The Condition of Man after Death. 197 2. That they believed in the existence of the spirit after the death of the body, is evident likewise from the credit which they were disposed to give to the art of necromancy, by means of which the Jews believed that the spirits of the dead were summoned back to the present scene of existence.* The objection which is sometimes made, viz. that persons whose minds are under the influence of superstition are very inconsistent with themselves and in their opinions, does not avail anything in the present case; for it would, in truth, be a miracle of inconsistency, if those persons who believed that departed spirits were no longer existing, should, nevertheless, give full credit to the ability of such non-existent spirits, to reveal the mysteries of the future. The belief of the ancient Hebrews, therefore, on this subject was, that the spirits of the dead were received into Sheol, which is represented as a large subterranean abode,† into which we are told that the wicked were driven suddenly, their days being cut short; but the good descended into it tranquilly, and in the fulness of their years. This very spacious dwelling-place for those who have gone hence, is often described as sorrowful, and as the land of darkness and the shadow of death, Job x. 21; Ps. vi. 5; lxxxviii. 11-12; cxv. 17; Is. xxxviii. 18; but in Is. xiv. 9, et seq., it is represented as full of activity; and in other places, as we may learn from Job xxvi. 5, 6, and 1 Samuel xxviii. 7, more than human knowledge is ascribed to its inhabitants, which is, indeed, implied in the trust which was reposed in necromancers. In this abode, moreover, the Departed Spirits rejoice in that rest so much desired by the Orientals, (Job iii. 13); and there the living hope to see once more their beloved ancestors and children; and there also the servant is at length freed from his master, and enjoys a cessation from his labours: "There the wicked cease from troubling, there the weary be at rest."-Job iii. 13—19. That the ancient Hebrews believed the good and the bad to be separated in Sheol, although it might be inferred from their ideas of the justice and benignity of God (Matt. xxii. 32), cannot be proved by any direct testimony. The probability, however, that this was the case, seems to be increased, when it is remembered that the author of the book of Ecclesiastes, who in chapter iii. 18, speaks somewhat hesitatingly of the immortality of the soul, says, in chapter xii. 7, that "the spirit shall return to God who gave it;" [and, although he nowhere in express terms holds up the doctrine of future rewards and punishments, yet he informs us in chap. * Lev. xix. 31; xx. 6, 7, 26, 27; Deut. xviii. 11; 1 Sam. xviii. 3, 10; 2 Kings xxiii. 24; 1 Chron. x. 13; Is. xix. 3; xxix. 4; lvii. 9; comp. Zech. xiii. 2-6. + Gen. xxxvii. 35; comp. Numb. xvi. 30-33; Deut. xxxii. 22. xiii. 14, of something very similar to it, viz. “That God shall bring every good work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil."] We have not authority, therefore, to say positively that any other motives were held out to the ancient Hebrews to pursue the good and to avoid the evil, than those which were derived from the rewards and punishments of this life. That these were the motives which were presented to their minds in order to influence them to pursue a right course of conduct, is expressly asserted in Isaiah xxvi. 9, 10, and may be learnt also from the imprecations which are met with in many parts of the Old Testament. The Mehestani, who were disciples of Zoroaster, believed in the immortality of the soul, in rewards and punishments after death, and in the resurrection of the body; at the time of which resurrection, all the bad would be purged by fire, and associated with the good. (See Zend-Avesta; comp. Ezek. xxxvii. 1—14.) There is some uncertainty respecting the passages in Daniel, xi. 2, 3, 13; but it is possible that they may be a confirmation of the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead; and it is very clear that Haggai (ii. 23,) speaks of some state of glory after the termination of the present life. (Compare Zech. iii. 7.) These sentiments of the later prophets, which are perfectly in unison with what is said of the justice and clemency of God in other parts of the Old Testament, were at length adopted by the Jews generally, with the exception of the Sadducees, against whom they are defended in the apocryphal books of Maccabees and Wisdom. Thus the Jews were gradually prepared to receive that broader and fuller light which Jesus shed upon them, see 2 Tim. i. 10.— Dr. Jahn's Manual of Biblical Antiquities, pp. 363-5. Bishop Hall, (Invisible World:-Of the Souls of Men,) says: That the soul, after separation from the body, hath an independent life of its own, is so clear a truth, that the very heathen Philosophers, by the dim light of nature have determined it for irrefragable: In so much as Aristotle himself, (who is wont to bear ill for his opinion of the soul's mortality,) is confidently reported to have written a book of the Soul separate, which Thomas Aquinas, in his (so late) age, professes to have seen: Sure I am that his Master Plato, and that heathen Martyr, Socrates (related by him) are full of divine discourses of this kind. In so much as this latter, when Crito was asking him how he would be buried: I perceive (said he) I have lost much labour, for I have not yet persuaded my Crito, that I shall fly clear away, and leave nothing behind me; meaning that the soul is the man, and would be ever itself, when his body should have no being; And in Xenophon, (so Cicero cites him,) Cyrus is brought in saying Nolite arbitrari, &c. Think not, my dear sons, that when I shall depart from you, I shall then cease to have any being; for even while I was with you, ye saw not the soul which I had, but yet ye well saw, by those things which I did, that The Condition of Man after Death. 