EXPLANATORY SURVEY OF THE FIELD AND ITS MYTHS.
SURVEYING the thought of mankind upon the subject of a future
life, as thus far examined, one can hardly fail to be struck by
the multitudinous variety of opinions and pictures it presents.
Whence and how arose this heterogeneous mass of notions?
In consequence of the endowments with which God has created man,
the doctrine of a future life arises as a normal fact in the
development of his experience. But the forms and accompaniments of
the doctrine, the immense diversity of dress and colors it appears
in, are subject to all the laws and accidents that mould and
clothe the products within any other department of thought and
literature. We must refer the ethnic conceptions of a future state
to the same sources to which other portions of poetry and
philosophy are referred, namely, to the action of sentiment,
fancy, and reason, first; then to the further action, reaction,
and interaction of the pictures, dogmas, and reasonings of
authoritative poets, priests, and philosophers on one side, and of
the feeling, faith, and thought of credulous multitudes and docile
pupils on the other. In the light of these great centres of
intellectual activity, parents of intellectual products, there is
nothing pertaining to the subject before us, however curious,
which may not be intelligibly explained, seen naturally to spring
out of certain conditions of man's mind and experience as related
with the life of society and the phenomena of the world.
So far as the views of the future life set forth in the religions
of the ancient nations constitute systematically developed and
arranged schemes of doctrine and symbol, the origin of them
therefore needs no further explanation than is furnished by a
contemplation of the regulated exercise of the speculative and
imaginative faculties. But so far as those representations contain
unique, grotesque, isolated particulars, their production is
accounted for by this general law: In the early stages of human
culture, when the natural sensibilities are intensely preponderant
in power, and the critical judgment is in abeyance, whatever
strongly moves the soul causes a poetical secretion on the part of
the imagination.1 Thus the rainbow is personified; a waterfall is
supposed to be haunted by spiritual beings; a volcano with fiery
crater is seen as a Cyclops with one flaming eye in the centre of
his forehead. This law holds not only in relation to impressive
objects or appearances in nature, but also in relation to
occurrences, traditions, usages. In this way innumerable myths
arise, explanatory or amplifying thoughts secreted by the
stimulated imagination and then narrated as events. Sometimes
these tales are given and received in good faith for truth, as
Grote abundantly proves in his volume on Legendary Greece;
sometimes they are clearly the gleeful play of the fancy, as when
it is said that the hated infant Herakles having been put to
Hera's breast as she lay asleep in heaven, she, upon waking,
thrust him away, and the lacteal fluid, streaming athwart the
firmament, originated the Milky Way! To apply this law to our
special subject:
1 Chambers's Papers for the People, vol. i.: The Myth, p. 1.
What would be likely to work more powerfully on the minds of a
crude, sensitive people, in an early stage of the world, with no
elaborate discipline of religious thought, than the facts and
phenomena of death? Plainly, around this centre there must be
deposited a vast quantity of ideas and fantasies. The task is to
discriminate them, trace their individual origin, and classify
them.
One of the most interesting and difficult questions connected with
the subject before us is this: What, in any given time and place,
were the limits of the popular belief? How much of the current
representations in relation to another life were held as strict
verity? What portions were regarded as fable or symbolism? It is
obvious enough that among the civilized nations of antiquity the
distinctions of literal statement, allegory, historic report,
embellished legend, satire, poetic creation, philosophical
hypothesis, religious myth, were more or less generally known. For
example, when Aschylus makes one of his characters say, "Yonder
comes a herald: so Dust, Clay's thirsty sister, tells me," the
personification, unquestionably, was as purposed and conscious as
it is when a poet in the nineteenth century says, "Thirst dived
from the brazen glare of the sky and clutched me by the throat."
So, too, when Homer describes the bag of Aolus, the winds, in
possession of the sailors on board Ulysses' ship, the half
humorous allegory cannot be mistaken for religious faith. It is
equally obvious that these distinctions were not always carefully
observed, but were often confounded. Therefore, in respect to the
faith of primitive times, it is impossible to draw any broad,
fixed lines and say conclusively that all on this side was
consciously considered as fanciful play or emblem, all on that
side as earnest fact. Each particular in each case must be
examined by itself and be decided on its own merits by the light
and weight of the moral probabilities. For example, if there was
any historic basis for the myth of Herakles dragging Cerberus out
of Hades, it was that this hero forcibly entered the Mysteries and
dragged out to light the enactor of the part of the three headed
dog. The aged North man, committing martial suicide rather than
die in his peaceful bed, undoubtedly accepted the ensanguined
picture of Valhalla as a truth. Virgil, dismissing Aneas from the
Tartarean realm through "the ivory gate by which false dreams and
fictitious visions are wont to issue," plainly wrought as a poet
on imaginative materials.
It should be recollected that most of the early peoples had no
rigid formularies of faith like the Christian creeds. The writings
preserved to us are often rather fragments of individual
speculations and hopes than rehearsals of public dogmas. Plato is
far from revealing the contemporaneous belief of Greece in the
sense in which Thomas Aquinas reveals the contemporaneous belief
of Christendom. In Egypt, Persia, Rome, among every cultured
people, there were different classes of minds, the philosophers,
the priests, the poets, the warriors, the common multitude, whose
modes of thinking were in contrast, whose methods of interpreting
their ancestral traditions and the phenomena of human destiny were
widely apart, whose respective beliefs had far different
boundaries. The openly skeptical Euripides and Lucian are to be
borne in mind as well as the apparently credulous Hesiod and
Homer. Of course the Fables of Asop were not literally credited.
Neither, as a general thing, were the Metamorphoses of Ovid. With
the ancients, while there was a general national cast of faith,
there were likewise varieties of individual and sectarian belief
and unbelief, skepticism and credulity, solemn reason and
recreative fancy.
The people of Lystra, as we read in the Acts of the Apostles,
actually thought Barnabas and Paul were Zeus and Hermes, and
brought oxen and garlands to offer them the sacrifices appropriate
to those deities. Peisistratus obtained rule over Athens by
dressing a stately woman, by the name of Phye, as Athene, and
passing off her commands as those of the tutelary goddess.
Herodotus ridicules the people for unsuspiciously accepting her.2
The incredibleness of a doctrine is no obstacle to a popular
belief in it. Whosoever thinks of the earnest reception of the
dogma of transubstantiation the conversion of a wheaten wafer into
the infinite God by nearly three quarters of Christendom at this
moment, must permit the paradox to pass unchallenged. Doubtless
the closing eye of many an expiring Greek reflected the pitiless
old oarsman plying his frost cold boat across the Stygian ferry,
and his failing ear caught the rush of the Phlegethonian surge. It
is equally certain that, at the same time, many another laughed at
these things as childish fictions, fitted only to scare "the baby
of a girl."
Stricken memory, yearning emotion, kindled fancy, a sensitive and
timorous observation of natural phenomena, rustling leaves,
wavering shadows, apparent effects of unknown causes, each is a
superstitious mother of beliefs. The Sonora Indians say that
departed souls dwell among the caves and rocks of the cliffs, and
that the echoes often heard there are their voices. Ruskin
suggests that the cause of the Greeks surrounding the lower world
residence of Persephone with poplar groves was that "the
frailness, fragility, and inconstancy of the leafage of the
poplar tree resembled the fancied ghost people." We can very
easily imagine how, in the breeze at the entrance to some
subterranean descent,
"A ghostly rank Of poplars, like a halted train of shades,
Trembled."
The operations of fierce passions, hate, fright, and rage, in a
brain boiling with blood and fire, make pictures which the savage
afterwards holds in remembrance as facts. He does not by
reflection consciously distinguish the internal acts and sights of
the mind from objective verities. Barbarians as travellers and
psychologists have repeatedly observed usually pay great attention
to the vagaries of madmen, the doings and utterances of the
insane. These persons are regarded as possessed by higher beings.
Their words are oracles: the horrible shapes, the grotesque
scenes, which their disordered and inflamed faculties conjure up,
are eagerly caught at, and such accounts of them as they are able
to make out are treasured up as revelations. This fact is of no
slight importance as an element in the hinting basis of the
beliefs of uncultivated tribes. Many a vision of delirium, many a
raving medley of insanity, has been accepted as truth.3 Another
phenomenon, closely allied to the former, has wrought in a similar
manner and still more widely. It has been a common superstition
with barbarous nations in every part of the world, from Timbuctoo
to Siberia, to suppose that dreams are real
2 Lib. i. cap. 60.
3 De Boismont, Rational History of Hallucinations, ch. 15:
Of Hallucinations considered in a Psychological, Historical,
and Religious Point of View.
adventures which the soul passes through, flying abroad while the
body lies, a dormant shell, wrapped in slumber. The power of this
influence in nourishing a copious credulity may easily be
imagined.
The origin of many notions touching a future state, found in
literature, is to be traced to those rambling thoughts and poetic
reveries with which even the most philosophical minds, in certain
moods, indulge themselves. For example, Sir Isaac Newton "doubts
whether there be not superior intelligencies who, subject to the
Supreme, oversee and control the revolutions of the heavenly
bodies." And Goethe, filled with sorrow by the death of Wieland,
musing on the fate of his departed friend, solemnly surmised that
he had become the soul of a world in some far realm of space. The
same mental exercises which supply the barbarian superstitions
reappear in disciplined minds, on a higher plane and in more
refined forms. Culture and science do not deliver us from all
illusion and secure us sober views conformed to fact. Still, what
we think amid the solid realities of waking life, fancy in her
sleep disjointedly reverberates from hollow fields of dream. The
metaphysician or theologian, instead of resting contented with
mere snatches and glimpses, sets himself deliberately to reason
out a complete theory. In these elaborate efforts many an opinion
and metaphor, plausible or absurd, sweet or direful, is born and
takes its place. There is in the human mind a natural passion for
congruity and completeness, a passion extremely fertile in
complementary products. For example, the early Jewish notion of
literally sitting down at table with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob,
in the resurrection, was gradually developed by accretion of
assisting particulars into all the details of a consummate
banquet, at which Leviathan was to be the fish, Behemoth the
roast, and so on.4 In the construction of doctrines or of
discourses, one thought suggests, one premise or conclusion
necessitates, another. This genetic application is sometimes
plainly to be seen even in parts of incoherent schemes. For
instance, the conception that man has returned into this life from
anterior experiences of it is met by the opposing fact that he
does not remember any preceding career. The explanatory idea is at
once hit upon of a fountain of oblivion a river Lethe from which
the disembodied soul drinks ere it reappears. Once establish in
the popular imagination the conception of the Olympian synod of
gods, and a thousand dramatic tales of action and adventure,
appropriate to the characters of the divine personages, will
inevitably follow.
The interest, cunning, and authority of priesthoods are another
source of prevailing opinions concerning a life to come. Many
nations, early and late, have been quite under the spiritual
direction of priests, and have believed almost every thing they
said. Numerous motives conspire to make the priest concoct
fictions and exert his power to gain credence for them. He must
have an alluringly colored elysium to reward his obedient
disciples. When his teachings are rejected and his authority
mocked, his class isolation and incensed pride find a natural
satisfaction in threatening the reprobate aliens that a rain of
fire will one day wash them down the smoking gulfs of sulphur. The
Maronites, a sect of Catholic Christians in Syria, purchase of
their priests a few yards of land in heaven, to secure a residence
there when
4 Corrodi, Gesch. des Chiliasmns, th. i. abschn. 15: Gastmahl des
Leviathan.
they die.5 The Siamese Buddhists accumulate silver and bury it in
secret, to supply the needs of the soul during its wandering in
the separate state. "This foolish opinion robs the state of
immense sums. The lords and rich men erect pyramids over these
treasures, and for their greater security place them in charge of
the talapoins!"6 When, for some reason or other, either as a
matter of neatness and convenience, or as a preventive of mutual
clawing, or for some to us unimaginable end, the authoritative
Skald wished to induce the Northmen to keep their nails close cut,
he devised the awful myth of the ship Nagelfra, and made his raw
minded people swallow it as truth. The same process was followed
unquestionably in a thousand other cases, in different particulars
of thought and aim, in different parts of the world.
