HISTORY OF OPINIONS

No idea is more universal among men than retribution. The laws of the material world exert a retributive power, rewarding those who regard and obey them and punishing those who disobey. So also the laws of all social organizations involve retribution. It is found in the family, in the school, in the social circle, in business, and in the state.

Retribution, also, has been believed to exist in the various systems of supernatural powers which men in various ages and climes have accepted as true. Under these systems some things are required and some things forbidden, and rewards and punishments are expected in accordance with obedience or disobedience.

If the idea of retribution is carried into a future life, and to this the idea of eternity is added, it becomes a motive of supreme, all-controlling power, for what is this short life compared with eternity?

Moreover, if the power of assigning the retributions of eternal joy or woe is believed to reside in a certain order of men, then this belief invests them with terrific sway. Such was the fearful influence once wielded by papal excommunications and interdicts. The power of priesthoods and governments has for ages rested on such convictions. The most terrible despotisms under which men have ever groaned have had this basis.

It is, therefore, a matter of great moment to understand the real system of the universe under which we live, and the real retributions which we are to expect. For this true knowledge we are dependent on the Word of God. Nor do we rely upon it in vain. Nothing is more full than divine revelation on this subject. And yet there is far from being unanimity of views among those who follow this standard. And though the subject has been often discussed, yet it is thought by some learned and pious divines that the full energy of investigation in the Church has never yet been put forth on this subject, and that a more profound discussion is needed and is at hand

A Profound Discussion Inevitable.

Prof. Schaff, of Union Theological Seminary, eminent alike for learning and piety, seems to think thus. In his “History of the Apostolic Church” he speaks as follows: “Each period of Church history is called to unfold and place in a clear light a particular aspect of doctrine to counteract a corresponding error; till the whole circle of Christian truth shall have been traversed in its natural order.” He illustrates this as to the Trinity, the person of Christ, the depravity of man, and the system of redemption. He then adds: “In our times the doctrine concerning the Church seems to be more and more challenging the attention of theologians. And finally, Eschatology, or the Doctrine of the Last Things, will have its turn.” There is a profound reason why the radical discussion of future retribution should come last, for that retribution is the final issue of the whole system, and, to explain and justify it, all false conceptions of God must have been exposed and his true character revealed, the highest forms of the principles of honor, justice, sympathy, and love, must have been disclosed and invested with divine authority, and the preceding system as a whole, and in all its parts, have been understood and vindicated. This is the most profound and all-comprehending work to which the mind of man can be summoned. To this all things are now tending. Nothing can be more evident than that a peculiar, profound, and universal interest is felt on the subject of future retribution, and that, to prepare for the coming investigation, a careful review of past discussions and opinions is indispensable. In the common histories of doctrine, such as those of Munscher, Hagenbach, Neander, and Shedd, the history of the doctrine of retribution is not considered at all under this title. Neither is it so considered under any title as to include more than one part of the Scripture doctrine of retribution. So far as it is treated, it is included under the head Eschatology. By this is meant, as stated by Dr. Schaff, the doctrine as to the last things, or the winding up of the present system. Viewed thus it includes death, the world of spirits, the final coming of Christ, the last judgment, and the retributions of the world to come.

Temporal Retribution in the Old Testament.

This mode of viewing the subject is defective, in that it omits a large and important part of the Scriptural doctrine of retribution. The only form of retribution prominently presented in the Old Testament as existing for four thousand years was temporal, and did not refer to the spirit-world and a future state. This, the common histories of doctrine omit, and consider only the doctrine concerning the retributions of the future state.

Of this omission one important effect has been to take from the divine system of temporal retributions the importance and influence which God once assigned to it, and to produce a tendency to entirely overlook it, and to concentrate the thoughts on the retributions of the eternal state. But certainly temporal retributions must have been, in the judgment of God, an element of great power, and well worth of attentive consideration, or he would not have mainly derived the motives of his revealed government from them for four thousand years.

These remarks on the predominance of temporal retributions in the Old Testament are not meant to affirm or imply that there was not some belief in a future state and its retributions, among the Old Testament saints, going beyond any express revelations of the Mosaic law, and disclosing itself in their recorded experience.

What is meant is this: that in the law of Moses, taken as a law, a rule of life, individual and national, there is not one motive derived from a future state and its retributions. All is derived from this world and the present life. The same also is true of the Patriarchal dispensation, and of the world before the flood.

It is true that the Christian Fathers carry back to the retributions of the Old Testament their ideas of future retribution. This is owing to the fact that the analogical relations of this material system to the spiritual world are such that these punishments may be intended as types of spiritual punishments. Thus, natural disease and death may be types of spiritual disease and death; natural defeat and bondage, of spiritual defeat and bondage; natural darkness, of spiritual darkness; natural fire, of spiritual fire. But, even it is so, nothing is expressly said about it in the Law of Moses. The system of temporal punishments is set forth without any express reference whatever to the spiritual world and a future state. Nevertheless, the analogies are often so striking that, in after-ages, they have been extensively regarded as types and shadows of coming events in the spiritual world. Thus the judgments of God on Pharaoh, and the redemption of Israel out of Egypt, have been regarded as types of God’s judgments on the great adversary, and the redemption of the Church. Yet of this the Law of Moses says nothing.

It may have been God’s purpose, as suggested by Fairbairn, since the Mosaic dispensation was typical, to keep always within the typical sphere of the material world, so as not to mingle the two spheres, and anticipate the spiritual dispensation. This may be the reason why no direct reference is made to the spiritual world and the future life, even when otherwise we should expect it. But, whatever that reason may be, I shall not attempt to develop it, but, following Moses, shall, in considering his system, keep within the temporal sphere.

As a general fact, we little realize how long this world was under the system of temporal retributions. It is not yet four thousand years from Abraham to our day. How long is such a period to us! But from Adam to Christ was fully four thousand years. In these years there was a long progress of thought and of revelation. In order to form any distinct conception of it, we need to unfold it somewhat, and not, as is often done, to attempt to present in one comprehensive summary what is called the teaching of the Old Testament.

The four thousand years before Christ, according to the common chronology, may be divided into five periods. The first, of two thousand years, from Adam to Abraham; the second, of five hundred years, from Abraham to Moses; the third, of five hundred years, from Moses to Solomon; the fourth, of five hundred years, from Solomon to the return from the captivity in Babylon; the fifth, of five hundred years, from the return from the captivity to Christ.

Without going into detail, the outline or illustration of temporal retributions during these periods will next be set forth.

Natural Death Pronounced on Adam.

In the first period, the first and most striking instance of retribution was the sentence of natural death pronounced upon Adam and Eve for their transgression. This sentence, as interpreted by Paul, included in its scope all their posterity.

Great efforts have been made under dogmatic influences to carry back the idea of spiritual death to the sentence pronounced on Adam and his race. But that sentence is its own interpreter. “Till thou return unto the ground, for out of it wast thou taken; for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.” The Jewish writers of the Alexandrine period and the Greek Fathers took this view, and their interpretation is confirmed by the Apostle Paul. Any other view is contrary to the whole genius of the Old Testament typical dispensation.

Another instance of threatened retribution was the future punishment of the tempter by the seed of the woman, of which more will be said hereafter. It is the first hint of a redeeming and avenging Messiah, which, in after-ages, was so fully developed as the central theme of revelation.

The deluge, also, was threatened and inflicted by God during this period. To this divine retribution our Saviour emphatically refers as an illustration and warning of coming judgments on Jerusalem.

Temporal Motives Addressed to the Jews.

In the second period occurred the judgment of God on Sodom and Gomorrah, to which our Saviour also refers, as a solemn warning to the men of his age, in view of the impending ruin of Jerusalem. In the third period were the divine judgments on Egypt, the redemption of the Israelites from bondage, and the development of the Mosaic economy in the wilderness, and the establishment of the nation in Canaan. It is not wonderful that the civil and criminal law of the nation thus established should be sustained by temporal retributions. But it is very remarkable that the providential rewards of fidelity to God and his system were derived entirely from the material sphere. If the nation was loyal and obedient, God promised that they should have health, long life, fruitful seasons, military ascendency among the nations, national wealth, honor, and power. If disobedient and idolatrous, God threatened that they should be scourged by famine, disease, defeat in war, captivity, poverty, shame, and contempt. The powers of language are exhausted in giving intensity to these motives. A brief experiment easily made will bring the whole subject before the mind, and for the sake of vividness of conception it is well to make it. Let any one read attentively the twenty-sixth chapter of Leviticus, and then ask, What are the rewards and punishments by which God here sought to induce the Israelites to obey? Is there any allusion to a future life and eternal retributions? Do they not relate to fruitful seasons and health, and victory in war, and the protecting presence of God, on the one hand, and drought, famine, disease, defeat, captivity, and death, on the other? Then read the twenty-eighth chapter of Deuteronomy – a still longer and more earnest and eloquent chapter, full of promises and threatenings – and see if one can be found that does not relate to this life. In that whole chapter we shall find not one reference to a future life, not one motive derived from it. The same is true of the whole law.

During the wanderings of the nation in the wilderness, temporal rewards and punishments were always close at hand, of the most powerful kind. During the period of the Judges, the fortunes of the nation varied with their obedience or rebellion, as God had threatened. The ascendency of the kingdom under David was the result of fidelity and obedience to God. The division and decline of the nation in the fourth period, and their final ruin, were owing to the apostacy of Solomon, and to subsequent relapses into idolatry, till the ten tribes were led captive by the King of Assyria, and the rest by the King of Babylon.

The great prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, in all their warnings of the apostatizing nation, did not refer to future punishments in the spirit-world, or to redemption from them, but to the terrors of the siege, of famine, of the capture of the city, and of captivity in a strange land, or to redemption from such captivity.

In the fifth period, after the return from the captivity until Christ, the system of temporal retributions was still pursued, and finally culminated in the terrible destruction of Jerusalem, in anticipation of which the Saviour wept.

Temporal Retribution Taught by Christ.

It is worth of special notice that, although he had the most vivid conceptions of future punishment, he yet confined himself in his prediction of coming retribution on Jerusalem to the temporal sphere, as did Moses. Listen to his words: “And when he was come near, he beheld the city and wept over it, saying, If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this, thy day, the things which belong to thy peace! But now they are hid from thine eyes. For the days shall come upon thee, that thine enemies shall cast a trench about thee, and compass thee round, and keep thee in on every side, and shall dash thee to the ground, and thy children within thee; and they shall not leave in thee one stone upon another; because thou knewest not the time of thy visitation.”

In addition to the special theoretical government of the Jews, God represents himself as administering a providential government during the ages over the surrounding nations of Egypt, Assyria, Tyre, Moab, Edom, and the like, and inflicting on them temporal retributions.

But, if we examine this whole governmental system for four thousand years so far as express promises or threats are concerned, we cannot infer from it any knowledge or thought of a future life, or of any retributions beyond this world.

How Was Belief in Future Life Developed?

Nevertheless, there was in fact a course of feeling and thought on the subject of a future life, during all these ages, which had finally culminated in well-defined opinions as to retributions in a future life before Christ came.

It is not often realized, but it is true, that in the last period, during the persecutions of the Jews by Antiochus Epiphanes, one hundred and seventy years before Christ, a spirit of martyrdom was developed, based on an open-eyed vision of the resurrection, a future life, and eternal rewards, which was not exceeded even by the glorious martyrs after Christ. This wonderful development of a full belief of eternal rewards in a future world must have been the result of powerful antecedent causes, the accumulated force of which, during the Old Testament dispensation, was thus finally developed.

Of the facts there can be no doubt. They are fully developed in trustworthy and universally accredited historical records. They are facts that cannot be ignored, and that demand a thorough investigation of the causes of such wonderful results.

It is necessary now to consider these causes, and the mode of their operation. There is an intimate connection between this inquiry and the development of opinion on the doctrine of retribution, both at and after the days of Christ.

CHAPTER II.

OPINIONS IN THE AGE OF THE MACCABEES

In the preceding chapter, a general view has been given of God’s system of retribution. It appears that by Moses, as a lawgiver, he made no revelation of a future state, and no appeal to its retributions, but derived his rewards and punishments entirely from this life.

From this many have inferred that there was among the Jews no knowledge or belief of a future life. In opposition to this view, we alleged that there were causes among the pious Jews leading to a belief of a future life and its retributions, growing out of a covenant with God, and their personal experience and habits of communion with him, and confirmed by certain prominent and sublime events of their history. In proof of this, the great fact was alleged that in the days of the Maccabees, nearly two centuries before Christ, there was developed among the Jews a clear conception and a firm belief of the doctrine of the resurrection, and of the retributions of a future life, a belief of such power that it sustained illustrious heroes in the torments of most cruel martyrdom. These facts are of such fundamental importance that they deserve a more full development. Moreover, the age and circumstances in which they occurred call for particular consideration, if we would thoroughly understand the thinking of subsequent ages.

Point of Vision.

It is for this reason that we shall make the age of the Maccabees a point of vision for the whole history. It is a remarkable point in many respects. It is the beginning of Jewish theological and religious writing outside of the Bible. Before this time there was the Bible alone. We, at this day, can hardly conceive of such a state of things. The Bible is now so imbedded in commentaries and systems of theology by the Fathers, the Scholastic divines, the Reformers, and the modern sects, that it is quite overshadowed by them. But up to this point the Old Testament stands in sublime majesty and solitude, overshadowed by nothing. But here, human comments, reasonings, inferences, and developments, begin to make their appearance.

It is no less remarkable as making the completion of the circuit of those great periods of foreign influences to which the Jews were, in the providence of God, exposed, and by which it has been alleged that their religious thinking was greatly affected.

Egyptian, Persian, and Grecian Periods.

The first of these periods was during their early captivity in Egypt, in which they came in contact with a clearly-defined doctrine of the immortality of the soul and of future retributions, connected with the theory of the transmigration of souls. The second was during the captivity of Babylon, and during their subjection to the Persian power. During this period they came in contact with the system of Zoroaster, of Eastern origin, containing a doctrine of future retributions, involving the resurrection of the body, the eternal reward of the righteous at a future judgment, the temporary punishment and final restoration and purification of wicked men, and the annihilation of evil spirits, so as to harmonize the universe in good. This system is based on professed direct revelations from God, and not on philosophical speculations.

The third period was during the Greek power of Alexander and his successors. During this period they came in contact with a doctrine of the immortality of the soul and of future retributions, based, not on a professed revelation, but on philosophical principles. It was also, as in Egypt, connected with a doctrine of the transmigration of souls. In it, also, the doctrine of the preexistence of souls was held, based upon their divine, immortal and eternal nature, they being regarded as a kind of self-existent and immortal divinities. These views were developed by Plato, and are repeated by Cicero as derived from him. The first of these periods lasted over two centuries, and terminated in the fifteenth century before Christ. The second lasted from the Babylonian captivity to the conquests of Alexander, over two centuries, terminating in the fourth century before Christ. The third lasted till Christ, for the religious and philosophical systems of the Greeks and Romans were substantially the same. The age of the Maccabees is a part of the third period. Now, it is certainly remarkable that, though the doctrines of a future life and of eternal retributions are not taught in the law of Moses, yet the Jews were, in the providence of God, so long and so repeatedly brought into contact with various forms of those doctrines that they could not but think of them, and the age of the Maccabees is noteworthy as marking the completion of this great circuit of influences on the Jewish mind. It is no less remarkable as the point at which we unmistakably meet the first clear and full development among the Jews, and outside of the Bible, of the doctrine of retribution in a future life as an element of all-pervading popular power. Before this point we have no Jewish theological and religious writing, except what is contained in the Hebrew canon of the Old Testament. And it has been earnestly debated whether the doctrine of future retribution occurs in the Old Testament at all. But it cannot be debated whether that doctrine was promulgated at this point, for it was clearly proclaimed – as clearly as at any subsequent time.

General Plan.

We shall, therefore, in the first place, clearly prove this statement, and then, from this point of vision, cast our eyes backward and endeavor to trace its river of opinion upward to its source; then returning, we shall trace it downward to Christ, and thence onward through the Christian ages.

Martyrdom and War.

The fundamental characteristics of the age of the Maccabees are, in the first place, a great religious persecution of the Jews by Antiochus Epiphanes, and then a great religious war. This war, like that under Cromwell, or that of the Netherlands, was based on deep religious convictions, by which a handful of heroes were enabled to encounter and defeat the whole power of the Syrian kingdom of Antiochus, and these convictions were based on eternal retributions. It was a crisis not only in the history of the Jews, but in that of the religion of the Bible and of humanity. It affected the Jews, not only in Palestine and Egypt, but throughout the world. Antiochus, cooperating with a party of Jewish apostates, deliberately undertook to eradicate the religion and religious usages of the Jews, and to replace them by those of Greece. He repeatedly took Jerusalem, and plundered the temple and massacred the people. He set up the altar of Jupiter on that of Jehovah, and defiled the temple by sacrifices of swine’s flesh thereon. He sought to destroy all the copies of the Law of Moses, and punished with death any with whom they were found. He prohibited not only the temple-service, but the keeping of the Sabbath and circumcision. Women who circumcised their children were put to a cruel death with their infants. Edicts commanding these things were published throughout Judea, and officers were appointed to enforce them. Inasmuch as Christianity was involved in Judaism, this was, by anticipation, a fundamental assault on the kingdom of Christ. This assault was met first by martyrdom and then by war. And the story of the heroic warfare of Judas Maccabeus and his brothers in defense of the law of God, the narrative of their victories, defeats, and martyrdoms, resulting in the final independence of the Jews, is inferior in interest, sublimity, and importance, to no history in the language of man.

A lofty and noble enthusiasm of faith in God and in eternal retributions was developed, from which a great religious reaction toward faith, and the more spiritual observance of the law of God, took its rise, which by sympathy elevated the tone of spiritual Judaism among all the Jews dispersed in all parts of the world.

Faith in Eternal Retributions.

This faith in the resurrection and in eternal retributions pervaded the whole army of Judas Maccabeus as thoroughly as it did the army of Cromwell, and was testified by public acts in behalf of those who died in battle, of which we shall elsewhere more fully speak. It was still more strikingly manifested in the case of the martyrs. Among these a mother and her seven sons were put to death by Antiochus for refusing to abjure the law of Moses and sacrifice to the gods of Greece. They endured extreme torments with wondrous and heroic power, through the hope of the resurrection and of eternal life. The second of the seven martyred brethren said, with his last breath, as he was dying of extreme torments, “Thou, O persecutor, removest us from this present life, but the King of this world will raise us up to everlasting life, since we die for his laws” (2 Macc. vii. 9). The fourth said to the tyrant: “It is a great blessing, when dying by the hands of men, to cherish the hope inspired by God, that we shall be raised up again by him. But to thee there shall be no resurrection unto life” (2 Macc. vii. 14).

The heroic mother, after cheering and sustaining her seven sons in the mighty conflict, at last died a triumphant martyr’s death.

Dogmatic Statements.

Not only was the belief in immortality and eternal retributions thus set forth in heroic actions and suffering, but it was also embodied in didactic statements. The author of the Wisdom of Solomon wrote in the second century before Christ, after the establishment of the kingdom of the Maccabees. He does not refer to these martyrs by name, but no one can doubt that they were before his mind when he wrote the following eloquent unfolding of the doctrine of future retribution and of eternal life:

“But the souls of the righteous are in the hands of God, and there shall no torment touch them. In the sight of the unwise they seemed to die, and their departure is taken for misery, and their going from us to be utter destruction; but they are in peace. For though they be punished in the sight of men, yet is their hope full of immortality. And having been a little chastised they shall be greatly rewarded, for God has proved them and found them worthy of himself. As gold in the furnace hath he tried them; and received them as a burt-offering. In the time of their visitation they shall shine and kindle a conflagration, as sparks among the dry straw. They shall judge the nations and have dominion over the people, and their Lord shall reign forever” (Wisdom of Solomon iii. 1-8).

“But the ungodly shall be punished according to their own imaginations, who have neglected the righteous and forsaken the lord. He shall rend them and cast them down headlong that they shall be speechless; and he shall shake them from their foundation, and they shall be utterly laid waste and be in sorrow, and their memorial shall perish. Then shall the righteous man stand in great boldness before the face of such as have afflicted him and made no account of his labors.

“When the wicked see it they shall be troubled with terrible fear, and shall be amazed at the greatness of his salvation. Repenting and groaning in spirit they shall say, This is he whom we once derided. We fools accounted his life madness and his end without honor. But now is he numbered among the children of God, and his lot is among the saints.” Then they lament over the extreme brevity and worthlessness of worldly joys. They are like dust blown away by the wind, like the foam of the ocean scattered by the storm, like smoke dissipated by a tempest. The writer then proceeds:

“But the righteous live for evermore; their reward also is with the Lord, and the care of them is with the Most High. Therefore shall they receive a glorious kingdom and a beautiful crown from the Lord’s hand” (iii. 10; iv. 19; v. 2-5, 15, 16).

Retribution on the wicked is then described in sublime, figurative language.

The right-aiming thunderbolts shall fly to the mark. Hailstones of wrath shall fall. Floods and tempests shall sweep them away.

Can anything be more explicit than this vivid account of a future life and future retributions? Indeed, the beautiful expression “a hope full of immortality” has been transferred from this passage to the religious language of Christendom. On the points of modern controversy such as the literal eternity of punishment, or the annihilation of the wicked, the language is not explicit. Of this we shall say more. But as to a glorious reward of the righteous, and a fearful punishment of the wicked in the world to come, the testimony is unequivocal.

