation\nwas esteemed a temporary theatre for the enactment of the sublime\ndrama of the fall and redemption of man. The entire heavens with\nall their host were thought to revolve in satellite dependence\naround this stationary and regal planet. For God to hold long,\nanxious, repeated councils to devise means to save us, was not\ndeemed out of keeping with the relative dignity of the earth and\nthe human race. But at length the progress of discovery put a\ndifferent aspect on the physical conditions of the problem. The\nphilosopher began to survey man's habitation and history, and to\nestimate man's comparative rank and destiny, not from the stand\npoint of a solitary planet dating back only a few thousand years,\nbut in the light of millions of centuries of duration and from a\nposition among millions of crowded firmaments whence our sun\nappears as a dim and motionless star. This new vision of science\nrequired a new construction of theology. The petty and monstrous\nnotions of the ignorant superstition of the early age needed\nrectification. In the minds of the wise and devout few this was\neffected; but with the great majority the two sets of ideas\nexisted side by side in unreconciled confusion and contradiction,\nas they even continue to do unto this day.\n\nWhen it came to be believed that the universe teemed with suns,\nmoons, and planets, composed of material substances, subject to\nday and night, and various other laws and changes, like our own\nabode, it was natural to infer that these innumerable worlds were\nalso inhabited by rational creatures akin to ourselves and capable\nof worshipping God. Numerous considerations, possessing more or\nless weight, were brought forward to confirm such a conclusion.\nThe most striking presentation ever made of the argument, perhaps,\nis that in Oersted's essay on the \"Universe as a Single\nIntellectual Realm.\" It became the popular faith, and is\nundoubtedly more so now than ever before. Towards the end of the\nseventeenth century a work was published in explicit support of\nthis faith by Fontenelle. It was entitled \"Conversations on the\nPlurality of Worlds,\" and had marked success, running through many\neditions. A few years later, Huygens wrote a book, called\n\"Cosmotheoros,\" in maintenance of the same thesis. The more this\ndoctrine obtained root and life in the convictions of men, the\nmore strongly its irreconcilableness with the ordinary theology\nmust have made itself felt by fearless and competent thinkers.\nCould a quadrillion firmaments loaded with stars, each inhabited\nby its own race of free intelligences, all be burned up and\ndestroyed in the Day of Judgment provoked on this petty grain of\ndust by the sin of Adam? 32 Were the stars mere sparks and\nspangles stuck in heaven for us to see by, it would be no shock to\nour reason to suppose that they might be extinguished with our\nextinction; but, grasping the truths of astronomy as they now lie\nin the brain of a master in science, we can no longer think of God\nexpelling our race from the joys of being and then quenching the\nsplendors of his hall \"as an innkeeper blows out the lights when\nthe dance is at an end.\" God rules and over rules all, and\nserenely works out his irresistible ends, incapable of wrath or\ndefeat. Would it be more incongruous for Him to be angry with an\nant hill and come down to trample it, than to be so with the earth\nand appear in vindictive fire to annihilate it?\n\nFrom time to time, in the interests of the antiquated ideas,\ndoubts have been raised as to the validity of the doctrine of\nstellar worlds stocked with intellectual families.33 Hegel, either\nimbued with that Gnostic contempt and hatred for matter which\ndescribed the earth as \"a dirt ball for the extrication of light\nspirits,\" or from an obscure impulse of pantheistic thought,\nsullies the stars with every demeaning phrase, even stigmatizing\nthem as \"pimples of light.\" Michelet, a disciple of Hegel,\nfollowed his example, and, in a work published in 1840, strove\nvigorously to aggrandize the earth and man at the expense of the\naccepted teachings of astronomy.34 With argument and ridicule, wit\nand reason, he endeavored to make it out that the stars are no\nbetter than gleaming patches of vapor. We are the exclusive\nautocrats of all immensity. Whewell has followed up this species\nof thought with quite remarkable adroitness, force, and\nbrilliance.35 Whether his motive in this undertaking is purely\nscientific and artistic, or whether he is impelled by a fancied\nreligious animus, having been bitten by some theological fear\nwhich has given him the astrophobia, does not clearly appear.\n\n32 As specimens of the large number of treatises which have been\npublished asserting the destruction of the whole creation in the\nDay of Judgment, the following may be consulted. Osiander, De\nConsummatione Saculi Dissertationum Pentus. Lund, De Excidio\nUniversi Totali et Substantiali. Frisch, Die Welt im Feuer, oder\ndas wahre Vergehen und Ende der Welt durch den letzen Sundenbrand.\nFor a century past the opinion has been gaining favor that the\ngreat catastrophe will be confined to our earth, and that even\nthis is not to be annihilated, but to be transformed, purged, and\nbeautified by the crisis. See, e. g., Brumhey, Ueber die endliche\nUmwandlung der Erde durch Feuer.\n\n33 Kurtz, Bibel and Astronomie. Simonton's Eng. trans., ch. vi.\nsect. 14: Incarnation of God.\n\n34 Vorlesungen uber die ewige Personlichkeit des Geistes. 35 Of a\nPlurality of Worlds: An Essay.\n\n\nBrewster has replied to Whewell's disturbing essay in a volume\nwhich more commands our sympathies and carries our reason,\nbut is less sustained in force and less close in logic.36 Powell\nhas still more recently published a very valuable treatise on the\nsubject;37 and with this work the discussion rests thus far,\nleaving, as we believe, the popular faith in an astronomic\nuniverse of inhabited worlds unshaken, however fatal the\nlegitimate implications of that faith may be to other doctrines\nsimultaneously held.38 It is curious to observe the shifting\npositions taken up by skepticism in science, now, with powerful\nrecoil from the narrow bigotries of theology, eagerly embracing\nthe sublimest dreams of astronomic speculation, and now inclining\nto the faith that the remoter stars are but brilliant globules\ntrickling from the poles of some terrible battery in the godless\nheights of space. But if there be any thing sure in science at\nall, it is that the material creation is inconceivably vast,\nincluding innumerable systems, and all governed by invariable\nlaws. But let us return from this episode.\n\nThe foregoing sixfold argument, preserving us from the remorseless\ngrasp of annihilation, leaves to us unchanged the problem of the\nrelations which shall be sustained by the disembodied soul to time\nand space, the question as to the locality of the spirit world,\nthe scene of our future life. Sheol, Hades, Tartarus, Valhalla\nwith its mead brimmed horns, Blessed Isles, Elysium, supernal\nOlympus, firmamental Heaven, paradisal Eden, definite sites of\ncelestial Worlds for departed souls, the Chaldee's golden orbs,\nthe Sanscrit Meru, the Indian Hunting Ground, the Moslem's love\nbowers, and wine rivers, and gem palaces thronged with dark eyed\nhouris, these notions, and all similar ones, of material\nresidences for spirits, located and bounded, we must dismiss as\ndreams and cheats of the childish world's unripe fancy. There is\nno evidence for any thing of that coarse, crude sort. The\nfictitious theological Heaven is a deposit of imagination on the\nazure ground of infinity, like a bird's nest on Himalaya. What,\nthen, shall we say? Why, in the first place, that, while there are\nreasons enough and room enough for an undisheartened faith in the\ngrand fact of human immortality, it is beyond our present powers\nto establish any detailed conclusions in regard to its locality or\nits scenery.\n\nBut surely, in the second place, we should say that it becomes us,\nwhen reflecting on the scenes to be opened to us at death, to rise\nto a more ideal and sublime view than any of those tangible\nfigments which were the products of untrained sensual imagination\nand gross materialistic theory. When the fleshly prison walls of\nthe mind fall, its first inheritance is a stupendous freedom. The\nnarrow limits that caged it here are gone, and it lives in an\nethereal sphere with no impeding bounds. Leaving its natal\nthreshold of earth and the lazar house of time, its home is\nimmensity, and its lease is eternity. Even in our present state,\nto a true\n\n36 More Worlds than One the Creed of the Philosopher and the Hope\nof the Christian.\n\n37 Essay on the Unity or Plurality of Worlds. See, furthermore, in\nWestminster Review, July, 1858, Recent Astronomy and the Nebular\nHypothesis.\n\n38 Volger, Erde and Ewigkeit. (Natural History of the Earth as a\nPeriodical Process of Development in Opposition to the Unnatural\nGeology of Revolutions and Catastrophes.) Treise, Dag Endlose der\ngrossen und der kleinen materiellen Welt.\n\n\nthinker there is no ascent or descent or terminating wall in\nspace, but equal motion illimitably in all directions; and no\nabsolute standard of duration, only a relative and variable one\nfrom the insect of an hour, to man, to an archangel, to that\nincomprehensible Being whose shortest moments are too vast to be\nnoted by the awful nebula of the Hour Glass, although its rushing\nsands are systems of worlds. The soul emerges from earthly bondage\nemancipated into eternity, while \"The ages sweep around him with\ntheir wings, Like anger'd eagles cheated of their prey.\"\n\nWe have now sufficient premonitions and examples of this wondrous\nenlargement to base a rational belief on. What hems us in when we\nthink, feel, and imagine? And what is the heaven that shall dawn\nfor us beyond the veil of death's domain but the realm of Thought,\nthe sphere of the spirit's unhampered powers? There are often\nvouchsafed to us here hours of outsoaring emotion and conception\nwhich make the enclosures in which the astronomer loiters seem\nnarrow. \"His skies are shoal, and imagination, like a thirsty\ntraveller, pants to be through their desert. The roving mind\nimpatiently bursts the fetters of astronomical orbits, like\ncobwebs in a corner of its universe, and launches itself to where\ndistance fails to follow, and law, such as science has discovered,\ngrows weak and weary.\" There are moods of spiritual expansion and\ninfinite longing that illustrate the train of thought so well\nexpressed in the following lines:\n\n\"Even as the dupe in tales Arabian\nDipp'd but his brow beneath the beaker's brim,\nAnd in that instant all the life of man\nFrom youth to age roll'd its slow years on him,\nAnd, while the foot stood motionless, the soul\nSwept with deliberate wing from pole to pole;\nSo when the man the Grave's still portal passes,\nClosed on the substances or cheats of earth,\nThe Immaterial, for the things earth glasses,\nShapes a new vision from the matter's dearth:\nBefore the soul that sees not with our eyes\nThe undefined Immeasurable lies.\" 39\n\nThen we realize that the spiritual world does not form some now\nunseen and distant region of the visible creation, but that the\nastronomic universe is a speck lying in the invisible bosom of the\nspiritual world. \"Space is an attribute of God in which all matter\nis laid, and other attributes he may have which are the home of\nmind and soul.\" We suppose the difference between the present\nembodied and the future disembodied state to be so vast that the\nconditions of the latter cannot be intelligibly illustrated by the\nanalogies of the former. It is not to be expected that the human\nsoul will ever be absolutely independent of time and space,\nliterally transcending them, but only relatively so as compared\nwith its earthly predicament.\n\n39 Bulwer, King Arthur, book xi.\n\n\nFor, as an able thinker and writer a philosopher of the\nSwedenborgian school, too has said, \"The conception of a mind\nabsolutely sundered from all connection with space is a mere\npretence which words necessarily repudiate.\"\n\nThe soul on the hypothesis that there is a soul is now in the\nbody. Evidently, on leaving the body, it must either be nowhere,\nand that is annihilation, which the vehement totality of our\nthought denies; or everywhere, and that implies infinity, the loss\nof finite being in boundless Deity, a conclusion which we know of\nnothing to warrant; or somewhere,  and that predicates a surviving\nindividuality related to surrounding externals, which is the\nprophesied and satisfactory result in which we rest in faith,\nhumbly confessing our ignorance as to all the minutia. It does not\nnecessarily follow from this view, however, that the soul is\nlimited to a fixed region in space. It may have the freedom of the\nuniverse. More wonders, and sublimer than mortal fancies have ever\nsuspected, are waiting to be revealed when we die:\n\n\"For this life is but being's first faint ray, And heaven on\nheaven make up God's dazzling day.\"\n\nWe are here living unconsciously engirt by another universe than\nthe senses can apprehend, thinly veiled, but real, and waiting for\nus with hospitable invitation. \"What are those dream like and\ninscrutable thoughts which start up in moments of stillness,\napparently as from the deeps, like the movement of the leaves\nduring a silent night, in prognostic of the breeze that has yet\nscarce come, if not the rustlings of schemes and orders of\nexistence near though unseen?\" Perchance the range of the abode\nand destiny of the soul after death is all immensity. The\ninterstellar spaces, which we usually fancy are barren deserts\nwhere nonentity reigns, may really be the immortal kingdom\ncolonized by the spirits who since the beginning of the creation\nhave sailed from the mortal shores of all planets. They may be the\ncrowded aisles of the universal temple trod by bright throngs of\nworshipping angels. The soul's home, the heaven of God, may be\nsuffused throughout the material universe, ignoring the existence\nof physical globes and galaxies. So light and electricity pervade\nsome solid bodies, as if for them there were no solidity. So,\ndoubtless, there are millions of realities around us utterly\neluding our finest senses. \"A fact,\" Emerson says, \"is the last\nissue of spirit,\" and not its entire extent. \"The visible creation\nis the terminus of the invisible world,\" and not the totality of\nthe universe. There are gradations of matter and being, from the\nrock to the flower, from the vegetable to man. Is it most probable\nthat the scale breaks abruptly there, or that other ranks of\nspiritual existence successively rise peopling the seeming abysses\nunto the very confines of God?\n\n\"Can every leaf a teeming world contain,\nCan every globule gird a countless race,\nYet one death slumber in its dreamless reign\nClasp all the illumed magnificence of space?\nLife crowd a grain, from air's vast realms effaced?\nThe leaf a world, the firmament a waste?\"\n\nAn honest historical criticism forces us, however reluctantly, to\nloose our hold from the various supposed localities of the soul's\ndestination, which have pleased the fancies and won the assent of\nmankind in earlier times. But it cannot touch the simple and\ncardinal fact of an immortal life for man. It merely forces us to\nacknowledge that while the fact stands clear and authoritative to\ninstinct, reason, and faith, yet the how, and the where, and all\nsuch problems, are wrapped in unfathomable mystery. We are to obey\nand hope, not dissect and dogmatize. However the fantastic dreams\nof the imagination and the subtle speculations of the intellect\nmay shift from time to time, and be routed and vanish, the deep\nyearning of the heart remains the same, the divine polarity of the\nreason changes not, and men will never cease fondly to believe\nthat although they cannot tell where heaven is, yet surely there\nis a heaven reserved for them somewhere within the sheltering\nembrace of God's infinite providence. We may not say of that\nkingdom, Lo, here! or Lo, there! but it is wherever God's\napproving presence extends: and is that not wherever the pure in\nheart are found? 40\n\nLet every elysian clime the breezes blow over, every magic isle\nthe waves murmur round, every subterranean retreat fancy has\ndevised, every cerulean region the moon visits, every planet that\nhangs afar on the neck of night, be disenchanted of their\nimaginary charms, and brought, by the advance of discovery, within\nthe relentless light of familiarity, for the common gaze of\nfleshly eyes and tread of vulgar feet, still the prophetic MIND\nwould not be robbed of its belief in immortality; still the\nunquenchable instincts of the HEART would retain, uninjured, the\ngreat expectation of ANOTHER WORLD, although no traveller returns\nfrom its voiceless bourne to tell in what local direction it lies,\nno voyager comes back from its mystic port to describe its\nlatitude and longitude on the chartless infinite of space.\n\nTurn we now from the lateral distribution of notions as to a\nfuture life, to their lineal development. We have seen that the\ndevelopment of belief as to the locality of our future destination\nhas been a chase of places, over the earth, under the earth,\nthrough the sky, as fast as the unknown was brought within the\nknown, until it has stopped at the verge of the unknowable. There\nwe stand, confessing our inability to fix the scene. The doctrine\nof the conditions and contents of the future life has followed the\nsame course as that of its locality.\n\nIn the first stage of belief the future life consists of the gross\nconditions and materials of the known present reflected, under the\nimpulse of the senses, into the unknown future. This style of\nfaith prevailed for a vast period, and is not yet obsolete. When\nthe King of Dahomey has done a great feat, he kills a man to carry\nthe tidings to the ghost of his royal father. When he dies\nhimself, a host are killed, that he may enter Deadland with a\nbecoming cortege. His wives also are slain, or commit suicide,\nthat they may rejoin him.\n\nThe second stage of belief is reached when, under the ethical\nimpulse, only certain refined elements of the present,\ndiscriminated portions of the products of reason, imagination and\nsentiment, are reflected into the future, and accepted as the\nfacts of the life there. Critical processes, applied to thought\nand faith, cause the rejection of much that was received. That\nalone which answers to our wants, and has coherence, continues to\nbe held\n\n40 Chalmers, Sermon, Heaven a Character and not a Locality.\n\n\nas truth. An example is afforded by Augustine in his essay, De\nLibero Arbitrio. He argues that the wicked are kept in being on\nthe out skirts of the material universe; partly wretched, partly\nhappy; too bad for heaven, too good for annihilation; incapable of\nattaining the summit of their beatified destiny. Not the crude\nreflection of the present state, but a criticized and purged\nportion of the results of speculation on it, is thrown forward,\nand composes the doctrine of the future life. This is the\ncondition of faith in which civilized mankind, for the most part,\nnow are.\n\nThe third stage of development is that wherein the thinker\nperceives that it is illegitimate to reflect into the future any\nof the realities or relations of the present, and then to regard\nthem as the truths of the experience which awaits him after death.\nHis experience here is the resultant of his faculties as related\nto the universe. Destroy his organization, and what follows? One\nwill say, \"Nonentity.\" Another, more wise and modest, will say,\n\"Something necessarily unknown as yet.\" We have no better right to\nproject into the ideal space of futurity the ingredients of our\nthoughts than we have to project there the objects of our senses.\nBunsen, whose thought and scholarship included pretty much all the\nknowledge of mankind, represents this stage of faith. He stands on\nthe religious side of the movement of Science, believing in\nimmortality without defining it. Comte stands on the positivist\nside, blankly denying all objective immortality. These two\nrepresent the results in which, advancing from its opposite sides,\nthe logical development of the doctrine of a future life ends.\nWith Comte, atheistic dogmatism crushing every eternal hope; with\nBunsen, Christian faith pointing the child to an eternal home in\nthe Father. For all but fetichistic minds the only choice lies\nbetween these two.\n\nThe organic evolution of the doctrine of a life to come is,\ntherefore, a process of faith beginning with the crude\ntransference of the elements of the present into the future,\ncontinuing with refined modifications of that transference, ending\nwith an entire cessation of it as inapplicable and incompetent.\nHaving examined all the historic, experimental, and scientific\ndata within our reach, we pause on the edge of the PART which we\nknow, and wait, with serene trust, though with bowed head and\nsilent lip, before the UNKNOWABLE WHOLE.\n\nCHAPTER VIII.\n\nCRITICAL HISTORY OF DISBELIEF IN A FUTURE LIFE.\n\nIF the first men were conscious spirits who, at the command of\nGod, dropped from the skies into organic forms of matter, or who\nwere created here on an exalted plane of insight and communion far\nabove any thing now experienced by us, then the destination of man\nto a life after death may originally have been a fact of direct\nknowledge, universally seen and grasped without any obscuring\nperadventure. From that state it gradually declined into dubious\ndimness as successive generations grew sinful, sensual, hardened,\nimmersed and bound in affairs of passion and earth. It became\nremoter, assumed a questionable aspect, gave rise to discussions\nand doubts, and here and there to positive disbelief and open\ndenial. Thus, beginning as a clear reality within the vision of\nall, it sank into a matter of uncertain debate among individuals.\n\nBut if the first men were called up into being from the earth, by\nthe creative energy of God, as the distinct climax of the other\nspecies, then the early generations of our race, during the long\nages of their wild and slowly ameliorating state, were totally\nignorant of any conscious sequel to the fate seemingly closed in\ndeath. They were too animal and rude yet to conceive a spiritual\nexistence outside of the flesh and the earth. Among the\naccumulating trophies of their progressive intellectual conquests\nhung up by mankind in the historic hall of experience, this\nmarvellous achievement is one of the sublimest. What a day was\nthat for all humanity forever after, when for the first time, on\nsome climbing brain, dawned from the great Sun of the spirit world\nthe idea of a personal immortality! It was announced. It dawned\nseparately wherever there were prepared persons. It spread from\nsoul to soul, and became the common faith of the world. Still,\namong every people there were pertinacious individuals, who swore\nnot by the judge and went not with the multitude, persons of less\ncredulous hearts and more skeptical faculties, who demurred at the\ngreat doctrine, challenged it in many particulars, gainsaid it on\nvarious grounds, disbelieved it from different motives, and fought\nit with numerous weapons.\n\nWhichever of the foregoing suppositions be adopted, that the\ndoctrine of a future life subsided from universal acceptance into\nparty contention, or that it arose at length from personal\nperception and authority into common credit, the fact remains\nequally prominent and interesting that throughout the traceable\nhistory of human opinion there is a line of dissenters who have\nthought death the finality of man, and the next world an illusion.\nThe history of this special department of thought opens a wide and\nfertile subject. To gain a comprehensive survey of its boundaries\nand a compact epitome of its contents, it will be well to consider\nit in these two lights and divisions, all the time trying to see,\nstep by step, what justice, and what injustice, is done: first,\nthe dominant motive forces animating the disbelievers; secondly,\nthe methods and materials they have employed.\n\nAt first thought it would appear difficult to tell what impulses\ncould move persons to undertake, as many constantly have\nundertaken, a crusade against a faith so dear to man, so ennobling\nto his nature. Peruse the pages of philosophical history with\ncareful reflection, and the mystery is scattered, and various\ngroups of disbelievers stand revealed, with earnest voices and\ngestures assailing the doctrine of a future life.1\n\nOne company, having their representatives in every age, reject it\nas a protest in behalf of the right of private judgment against\nthe tyranny of authority. The doctrine has been inculcated by\npriesthoods, embodied in sacred books, and wrought into the\norganic social life of states; and acceptance of it has been\ncommanded as a duty, and expected as a decent and respectable\nthing. To deny it has required courage, implied independent\nopinions, and conferred singularity. To cast off the yoke of\ntradition, undermine the basis of power supporting a galling\nreligious tyranny, and be marked as a rebellious freethinker in a\ngeneration of slavish conformists, this motive could scarcely fail\nto exhibit results. Some of the radical revolutionists of the\npresent time say that the doctrine of the divine right of kings\nand the infallible authority of the priesthood is the living core\nof the power of tyranny in the world. They therefore deny God and\nfuturity in order to overthrow their oppressors, who reign over\nthem and prey upon them in the name of God and the pretended\ninterests of a future life.2 The true way to secure the real\ndesideratum corruptly indicated in this movement is not by denying\nthe reality of a future life, but by removing the adjustment of\nits conditions and the administration of its rewards and penalties\nout of the hands of every clique of priests and rulers. A\nrighteously and benignly ordered immortality, based in truth and\nadjudicated by the sole sovereignty of God, is no engine of\noppression, though a doctrine of heaven and hell irresponsibly\nmanaged by an Orphic association, the guardians of a Delphic\ntripod, the owners of a secret confessional, or the interpreters\nof an exclusive creed, may be. In a matter of such grave\nimportance, that searching and decisive discrimination, so rare\nwhen the passions get enlisted, is especially needed. Because a\ndoctrine is abused by selfish tyrants is no reason for supposing\nthe doctrine itself either false or injurious.\n\nNo little injury has been done to the common faith in a future\nlife, great disbelief has been provoked unwittingly, by writers\nwho have sought to magnify the importance of revealed religion at\nthe expense of natural religion. Many such persons have labored to\nshow that all the scientific, philosophical, and moral arguments\nfor immortality are worthless, the teachings and resurrection of\nChrist, the revealed word of God, alone possessing any validity to\nestablish that great truth. An accomplished author says, in a\nrecent work, \"The immortality of the soul cannot be proved without\nthe aid of revelation.\" 3 Bishop Courtenay published, a few years\nsince, a most deliberate and unrelenting attack upon the arguments\nfor the deathlessness of the soul, seeking with persevering\nremorselessness to demolish every one of them, and to prove that\nman totally perishes, but will be restored to life at the second\ncoming of Christ.4 There can scarcely be a question that such\nstatements usually awaken and confirm a deep skepticism as to a\nfuture life, instead of enhancing a grateful estimate of the\ngospel.\n\n1 J. A. Luther, Recensetur numerus eorum, qui immortalitatem\ninficiati sunt.\n\n2 Schmidt, Geschichte der Deutschen Literatur im neunzehnten\nJahrhundert, band iii. kap. iv.: Der philosophische Radicalismus.\n\n\n3 Bowen, Metaphysical and Ethical Science, part ii. ch. ix. The\nFuture States: Their Evidences and Nature considered on Principles\nPhysical, Moral, and Scriptural, with the Design of Showing the\nValue of the Gospel Revelation.\n\n\nIf man is once annihilated, it is hardly credible that he will be\nidentically restored. Such a stupendous and arbitrary miracle\nclashes with the continuity of the universe, and staggers rather\nthan steadies faith. We should beg such volunteers however sincere\nand good their intentions to withhold the impoverishing gift of\ntheir service. And when kindred reasonings are advanced by such\nmen as the unbelieving Hume, we feel tempted to say, in the\nlanguage of a distinguished divine speaking on this very point,\n\"Ah, gentlemen, we understand you: you belong to the sappers and\nminers in the army of the aliens!\"\n\nAnother party of disbelievers have repudiated the whole conception\nof a future state as a protest against the nonsense and cruelty\nassociated with it in the prevailing superstitions and dogmatisms\nof their time. From the beginning of history in most nations, the\ndetails of another existence and its conditions have been\nfurnished to the eager credulity of the people by the lawless\nfancies of poets, the fine spinning brains of metaphysicians, and\nthe cold blooded calculations or hot headed zeal of sectarian\nleaders. Of course a mass of absurdities would grow up around the\ncentral germ and a multitude of horrors sprout forth. While the\ncommon throng would unquestioningly receive all these ridiculous\nand revolting particulars, they could not but provoke doubt,\nsatire, flat rejection, from the bolder and keener wits. So we\nfind it was in Greece. The fables about the under world the\nferriage over the Styx, poor Tantalus so torturingly mocked, the\ndaughters of Danaus drawing water in sieves all were accredited by\nthe general crowd on one extreme.5 On the other extreme the whole\nscheme, root and branch, was flung away with scorn. The following\nepitaph on an unbeliever is attributed to Callimachus. \"O\nCharidas, what are the things below? Vast darkness. And what the\nreturns to earth? A falsehood. And Pluto? A fable. We have\nperished: this is my true speech to you; but, if you want the\nflattering style, the Pellaan's great ox is in the shades.\"6\nMeanwhile, a few judicious mediators, neither swallowing the whole\ngross draught at a gulp, nor throwing the whole away with utter\ndisgust, drank through the strainer of a discriminative\ninterpretation. Because caprice, hatred, and favoritism are\nembalmed in some perverse doctrine of future punishment is no\ndefensible reason for denying a righteous retribution. Because\nheaven has been located on a hill top, and its sublime denizens\nmade to eat ambrosia and sometimes to fall out among themselves,\nis no adequate reason for rejecting the idea of a heavenly life.\nPuerilities of fancy and monstrosities of passion arbitrarily\nconnected with principles claiming to be eternal truths should be\ncarefully separated, and not the whole be despised and trodden on\ntogether. From lack of this analysis and discrimination, in the\npresence of abnormal excrescences and offensive secretions dislike\nand disbelief have often flourished where, if judicial thought and\nconscience had cut off the imposed deformities\n\n5 Plutarch, De Superstition. The reality of the popular credulity\nand terror in later Rome clearly appears from the fact that Marcus\nAurelius had a law passed condemning to banishment \"those who do\nany thing through which men's excitable minds are alarmed by a\nsuperstitious fear of the Deity.\" Nero, after murdering his\nmother, haunted by her ghost and tortured by the Furies, attempted\nby magical rites to bring up her shade from below, and soften her\nvindictive wrath Suetonius, Vita Neronis, cap. xxxiv.\n\n6 Epigram. XIV.\n\n\nand dispelled the discoloring vengeance, faith and love would have\nbeen confirmed in contemplating the pure and harmonious form of\ndoctrine left exposed in the beauty of benignant truth. The aim\nostensibly proposed by Lucretius, in his elaborate and masterly\nexposition of the Epicurean philosophy, is to free men from their\nabsurd belief in childish legends and their painful fears of death\nand hell. As far as merely this purpose is concerned, he might\nhave accomplished it as effectually, perhaps, and more directly,\nby exposing the adventitious errors without assailing the great\ndoctrine around which they had been gathered. Bion the\nBorysthenite is reported by Diogenes Laertius to have said, with a\nsharp humor, that the souls below would be more punished by\ncarrying water in whole buckets than in such as had been bored! A\nsoul may pass into the unseen state though there be no Plutonian\nwherry, suffer woe though there be no river Pyriphlegethon, enjoy\nbliss though there be no cup of nectar borne by Hebe. But to fly\nto rash extremes and build positive conclusions on mere ignorance\nhas always been natural to man, not only as a believer, but also\nas an iconoclastic denier.\n\nA third set of disbelievers in a future life consists of those who\nadvocate the \"emancipation of the flesh\" and assert the\nsufficiency of this life when fully enjoyed. They attack the dogma\nof immortality as the essential germ of asceticism, and abjure it\nas a protest against that superstitious distrust and gloom which\nput a ban on the pleasures of the world. These are the earthlings\nwho would fain displace the stern law of self denial with the\nbland permission of self indulgence, rehabilitate the senses, feed\nevery appetite full, and, when satiated of the banquet of\nexistence, fall asleep under the table of the earth. The\ncountenance of Duty, severe daughter of God, looks commands upon\nthem to turn from dallying ease and luxury, to sacrifice the\nmeaner inclinations, to gird themselves for an arduous race\nthrough difficulties, to labor and aspire evermore towards the\nhighest and the best. They prefer to install in her stead\nAphrodite crowned with Paphian roses, her eyes aglow with the\nlight of misleading stars, her charms bewitching them with fatal\nenchantments and melting them in softest joys. The pale face of\nDeath, with mournful eyes, lurks at the bottom of every winecup\nand looks out from behind every garland; therefore brim the purple\nbeaker higher and hide the unwelcome intruder under more flowers.\nWe are a cunning mixture of sense and dust, and life is a fair but\nswift opportunity. Make haste to get the utmost pleasure out of it\nere it has gone, scorning every pretended bond by which sour\nascetics would restrain you and turn your days into penitential\nscourges. This gospel of the senses had a swarm of apostles in the\nlast century in France, when the chief gates of the cemetery in\nParis bore the inscription, \"Death is an eternal sleep.\" It has\nhad more in Germany in this century; and voices of enervating\nmusic are not wanting in our own literature to swell its siren\nchorus.7 Perhaps the greatest prophet it has had was Heine, whose\npages reek with a fragrance of pleasure through which sighs, like\na fading wail from the solitary string of a deserted harp struck\nby a lonesome breeze, the perpetual refrain of death! death!\ndeath! His motto seems to be, \"Quick! let me\n\n7 Pierer, Universal Lexikon, dritte Auflage, Deutsche Literatur,\nsect. 42. Schmidt, Geschichte der Deutschen Literatur im\nneuntzehnten Jahrhundert, band iii: kap. i.: Das junge\nDeutschland.\n\n\nenjoy what there is; for I must die. Oh, the gusty relish of life!\nOh, the speechless mystery, the infinite reality, of death!\" He\nsays himself, comparing the degradation of his later experience\nwith the soaring enthusiasm of his youth, \"It is as if a star had\nfallen from heaven upon a hillock of muck, and swine were gnawing\nat it!\"\n\nThese men think that the doctrine of a future life, like a great\nmagnet, has drawn the needle of human activity out of its true\ndirection; that the dominant tendency of the present age is, and\nof right ought to be, towards the attainment of material well\nbeing, in a total forgetfulness to lay up treasures in heaven. The\nend is enjoyment; the obstacle, asceticism; the means to secure\nthe end, the destruction of faith in immortality, so that man,\nhaving nothing left but this world, will set himself to improve\nand enjoy it. The monkish severity of a morbid and erroneous\ntheology, darkening the present and prescribing pain in it to\nbrighten the future and increase its pleasures, legitimates an\nearnest reaction. But that reaction should be wise, measured by\ntruth. It should rectify, not demolish, the prevailing faith. For\nthe desired end is most likely to be reached by perceiving, not\nthat all terminates in the grave, but that the greatest enjoyment\nflows from a self controlling devotedness to noble ends, that the\nclaims of another life are in perfect unison with the interests of\nthis life, that the lawful fruition of every function of human\nnature, each lower faculty being subordinated to each higher one,\nand the highest always reigning, at once yields the most immediate\npleasure and makes the completest preparation for the hereafter.\nIn the absence of the all irradiating sun of immortality, these\ndisbelievers, exulting over the pale taper of sensual pleasure,\nremind us of a parcel of apes gathered around a cold glow worm and\nrejoicing that they have found a fire in the damp, chilly night.\n\nBesides the freethinkers, who will not yield to authority, but\ninsist upon standing apart from the crowd, and the satirists, who\nlevel their shafts undiscriminatingly against what they perceive\nassociated with absurdity, and the worldlings, who prefer the\npleasures of time to the imaginarily contrasted goods of eternity,\nthere is a fourth class of men who oppose the doctrine of a\npersonal immortality as a protest against the burdensome miseries\nof individuality. The Gipseys exclaimed to Borrow, \"What! is it\nnot enough to have borne the wretchedness of this life, that we\nmust also endure another?\" 8 A feeling of the necessary\nlimitations and suffering exposures of a finite form of being has\nfor untold ages harassed the great nations of the East with\npainful unrest and wondrous longing. Pantheistic absorption  to\nlose all imprisoning bounds, and blend in that ecstatic flood of\nDeity which, forever full, never ebbs on any coast has been\nequally the metaphysical speculation, the imaginative dream, and\nthe passionate desire, of the Hindu mind. It is the basis and\nmotive of the most extensive disbelief of individual immortality\nthe world has known. \"The violence of fruition in these foul\npuddles of flesh and blood presently glutteth with satiety,\" and\nthe mortal circuits of earth and time are a round of griefs and\npangs from which they would escape into the impersonal Godhead.\nSheerly against this lofty strain of poetic souls is that\ngrovelling life of ignorance which, dominated by selfish\ninstincts, crawling on brutish grounds,\n\n8 The Zincali, part ii. ch. i.\n\n\ncannot awaken the creative force of spiritual wants slumbering\nwithin, nor lift its head high enough out of the dust to see the\nstars of a deathless destiny; and a fifth group of disbelievers\ndeny immortality because their degraded experience does not\nprophesy it. Many a man might say, with Autolycus, \"For the life\nto come, I sleep out the thought of it.\" A mind holy and loving,\ncommuning with God and an ideal world, \"lighted up as a spar grot\"\nwith pure feelings and divine truths, is mirrored full of\nincorporeal shapes of angels, and aware of their immaterial\ndisentanglement and eternity. A brain surcharged with fires of\nhatred, drowsed with filthy drugs, and drenched with drunkenness,\nwill teem, on the contrary, with vermin writhing in the meshes of\ndecaying matter. Cleaving to evanescent things, men feel that they\nare passing away like leaves on waves; filled with convictions\nrooted and breathing in eternity, they feel that they shall abide\nin serene survival, like stars above tempests. Turn from every\nobscene sight, curb every base propensity, obey every heavenly\nvision by assimilation of immortal things, sacred self denials and\ntoils, disinterested sympathies and hopes, accumulate divine\ntreasures and kindle the mounting flame of a divine life, and at\nthe same time consciousness will crave and faith behold an\nillimitable destiny. Experiences worthy of being eternal generate\nfaith in their own eternity. But the ignorant and selfish\nsensualist, whose total experience is of the earth earthy, who has\nno realization of pure truth, goodness, beauty, is incapable of\nsincere faith in immortal life. The dormancy of his higher powers\nexcludes the necessary conditions of such a faith. His ignoble\nbodily life does not furnish the conscious basis and prophecy of a\nglorious spiritual life, but shudderingly proclaims the cessation\nof all his experience with the destruction of his senses. The\ntermination of all the functions he knows, what else can it be but\nhis virtual annihilation? When to the privative degradations of an\nuncultivated and earthy experience, naturally accompanied by a\npassive unbelief in immortality, are added the positive coarseness\nand guilt of a thick insensibility and a wicked life, aggressive\ndisbelief is quite likely to arise, the essay of an uneasy\nconscience to slay what it feels would be a foe, and strangle the\nworm that never dies. The denial springing from such sources is\nrefuted when it is explained. Its motive should never by any man\nbe yielded to, much less be willingly nourished. It should be\nresisted by a devout culture courting the smiles of God, by rising\ninto the loftier airs of meditation and duty, by imaginative\nsentiment and practical philanthropy, until the eternal instinct,\nlong smothered under sluggish loads of sense and sin, reached by a\nsoliciting warmth from heaven, stirs with demonstrating vitality.\n\nThe last and largest assemblage of dissenters from the prevailing\nopinion on this subject comprises those who utter their disbelief\nin a future existence out of simple loyalty to seeming truth, as a\nprotest against what they think a false doctrine, and against the\nsophistical and defective arguments by which it has been propped.\nIt may be granted that the five previously named classes are\nequally sincere in their convictions, honest assailants of error\nand adherents of truth; but they are actuated by animating motives\nof a various moral character. In the present case, the ruling\nmotive is purely a determination, as Buchner says, to stand by the\nfacts and to establish the correct doctrine. The directest and\nclearest way of giving a descriptive account of the active\nphilosophical history of this class of disbelievers will be to\nfollow on the lines of their tracks with statements and criticisms\nof their procedures.9 Disbelief in the doctrine of a future life\nfor man has planted itself upon bold affirmation, and fortified\nitself with arguments which may most conveniently be considered\nunder five distinct heads.\n\nFirst is the sensational Argument from Appearance. In death the\nvisible functions cease, the organism dissolves, the mind\ndisappears; there is apparently a total scattering and end of the\nindividual. That these phenomena should suggest the thought of\nannihilation is inevitable; to suppose that they prove the fact is\nabsurd. It is an arrant begging of the question; for the very\nproblem is, Does not an invisible spiritual entity survive the\nvisible material disintegration? Among the unsound and\nsuperstitious attempts to prove the fact of a future life is that\nfounded on narratives of ghosts, appearances and visions of the\ndead. Dr. Tafel published at Tubingen in 1853 a volume aiming to\ndemonstrate the immortality and personal identity of the soul by\ncitation of ninety cases of supernatural appearances, extending\nfrom the history of the ghost whose address to Curtius Rufus is\nrecorded by Tacitus, to the wonderful story told by Renatus\nLuderitz in 1837. Such efforts are worse than vain. Their data are\nso explicable in many cases, and so inconclusive in all, that they\nquite naturally provoke deeper disbelief and produce telling\nretorts. While here and there a credulous person is convinced of a\nfuture life by the asserted appearance of a spirit, the well\ninformed psychologist refers the argument to the laws of insanity\nand illusions, and the skeptic adds as a finality his belief that\nthere is no future life, because no ghost has ever come back to\nreveal and certify it. The argument on both sides is equally\nfutile, and removed from the true requisitions of the problem.\n\nTo the philosophical thinker a mere appearance is scarcely a\npresumption in favor of a conclusion in accordance with it.\nScience and experience are full of examples exposing the nullity\nor the falsity of appearances. The sun seems to move around the\nearth; but truth contradicts it. We seem to discern distances and\nthe forms of bodies by direct sight; but the truth is we see\nnothing but shades and colors: all beyond is inference based on\nacquired experience. The first darkness would seem to the\ntrembling contemplator absolutely to blot out the universe; but in\ntruth it only prevented him from seeing it. The first thorough\nunconscious sleep would seem to be the hopeless destruction of the\nsoul in its perfect oblivion. Death is forever for the first time,\nshrouded in the misleading obscurities of an unknown novelty.\nAppearances are often deceitful, yielding obvious clews only to\nmistakes and falsehoods. They are always superficial, furnishing\nno reliable evidence of the reality.\n\n\"Who could have thought such darkness lay conceal'd\nWithin thy beams, O Sun! Or who could find,\nWhilst fly and leaf and insect stood reveal'd,\nThat to such countless orbs thou mad'st us blind?\nWhy then do we shun death with anxious strife?\nIf light can thus deceive, wherefore not life?\"\n\n9 Spazier, Antiphadon, oder Prufung einiger Hauptbeweise fur die\nEinfachheit und Unsterblichkeit der menschlichen Seele.\n\n\nWhen the body dies, the mind is no longer manifested through it.\nThat is all we immediately know by perception. The inference that\nthe mind has therefore ceased to be at all, is a mere supposition.\nIt may still live and act, independently of the body. An outside\nphenomenon can prove nothing here. We must by some psychological\nprobe pierce to the core of the being and discern, as there\nconcealed, the central interpretation of truth, or else, in want\nof this, turn from these surface shadows and seek the solution in\nsome other province. Millions of appearances being opposed to the\ntruth or inadequate to hint it, we must never implicitly trust\ntheir suggestions. What microscope can reveal the organic life in\na kernel of corn, and show that through the decay of that kernel a\nstalk will spring up and bear a thousand kernels more? But if a\nnew mental life emerges from the dying form of man, it lies in a\nspiritual realm whereinto we have no instruments to gaze. Every\nexistent thing has its metes and limits. In fact, the only final\nweapon and fort of a thing is its environing limitation. It goes\ninto nothing if that be taken down, the atheist says; into\ninfinity, the mystic says. The mistake and difficulty lie in\ndiscerning what the last wall around the essence is. \"The universe\nis the body of our body.\" The boundary of our life is boundless\nlife. Schlegel has somewhere asked the question, \"Is life in us,\nor are we in life?\" Because man appears to be wholly extinguished\nin death, we have no right whatever in reason to conclude that he\nreally is so. The star which seemed to set in the western grave of\naged and benighted time, we, soon coming round east to the true\nspirit sky, may discern bright in the morning forehead of\neternity. There can be no safe reasoning from the outmost husk and\nphenomenon of a thing to its inmost essence and result. And, in\nspite of any possible amount of appearance, man himself may pass\ndistinct and whole into another sphere of being when his flesh\nfalls to dust. That science should search in vain with her finest\nglasses to discern a royal occupant reigning in the purple\nchambered palace of the heart, or to trace any such mysterious\ntenant departing in sudden horror from the crushed and bleeding\nhouse of life, belongs to the necessary conditions of the subject;\nfor spirit can only be spiritually discerned. As well might you\nseek to smell a color, or taste a sound, tie a knot of water, or\nbraid a cord of wind.\n\nNext comes the abstract Argument from Speculative Philosophy.\nUnder this head are to be included all those theories which deny\nthe soul to be a spiritual entity, but reduce it to an atomic\narrangement, or a dependent attribute, or a process of action.\nHeracleitus held that the soul was fire: of course, when the fuel\nwas exhausted the fire would go out. Thales taught that it was\nwater: this might all evaporate away. Anaximenes affirmed that it\nwas air, of which all things were formed by rarefaction and\ncondensation: on such a supposition it could have no permanent\npersonal identity. Critias said it was blood: this might\ndegenerate and lose its nature, or be poured out on the ground.\nLeucippus maintained that it was a peculiar concourse of atoms: as\nthese came together, so they might fly apart and there be an end\nof what they formed. The followers of Aristotle asserted that it\nwas a fifth unknown substance, with properties of its own, unlike\nthose of fire, air, water, and earth. This might be mortal or\nimmortal: there was nothing decisive in the conception or the\ndefining terms to prove which it was. Accordingly, the Peripatetic\nschool has always been divided on the question of the immortality\nof the soul, from the time of its founder's immediate disciples to\nthis day. It cannot be clearly shown what the mighty Stagyrite's\nown opinion really was.\n\nSpeculative conceptions as to the nature of the soul like the\nforegoing, when advanced as arguments to establish its proper\nmortality, are destitute of force, because they are gratuitous\nassumptions. They are not generalizations based on careful\ninduction of facts; they are only arbitrary hypotheses.\nFurthermore, they are inconsistent both with the facts and\nphenomena of experience. Mind cannot fairly be brought into the\ncategory of the material elements; for it has properties and\nperforms functions emphatically distinguishing it from every thing\nelse, placing it in a rank by itself, with exclusive predicates of\nits own. Can fire think? Can water will? Can air feel? Can blood\nsee? Can a mathematical number tell the difference between good\nand evil? Can earth be jealous of a rival and loyal to a duty? Can\na ganglion solve a problem in Euclid or understand the Theodicee\nof Leibnitz? It is absurd to confound things so distinct. Mind is\nmind, and matter is matter; and though we are now consciously\nacquainted with them only in their correlation, yet there is as\nmuch reason for supposing that the former survives the close of\nthat correlation as for supposing that the latter does. True, we\nperceive the material remaining and do not perceive the spirit.\nYes; but the differentiation of the two is exactly this, that one\nis appreciable by the senses, while the other transcends and\nbaffles them. It is absolutely inconceivable in imagination,\nwholly incredible to reason, intrinsically nonsensical every way,\nthat a shifting concourse of atoms, a plastic arrangement of\nparticles, a regular succession of galvanic shocks, a continuous\nseries of nervous currents, or any thing of the sort, should\nconstitute the reality of a human soul, the process of a human\nlife, the accumulated treasures of a human experience, all\npreserved at command and traversed by the moral lines of personal\nidentity. The things lie in different spheres and are full of\nincommunicable contrasts. However numerously and intimately\ncorrelated the physical and psychical constituents of man are,\nyet, so far as we can know any thing about them, they are steeply\nopposed to each other both in essence and function. Otherwise\nconsciousness is mendacious and language is unmeaning. A recent\nable author speaks of \"that congeries of organs whose union forms\nthe brain and whose action constitutes the mind.\" 10 The mind,\nthen, is an action! Can an action love and hate, choose and\nresolve, rejoice and grieve, remember, repent, and pray? Is not an\nagent necessary for an action? All such speculative conceptions as\nto the nature of soul as make it purely phenomenal are to be\noffset, if they can be, by the view which exhibits the personal\nego or conscious selfhood of the soul, not as an empty spot in\nwhich a swarm of relations centre as their goal point, but as an\nindestructible monad, the innermost and substantial essence and\ncause of the organization, the self apprehending and unchangeable\naxis of all thinking and acting. Some of the most free, acute,\nlearned, wise, and powerful thinkers of the world have been\nchampions of this doctrine; especially among the moderns may be\nnamed Leibnitz, Herbart, Goethe, and Hartenstein. Jacobi most\nearnestly maintained it both against Mendelssohn and against\nFichte.\n\n10 Bucknill and Tuke, Psychological Medicine, p. 371.\n\n\nThat the mind is a substantial entity, and therefore may be\nconceived as immortal, that it is not a mere functional operation\naccompanying the organic life, a phantom procession of conscious\nstates filing off on the stage of the cerebrum \"in a dead march of\nmere effects,\"  that it is not, as old Aristoxenus dreamed, merely\na harmony resulting from the form and nature of the body in the\nsame way that a tune springs from the consenting motions of a\nmusical instrument, seems to be shown by facts of which we have\ndirect knowledge in consciousness. We think that the mind is an\nindependent force, dealing with intellectual products, weighing\nopposing motives, estimating moral qualities, resisting some\ntendencies, strengthening others, forming resolves, deciding upon\nits own course of action and carrying out its chosen designs\naccordingly. If the soul were a mere process, it could not pause\nin mid career, select from the mass of possible considerations\nthose adapted to suppress a base passion or to kindle a generous\nsentiment, deliberately balance rival solicitations, and, when\nfully satisfied, proceed. Yet all this it is constantly doing. So,\nif the soul were but a harmony, it would give no sounds contrary\nto the affections of the lyre it comes from. But actually it\nresists the parts of the instrument from which they say it\nsubsists, exercising dominion over them, punishing some,\npersuading others, and ruling the desires, angers, and fears, as\nif itself of a different nature.11 Until an organ is seen to blow\nits own bellows, mend its shattered keys, move its pedals, and\nplay, with no foreign aid, \"I know that my Redeemer liveth,\" or a\nviolin tunes up its discordant strings and wields its bow in a\nspontaneous performance of the Carnival, showing us every Cremona\nas its own Paganini, we may, despite the conceits of speculative\ndisbelief, hold that the mind is a dynamic personal entity. That\nthought is the very \"latch string of a new world's wicket.\"\n\nThirdly, we have the fanciful Argument from Analogy. The keen\nchampions of disbelief, with their athletic agility of dialectics,\nhave made terrible havoc among the troops of poetic arguments from\nresemblance, drawn up to sustain the doctrine of immortality. They\nhave exposed the feebleness of the argument for our immortality\nfrom the wonderful workmanship and costliness of human nature, on\nthe ground that what requires the most pains and displays the most\nskill and genius in its production is the most lovingly preserved.\nFor God organizes the mind of a man just as easily as he\nconstructs the geometry of a diamond. His omnipotent attributes\nare no more enlisted in the creation of the intelligence of an\nelephant or the gratitude of a soul than they are in the\nfabrication of the wing of a gnat or the fragrance of a flower.\nInfinite wisdom and power are equally implied in each and in all.\nThey have shown the gross defectiveness of the comparison of the\nbutterfly and psyche. The butterfly, lying in the caterpillar\nneatly folded up like a flower in the bud, in due time comes\nforth. It is a material development, open to the senses, a common\ndemonstration tosensible experience. The disengagement of a spirit\nfrom a fleshly encasement, on the other hand, is a pure hypothesis\nwholly removed from sensible apprehension. There is no parallel in\nthe cases. So the ridiculousness has been made evident of Plato's\nfamous analogical argument that by a general law of nature all\nthings are produced contraries from contraries; warmth dies into\nthe\n\n11 Plato, Phado, 98.\n\n\nlife of cold, and lives out of the death of cold; night is born\nfrom the death of day, and day is born from the death of night;\nand thus everywhere death springs from life, and life from\ndeath.12 The whole comparison, considered as evidence of human\nimmortality, is baseless and full of astonishing sophistry. When\none hemisphere of the earth is turned away from the sun, it is\nnight there; when it is turned towards the sun, it is day again.\nTo this state of facts this revolving succession there is\nobviously no parallelism whatever in the two phenomenal phases of\nman, life and death, whereof one finishes its course and then the\nother seems fixed forever. In like manner, when Jeremy Taylor,13\nafter the example of many others, especially of old Licetus,\nargues soberly, as he does in a letter to Evelyn, for the\nimmortality of the soul from the analogy of lamps burning in tombs\nfor centuries with no waste of matter, there is no apposite and\nvalid similarity, even if the instances were not a childish fable.\nAn equally baseless argument for the existence of an independent\nspiritual body within the material body, to be extricated from the\nflesh at death and to survive in the same form and dimensions, we\nrecollect having seen in a work by a Swedenborgian author.14 He\nreasons that when a person who has suffered amputation feels the\nlost limb as vividly as ever before, the phenomenon is palpable\nproof of a spirit limb remaining while the fleshly one is gone! Of\ncourse, the simple physiological explanation is that the mind\ninstinctively refers the sensations brought in by the severed\nnerves to the points where, by inveterate custom, it has hitherto\nlearned to trace their origination. The report being the same, it\nis naturally attributed to the same source.\n\nBut those skeptics who have mercilessly exposed these fallacious\narguments from analogy have themselves reasoned in the same way as\nfallaciously and as often. When individual life leaves the\nphysical man, say they, cosmical life immediately enters the\ncorpse and restores it to the general stock of nature; so when\npersonal consciousness deserts the psychical man, the universal\nspirit resumes the dissolving soul. When certain conditions meet,\na human soul is formed, a gyrating current of thought, or a vortex\nof force: soon some accident or a spent impulse breaks the eddy,\nand the individual subsides like a whirl in the air or a water\nspout in the sea. When the spirit fuel of life is exhausted, man\ngoes out as an extinguished candle. He ceases like a tone from a\nbroken harp string. All these analogies are vitiated by radical\nunlikeness between the things compared. As arguments they are\nperfectly worthless, being spoiled by essential differences in the\ncases. Wherein there is a similarity it falls short of the vital\npoint. There is no justice in the conception of man as a momentary\ngyre of individual consciousness drawn from the universal sea by a\nsun burst of the Spirit. He is a self ruling intelligence, using a\ndependent organism for his own ends, comprehending his own\ndestiny, successively developing its conditions and acquiring the\nmaterials for occupying and improving them, with a prevision of\neternity. A flower may just as well perish as live, a musical\nsound cease as continue, a lamp be put out as burn on: they know\nnot the difference. Not so with the soul of man. We here overpass\na discrete degree and enter upon a subject\n\n12 Crawford, On the Phadon of Plato.\n\n13 Heber's Life and Works of Jeremy Taylor, vol. i. p. 69.\n\n14 Dee Guays, True System of Religious Philosophy, Letter V.\n\n\nwithin another circle of categories. Let the rash reasoner who\nmadly tries conclusions on a matter of such infinite pith and\nmoment, with data so inapt and poor, pause in sacred horror\nbefore, having first \"Put out the light, he then puts out\nTHE LIGHT!\"\n\nThere are peculiarities in the soul removing it out of the range\nof physical combinations and making a distinct destiny fairly\npredicable of it. When we reflect on the nature of a self\ncontained will, intelligent of immaterial verities and perhaps\ntranscendent of space and time, how burlesque is the terror of the\nancient corpuscular theorists lest the feebly cohering soul, on\nleaving the body, especially if death happened during a storm,\nwould be blown in pieces all abroad! Socrates, in the Phado, has a\nhearty laugh over this; but Lucretius seriously urges it.15 The\nanswer to the skeptical reasoning from analogy is double. First,\nthe lines of partial correspondence which visibly terminate within\nour tangible reach can teach nothing as to the termination of\nother lines which lead out of sight and disappear in a spiritual\nregion. An organized material form for instance, a tree is fatally\nlimited: else it would finally fill and exhaust the earth. But no\nsuch limiting necessity can be predicated of mind. Secondly, as\nfar as there is genuine analogy, its implications are much\nstronger in favor of immortality than against it. Matter, whose\nessence is materiality, survives all apprehensible changes;\nspirit, whose essence is spirituality, should do the same.\n\nAnother attack on the doctrine of a future life is masked in the\nnegative Argument from Ignorance. We do not know how we shall live\nagain; we are unable to construct the conditions and explain the\ndetails of a spiritual state of existence; and therefore, it is\nsaid, we should of right conclude that there is no such thing. The\nproposition is not usually stated so blankly; but it really\namounts to that. The Epicureans say, as a tree cannot exist in the\nsky, nor clouds in the ocean, nor fishes in the meadow, nor water\nin stone, thus the mind cannot exist apart from the nerves and the\nblood. This style of reasoning is a bold begging of the question.