In a bird's eye survey of the broad field we have traversed, one
cannot help noticing the marked influence of the present scenery
and habits, history and associations, of a people in deciding the
character of their anticipations of the future. The Esquimaux
paradise is surrounded by great pots full of boiled walrus meat.
The Turk's heaven is a gorgeously idealized pleasure garden or
celestial harem. As the apparition of a man wanders into the next
state, a shadow of his present state floats over into the future
with him. The Hereafter is the image flung by the Now. Heaven and
hell are the upward and downward echoes of the earth. Like the
spectre of the Brocken on the Hartz Mountains, our ideas of
another life are a reflection of our present experience thrown in
colossal on the cloud curtains of futurity. Charles Lamb, pushing
this elucidating observation much further, says, "The shapings of
our heavens are the modifications of our constitutions." A tribe
of savages has been described who hoped to go after death to their
forefathers in an under ground elysium whose glory consisted in
eternal drunkenness, that being their highest conception of bliss
and glory. What can be more piteous than the contemplation of
those barbarians whose existence here is so wretched that even
their imagination and faith have lost all rebound, and who
conceive of the land of souls only as poorer and harder than this,
expecting to be tasked and beaten there by stronger spirits, and
to have nothing to eat? The relation of master and servant, the
tyranny of class, is reflected over into the other life in those
aristocratic notions which break out frequently in the history of
our subject. The Pharisees some of them, at least excluded the
rabble from the resurrection. The Peruvians confined their heaven
to the nobility. The New Zealanders said the souls of the Atuas,
the nobles, were immortal, but the Cookees perished entirely.
Meiners declares that the Russians, even so late as the times of
Peter the Great, believed that only the Czar and the boyars could
reach heaven. It was almost a universal custom among savage
nations when a chieftain died to slay his wives and servants, that
their ghosts might accompany his to paradise, to wait on him there
as here. Even among the Greeks, as Bulwer has well remarked, "the
Hades of the ancients was not for the many; and the dwellers of
Elysium are chiefly confined to the oligarchy of earth."
The coarse and selfish assumption on the part of man of
superiority over woman, based on his brawniness and tyranny, has
sometimes appeared in the form of an assertion that
5 Churchill, Mt. Lebanon, vol. iii. ch. 7.
6 Pallegoix, Description du Royaume de Siam, ch. xx. p. 113.
women have no souls, or at least cannot attain to the highest
heaven possible for man. The former statement has been vulgarly
attributed to the Moslem creed, but with utter falsity. A pious
and aged female disciple once asked Mohammed concerning her future
condition in heaven. The prophet replied, "There will not be any
old women in heaven." She wept and bewailed her fate, but was
comforted upon the gracious assurance from the prophet's lips,
"They will all be young again when there." The Buddhists relate
that Gotama once directed queen Prajapati, his foster mother, to
prove by a miracle the error of those who supposed it impossible
for a woman to attain Nirwana. She immediately made as many
repetitions of her own form as filled the skies of all the
sakwalas, and, after performing various wonders, died and rose
into Nirwana, leading after her five hundred virtuous princesses.7
How spontaneously the idiosyncrasies of men in the present are
flung across the abysm into the future state is exhibited
amusingly, and with a rough pathos, in an old tradition of a
dialogue between Saint Patrick and Ossian. The bard contrasts the
apostle's pitiful psalms with his own magnificent songs, and says
that the virtuous Fingal is enjoying the rewards of his valor in
the aerial existence. The saint rejoins, No matter for Fingal's
worth; being a pagan, assuredly he roasts in hell. In hot wrath
the honest Caledonian poet cries, "If the children of Morni and
the tribes of the clan Ovi were alive, we would force brave Fingal
out of hell, or the same habitation should be our own."8
Many of the most affecting facts and problems in human experience
and destiny have found expression, hypothetic solution, in
striking myths preserved in the popular traditions of nations. The
mutual resemblances in these legends in some cases, though among
far separated peoples, are very significant and impressive. They
denote that, moved by similar motives and exercised on the same
soliciting themes, human desire and thought naturally find vent in
similar theories, stories, and emblems. The imagination of man, as
Gfrorer says, runs in ruts which not itself but nature has beaten.
The instinctive shrinking from death felt by man would, sooner or
later, quite naturally suggest the idea that death was not an
original feature in the divine plan of the world, but a
retributive additional discord. Benignant nature meant her
children should live on in happy contentment here forever; but sin
and Satan came in, and death was the vengeance that followed their
doings. The Persians fully developed this speculation. The Hebrews
either also originated it, or borrowed it from the Persians; and
afterwards the Christians adopted it. Traces of the same
conception appear among the remotest and rudest nations. The
Caribbeans have a myth to the effect that the whole race of men
were doomed to be mortal because Carus, the first man, offended
the great god Tiri. The Cherokees ascribe to the Great Spirit the
intention of making men immortal on earth; but, they say, the sun
when he passed over told them there was not room enough, and that
people had better die! They also say that the Creator attempted to
make the first man and woman out of two stones, but failed, and
afterwards fashioned them of clay; and therefore it is that they
are perishable.9 The
7 Hardy, Manual of Buddhism, p. 314.
8 Logan, Scottish Gael, ch. xiv.
9 Squier, Serpent Symbol, p. 67, note c.
Indians of the Oronoco declare that the Great Spirit dwelt for a
while, at first, among men. As he was leaving them, he turned
around in his canoe and said, "Ye shall never die, but shall shed
your skins." An old woman would not believe what he said; he
therefore recalled his promise and vowed that they should die.
The thought of more than one death that the composite man is
simplified by a series of separating deaths has repeatedly found
place. The New Testament speaks of "the second death;" but that is
a metaphorical phrase, descriptive, as there employed, of
condemnation and suffering. It is a thought of Plato that the
Deity put intellect in soul, and soul in a material envelope.
Following this hint, Plutarch says, in his essay on the Face in
the Moon, that the earth furnishes the body, the moon the soul,
the sun the mind. The first death we die, he continues, makes us
two from three; the second makes us one from two. The Feejees tell
how one of their warriors, seeing the spectre of a recently
deceased enemy of his, threw his war club at it and killed it.
They believed the spirit itself was thus destroyed. There is
something pathetic in this accumulation of dissolution upon
dissolution, this pursuit of death after death. We seem to hear,
in this thin succession of the ghosts of ghosts, the fainter
growing echoes of the body fade away.
Many narratives reveal the fond hovering of the human mind over
the problem of avoiding death altogether. The Hebrew Scriptures
have made us familiar with the translation of Enoch and the
ascension of Elijah without tasting death. The Hindus tell of
Divadassa, who, as a reward for his exceeding virtue and piety,
was permitted to ascend to heaven alive.10 They also say that the
good Trisanku, having pleased a god, was elevated in his living
body to heaven.11 The Buddhists of Ceylon preserve a legend of the
elevation of one of the royal descendants of Maha Sammata to the
superior heavens without undergoing death.12 There are Buddhist
traditions, furthermore, of four other persons who were taken up
to Indra's heaven in their bodies without tasting death, namely,
the musician Gattila, and the kings Sadhina, Nirni, and
Mandhatu.13 A beautiful myth of the translation of Cyrus is found
in Firdousi's Shah Nameh:
"Ky Khosru bow'd himself before his God: In the bright water he
wash'd his head and his limbs; And he spake to himself the Zend
Avesta's prayers; And he turn'd to the friends of his life and
exclaim'd, 'Fare ye well, fare ye well for evermore! When to
morrow's sun lifts its blazing banner, And the sea is gold, and
the land is purple, This world and I shall be parted forever. Ye
will never see me again, save in Memory's dreams.'When the sun
uplifted his head from the mountain, The king had vanish'd from
the eyes of his nobles. They roam'd around in vain attempts to
find him;
10 Vans Kennedy, Ancient and Hindu Mythology, p. 431.
11 Vishnu Purana, p. 371.
12 Upham, Sacred Books of Ceylon, vol. i. Introduction, p. 17.
13 Hardy, Manual of Buddhism, p. 25, note.
And every one, as he came back to the place, Bade a long farewell
to the king of the world. Never hath any one seen such a marvel
No, though he live long in the world That a man should go alive
into the presence of God."
There is a Greek story that Empedocles, "after a sacred festival,
was drawn up to heaven in a splendor of celestial effulgence."14
Philostratus relates a tradition of the Cretans, affirming that,
Apollonius having entered a temple to worship, a sound was heard
as of a chorus of virgins singing, "Come from the earth; come into
heaven; come." And he was taken up, never having been seen
afterwards. Here may be cited also the exquisite fable of
Endymion. Zeus promised to grant what he should request. He begged
for immortality, eternal sleep, and never fading youth.
Accordingly, in all his surpassing beauty he slumbers on the
summit of Latmus, where every night the enamored moon stoops to
kiss his spotless forehead. One of the most remarkable fragments
in the traditions of the American aborigines is that concerning
the final departure of Tarenyawagon, a mythic chief of
supernatural knowledge and power, who instructed and united the
Iroquois. He sprang across vast chasms between the cliffs, and
shot over the lakes with incredible speed, in a spotless white
canoe. At last the Master of Breath summoned him. Suddenly the sky
was filled with melody. While all eyes were turned up,
Tarenyawagon was seen, seated in his snow white canoe, in mid air,
rising with every burst of the heavenly music, till he vanished
beyond the summer clouds, and all was still.15
Another mythological method of avoidingdeath is by bathing in some
immortal fountain. The Greeks tell of Glaucus, who by chance
discovered and plunged in a spring of this charmed virtue, but was
so chagrined at being unable to point it out to others that he
flung himself into the ocean. He could not die, and so became a
marine deity, and was annually seen off the headlands sporting
with whales. The search for the "Fountain of Youth" by the
Spaniards who landed in Florida is well known. How with a vain
eagerness did Ponce de Leon, the battered old warrior, seek after
the magic wave beneath which he should sink to emerge free from
scars and stains, as fresh and fair as when first he donned the
knightly harness! Khizer, the Wandering Jew of the East,
accompanied Iskander Zulkarnain (the Oriental name for Alexander
the Great) in his celebrated expedition to find the fountain of
life.16 Zulkarnain, coming to a place where there were three
hundred and sixty fountains, despatched three hundred and sixty
men, ordering each man to select one of the fountains in which to
wash a dry salted fish wherewith he was furnished. The instant
Khizer's fish touched the water of the fountain which he had
chosen, it sprang away, alive. Khizer leaped in after it and
drank. Therefore he cannot die till the last trump sounds.
Meanwhile, clad in a green garb, he roams through the world, a
personified spring of the year.
14 Lewes, Biographical History of Philosophy, vol. i. p. 135, (1st
Eng. edit.)
