pore, some 90 or 100 miles up the river, and thence by road. I fancy Mr. Heberlet will accompany him to Sumbulpore, and return soon after to Cuttack. He is most willing, and he will derive in every respect much benefit from the journey. They will have splendid opportunities of preaching, etc. I almost envy the honour and privilege conferred on brother Pike in commencing this mission. I am greatly mistaken if it does not become the most interesting part of our operations. Received on account of the General Baptist Missionary Society from January 16th, I. General Baptist Societies. FOREIGN MISSIONS.—TREASURER: W. B. BEMBRIDGE, Esq., Ripley, nr. Derby II. CHILWELL COLLEGE.—TREASURER: T. W. MARSHALL, Esq., Loughborough. III. HOME MISSIONS.-TREASURER: T. H. HARRISON, Esq., Wardwick, Derby. SECRETARIES: REVS. J. FLETCHER, 322, Commercial Road, E., and J. CLIFFORD, 51, Porchester Road, London, W. IV. BUILDING FUND.-TREASURER: C. ROBERTS, Jun., Esq., Peterborough. Monies should be sent to the Treasurers or Secretaries. Information, Collecting Man after Death. IV. " SOUL" AND "SPIRIT" IN THE HEBREW SCRIPTURES. MAX MULLER, speaking concerning the religion of the Hindoos and 66 May the eye go to the sun, the breath to the wind, Or go to the waters, if that is meet for thee, The unborn part-warm it with thy warmth- Carry him away to the world of the Blessed!" The word on which everything turns here is " Aga," which means unborn; a meaning which easily passes into that of imperishable, immortal, eternal. But it has been said that "Aga" also means goat. This is true; and sometimes an animal of the female sex was led after the corpse to the pile, and burnt with the dead body. But (1.) this custom was by no means general; (2.) it was strictly forbidden; (3.) the sex is wrong; (4.) the most important word, thy, is left out; and for these reasons that rendering is to be rejected. Whereas if the translation of unborn, immortal, is retained, the meaning of the whole passage becomes more natural and apparent.* In like manner the decision as to the teaching of the Hebrew Scriptures concerning "Man after Death" sometimes depends upon the right exposition of a peculiar phrase, such as "gathered to his people,' gathered to his fathers," or even on a single word like "Sheol." 66 An admirable and appropriate illustration of the right method of dealing in such cases is shown by the same author in treating the statement that many words for soul originally meant shadow. He says, "What meaning shall we attach to such a statement as that the Benin negroes regard their shadows as their souls. If soul is here used in the English sense of the word, then the negroes could never believe their English souls to be no more than their African shadows. The question is, Do they simply say that a (shadow) is equal to a (shadow); or do they want to say that a shadow is equal to something else, viz., b, a soul? It is true that we also do not always see clearly what we mean by soul, but what we mean by it could never be the same as mere shadow only. Unless, therefore, we are told whether the Benin negroes mean by their word for soul the anima, the breath, the token of life; or the animus, the mind, the token of thought; or the soul, as the seat of desires and * Max Müller's Hibbert Lectures on the Origin and Growth of Religion, pp. 80, 81, 82. GENERAL BAPTIST MAGAZINE, APRIL, 1879.-VOL. LXXXI.-N. S. No. 111 passions; unless we know whether their so-called soul is material or immaterial, visible or invisible, mortal or immortal, the information that certain savage tribes look upon the shadow, or a bird or a shooting star, as their soul, seems to me to teach us nothing." On this R. H. Codrington writes-"They use the word shadow figuratively for that belonging to man, which is like his shadow, definitely individual, inseparable from him, but unsubstantial. No Mota man believes that the Maori word for shadow, which is the same as for soul, means shadow; he knows it means something like it, a second self." Or, as MAX MULLER puts it, "they believe that after death their breath, having left the body, would reside in something like the shadow that follows them during life. What we have to do is to try to understand this transition of meaning; how, from the observation of the shadow which stays with us by day and seems to leave us by night, the idea of a second self arose; how that idea was united with another, namely, that of breath, which stays with us during life and seems to leave us at the moment of death; and how, out of these two ideas, the conception of a something separate from the body, and yet endowed with life, was slowly elaborated."