gress what they believed to be the laws of God, or whether in dying they expressed their belief that they would be continued in a bodily existence by the Creator. For it is manifest from what we know of the Jews, that not merely one family but many would under similar circumstances have acted in the manner described by the historian, dying with the same fortitude and encouraged by the same hope. We have here a region in which there is no thought of the How this troublesome question has not yet arisen, nor is it likely to arise. No doubt has yet been entertained regarding the power of God, nor would such a doubt be likely to receive much encouragement here.

26. But the human mind will not refrain from speculation, and this brings us to the second method in which a belief regarding a future state may be held. It may be held after a mode determined by speculations regarding the possible conditions of a future state. Such speculations may of course take every variety of form, but yet there are three well-defined classes into which they naturally group themselves :

In the first place, we have the doctrine of an ethereal state, which may or may not be eternal ;

Secondly, we have the doctrine of a bodily existence, which may or may not be eternal; and,

In the third place, we have the doctrine that a future state is inconceivable or impossible.

27. The first of these beliefs was probably held by a portion of the Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans, and by most of the Jews. It was likewise held by many amongst the eastern nations. It formed indeed one of the two ways of imagining a future state, but it was of a very vague and dreary nature; and from the passage of Homer already

quoted (Art. 14), we realize the longing supposed to be felt by the inhabitants of such a place to escape into a more substantial region. Unquestionably it was not a place in which practical men like the Jews, for instance, would wish to dwell, and yet no doubt it had great attraction for minds of a visionary and ecstatic nature, who held matter to be the source of evil.

The return of the soul to its divine original, an Egyptian doctrine, the entrance into Nirvâna, proclaimed by Buddha, and the absorption into Buddha himself, proclaimed by some of his followers, are all proofs that a doctrine of this nature has peculiar fascinations for a dreamy order of minds. Nor must we analyse too rigidly the exact meaning and tendency of such doctrines, inasmuch as we cannot easily enter into the real feelings of those who propounded them, and who probably entertained conceptions which cannot adequately be clothed in words.

28. Coming now to the belief of a bodily existence, it is remarkable that the doctrine of a transmigration of souls was extensively prevalent amongst all the nations we have named, if we except the Jews. It was believed in, as we have seen, by a large class of the Egyptians; it was introduced into Greece by Pythagoras and his followers; it is considered to have been from time immemorial a common property of the various religions of the extreme East; and it is recorded by Cæsar that the Druids believed in the same doctrine, although they confined the transmigration to human bodies.

It will perhaps surprise many of our readers to learn the extensive prevalence of such a doctrine, wondering as they must how it is possible to attach certainty to an existence which passes through the body of various men and animals

--something perhaps like a draught of Lethe being administered at the moment of passage. But the ancients, being unable to rise to a higher conception of a bodily future, were compelled either to admit this doctrine or one yet more absurd, namely, that the very same body which was laid in the tomb will once more be animated by the spirit which formerly possessed it. It does not therefore surprise us that the ancients, with the exception probably of a portion of Egypt, and some of the Jews, should have preferred the doctrine of transmigration; but we are exceedingly surprised that the other alternative doctrine, of manifestly Egyptian parentage, should have come to be accepted by the modern nations of Europe under the garb of Christianity. We shall return again to this subject, but meanwhile let us observe that, when men first began to ask the How of a future state, the reply was something extremely vague and unsatisfying. No wonder, then, that a class of men who had not unlimited confidence in God, and who could not believe in either of the doctrines of a future state, should have lapsed into philosophical infidelity and denied the mmortality of the soul altogether.

29. We have thus arrived at a stage of development in which we may imagine the next step to be one which will throw some light upon this same question of How-that will give, or at any rate profess to give, some information regarding the conditions of a future life. The intellect of man had attempted to obtain such knowledge for itself, but the result was a conspicuous failure; the sword was not sharp enough, nor the arm which wielded it powerful enough, to hew down the thick and seemingly impenetrable barrier which fringes the avenue to the world of spirits.

"We cannot go to them," was the unanimous wail of the

ancient philosophers, till some of the more hopeful of them suggested as an alternative that they might come to us. For clearly, if A and B are separated from each other by a barrier, and there yet remains good-will between them, two courses are possible, and only two, if they are to be made acquainted with each other. If A is so weak as to be unable to overleap the barrier, and if at the same time it would be a matter of importance to him to become better acquainted with B, then B may be expected to surmount the barrier if it be surmountable, and exhibit himself to A.

30. As a matter of history, it appears that about the time of the birth of Christ there was an expectation, however vague, that something of this nature was about to take place. And when Christ made His appearance, and gathered round Him a little band of disciples, there can be no doubt that He claimed to be the bearer of intelligence from the world of spirits. Those who differ from one another as to the light in which they regard His person and doctrine will yet, we think, agree in this. The claim made by His disciples for His gospel was that it brought life and immortality to light (see Whately's Essays), and the grounds of the claim were built upon the belief that Christ had risen from the dead, and showed Himself after his resurrection to a body of men who had not previously believed that the Messiah Himself was to die and rise again.

His disciples in fine took His resurrection for a proof that life is possible after death. Christ was believed to be the first-fruits of a system that was destined ultimately to embrace in the same glorious immortality all those of His disciples who were united to their Master by a sincere and living faith. Evidently Paul attached much importance to the fact of Christ's resurrection, for he says (1 Cor. xv. 14),

"If Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain. Yea, and we are found false witnesses of God because we have testified of God that he raised up Christ; whom he raised not up, if so be that the dead rise not. For if the dead rise not, then is not Christ raised: and if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins."

31. Let us now try to ascertain what sort of future state was taught by Christ. In the first place, it was a bodily state a state which could even adapt itself with some modification to the views of the Pharisees who believed in the resurrection of the body. But the modification introduced is sufficiently important. The occasion of its announcement was a disputation with the Sadducees, who attempted to perplex Christ by stating to Him the case of a woman who had been married in this life to seven brethren in succession, and then asking Him whose wife she should be in the resurrection. We are told (Matthew xxii. 29) that in reply to the question, "Jesus answered and said unto them, Ye do err, not knowing the scriptures, nor the power of God. For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven." We may gather by implication from this narrative, that the question would have puzzled the Pharisees, who had certainly not arrived at this idea of the resurrection state.

They must evidently have thought that the resurrection body was to be similar to the present one, and although they believed in the existence and occasional appearance of angels, they cannot have risen to the idea that it was possible for man to reach a similar state after death.