15 Schoolcraft, Notes on the Iroquois, ch. ix.
16 Adventures of Hatim Tai, p. 125.
The same influences which have caused death to be interpreted as a
punitive after piece in the creation, and which have invented
cases wherein it was set aside, have also fabricated tales of
returns from its shrouded realm. The Thracian lover's harp,
"drawing iron tears down Pluto's cheek," won his mistress half way
to the upper light, and would have wholly redeemed her had he not
in impatience looked back. The grim king of Hades, yielding to
passionate entreaties, relented so far as to let the hapless
Protesilaus return to his mourning Laodameia for three hours. At
the swift end of this poor period he died again; and this time she
died with him. Erus, who was killed in battle, and Timarchus,
whose soul was rapt from him in the cave of Trophonius, both
returned, as we read in Plato and Plutarch, to relate with
circumstantial detail what they saw in the other world. Alcestis,
who so nobly died to save her husband's life, was brought back
from the region of the dead, by the interposition of Herakles, to
spend happy years with her grateful Admetus. The cunning Sisyphus,
who was so notorious for his treachery, by a shrewd plot obtained
leave, after his death, to visit the earth again. Safely up in the
light, he vowed he would stay; but old Hermes psychopompus
forcibly dragged him down.
When Columbus landed at San Salvador, the natives thought he had
descended from the sun, and by signs inquired if he had not. The
Hawaiians took Captain Cook for the god Lono, who was once their
king but was afterwards deified, and who had prophesied, as he was
dying, that he should in after times return. Te Wharewara, a New
Zealand youth, relates a long account of the return of his aunt
from the other world, with a minute description of her adventures
and observations there.17 Schoolcraft gives a picturesque
narrative of a journey made by a Wyandot brave to and from the
land of souls.18
There is a group of strangely pleasing myths, closely allied to
the two preceding classes, showing how the popular heart and
imagination glorify their heroes, and, fondly believing them too
godlike to die, fancy them only removed to some secret place,
where they still live, and whence in the time of need they will
come again to rescue or to bless their people. Greece dreamed that
her swift footed Achilles was yet alive in the White Island.
Denmark long saw king Holger lingering on the old warrior cairns
of his country. Portugal trusted that her beauteous prince
Sebastian had escaped from the fatal field to the East, and would
one day return to claim his usurped realm.19 So, too, of Roderick
the Goth, who fell in disastrous battle with the Arabs, the
Visiogothic traditions and faith of the people long insisted that
he would reappear. The Swiss herdsmen believe the founders of
their confederacy still sleep in a cavern on the shores of
Lucerne. When Switzerland is in peril, the Three Tells, slumbering
there in their antique garb, will wake to save her. Sweetly and
often, the ancient British lays allude to the puissant Arthur
borne away to the mystic vales of Avalon, and yet to be hailed in
his native kingdom, Excalibur once more gleaming in his hand. The
strains of the Troubadours swell and ring as they tell of
Charlemagne sleeping beneath
17 Shortland, Traditions of the New Zealanders, p. 128.
18 History, &c. of Indian Tribes, part ii. p. 235.
19 There is a fanatic sect of Sebastianists in Brazil now. See
"Brazil and the Brazilians," by Kidier and Fletcher, pp. 519-521.
the Untersberg, biding his appointed time to rise, resume his
unrivalled sceptre, and glorify the Frank race. And what grand and
weird ballads picture great Barbarossa seated in the vaults of
Kyffhauser, his beard grown through the stone table in front of
him, tarrying till he may come forth, with his minstrels and
knights around him, in the crisis hour of Germany's fortunes! The
Indians of Pecos, in New Mexico, still anxiously expect the return
of Montezuma; while in San Domingo, on the Rio Grande, a sentinel
every morning ascends to the top of the highest house, at sunrise,
and looks out eastward for the coming of the great chief.20 The
peasants of Brittany maintain as a recent traveller testifies that
Napoleon is still alive in concealment somewhere, and will one day
be heard of or seen in pomp and victory. One other dead man there
has been who was expected to return. the hated Nero, the popular
horror of whom shows itself in the shuddering belief expressed in
the Apocalypse and in the Sibylline Oracles that he was still
alive and would reappear.21
Alian, in his Various History, recounts the following singular
circumstances concerning the Meropes who inhabited the valley of
Anostan.22 It would seem to prove that no possible conceit of
speculation pertaining to our subject has been unthought of. A
river of grief and a river of pleasure, he says, lapsed through
the valley, their banks covered with trees. If one ate of the
fruit growing on the trees beside the former stream, he burst into
a flood of tears and wept till he died. But if he partook of that
hanging on the shore of the latter, his bliss was so great that he
forgot all desires; and, strangest of all, he returned over the
track of life to youth and infancy, and then gently expired. He
turned
"Into his yesterdays, and wander'd back To distant childhood, and
went out to God By the gate of birth, not death."
Mohammed, during his night journey, saw, in the lower heaven,
Adam, the father of mankind, a majestic old man, with all his
posterity who were destined for paradise on one side, and all who
were destined for hell on the other. When he looked on the right
he smiled and rejoiced, but as often as he looked on the left he
mourned and wept. How finely this reveals the stupendous pathos
there is in the theological conception of a Federal Head of
humanity!
The idea of a great terminal crisis is met with so often in
reviewing the history of human efforts to grasp and solve the
problem of the world's destiny, that we must consider it a normal
concomitant of such theorizings. The mind reels and loses itself
in trying to conceive of the everlasting continuance of the
present order, or of any one fixed course of things, but finds
relief in the notion of a revolution, an end, and a fresh start.
The Mexican Cataclysm or universal crash, the close of the Hindu
Calpa, the Persian Resurrection, the Stoic Conflagration, the
Scandinavian Ragnarokur, the Christian Day of Judgment, all embody
this one thought. The Drama of Humanity is played out, the curtain
falls, and when it rises again
20 Abbe Domenech's Seven Years' Residence in the Great Deserts of
North America; Vol. I. ch. viii.
21 Stuart, Commentary on the Apocalypse: Excursus upon ch. xiii.
v. 18.
22 Lib. iii. cap. 18.
all is commenced afresh. The clock of creation runs down and has
to be wound up anew. The Brahmans are now expecting the tenth
avatar of Vishnu. The Parsees look for Sosiosch to come, to
consummate the triumph of good, and to raise the dead upon a
renewed earth. The Buddhists await the birth of Maitri Buddha, who
is tarrying in the dewa loka Tusita until the time of his advent
upon earth. The Jews are praying for the appearance of the
Messiah. And many Christians affirm that the second advent of
Jesus draws nigh.
One more fact, even in a hasty survey of some of the most peculiar
opinions current in bygone times as to a future life, can scarcely
fail to attract notice. It is the so constant linking of the
soul's fate with the skyey spaces and the stars, in fond
explorings and astrologic dreams. Nowhere are the kingly greatness
and the immortal aspiring of man more finely shown. The loadstone
of his destiny and the prophetic gravitation of his thoughts are
upward, into the eternal bosom of heaven's infinite hospitality.
"Ye stars, which are the poetry of heaven!
If in your bright leaves we would read the fate
Of men and empires, 'tis to be forgiven,
That, in our aspirations to be great,
Our destinies o'erleap their mortal state
And claim a kindred with you; for ye are
A beauty and a mystery, and create
In us such love and reverence from afar
That fortune, fame, power, life, have named themselves a star."
What an immeasurable contrast between the dying Cherokee, who
would leap into heaven with a war whoop on his tongue and a string
of scalps in his hand, and the dying Christian, who sublimely
murmurs, "Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit!" What a sweep
of thought, from the poor woman whose pious notion of heaven was
that it was a place where she could sit all day in a clean white
apron and sing psalms, to the far seeing and sympathetic natural
philosopher whose loving faith embraces all ranks of creatures and
who conceives of paradise as a spiritual concert of the combined
worlds with all their inhabitants in presence of their Creator!
Yet from the explanatory considerations which have been set forth
we can understand the derivation of the multifarious swarm of
notions afloat in the world, as the fifteen hundred varieties of
apple now known have all been derived from the solitary white
crab. Differences of fancy and opinion among men are as natural as
fancies and opinions are. The mind of a people grows from the
earth of its deposited history, but breathes in the air of its
living literature.23 By his philosophic learning and poetic
sympathy the cosmopolitan scholar wins the last victory of mind
over matter, frees himself from local conditions and temporal
tinges, and, under the light of universal truth, traces, through
the causal influences of soil and clime and history, and the
colored threads of great individualities, the formation of
peculiar national creeds. Through sense the barbarian mind feeds
on the raw pabulum furnished by the immediate phenomena of the
world and of its own life. Through culture the civilized mind
feeds on the elaborated substance of literature,
23 Schouw, Earth, Plants, and Man, ch. xxx.
science, and art. Plants eat inorganic, animals eat organized,
material. The ignorant man lives on sensations obtained directly
from nature; the educated man lives also on sensations obtained
from the symbols of other people's sensations. The illiterate
savage hunts for his mental living in the wild forest of
consciousness; the erudite philosopher lives also on the psychical
stores of foregone men.
NOTE. To the ten instances, stated on pages 210, 211, of
remarkable men who after their death were popularly imagined to be
still alive, and destined to appear again, an eleventh may be
added. The Indians of Pecos, in New Mexico, anxiously expect the
return of Montezuma. In San Domingo, on the Rio Grande, a sentinel
every morning ascends to the roof of the highest house at sunrise
and looks out eastward for the coming of the great chief. See the
Abbe Domenech's "Seven Years' Residence in the Great Deserts of
North America," vol. ii. ch. viii.
PART THIRD.
NEW TESTAMENT TEACHINGS CONCERNING AFUTURE LIFE.
CHAPTER I.
PETER'S DOCTRINE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
IN entering upon an investigation of the thoughts of the New
Testament writers concerning the fate of man after his bodily
dissolution, we may commence by glancing at the various allusions
contained in the record to opinions on this subject prevalent at
the time of the Savior or immediately afterwards, but which formed
no part of his religion, or were mixed with mistakes.
There are several incidents recorded in the Gospels which show
that a belief in the transmigration of the soul was received among
the Jews. As Jesus was passing near Siloam with his disciples, he
saw a man who had been blind from his birth; and the disciples
said to him, "Master, who did sin, this man or his parents, that
he was born blind?" The drift of this question is, Did the parents
of this man commit some great crime, for which they were punished
by having their child born blind, or did he come into the world
under this calamity in expiation of the iniquities of a previous
life? Jesus denies the doctrine involved in this interrogation, at
least, as far as his reply touches it at all; for he rarely enters
into any discussion or refutation of incidental errors. He says,
Neither hath this man sinned nor his parents as the cause of his
blindness; but the regular workings of the laws of God are made
manifest in him: moreover, it is a providential occasion offered
me that I should show the divinity of my mission by giving him
sight.
When Herod heard of the miracles and the fame of Jesus, he said,
This is John the Baptist, whom I beheaded: he is risen from the
dead; and therefore mighty works are wrought by him. This brief
statement plainly shows that the belief in the reappearance of a
departed spirit, in bodily form, to run another career, was extant
in Judea at that period. The Evangelists relate another
circumstance to the same effect. Jesus asked his disciples who the
people thought he was. And they replied, Some think that thou art
John the Baptist, some Elias, and some Jeremiah or some other of
the old prophets, a forerunner of the Messiah. Then Jesus asked,
But who think ye that I am? And Simon Peter said, Thou art the
promised Messiah himself. There was a prophetic tradition among
the Jews, drawn from the words of Malachi, that before the Messiah
was revealed Elias would appear and proclaim his coming.