\nOur present experience is vacant of any specific knowledge of the\nconditions, methods, and contents of a life it has not yet\nexperienced: therefore there is no such life. Innumerable millions\nof facts beyond our present knowledge unquestionably exist. It is\nnot in any way difficult to conceive that innumerable millions of\nexperiences and problems now defying and eluding our utmost powers\nmay hereafter fall within our comprehension and be easily solved.\nWill you accept the horizon of your mind as the limit of the\nuniverse? In the present, experience must be confined within its\nown boundaries by the necessity of the case. If an embryo were\nendowed with a developed reasoning consciousness, it could not\nconstruct any intelligible theory of the world and life into which\nit was destined soon to emerge. But it would surely be bad logic\nto infer, because the embryo could not, from want of materials\nwithin its experience, ascertain the how, the when, the where, and\nthe what, of the life awaiting it, that there was no other life\nreserved for it. An acorn buried and sprouting in the dark mould,\nif endowed with intelligent consciousness, could not know any\ndefinite particulars of its maturer life yet to be in the upper\nlight and air, with cattle in its shade and\n\n15 Lib. iii. ll. 503-508.\n\n\nsinging birds in its branches. Ignorance is not a ground of\nargument, only of modest suspense. We can only reason from what we\nknow. And the wondrous mysteries or natural miracles with which\nscience abounds, myriads of truths transcending all fictions, melt\nand remove from the path of faith every supposed difficulty. Any\nquantity of facts have been scientifically established as real\nwhich are intrinsically far more strange and baffling to belief\nthan the assertion of our immortality is. Indeed, \"there is no\nmore mystery in the mind living forever in the future than in its\nhaving been kept out of life through a past eternity. The\nauthentic wonder is the fact of the transition having been made\nfrom the one to the other; and it is far more incredible that,\nfrom not having been, we are, than that, from actual being, we\nshall continue to be.\" 16\n\nThe unbounded possibilities of life suggested by science and open\nto imagination furnish sufficient reply to the objection that we\ncannot conceive the precise causes and modes of a future state.\nHad one little partitular been different in the structure of the\neye, or in the radiation and media of light, we should never have\nseen the stars! We should have supposed this globe the whole of\ncreation. So some slightest integument or hindering condition may\nnow be hiding from us the sublime reality and arrangements of\nimmortality which in death's disenveloping hour are to burst into\nour vision as the stellar hemisphere through the night. Shut up\nnow to one form of being and one method of experience, how can we\nexpect an exhaustive knowledge of other and future forms and\nmethods of being and experience? It is a contradiction to ask it.\nBut the soul is warranted in having faith, like a buried mustard\nseed which shall yet mount into its future life. A sevenfold\ndenser mystery and a seven times narrower ignorance would bring no\nreal argument against the survival of the soul. For in an\nomnipotent infinitude of possibilities one line of ignorance\ncannot exhaust the avenues and capacities of being. Escaping the\nflesh, we may soar into heaven\n\n\"Upon ethereal wings, whose way\nLies through an element so fraught\nWith living Mind that, as they play,\nTheir every movement is a thought.\"\n\nIgnorance of the scientific method avails nothing against moral\nproofs of the fact. The physiologist studying the coats of the\nstomach, the anatomist dissecting the convolutions of the brain,\ncould never tell that man is capable of sentiment, faith, and\nlogic. No stethoscope can discern the sound of an expectation, and\nno scalpel can lay bare a dream; yet there are expectations and\ndreams. No metaphysical glass can detect, no prognosis foresee,\nthe death of the soul with the dissolution of its organs: on\nempirical grounds, the assertion of it is therefore unwarranted.\nBut though no amount of obscurity enveloping the subject, no\nextent of ignorance disabling us now to grasp the secret, is a\nlegitimate basis of disbelief, yet actually, there can be no\ndoubt, in multitudes of instances, the effectual cause of\ndisbelief in immortality is the impossibility of vividly\nconceiving its conditions and scenery; \"for,\" as one of the\nsubtlest of thinkers has remarked, \"however far faith may go\nbeyond experience, it\n\n16 Martineau, Sermon on Immortality, in Endeavors after the\nChristian Life.\n\n\nmust always be chained down by it at a distance.\" But if there are\ngood grounds for anticipating another life, then man should\nconfide in it, no matter how incompetent he is to construct its\ntheatre and foresee its career. A hundred years ago, one might\nhave scouted the statement that the most fearful surgical\noperations would be performed without inflicting pain, because it\nwas impossible to see how it could be done. Or if a person had\nbeen informed that two men, one in Europe and one in America,\nshould converse in lightning athwart the bed of the Atlantic, he\nmight have rejected it as an absurdity, because he could not\nconceive the mode. If destined to a future life, all we could\nreasonably expect to know of it now would be through hinting germs\nand mystic presentiments of it. And there we do experience to the\nfullest extent: their ceaseless prophecies are everywhere with us,\n\n\"Blank misgivings of a creature Moving about in worlds not\nrealized.\"\n\nThe last weapon of disbelief in a future life is the Scientific\nArgument from Materialism. Lucretius says, \"There is nothing in\nthe universe but bodies and the properties of bodies.\" This is a\ncharacteristic example of the method of the materialists: to\nassume, as an unquestionable postulate, the very point in debate,\nand that, too, in defiance of the intelligent instincts of\nconsciousness which compel every unsophisticated person to\nacknowledge the simultaneous existence of mind and matter as two\ncorrelated yet distinct realities. The better statement would be,\nThere is nothing in the universe but forces and the relations of\nforces. For, while we know ourselves in immediate self\nconsciousness, as personal intelligences perceiving, willing, and\nacting, all we know of an outward world is the effects produced on\nus by its forces. Certainly the powers of the universe can never\nbe lost from the universe. Therefore if our souls are, as\nconsciousness declares, causes, and not mere phenomena, they are\nimmortal. To ignore either factor in the problem of life, the\nmaterial substratum or the dynamic agent, is mere narrowness and\nblindness.\n\nBut the unbelieving naturalist argues that the total man is a\nproduct of organization, and therefore that with the dissolution\nof the living combination of organs all is over. Matter is the\nmarriage bed and grave of soul. Priestley says, \"The principle of\nthought no more belongs to substance distinct from body than the\nprinciple of sound belongs to substance distinct from bell.\" There\nis no relevancy in the comparison, because the things are wholly\nunlike. Thought is not, as Hartley's theory avowed it was, a\nvibration of a cerebral nerve, as sound is a vibration of a\nsonorous body; for how could these vibrations be accumulated in\nmemory as our mental experiences are? When a material vibration\nends, it has gone forever; but thoughts are stored up and\npreserved. A hypothetical simile, like that just cited from\nPriestley, is not a cogent argument. It is false science thus to\nlimit the modes of being to what lies within our present empirical\nknowledge. Is it not pure presumptuousness to affirm that the\ncreative power of Almighty God is shut up so that intelligent\ncreatures can only exist in forms of flesh? When a recent\nmaterialist makes the assertion, \"The thinking man is the sum of\nhis senses,\" it is manifest that he goes beyond the data, assuming\nwhat should be proved, and confounding the instruments and\nmaterial with the workman. It is as if one should say, \"A working\ncotton manufactory is the sum of its machines,\" excluding the\npersons by whose guiding oversight all is done. Plainly, it may be\ngranted that all which man knows is brought in through the door of\nthe senses, without allowing the same of all that man is. We have\nno warrant for pronouncing the identical coextensiveness of what\nman learns to know and what he is created to be. The very\nproposition, man knows something, presupposes three things, a\nsubject, an act, and an object. Whether the three exist and perish\ntogether or not is matter for discussion, and not fairly to be\nsettled by forcibly lumping the heterogeneous three into\nhomogeneous unity.\n\nIn the present state of science it must be confessed that all\nkinds of physical force  whether mechanical, chemical, vital, or\nnervous are drawn more or less directly from the sun, the material\nreservoir of power for our solar system. This must be admitted,\nalthough some recent materialists have pushed the doctrine so far\nthat they may be called the Parsees of the West. Whenever the\nproper conditions for an animate being are furnished, a force\nderived from the sun lifts matter from its stable equilibrium to\nthe level of organic existence. In due season, from its wavering\nlife struggle there, it decays back to the deep rest of insensate\nearth.17 This is a truth throughout the organic realm, from the\nbulb of a sea weed to the brain of a Casar. So much cannot be\ndenied. Every organism constantly receives from the universe food\nand force, and as constantly restores in other forms the material\nand dynamical equivalents of what it receives, and finally itself\ngoes to the sources whence it came. But the affirmation of this\nfor all within the physical realm is not the admission of it for\nwhat subsists in an immeasurably higher rank and totally different\nrealm. Entering the psychical sphere, where we deal with a new,\ndistinct order of realities, not impenetrability, weight,\nextension, but thought, affection, will, why may not this province\ncontain eternities, even though the other holds only mortalities?\nIt is a question to be examined on its own grounds, not to be put\naside with a foregone conclusion. In nature the cause endures\nunder all evanescent changes, and survives all phenomenal\nbeginnings and endings: so in spirit the causal personality, if\nthere be one, may outlast all the shifting currents of the outward\nphenomena in endless persistence. Of course, the manifestation of\nthe mind through the senses must cease when the senses no longer\nremain. The essence of the controversy, then, is exactly this: Is\nthe mind an entity? or is it a collection of functions? If the\nsoul be a substantial force, it is immortal. If it be a phenomenal\nresultant, it ceases at death.\n\nA reductio ad absurdum immediately occurs. If the psychical\ntotality of man consists of states of feeling, modes of volition,\nand powers of thought, not necessitating any spiritual entity in\nwhich they inhere, then, by parity of reasoning, the physical\ntotality of man consists of states of nutrition, modes of\nabsorption, and powers of change, implying no body in which these\nprocesses are effectuated! Qualities cannot exist without a\nsubject: and just as physical attributes involve a body, spiritual\nattributes involve a mind. And, if a mental entity be admitted,\nits death or cessation with that of its outer dress or case is not\na fair inference, but needs appropriate evidence.\n\nThe soul of a man has been defined as the sum of his ideas, an\nidea being a state of the consciousness. But the essence of mind\nmust be the common ground and element of all\n\n17 Moleschott, Licht and Leben.\n\n\ndifferent states of consciousness. What is that common ground and\nelement but the presence of a percipient volitional force, whether\nmanifested or unmanifested, still there? That is the germinal core\nof our mental being, integrating and holding in continuous\nidentity all the phenomenal fluctuations of consciousness. It is\nclear that any other representation seems inconsistent with the\nmost central and vivid facts of our knowledge. In illustration of\nthis, let us see how every materialistic exposition omits utterly,\nor fails to account for, the most essential element, the solitary\nand crowning peculiarity, of the case. For example, it is said\nthat thought or consciousness is a phenomenal process of changes\nsustained in the brain by a correlation of forces, just as the\nrainbow appears, but has no ontological subsistence of its own:\nthe continuous spectrum hangs steady on the ceaselessly renewed\nsubstratum of the moving mist rack and the falling rain. But the\ncomparison is absolutely inapplicable, because the deepest ground\nprinciple of the mind is wanting in the rainbow, namely, conscious\nand continuous identity holding in each present moment all the\nchanges of the past moments. If the rainbow were gifted with\nconsciousness, it could not preserve its personal identity, but\nmerely its phenomenal identity, for any two successive moments,\nsince its whole being would consist of an untied succession of\nstates.\n\nTraversing the body from its extreme tissues to the gray vesicular\nsubstance composing the spinal cord and covering the surface and\nconvolutions of the brain, are two sets of white, fibrous nerves.\nOne set, the afferents, bring in sensation, all kinds of tidings,\nfrom the out world of matter. The other set, the efferents, carry\nout volition, all kinds of decrees, from the in world of mind.\nWithout an afferent nerve no influence of the world can reach the\nmind; and without an efferent nerve no conclusion of the mind can\nreach the world. As we are now constituted, this machinery is\nnecessary for the intercommunication of the mind and the material\nuniverse. But if there be something in the case besides live\nmachinery and crossing telegrams, if there be a monarch mind\ninaccessible to the vulgar crowd of things and only conversing\nwith them through the internuncial nerves, that spirit entity may\nitself be capable of existing forever in an ideal universe and of\ncommuning there face to face with its own kingly lineage and\nbrood. And we maintain that the account of the phenomena is\ngrossly defective, and that the phenomena themselves are palpably\ninexplicable, except upon the supposition of such an entity, which\nuses the organism but is not the organism itself nor a function of\nit. \"Ideas,\" one materialist teaches, \"are transformed\nsensations.\" Yes; but that does not supersede a transforming mind.\nThere must be a force to produce the transformations. \"The\nphenomena of mind,\" says another, \"consist in a succession of\nstates of consciousness.\" Yes; but what is it that presides over,\ntakes up, and preserves this succession? The phenomena of the mind\nare not the mind itself. \"The actions of the mind are the\nfunctions of the cerebrum,\" adds a third. Yes; but the inquiry is,\nwhat is the mind itself? not, what are its acts? The admission of\nthe gray nerve cells of the brain, as the material substratum\nthrough which sensations are received and volitions returned, does\nnot exclude the necessity of a dynamical cause for the\nmetamorphosing phenomenon. That cause must be free and\nintelligent, because the products of its action, as well as its\naccompanying consciousness, are marked by freedom and intelligence.\nFor example, when a cylindrical and\n\nfibrous porter deposits his sensitive burden in the vesicular and\ncineritious substance, something examines it, tests its import,\nreflects on what shall be done, forms an intelligent resolution,\nand commands another porter to bear the dynamic load forth. The\nreflective and determining something that does this is the mind.\nThus, by the fact of an indissoluble dynamic will, is the broad\nlineal experience of man grasped and kept from dissipating into\ncrumbled psychical states, as when the dead kings of ancient India\nwere burned their corpses were wrapped in asbestos shrouds to hold\nthe ashes together.\n\nThe flame of a burnt out candle twinkling in the socket is not\nnumerically the same with that which appeared when it was first\nlighted; nor is a river at any two periods numerically the same.\nDifferent particles constantly feed an ever renewed flame or\nstream, just like the former but never the same. A totally new\nelement appears when we contemplate mind. Here, although the whole\nmolecular substance of the visible organism is in perpetual flux,\nthe same conscious personality persists through all, growing ever\nricher in an accumulating possession of past experiences still\nheld in living command. The Arethusa of identity threads the\nblending states of consciousness, and, passing the ocean bed of\ndeath, may emerge in some morning fount of immortality. A\nphotographic image impressed on suitable paper and then\nobliterated is restored by exposure to the fumes of mercury. But\nif an indefinite number of impressions were superimposed on the\nsame paper, could the fumes of mercury restore any one called for\nat random? Yet man's memory is a plate with a hundred millions of\nimpressions all cleanly preserved, and he can at will select and\nevoke the one he wants. No conceivable relationship of\nmaterialistic forces can account for the facts of this miraculous\ndaguerreotype plate of experience, and the power of the mind to\ncall out into solitary conspicuousness a desired picture which has\nforty nine million nine hundred and ninety nine thousand nine\nhundred and ninety nine latent pictures lying above it, and fifty\nmillions below it. It has been said that \"the impressions on the\nbrain, whether perceptions or intellections, are fixed and\nretained through the exactness of assimilation. As the mind took\ncognizance of the change made by the first impression of an object\nacting on the brain through the sense organs, so afterwards it\nrecognises the likeness of that change in the parts inserted by\nthe nutritive process.18 This passage implies that the mind is an\nagent, not a phenomenon; and it describes some of the machinery\nwith which the mind works, not the essence of the mind itself. Its\ndoctrine does not destroy nor explain the presiding and elective\npower which interprets these assimilated and preserved changes,\nchoosing out such of them as it pleases, that unavoided and\nincomprehensible power, the hiding place of volition and eternity,\nwhose startling call has often been known, in some dread crisis,\nto effect an instantaneous restoration of the entire bygone life,\nmaking all past events troop through the memory, a swiftly awful\ncavalcade marching along the fibrous pavement of the brain, while\neach terrified thought rushes to its ashy window to behold. We\nhere leave the material realm behind and enter a spiritual\nprovince where other predicates and laws hold, and where,\n\"delivered over to a night of pure light, in which no unpurged\nsight is sharp enough to penetrate the mysterious essence that\nsprouteth into different persons,\" we kneel in most pious awe, and\ncry, with Sir\n\n18 Paget. Surgical Pathology, Lecture II.\n\n\nThomas Browne, \"There is surely a piece of divinity in us,\nsomething that was before the elements and owes no homage unto the\nsun!\"\n\nThe fatal and invariable mistake of materialism is that it\nconfounds means and steps with causes, processes with sources,\norgans with ends, predicates with subject.19 Alexander Bain denies\nthat there is any cerebral closet or receptacle of sensation and\nimagery where impressions are stored to be reproduced at pleasure.\nHe says, the revival of a past impression, instead of being an\nevocation of it from an inner chamber, is a setting on anew of the\ncurrent which originally produced it, now to produce it again.20\nBut this theory does not alter the fact that all past impressions\nare remembered and can be revived at will by an internal\nefficiency. The miracle, and the necessity of an unchanging\nconscious entity to explain it, are implied just as they were on\nthe old theory. \"The organs of sense,\" Sir Isaac Newton writes,\n\"are not for enabling the soul to perceive the species of things\nin its sensorium, but for conveying them there.\" 21 Now, as we\ncannot suppose that God has a brain or needs any material organs,\nbut rather that all infinitude is his Sensorium, so spirits may\nperceive spiritual realities without any mediating organism. Our\nphysical experience in the present is no limit to the spiritual\npossibilities of the future. The materialistic argument against\nimmortality fails, because it excludes essential facts. As\nanterior to our experience in the present state there was a power\nto organize experiences and to become what we are, so none of the\nsuperficial reasonings of a mere earth science can show that there\nis not now a power to organize experiences in a future state and\nto become what our faith anticipates we shall be. And this\nsuggests to speculative curiosity the query, Shall we commence our\nfuture life, a psychical cell, as we commenced our present life, a\nphysical cell?\n\nIt will be well, perhaps, to reply next to some of the aggressive\nsophistries of disbelief. The following lines by Dr. Beddoes are\nstriking, but, considered as a symbol of life, seem almost\nwilfully defective:\n\n\"The body is but an engine Which draws a mighty stream of\nspiritual power Out of the world's own soul, and makes it play A\nwhile in visible motion.\"\n\nMan is that miraculous engine which includes not only all the\nneedful machinery, but also fuel, fire, steam, and speed, and\nthen, in climacteric addition to these, an engineer! Does the\nengineer die when the fire goes out and the locomotive stops? When\nthe engine madly plunges off the embankment or bridge of life,\ndoes the engineer perish in the ruin, or nimbly leap off and\nimmortally escape? The theory of despair has no greater\nplausibility than that of faith.\n\nFeuerbach teaches that the memento mori of reason meets us\neverywhere in the spiritual God's acre of literature. A book is a\ngrave, which buries not the dead remains, but the quick\n\n19 Frauenstadt, Per Materialismus, seine Wahrheit und sein\nIrrthum, s. 169.\n\n20 The Senses and the Intellect, p. 61.\n\n21 Brodie, Psychological Inquiries, p. 41, 3d edition.\n\n\nman, not his corpse, but his soul. And so we live on the psychical\ndeposits of our ancestry. Our souls consist of that material which\nonce constituted other souls, as our bodies consist of the\nmaterial which once constituted other bodies. A thought, it is to\nbe replied, is never excreted from the mind and left behind. Only\nits existence is indicated by symbols, while itself is added to\nthe eternal stock of the deathless mind. A thought is a spiritual\nproduct in the mind from an affection of the cerebral substance. A\nsentence is a symbol of a thought adapted to create in the\ncontemplator just such a cerebral affection as that from which it\nsprang, and to deposit in his mind just such a spiritual product\nas that which it now denotes. Thus are we stimulated and\ninstructed by the transmitted symbols of our ancestors'\nexperiences, but not literally nourished by assimilation of their\nvery psychical substance, as this remorseless prophet of death's\nghastly idealism would have us believe. Still, in whatever aspect\nwe regard it, one cannot but shudder before that terrible\ncineritious substance whose dynamic inhabitants are generated in\nthe meeting of matter's messages with mind's forces, and sent\nforth in emblems to shake the souls of millions, revolutionize\nempires, and refashion the world.\n\nStrauss employs an ingenious argument against the belief in a\nfuture life, an argument as harmless in reality as it is novel and\nformidable in appearance. \"Whether the nerve spirit be considered\nas a dependent product, or as the producing principle of the\norganism, it ends at death: for, in the former case, it can no\nlonger be produced when the organism perishes; in the latter case,\nthat it ceases to sustain the organism is a proof that it has\nitself decayed.\"22 In this specious bit of special pleading,\nunwarranted postulates are assumed and much confusion of thought\nis displayed. It is covertly taken for granted that every thing\nseen in a given phenomenon is either product or producer; but\nsomething may be an accompanying part, involved in the conditions\nof the phenomenon, yet not in any way essentially dependent on it,\nand in fact surviving it. What does Strauss mean by \"the nerve\nspirit\"? Is there no mind behind it and above it, making use of it\nas a servant? Our present life is the result of an actual and\nregulated harmony of forces. Surely that harmony may end without\nimplying the decay of any of its initial components, without\nimplying the destruction of the central constituent of its\nintelligence. It is illegitimate logic, passing from pure\nignorance to positive affirmation; a saltation of sophistry from a\nnegative premise of blindness to all behind the organic life, to a\ndogmatic conclusion of denial that there is any thing behind the\norganic life.\n\nA subtle and vigorous disbeliever has said, \"The belief in\nimmortality is not a correct expression of human nature, but rests\nsolely on a misunderstanding of it. The real opinion of human\nnature is expressed in the universal sorrow and wailing over\ndeath.\" It is obvious to answer that both these expressions are\ntrue utterances of human nature. It grieves over the sadness of\nparting, the appalling change and decay, the close locked mystery\nof the unseen state. It rejoices in the solace and cheer of a\nsublime hope springing out of the manifold powerful promises\nwithin and without. Instead of contemning the idea of a heavenly\nfuturity as an idle dream image of human longing, it were both\ndevouter and more reasonable, from\n\n22 Charakteristiken und Kritiken, s. 394.\n\n\nthat very causal basis of it, to revere it and confide in it as\ndivinely pledged. All the thwarted powers and preparations and\naffections, too grand, too fine, too sacred, to meet their fit\nfulfilment here, are a claim for some holier and vaster sphere, a\nprophecy of a more exalted and serene existence, elsewhere. The\nunsatisfied and longing soul has created the doctrine of a future\nlife, has it? Very good. If the soul has builded a house in\nheaven, flown up and made a nest in the breezy boughs of\nimmortality, that house must have tenants, that nest must be\noccupied. The divinely implanted instincts do not provide and\nbuild for naught.\n\nCertain considerations based on the resemblances of men and\nbeasts, their asserted community of origin and fundamental unity\nof nature, have had great influence in leading to the denial of\nthe immortality of the human soul. It is taken for granted that\nanimals are totally mortal; and then, from the apparent\ncorrespondences of phenomena and fate between them and us, the\ninference is drawn that the cases are parallel throughout, and\nthat our destiny, too, is annihilation. The course of thought on\nthis subject has been extremely curious, illustrating, on the one\nhand, that \"where our egotism begins, there the laws of logic\nbreak,\" and, on the other hand, that often when fancy gets scent\nof a theory the voice and lash of reason are futile to restrain it\nuntil the theory is run into the ground. Des Cartes, and after him\nMalebranche and a few other writers, gave no slight currency to\nthe notion that brutes are mere machines, moved by prearranged\ninfluences and utterly destitute of intelligence, will, or\nconsciousness. This scheme gave rise to many controversies, but\nhas now passed into complete neglect.23 Of late years the tendency\nhas been to assimilate instead of separating man and beast.\nTouching the outer sphere, we have Oken's homologies of the\ncranial vertebra. In regard to the inner sphere, we have a score\nof treatises, like Vogt's Pictures from Brute Life, affirming that\nthere is no qualitative, but merely a quantitative, distinction\nbetween the human soul and the brute soul.24 Over this point the\nconflict is still thick and hot. But, however much of truth there\nmay be in the doctrine of the ground identity of the soul of a man\nand the soul of a dog, the conclusion that man therefore perishes\nis a pure piece of sophistry. Such a monstrous assassination of\nthe souls of the human race with the jaw bone of an ass may be\nlegitimately avoided in either of two ways. It is as fair to argue\nthe immortality of animals from their likeness to us, as our\nannihilation from our likeness to them. The psychological realm\nhas been as much deepened in them by the researches of modern\nscience as the physiological domain has been widened in us. As\nAgassiz says, we must not lose sight of the mental individuality\nof animals in an exclusive attention to the bodily side of their\nnature.25 A multitude of able thinkers have held the faith that\nanimals have immaterial and deathless souls. Rightly considered,\nthere is nothing in such a\n\n23 Darmanson, La bete transformee en machine. Ditton, Appendix to\nDiscourse on Resurrection of Christ, showing that brutes are not\nmere machines, but have immortal souls. Orphal, Sind die Thiere\nblos sinnliche Geschopfe? Thomasius, De Anima Brutorum, quo\nasseritur, eam non esse Materialem, contra Cartesianam Opinionem.\nWinkler, Philosophische Untersuchungen von dem Seyn and Wesen der\nSeelen der Thiere, von einzelnen Liebhabern der Weltweisheit.\n\n24 Buchner, Kraft und Stoff, kap. 19: Die Thierseele.\n\n25 Essay on Classification, p. 64.\n\n\ndoctrine which a keen reasoner may not credit and a person of the\nmost refined feelings find pleasure in embracing. In their serene\ncatholicity and divine sympathy, science and religion exclude\npride and contempt.\n\nBut admitting that there is no surviving psychical entity in the\nbrute, that is in no way a clear postulate for proving that the\nsame fact holds of man. The lower endowments and provinces of\nman's nature and experience may correspond ever so closely with\nthe being and life of brutes whose existence absolutely ceases at\ndeath, and yet he may be immortal. The higher range of his\nspiritual faculties may elevate him into a realm of universal and\neternal principles, extricating his soul from the meshes of decay.\nHe may come into contact with a sphere of truths, grasp and rise\ninto a region of realities, conferring the prerogative of\ndeathlessness, not to be reached by natures gifted in a much lower\ndegree, although of the same kind. Such a distinction is made\nbetween men themselves by Spinoza.26 His doctrine of immortality\ndepicts the stupendous boon as contingent, to be acquired by\nobservance of conditions. If the ideas of the soul represent\nperishable objects, it is itself mortal; if imperishable, it is\nimmortal. Now, brutes, it is probable, never rise to the\napprehension of pure and eternal truths; but men do. It was a mean\nprejudice, founded on selfish ignorance and pride, which first\nassumed the total destruction of brutes in death, and afterwards,\nby the grovelling range of considerations in which it fastened and\nthe reaction it naturally provoked, involved man and all his\nimperial hopes in the same fate. A firm logical discrimination\ndisentangles the human mind from this beastly snarl.27 The\ndifference in data warrants a difference in result. The argument\nfor the immortality of brutes and that for the immortality of men\nare, in some respects, parallel lines, but they are not\ncoextensive. Beginning together, the latter far outreaches the\nformer. Man, like the animals, eats, drinks, sleeps, builds;\nunlike them, he adorns an ideal world of the eternal future, lays\nup treasures in its heavenly kingdom, and waits to migrate into\nit.\n\nThere are two distinct methods of escaping the fatal inference of\ndisbelief usually drawn by materialists. First, by the denial of\ntheir philosophical postulates, by the predication of immaterial\nsubstance, affirming the soul to be a spaceless point, its life an\nindivisible moment. The reasonings in behalf of this conception\nhave been manifold, and cogent enough to convince a multitude of\naccomplished and vigorous thinkers.28 In Herbart's system the soul\nis an immaterial monad, or real, capable of the permanent\nformation of states in its interior. Its life consists of a\nquenchless series of self preservations. These reals, with their\nrelations and aggregations, constitute at once the varying\nphenomena and the causal substrata of the universe. Mamertius\nClaudianus, a philosophical priest of Southern Gaul in the fifth\ncentury, wrote a treatise \"On the Nature of the Soul.\" He says,\n\"When the soul wills, it is all will; when it recollects or feels,\nit is all recollection or feeling. Now, will, recollection, and\nfeeling, are not bodies. Therefore the soul is incorporeal.\" This\nmakes the conscious man an\n\n26 Jouffroy, Introduction to Ethics: Channing's trans., vol. ii.\npp. 189-191.\n\n27 Schaller, Leib und Seele, kap. 13: Der Psychische Unterschied\ndes Menschen vom Thiere.\n\n28 Crombie, Natural Theology, vol. ii.: Essay on the Immortality\nof the Soul. Brougham, Discourse of Nat. Theol., sect. 5.\n\n\nimperishable substantial activity. An old English writer, with\nquaint eloquence, declares, \"There is a proportion between an atom\nand the universe, because both are quantitative. All this excesse\nvanisheth into nothing as soon as the lowest substance shineth out\nof that orbe where they reside that scorn divisibility.\"\n\nFrom this brief statement of the position of the immaterialists,\nwithout arguing it, we pass to note, in the second place, that\nnearly all the postulates ordinarily claimed by the materialist\nmay be granted without by any means proving the justice of their\ndisbelief of a future life.29 Admit that there can be no sensation\nwithout a nerve, no thought without a brain, no phenomenal\nmanifestation without an organ. Such an admission legitimates the\nconclusion, on empirical grounds, that our present mode of life\nmust cease with the dissolution of our organism. It does not even\nempirically prove that we may not survive in some other mode of\nbeing, passing perhaps to an inconceivably higher stage and more\nblessed kind of life. After the entire disintegration of our\nmaterial organs, we may, by some now unknown means, possess in a\nrefined form the equivalents of what those organs gave us. There\nmay be, interfused throughout the gross mortal body, an immortal\nbody of exquisitely delicate structure invisibly extricating\nitself from the carious ruins at death. Plattner develops and\ndefends this hypothesis with plausible skill and power.30 The\nHindus conceived the soul to be concealed within several\nsuccessive sheaths, the innermost of which accompanied it through\nall its transmigrations.31 \"The subtile person extends to a small\ndistance over the skull, like the flame of a lamp above its wick.\"\n32 The later Pythagoreans and Platonists seem to have believed\nthat the same numerical ethereal body with which the soul was at\nfirst created adhered to it inseparably during all its descents\ninto grosser bodies, a lucid and wingy vehicle, which, purged by\ndiet and catharms, ascends again, bearing the soul to its native\nseat.33 The doctrine of Swedenborg asserts man to be interiorly an\norganized form pervading the physical body, an eternal receptacle\nof life from God. In his terminology, \"constant influx of life\"\nsupersedes the popular idea of a self contained spiritual\nexistence. But this influx is conditioned by its receiving organ,\nthe undecaying inner body.34 However boldly it may be assailed and\nrejected as a baseless theory, no materialistic logic can disprove\nthe existence of an ethereal form contained in, animating, and\nsurviving, the visible organism. It is a possibility; although,\neven if it be a fact, science, by the very conditions of the case,\ncan never unveil or demonstrate it.\n\nWhen subjected to a certain mode of thought developed recently by\nFaraday, Drossbach, and others, materialism itself brightens and\ndissolves into a species of idealism, the universe becomes a\nglittering congeries of indestructible points of power, and the\nimmortality of the soul is established as a mathematical\ncertainty.35 All bodies, all entities, are but forms of\n\nThis has been ably shown by Spiers in his treatise, Ueber das\nkorperliche Bedingtsein der Seelenthatigkeiten.\n\n30 Spes immortalitatis animorum per rationes physiologicas\nconfirmata.\n\n31 Dabistan, vol. ii. p. 177.\n\n32 Colebrooke, Essays, vol. i. p. 246.\n\n33 Cudworth, Int. Sys., vol. ii. pp. 218-230, Am. ed.\n\n34 On the Intercourse between the Soul and the Body, sect. 9.\n\n35 Lott, Herbarti de animi immortalitate doctrina.\n\n\nforce.36 Gravity, cohesion, bitterness, thought, love,\nrecollection, are manifestations of force peculiarly conditioned.\nOur perceptions are a series of states of consciousness. An\nattribute or property of a thing is an exercise of force or mode\nof activity producing a certain state of consciousness in us. The\nsum of its attributes or properties constitutes the totality of\nthe thing, and is not adventitiously laid upon the thing: you can\nseparate the parts of a thing; but you cannot take away its forces\nfrom any part, because they are its essence. Matter is not a\nlimitation or neutralization, but a state and expression, of\nforce. Force itself is not multiplex, but one, all qualities and\ndirections of it lying potentially in each entity, the kinds and\namounts which shall be actually manifested depending in each case\non the conditions environing it. All matter, all being, therefore,\nconsists of ultimate atoms or monads, each one of which is an\ninseparable solidarity of activities. The universe is an eternal\nsociety of eternal force individuals, all of which are capable of\nconstant changes in groupings, aggregations, developments,\nrelations, but absolutely incapable of annihilation. Every atom\npossesses potential reason, and comes to self apprehension\nwhenever the appropriate conditions meet. All differences\noriginate from conditions and exist not in essentialities.\n\nAccording to this theory, the eternity of the soul is sure, but\nthat eternity must be an endless series of mutual transitions\nbetween consciousness and unconsciousness, life and death.37 Since\nall cannot be men at once, they must take their turns. Carus says,\na soul enclosing in itself an independent consciousness is\ninconceivable. When the organism by which consciousness is\nconditioned and revealed is destroyed in death, consciousness\ndisappears as certainly as the gleaming height of a dome falls in\nwhen its foundation is removed. And Drossbach adds, death is the\nshade side of life. Without shade, light would not be perceptible,\nnor life without death; for only contrast leads to knowledge. The\nconsciousness of life is realized by interchange with the\nunconsciousness of death. Mortality is the inevitable attribute of\na self conscious being. The immortality of such a being can be\nnothing else than an everlasting mortality. In this restless\nalternation between the opposite states of life and death, being\nholds continuous endurance, but consciousness is successively\nextinguished and revived, while memory is each time hopelessly\nlost. Widenmann holds that the periods of death are momentary, the\nsoul being at once born again, retaining no vestiges of its\npast.38 Drossbach, on the contrary, believes that memory is an\nindefeasible quality of the soul atom, the reason why we do not\nremember previous lives being that the present is our first\nexperiment. When all atoms destined to become men have once run\nthe human career, the earliest ones will begin to reappear with\nfull memory of their preceding course. It matters not how long it\nrequires for one circuit of the whole series of souls; for the\ninfinite future is before us, and, as we are unconscious in death,\nthe lapse of ages is nothing. We lie down to sleep, and instantly\nrise up to a new life.\n\n36 Hickok, Rational Cosmology, ch. ii. sect. 1: Matter is force.\n\n37 Drossbach, Die personliche Unsterblichkeit als Folge der\natomistischen Verfaasung der Natur, abschn. iv. kap. ii. sect. 5,\n6.\n\n38 Gedanken uber die Unsterblichkeit als Wiederholung des\nErdenlebens.\n\n\n\"Death gives to life all its relish, as hunger is the true sauce\nof food. Death first makes us precious and dear to ourselves.\nSince it lies in the nature of change that no condition is\nendless, but morning ever follows night, death cannot be endless.\nBe unconcerned; thy being shall as little be lost as the grain of\ndust at thy foot! Because in death thou dost not know that thou\nart, therefore fearest thou that thou shalt be no more? O\npusillanimous! the great events of nature are too vast for thy\nweak heart. A whole eternity thou hast not been conscious that\nthou art, and yet thou hast become conscious of it. Every night\nthou losest thy consciousness, yet art thou conscious again, and\nshalt be. The loss of consciousness is not necessarily the loss of\nself. The knowledge of my being is not my being itself, but a\npeculiar force thereof, which, entering into reciprocal action\nwith other forces, is subject to change. It is its essence to act,\nand thus to change, yet without surrendering its essence. Goethe's\nwords may be applied to the soul: 'It is; therefore eternally it\nis.'\n\nNot in cold motionlessness consists eternal life, but in eternal\nmovement, in eternal alteration, in incessant change. These are\nwarranties that no state endures forever, not even the\nunconscious, death.\" 39\n\nIn this unfolding of the theory there are many arbitrary and\nfanciful conceptions which may easily be dispensed with. The\ninterspersion of the bright life of the human monads with blank\nepochs of oblivious darkness, and the confinement of their destiny\nto an endless repetition of their life course on this globe, are\nnot necessary. In the will of God the free range of the boundless\nuniverse may lie open to them and an incessant career in forever\nnovel circumstances await them. It is also conceivable that human\nsouls, leading still recurrent lives on earth with total\nforgetfulness, may at last acquire sufficient power, in some happy\nconcurrence or sublime exigency, to summon back and retain all\ntheir foregone states. But, leaving aside all such incidental\nspeculations, the chief interest of the dynamic atomistic or monad\ntheory, as affording a solid basis for immortality, is in relation\nto the arrogance of a shallow and conceited materialism. Says the\nmaterialist, \"Show me a spirit, and I will believe in your\nheaven.\" Replies the idealist, \"Show me your matter, however small\na piece, and I will yield to your argument.\" Spirit is no\nphenomenon to be shown, and matter is an inference from thought:\nthus the counter statements of physical science and ideal\nphilosophy fairly offset each other, and throw their respective\nadvocates back upon the natural ground of unsophisticated faith\nand observation. Standing there unperverted, man has an invincible\nreliance on the veracity of his faculties and the normal reports\nof nature. Through immediate apprehension of his own conscious\nwill and the posited experience of his senses, he has knowledge\nboth of causal forms of being, or free productive force, and of\nresultant processes and phenomena. And surely sound logic teaches\nthat the latter may alter or disappear without implying the\nannihilation of the former. If all material substance, so called,\nwere destroyed, not only would space remain as an infinite\nindivisible unity, but the equivalents\n\n39 Drossbach, Die individuelle Unsterblichkeit vom monadistisch\nmetaphysischen Standpunkte betrachtet.\n\n\nof what had been destroyed must remain in some form or other. Who\nshall say that these equivalents would not be intelligent points\nof power, capable of organizing aggregate bodies and of\nreconstituting the universe in the will of God, or of forming from\nperiod to period, in endless succession, new kinds of universes,\neach abounding in hitherto unimagined modes of life and degrees of\nbliss? To our present faculties, with only our present\nopportunities and data, the final problem of being is insoluble.\nWe resolve the properties of matter into methods of activity,\nmanifestations of force. But there, covered with alluring awe, a\nwall of impenetrable mystery confronts us with its baffling \"Thus\nfar, and no farther, shall thine explicating gaze read the secrets\nof destiny.\" We cannot tell what force is. We can conceive neither\nits genesis nor its extinction. Over that obscure environment,\ninto the immense empire of possibilities, we must bravely fling\nthe treasures of our love and the colors of our hope, and with a\ndivine impulse in the moment of death leap after, trusting not to\nsink as nothing into the abyss of nowhere, but, landing safe in\nsome elysium better than we know, to find ourselves still in God.\n\nIn dealing with moral problems in the realm of the higher reason,\nintuitions, mysterious hints, prophetic feelings, instinctive\napprehensions of fitness and harmony, may be of more convincing\nvalidity than all the formal arguments logic can build.40\n\"Sentiment,\" Ancillon says, as quoted by Lewes, \"goes further than\nknowledge: beyond demonstrative proofs there is natural evidence;\nbeyond analysis, inspiration; beyond words, ideas; beyond ideas,\nemotions; and the sense of the infinite is a primitive fact of the\nsoul.\" In transcendental mathematics, problems otherwise\nunapproachable are solved by operating with emblems of the\nrelations of purely imaginary quantities to the facts of the\nproblems. The process is sound and the result valid, notwithstanding\nthe hypothetical and imaginary character of the aids in reaching it.\n\nWhen for mastering the dim momentous problems of our destiny\nthe given quantities and relations of science are inadequate,\nthe helpful supposititious conditions furnished by faith may\nequally lead over their airy ways to conclusions of eternal truth.\n\nThe disbelievers of a future life have in their investigations\napplied methods not justly applicable to the subject, and\ndemanded a species of proof impossible for the subject to yield:\nas if one should use his ear to listen to the symmetries of beauty,\nand his eye to gaze upon the undulations of music.\n\nIt is therefore that the terribly logical onslaughts of\nFeuerbach are harmless upon most persons. The glittering scimetar\nof this Saracenic metaphysician flashes swift and sharp, but he\nfights the air with weapons of air. No blood flows from the\nsevered emptiness of space; no clash of the blows is heard any\nmore than bell strokes would be heard in an exhausted receiver.\nOne may justifiably accept propositions which strict science\ncannot establish and believe in the existence of a thing which\nscience cannot reveal, as Jacobi has abundantly shown41 and as\nWagner has with less ability tried to illustrate.42 The utmost\npossible achievement of a negative criticism is to show the\ninvalidity of the physiological,\n\n40 Abel, Disquisitio omnium tam pro immortalitate quam pro\nmortalitate argumentandi generum.\n\n41 Von den goutlichen Dingen and ibrer Offenbarung. Wissen und\nGlauben mit besonderer Beziehung zur Zukunft der Seelen:\nFortsetzung der Betrachtungen uber Menschenschopfung und\nSeelensubstanz.\n\n\nanalogical, and metaphysical arguments to furnish positive proof\nof a future life for us. But this negation fully admitted is no\nevidence of our total mortality. Science is impotent to give any\nproof reaching to such a conclusion. However badly the archery of\nthe sharp eyed and strong armed critics of disbelief has riddled\nthe outer works of ordinary argument, it has not slain the\ngarrison. Scientific criticism therefore leaves us at this point:\nthere may be an immortal soul in us. Then the question whether\nthere actually is an immortal soul in us, rests entirely on moral\nfacts and considerations. Allowing their native force to these\nmoral facts and considerations, the healthy ethical thinker,\nrecognising in himself an innermost self conscious ego which knows\nitself persistent and identical amidst the multiplex vicissitude\nof transient conditions, lies down to die expecting immediately to\ncontinue his being's journey elsewhere, in some other guise.\nLeaving out of view these moral facts and considerations, the\nmaterialistic naturalist thinker, recognising his consciousness as\nonly a phantom procession of states across the cerebral stage hung\nin ashy livery and afloat on blood, lies down to expire expecting\nimmediately to be turned into nobody forever. Misinterpreting and\nundervaluing these moral facts and considerations, the anchorless\nspeculative thinker, recognising his organism as an eye through\nwhich the World Spirit beholds itself, or a momentary pulse in\nwhich the All feels itself, his consciousness as a part of the\ninfinite Thought, lies down on his death couch expecting\nimmediately to be turned into everybody, eternity, instead of\ngreeting him with an individual kiss, wrapping him in a monistic\nembrace. The broad drift of human conviction leads to the first\nconclusion, a persistent personality. The greatest philosophers,\nfrom Plato to Pascal, deny the second view, a blotting extinction\nof the soul, declaring it false in science and incredible in\npresentation. The third theory a pantheistic absorption  the\nirresistible common sense of mankind repudiates as a morbid dream.\nMan naturally believes himself immortal but not infinite. Monism\nis a doctrine utterly foreign to undiseased thinking. Although it\nbe a Fichte, a Schelling, or a Hegel, who says that the soul is a\ncircumscribed yet omnipotent ego, which first radiates the\nuniverse, and afterwards beholds it in the mirror of itself, and\nat length breaks into dead universality, the conception is, to the\naverage apprehension of humanity, as overweening a piece of wild\nfancy as ever rose in a madman's reveries.43\n\nThe ordinary contemplator of the phenomena of the world and the\nsequel of human life from the materialistic point of view feels\ndisgust and terror at the prospect. The scene seems to him\ndegrading and the fate fearful. The loathing and dismay vulgarly\nexperienced thus, it is true, arise from an exaggerated\nmisapprehension of the basis and meaning of the facts: rightly\nappreciated, all is rulingly alive, aspirant, beautiful, and\nbenignant. The ceaseless transformations filling the heights and\ndepths of the creation are pervaded with joy and\n\n42 A full discussion of the pantheistic doctrine of immortality\nwill be found in the following works. Richmann, Gemsinfassl.\nDarstellung und Wurdigung aller gehaltreichen Beweisarten fur Gott\nund fur Unsterblichkeit der Seele. Unius, Unsterblichkeit.\nBlanche, Philosophische Unsterblichkeitlehre.\n\n43 Weisse, Die philosophische Geheimlehre von der Unsterblichkeit\ndes menschlichen Individuums. Goschel, Von den Beweisen fur die\nUnsterblichkeit der menschlichen Seele im Lichte der speculativen\nPhilosophie. Morell, Historical and Critical View of the\nSpeculative Philosophy of Europe in the 19th Century, part ii. ch.\nv. sect. 2: The German School of the 19th Century. Buchanan,\nModern Atheism.\n\n\nclothed with a noble poetry. There is no real death: what seems so\nis but a \"return or falling home of the fundamental phenomenon to\nthe phenomenal foundation, a dissolution through which nature\nseeks her ground and strives to renew herself in her principles.\"\nStill, in spite of this more profound and genial interpretation of\nthe shifting metamorphoses of nature, the fear of there being no\nconscious future life for man produces, when first entertained, a\nhorrid constriction around the heart, felt like the ice cold coils\nof a serpent. The thought of tumbling hopelessly into \"The blind\ncave of eternal night\" naturally oppresses the heart of man with\nsadness and with alarm. To escape the unhappiness thus inflicted,\nrecourse has been had to expedients. Four artificial substitutes\nfor immortality have been devised. Fondly fixing attention upon\nthese, men have tried to find comfort and to absorb their thoughts\nfrom the dreaded spectre and the long oblivion. The first is the\nsentimental phantasm of posthumous fame. The Latin bard, ancient\nEnnius, sings,\n\n\"Nemo me lacrymis decoret, nec funera fletu Faxit. Cur? volito\nvivu' per ora virum.\" 44\n\nShakspeare likewise often expresses the same thought:\n\n\"When all the breathers of this world are dead, You still shall\nlive (such virtue hath my pen) Where breath most breathes, even in\nthe mouths of men.\"\n\nAnd again in similar strain:\n\n\"My love looks fresh, and Death to me subscribes, Since, spite of\nhim, I'll live in this poor rhyme, While he insults o'er dull and\nspeechless tribes.\"\n\nNapoleon is reported to have said, \"My soul will pass into history\nand the deathless memories of mankind; and thus in glory shall I\nbe immortal.\" This characteristically French notion forms the\nessence of Comte's \"positivist\" doctrine of a future life. Those\ndeemed worthy after their death to be incorporated, by vote of the\npeople, in the Supreme Being, the Grand Etre, a fictitious product\nof a poetic personification, through the perpetual fame and\ninfluence thus secured have an immortal life in the thoughts and\nfeelings of a grateful posterity. Comte says, \"Positivism greatly\nimproves immortality and places it on a firmer foundation, by\nchanging it from objective to subjective.\" Great and eternal\nHumanity is God. The dead who are meritorious are alone\nremembered, and, thus incorporated into the Divinity, they have a\n\"subjective immortality in the brains of the living.\" 45 It is a\npoor shadow of the sublime truth which the soul craves. Leopardi,\nin his Bruto Minore, expresses this \"poor hope of being in the\nfuture's breath:\"\n\n44 Cicero, Tusc. Quast., lib. i. cap. xv.\n\n45 Catechism of Positive Religion, Conversation III.\n\n\n\"dell' atra morte ultima raggio Conscia future eta.\" That proud\nand gifted natures should have seriously stooped to such a toy, to\nsolace themselves with it, is a fact strange and pathetic. With\nreverential tenderness of sympathy must we yearn towards those\nwhose loving natures, baffled of any solid resource, turn\nappealingly, ere they fade away, to clasp this substanceless image\nof an image.\n\nAnother scheme is what may be called the \"lampada tradunt\" 46\ntheory of a future life. Generations succeed each other, and the\ncourse is always full. Eternal life takes up new subjects as fast\nas its exhausted receptacles perish. Men are the mortal cells of\nimmortal humanity. The individual must comfort himself with the\nsympathetic reflection that his extinction destroys nothing, since\nall the elements of his being will be manipulated into the forms\nof his successors.\n\nLife is a constant renovation, and its sum is forever full and\nequal on the globe. The only genuine resurrection unto eternal\nlife is an unending re creation of organisms from the same\nmaterials to repeat the same physiological and psychological\nprocesses.47 There is a gleam of cheer and of nobleness in this\nrepresentation; but, upon the whole, it is perhaps as ineffectual\nas the former. It is a vapid consolation, in view of our own\nannihilation, to think that others will then live and also be\nannihilated in their turn. It is pleasant to believe that the\nearth will forever be peopled with throngs of men; but though such\na belief might help to reconcile us to our fate, it could not\nalter the intrinsic sadness of that fate.\n\nA third substitute for the common view of immortality is a\nscientific perception of the fact that the peculiar force which\neach man is, the sum of his character and life, is a cause\nindestructibly mixed with the course of subsequent history, an\nobjective personal immortality, though not a conscious one. What\nhe was, remains and acts forever in the world.\n\nThe fourth substitute is an identification of self with the\nintegral scheme of things. I am an inseparable portion of the\ntotality of being, to move eternally in its eternal motion.\n\n\"If death seem hanging o'er thy separate soul, Discern thyself a\npart of life's great whole.\"\n\nLose the thought of thy particular evanescence in the thought of\nthe universal permanence. The inverted torch denotes death to a\nmere inhabitant of the earth: to a citizen of the universe,\ndownward and upward are the same. Perhaps one who rejects the\nordinary doctrine of a future life can be solaced and edified by\nthese substitutes in proportion to his fineness, greatness, and\nnobleness. But to most persons no substitute can atone for the\nwithdrawn truth of immortality itself.\n\nIn regard to the eternal preservation of personal consciousness,\nit were bigoted blindness to deny that there is room for doubts\nand fears. While the monad soul so to call it lies here beneath\nthe weak glimmer of suns so far off that they are forceless to\ndevelop it to a\n\n46 Lucretius, De Nat. Rerum, lib. ii. 1. 78.\n\n47 Schultz Schultzenstein, Die Bildung des menschlichen Geistes\ndurch Kultur der Verjungung seines Lebens, ss. 834-847: Die\nUnsterblichkeitsbegriffe.\n\n\nvictorious assurance, we cannot but sometimes feel misgivings and\nbe depressed by skeptical surmises. Accordingly, while belief has\ngenerally prevailed, disbelief has in every age had its\nrepresentatives. The ancients had their Dicaarchus, Protagoras,\nPanatius, Lucan, Epicurus, Casar, Horace, and a long list besides.\nThe moderns have had their Gassendi, Diderot, Condillac, Hobbes,\nHume, Paine, Leopardi, Shelley, and now have their Feuerbach,\nVogt, Moleschott, and scores of others needless to be named. And\nalthough in any argument from authority the company of the great\nbelievers would incomparably outshine and a thousand times\noutweigh the array of deniers, this does not alter the obvious\nfact that there are certain phenomena which are natural\nprovocatives of doubt and whose troubling influence scarcely any\none can always escape. Homer, in giving expression to Hector's\nconfidence of victory over the Greeks, makes him wish that he were\nbut as sure of entering the state of the immortal gods.48 When\nsome one asked Dr. Johnson, \"Have we not proof enough of the\nimmortality of the soul?\" he replied, \"I want more.\" Davenant of\nwhom Southey says, \"I know no other author who has so often\nexpressed his doubts respecting a future state and how burdensome\nhe felt them\" writes,  \"But ask not bodies doom'd to die,\nTo what abode they go: Since knowledge is but sorrow's spy,\nIt is not safe to know.\"\n\nCharles Lamb writes, \"If men would honestly confess their\nmisgivings, (which few men will,) there are times when the\nstrongest Christian of us has reeled under questionings of such\nstaggering obscurity.\" Many a man, seeing nature hang her veil of\nshifting glories above the silent tombs of vanished generations,\nvoiceless now forever, entertaining innumerable contradictory\nqueries amidst feelings of decay and sights of corruption, before\nthe darkness of unknown futurity might piteously exclaim, without\ndeserving blame,\n\n\"I run the gauntlet of a file of doubts, Each one of which down\nhurls me to the ground.\"\n\nWho that has reached maturity of reflection cannot appreciate and\nsympathize somewhat with these lines of Byron, when he stands\nbefore a lifeless form of humanity?\n\n\"I gazed, as oft I have gazed the same, To try if I could wrench\naught out of death Which should confirm, or shake, or make, a\nfaith; But it was all a mystery. Here we are, And there we go: but\nwhere? Five bits of lead, Or three, or two, or one, send very far!\nAnd is this blood, then, form'd but to be shed? Can every element\nour elements mar? Can air, earth, water, fire, live and we dead?\nWe, whose minds comprehend all things? No more.\"\n\n48 Iliad, lib, viii. Il. 538-540.\n\n\nDoubt is not sin, but rather a misfortune; for it is to adopt a\nsuggestion from Schaller a cleft in the soul through which thought\nsteals away what the heart desires. The guilt or innocence of\ndoubting depends on the spirit in which it is done. There are two\nattitudes of mind and moods of feeling before propositions and\nevidence. One is, \"I will not believe unless I see the prints of\nthe nails and lay my finger in the marks of the wounds.\" The other\nis, \"Lord, I believe: help thou mine unbelief.\" In abstract logic\nor rigid science the former may be appropriate and right. The\nlatter alone can be justifiable in moral and religious things. If\na man sorrowfully and humbly doubts, because he cannot help it, he\nshall not be condemned. When he is proud of his doubts,\ncomplacently swells with fancied superiority, plays the fanfaron\nwith his pretentious arguments, and sets up as a propagandist of\ndisbelief, being all the while in reality \"Most ignorant of what\nhe is most assured,  His glassy essence,\" his conduct is offensive\nto every good man, and his spirit must receive the condemnation of\nGod. A missionary of atheism and death, horridly eager to destroy\nthose lofty thoughts which so much help to make us men, is a\nshocking spectacle. Yet a few such there are, who seem delighted\nas by their dismal theory they bury mankind in an iron tomb of\nmaterialism and inscribe on the irrevocable door the solitary\nwords, Fate and Silence.\n\nThe more attentively one dwells on the perishable physical side of\nlife, the more prone he will be to believe in an absolute death;\nthe more prevailingly he ponders the incorruptible psychical side,\nthe more prepared he will be to credit immortality. The chemist\nwho confines his studies exclusively within his own province, when\nhe reflects on the probable sequence of life, will speculatively\nsee himself vanish in his blowpipes and retorts. Whoso devotedly\ndabbles in organisms, nerves, and bloods may easily become\nskeptical of spirit; for it everywhere balks his analysis and\neludes his search. The objects he deals with are things. They\nbelong to change and dissolution. Mind and its proper home belong\nto a different category of being. Because no heaven appears at the\nend of the telescope, and no soul is seen on the edge of the\ndissecting knife, and no mind is found at the bottom of the\ncrucible, to infer that therefore there is neither heaven, nor\nsoul, nor mind, is as monstrous a non sequitur as it would be to\ninfer the non existence of gravity because it cannot be distilled\nin any alembic nor discerned with any glass. The man who goes into\nthe dark crimson dripping halls of physiology seeking proofs of\nimmortality, and, failing to find them, abandons his faith in it,\nis like that hapless traveller who, groping in the catacombs under\nRome, was buried by the caving in of the sepulchral roof, and thus\nlost his life, while all the time, above, the great vault of\nheaven was stretching, blue and breezy, filled with sunshine and\nsentient joy!