And death, and to a House that is appointed for All Living?'Jab xxx. 33. And Sheol' is that House.'-Job xvii. 13. 'What man that liveth,' asks David, 'that shall not see death, and that shall deliver his soul from the hand of Sheol?'— Ps. lxxxix. 48. David himself expected to go there, as we have seen, and here is another proof: 'O Lord, Thou hast stayed my soul from Sheol; Thou hast kept me alive, that I should not [yet] go down to the Pit.'-Ps. xxx. 3. this he calls, 'the way of All the Earth.'-1 Kings ii. 2. The good, venerable Hezekiah, also, said that in the cutting off of his days he should go to the gates of Sheol, and behold man no more with the inhabitants of this world.-Isa. xxxviii. 10. 11. We read of Abraham having died and being gathered to his people,'--Gen. xxv. 8; and Isaac also, and Jacob, the same,-xxxv. 29, xlix. 29, 33. Also, Ishmael, Moses, Aaron, and others, are said to have been 'gathered to their people,' and 'their Fathers.' Even 'a whole Generation' and 'another Generation after them,' were likewise 'Gathered unto their Fathers.'-Judg. ii. 10. And where were the Fathers gathered? Here are three passages of the divine record to answer this question: 'I [Father Jacob] will go down into Sheol, unto my son.'---Gen. xxxvii. 35; 'Ye shall bring down my gray hairs with sorrow to Sheol.' ---Gen. xlii. 38; "They shall bring down the gray hairs of Thy servant, our father, with sorrow to Sheol.--xliv. 31. Nobody ever doubts that all these ancient worthies have been raised from Sheol to a higher and more perfect sphere. Yet it is imagined, still, that only the wicked go there, and that it is a place of terrible, penal, endless sufferings. But such is not the Sheol of the Bible. The wicked, of course, descend to Sheol with all the rest of mankind. But they are TURNED, driven, impelled prematurely, (the Hebrew has this force.) by their sins, out of this life into the next. We certainly have no idea that all who depart this life entering upon Sheol, are equally happy, and 'shall bear the ('glorious") image of the heavenly,' equally soon, for no two individuals leave this world in precisely the same moral condition. Among the remedial powers which a wise and merciful Providence has there seen fit to appoint, there may exist both a Paradise, and a sphere of wholesome, disciplinary incarcera tion. Still, we believe it to be on the whole, an advanced, a higher and more congenial state of being than the present, where all, (for none go out from this ignorant, imperfect life prepared to sit down with the exalted angels,) are gradually elevated 'from glory to glory,' and are changed as the darkness is transformed into light in the sun's bright beams, by the spirit of Christ, 'into the same image.' We do not believe the after state to be one of aggravated sufferings, much less of useless, wanton, merciless tortures, because it is not a region of temptation and iniquity, which alone are the pay. masters of such wages. Sinning hath its birthplace, and must have its death-place, in flesh and blood. He that is dead is freed from sin;' 'he that hath suffered in the flesh hath ceased from sin;' 'the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak;' 'the flesh lusteth against the spirit; it is 'with the flesh we serve the law of sin.' And we know that 'flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God." But who will say that the work of Christ's redemption is finished at death, which merely releases us from a weak and sinful body, 'the source of passions and the seat of lust ?' Who will say that the many and the heinous sins of this mortal life do not entail upon our vital and moral natures any consequences whatever, not even those of remorse, from which we shall require salvation in the succeeding state? Nay; there is a prostration of the holier energies of the divine principle within us, occasioned by our contact with the evils of earth, very properly denominated 'death' in the oracles of truth, which shall in the after-state, require the quickening power of the Spirit for its resurrection, that the last vestige of 'mortality shall be swallowed up of life. Our sins have not merely to be taken away, but in the dispensation of Forgiveness and Sanctification, they are also to be blotted out, that they shall be remembered no more, so that we shall be raised to such a state of spiritual health and blessedness as if we had never sinned. Besides, the work of raising the human spirit to the glory of the celestial, is twofold. Beyond the triumphs of redemption, commences the operations of the spirit of sanctifying wisdom, that leads us up from the condition of mere innocency, to that of angelic knowledge, and an ever-advancing progress towards the glory of the Head of All Things.' And the consideration, that three fifths of the human species that are born, as it is estimated, are taken away in infancy, wholly undeveloped in the ca pacities of their intelligent or moral natures, is another ar gument that the Paternal Wisdom has appointed suitable and ample provision in the immediate post-mortem life, for the sustenance, well-being, and growth of so immense a host of intelligences, and for their ultimate attainment of the immortal sphere. May there not be a peculiar meaning in the following passages which has not been generally observ ed? Unto the Angels hath He not put in subjection the world to come?'