Therefore, when the disciples of Christ recognised him as the
great Anointed, they were troubled about this prophecy, and said
to their Master, Why do the Scribes say that Elias must first
come? He replies to them, in substance, It is even so: the
prophet's words shall not fail: they are already fulfilled. But
you must interpret the prophecy aright. It does not mean that the
ancient prophet himself, in physical form, shall come upon earth,
but that one with his office, in his spirit and power, shall go
before me. If ye are able to understand the true import of the
promise, it has been realized. John the Baptist is the Elias which
was to come. The New Testament, therefore, has allusions to the
doctrine of transmigration, but gives it no warrant.
The Jewish expectations in regard to the Messiah, the nature of
his kingdom, and the events which they supposed would attend his
coming or transpire during his reign, were the source and
foundation of the phraseology of a great many passages in the
Christian Scriptures and of the sense of not a few. The national
ideas and hopes of the Jews at that time were singularly intense
and extensive. Their influence over the immediate disciples of
Jesus and the authors of the New Testament is often very evident
in the interpretations they put upon his teachings, and in their
own words. Still, their intellectual and spiritual obtuseness to
the true drift of their Master's thoughts was not so great, their
mistakes are neither so numerous nor so gross, as it is frequently
supposed they were. This is proved by the fact that when they use
the language of the Messianic expectations of the Jews in their
writings they often do it, not in the material, but in a spiritual
sense. When they first came under the instruction of Jesus, they
were fully imbued with the common notions of their nation and age.
By his influence their ideas were slowly and with great difficulty
spiritualized and made to approach his own in some degree. But it
is unquestionably true that they never not even after his death
arrived at a clear appreciation of the full sublimity, the pure
spirituality, the ultimate significance, of his mission and his
words. Still, they did cast off and rise above the grossly carnal
expectations of their countrymen. Partially instructed in the
spiritual nature of Christ's kingdom, and partially biassed by
their Jewish prepossessions, they interpreted a part of his
language figuratively, according to his real meaning, and a part
of it literally, according to their own notions. The result of
this was several doctrines neither taught by Christ nor held by
the Jews, but formed by conjoining and elaborating a portion of
the conceptions of both. These doctrines are to be found in the
New Testament; but it should be distinctly understood that the
religion of Christ is not responsible for them, is to be separated
from them.
The fundamental and pervading aim of that epistle of Peter the
genuineness of which is unquestioned and the same is true in a
great degree of his speeches recorded in the Acts of the Apostles
is to exhort the Christians to whom it is written to purify
themselves by faith, love, and good works; to stand firmly amidst
all their tribulations, supported by the expectations and prepared
to meet the conditions of a glorious life in heaven at the close
of this life. Eschatology, the doctrine of the Last Things, with
its practical inferences, all inseparably interwoven with the
mission of Christ, forms the basis and scope of the whole
document.
Peter believed that when Christ had been put to death his spirit,
surviving, descended into the separate state of departed souls.
Having cited from the sixteenth Psalm the declaration, "Thou wilt
not leave my soul in the under world," he says it was a prophecy
concerning Christ, which was fulfilled in his resurrection. "The
soul of this Jesus was not left in the under world, but God hath
raised him up, whereof we all are witnesses." When it is written
that his soul was not left in the subterranean abode of
disembodied spirits, of course the inference cannot be avoided
that it was supposed to have been there for a time.
In the next place, we are warranted by several considerations in
asserting that Peter believed that down there, in the gloomy realm
of shades, were gathered and detained the souls of all the dead
generations. We attribute this view to Peter from the combined
force of the following reasons: because such was, notoriously, the
belief of his ancestral and contemporary countrymen; because he
speaks of the resurrection of Jesus as if it were a wonderful
prophecy or unparalleled miracle, a signal and most significant
exception to the universal law; because he says expressly of David
that "he is not yet ascended into the heavens," and if David was
still retained below, undoubtedly all were; because the same
doctrine is plainly inculcated by other of the New Testament
writers; and, finally, because Peter himself, in another part of
this epistle, declares, in unequivocal terms, that the soul of
Christ went and preached to the souls confined in the under
world, for such is the perspicuous meaning of the famous text,
"being put to death in the body, but kept alive in the soul, in
which also he went and preached [went as a herald] to the spirits
in prison." The meaning we have attributed to this celebrated
passage is the simple and consistent explanation of the words and
the context, and is what must have been conveyed to those familiar
with the received opinions of that time. Accordingly, we find
that, with the exception of Augustine, it was so understood and
interpreted by the whole body of the Fathers.1 It is likewise so
held now by an immense majority of the most authoritative modern
commentators. Rosenmuller says, in his commentary on this text,
"That by the spirits in prison is meant souls of men separated
from their bodies and detained as in custody in the under world,
which the Greeks call Hades, the Hebrews Sheol, can hardly be
doubted," (vix dubitari posse videtur.) Such has ever been and
still is the common conclusion of nearly all the best critical
theologians, as volumes of citations might easily be made to show.
The reasons which led Augustine to give a different exposition of
the text before us are such as should make, in this case, even his
great name have little or no weight. He firmly held, as revealed
and unquestionable truth,2 the whole doctrine which we maintain is
implied in the present passage; but he was so perplexed by certain
difficult queries3 as to locality and method and circumstance,
addressed to him with reference to this text, that he, waveringly,
and at last, gave it an allegorical interpretation. His exegesis
is not only arbitrary and opposed to the catholic doctrine of the
Church; it is also so far fetched and forced as to be destitute of
1 See, for example, Clem. Alex. Stromata, lib. vi.; Cyprian, Test.
adv. Judaos, lib. ii. cap. 27, Lactantius, Divin. Instit. lib.
vii. cap. 20.
2 Epist. XCIX.
3 Ibid.
plausibility. He says the spirits in prison may be the souls of
men confined in their bodies here in this life, to preach to whom
Christ came from heaven. But the careful reader will observe that
Peter speaks as if the spirits were collected and kept in one
common custody, refers to the spirits of a generation long ago
departed to the dead, and represents the preaching as taking place
in the interval between Christ's death and his resurrection. A
glance from the eighteenth to the twenty second verse inclusive
shows indisputably that the order of events narrated by the
apostle is this: First, Christ was put to death in the flesh,
suffering for sins, the just for the unjust; secondly, he was
quickened in the spirit; thirdly, he went and preached to the
spirits in prison; fourthly, he rose from the dead; fifthly, he
ascended into heaven. How is it possible for any one to doubt that
the text under consideration teaches his subterranean mission
during the period of his bodily burial?
In the exposition of the Apostles' Creed put forth by the Church
of England under Edward VI., this text in Peter was referred to as
an authoritative proof of the article on Christ's descent into the
under world; and when, some years later, thatreference was
stricken out, notoriously it was not because the Episcopal rulers
were convinced of a mistake, but because they had become afraid of
the associated Romish doctrine of purgatory.
If Peter believed as he undoubtedly did that Christ after his
crucifixion descended to the place of departed spirits, what did
he suppose was the object of that descent? Calvin's theory was
that he went into hell in order that he might there suffer
vicariously the accumulated agonies due to the LOST, thus
placating the just wrath of the Father and purchasing the release
of the elect. A sufficient refutation of that dogma, as to its
philosophical basis, is found in its immorality, its forensic
technicality. As a mode of explaining the Scriptures, it is
refuted by the fact that it is nowhere plainly stated in the New
Testament, but is arbitrarily constructed by forced and indirect
inferences from various obscure texts, which texts can be
perfectly explained without involving it at all. For what purpose,
then, was it thought that Jesus went to the imprisoned souls of
the under world? The most natural supposition the conception most
in harmony with the character and details of the rest of the
scheme and with the prevailing thought of the time would be that
he went there to rescue the captives from their sepulchral
bondage, to conquer death and the devil in their own domain, open
the doors, break the chains, proclaim good tidings of coming
redemption to the spirits in prison, and, rising thence, to ascend
to heaven, preparing the way for them to follow with him at his
expected return. This, indeed, is the doctrine of the Judaizing
apostles, the unbroken catholic doctrine of the Church. Paul
writes to the Colossians, and to the Ephesians, that, when Christ
"had spoiled the principalities and powers" of the world of the
dead, "he ascended up on high, leading a multitude of captives."
Peter himself declares, a little farther on in his epistle, "that
the glad tidings were preached to the dead, that, though they had
been persecuted and condemned in the flesh by the will of men,
they might be blessed in the spirit by the will of God."4 Christ
fulfilled the law of
4 See Rosenmuller's explanation in hoc loco.
death,5 descending to the place of separate spirits, that he might
declare deliverance to the quick and the dead by coming
triumphantly back and going into heaven, an evident token of the
removal of the penalty of sin which hitherto had fatally doomed
all men to the under world.6
Let us see if this will not enable us to explain Peter's language
satisfactorily. Death, with the lower residence succeeding it, let
it be remembered, was, according to the Jewish and apostolic
belief, the fruit of sin, the judgment pronounced on sin. But
Christ, Peter says, was sinless. "He was a lamb without blemish
and without spot." "He did no sin, neither was guile found in his
mouth." Therefore he was not exposed to death and the under world
on his own account. Consequently, when it is written that "he bore
our sins in his own body on the tree," that "he suffered for sins,
the just for the unjust," in order to give the words their clear,
full meaning it is not necessary to attribute to them the sense of
a vicarious sacrifice offered to quench the anger of God or to
furnish compensation for a broken commandment; but this sense,
namely, that although in his sinlessness he was exempt from death,
yet he "suffered for us," he voluntarily died, thus undergoing for
our sakes that which was to others the penalty of their sin. The
object of his dying was not to conciliate the alienated Father or
to adjust the unbalanced law: it was to descend into the realm of
the dead, heralding God's pardon to the captives, and to return
and rise into heaven, opening and showing to his disciples the way
thither. For, owing to his moral sinlessness, or to his delegated
omnipotence, if he were once in the abode of the dead, he must
return: nothing could keep him there. Epiphanius describes the
devil complaining, after Christ had burst through his nets and
dungeons, "Miserable me! what shall I do? I did not know God was
concealed in that body. The son of Mary has deceived me. I
imagined he was a mere man."7 In an apocryphal writing of very
early date, which shows some of the opinions abroad at that time,
one of the chief devils, after Christ had appeared in hell,
cleaving its grisly prisons from top to bottom and releasing the
captives, is represented upbraiding Satan in these terms: "O
prince of all evil, author of death, why didst thou crucify and
bring down to our regions a person righteous and sinless? Thereby
thou hast lost all the sinners of the world."8 Again, in an
ancient treatise on the Apostles' Creed, we read as follows: "In
the bait of Christ's flesh was secretly inserted the hook of his
divinity. This the devil knew not, but, supposing he must stay
when he was
5 See King's History of the Apostles' Creed, 3d ed., pp. 234-239.
"The purpose of Christ's descent was to undergo the laws of death,
pass through the whole experience of man, conquer the devil, break
the fetters of the captives, and fix a time for their
resurrection." To the same effect, old Hilary, Bishop of
Poictiers, in his commentary on Psalm cxxxviii., says, "It is a
law of human necessity that, the body being buried, the soul
should descend ad interos."
6 Ambrose, De Fide, etc., lib. iv. cap. 1, declares that "no one
ascended to heaven until Christ, by the pledge of his
resurrection, solved the chains of the under world and translated
the souls of the pious." Also Cyril, Bishop of Jerusalem, in his
fourth catechetical lecture, sect. 11, affirms "that Christ
descended into the under world to deliver those who, from Adam
downwards, had been imprisoned there."
7 In Assumptionem Christi.
8 Evan. Nicodemi, cap. xviii.
devoured, greedily swallowed the corpse, and the bolts of the
nether world were wrenched asunder, and the ensnared dragon
himself dragged from the abyss."9 Peter himself explicitly
declares, "It was not possible that he should be held by death."
