1. In the Old Testament a great forward step is taken. We feel that we have left the twilight for the dawn. Among heathen races faith in immortality rested on conceptions of man's nature, ^ Henry AVhite. * Shelley. ^ Tennyson, "Two Voices."
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in the Old Testament it rests on God's character. He is the Eternal Eighteousness, and His faith is pledged to man whom He calls to live in fellowship with Himself, All things may seem to be against a man ; his friends may desert him, circumstances may accuse him; but if he is righteous, God cannot desert him, and if he must die under a cloud, even death will not prevent his vindication. His Eedeemer lives, and one day he shall again see God. And to see God is to have life, in the only sense which is adequate to the Bible use of the word.
^ It is quite true to say that Israel had hardly any ideas about the future, and shrank in horror from those it had ; but Israel had God, and that was everything. Israel knew that there was One only, the living and true God, from everlasting to everlasting, infinite in goodness and truth ; Israel knew that God had made man in His own image, capable of communion with Him, and only blessed in such communion ; to Israel, to see good was all one with to see God ; with God was the fountain of life, in God's light His people saw light. This faith in God was greater than Israel knew ; it could not be explored and exhausted in a day ; it had treasures stored up in it that only centuries of experience could disclose, and among them was the hope of immortality. The believing nation of Israel, like Bunyan's pilgrim, unconsciously carried the key of promise in its bosom, even when it was in the dungeon of Giant Despair.^
"Oh, little bulb uncouth, Bagged and rusty brown. Have you some dew of youth ? Have you a crimson gown ? " " Plant me and see What I shall be,— God's fine surprise Before your eyes !
A body wearing out,
A crumbling house of clay!
Oh, agony of doubt
And darkness and dismay !
Trust God and see
What I shall be,—
His best surprise
Before your eyes ! "
* J. Denney, The Way Everlasting, 182.
64 LIFE BEYOND DEATH
2. The Old Testament revelation is at the best hazy. The descriptions given of Sheol are numerous and depressing. Man existed in it, but did not live. He had no communion there either with the living God or with living men. It was a pale transcript of life, but not life in reality. It was a realm of darkness, dust, and endless silence, unbroken by the vision of God or the voice of praise. The best men shrank from it with horror. The feeling with which they regarded it will be sufficiently illustrated by these lines from the Psalm of Hezekiah : " I said, in the noontide of my days I shall go into the gates of Sheol. . . . I shall not see the Lord, even the Lord in the land of the living : I shall behold man no more with the inhabitants of the world. . . . But thou hast in love to my soul delivered it from the pit of nothingness, for thou hast cast all my sins behind thy back. For Sheol cannot praise thee, death cannot celebrate thee : they that go down into the pit cannot hope for thy truth. The living, the living, he shall praise thee, as I do this day : the father to the children shall make known thy truth."
^ It goes without saying that Job's most far-reaching and comprehensive declaration falls unspeakably short of that abolition of death, and bringing of life and immortality to light, accomplished by the gospel of Christ; but what it lacks in fulness and breadth, it gains in the burning intensity and glow out of which it springs, and the sublime motives which urge and impel him, not only to speak, but also to covet a monumental and immortal pulpit for his words. His sayings form a window through which we look into his sovd ; a lit lamp by whose clear ray we see the workings of his mind, and enter into partnership, not only with his ideas, but with himself, as those ideas are born in his soul, and take their place in his life.^
IIL
The Answer of Christ.
1, When Christ entered on His ministry of teaching. He found certain doctrines existing in Jewish theology; they were either imperfect or germinal truths. He found a doctrine of God, partial in conception; He perfected it by revealing the Divine
^ J. Clifford, Daily Strength for Daily Living, 318.
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Fatherhood. He found a doctrine of sin and righteousness turning upon external conduct; He transferred it to the heart and spirit. He found a doctrine of judgment as a single future event; He made it present and on-going. He found a doctrine of reward and punishment, the main feature of which was a place in the under and upper worlds where pleasure was imparted and pain inflicted ; He transferred it to the soul, and made the pleasure and pain to proceed from within the man, and to depend upon his character. He found a doctrine of immortality, held as mere future existence ; He transformed the doctrine, even if He did not supplant it, by calling it life, and connecting it with character. His treatment of this doctrine was not so much corrective, as accretive. He accepts immortality, but He adds to it character. He puts in abeyance the element of time or continuance, and substitutes quality or character as its main feature. Hence He never uses any word corresponding to immortality (which is a mere negation — unmortal), but always speaks of life. The continuance of existence is merely an incident, in His mind, to the fact of life. It follows inevitably, but is not the main feature of the truth.