\n\nWhen we contemplate men in a mass, like a swarm of bees or a hive\nof ants, we find ourselves doubting their immortality. They melt\naway, in swiftly confused heaps and generations, into the bosom of\nnature. On the other hand, when we think of individuals, an almost\nunavoidable thought of personal identity makes us spontaneously\nconclude them immortal. It rather requires the effort then to\nthink them otherwise. But obviously the real problem is never of\nthe multitudinous throng, but always of the solitary person. In\nreference\n\nto this question it is sophistry to fix our thoughts on a Chinese\ncity as crowded with nameless and indistinguishable human\ninhabitants as a decayed cheese is with vermin. Fairness requires\nthat our imaginations and reasonings upon the subject fasten upon\nan individual, set apart and uplifted, like a king, in the\nincommunicable distinctness and grandeur of selfhood and\nresponsibility.\n\nFrom looking about this grave paved star, from painful and\ndegrading contemplations of dead bodies, \"the snuff and loathed\npart of nature which burns itself out,\" let a man turn away, and\nsend his interior kingly glance aloft into ideal realms, let him\nsummon up the glorious sentiments of freedom, duty, admiration,\nthe noble experiences of self sacrifice, love, and joy, and his\nsoul will extricate itself from the filthy net of material decay,\nand feel the divine exemption of its own clean prerogatives,\ndazzling types of eternity, and fragments of blessedness that\n\"Promise, on our Maker's truth, Long morrow to this mortal youth.\"\nMartyrdom is demonstration of immortality; for self preservation\nis the innermost, indestructible instinct of every conscious\nbeing. When the soul, in a sacred cause, enthusiastically rushes\nupon death, or in calm composure awaits death, it is irresistibly\nconvinced that it cannot be hurt, but will be blessed, by the\ncrisis. It knows that in an inexpressibly profound sense whosoever\nwould ignobly save his life loses it, but whosoever would nobly\nlose his life saves it. Martyrdom demonstrates immortality.\n\n\"Life embark'd out at sea, 'mid the wave tumbling roar, The poor\nship of my body went down to the floor; But I broke, at the bottom\nof death, through a door, And, from sinking, began forever to\nsoar.\"\n\nThe most lamentable and pertinacious doubts of immortality\nsometimes arise from the survey of instances of gross wickedness,\nsluggishness, and imbecility forced on our attention. But, as\nthese undeniably are palpable violations of the creative\nintention, it is not just to reason from them. In fairness the\nargument demands that we select the noblest, healthiest specimens\nof completed humanity to reason from. Should we not take a case in\nwhich God's will is so far plainly fulfilled, in order to trace\nthat will farther and even to its finality? And regarding on his\ndeath bed a Newton, a Fenelon, a Washington, is it difficult to\nconceive him surviving the climax and catastrophe of his somatic\ncell basis and soaring to a more august range of existence?\nRemembering that such as these have lived and died, ay, and even\nthe godlike Nazarene, can we believe that man is merely a white\ninterrogation point lifted on the black margin of matter to ask\nthe answerless secret of the universe and be erased?\n\nSuch a conclusion charges God with the transcendent crime of\ninfanticide perpetrated in the most deliberate manner and on the\nmost gigantic scale. Who can bear, by thus quenching the hope of\nanother life, to add death to death, and overcast, to every\nthoughtful eye, the whole sunny field of life with the melancholy\nshadow of a bier? There is a noble strength and confidence,\ncheering to the reader, in these words of one of the wisest and\nboldest of thinkers: \"I should be the very last man to be willing\nto dispense with the faith in a future life: nay, I would say,\nwith Lorenzo de'Medici, that all those are dead, even for the\npresent life, who do not hope for another. I have the firm\nconviction that our soul is an existence of indestructible nature,\nwhose working is from eternity to eternity. It is like the sun,\nthat seems indeed to set, but really never sets, shining on in\nunchangeable splendor.\" 49 Such a view of our destiny incomparably\ninspires and ennobles us. Man, discovering under all the poor,\nwretched accidents of earth and sense and hard fortune the\nimmortality of his soul, feels as that king's son who, lost in\ninfancy, and growing up under the care of a forest hind, supposed\nhimself to belong to the rude class among whom he lived; but one\nday, learning his true parentage, he knew beneath his mean\ndisguise that he was a prince, and immediately claimed his\nkingdom. These facts of experience show clearly how much it\nbehooves us to cultivate by every honest method this cardinal\ntenet of religion, how much wiser faith is in listening to the\nlucid echoes of the sky than despair in listening to the muffled\nreverberations of the grave. All noble and sweet beliefs grow with\nthe growing nobleness and tenderness of characters sensitive to\nthose fine revealings which pachydermatous souls can never know.\nIn the upper hall of reason, before the high shrine of faith, burn\nthe base doubts begotten in the cellars of sense; and they may\nserve as tapers to light your tentative way to conviction. If the\nfloating al Sirat between physiology and psychology, earth and\nheaven, is too slippery and perilous for your footing, where heavy\nlimbed science cannot tread, nerve the wings of faith for a free\nflight. Or, if every effort to fasten a definite theory on some\nsolid support on the other side of the gulf fails, venture forth\non the naked line of limitless desire, as the spider escapes from\nan unwelcome position by flinging out an exceedingly long and fine\nthread and going forth upon it sustained by the air.50 Whoever\npreserves the full intensity of the affections is little likely to\nlose his trust in God and a future life, even when exposed to\nlowering and chilling influences from material science and\nspeculative philosophy: the glowing of the heart, as Jean Paul\nsays, relights the extinguished torch in the night of the\nintellect, as a beast stunned by an electric shock in the head is\nrestored by an electric shock in the breast. Daniel Webster says,\nin an expression of his faith in Christianity written shortly\nbefore his death, \"Philosophical argument, especially that drawn\nfrom the vastness of the universe in comparison with the apparent\ninsignificance of this globe, has sometimes shaken my reason for\nthe faith which is in me; but my heart has always assured and\nreassured me.\"51 Contemplating the stable permanence of nature as\nit swallows our fleet generations, we may feel that we vanish like\nsparks in the night; but when we think of the persistent identity\nof the soul, and of its immeasurable superiority to the brute mass\nof matter, the aspect of the case changes and the moral inference\nis reversed. Does not the simple truth of love conquer and trample\nthe world's aggregated lie? The man who, with assiduous toil and\nearnest faith, develops his forces, and disciplines his faculties,\nand cherishes his aspirations, and accumulates virtue and wisdom,\nis thus preparing the auspicious stores and conditions of another\nexistence. As he slowly journeys over the mountains of life, aware\nthat there can be\n\n49 Eckermann's Conversations with Goethe.\n\n50 Greenough, An Artist's Creed.\n\n51 Memorial of Daniel Webster from the City of Boston, p. 16.\n\n\nno returning, he gathers and carries with him materials to build a\nship when he reaches the strand of death. Upon the mist veiled\nocean launching then, he will sail where? Whither God orders. Must\nnot that be to the right port?\n\nWe remember an old Brahmanic poem brought from the East by Ruckert\nand sweetly resung in the speech of the West full of encouragement\nto those who shall die.52 A man wrapped in slumber calmly reclines\non the deck of a ship stranded and parting in the breakers. The\nplank on which he sleeps is borne by a huge wave upon a bank of\nroses, and he awakes amidst a jubilee of music and a chorus of\nfriendly voices bidding him welcome. So, perhaps, when the body is\nshattered on the death ledge, the soul will be tossed into the\nfragrant lap of eternal life on the self identified and dynamic\nplank of personality.\n\n52 Brahmanische Erzahlungen, s. 5.\n\n\nCHAPTER IX.\n\nMORALITY OF THE DOCTRINE OF A FUTURE LIFE. IN discussing the\nethics of the doctrine of a future life a subject here amazingly\nneglected, there more amazingly maltreated, and nowhere, within\nour knowledge, truly analyzed and exhibited1 it is important that\nthe theme be precisely defined and the debate kept strictly to the\nlines. Let it be distinctly understood, therefore, that the\nquestion to be handled is not, \"Whether there ought to be a future\nlife or not,\" nor, \"Whether there is a future life or not.\" The\nquestion is, \"What difference should it make to us whether we\nadmit or deny the fact of a future life?\" If we believe that we\nare to pass through death into an immortal existence, what\ninferences pertaining to the present are right, fully to be drawn\nfrom the supposition? If, on the other hand, we think there is\nnothing for us after the present, what are the logical\nconsequences of that faith in regard to our aims and rules of\nconduct in this world?\n\nSuppose a man who has always imagined that death is utter\nannihilation should in some way suddenly acquire knowledge that an\nendless existence immediately succeeds the termination of this:\nwhat would be the legitimate instructions of his new information?\nBefore we can fairly answer this inquiry, we need to know what\nrelations connect the two states of existence. A knowledge of the\nlaw and method and means of man's destiny is more important for\nhis guidance than the mere ascertainment of its duration. With\nreference to the query before us, four hypotheses are conceivable.\nIf, in the first place, there be no connection whatever except\nthat of temporal sequence between the present life and the future,\nthen, so far as duty is concerned, the expectation of a world to\ncome yields not the slightest practical application for the\nexperience that now is. It can only be a source of comfort or of\nterror; and that will be accordingly as it is conceived under the\naspect of benignity or of vengeance. If, secondly, the character\nof the future life depend on conditions to be fulfilled here, but\nthose conditions be not within our control, then, again, no\ninferences of immediate duty can be drawn from the apprehended\nhereafter. Being quasi actors in a scene prearranged and with a\nplot predetermined, we can no more be capable of any obligation or\nchoice, in regard to the end, than puppets which some unseen\nHarlequin moves by the terrible wires of primitive decree or\ntransmitted depravity towards the genial or the tragic crisis. If\nthe soul's fate there is to be heaven or hell according to the\npart enacted here, it must have free will and a fair opportunity\nto work the unmarred problem safely out. Otherwise the future life\nis reduced, as far as it affects us here, to a mere source of\ncomplacency or of horror as it respectively touches the elect and\nthe reprobate.\n\nThirdly, it may be conceived that the future life is a state of\neverlasting reward and punishment unchangeably decided by the way\nin which the probationary period allotted on\n\n1 The only direct treatise on the subject known to us is\nTilemann's Kritik der Unsterblichkeitslehre in Ansehung des\nSittengesetzes, published in 1789. And this we have not seen.\n\n\nearth is passed through. Here are men, for a brief time, free to\nact thus or otherwise. Do thus, and the endless bliss of heaven is\nwon. Do otherwise, and the endless agony of hell is incurred. The\nplain rule of action yielded by this doctrine is, Sacrifice all\nother things to the one thing needful. The present life is in\nitself a worthless instant. The future life is an inexhaustible\neternity. And yet this infinite wealth of glory or woe depends on\nhow you act during that poor moment. Therefore you have nothing to\ndo while on earth but to seek the salvation of your soul. To waste\na single pulse beat on any thing else is the very madness of\nfolly. To find out how to escape hell and secure heaven, and then\nto improve the means, this should absolutely absorb every energy\nand every thought and every desire of every moment. This world is\na bridge of straw over the roaring gulf of eternal fire. Is there\nleisure for sport and business, or room for science and\nliterature, or mood for pleasures and amenities? No: to get\nourselves and our friends into the magic car of salvation, which\nwill waft us up from the ravenous crests of the brimstone lake\npacked with visages of anguish, to bind around our souls the\nfloating cord of redemption, which will draw us up to heaven, this\nshould intensely engage every faculty. Nothing else can be\nadmitted save by oversight of the awful facts. For is it not one\nflexible instant of opportunity, and then an adamantine\nimmortality of doom? That doctrine of a future life which makes\neternal unalterable happiness or misery depend on the fleeting\nprobation allowed here yields but one practical moral; and that it\npronounces with imminent urgency and perfect distinctness. The\nonly true duty, the only real use, of this life is to secure the\nforensic salvation of the soul by improvement of the appointed\nmeans. Suspended by such a hair of frailty, for one breathless\nmoment, on such a razor edged contingence, an entrancing sea of\nblessedness above, a horrible abyss of torture beneath, such\nshould be the all concentrating anxiety to secure safety that\nthere would be neither time nor taste for any thing else. Every\nobject should seem an altar drenched with sacrificial blood, every\nsound a knell laden with dolorous omen, every look a propitiatory\nconfession, every breath a pleading prayer. From so single and\npreternatural a tension of the believer's faculties nothing could\nallow an instant's cessation except a temporary forgetting or\nblinking of the awful scene and the immeasurable hazard. Such\nwould be a logical application to life of the genuine morals of\nthe doctrine under consideration. But the doctrine itself is to be\nrejected as false on many grounds. It is deduced from Scripture by\na technical and unsound interpretation. It is unjust and cruel,\nirreconcilable with the righteousness or the goodness of God. It\nis unreasonable, opposed to the analogies of nature and to the\nexperience of man. It is wholly impossible to carry it out\nconsistently in the practice of life. If it were thoroughly\ncredited and acted upon, all the business of the world would\ncease, and the human race would soon die out.\n\nThere remains one other view of the relationship of a future life\nwith the present. And it seems to be the true view. The same\nCreator presiding, the same laws prevailing, over infinitude and\neternity that now rule over time and earth, our immortality cannot\nreasonably be imagined either a moment of free action and an\neternity of fixed consequences, or a series of separate fragments\npatched into a parti colored experience with blanks of death\nbetween the patterns of life. It must be conceived as one endless\nexistence in linear connection of cause and effect developing in\nprogressive phases under varying conditions of motive and scenery.\nWith what we are at death we live on into the next life. In every\nepoch and world of our destiny our happiness depends on the\npossession of a harmoniously working soul harmoniously related\nwith its environment. Each stage and state of our eternal\nexistence has its peculiarities of duty and privilege. In this one\nour proper work is to improve the opportunities, discharge the\ntasks, enjoy the blessings, belonging here. We are to do the same\nin the next one when we arrive in that. All the wealth of wisdom,\nvirtue, strength, and harmony we acquire in our present life is\nthe vantage ground and capital wherewith we start in the\nsucceeding life. Therefore the true preparation for the future is\nto fit ourselves to enter it under the most favorable auspices, by\naccumulating in our souls all the spiritual treasures afforded by\nthe present. In other words, the truest aim we can set before\nourselves during our existence on earth is to make it yield the\ngreatest possible results of the noblest experience. The life\nhereafter is the elevated and complementary continuation of the\nlife here; and certainly the directest way to ameliorate the\ncontinuation is to improve the commencement.\n\nBut, it may be said, according to this representation, the fact of\na future life makes no difference in regard to our duty now; for\nif the grave swallows all, still, it is our duty and our interest\nto make the best and the most of our life in the world while it\nlasts. True; and really that very consideration is a strong proof\nof the correctness of the view in question. It corresponds with\nthe other arrangements of God. He makes every thing its own end,\ncomplete in itself, at the same time that it subserves some\nfurther end and enters into some higher unity. He is no mere\nTeleologist, hobbling towards his conclusions on a pair of decayed\nlogic crutches,2 but an infinite Artist, whose means and ends are\nconsentaneous in the timeless and spaceless spontaneity and\nperfection of his play. If the tomb is our total goal, our genuine\naim in this existence is to win during its course an experience\nthe largest in quantity and the best in quality. On the other\nhand, if another life follows this, our wisdom is just the same;\nbecause that experience alone, with the favor of God, can\nconstitute our fitness and stock to enter on the future. And yet\nbetween the two cases there is this immense difference,  not\nindeed in duty, but in endowment, that in the latter instance we\nwork out our allotted destiny here, in a broader illumination,\nwith grander incentives, and with vaster consolations. A future\nlife, then, really imposes no new duty upon the present, alters no\nfundamental ingredient in the present, takes away none of the\ncharms and claims of the present, but merely sheds an additional\nradiance upon the shaded lights already shining here, infuses an\nadditional motive into the stimulants already animating our\npurposes, distills an additional balm into the comforts which\nalready assuage our sorrows amidst an evanescent scene. The belief\nthat we are to live hereafter in a compensating world explains to\nus many a sad mystery, strengthens us for many an oppressive\nburden, consoles us in many a sharp grief. Else we should oftener\ngo mad in the baffling whirl of problems, oftener obey the baser\nvoice, oftener yield to despair. These three are the moral uses,\nin the present life, of the\n\n2 \"Seht, an der morschen Syllogismenkrucke Hinkt Gott in Seine\nWelt.\"Lenau's Satire auf einen Professor philosophia.\n\n\ndoctrine of a future life. Outside of these three considerations\nthe doctrine has no ethical meaning for human observance here.\n\nIt will be seen, according to the foregoing representation, that\nthe expectation of a future life, instead of being harmful to the\ninterests and attractions of the present, simply casts a cheering\nand magnifying light upon them. It does not depreciate the\nrealities or nullify the obligations now upon us, but emphasizes\nthem, flinging their lights and shades forward through a mightier\nvista. Consequently there is no reason for assailing the idea of\nanother life in behalf of the interests of this. Such an\nopposition between the two states is entirely sophistical,\nresulting from a profound misinterpretation of the truemoral\nrelations connecting them.\n\nThe belief in immortality has been mistakenly attacked, not merely\nas hostile to our welfare on earth, but likewise as immoral in\nitself, springing from essential selfishness, and in turn\nnourishing selfishness and fatally tainting every thing with that\ncentral vice. To desire to live everlastingly as an identical\nindividual, it has been said, is the ecstasy and culmination of\navaricious conceitedness. Man, the vain egotist, dives out of\nsight in God to fish up the pearl of his darling self. He makes\nhis poor individuality the measure of all things, his selfish\ndesire the law of endless being. Such a rampant proclamation of\nself will and enthronement of pure egotism, flying in the face of\nthe solemn and all submerging order of the universe, is the very\nessence and climax of immorality and irreligiousness. To this\nassault on the morality of the belief in a future life, whether\nmade in the devout tones of magnanimous sincerity, as by the\nsublime Schleiermacher, or with the dishonest trickiness of a\nvulgar declaimer for the rehabilitation of the senses, as by some\nwho might be named, several fair replies may be made. In the first\nplace, the objection begs the question, by assuming that the\ndoctrine is a falsehood, and that its disciples wilfully set up\ntheir private wishes against the public truth. Such tremendous\npostulates cannot be granted. It is seizing the victory before the\nbattle, grasping the conclusion without establishing the premises.\nFor, if there be a future life provided by the Creator, it cannot\nbe sinful or selfish in us to trust in it, to accept it with\nhumble gratitude, and to prepare our souls for it. That, instead\nof being rebellious arrogance or overweening selfishness, would\nsimply be conforming our thoughts and plans, our desires and\nlabors, to the Divine arrangements. That would be both morality\nand piety. When one clings by will to a doctrine known to be a\nfalsehood, obstinately suppressing reason to affirm it as a truth,\nand, in obedience to his personal whims, trying to force all\nthings into conformity with it, he does act as a selfish egotist\nin full violation of the moral law and the spirit of religion. But\na future life we believe to be a fact; and therefore we are, in\nevery respect, justified in gladly expecting it and consecratedly\nliving with reference to it.\n\nFurthermore, admitting it to be an open question, neither proved\nnor disproved, but poised in equal uncertainty, still, it is not\nimmoral nor undevout deeply to desire and fondly to hope a\npersonal immortality. \"The aim of religion,\" it has been said, \"is\nthe annihilation of one's own individuality, the living in the\nAll, the becoming one with the universe.\" But in such a definition\naltogether too much is assumed. The aim of religion is only the\nannihilation of the self will of the individual as opposed to the\nWill of the Whole, not the losing of one's self in the unconscious\nwastes of the universe, but the harmonizing of one's self with the\nSupreme Law of the universe.\n\nAn humble, loving, and joyous conformity to the truth constitutes\nmorality and religion. This is not necessarily inconsistent with a\npersonal immortality. Besides, the charge may be retorted. To be\nidentified with the universe is a prouder thought than to be\nsubordinated to it as an infinitesimal individual. It is a far\nhaughtier conceit to fancy one's self an integral part of God's\nsubstance than to believe one's self a worshipping pensioner of\nGod's will. The conception, too, is less native to the mind, has\nbeen more curiously sought out, and is incomparably more pampering\nto speculative luxury. If accusations of selfishness and\nwilfulness are to be hurled upon any modes of preferred faith as\nto our destiny, this self styled disinterested surrender of our\npersonality to the pantheistic Soul is as obnoxious to them as the\ncommon belief.\n\nIf a desire for personal immortality be a normal experience in the\ndevelopment of our nature, it cannot be indictable as an offence,\nbut must be recognised as an indication of God's design. Whether\nthe desire is a cold and degraded piece of egotism deserving\nrebuke and contempt, or a lofty and sympathetic affection worthy\nof reverence and approval, depends on no intrinsic ingredient of\nthe desire itself, but on the character in which it has its being.\nOne person will be a heartless tyrant, another a loving saint, in\nhis hope of a future life. Shall our love of the dead, our prayers\nto meet them again, our unfathomed yearnings to know that they\nstill live and are happy, be stigmatized as mean and evil? Regard\nfor others as much as for ourselves prompts the eternal sigh. Nor\nwill Divinity ever condemn the feeling himself has awakened. It is\nsaid that Xerxes, gazing once upon his gorgeous army of a million\nmen spread out below hire, sheathed in golden armor, white plumes\nnodding, purple standards waving, martial horns blowing, wept as\nhe thought that in thirty years the entire host composing that\nmagnificent spectacle would be dead. To have gazed thoughtfully\nupon such a sight with unmoved sensibilities would imply a much\nmore selfish and hard hearted egotist. So when a lonely\nphilanthropist from some meditative eminence looks down on the\nhuman race, if, as the contemplation of their pathetic fading and\ndecay wounds his saddened heart, he heals and cheers it with the\nfaith of a glorious immortality for them all, who shall call him\nselfish and sinful? To rest contented with the speedy night and\nthe infinite oblivion, wiping off all the unsolved sums from the\nslate of existence with annihilation's remorseless sponge, that\nwould be the selfishness and the cruelty.\n\nWhen that sweet asp, death, fastens on our vein of earthly life,\nwe all feel, like the dying queen of Egypt, that we have \"immortal\nlongings\" in us. Since the soul thus holds by a pertinacious\ninstinct to the eternity of her own existence, it is more rational\nto conclude that this is a pledge of her indestructible\npersonality, God's impregnable defence reared around the citadel\nof her being, than to consider it the artificial rampart flung up\nby an insurgent egotism. In like manner, it is a misrepresentation\nof the facts to assert the culpable selfishness of the faith in a\nfuture life as a demanded reward for fidelity and merit here. No\none demands immortality as pay for acquired desert. It is modestly\nlooked for as a free boon from the God who freely gave the present\nand who has by a thousand symbolic prophecies promised it. Richter\nsays, with great insight, \"We desire immortality not as the reward\nof virtue, but as its continuance. Virtue can no more be rewarded\nthan joy can: it is its own reward.\" Kant says, \"Immortality has\nbeen left so uncertain in order that pure freedom of choice, and\nno selfish views, shall prompt our aspirations.\" \"But,\" Jean Paul\nkeenly replies, \"as we have now discovered this intention, its\nobject is defeated. Besides, if the belief in immortality makes\nvirtue selfish, the experience of it in the next world would make\nit more so.\" The anticipation of heaven can hardly make man a\nselfish calculator of profit; because heaven is no reward for\ncrafty reckoning, but the home of pure and holy souls. Virtue\nwhich resists temptation and perseveres in rectitude because it\nhas a sharp eye to an ulterior result is not virtue. No credible\ndoctrine of a future life offers a prize except to those who are\njust and devout and strenuous in sacred service from free loyalty\nto the right and the good, spontaneously obeying and loving the\nhigher and better call because it divinely commands their\nobedience and love. The law of duty is the superior claim of truth\nand goodness. Virtue, yielding itself filially to this, finds in\nheaven not remuneration, but a sublimer theatre and an immortal\ncareer. Egotistic greed, all mere prudential considerations as\ndetermining conditions or forces in the award, are excluded as\nunclean and inadmissible by the very terms; and the doctrine\nstands justified on every ground as pure and wholesome before the\nholiest tribunal of ethics. Surely it is right that goodness\nshould be blessed; but when it continues good only for the sake of\nbeing blessed it ceases to be goodness. It is not the belief in\nimmortality, but only the belief in a corrupt doctrine of\nimmortality which can poison the springs of disinterested virtue.\n\nThe morality of the doctrine of a future life having thus been\ndefended from the attacks of those who have sought to destroy it\nin the fancied interests either of the enjoyments of the earth or\nof the purity of virtue and religion, it now remains to free it\nfrom the still more fatal supports which false or superficial\nreligionists have sought to give it by wrenching out of it\nmeanings it never held, by various perverse abuses of it, by\nmonstrous exaggerations of its moral importance to the present. We\nhave seen that the supposition of another life, correctly\ninterpreted, lays no new duty upon man, takes away from him no old\nduty or privilege, but simply gives to the previously existing\nfacts of the case the intensifying glory and strength of fresh\nlight, motive, and consolation. But many public teachers, not\ncontent to treat the subject with this sobriety of reason, instead\nof presenting the careful conclusions of a conscientious analysis,\nhave sought to strengthen their argument to the feelings by help\nof prodigious assumptions, assumptions hastily adopted, highly\ncolored, and authoritatively urged. Upon the hypothesis that\nannihilation is the fate of man, they are not satisfied merely to\ntake away from the present all the additional light, incentive,\nand comfort imparted by the faith in a future existence, but they\narbitrarily remove all the alleviations and glories intrinsically\nbelonging to the scene, and paint it in the most horrible hues,\nand set it in a frame of midnight. Thus, instead of calmly seeking\nto elicit and recommend truth, they strive, by terrifying the\nfancy and shocking the prejudices, to make people accept their\ndogma because frightened at the seeming consequences of rejecting\nit. It is necessary to expose the fearful fallacies which have\nbeen employed in this way, and which are yet extensively used for\nthe same purpose.\n\nEven a Christian writer usually so judicious as Andrews Norton has\nsaid, \"Without the belief in personal immortality there can be no\nreligion; for what can any truths of religion concern the feelings\nand the conduct of beings whose existence is limited to a few\nyears in this world?\" 3 Such a statement from such a quarter is\nastonishing. Surely the sentiments natural to a person or\nincumbent upon him do not depend on the duration of his being, but\non the character, endowments, and relations of his being. The\nhypothetical fact that man perishes with his body does not destroy\nGod, does not destroy man's dependence on God for all his\nprivileges, does not annihilate the overwhelming magnificence of\nthe universe, does not alter the native sovereignty of holiness,\ndoes not quench our living reason, imagination, or sensibility,\nwhile they last. The soul's gratitude, wonder, love, and worship\nare just as right and instinctive as before. If our experience on\nearth, before the phenomena of the visible creation and in\nconscious communion with the emblemed attributes of God, does not\ncause us to kneel in humility and to adore in awe, then it may be\ndoubted if heaven or hell will ever persuade us to any sincerity\nin such acts. The simple prolongation of our being does not add to\nits qualitative contents, cannot increase the kinds of our\ncapacity or the number of our duties. Chalmers utters an injurious\nerror in saying, as he does, \"If there be no future life, the\nmoral constitution of man is stripped of its significancy, and the\nAuthor of that constitution is stripped of his wisdom and\nauthority and honor.\" 4 The creative Sovereign of fifty million\nfirmaments of worlds \"stripped of his wisdom and authority and\nhonor\" because a few insects on a little speck are not eternal!\nCan egotistic folly any further go? The affirmation or denial of\nimmortality neither adds to nor diminishes the numerical relations\nand ingredients of our nature and experience. If religion is\nfitted for us on the former supposition, it is also on the latter.\nTo any dependent intelligence blessed with our human susceptibilities,\nreverential love and submission are as obligatory, natural, and\nbecoming on the brink of annihilation as on the verge of immortality.\n\nRebellious egotism makes all the difference. Truth is truth,\nwhatever it be. Religion is the meek submission of self will to\nGod's will. That is a duty not to be escaped, no matter what the\nfuture reserves or excludes for us.\n\nAnother sophism almost universally accepted needs to be shown.\nMan, it is said, has no interest in a future life if not conscious\nin it of the past. If, on exchange of worlds, man loses his\nmemory, he virtually ceases to exist, and might just as well be\nannihilated. A future life with perfect oblivion of the present is\nno life at all for us. Is not this style of thought the most\nprovincial egotism, the utter absence of all generous thought and\nsympathy unselfishly grasping the absolute boons of being? It is a\nshallow error, too, even on the grounds of selfishness itself. In\nany point of view the difference is diametric and immense between\na happy being in an eternal present, unconscious of the past, and\nno being at all. Suppose a man thirty years of age were offered\nhis choice to die this moment, or to live fifty years longer of\nunalloyed success and happiness, only with a complete\nforgetfulness of all that has happened up to this moment. He would\nnot hesitate to grasp the gift, however much he regretted the\ncondition.\n\n3 Tracts concerning Christianity, p. 307.\n\n4 Bridgewater Treatise, part ii. ch. 10, sect. 15.\n\n\nIt has often been argued that with the denial of a retributive\nlife beyond the grave all restraints are taken off from the\npassions, free course given to every impulse. Chateaubriand says,\nbluntly, \"There can be no morality if there be no future state.\" 5\nWith displeasing coarseness, and with most reprehensible\nrecklessness of reasoning, Luther says, in contradiction to the\nessential nobleness of his loving, heroic nature, \"If you believe\nin no future life, I would not give a mushroom for your God. Do,\nthen, as you like. For if no God, so no devil, no hell: as with a\nfallen tree, all is over when you die. Then plunge into lechery,\nrascality, robbery, and murder.\" What bible of Moloch had he been\nstudying to form, for the time, so horrid a theory of the happiest\nlife, and to put so degrading an estimate upon human nature? Is\nman's will a starved wolf only held back by the triple chain of\nfear of death, Satan, and hell, from tearing forth with ravenous\nbounds to flesh the fangs of his desires in bleeding virtue and\ninnocence? Does the greatest satisfaction man is capable of here,\nthe highest blessedness he can attain to, consist in drunkenness,\ngluttony, dishonesty, violence, and impiety? If he had the\nappetite of a tiger or a vulture, then, thus to wallow in the\noffal of vice, dive into the carrion of sensuality, abandon\nhimself to revelling in carnivorous crime, might be his instinct\nand his happiness. But by virtue of his humanity man loves his\nfellows, enjoys the scenery of nature, takes delight in thought\nand art, dilates with grand presentiments of glory and eternity,\nmysteriously yearns after the hidden God. To a reasonable man and\nno other is to be reasoned with on matters of truth and interest\nthe assumption of this brief season as all, will be a double\nmotive not to hasten and embitter its brevity by folly, excess,\nand sin. If you are to be dead to morrow, for that very reason, in\nGod's name, do not, by gormandizing and guzzling, anticipate death\nto day! The true restraint from wrong and degradation is not a\ncrouching conscience of superstition and selfishness, fancying a\nchasm of fire, but a high toned conscience of reason and honor,\nperceiving that they are wrong and degradation, and spontaneously\nloathing them.\n\nStill worse, many esteemed authors have not hesitated to assert\nthat unless there be a future life there is not only no check on\npassion within, but no moral law without; every man is free to do\nwhat he pleases, without blame or fault. Sir Kenelm Digby says, in\nhis \"Treatise on Man's Soule,\" that \"to predicate mortality in the\nsoule taketh away all morality, and changeth men into beastes, by\nremoving the ground of all difference in those thinges which are\nto governe our actions.\" 6 This style of teaching is a very\nmischievous absurdity. Admit, for a moment, that Jocko in the\nwoods of Brazil, and Schiller in the brilliant circles of Weimar,\nwill at last meet the same fate in the dusty grasp of death; yet,\nwhile they live, one is an ape, the other is a man. And the\ndifferences of capacity and of duty are numberless and immense.\nThe statement is enough: argument would be ridiculous. The words\nof an audacious French preacher are yet more shocking than those\nof the English nobleman. It is hard to believe they could be\nuttered in good faith. Says Massillon, in his famous declamation\non immortality, \"If we wholly perish with the body, the maxims of\ncharity, patience, justice, honor, gratitude, and friendship, are\nbut empty words. Our own passions shall decide our duty.\n\n5 Genie du Christianisme, partie ii. livre vi. chap. 3.\n\n6 Ch. ix. sect. 10.\n\n\nIf retribution terminate with the grave, morality is a mere\nchimera, a bugbear of human invention.\" 7 What debauched\nunbeliever ever inculcated a viler or a more fatal doctrine? Its\nutter barelessness, as a single illustration may show, is obvious\nat a glance. As the sciences of algebra and geometry, the\nrelations of numbers and bodies, are true for the material world\nalthough they may be lost sight of when time and space are\ntranscended in some higher state, so the science of ethics, the\nrelations of nobler and baser, of right and wrong, the manifold\ngrades and qualities of actions and motives, are true for human\nnature and experience in this life even if men perish in the\ngrave. However soon certain facts are to end, while they endure\nthey are as they are. In a moment of carelessness, by some strange\nslip of the mind, showing, perhaps, how tenaciously rooted are the\ncommon prejudice and falsehood on this subject,  even so bold and\nfresh a thinker as Theodore Parker has contradicted his own\nphilosophy by declaring, \"If to morrow I perish utterly, then my\nfathers will be to me only as the ground out of which my bread\ncorn is grown. I shall care nothing for the generations of\nmankind. I shall know no higher law than passion. Morality will\nvanish.\" 8 Ah, man reveres his fathers and loves to act nobly, not\nbecause he is to live forever, but because he is a man. And,\nthough all the summer hopes of escaping the grave were taken from\nhuman life, choicest and tenderest virtues might still flourish,\nas it is said the German crossbill pairs and broods in the dead of\nwinter. The martyr's sacrifice and the voluptuary's indulgence are\nvery different things to day, if they do both cease to morrow. No\nspeed of advancing destruction can equalize Agamemnon and\nThersites, Mansfield and Jeffries, or hustle together justice and\nfraud, cowardice and valor, purity and corruption, so that they\nwill interchange qualities. There is an eternal and immutable\nmorality, as whiteness is white, and blackness is black, and\ntriangularity is triangular. And no severance of temporal ties or\ncompression of spatial limits can ever cut the condign bonds of\nduty and annihilate the essential distinctions of good and evil,\nmagnanimity and meanness, faithfulness and treachery.\n\nReducing our destiny from endless to definite cannot alter the\ninherent rightfulness and superiority of the claims of virtue. The\nmost it can do is to lessen the strength of the motive, to give\nthe great motor nerve of our moral life a perceptible stroke of\npalsy. In reference to the question, Can ephemera have a moral\nlaw? Richter reasons as follows: \"Suppose a statue besouled for\ntwo days. If on the first day you should shatter it, and thus rob\nit of one day's life, would you be guilty of murder? One can\ninjure only an immortal.\" 9 The sophistry appears when we rectify\nthe conclusion thus: one can inflict an immortal injury only on an\nimmortal being. In fact, it would appear to be a greater wrong and\ninjury, for the time, to destroy one day's life of a man whose\nentire existence was confined to two days, than it would be to\ntake away the same period from the bodily existence of one who\nimmediately thereupon passes into a more exalted and eternal life.\nTo the sufferer, the former would seem an immitigable calamity,\nthe latter a benign furtherance; while, in the agent, the overt\nact is the same. This general moral problem has been more\naccurately answered by Isaac Taylor, whose lucid statement is as\nfollows: \"The creatures of a summer's day might be imagined, when\n\n7 OEuvres Completes, tome xiii.: Immortalite de l'Ame.\n\n8 Sermons of Theism, Sermon VII.\n\n9 Werke, band xxxiii. s. 240.\n\n\nthey stand upon the threshold of their term of existence, to make\ninquiry concerning the attributes of the Creator and the rules of\nhis government; for these are to be the law of their season of\nlife and the measure of their enjoyments. The sons of immortality\nwould put the same questions with an intensity the greater from\nthe greater stake.\"\n\nPractically, the acknowledged authority of the moral law in human\nsociety cannot be destroyed. Its influence may be unlimitedly\nweakened, its basis variously altered, but as a confessed\nsovereign principle it cannot be expelled. The denial of the\nfreedom of the will theoretically explodes it; but social custom,\nlaw, and opinion will enforce it still. Make man a mere dissoluble\nmixture of carbon and magnetism, yet so long as he can distinguish\nright and wrong, good and evil, love and hate, and, unsophisticated\nby dialectics, can follow either of opposite courses of action,\nthe moral law exists and exerts its sway.\n\nIt has been asked, \"If the incendiary be, like the fire he kindles,\na result of material combinations, shall he not be treated in the\nsame way?\" 10 We should reply thus: No matter what man springs\nfrom or consists of, if he has moral ideas, performs moral\nactions, and is susceptible of moral motives, then he is morally\nresponsible: for all practical and disciplinary purposes he is\nwholly removed from the categories of physical science.\n\nAnother pernicious misrepresentation of the fair consequences of\nthe denial of a life hereafter is shown in the frequent\ndeclaration that then there would be no motive to any thing good\nand great. The incentives which animate men to strenuous services,\nperilous virtues, disinterested enterprises, spiritual culture,\nwould cease to operate. The essential life of all moral motives\nwould be killed. This view is to be met by a broad and indignant\ndenial based on an appeal to human consciousness and to the reason\nof the thing. Every man knows by experience that there are a\nmultitude of powerful motives, entirely disconnected with future\nreward or punishment, causing him to resist evil and to do good\neven with self sacrificing toil and danger. When the fireman risks\nhis life to save a child from the flames of a tumbling house, is\nthe hope of heaven his motive? When the soldier spurns an offered\nbribe and will not betray his comrades nor desert his post, is the\nfear of hell all that animates him? A million such decisive\nspecifications might be made. The renowned sentence of Cicero,\n\"Nemo unquam sine magna spe immortalitatis se pro patria offerret\nad mortem,\" 11 is effective eloquence; but it is a baseless libel\nagainst humanity and the truth. In every moment of supreme\nnobleness and sacrifice personality vanishes. Thousands of\npatriots, philosophers, saints, have been glad to die for the\nfreedom of native land, the cause of truth, the welfare of fellow\nmen, without a taint of selfish reward touching their wills. Are\nthere not souls \"To whom dishonor's shadow is a substance More\nterrible than death here and hereafter\"?\n\nHe must be the basest of men who would decline to do any sublime\nact of virtue because he did not expect to enjoy the consequences\nof it eternally. Is there no motive for the\n\n10 Some discussion of this general subject is to be found in\nSchaller, Leib nod Seele. kap. 5: Die Consequentzen des\nMaterialismus. And in Schopenhauer, Die beiden Grundprobleme der\nEthik.\n\n11 Tuscul. Quast. lib. i. cap. 15.\n\n\npreservation of health because it cannot be an everlasting\npossession? Since we cannot eat sweet and wholesome food forever,\nshall we therefore at once saturate our stomachs with nauseating\npoisons?\n\nIf all experienced good and evil wholly terminate for us when we\ndie, still, every intrinsic reason which, on the supposition of\nimmortality, makes wisdom better than folly, industry better than\nsloth, righteousness better than iniquity, benevolence and purity\nbetter than hatred and corruption, also makes them equally\npreferable while they last. Even if the philosopher and the idiot,\nthe religious philanthropist and the brutal pirate, did die alike,\nwho would not rather live like the sage and the saint than like\nthe fool and the felon? Shall heaven be held before man simply as\na piece of meat before a hungry dog to make him jump well? It is a\nshocking perversion of the grandest doctrine of faith. Let the\ntheory of annihilation assume its direst phase, still, our\nperception of principles, our consciousness of sentiments, our\nsense of moral loyalty, are not dissolved, but will hold us firmly\nto every noble duty until we ourselves flow into the dissolving\nabyss. But some one may say, \"If I have fought with beasts at\nEphesus, what advantageth it me if the dead rise not?\" It\nadvantageth you every thing until you are dead, although there be\nnothing afterwards. As long as you live, is it not glory and\nreward enough to have conquered the beasts at Ephesus? This is\nsufficient reply to the unbelieving flouters at the moral law.\nAnd, as an unanswerable refutation of the feeble whine of\nsentimentality that without immortal endurance nothing is worth\nour affection, let great Shakspeare advance, with his matchless\ndepth of bold insight reversing the conclusion, and pronouncing,\nin tones of cordial solidity,\n\n\"This, thou perceivest, will make thy love more strong, To love\nthat well which thou must leave ere long.\"\n\nWhat though Decay's shapeless hand extinguish us? Its foreflung\nand enervating shadow shall neither transform us into devils nor\ndegrade us into beasts. That shadow indeed only falls in the\nvalleys of ignoble fear and selfishness, leaving all the clear\nroad lines of moral truth and practical virtue and heroic\nconsecration still high and bright on the table land of a worthy\nlife; and every honorable soul, calmly confronting its fate, will\ncry, despite the worst, \"The pathway of my duty lies in sunlight;\nAnd I would tread it with as firm a step, Though it should\nterminate in cold oblivion, As if Elysian pleasures at its\nClose Gleam'd palpable to sight as things of earth.\"\n\nIf a captain knew that his ship would never reach her port, would\nhe therefore neglect his functions, be slovenly and careless,\npermit insubordination and drunkenness among the crew, let the\nbroad pennon draggle in filthy rents, the cordage become tangled\nand stiff, the planks be covered with dirt, and the guns be grimed\nwith rust? No: all generous hearts would condemn that. He would\nkeep every inch of the deck scoured, every piece of metal polished\nlike a mirror, the sails set full and clean, and, with shining\nmuzzles out, ropes hauled taut in their blocks, and every man at\nhis post, he would sweep towards the reef, and go down into the\nsea firing a farewell salute of honor to the sun, his flag flying\nabove him as he sunk.\n\nThe dogmatic assertors of a future life, in a partisan spirit set\nupon making out the most impressive case in its behalf, have been\nguilty of painting frightful caricatures of the true nature and\nsignificance of the opposite conclusion. Instead of saying, \"If\nsuch a thing be fated, why, then, it must be right, God's will be\ndone,\" they frantically rebel against any such admission, and\ndeclare that it would make God a liar and a fiend, man a \"magnetic\nmockery,\" and life a hellish taunt. This, however unconscious it\nmay be to its authors, is blasphemous egotism. One of the\ntenderest, devoutest, richest, writers of the century has\nunflinchingly affirmed that if man who trusted that love was the\nfinal law of creation, although nature, her claws and teeth red\nwith raven, shrieked against his creed be left to be blown about\nthe desert dust or sealed within the iron hills,\n\n\"No more! a monster, then, a dream,\nA discord; dragons of the prime,\nThat tare each other in their slime,\nWere mellow music match'd with Him!\"\n\nEpictetus says, \"When death overtakes me, it is enough if I can\nstretch out my hands to God, and say, 'The opportunities which\nthou hast given me of comprehending and following thy government,\nI have not neglected. I thank thee that thou hast brought me into\nbeing. I am satisfied with the time I have enjoyed the things thou\nhast given me. Receive them again, and assign them to whatever\nplace thou wilt.'\" 12 Surely the pious heathen here speaks more\nworthily than the presumptuous Christian! How much fitter would it\nbe, granting that death is the end all, to revise our interpretation,\nlook at the subject from the stand point of universal order,\nnot from this opinionative narrowness, and see if it be not\nsusceptible of a benignant meaning, worthy of grateful acceptance\nby the humble mind of piety and the dispassionate spirit of science!\nYea, let God and his providence stand justified, though man prove\nto have been egregiously mistaken.\n\n\"Though He smite me, yet will I praise Him; though He slay me, yet\nwill I trust in Him.\"\n\nTo return into the state we were in before we were created is not\nto suffer any evil: it is to be absolutely free from all evil. It\nis but the more perfect playing of that part, of which every sound\nsleep is a rehearsal. The thought of it is mournful to the\nenjoying soul, but not terrific; and even the mournfulness ceases\nin the realization. He uttered a piece of cruel madness who said,\n\"Hell is more bearable than nothingness.\" Is it worse to have\nnothing than it is to have infinite torture? Milton asks,\n\n\"For who would lose, Though full of pain, this intellectual\nbeing?\"\n\nEvery creature that exists, if full of pain, would snatch at the\nboon of ceasing to be. To be blessed is a good; to be wretched is\nan evil; not to be is neither a good nor an evil, but simply\n\n12 Dissert., lib. iv. cap. x. sect. 2.\n\n\nnothing. If such be our necessary fate, let us accept it with a\nharmonized mind, not entertaining fear nor yielding to sadness.\nWhy should we shudder or grieve? Every time we slumber, we try on\nthe dress which, when we die, we shall wear easily forever.\n\nNot satisfied to let the result rest in this somewhat sad but\npeaceful aspect, it is quite customary to give it a turn and hue\nof ghastly horribleness, by casting over it the dyspeptic dreams,\ninjecting it with the lurid lights and shades, of a morbid and\nwilful fancy. The most loathsome and inexcusable instance in point\nis the \"Vision of Annihilation\" depicted by the vermicular,\ninfested imagination of the great Teutonic phantasist while yet\nwrithing under the sanguinary fumes of some horrid attack of\nnightmare. Stepping across the earth, which is but a broad\nexecutioner's block for pale, stooping humanity, he enters the\nlarva world of blotted out men. The rotten chain of beings reaches\ndown into this slaughter field of souls. Here the dead are\npictured as eternally horripilating at death! \"As annihilation,\nthe white shapelessness of revolting terror, passes by each\nunsouled mask of a man, a tear gushes from the crumbled eye, as a\ncorpse bleeds when its murderer approaches.\" Pah! Out upon this\nexecrable retching of a nauseated fancy! What good is there in the\nbaseless conceit and gratuitous disgust of saying, \"The next world\nis in the grave, betwixt the teeth of the worm\"? In the case\nsupposed, the truth is merely that there is no next world\nanywhere; not that all the horrors of hell are scooped together\ninto the grave, and there multiplied by others direr yet and\nunknown before. Man's blended duty and interest, in such a case,\nare to try to see the interior beauty and essential kindness of\nhis fate, to adorn it and embrace it, fomenting his resignation\nwith the sweet lotions of faith and peace, not exasperating his\nwounds with the angry pungents of suspicion, alarm, and complaint.\nAt the worst, amidst all our personal disappointments, losses, and\ndecay, \"the view of the great universal whole of nature,\" as\nHumboldt says, \"is reassuring and consolatory.\" If the boon of a\nfuture immortality be not ours, therefore to scorn the gift of the\npresent life, is to act not like a wise man, who with grateful\npiety makes the best of what is given, but like a spoiled child,\nwho, if he cannot have both his orange and his gingerbread,\npettishly flings his gingerbread in the mud.\n\nThe future life, outside of the realm of faith, to an earnest and\nindependent inquirer, and considered as a scientific question,\nlies in a painted mist of uncertainty. There is room for hope, and\nthere is room for doubt. The wavering evidences in some moods\npreponderate on that side, in other moods on this side. Meanwhile\nit is clear that, while he lives here, the best thing he can do is\nto cherish a devout spirit, cultivate a noble character, lead a\npure and useful life in the service of wisdom, humanity, and God,\nand finally, when the appointed time arrives, meet the issue with\nreverential and affectionate conformity, without dictating terms.\nLet the vanishing man say, like Ruckert's dying flower, \"Thanks to\nday for all the favors I have received from sun and stream and\nearth and sky, for all the gifts from men and God which have made\nmy little life an ornament and a bliss. Heaven, stretch out thine\nazure tent while my faded one is sinking here. Joyous spring tide,\nroll on through ages yet to come, in which fresh generations shall\nrise and be glad. Farewell all! Content to have had my turn, I now\nfall asleep, without a murmur or a sigh.\" Surely the mournful\nnobility of such a strain of sentiment is preferable by much to\nthe selfish terror of that unquestioning belief which in the\nMiddle Age depicted the chase of the soul by Satan, on the columns\nand doors of the churches, under the symbol of a deer pursued by a\nhunter and hounds; and which has in later times produced in\nthousands the feeling thus terribly expressed by Bunyan, \"I\nblessed the condition of the dog and toad because they had no soul\nto perish under the everlasting weight of hell!\"\n\nSight of truth, with devout and loving submission to it, is an\nachievement whose nobleness outweighs its sorrow, even if the\ngazer foresee his own destruction.\n\nIt is not our intention in these words to cast doubt on the\nimmortality of the soul, or to depreciate the value of a belief in\nit. We desire to vindicate morality and religion from the\nunwitting attacks made on them by many self styled Christian\nwriters in their exaggeration of the practical importance of such\na faith. The qualitative contents of human nature have nothing to\ndo with its quantitative contents: our duties rest not on the\nlength, but on the faculties and relations, of our existence. Make\nthe life of a dog endless, he has only the capacity of a dog; make\nthe life of a man finite, still, within its limits, he has the\npsychological functions of humanity. Faith in immortality may\nenlarge and intensify the motives to prudent and noble conduct; it\ndoes not create new ones. The denial of immortality may pale and\ncontract those motives; it does not take them away.\n\nKnowing the burden and sorrow of earth, brooding in dim solicitude\nover the far times and men yet to be, we cannot recklessly utter a\nword calculated to lessen the hopes of man, pathetic creature, who\nweeps into the world and faints out of it. It is our faith not\nknowledge that the spirit is without terminus or rest. The\nfaithful truth hunter, in dying, finds not a covert, but a better\ntrail. Yet the saintliness of the intellect is to be purged from\nprejudice and self will. With God we are not to prescribe\nconditions. The thought that all high virtue and piety must die\nwith the abandonment of belief in immortality is as pernicious and\ndangerous as it is shallow, vulgar, and unchristian. The view is\nobviously gaining prevalence among scientific and philosophical\nthinkers, that life is the specialization of the universal in the\nindividual, death the restoration of the individual to the whole.\nThis doubt as to a personal future life will unquestionably\nincrease. Let traditional teachers beware how they venture to\nshift the moral law from its immutable basis in the will of God to\na precarious poise on the selfish hope and fear of man. The sole\nsafety, the ultimate desideratum, is perception of law with\ndisinterested conformity.\n\nThe influence of the doctrine of reward and punishment in a future\nstate, as a working motive for the observance of the moral law, is\nenormously overestimated. The influence, as such a motive, of the\npublic opinion of mankind, with the legal and social sanctions, is\nenormously underestimated. And the authority of a personal\nperception of right is also most unbecomingly depreciated.\nUNIVERSAL ORDER is the expression of the purposes of God, not as\narbitrarily chosen by his will and capriciously revealed in a\nbook, but as necessitated by his nature and embodied in his works.\nThe true basis of morality is universal order. The true end of\nmorality is life, the sum of moral laws being identical with the\nsum of the conditions in accordance with which the fruition of the\nfunctions of life can be secured with nearest approach to\nperfectness, perpetuity, and universality. The true sanctions of\nmorality are the manifold forms in which consciousness of life is\nheightened by harmony with universal order or lowered by discord\nwith it. The true law of moral sacrifice or resistance to\ntemptation is misrepresented by the common doctrine of heaven and\nhell, which makes it consist in the renunciation of a present good\nfor the clutching of a future good, the voluntary suffering of a\nsmall present evil to avoid the involuntary suffering of an\nimmense future evil. The true law of moral sacrifice is deeper,\npurer, more comprehensive, than that. It expresses our duty, in\naccordance with the requirements of universal order, to\nsubordinate the gratification of any part of our being to that of\nthe whole of our being, to forego the good of any portion of our\nlife in deference to that of all our life, to renounce any\nhappiness of the individual which conflicts with the welfare of\nthe race, to hold the spiritual atom in absolute abeyance to the\nspiritual universe, to sink self in God. If a man believe in no\nfuture life, is he thereby absolved from the moral law? The kind\nand number of his duties remain as before: only the apparent\ngrandeur of their scale and motives is diminished. The two halves\nof morality are the co ordination of separate interests in\nuniversal order, and the loyalty of the parts to the wholes. The\ndesire to remove the obligations and sanctions of the moral law\nfrom their intrinsic supports, and posit them on the fictitious\npedestals of a forensic heaven and hell, reveals incompetency of\nthought and vulgarity of sentiment in him who does it, and is a\nprocedure not less perilous than unwarranted. If the creation be\nconceived as a machine, it is a machine self regulating in all its\nparts by the immanent presence of its Maker.\n\nWhen we die, may the Spirit of Truth, the Comforter of Christ, be\nour confessor; the last inhaled breath our cup of absolution; the\ntears of some dear friend our extreme unction; no complaint for\npast trials, but a grateful acknowledgment for all blessings, our\nparting word. And then, resigning ourselves to the universal\nFather, assured that whatever ought to be, and is best to be, will\nbe, either absolute oblivion shall be welcome, or we will go\nforward to new destinies, whether with preserved identity or with\ntransformed consciousness and powers being indifferent to us,\nsince the will of God is done. In the mean time, until that\ncritical pass and all decisive hour, as Milnes says:\n\n\"We all must patient stand, Like statues on appointed pedestals:\nYet we may choose since choice is given to shun Servile\ncontentment or ignoble fear In the expression of our attitude; And\nwith far straining eyes, and hands upcast, And feet half raised,\ndeclare our painful state, Yearning for wings to reach the fields\nof truth, Mourning for wisdom, panting to be free.\"\n\nPART SIXTH SUPPLEMENTARY.\n\n[FIFTEEN YEARS LATER]\n\nCHAPTER I.\n\nTHE END OF THE WORLD.\n\nWE read in the New Testament that the heavens and the earth are\nreserved unto fire against the day of judgment, when they shall be\nburned up, and all be made new. It is said that the elements shall\nmelt with ferment heat, the stars fall, and the sky pass away like\na scroll that is rolled together. On these and similar passages is\nbased the belief of Christendom in the destined destruction of the\nworld by fire and in the scenic judgment of the dead and the\nliving gathered before the visible tribunal of Christ. This belief\nwas once general and intense. It is still common, though more\nvague and feeble than formerly. In whatever degree it is held, it\nis a doctrine of terror. We hope by tracing its origin, and\nshowing how mistaken it is, to help dispel its sway, free men from\nthe further oppression of its fearfulness, and put in its place\nthe just and wholesome authority of the truth. The true doctrine\nof the divine government of the world, the correct explanation of\nthe course and sequel of history, must be more honorable to God,\nmore useful to men, of better working and omen in the life of\nsociety, than any error can be. Let us then, as far as we are\nable, displace by the truth the errors prevalent around us in\nregard to the end of the world and the day of judgment.