* Precisely the same transition from the visible to the invisible, from the material to the immaterial, is observable in the use of the words "soul" and "spirit" in the Hebrew Scriptures. At once they bear us into the presence of physical realities analogous to the "shadow" of the Benin negroes and the "shooting stars" of the Fijians. The word for soul is also the word for "breath;" and that which describes the spirit" of man, also describes the wind that bloweth where it listeth, and whose sound we hear, but cannot tell whence it comes or whither it goes. The Hebrew said man was a "living soul;" and used a term which described the breath which is exhaled from the lungs; but no one will maintain that he believed that the breath was actually the soul. He meant that the soul was like the breath, in its seeming separableness from the man, in its airiness and unsubstantiality, and in its being essential to his whole and undivided existence. God breathes into man, and he becomes a living soul (Gen. ii. 7). The divine act is creative and distinguishing; the privilege and the honour of the human, as separate from the brute, creation. Still, all animals breathe, and the same word describes man and his dog. The "soul" is the token of life, the holder of it, for as soon as it ceases life is extinct; and yet this "breath," so called, is susceptible of tremendous damage by wrong-doing, and capable of the highest experience and noblest acts of justice, humanity, and devotion. It is represented as the anima, the principle of the life, of the senses; and also as the animus, the subject of all man's inward activities of knowing and feeling and wishing, the centre in which inheres the living personality, the will, the conscience, the heart. The same transition from the material to the immaterial is observable with regard to the word "spirit." "Spirit" and "wind" are described by the same word in the Hebrew, Greek, and Latin. The spirit is thus the breath of the wind, or the breath of the mouth (Ps. xxxiii. 6); or * Max Müller's Hibbert Lectures on the Origin and Growth of Religion, pp. 87, 88, 89 MAN AFTER DEATH. 123 that which returns to God who gave it at the time the dust returns to the earth (Ecc. xii. 8). But the Hebrews did not mean by these figures that they believed that "wind" changed the chaos of the creation into cosmos (Gen. i. 1); or that Pharaoh's breathing was troubled (Gen. xli. 8); or that he who does not rule his "breathings" is like a city that is broken down and without walls (Proverbs xxv. 28). The "wind" was but a figure of the inward life of man in its reality and force, in its mysterious invisibility and marvellous effects; in its capability of fellowship with the Unseen and the Eternal. In short the Hebrew believed in more than flesh; he has a self other than that we see, a self which is like the "breath," or the "wind ;" and which, when it passes away from the visible man, goes to the "gathering of the fathers" in "Sheol." V. THE TIMES OF THE PATRIARCHS. The first hint we have in the Bible as to "Man after Death," after the translation of Enoch, is the promise made by God to Abraham that he should die in a good old age and be gathered to his fathers. That interval is enormous, and the silence is suggestive. During those ten centuries, vast generations of men came and went, broke through the barriers of time into the dark future, and yet, as far as we know, their vision was restricted to the life that now is. No messenger speaks of future blessedness; no whisper is heard of "conditional immortality," no threat of eternal "annihilation," saddens their hearts. Their Titanic energy riots in sin; and sin, as it always will, breaks up and utterly befouls humanity, and stains the earth so deep that God has to cleanse it with the deluge. In Noah the race starts anew, and runs on through ten long generations before so much as a hint is reported concerning the future life. God To Abram, God's specially elect man, God is more fully revealed; and, according to a law of these Scriptures, with the fuller manifestation of God there comes a fuller disclosure of the eternal life of men. tells his faithful servant that he shall go to his fathers in peace. The phrase is peculiar and significant. It occurs for the first time (Gen. xv. 19) in a declaration concerning the position and future of Abram's descendants. It is next met with (Gen. xxv. 9) in the description of his decease. The Patriarch dies at 175, "and is gathered to his people;" and yet his father was buried at Haran, on the Euphrates, and separated from Machpelah, near Hebron, where Abram was buried, by more than 400 miles. Death had brought them together, notwithstanding this vast distance.