The question often comes up in even the most candid and honest minds: Why is the Pentateuch silent, or at least, so nearly silent as to the rewards and punishments of the future life?——Moreover, there is a class of critics who are fain to decry the Hebrew people as almost contemptibly low in point of knowledge, culture, and civilization, and who are wont to deny that the Mosaic system, civil or religious, has any allusion to the future life or even assumes its existence.——From this supposedfact, they infer that the Hebrew people and even Moses himself had no knowledge of the future life.
In briefly discussing this subject, I propose,
1. To qualify somewhat the absolute statement—No allusion to the future life or assumption of its existence.
2. To give some reasons for placing the Theocracy mainly on the basis of temporal rewards and punishments.
3. To maintain that Moses and the patriarchs knew and believed in the future life as one of rewards and punishments.
1. I propose to qualify somewhat the absolute statement—“No allusion to the future life and no assumption of its existence.”
Here I call attention to the remarkable fact that there are several statutes without penalties—left simply upon the consciences of men and upon their sense of the fear of God.——As to those who violate the third of the ten commandments, it is simply said, “The Lord will not hold him guiltless”; but it is not intimated that any due punishment should befall him in the present life. The statutes touching this sin stand also without penalties. Correspondingly the statutes forbid perjury; but they seem to leave the sanctity of the solemn oath upon the conscience and upon men’s fear of God. So of the precept, “Thou shalt not revile the judges, nor curse the rulers of thy people” (Ex. 22: 28).
Now it scarcely need be suggested that human laws without penalties are mere puerilities—virtually no laws at all. Suppose under any human government, sundry statutes were left without penalties, the law saying only, “he shall bear his iniquity”; “his sin shall be upon him”: Would not the whole body of lawless, law-breaking men say in their heart, What of that? What then? Every violator of human law knows well enough that there is nothing to fear from it beyond the grave. If human law will only let them have their way in this world, they would scoff at the thought of its penalties in the next.——Now my point is that the Hebrew statutes did not leave the law-breaker’s conscience in this attitude. The man who scorned those statutes because they stood without penalties in this world had something to think of for the world to come.Those statutes, left without penalties for this life were not by any means for that reason powerless. So far from being powerless, they were in many minds more terrible than any other statutes. Was it of no account to them that God had said—“His sin shall be upon him” and “he shall bear his iniquity”? Did they not know that “it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God”—fearful, moreover, not because he might bring trouble on them in time, but because there is an after-life and the same dreadful God is there—terrible to those who have defied his authority and scorned his law?——Therefore the statement that this Hebrew code did in no manner assume the existence of an after-life and of a God terrible to the sinner there, must be somewhat modified.
2. I am to assign some reasons for putting this Theocracy mainly on the basis of temporal rewards and punishments.
(1.) It was to be administered chiefly by human agents. Human judges sat upon offenses against it, and human hands executed their decisions.——I qualify these statements with the words “mainly,” “chiefly,” stating this as being the case for the most part.——The fact as to human agents being admitted, there is no need of further reasons for placing the administration of this government mainly on the basis of earthly rewards and punishments—penalties in this world, not in the next. How could human judges award judgments for the world to come, and human hands execute them there?