ducees, that the Pharisees were on his side. They believed that the soul was in its nature immortal ; that the righteous only are happy after death, and that the wicked are eternally miserable. That the Jews derived their doctrine from their own Scriptures is plain, (1.) Because they admitted no other source of religious knowledge. The Scriptures were their rule of faith, as those Scriptures had been understood and explained by their fathers. (2.) There is no other known source from which the doctrine of a future state as held by the Jews in the time of Christ, could have been obtained. The doctrines, whether religious or philo- sophical, of their heathen neighbours were antagonistic to their own. This is true even of the doctrines of Zoroaster, which in some points had most affinity with those of the Jews. (3.) The inspired writers of the New Testament teach the same doctrines, and affirm that their knowledge was derived not from men, but from the revelation of God as contained in the Old Testament, and as made by Christ,
A few of the passages in which the Apostles teach that the doctrine of a future life was known to the patriarchs before the coming of Christ, are the following : Paul was arraigned before the council in Jerusalem, and "when Paul perceived that the one part were Sadducees, and the other Pharisees, he cried out in the council, Men and brethren, I am a Pharisee, the son of a Pharisee : of the hope and resurrection of the dead I am called in question." (Acts xxiii. 6.) He here declares that in the dispute between these two parties, on the question whether the doctrine of a future life and of the resurrection of the dead was taught in the Scriptures which both parties acknowledged, he sided with the Pharisees. Again in his speech before Agrippa, he said : " I stand, and am judged for the hope of the promise made of God unto our fathers : unto which promise our twelve tribes in- stantly serving God day and night, hope to come. For which hope's sake, King Agrippa, I am accused of the Jews. Why should it be thought a thing incredible with you, that God should raise the dead ? " (Acts xxvi. 6-8.) The promise to which he refers is the promise of redemption through the Messiah, which redemption includes the deliverance of his people from the power of death and other evil consequences of sin. This was the prom- ise to which the twelve tribes hoped to come. The belief, there- fore, in a future life is thus declared to have been a part of the religion of the whole Hebrew nation.
In Galatians iii. 8, the Apostle says, God " preached before
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722 PART IV. Ch. I. — STATE OF SOUL AFTER DEATH.
the gospel unto Abraham.' ' The Gospel, however, in the Apos- tle's sense of the term, is the glad tidings of salvation ; and sal- vation is deliverance from the penalty of the law and restoration to the image and favour of God. This of necessity involves the idea of a future life ; of a future state of misery from which the soul is delivered, and of a future state of glory and blessedness into which it is introduced. In teaching, therefore, that men be- fore the coming of Christ needed and desired salvation, in the Christian sense of the word, the Apostle assumed that they had a knowledge of the evils which awaited unpardoned sinners in the world to come. The evidence, however, that the New Testa- ment affords of the fact that the Hebrews believed in a future state, is not found exclusively in direct assertions of that fact, but in the whole nature of the plan of salvation therein unfolded. The New Testament takes for granted that all men, since the apostasy of Adam, are in a state of sin and condemnation ; that from that state no man can be delivered except through the Mes- siah, the Lord Jesus Christ, who is the only Saviour of men. It is, therefore, taught that the knowledge of this Redeemer was communicated to our race from the beginning, and in express terms in the promise made to Abraham ; that the condition of salvation was then, as it is now, faith in Christ ; that the bless- ings secured for believers were enjoyed before the advent of the Son of God in the flesh, as well as since. The heaven of be- lievers is called the bosom of Abraham. All this of course as- sumes that the truths made known in the New Testament are in their germs revealed in the Old ; just as all the doctrines un- folded in the Epistles are contained in the words of Christ as recorded in the Gospels.
The Epistle to the Hebrews is specially devoted to the object of unfolding the relation between the Old Dispensation and the New. The former was the shadow, or image, of the latter. What in the New is taught in words, in the Old, was taught through types. That men are sinners, and as such under con- demnation ; that sin can only be cleansed by blood, or that the expiation of guilt by a vicarious sacrifice is necessary in order to forgiveness ; that men therefore are saved by a priest appointed to draw near to God in their behalf and to offer gifts and sacri- fices for sin ; and that the effect of this priestly intervention is eternal salvation, are said to be the truths which underlie the religion of the Old Testament, as they constitute the fife of the religion of the New. Faith was to the saints of old as it is to us,