ord.
‘death.’ True life meant conscious and purposed fellowship with God; true death was not the dis- solution of body and soul, but the separation of sin persisted in. Thus we find Job and the Psalmists rising to the conception of escape from Hades, and to the assurance of an endless life in God’s presence. The way to ensure this is to walk in God’s statutes, and love and honour Him with all one’s heart. He will vindicate His chosen against all enemies.
Thus, through the more definite teaching on im- mortality of later Judaism, was paved the way for the doctrine of the New Testament. Our Lord did not have to explain the meaning of ‘ eternal life’ and its opposite, but to show how they were respectively to be avoided and won. Fellow- ship is once more the prominent and central idea.
words point to it. To ‘know,’ to ‘love,’ to ‘eat,’ to ‘drink,’ to ‘keep words and command- ments,’ to ‘have’—these constitute the language of the eternal life. The intimacy of union with God through Christ becomes its one essential con- dition; and, on the contrary, the lack of that union entails eternal death.
In the teaching of St. Paul we find that the lower life is purified and transformed into the higher. All that is sensual, sinful, earthly, dies, and only the spiritual elements remain. But life is one and undivided, so that even the body has its spiritual protoplasm (so to say), like the germ within the seed, which develops into the spiritual body, and so gives reality to the resurrection. It is the resurrection that crowns the work of faith, ‘if in this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all men most pitiable.’ It is no unreal, shadowy, or partial life that lies beyond the grave, but life in all its fulness and perfection—‘ the life that is life indeed.’
The NT is consistent in presenting Christ as the sole mediator of life. is life inheres in God, and the life He isenabled to communicate to men inheres in Him. Even the life of the physical universe as possible only in Him—‘all things have been created through him and unto him’ (Col 158, 1Co8*). In St. Paul and in St. John we find the fullest presentation of these teachings, but all agree in the primary conceptions. St. John’s teach- ing on the eternal life is very full and varied, and is thus admirably summed up by Dr. Westcott: ‘Tt is a life which, with all its fulness and all its porns, is now : a life which extends beyond the imits of the individual, and preserves, completes, crowns individuality by placing the part in con- nexion with the whole: a life which satisfies while it quickens aspiration ... a life which gives unity to the constituent parts and to the complex whole, which brings together heaven and earth, which offers the sum of existence in one thought’ (Comm. on Epp. of John, pp. 217, 218).
(Ὁ) Ethical.—Because life is God’s unique gift, it is held to be sacred. Hence all crimes against life, that lessen its value by maiming the body’s physical powers or purity, by rendering life burden- some through oppression, or still more by destroying it altogether in the act of murder, are reckoned as amongst the most heinous. The sacredness of life ja all these forms is safeguarded in the command- nents cf the Decalogue, and in the various elaborate provisions of the Jewish legislation. The ethical value of life is distinctly felt by all the prophets, so that their most severe denunciations are levelled against those who oppress or debauch the poor, und by acts of injustice render life hard and bitter. In this same thought the OT finds its strongest arguments for immortality. Life is too great to be destroyed, therefore God will either save His servants trom Sheol altogether, or will rescue them eventually from its thraldom. God is interested that men shall live and not die ;—this makes the
(Paris, 1891-2); Farrar, Eternal Hope, and Mercy and Judg- ment; Salmond, Christian Doctrine Immortality, 1897 ; Beet, The Last Things, 142 ff.; Hort, The Way, the Truth, and the Life, 1893 (Hulsean Lect. for 1871); Sanday-Headlam, Com on Romans (on 68 79 86 105 121); Stevens, Johannine Theology.
| LIGHT LIGHT, LIGHTNESS 119
812 ff.; Hyde, Social Theology, 149 ff.; Dahle, Life after Death ; Macpherson, art. ‘The New Test. View of Life’ in Expos. 1st Ser. v. 72 ff.; Massie, art. ‘Two New Test. Words denoting Life’ in Expos. 2nd Ser. iv. 380ff.; Matheson, art. ‘Pauline View of Death’ in Expos, 2nd Ser. v. 40 ff. See also the authorities cited under the three articles on EscHaTo.oey in vol. i.; the Ozford Concordance to the LXX ; and the comm. on the books quoted.
G. C. MARTIN.
LIGHT (Heb. ix, 7\x>, the latter of the sun and moon as the abode of light, Gn 115 15. Gr. ¢&s).*— i. With the Jews, as among other Oriental peoples, there was a feeling of sanctity connected with the idea of light. It was, according to Gn 15, the first thing shaped by God out of chaos, and after- wards located in the sun and moon. In Job 38” the original source of light is a mystery known only to God.
ii. By very natural processes of thought many secondary ideas became attached to the word. (1) In Job 3” it is a synon of life, contrasted in 315 with the darkness of the womb, and in 10” with the shadow of death. (2) It is associated very fre- quently with joy and prosperity, as in Est 8°, Job 185: 6. where the light of the wicked is to be put out, whereas in Job 22% the light shines on the EYE of the righteous. In Is 9 the joy of Israel under the government of the ‘Prince of Peace’ is to be like the shining of a great light in contrast to the preceding misery (cf. 2S 234). (3) It is used as a symbol of moral excellence, as in Pr 418, where progress in goodness is compared with the dawning ‘that shineth more and more unto the perfect day.’ This use is very frequent in NT, as in Mt 65:3 (Lk 11%), often with the collateral thought of the influence which the light has upon others, as in Mt 5'*!8 (Lk 816 11%) ; so of Christianity in con- trast with the darkness of heathendom, as in Eph 5% 12) Col 22-18 1 P 2% In Ro 132" 1 Th 54%, in connexion with this thought there is a contrast between the active duty of a soldier’s life by day and the debauchery of night. (4) The term is also sputied to spiritual knowledge. Thus in Lk 168 the ‘sons of light’ are contrasted with the ‘sons of this world’ in point of wisdom. In 2 Co4*® the