--Heb. ii. 5. 'Are the Angels not all Ministering Spirits, sent out to minister to them who shall be heirs of salvation?'---Heb. i. 14. 'Do ye not know that the Saints shall judge the world?'---1 Cor. vi. 2. Thus saith the word of the Lord, not by might, nor by power, [not by coercion,] but by My Spirit, [which is Omnipotent Love,] shall ye Prevail.'---Zech. iv. 6. Away then with the notion of any after state of unmitigated or hopeless pains for the immortal spirit of man!-The dust shall return to the earth as it was, and the spirit shall return unto God that gave it.' And the Scriptures assure us of the presence of the Infinite Love in Sheol,---Ps; exxxix. 8; Amos ix. 2. We are told that 'the day of man's death is better than his birth.---Ec. vii. 1; that no man dieth to himself, but unto the Lord,' and that, in fact, 'to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord.' Sheol then is not a miserable world, else, again, Job would not have prayed to go there, as he did,---'O that Thou would'st hide me in Sheol.'---Job xiv. 13. Job believed that, 'There, [in Sheol,] the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest. There the Prisoners rest together, and hear not the voice of the oppressor. The small and great are there, [see Isa. xiv. 9, 10; Ezek. xxxi. 14--18.] and the servant is free from his master.'---Job iii. 17--18. Do not All go unto one Place?' asked Solomon,---Eccl. vi. 6. All go unto one place.'---Eccl. iii. 20. Neither can we believe with Rev. Mr. Balfour and others, that SHEOL is an unconscious State. In addition to the evidence against this which many of our former proofs contain, we name the following: 'Swallow them up ALIVE, as Sheol, and whole, as those that go down to the Pit.'---Prov. i. 12. 'And the earth open her mouth and swallow them, and they go down quick [LIVING] into Sheol.'---Numb. xvi. 30. The language of Solomon, Ec. ix. 10, 'there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge in Sheol whither thou goest,' is not to be interpreted so as to contradict his own teaching in many other places, and repeated declarations of Jesus, and the apostles. Some of the best critics are agreed in understanding this passage to be a precept, simply, against procrastination, against putting off 'what our hands find to do,' enforced by the consideration that death places our earthly work and devices beyond our power of completion, because it changes our sphere of being, and all our knowledge and habits. Taken ever so literally, however, this passage does not disprove Sheol to be a place of conscious being. We think the prophecies of the Old Testament have a good deal to do with the scenes and beings of the Middle World, which has several other scriptural names beside Sheol. Various terms expressive of the idea of sub-terranean, (we would only refer to Rev. v. 13, Phil. ii. 10, Col. ii. 20, and Eph. iv. 8,) also that frequent, mystic term Sea, and others even, which, without a more extensive opening of the subject we should not care to name, we have a strong prepossession to consider as evidencing the doctrine of The Three Worlds. Yet we do not of course attach an undue importance to these opinions, and have only introduced them because we believed them to afford an additional argument for Universal Reconciliation. The Scriptures are always plainest upon those doctrines which are most essential, and we freely acknowledge that if the Bible reveals anything at all upon the subject of an Intermediate State, we as yet see but as 'through a glass, darkly.' Undoubtedly, we shall all know a great deal more about the future state, when we come to get there. "For birth, and life, and death, and that strange state, All tend to perfect happiness, and urge, SHELLEY. 2d. That 'Hell' shall ultimately be Abolished. 'O, SHEOL, I will be thy Destruction!'---Hosea xiii. 14. 'O, HADES, where is thy Victory ?---1 Cor. xv. 56. If St. Paul had believed Hades to be an immense and eternal world of dreadful sufferings, which the Lord had built and fitted for the everlasting abode of His sinful offspring,---is it not surpassingly marvellous that, in all his numerous writings, which, indeed, constitute one-third of the New Testament, he should never have but once named it, and even in that solitary instance, that he should have alluded to it in a burst of rapturous exultation at its being swallowed up in a glorious victory? And yet he affirmed that he 'failed not to declare the whole counsel of God.' 'And Death and HADES were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death.'---Rev. xx. 14. 'And THE LAST ENEMY shall be Destroyed, DEATH. Death is swallowed up in Victory!' "Evil away for aye! "It suits not the eternal laws of Good, That Evil be immortal." $ "Sin is burn'd, In hell to ashes with the dust of Death."-FESTUS. |