Theodoret says, "Whoever denies the resurrection of Christ rejects
his death."10 If he died, he must needs rise again. And his
resurrection would demonstrate the forgiveness of sins, the
opening of heaven to men, showing that the bond which had bound in
despair the captives in the regions of death for so many voiceless
ages was at last broken. Accordingly, "God, having loosed the
chains of the under world, raised him up and set him at his own
right hand."11
And now the question, narrowed down to the smallest compass, is
this: What is the precise, real signification of the sacrificial
and other connected terms employed by Peter, those phrases which
now, by the intense associations of a long time, convey so strong
a Calvinistic sense to most readers? Peter says, "Ye know that ye
were redeemed with the precious blood of Christ." If there were
not so much indeterminateness of thought, so much unthinking
reception of traditional, confused impressions of Scripture texts,
it would be superfluous to observe that by the word blood here,
and in all parallel passages, is meant simply and literally death:
the mere blood, the mere shedding of the blood, of Christ, of
course, could have no virtue, no moral efficacy, of any sort. When
the infuriated Jews cried, "His blood be on us, and on our
children!" they meant, Let the responsibility of his death rest on
us. When the English historian says, "Sidney gave his blood for
the cause of civil liberty," the meaning is, he died for it. So,
no one will deny, whenever the New Testament speaks in any way of
redemption by the blood of the crucified Son of Man, the
unquestionable meaning is, redemption by his death. What, then,
does the phrase "redemption by the death of Christ" mean? Let it
be noted here let it be particularly noticed that the New
Testament nowhere in explicit terms explains the meaning of this
and the kindred phrases: it simply uses the phrases without
interpreting them. They are rhetorical figures of speech,
necessarily, upon whatever theological system we regard them. No
sinner is literally washed from his transgressions and guilt in
the blood of the slaughtered Lamb. These expressions, then, are
poetic images, meant to convey a truth in the language of
association and feeling, the traditionary language of imagination.
The determination of their precise significance is wholly a matter
of fallible human construction and inference, and not a matter of
inspired statement or divine revelation. This is so, beyond a
question, because, we repeat, they are figures of speech, having
no direct explanation in the records where they occur. The
Calvinistic view of the atonement was a theory devised to explain
this scriptural language. It was devised without sufficient
consideration of the peculiar notions and spirit, the peculiar
grade of culture, and the time, from which that language sprang.
We freely admit the inadequacy of the Unitarian
9 Ruffinus, Expos. in Symb. Apost.
10 Comm. in 2 Tim. ii. 19.
11 By a mistake and a false reading, the common version has "the
pains of death," instead of "the chains of the under world." The
sense requires the latter. Besides, numerous manuscripts read
[non ASCII characters]. See, furthermore, Rosenmuller's thorough
criticism in loc. Likewise see Robinson's New Testament Greek
Lexicon, in [NAC].
doctrine of the atonement to explain the figures of speech in
which the apostles declare their doctrine. But, since the
Calvinistic scheme was devised by human thought to explain the New
Testament language, any scheme which explains that language as
well has equal Scripture claims to credence; any which better
explains it, with sharper, broader meaning and fewer difficulties,
has superior claims to be received.
We are now prepared to state what we believe was the meaning
originally associated with, and meant to be conveyed by, the
phrases equivalent to "redemption by the death of Christ." In
consequence of sin, the souls of all mankind, after leaving the
body, were shut up in the oblivious gloom of the under world.
Christ alone, by virtue of his perfect holiness, was not subject
to any part of this fate. But, in fulfilment of the Father's
gracious designs, he willingly submitted, upon leaving the body,
to go among the dead, that he might declare the good tidings to
them, and burst the bars of darkness, and return to life, and rise
into heaven as a pledge of the future translation of the faithful
to that celestial world, instead of their banishment into the
dismal bondage below, as hitherto. The death of Christ, then, was
the redemption of sinners, in that his death implied his ascent,
"because it was not possible that he should be holden of death;"
and his ascension visibly demonstrated the truth that God had
forgiven men their sins and would receive their souls to his own
abode on high.
Three very strong confirmations of the correctness of this
interpretation are afforded in the declarations of Peter. First,
he never even hints, in the faintest manner, that the death of
Christ was to have any effect on God, any power to change his
feeling or his government. It was not to make a purchasing
expiation for sins and thus to reconcile God to us; but it was, by
a revelation of the Father's freely pardoning love, to give us
penitence, purification, confidence, and a regenerating piety, and
so to reconcile us to God. He says in one place, in emphatic
words, that the express purpose of Christ's death was simply "that
he might lead us to God." In the same strain, in another place, he
defines the object of Christ's death to be "that we, being
delivered from sins, should live unto righteousness." It is plain
that in literal reality he refers our marvellous salvation to the
voluntary goodness of God, and not to any vicarious ransom paid in
the sacrifice of Christ, when he says, "The God of all grace hath
called us unto his eternal glory by Jesus Christ." The death of
Christ was not, then, to appease the fierce justice of God by
rectifying the claims of his inexorable law, but it was to call
out and establish in men all moral virtues by the power of faith
in the sure gift of eternal life sealed to them through the
ascension of the Savior.
For, secondly, the practical inferences drawn by Peter from the
death of Christ, and the exhortations founded upon it, are
inconsistent with the prevailing theory of the atonement. Upon
that view the apostle would have said, "Christ has paid the debt
and secured a seat in heaven for you, elected ones: therefore
believe in the sufficiency of his offerings, and exult." But not
so. He calls on us in this wise: "Forasmuch as Christ hath
suffered for us, arm yourselves with the same mind." "Christ
suffered for you, leaving an example that ye should follow his
steps." The whole burden of his practical argument based on the
mission of Christ is, the obligation of a religious spirit and of
pure morals. He does not speak, as many modern sectarists have
spoken, of the "filthy rags of righteousness;" but he says, "Live
no longer in sins," "have a meek and quiet spirit, which is in
the sight of God of great price," "be ye holy in all manner of
conversation," "purify your souls by obedience to the truth,"
"be ye a holy priesthood to offer up spiritual sacrifices," "have
a good conscience," "avoid evil and do good," "above all, have
fervent love, for love will cover a multitude of sins." No candid
person can peruse the epistle and not see that the great moral
deduced in it from the mission of Christ is this: Since heaven
is offered you, strive by personal virtue to be prepared for it
at the judgment which shall soon come. The disciple is not told
to trust in the merits of Jesus; but he is urged to "abstain
from evil," and "sanctify the Lord God in his heart," and
"love the brethren," and "obey the laws," and "do well,"
"girding up the loins of his mind in sobriety and hope."
This is not Calvinism.
The third fortification of this exposition is furnished by the
following fact. According to our view, the death of Christ is
emphasized, not on account of any importance in itself, but as the
necessary condition preliminary to his resurrection, the
humiliating prelude to his glorious ascent into heaven. The really
essential, significant thing is not his suffering, vicarious
death, but his triumphing, typical ascension. Now, the plain,
repeated statements of Peter strikingly coincide with this
representation. He says, "God raised Christ up from the dead, and
gave him glory, [that is, received him into heaven,] that your
faith and hope might be in God." Again he writes, "Blessed be God,
who according to his abundant mercy hath begotten us again unto a
lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead unto
an incorruptible inheritance in heaven." Still again, he declares
that "the figure of baptism, signifying thereby the answer of a
good conscience toward God, saves us by the resurrection of Jesus
Christ, who is gone into heaven." According to the commonly
received doctrine, instead of these last words the apostle ought
to have said, "saves us by the death of him who suffered in
expiation of our sins." He does not say so. Finally, in the
intrepid speech that Peter made before the Jewish council,
referring to their wicked crucifixion of Jesus, he says, "Him hath
God raised up to his own right hand, to be a Leader and a Savior,
to give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins." How plainly
remission of sins is here predicated, not through Christ's
ignominious suffering, but through his heavenly exaltation! That
exaltation showed in dramatic proof that by God's grace the
dominion of the lower world was about to be broken and an access
to the celestial world to be vouchsafed.
If Christ bought off our merited punishment and earned our
acceptance, then salvation can no more be "reckoned of grace, but
of debt." But the whole New Testament doctrine is, "that sinners
are justified freely through the redemption that is in Christ
Jesus." "The redemption that is in Christ"! Take these words
literally, and they yield no intelligible meaning. The sense
intended to be conveyed or suggested by them depends on
interpretation; and here disagreement arises. The Calvinist says
they mean the redemption undertaken, achieved, by Christ. We say
they mean the redemption proclaimed, brought to light, by Christ.
The latter explanation is as close to the language as the former.
Neither is unequivocally established by the statement itself. We
ought therefore to adopt the one which is at once most rational
and plausible in itself, and most in harmony with the peculiar
opinions and culture of the person by whom, and of the time when,
the document was written. All these considerations, historical,
philosophical, and moral, undeniably favor our interpretation,
leaving nothing to support the other save the popular theological
belief of modern Protestant Christendom, a belief which is the
gradual product of a few great, mistaken teachers like Augustine
and Calvin.
We do not find the slightest difficulty in explaining sharply and
broadly, with all its niceties of phraseology, each one of the
texts urged in behalf of the prevalent doctrine of the atonement,
without involving the essential features of that doctrine. Three
demonstrable assertions of fact afford us all the requisite
materials. First, it was a prevalent belief with the Jews, that,
since death was the penalty of sin, the suffering of death was in
itself expiatory of the sins of the dying man.12 Lightfoot says,
"It is a common and most known doctrine of the Talmudists, that
repentance and ritual sacrifice expiate some sins, death the rest.
Death wipes off all unexpiated sins."13 Tholuck says, "It was a
Jewish opinion that the death of the just atoned for the
people."14 He quotes from the Talmud an explicit assertion to that
effect, and refers to several learned authorities for further
citations and confirmations.
Secondly, the apostles conceived Christ to be sinless, and
consequently not on his own account exposed to death and subject
to Hades. If, then, death was an atonement for sins, and he was
sinless, his voluntary death was expiatory for the sins of the
world; not in an arbitrary and unheard of way, according to the
Calvinistic scheme, but in the common way, according to a
Pharisaic notion. And thirdly, it was partly a Jewish expectation
concerning the Messiah that he would,15 and partly an apostolic
conviction concerning Christ that he did, break the bolts of the
old Hadean prison and open the way for human ascent to heaven. As
Jerome says, "Before Christ Abraham was in hell, after Christ the
crucified thief was in paradise;"16 for "until the advent of
Christ all alike went down into the under world, heaven being shut
until Christ threw aside the flaming sword that turned every
way."17
These three thoughts that death is the expiatory penalty of sin,
that Christ was himself sinless, that he died as God's envoy to
release the prisoners of gloom and be their pioneer to bliss leave
nothing to be desired in explaining the sacrificial terms and
kindred phrases employed by the apostles in reference to his
mission.
Without question, Peter, like his companions, looked for the
speedy return of Christ from heaven to judge all, and to save the
worthy. Indications of this belief are numerously afforded in his
words. "The end of all things is at hand: be ye therefore sober
and watch unto prayer." "You shall give account to him that is
ready to judge the quick and the dead." Here the common idea of
that time namely, that the resurrection of the captives of the
12 Witsius, Dissertatio de Seculo hoc et futuro, sect. 8.
13 Lightfoot on Matt. xii. 32.
14 Comm. on John i. 29.
15 "God shall liberate the Israelites from the under world."
Bertholdt's Christologia Judaorum, sect. xxxiv., (De descensu
Messia ad Inferos,) note 2. "The captives shall ascend from the
under world, Shechinah at their head." Schoettgen de Messia, lib.
vi. cap. 5, sect. 1.