\n\nIt will help us in our proposed investigation, if we first notice\nthat the ecclesiastical doctrine as to an impending destruction of\nthe world is not solitary, but has prototypes and parallels in the\nfaiths of other nations and ages. Almost every people, every\ntribe, has its cosmogony or theory of the creation, in which there\nare accounts, more or less rude or refined, general or minute, of\nthe supposed beginning and of the imagined end of nature. All\nearly literatures from the philosophic treatises of the Hindus to\nthe oral traditions of the Polynesians are found to contain either\nsublime dreams or obscure prophecies or awful pictures of the\nfinal doom and destruction of earth and man. The Hebrew symbols\nand the Christian beliefs in relation to this subject therefore\nstand not alone, but in connection with a multitude of others,\neach one plainly reflecting the degree of knowledge and stage of\ndevelopment attained by the minds which originated it. Before\nproceeding to examine the familiar doctrine so enveloped in our\nprejudices, a brief examination of some kindred doctrines, less\nfamiliar to us and quite detached from our prejudices, will be of\nservice.\n\nThe sacred books of the Hindus describe certain enormous periods\nof time in which the universe successively begins and ends,\nsprings into being and sinks into nothing. These periods are\ncalled kalpas, and each one covers a duration of thousands of\nmillions of years. Each kalpa of creation is called a day of\nBrahma; each kalpa of destruction, a night of Brahma. The belief\nis that Brahma, waking from the slumber of his self absorbed\nsolitude, feels his loneliness, and his thoughts and emotions go\nforth in creative forms, composing the immense scheme of worlds\nand creatures. These play their parts, and run their courses,\nuntil the vast day of Brahma is completed; when he closes his\neyes, and falls to rest, while the whole system of finite things\nreturns to the silence and darkness of its aboriginal unity, and\nremains there in invisible annihilation through the stupendous\nnight that precedes the reawaking of the slumbering Godhead and\nthe appearance of the creation once more.\n\nA little reflection makes the origin of this imagery and belief\nclear. Each night, as the darkness comes down, and the outer world\ndisappears, man falls asleep, and, so far as he is consciously\nconcerned, every thing is destroyed. In his unconsciousness,\neverything ceases to be. The light dawns again, he awakes, and his\nreopened senses create anew the busy frame and phenomena of\nnature. Transfer this experience from man to God; consider it not\nas abstract and apparent, but as concrete and real, and you have\nthe Hindu doctrine of the kalpa. When we sleep, to us all things\nare destroyed; and when we awake, to us they reappear. When God\nsleeps, all things in themselves really end; and when he wakes,\nthey begin anew to be. The visible and experimental phenomena of\nday and night, sleeping and waking, are universalized, and\nattributed to God, It is a poetic process of thought, natural\nenough to a rich minded, simple people, but wholly illegitimate as\na logical ground of belief, But being stated in books supposed to\nbe infallibly inspired, and in the absence of critical tests for\nthe discrimination of sound from unsound thought, it was\nimplicitly accepted by multitudes.\n\nClosely allied to the foregoing doctrine, yet in several\nparticulars strikingly different from it, and evidently quite\nindependent in its origin, was the Great Year of the Stoics, or\nthe alternative blotting out and restoration of all things. This\nschool of philosophers conceived of God as a pure artistic force\nor seed of universal energy, which exhibits its history in the\nevolution of the kosmos, and, on its completion, blossoms into\nfire, and vanishes. The universal periodical conflagration\ndestroys all evil, and leaves the indestructible God alone in his\npure essence again. The artistic germ or seed force then begins,\nunder its laws of intrinsic necessity, to go once more through the\nsame process to the same end.\n\nThe rise of this imagery and belief is not so obvious as in the\nlast instance, but it is equally discoverable and intelligible.\nEvery animal, every flower, every plant, begins from its proper\nspecific germ or force, goes through a fixed series of growths and\nchanges, and relapses into its prime elements, and another and\nanother follow after it in the same order. The seasons come and\ngo, and come again and go again, Every planet repeats its\nrevolutions over and over. Wherever we look, this repetition of\nidentical processes greets our vision. Now, by imaginative\nassociation universalize this repetition of the course of\nphenomena as seen in the parts, and take it up and apply it to the\nwhole creation, and you have the doctrine in hand.\n\nIt is a poetic process of thought not scientific or philosophic,\nand without claim to belief; yet, in the absence of scientific\ndata and standards, it might easily win acceptance on authority.\n\nThe Scandinavians, also, have transmitted to us, in their sacred\nbooks, descriptions of their belief in the approaching end of the\nworld, descriptions rude, wild, terrible, not without elements of\nappalling grandeur. They foretell a day called Ragnarok, or the\nTwilight of the gods, when all the powers of good and evil shall\njoin in battle, and the whole present system of things perish in a\nscene of unutterable strife and dismay. The Eddas were composed in\nan ignorant but deeply poetic and fertile age, when all the\nmythological elements of mind were in full action. Their authors\nlooking within, on their own passions, and without, on the natural\nscenery around them, conscious of order and disorder, love and\nhate, virtue and crime, beholding phenomena of beauty and horror,\nsun and stars, night and tempest, winter and summer, icebergs and\nvolcanoes, placid moonlight and blinding mist, assisting friends\nand battling foes, personified everything as a demon or a\ndivinity. Asgard, above the blue firmament, was the bright home of\nthe gods, the Asir. Helheim, beneath the rocky earth and the\nfrozen ocean, was the dark and foul abode of the bad spirits, the\nJotuns. Everywhere in nature, fog and fire, fertility and\nbarrenness, were in conflict; everywhere in society, law and crime\nwere contending. In the moon followed by a drifting cloud, they\nsaw a goddess chased by a wolf. The strife goes on waxing, and\nmust sooner or later reach a climax. Each side enlists its allies,\nuntil all are ranged in opposition, from Jormungandur, the serpent\nof the deep, to Heindall, the warder of the rainbow, gods and\nbrave men there, demons, traitors, and cowards here. Then sounds\nthe horn of battle, and the last day dawns in fire and splendor\nfrom the sky, in fog and venom from the abyss. Flame devours the\nearth. For the most part, the combatants mutually slay each other.\nOnly Gimli, the high, safe heaven of All Father, remains as a\nrefuge for the survivors and the beginning of a new and fairer\nworld.\n\nThe natural history of this mythological mess is clear enough. It\narises from the poetic embodiment and personification of\nphenomena, the grouping together of all evil and of all good, then\nimaginatively universalizing the conflict, and carrying it out in\nidea to its inevitable ultimatum. The process of thought was\nobviously natural in its ground, but fictitious in its result. Yet\nin a period when no sharp distinction was drawn between fancy and\nfact, song and science, but an indiscriminate faith was often\nyielded to both, even such a picturesque medley as this might be\nheld as religious truth.\n\nThe Zarathustrian or Persian scheme of a general judgment of men\nand of the world in some respects resembles the systems already\nset forth, in other respects more closely approaches that\nChristian doctrine partially borrowed from it, and which is\nhereafter to be noticed. Ahura Mazda, the God of light and truth,\ncreates the world full of all sorts of blessings. His adversary,\nAngra Mainyus, the author of darkness and falsehood, seeks to\ncounteract and destroy the works of Ahura Mazda by means of all\nsorts of correspondent evils and woes. When Ahura Mazda creates\nthe race of men happy and immortal, Angra Mainyus, the old serpent,\nfull of corruption and destruction, steals in, seduces them from\ntheir allegiance, and brings misery and death on them, and then\nleads their souls to his dark abode. The whole creation is\nsupposed to be crowded with good spirits, the angels of Ahura\nMazda,\n\nseeking to carry out his beneficent designs; and also with evil\nspirits, the ministers of Angra Mainyus, plotting to make men\nwicked, and to pervert and poison every blessing with an answering\ncurse. Light is the symbol of God, darkness the symbol of his\nAntagonist. Under these hostile banners are ranged all living\ncreatures, all created objects. For long periods this dreadful\ncontention rages, involving everything below in its fluctuations.\nBut at last Ahura Mazda subdues Angra Mainyus, overturns all the\nmischief he has done, by means of a great deliverer whom he has\nsent among men to instruct and redeem them raises the dead,\npurifies the world with fire, and, after properly punishing the\nguilty, restores all nature to its original paradisal condition,\nfree from pain and death.\n\nIn the primitive state of mankind, when the germs of this religion\nwere conceived, when men dwelt in ignorance, exposure, and fear,\nthey naturally shuddered at darkness as a supernatural enemy, and\nworshipped light as a supernatural friend. That became the emblem\nor personification of the Devil, this the emblem or personification\nof God. They grouped all evils with that, all goods with this.\n\nImaginatively associating all light and darkness, all blessing\nand bale, respectively with Ahura Mazda and Angra Mainyus,\nthey universalized the fragmentary embodiments and oppositions\nof these into one great battle; and under the impulse of\nworshipping faith and hope, carried it to its crisis in the\nfinal victory of the good. Plainly, it is mere poetry injected a\nlittle with a later speculative element, and dealing in\nmythological fashion chiefly with the phenomena of nature as\nrelated to the experience of man. No one now can accept it\nliterally.\n\nThis survey of the various heathen myths of the end of the world\nhas prepared us, in some degree, to consider the corresponding\nview held by the Jews, and more completely developed by the\nChristian successors to the Jewish heritage of thought and\nfeeling.\n\nThe Hebrews believed themselves to be exclusively the chosen\npeople of God, who directly ruled over them himself by a\ntheocratic government represented in their patriarchs, law givers,\nprophets, and kings. Jehovah was the only true God; they were his\nonly pure and accepted worshippers, sharply distinguished from the\nwhole idolatrous world. The heathen nations, uncircumcised\nadorers of vain idols or of demons, were by consequence enemies\nboth of the true God and of his servants. This contrast and\nhostility they even carried over into the unseen world, and\nimagined that each nation had its own guardian angel in the Court\nof Jehovah in heaven, who contended there for its interests; their\nown national guardian, the angel Michael, being more powerful and\nnearer to the throne than any other one. In the calamities that\nfell on them, they recognized the vengeance of Jehovah for the\nviolation of his commands. In their victories, their deliverances,\ntheir great blessings, especially in their rescue from Egypt, and\nin the many miracles which they believed to have accompanied that\ngreat passage, they saw the signal superiority of their God over\nevery other god, and the proofs of his particular providence over\nthem in distinct preference to all other peoples. He had, as they\npiously believed, made a special covenant with Abraham, and set\napart his posterity as a sacred family, exclusively intrusted with\nthe divine law, and commissioned to subdue and govern all the\nother families of the earth. When this proud and intensely\ncherished faith was baffled of fulfillment, they never dreamed of\nabandoning it.\n\nThey only supposed its triumphant execution postponed, as a\npenalty for their sins, and looked forward with redoubled ardor to\na better time when their hopes should break into fruition, their\nexile be ended, their captivity appear as a dream, Jerusalem be\nthe central gem of the world, and the anointed ruler wield his\nsceptre over all mankind.\n\nBut misfortunes and woes were heaped on them. Their city was\nsacked, their temple desecrated, their people dragged into foreign\nslavery, forbidden to celebrate the rites of their religion,\nslaughtered by wholesale. Many times, during the two centuries\nbefore and the first century after Christ, did they suffer these\nterrible sorrows. Their hatred and scorn of their heathen\npersecutors; their faith in their own incomparable destiny; their\nexpectation of the speedy appearance of an anointed deliverer,\nraised up by Jehovah to avenge them and vindicate their trust, all\nbecame the more fervent and profound the longer the delay. Under\nthese circumstances grew up the Jewish doctrine of the Messiah, as\nit is seen in that Apocalyptic literature represented by the Book\nof Daniel, the Sibylline Oracles, the Book of Enoch, the\nAssumption of Moses, the Fourth Book of Esdras, and similar\ndocuments.\n\nThe Jews were remarkably free from that habit of mind which led\nalmost all the other nations to personify the most startling\nphenomena of nature as living beings, which created fetiches of\nstocks and stones and animals; saw a god in every wind, season,\nstar, and cloud. The Semitic mind and literature were more sober,\nrational, and monotheistic. The place occupied in the thoughts of\nother peoples by the phenomena of nature was held in the thoughts\nof the Jews by political phenomena, by ritual, legal, and military\nrelations. And the poetic action of fancy, the mythological\ncreativeness and superstitious feeling which other people\nexercised on the objects and changes of nature, the Jews exercised\non the phenomena of their own national history. The burning\ncentral point of their polity and belief and imagination was the\nconviction of their own national consecration as the exclusive\npeople of God, meant to conquer, teach, and rule all the infidel\nnations; that Jehovah was literally their invisible King,\nrepresented in their chief ruler; that every great triumph or\ndisaster was a signal Day of the Lord, a special Coming of Jehovah\nto reward or punish his people. During their repeated bondages\nunder the Persians, Syrians, Greeks, Parthians, Romans, their\nfeeling of the antagonism between themselves and the other people\nincreased. From the time of the Babylonish captivity the Persian\ndoctrine of good and evil spirits had infiltrated into their\nbelief; and they adopted the notion of Angra Mainyus, and\ndeveloped it (with certain modifications) into their conception of\nSatan. Then, in their faith, the war of Jews and Gentiles spread\ninto the invisible world, and took up on its opposite sides the\ngood and the fallen angels. And, finally, the idea of their\nMessiah became the centre of a battle and a judgment in which all\nthe generations of the dead as well as of the living were to have\na part; and which should culminate in the overthrow of evil, the\nsubjection of the heathen, the assignment of the righteous to a\nparadisal reign, and of the wicked to a doom typified by the\nsubmersion of Sodom and Gomorrah in fiery brimstone.\n\nHow plainly this doctrine was the result of the same poetic\nprocess of thought with the other schemes already depicted! Only\nthey were developed on the basis of natural phenomena; this, on\nthe basis of political phenomena. It is simply the imaginative\nuniversalization of the struggle between Jew and Gentile, and the\ncarrying of it to its crisis and sequel. And when inexplicable\ndelays and the accumulation of obstacles made the realization of\nthe expected result amidst the conditions of the present world\nseem ever more and more hopeless, the growing and assimilative\naction of faith and fancy expanded the scene, and transferred it\nto a transmundane state, involving the destruction of the heavens\nand earth and their replacement with a new creation.\n\nIs there any more real reason for believing this doctrine than\nthere is for believing the other kindred schemes? Not a whit. It\nis a mistake of the same poetic nature, and resting on the same\ngrounds with them. Two thousand years have passed, and it has not\nbeen fulfilled; and there is ever less and less sign of its\nfulfillment. It never will be fulfilled, except in a spiritual\nsense. The Jews will finally lose their pride of race and\ncovenant, abandon their special Messianic creed, and blend\nthemselves and their opinions in the mass of redeemed and\nprogressive humanity, and no more dream of a physical resurrection\nof the dead amidst the dissolving elements of nature.\n\nAnd now we must notice that besides all these poetic pictures of\nthe end of the world, there are prophecies of a similar result\nwhich wear an apparently scientific garb. Many men of science\nfirmly believe that our world is destined to be destroyed, that a\nclose for the earthly fortunes of mankind can be plainly foreseen.\nNo little alarm was felt a century or more ago, when it was\ndiscovered that there was a progressive diminution going on in the\norbit of the moon, which must cause it at length to impinge upon\nthe earth. But La Grange exhibited the fallaciousness of the\nprophecy, by showing that the decrease was periodical and\nsucceeded by a corresponding increase. Intense and widely spread\nterror has repeatedly been felt less a comet should come within\nour planetary orbit, and shatter or melt our globe by its contact.\nBut the discovery of the nebulous nature of comets, of their great\nnumbers and regular movements, has quite dissipated that fear from\nthe popular mind in our day.\n\nThere are, however, other forms of scientific speculation which\nput the prophesied destruction of the world on a more plausible\nand formidable basis. It is supposed by many scientists that all\nforce is derived from the consumption of heat; and that the fuel\nmust at last be used up, and therefore no life or energy be left\nfor sustaining the present system of the creation. This theory is\nmet by the counter statement that the heat of the sun and other\nsimilar centres may possibly not depend on any material\nconsumption; or, if it does, there may be a self replenishing\nsupply, loss and repair forming an endless circle.\n\nIt is foretold by some chemists, that the progressive interior\ncooling and contraction of our orb will cause ever greater\ninterstices or vacant spaces among the solid substances below the\nouter crust; and that into these pores, first all liquids, then\nall gases and the whole atmosphere, will be absorbed: so that the\nworld will be left desolate, utterly uninhabitable by life.\n\nAgain: it is said that all force or energy tends at every\ntransformation to pass (at least partially) into heat; and\ntherefore that, finally, all force will be frittered down into the\none form of heat, all matter vanishing from its separate shapes\ninto the state of a homogeneous, nebulous fire. The portentous\nsight, repeatedly descried by astronomers, of a nameless world,\naway in remotest space, which has suddenly kindled, blazed,\nsmouldered, darkened, and vanished forever from its place, is\nperhaps a solemn symbol of the fate of our own planet; hinting at\na time when the earth, too, shall make itself a funeral pyre,\n\nAnd, awed in distant orbs, some race unknown Shall miss one star\nwhose smile had lit their own.\n\nThis same final crisis is also prophesied on the basis of a slight\nretardation to which the planets are subjected in their passage\nthrough the ethereal medium. No matter how slight the resistance\nthus interposed, its consequence, it is thought, must accumulate\nand ultimately compel all material bodies to approach each other;\nand, as their successive collisions convert them into heat and\nvapor, nothing will be left at last but one uniform nebula. The\nprocess of evolution will then begin anew, and so the stupendous\nhistory of the universe repeat itself eternally.\n\nThis is the sublimest of all the generalizations of science. It\nmay be true, and it may not be true. At any rate, it differs\nimmensely in the moral impression it makes from that made by the\ncurrent theological doctrine of the same catastrophe. We can\ncontemplate the scientific prophecy of the end of the world with a\npeace of mind which the traditional prophecy does not permit.\n\nIn the first place, the ecclesiastical doctrine makes the\ndestruction of the world a result of wrath and vengeance. The\nangry God looms above us with flaming features and avenging\nweapons to tread down his enemies. We shrink in fright from the\nwrath and power of the personal Judge, the inexorable Foe of the\nwicked. But the scientific doctrine makes the end a result of\npassionless laws, a steady evolution of effects from causes,\nwholly free from everything vindictive.\n\nSecondly. The ecclesiastical doctrine makes the dreadful\nconclusion a sudden event, an inconceivable shock of horror,\nfalling in an instant, overwhelming all its victims with the\nswiftness of lightning in the unutterable agony of their ruin. But\nthe scientific doctrine makes the climax a matter of slow and\ngradual approach. Whether the worlds are to be frozen up by\nincreasing cold, or to evaporate in culminating heat, or to be\nconverted into gas as they meet in their career, the changes of\nthe chemical conditions will be so steady and moderate beforehand\nas to cause all living creatures to have diminished in numbers by\ninsensible degrees, and to have utterly ceased long before the\nfinal shock arrives.\n\nThirdly. The ecclesiastical doctrine makes the sequel imminent,\nnear, ready to fall at a moment's warning. At any hour the signal\nmay strike. Thus it is to the earnest believer a constant, urgent\nalarm, close at hand. But the scientific doctrine depicts the\nclose as almost unimaginably remote. All the data in the hands of\nour scientists lead their calculations as to the nearest probable\nend to land them in an epoch so far off as to be stated only in\nthousands of millions of years. Thus the picture is so distant as\nto be virtually enfeebled into nothing. We cannot, even by the\nmost vivid imagination, bring it home closely enough to make it\nreal and effective on our plans.\n\nAnd, finally, the theological dogma of the destruction of the\nworld professes to be an infallible certainty. The believer holds\nthat he absolutely knows it by a revelation of supernatural\nauthority. But with the scientist such a belief is held as merely\na probability. A billion of centuries hence the world may perhaps\ncome to an end; and, on the other hand, the phenomena which lead\nto such a belief may yet be explained as implying no such result.\nAnd these two issues, so far as our social or ideal experience is\nconcerned, are virtually the same.\n\nA brilliant French writer has suggested that even if the natural\ncourse of evolution does of itself necessitate the final\ndestruction of the world, yet our race, judging from the\nmagnificent achievements of science and art already reached, may,\nwithin ten thousand centuries, which will be long before the\nforeseen end approaches, obtain such a knowledge and control of\nthe forces of nature as to make collective humanity master of this\nplanet, able to shape and guide its destinies, ward off every\nfatal crisis, and perfect and immortalize the system as now\nsustained. It is an audacious fancy. But like many other\nincredible conceptions which have forerun their own still more\nincredible fulfillment, the very thought electrifies us with hope\nand courage.\n\nAnd thus the conclusion in which we rest at the close of our\ninvestigation is the belief that the world is to last, and our\nrace to flourish on it virtually forever. This conclusion is\nequally a relief from the frightful burdens of superstition, and a\nconsolation for our own personal evanescence. The stable harmony\nof natural beauty and beneficence, amidst which we individually\nplay our brief part and vanish, shall stand fast, blooming with\nfresh growths, and shining with fadeless light, and the successive\ngenerations of our dear fellow men shall grow ever wiser and\nhappier, beyond the reach of our farthest vision into the future.\nAnd if we recognize in the great catastrophic myths and previsions\nof the poets and scientists the fundamental truth that the things\nwhich are seen are temporal, while the things alone which are\nunseen are eternal, the end being a regular and remote sequel in\nthe creative plan of God, free from anger, retributive\ndisappointment, or cruelty will not alarm us. For if souls are\nsubstantial entities, and not mere phenomenal processes, they will\nsurvive the universal crisis, and either at the lucid goals of\ntheir perfected destiny rejoice forever in a reflected individual\nfruition of the attributes of God, or else start refreshed on a\nnew career with that redistribution of the cosmic matter and\nmotion which in its gigantic and eternal rhythm of development and\ndissolution the ancient Hindu mind figured as the respiration of\nBrahm and which ambitious science now generalizes as the law of\nevolution.\n\nCHAPTER II.\n\nTHE DAY OF JUDGMENT.\n\nJUDAISM so largely supplied the circumstantial and doctrinal germs\nout of which dogmatic Christianity grew, that we cannot thoroughly\nunderstand the Christian belief in a final day of judgment, unless\nwe first notice the historic and literary derivation of that\nbelief from Judaism, and then trace its development in the new\nconditions through which it passed. The personal character,\nteachings, life, and death of Jesus Christ, together with his\nsubsequent resurrection and career in the consciousness of\necclesiastical Christendom, constituted the crystalizing centre\nwhich, dipped in the inherited solution of ideal and social\nmaterials furnished by the Church, has gathered around it the\naccretion of faith and dogma composing the theoretic Christianity\nof the present day. To follow this process with reference to the\nparticular tenet before us, analyze it, discriminate the\nappropriate in it from the inappropriate, the true from the false,\nmaybe difficult; but it is necessary for a satisfactory\nconclusion. To this task let us therefore now address ourselves,\nputting away all bias and prejudice, invoking in equal degree\ncandor, fearlessness and charity.\n\nThe Jews believed themselves to be a people chosen out of all the\nworld as the exclusive favorites of God. By the covenant of\nAbraham, and the code of Moses, Jehovah had entered, as they\nthought, into a special contract with them to be their peculiar\nGod, Guardian, and Ruler. In contrast with the depraved habits and\nidolatrous rites of the heathen nations, the Israelites were\nstrictly to keep the moral law, and, at the same time, to pay a\npure worship to Jehovah through the scrupulous observance of their\nceremonial law. The bond of race and family descent from Abraham,\nthe practice of circumcision, and the ceremonies of the Mosaic\nritual, sealed them as accepted members of this divine covenant.\nSo long as they were true to the duties involved in this relation,\nJehovah would watch over them, defend them from their enemies, set\nthem proudly above the alien Gentiles, and crown them with every\nspiritual and temporal blessing. The noblest representatives of\nthe people believed this with unparalleled thoroughness and\nintensity. They looked down on the uncircumcised nations as wicked\nidolaters, destined to be their servants until they should be\nadopted into the same covenant by becoming proselytes to their\nfaith. Jehovah was literally their direct, though invisible, King,\nLaw giver, and Judge, palpably rewarding their fidelity by overt\ntemporal blessings, punishing their dereliction by awful temporal\ncalamities and sufferings.\n\nEvery signal instance of his providential intervention in their\naffairs they called a Day of the Lord, a Coming of Jehovah, a\nJudgment from heaven. Thus the prophet Joel foretells the\nvengeance which God would take on Tyre and Sidon and Philistia,\nbecause they had assailed and scattered his people. \"Behold the\nday of Jehovah cometh, the great and terrible day. And I will show\nwonders in the heavens and in the earth, blood and fire and\npillars of smoke. The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the\nmoon into blood. Then whosoever calleth on the name of Jehovah\nshall be delivered: for upon Mount Zion and in Jerusalem shall be\ndeliverance. I will contend with the Gentiles for my people, and\nwill bring back the captives.\n\nThe multitudes, the multitudes in the valley of judgment: for the\nday of Jehovah is near in the valley of judgment.\" In a similar\nstrain Isaiah prophesies against Edom: \"Draw near, O ye nations,\nand hear! For the wrath of Jehovah is kindled against the nations,\nand he hath given up their armies to slaughter. The stench of\ntheir carcasses shall ascend, and the mountains shall melt with\ntheir blood. And all the hosts of heaven shall melt away; and all\ntheir host shall fall down, as the blighted fruit from the fig\ntree. For my sword shall rush drunk from heaven: behold, upon Edom\nshall it descend. For it is a day of vengeance from Jehovah. Her\nstreams shall be turned into pitch, and her dust into brimstone,\nand her whole land shall become burning pitch. It shall lie waste\nforever, and none shall pass through it. The pelican and the\nhedgehog shall possess it; the heron and the raven shall dwell in\nit.\"\n\nTremendous and appalling as this imagery is, it is obvious that\nthe whole meaning of it is earthly and temporal, a local judgment\nof Jehovah in vindication of his people against the heathen. And\nkindred judgments are threatened against his own people when they\nlapse into wickedness and idolatry. \"Thus saith the Lord, Behold,\nI will wipe Jerusalem as a man wipeth a dish, wiping it and\nturning it upside down.\" \"Jehovah appeareth as a hostile witness,\nthe Lord from his holy place. Behold, Jehovah cometh forth from\nhis dwelling place, and advanceth on the high places of the earth.\nThe mountains melt under him, and the valleys cleave asunder like\nwax before the fire. For the sin of the house of Israel is all\nthis.\"\n\nThus the earliest meaning of the phrase, Day of the Lord, or Day\nof Judgment, according to Biblical usage, was the occurrence of\nany severe calamity, either to the Jews, as a punishment for their\napostasy; or to the Gentiles, as a punishment for their\nwickedness, or for their violent encroachment on the rights of the\nchosen people. These visitations of military disaster or political\nsubjection, though purely local and temporal, are depicted in the\nmost terrific images, such as flaming brimstone, falling stars,\nheaven and earth dissolving in darkness, blood, and fire. Ezekiel,\nalluding to the barbarous invasion headed by Prince Gog,\nrepresents Jehovah as declaring, \"I will contend against him, and\nwill rain fire and brimstone upon him and his hosts. Thus will I\nshow myself in my greatness and glory before the eyes of many\nnations, and they shall know that I am Jehovah.\" The highly\nfigurative character of this imagery must be apparent to every\ncandid critic.\n\nFor example, in the following passage from Zechariah, no one will\nsuppose for a moment that it is meant that Jehovah will appear\nvisibly in person and reign in Jerusalem, but only that his\npromise shall be fulfilled, and his law shall prevail there in the\ntriumphant establishment of his chosen people: \"Behold the day of\nJehovah cometh, when I will gather all nations to battle against\nJerusalem; and the city shall be taken. Then shall Jehovah go\nforth, and fight against those nations. And his feet shall stand\nin that day upon the Mount of Olives. And Jehovah shall be king\nover all the earth. And it shall be that whoso of all the families\nof the earth will not go up to Jerusalem to worship the King,\nJehovah of hosts, upon them shall be no rain.\"\n\nWhen the prophets burst out in the lyric metaphors, \"Jehovah will\nroar from Zion, and utter his voice from Jerusalem;\" \"Egypt shall\nbe a waste and Edom a wilderness for their violence to the sons of\nJudah; but Jerusalem shall be inhabited forever, and Jehovah shall\ndwell upon Zion,\" the meaning is simply that \"Jehovah will be a\nrefuge to his people, a stronghold to the sons of Israel, and all\npeople shall know that Jehovah is God.\" It would imply the\ngrossest ignorance in any critic if he imagined that the Jews ever\nbelieved that Jehovah was visibly to come down and reign over them\nin person. They did however, believe that an awful token or the\npresence of Jehovah dwelt in the holy of holies of their temple.\nThey also believed that every anointed ruler who governed them in\njustice and piety represented the authority of Jehovah. And as, in\nthe long times of their natural captivity and oppression, their\nhopes sought refuge from the depressing present in bright visions\nof a glorious future, when some inspired deliverer should justify\ntheir faith by carrying the national power and happiness to the\nhighest pitch, they naturally believed that the spirit and signet\nof the Lord would, in a special manner, rest on that Messianic\nhero.\n\nBy the assimilative action of faith and imagination, this idea of\na divinely accredited Messiah developed, and grew ever richer and\nmore complete. It began simply with the expectation of a holy\nleader and ruler who should subdue the heathen and establish the\nfavored people of Jehovah in peerless purity, power, and happiness\nin the land of Judea. Little by little the rewards of the\nrighteous and the punishments of the wicked were extended beyond\nthose living on the earth, and took in the dead. The prophet\nEzekiel depicted the promised restoration of the Jews from their\ncaptivity at Babylon to Jerusalem under the poetic image of a\nrevivification of a heap of dead bones. This metaphor slowly\nassumed the form of a literal dogma, which grew from its beginning\nas an exceptional belief in the resurrection of a chosen few,\nstated in the book of Daniel and the second book of Maccabees, to\nthe belief in the universal resurrection of the dead, avowed by\nPaul as the common Pharisaic belief. The belief, too, in regard to\nthe scene of the Messianic triumph, the penalties to be inflicted\non the enemies of Jehovah, and the kind and number of those\nenemies, underwent the same process of development and growth. The\nworld was conceived as a sort of three story house connected with\npassage ways; heaven above the firmament, the earth between, and a\npenal region below. The imagery of fire and brimstone associated\nin the Hebrew mind with Sodom and Gomorrah, and the fearful\nimagery of idolatory, filth, and flames in the detested valley of\nHinnom where the refuse of Jerusalem was carried to be burned, had\nbeen transferred by the popular imagination to the subterranean\nplace of departed souls. The story in the book of Genesis about\nthe sons of God forming an alliance with the daughters of men, and\nbegetting a wicked brood of giants, had been wrought into the\nbelief in a race of fallen angels, foes of God and men, whose\ndwelling place was the upper air. Above these wicked spirits in\nhigh places, but below the heaven of Jehovah, was the paradise\nwhither Enoch and Elijah were supposed to have been translated,\nand whence they would come again in the last days. The Jewish\napocryphal book of Enoch which was written probably about a\ncentury and a half before the birth of Christ, and is explicitly\nquoted in the Epistle of Jude contains a minute account of the\nfinal judgment, including in its scope this whole scenery and all\nthese agents, and closely anticipating both the doctrinal and\nverbal details of the same subject as recorded in the New\nTestament itself. There is not, with one exception, a single\nessential feature of the now current Christian belief, in regard\nto the day of judgment at the end of the world, which is not\ndistinctly brought out in the same form in the book of Enoch,\nwritten certainly more than a hundred years before a line of the\nGospels was composed. The exception referred to relates to the\nperson of the Messiah. In the book of Enoch he is indeed called\nthe Son of man, but is wrapt in mysterious obscurity, undefined\nand unnamed: in the Christian documents and faith he is, of\ncourse, identified with Jesus of Nazareth, and, at a later period,\nidentified also with God.\n\nThe growth of the Messianic personality in distinctness,\nprominence, importance, and completeness of associated grouping,\nis not only historically traceable, but was also perfectly\nnatural. At first the prophecy of the triumphant re establishment\nof the Jews was conceived as the result of the favoring power of\nJehovah, not in a personal manifestation, but providentially\ndisplayed. Thus Joel represents Jehovah as saying, in his promise\nto vindicate Jerusalem, \"Let the heathen be wakened, and come up\nto the valley of Jehoshaphat; for there will I sit to judge all\nthe heathen round about.\" It cannot be denied that this was purely\nmetaphorical. But in all imagery of a kingdom, of war, of\njudgment, the idea of the king, the leader, the judge, would\nnaturally be the strongest point of imaginative action, the center\nof crystalizing association around which congruous particulars\nwould be drawn until the picture was complete. So it actually\nhappened. Perhaps the most striking example of this is seen in the\ngrowth of the notion of the great Adversary who precedes and\nfights against the Messiah. The book of Daniel, written just after\nAntiochus Epiphanes had oppressed the Jews with such frightful\ncruelties and profaned their temple with such abominable\ndesecrations, impersonated in him the whole head and front of the\nimpious hostility which the promised deliverer would have to\nsubdue in vindicating the rights and hopes of the chosen people.\n\"The figure of Antiochus Epiphanes,\" Martineau has happily said,\n\"placed in immediate antecedence and antithesis to that of the\nMessiah, as the predicted crisis moved forward, was carried with\nit, and spread its portentous shadow over the expected close.\" The\nwriter of the book of Daniel looked for the immediate arising of\nsome inspired hero and servant of Jehovah to overthrow this wicked\ndespot, this persecuting monster, and avenge the oppressed Jews on\ntheir Gentile tyrants. When subsequent events postponed this\nexpected sequel, the opposed parties in it, the Antichrist and the\nChrist, were thrown forward together in ever dilating proportions\nof gloom and brightness: the fierce countenanced king in Daniel\nbecomes the Man of Sin in Paul and the Beast drunk with the blood\nof saints in the Apocalypse. And in the Rabbinical books of the\nJews the belief in Antichrist, under the name of Armillus, is\ndeveloped into a mass of mythological details, afterwards adopted\nquite in the gross by the Mohammedans. Terrible signs will precede\nthe appearance of the Messiah, such as a dew of blood, the\ndarkening of the sun, the destruction of the holy city, with the\nslaughter and dispersion of the Israelites, and the suffering of\nawful woes. The Messiah shall gather his people and rebuild and\noccupy Jerusalem. Armillus shall collect an army and besiege that\ncity. But God shall say to Messiah, \"Sit thou on my right hand,\"\nand to the Israelites, \"Stand still, and see what God will work\nfor you to day.\" Then God will pour down sulphur and fire from\nheaven, and consume Armillus and his hosts. Then the trumpet will\nsound, the tombs be opened, the ten tribes be led to Paradise to\ncelebrate the marriage supper of the Messiah, the aliens be\nconsigned to Gehenna, and the earth be renovated.\n\nAs the doctrine of the functions of the Messiah, in this finished\nform, is not stated in the Old Testament, but was familiar in the\nChristian Church, it is commonly supposed to be exclusively a\nlater Christian development from the Jewish germ. It did, however,\nexist in the Jewish mind, before the birth of Christ, in the\nmature form already set forth. It is found clearly laid down and\ndrawn out in Jewish apocryphal books dated earlier than the\nChristian era. It is likewise explicitly and minutely detailed in\nthe Talmud, where its subsequent adoption from the Christians must\nhave been impossible to the bigoted scorn and hate of the Jews for\nthe Christians; while the historic affiliation of Christianity on\nJudaism made the Christians avowedly adopt all the vital doctrines\nof the older creed. The gradual growth of the Christian doctrine\nof the connection of the Messiah with the final judgment, out of\nthe previous Jewish and Rabbinical notions, by the hardening of\nmetaphors into dogmas and the universalizing of local peculiarities,\nis confessedly an obscure process, in many of its particulars\nextremely difficult to trace. But that it did thus grow up,\nno impartial scholar, who has mastered what is now known\non the subject, can doubt. A world of new knowledge and light has\nbeen thrown on this whole field during the last thirty five years\nby Gfrorer, Baur, Ewald, Hoffmann, Hilgenfeld, Dilmann, Ceriani,\nVolkmar, and other students of kindred power and spirit.\nResearches and discussions in this department are still pushed\nwith the greatest zeal; and it is confidently believed that in a\nfew years the views adopted in the present writing will be\nestablished beyond all cavil from any fair minded critic. Then all\nthe steps will have been clearly defined in the development of\nthat doctrine of the great Day of the Lord, which, beginning with\na poetic picture of a Jewish overthrow of the Gentiles, through\nthe inspiring power of Jehovah, before the walls of Jerusalem,\nended with a literal belief in the setting up, by the Messiah, of\na tribunal in the Valley of Jehoshaphat, the assemblage there of\nall the living and the dead for judgment, the installation of the\nimmortalized righteous in Paradise, and the submerging of the\nwicked under the Vale of Hinnom in a rainstorm of blazing\nbrimstone.\n\nAnd now what must we think in regard to the truth or falsehood of\nthe outward, forensic, military, and ritual part of the doctrine\nof historic and literary development we have imperfectly followed.\nIs it not perfectly clear, that the growth of the doctrine in\nquestion has been but a natural action of the imagination on the\nmaterials furnished it; adding congruous particulars, one after\nanother, until the view was complete, and therefore could extend\nno further? And is it not equally obvious, that it can lay no sort\nof claim to logical validity? The superstitious and arbitrary\ncharacter of its intrinsic constituents, its irreconcilableness\nwith science and philosophy, disprove, to all who dare honestly\nface the facts, every plea set up for it as an inspired revelation\nof truth. It is a mixture of poetry and speculation, credible\nenough in an early and uncritical age, but a hopeless stumbling\nblock to the educated reason of the present day. Every one who\nbrings a free intelligence to the subject will find it impossible\nnot to recognize the same fanciful process of thought, the same\npoetic ingredients, here as in the schemes of those heathen\nreligions whose principal portrayals we all regard as mythology.\nTo argue that because earthly rulers, in their anger and power,\nsend retributive armies against their rebellious subjects, to\nbring them to judgment, destroy their homes and cities, and lay\nwaste their lands with fire and sword, therefore God, the supreme\nKing, will do so by the whole world, is not to reason logically,\nbut to poetize creatively. There can be no warrant for\ntransferring the political and military relations between men and\nearthly sovereigns to the moral and spiritual relations between\nthe human race and God, since the two sets of relations are wholly\ndifferent. The relation of Creator and creature is immensely\nhigher and wider than that of king and subject. He whose laws are\neverywhere incessantly self executing needs not to select and\ngroup and reserve his friends or foes for any climateric\ncatastrophe. The common notion of a final judgment day the\nfanciful association of all the good together, on one side, to be\nsaved; of all the bad together, on the other side, to be damned,\napplies to the divine government an imperfection belonging only to\nhuman governments. Surely every one must see, the moment the\nthought is stated, that this imaginative universalizing of the\nindignation of God, and carrying it to a climax, in the\ndestruction of the world, is a mythological procedure utterly\ninapplicable to a Being who can know no anger, no caprice, no\nchange, a Being whose will is universal truth, whose throne is\nimmensity, whose robe is omnipresence.\n\nOriginal Christianity, internally regarded in its divine truth,\nwas the pure moral law exemplified in the personal traits of Jesus\nChrist, and universalized by his ascent out of the flesh into that\nkingdom of heaven which knows not nationalities or ceremonies. But\noriginal Christianity, externally and historically regarded, in\nthe belief of its first disciples, was simply Judaism, with the\naddition of the faith that the Messiah had actually come in the\nperson of Jesus Christ. The first disciples vividly cherished the\nprevalent Pharisaic doctrine that the Messiah would glorify his\npeople, vanquish the heathen, raise and judge the dead, change the\nface of the earth, and inaugurate a holy reign of Israel in joy\nand splendor. This the Messiah was to do. But they believed Jesus\nto be the Messiah. Yet, before doing these things, he had been put\nto death. Therefore, they argued, he must come again, to finish\nhis uncompleted mission. Such was the derivation of the apostolic\nand ecclesiastical doctrine of the speedy second advent of Christ\nto judge the dead and the living, and to wind up the present\nscheme of things. The belief was inevitable under the circumstances.\nTo have believed otherwise, they must have reconstructed the current\nidea of the Messiah, and have seen in him no political monarch\nwith an outward realm, but purely a king of truth.\n\nFor this they were not ready; though it seems as if, after\nthe experience of eighteen hundred years, we ought by this\ntime to be prepared to see that such was really the intention of\nProvidence.\n\nIt is a question of primary interest, whether Jesus himself, in\nassuming the Messiahship, regarded it personally as an exclusively\nspiritual office, or as a literally including these royal and\njudicial functions in a visible form.\n\nJesus foretold, in the same imaginary used by the previous\nprophets, and familiar to the minds of his contemporaries, the\nspeedy approach of frightful calamities, wars, rumor of wars,\nfamine and slaughter, Jerusalem compassed with armies and\ndestroyed. Then, he adds, the Son of man shall come in the clouds\nof heaven, with all his holy angels, and take possession of the\nscene, apportioning the destinies of the righteous and the wicked.\nThe question is, whether this pictured reappearance, in such\ntranscendent pomp and power, was meant by him as a literal\nprophecy, to be physically fulfilled in his own person; or as a\nmoral horoscope of the destined fortunes of his religion, a\nfigurative representation of the establishment and reign of his\nspiritual truth. The latter view seems to us to be the correct one.\n\nIn the first place, this is what has actually taken place. In the\ngrowing recognition of his spirit and power, in the spread of his\nteachings and name, in the revolutionizing advancement of his\nkingdom among men, Jesus has come again and again. Jerusalem was\ndestroyed by the Romans, as he foretold, amidst unspeakable\ntribulations, and the disciples of the new faith installed in\ndomination over the world. He said the time was then at hand, even\nat the doors, that some of those standing by should not taste\ndeath until all these things came to pass. If his prophecy bore a\nmoral sense, the sequel justified it; if it bore a physical sense,\nthe sequel refuted and falsified it. For that generation passed\naway, fifty generations since have passed away, and yet there has\nbeen no literal second advent of Jesus in person to judge the dead\nand the living, and to destroy the world. The event proves that we\nmust either give the words of Jesus a metaphorical interpretation\nor hold that he was in error.\n\nBut, secondly, such an error would be incompatible with soundness\nof mind. For any man, even for him called by an apostle \"the man\nChrist Jesus,\" to believe that after his death he should reappear,\nswooping down from heaven, convoyed by squadrons of angels, to\ncollect all men from their graves, and replace the old creation\nwith a new one, would imply a profound disturbance of reason, a\nmonomaniacal fanaticism if not an actual insanity. It is such a\npure piece of theatrics that no one deeply in unison with that\nspirit of truth which expresses the mind of God through the order\nof nature and providence could possibly believe it. Such a nature\nwas preeminently that of Jesus. All his most characteristic\nutterances, such as: \"blessed are the pure in heart, for they\nshall see God;\" \"who loves much shall be forgiven much;\" reveal\nunsurpassed saneness and truth of perception. It is by much the\nmost probable supposition, that Jesus employed in the deepest and\npurest moral sense alone those Messianic images and catastrophic\nprophecies which were indeed originally used as moral metaphors,\nbut had been afterwards degraded into material dogmas.\n\nStill further, the literal belief commonly attributed to Jesus, in\nhis own physical reappearance and reign, is not only incompatible\nwith his supreme soundness of mind, it is also irreconcilable with\nhis other explicit teachings. \"My kingdom is not of this world.\"\n\"Every one that is of the truth heareth my voice.\" He warns his\ndisciples against the many false Christs who will appear, and says\nthat \"the kingdom of heaven cometh not with observation.\" \"Say\nnot, lo here! or lo there! for the kingdom of heaven is within\nyou.\" \"I am the truth, the way, and the life.\" \"He that rejecteth\nme, I judge him not; the word that I have spoken, that shall judge\nhim.\" \"Whoever doeth the will of my Father in heaven, the same is\nmy brother.\" In view of these and kindred utterances of the\nprofoundest insight, irreconcilable with any gross mythological\nbeliefs, we must hold to the purely spiritual character of the\ndoctrine of Jesus concerning his personal offices, and think that\nall the speeches, if any such there be, which cannot be fairly\nexplained in accordance with this view, have been refracted in\ntheir transmission through incompetent reporters, or even perhaps\nfictitiously ascribed to him from the faith of a later age. There\nis a grateful satisfaction in thus discharging, as we feel we are\nfairly entitled to do, from the authority of Jesus a burden too\ngreat even for his peerless name any longer to support. For, say\nwhat its advocates may, this gigantic melo drama of the second\nadvent, this world wide mixture and display of martial and\nforensic elements before an audience of all mankind and amidst a\nconvulsed and closing universe, is inherently incredible by any\nmind not grossly ignorant and undisciplined or drilled to the most\nslavish servility of traditional thought. Every one really\neducated in science and philosophy, and familiar with the\nphysiological conditions and literary history of mythology in the\nother nations of the world, will plainly perceive the intrinsic\nfancifulness and falsity of the belief, at the same time that he\neasily accounts for its rise and prevalence.\n\nThe same picture of the siege of Jerusalem by a league of\nidolatrous armies, and of the mighty coming of the Messiah, found\nin the New Testament, is drawn in the third book of the Sibylline\nOracles, which was composed by a Jew two hundred years before one\nword of Matthew or Luke was written. Jesus took up this current\nand fitting imagery wherein to express the conflict of his\nreligion with the world, and to predict its ultimate triumph. He\nidentifies himself with the truths he has brought, with the\nregenerating energies he has inaugurated to combat and overcome\nthe wickedness and despotism of the nations of men. Every advent\nof his universal principles to a wider conflict or a higher seat\nof authority, is a true coming of the Son of Man. The vices and\ncrimes of men, the selfishness and tyranny of governments,\naccumulate impediments in the way of the free working of the will\nof God in human society. Therefore from period to period\nconvulsive crises occur, shocks of progressive truth and liberty\nagainst the obstacles gathered in their way. Thus, not only the\ndestruction of Jerusalem, but the destruction of Rome, the French\nRevolution, and all the terrible social crises in the advancing\naffairs of the world, write on the earth and the sky, in huge\ncharacters of blood, smoke and fire, the true meaning of the\nrepeated coming of Christ. This is the only kind of judicial\nsecond advent he will ever make, and this will occur over and over\nin calamitous but helpful revolutions, until all removable evils\nare done away, all the laws of men made just and all the hearts of\nmen pure. Then the spirit once manifested by Jesus in his lonely\nmission will be a universal presence on earth, and the genuine\nmillennium prevail without end.\n\nIt is necessary now, as preliminary to a clear exposition of the\ntrue Christian doctrine of judgment, to explain the cause and\nprocess of the dark perversion which the teachings of Christ\nhimself have so unfortunately undergone in the Church. For this\npurpose we must again, for a moment, refer to the original\nconnection of Christianity with Judaism.\n\nJudaism was composed of two parts: one an accidental form; the\nother, essential truth. The first was the ceremonial peculiarities\nof the Jewish race and history; the second was the absolute and\neternal principles of morality and religion. These two parts the\nritual law and moral law were closely joined in all the best\nrepresentatives of the nation at all the best periods of its\nhistory. Yet there was a constant tendency to separate these. One\nparty exalted the ritual element, another party the spiritual\nelement; the priestly class and the vulgar populace the former;\nthe prophets the men of poetic, fiery heart and genius the latter.\n\nSuch men as Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, always insisted on personal\nand national righteousness, purity, and devotion, as the one\nessential thing. But the natural tendency of the common multitude,\nand of every professional class, to an external routine of\nmechanised forms, manifested itself more and more in a party which\nmade an overt covenant and ritualistic conformity the all\nimportant thing. This party reached its head in the sect of the\nPharisees, who, at the time of Jesus, possessed the offices, and\nrepresented the dominant spirit and authority of the Jewish\nnation. The character of this sect of bigoted formalists, as\nindignantly described and denounced by Jesus, is too well known to\nneed illustration. They subordinated and trivialized the weightier\nmatters of justice, mercy, humility, and peace, but enthroned and\nglorified the regime of mint, anise, and cummin.\n\nWhat was the Jewish idea of salvation, or citizenship in the\nkingdom of God? What was the condition of acceptance in the\nPharisaic church? It was heirship in the Jewish race, either by\ndescent or adoption, with ceremonial blamelessness in belief and\nact. Do you belong to the chosen family of Abraham, and are you\nundefiled in relation to all the requirements of our code? Then\nyou are one of the elect. Are you a Gentile, an idolatrous member\nof the uncircumcision, or a scorner of the Levitic and Rabbinical\ncustoms? Then you are unfit to enter beyond the outer precincts of\nthe Temple; you are a hopeless alien from the kingdom of heaven.\nThus the Jewish test of acceptance with God was national,\nexternal, formal, a local and temporal peculiarity.\n\nWhen Jesus arose and began to teach, his transcendent genius,\nworking under the unparalleled inspiration of God, an unprecedented\nsensibility to divine truth in its utmost purity and freedom,\nexpanded beyond all these shallow material accidents and\nbonds; and he propounded a perfectly moral and spiritual test of\nacceptance before God; namely, the possession of an intrinsically\ngood character. He made nothing of the distinction between Jew and\nGentile, declaring, \"My father is able of these stones to raise up\nchildren unto Abraham.\" He affirmed the condition of admittance\ninto the kingdom of God to be simply the doing of the will of God.\nWhen he saw the young lawyer who had kept the two commandments,\nloving God with all his soul, and his neighbor as himself, his\nheart yearned towards him in benediction. And, finally, in his\nsublime picture of the last judgment, he, in the most explicit and\nunmistakable manner, makes the one essential condition of\nrejection to be inhumanity of life, cruel selfishness of\ncharacter; the one essential condition of acceptance, the spirit\nof love, the practical doing of good. He utters not a solitary\nsyllable about immaculateness of ceremonial propriety or soundness\nof dogmatic belief. He only says, Inasmuch as ye have or have not\nvisited the sick and the imprisoned, fed the hungry, and clothed\nthe naked, ye shall be justified or condemned at the divine\ntribunal. This test of personal goodness or wickedness, benevolent\nor malignant conduct, proclaimed by Jesus, is the true standard,\nfree from everything local and temporary, fitted for application\nto all nations and all ages.\n\nBut no sooner had Christianity obtained a foothold on earth,\nmultiplied its converts, and gained some outward sway, than its\nJudaizing disciples and promulgators, fastening on that which was\neasiest to comprehend and practise, that which was most impressive\nto the imagination, that which seemed most sharply to distinguish\nthem from the unbelieving and unconforming world around, thrust\nfar into the background this universal and eternal test of\njudgment set up by Jesus himself, and in place of it installed an\nexclusive test fashioned after a more developed and aggravated\npattern of the very narrowest and worst elements in the\nPhariasaism which he expressly came to supersede. The Pharisaic\ncondition of salvation was inheritance, by blood or adoption, in\nthe Jewish race and Abrahamic covenant, together with exactitude\nof ceremonial observance. Everybody else was an unclean alien, an\nuncircumcised dog, an uncovenanted leper. In place of this test,\nthe orthodox ecclesiastical party made their test dogmatic belief\nin the supernatural Messiahship of Jesus Christ, formal profession\nof allegiance to the official person of Jesus Christ. It is summed\nup in the formula, \"Whoso believeth that Jesus is the Christ, is\nof God; whoso denieth this, is of the Devil.\"\n\nExactly here is where Paul, the noble apostle to the Gentiles,\nbroke with the Judaizing apostles, and taught a doctrine more\nfully developed in its historic sequence, but substantially in\nperfect unison with the free teachings and spirit of Jesus\nhimself. With Paul the test of Christian salvation was the\npossession of the mind of Christ. \"If any man have not the spirit\nof Christ, he is none of his;\" \"but as many as are led by the\nspirit of God are sons of God.\" \"Neither circumcision availeth\nanything, nor uncircumcision; but a new creature,\" begotten in the\nimage of Christ, availeth everything before God. \"God rewardeth\nevery man, the Jew and the Gentile, according to his works.\" With\nPaul, descent from Abraham was nothing, observance of the legal\ncode was nothing: a just and pure character, full of self\nsacrificing love, evoked by faith in Christ, was the all in all.\nJesus Christ was the head of a new race, the second Adam; and all\ndisciples, who, through moral faith in him, were regenerated into\nhis likeness and unto newness of living, were thereby adopted as\nsons of God and joint heirs with him. The Pauline formula of\nsalvation, freely open to all the world, was, spiritual\nassimilation and reproduction of Christ in the disciple.\n\nBut the Judaizing party bore a heavy preponderance in the early\nChurch, and has succeeded unto this day in imposing on\necclesiastical Christendom its own test: namely, a sound dogmatic,\nbelief in the supreme personal rank and office of Christ, as the\nonly means of admission to the kingdom of heaven. The one\npeculiarity which most sharply and broadly contrasted the early\nChristians with the rest of the world was unquestionably their\nbelief in the miraculous mission of Jesus, a belief growing\ndeeper, higher, intenser, until it actually identified him with\nthe omnipotent God. There was an inevitable tendency, it was a\nperfectly natural and necessary process, for them to make this\npoint of contrast the central condition on which depended the\npossession of all the special privileges supposed to be promised\nto its disciples by the new religion. The result is well expressed\nby Polycarp in these words: \"Whosoever confesses not that Christ\nis come in the flesh, is an Antichrist; and whosoever acknowledges\nnot the martyrdom of the cross, is of the Devil; and whosoever\nsays that there is no resurrection nor judgment, is the first born\nof Satan.\" This extract strikes the key note of the Orthodox\nChurch all through Christendom from the second century to the\npresent hour. In place of the true condition of salvation\nannounced by Jesus, personal and practical goodness, it\ninaugurates the false ecclesiastic standard, soundness of dogmatic\nbelief in relation to Jesus himself! Those who hold this are the\nelect, and shall stand in heaven with white robes and palms and a\nnew song, while all the rest of the world apostate and detested\nenemies of God and his saints shall be trampled down in merciless\nslaughter, and flung into the pit whence the smoking signal of\ntheir torment shall ascend for ever and ever. It is a transformation\nof the bigoted scorn and hate of the covenanted Jew for his\nGentile foes into the intensified horror of the Orthodox\nbeliever for the reprobate infidel. And it finally culminated in\nthe following frightful picture which still lowers and blazes in\nthe imagination of ecclesiastical Christendom as a veritable\nrevelation of what is to take place at the end of the world:\n\nWhile the stars are falling, the firmament dissolving, the dead\nswarming from their graves, and the nations assembling, Christ\nwill come in the clouds of heaven with a host of angels and sit in\njudgment on collected mankind. All who submissively believed in\nhis Divinity, and have the seal of his blood on their foreheads,\nhe will approve and accept; all others he will condemn and reject.