fire, and will refine them as silver is refined, and will try them as gold is tried; they shall call on my name, and I will hear them.""1 Other quotations are added, which it is not necessary to repeat here. Returning to the wholly wicked, the account distributes them again, not formally but really, into two classes. The former, containing "the transgressors of Israel," and "the transgressors of the Gentiles," descend into Gehenna, and are punished in it twelve months; but “after twelve months their body perishes (b), and their soul is burned (), and the wind scatters them under the soles of the feet of the righteous, as it is said: ' And ye shall tread down the wicked; for they shall be ashes under the soles of your feet.'" The remaining class of sinners, of whom an enumeration is given including heretics, traitors, Epicureans, deniers of the law, etc., and ending with "Jeroboam the son of Nebat and his companions," "descend into Gehenna and are punished in it forever and ever, as it is said: And they shall go forth and look upon the carcasses of the men that have transgressed against me; for their worm shall not die, and their fire shall not be quenched; and they shall be an abhorrence unto all flesh.'" 5

Zech. 13: 9. This the Gemara tells us is the doctrine of the school of Shammai respecting the middle class. But the school of Hillel teaches that God, who always inclines to mercy, releases them from the penalty of descending into Gehenna.

2 In the Seder Olam occurs this variation: "After twelve months, as to the transgressors of Israel who have transgressed the law and the commandments, their soul shall decay (b), and their body shall perish (b), and they shall be reduced to ashes. And Gehenna shall cast them out, and the wind shall scatter them," etc.

Mal. 4: 3. Their purification seems to last twelve months. See below. 4 In the Seder Olam: "Gehenna shall be shut up before them, and they shall be punished in the midst of it forever and ever," etc.

5 There is, however, still another view, viz. that at the resurrection "the wicked, after they have appeared in shame and abomination and contempt before all the living" (in allusion to Dan. 12: 2), "shall return to death" (that is, as it respects their bodies), "but their spirit and soul shall return to Gehenna, in which it was before." Abarbanel on the opinions of the Jewish Rabbies, as quoted by Meier, Annotations to the Seder Olam, p. 1108. This he gives as the opinion of Maimonides, but he adds: "Or their opinion may have been that the wicked will not rise in the judgment, nor return to life, but will always remain in Gehenna in the future time also."

The fiction of a twelve months' punishment the Jews derive from a fanciful interpretation of Isa. 66: 23, on which they have long disquisitions. They did not, however, rest it wholly on exegetical grounds, as will be manifest from the following extract, which we copy from Meier's Annotations to the Seder Olam, referring apparently to the purification of the middle class: "This punishment, whether it pertain to the body alone, or to the soul with the body, or to the soul alone, differs according to each one's state and condition. For it cannot be that he in whom are partly good qualities and partly evil, should be eternally tortured with those extreme torments which have been mentioned; for, after the lapse of a certain time, that punishment will cease; namely, when that habit of sinning shall have been wholly wiped away and abolished by a perpetual oblivion, which according to our doctors of blessed memory, will be the time of twelve months." We beg the reader to notice here, first, that the writer bases his argument on the assumed unreasonableness of endless punishment for any but the worst sinners. "It cannot be," etc.; secondly, that he and all the other Jewish writers understand by eternal punishment, not annihilation, but eternal misery. Of those who, according to the above figment, are reduced to ashes at the end of twelve months and scattered by the wind, it is expressly said they are "punished twelve months." It may be well to remember this, since the author under review, who frequently quotes the opinions of the Jewish doctors, endeavors to maintain that by eternal punishment we may understand the eternal loss of life by annihilation. In this the Jewish usage is as directly against him, as are the principles of sound exegesis.?

1

Our readers are, we trust, convinced by this time, that on this momentous subject the Jewish schools have each its

Annotations, p. 290.

2 In the Talmud (Sanhedrim, Chap. 11) is an enumeration of those who have no portion in the world to come (san Bbb pån oss). These are plainly all who are excluded from the Paradise of the righteous, whatever may be their particular destiny, a point on which, as we have seen, the Jewish doctors are not agreed.

dream and its interpretation. The writers of the New Testament, retaining the main ideas of Gehenna as a place of positive punishment, and of fire as a symbol of torment, reject the confusions and contradictions and false distinctions of the Rabbis, and unfold to us the truth, so far as it is necessary that we should know it.

2. Life and death. In the primitive constitution of God's moral government over man, life was announced as the reward of obedience, and death as the penalty of transgression. Whatever else may have been comprehended under this latter term, it certainly included the death of the body. This was that great public act by which God visibly laid upon man the penalty of sin. But that the penalty would have ended here, we have not the least warrant for affirming. Death does not now, under an economy of grace, close the history of man, and we have no right to say that without such an economy it would have closed it. That it would have had for its proper sequel an eternity of misery, such as that of the fallen angels, we have no ground for denying. It is further to be noticed that death began in a true sense with the transgression. Not only did man fall under its penalty outwardly, as a condemned culprit, in the day when he sinned, but inwardly also. Death began to work in both his body and his soul; steadily conducting the former to the dust out of which it was taken, and making the latter continually more and more a "vessel of wrath fitted to destruction."