16 See his Letter to Heliodorus, Epiat. XXXV., Benedict. ed.
17 Comm. in Eccles. cap. iii. 21, et cap. ix.
under world would occur at the return of Christ is undoubtedly
implied. "Salvation is now ready to be revealed in the last time."
"That your faith may be found unto praise and honor and glory at
the appearing of Jesus Christ." "Be sober, and hope to the end for
the grace that is to be brought unto you at the revelation of
Jesus Christ." "Be ye examples to the flock, and when the chief
Shepherd shall appear ye shall receive an unfading crown of
glory." "God shall send Jesus Christ, . . . whom the heavens must
receive until the times of the restitution of all things." It is
evident that the author of these passages expected the second
coming of the Lord Jesus to consummate the affairs of his kingdom.
If the apostle had formed definite conclusions as to the final
fate of unbelieving, wicked, reprobate men, he has not stated
them. He undeniably implies certain general facts upon the
subject, but leaves all the details in obscurity. He adjures his
readers with exceeding earnestness he over and over again adjures
them to forsake every manner of sinful life, to strive for every
kind of righteous conversation, that by faith and goodness they
may receive the salvation of their souls. He must have supposed an
opposite fate in some sort to impend over those who did otherwise,
rejecting Christ, "revelling in lasciviousness and idolatry."
Everywhere he makes the distinction between the faithful and the
wicked prominent, and presents the idea that Christ shall come to
judge them both, and shall reward the former with gladness,
crowns, and glory; while it is just as clearly implied as if he
had said it that the latter shall be condemned and punished. When
a judge sits in trial on the good and the bad, and accepts those,
plainly the inference is that he rejects these, unless the
contrary be stated. What their doom is in its nature, what in its
duration, is neither declared, nor inferrible from what is
declared. All that the writer says on this point is substantially
repeated or contained in the fourth chapter of his epistle, from
verses 12 to 19. A slight explanatory paraphrase of it will make
the position clear so far as it can be made clear. "Christian
believers, in the fiery trials which are to try you, stand firm,
even rejoicing that you are fellow sufferers with Christ, a pledge
that when his glory is revealed you shall partake of it with him.
See to it that you are free from crime, free from sins for which
you ought to suffer; then, if persecuted and slain for your
Christian profession and virtues, falter not. The terrible time
preceding the second advent of your Master is at hand. The
sufferings of that time will begin with the Christian household;
but how much more dreadful will be the sufferings of the close of
that time among the disobedient that spurn the gospel of God! If
the righteous shall with great difficulty be snatched from the
perils and woes encompassing that time, surely it will happen very
much worse with ungodly sinners. Therefore let all who suffer in
obedience to God commit the keeping of their souls to him in well
doing."
The souls of men were confined in the under world for sin. Christ
came to turn men from sin and despair to holiness and a
reconciling faith in God. He went to the dead to declare to them
the good tidings of pardon and approaching deliverance through the
free grace of God. He rose into heaven to demonstrate and visibly
exhibit the redemption of men from the under world doom of
sinners. He was soon to return to the earth to complete the
unfinished work of his commissioned kingdom. His accepted ones
should then be taken to glory and reward. The rejected ones
should Their fate is left in gloom, without a definite clew.
CHAPTER II.
DOCTRINE OF A FUTURE LIFE IN THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS.
THE Epistle to the Hebrews was written by some person who was
originally a Jew, afterwards a zealous Christian. He was
unquestionably a man of remarkable talent and eloquence and of
lofty religious views and feelings. He lived in the time of the
immediate followers of Jesus, and apparently was acquainted with
them. The individual authorship it is now impossible to determine
with certainty. Many of the most learned, unprejudiced, and able
critics have ascribed it to Apollos, an Alexandrian Jew, a compeer
of Paul and a fellow citizen of Philo. This opinion is more
probable than any other. Indeed, so numerous are the resemblances
of thoughts and words in the writings of Philo to those in this
epistle, that even the wild conjecture has been hazarded that
Philo himself at last became a Christian and wrote to his Hebrew
countrymen the essay which has since commonly passed for Paul's.
No one can examine the hundreds of illustrations of the epistle
gathered from Philo by Carpzov, in his learned but ill reasoned
work, without being greatly impressed. The supposition which has
repeatedly been accepted and urged, that this composition was
first written in Hebrew, and afterwards translated into Greek by
another person, is absurd, in view of the masterly skill and
eloquence, critical niceties, and felicities in the use of
language, displayed in it. We could easily fill a paragraph with
the names of those eminent in the Church such as Tertullian,
Hippolytus, Erasmus, Luther, Le Clerc, and Neander who have
concluded that, whoever the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews
was, he was not Paul. The list of those names would reach from the
Egyptian Origen, whose candor and erudition were without parallel
in his age, to the German Bleek, whose masterly and exhaustive
work is a monument of united talent and toil, leaving little to be
desired. It is not within our present aim to argue this point: we
will therefore simply refer the reader to the thorough and
unanswerable discussion and settlement of it by Norton.1
The general object of the composition is, by showing the
superiority of the Christian system to the Hebrew, to arm the
converts from Judaism to whom it is addressed against the
temptations to desert the fulfilling faith of Christ and to return
to the emblematic faith of their fathers. This aim gives a
pervading cast and color to the entire treatment to the reasoning
and especially to the chosen imagery of the epistle. Omitting, for
the most part, whatever is not essentially interwoven with the
subject of death, the resurrection, and future existence, and with
the mission of Christ in relation to those subjects, we advance to
the consideration of the views which the epistle presents or
implies concerning those points. It is to be premised that we are
forced to construct from fragments and hints the theological
fabric that stood in the mind of the writer. The suggestion also
is quite obvious that, since the letter is addressed solely to the
Hebrews and describes Christianity as the completion of
1 Christian Examiner, vols. for 1827 29.
Judaism, an acquaintance with the characteristic Hebrew opinions
and hopes at that time may be indispensable for a full
comprehension of its contents.
The view of the intrinsic nature and rank of Christ on which the
epistle rests seems very plainly to be that great Logos doctrine
which floated in the philosophy of the apostolic age and is so
fully developed in the Gospel of John: "The Logos of God, alive,
energetic, irresistibly piercing, to whose eyes all things are
bare and open;" "first begotten of God;" "faithful to Him that
made him;" inferior to God, superior to all beside; "by whom God
made the worlds;" whose seat is at the right hand of God, the
angels looking up to him, and "the world to come put in subjection
to him." The author, thus assuming the immensely super human rank
and the pre existence of Christ, teaches that, by the good will of
God, he descended to the world in the form of a man, to save them
that were without faith and in fear, them that were lost through
sin. God "bringeth in the first begotten into the world." "When he
cometh into the world he saith, Sacrifice and offering thou
wouldest not, but a body hast thou prepared for me." "Jesus was
made a little while inferior to the angels." "Forasmuch, then, as
the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself
likewise partook of the same;" that is, in order to pass through
an experience like that of those whom he wished to deliver, he
assumed their nature. "He taketh not hold of angels, but he taketh
hold of the seed of Abraham:" in other words, he aimed not to
assist angels, but men. These passages, taken in connection with
the whole scope and drift of the document in which they are found,
declare that Jesus was a spirit in heaven, but came to the earth,
taking upon him a mortal frame of flesh and blood.
Why he did this is the question that naturally arises next. We do
not see how it is possible for any person to read the epistle
through intelligently, in the light of an adequate knowledge of
contemporary Hebrew opinions, and not perceive that the author's
answer to that inquiry is, that Christ assumed the guise and fate
of humanity in order to die; and died in order to rise from the
dead; and rose from the dead in order to ascend to heaven; and
ascended to heaven in order to reveal the grace of God opening the
way for the celestial exaltation and blessedness of the souls of
faithful men. We will commence the proof and illustration of these
statements by bringing together some of the principal passages in
the epistle which involve the objects of the mission of Christ,
and then stating the thought that chiefly underlies and explains
them.
"We see Jesus who was made a little while inferior to the angels,
in order that by the kindness of God he might taste death for
every man through the suffering of death crowned with glory and
honor." With the best critics, we have altered the arrangement of
the clauses in the foregoing verse, to make the sense clearer. The
exact meaning is, that the exaltation of Christ to heaven after
his death authenticated his mission, showed that his death had a
divine meaning for men; that is, showed that they also should rise
to heaven. "When he had by himself made a purification of our
sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high." "For
this cause he is the Mediator of the new covenant, that, his death
having occurred, (for the redemption of the transgressions under
the first covenant,) they which are called might enter upon
possession of the promised eternal inheritance." The force of this
last passage, with its context, turns on the double sense of the
Greek word for covenant, which likewise means a will. Several
statements in the epistle show the author's belief that the
subjects of the old dispensation had the promise of immortal life
in heaven, but had never realized the thing itself.2 Now, he
maintains the purpose of the new dispensation to be the actual
revelation and bestowment of the reality which anciently was only
promised and typically foreshadowed; and in the passage before us
he figures Christ the author of the Christian covenant as the
maker of a will by which believers are appointed heirs of a
heavenly immortality. He then following the analogy of
testamentary legacies and legatees describes those heirs as
"entering on possession of that eternal inheritance" "by the death
of the Testator." He was led to employ precisely this language by
two obvious reasons: first, for the sake of that paronomasia of
which he was evidently fond; secondly, by the fact that it really
was the death of Christ, with the succeeding resurrection and
ascension, which demonstrated both the reality of the thing
promised in the will and the authority of the Testator to bestow
it.
All the expressions thus far cited, and kindred ones scattered
through the work, convey a clear and consistent meaning, with
sharp outlines and coherent details, if we suppose their author
entertained the following general theory; and otherwise they
cannot be satisfactorily explained. A dreadful fear of death,
introduced by sin, was tyrannizing over men. In consequence of
conscious alienation from God through transgressions, they
shuddered at death. The writer does not say what there was in
death that made it so feared; but we know that the prevailing
Hebrew conception was, that death led the naked soul into the
silent, dark, and dreary region of the under world, a doleful
fate, from which they shrank with sadness at the best, guilt
converting that natural melancholy into dread foreboding. In the
absence of any evidence or presumption whatever to the contrary,
we are authorized, nay, rather forced, to conclude that such a
conception is implied in the passages we are considering. Now, the
mission of Jesus was to deliver men from that fear and bondage, by
assuring them that God would forgive sin and annul its
consequence. Instead of banishing their disembodied spirits into
the sepulchral Sheol, he would take them to himself into the glory
above the firmament. This aim Christ accomplished by literally
exemplifying the truths it implies; that is, by personally
assuming the lot of man, dying, rising from among the spirits of
the dead, and ascending beyond the veil into heaven. By his death
and victorious ascent "he purged our sins," "redeemed
transgressions," "overthrew him that has the power of death," in
the sense that he thereby, as the writer thought, swept away the
supposed train of evils caused by sin, namely, all the
concomitants of a banishment after death into the cheerless
subterranean empire.
It will be well now to notice more fully, in the author's scheme,
the idea that Christ did locally ascend into the heavens, "into
the presence of God," "where he ever liveth," and
2 xi. 13, 16, et al. See chap. x. 36,
where to receive the promise most plainly means to obtain the thing
promised, as it does several times in the epistle.
So Paul, in his speech at Antioch, (Acts xiii. 32, 33,) says,
"We declare unto you glad tidings, how that the promise which
was made unto the fathers, God hath fulfilled the same unto us
their children, in that he hath raised up Jesus again" that by
this ascent he for the first time opened the way for others to
ascend to him where he is, avoiding the doom of Hades.