CHAPTER III.

CHARACTER AND HISTORIC DOCUMENTS

OF THE AGE OF THE MACCABEES

We have ascended the chosen mountain-top of thought. We have seen, in the Maccabean age, the full and vivid development of the doctrine of the resurrection, and of the retributions of a future life. Standing on this mount of vision, let us survey the present, the past, and the future. Let us inquire whence came these clear and sublime views of a future life? Who were these men and these women who thus anticipated the martyr-spirit of the Christian age? What were their habits of thought? What their books and historical documents? What the character of the age? In short, what means have we of reproducing, in sympathetic forms, the opinions, feelings, and acts, of the men of that age? We do not feel content with dry dates, or the skeletons of heartless abstractions. We desire to meet them heart to heart, and to sympathize with them in the great conflicts, physical, intellectual, and moral, in which they were called to engage. Nor is it from mere curiosity that we desire this investigation. It is indispensable to a thorough historical presentation of the great question which we have undertaken to consider.

Antecedent Relations.

For want of it, the history of the doctrine of retribution in the early Christian ages has been presented without a proper regard to its antecedent relations. In the most common histories of doctrines, such as those of Hagenbach, Neander, and Shedd, the subject is treated as if Christ were the fountain-head of the doctrine of future eternal retributions, and as though the history of opinions on this subject properly begins with him.

But the fact is that, in the three centuries preceding Christ, nearly or quite every form of the doctrine of future retribution had been developed that was promulgated and defended after Christ.

Leading Forms of Doctrine.

The three leading forms promulgated among the early Christians were – 1. The eternal blessedness of the righteous and the eternal punishment of the wicked. 2. The eternal blessedness of the righteous and the annihilation of the wicked. 3. The eternal blessedness of the righteous and the limited remedial punishment of the wicked, resulting in the final restoration to holiness of all fallen beings, and the unity and harmony of the universe in God. Every one of these doctrines of retribution had been held and defended before Christ came, by the Jews or among them.

In addition to these, in the early Christian ages the doctrine was promulgated of a conflict between two eternal and self-existent gods; one good, the other evil, each creating a system of his own – a conflict which involved in its issues the eternal duration of evil; though good was, on the whole, to be victorious in the conflict. This view, though promulgated by men claiming the Christian name, was generally regarded as extra-Christian and heretical. This view also had been promulgated in the centuries before Christ, and had come in contact with the Jews. Hence it is clear that the influence of these preceding centuries must have been deeply felt in all the early Christian discussions of the doctrine of retribution. It was, in fact, so felt.

Character of the Centuries Before Christ.

It has also been supposed that the centuries immediately preceding Christ were centuries of relative darkness, since prophecy and revelation ceased soon after the return from captivity, four hundred years before Christ, and in the interval the most important works of a literary kind produced by the Jews were those books entitled Apocryphal, and which by Protestants generally have been undervalued, if not contemned, under that title. Though intelligent Romanists esteem them more highly as a kind of Deutero-canonical books, yet the masses for the most part do not popularly appreciate them or the centuries during which they were written.

And yet the five centuries preceding Christ are some of the most remarkable centuries in the history of man, and most highly distinguished for an intense and wide-spread mental activity, in which the Jews participated, especially those at Alexandria.

Philosophers, Historians, Poets.

In these centuries flourished such philosophers as Socrates, Plat, and Aristotle, and also, except Homer, the leading poets and historians of Greece. In the same centuries the great luminaries of Rome arose, in whose light we still walk in our classical studies, such as Cicero, Horace, Virgil, and Livy. In these centuries was the great scientific and literary development of Alexandria under the Ptolemics. In this development the language of Greece took the lead, and the fact that the Jewish writings called Apocryphal are in Greek, and not, like the Old Testament, in Hebrew, is a result of that wonderful providence of God, by which the language of the Greek Testament was prepared.

Alexandria A Great Centre.

When Alexander founded Alexandria he created not only a great centre of political power, commerce, and wealth, but of literary and scientific development.

The Museum.

What was called the Museum was, in fact, a great royal university. “To it” (says Draper), “as to a centre, philosophers from all parts of the world converged. It is said that at one time not fewer than fourteen thousand students were assembled there.” In it were established two great libraries, which together contained 700,000 volumes. Here grammar and criticism were developed. Here the inductive sciences were cultivated under the lead of Aristotle. Here the world-famed Geometry of Euclid was composed. From this school came such mathematicians, astronomers, and geographers, as Appollonius and Eratosthenes. Its influences extended to Archimedes and Hipparchus. Draper says: “Astronomical observatories, chemical laboratories, libraries, dissecting-houses, were not in vain. There went forth from them a spirit powerful enough to tincture all future time.” In short, the intellectual activity of the Old World came to its highest development in the five centuries before Christ. In this respect he came in the fullness of time.

The Bible in Greek.

In the providence of God, the Jews and their sacred books were brought into the very centre of this great intellectual movement. When the Ptolemies carried above 100,000 Jews into Egypt they at once felt the power of the surrounding mental excitement, and studied the language, history, and philosophy, of the Greeks. As a result the Hebrew Scriptures were translated into Greek, and thus prepared for universal circulation. Thus, too, the Alexandrine or Hebraizing Greek of the New Testament was formed.

Celebrated Jews.

From this great movement came Philo, the celebrated Jewish commentator on Moses, whose works exerted a world-wide influence both in the Church and out of it; and Josephus, the eminent and well-known Jewish historian. Both of these lived near the time of Christ, yet they were not formed under his influence, but under that of the preceding ages.

The Apocrypha.

What, then, are the writings commonly called Apocryphal? They are mainly historical and ethical compositions of Jews, to whom the Old Testament was the supreme standard of religious truth. Besides these there were works of religious fiction, intended to develop religious and patriotic enthusiasm for the institutions of the Jews.

At the same time they were under the influence of ideas which of necessity had come in through the thinking of the Egyptians, Babylonians, Persians, and Greeks, to whom their nation was subjected in successive centuries. Hence, in view of the relations of the events of those ages to the future of Christianity, these writings are of great value and profound interest.

Apocalyptic Literature.

The same is true of the literature of those ages not commonly called Apocryphal, but rather Apacalyptic; such as the early parts of the Sibylline Oracles, the book of Enoch, the Fourth Book of Ezra, and the like. Indeed, in these are the most complete statements of the views then held among the Jews of the system revealed in the Old Testament, in its future development and final retributions. Thus in the book of Enoch there is a very full development of the rewards of the holy and the final punishment of the wicked, as conceived of at that time by a Jew.

Prejudice Removed.

I am aware that a prejudice is felt against such apocalyptic works, on account of the moral element involved in the false assumption that they were written by the authors whose names they bear; as, for example, Enoch, or the Sybil. But without entering into that question, it is enough to say that it does not affect their value for the purpose now contemplated, that is, the throwing of light on the thinking and feeling of the age of their composition. This may be illustrated by a modern example. In Milton’s “Paradise Lost,” the angel Michael is represented as giving to Adam a long and tolerably minute prophetic outline of the destinies of his descendants. It is in form a prophecy; it is in fact a statement of history up to the days of Milton from his theological standpoint. To this is added Milton’s view of the future destinies of mankind, as coming from the lips of the angel. As a prophecy all this is of no worth, but it is of great value as throwing light on the opinions of Milton and of the great body of Christians of his age. In like manner the authors of these apocalyptic works represent the Sybil, or Enoch, or any other prophet, as predicting events according to what the writer held to be the true view. Regarded thus, they throw very great light on the thinking and feeling of the age in which they were written. In these works, too, is found a very wide range of thought and great mental activity.

Pharisees and Sadducees.

It adds a new interest to this age of the Maccabees to know that in it are the roots of the two great parties of the Pharisees and Sadducees, whose opinions on future retribution are so prominently presented in the New Testament. The Pharisees honorably represented at the outset those whose firm faith in the resurrection and the rewards of a future life sustained them in the great persecution. They truly represented the main body of the Jews, and they were zealous defenders of the law of Moses, but it was as encompassed with the traditions of the Fathers. The Sadducees, on the other hand, represented the Epicureanism that rejected the retributions of a future life, and they repudiated all efforts to introduce into the law of Moses by tradition what was not there in express statement.

The Zend-Avesta.

To the sources of information already noticed we may add the Zend-Avesta and the recent learned investigations into the system of Zoroaster by German, French, English and American scholars. The question how far, if at all, what is regarded as the Christian doctrine of the future life and of retribution has been derived from the system of Zoroaster cannot be satisfactorily answered except by a thorough study of that system, and for this the materials and aids are more satisfactory and abundant than they ever have been before.

The Mishna.

The Mishna is the first part of the Talmud, and is a digest of Jewish observances and traditions. Its author, Rabbi Juhudah the Holy, a Jew, wealthy and influential, composed it toward the close of the second century. Yet it refers back to the decisions of Hillel and Shammai, who flourished before Christ; and also to those of Gamaliel, the teacher of Paul. It is therefore of great value in studying the progress of doctrinal opinion as well as practice among the Jews, even before Christ. On some points at issue we shall freely appeal to this authority.

CHAPTER IV.

SOURCE OF JEWISH OPINIONS

We have gained our point of vision, and from it have looked down on a broad and deep river of opinion flowing by us. We have seen that although the law of Moses was sustained by sanctions merely temporal, yet, under it, in the days of the Maccabees, there was a remarkable development of a mighty current of belief in a future life, in a resurrection of the body, and in eternal retributions. This river of opinion was broad and deep, and carried a nation in its current. It was derived from no abstract and unpractical speculations of philosophy, adapted only for the few. It flowed from simple and intense faith in God and his Word. It was a belief popular and powerful enough to rally a nation, and to sustain them in the intense struggles of a fierce and bloody religious war, and conduct them to victory and independence.

From this point of vision we are now to cast our eyes backward, and to trace this river of opinion to its sources.

Two Opinions Possible.

As to these sources, two opinions are supposable. One, that the fountain-heads of the river are found in great events in the history of the Jewish nation and their ancestors, in their covenant relations to God, and in the habits of communion with him that distinguished their great leaders, rulers, and teachers, during the course of centuries.

Another view is that this river took its rise either in Egypt, or Persia, or Greece. But as the doctrine of the resurrection was not found in Egypt or in Greece, and as Greek philosophy was specially antagonistic to it, and as the doctrine of the resurrection of the body was a prominent element in the Persian theology, as set forth by Zoroaster, the great river which we have seen is traced back to its fountain-heads in Persia.

If any one would see an argument for this view set forth with great zeal and affluence of historic lore, he will find it in Mr. Alger’s learned work on a future life. He will find, at the same time, a very radical presentation of this view. Mr. Alger does not believe that the resurrection is a part of the true system of a future life as taught by Christ. Yet he concedes that it was taught by Paul and other writers of the New testament. But they had not yet been freed from the errors of Pharisaic teaching which had been corrupted by the Zoroastrian error of the resurrection as well as by other errors. By this erroneous teaching of the writers of the New Testament the Apostolic Church was led to adopt these errors of the Persianized-Pharisaic theology, and they have come down even to this age, and have pervaded the whole Church. Moreover, to eliminate them from true Christianity is the great work of the present age. In this work Mr. Alger has engaged with great zeal.

Those who have seen the Mississippi after the Missouri has entered it will have a striking illustration of Christianity after this Persian theology has entered it as represented by Mr. Alger. Before the Missouri enters, the Mississippi flows clear, pure, and tranquil; after it enters, the whole aspect of the river is changed. It is turbid with mud, and rushes with a fierce current, boiling, struggling, and almost frantic, in its downward course. As the Mississippi is entirely revolutionized by the Missouri, so (according to Mr. Alger) has Christianity been entirely revolutionized by the influx of this river of Persian-Zoroastric theology.

The True View

We do not adopt this view. We rather adopt the view first stated, that the river that we saw from our point of vision rose from the mountain-summits of God, in his providence and in his revealed Word. For this belief we propose to give historic reasons.

Persian Theology

But, before proceeding to do it, we shall say a few words on some points of this Persian theology. We shall not attempt to unfold the system as a whole. It will suffice for our present purpose to mention three noticeable points in which this Zoroastric system is the earliest on record in developing certain modes of thinking as to retribution, which have since appeared in various forms in the Church.

We refer to a doctrine of the purification and resurrection of wicked men after the judgment-day, also to a doctrine of the annihilation of some of the wicked – that is, wicked spirits – and, finally, to a doctrine of prayer for the dead.

The doctrine of the purification and restitution of the wicked was afterward stated, but on very different grounds, by Origen, at Alexandria; and on still different grounds, subsequently, by Theodore of Mopsuestia, as we shall show hereafter.

The doctrine of annihilation in the system of Zoroaster is limited to Ahriman, and wicked spirits created by him. Afterward, a doctrine of annihilation was applied by Philo, and then by Irenaeus and others, to sinful men.

The doctrine of prayer for the dead is an important part of the Zoroastrian system. The twelfth Fargard of the Vendidad is almost entirely occupied in directions as to the prayers to be offered when any relatives of various degrees die. Twice as many prayers are enjoined for those who had died in sin as for the pure, and certain seasons of the year were regarded as times of special prayer and of peculiar success in the delivery of the souls of the dead from punishment.

Jewish Prayers for the Dead.

Nothing of this kind is prescribed in the Bible, and the first recorded instance of its being done by those who regarded the Bible as their supreme authority is found in the Maccabean war of independence. After a victory of Judas Maccabeus over Georgias, they found, on burying the dead, under the coats of every one that was slain, things consecrated to idols, an saw that for this cause they were slain. The historian then proceeds: “All men, therefore, praising the Lord, the righteous Judge, who had opened the things that were hid, betook themselves unto prayer, and besought him that the sin committed might be wholly blotted out. Moreover, the noble Judas exhorted the multitude to keep themselves free from sin, since they saw so manifestly the disastrous consequences of the sins of those who were slain. Moreover, he made a collection throughout his army, amounting to two thousand drachms of silver, and sent it to Jerusalem, to offer a sin-offering for them. In this he acted well and reverentially, in that he had respect unto the resurrection. For if he had not hoped that those who were slain would rise again, it would have been vain and profitless to pray for the dead. He also thus indicated his belief that glorious rewards were laid up for those who died a godly death. It was a holy and reverent thought. Wherefore, he made a propitiation for the dead, that they might be redeemed from their sins” (2 Macc. xii. 36-45).

Even in this case, we do not affirm that the noble Judas Maccabeus was, of course, under the influence of Persian theology. Believing firmly, with his whole army, in a future life and in a coming resurrection, he could not endure the thought that any who had died in battle for their country should perish; and, therefore, he and his army resorted to prayer and propitiation in behalf of the slain. In our more advanced age, and during our civil war, it seemed to be assumed by perhaps the majority, that all who died fighting for their country would go to heaven, of course. They seemed to regard it as the ancient Church did – a baptism of blood in the case of martyrs. Of course, there was no resort to prayer and propitiation, as in the army of Judas Maccabeus, in a less enlightened age.

Annihilation of Ahriman, and Purification of Wicked Men.

We have stated it as the Zoroastric doctrine that Ahriman and his evil spirits are to be annihilated, and that sinful men are to be purified and restored, after adequate punishment.

Scholars Differ.

We are aware that there seems to be some diversity of opinion on both these points among scholars. Prof. Whitney, in the article on the Avesta, in his “Oriental and Linguistic Studies,” p. 186, says that the good are supposed by the Zoroastrians to go to the paradise of the holy and benevolent gods. “The souls of the unbelieving and the evil-doers, however, were not deemed worth of that blessedness, and were thought, so it seemed, to be destroyed with the body.” So eminent a scholar would not say this without some evidence, to himself, at least, of its truth. But we have been unable to find any such evidence, and there seems to be decided proof, which we shall soon adduce, that the ultimate purification and restoration of wicked men was the real Zoroastric doctrine.

In like manner we found Mr. Alger and J. F. Clarke asserting, in the strongest terms, the final purification and restoration of Ahriman, the great centre and head of evil. We were quite interested in this as a seeming anticipation of Origen’s doctrine of the ultimate conversion and restoration of the devil. But, on looking for evidence of the truth of the statement, we were unable to find any; and, on the other hand, we found, in the supreme authority, decisive statements affirming his annihilation with his angels.

The Avesta.

The Avesta, as translated by Spiegel, contains the doctrine of the resurrection, and of the ultimate purification of all men. But it decisively represents Ahriman and his evil spirits as annihilated. In the Khordah-Avesta, Patet Erani 1^st, this profession is made: “I am wholly without doubt in the coming of the resurrection of the later body, in an invariable recompense of good deeds and their reward, and of bad deeds and their punishment, as well as in the continuance of Paradise, in the annihilation of hell and Ahriman and the Devas; that the god Ormuzed will at last be victorious, and Ahriman will perish, together with the Devas and the offshoots of darkness (Spiegel, vol. iii., p. 163). In the Khordah-Avesta, Nanmetaisne 7^th, occurs this doxology: “Praise to the Overseer, the Lord who rewards those who accomplish good deeds according to his own wish, purifies, at last, the obedient, and at last purifies even the wicked out of hell” (Spiegel, vol. iii., p. 15). This passage, as quoted by J. F. Clarke, in his work on “The Ten Great Religions,” would lead to the conclusion that even Ahriman himself was to be purified out of hell, and not annihilated, as is elsewhere stated. But this is owing to a single error in quotation. In every other case he quotes Bleek’s translation of Spiegel exactly. In this case he quotes him (p. 190) as translating thus: “who purifies even the wicked one of hell,” instead of “who purifies even the wicked out of hell.” “The wicked one of hell” is of course Ahriman, who is elsewhere said to be annihilated. I am aware that this doctrine of the purification of the wicked out of hell is not found in the oldest portions of the Avesta, but in those parts of the Khordah-Avesta which are not in the Avestan dialect, but in Parsec, and were, as Spiegel states (vol. iii., p.2), written in a comparatively modern period.

The doctrine of the resurrection, however, occurs in the older portions of the Avesta, if those parts that teach it are not interpolations, as some suggest. But there is, on the whole, good reason to believe that these portions are genuine, and that the doctrine of the resurrection was an early, if not an original, part of the system of Zoroaster. The purification of the wicked out of hell was also probably introduced very early into the system.

Mr. Clarke’s Authorities.

Mr. Clarke, in his statement of the purification of Ahriman, follow Rhode, who relies on the Bundehesh and the later writings of the Parsees. The same seems to be true of Mr. Alger. In order to ascertain whether the Bundehesh does thus contradict the Avesta, I requested Prof. Abbott, of Cambridge, to consult the most recent authorities on the point. From his reply to me I take the following statements, which seem to be decisive.

Professor Abbott’s Statements.

“The statement that the Bundehesh teaches the final conversion or purification of Ahriman (Angro Mainyus) is founded, I believe, solely on the translation of Anquetil du Perron, afterward Germanized by Kleuker. The doctrine does not appear in the translations of Spiegel and Windischman, whose authority is, of course, much higher than that of Anquetil. Those who have maintained the conversion of Ahriman as a Zoroastrian doctrine have relied mainly on Rhode, who, in addition to the Bundehesh, cites the Yasna (Izeschne, in Anquetil and Kleuker). But this proof disappears in Spiegel’s translation. Nor is there any proof of it in the Zemyad Yasht (Yasht, xix., Khordah-Avesta, xxxv.), to which Miss Cobbe refers. In the Sadder Bundehesh, the annihilation of Ahriman is expressly taught in connection with the doctrine of the redemption of the wicked from hell, after long and severe punishment.” These statements are all decisively sustained by quotations from Windischman and Spiegel, which we have not room to introduce.

The Conclusion.

The positive statements of the Avesta must, therefore, stand uncontradicted by the Bundehesh, as the true Zoroastrian doctrine. Wicked men are at last to be purified out of hell; Ahriman and his angels are to be finally annihilated.

We shall make other statements as to the theology of Zoroaster as we proceed, to prove that the Jewish system which we have set forth did not originate in Persia, but was the natural development and result of (1) great facts in the history of the Jews, and of (2) the peculiar and unexampled habits of their leaders of communion with God, and of (3) the covenant relations of the Jews and their ancestors to God.

CHAPTER V.

JEWISH ORIGIN OF THE DOCTRINE OF FUTURE RETRIBUTION

Standing at our point of vision, in the age of the Maccabees, we have seen a great river of belief and emotion as to the retributions of a future life flowing by us. It is not, however, merely belief in a future life and future retributions, but still more specifically in a resurrection of the body. We have also considered an effort to find the great fountain-heads of this river in Persia, and not in Judea. This view we have declined to accept. We are willing to concede that not only the Persians, but also the Egyptians and the Greeks, did exert an influence on Jewish thought and belief. Of what kind it was, and to what degree exerted, will be considered elsewhere. But that the original, main, deep current of thought and belief as to a future life and its retributions originated with any of these nations, there is no good reason to believe.

On the other hand, there is decisive evidence that it originated from the divine system disclosed in the Old Testament, and the beginnings of which long preceded the law of Moses.

Historical Positions.

In opposition to the theory of Persian origin, we lay down these historical positions:

1. The idea of a future life and of its retributions is wrought, in the most impressive

manner, into the fundamental history of the Old Testament, a history ever before the mind of the Jews, while that of Persia was remote and unknown.

2. The belief in a future life and its retributions is implied and assumed in the covenant

with Abraham and his descendants, which preceded the law of Moses by four hundred and thirty years.

3. This belief was cherished and avowed by the patriarchs before they went down to

Egypt, and in Egypt. Moses also in Egypt cherished the same.