* JACOB, too, is gathered to his fathers immediately after his decease, and yet he is not buried for eighty days (Gen. xlix. 30). AARON dies on Mount Hor, and MOSES on Nebo. Their bodies are in a strange land, but they themselves are gathered to their people. JOSHUA and all the men of his generation pass into the same condition. (Judges ii. 10).† * Did not the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews regard Abraham as believing in the resurrection of the dead? Hebrews xi. 17, 18, 19. + Cf. also Isaac, Gen. xxv. 19; David, Omri, and Manasseh, who were not buried in the tomb of their ancestors-1 Kings ii. 10; xvi. 28; 2 Kings xxi. 18. The phrase occurs too frequently to be a mere euphemism for death, and, moreover, it is already distinguished from the act of dying on the one hand, and the act of interment on the other; and it reminds us of the saying of David concerning his deceased son, "I shall go to him, but he shall not return to me;' and bears witness, at least, to the existence, in patriarchal times, of a faith (1) in the personal continuance of men after death; and (2) in the existence of a certain kind of fellowship amongst the dead in a future state. That hint of belief in a life beyond this life is repeated and enforced by the term chosen to describe the place or region in which this gathering together of the dead occurs. It is not in the grave. The Hebrew word for a grave as a place of interment or burying is common enough in the scripture. It occurs in Genesis xxxv. 20, and is used by Abraham when he speaks of the cave of Machpelah, for he buys that cave as a burying-place. Indeed the word was well enough known; but it was not adequate to describe all the Hebrews felt and believed concerning the State of the Dead. Therefore we have the word SHEOL, used as descriptive of the region in which the dead gather, where Abraham and Moses and David are brought into union with their fathers," or their "people." It is not to the grave; it is to sheol, that Jacob looks for consolation when he thinks of his son Joseph devoured by wild beasts; and without any doubt, he says to his sympathetic children, who would fain comfort him, "No, no! Don't attempt it. Let me die. I will go down mourning into Sheol to my son.' The signification of the term "Sheol" is, as Schultz says, "hollow," 66 cavernous," an "abyss." Hupfeld finds in the word the idea of "loose, lax being;" but several scholars almost simultaneously hit upon the fundamental meaning given above, and that is, without doubt, correct. On no account should it be regarded as meaning the GRAVE itself. Although the grave was, in all likelihood, the material fact which was subsequently clothed with the various ideas expressed in the word Sheol; yet, even where no grave is warranted, is Sheol thought of as the common place of abode of all the dead; and the longest dead are regarded as assembled there, and welcoming a later new comer reposing from the pain of life.§ Moreover the king of Babylon goes to Sheol, and yet his corpse is to remain unburied. Cf. Isaiah xiv. 18; Ezekiel xxxii. 22. In this respect, the following fact is of weight. "Of all the ancient versions NOT ONE translates Sheol by the equivalent of grave. The *The Hebrew is indicative of undoubted uncertainty. Cf. Delitzsch on the Pentateuch, I. 338. + Cf. Oehler's Old Testament Theology, I. 247-8. Cf. the words of Max Müller. "Here is the great lesson which the Veda teaches us! All our thoughts, even the apparently most abstract, have their natural beginnings in what passes daily before our senses. Nihil in fide nisi quod ante fuerit in sensu. Man may, for a time, be unheedful of these voices of nature; but they come again and again, day after day, night after night, till at last they are heeded. And if once heeded, those voices disclose their purport more and more clearly, and what seemed at first a mere sunrise, becomes, in the end, a visible revelation of the infinite, while the setting of the sun is transfigured into the first vision of immortality."-Hibbert Lectures, 233. § Schultz Old Testament Theology, Vol. I. |
