the Fall, that even the unbelieving, who derive many benefits therefrom in this life, may not altogether perish in the bodily death. Not to say that the average duration of life is greater for the Gospel, it seems certain that life is of a higher type. Even bad men in Christendom are familiar with moral sentiments, great truths of humanity, which the heathenish intellect has not conceived. May not such truths, as food to the souls even of those who do not cleave to him who is the Truth and the Life, cause death itself to be divided, as the proper effect and token of the Redemption? And for judgment, it is as if the unjust, hearing the voice of God in the last call to life, should be putting on a glorious incorruption, and should perish in the act.

CHAPTER VIIL

THE HISTORICAL ARGUMENT.

"Our Saviour Jesus Christ, who hath abolished death, and brought life and immortality to light through the Gospel."

IT is often alleged that the doctrine of the soul's proper immortality is supported by the common consent of mankind; and many suppose that the view we have advanced is without a history, but is almost a new thing under the sun. Our previous discussions have sufficiently intimated the contrary; but we ought here to give a more full account of the hopes and fears, the beliefs and doubts, of men in the ages past, respecting their future destiny. A true account of these, and a more full statement of the effects of the received doctrine, will furnish, we think, a distinct and valid argument for our view.

§ 1. EASTERN AND ANCIENT DOCTRINE.

Among the Chinese, Buddhism is the only doctrine of human destiny that can be properly styled religious. It was introduced from India in the first century of our era, and its Hindoo doctrine of metempsychosis is too well known to be recited here. The other religious systems, or rather, substitutes for religion, are: 1st. That of Confucius, who stumbled upon the half-truth that virtue is its own reward, and needs no pay-day in an after life. The culture which he introduced might be called a parent-worship, and a reverence for the memory of the great. But this system, which has dedicated 1,560 temples to Confucius, is maintained simply for the sake of its rites, and as a useful establishment; it has no significance beyond

that which is seen. And this "sect of the learned," says Dr. Morrison, "which is so miserably deficient respecting the Deity, is also entirely silent respecting the immortality of the soul, as well as future rewards and punishments. Virtue is rewarded, and vice punished, in the individuals, or in their posterity on earth; but of a separate state of existence they do not speak."

2d. The sect of the Rationalists, founded by Lautsz in the sixth century before Christ, resembled not a little the Grecian Stoics; and, like them, so far as they held immortality at all, held it not for all men, but for a class. They taught the emanation of all good beings from the bosom of Reason, and their return thither for an eternal existence; but that the bad are destined to successive births with many sorrows. The immortality of the good man, however, was little more than an eternal fame. "He who does not dissipate his life is imperishable; he who dies and is not forgotten has eternal life." And, as though an impersonal life beyond the grave were of little account, the sect long endeavored to find an elixir which should insure longevity or immortality. They are now degenerated.2

3d. Another sect, less numerous, held that "there is no other principle of all things but a vacuum and nothing; from nothing all things have sprung, to nothing they must again return; and there all our hopes end." 3

3

The Hindoo doctrine is most important for our argument in its early history. And here its form is the same that reappears in some of the Grecian schools, viz: that the soul is immortal because it is eternal. This view is stated at large in a poetical document of very ancient date, the Bhagavad Gita, which is "admitted to contain the very essence of Brahminical philosophy, and which sets forth in a most lively manner, questions which must have agitated the Hindoo mind at all periods.” 4

The following extracts show its ethical and religious charac

1 Maurice, Anc. Phil., c. 4.

2 S. W. Williams, The Middle Kingdom, I. 242-249. 8 Ancient Fragments; New York, 1835, pp. 120,121. 4 Maurice, Anc. Phil. c.; 3, § 2.

ter. "Let the motive be in the deed, not in the event. Be not one whose motive for action is the hope of reward." "The man who, having abandoned all the lusts of the flesh, walketh without inordinate desires, unassuming, and free from pride, obtaineth happiness. This is divine dependence. A man being possessed of this confidence in the Supreme goeth not astray; even at the hour of death, should he attain it, he shall mix with the incorporeal nature of Brahm." "The soul neither killeth, nor is killed. You cannot say of it, it hath been, is about to be, or is to be hereafter. It is a thing without birth. It is ancient, constant, and eternal. . . As a man throweth away old garments and putteth on new, so the soul, having quitted its old mortal frames, entereth into others which are new. The weapon divideth it not; the fire burneth it not; the water corrupteth it not; the wind drieth it not away. It is indivisible, inconsumable, incorruptible; it is universal, permanent, immovable. . The former state of being is unknown; the middle [present] state is evident; the future state is not to be discovered."4

The Persians, with all their Dualism, have a restorationist doctrine of the soul. According to Zoroaster, it has Ormuzd for its creator, and is united to the body at its birth. At death it is sent to paradise, or to hell for its purification, according as good or evil predominates in its life, to await the resurrection. In that day Maschia and Maschiana, the parents of the human race, will rise first, and the judgment succeeds. Those not yet purified are sent again to hell. Here the tortures of three days and three nights, equal to an agony of three thousand years, suffice to reclaim the most wicked. The world shall melt, and be purified; hell and its demons shall be cleansed; Ahriman reclaimed and converted to goodness.

Of the Egyptian doctrine of the soul Herodotus and Diodorus have given different accounts; the former asserting that this people were "the first of mankind who had defended the immortality of the soul;" and that they held its transmigration through

1 Wilkins's trans. pp. 40, 43, 36, 37.

2 Zend Avesta; Boun Dehesch. Trans. by Du Perron, Paris, 1771. Tome II. pp. 341, 344, 384, 415, 416. Compare Fraser, Hist. of Persia, c. 4.

"1

various animal bodies, and its return to a human body, in a period of three thousand years. The latter tells us that they "considered this life as of very trifling consequence, and therefore valued in proportion a quiet repose after death. This led them to consider the habitations of the living as mere lodgings, in which, as sojourners, they put up for a short time, while they called the sepulchres of the dead everlasting dwellings, because they continue in the grave such an immeasurable length of time. " 2

8

The reconciliation of these statements has been attempted in various ways. One writer regards metempsychosis as an esoteric doctrine of the priesthood, and thinks the common people looked to the sepulchre as their final resting place. Another asks whether transmigration was a dreaded destiny, to be delayed by the preservation of the body? or did the embalmed body await its re-animation, when the soul should have ended its wanderings? or was this care of the body an expression of concern- an enacted prayer for the welfare of the soul?* Another remarks that the worthy alone were embalmed, after an ordeal from which kings were not exempt; and asks if the wicked alone were driven away from their bodies, and condemned to transmigration? "It is distinctly shown that all virtuous men became 'Osiris,' and returned again to the Good Being whence their souls emanated." And he concludes: "There is sufficient reason to believe from the monuments, that the souls which underwent transmigration were those of men whose sins were of a sufficiently moderate kind to admit that purification, the unpardonable sinner being condemned to eternal fire."5 Another writer, after an interesting discussion of the subject, says: "It would be vain to endeavor to combine these different statements and indications of opinion into a system which should represent the defined and universal belief of the Egyptian people."

6

1 Euterpe, c. 123. 2 Hist. 1. 1, c. 51; cited by Heeren, Hist. Researches, I. 190. 8 Heeren, ib. pp. 190-196. 4 Schlegel, Phil. of Hist. pp. 157-160, Bobn's ed. 5 Wilkinson, The Ancient Egyptians, I. 380. The last was probably an esoteric doctrine, as was a similar tenet of the Greek philosophers.

6 Kenrick, Egypt under the Pharaohs, I. 409, 410.