4. This belief was clearly and fully developed in the religious experience recorded in the

book of Psalms, long before the Jews had come in contact with the Persians.

5. The covenant with the patriarchs as to their personal possession of the land of Canaan

was such as to suggest to them the doctrine of the resurrection.

6. The most ancient and influential Jewish Rabbis, and among them Gamaliel, the teacher

of Paul, positively and decidedly assert that the doctrine of the resurrection did arise from this source, thus, in effect, positively denying its Persian origin.

7. The doctrine was taught in the book of Psalms, and by Isaiah and Hosea, before the

Jews came in contact with the Persians, as well as by Daniel, after the captivity in Babylon.

8. The tendency of the Jews in all ages to necromancy, and the need of laws against it

even in the time of Moses, is decisive proof of the popular belief of the survival and activity of the soul, and, of course, of a life after death and its retributions.

The most interesting part of this array of historical positions, and perhaps as conclusive and unanswerable as any, is found in the first great fact, that the idea of a future life, and of its retributions, is wrought in the most impressive manner into the history of the Old Testament.

Power of the Teaching of Facts.

Doctrines are never so powerful to affect the popular mind as when embodied in some great historical event. Thus the doctrine of the resurrection was invested with an all-pervading popular power when embodied in the resurrection of Christ.

Was there, then, any embodying of the doctrine of a future life and its rewards in any great act by which the popular mind could be affected under the Old Testament dispensation? There was.

Influence on the Maccabees.

And this great act is invested with peculiar interest by the certainty with which we are assured that it was a main element in kindling the hope of eternal life in the minds of the Maccabees themselves, in the very crisis of their struggle against Antiochus Epiphanes.

There is not perhaps in history a more interesting scene than the death-bed of Mattathias, the father of the Maccabees. No scene more deserves the highest efforts of an inspired painter.

Mattathias began in Modin, single-handed, the war for the law of God against the king. Fired with zeal, he slew the king'’ officer, who was endeavoring to enforce the offering of sacrifice to the gods of Greece. Then he fled to the mountains with his sons, and rallied to his standard all who were true to the law of God from all the land of Judea. His followers at first were few and heroic. But he led them to victory, and emboldened and aroused the nation. But the infirmities of age were upon him, and death drew near. Then, upon his death-bed, he gathered around him his sons, and nominated the hero Judas Maccabeus to take his place, and delivered a parting address, in which he endeavored to embolden his sons by holding up before them the great heroes of Jewish history.

Translation of Elijah.

But among them all there was no one whose example seemed so much to inspire him as that of the great prophet Elijah, who, like him, had periled his life in defending the law of God against an idolatrous king and queen. This example, with glowing words, he held up before his sons, and with it the glorious reward of his fidelity. He says (1 Mac. xlviii. 61), after mentioning other heroes, “consider that Elijah, for being zealous and fervent for the law, was taken up into heaven.” In effect, he says: Remember the great prophet Elijah. Remember his zeal for the law of God in the face of danger and death, and remember his reward. He was taken up even into heaven into the presence of God. Doubt not, then, that eternal life is in reserve for you, if you, in like manner, are faithful to god and to his law.

The Popular View.

That this view of that great event was not peculiar to him is plain from the manner in which the son of Sirach thus apostrophizes the great prophet (Ecc. xlvii. 4, 9, 11): “How wast thou glorified, O Elijah, in the wondrous deeds, who wast taken up in a whirlwind of fire and in a chariot of fiery horses! Blessed are we who behold thee, and are adorned with love, for we too shall surely live.” That this was the popular view of the case is perfectly plain from these facts, and thus we come at least to one fountain-head of that river of belief and emotion which we are endeavoring to trace upward to its sources. We find it flowing not from Persia, but from the mountains of Judea, where Elijah was very zealous for the law of God, and as a reward was taken up to heaven.

Translation of Enoch.

But this is not the highest source of the river. There is still another in times still more remote, and before Persia had ever been heard of. A similar transaction is recorded, even before the flood, in the case of the great prophet Enoch. An inspired writer makes his case the centre of the great doctrine of retribution (Heb. xi. 5, 6).

The Septuagint Version.

But before we advert to his remarks it is necessary to give the Septuagint version of the passage upon which they are based (Gen. v. 24). Our translation is this: “Enoch walked with God and he was not; for God took him.” Of this the Septuagint translation is, “Enoch pleased God, and was not found, for God translated him.” So, also, where our translation says, “Enoch walked with God three hundred years,” the Septuagint translators say, “Enoch pleased God three hundred years.” This is no doubt, in essence, the same idea as is implied in walking with God, but to see the full force of the words of the inspired writer we must have before us the very words of the translation to which he was appealing. Looking at and using this version he thus speaks when properly translated: “By faith Enoch was translated that he should not see death, and was not found, because God had translated him; for he had this testimony, that before his translation he pleased God. But without faith it is impossible to please him; for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is rewarder of them that diligently seek him.” The translation of the Septuagint was made under the early Ptolemies, long before the days of the Maccabees, and is an unanswerable proof of the manner in which the account of the translation of Enoch was then regarded by the Jews. The translation of Enoch is also referred to in the Wisdom of Solomon, as a reward for his pleasing God (iv. 10, 100). “He pleased God, and was beloved of him, so that living among sinners he was translated.”

The Fountain-Head

This great event, then occurring before the flood, as shone as a light through the ages, disclosing the real existence of the spirit-world, and of a life with God with its retributions before the present. This great event, like the sun, has shone through each succeeding generation, and in the days of the Maccabees it was appealed to as a proof of a future life and its retributions, in the same way in which the translation of Elijah was appealed to, as we have seen. Indeed, no character of the Old Testament seems more powerfully to have affected the Jewish mind and imagination in every age than Enoch. He was regarded as an eminently holy man, taken into the immediate counsels of God, and as, therefore, the fittest person to unfold the destinies of coming ages.

The Book of Enoch.

Upon this conception the book of Enoch is based. There is no reason to doubt that this book contains many of the traditions of past ages as to this great prophet. One of these traditions is quoted in common by the apostle Jude and the author of the book of Enoch, unless we prefer to regard the apostle as quoting and sanctioning a part of that book. Certainly the prophecy occurs in the book of Enoch substantially as it is reported by Jude. “Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied, saying, Behold the Lord cometh with ten thousand of his saints, to execute judgment upon all, and to convince all that are ungodly among them, of all their ungodly deeds which they have committed against God, and of all their hard speeches which ungodly sinners have spoken against him.”

We have not time now to speak at length of the important and deeply-interesting contents of the book of Enoch. That it was written long before Christ, by a Jew, and that it was extensively read and exerted great influence among the Jews, are the important facts of the case. Thus viewed, one thing it makes sure, that the river of Jewish belief as to a future life and its retributions did not originate in Persia, but in the earliest narratives of the Mosaic record. This the whole book, full of eternal retributions, clearly proves.

Magnitude of These Events.

Let us now pause and reflect. No one, we suppose, will deny that, next after Moses, the prophet Elijah is the greatest and most impressive character of the Old Testament record. Nowhere are there such brilliant and intense lights and shades as in his history. The scene on Carmel, when he stood up alone for God against the three hundred prophets of Baal, and called down fire from heaven to testify for God, and to turn back the people to his service, has never been exceeded in grandeur, sublimity,[sic] and thrilling power. Of the place occupied in the mind of the Jewish nation by Enoch, we have already spoken. These two great men had probably never heard of Persia, and in their days Persia had no connection whatever with the Jews. And yet the idea of a future life and of its retributions is wrought in the most impressive manner into their lives, and thus into the fundamental history of the Old Testament, a history ever before the mind of the Jews, while that of Persia was remote and unknown.

Denial by Mr. Alger.

We are aware that Mr. Alger earnestly insists that these narrations do not teach what they are supposed to teach. But it is a manifest historical fact, as we have shown, that the Jews did so understand them, and that is sufficient for our purpose; we have historically traced their opinions to their real sources, even if the Jews erred in their philology. But they did not err. The more thoroughly these records are studied, the clearer will it become that the Jews truly understood them, and that they really teach what they have ever held them to teach. To the Jewish writers already quoted may also be added Philo, the distinguished commentator on the books of Moses. In his questions on Genesis, he derives from this passage the doctrine of the immortality of the soul, of the reward of Enoch for a holy life, and of his translation to live and act in the spirit-world. From this reward of Enoch for a holy life, from which he never receded, Philo derives encouragement for the good, in all ages, to expect divine rewards in the life to come.

The Patriarchs and Moses.

The case of the patriarchs and of Moses next demands our consideration. So far as they are concerned, no connection with Persia can be alleged. Their relations to Egypt, however, will deserve careful consideration, for, among the Egyptians, ideas of a future state and its retributions were fully developed. We shall make it plain, however, that they did not adopt the Egyptian system, but that, nevertheless, they were excited and stimulated by it to develop such a system of a future life and its rewards as would grow naturally out of their own covenant with the God of the Bible.

For we must never forget that the great covenant of god was formed with Abraham and his posterity long before they went down into Egypt. The promise of a land and of a posterity, in whom all future ages and all the families of the earth should be blessed, had been made to them. And Christ assures us that Abraham looked forward to his day with peculiar joy. The character of the one God, the Holy One, the Creator of all things, acting on an eternal plan, had been fully revealed to them. From this we shall find that they did not recede, but developed their ideas of future rewards beyond this life in accordance with this plan. The ideas of the Egyptians on future retributions, as we shall see, did not corrupt them, but rather stimulated them more fully to develop their own system.

CHAPTER VI.

VIEWS OF THE PATRIARCHS AND OF MOSES

It is worth of notice that during the long period from Abraham to David, and the composition of the book of Psalms, there is but little record of experimental communion with god, or of the hope of immortality with him. Experience of this kind, as we shall see, becomes abundant in the book of Psalms. Are we to suppose that there was no such experience in the patriarchal ages, or only that it was unrecorded?

Causes of the Doctrine of Immortality.

The causes that produced the experience of the book of Psalms we certainly do find in the patriarchal ages. Take the case of Abraham. Here we find the revelation of God to him as a personal God, and intimate confidential communication between them. We find a plan organized to bless all the nations of the earth through him and his seed. A system is organized for the ages. A covenant is formed including him and his seed. God says to him, “I am thy shield and exceeding great reward.” As a means of executing this plan a land was pledged as the centre of operations. Isaac and Jacob were taken into the same covenant. Nor was the great plan confined to this world and to man. An angelic world of heavenly spirits in fellowship with God, and his messengers and ministers in carrying out this plan, was also revealed. This idea was developed in peculiar sublimity when there was presented to Jacob a ladder reaching up to heaven, on which the angels of God were ascending and descending, and at the top of which God stood and renewed his covenant with him. It is plain that men with whom God thus covenanted in a plan for eternal ages, must have regarded themselves as immortal, and partakers with god in that plan, and not as the perishing creatures of a few years. The immortality of God, and their union with him in a plan for eternal ages, must have given them an assurance of their own immortality. Lange is right when he says that such a covenant for the ages, by a personal God, with the pious, contains in itself the assumption of their immortality, and that this is just as distinct an assumption in the Old Testament as the being of God.

Case of Moses.

This argument applies with even greater force to the case of Moses. How intimate, how various was his communion with God! How glorious, how wonderful, how unsurpassed, was the revelation of the divine character made by God to him at his request! How vast the plans for all coming ages in which he was associated as a fellow-laborer with God! How vividly did he anticipate his great antitype – the prophet like unto himself! Is it possible that he did not expect to live with god to see the consummation of these plans?

Case of Abraham.

Nor were such previsions of Christ confined to Moses. That Abraham took enlarged views of the plans of god in Christ, our Saviour assures us. He said to the Jews, “Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day, and he saw it, and was glad.”

Epistle to the Hebrews.

The writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews also assures us that the minds of the patriarchs did not rest merely on temporal rewards. Of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, he says: “These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. For they that say such things declare plainly that they seek a heavenly fatherland. And truly if they were thinking of that fatherland whence they came out, they might have had opportunity to return to it; but now they desire a better fatherland, that is a heavenly, wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God; for he hath prepared for them a city.” Of Moses, he says, that he endured as seeing him who is invisible, and that he had respect unto the future recompense of the reward, and therefore refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season, esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt. Moses, it seems, even in Egypt, had a view of the day of Christ in the future, and bore reproach for his sake.

Objections to the Epistle, and Reply.

But there are those who regard these statements as not historical, but only as the opinions of the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, whoever he was. But even those who make light of the historical or inspired authority of this epistle, cannot deny that it represents the opinions of a learned and eloquent Jew, perhaps Apollos, if not Paul, on this historical question. Nor can they deny that Philo also, the most learned Jew of the age of Christ, represents Moses and the patriarchs as acting with reference to the retributions of a future life. For the present, then, leaving out of view the question of inspiration, we allege that there are other historical facts which render this view not only credible, but even necessary to account for the course of events.

Historical Facts.

The facts are these: The posterity of Abraham, when they went down to Egypt, for a residence of centuries, encountered there a system of future retribution which was popular, and all-pervading in its influence. It was also adapted, unless it was resisted by the influence of another system, firmly and intelligently held, to bring the children of Israel under its control. But its influence was resisted. Though Joseph was married to Asenath, daughter of the priest of On; though Moses, as the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, was educated in the highest schools of the Egyptians, and was learned in all their wisdom, yet they did not adopt their system of theology, nor of future retribution. To understand the full force of the system to be resisted, and its influence on the popular mind, let the following statements of Wilkinson, which could be greatly enlarged by similar testimony, be thoughtfully considered.

Egyptian System of Immortality.

“The great care of the Egyptians was directed to their condition after death, that last stage toward which their present life was only the pilgrimage; and they were taught to consider their abode here merely as an inn upon the road. They looked forward to being received into the company of that being who represented the divine goodness, if pronounced worth at the great judgment-day; and the privilege of being called by his name was the fulfillment of all their wishes. Every one was then the same; all were equally noble; there was no distinction of rank beyond the tomb; and, though their actions might be remembered on earth with gratitude and esteem, no king or conqueror was greater than the humblest man after death; nor were any honors given to them as heroes.”

We call particular attention to the statement that among the Egyptians this present life was regarded as merely a pilgrimage to a better country, and that they were taught to consider their abode here as merely an inn upon the road. Now, if the pious Israelites were acting in view of a future life, growing out of their own views of the god of their fathers, the Creator of all things, then they too could, from their own point of vision, look on this present life as a pilgrimage, and a heavenly country as their home. And if, when this was the current use of language, they so spoke of this life, it is fair to ascribe to their language the meaning which it would then receive.

Strangers and Pilgrims.

Fix your eye, then, on one of the most striking scenes recorded in the Old Testament, the introduction of Jacob to Pharaoh. Joseph, the son-in-law of the priest of On, brought in his father and set him before Pharaoh. The old patriarch then blessed the King of Egypt. “And Pharaoh said unto Jacob, How old are thou? And Jacob said unto Pharaoh, The days of the years of my pilgrimage are an hundred and thirty years. Few and evil have the days of the years of my life been, and have not attained unto the days of the years of the life of my fathers in the days of their pilgrimage.” Is it possible to doubt what this use of the word pilgrimage must have meant to Pharaoh and to Joseph, and to all the Egyptians? Was it not a distinct recognition of this life as a pilgrimage to a future country, a heavenly home? In the circumstances and in view of the usages of language at that time, could the words admit of any other meaning?

Now, the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews probably was better acquainted with these and similar facts than some of his modern critics. And he was perfectly justified in drawing from the language of the patriarchs the inferences that he did. He adverts first to the fact that they confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth, and from this he draws the conclusion that they were seeking a better country, even an heavenly. For we are to call to mind that Abraham also, for a considerable time, was a resident in Egypt, and on intimate terms with the reigning Pharaoh (see Gen. xii. 10-20). By such a residence in Egypt, in the very centre of Egyptian life and power, he must have been fully informed on the views of the Egyptians as to a future life, and of this life as a pilgrimage to a heavenly country.

Egyptian Funerals.

Indeed, no one could reside in Egypt without seeing these views acted out in their funerals. Nothing was so prominent, nothing so influential in the lives of all classes of men in Egypt, from the king to the peasant, as the doctrine of future retributions. On this was based a judgment at death, not only of the common people, but of kings, in view of their past lives, and a presumptive sentence was passed on them with respect to their future destiny. The good were assigned to union with Osiris, the sinful but corrigible to transmigration as a means of purification, the incorrigibly and hopelessly bad to endless punishment. All this was acted out in so public a manner that no one could remain ignorant of it. It penetrated to every family and every individual.

Influence on the Israelites

Now, the influence of such a system on the children of Israel must have been great in one respect. It must have compelled them to think o9f future retributions. How could Joseph, connected as he was with the priesthood, avoid it? How could Moses, with his princely education in the court of Pharaoh, avoid it? How could the Israelites at large avoid it?

Another thing is plain. They must have been drawn into the current of this system, if they had not been anchored by a system of their own, centred in a higher and truer doctrine of immortality and of retribution. For the human mind, as all history shows, tends in all nations to some doctrine of a future life and of future retribution. It is absurd to suppose that, with the subject forced on their attention on every side, such men as Joseph and Moses could have remained in a state of mere negation and ignorance on such a question. Hence, when the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews (xi, 25-27) represents Moses as enduring as seeing the invisible God, and acting in view of future retributions, he simply states what in the circumstances is indispensable to account for his conduct, and what of necessity must have been true.

The Counterpoise.

But it may be asked, “What was this system by which the Israelites in Egypt were anchored, and how did it take hold of future retributions?”

In reply to this we answer, it was the system growing out of the covenant of God with Abraham, which in its scope took in all men in all future ages. In Abraham and in his seed all the families of the earth in all future ages were to be blessed. Of the coming future Abraham must have taken enlarged views, since Christ himself assures us that he saw his day and was glad.

As a part of this system God gave to the patriarchs, personally, and to their seed, the land of Canaan. Before going down into Egypt, they had been prophetically warned of their bondage there and of their deliverance, and this God, this covenant, and these promises, held them, while in bondage, from drifting away into the polytheism of Egypt. Moses was educated by his mother to understand and to believe this system. Hence, also, Jacob refused to be buried in Egypt, and was buried by Joseph and his other sons in the land of promise. So, too, Joseph, before he died, said to his brethren: “I die; and God will surely visit you and bring you out of this land unto the land which he swore to Abraham and to Isaac and to Jacob. And he took an oath of the children of Israel, saying, God will surely visit you, and ye shall carry up my bones from hence” (Gen. 1. 24, 25). These promises, anticipations, and hopes, were common to all the Israelites, and when the time came they were rallied by Moses to leave Egypt and march for the promised land, and the Egyptians were compelled by the terrific judgments of God to let them go.

Influence of the System.

Now, from a system like this, extending through the ages, a logical inference is the immortality of those involved in it. This is not, indeed, capable of positive demonstration. But one thing is clear: the idea of an immortal God, organizing a system for all coming ages, through the patriarchs and Moses, cannot be held with any consistency or dignity, except on the assumption of the immortality of the soul and a future life. If men perish in their generations, the system dies with them. There is nothing to connect the future with the past. Where but one generation exists at a time, the sympathy and cooperation of the ages cease, and the universe is comparatively an unsympathetic solitude. Upon such a future as this Abraham did not look when he rejoiced in view of the day of Christ, nor did Moses when he anticipated the coming of his antitype, the Great Prophet, like unto himself, and for him endured reproach. They lived in the future, and felt that the future was theirs. Christ sanctions this reasoning when he says (Luke xx. 38): “God is not a God of the dead, but of the living: for all live unto him.”

Belief of the Resurrection.

But this belief of immortality may assume two forms. It may, as in Greece, ignore the body at death, and hold to an immediate passage to an eternal spirit-world, or it may lead to a doctrine of the resurrection of the body, and a future life in a renewed body. That it assumed the latter form among the Jews is admitted by all. But it is asserted by Alger and others, as has been stated, that the idea came from Persia. On the other hand, it is asserted by the ancient Jews that the idea of a resurrection arose from the nature of the promises of God to the patriarchs, as to their personal possession of the promised land. It was promised, they said, not merely to the seed of the patriarchs, but to them personally, as well as to their seed. And yet, personally, they never inherited it. Of this fact the martyr Stephen thus speaks in his dying speech: “God gave Abraham no inheritance in it, not so much as to set his foot on; yet he promised that he would give it to him for a possession, and to his seed after him” (Acts vii. 5). Hence the Jews came to the conclusion that, inasmuch as God would surely fulfill his promise, he would raise up Abraham and the other patriarchs, at the time of the coming of the Messiah, to inherit the land, with their descendants. In connection with this resurrection, they also looked for a renovation and restitution of all things. Whether these were fair inferences from the promises of God, is not now the question, but whether, in fact, the Jews so reasoned, and thus came to the doctrine of the resurrection. On this point there can be no doubt. Fairbairn also justifies this reasoning.

Testimony of the Jews.

Speaking of the belief that the patriarchs, personally, should inherit the promised land, he says: “No doubt such a belief implied that there must be a resurrection of the dead before the promise could be realized; and, to those who conceive immortality as altogether a blank page to the eye of an ancient Israelite, the idea may seem to carry its own refutation along with it. The rabbis, however, with all their blindness, seem to have had juster,[sic] because more Scriptural, notions of the truth and purposes of God in this respect.”