199 there was a soul within this body: Believe ye, therefore, that though ye shall see no soul of mine, yet it shall still have a being. Shortly, all but a hateful Epicurus have agreed to this truth: and if some have fancied a transmigration of souls into other bodies; others a passage to the stars which formerly governed them; others to I know not what Elysian fields; all have pitched upon a separate condition. In the work entitled Mortal Life, and the State of the Soul after Death, we read: "If man, or rather the soul of man, did not live in a former state, then the Almighty creates a new soul for every person who is born. There is, in short, a constant creation of souls. Our material frames may continue their kind,-similar bodies to themselves by the delegated power of God; but they cannot be supposed to create souls. We commonly believe that God creates souls at the time these bodies are produced which they are to inform." Mr. Samuel Blair also records his opinion that "the soul is a real creation as well as the body, although a different substance; "* and Lord Brougham remarks that while the material world affords no example of creation, of mind this cannot be said; it is called into existence perpetually before our eyes."+ Dr. Cromwell considers all these notions greatly below right, and even reverent, ideas of the operations of the Deity. Dr. Millingen, on the other hand, considers that "we are born with a soul; " but then arises the question, at what period the immortal essence joins the embryonic existence. Another theory is that "whenever a body is completely organised, there is a general law in nature, by which, without any particular interposition of the Deity, a soul immediately attaches itself to it; " but this, Dr. Priestley adds, supposes the pre-existence of all human souls; which, indeed, was the original doctrine of the soul, and what he thinks to be necessary to make the system complete and consistent."‡ Dr. Cromwell then refers to the opinion of modern physiologists, that soul and body, unitedly, may, after all, be only a proper reproduction; for that, allowing the soul to be essentially distinct from, it may be an essence comprehended by, one of those minute cells, in which every organised fabric, animal or vegetable, has been discovered to originate. (See Morell's Elements of Psychology, Part I.) Examples are not less rife, (says Dr. Cromwell,) of the immaterialistic faith that the human soul comes immediately from God, and is of the very nature-indeed, so to speak, a very fraction of God. It is beyond question that this doctrine prevailed with all such of the ancients as held that of the immateriality of the soul. The Indian or Egyptian philosopher never doubted it: it reigned from Plato, if not from Pythagoras, to Seneca, and Epictetus among the Greeks and Romans; and it was a marked *Mind and Matter, p. 133. Disc. Nat. Theology, p. 110. Priestley in Correspondence with Price, p. 372. feature of the new Platonism of Alexandria. Plotinus, dying, exclaimed "I am struggling to liberate the divinity within me." The pious James Montgomery sings: The sun is but a spark of fire, A transient meteor in the sky; "We are all emanations from the Infinite Essence," says Morell; and Mr. Blair states that he once heard an eloquent preacher say in the pulpit, "the soul is a part of God himself, and is deathless and indestructible;" thus nearly repeating Plutarch: "The soul is not God's mere work, but a part of himself: its creation was not by him, but from him, and out of him.” Dr. Cromwell urges that the progress of physiology indicates that psychology will hereafter not alone be based upon but moulded by it; and foretells that in due time will follow the common admission that the capacities called those of the Mind, are, by a law of the human creature, "determined by the size, form, and constitution of the Brain, the form, size, and qualities of which are transmitted by hereditary descent." "TO THE HOLY SPIRIT." A remarkable instance of sacred poetry becoming the household words of the poor is presented in the following, from Herrick's Noble Numbers," which, some fifty years since, was repeated by a poor woman in the ninety-ninth year of her age, named Dorothy King. This beautiful Litany and four others, she had learned from her mother, who was apprenticed to Herrick's successor in the vicarage of Dean Prior, in Devonshire. She called them her prayers, which, she said, she was in the habit of putting up in bed, whenever she could not sleep. She had no idea that these poems had ever been printed, and could not have read them if she had seen them. HIS LITANY, In the hour of my distress, Sweet Spirit, comfort me! When I lie within my bed, When the home doth sigh and weep, Sweet Spirit, comfort me! Life after Death-Reunion of Soul and Body. 201 When the passing-bell doth toll, And that number more than true, When the priest his last hath pray'd, When (God knows) I'm toss'd about Sweet Spirit, comfort me! When the tempter me pursu❜th Sweet Spirit, comfort me! When the judgment is reveal'd, LIFE AFTER DEATH.-REUNION OF THE SOUL AND BODY. The unequal distribution of good and evil in this world proves that there must be another state, where the good will be rewarded and the wicked punished: since, it is not possible that a Being of perfect justice and holiness, of infinite wisdom and power, should have so ordered things that obeying him and our own conscience should ever make us miserable, and disobeying them prove beneficial to us on the whole. Strongly as this argument proves the doctrine of a life after death, it is considerably strengthened by the universal agreement of mankind, with but few exceptions. Not only Jews, but all the nations of the world, learned or unlearned, ancient or modern, appear to have been persuaded that the souls of men continue after death. The full reward of good persons deceased is not yet bestowed upon them, nor the full punishment of the wicked inflicted; since these things are to follow the General Resurrection. The state of those that die in the Lord is not a state of insensibility; since our Saviour describes the soul of Lazarus as "carried by angels into Abraham's bosom," and there "comforted;" and he promised the penitent robber upon the cross, that he should be "that day |