\nNo matter for the natural goodness and integrity of the\nunbeliever: his unbelief dooms him. No matter for the natural\ndepravity and iniquity of the believer: his faith in the atoning\nsacrifice saves him. The Judge will say to the orthodox, on his\nright, \"You may have been impure and cruel, lied, cheated, hated\nyour neighbor, rolled in vice and crime, but you have believed in\nme, in my divinity: therefore, come, ye blessed, inherit my\nkingdom.\" To the heretical, on his left, he will say, \"You may\nhave been pure and kind, sought the truth, self sacrificingly\nserved your fellow men, fulfilled every moral duty in your power,\nbut you have not believed in me, in my deity, and my blood:\ntherefore, depart, ye cursed, into everlasting fire.\" Such is a\nfit verdict to be pronounced by the avenging Warrior depicted in\nthe Apocalypse, from whose mouth issues a two edged sword, to cut\nhis enemies asunder; who sits on a white charger, in a vesture\ndipped in blood, with a bow and a crown, and goes forth conquering\nand to conquer; whose eyes are flames of fire; who treads his\nrejecters in the wine press of his wrath until their blood reaches\nto the horse bridles. It was the natural reflection of an age\nfilled with the most murderous hatreds and persecutions, based on\npolitical and dogmatic distinctions. But how contradictory it is\nto the teachings of Jesus himself! How utterly irreconcilable it\nis with the image and spirit of that meek and lowly Son of Man who\nsaid that he \"came not to destroy men's lives but to save them;\"\nwho declared, \"of mine own self I can do nothing;\" who modestly\ndeprecated all personal homage, asking, \"Why callest thou me\ngood?\" who sat with the publican, and forgave the harlot, and\ndenounced bigotry in many an immortal breathing of charity; and\nwho, even in his final agony, pardoned and prayed for his\nmurderers! What reason is there for supposing that he who was so\ninfinitely gentle, unselfish, forgiving, when on earth, will\nundergo such a fiendish metamorphosis in his exaltation and\nreturn? It is the most monstrous, the most atrocious travesty of\nthe truth that ever was perpetrated by the superstitious ignorance\nand audacity of the human mind. It is a direct transference into\nthe Godhead of the most egotistical and hateful feelings of a bad\nman. No good man who had been ever so grossly misconceived,\nvilified, and wronged, if he saw his enemies prostrate in\nsubmissive terror at his feet, perfectly powerless before his\nauthority, could bear to trample on them and wreak vengeance on\nthem. He would say, \"Unhappy ones, fear not; you have misunderstood\nme; I will not injure you; if there be any favor which I can\nbestow on you, freely take it.\" And is it not an incredible\nblasphemy to deny to the deified Christ a magnanimity equal to\nthat which any good man would exhibit?\n\nIt is with pain and regret that the writer has penned the\nforegoing sentences, which, he supposes, some persons will read\nwith the feeling that they are inexcusable misrepresentations,\nothers, with a shocked and resentful horror, relieving itself in\nthe cry, Infidelity! Blasphemy! The reply of the writer is simply\nthat, while reluctant to wound the sensibility of any, he feels\nbound in conscience to make this exposition, because he believes\nit to be a true statement; and loyalty to truth is the first duty\nof every man. Truth is the will of God, obedience to which alone\nis sound morality, reverential love of which alone is pure piety.\nFrightful as is the picture drawn above of Christ in the judgment,\nit is impossible to deny, without utter stultification, that every\nlineament of it is logically implied in the formula. \"There is no\nsalvation for the man who unbelievingly rejects, no damnation for\nthe man who believingly accepts, the official Christ and his\nblood.\" And what teacher will have the presumption to deny that\njust this has been, and still is, the central dogma in the faith\nof ecclesiastical Christendom? The legitimate result of this view,\nunflinchingly carried out, and applied to the precise point we now\nhave in hand, is seen in that horrible portrayal of the Last\nJudgment wherewith Michael Angelo has covered the ceiling of the\nSistine Chapel, in Rome. The great anatomical artist consistently\ndepicts Christ as an almighty athlete, towering with vindictive\nwrath, flinging thunderbolts on the writhing and helpless\nwilderness of his victims. The popular conception of Christ in the\njudgment has been borrowed from the type of a king, who, hurling\noff the incognito in which he has been outraged, breaks out in his\nproper insignia, to sentence and trample his scorners. The true\nconception is to be fashioned after the type given in his own\nexample during his life. So far as Christ is the representative of\nGod, there must be no vanity or egotism in him. Every such quality\nascribed to the Godhead is anthropomorphizing sophistry. However\nmuch more God may be, he is the General Mind of the Universe. He\nincludes, while he transcends, all other beings. Now, the General\nMind must represent the interests of all, the disinterested good\nof the whole, and not any particular and selfish exactions, or\nresentful caprices, fashioned on the pattern shown among human\negotists by a kingly despot.\n\nThe Church, in developing Christianity out of Judaism through the\nperson and life of Jesus, has given prominence and emphasis to the\nwrong elements, seeking to universalize and perpetuate, in a\ntransformed guise, the local spirit and historic errors of that\nPharisaic sect against which he had himself launched all his\ninvective. That temper of bigotry and ceremonial technicality\nwhich hates all outside of its own pale as reprobate, and which\nultimated itself in the virtual Pharisaic formula, \"Keep the hands\nand platter washed, and it is no matter how full of uncleanness\nyou are within,\" at a later period embodied itself through the\nleaders of ecclesiastical Orthodoxy in the central dogma, \"Nothing\nbut faith in Christ can avail man anything before God.\" Instead of\nthis the true doctrine is, Nothing but obedience, surrender, and\ntrust, personal penitence and aspiration, can avail man anything\nbefore God.\n\nThe Christians, as the Jews did before them, have made a wrong\nselection of the doctrine to be, on the one hand, particularized\nand left behind; on the other hand, carried forward and\nuniversalized. This immense error demands correction. Let us\nnotice a few specimens in exemplication of it. Jehovah is not the\nonly true God in distinction from odious idols; but Brahma, Ahura\nMazda, Osiris, Zeus, Jupiter, and the rest, are names given by\ndifferent nations to the Infinite Spirit whom each nation worships\naccording to its own light. The Jews and the Christians are not\nthe only chosen people of God; but all nations are his people,\nchosen in the degree of their harmony with his will. The\nprovidence of God is not an exceptional interference from without,\nexclusively for the Jews and Christians; but it is for all, a\nsteady order of laws within, as much to be seen in the shining of\nthe sun, or the regular harvest, as in any shocks of political\ncalamity and glory. Not the Messiah alone reveals God; but, in his\ndegree, every ruler, prophet, priest, every man who stands for\nwisdom, justice, purity, and devotion, represents him. It is not\ndoctrinal belief in the Messiah, but vital adoption of his spirit\nand character, of the principles of real goodness, that\nconstitutes the salvation of the disciple. We are to look not for\nthe resurrection of the flesh from the grave, but for the\nresurrection of the soul from all forms of sin, ignorance, and\nmisery. It is the universal prevalence of truth and virtue,\nknowledge, love, and peace, in the hearts of men, not the physical\nreign of the returning Messiah, which will make a millennium on\nearth. The kingdom of God which Judaism localized exclusively in\nPalestine, and the early church exclusively in heaven or on the\nmillennial earth, should be recognized in every place, whether\nabove the sky or on the globe, where duty is done, and pure\naffection, trust, and joy experienced; for God is not excluded\nfrom all other spaces by any enthronization in one. We ought not\nto cling, as to permanent fixtures of revealed truth, to the rigid\noutlines of that scheme of faith which was struck out when the\nthree story house of the Hebrew cosmogony showed the limits of\nwhat men knew, before exact science was born, or criticism\nconceived, or the telescope invented, or America and Australia and\nthe Germanic races heard of; but we should hold our speculative\ntheological beliefs freely and provisionally, ready to reconstruct\nand read just them, from time to time, in accordance with the\ndemands of the growing body of human knowledge.\n\nReflecting, in the light of these general ideas of truth, on the\nwhole subject of the current doctrine of the end of the world and\nthe day of judgment, we shall see that that doctrine presents no\nvalid claim for our belief, but is a mythological growth out of\nthe historic and literary conditions amidst which Christianity\narose on the basis of Judaism. The doctrine was formed by the\nunconscious transmutation of metaphors into dogmas. Poetic figures\ncame, by dint of familiarizing repetition, by dint of imaginative\ncollection and contemplation, to be taken as expressive of literal\ntruths. To any reader of the Apocalypse, with competent historical\nand critical information for entering into the book from the point\nof view occupied by its author, it is just as evident that its\nimagery was meant to describe the immediate conflict of Hebrew\nChristianity with pagan Rome, and not the literal blotting out of\nthe universe, as it is unquestionable that the book of Daniel\ndepicts, not the impending destruction of the world, but the\nrelations of the chosen nation with the hostile empires of\nPersia, Media, Babylon, and Macedonia, from which they had\nsuffered so much, and which they then hoped speedily to put\nbeneath their feet. The slain Lamb, standing amidst the throne of\nGod, with seven eyes and seven horns; Death, on a pale horse, with\nHell following him; the woman, clothed with the sun, and the moon\nunder her feet; the great red dragon, whose tail casts to the\nearth the third part of the stars of heaven; the worm wood star,\nthat falls as a blazing lamp, and turns a third of the waters of\nthe earth into bitterness; the seven thunders, seven seals, seven\nvials, seven spirits before the throne, seven candlesticks, seven\nangels, seven trumpets, seven epistles to the seven churches,\nseven horns, seven headed beast, all these things must, perforce,\nbe taken as free poetic imagery; it would require a lunatic or an\nutterly unthinking verbalist to interpret them literally. Why,\nthen, shall we select from the mass of metaphors a few of the most\nviolent, and insist on rendering these as veritable statements of\nfact? If the rest is symbolism, so are the pictures of the\navenging armies of angels, the reeking gulf of sulphur, and the\ngolden streets of the city.\n\nThe entire scheme of thought, as it still stands in the mind of\nthe Orthodox believer, is to be rejected as spurious, because it\nrests on a process of imaginative accumulation and transference\nwhich is absolutely illegitimate; namely, the association and\nuniversalizing of political and military images, which are then\nhardened from emblems into facts, and cast over upon the mutual\nrelations of God and mankind. We ought to break open the\nmetaphors, extract their significance, and throw the shells aside.\nBut ignorant bibliolatary and ecclesiasticism insist on\nworshipping the shells, with no insight of their contents.\n\nThere is one all important fact which should convince of their\nerror those who hold the current view of a general judgment at the\nend of the world as having been revealed from God through Christ.\nWe refer to the fact that the system of ideas in which a final\nresurrection and judgment of the dead are logical parts, existed\nin the Zoroastrian theology five or six centuries before the birth\nof Christ. It was adopted thence by the Jews, and afterwards\nadopted from the Jews by the Christians. If, therefore, this\ndoctrine be a revelation from God, it was revealed by him to the\nPersians in a dark and credulous antiquity. In that case it is\nZoroaster and not Christ to whom we are indebted for the central\ndogmas of our religion! No, these things are imagery, not essence,\nthe human element of imaginative error with which the divine\nelement of truth has been overlaid, and from whose darkening and\ncorrupt company this is to be extricated.\n\nThere are, in the New Testament, in addition to the relevant\nmetaphors which we have already examined, several others of great\nimpressiveness and importance. We must now explain these, separate\nthe truths and errors popularly associated with them, and leave\nthe subject with an exposition of the real method of the divine\ngovernment and the true idea of the day of judgment, in contrast\nwith the prevalent ecclesiastical perversions of them.\n\nThe part played in theological speculation and popular religious\nbelief by imagery borrowed from the scenery and methods of\njudicial tribunals, the procedures and enforcement of penal law,\nhas not been less prominent and profound than the influence\nexerted by natural, political, and military metaphors. The power,\nthe pomp, the elaborate spectacle, the mysterious formalities, the\nfrightful penalties, the intense personal hopes and fears,\nassociated with the trial of culprits in courts or before the head\nof a nation, must always have sunk so deeply into the minds of men\nas to be vividly present in imagination to be affixed as typical\nstamps on their theories concerning the judgments of God and the\nfuture world. This process is perhaps nowhere more distinctly\nshown than in the belief of the ancient Egyptians. Before the\nsarcophagus containing the mummy was ferried over the holy lake to\nbe deposited in the tomb, the friends and relatives of the\ndeparted, and his enemies and accusers, if he had any, together\nwith forty two assessors, each of whom had the oversight of a\nparticular sin, assembled on the shore and sat in judgment. The\ndeceased was put on his trial before them: and, if justified,\nawarded an honorable burial; if condemned, disgraced by the\nwithholding of the funeral rites. Now the papyrus rolls found with\nthe mummies give a description of the judgment of the dead, a\npicture of the fate of the disembodied soul in the Egyptian Hades,\nminutely agreeing in many particulars with the foregoing ceremony.\nMa, the Goddess of Justice, leads the soul into the judgment hall,\nbefore the throne of Osiris, where stands a great balance with a\nsymbol of truth in one scale, the symbol of a human heart in the\nother. The accuser is heard, and the deceased defends himself\nbefore forty two divine judges who preside over the forty two sins\nfrom which he must be cleared. The gods Horus and Anubis attend to\nthe balance, and Thoth writes down the verdict and the sentence.\nThe soul then passes on through adventures of penance or bliss,\nthe details of which are obviously copied, with fanciful changes\nand additions, from the connected scenery and experience known on\nthe earth.\n\nTaking it for all in all, there perhaps never was any other scene\nin human society so impressive as the periodical sitting in\njudgment of the great Oriental kings. It was the custom of those\nhalf deified rulers the King of Egypt, the Sultan of Persia, the\nEmperor of India, the Great Father of China to set up, each in the\ngate of his palace, a tribunal for the public and irreversible\nadministration of justice. Seated on his throne, blazing in\npurple, gold, and gems, the members of the royal family nearest to\nhis person; his chief officers and chosen favorites coming next in\norder; his body guards and various classes of servants, in\ndistinctive costumes, ranged in their several posts; vast masses\nof troops, marshalled far and near. The whole assemblage must have\ncomposed a sight of august splendor and dread. Then appeared the\naccusers and the accused, criminals from their dungeons, captives\ntaken in war, representatives of tributary nations, all who had\ncomplaints to offer, charges to repel, or offences to expiate. The\nmonarch listened, weighed, decided, sentenced; and his executioners\ncarried out his commands. Some were pardoned, some rewarded, some\nsent to the quarries, some to prison, some to death. When the\ntribunal was struck, and the king retired, and the scene ended,\nthere was relief with one, joy with another, blood here, darkness\nthere, weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth in many a place.\n\nDramatic scenes of judgment, public judicial procedures, in some\ndegree corresponding with the foregoing picture, are necessary in\nhuman governments. The prison, the culprit, the witnesses, the\njudge, the verdict, the penalty, are inevitable facts of the\nsocial order. Offences needing to be punished by overt penalties,\nwrongs demanding to be rectified by outward decrees, criminals\ngathered in cells, appeals from lower courts to higher ones, may\ngo on accumulating until a grand audit or universal clearing up of\narrears becomes indispensable. Is it not obvious how natural it\nwould be for a mind profoundly impressed with these facts, and\nvividly stamped with this imagery, to think of the relation\nbetween mankind and God in a similar way, conceiving of the\nCreator as the Infinite King and Judge, who will appoint a final\nday to set everything right, issue a general act of jail delivery,\nsummon the living and the dead before him, and adjudicate their\ndoom according to his sovereign pleasure?\n\nThe tremendous language ascribed to Jesus, in the twenty fifth\nchapter of Matthew, was evidently based on the historic picture of\nan Eastern king in judgment. \"When the Son of Man shall come in\nhis glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit\nupon the throne of his glory: and before him shall be gathered all\nnations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a\nshepherd divideth his sheep from the goats: and he shall set the\nsheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left.\" If Jesus\nhimself used these words, we suppose he meant figuratively to\nindicate by them the triumphant installation, as a ruling and\njudging power in human society, of the pure eternal principles of\nmorality, the true universal principles of religion, which he had\ntaught and exemplified. But unfortunately the image proved so\noverpoweringly impressive to the imagination of subsequent times,\nthat its metaphorical import was lost in its physical setting.\n\nThis momentous error has arisen from the inevitable tendency of\nthe human mind to conceive of God after the type of an earthly\nking, as an enthroned local Presence; from the rooted incapacity\nof popular thought to grasp the idea that God is an equal and\nundivided Everywhereness. In his great speech on Mar's Hill, the\napostle Paul told the Athenians that \"God had appointed a day in\nthe which he would judge the world in righteousness by that man\nwhom he hath ordained.\" Is not this notion of the judgment being\ndelegated to Jesus plainly adopted from the political image of a\ndeputy? The king himself rarely sits on a judicial tribunal: he is\ngenerally represented there by an inferior officer. But this\narrangement is totally inapplicable to God, who can never abdicate\nhis prerogatives, since they are not legal, but dynamic. The\nessential nature of God is infinity. Certainly, there can be no\nsubstitution of this. It cannot be put off, nor put on, nor\nmultiplied. There is one Infinite alone.\n\nThe Greeks located, in the future state, three judges of the dead,\nMinos, who presided at the trial of souls arriving from Europe;\nRhadamanthus, who examined those coming from Asia; and Aacus, who\njudged those from Africa. They had no fourth and fifth inspectors\nfor the souls from America and Australia, because those divisions\nof the earth were, as yet, unknown! How suggestive is this mixture\nof knowledge and ignorance! The heaven of the Esquimaux is a place\nwhere they will have a plenty of fine boats and harpoons, and find\na summer climate, and a calm ocean abounding with fat seals and\nwalruses. The Greenlander's hell is a place of torment from cold;\nthe Arab's, a place of torment from heat. Every people and every\nman unless they have learned by comparative criticism to correct\nthe tendency  conceive their destiny in the unknown future in\nforms and lights copied, more or less closely, from their familiar\nexperiences here. Is there not just as much reason for holding to\nthe literal accuracy and validity of the result in one case as in\nanother? The popular picture, in the imagination of Christendom,\nof Gabriel playing a trumpet solo at the end of the world, and a\nhuge squad of angelic police darting about the four quarters of\nheaven, gathering the past and present inhabitants of the earth,\nwhile the Judge and his officers take their places in the\nUniversal Assize, instead of being received as sound theology,\nshould be held as moral symbol. Taken in any other way, it sinks\ninto gross mythology. Can any one fail to see that this picture of\nthe Last Judgment is the result of an illogical process; namely,\nthe poetic association and universalizing of our fragmentary\njudicial experiences, and the bodily transfer of them over upon\nour relations with God? The procedure is clearly a fallacious one,\nbecause the relations of men with God in the sphere of eternal\ntruths are wholly different from their relations with each other\nin the sphere of political society. They are, in no sense, formal\nor forensic, but substantial and moral; not of the nature of a\nleague or compact, but interior and organic; not acting by fits\nand starts, or gathering through interruptions and delays to\nconvulsive catastrophes, but going on in unbreakable continuity.\nGod is a Spirit; and we too, in essence, are spirits. The rewards\nand punishments imparted from God to us, then, are spiritual,\nresults of the regular action of the laws of our being as related\nto all other being. Consequently, no figures borrowed from those\njudicial and police arrangements inevitable in the broken and\nhitching affairs of earthly rulers, can be directly applicable,\nthe circumstances are so completely different. The true\nillustration of the divine government must be adopted from\nphysiology and psychology, where the perfect working of the\nCreator is exemplified,  not from the forum and the court, where\nthe imperfect artifices of men are exhibited.\n\nGod forever sits in judgment on all souls, in the reactions of\ntheir own acts. The divine retribution for every deed is the kick\nof the gun, not an extra explosion arbitrarily thrown in. The\nthief, the liar, the misanthrope, the drunkard, the poet, the\nphilosopher, the hero, the saint, all have their just and\nintrinsic returns for what they are and for what they do, in the\nfitness of their own characters and their harmonies or discords\nwith the will of God, with the public order of creation. Thus is\nthe daily experience of one man made a lake of peace threaded with\nthrilling rivulets of bliss; that of another, a stream of\ndevouring fire and poison, or a heaving and smoking bed of\nuncleanness and torment. The virtues represent the conditions of\nuniversal good; the vices represent private opposition to those\nconditions. Accordingly, the good man is in attracting and\ncooperative connection with all good; the bad man, in antagonistic\nand repulsive connection with it. In these facts a perfect\nretribution resides. If any one does not see it, does not feel its\nworking, it is because he is too insensible to be conscious of the\nsecrets of his own being, too dull to read the lessons of his own\nexperience. And this self ignorant degradation, so far from\nrefuting, is itself the profoundest exemplification of the truth\nof that wonderful word of Jesus: \"Verily, I say unto you, they\nhave their reward.\" Those who consider themselves saints indulge\nin an unspeakable vulgarity, when they feel, \"Well, the sinners\nhave their turn in this world; we shall have ours in the next.\"\nThe law of retribution in the spiritual sphere is identical with\nthe first law of motion in the material sphere; action and\nreaction are equal, and in opposite directions. This law being\ninstantaneous and incessant in its operation, there can be no\noccasion for a final epoch to redress its accumulated disbalancements.\nIt has no disbalancements, save in our erroneous or defective vision.\n\nThe true conception of the relation of the all judging Creator to\nhis creatures is that of the Infinite Being who supplies all\nfinite receptacles in accordance with their special forms of\norganization and character, and who causes exact retributions of\ngood and evil intrinsically to inhere in their indulged modes of\nthought and feeling and will, their own virtues and vices,\nfruitions and battlements. This internal, continuous, dynamic view\nworthily represents the perfection of the Divine government. The\nincomparably inferior view the external, intermittent,\nconstabulary theory rests, as it seems to us, merely on the\ntraditions of ignorance and fancy. It has, in every instance,\noriginated from the unwarrantable interpretation of a trope as a\ntruth.\n\nFor example, the picture of the Last Judgment, supposed to be\ndrawn by Jesus, in the Parable of the Tares, must be considered,\nnot as a rigid prophecy of the end of the earth, and the\ntransmundane destination of souls, but as a free emblem of the\napproaching close of the Jewish dispensation, and the terrible\ncalamities which would then come on the proud, obstinate and\nrebellious people. The reaping angels are the Roman and Jewish\narmies, and other kindred agencies and collisions in the destined\nevolution of the fortunes of Christianity and mankind in the\nfuture. Taken literally, the symbols are incongruous with fact,\nand absolutely incredible in doctrine. For they are based on the\nimage of a royal land owner, who draws his support from the income\nof his fields and subjects, and who rewards the faithful bringer\nof fruits, and punishes the slothful defaulter; who welcomes and\nstores sheaves, because they are wealth: rejects and burns tares,\nbecause they are an injury and a nuisance. But nothing can be\nriches or a nuisance to the infinite God, who neither lives on\nrevenue nor judges by jerks. Men are not literally wheat, the\nproperty of the good sower, Christ; nor tares, the property of the\nbad sower, the Devil: they are souls, responsibly belonging to\nthemselves, under God. And the pay of the human agriculturists, in\nthe moral fields of the divine King, consists in the daily crops\nof experience they raise, not in being advanced to a seat at the\nright hand of their Lord, or in being flagellated and flung into a\nflaming furnace.\n\nJesus himself, undoubtedly, used this physical imagery as the\nvehicle of spiritual truths; it is lamentable that perfunctory\nminds have so generally overlooked the substance in the dress. He\nis represented, in Matthew, as having said to his apostles: \"When\nthe Son of man shall sit on the throne of his glory, ye also shall\nsit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.\"\nNow, that he used this figure to convey an impersonal moral\nmeaning, and that his profound thought underwent a materializing\ndegradation in the minds of his hearers and reporters, appears\nclearly from the incident related immediately afterward. The wife\nof Zebedee asked that her two sons might sit, the one on his right\nhand, and the other on the left, in his kingdom. And Jesus said,\n\"Ye shall drink indeed of my cup, and be baptized with the baptism\nthat I am baptized with: but to sit on my right hand, and on my\nleft, is not mine to give.\" The imagery meant that the missionary\nassistants, in forwarding and spreading the kingdom of truth and\nlove he came to establish, would be represented in common with\nhimself in the power it would acquire and sway over the world.\nWhen his hearers interpreted the imagery in a physical sense, as\nindicating that he was hereafter to be a visible king, and that\nhis favorites might expect to share in his authority, honor, and\nglory, he solemnly repudiated it.\n\nThere is yet another and a wholly different style of imagery\nemployed by Jesus to convey his instructions as to the judgment\nwhich is to separate the justified from the condemned. The\nconsideration of this species of imagery would afford an\nindependent proof, of a cogent character, that they strangely\nmisapprehend the mind of Jesus who interpret the moral meaning of\nhis parable in an outward and dramatic sense. The metaphors to\nwhich we now refer are of a domestic and convivial nature, based\non some of the most impressive social customs of the Oriental\nnations. It was the habit of kings, governors, and other rich and\npowerful men, to give, on certain occasions, great banquets, to\nwhich the guests were invited by special favor. These feasts were\ncelebrated with the utmost pomp and splendor, by night, in\nbrilliantly illuminated apartments. The contrast of the blazing\nlights, the richly costumed guests, the music and talk, the honor\nand luxury within, set against the darkness, the silence, the\nenvious poverty and misery without, must have deeply struck all\nwho saw it, and would naturally secure rhetorical reflections in\nspeech and literature. The Jews illustrated their idea of the\nKingdom of God by the symbol of a table at which Abraham and Isaac\nand Jacob were banqueting, and would be joined by all their\nfaithful countrymen. In his parable of the Supper, describing how\na king, on occasion of the marriage of his son, made a feast and\nsent out generous invitations to it, Jesus works up this imagery\nstill more elaborately. What did he really mean to teach by it? Is\nit not clearly apparent from the whole context that he intended it\nas an illustration of the fact that the Jews, to whom he first\nannounced his gospel, and offered all its privileges, having\nrejected it, its blessings would be freely thrown open to the\nGentiles, and that they would crowd in to occupy the place of joy\nand honor, which the chosen people of Jehovah had refused to\naccept? It is by a pure effect of fancy and doctrinal bias that\nthe parable has been perverted into a description of the Last\nJudgment. The reference plainly indicates admission to or\nexclusion from the privileges of the new dispensation, a matter of\npersonal experience in the heart of the disciple and in the\nsociety of the church on this earth. The wedding garment, without\nwhich no one can come to the royal table, is a holy, humble, and\nloving character. In consequence of his destitution of this,\nJudas, although seated at the table, with the most honored guests,\nin the very presence of his Lord, was proved to have no right\nthere, and was thrust into the outer darkness. His bad spirit, his\ninability to appreciate and enjoy the pure truths of the kingdom,\nconstituted his expulsion. That such was the idea in the mind of\nJesus, something to be experienced personally and spiritually in\nthe present, and not something to be shown collectively and\nmaterially at the end of the world, appears from the great number\nof different forms in which he reiterates his doctrine. Had he\nmeant to teach literally that he was to come in person at the last\nday, and sit in judgment on all men, would he not have had a\ndistinct conception of the method, and have always drawn one and\nthe same consistent picture of it? But if he meant to teach that\nall who were fitted by their spirit, character and conduct to\nassimilate the living substance of his kingdom were thereby made\nmembers of it, while all others were, by their own intrinsic\nunfitness, excluded, then it was perfectly natural that his\nfertile mind would on a hundred different occasions convey this\none truth in a hundred different figures of speech. That in which\nthe images all differ is unessential: that in which they all agree\nmust be the essential thought. Now the parables differ in the\nforms of judgment they picture. Therefore these forms are\nmetaphoric dress. The parables agree in assigning a different fate\nto the righteous and the wicked. Therefore this difference is the\nvital truth. And Jesus nowhere makes righteousness consist in\nanything national, dogmatic, or ceremonial, but everywhere is\nsomething moral.\n\nThe doctrine of an unfailing tribunal in the soul, the belief that\nwe are all judged momentarily at the continuous bar of the truth\nreflected in our own conscience, is too deep, delicate, and\nelusive a view for the ignorance and hardness of some ages, and of\nsome persons in every age. They cannot understand that the mind of\nman is itself a living table of the law and judgment seat of the\nCreator, by its positive and negative polarities, in sympathetic\nconnection with the standards of good and evil, pronouncing the\nverdicts and executing the sentences deserved. They need to\nproject the scheme of retribution into the startling shape of a\ntrial in a formal court, and then to universalize it into an\noverwhelming world assize. The semi dramatic figment, no doubt,\nwas an inevitable stage of thought, and has wrought powerfully for\ngood in certain periods of history. But the pure truth must be as\nmuch better for all who can appreciate it, as it is more real and\nmore pervasive.\n\nSince God, the indefeasible Creator, is a resistless power of\njustice and love in omnipresent relations with his creatures, the\ngenuine day of judgment to each being must be the entire career of\nthat being. In a lower degree, every day is a day of judgment;\nbecause all acts, in the spirit from which they spring and the end\nat which they aim, carry their own immediate retributions. If we\ncould survey the whole, at once, from the Divine point of view,\nand comprehend the relation of the parts to the whole, undoubtedly\nwe should perceive that the deserts and the receipts of each\nephemeral existence are balanced between the rise and set of its\nsun. But death may, with most solemn emphasis, be regarded as the\nfinal day of judgment to each man, in this sense; that then the\nsum of his earthly life and deeds is sealed up and closed from all\nfurther alteration by him, passing into history as a collective\ncause or total unit of influence. As long as the creation rolls in\nspace, and conscious beings live and die, that bequeathal will\ntell its good or evil tale of him. What sensitive spirit will not\ntremble at the thought of a judgment so unavoidable and so\ntremendous as this! The votaries of superstition are mistaken in\nsupposing that the removal of their false beliefs will destroy or\nweaken the sanctions of duty among men. The removal of imaginary\nsanctions will but cause the true ones to appear more clearly and\nto work more effectively.\n\nThe judgment of God then, we conclude, is no vengeful wreaking of\narbitrary royal volitions; but it is the return of the laws of\nbeing on all deeds, actual or ideal. This is, in itself, perpetual\nand infallible: but it sometimes forces itself on our recognition\nin sudden shocks or crises caused by the gathering obstacles and\nopposition made to it by our ignorance, vice, and crime. Every\nother doctrine of the Divine judgment is either an error or a\nfigurative statement of this one. In the latter case, the physical\ncover should be dissolved and thrown away, the moral nucleus laid\nbare and appropriated. But the popular mind of Christendom has\nunfortunately pursued the contrary course, first exaggerating and\nconsolidating the metaphors, then putting their forms literally in\nthe place of their meaning.\n\nThe awful panorama of the last things, as painted in the\nApocalypse, the sun becoming as sackcloth of hair, and the moon as\nblood; the blighted stars dropping; the unveiling of the great\nwhite throne, from before the face of whose occupant the\nfrightened heaven and earth flee away; the standing up of the\ndead, both small and great, the opening of the books, and the\njudging of the dead out of the things written therein, this scenic\narray has, by its terrible vividness and power of fanciful\nplausibility, sunk so deeply into the imagination, and taken such\na tenacious hold on the feelings of the Christian world, secured\nfor itself so constant a contemplation and encrusted itself with\nsuch a mass of associations, that it has actually come to be\nregarded as a veritable revelation of the reality, and to act as\nsuch. And yet, surely, surely, no one who will stop to think on\nthe subject, with conscious clearness, can believe that books are\nprovided in heaven with the names of men in them and recording\nangels appointed to keep their accounts by double or by single\nentry, and that God will literally sit upon a vast white dais\nraised on the earth, and go through an overt judicial ceremony. On\nwhat principle is a part of the undivided apocalyptic portrayal\nrendered as emblem, the rest accepted as absolute verity? If the\nblood red warrior on his white horse followed by the shining\ncavalry of heaven, the horrible vials of wrath, the chimerical\nangels and beasts, the sky and globe converted into terror struck\nfugitives, the bridal city descending from God with its incredible\nwalls and its impossible gates and its magic tree of life yielding\ntwelve kinds of fruit, are imagery; then the lake of burning\nsulphur, and the resurrection trumpet, and the indictment of the\ndead before the dazzling throne, are imagery too. The reader\nsmiles at the idea that the good Esquimau will sit in Leaven\namidst boiling pots of walrus meat, while in hell the fish lines\nof the bad Esquimau will break, and his canoe be crushed by\nfalling ice. But what better reason can the civilized man give for\nthe reflecting over upon the judgments of the future his present\nexperience in the imagery of criminal courts? The same process of\nthought is exemplified in both cases. Can any one literally credit\nthe following verses:\n\n\"There are two angels that attend, unseen Each one of us, and in\ngreat books record Our good and evil deeds. He who writes down The\ngood ones after every action closes His volume and ascends to God.\nThe other keeps his dreadful day book open Till sunset, that we\nmay repent, which doing, The record of the action fades away, And\nleaves a line of white across the page.\"\n\nNo more should we literally credit the kindred phraseology in the\nNew Testament. It is free metaphor. The sultan may keep in his\ntreasury a book with the names of all his favorites enrolled in\nit. Is it not a peurility to suppose that God has such documents?\n\nWhen the Gospels and the Epistles of the New Testament were\nwritten, the reappearance of Christ for the last judgment was\nalmost universally supposed by the Church to be just at hand. At\nany instant of day or night the signal blast might be blown, the\ntroops of the sky pour down the swarms of the dead surge up, and\nthe sheep and the goats for ever be parted to the right and left.\nEach day when they saw \"the sun write its irrevocable verdict in\nthe flame of the west,\" the believers felt that the supreme Dies\niroe was so much nearer to its dawn. But as generation after\ngeneration died, without the sight, and the tokens of its approach\nseemed no clearer, the belief itself subsided from its early\nprominence into the background. But as it retreated, and became\nmore obscure and vague in its date and other details, it grew ever\nmore sombre, appalling, and stupendous in its general certainty\nand preternatural accompaniments. When the tenth century drew nigh\nits close, a literal acceptance of the scriptural text that \"the\ndragon, that old serpent, which is the Devil and Satan, after\nbeing bound in the bottomless pit for a thousand years,\" should\n\"be loosed a little season,\" filled Christendom with the most\nintense agitation and alarm. From all the literature and history\nof that period the reverberations of the frightful effects of the\ngeneral expectation of the impending judgment and destruction of\nthe world have rolled down to the present time. The portentous\nseason passed, all things continuing as they were, and the immense\nincubus rose and dissolvingly vanished. And the Mediaval Church,\nlike the Apostolic Church before, instead of logically saying: Our\nexpectation of the physical return of Christ was a delusion,\nfancifully concluded: We were wrong as to the date; and still\ncontinued to expect him.\n\nThe longer the crisis was delayed, and the more it was brooded\nover, the more awful the suppositious picture became. The\nMohammedans held that the end would be announced by three blasts:\nthe blast of consternation, so terrible that mothers will neglect\nthe babes on their breasts, and the solid world will melt; the\nblast of disembodiment, which will annihilate everything but\nheaven and hell and their inhabitants; and the blast of\nresurrection, which will call up brutes, men, genii, and angels,\nin such numbers that their trial will occupy the space of\nthousands of years.\n\nBut in the later imagination of Christendom the vision assumed a\nshape even more fearful than this. The Protestant Reformation,\nwhen one party identified the Pope, the other, Luther, with\nAntichrist, gave a new impulse to the common expectation of the\navenging advent of the Lord. The horrible cruelties inflicted on\neach other by the hostile divisions of the Church aggravated the\nfears and animosities reflected in the sequel at the last day.\nProbably nothing was ever seen in this world more execrable or\nmore dreadful than those great ceremonies celebrated in Spain and\nPortugal, in the seventeenth century, at the execution of heretics\ncondemned to death by the Inquisition. The slow, dismal tolling of\nbells; the masked and muffled familiars; the Dominicans carrying\ntheir horrid flag, followed by the penitents behind a huge cross;\nthe condemned ones, barefoot, clad in painted caps and the\nrepulsive sanbenito; next the effigies of accused offenders who\nhad escaped by flight; then, the bones of dead culprits in black\ncoffins painted with flames and other hellish symbols; and,\nfinally, the train closing with a host of priests and monks. The\nprocession tediously winds to the great square in front of the\ncathedral, where the accused stand before a crucifix with\nextinguished torches in their hands. The king, with all his court\nand the whole population of the city, exalt the solemnity by their\npresence. The flames are kindled, and the poor victims perish in\nlong drawn agonies. Now can anything conceivable give one a more\nvivid idea of the terrors embodied in the day of judgment than the\nfact that it came to be thought of under the terrific image of an\nAuto da Fe magnified to the scale of the human race and the earth,\nChrist, the Grand Inquisitor, seated as judge; his familiars\nstanding by ready with their implements of torture to fulfil his\nbidding; his fellow monks enthroned around him; his sign, the\ncrucifix, towering from hell to heaven in sight of the universe;\nthe whole heretical world, dressed in the sanbenito, helpless\nbefore him, awaiting their doom? Who will not shudder at the\ninexorable horrors of such a scheme of doctrine, and devoutly\nthank God that he knows it to be a fiction as baseless as it is\ncruel?\n\nSince the cooling down of the great Anabaptist fanaticism, the\nmillennarian fever has raged less and less extensively. But if the\nliterature it has produced, in ignorant and declamatory books,\nsermons, and tracts, were heaped together, they would make a pile\nas big as one of the pyramids. The preaching of Miller, about a\nquarter of a century ago, with his definite assignment of the time\nfor the appointed consummation, caused quite a violent panic in\nthe United States. Several prophets of a similar order in Germany\nhave also stirred transient commotions. In England, the celebrated\nLondon preacher, Dr. Cumming, whose works entitled \"The End,\" and\n\"The Great Tribulation,\" have been circulated in tens of thousands\nof copies, is now the most prominent representative of this\ncatastrophic belief. He has, however, made himself so ridiculous\nby his repeated postponements of the crisis, that he has become\nmore an object of laughter than of admiration. Mathematical\ncalculations, based on mystic numbers transmitted in apocalyptic\npoetry, are at a heavy discount. And yet there is a considerable\nsect, called the Second Adventists, composed of the most\nilliterate believers, and swelled by clergymen wrought up to the\nfanatic pitch by an exclusive dogmatic drill, who lead an\neleemosynary life on mouldy scraps of Scripture, and anxiously\nwait for the sound of the archangelic trump. Every earthquake,\npestilence, revolution, violent thunderstorm, comet, meteoric\nshower, or extraordinary gleaming of the aurora borealis, startles\nthem as a possible avant courier of the crack of doom. Some of\nthem are said to keep their white robes in their closets all ready\nfor ascension. What a dismal thing it must be to live in such a\nlurid and lugubrious dream; their best hope for the world the hope\nthat its end is at hand,\n\n\"Impatient of the stars that keep their course And make no pathway\nfor the coming Judge!\"\n\nBut this excited and uneasy anticipation is now a rare exception.\nIn the minds of most intelligent Christians, even of those who\nstill cling to the old Orthodox dogmas, the day of judgment has\nbeen put forward as far as the day of creation has been put\nbackward. Less and less do religious believers shudder before the\ntheatric trials depicted in heathen and Christian mythology; more\nand more do they reverently recognize the intrinsic jurisdiction\nin the structure of the soul, and in the organism of society. The\ntime is not far remote, let us trust, when the ancient spirit of\nnational separation, political antipathy, and sectarian hatred,\nwhose subjects identify themselves with the party of God, all\nothers with the party of the Devil, and cry, \"How long, O Lord,\ndost thou not judge and avenge us on our enemies,\" will give way\nto that better spirit of philanthropy and true piety, which sees\nbrethren in all men, and prays to the common Father for the equal\nsalvation and blessedness of all. Then the faith of the self\nrighteous, who plume themselves on their sound creed, and so\nrelentlessly consign the heretics to perdition, gloating over the\nidea of the time \"when the kings of the earth, and the chief\ncaptains, and the rich men, and the mighty men, and every bondman,\nand every freeman, shall hide themselves in dens and caves, saying\nto the mountains and the rocks, Fall on us, and hide us from the\nface of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the\nLamb; for the great day of his wrath is come, and who shall be\nable to stand?\"  then the temper of this faith will be seen to be\nas wicked as its doctrine is erroneous. It will be recognized as a\nremnant of the barbaric past in steep contradiction with the whole\nmind of the modest and loving Jesus, who, when the disciples\nwished to call down fire from heaven to consume his opponents,\nrebuked them in words still condemning all their imitators, \"Ye\nknow not what spirit ye are of.\" Many a bigoted and complacent\ndogmatist, wrapt in that same ignorance to day, fails to read his\nown heart, and obstinately shuts his eyes to the truth, foolishly\nfancying himself better and safer, on account of his blind\nconservatism, than he who fearlessly seeks the guidance of\nscience. Yet are not the principles of science as much glimpses of\nthe mind of God as any sentences in the Bible are? The whole\necclesiastical scheme of eschatology is a delusion. No such\ngigantic melodrama, no such grotesque and horrible extravaganza,\nwill ever get itself enacted between heaven and earth. Forever, as\nfreshly as on the first morning, the Creator pours his will\nthrough his works in irresistible vibrations of goodness and\njustice; and forever may all his creatures come to him unimpeded,\nand trust in him without limit.\n\nAway, then, monstrous horrors, bred in the night of the past!\nDreadful incubi! too cruelly and too long ye have sat on the\nbreast of man. The cockcrow of reason has been heard, and it is\ntime ye were gone. Fade, terrible dream, painted by superstition\non the cope of the sky, picture of contending fiends and angels,\nfiery rain, a frowning God, and shuddering millions of victims!\nAway forever, and leave the blue space free for the benignant\nmysteries of the unknown eternity to lure us blessedly forward to\nour fate. Come, believers in the merciful God of truth, lend your\naid to the glorious work of spiritual emancipation. In this benign\nbattle for the deliverance of the world from error and fear, every\nfree mind should be a champion, every loving heart a volunteer.\nFree leaders of the free, forward! out of the darkness into the\nlight. Lift your banner in the front of the field of opinions\nwhere all may see it, and then follow it as far as truth itself\nshall lead. On! Progress is the eternal rule. Man was made to\noutgrow the old and struggle into the new, as every morning the\nsun mounts afresh out of the dead day, and drives the night before\nhim. Ignorance and despotism have crushed us long. But now, now we\nfling our fetters off, and, marching from good to better, hope to\nescape from every falsehood, and to conquer every wrong, under the\ninspiration of the omnipresent Judge who executes his decrees in\nthe very working itself of that Universal Order whose progressive\nunfolding will be fulfilled at last, not in any magic resurrection\nand assize, but in the simple lifting of the veil of ignorance\nfrom all souls brought into full community, and the illumination\nbefore their opened faculties of the whole contents of history.\nFor we believe that all history is by its own enactment\nindestructibly registered in the theatre of space, and that every\nconsciousness is educating to read it and adore the perfect\njustification of the ways of God. The eternal immensity of the\nuniverse is the true Aula Regis in which God holds perpetual\nsession, overlooking no suppliant, omitting no case.\n\nCHAPTER III.\n\nTHE MYTHOLOGICAL HELL AND THE TRUE ONE, OR THE LAW OF PERDITION.\n\n\nTHE doctrine that there is a material place of torment destined to\nbe the eternal abode of the wicked after death is based on the\nlanguage of the Bible, supported by the aggregate teachings of the\nchurch, and commonly asserted, though with a stricken and failing\nfaith, throughout Christendom at this moment. When any one tries\nto show the unreasonableness of the belief in this local prison\nhouse of the damned, arrayed with the innumerable horrors of\nphysical anguish, he is at once met with the declaration that God\nhimself has declared the fact, and consequently that we are bound\nto accept it without question, as a truth of revelation. For the\nreasons which we will immediately proceed to give, this\nrepresentation must be rejected as a mistake.\n\nThe popular doctrine of hell is not a divine revelation, but is a\nmythological growth. It is a fanciful mass of grotesque and\nfrightful errors enveloping a truth which needs to be separated\nfrom them and exhibited in its purity. In the first place, the\nsubstance of the doctrine affirmed, the notion of a bottomless\npit, or penal territory of fire and torment in which God will\nconfine all the unredeemed portions of the human race after their\nbodily dissolution, is something wholly apart from morality and\nreligion, something belonging to the two departments of\ndescriptive geography and police history. The existence or\nnonexistence of a place of material torment reserved for the\nwicked, is a question not of theology, but of topography. In\nearlier times it was avowedly included in geography; and numerous\ncaves, lakes, volcanos, as at Lebadeia, Derbyshire, Avernus,\nNafita, Etna, and elsewhere were believed to be literally\nentrances to hell. So famous and eminent a man as Saint Gregory\nthe Great, when the great Sicilian volcano was seen to be\nincreasingly agitated, taught that it was owing to the press of\nlost souls, rendering it necessary to enlarge the approach to\ntheir prison. With the increase of knowledge, the localization of\nhell was subsequently by many authors, made a part of cosmography,\nand shifted about among the comets, the moon and the sun, although\nmost people still think that it is the interior of the earth. But,\nthe best theologians of all denominations, the most authoritative\nthinkers of all schools, now hold that the supernatural\nrevelations of God are limited to the sphere of the spirit, and do\nnot include the data of geology, astronomy, chemistry and\nmathematics.\n\nGod is not a local king, ruling his subjects by means of political\nmachinery and external interferences; he is the omnipresent\nCreator, spiritually sustaining and governing his creatures from\nwithin by means of the laws which determine their experience, the\naction and reaction between their faculties and their surrounding\nconditions. Accordingly, the sphere of direct revelations from the\nspirit of God to the spirit of man is limited to the implications\nin the divine logic of the soul and its life, that is, to moral\nand religious truths. The facts of history and cosmology are left\nfor the processes of natural discovery. Whether there be or be not\na localized hell of material tortures lies not within the domain\nof revelation, but is a problem of physical science. And science\ndemonstrates, from the weight of the globe, that it is solid; and\nnot, according to the current belief, a hollow shell containing a\nsea of flame packed with the floating hosts of the lost.\n\nFurthermore, the only mode in which the truth of such a doctrine\ncould be made known is wholly aside from the method of\nsupernatural revelation. God does not utter his thoughts to his\nchosen messengers in words or other outward signs as a man does.\nMen communicate information to one another by voice, gesture,\ndrawing, writing or other mechanical devices. It is the natural\nmistake of a crude age to suppose that God does the same,\nbreathing verbal formularies into the of minds of his selected\nservants. But this is not the case. Revelation is not to receive\nan announcement; it is to perceive a truth. Since God is infinite,\nwe cannot stand out against him and talk with him. Souls in finer\nand fuller harmony with the works and laws of God, thus fulfilling\nthe human conditions of inspiration, are met by the divine\nconditions, and obtain new insight of the ways and designs of God.\nThey experience purer and richer ideas and emotions than others,\nand may afterwards impart them to others, thus transmitting the\nrevelation to them. For this new enlightenment, sanctification, or\nrise of life, is what alone constitutes a true revelation. Now if\nthere be a local and physical hell, it is not a moral truth which\nthe inspired soul can see, but a scientific fact which can be\nperceived only by the senses or deduced by the logical intellect.\nIf a man could travel to every nook of the creation he might\ndiscover whether there were such a hell or not. But you cannot\ndiscover a spiritual truth by any amount of outward travel. When a\nsoul is so delivered from egotism, or the jar of self will against\nuniversal law, and brought into such high harmony with the spirit\nof the whole, as to perceive this divine law of life, \"He who\ndwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him,\" then he is\ninspired to see a religious truth. He has obtained a divine\nrevelation. But we cannot conceive of any degree of exaltation\ninto unison with God which would enable a man to see the fact that\nthe centre of the earth or the surface of the sun or any other\nspot, is a place of fire set apart as the penal abode of the\ndamned, and that it is crowded with burning sulphur and\nunimaginable forms of wickedness and agony. Such a doctrine is out\nof the province, and its conveyance irreconcilable with the method\nof revelation, which consists not in an exterior communication of\nscientific facts to messengers selected to receive them, but in an\ninterior unveiling of religious truths to souls prepared to see\nthem.\n\nIn the next place, we maintain, that the doctrine of a local hell,\na guarded and smoking dungeon of the damned, ought not to be\nregarded as a truth contained in a revelation from God, because it\nis plainly proved by historic evidence to be a part of the\nmythology of the world, a natural product of the poetic\nimagination of ignorant and superstitious men. In all ages and\nlands men have recognized the difference between the good and the\nbad, merit and crime; have seen that innocence and virtue\nrepresented the permanent conditions of human welfare, that guilt\nand vice represented the insurrection of private or lower and\ntransient desire against public or higher and more lasting good;\nand have felt that the former deserved to be praised and rewarded,\nthe latter to be blamed and punished. In all ages and all nations\nsociety has teemed with devices for the distribution of these\nreturns, prizes to the meritorious, penalties to the derelict.\nThere is scarcely any evil discoverable in nature or inventable in\nart which has not been used as a means for the punishment of\ncriminals. Enemies captured in battle, or seized by the minions of\ndespots, violators of the laws of the community, arraigned before\njudicial tribunals, have been in every country subjected to every\nspecies of penalty, such as slavery, imprisonment, banishment,\nfine, stripes, dismemberment. They have been starved, frozen,\nburned, hung, drowned, strangled by serpents, devoured by wild\nbeasts. The rebellious and hated offenders of the king, while he\nbanquets in his illuminated palace with his faithful servants and\nfavorites around him, are exiled into outer darkness, fettered in\ndungeons, plied with every conceivable indignity and misery,\nbastinadoed, bowstrung, or torn in pieces with lingering torture.\nHere we have the germ of hell. To get the fully developed popular\ndoctrine of hell it is only necessary to concentrate and aggravate\nthe known evils of this world, the horrible sufferings inflicted\non criminals and enemies here, and transfer the vindictive and\npitiable mass of wretchedness over into the future state as a\nrepresentation of the doom God has there prepared for his foes.\nEarthly rulers and their practice, the most impressive scenes and\nacts experienced among men, have always hitherto furnished the\ntypes of thought applied to illustrate the unknown details of the\nhereafter. The judge orders the culprit to be disgraced, scourged,\nput in the stocks, or cropped and transported. The sultan hurls\nthose he hates into the dungeon, upon the gibbet or into the\nflame, with every accompaniment of mockery and pain. So, an\nimaginative instinct concludes, God will deal with all who offend\nhim. They will be excluded from his presence, imprisoned and\ntormented forever.\n\nThis whole process of comparison and inference, natural as it is,\nis one prolonged fallacy exemplifying the very essence of all\nmythological construction in contrast both with inspired\nperception and logical reasoning. The revealing arrival of a truth\nin consciousness is when an intuitive thrill announces the action\nof our faculties in correspondence with some relation in the\nreality of things. Mythology is the deceptive substitute for this,\nemployed when we arbitrarily project forms of our present\nexperience into the unknown futurity, and then hold the resultant\nfancies as a rigid belief, or regard them as actual knowledge.\nThis is exactly what has happened in the case of the doctrine of\nan eternal physical hell beyond the grave. The natural and\npunitive horrors of the present state have been collected,\nintensified, dilated, and thrown into the future as a world of\nunmitigated sin and wrath and anguish, a consolidated image of the\nvengeance of God on his insurgent subjects.\n\nNow the true desideratum, the only result on which reason can\nrest, whenever tests are applied to our beliefs, is this: that\nwhat is known be scientifically set forth in distinct definitions;\nthat what is unknown be treated provisionally, with theoretic\napproaches; and that what is absolutely unknowable be fixedly\nrecognized as such. This regulative principle of thought is\ngrossly violated in every particular by the popular belief in a\nmaterial hell.\n\nWherever we look at the prevalent doctrines of hell among\ndifferent peoples, from the rudest to the most refined, we see\nthem reflecting into the penal arrangements of the other world the\nleading features of their earthly experience of natural, domestic,\njudicial, and political evils. The hells of the inhabitants of the\nfrigid zones are icy and rocky; those of the inhabitants of the\ntorrid zones are fiery and sandy. Are not the poetic process and\nits sophistry clear? Nastrond, the hell of the Northmen, is a\nvast, hideous and grisly dwelling, its walls built of adders whose\nheads, turned inward, continually spew poison which forms a lake\nof venom wherein all thieves, cowards, traitors, perjurers and\nmurderers, eternally swim. Is this revelation, science, logic, or\nis it mythology?\n\nThe Egyptian priests taught, and the people seemed to have\nimplicitly trusted the tale, that there was a long series of hells\nawaiting the disembodied souls of all who had not scrupulously\nobserved the ritual prescribed for them, and secured the pass\nwords and magical formulas necessary for the safe completion of\nthe post mortal journey. The specifications and pictures of the\nterrors and distresses provided in the various hells are vivid in\nthe extreme, including ingenious paraphrases of every sort of\npenalty and pang known in Egypt. The same thing may be affirmed\nwith quadruple emphasis of the Hindu doctrine of future\npunishment. In the Hindu hells, truly, the possibilities of horror\nare exhausted. To enumerate their sufferings in anything like\ntheir own detail would require a large volume. The Vishnu Parana\nnames twenty eight distinct hells, assigning each one to a\nparticular class of sinners; and it adds that there are hundreds\nof others, in which the various classes of offenders undergo the\npenalties of their misdeeds. There are separate hells for thieves,\nfor liars, for those who kill a cow, for those who drink wine, for\nthose who insult a priest, and so on. Some of the victims are\nchained to posts of red hot steel and lashed with flexible flames:\nothers are forced to devour the most horrible filth. Some are\nmangled and eaten by ravenous birds, others are squeezed into\nchests of fire and locked up for millions of years. These examples\nmay serve as a small specimen of the infernal ingenuity displayed\nin the descriptions of the Hindu hells, which are all of one\nsubstantial pattern, however varied in the embroidery.