He then quotes from the comment of the Talmud, in Gemara, on Ex. Vi. 4, where God, speaking of Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, says, “I have established my covenant with them to give them the land of Canaan, the land of their pilgrimage, wherein they were strangers.” Here it is noticeable that the patriarchs are spoken of personally, and not as joined with their seed. Here, also, the Talmud raises the question, “Where does the law teach the resurrection of the dead?” The distinct answer given is this: “In that place where it is said I have established by covenant with thee, to give thee the land of Canaan, for it is not said with you, but with thee.” We are told also that when the Sadducees pressed Rabbi Gamaliel, the teacher of Paul, with the same question, he returned in substance the same answer. Menasseh Ben Israel states the argument still more fully: “God says to Abraham, I will give to thee, and to thy seed after thee, the land wherein thou art a stranger. But it appears that Abraham and the holy patriarchs did not possess that land; therefore it is of necessity that they should be raised up to enjoy the good promises; else the promises of God would be vain and false. So that we have here a proof, not only of the immortality of the soul, but also of the essential foundation of the law, the resurrection of the dead.” After making these quotations, Fairbairn remarks: “It is not surely too much to suppose that what Jewish rabbis could so certainly draw from the Word of God may have been perceived by wise and holy patriarchs. Indeed, the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead, not that of the mere immortality of the soul, is the form which the prospect of an after-state of being must have chiefly assumed in the minds of the earlier believers.” These views are defended at large by Fairbairn, in section 7, chapter ii, vol. I, of his “Typology,” and the whole section is well wrought out, and very interesting and able.

Persian Origin Excluded.

We, however, at present, are chiefly interested in the historical question of the origin among the Jews of the doctrine of the resurrection. And we see that the rabbis clearly testify that it originated from their own system in its earlier development, and was not a later importation from Persia.

Certainly, in the book of Daniel, where the doctrine of the resurrection is most clearly declared, it has this Jewish form. Daniel is referred for consolation to his own future resurrection to possess the holy land in these words: “Go thou thy way till the end be; for thou shalt rest, and stand up on they lot at the end of the days” (Dan. xii. 13).

Fairbairn thinks that the promised land really meant was this earth renovated and made the eternal abode of the Church. Dr. Chalmers and others are disposed to adopt the same view. This question, however, is beyond our present province. It is enough to have traced historically the origin of the doctrine of the resurrection among the Jews.

CHAPTER VII.

THE PSALMS AND THE PROPHETS

In our remarks on the patriarchs and Moses, we said that the union with an immortal God, in a covenant, and in carrying out a plan for eternal ages, tended directly to a belief in eternal life and endless retributions. The want of any recorded early belief of this kind we explained by the fact that the experience of the early ages lacked a poet like David to record it in sacred songs. But we proved, by the testimony of the Epistle to the Hebrews, sustained by coincident historic evidence, that such an experience did exist.

The Book of Psalms.

But, as soon as we come to the book of Psalms, all doubt on this question is removed. The tendency which we alleged is there seen in its full development. We do not commonly realize the magnitude of the change effected by David when he introduced into the worship of God the singing of psalms. For centuries the Mosaic ritual had been observed without this act of worship. Moses made no provision for it. Only one of the psalms is ascribed to him, and there is no evidence that even that one was sung until the time of David. But, as soon as we enter the book of Psalms, the wanting element of recorded religious experience appears in full power.

Now, what we stated of the tendency of a covenant with an immortal god, and with reference to an eternal plan to produce the belief of eternal life with him, is fully verified. There is disclosed a doctrine of immortality, and of eternal rewards, that has its roots in the covenant of God with the fathers. It is our purpose to prove that this doctrine of eternal life and future retributions is, in fact, found in the book of Psalms, and that it has its roots in a system essentially unlike that of the Zend-Avesta, and cannot be traced to Persia.

Grounds of Belief in Immortality.

But before doing this it will be expedient to consider the real foundations of any reliable belief in immortality. Plato sought to find them in the inherent nature of the deathless soul, existing from eternity to eternity. Others have sought them in the aspirations of the soul, and the imperfect development of retribution in this life. But the fundamental positions of the system of the Bible are not of this kind. It does not recognize, nay, it expressly denies, the natural and inherent immortality of the soul. It assures us that God only hath immortality (1 Tim. Vi. 16). By this we understand that he only has immortality in the highest sense – that is, inherent immortality. All existences besides himself he created, and he upholds. Men are not, as Plato taught, self-existent, eternal beings, immortal by their very nature. There is no such being except one, and that is God. There is no inherent immortality of the soul in this sense. What God created he sustains in being, and can annihilate if he will. It is by his will that we live, and move, and have our being.

The true and only sure basis of eternal existence is found in the fact that God is immortal, and chooses to have an eternal system, in which his rational creatures can know and love him and cooperate with him in his eternal plan. So long as God wills this, he will render immortal those intelligent moral beings who are involved in his plan. His will, his power, and not their inherent nature, is the pledge of their immortality. How, then, under such a God can the highest assurance of immortality be given? Not by philosophical reasoning on the nature of the mind. God himself must give it. He must reveal himself as immortal; he must disclose an eternal plan; he must take his intelligent creatures into covenant relation with himself; he must reveal himself to them as their portion and their God; he must disclose to them the eternal plan in which they are to cooperate with him, and give them the assurance that their action with him is to be eternal. Let this be done, and there will be the highest possible assurance of immortality. It rests upon the assurance of the immortality of God and the eternity of his kingdom, and that he is the God and the eternal portion of the soul.

So in the Psalms: Not in the Zend-Avesta.

Now, it is in this way that the assurance of immortality is in fact given in the book of Psalms, and it is given on grounds which the Zend-Avesta does not furnish, but rather contradicts. We shall not attempt a full contrast of the two systems. We shall only consider the God of the Bible and of the Zend-Avesta as centres of systems. The Oromasdes of the Zend-Avesta differs essentially from the Jehovah of the Bible. He is not self-existent, but is derived – as is also Ahriman, his antagonist – from Zervan Akerane. Hence, in the Zend-Avesta they are called twins. Of these twins, the progeny of Zervan Akerane, one turns to good, the other to evil, and hence the conflict between them. Hence, if gods, they are derived and created gods. And, although the work of creation is ascribed to Oromasdes, it is limited to this earth and men and good spirits. The firmament and heavenly bodies he did not create. They are praised in the Zend-Avesta as self-existent and eternal. To Ahriman, also, creative power is ascribed. He created evil spirits, the devas, to oppose the good spirits of Oromasdes. Moreover, the praise, not to say worship, given to the heavenly bodies and the elements and the good spirits, though the supremacy is verbally given to Oromasdes, is opposed to the all-pervading spirit of the Bible, which presents Jehovah as the creator and upholder of all beings and worlds, and as the supreme and only proper object of worship. The comparison could easily be carried further, evincing that, though there are some points of similarity, yet the systems are essentially antagonistic in their fundamental elements. In particular, the great idea of a Messiah, who is God incarnate, which is the essence of Christianity, is wanting. Moreover, Zervan Akerane, from whom Oromasdes, the chief acting god, is derived, is worshiped [sic] but rarely, if at all. So inconsistent is the Zoroastrian system with itself.

Probable Origin of.

It is not improbable, however, that the system began as a system of pure dualism, teaching the existence of two self-existent and eternal gods, one good and the other evil, each having creative power, the one creating good spirits and the other evil. This system may have been, and probably was, modified by contact with other systems, and reduced to a unity in Zervan Akerane, who was represented as the father of Oromasdes and Ahriman. At the same time their creative power was not taken away from them, and, as before, Oromasdes is worshiped [sic] as the main and active God, while the worship of Zervan Akerane, who was merely a philosophic centre of origin and unity, remained undeveloped.

System of the Bible.

The system of the Bible is not distracted by any such contradictory elements, but is essentially monotheistic, and gives rise to its own consistent doctrine of eternal life and retributions.

In the first place, all the elements of the assurance of eternal life are presented in the most perfect devotional and experimental forms that are found in the language of man.

Creation.

In contradistinction to the Zend-Avesta, which ascribes to Oromasdes, the good divinity, only a limited creation, i.e., of the earth, good spirits, and men, while the higher lights are without a beginning and self-existent, the Psalms thus praise God as creator of all: “Praise ye the Lord from the heavens; praise him in the heights; praise ye him all his angels; praise ye him all his hosts; praise ye him sun and moon; praise him all ye stars of light; praise him ye heavens of heavens and ye waters that be above the heavens. Let them praise the name of the Lord, for he commanded and they were created.” In like manner, the creation of man and of this lower world, and the divine supremacy in them, are not only narrated historically, but celebrated poetically in strains of unequaled sublimity and beauty.

God’s Kingdom Universal and Eternal.

The absolute universality of God’s kingdom and the eternity of his plans are also declared in the highest strains of devotion:

“All thy works shall praise thee, O Lord, and thy saints shall bless thee. They shall speak of the glory of thy kingdom, and talk of thy power, to make known to the sons of men his mighty acts, and the glorious majesty of his kingdom. Thy kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and thy dominion endureth through all generations” (Ps. cxlv. 10-13). “The Lord shall reign forever, even thy God, O Zion, unto all generations. Praise ye the Lord” (Ps. cxlvi. 10). God, too, by a beautiful metaphor, is described as the dwelling-place of his children in all generations, and we are told that those who love him shall dwell in the secret place of the most High, and abide beneath the shadow of the Almighty.

Communion with God.

The personality of God and his self-revealing power are presented in full action, disclosing a character not only of holiness, power and wisdom, but of condescension, love, sympathy, tenderness, compassion, and forgiveness, that removes fear, perfects faith, and gives a full and experimental knowledge of God and communion with him in all his glorious perfections which fills the soul with unutterable joy. Neither in the Zend-Avesta nor in Plato do we find any such full, experimental, joyful knowledge of and intimate communion with a present, loving, self-revealing God.

It is such an experience that gives rise to such utterances as these: “With thee is the fountain of life: in thy light shall we see light” (Ps. xxxvi. 9). “Because thy loving-kindness is better than life, my lips shall praise thee. Thus will I bless thee while I live: I will lift up my hands in thy name. My soul shall be satisfied as with marrow and fatness; and my mouth shall praise thee with joyful lips: when I remember thee upon my bed, and meditate on thee in the night watches. Because thou hast been my help, therefore in the shadow of thy wings will I rejoice. My soul followeth hard after thee: thy right hand upholdeth me” (Ps. lxiii. 3-8).

All the Elements Combined.

Now, here are all the elements of a profound and perfect certainty of eternal life. Here is an immortal and eternal God, the creator, upholder, ruler of all things. Here is an eternal plan, an eternal kingdom, here are men who know and love this God, and are in covenant with him, and are cooperating with him in intimate fellowship as his instruments in carrying out his eternal plans. Is it not an intuition of the soul that they too must be immortal? Does not the very idea of a divine eternal plan demand it?

But, it will be said, why leave it to intuition or inference? Why not fully reveal and declare it? Why not combine all these elements in an explicit declaration of the full assurance of eternal life in God?

Explicit Declarations.

To this we reply, all these elements are combined not in one, but in many explicit declarations of the full assurance of eternal life in God.

Why, then, it may be said, have they been overlooked? Why has it been represented as doubtful whether the Old Testament saints had a full assurance of eternal life in God?

We reply, because such declarations occur not in abstract metaphysical and philosophical forms, but in the form of religious experience, and of lofty and intense devotion. True, there is neither reason nor philosophy in ignoring them for this reason. For it is undeniably true that the highest forms of devotion in communion with god involve not only the highest and noblest emotions of the soul, but the highest and most philosophical intuitions of truth. There cannot be a higher form of intellectual philosophy than full communion with God. For if God is a personal, a loving God, if he has a self-revealing power, if he can make his presence and love a reality, if he can give the assurance of eternal life in that love, then the most highly devotional passages are the very place where we should expect to find a glowing declaration of the assurance of eternal life in the love of God.

Illustrations.

Out of many such declarations, take one, and examine it critically, and see what it can be except an unequivocal declaration of the firm belief of eternal life in the love of God.

In the seventy-third Psalm (v. 23-26), after describing the assaults of unbelief and the victory of faith, the Psalmist thus proceeds: “Nevertheless, I am continually with thee: thou hast holden me by my right hand. Thou shalt guide me with thy counsel, and afterward receive me to glory. Whom have I in heaven but thee? And there is none upon earth whom I desire beside thee. My flesh and my heart fail: but God is the strength of my heart, and my portion forever.” Weigh well the import of those few words, “God is my portion forever,” and can the full belief of eternal life, in the love of God, be more clearly or more joyfully declared? Consider too the antithesis: “My flesh and heart fail: they die: but God is the strength of my heart, and my portion forever.” Consider another antithesis: “thou shalt guide me by thy counsel (in life), and afterward receive me to glory (with thee).” Nor is this a solitary instance. There are numerous declarations of a similar import in the book of Psalms. Listen to some of them:

“Thou wilt show me the path of life: in thy presence is fullness of joy; at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore” (Ps. xvi. 11).

“He asked life of thee, and thou gavest it him, even length of days forever and ever” (Ps. xxi. 4).

“They shall praise the Lord that seek him: your heart shall love forever” (Ps. xxii. 26).

“Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever” (Ps. xxiii. 6).

“O Lord my God, I will give thanks unto thee forever” (Ps. xxx. 12).

“This God is our God, forever and ever” (Ps. xlviii. 14).

“God will redeem my soul from the power of the grave: for he shall receive me” (Ps. xlix. 15).

“I trust in the mercy of god, forever and ever. I will praise thee forever (Ps. xlix. 15).

“I will abide in thy tabernacle forever: I shall abide before God forever. I will sing praise unto thy name forever” (Ps. lxi. 4, 7, 8).

“I will declare forever; I will sing praises to the God of Jacob” (Ps. lxxv. 9).

“We will bless the Lord from this time forth and for evermore” (Ps. cxv. 18).

“Let Israel hope in the Lord, from henceforth and forever” (Ps. cxxxi. 3).

“The Lord will perfect that which concerneth me: thy mercy, O Lord, endureth forever: forsake not the works of thine own hands” (Ps. cxxxviii. 8).

“Lead me in the way everlasting” (Ps. cxxxix. 24).

In these passages we have but a specimen of the hope of eternal life caused by a self-revealing power of god, and communion with him as a covenant God and portion in an eternal plan. In one of them is also expressed the hope of a resurrection from the grave (Ps. xlix. 15). The same hope is expressed in Is. xxvi. 19, and in Hos. xviii. 14; Dan. xii. 2, 3.

There is also implied in all these passages a retribution of evil to those who are not in communion with God, but at enmity with him. Indeed, this is expressly stated in Ps. lxxiii. 17-20, and in other places. It is true that the retribution of evil is indefinite as to duration and locality. Nor is the idea of locality prominent in the case of the good. The leading idea is eternal life in God, and with God, wherever he may be. In the words of Moses, God is the dwelling-place of the holy soul forever.

If it is said the word leolam does not by itself denote absolute eternity, I concede it. But the relation to God is which it stands imparts to it that force.

Proverbs.

The idea of retribution in a future life for the good and the bad is also found in the proverbs of popular life, as well as in the records of devotion. We are told that “the wicked is driven away in his wickedness, but the righteous hath hope in his death;” and, again, “When a wicked man dieth, his expectation shall perish, but the righteous hath hope in his death” (Prov. xi. 7, 14, 32).

We have thus traced the river of belief that we saw from the mountain-tops of the age of the Maccabees. We have found its sources, not in Persia, but in the revelations of god to his covenant people, beginning in the earliest ages, and coming down the tracts of time.

We propose next to trace the stream to the days of Christ, and then through the Christian ages.

CHAPTER VIII.

FROM THE MACCABEES TO THE CHRISTIAN AGES

We have stood upon the mountain-top of vision in the times of the Maccabees, and surveyed the mighty river of belief as to future retribution, that bore a nation to victory and independence, through martyrdom and war. We have traced its sources in the Word and the dispensations of God in the Old Testament.

We are now to trace it down to the development of Christianity, and the formation of the system of Christian doctrine under the completed canon of the New Testament.

Diversity of Views.

Up to the point at which we have arrived, we have found a clear belief in the resurrection, and the retributions of a future state, but no definite details as to the nature and duration of the punishment to be inflicted on the wicked. It is, in fact, generally supposed that clear statements on these points are peculiar to Christianity. This, however, is not the fact. It is, indeed, true that authoritative declarations were first made by Christ and his apostles; but, as we have before said, in the interval between the Maccabees and Christianity, all the leading forms of thought on these points which are now found in the Christian community were fully and vividly developed. This was not done, however, in the writings commonly called apocryphal, but in those designated as apocalyptic. The reason why these writings more fully considered these themes is found in the fact that they undertook to set forth in prophetic vision the coming of the Messiah, and the establishment of his kingdom. Of course, this would involve a statement of the rewards of the righteous, and the punishment of the wicked, analogous to the sublime statement found in the twenty-fifth chapter of Matthew of the coming of Christ, and the rewards of his faithful followers, and the punishment of his enemies.

Basis of Apocalyptic Writings.

These apocalyptic writings are based on the predictions of the Old Testament, and are intended to be a faithful development of the true system of the Bible. But here, as among modern authors, interpreters of prophecy differ among themselves. Hence, it happens that the winding up of all things is variously represented, so far as the punishment of the wicked is concerned. By some they are represented as finally annihilated, by others as ultimately restored to holiness, and by still others as eternally punished. Hence, before we come to Christ and his statements, we shall find that the public mind of the religious world had been intensely exercised with the investigations on all the leading questions as to man’s eternal destiny.

Influence of Apocalyptic Writings.

Before we enter upon the history of Christian discussions, it is of special importance that we familiarize ourselves with these earlier developments. They not only affected the age in which they were written, but also the Christian ages. Some even of the inspired writings were greatly affected by one of these apocalyptic writings – the book of Enoch. The influence of another, the sibylline verses, is visible in the Church for many centuries, as we shall see.

Other Authorities.

But before we enter upon a direct consideration of the teaching of these works, it is proper to say that these are not the only works by which we can fill up the representation of the thinking of this period. There are two other prominent Jews – Josepheus and Philo – one of whom, as an historian, the other as a philosopher and commentator on Moses, will throw light on the opinions of the age.

General View of the Period.

It is expedient, also, before descending to details, to take a general view of the period of about three centuries between the Maccabees and the formation of the New Testament canon. The influence of the Maccabean age runs across the whole and there is a strange commingling of Jewish and Christian writings. The sibylline verses were begun by Jews and finished by Christians. The Jewish apocalypse of Ezra was provided by Christians with a Christian introduction and close. It was not until the completion of the New Testament canon that all the elements needed for the full development of Christian doctrine in a pure form were in the hands of the Christian community.

Character of the Apostolic Age.

It is natural to suppose that the nearer we come to Christ and the apostles the purer and more full will be our statements of the true Christian doctrine as to retribution. Hence many carefully examine the writings of the apostolic fathers. This implies an utterly erroneous view of the real state of things in the apostolic age, and up to the formation of the canon. The apostolic age was eminently the age of verbal testimony and of oral preaching. And yet very often it happens that the whole New Testament is in imagination carried back to the days of Christ, just as we have it now in one volume. It is not realized that the earliest gospels, as we now have them, were not reduced to writing till between the years 60 and 70 after Christ, and that the earliest epistle, the first of Paul to the Thessalonians, was not written earlier than the year 52. The gospels, epistles, and apocalypse of John, were not written till near the close of the century.

Formation of the Canon.

After the writing of the gospels, and epistles, and other books, another work still remained – to collect them, authenticate each of them, and unite them in a volume, thus forming the canon of the New Testament. This work, too, was to be done for a wide geographical territory – for Europe, for Asia, and for Africa. Westcott, in his elaborate work on the canon, and elsewhere, has shown that this work was virtually, though not completely, done by the year 170 after Christ.

What, then, was the state of things before that time? Beginning with the day of Pentecost, in the year 30 till the year 60, none of our gospels were in existence, and after they were written, for a considerable time, many churches had but one gospel and one or two epistles, the number of each being gradually increased as fast as they could be copied and verified.

If, then, it is asked, how was the gospel at first spread through the world? we reply by the living testimony of the original witnesses, who had been with Christ, and who could testify to the great facts of his life, death, resurrection, and ascension. It was, in fact, through this process of oral teaching that the gospels were finally formed, and by practice and selection condensed into their present limits.

Written Standard.

During this great and long-continued work of oral teaching, before either gospel or epistle had been written, what was the supreme written standard of appeal? It was the Old Testament. The life of Christ was held up as the fulfillment of the Old Testament. Paul and the twelve alike assume this ground, and reason from the Scriptures to prove it. Westcott truly says: “The written gospel of the first period of the apostolic age was the Old Testament, interpreted by the vivid recollection of the Saviour’s ministry. The preaching of the apostles was the unfolding of the law and of the prophets. . . . The knowledge of the teachings of Christ, and of the details of his life, to the close of the second century, were generally derived from tradition, and not from writings. The gospels were not distinguished by this, their prophetic title. The Old Testament was still the great storehouse from which Christian teachers derived the sources of consolation and conviction.” – “Introduction to Gospels,” p. 181.

Great Facts Explained.

This view of the case is important in order to understand the reasons of a great fact, rarely adverted to, and yet undeniable. That fact is this: The account of the last judgment by Christ, and of the consequent retributions of eternal life, and eternal punishment, which in after-ages has exerted more influence on the doctrine of the Church than all other parts of the Bible united, is not referred to at all in the writings of the apostolic fathers, and is prominently brought forward for the first time in writing in the latter part of the second century, by Justin Martyr and Irenaeus. This should not surprise us. This account of the judgment by our Lord is found in but one gospel, that of Matthew, and this particular gospel the apostolic fathers may have never seen.

