In regard to the Eschatology of the individual person there are two things wliich require to lie carefully distinguished. There are, first, certain ideas regarding death and the state of the dead lying in the popular mind, though cherished by
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all classes, the righteous as well as otliers, alike. Thene ideas are common to Israel with some other Sheaiitic peoples. They have in themselves no moral 8if,Tiilicance. But some of them, such as the idea that the person, though he died, was not extinguished, but still subsisted as a person, how- ever shadowy the state of subsistence was ; and the other idea, that the dead person, though still gnbsistiiic, was in death cut oil from all fellowship with the living, whether men or God, — these ideas formed points to which the aspirations of the pious might attach themselves, whether in the way of development, as of the first idea, or protest, as against the second idea. And, secondly, there are the aspirations, intuitions, or inferences of the pious mind itself. It is only these that can pro- perly be called OT teaching. Such aspirations and intuitions may be either intellectual or emo- tional, that is, virtually, either ethical or religious, thougli the basis even of the religious is ethical. The fundamental idea is the moral one : God and man are moral beinjjs, their relation is moral ; the universe is a moral constitution, the stage where God displays His righteousness, and where man Bees God's face in righteousness. Righteousness must win, and righteousness is eternal (Is 51'). This Is the idea tiiat underlies the Book of Job and such Psalms as 37. 49. and 73. There are thus three things to look at: (1) Death and the state of the dead ; (2) Life ; and (3) the Reconcilia- tion of Death and Life.
(1) By death OT means what we mean when we nse the word. It is the phenomenon which we observe. Now, all parts of OT indicate the view that at death the person is not annihilated; he continues to subsist in She61, the place of the dead, tliough in a shadowy and feeble form occa- sioned by the withdrawal of the spirit of life. In this condition of subsistence, whicn is not life but death, in Sheol, the common abode of all dead perwns, there is no distinction in destiny between the righteous and the ungodly. OT does not name those in Shebl either souls or spirits, they are persons. It is possible that they were conceived as retain- ing a shadowy flickering outline of their former personality, for in Is 14 they sit on thrones, from which they rise up and speak. Subsistence in Sheol Is a feeble, nerveless reflection of life on earth. These conceptions, as has been said, are not pro- perly scripture teaching, only the popular notions from which its teaching starts. Illustrations of them are such pas-sages as these among others, Ps 6. 30, Is 14. 38, Job 3. 10. Thus, to ■tart with, OT is not materialistic, death is not the extinction of the formerly living person. Neither is it philosophic, regarding the body as the pri.son- honse of the soul, released from which it can spread its wings and soar unfettered into regions of pure and perfect life. Nor is it, to begin with at least, Christian in the sense that the spirit attains to perfection at death.
(2) As by death so by life OT means what we mean by it. It starts from the idea, not of the soul, but of the person. Life is what we so call when we see it, the subsistence of the complete personality in the unity of its parts, body and soul. An essential part of man's being is tlie body ; and life is life in the body, sucli a.s it is before trie analysis which we call death, and corresponds therefore to the Christian synthesis called the re.surrection life. Hence Job, wtien the idea of a second life first dawns npon him, can conceive it only as a renewal of the natural life — ' If a man die, shall he live again?' (ch. 14). But as life was due to the com- munication by God of the sjiirit of life, and death to the withdrawal of this sjiirit, these operations came under the moral idea, and ' life ' meant moral life in the favour of God (Ezk 33) — ' in the way of
rightecmsness is life'; ' righteou-sness delivereth from deatli.' OT .scriptures occupy themselves chiefly with the condition of man on this side of death, and they teach that whatever principles are involved in the relations of men to God tliey come always to light in this life ; death does not change these relations ; on the contrar}-, by its iiiaMiier or circumstances it reveals them (Ps 37. 73).
(3) Now, this conception of life naturally came into collision with the fact of death. And OT doctrine of immortality, when death is had in view, consists of the efforts made by the faith of pious men to gain for the idea of life just referred to the victory over the fact of death. These efforts are of two kinds : one consists of an appeal against the fact of death, a demand for immortality or not dying, a protest against the fellowship of the living man here with God being interrupted, or a lofty assurance that it cannot be interrupted. It is quite possible that the examples of this may have to be referred to particular circumstances, when death might be actually threatening ; but tlie language used, the demand made for the con- tinuance of life, the lofty assurance of faith that the relation of the person to God cannot be inter- rupted, rise to the expression of principles, and are by no means merely tlie expression of an assurance that God would save from death on this particular occasion. This is the meaning of Ps 16, ' I have set the Lord always before me ; because he is at my ri^,'ht hand, 1 shall not be moved. Thou wilt not leave my soul over to SlieM ; thou wilt not let thine holy one see the pit.' What the speaker is assured of is deliverance from death. But his assurance has an absoluteness in it. It expresses principles. In his ecstasy of life in God he feels life to be eternal. The tie between him and J" is indis- soluble. With our more reflecting habits of thought this ecstasy of faith is hard to conceive. To us the fact of death is so inevitable that we cannot imagine any one resisting it. We accept the fact, and rest on what lies beyond. But the resistance of the pious Hebrew was due just to his not kno^ving what lay beyond, and was but a mode of making a demand for that which we now know to lie beyond.