"We have a great High Priest, who has passed through the
heavens, Jesus, the Son of God." "Christ is not entered into the
most holy place, made with hands, the figure of the true, but into
heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us."
Indeed, that Jesus, in a material and local sense, rose to heaven,
is a conception fundamental to the epistle and prominent on all
its face. It is much more necessary for us to show that the author
believed that the men who had previously died had not risen
thither, but that it was the Savior's mission to open the way for
their ascension.
It is extremely significant, in the outset, that Jesus is called
"the first leader and the bringer to the end of our faith;" for
the words in this clause which the common version renders "author"
and "finisher"3 mean, from their literal force and the latent
figure they contain, "a guide who runs through the course to the
goal so as to win and receive the prize, bringing us after him to
the same consummation." Still more striking is the passage we
shall next adduce. Having enumerated a long list of the choicest
worthies of the Old Testament, the writer adds, "These all, having
obtained testimony through faith, did not realize the promise,4
God having provided a better thing for us, that they without us
should not be perfected," should not be brought to the end, the
end of human destiny, that is, exaltation to heaven. Undoubtedly
the author here means to say that the faithful servants of God
under the Mosaic dispensation were reserved in the under world
until the ascension of the Messiah. Augustine so explains the text
in hand, declaring that Christ was the first that ever rose from
the under world.5 The same exposition is given by Origen,6 and
indeed by nearly every one of the Fathers who has undertaken to
give a critical interpretation of the passage. This doctrine
itself was held by Catholic Christendom for a thousand years; is
now held by the Roman, Greek, and English Churches; but is, for
the most part, rejected or forgotten by the dissenting sects, from
two causes. It has so generally sunk out of sight among us, first,
from ignorance, ignorance of the ancient learning and opinions on
which it rested and of which it was the necessary completion;
secondly, from rationalistic speculations, which, leading men to
discredit the truth of the doctrine, led them arbitrarily to deny
its existence in the Scripture, making them perversely force the
texts that state it and wilfully blink the texts that hint it.
Whether this be a proper and sound method of proceeding in
critical investigations any one may judge. To us it seems equally
unmanly and immoral. We know of but one justifiable course, and
that is, with patience, with earnestness, and with all possible
aids, to labor to discern the real and full meaning of the words
according to the understanding and intention of the author. We do
so elsewhere, regardless of consequences. No other method, in the
case of the Scriptures, is exempt from guilt.
The meaning (namely, to bring to the end) which we have above
attributed to the word [NAC](translated in the common version to
make perfect) is the first meaning and the
3 Robinson's Lexicon, first edition, under [NAC]; also see Philo,
cited there.
4 Ch. x. 36.
5 Epist. CLXIV. sect. ix., ed. Benedictina.
6 De Principiis, lib. ii. cap. 2.
etymological force of the word. That we do not refine upon it
over nicely in the present instance, the following examples from
various parts of the epistle unimpeachably witness. "For it was
proper that God, in bringing many sons unto glory, should make him
who was the first leader of their salvation perfect [reach the
end] through sufferings;" that is, should raise him to heaven
after he had passed through death, that he, having himself arrived
at the glorious heavenly goal of human destiny, might bring others
to it. "Christ, being made perfect," (brought through all the
intermediate steps to the end,) "became the cause of eternal
salvation to all them that obey him; called of God an high
priest." The context, and the after assertion of the writer that
the priesthood of Jesus is exercised in heaven, show that the word
"perfected," as employed here, signifies exalted to the right hand
of God. "Perfection" (bringing unto the end) "was not by the
Levitical priesthood." "The law perfected nothing, but it was the
additional introduction of a better hope by which we draw near
unto God." "The law maketh men high priests which have infirmity,
which are not suffered to continue, by reason of death; but the
word of the oath after the law maketh the Son perfect for
evermore," bringeth him to the end, namely, an everlasting
priesthood in the heavens. That Christian believers are not under
the first covenant, whereby, through sin, men commencing with the
blood of Abel, the first death were doomed to the lower world, but
are under the second covenant, whereby, through the gracious
purpose of God, taking effect in the blood of Christ, the first
resurrection, they are already by faith, in imagination,
translated to heaven, this is plainly what the author teaches in
the following words: "Ye are not come to the palpable mount that
burneth with fire, and to blackness and tempest, where so terrible
was the sight that Moses exceedingly trembled, but ye are come to
Mount Zion, to the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable
company of angels, and to God, and to the spirits of the perfected
just, and to Jesus, the mediator of the new covenant, and to the
lustral blood which speaks better things than that of Abel." The
connection here demonstrates that the souls of the righteous are
called "perfected," as having arrived at the goal of their destiny
in heaven. Again, the author, when speaking of the sure and
steadfast hope of eternal life, distinguishes Jesus as a
[non-ASCII characters], one who runs before as a scout or leader:
"the Forerunner, who for us has entered within the veil," that is,
has passed beyond the firmament into the presence of God. The Jews
called the outward or lowermost heaven the veil.7 But the most
conclusive consideration upon the opinion we are arguing for and
it must be entirely convincing is to be drawn from the first half
of the ninth chapter. To appreciate it, it is requisite to
remember that the Rabbins with whose notions our author was
familiar and some of which he adopts in his reasoning were
accustomed to compare the Jewish temple and city with the temple
and city of Jehovah above the sky, considering the former as
miniature types of the latter. This mode of thought was originally
learned by philosophical Rabbins from the Platonic doctrine of
ideas, without doubt, and was entertained figuratively,
spiritually; but in the unreflecting, popular mind the Hebraic
views to which it gave rise were soon grossly materialized and
located. They also derived the same conception from God's command
to Moses when he was about to build the tabernacle:
7 Schoettgen, Hora Hebraica et Talmudica in 2 Cor. xii. 2.
"See thou make all things according to the pattern showed to thee
in the mount." They refined upon these words with many conceits.
They compared the three divisions of the temple to the three
heavens: the outer Court of the Gentiles corresponded with the
first heaven, the Court of the Israelites with the second heaven,
and the Holy of Holies represented the third heaven or the very
abode of God. Josephus writes, "The temple has three compartments:
the first two for men, the third for God, because heaven is
inaccessible to men."8 Now, our author says, referring to this
triple symbolic arrangement of the temple, "The priests went
always into the first tabernacle, accomplishing the service, but
into the second went the high priest alone, once every year, not
without blood; this, which was a figure for the time then present,
signifying that the way into the holiest of all9 was not yet laid
open; but Christ being come, an high priest of the future good
things, by his own blood he entered in once into the holy place,
having obtained eternal deliverance." The points of the comparison
here instituted are these: On the great annual day of atonement,
after the death of the victim, the Hebrew high priest went into
the adytum of the earthly temple, but none could follow; Jesus,
the Christian high priest, went after his own death into the
adytum of the heavenly temple, and enabled the faithful to enter
there after him. Imagery like the fore going, which implies a
Sanctum Sanctorum above, the glorious prototype of that below, is
frequent in the Talmud.10 To remove all uncertainty from the
exposition thus presented, if any doubt linger, it is only
necessary to cite one more passage from the epistle. "We have,
therefore, brethren, by the blood of Jesus, leading into the
holiest, a free road, a new and blessed road, which he hath
inaugurated for us through the veil, that is to say, through his
flesh." As there was no entrance for the priest into the holiest
of the temple save by the removal of the veil, so Christ could not
enter heaven except by the removal of his body. The blood of Jesus
here, as in most cases in the New Testament, means the death of
Jesus, involving his ascension. Chrysostom, commenting on these
verses, says, in explanation of the word [non-ASCII characters],
"Christ laid out the road and was the first to go over it.
The first way was of death, leading [ad inferos] to the under
world; the other is of life," leading to heaven.
The interpretation we have given of these passages reconciles
and blends that part of the known contemporary opinions which
applies to them, and explains and justifies the natural force
of the imagery and words employed.
Its accuracy seems to us unquestionable by any candid person who is
competently acquainted with the subject. The substance of it is,
that Jesus came from God to the earth as a man, laid down his life
that he might rise from the dead into heaven again, into the real
Sanctum Sanctorum of the universe, thereby proving that faithful
believers also shall rise thither, being thus delivered, after the
pattern of his evident deliverance, from the imprisonment of the
realm of death below.
We now proceed to quote and unfold five distinct passages, not yet
brought forward, from the epistle, each of which proves that we
are not mistaken in attributing to the writer
8 Antiq. lib. iii. cap. 6, sect. 4; ibid. cap. 7, sect. 7.
9 Philo declares, "The whole universe is one temple of God, in
which the holiest of all is heaven." De Monarchia, p. 222, ed.
Mangey.
10 Schoettgen, Dissertatio de Hierosolyma Coelesti, cap. 2, sect.
9.
of it the above stated general theory. In the first verse which we
shall adduce it is certain that the word "death" includes the
entrance of the soul into the subterranean kingdom of ghosts. It
is written of Christ that, "in the days of his flesh, when he had
earnestly prayed to Him that was able to do it, to save him from
death, he was heard," and was advanced to be a high priest in the
heavens, "was made higher than the heavens." Now, obviously, God
did not rescue Christ from dying, but he raised him, [non-ASCII
characters], from the world of the dead.
So Chrysostom declares, referring to this very text, "Not to be
retained in the region of the dead, but to be delivered from it,
is virtually not to die."11 Moreover, the phrase above translated
"to save him from death" may be translated, with equal propriety,
"to bring him back safe from death."
The Greek verb [non-ASCII characters], to save, is often so used
to denote the safe restoration of a warrior from an incursion into
an enemy's domain. The same use made here by our author of the term
"death" we have also found made by Philo Judaus. "The wise," Philo
says, "inherit the Olympic and heavenly region to dwell in, always
studying to go above; the bad inherit the innermost parts of the
under world, always laboring to die."12 The antithesis between
going above and dying, and the mention of the under world in
connection with the latter, prove that to die here means, or at
least includes, going below after death.
The Septuagint version of the Old Testament twice translates Sheol
by the word "death."13 The Hebrew word for death, maveth, is
repeatedly used for the abode of the dead.14 And the nail of the
interpretation we are urging is clenched by this sentence from
Origen: "The under world, in which souls are detained by death,
is called death."15 Bretschneider cites nearly a dozen passages
from the New Testament where, in his judgment, death is used to
denote Hades.
Again: we read that Christ took human nature upon him "in order
that by means of [his own] death he might render him that has the
power of death that is, the devil idle, and deliver those who
through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage."
It is apparent at once that the mere death of Christ, so far from
ending the sway of Death, would be giving the grim monster a new
victory, incomparably the most important he had ever achieved.
Therefore, the only way to make adequate sense of the passage is
to join with the Savior's death what followed it, namely, his
resurrection and ascension. It was the Hebrew belief that sin,
introduced by the fraud of the devil, was the cause of death, and
the doomer of the disembodied spirits of men to the lower caverns
of darkness and rest. They personified Death as king, tyrannizing
over mankind; and, unless in severe affliction, they dreaded the
hour when they must lie down under his sceptre and sink into his
voiceless kingdom of shadows. Christ broke the power of Satan,
closed his busy reign, rescued the captive souls, and relieved the
timorous hearts of the faithful, by rising triumphantly from
11 Homil. Epist. ad Heb. in hoc loc.
12 Quod a Deo mitt. Somn., p. 643, ed. Mangey.
13 2 Sam. xxii. 6; Prov. xxiii. 14.