The general view given of this period may also explain another characteristic fact, namely, the great variety of views held in it as to the final destiny of the wicked. Assuming the Old Testament as a standard, the everlasting life of the righteous is plainly taught. So also the punishment of the wicked in a future state is clearly declared; but the nature and duration of that punishment are not definitely and fully set forth. There are passages in the Old Testament which were regarded of old, and still are by many, as teaching the ultimate annihilation of the wicked. Other passages were regarded as teaching their restoration after punishment, while others were regarded as teaching future eternal punishment.

Having given these general views of the period, I shall set forth the history of opinions in the following order:

1. The doctrine of the annihilation of the wicked.

2. That of the restoration of the wicked.

3. That of future eternal punishment.

It is not necessary to say that the advocates of all of these doctrines hold to the eternal blessedness of the righteous, and to a just punishment of the wicked. But shrinking from endless misery, and regarding a final unity of all things in God as infinitely desirable and reasonable, some seek to gain it, either by final annihilation of the wicked, or by their restoration to obedience.

In the first class I place Philo and the author of the ascension of Isaiah; in the second, the authors of the apocalypse known as the sibylline verses; in the third, the author of the apocalypse of Enoch and of that of Esdras.

To these I shall add the statements of Josephus as to the belief of the Pharisees, Sadducees, and Essenes, in his day.

After this I shall consider the development of the first Christian theological schools, out of which sprang a doctrine of restoration, which led to a controversy of centuries, the effects of which are still universally felt. Finally, I shall speak of the apostolic fathers.

Philo Judaeus and Annihilation.

This eminent Jew was a result of the great intellectual movement of which we have spoken, and the centre of which was Alexandria. He was a native of this city, and was probably born twenty-five years before Christ, and had finished his education under the influence of the schools of Alexandria before Christ appeared. But, as he lived to an advanced age, he not only was developed contemporaneously with him, but survived him, though in all probability he never came in contact with him. Certainly he never recognizes him. He was of a priestly family, and was a Pharisee. He was zealous beyond expression for Moses, and regarded his law as the sum of all wisdom and destined for the human race. And yet he was learned in all the systems of Greek philosophy, but especially an admirer of Plato. He was also a man of influence in political life and in business, as was evinced by the fact that the Jews of Alexandria chose him as their representative to the emperor at Rome, to justify them with reference to a tumult that had taken place at Alexandria. There is no need at this time to speak of his principles of Scriptural interpretation, except to say that they exerted for ages a profound influence on the Church through Origen and the theological school of Alexandria. But these principles have no influence on the question now before us, as he speaks in accordance with the general principles of moral government, and without any mystical interpretation of the Scriptures. Of him Dollinger says, “Philo represents the wicked as perishing with the dissolution of their bodies.” Others quote passages from him, representing the wicked as surviving death and suffering in Hades. There are, however, passages that go beyond this. Hades was regarded as an abyss in the centre of the earth. But Philo held that even the earth itself was to be destroyed, and Hades and the wicked with it, probably as the Stoics taught, by fire. This view is fundamental, and is copiously set forth in his treatise on “Providence,” Section 34. He says:

“There is a Providence that directs the obedient, and places rulers and judges over the disobedient, and by them corrects the contumacy of men, so that by obedience they may obtain honor from God for their virtue.

“But providence is annihilated if the good things of the world are equally distributed so that the wicked always enjoy them.”

In this we see the same line of thought that led the Psalmist, in Ps. lxxiii., to feel the need of retribution on the wicked who prosper in this world. The Psalmist says, accordingly, that they are “cast down into destruction in a moment, and utterly consumed with terrors,” when God awakes to judgment. Philo may have understood this to denote annihilation. At all events this is the final retribution on the wicked which he anticipate, for he proceeds to say:

“But their fairest flower is withered by a just judge, by their destruction when

heaven and earth pass away.”

He then shows that the prospect of divine retribution and of so fearful a final doom will destroy all the pleasures of a sinful life. As to the final destruction of the world he thus speaks:

“The destruction of the world is to be ascribed to the judicial retribution of the Creator. Since the folly of sin corrupts the development of the moral nature of sinners, it impels the judge to retribution, although for a time he has judged it proper to sustain and nourish their corrupt and infamous life.”

He then sets forth the benevolent purpose of god in all of this forbearance:

“The eye of the judge does not overlook the burning of the mind set on fire by lascivious and unclean deeds, but rather like a father educating children, now by fear and now by great gifts, he knows how to dissuade from such unjust and aggressive deeds.”

The influence of sinful habit in rendering all this vain is next set forth in striking terms:

“But those who are dissolved in all effeminate pleasures, and deceived by the show of transient joys, since they cannot endure to go without them, are impelled by them to an impious and violent life.”

He then sets forth the final issue, destruction with a burning world:

“Since they have thus entirely withdrawn themselves from the interests of divine Providence in the creation of the human mind, they must undergo that destructive wrath which hangs over all the elements.”

He then justifies this retribution on principles of justice:

“Since they endeavored to destroy this world, this most perfect work of divine Providence, when this most beautiful workmanship of the Creator is destroyed, they will be involved in the destruction. Thus on those who have been disobedient he will inflict a deserved retribution. Then that in and by which they executed their desires, namely, this beautiful world, will be dissolved and destroyed, since, through the absorption of their hearts in sin, all regard to what is honorable and right, and due to God, has perished from among them.”

In his “Questions on Genesis,” Section 51, he exhibits the idea of the annihilation of the spirit in another form. Speaking of the return of man to the earth, from which he was taken, he says, “Man was not made from earth alone, but from the divine Spirit also.” He then says: “If one is inflamed with the love of virtue, which makes the mind immortal, he has obtained a lot wholly heavenly. But he who is absorbed in the love of pleasure, by which the death of the spirit is caused, again gives himself up to the earth. So, then, of a wicked and depraved man the beginning and end are earth, of a virtuous man heaven.”

Such opinions of such a man could not be without influence. Of him Dollinger says: “With the exception of the apostolic circle he was the man most distinguished for intellectual attainments whom the Jew then possessed. He was a man of rare endowments and high cultivation, from his comprehensive studies and intimate acquaintance with Greek literature; his piety was earnest and his faith firm” (p. 398).

Ascension of Isaiah.

That these views did affect some Christians is plain from the fact that they occur in substance in the ascension of Isaiah, a Christian apocalypse of the same class with that of Isaiah, a Christian apocalypse of the same class with that of Enoch. It was written by a Christian Jew, in the years 68 and 69 after Christ. In the fourth chapter occurs the following passage: “There shall also be a resurrection and a judgment in those days. Then the beloved shall cause to ascend from him a fire to consume all the ungodly who shall be as if they had never been created.” The basis of this work is laid in the assumption that Isaiah ascends to the seventh heaven, and reveals the mysteries of the spirit-world and the destinies of the future. It has, of course, to us, no authority, but it clearly reveals what one Christian writer, at that time, believed and taught as to the destiny of the wicked.

Other Advocates.

The doctrine of the annihilation of the wicked will also be found in Justin Martyr and Irenaeus, in the next century, but we shall defer our notice of them to another occasion. The manner in which they arrive at this result differs from that which Philo presents. It will demand and repay careful consideration.

Our attention will next be directed to the earnest development of the doctrine of the final restoration of the wicked to holiness and to heaven.

CHAPTER IX.

DEVELOPMENT OF UNIVERSAL RESTORATION

By the doctrine of universal restoration, in its broadest and most generic sense, we mean the doctrine that all sinful beings will be finally restored to holiness and eternal life, and that thus the harmony and unity of the universe will be restored. It was in this broad sense that Origen held it, when he taught the future restoration, not only of all men, but also of all fallen spirits, not even excepting the devil himself.

Various Forms.

But the doctrine has been held by some as applicable to all men, without any hope as to the devil and his angels, either because they have no belief in their existence; or because, like the Persian divines in the Zend-Avesta, they believe in their annihilation; or because, if all men are saved, they are willing to vie up the evil angels to endless punishment, though this would not be very consistent with their principles.

The doctrine of universal restoration applied to men has also been held in different forms. In the statements of some, ideas of material purification by fire and torment have been predominant. Others, like Origen, have entirely excluded material fire, and, holding to the eternal possession of free agency, made the process of purification to depend on the truth operating to produce deep conviction of sin, and of ill desert, filling the spirit with unspeakable anguish, until, by repentance and a return to holiness, it is delivered and restored to eternal life. Others, like Theodore of Mopsuestia, have regarded a temporary process of sinning as indispensable to full spiritual development, and the formation of a firm and established holy character, and have taught that God will surely conduct all men through this process of education, until finally they are established in holiness and eternal life.

Need of Discrimination.

These views were historically developed in the order in which we have stated them, and will be more fully set forth in the course of this history. This summary view is here given for the sake of greater clearness of conception during our narrative. Much confusion and error have arisen in different ages from the fact that the analogical, spiritual sense of the word fire has been overlooked, and that thus that which was in the Word of God spoken analogically and spiritually has been used to sustain a doctrine of literal fire in the punishment of the wicked. The merits of Origen are great in having entirely rejected the gross literalism of torrents by material fire. Before him such literalism was universal. Accordingly, we shall find an example of it in the first appearance of the doctrine of universal restoration.

First Statement.

The first statement of this doctrine is found in the Sibylline oracles.

It is in them, however, as part of a general account of the day of judgment, including its antecedents and consequents. It has a peculiar interest as probably the first written description of that day by a Christian.

Increased Interest.

This interest is increased by the fact that it is distinctly appealed to in the hymn on the Judgment, that greatest Latin hymn of the middle ages, Dies Irae, the “Day of Wath.” Of this Prof. Schaff says, “It excites new wonder on every reading, and to it no translation in any modern language can do full justice.” He calls it “That incomparable giant hymn on the Judgment, the tremendous power of which resides first, indeed, in its earnest matter, but next in its inimitable mastery of the musical treatment of the vowels.” Yet in this great hymn there is a virtual indorsement [sic] of the Sibylline verses, by appealing to the Sybil alongside of David as authority, with reference to that day:

“Dies Irae, dies illa,

Solvet seclum in favilla,

Teste David cum Sibylla.”

“The day of wrath, that dreadful day, shall dissolve the world into ashes, according to the testimony of David with the Sibyl.” Some of the versions of this hymn do not show this appeal to the Sibyl, for the translators, having outgrown the faith of the middle ages, seem to shrink from so prominent and sacred a recognition of the Sibyl. Hence, in the translation adopted in the “Plymouth Collection,” we find this version of the first three lines:

“Day of wrath, that day of burning,

All shall melt to ashes turning,

All foretold by seers discerning.”

Here the unlearned English reader would have no conception who these discerning seers could be. Least of all would be conjecture that they were David and the Sibyl. But as soon as this is known, the inquiry at once arises, How and when did these seers foretell these things?

Predictions.

As to David, it may meet the exigencies of the case to say that, in Psalm ciii. 26, 27, he testifies that the heavens and the earth, which God of old created, shall perish and be changed as a vesture. But there is no such deficiency in the case of the Sibyl. In her testimony the fire is prominent, dissolving the universe, and explicit mention is made of the ashes into which all things are dissolved.

But if any shrink from such an appeal, they should recall the usages of the age of the poet. In this appeal the author of this hymn did not act without illustrious precedent. Dr. Schaff says, vol. i., p. 205: “The first appeal of the apologists was, of course, to the prophetic writings. But even a Clement of Alexandria, and, with more caution, an Origen, a Eusebius, and St. Augustine, employed, also without hesitation, apocryphal prophecies, especially the Sibylline Oracles.” Lactantius quoted these oracles so freely that over two folio pages of Gallandius are needed to present a conspectus of his quotations.

The Sibyl. Who?

The word sibyl means a revealer of the counsels of God, that is, a prophetess. It was applied to at least ten in the heathen world, and Dr. Schaff as well as Bishop Horsley believes that some of their revelations were true. “All was not error and pious fraud. Through all heathenism there runs, in truth, a dim, unconscious presentiment of Christianity.” In proof, he refers to the fourth “Eclogue” of Virgil.

But the Sibyl of these verses was not one of these heathen prophetesses, but, according to her own testimony, one of the daughters-in-law of Noah, a person of strict veracity, who was with him in the ark, and who was therefore, able to give a summary of the history of the world before the flood, as well as to predict its future fates. Of the Sibylline verses there were at least two authors. One was a Jew, who wrote about one hundred and twenty years before Christ, and foretold the coming and kingdom of the Messiah, following, mainly, the Hebrew prophets. Of his views of the Messiah and his kingdom Westcott has given a summary (pp. 114-116, “Study of the Gospels”). In these, although there is retribution when the Messiah establishes his kingdom, and rewards his people, and punishes his enemies, yet the peculiar features of the final day of judgment and its results spoken of in the New Testament are not found. These are presented in the second book, which obviously proceeded from a Christian writer. And yet he follows no one of the New Testament writers absolutely, and sometimes introduces matter found in none of them.

The Judgment.

The great drama is opened by a night of fearful and universal gloom, during which a deluge of fire from heaven is suddenly poured upon the earth, resulting in the utter dissolution of the elements of the universe, for this fiery deluge extends not only to the earth and all the works that are therein, but also to the heavenly luminaries. All worlds are thus dissolved into one great ruin, and the seer expressly informs us that ashes shall cover all things, and thus justifies the appeal of the poet. Of such a deluge of fire nothing is said in our Saviour’s account of the day of judgment in Matt. xxv. But in 2 Peter the burning of the heavens and the earth by fire, and the consequent dissolution of the elements, are expressly mentioned, and the Sibylline poet may have followed him or his authorities.

The Judge.

In the personalities of the judgment he follows Dan. vii., where the Ancient of days first is seen enthroned, and then the Messiah comes to him in the clouds of heaven, to receive his glorious kingdom. In like manner the Eternal Father is first enthroned, and then Christ the judge, himself immortal, appears in glory with his holy angels, and, throned on a cloud, comes to the immortal Father, and sits in majesty at his right hand on the judgment-seat to judge the life and the deeds of godly and of ungodly men.

The Assembly.

Before the judgment the dead of all ages are raised, and reinvested with bodies by the mighty power of God. No account is made of difficulties. The writer specifies those who died before the flood, hose consumed by birds, beasts, and serpents, and those burned by fire. But over all difficulties the almighty power of God triumphs. Then, by the angels, all, good and bad, are gathered before the judgment-seat. Moses, Abraham, and other eminent saints, are specially named. But here a remarkable deviation from our Saviour’s account occurs.

The Separation.

No public summation of their deeds by the Judge is made, nor is a sentence pronounced; on the other hand, they are divided by being made to pass through a river of fire. By this process the righteous are separated from the wicked and saved. The angels convey them safely through the burning river to their heavenly home. But the wicked are abandoned to the river of fire, where they suffer for whole ages according to the deeds they have done. A long list of their crimes is given, such as murder, lies, theft, adultery, slander, apostacy [sic] from God, idolatry.

Punishment.

The punishment inflicted on them is then set forth in great detail. They are chained by God with fiery chains to a mountain, around which flows the river of fire, and the angels of the eternal God scourge them, with fearful severity, with fiery scourges.

After this they are exposed in the darkness of Tartarus to horrid monsters. Then the most wicked are condemned to go through a fiery circuit of the river of fire. Meanwhile their ceaseless lamentations ascend, until at last they pay in suffering thrice as much as they have sinned. In their torments they gnash with their teeth, and in vain desire to die. They implore god for deliverance, but he turns from them and reminds them that by the incarnation he gave them the opportunity for repentance in the seven ages of the world’s history.

After all this the good are fully described and their happy lot. A long account is given of the heavenly world, and its holy society and various forms of happiness.

Final Restoration.

But according to this prophetess the holy cannot be happy even amid the joys of heaven while others are suffering. Hence, with one voice, they petition God for their delivery. Nor is their petition vain. Thus entreated, he will deliver them from the devouring fire and from eternal gnashing of teeth. Having thus delivered them, he will firmly establish them and assign them, through his people, to a new and eternal life among the immortals.

This view of restitution is not peculiar in distinctly bringing out that feeling of compassion an d sympathy for the lost that has since been repeatedly expressed during the ages. But it is peculiar in this, that it makes the expression of it to God the turning-point of the system. God at first rejects the prayers of the wicked for salvation, and it is not until he is moved by the earnest entreaties of the holy that he interposes to deliver them.

Influence of this View.

That this view was not without popular power is plain from one fact. Augustine states, in his “City of God,” that there were many tender-hearted souls in the west who were moved with sympathy for the lost, and denied the eternity of their punishment. In stating their reasonings he gives a prominent place to this view of the merciful prophetess, and devotes one whole chapter to setting forth the principles of their reasoning. As he presents them they have no little plausibility. They insisted on the fact that Christians, even in this imperfect state, were imbued with the spirit of forgiveness and of prayer even for their enemies. Will they, then, lay aside these traits when perfect and in that perfect world? Will they not pity and forgive and pray for the wicked? Will not the whole church of the redeemed unite in this prayer? And if they do, can it be that God will not feel it and be moved to answer the united petitions of the glorious host of the redeemed?

What Augustine would have said in reply to such reasonings must be matter of conjecture, for he is content to state them without making a reply.

The account of the judgment and its consequences thus reported has been much abbreviated. In full it occupies 143 lines of Greek hexameters. Yet to a great extent we have translated and used the words of the writer. A view of the Sibylline oracles as a whole excites admiration at the amount of study requisite for their composition. The author aims to use the vocabulary of Homer, and the composition of such a work in twelve books by a Jew or a Christian would have been impossible, had it not been for the careful and extended study of the poems of Homer in the schools of Alexandria. Westcott speaks of the Sibylline writings as exhibiting much enlargement of views. He says, “They stand alone as an attempt to embrace all history, even in its details, in one great theocratic view, and to regard the kingdoms of the world as destined to form provinces in a future kingdom of God.”

View Physical.

Yet the views of retribution presented are not elevated. The punishment of the wicked is inflicted by literal fire, nor are the ideas of a moral purification as the means of restoration, afterward promulgated by Origen, visible in the work. It more nearly accords in this respect with the Zoroastrian Bundehesh, in which the final punishment and purification of the wicked are represented as effected by a river of literal fire.

Not Zoroastric.

But one striking fact proves that this prophecy of the judgment was not derived from Persian sources. There is no reference to the devil and his angels in the whole account; whereas Ahriman and his angels figure conspicuously in all Zoroastrian accounts of the final day of retribution.

The development of the higher forms of universal restoration will be considered hereafter. We shall next consider the first statement of the doctrine of future eternal punishment in the book of Enoch, a work which affected the public mind and filled the imaginations of men more perhaps than any other apocalyptic work of the ages before Christ.

CHAPTER X.

DEVELOPMENT OF THE DOCTRINE OF FUTURE

ETERNAL PUNISHMENT

We have considered the earliest statement of the doctrine of the annihilation of the wicked, by a believer in the Scriptures. We have also set forth the first development of the doctrine of their universal restoration. We now proceed to consider the earliest presentation of the doctrine of future eternal punishment. This is found in the book of Enoch.

Book of Enoch.

This book was first quoted by the apostle Jude, and after him was quoted or referred to by Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, and Augustine. After this it gradually disappeared, and was lost till in 1773 Bruce brought from Abyssinia to England a complete Ethiopic translation of it. This in 1838 was translated by Archbishop Laurence into English and Latin. This gave a great impulse to the study of the book. Prof. Stuart published an able view of it, and Hoffman, Gfrorer, and Dillman, translated it into German and Latin. Ewald also and others have made a thorough study of the book. The most important authorities concur in the belief that it was written before Christ, some carrying its composition, at least in part, back to the early part of the age of the Maccabees. The evidence seems clearly to sustain these views, but we cannot now enter into this question, but, resting on these results, shall proceed to consider its utterances on the subject now under consideration.

Insulated Quotations.

It would be easy, by direct and multiplied quotations taken out of their connection, to show that it teaches, in most explicit terms, the eternal punishment of the fallen angels, and of wicked men. But such insulated extracts would not give a fair idea of the light in which these doctrines are presented in the book. We should at once weave them into a modern fabric of doctrine such as is now held, whereas we ought to see them in the relations in which they stand in the book.

System of Enoch.

One grand peculiarity of the system of Enoch is, that it is not founded on the fall in Adam, but on the fall of the angels. This view was extensively read and studied and appealed to by the early Christian fathers. Who, then, are the fallen angels of whom the book speaks, and whose judgment and eternal punishment it so clearly sets forth? They are not the devil and his angels, of whom we should naturally think, with our modern views, but those particular angels, supposed of old to be spoken of in the sixth chapter of Genesis, who, seeing the daughters of men that they were fair, took them wives of all that they chose. By these wives, the angels aforesaid became the fathers of the giants by whom the earth was desolated, and whose spirits, after death, became evil spirits, or demons.

But it will be said that the Bible does not speak of angels as thus taking wives of men, but of the sons of God. This is true of the Hebrew text, and of our English version.

The Septuagint.

But some manuscripts of the Septuagint have the reading angels of God, instead of sons of God. This was the reading followed by Philo (“De Gigantibus,” Section 2), and Josephus. And even now this is the reading of the Alexandrian manuscript, which is followed in the edition of the modern Greek Church, sanctioned by the Synod of all Russia. So, also, the edition of the English Society for promoting Christian Knowledge, agrees purposely with the Greek Church in following the same manuscript, edited by J.E. Grabe, and then by F. Field: Oxford, 1859. The early fathers seem to have followed the same reading, as did also Augustine.