\n\nThe Parsees hold that when a bad man dies his soul remains by the\nbody three days and nights, seeing all the sins it has ever\ncommitted, and anxiously crying, \"Whither shall I go? Who will\nsave me?\" On the fourth day devils come and thrust the bad soul\ninto fetters and lead it to the bridge that reaches from earth to\nheaven. The warder of the bridge weighs the deeds of the wicked\nsoul in his balance, and condemns it. The devils then fling the\nsoul down and beat it cruelly. It shrieks and groans, struggles,\nand calls for help; but all in vain. It is forced on toward hell,\nwhen it is suddenly met by a hideous and hateful maiden. It\ndemands, \"Who art thou, O, maiden, uglier and more detestable than\nI ever saw in the world?\" She replies, \"I am no maiden; I am thine\nown wicked deeds, O, thou hateful unbeliever furnished with bad\nthoughts and words.\" After further disagreeable adventures, the\nsoul is plunged into the abode of the devil, where the darkness\nand foul odor are so thick that they can be grasped. Fed with\nhorrid viands, such as snakes, scorpions, poison, there the wicked\nsoul must remain until the day of resurrection.\n\nNow, no enlightened Christian scholar or thinker will hesitate\nwith one stroke to brush away all the details of these pagan\ndescriptions of hell, as so much mythological rubbish, leaving\nnothing of them but the bare truth that there is a retribution for\nthe guilty soul in the future as in the present. But, in the\necclesiastical doctrine of hell, prevalent in Christendom, we see\nthe full equivalents of the baseless fancies and superstitions\nincorporated in these other doctrines. If the mythological hells\nof the heathen nations are not a revelation from God, neither is\nthat of the Christians; for they are fundamentally alike, all\nillustrating the same fallacy of the imaginative association of\nthings known, and the transference of them to things unknown. Not\na single argument can the Christian urge in behalf of his local\nhell which the Scandinavian, the Egyptian, the Hindu or the\nPersian, would not urge in behalf of his.\n\nWe can actually trace the historic development of the orthodox\nbelief in a material hell from its simple beginning to its\nsubsequent monstrousness of detail. The Hebrew Sheol or\nunderworld, the common abode of the dead, is depicted in the Old\nTestament as a vast, slumberous, shadowy, subterranean realm,\ngloomy and silent. It grew out of the grave in this manner. The\ndead man was buried in the ground. The imagination of the\nsurvivors followed him there and brooded on the idea of him there.\nThe image of him survived in their minds, as a free presence\nexisting and moving wherever their conscious thought located him.\nThe grave expanded for him, and one grave opened into another\nadjoining one, and shade was added to shade in the cavernous space\nthus provided; just as the sepulchres were associated in the\nburial place, and as the family of the dead were associated in the\nrecollection of the remaining members. Thus Sheol was an\nimaginative dilatation of the grave.\n\nBut it was dark and still; an obscure region of painless rest and\npeace. How came the notions of punishment, fire, brimstone, and\nkindred imagery, to be connected with it? We might safely say in\ngeneral that these ideas were joined with the supposed world of\nthe dead, by the Hebrews, in the same way that a similar result\nhas been reached by almost every other civilized nation, that is,\nby a reflection into the future state of the retributive terrors\nexperienced here. Since the sharpest torture known to us in this\nworld is that inflicted by fire, it is perfectly natural that men,\nin imagining the punishments to be inflicted on his victims in the\nnext world by one who has at his command all possible modes of\npain, should think of the application of fire there. But happily,\nwe are not left to this possible conjecture.\n\nFew influences sank more deeply into the Hebrew mind then the\nlegend how the earth opened her mouth and swallowed into Sheol,\nKorah and Dathan and Abiram, the rebels against the authority of\nMoses, at the same time that fire fell from Jehovah and consumed\ntwo hundred and fifty of their confederates. In this story,\nrebellion against a prophet of God, fire and submersion in Sheol,\nare fused into one thought as a type of the future punishment of\nthe wicked.\n\nBut another narrative has been of far greater importance in this\ndirection, namely, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. The\nCities of the Plain were situated on a sulphur freighted and\nvolcanic soil. They were inhabited by a people specially abandoned\nto vices, and specially odious to the chosen people of God. When a\nterrible eruption took place, overwhelming those cities with all\ntheir people, and swallowing them under a flood of bituminous\nflame, ashes and gas, it was natural that the Hebrews in after\ntime should say that Jehovah had rained fire and brimstone from\nheaven on his enemies, and then that the history should take form\nin their proud and pious imaginations as a fixed type of the doom\nof the wicked. So it did.\n\nAt a later period the scenes and events in Gehenna, or the Valley\nof Hinnom in the outskirts of Jerusalem, confirmed this tendency\nand completed the Jewish picture of hell. In this detested vale\nthe worship of Moloch was once celebrated by roasting children\nalive in the brazen arms of the god, in whose hollow form a fierce\nfire was kept up, and around whose shrine gongs were beaten and\nhymns howled to drown the shrieks of the victims. Here all the\nrefuse and offal of the city was carried and consumed, in a\nconflagration whose fire was never quenched, and amidst an\nuncleanness whose worms never died. This imagery, too, was cast\nover into the future state as a representation of the fate\nawaiting the wicked.\n\nStill further, it was the custom of some Oriental kings to have\ncriminals of an especially revolting character, or the objects of\ntheir own particular hatred, flung into a furnace of fire, and\nthere burned alive before the eyes of their judges. The example of\nthis given in the Book of Daniel, where Nebuchadnezzar had the\nfurnace heated seven times hotter than was wont, and ordered\nShadrach, Meshach and Abednego cast into it, furnished both the\nJews and the Christians with another type of the punishment of\nhell. So striking an image could hardly fail to take effect, and\nto be often reproduced. It occurs repeatedly in the New Testament.\nThe old dragon, the devil, as the Apocalypse says, is to be\nchained and cast into a furnace of fire. In the writings of the\nChurch fathers, and in the visions of the monks of the Middle Age,\nthis image constantly occupies a conspicuous place. And thus,\nfinally, the common notion of hell became an underground world of\nburning brimstone, an enormous furnace or lake of fire, full of\nfiends and shrieking souls.\n\nTundale, an Irish monk of the Twelfth century, describes the devil\nin the midst of hell, fastened to a blazing gridiron by red hot\nchains, The screams echo from the rafters, but with his hands he\nseizes lost souls, crushes them like grapes between his teeth, and\nwith his breath draws them down the fiery caverns of his throat.\nSome of the damned the chronicler describes as suspended by their\ntongues, some sawn asunder, some alternately plunged into caldrons\nof fire and baths of ice, some gnawed by serpents, some beaten on\nan anvil and welded into one mass, some boiled and strained\nthrough a cloth. The defenders of the orthodox doctrine of hell\nwill admit that this terrible picture is mere mythology; but they\nwill say it is the product of a benighted age, and long since\noutgrown. Yet it is no more mythological than the declarations in\nthe Apocalypse which are still literally accredited by multitudes\nof the believing. And what shall be said of the following extract\nfrom a little book called \"The Sight of Hell,\" recently published\nwith high ecclesiastical endorsement, for circulation among the\nchildren of Great Britain and America? The writer, the Rev. J.\nFurniss, describes the different dungeons of hell, and the passage\nwhich we quote is but a fair specimen of the entire series of\ntracts which he has collected in a volume, and which is having a\nlarge sale at this very time. \"In the middle of the fourth dungeon\nthere is a boy. His eyes are burning like two burning coals. Two\nlong flames come out of his ears. He opens his mouth, and blazing\nfire rolls out. But listen! there is a sound like a kettle\nboiling. The blood is boiling in the scalded veins of that boy.\nThe brain is boiling and bubbling in his head. The marrow is\nboiling in his bones. There is a little child in a red hot oven.\nHear how it screams to come out. See how it turns and twists\nitself about in the fire. It beats its head against the roof of\nthe oven. It stamps its little feet on the floor. Very likely God\nsaw that this child would get worse and worse, and never repent,\nand thus would have to be punished much more in hell. So God in\nhis mercy called it out of the world in its early childhood.\" Of\nthese diabolical horrors, drawn out through hundreds of pages, the\northodox Protestant may say, \"Oh, this is only a piece of Popish\nsuperstition. We all repudiate it as a most repulsive and absurd\nfancy.\"\n\nWell, what then will he say if representations, though perhaps not\nquite so grossly graphic in circumstance, yet absolutely identical\nin principle, are set before him from the fresh utterances of\nhundreds of the most distinguished Baptist, Methodist,\nPresbyterian, Episcopalian preachers and theologians? It would be\neasy to present whole volumes of apposite citations. But two or\nthree will be enough. John Henry Newman in that one of his\nparochial sermons, entitled, \"On the Individuality of the Soul,\"\ngives us accounts of hell which for unshrinking detail of\nmateriality will compare with the most frightful passages of\nOriental mythology. George Bull, Lord Bishop of Saint Davids, in\nhis volume of sermons declares that all who die with any sin\nunrepented of, \"are immediately consigned to a place and state of\nirreversible misery a place of horrid darkness where there shines\nnot the least glimmering of light or comfort.\" Mr. Spurgeon\nasserts, \"There is a real fire in hell a fire exactly like that\nwhich we have on earth, except that it will torture without\nconsuming. When thou diest thy soul will be tormented alone in\nhell: but at the day of judgment thy body shall join thy soul, and\nthen thou wilt have twin hells, body and soul together, each\nbrimfull of pain; thy soul sweating in its inmost pores drops of\nblood, and thy body, from head to foot, suffused with agony; not\nonly conscience, judgment, memory, all tormented, but thy head\ntormented with racking pain, thine eyes starting from their\nsockets with sights of blood and woe; thine ears tormented with\nhorrid noises; thy heart beating high with fever; thy pulse\nrattling at an enormous rate in agony; thy limbs cracking in the\nfire, and yet unburned; thyself put in a vessel of hot oil,\npained, yet undestroyed. Ah! fine lady, who takest care of thy\ngoodly fashioned face, that fair face shall be scarred with the\nclaws of fiends. Ah! proud gentleman, dress thyself in goodly\napparel for the pit; come to hell with powdered hair. It ill\nbecomes you to waste time in pampering your bodies when you are\nonly feeding them to be devoured in the flame. If God be true, and\nthe Bible be true, what I have said is the truth, and you will\nfind it one day to be so.\" Is not this paragraph a disgusting\ncombination of ignorance and arrogance? It is to be swept aside\nand forgotten along with the immense mass of similar trash,\nloathsome mixture of superstition and conceit, with which\nChristendom has for these many centuries been so cruelly deceived\nand surfeited.\n\nTearing off and throwing away from the vulgar doctrine of hell all\nthe incrustation of material errors and poetic symbolism, the pure\ntruth remains that God will forever see that justice is done,\nvirtue rewarded, vice punished. Then the question arises, In what\nway is this done? Not by the material apparatus of a local hell.\nFor the doctrine of such a penal abode is not only a natural\nproduct of the mythological action of the human mind in its\ndevelopment through the circumstances of history, but when\nregarded in that light it is clearly a false representation. It is\na figment incredible to any vigorous, educated and free\n\nmind at the present day. Such reception as it now has it retains\nby force of an unthinking submission to tradition and authority.\nIn the primitive ages, when the soul was imagined to be a fac\nsimile of the body, only of a more refined substance, capable of\nbecoming visible as a ghost, of receiving wounds, of uttering\nfaint shrieks when hurt, of partaking of physical food and\npleasure, it was perfectly natural to believe it susceptible of\nmaterial imprisonment and material torments. Such was the common\nbelief when the doctrine of a physical hell was wrought out. The\ndoctrine yet lingers by sheer force of prescription and\nunthinkingness, when the basis on which it originally rested has\nbeen dissipated. We know great as our ignorance is, we know that\nthe soul is a pure immateriality. Its manifestations depend on\ncertain physical organs and accompaniments, but are not identical\nwith them. Thought, feeling, will, action, force, desire, these\nare spirit, and not matter. A pure consciousness cannot be shut up\nin a dungeon under lock and bolt. A wish cannot be lashed with a\nwhip. A volition cannot be fastened in chains of iron. You may\ncrush or blast the visible organism in connection with which the\nsoul now acts; but no hammer can injure an idea, no flame scorch a\nsentiment. What the spiritual personality becomes, how it exists,\nwhat it is susceptible of, when disembodied, no man knows. It is\nidle for any man, or any set of men to pretend to know.\nUnquestionably it is not capable of material confinement and\npenalties. The gross popular doctrine of hell as the fiery prison\nhouse of the devil and his angels, and the condemned majority of\nmankind, therefore, fades into thin air and vanishes before the\ntruth of the absolute spirituality of mind.\n\nIn those early times, when military, political, judicial and\nconvivial phenomena furnished the most imposing and instructive\nphenomena, before exact science and critical philosophy had given\nus their fitter moulds and tests of thought, it was unavoidable\nthat men should think of God and Satan as two hostile monarchs,\neach having his own empire and striving to secure his own\nsubjects, and looking on the subjects of his adversary as foes to\nbe thwarted at all points. But when, with the progress of thought\nevil is discerned to be a negation, the devil vanishes as a verbal\nphantom, and the bounds of his local realm are blotted out and\nblent in the single dominion of the infinite God who regards none\nas enemies, but is the steady friend and ruler of all creatures,\neverywhere aiming, not to inflict vengeance on the wicked, but to\nharmonize the discordant, bringing good out of bad and better out\nof good in perpetual evolution. Sound theology will see that God\nis the pervading Creator who governs all from within by the\ncontinuous action and reaction between every life and its\nenvironing conditions. But mythology puts in place of this the\nincompetent conception of God as a political king, governing by\nexternal edicts and agents, by overt decrees and constables. This\ndeludes us with the local and material hell of superstition, which\nhas no existence in reality. Disordered Function is the open\nturnpike and metropolis of the real hell of experience. The great\nking's highway, leading to heaven from every point in the universe\nis the golden Mean of Virtue; but on the right and left of this\nbroad road two tributary rivers, namely, Defect and Excess, empty\ninto hell. The only true hell is the vindicating and remedial\nreturn of resisted law on a being out of tune with some just\ncondition of his nature and destiny. The fearful cruelty and\ntyranny of the mythological hell, supported by the constant\ndrilling of the people on the part of the priesthood whose vested\ninterests and prejudices are bound up in the doctrine, have held\nthe human race long enough in their bondage of pain and terror. In\na Buddhist scripture we read, \"The people in hell who are immersed\nin the Lohakumbha, a copper caldron a thousand miles in depth,\nboiling and bubbling like rice grains in a cooking pot, once in\nsixty thousand years descend to the bottom and return to the top.\nAs they reach the surface they utter one syllable of prayer, and\nsink again on their terrific journey. Those who, during their life\non earth, reverence the three jewels, Buddha, the Law and the\nPriesthood, will escape Lohakumbha!\" The same essential doctrine\nresting on the same inveterate basis, selfish love of power and\nsensation, still prevails, though diminishingly, among us. When at\nlast in the light of reason and a pure faith it vanishes away what\na long breath of relief Christendom and humanity will draw!\n\nIf we thus dismiss as a vulgar error the belief in a hell which is\na bounded region of physical torture somewhere in outward space,\nit becomes us to acquire in place of this rejected figment some\nmore just and adequate idea. For a doctrine which has played such\na tremendous part in the religious history of the world must be\nbased on a truth, however travestied and overlaid that truth may\nbe. This frightful envelop of superstitious fictions cannot be\nwithout some important reality within. In distinction, then, from\nthe monstrous mass of mistakes denoted by it, what is the truth\ncarried in the awful word, hell?\n\nDenying hell to be distinctively any particular locality in time\nand space, we affirm it to be an experience resulting wherever the\nspiritual conditions of it are furnished. Accordingly, we are not\nto exclude it from the present state and confine it to the future,\nas those seem to do who say that men go to hell after death. Being\na personal experience and not a material place, many are in it now\nand here as much as they ever will be anywhere. Neither are we to\nexclude it from the future and confine it to the present state, as\nthose do who say that all the hell there is terminates with the\nemergence of the soul from the body. This might be so, if all sins\ndiscords and retributions were bodily. But, plainly, they are not.\nA mental chaos or inversion of order is as possible as a physical\none. Hell is anywhere or nowhere, at any time or at no time,\naccordingly as the soul carries or does not carry its conditions.\nWe are not to say of the sinner that he goes to hell when he dies,\nbut that hell comes to him when he feels the returns of his evil\ndeeds. It is a state within rather than a place without.\n\nThe true meaning of hell is, a state of painful opposition to the\nwill of God, misadjustment of personal constitution with universal\norder or the rightful conditions of being. This is not, as the\nvulgar doctrine would make it, an experience of unvarying sameness\ninto which all its subjects are indiscriminately flung. It is a\nthing of endless varieties and degrees, varying with the\nindividual fitnessess. Hell is pain in the senses, slavery in the\nwill, contradiction or confusion in the intellect, remorse or vain\naspiration in the conscience, disproportion or ugliness in the\nimagination, doubt, fear, and hate in the heart. There is a hell\nof remorse, forever retreading the path of ruined yesterdays.\nThere is a hell of loss, whose occupant stands gazing on the\nmelancholy might have been transmuted now into a relentless\nnevermore. Every sinner has a hell as original and idiosyncratic\nas his soul and its contents. As the ingredients of evil\nexperience are not mixed alike in any, hell cannot be one\nmonotonous fixture for all, but must be a process altering with\nthe different elements and degrees afforded, and softening or\nending its wretchedness in proportion as the heavenly elements and\ndegrees of freedom, pleasure, clearness, self approval, beauty,\nfaith and love, furnish the conditions of blessedness. Hell being\nthe consciousness of a soul in which private will is antagonistic\nto some relation of universal law, its keenness and extent, in\nevery instance, must be measured by the variations of this\nantagonism. But how does such an antagonism arise? What are the\nresults or penalties of it? How can it be remedied? No amount of\nreflection will enable any man to penetrate to the bottom of all\nthe mysteries connected with these questions. But though we cannot\ntell why the principles of our destiny should be as we find them,\nwe can see what the facts of the case actually are as revealed in\nthe history of human experience. And this is what chiefly concerns\nus. Let us, then, try to penetrate a little more thoroughly into\nthe nature of hell.\n\nThe rude definition of heaven and hell, regardless of any special\nplace or time, is respectively the experience of good, and the\nexperience of evil. But what are good and evil? Good is the\nconscious realization of universal order, the absolute fruition of\nbeing, the fulfillment of individual function, in accordance with\nthe conditions for the most perfect and prolonged fulfillment of\nthe universal totality of functions. Supposing that there were\nonly one instance and form of conscious life, with no possibility\nof conflicting claims within or without, then good would be to\nthat life simply the fulfillment of the functions of its nature.\nBut the moment a being is set in relation with other beings like\nitself, and also made aware of various gradations of importance\namong its own interior faculties, then the definition of good is\nno longer the simple fulfillment of function, or the mere\ngratification of desire; but it becomes the fulfillment of\nfunction in such a manner as to secure the greatest total quality\nand quantity of fulfilled function. Now evil is the opposite or\nnegation of this. It is whatever lessens the fruition of life,\nprevents the fulfillment of function, contracts or mars the\nrealization of universal order in the consciousness of a living\nbeing. Thus evil is not merely the keeping of an individual desire\nfrom its own proper good. But every gratification of desire which\ninvolves the winning of a less important good at the expense of a\nmore important one is evil; or, on the other hand, the evil of\nsacrificing or denying a gratification in itself legitimate,\nbecomes good when it is the means for securing a more authoritative\ngratification. Let us try to make these abstract statements\nintelligible by illustration.\n\nThe appropriation of nutriment is a good, the indispensable method\nfor sustaining life. It is right that we should eat and drink; and\nthe pleasure which accompanies the proper performance of the\nfunction is the reflex approval of the Creator. The refusal fitly\nto take and relish our food brings debility, disease, pain, and\npremature death. Whether this refusal results from absorption in\nother employment or from some superstitious belief, it is a\nviolation of the will of our Maker, and the consequent suffering\nand dissolution are the retributive hell or reflex signals,\npainfully pointing out our duty. On the other hand, if the\npleasure of gratifying appetite becomes a motive for its own sake\nand leads to excessive indulgence, the superior good of permanent\nhealth and vigor is sacrificed to the far inferior transient good\nof a tickled palate. Thus, the dyspeptic over loading his stomach\nis plunged into the horrid hell of nightmare: the gourmand,\npampering himself with a diet of spiced meats and Burgundy,\nshrieks from the twinging hell of gout. There is no divine malice\nin this. It is simply the rectifying rebound of the distorted\narrangements of nature. The law of virtue prescribes in every\nrespect that course of action which, on the whole, permanently and\nuniversally, will secure the greatest amount and the best quality\nof life and experience. Vice is whatever inverts or interferes\nwith this, as when a man exalts a physical impulse above a moral\nfaculty, or incurs years of shame and misery in the future for the\nsake of some passing gratification in the present. God commands\nman to rule his passions by reason, not slavishly obey them; to\nexercise a wisely proportioned self denial to day for the winning\nof a safer and nobler morrow. The degree in which they do this\nmeasures the civilization, wisdom, moral valor, and dignity of\nmen. The failure to do this is the condition on which every\ninfernal penalty or reaction of hellish experience hinges. A man\nmay feed an abnormal craving for opium, until all his once royal\npowers of body and mind are sacrificed, imbecility and madness set\nin, and his nervous system becomes a darting box of torments. How\nmuch better, according to the aphorism of Jesus, to have cut off\nthis single desire, than for the whole man to be thus cast into\nhell.\n\nHell is the retributive reflex or return of disarranged order\nexperienced when in the hieriarchy of man higher grades of faculty\nand motive are subordinated to lower ones. The miser who gives\nhimself up to a base greed for money, separated from its uses, is\nthereby degraded into a mechanized, self fed and self consuming\npassion, having no pleasure, except that of accumulating, hoarding\nand gloating over the idle emblem of a good never realized. His\ntime and life, his very brain and heart, are coined into an\nobscene dream of money. He knows nothing of the grandest ranges of\nthe universe, nothing of the sweetest delights of humanity.\nContracted, stooping, poorly clad, ill fed, self neglected,\ndespised by everybody, dwelling alone in a bleak and squalid\nchamber, despite his potential riches, his whole life is a\nconglomerate of impure fears welded by one sordid lust fear of\nrobbery, fear of poverty, fear of men, fear of God, fear of death,\nall fused together by a lust for money. Is he not in a competent\nhell? Who would wish anything worse for him? His vice is the\nelevation of the love of money above a thousand nobler claims. His\nunclean and odious experience is the avenging hell which warns the\nspectators, and would redeem its occupant, if he would open his\nsoul to its lessons. So, when a burglar breaks into a bank and\nbears off the treasures deposited there, scattering dismay and\nruin amidst a hundred families, the essence of his crime is that\nhe makes the narrow principle of his selfish desire paramount over\nthe broad principle of the public welfare, setting the petty good\nof his individual enrichment above the weighty good represented by\nthat respect for the right of property which is a condition\nessential to the life of the community. The principle on which he\nacts, if carried out, would cause the dissolution of society. The\nevil which he seeks to avoid, his lack of the means of life, is\nincomparably smaller than the evil he perpetrates, the means for\nthe death of society. The resulting sense of hostility between\nhimself and the community, alienation from his fellow men and from\nGod, fear of detection, actual condemnation by his own conscience,\nand ideal condemnation by all the world, constitute a hell felt in\nproportion to the delicacy of his sensibility. The spiritual\ndisturbance and pain thus suffered are the effort of Providence to\nreadjust the inverted relation of his low self interest to the\nhigher interest of the general public, and remove the threatened\nruinous consequences of his sin by remedying the order it has\ndisbalanced and broken.\n\nThese illustrations have prepared the way for a statement of the\ntrue idea of hell in its final formula. The will of God is\nexpressed in that gradation of goods or scale of ranks which\nindicates the fixed conditions of universal welfare and the\naccordant forces of the motives which should impel our pursuit of\nthem. To seek these goods in their proper order of importance and\nauthority, every level of function beneath kept subservient to\nevery one above, is the law of salvation, or the pathway of heaven\nthrough the universe. To substitute our will for the will of God,\nthe intensity of private desires in place of the dignity of public\nmotives, putting the lower and smaller over the higher and\ngreater, is the law of perdition, or the pathway of hell through\nthe universe.\n\nThe lowest function of man is a simple momentary gratification of\nsense, as, for example, an act of nutrition. The highest function\nof which his nature is capable is the surrender of himself to the\nuniversal order, the sympathetic identification of himself with\nthe eternal law and weal of the whole. Between those vast extremes\nthere are hundreds of intermediate functions, rising in worth and\nauthority from the direct gratifications of appetite to the ideal\nappropriations of transcendental good, from the titillation given\nby a pinch of snuff to the thrill imparted by an imaginative\ncontemplation of the redeemed state of humanity a million years\nahead. But, throughout the entire range, all the sin and guilt\nfrom which hell is produced consist in obeying a lower motive in\npreference to a higher one, making some narrow or selfish good\nparamount over a wider or disinterested one. A man, educated as a\nphysician, practiced his profession on scientific principles, and\nnearly starved on an income of seven hundred dollars a year. He\nthen set up as a quack, compounded a worthless nostrum, and, by\ndint of impudence, advertising, and other charlatanry, made\neighteen thousand dollars a year, and justified his conduct on the\nground of his success. By falsehood and cheating he preyed on the\ncredulity of the public. If all men were like him, society could\nnot exist. The meanness of his soul, shutting him out from the\nmost exquisite and exalted prerogatives of human nature, is the\nrevenge which the universe takes on such a man the hell in which\nGod envelops him. A manufacturer turns out certain products by\nmeans of a chemical process which adds seven per cent. to his\nprofit, but shortens the average life of his workmen five years.\nAll mankind would indignantly denounce him with an instinctive\nrecognition of his wickedness in thus erecting the profane\nstandard of pecuniary gain above the sacredness of the lives of\nhis brothers. But when of two men in deadly peril from an\napproaching explosion only one can escape, and the stronger,\ninstead of monopolizing the chance, as he might, stands back and\nlays down his life in saving the weaker, it is a deed of heroic\nvirtue, applauded by all men, supported by the whole moral\ncreation which derives new beauty and sweetness from it. It\nradiates a peaceful bliss of self approval through the breast\nbefore it is mangled and cold, and fills the soul with a serene\njoy as it flies to God. The essential merit of such an action is\nthe subjection of that selfishness which is the principle of all\nsin, and whose recoil is the spring trap of hell, to that\ndisinterestedness which is the germ of redemption and the perfume\nof heaven.\n\nIt is not an unfrequent occurrence for a mixture of heaven and\nhell to be experienced. Here is an able and upright merchant who\nis about to fail, in consequence of disasters which he could\nneither foresee nor prevent, and for which he is in no sense\nresponsible. He shrinks from bankruptcy with inexpressible shame\nand distress. He is mortified, cut to the quick, robbed of sleep,\ncan hardly look his creditors in the face. Now, he reflects, \"This\nis not my fault. I have been honest, prudent, economical,\nunwearied in effort, I have done my duty to the best of my\nability. God approves me, and all good men would if they knew the\nexact facts.\" If that assurance does not shed an element of heaven\ninto his hell, spread a soothing veil of light and oil over his\nstormy trouble, then it is because his pride is greater than his\nself respect, his vanity more keen than his conscience is strong,\nhis regard for appearances more influential than his knowledge of\nthe truth. And in that case the misery he suffers is the penalty\nof his excessive self sensitiveness.\n\nThe elements of hell are pain, slavery, imprisonment, rebellion,\nforced exertion, forced inaction, shame, fear, self condemnation,\nsocial condemnation, universal condemnation, aimlessness, and\ndespair. He who seeks good only in the just order of its\nsuccessive standards, gratifying no lower function, except in\nsubservience to the higher ones, escapes these experiences, feels\nthat he fulfills his destiny, and is an approved freeman of God.\nThe service of truth and good alone makes free; all service of\nevil is slavery and wretchedness. For freedom is spontaneous\nobedience to that which has a right to command. The thirsty man\nwho quaffs a glass of cold water does an act of liberty; but he\nwho constantly intoxicates himself in satiation of a morbid and\ndespotic appetite, knows that he is a slave, and feels condemned,\nand chafes in the hell of his bondage.\n\nThe dissipated sluggards and thieves who feed the vices and prey\non the interests of the community, writhe under the rebuke of the\nhigher laws they break in enthroning their selfish propensities\nabove the cardinal standards of the public good; and in the stale\nmonotony of their indulgences, they know nothing of the glorious\nzest shed by the best prizes of existence into the breasts of the\nvirtuous and aspiring, whom every day finds farther advanced on\ntheir way to perfection. Envy is the very blast that blows the\nforge of hell. It sets its victim in painful antagonism with all\ngood not his own, actually turning it into evil; while a generous\nsympathy appropriates as its own all the foreign good it\ncontemplates. The sight of his successful rival keeps an envious\nman in a chronic hell, but adds a heavenly enjoyment to the\nexperience of a generous friend. Ignorance, pride, falsehood, and\nhate are the four master keys to the gates of hell keys which\nsinners are ever unwittingly using to let themselves in, and then\nto lock the bolts behind.\n\nA character whose spontaneous motions are upward and outward, from\nthe central and lowermost instincts of self toward the highest and\nouter most apprehensions of good, exemplifies the law of\nsalvation, which guides the conscious soul in an ascending and\nexpanding spiral through the successively greater spheres of truth\nand life. The character whose spontaneous tendencies are the\nreverse of this, moving inward and downward, exemplifies the law\nof perdition, which guides the soul in a descending and\ncontracting spiral, constantly enslaving it to lower and viler\nattractions of self in preference to letting it freely serve the\nsuperior ranks forever issuing their redemptive behests and\ninvitations above. When the members of a family erect their\nseparate wills as independent laws, instead of harmoniously\nblending around a common authority of truth and love, when they\nlive in incessant collisions and stormy insubordination, a\npoisonous fret of irritable vanity gnawing their heart strings, a\nfiery sleet of hate and scorn hurtling through the domestic\natmosphere, the whole household are in perdition. Their home is a\nconcentrated hell. To be without love, without soothing attentions\nand encouragements, without fresh aims, and a relishing\nalternation of work and rest, without progress and hope, to be\ndeprived of the legitimate gratifications of the functions of our\nbeing, and compelled to suffer their opposites what closer\ndefinition of hell can there be than this? And this, while avoided\nor neutralized by virtue, is, in its various degrees, obviously\nthe inevitable result and penalty of sin.\n\nThe great mistake in the popular view or mythological doctrine of\nhell has arisen from conceiving of God under the image of a\npolitical ruler, acting from without, by wilful methods, and\ninflicting arbitrary judgments on his rebellious subjects. He\nshould be conceived as the dynamic Creator, acting from within,\nthrough the intrinsic order and laws of things, for the\ninstruction and guidance of his creatures. His condemnation is the\ninevitable culmination of a discordant state of being, rather than\nthe verdict of a vindictive judge or the sentence of a forensic\nmonarch. Every retribution is an impinge of the creature in the\ncreation, and, so far from expressing destructive wrath, is an act\nof the self rectifying mechanism of the universe to readjust the\npart with the whole. With what pernicious folly, what cruel\nsuperstition, men have attributed their own miserable passions to\ntheir imperturbable Maker, breaking his infinite perfection into\nall sorts of frightful shapes, as seen through the blur and\neffervescence of their own imperfections! So the sun seems to go\ndown with his garments rolled in blood, and to set angrily in a\nstormy ocean of fire: but really the great lamp of the universe\nshines serenely from the unalterable fixture of his central seat,\nand all this spectral tempest of blaze and glare is but a\nrefraction of his beams through our vexed atmosphere.\n\nGod being infinitely perfect, does not change his dispositions and\nmodes of action like a fickle man. His intentions and deeds are\nthe same here and everywhere, now and always. If we wish to learn\nin what manner God will prepare a hell and punish the impenitent\nwicked after death, we must not, as men did in the barbaric and\nmythological ages, make an induction from the treatment of\ncriminals by capricious and revengeful rulers in this world; we\nmust see how God himself now treats his disobedient children for\ntheir demerits here, assured that his eternal temper and method\nare identical with his temporal temper and method.\n\nWell, then, how does God treat offenders now? Incapable of anger\nor caprice, he retains his own steady procedures and absolute\nserenity unaltered, but leaves the culprits to endure the effects\nof their perverted bearing towards him and towards the order he\nhas established.\n\nIf a man lies or defiles himself, or blasphemes, or murders, God\ndoes not dash him from a cliff or cast him into a furnace of fire.\nThere would be no connection of cause and effect in\n\nthat; and to suppose it, is a gross superstition. He leaves the\noffender to the reactions of his own acts, the discordant vileness\nof his own degradation, the devouring return of his own passions,\nto punish him for his sin, and to purge him of his wrong. The true\nretribution of every wicked deed is contained in the recalcitration\nof its own motive. What fitter penalty can the soul suffer than\nthat of being embraced in the hellish atmosphere of its own bad spirit,\nto teach it to reform itself and cultivate a better spirit?\n\nWhat, then, is the meaning of the fear, suffering and horror,\nwhich so often accompany or follow sin? They do not, as has been\ncommonly supposed, express the indignation and revengefulness of\nGod. No, at their very darkest, they must suggest the shadow of\nhis aggrieved will, not the lurid frown of his rage. A part of the\ndiscord which sin is and introduces, they denote the remedial\nstruggles of nature and grace to restore the perverted being to\nits normal condition. If you put your finger in the fire the\nburning pain is the reaction of your act, and that pain is not\nvengeance, but preservative education. When some frightful disease\nseizes on a man, the inflammation and convulsions which succeed\nare the violent spring of the constitution on the enemy, its\ndesperate attempt to shake off the fell grasp, and bring the\norganism to health and peace again. These efforts either succeed,\nor in the exhausting shocks the body is destroyed. It is the same\nwith the soul. Sin is the displacement of the hierarchy of\nauthorities in the soul, the misbalancing of its energies, the\ndisturbance of its health and peace. And all the varieties of\nretribution are the recoil of the injured faculties, the struggles\nof the insulted authorities, to vindicate and reestablish\nthemselves. Now, these efforts, if the soul is indestructible,\nmust always, at last, be successful. Health in the body is the\nharmonious adjustment of its energies with its conditions; and a\nsufficient modicum must be obtained or death ensues. Virtue in the\nsoul is the harmony of its powers with the laws of God; the\nmeasure of this is the measure of spiritual life; and granting the\nsoul to be immortal, the tendency towards a complete measure of\nvirtue must ultimately become irresistible, and every hell at last\nterminate in paradise. The persistent forces or laws of the divine\nenvironment steadily tend to draw the unstable forces or passions\nof all creatures into harmony with them, and that harmony is\nredemption. Perdition is consequently never, as the ecclesiastical\ndoctrine makes it always, a state of fixed hopelessness. Though we\nmake our bed in the nethermost hell, God is there. And wherever\nGod is, penitence and grace, reformation and pardon, have a right\nof eminent domain between him and the souls of his children.\n\nAccording to the common doctrine of hell as a physical locality,\nand the predestination of all men to it through the sin of Adam,\nbirth is a universal gateway of perdition, the whole world one\nopen course to damnation for all except the few elected to be\nsaved through the blood of Christ. The orthodox scheme depicts the\nlineage of Adam as a dark river of perdition, choked with the\nsouls of the damned, steadily pouring into hell ever since our\nhuman generations began. But in addition to the refutation of this\nterrible belief by its monstrous moral iniquity, science is now\ndoubly refuting it by the proof of the existence of the human race\non the earth for unnumbered centuries before the Biblical date of\nAdam. So this fictitious gate of a fictitious hell is shut and\nabolished. With it vanishes the horrible picture of this world as\nfloored with omnipresent trap doors to the bottomless pit, and\nclosed fatally around by a dead wall of doom, through which, by\none bloody orifice alone, the believers in the vicarious atonement\ncould crawl up into heaven. In place of this, we see the whole\nuniverse as one open House of God, traversed in all directions by\nthe free entries of laws of intrinsic justice and love.\n\nAnd so of the remaining theoretic gates of hell, unbelief, ritual\nneglect, and the other technicalities on which priests and deluded\nzealots have always hinged the perdition of such as heed not their\nauthority; none of them shall much longer prevail. With the wiping\nout of the mythological hell all these fanciful entrances to it\nlikewise disappear. But instead of these visionary ones we should\npoint out and warn men from the substantial gates of the true\nhell. Whatever is a cause of insubordinate and discordant fruition\nin body or soul, individual or community, is a real gate of hell.\nAll the moral and social evils, intemperance, war, ambition,\navarice, the extremes of poverty and wealth, ignorance, bad\nexample, despotism, disease, every form of vice or crime, all the\ninfluences that destroy or mar human virtue, excellence, and\nharmony, are so many open gates of hell, drawing their victims in.\nIn holding back those who are approaching these fatal gates, in\ntrying to contract them, to shut them up here is a vital work to\nbe done, infinitely more promising than the brandishing of the\nterrors of that material hell in which sensible men can no longer\nbelieve. For the only true hell is the remedial vibration of truth\nin an uncoordinated soul, even when not remedial for the\nindividual still remedial for the race.\n\nIt is not our outward abode, but our inmost spirit, that makes our\nexperience infernal or heavenly: for, in the last result, it is\nthe occupying spirit that moulds the environment, not the\nhabitation that determines the tenant. This is the substance of\nthe whole matter. An accomplished chemist, who was a good man in\ntruth, but a heretic by the standard of orthodoxy, died. Being an\nunbeliever, of course, he went to hell. Seeing a group of children\nin torment there, he pitied them very deeply, and straightway\nbegan to devise measures, by means of his skill in chemical\nscience, to shield them from the flame. Instantly the whole scene\nchanged. The beauty of heaven lay around him, and all its\nblandness breathed through him. Forgetting his own sufferings in\nsympathy for those of others, he had obeyed the law of virtue,\nsubjecting a selfish desire to a disinterested one; and the\nomnipotent God enveloped him with the heaven of his own spirit.\nAnother man, who was hard and cruel in character, but perfectly\nsound in the orthodox faith and observances, died. It is true he\nwas an avaricious and hard saint, but then he believed in the\natoning blood; and so, of course, he went to heaven. No sooner did\nhe find himself safely seated in bliss than he tried to peep over\nthe golden wall into the pit of perdition, in order to heighten\nthe relish of his favored lot by the contrast of the agonies of\nthe lost. Instantly the celestial scenery about him was changed\ninto infernal, and, by the radiation and return of his own bad\nspirit, he found himself plunged into hell and writhing under its\nretributive experience. His character exemplified the law of\nperdition, enthroning selfishness over disinterestedness,\nsubverting the order of virtue; and the insulted will of God made\nhis imagined heaven a real hell.\n\nHell is revealed in the experience of the world as a diminishing\nquantity through the successive periods since war, cannibalism and\nslavery were universal. Will not the progressive process terminate\nin the utter extinction of it, paradise everywhere steadily\nencroaching on purgatory until at last the whole universe of matter\nand spirit composes an unbroken heaven?\n\nAccording to the nebular hypothesis, the entire creation was once\na measureless chaos  confusion, conflict, collisions, explosions,\nmaking a universal hell of matter. But the discords and\nperturbations grew ever less and less, regularity and order more\nand more, as suns and planets and moons took form and wheeled in\ntheir gleaming circles, till now the mazy web of worlds is weaving\nthroughout space the perfect harmony of the creative design. The\nevolution of incarnate spiritual destinies began later, and is\nmore complex than the material, each mind being as complicated as\nthe whole galaxy. May we not trust that at last it shall be as\ncomplete as the evolution of the astronomic motions already is,\nand a divine empire of holy and happy men be the goal of history?\nThis hope carries the cross through hell, and leaves nothing\nunredeemed.\n\nCHAPTER IV.\n\nTHE GATES OF HEAVEN; OR, THE LAW OF SALVATION IN ALL WORLDS.\n\nHEAVEN, in the crude fancy of mankind, has generally been\nconceived as a definite, exclusive, material abode; either some\nelysian clime on the surface of the earth; or some happy isle\nbeyond the setting sun; or this whole globe, renovated by fire and\npeopled with a risen and ransomed race; or else some halcyon spot\nin the sky, curtained with inaccessible splendor and crowded with\neternal blessings. It was natural that men should think thus of\nheaven as a place whence all the evils which they knew were\nexcluded and where all the goods which they knew were carried to\nthe highest pitch, God himself visibly enthroned there in\nentrancing glory amidst throngs of worshippers.\n\nThis was unavoidable, because, in an early age, before knowledge\nand reflection had trained men to the critical examination and\ncorrection of their instinctive conclusions, all the data which\nthey possessed would naturally lead them to imagine the unknown\nGod in the glorified form and circumstances of the most enviable\nbeing their experience had yet revealed to them; and to paint the\nunknown future state of perfected souls under the purest aspects\nof the most desirable boons they had known in the present state.\nIt being a necessity of their uncritical minds to personify God by\na definite picture of imagination, and to portray heaven to\nthemselves as an external place, they could not do otherwise than\nwork out the results by means of the most intense experiences and\nthe most impressive imagery familiar to them. The highest idea\nthey had of man, purified and expanded to the utmost, would be\ntheir idea of God; and the grandest and happiest conditions of\nexistence within their observation, enhanced by the removal of\nevery limiting ill, would form their notion of heaven. Both would\nbe outward, definite, local, and, as it were, tangible. Royal\ncourts with their pomp of power and luxury; priestly temples, with\ntheir exclusive sanctity, their awe inspiring secrets, their\nprocessions and anthems, would inevitably furnish the prevailing\ncasts and colors to the dogmas and the scenery of early religion.\nFor what were the most vivid of all the experiences men had among\ntheir fellows on earth? Why, the exhibitions of the sultan with\nhis gorgeous ceremonial state, and of the high priest with the\ndread sacrifice and homage he paid amidst clouds of incense and\nrolling waves of song; the admission of the favored, in glittering\nrobes, to share the privileges; the exclusion of the profane and\nvulgar in squalid misery and outer darkness. Consequently, except\nby a miracle, these sights could not fail largely to constitute\nthe scenic elements for the popular belief concerning God and\nheaven. What should men reflect over into the unknown to portray\ntheir ideals there, if not the most coveted ingredients and the\nmost impressive forms of the known? The great thing, then,\ninevitably, would be supposed to be to gain the personal favor of\nthe supreme Sovereign by some artifice, some flattery, some\nfortunate compliance with his arbitrary caprice, and to get into\nthe charmed enclosure of his abode by some special grace some\nauthoritative passport or magic art.\n\nBut as soon as science and philosophy, and a spiritual experience\nrectifying its own errors by reflective criticism, have created a\nmore competent theology it discredits all these raw schemes. It\nteaches that God, being the eternal omnipresent power and mystery\nwhich foreran, underlies, pervades and includes all things, cannot\njustly be figured as a man, locally here or there, and not\nelsewhere. He can be justly thought of only as the almighty\nCreator of the universe, intelligible in the order of his works\nand ways, but inscrutable in his essence, absent nowhere, present\neverywhere in general, and specially revealed anywhere whenever a\nfit experience in the soul awakens a special consciousness of him.\nThis conception of God the only one any longer defensible as the\nInfinite Spirit, incapable, except in his various incarnations, of\nparticular local enthronement and uncovering to the outward gaze\nof worshippers, necessitates a correspondent alteration in the\nvulgar idea of heaven as an exclusive spot in space.\n\nIn every form of being, in any portion of the universe, the\ncentral idea of a state of salvation, is the fulfillment of the\nwill of the Creator in the faculties of the creature, the fruition\nof the ends of the whole in the consciousness of the part, the\ncongruity of the forces of the soul with the requirements of its\nsituation. If this definition be accepted, it is clear that no\nmere place of residence, however excellent, can be heaven. That is\nbut one factor of heaven, and worthless without a corresponding\nfactor of a spiritual kind. Essentially, heaven is a divine\nexperience, not a divine location; yet constructively it is both\nof these. Ever so serene and pure a space, perfectly free from\nevery perturbation of ill, and surrounded with all the outer\nprovisions of power and order, would be no heaven, until a\nprepared soul entered it, furnishing the spiritual conditions for\nthe forces to run into fruition, for the melody of blissful being\nto play. The material elements of the universe, so far as we know,\nare unconscious dynamics. However perfectly marshalled, they can\nby themselves compose no heaven. So the conscious soul, as far as\nwe know, is incapable of an independent and unrelated existence in\nitself. All its experience, when ultimately analyzed, is the\nresultant of the mutual relations between its own energies and\ncapacities and the forms and forces of things outside of itself.\nWhen there is a right arrangement of right realities in the\nresidence, and a right development of faculties and affections\nwithin the resident, and such an adjustment of the spiritual\nstates with the surrounding conditions, that, as these act and\nreact upon each other, the laws of the universe break into\nconscious harmony, or the will of God is realized in a life of\nblessedness; that harmony, that blessedness, is what we mean by\nheaven; and the conditions of its realization constitute the law\nof salvation.\n\nSuch being the true idea of heaven, obviously, it cannot be\nlimited to any particular locality. It may be here, elsewhere,\nanywhere, everywhere, before death, in death, after death;\nwhenever and wherever the proper conditions meet inward state and\noutward circumstances so adjusted as to produce an experience\nwhich fulfills the will of God and realizes the end of the\ncreation. Hereafter this may be, as we know it now on earth, a\nspiritual fruition in material conditions, or it may be something\naltered in accordance with the varying exigences of worlds whose\ndetails are as yet inconceivable by us, altogether hidden behind\nthe veil of futurity and our ignorance. But its one fundamental\ncondition, its eternal essence under all circumstances which can\npossibly happen, must always be the same. Whatever changes await\nthe soul, embodied in a new form in the state after death, or\nremaining in pure disembodiment; whatever be the relation of the\nimmaterial entity of mind to the circumference and contents of its\nnew home, it can be in paradise, it can command peace and bliss,\nor any equivalent of these terms, only by the fulfillment of the\nwill of God in its being. Heaven is, therefore, the reconciliation\nand unison of the soul with its divinely appointed lot, the\nidentification of the ideal and the real.\n\nThe will of God is expressed in the soul in the submissive\nservices and virtues of a pure and pious character it is expressed\nin the outward creation by the unbreakable persistency of his laws\nthrough all the aberrations and discords of accompaning evil or\nlimitation. Nowhere can it ever be an impossibility to conjoin\nthese and thus to make a heaven. The one thing which everywhere is\nvariable and evanescent, is evil, or the imperfect adjustment of\nthe creature with the works and designs of the Creator. The one\nthing which forever stays, and steadily invites the intelligent\nsoul to its embrace, is good, that is, the opportunity to realize\nthe divinely intended correspondence of the relations in the part\nwith the relations in the whole, a serene movement of life through\nthe unison of the soul with its true fate. Now, the one predicate\nwhich is essential in all things, without whose presence nothing\ncan be, is the will of God. Even could that will be violated or\nwithstood, still it would be there, upholding, forgiving, wooing\nSalvation, or a life of conscious harmony, is capable of\nrealization, of course, wherever the means are offered for the\nperformance and enjoyment of the will of God; and the infinity of\nhis attributes necessarily makes that condition an omnipresent\npossibility in the realm of free spirits. Therefore, heaven is not\noutwardly limited to one place, or to one period, but may be\nachieved at any time, and anywhere. This throws light on the\nfallacy of the current, narrow doctrine of a limited probation.\nThe oriental belief that the action of the present is the fate of\nthe future unquestionably covers a profound truth. Yet, if there\nis always a future there must likewise always be a present, and\nthe right action in this may forever redeem that. Probation is\nlimited by no decree, only by the duration of free being.\n\nAlthough the essential element in the idea of heaven is forever\nthe same, it may be regarded in three different aspects, or on\nthree different scales as an individual experience, as a social\nstate, as a far off universal event. Heaven, as a private\nexperience, is the harmonized intercourse of the soul with the\ndivineness in its surrounding conditions. Heaven, as a public\nsociety, is the blessed communion of blessed souls, a complete\nadjustment of the lives of kindred natures. Heaven, as a final\nconsummation, is the publication of the vindicated will of God in\nthe total harmony of the universe, all individual wills so many\nseparate notes blent in the collective consonance of the whole.\n\nBut, for all practical purposes, we may overlook this triple\ndistinction and think of heaven simply as the correspondence of\nthe life of the soul with those outward conditions which represent\nthe will of God. And towards this conclusion everything, in its\nprofoundest and most persistent tendency, is bearing. In spite of\ninterruptions and seeming exceptions, it is towards this that the\nentire confluence of forces and beings gravitates and slowly\nadvances. The universal law of evolution, in which a scientific\nphilosophy has generalized its most comprehensive induction, is\nbut a history and prophecy of the progress towards a moving\nequilibrium of the totality of worlds and intelligences, which can\neventuate only in a universal heaven, or unimpeded completion of\nthe creative design.\n\nDo we not see all creatures tending towards the perfection of\ntheir respective types, every improvement selectively taken up and\ncarried on, every deteriorating deviation eliminated, all errors\nand failures doomed to perish or change into new conditions for\nmore hopeful attempts? This confirms the faith first based on the\ndeeper argument. For, since the will of God is the one persistent\nreality, the one all evolving and all inclusive power of which\nevil is only the distorted and shadowy negation, that opposition\nto the will of God which constitutes sin and misery, that discord\nwith him which generates hell, must prove an ever smaller\naccompaniment of his plan, a transitory phenomenon ceasing in even\ndegree with the spreading conquests of his almighty purpose, as\nrace on race of creatures, and system on system of worlds, sweep\ninto the victorious harmony, until the boundless realm of being\nshall be boundless heaven.\n\nHeaven, then, in essence, is not merely a favored locality, not\nmerely a resigned soul, but the result of a combination of these\nin a just relation. It is not a playing power in the material\nenvironment nor an inherent attribute of the spiritual instrument;\nbut it is the music which flows from the instrument when it is\nattuned to react in coordination with the acting environment.\nSalvation, consequently, is not simply a divine place of abode,\nnot simply a divine state of soul; but it is these two conjoined.\nIt is the experimental deposit between the two poles of rightly\nordered conditions in the realm and rightly directed energies in\nthe inhabitant. Heaven, then, in the best and briefest definition\nwe can give, is the will of God in fulfillment, or the law of the\nwhole in uncrossed action.\n\nHell is the experience produced by the rebound of violated law.\nOr, if we hold that, strictly speaking, a divine law is incapable\nof violation; as every seeming resistance to gravitation is in\nfact a deeper obedience to gravitation, then we may say, in more\naccurate phrase, hell is the collision and friction of the\nlimitations of different laws. It is the discord of the part with\nthe whole. It is the antagonism of the soul with God. But the\nperpetual preservation of a perfectly balanced antagonism with God\nis inconceivable. It must vary, totter, grow either worse or\nbetter. If it grows worse, it will finally destroy itself, the\naberrant individuality or malign insurgence vanishing in the\ntotality of force, as the filth of our sewers vanishes purely in\nthe purity of the ocean. If it grows better, its improvement will\nfinally transform the opposition into reconciliation, the evil\ndisappearing in good. Therefore, every being must at length be\nsaved from misery, if not by redemptive atonement then by\nabsolvent annihilation, and one absolute heaven finally absorb the\ndwindling hells.\n\nThe question of chief importance to us in relation to heaven is,\nHow can we gain admission into it. The limitations of language\nnecessitate the use of imagery for the expression of religious\nideas: and there is no objection to it if it be recognized as\nimagery, and be interpreted accordingly. Considering, then, that\nbeatific experience of which heaven consists, under the metaphor\nof a city, what are its ways of entrance? How can we pass to its\ncitizenship?\n\nThe obstacles to our entrance exist not in the city itself. Its\ngates are never closed. The supreme conditions of redemption are\nspiritual, and not local or material. If there be within\nno fatal impediments to the free course of the will of God, all\nouter obstacles easily give way and cease. If we are ever to know\nheaven, it is within ourselves that we must find it out. Whatever\nabolishes that internal rebellion of the soul which makes its\nexperience a purgatory, whatever replaces this confusion with an\naccord of the faculties, is a road to heaven. Whatever removes\nvices and inserts virtues in their stead, attuning us to the\neternal laws of things, leads us through some gate into paradise.\nAnd nothing else can no ceremonial artifice, no external\ntransference, no sacramental exorcism, no priestly dodge.