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النشر الإلكتروني

VIII.

Witness of the New Testament

(hades-Gehenna)

MYSTERY OF MYSTERIES.

“Who sins, shall die; who dies, shall suffer pain.
Dire trinity of anguish, death and guilt,
On whose inscrutable foundations built
The riddle of creation racks man's brain!
Probe as we will, with firm persistent strain
Plunging thought's rapier-blade from point to hilt
Till the last heart's drop of the world be spilt,
Deep at the roots of life these three remain.
Sin, Death and Suffering! Mystery triune,
Whereof the name is legion! Multiform
Symptom of irremovable disease!
Discord that jars upon the sphery tune

Sung in the ears of seraphs! Sunless storm
Troubling the depth of God's refulgent ease!"

J. A. SYMONDS.

IN

VIII.

Witness of the New Testament-hades

N the preceding chapter we have seen what was the popular conception among the Jews as to the future life, at the time of our Lord's ministry. The vague hopes and beliefs that are found here and there in the Old Testament had in the three centuries that intervened between the close of the Old Testament and the Incarnation taken a definite form, and were associated with certain well-understood terms. Our Lord did not come to destroy but to purify and amend the doctrine of the Jewish Church, and to reveal truths that had hitherto been altogether concealed. Consequently we find that a large portion of the system of the Jewish and Rabbinical schools was incorporated in the doctrine of Jesus Christ, and although He occasionally denounced the corrupt glosses on the divine Law introduced by the Scribes and Pharisees, yet on the whole our Lord gave His approval to their teaching: "The Scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses' seat all therefore whatsoever they bid you observe, that observe and do . . .”1

1 St. Matt. xxiii. 2, 3.

Bearing this fact in mind, we not only may, but must, keep before us what was the belief as to the future life already in the mind of those whom our Lord addressed.

If the traditions of the Jews on this subject had been entirely or even largely mistaken, the first duty of an enlightened teacher would be to avoid adopting the terminology associated with this erroneous teaching, and in its place very plainly to set forth the truth as far as it could be expressed in human language.

When therefore we find that our Lord not only did not reject the traditional language of the Gentile and the Jew as to the future state, but on the contrary accepted and used it in many of the most solemn warnings He addressed to His disciples, we can only conclude that in the main the Gentile and the Jew had come very near to the truth.

And yet, when we speak of "the truth," we must not forget that it is quite possible, and indeed very probable, that all the language used in Holy Scripture as to the mysteries of the spiritual world is highly symbolical, and by no means to be subjected to a rigorously literal interpretation. The important point is this, that such language has been divinely approved of as most suited to convey to our minds ideas that are the "figures of the true." We, who can form no mental picture of a spiritual world, must be content dimly to shadow forth the "invisible things" of God through the instrumentåvтíTuπα тŵv åλn0ɩvŵv—exemplaria, Vulgate.

1

1 Heb. ix. 24.

ality of "the things that are made." Symbols are used by God to lift up our imagination and to bring before our thoughts certain ideas; they are, however, but "the copies of things in the heavens,”2 and of things that are beneath in the realm of the shadow of death, not the very "things themselves."

It is beyond our power to imagine how the omnipresent Deity can be said to be localised, but in the language of Holy Writ-as well in the New Testament as in the Old-Heaven is spoken of as the place where the divine glory of the illimitable Deity is sensibly manifested.

This language cannot be explained away as wholly metaphorical. St. Stephen confessed that "the Most High dwelleth not in temples made with hands," but he added the words from Isaiah: "Thus saith the Lord, The heaven is My throne." 4

Heaven is so often spoken of as "the throne of God," that while no doubt there is in such language an element of metaphor, there is also a sense in which the words are true. The Old Testament continually asserts or takes for granted that Heaven is the dwelling-place of God, and this truth was emphasised by the words of our Lord. He speaks again and again of "My Father which is in heaven," and when He taught His disciples to pray He bade them say, "Our Father which art in heaven."

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