The Septuagint translators, in Job xxxviii. 7, where all the sons of God are spoken of as shouting for joy at the creation, have introduced the word angels as the translation of sons of God. In this, they clearly expressed the real fact of the case. And this shows how the translation angels of God, could have been introduced in Gen. vi. 2. This translation the author of the book of Enoch followed, and it was generally followed y the early fathers. Nor should we wonder at them, for, as we have seen, even to this day, the Greek Church does the same.

The Foundation of the Book.

Here, then, is the foundation of the system of the book of Enoch, for, according to him, it was not the fall in Adam that corrupted the world. Of the fall of Adam there is no mention in the book. It was the fall of the angels before the allurements of the beautiful daughters of men that filled the earth with corruption, violence, and ruin, and called for the flood. For this, too these angels were bound in everlasting chains, under darkness, unto the judgment of the great day.

Seduction, Corruption, Oppression.

The book states, at length, how the angels who had fallen seduced and corrupted men by magic, and the disclosure of various other unlawful secrets. It narrates, also, how men were oppressed by the giants who were born from these unlawful connections. And, indeed, the despotism of the giants must have been terrific, for the book expressly states that they were 300 cubits (450 feet) high, and devoured the labors of men, and animals of all kinds, and finally men themselves. They must, also, have been somewhat numerous, for we are told that there were two hundred fallen angels and from so many a numerous progeny would naturally descend. Not only is the number of these angels given, but the names of their leaders, and the evil arts which each taught.

The Crisis and the Angels.

Here, then, was a crisis. Men were corrupted, oppressed, and in danger of destruction beneath a fearful despotism, and cried for aid. The case was first laid before God by a deputation of angels; and God gave directions to the good angels what measures to adopt to destroy the power of so fearful a combination.

The Call of Enoch.

God also sent a direct message to the fallen angels through Enoch, who for this purpose was taken up into the presence of God, and saw his glory. This message denounced retribution and destruction on them, and on their children, the giants. On receiving the message, the sinful angels were overcome with terror, and entreated Enoch to intercede in their behalf He complied with their request.

Reply of God.

God sent by Enoch a message, refusing to spare them, because of the magnitude of their crimes. God denounced their guilt in forsaking the elevated spiritual sphere, for which they were made immortal, and without the need of marriage after the manner of men, and coming down to the low plane of carnal lust. He reproved them for forsaking their proper and elevated station as guardians and watchmen over men, and coming down to the degradation of sensual lust to seduce and corrupt them. In view of such crimes, he declares that their case is hopeless, and that they are beyond the reach of mercy.

Retribution.

The holy angels are then ordered to bind them in chains, and reserve them till the great day of the final judgment. Thus in chapter x., it is said, concerning Samyaza, and the fallen angels who had intercourse with women: “Bind them for seventy generations underneath the earth, even to the day of judgment and of consummation, until the judgment, the effect of which will last forever, be completed. Then shall they be taken away into the lowest depths of the fire in torments, and in confinement shall they be shut up forever.”

In chapter xxi. 5, is given a striking account of the place of their eternal punishment: “I beheld a great fire, blazing and glittering, in the midst of which was a division. Columns of fire struggled together to the end of the abyss, and deep was their descent. Then I exclaimed, ‘How terrible is this place, and how difficult to explore!’ Uriel, one of the holy angels, who was with me, answered and said: ‘Enoch, why art thou alarmed and amazed at this terrific place, at the sight of this place of suffering? This,’ he said, ‘is the prison of the angels; here they are kept forever.’”

Thus are these fallen angels singled out as the greatest criminals of the ages. They are not confined and punished with sinful men, but in a prison appropriated to them, where they suffer for their great and peculiar crimes, as the great traitors who betrayed and corrupted humanity, over which they had been placed as guardians, and opened the flood-gates of evil on the world. This is the view of them presented from the beginning to the end of the book. It is also noteworthy that these fallen angels are not placed in any immediate connection with the devil, for, though their leaders are enumerated, he is not one of them. Indeed, Satan is but once referred to in the book.

Sinful Men Punished.

So much for the eternal punishment of the fallen angels. As to the eternal punishment of sinful men, and the eternal rewards of heaven, the book is no less explicit. Enoch was conducted by the angels, at divers times, through the spiritual universe, and saw the abodes of the sinful and of the holy. Many quotations might be made as to eternal punishment, for he has vision after vision. But one or two extracts from the twenty-first chapter will remove all uncertainty. After a general view of the places assigned to souls until the day of judgment, he says of the abodes of the wicked: “Here their souls are separated. Moreover, abundant is their suffering until the time of the great judgment, the castigation and the torment of those who eternally execrate, whose souls are punished and bound there forever.”

The Final Prison.

Of the final prison, he says: “A receptacle has been formed for the souls of unrighteous men and of sinners: of those who have completed crime, and associated with the impious, whom they resemble. Their souls shall not be annihilated in the day of judgment, neither shall they arise from this place."

In chapter xxxviii. He says: “When the light of the righteous shall be manifested, where will the habitation of sinners be? Where the place of rest for those who have rejected the Lord of spirits? Better would it have been for them had they never been born.”

In chapter civ. it is said: “In those days shall the mouth of hell be opened into which they shall be immerged [sic]; hell shall swallow up and destroy sinners from the face of the elect.”

The Messiah as Judge.

The agency of the Messiah in the judgment on the angels and on sinful men is clearly set forth in chapter lxviii. The names of the leaders of the seducing angels are first given. Then God’s oath is proclaimed. Then it is said: “The Son of Man sat upon the throne of his glory, and to him the principal part of the judgment was assigned. Sinners shall disappear and perish, while those who seduced them shall be bound with chains forever.”

Range of the Book.

But the book is not entirely confined to the angels. It gives the great outlines of human history, and the relations of kings and nations to the coming judgment. It also contains disclosures as to the elements, the seasons, and the great laws of the natural world.

Punishment by Fire.

Thus far, no particular mention of fire in the punishment of wicked men has been made. In chapter cv. This deficiency is supplied. He says: “I beheld a flame of fire blazing brightly, and, as it were, glittering mountains whirled around and agitated from side to side. In it was the clamor of exclamation, of woe, and of great suffering.” In reply to his inquiry, “What is it?” the angel said: “There into that place which thou beholdest shall be thrust the spirits of sinners and blasphemers; of those who shall do evil, and who shall pervert all that God has spoken.”

Rewards of the Good.

Of the good, God says: “I will bring them into the splendid light of those who love my holy name, and I will place each of them on a throne of glory, of glory peculiarly his own, and they shall be at rest during unnumbered periods. Righteous is the judgment of God.”

Good Things in This World.

Of sinners who have lived in prosperity and luxury, and been envied by men, therefore, he says, chapter ciii., Section 4: “Has it not been shown to them that when to the receptacle of the dead their souls shall be made to descend, their evil deeds shall become their greatest torments? Into darkness, into the snare, and into the flame that shall burn to the great judgment shall their spirits enter, and the great judgment shall take effect forever and ever. Woe to you, for to you there shall be no peace!”

The whole of chapter xcvi. Is full of warnings to the wicked in view of the record of their crimes, and the coming day of judgment and retribution – as full as any modern sermon on the same subject.

Resurrection.

In this book, also, the doctrine of the resurrection is fully declared for the good, but not for the wicked. It is not a part of their privilege and honor. It is their spirits that are said to be thrust into eternal fire.

Influence of the Book.

This Jewish book of Enoch was extensively read in the early centuries. Justin Martyr, Athenagoras, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria, Lactantius, and not a few others, adopted the view presented in it of the angels and their fall by carnal lust and sinful intercourse with women. Their ideas of spirits were not so immaterial as to render it incredible. No protest was made against the idea of giants four hundred and fifty feet high. Indeed, even these would not probably reach the indefinite height of Satan as given by Milton, to whose staff the tallest mast of “some great admiral” was but a wand.

Not in the Canon.

But though the book was so extensively read, and exerted so wide an influence, it was not regarded as an inspired work, or a part of the Old Testament canon. Tertullian is the only exception to this statement. Although the statements of the book are without authority on us, as to future punishment, they show that, even before Christ came, the minds of the Jews had trodden a wide range as to the future life and endless retributions. Of the book Westcott says, “No apocryphal book is more remarkable for eloquence and poetic vigor.” In various parts of the book there are evidences of a Miltonic imagination acting in scenes of judgment and fiery terror. From this apocalypse of Enoch we pass to that of Ezra, which also sets forth future eternal punishment, but from a different standpoint, and as the development of an entirely different system, one far more in affinity with modern modes of thought. This, also, was widely read, and exerted great influence in the early church. It deserves more careful consideration in many respects than it has yet received. In some respects it is an enigma as yet unsolved.

CHAPTER XI.

FUTURE ETERNAL PUNISHMENT IN THE APOCALYPSE OF EZRA

We have set forth future eternal punishment as it is presented in the Apocalypse of Enoch. We have seen that the basis of the system of which it was a part was the fall of the angels through the love of the fair daughters of men, spoken of in Gen. vi. 2, and the corruption thence originating. In the Apocalypse of Ezra the doctrine of future eternal punishment is retained, but this basis of the system disappears. And no reference is made to evil angels at all. Even the devil utterly disappears. An entirely new basis comes in sight. This fact deserves more attention than it has ever received.

New Basis.

This new basis, however, is not quite so remote from modern thought as the other. Indeed, it is likely to meet a very general recognition, for it is nothing else but the doctrine of the fall in Adam.

This is not, however, in the Augustinian form of the identity of Adam and his posterity, and their guilt for his sin, nor in the form of Dr. Hodge, of Princeton, of a covenant with the race through Adam as their representative head, so that his sin is reckoned as their sin. It is the doctrine that, by an inscrutable law of evil through Adam’s sin, original righteousness passed away from the race; and the same evil heart that was in Adam reappears in all his posterity, and results in the eternal perdition of the great majority of the human race, not by annihilation, but by endless misery. This is set forth as emphatically announced by God, and is assumed by Ezra. The condemnation of men is justified on the ground that they are, notwithstanding, free moral agents, knowing their duty, and wickedly refusing to do it.

Mode of Discussion.

This doctrine is discussed in a kind of dialogue, in which the speakers are God, Ezra, and an angel. The doctrine is defended, not by Ezra, but by god or by the angel who is God’s representative and sometimes speaks as God himself, and is so addressed. On the other hand, Ezra presents very serious objections to the doctrine as set forth, and protests against it with great keenness on moral and rational grounds. Indeed, as the case is presented, he has altogether the advantage as to moral impression. Nor is this all. He repudiates the doctrine as based on the fall of Adam with the highest and most affecting forms of moral and sympathetic emotion. On the whole, the Apocalypse of Ezra must be regarded as one of the most remarkable productions of antiquity.

It seems to present the doctrine of future eternal punishment based on the fall of Adam as true, according to the statements of God and the angel, and yet as entirely unsatisfactory to Ezra on moral and rational grounds. And the marked feature of the case is that, though Ezra seems to have decidedly the best of the argument, yet, without retracting anything, he simply submits to God.

Origin of the Book.

The book professes to have been written by Ezra, in the thirtieth year after the Babylonish captivity. Luche, Van der Vlis, Laurence, and Hilgenfeld, place its composition in the latter part of the century before Christ. Other eminent scholars place it somewhat later. But all agree that a Jew was the author. As it stands in the Apocrypha of our English Bible, it is called the Second Book of Esdras. But there is decisive evidence that the two opening and two concluding chapters are a Christian interpolation, and that a whole chapter has been omitted at vii. 35, which Archbishop Laurence has restored from the Ethiopic and Arabic translations of the book. Laurence has also given a new translation in English and Latin of the whole. It is upon the Apocalypse of Ezra, thus restored to its original form and newly translated, that our remarks are based.

The book was extensively read, and exerted great influence among the fathers. By Clement of Alexandria it was ascribed to the prophet Ezra, and regarded as inspired and canonical. With him Irenaeus, Tertullian, and Ambrose, agreed. Indeed, Ambrose made large quotations from it as of divine authority. The book deserves, therefore, attentive study, by reason of its influence on ancient thought. It does not open with a consideration of eternal punishment. It begins with a consideration of the doctrine of original sin in its relations to God’s dealings with Israel in the captivity.

Ezra’s Opening and Rejoinders.

Ezra was convinced that if an evil heart was derived to all men in Adam, it was so deeply at the foundation of all history that everything needed to be explained and justified in the light of it in order to understand it truly and thoroughly.

He recounts, therefore, the facts of history to God – the wickedness that called for the flood; the speedy apostacy after the flood, and again, after the giving of the law, and again, after the building of the temple; and he declares that the deep cause of all these apostacies was the evil heart, derived from Adam, which God caused and did not take away. To this he recurs again and again through his book. He earnestly calls on God to justify his dealings with his people from this standpoint.

He is met by the assertion of the angel that to understand this doctrine of the evil heart is beyond his capacity, and that it is an immodest boldness for him to undertake it.

He is not intimidated by this repulse, but gives a bold and profound reply. He says, “It were better not to exist than thus to live under the power of the law of sin, and to suffer for it, and yet not to know how or why it is.”

The angel then tells him: “God only in heaven can understand such high things; you are a man on earth and cannot do it. Why aim at such high mysteries?”

Ezra boldly replies, “Why, then, are we endowed with a reasoning soul?” He adds: “I was not asking as to high things, but as to things taking place daily before us. I am inquiring into God’s dealings with us from this standpoint.”

Final Relief Promised.

This boldness is not further precede; it is rather yielded to. Ezra is told that the end of the world and the final judgment are near, and that in their light even the mysteries of Adam’s sin can and will be explained. After many questions as to the time and to the signs of the day and what shall precede it, the judgment itself is described. Nothing is taken from the New Testament descriptions of the day. It is the view of a Jew familiar with the Old Testament, and in some things it widely differs from the New Testament.

The Resurrection and the Judgment.

The resurrection and the judgment are thus set forth to Ezra: “The earth shall restore those that are asleep in her, and so shall the dust those that dwell in silence; and the secret places shall deliver those souls that were committed unto them. And the Most High shall appear upon the seat of judgment, and misery (of the good) shall pass away, and the long-suffering shall have an end. But judgment only shall remain, truth shall stand and faith shall wax strong, and the work shall follow, and the reward be shewed, and the good deeds be of force and wicked deeds shall bear no rule” (vii. 32-35).

(At this point the omitted and restored chapter begins.)

“Then shall the deep pit of condemnation lie open before the region of consolation, and the furnace of hell appear before the paradise of joy. On that day shall the Most high say to the wicked who are risen: ‘Look and understand who it is that you have denied, whom ye would not obey and whose commands ye have despised. Before you on one side joy and consolation, on the other judgment and fire.’ Thus shall he speak to them in the day of judgment.”

Ezra’s Dissatisfaction.

In view of this result, so favorable to the good, Ezra does not, as might have been expected, express joy. On the other hand, he grieves because the number of the good is so small. On account of Adam’s sin he sorrows that so few are saved, and so many condemned. The evil heart, he says, derived from Adam, leads to sin and ruin. This is true almost universally.

God’s Reply.

To this God in substance replies: “That which is scarce is most valuable. Gold is more scarce than silver, iron, lead, clay, and therefore more valuable. So shall I rejoice in the few that live, for in them I am glorified. Nor do I grieve on account of them who perish, for, like a fire and smoke, they burn, rage, and are extinguished.” This seems to be a very cold-hearted reply.

Ezra’s Rejoinder.

The reply of Ezra to this deserves particular notice. It is in effect this: The possession of responsible free agency under such a system is not a blessing but a curse. To be an irresponsible animal is far better than to be an accountable free agent under such a system.

“Then I answered him and said, Surely it would have been better not to have had an understanding heart formed in us than to have had it formed, and to increase with us, and yet an account of this to be condemned; for we know that we must perish.”

Ezra’s First Lament.

Then follows an expression of sorrow over the sad condition and destiny of man, unparalleled in theological literature: “Let the human race lament, while the beasts of the field rejoice. Let all who are born of woman weep, while all the flocks of cattle bound for joy. For their condition is much better than ours. No judgment awaits them, nor are they obnoxious to punishment. Nor do they hope for life after death. What profit is our life to us? All who are born are immerged [sic] in sin, full of iniquity and laden with transgressions. Truly it would have been better for us if we had not been capable of being judged after death.”

God’s Reply.

The reply put into the mouth of God does not meet the point of this appeal. It simply states the fact that God, from the beginning, determined that men should be responsible to judgment, and they are. They know their duty, and do not do it, and therefore they shall be punished. “He replied, when the Most High created the world, Adam, and his posterity, he previously ordained judgment and punishment. Now then learn wisdom from they own words, for thou saidst an understanding heart has increased within us; therefore will all who inhabit the earth be punished, because they are conscious of their crimes. Knowing, they have not obeyed. Having understood his law, they have broken it. What can they say when judged?”

Questions of Ezra.

Ezra is silent and does not pursue the discussion further at this point, but inquires as to the state of the soul after death. He is told that all souls return to God, and then are assigned places where they anticipate the judgment-day; and the various sources of suffering to the wicked, and joy to the righteous, during the interval, are pointed out.

He then asks whether the righteous can effectually intercede for sinners after the judgment – fathers for children, children for fathers, friends and relatives for each other – and he is told that they cannot. No man can assist another. No man can cast his burden on another. Every man must bear his own burden. (Here the omitted and restored chapter ends, and vii. 36 proceeds.)

Ezra then refers to many cases of effectual intercession of the saints in the Old Testament, and asks why should it not be so after the judgment? He is told that this world is not a final and fixed state, but the world to come is. In this world, therefore, they have effectually interceded for sinners. But the day of doom is the end of this state and the beginning of immortality. Then shall no man be able to save him who is destroyed, nor to overcome him who hath gotten the victory.

Ezra’s Final Reply.

The final reply of Ezra is as remarkable as anything that has preceded. I answered them and said: “THIS IS MY FIRST AND LAST SAYING, THAT IT HAD BEEN BETTER NOT TO GIVE THE EARTH UNTO ADAM; OR ELSE, WHEN IT WAS GIVEN HIM, TO HAVE RESTRAINED HIM FROM SINNING.” The import of this is plain. No system, blank non-existence of rational beings in this world, would be better than such a system as is based on the fall of Adam. It deserves notice, also, that this is after he has heard the defense ascribed to God –i.e., that men are intelligent beings and know their duty, and cannot justify themselves for their crimes. Ezra goes beneath all this, and calls in question the rectitude of the system itself which could terminate in such results. Nothing can be bolder than his reply.

Ezra’s Second Lament.

After this he bursts out into a loud and moving second lament over the inevitable results of the system, as seen in the certain sinfulness and ruin of the vast mass of mankind:

“O thou, Adam, what has thou done? For though it was thou that sinned, thou art not fallen lone, but we all who come of thee. For what profit is it to us if there be promised us an immortal life, whereas we have done the works that bring death? That there is promised to us an everlasting hope, whereas we, being most wicked, are hopeless of it? And that there are laid up for us dwellings of health and safety, whereas we have forfeited them by wicked lives? And that the glory of the Most High defends such as have led a holy life, whereas we have walked in the most wicked ways of all? And that thou should be shewed a paradise whose fruit endureth forever, wherein is security and health, since we shall not enter into it? And that the faces of those who have abstained from sin should shine above the stars, but our faces shall be blacker than darkness? For while we lived and committed iniquity we considered not that we should begin to suffer for it after death.”

God’s Reply.

The reply to this in the name of God is based on a repeated assertion of the free agency, responsibility, and disobedience, of man:

“Then answered he me and said, This is the condition of the battle which man who is born upon the earth shall fight; that if he be overcome, he shall suffer as thou hast said; but if he gain the victory, he shall receive the reward as I say. For this is the life whereof Moses spoke unto the people while he lived, saying, Choose life, that thou mayst live. Nevertheless, they believed not him, nor yet the prophets after him; no, nor me, who have spoken unto them, that there should not be so much sorrow for their destruction as joy over those who are persuaded to salvation.”

Spirit of the Book.

The book then proceeds to consider at great length the signs of the times and future developments, in which we cannot follow it.

In form it defends, by the authority of God, the doctrine of future eternal punishment, as based on the fall of Adam. On the other hand, the moral influence of Ezra’s protest against it is very great, and is met by no adequate reply.

What the author actually meant is not clear. The book is an enigma; yet it has generally been accepted as a defense of the doctrine. One thing is sure – it goes down to the very depths of human thought and feeling on this great theme. In every age the doctrine of the fall in Adam has been felt to add a new horror to the doctrine of endless punishment, and to make the system utterly indefensible.

CHAPTER XII.

THE CONTEMPORARIES OF CHRIST

Christ is the great central luminary of history. We rejoice in proportion as we are able to see all events in his light. As to future retribution, as we have seen, there had been great mental activity before his day, and various and decided opinions had been formed and widely promulgated. Let us now endeavor to conceive who they were with whom our Saviour would come in contact, and what forms of belief he would encounter.

Jewish Centres.