\n\nThe same mistake generally committed in regard to the nature of\nheaven, making it a mere local residence, has been as generally\ncommitted in regard to the conditions of admission. They have been\nmade arbitrary, whereas they are intrinsic. They are inwrought\nwith the substantial laws of being. The idea of God being first\nfashioned after the image of a sultan throned in his palace amidst\nhis courtiers, ruling an empire by his whims, it was but natural\nthat heaven, and the terms of entrance there, should be in a\nsimilar manner conceived under the forms of court ceremonial with\nits capricious favoritisms. Thus it has been supposed that by the\natoning sacrifice of an incarnate person of the Godhead\nsatisfaction has been made for the sins of the world, which was\nhopelessly ruined by its original federal representative, and that\nthus a pardon was offered to those alone who mentally accept the\nformula of the correspondent belief.\n\nAccording to this view, the only open gateway of heaven is faith\nin the vicarious atonement, a baptismal passage through the blood\nof Christ. Science explodes this narrow and repulsive doctrine by\ndemonstrating its irreconcilableness alike with physical fact and\nwith moral law, first tracing the affiliated lines of our race\nback to many separate Adams in the shadows of an indeterminable\nantiquity, and then showing that the divine method of salvation is\nthrough substantial rejection of evil and appropriation of good in\npersonal character, and not through royal proclamation and\nforensic conformity.\n\nThe plan of God for the salvation of men, as its culmination is\nseen in Christ, is the exhibition of the true type of being, the\ntrue style of motive and action, for their assimilation and\nreproduction: but Calvinism, when fundamentally analyzed, reduces\nit to a monarchical manifesto and spectacular drama working its\neffects through verbal terms, acts of mental assent and gesticular\ndeeds. Every sound teaching of philosophy refutes this exclusive\nand arbitrary creed. In fact, its fictitious and mythological\nnature is obvious the moment we see that the will of God is\nrepresented in those laws of nature which are the direct\narticulations and embodiments of his eternal mind, and not in\nthose political regulations or priestly and judicial formalities\nwhich express the perverted desires and artificial devices of men.\nThe wearing of a certain dress, the bending of the knee, the\nmuttering of a phrase, may flatter an earthly sovereign and gain a\nseat at his banquets. But it is childish folly to fancy any such\nthing of God. It is absurd to suppose that he has two schemes of\ngovernment, one for the present state, another for the future; one\nfor the elect, another for the reprobate; one for those who gaze\non the spectacle of the crucifixion and make a certain sign,\nanother for those who do not. His laws, identified with the\nunchangeable nature and course of the creation, sweep in one\nunbroken order throughout immensity and eternity, awarding perfect\njustice, and perfect mercy to all alike, making the experience of\nall souls a hell or a heaven to them accordingly as they strive\nagainst or harmonize with the divine system of existence in\nwhich they have their being. The mere acceptance of a technical\ndogma, the mere performance of a ritual action, cannot adjust\na discordant character with the conditions of blessedness so\nas to reinstate an exile of heaven. To imagine that God will,\nin consideration of some technical device, place in heaven a\nman whose character fits him for hell, or, in default of that\nconventionality, place in hell a man whose character fits him\nfor heaven, is to represent him as acting on an eccentric whim.\nAnd surely every one who has a worthy idea of God must find\nit much easier to believe that men have mixed mythological\ndreams with their religion, than to believe that the infinite\nGod is capable of despotic freaks or melo dramatic caprices.\n\nThe poor, odious figment that baptism with the blood of Christ\nis the sole entrance to heaven, is rebuked by the sweet and awful\nimperturbableness with which the laws of being act, distributing\nthe ingredients of hell or heaven to every one accordingly as his\nvices disobey or his virtues obey the will of God.\n\nIn a universe of law where God with all his attributes is\nomnipresent no trick can ever be the pathway into paradise. The\ntrue method of salvation is by the production of a good character\nthrough divine grace and the discipline of life. Thus, the real\nlaw of salvation through Christ consists not in the technical\nbelief that he shed his blood for our redemption, but in the\npersonal derival from him of that spirit which will make us\nwilling to shed our own blood for the good of others.\n\nThere was, not long ago, called to her eternal home, a young\nwoman, who, by the sweet gentleness, the heroic generosity and the\nunspotted fidelity of her whole life, deserves an exalted place on\nthe roll of feminine chivalry and saintliness. Not a brighter\nname, or one associated with a more fearless and accomplished\nspirit, is recorded on the list of those Christian women who\nvolunteered to serve as nurses in the great American war of\nnationality. No soldier was braver, few were more under fire, than\nshe; still plying her holy work with unfaltering love and\nfortitude, both in the horrid miasma of camps and before the\ncharge of cavalry and the blaze of cannon. Many a time, the\nlivelong night, under the solemn stars, equipped with assuaging\nstores, she threaded her way alone through the debris of carnage,\nseeking out the wounded among the dead, lifting her voice in song\nas a signal for any lingering survivor who might be near. Many a\ntime she broke on the vision of mutilated and dying men, with the\nlight of love in her eyes, a hymn of cheer on her lips, and\nunwearied ministrations in her hands, transfigured with courage\nand devotion, gleaming on their sight through the sulphurous flame\nof battle or the darkening mists of disease like an angel from\nheaven. Receiving the seeds of fatal illness from her exposures,\nshe returned home to delight with her noble qualities all who knew\nher, to make a husband happy, and then to die a contented martyr.\nMeekly folding her hands, and saying: \"Thanks, Father, for what\nthou hast enabled me to do, and still more for the new home to\nwhich thou art calling me now\" she was gone. The cruel creed of\nsuperstition says: \"Since she was a Universalist, having no part,\nby faith, in the mystic sacrifice of Christ, she is doomed to\nhell.\" But every attribute of God, every promise written by his\nown finger in the sacred instincts of our nature, as well as the\ncardinal teachings of the New Testament, assure us that as the\nvictorious purity and devotedness of her soul bore her away from\nthe tabernacle of flesh, the welcoming Savior said: \"Come, thou\nblessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared from the\nfoundation of the world.\" And heaven swung wide its gate for her;\nand excited fancy conceives that, as she passed in, there was a\ngratulatory flutter of wings and waving of palms through the\nangelic ranks.\n\nIn distinction from that hypothetical gate of blood, set up by a\ncrude theology in one narrow place alone, what, then, are the real\ngates of heaven, which stand open throughout the realms of\nresponsible being? All the causes which bring the will of man into\nconsent with the will of God. Truth is the harmony of mind with\nthe divine order; beauty, the harmony of taste with the divine\nsymmetries; good, the harmony of volition with the divine ends.\nEverything that secures these for us is an avenue into the\npeaceful city of bliss. To be in heaven is to be a transparent\nmedium through which the qualities of objects, the reflections of\nphenomena, the vibrations of aboriginal power, pass in blessed\nfreedom, without deflection or jar, and on which the mysterious\nattraction of the Infinite exerts its supreme spell. To be there\nin a superlative degree is to have a mind which is an\ninfinitesimal mirror of the All, and a heart responsive to that\nmind, every perception of truth in the realm of the intellect\ngenerating a correspondent emotion of good in the realm of\naffection. Not any forensic act of faith in atoning blood, but\ningrained piety a modest renunciation before the reality of things\nis the grand gateway of souls to the blessedness and repose of\nGod. Anselm, the great sainted Archbishop of Canterbury, said: \"I\nwould rather be in hell without a fault than in heaven with one.\"\nCan any defective technicality damn such a man? No; such a spirit\ncarries and radiates heaven is itself heaven. That spirit is God\nhimself in his creature, and can no more be imprisoned in hell\nthan God can be. On the other hand, any professing Orthodoxist\nwho, according to a horrible doctrine of the Calvinists in former\ndays, should hope in heaven to obtain a sharper relish for his own\njoy by looking down on the tortures of the damned, and contrasting\nhis blissful safety with the hopeless agony of their perdition,\nwould find himself in hell. The infernal scenery, even there,\nwould burst on his gaze, its atmosphere of pain reek around him,\nand the detestable turmoil of its experience rage in his breast.\nThe selfishness of his character, in steep contradiction to the\npublic disinterestedness belonging to the divine will, must invert\nevery proper experience of heaven. Could any conventional\narrangement, or accident of locality, save such a man, while his\ncharacter remained unchanged? No; such a spirit carries and\nradiates hell, is itself hell.\n\nA Mohammedan author says of the seventy three sects into which his\ncoreligionists are divided, that seventy two are wrong ways,\nterminating in eternal damnation; the remaining one alone, in\nwhich are the party of salvation, leads through the true faith\ninto the City of Allah. The same unwise bigotry, the same\nunripeness of judgment, has been generally shown by Christians. It\nis time they were ashamed of it, and allowed their souls to mature\nand expand into a more liberal creed in fuller keeping with the\nhospitable amplitude of the righteousness and goodness of God.\nEverything that tends to bring the will of man into loving\nsubmission to the infinite Father, to mould the structure of\ncharacter into correspondence with those established conditions of\nrightful being represented by the moral and religious\nvirtues, is an open highway of salvation. And all the great\ncardinal ordinations of life do legitimately tend to this result.\nTherefore all these are gates of heaven. Some pass in through one\nof them, others through another; and by means of them all, it is\ndecreed in the sovereign councils of the Divinity, as we believe,\nthat, sooner or later, every intelligence shall reach the goal.\n\nFirst is the gate of innocence. Little children, spotless youths\nand maidens who have known no malice or guile, the saintly few\namong mature men and women who by the untempted elevation and\nserenity of their temper have kept their integrity unmarred and\ntheir robes unsullied, enter by this nearest and easiest gate.\nBorne aloft by their own native gravitation, we see the white\nprocession of the innocent ones winding far up the cerulean height\nand defiling in long melodious line into heaven.\n\nThe second gate is prosperity. Through this enter those to whom\ngood fortune has served as the guiding smile of God, not pampering\nthem with arrogance, nor hardening them with careless egotism, but\nshaping them to thankful meekness and generosity. Exempt from\nlacerating trials, every want benignly supplied, girt with\nfriends, they have grown up in goodness and gratitude, obeying the\nwill of God by the natural discharge of their duties, diffusing\nbenedictions and benefits around them. To such beautiful spirits,\nsaved from wrong and woe by the redemptive shelter of their lot,\nhappiness is a better purgatory than wretchedness. The crystal\nstream of joy percolating throughout the soul cleanses it more\nperfectly than any flames of pain can. And so the virtuous\nchildren of a favored fortune, who have improved their privileges\nwith pious fidelity, move on into heaven.\n\nThen the third gate is victory. This is more arduous of approach,\nand yet a throng of heroic souls, the very chivalry of heaven,\npress through it, wounded and bleeding from the struggle, but\ntriumphant. These are they who have endured hardship with\nuncomplaining fortitude and fought their way through all enemies,\nseductions and tribulations. These are they who, armed with the\nnative sacrament of righteousness, inspired with a loyal love,\nwould never stoop their crests to wrong nor make a league with\niniquity the conquering champions who tread down every vile\ntemptation, ever hearing their Leader say, \"In the world ye shall\nhave trouble and sorrow; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the\nworld.\"\n\nPenitence is another gate of heaven. By the instructions of\nProvidence, by the natural progress of experience, the evolution\nof wisdom, a sinner may become aware of the ingratitude of his\ndisobedience, ashamed of the odiousness of his guilt; be smitten\nwith a regenerating love of truth, beauty, goodness, God; and,\nwithout waiting for the lash of an external judgment to drive him\nthe way he should go, by voluntary preference may grieve over his\nfolly and sin, and turn to his duty and his Savior. Then the\nblessed gate of a spontaneous repentance stands open before him;\nand through this hospitable entrance multitudes find admission to\nthe divine home.\n\nDeath often gives an otherwise unattainable deliverance, and so\nyields the poor victim of unhappy outer conditions a passage to\nheaven. It is a thought no less false than it is frightful, which\nrepresents death as the vindictive turnkey of the creation, at\nwhose approach probation ends, and the shuddering convict is\nthrust into hell, the hopeless bolt dropping into its ward behind\nhim. It is rather the divine messenger of deliverance for those\nwho are borne down here under a fate too hard for them. Oh, what\nmyriads of afflicted ones orphan children crushed by brutal\ntreatment; poor seamstresses starving in garrets; men and women\nground and grimed almost out of the semblance of humanity, in the\ndrudgery and darkness of coal mines; hapless suicides, who have\nrashly fled from this step dame world, and whose alabaster forms,\npurpled with bruises, are laid on the dismal beds of brass in the\nmorgue, where a ghastly light strains through the grates, and the\ncrowd of gazers sweeps endlessly on; unsuccessful men of genius,\nunappreciated, neglected, cruelly wronged, their extreme\nsensitiveness making their lives a long martyrdom to these what a\nblessed angel is death, freeing them, setting them in a new state,\nstarting them on a fresh career, amidst fairer circumstances, in\nfront of better opportunities! To be saved, and in paradise, what\nis it but to be a pure instrument to echo the music of divine\nthings? When the corruptible parts of the instrument are\nhopelessly discordant, or the circumstances of its place here are\njangled with evils which it cannot overcome, then the\ndisentanglement of the spiritual harp, and the translation of it\nto some finer sphere; where its free chords may ring their proper\nmusic clearly out, are a blessed redemption, making death itself a\ntriumphant gate of heaven.\n\nRetribution is the remotest and most difficult of all the heavenly\ngates; and yet it is one, and one that is indispensable for many a\nneglectful, halting, and obstinate child of man. It is an extreme\nerror to think punishment a gate of hell. It is rather a result of\nbeing already inside, and it legitimately serves as an outlet\nthence. Whatever may be the case with imperfect human rulers, in\nthe government of God no punishment is ever inflicted for the sake\nof vengeance, a gratuitous evil. It is blasphemy to deem God\nvindictive. He always punishes for the sake of good, to awaken\nattention, produce insight and sorrow, and cause a reattunement of\ncharacter and conduct with the laws of right, seen at last to be\nsupremely authoritative and benignant, indissolubly bound up with\nthe truest good of each and with the sole good of all. On every\ngate of hell may be written. Wherever retribution is actual,\nsalvation is possible, equivalent to the great maxim of\njurisprudence: Ubi jus ibi remedium! So, even the dark door of\nretribution, when men will advance by no other way, leads them to\nthoughtfulness, regret, and a redemptive readjustment of their\npassions and acts. Thus it becomes the ultimate gate of heaven.\nAnd, alas! what a dismal crowd of sufferers, refusing all shorter\nand happier ways, wait to be drawn through this torturing passage\nof remedial mercy! May the number entering by the other gates ever\nincrease, and those entering this dwindle! And yet, may it forever\nstand open for the unhappy culprits who must be lost unless saved\nhere!\n\nBesides all these gates, and commanding them all, there is one\neverywhere accessible, and never shut on any soul which has the\ngrace to try it the omnipresent gate of resignation. Remove the\nconditions of resistance, or friction, by a total surrender of\nself will and an absolute acceptance of the Divine Will, and, it\nmatters not where you are, the essence of perdition is destroyed\nin your soul. The utter abandonment of pride, a pious submission\nto the laws of things, a glad and grateful acquiescence in\nwhatever the Supreme Authority decrees this is the unrestricted\nway into heaven which waits before the steps of all who will only\nexhibit the requisite spirit, and enter. Yes, let any being but\nbanish from himself every vestige of personal dictation before God\nand unexactingly identify his desires with universal good; and,\neven though he stand on the bottom of hell, heaven will be directly\nbefore him through the open gate of resignation. For the organic\nattitude of a pure and loving submission tunes the discordant\ncreature to that eternal breath of God which blows everywhere\nthrough the universe of souls, sighing until they conspire with\nit to make the music of redemption.\n\nCHAPTER V.\n\nRESUME HOW THE QUESTION OF IMMORTALITY NOW STANDS.\n\nIN THE leading nations of Christendom, the belief in the\nimmortality of the soul has for some time past obviously been\nweakening. The number of those who assail the belief increases,\nand their utterances become more frank and dogmatic. A multitude\nof instances, clear to every careful observer, prove this.\nEspecially at the present moment do examples of painful doubt,\nprofound misgiving, bold and exultant denial, mocking flippancy\nand ridicule, abound on all sides, in private conversation, in\npublic discussion, and in every form of literary activity. The\nhearty thoroughness and fervor with which the faith of the Church\nwas once held have gone from whole classes. Subtle skepticism or\nblank negation is a common characteristic. Whether this tendency\ntowards unbelief be sound or fallacious, temporary or permanent,\nit is at least actual. And it is important that we examine the\ncauses of it, and test their logical validity while tracing their\nhistoric spread. Why, then, we ask, is the faith in a future life\nfor man suffering such a marked decay in the present generation of\nChristendom?\n\nIn the first place, the faith pales and dwindles, from the general\nneglect of that strenuous and constant cultivation of it formerly\nsecured by the stern doctrinal drill and by the rigid supervision\nof daily thought and habit in the interests of religion. Never\nbefore were men so absorbed as now in material toil and care\nduring the serious portion of their existence; never before so\nbeset as now during the leisure portion by innumerable forms of\namusement and dissipation. The habit of lonely meditation and\nprayer grows rarer. The exactions of the struggle of ambition grow\nfiercer, the burdens of necessity press more heavily; the vices\nand temptations of society thicken: and they withdraw the\nattention of men from ideal and sacred aims. More and more men\nseem to live for labor and pleasure, for time and sense; less and\nless for truth and good, for God and eternity. Absorbed in the\nmaterialistic game, or frittered and jaded in frivolous\ndiversions, all eternal aims go by default. In what precious age\nwas maddening rivalry so universal, giggling laughter so pestilent\nan epidemic, triviality at such a premium and sublimity at such a\ndiscount? But the things to which men really devote themselves\ndilate to fill the whole field of their vision. They soon come to\ndisbelieve that for which they take no thought and make no\nsacrifice or investment. The average men of our time, as well\nthose of the educated classes as those of the laboring classes, do\nnot live for immortality. Therefore their faith in it diminishes.\nOur fathers, to a degree not common now, walked in mental\ncompanionship with God, practiced solitary devotion, shaped their\ndaily feelings and deeds with reference to the effect on their\nfuture life. Thus that hidden life became real to them. Now the\ninterests and provocations of the present world, concentrated and\nintensified as never before the strife of aspirants, the giddy\nenterprises of speculation and commerce and engineering, the chaos\nof caucuses and newspapers and telegraphs  monopolize our\nfaculties and exhaust our energies, leaving us but faint\ninclination to attend to the solemn themes of the soul and the\nmystic lures of infinity. To those crazed with greed, battling\nwith rivals or sunk in debauchery, God naturally becomes a verbal\nphantom and immortality a foolish dream. There is nothing in\nmechanism and mammon worship, nothing in selfish sloth and\nlaughter, nothing in cruel oppression and drudgery, to inspire\nbelief in the deathless spirituality of man. Among a people\nprevailingly given over to these earthlinesses, faith in the\ntranscendent verities of religion perforce dies out. In the long\nrun the supreme devotion of the soul irresistibly moulds its\nfaith. Christendom does not live in conscious sacrifices and\naspirations for God and eternal life, but it lives chiefly for\nselfish power and knowledge, money, praise and luxury. Therefore\nin Christendom faith in immortality is decaying. But we believe\nthis decay to be temporary, the necessary transition to a richer\nand more harmonic insight. The passing eclipse of faith in a\nfuture life is destined by concentrating attention on the present\nto develop its resources, realize the divine possibilities of this\nworld, unveil all the elements of hell and heaven really existing\nhere, and fully attune mankind to the conditions of virtue and\nblessedness now. When this shall have been done the tangential and\nfractional character of our experience will be so obvious, the\ninadequacy of the earthly state for the wants of our transcendent\nand prophetic faculties will be so urgent, and the supplementing\nadaptations of the entire unseen but clearly divined future to the\ncraving parts in the present will be so manifest, that a complete\nrevelation of immortality will break upon the prepared mind of the\nrace. Then history will take a new departure in breathing\ncommunion with the whole creation.\n\nBut infidelity to duty and privilege does not destroy the truth of\nduty and privilege. It only blinds the faithless eyes so that they\ncannot see the truth. If the immortality of the soul be a truth,\nthe materialistic absorption of our life would blind us to it and\nmake us deny it. Exclusive attention to the present would hide the\nfuture from us, although its dazzling prizes, scattered on the\ndark back ground of eternity, were burning there in everlasting\ninvitation and hospitality. Thus, while the eager worldliness of\nour age practically vacates the faith in a future life, it does\nnot logically disprove it; but leaves it for the ultimate test of\nthe genuine evidence.\n\nThe second reason for the apparent rapid crumbling away of the\nbelief in immortality in Christendom is the recent wide diffusion\nof a critical knowledge of the comparative history of the opinions\nof all nations on the subject of a future life, revealing the\nmythological character common to them, and tracking them back to\ntheir origin in primitive superstitions no longer is their literal\npurport credible to any educated intelligence. In many works by\ntheological writers, and by scientific writers, of free habits of\nthought, like Strauss and Spencer, collections have been made of\nthe fancies and theories of mankind respecting the survival of the\nspirit and the conditions of its experience after the death of the\nbody. These beliefs, it has been agreed, even among the most\nenlightened peoples, rest at last on the same basis with the\ncrudest notions of the barbarians of the prehistoric period,\nnamely, the spontaneous workings of raw instinct and imagination.\nTracing the views of Christians as to the nature of the soul, and\nthe life to come in heaven or hell, back to the rude conceptions\nof the naked savages who fashioned their idea of the ghost from\nthe shadow or the reflection of the man, which was a picture or\nrepresentative of him, yet without matter, and from the phenomena\nof dreams, in which they supposed the spirit of the man left him\nand went through the adventures of the dream and returned ere he\nawoke it has been asserted that every form of later faith, however\nrefined and improved in details, yet really resting on such\npuerile fancies, such incompetent and absurd beginnings, is\nthereby discredited and must be rejected.\n\nNow, it is true that when we find among Christian believers,\nconnected with the doctrine of a future life, an incongruous\nmedley of physical imagery and gross imaginative pictures,\nconceptions of just the same character as the grotesque dreamings\nof the earliest savages and the elaborate mythology of subsequent\npriesthoods, we are required to treat the whole suppositious mass\nas mere poetry or superstition, and to dismiss it from our faith.\nBut we are by no means justified in doing so with the essential\nfact itself of a future life. The essential fact, the assertion of\nimmortality, may be true, even if the mythological dress be all\nfictitious. It does not follow that man has no surviving soul\nbecause the local heaven or hell, described by savage or priest as\nits residence, is unreal. It surely is no correct inference that\nthe soul perishes with the body, because the barbarian mind\ngeneralized its idea of the soul from the phenomena of shadows,\nreflections, echoes and dreams. The critical scholar, who judges\nthe case fairly, will correct the fallacies of the confused\nreasoning instinct, and relegate the mythology to its proper\nprovince, but reserve his judgment on the question itself of\nspiritual survival to be settled on the only appropriate evidence.\nAlthough the habit thus formed by the critical scholar, and by\nthose who follow his authority, of sweeping away as wholly\nuntenable so many varieties of speculation, and so many groups of\nimages connected with the belief in a future life, has\nunquestionably contributed powerfully to foster complete disbelief\nin the doctrine itself, yet it is equally unquestionable that this\nprocess of negation is illogical. Many a true doctrine has been\ncradled in superstitions and absurdities. A faith supported by\nmany classes of independent arguments is not overthrown by the\ndisproof of one of those classes. It is as wrongful a procedure to\ndeny the immortality of the soul because barbaric instinct\ngrounded it on erroneous notions and enveloped it with falsehoods,\nas it would be to reject the established laws of gravitation and\nlight and sound, for the reason that the various provisional\ntheories, preceding the correct ones, were ridiculous mistakes.\nThe problem to be solved is, Does the man who is now a soul in a\nbody remain a soul when the body dissolves? The inadequacy or\nfolly of a hundred provisional answers does not affect the final\nanswer. Instead of denying immortality because the childish mind\nof the early world feigned impossible things about it, we should\nchange the question by appeal to a more competent court, and\ninquire what Pythagoras, Augustine, Dante, Leibnitz, Fichte,\nSchelling, Swedenborg, Goethe, thought about it. It is a question\nfor the consensus of the most gifted and impartial minds, the very\nAreopagus of Humanity, to decide. Furthermore, on a deeper\ninquiry, it seems clear that the real belief in immortality did\nnot originate from the contemplation of the phenomena of dreams\nand shadows and echoes, but arose rather from the inexpugnable\nself assertion of consciousness, its inability to feel itself non\nexistent. This persistency of consciousness, following it in all\nits imaginative flights of thought beyond the death of the body,\nwas the cause of the mythological creativeness of the barbaric\nmind. And thus the elaboration of the imagery of ghosts and a\nghostly realm was not the precursor, but the result of a belief in\nanother life. The belief sprang directly out of the feeling of a\ncontinuous being unconquerably connected with human self\nconsciousness, and is independent of the imagery in which it has\nbeen clothed, may clothe itself in endless forms of imagery, and\nsurvive their removal on the discovery of their incompetence.\n\nBesides, the savage himself was, after all, not so far out of the\nway. His mythology was not a mere fiction concreted into fact by\nsuperstition. He was on that track of analogy which, when cleared,\nwill be, perhaps, the luminous highway to universal truth. The\nsavage was obscurely conscious that the objects which appeared\naround him as solid material realities had their immaterial\ncorrespondences within his spirit. The tree, the stone, the\nflower, the star, the beast, the man, had within him correspondent\nmental images or ideas just as real as they, but without sensible\nqualities, and incapable of hurt. With creative wonder he\nrecognized a symbol or analogy of this inner world in the shadow\nand the reflection. The shadow or the reflection is a representation\nof its original, but without material substance.\n\nSee, it lies there, wavering, on the rock, or in the water. No\narrow can pierce it, no club bruise it, no pestle pulverize it, no\nchemistry disintegrate it. It is an emblem of the immaterial and\nindestructible spirit, revealed in the outer world of matter,\nwhere everything changes and passes away except the noumena under\nthe phenomena. No wonder it stirred the brooding fancy of the\nignorant, but prophetic primitive man, and made it teem with poesy\nand personification.\n\nFreely, then, let us brush aside the mythological extravagance and\nirrational errors in the entire cosmopolitan doctrine of a future\nlife, but beware of rejecting the fact itself of immortality until\nwe have better grounds than have yet been afforded by the\naccumulating insight of literary history. As the world moves on,\nand the human mind develops with it, the crude must give way to\nthe mature, and the false be replaced, not with vacancy, but with\nthe true. The problem of the nature and destiny of the soul will\nnot be solved by tearing away the fictitious drapery thrown around\nit, but by piercing to the roots of the reality within the\ndrapery.\n\nAnd now we come to the third reason for the increasing doubt and\ndecreasing faith in regard to a future life: that reason is that\nthe form of the belief in it prevalent in Christendom has become\nincredible, and the rejection of the form has loosened the hold on\nthe substance. The philosophic mind, which has attained to the\nidea of the infinite God, without body, or parts, or passions,\nomnipresent in his total perfection, can reason to the belief in a\nkindred immortality for its own finite being. But since our\nexperience is here limited to the life now known, we are utterly\nwithout data or ability to image forth such a conception of\nimmortality in any form of picture or mental scenery. There seem\nto be only three ways in which we can give imaginative\nrepresentation of a future life. The first is the method of the\nuniversal barbarian mind, which paints the life to come as a\nshadowy reflex or copy of the present world and life, an\nunsubstantial, graspless, yet actual and conscious realm of\nghosts, carrying on a pale and noiseless mimicry of their former\nadventures in the body. Holding fast to that clew of analogy which\nis the nucleus of philosophy in this view, but rejecting the rest\nas fantastic figment, we arrive at the next way in which those who\nare unwilling to leave their thoughts of the future life in empty\nrational abstraction, portray it in vivid concrete. This they do\nby means of the doctrine of a general bodily resurrection of the\ndead.\n\nIt is a striking fact that four of the great historic and literary\nreligions have taught the doctrine of immortality under the form\nof a physical resurrection, namely: Zoroastrianism, Judaism,\nChristianity, and Mohammedanism. It has been attributed, also, to\nthe ancient religion of Egypt, but erroneously. Its belief there\nis a mere inference from facts which do not really imply it. The\nEgyptians plainly believed in a series of individual reincarnations,\nnot in any general resurrection. But it is a sufficiently\ninteresting and impressive fact that over one third of the human\nrace have embodied their expectation of a future eternal life\nin this concrete and astonishing form. It has not rested on a basis\nof reason, but on one of asserted revelation and authority. It\noriginated in the fact that the only life of which we now have\nany experience is a life in the body, and, therefore, this is the\nlife which we instinctively love and prefer; also in the fact\nthat this is the only mode of life which we are able to\nrepresent to ourselves in any satisfactory, apprehensible image.\nIt then bolstered itself up by arbitrary theological theorizings,\nand proclaimed itself with sanctions of a pretended supernatural\nauthority. Slowly the minds of its disciples were drilled to a\nfamiliarity with it, and to a habit of implicitly believing it,\nwhich grew strong enough to make them hold to it in spite of its\ndifficulty as a sheer and violent miracle having no connection\nwhatever with the natural order of things. Authority and passive\nhabit long maintained the belief in unbroken sway. They still so\nsupport it in the Mohammedan world, where there is almost no\nscience, but little skeptical thought, and a common uniformity of\nabject submission to the word of the Koran. But in Christendom it\nfares differently. Here, the knowledge of modern science and\nhabits of free inquiry are almost universally diffused. The\nconsequence is, since the chief Christian belief in immortality\nhas been identified with the notion of a general physical\nresurrection of the dead at the last day, and since all\nphilosophical and scientific thinking refutes that notion by\nsetting its arbitrariness and monstrous abnormality in high and\nsteep relief against the consensus of demonstrated knowledge and\nmoral probability, that the popular belief of Christendom in\nimmortality itself is depolarized and swiftly dropping into decay\nwith a large class of persons. But this spread of doubt and\ndenial, while a natural process, is yet an illogical and\nunnecessary one. The competent thinker will extricate the question\nof the immortality of the soul from its accidental entanglement\nwith the doctrine of the resurrection, and, rejecting the latter\nas incredible, still affirm the former on its own independent\ngrounds. To prove and illustrate these statements we must here\ngive a little additional study, fresh and independent study, to\nthe subject.\n\nThe doctrine of the resurrection of the flesh is bound up with the\nwhole fabric of the Catholic and Orthodox dogmatic theology of\nChristendom, and cannot be removed without logically shaking that\nsystem of belief into pieces. And yet the doctrine, as has been\nshown in a previous chapter, is unscriptural and of a purely pagan\norigin, the New Testament foretelling a resurrection of spirits\nfrom the underworld, not of bodies from the grave. It has no real\nanalogies in the world, but is a figment of fancy, unsupported by\nreason on any authentic physical or moral grounds. It is,\nfurthermore, a doctrine whose realization is impossible, because\nit is a self destroying absurdity.\n\nAll that we need for demonstrating its absolute incredibility, is\nsimply to ultimate its implications, carry it out in thought to\nthe necessary results which its ignorant originators never\nforesaw. The doctrine of a physical resurrection presupposes that\nour race was originally intended to be immortal on earth, and that\ndeath was a penalty for sin. Fill out the theory. Adam and Eve,\nmade male and female, were commanded to multiply and replenish the\nearth. Their descendants, doubling every twenty five years, would,\nafter sixty or seventy generations had accumulated, have covered\nthe whole earth so thickly that they would be packed in one\nimmovable mass, the whole planet carpeted with their forms and\npaved with their upturned faces. Not an inch of room on the globe\nfor any harvest to grow or any creature to move; the world,\ncrowded and imbedded at every point with one continuous multitude\nof immortal human beings, would have then rolled around the\nzodiac, presenting this chronic and motionless picture, to all\neternity!\n\nIf it be maintained that had it not been for sin and its penalty,\nthe successive generations would neither have died nor have\nremained forever on the earth, but would have been translated\nbodily to some other world, the absurdity just exposed is escaped\nonly to introduce another one equally glaring. For in time, the\nentire solid contents of the globe would thus be removed, and the\ndisappearance of our planet unhinge the solar system and produce a\ngeneral cataclysm. The solid contents of the earth have been\nestimated at about thirty nine trillions of cubic feet. Seventy\nfive doublings of the primal pair would reach to over seventy\ntrillions of human beings, each containing more than a solid cubic\nfoot.\n\nIt is perfectly clear, therefore, in any view, that the only way\nin which the human race, with their reproductive constitution,\ncould permanently inhabit the world is by the present system of\nsuccessive births and deaths; a system, furthermore, which science\nshows to have been in working existence among the preceding races\nof creatures for innumerable ages before the mythical sin of Adam\nand Eve, with its mythical consequences.\n\nThe fabulous scheme of an intended bodily immortality on the earth\nis a discordant and disagreeable one in every respect, asthetic,\nrational, and moral. It jars incongruously with the great order of\nnature and providence, which everywhere interpolates a night\nbetween two days, a sleep between two wakings, to keep the edge of\nconsciousness fresh and the possibilities of pleasure alive.\nImprisoned in this carcass of flesh with its ignoble necessities\nfor endless ages, the contemplation of the fearful burden of\nmonotony would be insufferable to any one who had thought the case\nout in all its details with vivid realization. And yet, so\nunthinking are most persons in regard to the conventional beliefs\nprevalent in society,  Parsees, Jews, Christians and Mohammedans,\nprofessedly base their entire faith in immortality on this dogma\nwith the resurrection involved in it.\n\nWhen carried out in its particulars by the imagination, the\ndoctrine is self evidently untenable, contradictory to the\nessential facts of human nature under the given conditions of the\nmaterial creation. It had its theologic birth in the speculations\nof the dualistic religion of Persia, whence it was first borrowed\nby the Jews, then secondarily adopted into Christianity, and\nthence finally impacted into the mongrel creed of Mohammed and his\nfollowers. It is philosophically irreconcilable with a pure\nmonotheism; for, if God be infinite, no enemy could subvert his\noriginal scheme and force Him to an arbitrary miracle to restore\nit. It is a creaking and dissonant artifice, every way repugnant\nto all whose reason and sentiment have learned to love the smooth\nand continuous evolution of the order of the cosmos and the\nconnected destinies of conscious beings. It is absolutely refuted\nby the double reductio ad absurdum shown above to be contained in\nit.\n\nYet, while the grounds on which the common belief in a destined\ngeneral resurrection of the dead rests have really lost their\nvalidity to the mind of the nineteenth century, the millions of\nIslam and Christendom retain the article unchanged in their\ncreeds, and to question it is a heresy. No wonder skepticism\nflourishes and genuine faith decays. This clinging to an outgrown\nscheme is not only from the strong drift of a passive mental\nconformity, as the train of cars keeps on for some time after the\ndynamic locomotive has been taken off. Another reason is that the\ntenet is so centrally imbedded in the dogmatic ecclesiasticism\nthat it cannot be extricated without involving all the associated\ndogmas. Therefore, one portion of this knowing generation repeat\nthe formula and blink the difficulties, while another portion go\nover to open disbelief of any future life. The doctrine of the\nliteral resurrection of the body from the grave is incredible to\nthe educated and free intelligence of the age. In continuing to\naffirm it ecclesiastical Christendom brands itself with frivolity,\nnot earnest enough to carry its thought in loyalty to truth as far\nas possible, or with hypocrisy, consciously dishonest to its\ndoubts.\n\nIt is a precious boon to be rid of such an unnatural and ominous\nbelief as that in the final disemboguing of the dead by sea and\nland, the tumbling of the rocks, the falling of the stars, and the\neverlasting torture of the condemned in a prison of fire. Far\nbetter than any such doctrine is a calm confronting of the mystery\nof the future in its confessed secrecy as it is, and a peaceful\nresignation to the will of God in conscious ignorance and trust.\nAnd yet the believer in this scheme of colossal and ghastly\nnecromancy, when confronted with the unanswerable arguments\nagainst it, is sometimes found clinging to it with willful\ntenacity, and bitterly complaining of those who refute it, that\nthey would rob him of his faith and give him nothing in exchange.\nSuppose a man to believe that in the year nineteen hundred the\nearth will be exploded, and that all men, except himself and the\nlittle clique of his friends, will be strung for eternity on a red\nhot iron wire in empty space. Suppose that this horrid notion is\nclearly proved to him to be an error. Then, because he is not\ntaught exactly what will happen in the year nineteen hundred, he,\nthe unhappy man, assails his enlightener for having robbed him of\nhis faith and given him nothing in exchange! Is not the truth of\nignorance better than the falsity of superstition? Modest faith in\nfront of the shrouded unknown can well stand comparison with the\narrogant and incompetent exultation of fanaticism. In regard to\nthat belated relic of the belief in magic, the doctrine of the\nliteral resurrection of the dead in their fleshy bodies, let us\ngratefully wipe it all out and draw a long breath of relief. Let\nus rejoice to know that the will of God will be done in the\nfulfilling order of the universe, although we may now be ignorant\nof precisely what that will is. Believing the will of God to be\ngood, whether revealed or concealed, we can afford to wait in\npeace, trying in the meantime to carry our individual character\nand our social state and experience here steadily toward\nperfection. Surely, that is the best way to prepare ourselves for\nwhatever lies beyond.\n\nAnd yet we are not wholly shut up to mere blind faith. There is\nalways some ground of moral truth in every widely extended\ndogmatic belief. In casting off the dogma we should carefully\nextract its moral purport and try to give it a more authentic\nsetting. It will not be hard to do this with reference to the\ndoctrine now under consideration.\n\nObscure and complicated and baffling as the problem of our future\ndestiny is, we can already trace many a line of light, many a\nprophetic signal and hint suggestive of what is ordained to happen\nto the individual and the race.\n\nUnquestionably, the genuine moral reason why the belief in the\nfleshly resurrection has been so general and tenacious is the two\nfold consideration: first; that we desire our future life to be an\nincarnate life because our experience makes that form of being\nrealizable and precious to our imagination, while a disembodied\nghostliness is, perforce, repulsively vacant and abstract; and,\nsecondly because our affection and our imagination and our\nconscience profoundly crave the complete fulfillment of the scheme\nof the historic career of collective humanity in this world in\nsome such manner, that here, on this dear old earth, the\nexperience of our whole race may be brought to a clear epical\nunity, and may close with an illuminating justification of\nprovidence in the sight of all men, who shall then read the\ninterpretation of their entire past, and see together eye to eye.\nNow we believe that the essence of this natural desire and this\nsublime hope is a divine prophecy which shall be fulfilled. We\nbelieve that in the very falsity of the doctrine of a carnal\nresurrection and judgment there lurks a truth yet to break out in\noverwhelming refulgence and perfectly satisfy every soul of man.\nBut it will be brought about by the gradual culmination of the\nmeans and processes which God is now visibly carrying forward, and\nnot by any sudden convulsion of miracle.\n\nThe faculties of human consciousness in the individual and the\nrace are in process of development. Also the transmissible sum of\nknowledge, on which those faculties employ themselves, is in\nprocess of rapid increase. The faculties of knowledge possessed by\nan accomplished master of literature and science now, contrasted\nwith those of a cannibal savage of the pre glacial epoch, reveal\nan advance which hardly needs to be repeated in order to give us a\ncomprehension of the whole experience of our kind on earth, quite\nample to explain the facts of the case and solve the problem of\nour destiny. The grasp of our intelligence and the richness of our\nsensibility increase along the ages. The generalizations of our\nphilosophy grow wider, the gropings of our sympathetic faith\nbecome vaster, the retrospection and the prevision of our science\nkeener and longer and more inclusive, every generation. It is very\nsignificant that the further away we get from the prehistoric\ntimes the more we learn about them. Archaology is one of the\nlatest and most swiftly enlarging branches of knowledge. Let the\nprocesses thus indicated go on, as they have gone on and are with\naccelerated pace going on, and the date is not beyond prophecy\nwhen all earthly and human secrets will be solved, and their\nmysteries be revealed, and the autobiographic book and volume of\nthe world be opened, and the universal tribunal be set in the\nlight of every life, and the irreversible judgment be declared, by\nthe simple revelation of the truth of history in the web of its\nrelations. For as every atom of matter is conjoined by all the\nlaws of nature with all other atoms of matter, and the history of\nall their adventures is registered by their own indestructible\nvibrations in the elemental spaces of the universe where they run\ntheir career, so every identity of spirit is conjoined by all the\nlaws of spirit with all other spirits, and all their deeds and\nsufferings are ineffaceably self registered in their reactions\nupon the authors, in the pictures they shed upon space, and the\ninfluences they set rolling through the eternity of successive\nsouls and lives. All, then, that is needed for a perfectly\nvindicating judgment is the awakening of consciousness to the full\nview of the facts. And the tendencies are powerfully moving in\nthat direction. What was the illumination of Swedenborg but the\ntaking possession by his consciousness of the unconscious lower\nnervous system, with all its impacted ancestral experiences and\nwondrous relations with the visible and invisible worlds? And this\nmay be repeated, by and by, and be perfected, and become common.\nWhat may result is as yet almost inconceivable. Let us trace a\nlittle, in this regard, the connections of the individual and the\nface, and follow out some of their implications.\n\nSuppose that in turn every child born begets or bears two\nchildren. Then in the thirtieth generation the transmitted\nqualities of spirit, nerve and blood, of the single original pair\nof parents will be represented in upwards of one thousand millions\nof descendants. It is clear from this law, allowing for all\ndeviations from its numerical progression on account of inter\nmarriages and of failures of offspring, how powerfully and swiftly\nthe ever multiplying streams of consanguinity are spreading in\nevery direction, affiliating and fraternizing the whole human race\nliterally into one family, the innumerable rills of separate\ndescent intermingling as they flow on, and finally diffusing over\nthe earth in that oceanic unity of humanity, which, when full,\nwill beat with the tidal pulse of a single sympathy. It is\nbelieved by many that no experience of any living creature is ever\nlost, but is by its own spontaneous and exact reflex vibrations\neither registered in the conscious memory or deposited in the\nunconscious organism in latent perfection of vestige and tendency.\nMemory is a faithful treasurer of all the stores of events.\nSuppose now that each parent bequeaths in the dynamic germ of his\nprogeny the possibility of reviving into consciousness, when the\nproper conditions shall be furnished, the accumulated sum of all\nthat has happened throughout the entire line of his ancestry. And\nagain, imagine that all the souls composing the human race each of\nwhich is a substantial and indestructible entity, living\nincarnated over and over, and not a mere phenomenal process that\nvanishes into nothing with the dissolution of the body are so\nlimited in number that they may be embodied on the earth in one\ngeneration, whose members shall be so conjoined in knowledge and\nfellowship that the life of the whole is concentrated in every\none, and the life of every one mirrored in the whole. Now,\nfinally, let it be conceived that this latest generation,\nincluding all who have ever inhabited the world, at last attain a\ndevelopment which enables them to grasp in distinct consciousness\nthe collective sum of the organic heritage of the race, each one\nreading with perfect clearness in every particular the complete\nhistory of humanity from the beginning to the end, understanding\nall its causes, courses and consequences, and beholding with\nunspeakable delight the justification of the ways of God, the\nwhole universe opening into free intercommunication, as if time\nand space were either no more or else their measures were of\nboundless subjective elasticity, every creature found in peace and\nrapture at the goal of his destiny. That, indeed, would be a\nrealization of the day of judgment and the resurrection of the\ndead, but without a shock or a jar in the course of things which\nscience reveals. The process of development now going on, if\ncarried far enough, will naturally result in this or in something\nequivalent to it; while the notion of the vomiting forth of the\naccumulated dead from land and sea, at the blast of a trumpet, is\na wild piece of imagery, borrowed from startling political\nphenomena, and applied with absurd incongruity to the chronic\nprovidence of God. The former view contains all the moral\nsignificance of the latter, but without its violation of\nprobability. Nor is it all necessary that the climax shall be\nbrought about of a simultaneous universal judgment, or of the\nappearance of our whole race on the earth at one time. The giving\nof the vision to souls subjectively, one after another, in the\norder of their attainment of the conditions, would meet every\nrequirement of the case. To each one in turn, wherever he was, as\nthe result broke on him in the ecstatic glory of all it means, the\nessence of the so long cherished faith of Christendom would be\njustified, and the providential theater and scenery of human\nexperience would appear under its illumination as a dazzling\nvision of poetic justice perfect at every point.\n\nMarvelous and almost incredible as this scheme of thought may\nseem, it is not more mysterious in itself, or more staggering in\nits demand on our faith, than many things successively were which\nare now established beyond a doubt such as the telegraphic\nconversation of men through the ocean and around the globe; the\nseven hundred and thirty three thousand millions of ethereal\nvibrations in a second, which cause the report of the violet ray\nin consciousness; the transcendent disclosures of the spectrum\nanalysis; the conception of gravitation as a force which holds all\nmatter in unbroken union, and acts throughout the stellar universe\nwith timeless simultaneity. It is in entire keeping with\neverything else in the workings of God, as demonstrated by\nscience, on every hand, both in nature and history. The atomic\ntheory and the nebular hypothesis, the chemical crucible and the\nmathematical calculus, the microscope and the telescope discover\nto our senses and our reason, wherever we look, facts as\nmysterious to the understanding, and as baffling to the\nimagination as any of the foregoing implications; showing us, in\nevery department of nature and experience, the bewildering\nmiracles of the infinitely little and the infinitely great exactly\nbalanced and perpetually passing into one another.\n\nThere is a third way, in addition to the ghost world of the\nprimitive faith of barbarians, and the resurrection climax of the\nChristian and Parsee and Hebrew and Moslem creeds, in which the\nimagination of man, moved by his instinct and reason, has\nconcreted the idea of a future life; namely, by the doctrine of\ntransmigration. A striking feature and no slight recommendation of\nthe foregoing view of the true meaning of the dogma of the\nresurrection is that it reconciles these two chief forms of the\nbelief in immortal life. For resurrection and transmigration agree\nin the central point of a restoration of the disembodied soul to a\nnew bodily existence, only the former represents this as a single\ncollective miracle wrought by an arbitrary stroke of God at the\nclose of the earthly drama, the latter depicts it as constantly\ntaking place in the regular fulfillment of the divine plan in the\ncreation. This difference is certainly, to a scientific and\nphilosophical thinker, who reasons on the data of nature and\nexperience and not on the dicta of theologians, strongly in favor\nof the Oriental theory. We have no experience whatever of any\ngeneral resurrection, but all experience is full of the constant\nappearances of souls in freshly created bodies throughout the\nscale of sentient being. If our final future life is to be a\nbodily one there surely is a world of presumptive evidence,\ntherefore, in behalf of transmigration as opposed to resurrection.\nBesides the various distinctive arguments of its own, every reason\nfor the resurrection holds with at least equal force for\ntransmigration. The argument from analogy is especially strong. It\nis natural to argue from the universal spectacle of incarnated\nlife that this is the eternal scheme everywhere, the variety of\nsouls finding in the variety of worlds an everlasting series of\nadventures, in appropriate organisms; there being, as Paul said,\none kind of flesh of birds, another kind of flesh of beasts,\nanother of men, another of angels, and so on. Our present lack of\nrecollection of past lives is no disproof of their actuality.\nEvery night we lose all knowledge of the past, but every day we\nreawaken to a memory of the whole series of days and nights. So in\none life we may forget or dream, and in another recover the whole\nthread of experience from the beginning.\n\nIn every event, it must be confessed that of all the thoughtful\nand refined forms of the belief in a future life none has had so\nextensive and prolonged a prevalence as this. It has the vote of\nthe majority, having for ages on ages been held by half of the\nhuman race with an intensity of conviction almost without a\nparallel. Indeed the most striking fact, at first sight, about the\ndoctrine of the repeated existences of the soul incarnated in\ndifferent organisms, its form and experience in each successive\nembodiment being determined by its merits and demerits in the\npreceding ones, is the constant reappearance of the faith in it in\nall parts of the world, and its permanent hold on certain great\nnations. The ancient civilization of Egypt, whose contrasted\nsplendors and horrors awaken astonishment more and more with each\nstep in the progressive decipherment of its mysterious record,\nseems largely to have grown out of this faith. The swarming\nmillions of India also, through the chief periods of their\nhistory, have lain under its spell, suffered their lives, wrought\ntheir great works of government, architecture, philosophy, and\npoetry, and in its belief meditated, aspired, and exhaled their\nsouls. Ruder forms of it are reported among innumerable barbaric\ntribes. It played an important part in the speculations of the\nearly Fathers of the Christian Church, and has often cropped out\nin the works of later theologians. Men of the profoundest\nmetaphysical genius, like Scotus Erigena and Leibnitz, have\naffirmed it, and sought to give it a logical or scientific basis.\nAnd even amidst the predominance of skeptical and materialistic\ninfluences in Europe and America, at the present time, we\nconstantly meet individuals with independent minds who earnestly\nbelieve the alluring dogma. For, to a large and varied class of\nminds, the doctrine holds a transcendent attraction as well as a\nmanifold plausibility.\n\nAnother striking fact connected with this doctrine is that it\nseems to be a native and ineradicable growth of the Oriental\nworld; but appears in the Western world only in scattered\ninstances, and rather as an exotic form of thought. In the growing\nfreedom and liberality of thought, which no less than its doubt\nand denial, now characterize Christendom, it seems as if the full\ntime had come for a greater mental and asthetic hospitality on the\npart of Christians towards Hindus. The advocates of the\nresurrection should not confine their attention to the repellent\nor the ludicrous aspects of metempsychosis, but do justice to its\nclaim and its charm. The Pantheistic tendency which possessed and\noverwhelmed the Brahminic mind, shaping and tinging its views\nopened the whole range of sentient existences to an indiscriminate\nsympathy, and made the idea of transmigration natural, and more\npleasing than repugnant. Furthermore, the Brahminic thinkers and\nsages were a distinct class of men whose whole lives were absorbed\nin introspective reveries and metaphysical broodings calculated to\nstimulate the imagination and arouse to the keenest consciousness\nall the latent marvels and possibilities of human experience, thus\nfurnishing the most favorable conditions for exactly such a belief\nas that of transmigration, an endless series of ever varying\nadventures for the imperishable soul. And the vast swarms of the\ncommon people in the East are the passive followers of this high\ncaste of thinkers, abjectly accepting what they teach.\nAccordingly, the mysterious doctrine of the metempsychosis has\nheld the entire mind, sentiment and civilization of the East,\nthrough every period of its history, as with an irreversible\nspell.\n\nThe persistent practice of various modes of profound and\nrhythmical breathing by which the Brahmins perfect their\nrespiration, and the keen and sustained concentration of their\nattention on their inner states, tend at the same time to heighten\nthe richness and intensity of the cerebral nerves, to unify the\nconnections of the lower nerve centres with them, and to fuse the\nunconscious physiological processes with the conscious\npsychological processes. Then the persevering disuse and\nsuppression of the action of their outer senses cause the objects\nof the material world around them to seem more vague and dreamy\nthan the impressions of the ideal world within. And so the earth\nwith all its affairs seems an illusion, while their own unsought\ntrains of thought, feeling and imagery the rich mental panorama of\npictures and events, are taken for a series of substantial\nrevelations of the universe of being. An irresistible belief in\npreexistence, immortality and transmigration, results.\n\nOn the contrary, in the Western world, the characteristic\ntendencies are all different. Pantheistic theories are rarely\nheld, and the dreams and emotions which those theories are fitted\nto feed are foreign and repulsive. An impassible barrier is\nimagined separating humanity from every other form of being.\nSpeculative reason, imagination and affection, are chiefly\nemployed in scientific studies and social pursuits, or personal\nschemes, external rather than internal. This absorption in\nmaterial things and evanescent affairs engenders in the spirit an\narid atmosphere of doubt and denial, in which no efflorescence of\npoetic and mystic faiths can flourish. Thus, while the outward\nutilities abound, hard negations spread abroad; and living,\npersonal apprehension of God, of an all pervasive Providence, and\nof the immortality of the soul in any form, dies out either in\nopen infidelity or in a mere verbal acceptance of the established\ncreed of society. Consequently, to the average mind of the modern\nWestern world, the doctrine of transmigration remains a mere\nfancy, although, as we shall immediately see, it has a strange\npoetic charm, a deep metaphysical basis, and a high ethical and\nreligious quality.\n\nThe first ground on which the belief rests is the various strong\nresemblances, both physical and psychical, connecting human beings\nwith the whole family of lower creatures. They have all the senses\nin common with us, together with the rudiments of intelligence and\nwill. They all seem created after one plan, as if their varieties\nwere the gradulations of a single original type. We recognize\nkindred forms of experience and modes of expression in ourselves\nand in them. Now the man seems a travesty of the hog, the parrot,\nthe ape, the hawk, or the shark; now they seem travesties of him.\nAs we gaze at the ruminating ox, couched on the summer grass,\nnotice the slow rhythm of his jaw, and the wondering dreaminess of\nhis eyes, it is not difficult to fancy him some ancient Brahmin\ntransmigrated to this, and patiently awaiting his release. Nor is\nit incongruous with our reason or moral feeling to suppose that\nthe cruel monsters of humanity may in a succeeding birth find the\nfit penalty for their degradation and crime, in the horrid life of\na crocodile or a boa constrictor.