send. Ah ! there is a life for mortals which knoweth not any pain, Where comes no snow, nor winter, nor down-rush of the rain ; But the Zephyr bloweth gently, where the kindly Ocean rolls, And sends his breath to quicken those happy human souls.
{Odyss. iv. 563-568).!
2. In modern speculation. — On the afternoon of October 30, 1793, twenty-one gentlemen of France, condemned to death, were confined in the Conciergerie prison in Paris. They were the Girondist leaders, the flower of the land. Their average age was twenty-two and a half years. All were guillotined next morning. That evening they had their last supper together and spoke of many things, now seriously, now gaily. Finally, as it grew late, Vergniaud, their chief orator, called them to order and said : " The only question which now remains to be considered is the immortality of the soul." According to Nodier (who solemnly affirms the substantial correctness of his report) one of their number said : " The solution of that question is traceable in the heart of every honest man whose virtues have been sacrificed on earth. In God's creation there is no imperfection, and if righteousness persecuted and innocence trampled under foot have no point of appeal before Him, the morality of this sublime creation is a chimera." Another said : " The solution is indicated by nature in the intelligent instincts of the only organized being who conceives the need and desire of living again. That which nature has promised me, in giving me a presentiment of it, will be
1 R. F. Horton-
2 TIMOTHY I. lo 165
mine." Another, Brissot, said : " It is traced by the reasonings of philosophy iu the writings of Plato, and reason has never reached a higher point. That which philosophy has promised in the name of the great Architect of the worlds, I am going to find," There was a Christian priest among them, and he said : " It is traced for the Christian by his faith, wiser than all philosophy, and that which faith has given me in the name of the Lord, I am going to possess in heaven." These expressions constitute a resum^ of the chief ai'guments which men have employed in support of the doctrine of personal immortality. Each of the first three — the moral, the psychological, the philosophical — has weight. Taken together, and strengthened by the argument from analogy, they have proved sound and strong enough to sustain many souls in some degree of faith and hope. The reasonings and sentiments which Plato puts into the mouth of Socrates at his last interview with his friends are most impressive and affecting. The Phaedo of Plato is a kind of prolegomenon to the gospel of the resurrec- tion. But that Christian priest's declaration is distinctly different in kind from the preceding arguments. It has no speculation iu it. It rests on a belief that immortality has been brought to light in the gospel. If this be true, it confirms, completes, and crowns all other arguments.
3. In the Old Testament. — The ordinary belief on the subject of a future life shared by the ancient Hebrews was not that the spirit after death ceased to exist, but that it passed into the underworld, Sheol, the " meeting-place," as Job describes it, " for all living," — as well for the tyrant king of Babylon, at whose downfall the earth rejoiced, as for Jacob, or Samuel, or David, — where it entered upon a shadowy, half-conscious existence, devoid of interest and occupation, and not worthy of the name of " life " : " For Sheol cannot praise thee, death cannot celebrate thee ; they that go down into the pit cannot hope for thy faithfulness." But the darkness which thus shrouded man's hereafter was not unbroken in the Old Testament ; and there are three lines along which the way is prepared for the fuller revelation brought by the gospel. There is, firstly, the limilaLion of the power of death set forth by the prophets, in their visions of a glorified, but yet earthly, Zion of the future : " for as the days of a tree shall be
i66 LIFE AND IMMORTALITY
the days of my people, and my chosen shall long enjoy the work of their hands." There is, secondly, the conviction uttered by individual Psalmists, that their close fellowship with God implies and demands that they will themselves personally be superior to death : " My flesh and my heart faileth ; but God is the strength of my heart, and my portion for ever." And, thirdly, we meet with the idea of a resurrection, though at first as a hope rather than as a dogma, and with the limitation that it is restricted to Israel. " Let thy dead live ! let my dead bodies arise ! " cries the dwindled nation in its extremity; and the prophet forthwith utters the jubilant response : " Awake and sing, ye that dwell in the dust : for thy dew is as the dew of lights, and the earth shall cast forth the Shades." But the hope thus triumphantly expressed is limited by the context to Israel; and the same limitation is apparent in the vision of the dry bones in Ezekiel xxxvii. Even in Daniel xii. 2, the passage which speaks most distinctly, and teaches also a resurrection of the wicked, the terms are still not universal : "And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt." But this verse adds, for the first time, the idea of a future retribution, which also may be signified by the "judgment" to which the Preacher, in Ecclesiastes, more than once solemnly alludes. Such is the point at which the Old Testament leaves the doctrine of a future life.