The Jews of his age had three main centres of population and development – Babylon, Alexandria, and Jerusalem. The Jews of Babylon, as we have seen, were more exposed to Persian and Oriental influences. Those of Alexandria were more under the influence of Greek philosophy. Those of Palestine were more conservative of the original and unaltered institutions of Moses. And yet, at the great yearly festivals at Jerusalem, leading Jews from all these centres were assembled from year to year, and Christ must have met them there. He may have met even Philo in this way. John also tells that on a certain occasion some Greeks – proselytes, no doubt – came to worship at the feast of the Passover, and desired to see Jesus – John xii. 20. Probably this was not a rare event. In these great gatherings there would be scribes, or expounders of the law (called sometimes lawyers), as well as priests, Pharisees, and Sadducees. Probably he met also Essenes, though of them nothing is said in the New Testament. Besides these, he would meet with Roman magistrates and soldiers, and finally, and more than all, he would come in contact with the common people. And in these great convocations there would be those who had read whatever works had been written or published on the great theme of retribution – works called by us apocryphal or apocalyptic. What forms of belief, then, did he meet?

Testimony of the Evangelists.

Looking at the Evangelists, we at once discover one great fact. Christ stood in the midst of a very great, keenly-contested, and wide-spread controversy. On one side were the Sadducees, denying future life and all its retributions, as entirely unknown to the law of Moses. On the other side stood the Pharisees, teaching with emphasis the resurrection, and a future life and its retributions. In this great controversy he sided with the Pharisees. So much we gather clearly from the Evangelists. But what, in their view, were these retributions? On this point the New Testament gives us no definite information whatever. It is not even expressly said that the Pharisees taught that the rewards of the good would be eternal life, though it may be reasonably supposed that they did. Much less does it inform us whether, with Philo, they held to the annihilation of the wicked, or, with the book of Enoch, to their endless punishment. Nor is it intimated that they held to the doctrine of universal restoration. Indeed, it is not probable that, as Jews, full of conceit of their own peculiar prerogatives, they even adopted an idea so enlarged and liberal as the salvation of universal humanity, and their exaltation as sons of God, though it might have been suggested in Persia.

If we had a work on the questions involved in the great controversy of the day by a Sadducee or a Pharisee then living, with what interest should we scrutinize it! Especially would it be interesting to hear from a Sadducee the reasons of their belief, or rather unbelief. But no one arose to represent or defend them to the ages. All that we know of them comes from their opponents.

Of the Pharisees this is not true. There are at least two Pharisees, contemporaries of Christ, who have spoken of them, and these are both distinguished men. One is the apostle Paul and the other is Josephus.

Testimony of Paul.

But the testimony of Paul in one case is indirect, and bears only on the fact that the Pharisees held to the resurrection. Luke informs us that, on his trial before the Sanhedrim [sic] in Jerusalem, Paul, perceiving that one part was Sadducees and the other Pharisees, made a diversion of the Pharisees in his own favor by declaring his faith in the resurrection to be the point on which he was called in question. On this, Luke says, the multitude was divided. “For the Sadducees say that there is no resurrection, neither angel nor spirit; but the Pharisees confess both” (Acts xxiii. 6-8).

But after this, on his trial before Felix at Cesarea, he distinctly declares, “I have hope toward God which they also allow, that there shall be a resurrection of the dead, both of the just and unjust” (Acts xxiv. 15).

But Paul nowhere states what their views of the punishment of the wicked, or of the rewards of the righteous.

HE SEEMS TO TEACH TRANSMIGRATION.

Belief of the Masses.

That the doctrine of the Pharisees, on the subject of the resurrection, was believed by the masses, there is no reason to doubt. It is clearly indicated by the reply of Martha to Jesus, when he said to her with reference to the time then present, “Thy brother shall rise again.” She said unto him, “I know that he shall rise again in the resurrection at the last day” (John xi. 24).

Testimony of Josephus.

From Paul let us now turn to the other Pharisee, Josephus, and question him. At first sight it seems as if we should thus obtain full satisfaction, for in each of his great works he professes to give a careful account of the doctrines of the Pharisees, as well as of the Sadducees and Essenes.

But, though he was a priest as well as a Pharisee, he perplexes rather than enlightens us by his disagreement with the testimony of Paul, and of the Evangelists, as to the resurrection.

He Seems to Teach Transmigration.

His language teaches rather the transmigration of souls – not into animals, but into new human bodies – than the true doctrine of the resurrection. It is suggested that he uses words ambiguously, so that the Greeks, who held to transmigration, and not resurrection, might put their sense on his words, and, at the same time, believers in the resurrection might interpret them in their own sense. This may be the truth, and, if so, Josephus simply acted on the slippery principle of compromise, which even Christian councils have not hesitated to follow. But the force of his language predominates on the side of transmigration. Take the statement in his speech at Jotapata, to deter his companions from suicide in a great extremity. He says to them: “Do you not know that those who depart out of this life according to the law of Nature, and pay that debt when he that lent life is pleased to require it back again, enjoy eternal fame? That their souls are pure and obedient, and obtain a most holy place in heaven, whence, in the revolution of ages, they are again sent into pure bodies, while the souls of those whose hands have acted madly against themselves are received into the darkest place in Hades?” (“Jewish War,” iii., 8, 5). It deserves notice here that he is speaking to Jews, and not to Greeks, and, unless in reporting his speech for the Greeks he modified his address to his comrades, it is clear that he set forth to them the doctrine of transmigration, and not of resurrection. Again, in ii., 8, 14, he says of the Pharisees: “They say that all souls are immortal, but that the souls of good men only are removed into other bodies, and that the souls of bad men are subject to eternal punishment.” Here the resurrection of the unjust is expressly denied, and that of the just is transformed into a removal into other bodies, as already stated. In another place, he states the case thus: “The wicked shall be detained in an everlasting prison, but the righteous shall have power to revive and live again” (“Antiquities,” xviii., 1, 3). This last form of words is nearest to a compromise of the two systems, for it can be taken so as to express either.

Views of Alger and Twisleton.

Different views are taken of these facts. Mr. Alger does not hesitate to say that “the Greek culture and philosophical tincture wit which Paul was imbued led him to reject the doctrine of a bodily resurrection; and this is probably the reason why he makes no allusion to that doctrine in his account of the Pharisees.” If he was reporting his own opinions, there would be a good reason for saying nothing of the resurrection, if he did not believe it. But it would not be a good reason for misrepresenting the main body of the Pharisees, who held it. We cannot suppose that the Evangelists, and Paul, and our Saviour, were mistaken in asserting that the Pharisees held the doctrine. E.B.T. Twisleton, in Smith’s “Bible Dictionary,” says: “The value of Josephus’s account of the Pharisees would be much greater if he had not accommodated it, more or less, to Greek ideas. So that, in order to arrive at the exact truth, not only much must be added, but likewise much of what he has written must re retranslated, as it were, into Hebrew conceptions.” This implies that Josephus, in order to adapt his narration to the Greeks, translated the Jewish resurrection into the transmigration of souls, and that, in order to get at the exact truth, we must translate it back again into the Jewish doctrine of the resurrection of the body. One other view of the case is possible.

Another View.

It may be that among the Pharisees there was, in fact, a Grecian party of Alexandrian Jews and their sympathizers, who held to the transmigration of the soul, and called it a resurrection. It would appear, from Luke ix. 7-9, 19, that some of the Jews regarded Christ as one of the old prophets risen again. Hence it would seem that if the spirit of an old prophet was born into this world in a new body, it would be called by some of the Jews a resurrection from the dead; for it is hard to suppose that any of them were so ignorant of the fact that Christ was born in the usual way as to suppose that in his case there had been a literal resurrection of the dead body of any old prophet. If there was such a party, Josephus, in dealing with the Greeks, in order to avoid their prejudices against the resurrection, may have chosen to make these views prominent, though perhaps the majority of the Pharisees held to the literal resurrection of the body. In this supposition there is nothing improbable. The Alexandrian Jews thought very freely. We have seen that Philo held to the annihilation of the wicked, though eternal misery, according to Josephus, was the prevailing doctrine of the Pharisees.

Hence an exact agreement among the Pharisees is improbable. The doctrine of preexistence among the Greeks was generally associated with the transmigration of souls, and there is evidence that the doctrine of preexistence was widely spread among the Jews of Alexandria. Of it we have an illustration in the Wisdom of Solomon, in which the wise King of Israel is introduced as saying of himself, “I was an intelligent child, and had a good spirit, yea, rather, being good, I came into a body undefiled” (Wisdom viii. 19, 20). This resembles, in no small degree, the statement of Josephus to his fellow-soldiers that, “In the revolution of ages, the good are sent into pure bodies.” The extent of this belief in preexistence finally became so great that Alger says, “The Talmudists generally believed in the preexistence of souls in heaven.” Indications of this belief in preexistence occur also among the masses in Palestine, as is indicated by the inquiry of the disciples, “Master, who did sin, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” (John ix. 2). On this supposition we see that Josephus may have stated the truth, though not the whole truth, in saying that the Pharisees held to the transmigration of souls. Of a large number it may have been true, though the majority still held to the resurrection of the body.

THE ESSENES.

Eternal Punishment.

But, on one point, the testimony of Josephus is full and explicit, and he is our only witness on that point. The Pharisees, as is proved by his testimony already given, held to the doctrine of the eternal punishment of the wicked. According to them, they were never raised from Hades. They never could enter other bodies. They were confined in an everlasting prison. They were subject to eternal punishment.

As to the nature of this punishment, Josephus is silent. He makes no mention of fire, though this means of torment seems to have been naturally suggested among many nations.

The Essenes.

Concerning the Essenes, the third Jewish sect, Josephus says that they taught that the body is corruptible and the soul immortal; that their bodies are prisons of the soul; that the soul, when set free, rejoices, and mounts upward. He says that their views are like the opinions of the Greeks: that good souls dwell in a region that is neither oppressed with storms of rain or snow, or with intense heat; while the bad are consigned to a dark and tempestuous region, full of never-ceasing punishments (“Jewish Wars,” ii., 8-13).

So much for the contemporaries of Christ. We will next consider the Christian ages.

CHAPTER XIII.

CHRISTIAN AGES

We come now to the Christian ages. Of these, the nineteenth is fast drawing to a close.

Christ came at the fullness of the times, and laid hold of the destinies of the world, but not in the manner anticipated. Not by armies, and conquest, and a universal worldly empire, but by principles, thoughts, enlarged views of God, man, and the universe, deep and intense emotions, and tireless mental activity. He came to save man from sin, and to renovate society. His own profound words express the character of his coming more perfectly than any other; it was to be as a vital leaven, inserted in human society and destined not to cease its action till the whole system, in all departments, was leavened. The dispensation was to be closed by his second coming and a final judgment.

Hence, these ages are full of thought, of controversies, of conflicts and of revolutions. They are also full of historical documents, in the various languages of men, calling for intense study thoroughly to understand them.

The history of these ages is a vast and sublime ocean on which we are to launch. Nor is it without its dangers. In it are gulf streams and fogs, rocks and shoals, gales and icebergs. Yet, in one part, at least, it has a fascinating aspect to all, for in it are the beginnings of that vast revolution which is yet shaking the world, and which is destined not to cease till every form of evil is overthrown.

As there is to travelers a fascination in Palestine, Sinai, and Egypt, because in them associations of Moses and of Christ meet them on every side, so the first century till its close, from its constant contact with Christ and his apostles, is full of powerful attractions.

Apostolic Fathers.

Hence, too, the deep interest in those who are supposed to be apostolic fathers, that is, those who were associated with the apostles or with their immediate disciples.

Thus, when Irenaeus, that great defender of the faith against the Gnostics, says of Polycarp, that he was “instructed by apostles, and had intercourse with many who had seen Christ;” when he further tells how he saw Polycarp when a boy, and adds: “I can tell even the spot in which the blessed Polycarp sat and conversed, and his outgoings and incomings, and the character of his life, and the form of his body, and the conversations which he held with the multitude, and how he related his familiar intercourse with John and the rest who had seen the Lord, and how he rehearsed their sayings, and what things they were which he had heard from them with regard to the Lord and his miracles and teaching,” certainly it invests this venerable apostolic father with a deep and peculiar interest. And when Irenaeus proceeds to say, “All these things Polycarp related in harmony with the Scriptures (the gospels), as having received them from the eye-witnesses of the word of life,” our faith in the historical verity of the gospels in opposition to all mythical theories is gratefully confirmed.

Historical Foothold.

We need not wonder, therefore, if all parties seek to gain a foothold in this region. This foothold is secured only by means of a statement of their case in history.

It was said of Daniel Webster that his great power with a jury lay in the statement of the facts of his case. His argument was virtually complete and he had carried the jury before they supposed that he had begun to reason at all.

In the same way histories have been written in behalf of the papacy, and, when the desired original documents were not found, they were manufactured, and for ages accepted as genuine.

Hence, in the Reformation, a fundamental work was needed, in exposing false documents, and writing the true history of the early ages, and in this work the Magdeburg Centuriators labored with terrific effect. Of course, the papacy was not silent. Baronius was their advocate, and a cardinalship was his reward. He was a man of vast learning and resources, and as honest as his cause would allow him to be, which is not saying much, for, even to-day [sic], Dollinger, the learned leader of the Old Catholics, has warned the nations of a universal Jesuit conspiracy to falsify and corrupt history in support of the claims of the papacy.

Contested Ground.

Hence, almost the whole territory is contested ground. There are hundreds of millions in the Romish and Greek Churches whom modern historical science and criticism have not reached, and who are sensitive to an attack upon even the grossest forms of error and imposition. The subject of our history is no exception to this general course of remark. Every part of it is contested ground.

Four Ends.

History has been written as to the doctrine of retribution with reference to at least four ends.

The first is to depreciate the early fathers as holding almost universally to a system of eternal torments by material fire, thus subjecting the world to a system of degrading terrorism.

The second is to establish as true the current orthodox view of eternal punishment.

The third is to sustain the doctrine of the annihilation of the wicked after a just degree of suffering.

The fourth is to vindicate the doctrine of universal restoration and salvation as having its roots in the early ages.

It will prepare the way for our future investigations if we illustrate, by examples, some of these statements.

W. E. H. Lecky.

W. E. H. Lecky is a scholar of extensive reading and original research. His “History of European Morals, from Augustus to Charlemagne,” is a work of great value, and his account of the philosophic systems of the Roman Empire indicates a careful study of the original sources of evidence. But when, in his “History of Rationalism” (vol. I, page 316), he speaks of the fathers, he obviously has not studied the original sources, and refers to second-hand authorities of no weight at this day, in the historical world. Thus only can we explain the fact that such a man has committed himself to the statement that follows: “Origen, and his disciple Gregory of Nysssa, in a somewhat hesitating manner, diverged from the prevailing opinion (eternal torments), and strongly inclined to a figurative interpretation, and to the belief in the ultimate salvation of all. But they were alone in their opinion. With these two exceptions, all the fathers proclaimed the eternity of torments, and all defined these torments as the action of a literal fire on a sensitive body.” The general accuracy of Mr. Lecky, in his historical statements, need not be called in question. But nothing can be more erroneous than this statement. It would require more time than we can here spare to mention and characterize all those among the father who did not hold to the doctrine of eternal torments at all, in addition to the two mentioned by Mr. Lecky. But all that is necessary will be said in the course of this history.

Prof. Shedd.

We will next consider the statement of a defender of the current orthodoxy. This we will take from a work of decided ability and merit, a “History of Christian Doctrine,” by Prof. Shedd, of the Union Theological Seminary. In vol. ii., p. 414, he says, “The punishment inflicted upon the lost was regarded by the fathers of the ancient Church, with very few exceptions, as endless.” He then makes quotations to that effect from four fathers of the Western Church, to whom he adds Justin Martyr and Chrysostom. He then says, “The only exception to the belief in the eternity of future punishment in the ancient Church appears in the Alexandrian school.” He then shows how this denial grew out of their anthropology, and adds in conclusion” “The views of Origen concerning future retribution were almost wholly confined to his school. Faint traces of a belief in the remission of punishments in the future world are visible in the writings of Didymus of Alexandria, and in Gregory of Nyssa. The annihilation of the wicked was taught by Arnobius. With these exceptions the ancient Church held that the everlasting destiny of the human soul is decided in this earthy state.”

The argument of this passage is plain. It is this: If this is a true statement of facts, then the case of the current orthodoxy is very strong, and little more need be done. The Church has settled the question. But we ask, Is it true?

This statement somewhat transcends the limits set by Lecky to the doctrine of restoration. It is not confined to two individuals, but it is confined to one school, the school of Alexandria. What, then, shall be said of Didore of Tarsus, not of the school of Alexandria, the eminent teacher of Chrysostom, and a decided advocate of universal restoration? What shall be said of his disciple, Theodore of Mopsuestia, that earnest defender of the same doctrine, of whom Dorner says that he was “the climax and the crown of the school of Antioch?” What shall be said of the great Eastern school of Edessa and Nisibis in which the scriptural exposition of Theodore of Mopsuestia was a supreme authority and text-book? Was Theodore of the school of Alexandria? Not at all. He was of the school of Antioch. He was an opposer of Origen in interpretation, and psychology, and anthropology. And yet he not only taught the doctrine of universal restoration on his own basis, but even introduced it into the liturgy of the Nestorian Church in Eastern Asia. What, too, shall we say of the two great theological schools in which he had a place of such honor and influence? But of this we shall speak more fully at another time, when we consider the relation of the early theological schools to this question. Dr. Shedd should have called to mind a statement in Guericke’s “Church History,” as translated by himself: “It is noticeable that the exegetico-grammatical school of Antioch, as well as the allegorizing Alexandrian, adopted and maintained the doctrine of restoration” (p. 349, note 1).

Messrs. Constable and Hudson.

But there is another statement of the case by Messrs. Constable, of Ireland, and Hudson of this country, in their elaborate works designed to prove the final annihilation of the wicked. According to Mr. Constable, all the apostolic fathers believed in this doctrine. His list of authorities is quite impressive. Beginning with Barnabus, and going to the year 242, he claims Clemens Romanus, Hermas, Ignatius, Polycarp, Justin Martyr, Theophilus of Antioch, Irenaeus, and Clement of Alexandria, so that Arnobius does not stand alone as Prof. Shedd represents, but has very illustrious company. He leaves only Athenagoras, Tatian, and Tertullian, as advocates of eternal torment, and finally he represents Origen, so late as the year 253, as first introducing the doctrine of universal restoration. Mr. Hudson is not less exacting in his claims. He says: “It now remains to show that the early Christians, heralds as they were of the word of life, taught nothing else than the death of the wicked. The documents which here offer themselves are the writings of the so-called apostolic fathers, and other early records” (“Doctrine of a Future Life,” p. 289).

Of these claims it is enough to say that some of these witnesses do undeniably testify as alleged, but that a large number do not definitely testify to any view except the general one of future retribution, because the subject had never been up as a controverted question, and the end at which they were aiming did not call for it.

Dr. Ballou.

Dr. Ballou also has written a “History of Ancient Universalism,” in which is presented a very different state of facts that [sic] alleged by Mr. Lecky and Prof. Shedd. He claims, and truly, a much wider range, and far greater power for the doctrine of universal salvation, than they admit. The work is one of decided ability, and is written with great candor and a careful examination of authorities. In our opinion, it would benefit Mr. Lecky and Prof. Shedd attentively to consider all the facts and authorities presented in it. We think, however, that he, and especially his editors, in a number of cases, draw conclusions that go beyond the authorities to which they refer. The view given of the theology of Theodore of Mopsuestia, and of the difference between him and Origen, is also incomplete, and needs to be more fully wrought out.

Plan of the History.

What, then, do we propose to do in a field of history, every part of which has been, and is, so sternly contested?

We do not propose to go over all the ground in minute detail, fighting our way as we go. We propose rather, first of all, to begin with the account of the last judgment given by Christ, and the views taken of it in the early church, and to give a history of the interpretation of the leading word in that passage, the word aionios, translated first everlasting, and afterward eternal. In a true view of the historical sense of this word is the only key to much of the writing of the fathers, which would be contradictory without it. We propose next to develop certain great and undeniable historical facts as to the first system of Christian theology that was ever published, and which promulgated universal restoration, of which the illustrious Origen, in or about the year 230, was the author. We propose also to consider the foundation and growth of the first Christian theological schools and their relations to this doctrine. Thus will be developed certain great facts concerning which there can be no controversy, and these will furnish us with a point of vision from which we can survey the whole field, backward toward Christ, and onward to the action of Justinian, through a local council, in condemning the doctrine of universal restoration, so late as the year 644, more than three centuries after it was promulgated by Origen. After this year, there is no special difficulty in the history of the doctrine.

CHAPTER XIV.

CHRIST AND THE JUDGMENT

No portion of the Word of God exceeds in sublimity, and wide and enduring influence, the account of the judgment given by Christ, the final judge. A full history of the modes in which it has been understood, and of the influence it has exerted, would be of intense interest, for it has been the great channel of thought and emotion in the Christian ages. The views taken as to the time of the judgment, its nature, and the duration of the consequent retributions, if fully set forth, would make an extended history. But at present we shall consider only the last point, and this brings up the history of opinions on the meaning of the word aionios used by Christ and translated eternal and everlasting. After all, the main question that most deeply moves the mind of man is this: Did Christ, in his account of the judgment, proclaim endless punishment to the wicked?

It is not wonderful that this question moves the world. The nations must stand before his judgment-bar. No investigation as to the nature of the threatened penalty can be too exact or profound. This has created an earnest desire for the testimony of some witness as to the import of his words whose testimony shall be absolute and decisive. The question is, Does ainios mean endless?