\n\nThe conception of a series of connected lives also furnishes a\nplausible explanation for many mysteries in our present\nexperience. Reference is made to all that class of phenomena\ncovered by the Platonic doctrine of reminiscence. Faces previously\nunseen, and localities unvisited, awaken in us a vivid feeling of\na long familiarity with them. Thoughts and emotions, not hitherto\nentertained, come to us as if we had welcomed and dismissed them a\nthousand times in periods long gone by. Many an experience,\napparently novel and untried, makes us start as at the shadowy\nreminder of something often known before. The supposition of\nforgotten lives preceding the present, portions of whose\nconsciousness reverberate and gleam through the veils of thought\nand sense, seems to throw satisfactory light on this strange\ndepartment of experience.\n\nMuch more weighty and penetrative, however, than the foregoing\nconsiderations is the philosophical argument in behalf of\ntransmigration, drawn from the nature of the soul. Consciousness\nbeing in its very essence the feeling of itself, the conscious\nsoul can never feel itself annihilated, even in thought it only\nloses the knowledge of its being when it lapses into unconsciousness,\nas in sleep or trance. The soul may indeed think of its own\nannihilation but cannot realize the thought in feeling,\nsince the fainter emotional reflex upon the idea of its\ndestruction is instantly contradicted and over borne by the more\nmassive and vivid sense of its persistent being in immediate\nconsciousness. This incessant self assertion of consciousness at\nonce suggests the idea of its being independent of the changing\nand vanishing body in which it is temporarily shrined. Then the\nconception naturally follows that the soul, as it has once\nappeared in human form, so it may reappear indefinitely in any of\nthe higher or lower forms of being which compose the hierarchy of\nthe universe. The eternity of the soul, past and future, once\naccepted by the mind, leads directly to the construction of the\nwhole scheme of metempsychosis an everlasting succession of births\nand deaths, disembodiments and reembodiments, with their laws of\npersonality and fortunes of time and space weaving the boundless\nweb of destiny and playing the endless drama of providence.\n\nBut the strongest support of the theory of transmigration is the\nhappy moral solution it seems to give to the problem of the dark\nand distressing inequality and injustice which otherwise appear so\npredominant in the experience of the world. To the superficial\nobserver of human life the whole scene of struggle, sin and\nsorrow, nobleness and joy, triumph and defeat, is a tangled maze\nof inconsistencies, a painful combination of violent discords. But\nif we believe that every soul, from that of the lowest insect to\nthat of the greatest archangel, forms an affiliated member of the\ninfinite family of God, and is eternal in its conscious essence,\nperishable only as to its evanescent disguises of unconscious\nincarnation; that every act of every creature is followed by its\nlegitimate reactions; that these actions and reactions constitute\na law of retribution absolutely perfect; that these souls, with\nall their doings and sufferings are interconnected with one\nanother, and with the whole, all whose relationships copenetrate\nand cooperate with mutual influences whose reports are infallible\nand with lines of sequence that never break, then the bewildering\nmaze becomes a vindicated plan, the horrible discord a divine\nharmony. What an explication it gives of those mysteries of evil,\npain, sorrow and retribution, which often wrap the innocent and\nthe wicked in one sad fate, if we but see that no individual\nstands alone, but trails along with him the unfinished sequels of\nall ancestral experience, and, furthermore, is so bound up with\nhis simultaneous race that each is responsible for all and all for\neach, and that no one can be wholly saved or safe until all are\nredeemed and perfected! Then every suffering we endure for faults\nnot our own, the consequence of the deeds of others, assumes a\nholy light and a sublime dignity, associating us with that great\nsacrament of atoning pain whereof the crucified Christ is not the\nexclusive instance but the representative head.\n\nThe above translation of the ecclesiastical doctrine of the\nresurrection into a form scientifically credible, and reconciled\nwith the immemorial tenet of transmigration, may seem to some a\nvery fanciful speculation, a mere intellectual toy. Perhaps it is\nso. It is not propounded with the slightest dogmatic animus. It is\nadvanced solely as an illustration of what may possibly be true,\nas suggested by the general evidence of the phenomena of history\nand the facts of experience. The thoughts embodied in it are so\nwonderful, the method of it is so rational, the region of\ncontemplation into which it lifts the mind is so grand, the\nprospects it opens are of such universal reach and import, that\nthe study of it brings us into full sympathy with the sublime\nscope of the idea of immortality and of a cosmopolitan vindication\nof providence uncovered to every eye. It takes us out of the\nlittleness of petty themes and selfish affairs, and makes it\neasier for us to believe in the vastest hopes mankind have ever\nknown. It causes the most magnificent conceptions of human destiny\nto seem simply proportional to the native magnitude and beauty of\nthe powers of the mind which can conceive such things. After\ntraversing the grounds here set forth we feel that if the view\nbased on them be not the truth, it must be because God has in\nreserve for us a sequel greater and lovelier, not meaner than our\nbrightest dream hitherto. The worthiest theory of the fate of man\nwhich the spirit of man can construct must either be a revelatory\ndivination of the truth, or an inadequate attempt to grasp the\ndesign of the Creator in its true glory. It is impious and absurd\nto hold that man can think out a scheme superior to the one God\nhas decreed. And it seems equally unreasonable to suppose that the\nscheme of God for the future stages of our career is one which has\nno hints in our present experience. Certainly it appears more\nlikely that the sequel will be discovered by the logical\ncompletion of the inwrought order which has been slowly unfolding\nfrom the first. And what do history and prophecy show more plainly\nthan the tendency to a convergence of all humanity in every man?\nSpreading consanguinity in descent and growth of sympathetic\nknowledge both point to this. Perfect this in each man, and\nilluminate his whole organism and its relations with adequate\nintelligence, and we have a true resurrection, not indeed of\ndecayed bodies from the grave, but of historic states of\nconsciousness from their latent embedment in the nervous system,\nand their undulatory record in the dynamic medium of the creation.\nOur senses now convert certain sets of undulations of the ethereal\nmedium into perceptions of light, heat, sound, and so interpret\ntheir contents and extract their tidings. It is not impossible\nthat in a coming stage of development we may obtain additional\nsenses; our spirits may command the means of translating into\ncorrespondent states of consciousness all the other modes of\nvibration of the ethereal medium, and grasp the keys of unlimited\nknowledge deciphering every secret wherever they go. The whole\nuniverse may be a palimpsest preserving the inscriptions of all\ndeeds, and every soul may be a reagent gifted with the power to\nrecover and read its own.\n\nAs each generation is the inheritor of the preceding ones, all of\nwhich from the first prolong their existence into the last in\nunbroken continuity of historic conduct and responsibility,\njustice may at the ripened period be naturally summed up without\nany miracle. We all are projections of our ancestors. They\nproperly in us suffer and enjoy in accordance with what has flowed\nfrom their lives. The whole of this, lighted up with consciousness\nat last, may be the real meaning of the burden of the spirit given\nto the apostle Paul, but misinterpreted by him into the mechanico\nscenic scheme of the Judaized Christian Church. For when the\nmighty influx struck the brain of the persecuting zealot,\nrevolutionizing his life, it came into connection with all the\ninflamed theories and convictions so deeply drilled therein by his\nPharisaic education. These convictions, partly of a mere local and\ntransient character, associated with legends of Adam and Abraham\nand the under world and Christ and the sky, mixed with the true\nand universal import of the higher inspiration now given him,\ncaused his misconstrual of its message, and stamped the purely\nhuman and providential meaning of the doctrine of the resurrection\nwith the rabbinical die of a politico mythological dogma. If this\nwere so, it is not the only instance in which the preexistent\ndiscolorations in the mind of an inspired prophet have refracted\nthe truth of his burden into distorted error and bequeathed the\ntask of a future rectification when more light shall have come.\n\nIn the next place, we come to the fourth reason for the growing\ndoubts and disbelief of our day in immortality. It is the\nremarkable diffusion of the habits of thought engendered by the\nstudy of materialistic science. The authority of physical science\nhas been rapidly encroaching on and displacing the authority of\nthe church theology and sectarian creeds. Belief in invariable\nlaws has undermined belief in miracle and supernatural revelation.\nThose who had been taught that the resurrection of Christ was the\nonly adequate proof of the immortality of the soul, learning to\ndeny the former, have naturally proceeded to question the latter.\nFor in such matters the real implications of logic are little\nnoticed. The religious skepticism nourished by physical science is\nin all respects really as irrational and baseless as it is actual.\nFor example, the resurrection of Christ, admitting it to be a\nfact, did not create the immortality it was considered to\nillustrate. If he rose, it was because men are immortal, and men\nare not immortal because he rose. If he did not rise, men are\nimmortal all the same, provided human immortality be a truth; if\nit be not a truth, the resurrection of Christ would be an isolated\nabnormal event without any logical validity on the question. The\ntruth or falsity of human immortality, therefore, is a question of\nthe creative plan of God and the essential nature of man, to be\ndecided on the intrinsic evidences, and cannot logically be\naffected one way or the other by any individual historic\noccurrence limited to a certain time and place. Yet it is a\npractical necessity that any great popular faith, if it rests on\nauthority, will be shocked and weakened by everything which shocks\nand weakens that authority, no matter how adventitious it is. If\none cannot believe in the preternatural resurrection of Christ,\nthat surely is no valid reason for denying the natural immortality\nof the soul, but only a good reason for seeking to learn if there\nbe not adequate grounds for this faith quite independent of\nscripture text and priestly assertion.\n\nPrecisely the same reasoning holds in relation to the doubts about\nspiritual realities bred in the minds of those whose studies are\nconversant exclusively with material realities. The professors of\nphysical science, thoroughly familiarized with things which\ncombine and dissolve, often come to fancy that everything is\nphenomenal and evanescent, that there is no immaterial substance,\nthat spirit is not entity but process, that thought and feeling\nand will are mere transient functions of transient matter. Thus\nall faith in the individuality of mind is pulverized at the\nfountain head. There can be no question but that such is the\ncommon influence of a constant contemplation of the physical\naspects alone of physical things. Mentality, consciousness, is\nregarded as the prismatic bow in the cloud, a spectral show that\nappears and vanishes, with no permanent substance. At the present\ntime, in Christendom, the one conquering power in literature, the\none fascinating absorption of thought in society, is that\nconnected with the cultivation of physical science. Its prestige\nis overwhelming. Its prevalent methods and results give a\nmaterialistic turn of interpretation to the popular mind upon all\nsubjects. The direct consequence, among that class of minds who\nput physical science above theology, is the spreading disavowal of\nall belief in the immortality of the soul. The fallacy is obvious,\nand the remedy is simple, if there be at hand but enough of modest\ncandor and patience fairly to weigh the facts of the case in the\nscales of a sound logic.\n\nIn the first place, by the very structure of our being, by the\nvery necessity of our experience, the universe is divided into two\nirreconcilable classes of realities, namely, spiritual subjects\nand material objects. Sensations, perceptions, emotions, thoughts,\nvolitions, all qualities of mind, all states of consciousness, are\nabsolutely immaterial. They are more real to us, that is to say,\nthey more inexpugnably assert and maintain themselves, than\nmaterial things do: and it is only hopeless vulgarity and\nincompetence of thinking which can ever confuse or merge them with\nmaterial things. Matter is that which proves itself to spirit by\nthe effects it produces on spirit. Spirit is that which is its own\nevidence. The center of consciousness in us is its own proof of\nits own being, and all that occurs within it is its own proof, and\nis unsusceptible of any other or foreign demonstration. Hope,\nfear, love, imagination, reason, are absolutely unthinkable as\nforms of material substance, however exquisitely refined and\nexalted. There is no conceivable community of being between a\nsentiment and an atom, a gas and an aspiration, an idea of truth\nin the soul and any mass of matter in space. Each of these facts,\nconscious thought and material extension, has its own incommunicable\nand incomparable sphere of being and laws of action, which can be\nconfused only by ignorance and sophistry.\n\nSo clear has this become to all profound reflection, that the ablest\nsupporters of the theory of evolution, with all their preponderant\nbias in favor of physical science, declare, in the words of\nHerbert Spencer, that if compelled to choose between thinking of\nspirit in the terms of matter and thinking of matter in the terms\nof spirit, they should take the latter alternative and give an\nidealistic interpretation to nature rather than a materialistic\ninterpretation to the soul. It is logically clear, then, despite\nthe fallacious influences of habit to the contrary, that no\nprogress of the physical sciences, no conceivable amount of\ninduction and generalization as to the composition or decomposition\nof material bodies, can throw any new light or darkness on the\nnature and destiny of the immaterial soul.\n\nThe incessant flux of phenomena constructing and destroying apparent\nthings, though studied till the observing eye sees nothing but\nmirage anywhere, has nothing to do with the steady persistence of\nspiritual identity. To force it to discredit our claim to a divine\ndescent and an endless inheritance is a glaring sophism. The\nquestion must be snatched back from the assumption of the retort\nand crucible, the observational and numerical methods of the\nphysical realm, and relegated to the legitimate tests of the moral\nand metaphysical realm.\n\nAgain, there is furnished in the results of the study of physical\nscience itself, as pursued by its most gifted masters, a glorious\noverthrow and neutralization of the moral and religious doubts\ncalled out in its shallower votaries by their absorption in its\nmore superficial phases. The scientific men of the most profound\nintellectual power and the most brilliant original genius, the\nsupreme heads of chemistry, dynamics and mathematics, have applied\nto the phenomena of the material creation modes of observation and\ninstruments of reasoning before whose compelling efficacy the\nwhole frowning vastitude of the outer universe melts into ideal\npoints of force and forms of law. Everything in time and space is\nreduced to molecular vibrations, regulated by the mental\nconceptions of number, weight and measure. The reasonings of such\nmen as Oersted and Faraday on electricity and magnetism; of Sir\nWilliam Thomson and Clerk Maxwell on thermodynamics; the theories\nof the greatest mathematicians, grasping all things in heaven and\nearth with their irresistible calculus, literally using infinites\nas toys, creating imaginary quantities, and, going through certain\noperations with them, actually discovering new truths in the solid\ndomain of reality yield conceptions of order, beauty and\nsublimity, and emotions of wonder, awe and delight, nowhere else\nsurpassed. They exalt the spectacle of nature into a vision of\npoetic intelligence, and show the theorizing mind of man to be\nakin to the creating mind of God. Thus, if skepticism as to the\ndeathless royalty of soul is bred in the physicist who constantly\nstoops with the scalpel and the microscope, it is offset in him\nwho, with as steady a judgment, soars to the contemplation of the\nethereal medium with its lines of force traversing immensity and\nvibrating timelessly along their whole length, loaded, for those\nwho can interpret them, with tidings of all that happens. Instead\nof spirit being materialized, matter is spiritualized and nature\ntransfigured into the ideal home of ideal entities. Dumas, years\nago, asserted that hydrogen gas is but an etherealized metal. Just\nnow, it is said, Pictet has succeeded, under a pressure of six\nhundred and fifty atmospheres, in actually crystallizing oxygen\nand hydrogen. One has only to read such papers as those of Stallo\non the fundamental concepts of science to learn that if matter or\nmind is ever to be lost, it will not be mind.\n\nBut there remains a more direct and more important way of\ncorrecting the dismal or defiant doubts of immortality caused by\nthe inferior phases of materialistic study; and that is, by\nbringing up to a correspondent fullness and intensity the counter\nactivity of the ideal powers. Let justice be done to the subject\nas well as to the object. Over against the watching of clouds and\nwaves, the sorting of herbs, the weighing of metals, the measuring\nof quantities, bring up the exercise of the mind on the treasures\nof qualitative substance in its own proper sphere of reason and\nlove and faith. Admire the beautiful, love the good, obey the\ntrue, worship the right, aspire to the highest, subordinate or\nsacrifice everything base or wrong in a generous service of duty,\nand thus nourish a consciousness of those ontological relations by\nwhich the soul is rooted in the Godhead, and stimulate that\nintuitive efflorescence of faith which grows out of progressive\nfulfillment and which prophecies perpetuity of fulfillment. To say\nthe least, the subject is as real as the object, the contemplating\nfaculty as valid as the phenomenon it confronts. The teachings of\nthe soul rightly construed are as authentic as the teachings of\nnature. And, some day in the future, a complete system of truth\ndeveloped from the central principle of the one by the subjective\nmethod will be found to correspond perfectly with the complete\nsystem of truth developed by the objective method from the central\nprinciple of the other. As the objective scientific principle is\nthe persistence of force, the subjective scientific principle is\nthe potential infinity of individual spirit, each one the\nequivalent of the all. What else than this can be the ultimate\nmeaning of the primal, universal, indestructible antithesis or\ndual classification of being, the ego and the non ego, self and\nnot self, the former including each individual in his own\napprehension, the latter including all besides?\n\nThere is a philosophical authority which, for those incompetent to\njudge for themselves, should properly take the place vacated by\nthe ecclesiastical authority, which, in our day, is plainly on the\nwane. Multitudes no longer believe in the immortality of their\nsouls on the ground of the resurrection of Christ, or the\nassertion of Scripture or creed. Shall they, then, deny it\naltogether because the materialistic band clamor that it is a\ndelusion, and they themselves see no sufficient evidence for it?\nThere is a more appropriate alternative. Many theories in natural\nphilosophy have been exploded by the proof of their absurdity, and\nthe correct explanations are accepted on trust by the multitudes\nincompetent to master their logical and mathematical grounds. Very\nfew understand the proofs of the chief laws of nature, but the\nvast majority of men implicitly trust the assertions of those who\ndo know them. In like manner there is a legitimate sphere for\nauthority in moral and religious beliefs; only it should be the\nauthority of the competent and disinterested. Now, it is a fact\nthat the very greatest philosophers who have ever lived, the\npreeminently imperial thinkers, such as Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas,\nAnselm, Hegel, and the resplendent group of their peers, have\nasserted as a necessary principle the real being and eternal\nsubstantiality of the soul. Besides all the combinations of matter\nthat dissolve, all the phenomena that pass, they affirm the\nexistence of enduring entities, individual spirits, thinkers\nconscious of their thoughts. In central calm, far within the\nstruggle and vex of the rolling elements, throned in its own\nserene realm of law, lives the free, conscious soul, and will live\neternally, actualizing its potentialities. Nothing can\ndisintegrate it, because it is not an aggregate but a unity, not a\nquantitative mass of matter, but a spaceless monad of power. It is\na closed circuit of thinking activity, impenetrable to everything\nelse. Spirits are the only solids, matter being endlessly\npenetrable and transmutable.\n\nWe are all obliged to think of ourselves as entities, and not as\nmere phenomenal series of states. There must be a substratum for\nthe affections of consciousness. All changes are changes of\nsomething. It is true there is a mystery involved here which no\nwords can make clear; yet the more deeply one thinks and feels the\nmore intense will be his assurance that there is something in him\nwhich thinks and feels, or rather that he himself is a something\nwhich thinks and feels. The best conception we can get of the soul\nis that it is a subject which is its own object and a mirror for\nthe inner reflection of all other objects. God is not an object,\nbecause He is the actualized infinite Subject. His thoughts are\nconcrete creations, the objective realities of the universe\nphenomenal and substantial. We are actually finite subjects, but\nwith a potential infinity, patterned in free correspondence with\nHim. Our thoughts are subjective reflections of His, modified by\nthe contents of our facultative constitution and the peculiarities\nof our historic experience. What constitutes my soul is the\npotentiality of all states of consciousness, actual and latent,\npast, present and future. It reveals itself to me, so to speak, in\nmy actual thoughts and feelings. So far as these are true and\ngood, they correspond with and represent the will of God, and must\nshare the fortunes of the Divine Reality with which they are\nimplicitly joined. Then my soul cannot be annihilated unless the\nwill of God is so far annihilated. But God is infinite being, and\nthere is nothing outside of or counter to infinite being to\ndestroy it. All evil is but defect or negation. I am only in so\nfar as I am positive reality. Nothing of me, therefore, can ever\nperish, except my imperfections; and the thought of the perishing\nof imperfections is a thought of joy. Welcome, then, be the\napproach of death which shall cleanse and dislimit me into\nunimprisonable divineness of being, the crystalline sphere of pure\nintelligence and immortality!\n\nThe only real proof of immortality in the sight of the intellect,\nis the perception of the necessity of self determining entities as\nthe causes and grounds of the facts of experience. A series of\nstates implies something of which they are states. There seems to\nbe no possible explanation or understanding of the phenomena which\nconfront our experience without the conception of ultimate\nindividualities, indestructible subject objects, centers of\nspiritual activity, monistic selfhoods, conscious egos, each of\nwhich distinguishes itself from every other, and contrasts itself\nwith the All. Now it is claimed that every thinker who reaches the\nmaturest stage of thought attains to this insight. It is the\nimperial mark of a certain stage of knowledge. Here the supreme\nthinkers, sceptered with final perception of the truth of their\nown eternity, sit at ease, enthroned in the serene and lucid realm\nof law, beyond the reach of the dark tempest of cavils and doubts.\nAnd there is a larger company who on easier terms have attained\nthe same result. For, without this wearisome metaphysical hewing\nof conclusions from the quarries of ontology, the good and pure,\nwho, in their loving obedience and aspiration, keep the harmonic\nquickness and innocence of their intuitions uninjured, also have\nan unshaken assurance that they live in God and shall share his\nlife forevermore. The mystics of every period seem in feeling to\nhave an immediate grasp of all that the greatest philosophers have\npainfully conquered by speculation. These two classes may claim to\npossess direct certitude of eternal life. All others must either\nattain to the stage of development and mount of vision of these,\nor receive the faith on their authority, or else be subject to\ndoubt and unbelief.\n\nTo accept the doctrine of the immortality of the soul on the\nauthority of the wisest philosophers and the purest saints, is a\nlegitimate procedure perfectly in keeping with what the human race\ndoes in all other provinces of thought where it is incapable of\nproving what its teachers have demonstrated, but can easily\nappreciate and make practical application of the truths they have\naffirmed. The great laws of science in all its domains are\nscientifically mastered by very few, but their empirical rules are\nimplicitly followed by the common multitude. One form or\nreceptacle of authority after another may be superseded; but\nauthority itself always remains. And the true course for those to\npursue who have come to repudiate the authority of scripture, or\nchurch creed, or the resurrection of Christ, as a proof of the\nfuture life of man, is not at once to abandon all belief in a\nfuture state, but to accept the guidance of the most competent\nindependent thinkers in place of that of the most arbitrary\ndogmatists. For unto all who do not arrogate to themselves a\ntranscendent competency to judge, the general consensus of the\nthought and feeling of the world, clarified and interpreted by the\nfittest few, will always be a grateful ground of reliance and\ntrust. And the verdict thus revealed is unequivocally in favor of\nthe doctrine of immortality.\n\nThere can be no changes independently of something which is\nchanged. Amidst all the changeable in us which passes and is\nforgotten, there is something which stays and is inexpugnable. It\nis our identity. That which appears in consciousness first, which\nrecurs oftenest, and which persists longest, is the most valid\nobject of belief. And what is that but the very consciousness, or\nthe subject as its own object? Surely, the one invariable\naccompaniment of all the shifting states of consciousness is the\nbare essential consciousness itself: this is, so to speak, the\nunitary vessel containing all their varieties. This unquestionably\nexists now. The burden of proof, then, as Bishop Butler long ago\nshowed, is on those who affirm its destruction in the article of\ndeath. Consciousness is purely immaterial, as every one who has\npassed beyond the most ignorant and childish stages of thought\nmust see. Merely because it is, in our present experience,\nassociated in time and space with a material organism, therefore\nto declare that it is a dependent production of matter, or a\ntransient concomitant of the transient body, is a gratuitous\nassertion with not one scintilla of evidence.\n\nEven, for the moment, admitting it to be true that no argument of\nirresistible cogency has yet been advanced to prove the\nimmortality of the soul, it is certain that no proof has ever\nbeen given of its mortality. The very utmost that can be claimed\nby any skeptic who fairly understands the whole case, is that the\ndifferent arguments, for and against, offset one another, and\nleave the question in a neutral balance of suspense, just where it\nwas before the debate began. Many persons hold that the counter\nreasonings do thus balance and annul one another. For them the\nproblem remains to be decided on other grounds than those of the\nlogical disputation which has proved inadequate to its settlement.\nThese other grounds are considerations of congruity, probability,\nthe prophetic preparations and demands of present experience. What\nsort of a figure would the segments which we now see, compose, if\nthey were completed? What in the hidden future portions of our\ndestiny would be harmonic and complementary as related with the\nparts here experienced? When the other modes of inquiry are\nabandoned this mode remains. Its teachings are rich and impressive\nin proportion to the greatness of the faculties and the wealth of\nknowledge and love brought to its consideration. And thus we come\nface to face with the fifth and last cause of the failing faith in\nimmortality confessed to characterize the present day.\n\nThat cause is the common inability to realize in the thoughts of\nthe mind, and to hold in the faith of the feelings, a conception\nso vast, so mysterious, so remote from the usual routine of the\nselfish trifles and petty notions which monopolize the powers and\nfritter down the faculties of the average people of the nineteenth\ncentury. The battle of sensualism, the scramble over material\ninterests, the wearing absorption in the small and evanescent\nstruggles of social rivalry, the irritated attention given to the\never thickening claims of external things, the pulverizing\ndiscussions of all sorts of opinions by hostile schools, are fatal\nto that concentrated calmness of mood, that unity of passion, that\nserene amplitude of intellectual and imaginative scope, that\ndocile religious receptiveness of soul, requisite for the fit\ncontemplation of a doctrine so solemn and sublime as that of\nimmortality. The grade of thought and scale of emotion ordinarily\ncharacteristic of ordinary men are utterly out of keeping with the\ninexpressible grandeur of themes like that of the divine kinship\nand eternity of the soul. The reason and fancy, before they can be\ncompetent to appreciate such truths, must be trained in the study\nand worshipful meditation of subjects of commensurate mystery and\nsublimity. It is no wonder that when minds and hearts familiar\nonly with houses and clothes and food, the trivial gossip and\nvanity of the hour, are summoned to grasp the idea of spiritual\nsurvival and an everlasting destiny of conscious adventures, they\nare overwhelmed and helplessly fail to represent to themselves the\npossibility of any such truth. This cause of doubt is very\nprevalent and effective; for ever more and more in our age\nconscious attention is turned away from states within and fixed\nupon things without. The natural consequence is that the objective\nworld is arrogating the first place in consciousness, and the\nsubjective world is sinking into the secondary rank. Whatever\nexalts the object at the expense of the subject tends to\nmaterialism, unbelief in the separate being of the spirit. On the\nother hand whatever gives the panoramic passage of subjective\nstates in the soul greater apparent vividness and tenacity than\nbelong to outer phenomena, tends to produce faith in the\nindependence and immortality of the spirit. Hence it is quite to\nbe expected that until our modern concentration on objective toil\nand study and amusement reaches its destined climax and begins the\nreturn career to subjective reason and feeling, the skepticism of\nthe age will increase.\n\nMeanwhile the remedy for the evil is, first, to perceive it, and\nthen, to cultivate the kinds of experience calculated to\nneutralize it. For the logical invalidity and fallaciousness of\nthe doubts concerning immortality, arising from the immense\ndisparity of such a belief with the mental habits of ignorant\nearthlings and social parasites, appear from the fact that there\nare others with whose experience and thought the doctrine has no\nsuch disparity, but for whose spiritual range and haunt it is as\nnatural to believe it as to breathe. And, in explaining the\ndestiny of man, it is legitimate to take the most finished and\nfurnished specimens, not the abortive ones. There are grounds of\nknowledge, domains of imagination, heights of nobility, familiar\nto the most exalted characters, perfectly cognate and harmonious\nwith the conception of eternal life, and making the faith in it\nfully as credible as the transcendent truths of science and\nphilosophy which have been actually demonstrated. Those who are\nfamiliar only with the little affairs of sense, in narrow bounds\nof time and space, may well gasp in despair and denial when the\nbewildering contents of the doctrine of immortality are held\nbefore them; but for all who have mastered what science reveals of\nthe objective world of nature, and what literature records of the\nsubjective world of soul, both these spheres furnish ample\nillustrative examples and data to make the faith in every way\ncongruous with what else they know, and as easy as it is pleasing\nto receive. Assuredly the belief resulting in this latter class\nfrom their positive perception and correspondent desire and\npersuasion, are, on every ground of reason or moral fitness, more\nthan a counterbalance for the unbelief resulting in the former\nclass from their negative experience and incompetency. If we\nsought to estimate the possibility and destined fulfillment of\nhuman nature when all its conditions shall have been perfected,\nshould we choose for the basis of our judgment the incapacity of\nthe lower specimens of man? or the capacity of the higher? After\nconsidering the chief achievements of human genius, the mysterious\npowers of the human soul now, the doctrine of immortality does not\nseem too great and wonderful for belief; but, on the contrary, it\nappears the coherent complement of the facts of the present.\n\nNothing can be more marvelous or imply greater glory for the\ndestiny of the individual being than the fact that each\nconsciousness is to itself the antithetical equivalent or balance\nof the totality of being beside; since the whole universe, all\nother beings, God himself, are known to the individual\nconsciousness only as revealed in itself through its personal\nfaculties. The slightest change in the subject is reported by a\ncorrespondent change in objects. Heighten the internal activities\nof the soul to a certain pitch, and the convictions they engender\nwill be so intense, and the experience so absorbing, as\nirresistibly to sweep away all opposing doubts and fill every\ncraving with the triumphant flood of life. What overwhelming\nrevelations of the providence of God and eternal life, crowding\nthe cosmos at every point with the workings of poetic justice, may\nthus be made to prepared spirits, only those who receive them\nknow. Paul said he was caught up into the third heaven and heard\nunspeakable words. It is to be believed that such visions, while\noften illusory, are sometimes genuine. A test to discriminate the\nspurious and the authentic will one day be secured. Meanwhile it\nis either a faithless faintheartedness or a vulgar arrogance to\nomit from the data of our expected fate those thoughts, which,\nthough beyond the reaches of our souls, nevertheless irresistibly\nallure our attention and enchain our affection; ideas belonging to\nour nature, though transcending our experience, and, while\nsurpassing our faculties, still attracting us to our destiny. What\nare presentiments but divine wings of the spirit fluttering toward\nour unseen goal?\n\nAgain, the great metaphysicians, who have elaborated the\nidealistic philosophy in so many forms, exhibit the mind of man to\nus as superior to the cosmic spectacle it contemplates projected\nin immensity. They portray the material creation as a phantasmal\nshow of mind, a phenomenal process and aspect of spirit,\nindissoluble centers of consciousness alone having solid verity\nand stay, while matter and force and times and places whirl and\npass, combine and dissolve.\n\nLikewise the mathematicians, with their mighty calculus, translate\nall quantities and qualities, all objects and operations, into\nnumerical symbols, and with these intellectual toys play the same\nmiraculous tricks that the Creator himself plays with the\noriginals. They symbolize purely imaginary quantities, bring them\ninto relations and pass them through certain operations, and\nthereby discover truths which are found to have permanent\nobjective validity. It demonstrates, as said before, that the\nfilial mind which thus wanders in thought through the house of the\nFather, and, everywhere making itself familiarly at home, disports\namong His treasures, is of the same type with the parental Mind.\n\nAnd now, still farther, that the cultivators of physical science\nare pushing their discoveries and their theories to ultimates, we\nbegin to see the adamantine structure of material nature melting\ninto a system of ideal equivalents, vaporizing into an undulatory\nether, vanishing before our microscopes in immaterial bases of\nthought, reason, law and will. The gases have just been first\nliquified and then actually solidified, confirming the speculative\nannouncement long before made that oxygen and hydrogen are metals\nvolatilized. Many valuable and strange discoveries have been\nreached in physical science by following prophetic declarations\nmade a priori on grounds of pure reason. The same proofs of\nintellectual design and purpose are discerned in the order of\natomic combination, in the beauty of crystals and dewdrops and\nsnowflakes, in the perfect geometrical symmetry of minerals and\nflowers, and in the same spiral adjustment of the leaves on a tree\nand of the orbits of the planets in the sky, as in the artistic\nworks of man. Intellect and will are as much shown in the\nproduction of a palm tree as they are in the production of a poem\nAnd so, before the gaze of the accomplished and devout scientist,\nmatter is translated into terms of mind, rather than the reverse,\nand the whole cosmos is transmuted into a divine laboratory of\nideal powers, a divine gallery of ideal pictures, a divine theater\nfor the eternal adventures of conscious spirits.\n\nIn mental conception man deals with mathematical infinites as\neasily as with the pettiest objects, dilates a point to the\nuniverse and shrinks the universe to a point, condenses eternity\ninto a moment or stretches a moment to eternity. It has been shown\nthat if correspondent diminution or enlargement in the faculties\nof sense and intelligence and in all the forces concerned were\nmade, the whole stellar system and its contents might be dwarfed\ninto the bulk of a grain of sand, or so magnified that each grain\nwould fill the space now occupied by the whole, and no one would\nperceive any change whatever in the scale. In reply to the\nstatement that nothing can act where it is not, it has been proved\nthat every atom is virtually omnipresent. It takes the entire\nuniverse to constitute an atom, since the forces centered in each\natom are connected with the whole by the insunderable continuity\nof all the laws of being. The science of molecular physics as\nexpounded by its latest masters is not less astounding than the\nwildest soarings of transcendental metaphysics. For instance, it\nis proved that if there be ultimate atoms their size must be so\nsmall that it would require at least five hundred millions of them\nto an inch in length. In a cubic inch of hydrogen gas, then, for\nexample, there are 125,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 one hundred\nand twenty five septillions of atoms, moving with the inconceivable\nvelocity that is implied by their making thousands of millions\nof changes of direction every second. The view of the dynamic s\ntructure of the universe opened in this direction is as\nappalling as that unveiled in the opposite direction by the\nlargest extension of the nebular hypothesis. He who can gaze here\nwith steady reason need not be staggered by the sublimest doctrine\nof religion. Amazed at the spectacle of creative power and wisdom,\nequally amazed at the discovering faculty of man, we feel it to be\nincredible that he should have been made capable of such thoughts\nonly to be annihilated after a brief tantalization. Confronting\nthe immeasurable wilderness of divine glory, strewn all through\nwith prizes before which his soul burns with the unconsumable fire\nof a god like ambition, man lifts his eye to worship and reaches\nout his hand to receive. Is he merely taunted with the starry sky,\nand mocked with an infinite illusion of progress, suddenly barred\nwith endless night and oblivion? Behold him emerging out of\nnothingness, mastering his self conscious identity, climbing over\nthe rounds of symbolic experience and language through the heights\nof knowledge and love. Strange, helpless, sublime prince of the\nuniverse, beggar of God, when he has attained the summit of\nillimitable perception, holding immortal joys in full prospect,\nshall he be dashed back into nonentity? Is it not fitter that he\nbe welcomed by triumphant initiation into the family of the\ndeathless Father?\n\nThink of the advancement man has made since the time when he was a\ncannibal cave dweller, shivering out of the glacial epoch, and\ncontending with wild beasts for a foothold on the earth, till now\nthat he enjoys the idealism of Berkeley, wields the quaternions of\nHamilton, uses the lightnings for his red sandaled messengers,\nholds his spectroscope to a star and tells what elements compose\nit, or to an outskirting nebula and declares it a mass of\nincandescent hydrogen. From such a background of accomplished fact\nhe seems really to have a right to peer forth into the unbounded\nfuture and promise himself an unbounded destiny. The repetition of\nsuch a progress, nay much less, it may not unreasonably be\nimagined would raise the curtains from unsuspected secrets, bring\nthe family of intelligences scattered over all worlds into\nconscious communication, and accomplish the deliverance of the\nwhole creation travailing and groaning together unto this day for\nthe redemption of the creature. What a splendid, almost incredible\ntask man has already achieved in disentangling the apparent\nastronomic motions and converting them into the real ones. How\nimmensely sublimer and more complex is the position of man on this\nplanet than it seemed to the primitive savage, who knew only what\nhis crude senses taught him, although, all the while, the moon was\ncircling about him twenty five hundred miles an hour, and he was\nwhirling with the revolving earth a thousand miles an hour, and\nspinning around the sun over thirty thousand miles an hour, and\nswooping with the whole solar system through the blue void with a\nstill swifter gyre in a yet vaster cycle! This is demonstrated\nphysical fact. Its harmonic correlate in the spiritual sphere\nwould be nothing less than a lease of eternal existence for the\nsoul which sees endless invitations ahead, and exults at the\nprospect of an eternal pursuit of them, its reason and affection\naffiliated with those of the whole divine household of immortals.\nTwo or three generations ago it would have been more inconceivable\nthat men a hundred miles apart could audibly converse together, as\nthey now do by means of the telephone, than it is at this day to\nbelieve that communication may at some future time be opened\nbetween the inhabitants of the earth and the inhabitants of Sirius\nthrough the vibrations of the ethereal medium.\n\nFuthermore, the idea of the infinite God, in possession of which\nman finds himself, is a warrant for his immortality. There cannot\nbe more in an effect than was in its cause, though there may be\nless. We perceive intelligence, orderly purpose, as well as power,\nin nature. We find in ourselves all the explicit attributes and\ntreasures of consciousness. Reasoning back by indubitable steps we\ncome to an uncaused, unlimited, infinite Being, the underived and\neternal source of all that is. This idea in our minds of a Being\nof absolute perfection, whose boundless consciousness as being\nnecessarily indivisible must be totally present at every point of\ninfinitude, is the charter of our own divine nature and heirship.\nFor we can become, even here, friends and companions of this\nomnipresent One, of whose essence and attributes everything below\nis but a defective transcript or dimmed revelation. This idea of\nHimself is the gift of God to us. To suppose that we are capable\nof originating it implies a greater miracle than the one it seeks\nto account for, and really puts ourselves in the place of God. Can\nwe imagine that we are the creators of God? If the absolute\nnoumenal Power beyond all phenomena be unknowable, it cannot\ncontain less, but must contain more than all the attributes of the\nmaterial and spiritual creation which has proceeded thence. The\nnoblest and best spirits of all lands and ages have walked in full\nfellowship with this Being, seeking supremely to serve and love\nHim in the subjection of self will and in the doing of good. Many\na nameless saint, in a pure consecration, has heroically thought\nand suffered and aspired, worn out life in slow toils or offered\nit up in sharp sacrifice, for the good of fellow creatures, as a\ntribute to God, and exhaled the last breath in a prayer of love\nand trust. Such faithful servants and comrades must be dear to the\nInfinite Spirit, and it is natural to believe that He will keep\nthem with him forever. When Christ, in self sacrificing love,\nsubmitted to death on the cross, saying, \"Father, into Thy hands I\ncommit my spirit,\" he who can believe that the magnanimous\nsufferer was disappointed, blotted out and extinguished, thus\nreveals the grade of his own insight, but does not refute the\ngreater hope of nobler seers. It seems as if the idea of God, with\nloving faith and obedience to its requirements, planted in a soul\nwhich had not inherited immortality would straightway begin to\ndevelop it there. The atmosphere of eternity alone befits a nature\nwhich feels itself living in the companionship of God. Everything\nsubject to decay cowers into oblivion from before the idea of that\naugust, incorruptible presence. The fear of death is but the\nrecoil of the immortal from mortality. When man voluntarily faces\ndeath without fear, even courting martyrdom with a radiant joy, it\nis because there is in him, deeper than consciousness, a mystic\nknowledge that he is essentially eternal and cannot perish. He who\nfreely sacrifices anything thereby proves himself superior to that\nwhich he sacrifices. Man freely sacrifices his life. Therefore he\nis immortal.\n\nThe ancient Semitic philosopher and poet who wrote the book of\nJob, brooding on the strange problem of life and death, murmured,\n\"Man giveth up the ghost, and where is he?\" With each successive\ngeneration, for many ages, countless millions have dissolved and\nvanished into the vast, dumb mystery. Now, the spectator,\nremembering all this, stands beneath the dome of midnight,\nimploringly breathes the mystic sigh, \"Man giveth up the ghost,\nand where is he?\" The only responses is the same dread silence\nstill maintained as of old. And, in a moment more, he who breathed\nthe wondering inquiry is himself gone. Whither? Into the vacant\ndark of nothingness? Into the transparent sphere of perfect\nintelligence? The sublimity of the demand seems to ally the finite\nquestioner with the infinite Creator; and, with a presentiment of\nmarvelous joy, we look beyond the ignorant veil at the close of\nearth, and hold that eternity itself will not exhaust the\npossibilities of the soul, whose career shall be kept from\nstagnation by constant interspersals of death and birth,\nrefreshing disembodiments from worn out forms and reincarnations\nin new.\n\nIf this life on the earth, where man feels himself a stranger, be\nhis all, how superfluously he is equipped with foresights and\nlongings that outrun every conceivable limit! Why is he gifted\nwith powers of reason and demands of love so far beyond his\nconditions? If there be no future for him, why is he tortured with\nthe inspiring idea of the eternal pursuit of the still flying goal\nof perfection? Is it possible that the hero and the martyr and the\nsaint, whose experience is laden with painful sacrifices for\nhumanity, are mistaken? and that the slattern and the voluptuary\nand the sluggard, whose course is one of base self indulgence, are\ncorrect? Is it credible that, with no justifying explanation\nhereafter, it should be ordained that the more gifted and\ndisinterested a man is the more he shall uselessly suffer, from\nhis sympathetic carriage of the greater share in the sin and\nsorrow of all his race? No, far back in the past there has been\nsome dark mystery which yet flings its dense shadows over our\nhistory here; and in the obscurity we cannot read its solution.\nBut there is a solution. And when in some blessed age to come\nmankind shall outgrow their discords and be reconciled, so that\ntheir divinest living member can become the focalizing center of\ntheir collective inspiration, through him the truth will be\nrevealed. The most inspired individual can only in a degree\nanticipate his age. At a certain distance he is tethered by his\nconnections with the race. They must be near the goal before he\ncan deliver the final message. Inspiration and revelation are as\nreal as the sensuous method of outer knowledge. Spirit or\nconsciousness, as that which is its own evidence, has a more than\nmathematic validity. When men purely love one another, and, with\nsupreme loyalty, seek truth, ignorance and delusion will melt away\nbefore the encroaching illumination from God, and the dominion of\ndeath will be abolished.\n\nThat the human mind shall be the victim of death is incongruous\nwith its rank. The atheistic scientist who imagines that the\nenergy of the stellar creation is gradually dissipating, so that\nthe whole scheme must at last perish; and who sees the soul, then,\nlike a belated butterfly, fall frozen on the boundary of a dead\nuniverse, refutes his own dismal creed by the grandeur of the\npower shown in thinking it. The might of love, the faculty of\nthought, the instinct of curiosity, are insatiable; and that which\nremains wooing them to grasp it, is infinite. And, after all is\nsaid, it seems certain that we are either discerpted emanations\nand avatars of God suffering transient incarnations for a purpose,\nand then to be resumed, immortal in his immortality; or else we\nare separate and inherent entities, immortal in ourselves. The\nformer faith ought to satisfy the proudest ambition. The latter\nfaith yields every motive for contentment and aspiring obedience.\nMan, forever feeding on the unknown, is the mysterious guest of\nGod in the universe. We cannot believe that, the hospitality of\nthe infinite Housekeeper becoming exhausted, He will ever blow out\nthe lights and quench the guests.\n\nCHAPTER VI.\n\nTHE TRANSIENT AND THE PERMANENT IN THE DESTINY OF MAN.\n\nA COMPANION of Solomon once said to him, \"Give me, O king of\nwisdom, a maxim equally applicable on all occasions, that I may\nfortify myself with it against the caprices of fortune.\" Solomon\nreflected a moment, then gave him, in these words, the maxim he\nsought: \"This, too, shall pass away.\" The courtier at first felt\ndisappointed, but, meditating awhile, perceived the pertinent and\nprofound meaning hidden in the transparent simplicity of the\nwords. Are you afflicted? Be not despondent or rash, This, too,\nshall pass away. Are you blessed? Be not elated or careless, This\ntoo shall pass away. Are you in danger? in temptation? in glory?\nStill, for your proper guidance, in relation to each one,\nremember; This too shall pass away. And so on, under every\ndiversity of situation in which man can be placed. Whatever\nrestraint, whatever encouragement, whatever consolation he needs,\nit is all contained in the profound thought, This too shall pass\naway.\n\nThis maxim for all times needs to be supplemented by a\ncorresponding maxim for all persons. There is a truth constantly\nsuited for the variety of immortal souls, as the foregoing one is\nfor the variety of temporal changes. Let us see what that truth is\nand set it in a fitting aphorism.\n\nThe desires of the human soul are boundless. Nothing can satisfy\nits wishes by fulfilling them and circumscribing there a fixed\nlimit. It would devour the whole creation, and hungrily cry for\nmore. Whatever extension of power or fruition it can conceive, it\nwants for its own, and frets if deprived of it. Now, if the spirit\nof the Creator is in the creature, this illimitable passion of\nacquisition cannot be a mere mockery. It must be a hint of the\nwill of God and of the destiny of his child in whom He has\nimplanted it. It is prophetic of something awaiting fulfillment.\nBut what is the prophecy, and how is it to be fulfilled? The\nanswer to this question will give us that maxim of eternal\nhumanity which accords with the maxim of transient fortune. And\nthus it reads: Over all the things for which men struggle with\neach other, there is one thing, out of the sphere of struggle,\nwhich indivisibly belongs to every man, and that one thing is the\nwhole universe! Be not baffled by the appearance of transcendental\nmysticism in this maxim, as the ancient inquirer was by the\nappearance of commonplace in his, but seek its significance.\n\nA son is an heir of his father. All men are sons of God, though\nonly a few, and that in varying degree, are distinctly conscious\nas yet of their sonship. But, despite their ignorance, all are\ntending, more or less swiftly, toward the goal of their nature and\ninheritance.\n\nThere are exclusive prizes which men can monopolize: and they\nfight with one another for these, because the more some have the\nless others can obtain. There are also inclusive prizes, or modes\nof holding and enjoying property which do not interfere with\nuniversal participation, with universal, undivided ownership. In\nthese no one need have any the less because every one has all.\nThis is the region of reason, imagination, affection, the empire\nof the soul. The more one knows of mathematical truth, poetic\nbeauty or moral good, the easier it is, not the harder, for others\nto know and enjoy as much or more. In this divine domain no\nmonopoly or conflict is possible, because the outward moving fence\nof each consciousness, retreating and vanishing before its\nconquests of experience, is a vacuum with respect to that of every\nother. They overlap and penetrate one another as if they were\nmutually nonexistent. For example, the pleasure any one takes in a\npicture, or in a play, does not lessen the pleasure which remains\nfor the other spectators; but, on the contrary, adds to it if they\nhave sympathy.\n\nNow, the all inclusive prize of desire, the very secret of the\nGodhead namely, the power of taking a full pure joy in every form\nof being, in every substance and phenomenon of the creation is\nforever wooing every soul; and every soul, in proportion to its\nadvancement, is forever embracing it just as freely as if no other\nsoul existed, yet has the zest of its enjoyments endlessly varied\nand heightened by mutual contemplations and reflections of those\nof all the rest. Such is the superiority of the disinterested\nspirit over the selfish flesh, of the inner world over the outer\nworld, of good over evil.\n\nMental ownership is sympathetic and universal, physical\nappropriation antagonistic and individual. We hate and oppose our\nfellows that with hand and foot we may monopolize some wretched\ngrains of good, while God is inviting every one of us with our\nmind and heart to accept as fast as we can his whole undivided\ninfinitude of good. The universe is the house of the Father; the\ntrue spirit of the family is disinterested, and consequently every\nchild is heir of the whole even as the apostle Paul said, joint\nheir with Christ. Register, then, deeply in memory, side by side\nwith the historic maxim for all times, This too shall pass away!\nthe religious maxim for all souls. Over those things for which men\nstruggle with each other, there is one thing, out of the sphere of\nstruggle, which belongs indivisibly to every man, and that one\nthing is the whole universe! Then, should you ever feel vexed or\ndisheartened by the irritations and failures you meet in your\njourney through the evanescent masquerade of this world, pause and\nsay to yourself, Is it worthy of me, while the entire realm of\nexistence asks me to appropriate it in ever expansive possession,\nto be angry or sad because some infinitesimal speck of it does not\ngrant me as much of itself as I crave?\n\nThe more things we love the richer we are. The fewer things we\ncare for the freer we are. O blessed wealth and wretched freedom,\nhow shall we perfect and reconcile them? This is the secret: If we\nlove the divine and eternal in everything, and care not for the\nlimiting and perishable evil connected with it, then we shall at\nonce be both rich and free. The former practice educates our\npowers; the latter emancipates them. The true use of renunciation\nis as a means for larger fulfillment. Detach from lower and lesser\nobjects in order to attach to higher and greater ones. Be always\nready to renounce the meaner at the invitation of the nobler. The\nsoul, like a grand frigate, may be loosely tied by a thousand\nseparate strings, but should be held firm by one cable. Our\nrelations to fellow creatures are those threads; our supreme\nrelation to God, that cable. Those are the gossamer of time; this\nthe adamant of eternity.\n\nThe lame man cries, O, that I could walk! He who can walk says, O,\nthat I could fly! If he could soar, he would sigh, O, that I were\nomnipresent, and therefore had no need to move! The end of one\nwish is but the beginning of another; and the craving of every\nhuman soul, let loose in sincere expression, is absolutely\nillimitable. It always comes, in the last analysis, to this; every\none really longs to be God. Therefore, unless the rational\ncreation is mendacious, to be deified, is, in some mystical but\ntrue sense, the final destiny of all souls. Every one, in its\nconsciousness fully developed and harmonized, shall become a focus\nof universal being, a finite reflex of God, the infinite God\nhimself remaining eternally the same unescapable and incomprehensible\nmystery as ever.\n\nThere are, therefore, two supreme maxims for souls conditioned in\ntime and space but destined for eternity and infinity a maxim of\ncomfort for those who suffer, and a maxim of impulse for those who\naspire. The one, to be used in view of every fear, every evil or\nlimit. This, too, shall pass away! The other, to be used in view\nof every insatiable desire, Over all those things for which men\nstruggle with each other, there is one thing, out of the sphere of\nstruggle, which indivisibly belongs to every man, and that one\nthing is the whole universe!\n\nNothing but the Absolute Good is everlasting: and that must belong\nto all who, being essential personalities, are superior to death.\nBlessed, blessed, then, are they who hunger and thirst after God;\nfor, by a real transubstantiation assimilating Him, they shall as\ndivinely live forevermore. They shall cease to say any more of\nanything, This, too, shall pass away! because the infinite God\nshall have said to each of them, Son, thou art ever with me, and\nall that I have is thine!\n\nIf the view above marked out, a view in many respects so sublime\nand satisfactory, a view which goes so far to explain the\nmysteries, reconcile the contradictions, and transfigure the evils\nof our transient life and lot below be not true, it must either be\nbecause some other higher and better view is the truth in which\ncase we certainly ought to be contented or else the creative and\nprovidential plan of God is inferior to the thought of one of his\ncreatures. It is not possible for me to suppose that a speculative\ntheory of my brain can transcend in harmony and beneficence the\ndesign of the infinite God. Could it do so, then, in reality, I\nshould be a higher being than He. I should veritably have\ndethroned Him and vaulted into his place. Is not that a pitch of\nimpiety and absurdity too great even for the pride of man,\ninsurgent atom of criticising assumption, set, baffled at every\npoint, amidst the awful immensity of existence? Here, then, is\nrest. Either our highest view is the truth, or the truth is higher\nand better than that. For to think that his thought is superior to\nthe purpose of God, thus making himself the real God, is too much\nfor the extremist human egotist within the limits of sanity.\n\nTherefore, until a better theory is propounded, we hold that the\ndestiny of the soul is to become, through the progressive\nactualization of its potential consciousness, a free thinking\ncenter of the universe, an infinitesimal mirror of God. The\nadventures of the different souls, full of inexhaustible curiosity\nand relish in the mutually revealing contacts of their degrees of\ndevelopment and originalities of personal character and treasure,\nconstitute the endless drama of spiritual existence within the\nphenomenal theater of the material creation. And still the\ninfinite One serenely smiles on the troubled play of the eternal\nMany; because the psychological kaleidoscope of their experience\nis a continuous improvisation of justice, weaving the fate of Each\nwith the fates of All, and transfusing the monotonous unity of the\nSame with the zestful variety of the Other.","title":"The Destiny of the Soul: A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life","tradition":"scripture-revelation","translated_text":null,"word_count":400727}