In accordance with this comprehensive idea, the words life and death are abundantly used in the New Testament. Men are represented as now dead dead in sin, dead to God and righteousness and, as such, under his wrath and curse. And this present death has for its sequel the second death. Both are, to those who remain out of Christ, indivisible parts of one terrible whole. In like manner the converted sinner's life begins in this world the very day when he

3 As Maimonides says: "They have greatly confused themselves, so that you can hardly find one man who has explained the matter well" (Commentary on Sanhedrim, Chap. 11). This he says of the whole Rabbinic doctrine of rewards and penalties.

is, through repentance and faith, united to Christ; and it is completed at the resurrection. He has now in his soul the dawn of eternal life; and the dawn not only ushers in the

day, but is itself a part of it.

To illustrate this, let us con

sider a few passages of the New Testament.

We will first direct the reader's attention to the following words, which occur in our Lord's discourse in the synagogue at Capernaum :

"Then said Jesus unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you. Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me, and I in him. As the living Father hath sent me, and I live by the Father; so he that eateth me, even he shall live by me. This is that bread which came down from heaven; not as your fathers did eat manna, and are dead; he that eateth of this bread shall live forever." John 6: 53-58.

The words: "Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you," have for their converse: "He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life." It is a life that begins in the believer's soul, the moment he begins to feed on Christ, the living bread, as is more fully expressed in the fifty-fifth verse: "He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me and I in him." Whoever enjoys this blessed union with Christ has life in him has it as a present possession. It is the beginning of eternal life, and will be completed at the resurrection. Hence our Saviour adds to the declaration that he "hath eternal life;" "and I will raise him up at the last day." Eternal life does not begin at the resurrection, but then it has its consummation. The last clause of the above passage: "Not as your fathers did eat manna, and are dead: he that eateth of this bread shall live forever," is explained by another remarkable declaration of our Lord, uttered when he was on the way to the grave of Lazarus, and which beautifully connects the believer's present life in Christ with its final consummation in the resurrection of his body.

"Jesus saith unto her, Thy brother shall rise again. Martha saith unto

him, I know that he shall rise again in the resurrection at the last day. Jesus saith unto her, I am the resurrection and the life; he that believeth on me, though he die, shall live.1 And every one that liveth, and believeth on me, shall not die forever." John 11: 23-26.

2

Our Saviour here, as elsewhere, designedly employs the words life and death in a two-fold sense, the lower and the higher; as much as to say: Though he die in respect to his body, he shall yet live. Death to him shall be no death; it shall not interrupt the life of his soul in Christ, and at the resurrection it shall be abolished in every sense. Many similar declarations of our Lord will readily recur to the reader; as, for example, the following: "He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath eternal life, and cometh not into condemnation; but has passed from death unto life."3 The transition from death to life has already taken place in his soul; and life in Christ brings with itself justification also through Christ; as it is written: "There is therefore now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus." 4

1 κἂν ἀποθάνῃ, ζήσεται. We prefer this simple literal rendering to the other: though he were dead, he shall live, which would more properly be: kûv veкpóc ỷ (compare Luke 15: 24). As it respects the main point, however, this is unes. sential.

2 Compare Matt. 10: 39: "He that findeth his life shall lose it: and he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it" ("keep it unto life eternal,” John 12: 25). In Maimonides's commentary on the Mishna (Sanhedrim, Cap. 11) is a passage which exhibits a striking agreement with the above words of our Saviour, in respect to the two-fold use of the words life and death. After affirming that the resurrection belongs to the righteous alone, he adds: "But how shall the wicked live again, since even when among the living they are dead; as [our Rabbies] have said: "The wicked, even when among the living, are called dead; the righteous, even when among the dead, are called living."

3 John 5: 24. On the Perfect, μɛтаßeßŋkɛv, see for a refutation of the false position of Bretschneider the excellent remarks of De Wette: "By the very act of believing he has passed. This Perfect is here, as in 3: 18; 1 John 3: 14; to be retained in its proper sense (als solches)." He explains ék tov davátov, “from spiritual death," with references to John 8: 51; Rom. 7: 10; 8: 6; and adds: “As this certainly has for its condition not only bodily death and all the misery of sin, but also the so-called second death, or damnation; so also there necessarily lies in the words μeтaßéẞnkev, K. 7. 2. the root and hope of the resurrection, in the sense of v. 29 [the literal resurrection at the last day]. But we do not satisfy the idea, when we restrict it to this. Com. in loco.

4 Rom. 8: 1.