14 Ps. ix. 13. Prov. vii, 27.
15 Comm. in Epist. ad Rom., lib. vi. cap. 6, sect. 6.: "Inferni
locus in quo anima detinebantur a morte mors appellatur."
the long bound dominion of the grave, and ascending in a new path
of light, pioneering the saints to immortal glory.
In another part of the epistle, the writer, having previously
explained that as the high priest after the death of the expiatory
goat entered the typical holy place in the temple, so Christ after
his own death entered the true holy place in the heavens, goes on
to guard against the analogy being forced any further to deny the
necessity of Christ's service being repeated, as the priest's was
annually repeated, saying, "For then he must have died many times
since the foundation of the world; but, on the contrary, [it
suffices that] once, at the close of the ages, through the
sacrifice of himself he hath appeared [in heaven] for the
abrogation of sin."16 The rendering and explanation we give of
this language are those adopted by the most distinguished
commentators, and must be justified by any one who examines the
proper punctuation of the clauses and studies the context. The
simple idea is, that, by the sacrifice of his body through death,
Christ rose and showed himself in the presence of God. The author
adds that this was done "unto the annulling of sin." It is with
reference to these last words principally that we have cited the
passage. What do they mean? In what sense can the passing of
Christ's soul into heaven after death be said to have done away
with sin? In the first place, the open manifestation of Christ's
disenthralled and risen soul in the supernal presence of God did
not in any sense abrogate sin itself, literally considered,
because all kinds of sin that ever were upon the earth among men
before have been ever since, and are now. In the second place,
that miraculous event did not annul and remove human guilt, the
consciousness of sin and responsibility for it, because, in fact,
men feel the sting and load of guilt now as badly as ever; and the
very epistle before us, as well as the whole New Testament,
addresses Christians as being exposed to constant and varied
danger of incurring guilt and woe. But, in the third place, the
ascension of Jesus did show very plainly to the apostles and first
Christians that what they supposed to be the great outward penalty
of sin was annulled; that it was no longer a necessity for the
spirit to descend to the lower world after death; that fatal doom,
entailed on the generations of humanity by sin, was now abrogated
for all who were worthy. Such, we have not a doubt, is the true
meaning of the declaration under review.
This exposition is powerfully confirmed by the two succeeding
verses, which we will next pass to examine. "As it is appointed
for men to die once, but after this the judgment, so Christ,
having been offered once to bear the sins of many, shall appear a
second time, without sin, for salvation unto those expecting him."
Man dies once, and then passes into that state of separate
existence in the under world which is the legal judgment for sin.
Christ, taking upon himself, with the nature of man, the burden of
man's lot and doom, died once, and then rose from the dead by the
gracious power of the Father, bearing away the outward penalty of
sin. He will come again into the world, uninvolved, the next time,
with any of the accompaniments or consequences of sin, to save
them that look for him, and victoriously lead them into heaven
with him. In this instance, as all through the writings of the
apostles,
16 Griesbach in loc.; and Rosenmuller.
sin, death, and the under world are three segments of a circle,
each necessarily implying the others. The same remark is to be
made of the contrasted terms righteousness, grace, immortal life
above the sky; 17 the former being traced from the sinful and
fallen Adam, the latter from the righteous and risen Christ.
The author says, "If the blood of bulls and goats sanctifies unto
the purification of the flesh, how much more shall the blood of
Christ, who having18 an eternal spirit offered himself faultless
to God, cleanse your consciousness!" The argument, fully
expressed, is, if the blood of perishable brutes cleanses the
body, the blood of the immortal Christ cleanses the soul. The
implied inference is, that as the former fitted the outward man
for the ritual privileges of the temple, so the latter fitted the
inward man for the spiritual privileges of heaven. This appears
clearly from what follows in the next chapter, where the writer
says, in effect, that "it is not possible for the blood of bulls
and of goats to take away sins, however often it is offered, but
that Christ, when he had offered one sacrifice for sins, forever
sat down at the right hand of God." The reason given for the
efficacy of Christ's offering is that he sat down at the right
hand of God. When the chosen animals were sacrificed for sins,
they utterly perished, and there was an end. But when Christ was
offered, his soul survived and rose into heaven, an evident sign
that the penalty of sin, whereby men were doomed to the under
world after death, was abolished. This perfectly explains the
language; and nothing else, it seems to us, can perfectly explain
it.
That Christ would speedily reappear from heaven in triumph, to
judge his foes and save his disciples, was a fundamental article
in the primitive Church scheme of the last things. There are
unmistakable evidences of such a belief in our author. "For yet a
little while, and the coming one will come, and will not delay."
"Provoke one another unto love and good works, . . . so much the
more as ye see the day drawing near." There is another reference
to this approaching advent, which, though obscure, affords
important testimony. Jesus, when he had ascended, "sat down at the
right hand of God, henceforward waiting till his enemies be made
his footstool." That is to say, he is tarrying in heaven for the
appointed time to arrive when he shall come into the world again
to consummate the full and final purposes of his mission. We may
leave this division of the subject established beyond all
question, by citing a text which explicitly states the idea in so
many words: "Unto them that look for him he shall appear the
second time." That expectation of the speedy second coming of the
Messiah which haunted the early Christians, therefore,
unquestionably occupied the mind of the composer of the Epistle to
the Hebrews.
If the writer of this epistolary essay had a firm and detailed
opinion as to the exact fate to be allotted to wicked and
persistent unbelievers, his allusions to that opinion are too few
and vague for us to determine precisely what it was. We will
briefly quote the substance of what he says upon the subject, and
add a word in regard to the inferences it does, or it does not,
warrant. "If under the Mosaic dispensation every transgression
received a just recompense, how shall we escape if we neglect so
great a salvation, first proclaimed by the
17 Neander, Planting and Training of the Church, Ryland's trans.
p. 298.
18 [Non-ASCII characters] is often used in the sense of with,
or possessing. See Wahl's New Testament Lexicon.
Lord?" "As the Israelites that were led out of Egypt by Moses, on
account of their unbelief and provocations, were not permitted to
enter the promised land, but perished in the wilderness, so let us
fear, lest, a promise being left us of entering into his rest, any
of you should seem to come short of it." Christ "became the cause
of eternal salvation to all them that obey him." "He hath brought
unto the end forever them that are sanctified." It will be
observed that these last specifications are partial, and that
nothing is said of the fate of those not included under them. "It
is impossible for those who were once enlightened, . . . if they
shall fall away, to renew them again unto repentance. . . . But,
beloved, we are persuaded better things of you, even things that
accompany salvation." "We are not of them who draw back unto the
destruction, but of them who believe unto the preservation, of the
soul." "If we sin wilfully after we have received the knowledge of
the truth, there is no longer left a sacrifice for sins, but a
certain fearful looking for of judgment, and of fiery indignation
to devour the adversaries." "It is a fearful thing to fall into
the hands of the living God." "If they escaped not who refused him
that spoke on earth, [Moses,] much more we shall not escape if we
turn away from him that speaks from heaven," (Christ.) In view of
the foregoing passages, which represent the entire teaching of the
epistle in relation to the ultimate destination of sinners, we
must assert as follows. First, the author gives no hint of the
doctrine of literal torments in a local hell. Secondly, he is
still further from favoring nay, he unequivocally denies the
doctrine of unconditional, universal salvation. Thirdly, he either
expected that the reprobate would be absolutely destroyed at the
second coming of Christ, which does not seem to be declared; or
that they would be exiled forever from the kingdom of glory into
the sad and slumberous under world, which is not clearly implied;
or that they would be punished according to their evil, and then,
restored to Divine favor, be exalted into heaven with the original
elect, which is not written in the record; or, lastly, that they
would be disposed of in some way unknown to him, which he does not
avow. He makes no allusion to such a terrific conception as is
expressed by our modern use of the word hell: he emphatically
predicates conditionality of salvation, he threatens sinners in
general terms with severe judgment. Further than this he has
neglected to state his faith. If it reached any further, he has
preferred to leave the statement of it in vague and impressive
gloom.
Let us stop a moment and epitomize the steps we have taken. Jesus,
the Son of God, was a spirit in heaven. He came upon the earth in
the guise of humanity to undergo its whole experience and to be
its redeemer. He died, passed through the vanquished kingdom of
the grave, and rose into heaven again, to exemplify to men that
through the grace of God a way was opened to escape the under
world, the great external penalty of sin, and reach a better
country, even a heavenly. From his seat at God's right hand, he
should ere long descend to complete God's designs in his mission,
judge his enemies and lead his accepted followers to heaven. The
all important thought running through the length and breadth of
the treatise is the ascension of Christ from the midst of the dead
[non-ASCII characters]into the celestial presence, as the pledge of
our ascent. "Among the things of which we are speaking, this is the
capital consideration, [non-ASCII characters] the most essential
point, "that we have such a high priest, who hath sat down at the
right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens." Neander
says, though apparently without perceiving the extent of its
ulterior significance, "The conception of the resurrection in
relation to the whole Christian system lies at the basis of this
epistle."
A brief sketch and exposition of the scope of the epistle in
general will cast light and confirmation upon the interpretation
we have given of its doctrine of a future life in particular. The
one comprehensive design of the writer, it is perfectly clear, is
to prove to the Christian converts from the Hebrews the
superiority of Christianity to Judaism, and thus to arm them
against apostasy from the new covenant to the ancient one. He
begins by showing that Christ, the bringer of the gospel, is
greater than the angels, by whom the law was given,19 and
consequently that his word is to be reverenced still more than
theirs.20 Next he argues that Jesus, the Christian Mediator, as
the Son of God, is crowned with more authority and is worthy of
more glory than Moses, the Jewish mediator, as the servant of God;
and that as Moses led his people towards the rest of Canaan, so
Christ leads his people towards the far better rest of heaven. He
then advances to demonstrate the superiority of Christ to the
Levitical priesthood. This he establishes by pointing out the
facts that the Levitical priest had a transient honor, being after
the law of a carnal commandment, his offerings referring to the
flesh, while Christ has an unchangeable priesthood, being after
the power of an endless life, his offering referring to the soul;
that the Levitical priest once a year went into the symbolic holy
place in the temple, unable to admit others, but Jesus rose into
the real holy place itself above, opening a way for all faithful
disciples to follow; and that the Hebrew temple and ceremonies
were but the small type and shadow of the grand archetypal temple
in heaven, where Christ is the immortal High Priest, fulfilling in
the presence of God the completed reality of what Judaism merely
miniatured, an emblematic pattern that could make nothing perfect.
"By him therefore let us continually offer to God the sacrifice of
praise." The author intersperses, and closes with, exhortations to
steadfast faith, pure morals, and fervent piety.
There is one point in this epistle which deserves, in its
essential connection with the doctrine of the future life, a
separate treatment. It is the subject of the Atonement. The
correspondence between the sacrifices in the Hebrew ritual and the
sufferings and death of Christ would, from the nature of the case,
irresistibly suggest the sacrificial terms and metaphors which our
author uses in a large part of his argument. Moreover, his precise
aim in writing compelled him to make these resemblances as
prominent, as significant, and as effective as possible. Griesbach
says well, in his learned and able essay, "When it was impossible
for the Jews, lately brought to the Christian faith, to tear away
the attractive associations of their ancestral religion, which
were twined among the very roots of their minds, and they were
consequently in danger of falling away from Christ, the most
ingenious author of this epistle met the case by a masterly
expedient. He instituted a careful comparison, showing the
superiority of Christianity to Judaism even in regard to the very
point where the latter seemed so much more glorious, namely, in
priesthoods, temples,
19 Heb. i. 4 14, ii. 2; Acts vii. 53; Gal. iii.
20 Heb. ii. 1 3.