The history of ecclesiastical opinions on this point does not go back to the apostolic fathers, for, as we have before stated, there is no reference to Christ’s account of the judgment in their writings.

Aristotle.

But some have thought that they have found the desired witness in the eminent philosopher Aristotle. They regard him as declaring that the word aion, from which aionios is derived, denotes originally and primarily eternity, in the absolute sense, and hence that aionios must mean eternal in the same sense.

This supposed testimony of the illustrious philosopher has exerted a great influence in producing an assured conviction on that point, in the minds of many, which leads them to assume that the idea of eternity is so plainly declared by the words of Christ that to call it in question is a sinful evasion or denial of the Word of God.

This great philosopher has in fact stated that aion is derived from two Greek words, the adverb aei, always, and the participle on, existing. Hence, assuming that aei always denotes eternity, is adapted to exert great influence on candid minds, and has extensively done so.

The eminent Andrew Fuller, in his letters to Mr. Vidler, refers to this passage of Aristotle as deciding the original sense of the word and its usage in the days of Aristotle. (“Works,” i., 349). The same passage is also referred to as decisive of the question in the “Encyclopaedia of Religious Knowledge,” of which the eminent Prof. B. B. Edwards, of Andover Theological Seminary, was one of the editors (p. 73, aion). The passage referred to in support of these assertions occurs in the treatise of Aristotle, “De Coelo,” i., 9. On it two questions arise: First, is the etymology of Aristotle correct? Second, admitting it to be correct, does aei always denote eternity and does it sanction the translation of the passage given by these writers, and their inference from it that aion originally and primarily means eternity? On the first point it must be said that by the general consent of scholars, though Plato and Aristotle were great philosophers, they were very poor etymologists. The true principles of etymology they neither understood nor acted on. For a full view of the facts in the case see Grote’s “Plato,” vol. ii., pp. 500-550. Sufficient reasons could be given for rejecting this etymology. Yet, though some lexicographers of repute reject it, others of equal authority accept it. And as I prefer to meet the question radically, and to test the argument in its full strength, I will for the present concede the correctness of the etymology of Aristotle.

But, in reply to the second question, I remark that even if the etymology of Aristotle were to be accepted, it is not at all decisive of the question; for the word aei does not always or even commonly denote or imply eternity, and in this passage it manifestly does not, and to give it that sense involves Aristotle in inconsistency and absurdity, and in a war with notorious facts in the history of the Greek language. But as this passage has exerted so extensive an influence, I propose to pay particular attention to these statements. Any careful study of the word aei will show that singly or in compounds it does not always denote or even imply eternity, but more frequently continuity of being, or character, or action, or habitual action in a given way. The same is true of our English words ever and always. An evergreen [Greek letters used here!] is not a tree green to all eternity, but a tree continuously green during its life. In the New Testament aei is never used in the sense of eternity, but always to denote habitual action, or a stated mode of action at all proper times. It was Pilate’s usage to release yearly unto the Jews one prisoner. The mob, therefore, desired him to do as he had ever (aei) done unto them, not to or from eternity, but as an annual usage. Peter exhorts the Christians (1 Epis. iii. 15) to be ready always (aei) to give a reason of the hope that is in them, that is habitually, at all proper times, not to all eternity. The same usages are found in the Latin semper (always), and in the German. Aristotle, moreover, refers to the ancients as sanctioning this etymology of aion. But in Homer, the great leader of the ancients, aei is rarely used to denote eternity. Damm, in his elaborate “Lexicon and virtual Concordance of Homer,” thus defines the word aei:

“Ever, always, perpetually, constantly. It does not always denote duration to infinity, but often continuity of action in a small space of time, or assiduous and earnest action in a limited time, or frequent, or oft-repeated, or habitual action. Often aei is completed on the same day, and denotes great earnestness and effort.” A few illustrations may suffice. Achilles says to Calchas, “It is ever (aei) pleasing to you to foretell evils to me” (Il., i., 107); Menelaus says, “Always (aei) the minds of the young are unstable” (Il., iii, 109); Homer says that “Atreides took a knife that always (aei) hung by the sheath of his great sword (Il., iii, 272); Jupiter says to Juno, “The laughter-loving Venus is always (aei) near to Paris, and averts death from him” (Il., iv. 11); Jupiter says to Juno, “It is always (aei) pleasant to you to engage in clandestine counsels apart from me” (Il., i., 541). In all these cases, not eternity, but continuous or habitual action in a limited time, is denoted. Damm in his “Lexicon,” derives aion from a intensive and on. Yet he looks at it as possibly derived from aei and on. On this assumption he introduces the idea of continuity of action as involved in it, and rejects the idea of absolute eternity. He thus defines it: “Continuance or duration to the end; any perpetuity. It denotes properly the whole duration of the life of man, the duration of mortal life. Hence, to finish one’s aion is to die. The words aei on denote existing perpetually, and without any intermission, until the end comes.”

It is the neglect of these plain and undeniable facts and principles that has led to a false and absurd translation of the passage of Aristotle on which so much has been made to rest. I shall now translate it, after premising that it contains certain peculiar views of Aristotle based on the assumption that the earth is the centre of the universal system; that the sun, moon, and stars, revolve around it; that all the matter in the universe is included in it, and yet that, beyond the extreme limit of all revolving worlds, other beings exist. He has been speaking of these spiritual beings beyond all the revolving bodies of the whole material system, and he attempts to prove that there is to them neither matter, nor time, nor a vacuum. Of these beings he says: “they are not in place, nor does time cause them to grow old, nor is there any change in them. But without change, and enjoying the best and the most satisfying life, they pass their whole existence” (aion). We are here to remember that, according to Aristotle (it matters not whether we can receive his ideas or not), to these beings there is neither time nor place, but only existence, and we are bound not to translate aion eternity, which is infinite time, but existence, continuous existence, as it is defined by Damm. He next proceeds to say: “And indeed this word aion, by a divine inspiration, was employed by the ancients; for they called the boundary which surrounds and takes in the time of the life of every man, beyond which, by necessity of Nature, no action exists, the aion; that is, the whole continuous existence of the man.” This statement, in fact, agrees with the usage of the ancients, for, as we shall see, they did use aion to denote the whole duration of the life of man. It is also a demonstration that by aion Aristotle did not mean eternity. Is a definitely bounded human life eternity? To call such a life eternity would be absurd and contradictory. And yet most translators have so absurdly rendered Aristotle. Grote is an exception.

Aristotle proceeds: “On the same principle, the boundary of all the heavens, and the boundary that incloses [sic] and comprehends all time and space, is aion, a continuous existence, immortal and divine, deriving its name from [two Greek words appear here – using Greek letters], to exist continuously.” On this passage, Liddell and Scott say that aion denotes the complete period of the universe, as previously it denoted the complete period of human life. It is manifest that this aion is repeatedly said to be a boundary or limitation inclosing [sic] the universe. But eternity, from its very idea, is not a definite boundary of anything. Therefore, to translate aion eternity would be contradictory and absurd. It is a continuous existence.

Moreover, as human existence implies a being who exists, so here the existence (aion) of the universe implies a being who exists in the aion. Hence, Aristotle calls the aion immortal and divine.

In this case, the being who exists can be no other than the Supreme God, the immovable mover of all revolving worlds, of whom Aristotle says so much. He, too, is beyond the revolving universe, where there is existence, but not time.

That Aristotle meant this Supreme God by aion is plain from what he adds: “On whom the being and life of all other beings and things are dependent, in some cases more clearly and obviously, in others more obscurely.”

Of eternity none of these things are true. It is not immortal and divine. On it the being and life of all other beings and things are not dependent. Hence to translate aion eternity is absurd.

I have thus shown that, if aion is rendered eternity in this passage, it involves Aristotle in self-contradiction and utter absurdity. Hence, the argument from his testimony utterly fails.

CHAPTER XV.

THE ANCIENTS

But, besides what has been said, we are to remember that Aristotle appeals to the ancients as sustaining his view of the import of the word. But, to translate aion eternity would also bring him into direct conflict with all the ancients. For, in the early centuries, the idea of eternity does not occur at all in the word, and it was introduced into it only in the later centuries of the language. Nor is it hard to trace the process by which this sense was finally introduced. It is the more important to do this, as there is, in some lexicographers, a disposition still to give eternity as the original sense of aion, and the popular mind cannot be thoroughly freed from this fallacy until the real facts in the case are clearly understood.

Moreover, a biographical sketch of this word, and its changes from the beginning to this day, would develop a history of peculiar interest and great profit. But I cannot enter into it in detail. I will only give a sketch of the great river of thought connected with this word, from its earliest beginnings down to this day, when it is the centre of a world-wide controversy.

Who, then, are the ancients to whom Aristotle appeals? Beyond all doubt Homer and Hesiod come into this list, and also the Orphic hymnists. Here, then, if anywhere, we are to look for the testimony of the ancients. After these come the great lyric and dramatic poets Pinder, Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. To these may be added the historians Herodotus, Thucydides, and Xenophon. Let us then see if Aristotle’s appeal to the ancients will sustain the position that the primary and original sense of aion was eternity.

What, then, was the original and earliest meaning of this word? I reply LIFE, denoting a physical energy of the system that causes normal action and averts decay. Of this we have a striking illustration in Homer (Il., xix., 27). Here Achilles expresses to his mother his fears that flies will breed worms in the wounds of the slain Menoetius, and cause putrefaction in his body, for life (aion) has been destroyed. Here the mind is fixed on life, the vital power, the destruction of which creates the danger of putrefaction. Here, then, the idea of time is utterly excluded. Again, in the lamentation of Andromache over the death of Hector, she says, “Oh, my dear husband, too early hast thou perished from life (aion) and left me a widow!” (Il., xxiv., 725).

So, also, Sarpedon says pathetically to Hector, “Do not leave me disabled by a mortal wound, a prey to the Greeks, but defend me, and permit my life (aion) to leave me in your city.” Here he had no idea of time or of eternity, but only of the privilege of giving up his life in the beloved city Troy, which he had come to defend.

The same use of aion to denote life is found in the Homeric “Hymn to Mercury,” v. 42., 119, in which that god is described as destroying the life ([Greek word for aion]) of a mountain-tortoise and making a lyre of its shell, and as destroying the lives (aionas) of two cows to prepare a feast. In the fragments of Pindar, “Hypochor.” iii., 5, to describe the death of a man killed by a club, it is said, “His life [(Greek word for aion)] was dashed out through his bones.”

Aeschylus, also, in “Prometheus,” 862, refers to animal life when he says, “Each wife shall deprive her husband of life (aion), plunging into his breast the sharp two-edged sword.”

From this abstract idea of life, it passed to a concrete form to denote a living spirit, an [Greek word], or aeon. We see such a transition illustrated by Virgil, in the use of the Latin vita, life. Speaking of the spirits of departed men who thronged to meet Aeneas, he calls them (Aen., vi., 192) “vitas sine corpore” (lives), i.e., living spirits, without bodies. This use of aion to denote living spirits does not occur in the Homeric poems. But it does occur in Euripides (“Herac.” 900). By the chorus, Jupiter is called aion, i.e., the Supreme living Spirit. This accords with Aristotle’s use of aion. It is found also at a later period in Epictetus, book ii., chap. V., who declares that he is not an aion (a spirit), but a man. In accredited ecclesiastical writers also various orders of angels are called aions. The excess of the Gnostics in multiplying aions in their manifold systems seems to have caused a timid reaction in lexicographers, and a desire to drop the word in this sense, as denoting no reality, and as no regular Greek word. Yet its claim to be a true part of the Grecian language cannot be rationally denied or ignored. It ought to have its place in every good lexicon. Hitherto the idea of eternity is so far from being primary and original, that it is entirely excluded. The element of time, in any form, is not included in these original uses of the word.

Nevertheless, as the idea of duration is essentially connected with prolonged life, the word assumed an idea of time and denoted the continuous time of life at any given point, and also the total duration of life, as stated by Aristotle. Ideas of the circumstances and character of life were also introduced, as a prosperous, honorable, joyful life, or the reverse. In this sense it is commonly used, not only by Homer, but by the great poets, lyric and dramatic – Pindar, Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides – who show undeniably how it was understood in common life. In Euripedes (“Orestes,” 603) Orestes says, “A happy life (aion) is theirs who are well united in marriage.” In “Bacchae” the chorus says that Semele, “having given birth to Dionysus, left this life (aion), being smitten by a divine thunderbolt” (92, 93). In Sophocles (“Philoctetes,” 179), the chorus laments, “O miserable generations of mortals, to whom not even a tolerable life (aion) is assigned!” So Philoctetes says (1348), “O sad, hateful, gloomy life!” (aion). So Euripides (Hecuba, 754-7), Agamemnon says to Hecuba: “What do you long for? Is it to lay aside your servile life (aion)? She replies: “No, indeed; but having punished the evil-doers to be in servitude all my life” (aion). In “Phoiniss.” (1520) Antigone laments that she is to live always a single life (aion) with flowing tears. Pindar (“Nemea,” ix., 106) says, “From labors in youth, and justice, proceeds in old age a happy life” (aion). In “Frag.,” p. 96, vol. iii., “Do not while you live darken pleasure, for a pleasant life (aion) is the best portion for a man.” “Isthmia, vii., 39, “Enjoying daily pleasures, I approach old age, and the fated duration of life” (aion). In all these popular writers the idea of eternity does not occur.

But the idea duration of life, or age, does occur; and, as our word age, denoting the time of the life of a man, also comes to denote the lifetime of a generation, and then a period marked with some characteristic, as the antediluvian age, or the Mosaic age, and then those living in that period, so was it with the word aion. This is conceded by all.

The senses of the word thus far spoken of, in which the idea of physical life is at first predominant and exclusive, and afterward is united with ideas of time, outward state, and moral character, occur for over five centuries in such writers as Homer, Hesiod, the Orphic hymnists, Sophocles, Euripides, Pindar, Herodotus, Xenophon, and Thucydides; but we do not yet come to the idea of eternity.

CHAPTER XVI.

THE LATER AGES

Another change was necessary in order to arrive at the idea eternity. That change took place, and it was this: The original idea of life was subordinated and disappeared, and ideas of time alone took possession of the whole ground, and aion, instead of denoting life, came to denote time.

The change is seen in its greatest completeness in Marcus Aurelius. In his twelve books of “meditations,” so called, he uses aion twenty times, and always denotes by it some form of time, and never life.

He says (iv. 43): “Time (aion) is a sort of river of events, and a mighty current; for as soon as each event has appeared and has been borne by, still another is carried by and shall be borne onward.” Again (vii., 19): “how many a Chrysippus, how many a Socrates, how many an Epicetetus, has time (aion) already swallowed up!” Again he says (iv., 50): “Behold the immensity of time (aion) behind thee, and before thee another boundless expanse.”

Speaking as a Stoic, he says (v., 32), “The reason, which pervades all substance, through all time (aion) administers the universe by fixed periods.”

Again he says (v., 24), “Call to mind the universal substance of which thou sharest a very small part, and the whole of time (aion), of which a short and insignificant portion has been assigned to thee.”

Again (x., 17): “Contemplate habitually universal time (aion) and universal substance, and consider that all individual things as to substance are as a fig-seed, and as to time [Greek letters] the turning of a gimlet.”

It deserves notice that here he uses [Greek letters] (time) as a synonym of aion.

Again (iv., 3), he says, “Consider the boundless extent of infinite time (aion) on each side of the present.”

Again (xii., 32), “How small a part of the boundless and unfathomable time (aion) is assigned to every man!”

Again, in iv., 21, he speaks of the bodies of preceding generations as “buried in time (aion) so remote.”

We are now in a position to see how there could be, without absurdity, a transition of (time) into the sense eternity; for, when it is qualified by adjectives denoting totality, it acquires the sense eternity. All past time is past eternity. All future time is future eternity. All time past, present, and future, is absolute eternity. At first this qualifying adjective was expressed, as we see in Marcus Aurelius. But by degrees it came to be sometimes implied and understood, but not expressed, and aion, with this understanding, was used for eternity. Marcus Aurelius almost always expresses the qualifying adjective, but, in one or two instances, he implies it, and aion alone stands for eternity. Thus (vi., 36), “The present time is a point in (universal) time,” i.e., eternity (aion). The same process is seen in Diodorus Siculus, who, in the introduction to his history (i., 1), qualifies aion, and says that “Divine providence has its circuit through all time (aion), and by worlds and seasons creates common relations among men, and causes every age so to revolve as to assign a destined end to each.” Here the qualifying adjective is used; but in his statement of theories of the origin of mankind, he introduces it once and omits it once. Thus he says (lib. i., Section 6): “There are two theories as to the origin of men: one that the world was uncreated and immortal, and that men existed from (all) time (aion) and had no beginning of their generation; the other, that all men, by the weakness of nature, live but a small part of all time (aion), and perish for all after-time.” In this case, the qualifying adjective is expressed once and omitted once, but the sense in each case is the same. Thus the expression eis ton aiona came sometimes to mean for all time, that is forever, and to eternity. In such cases, Cremer says that it means “for the future,” that is, for all time to come. In such a case the article is commonly used.

But this same form, that may thus denote eternity, may also denote for an age, or for a dispensation, in other circumstances.

The transition from the sense life to time and from time to eternity can thus be explained by actual facts. But suppose that the word had, as alleged, begun with the idea eternity. How could it ever have reached the sense life, not including time or eternity? What links could there be for such a transition? The supposition is as much at war with the laws of the mind as it is with actual historical facts.

But, besides this approach to the sense eternity, there is still another of a rhetorical kind, in which aion in the plural is taken in the sense of ages, and, by reduplicated ages, approximates to the conception of eternity. Of this I shall soon speak.

There is still another use of aion, introduced by Plato to denote a kind of philosophical eternity, from which past, present, and future time are eliminated, and absolute being only is retained. This philosophical speculation is unknown to aion in its earlier centuries, and was developed by those who supposed that it had some meaning, though to common-sense minds it is nonsense.

I have thus shown that an appeal to the ancients, like that of Aristotle, can never sustain the assertion that eternity is the original sense of aion. I have shown that for many centuries this sense was unknown, and that it came in only in the later ages of the Greek language. To translate aion eternity in the passage of Aristotle which has been considered would do him a great wrong, for it would represent him as ignorantly contradicting the universal usages of those to whom he appeals.

CHAPTER XVII.

THE SEPTUAGINT

But the biography of that momentous word, aion would be incomplete if I should neglect to notice its destinies in connection with the Septuagint; that is, the Greek translation of the Old Testament made at Alexandria, according to tradition, by seventy translators, over two centuries before Christ. Think what it was. It was practically the only bible of the early church, and it had been in use over four centuries when Christ came. It furnished terms for the theology of the early church. By a careful examination of it we can be sure of the usage of aion and aionios when Christ came. The word aion occurs in it about four hundred times in every variety of combination. The adjective aionios derived from it, is used over one hundred times, and often in circumstances imparting to it an absolute definiteness of meaning; It is always pleasant to pass from the ground of mere opinion to that of absolute certainty. This was never more possible than in the present case.

In this translation (aion) is universally used as the equivalent of olam. What, then, is the meaning of olam? Is it eternity? I answer, no. It is derived from a verb denoting to hide, or to conceal, and denotes a period of time past or future, the boundaries of which are concealed, obscure, unseen, or unknown. So say Taylor and Furst in their Hebrew Concordances. It is true of eternity, past and future, that their boundaries are unseen and unknown. But it is also true of other undefined periods that are not eternal, and that may be called ages or dispensations. Of olam thus viewed aion is the universal representative.

Moreover, in the Septuagint the adjective aionios for the first time came into extensive use, for previously it had been rarely used in all Greek literature. And as aion denoted an age, great or small, so the adjective aionios expressed the idea pertaining to or belonging to the aion, whether great or small. Cremer, taking aion as denoting time, defines aionios as “belonging to the aion, that is, to time in its movement.” But in every case this adjective derives its character and duration from the aion to which it refers.

Let us now enter the Hebrew Bible, and the Septuagint version of it, and note the use of olam and its equivalent aion, and its adjective aionios. Olam has no Hebrew adjective, but certain forms of it are rendered by the Greek aionios. Thus a covenant of olam is rendered an aioinian covenant.

Creation, Time, and eternity, in the Old Testament.

On entering the Old Testament, two great facts strike us – the absolute eternity of God, and the absolute creation of all things by him. There is no self-existent matter, as in the Greek philosophy, to limit the former of the universe, and to give rise to moral evil by its intractable nature, as in the Platonic and Gnostic systems.

Again, we find in the Old Testament no Platonic speculations as to an eternity in which there is no past or future, but one eternal now. On the other hand, all time is divided into the present, the past, and the future. Time, also, is divided in two ways: one by the measurements of the solar system, which God is represented as making to measure time by days, hours, weeks, months, and years; the other by indefinite periods.

Olam.

This indefinite division of time is represented by olam (Greek, aion). Hence we find, since there are many ages or periods, that the word is used in the plural. Moreover, since one great period or age can comprehend under it subordinate ages, we find such expressions as an age of ages, or an olam of olams, or an aion of aions, and other reduplications.

Olam and Temporary Ages.

Of the fact that olam is used to denote limited periods, notice has been often taken in incidental cases; such as, “He shall be his servant forever;” i.e., for his olam or his aion, in this case his life (Ex. xxi. 5). But no proper notice has been taken of the extent and variety of this usage. Let us, then, take a general survey of temporary ages, and of the application of olam and aion to them.

There are six ages, or aggregates of ages, involving temporary systems, spoken of in the Old Testament.

These ages are distinctly stat