I do not see why the word "heresy" should be flung at you. Heresy is a very grave matter, and should not be charged except in cases where not only the subject matter is grave, but also the whole authority of the Church or Christian community has been brought to bear. I conceive, however, that the question of Jewish opinion on a future state, as opened in the Old Testament, is a question quite open to discussion.
I have myself been a good deal engaged latterly in examining the question of a future state, and have had occasion to touch more or less upon Jewish opinion. The subject is very interesting, but is also large and complex, and I would advise you as strongly as I may against publishing anything upon it without a previous examination proportioned in some degree to the character of the subject. How can you safely enter upon it without some attention to the researches and the opinions of the writers who have examined it?
My own state of information is by no means so advanced as to warrant the expression of confident and final conclusions. But I think there are some things that are clearly enough to be borne in mind. We cannot but notice the wise reserve with which the Creeds treat the subject of the future state. After the period when they were framed, Christian opinion came gradually, I believe, to found itself upon an assumption due to the Greek philosophy, and especially to Plato, namely, that of the natural immortality of the human soul. And this opinion (which I am not much inclined to accept) supplies us, so to speak, with spectacles through which we look back upon the Hebrew ideas conveyed in the Old Testament.
Another view of the matter is, that man was not naturally immortal, but immortalíable. That had he not sinned, he would have attained regularly to immortality; but after his eating from the tree of knowledge he was prevented, as the text informs us, from feeding on the tree of life, and the subject of his immortality was thus thrown into vague and obscure distance.
I suppose it to be a reasonable opinion that there was a primitive communication of divine knowledge to man, but of this revelation we have no knowledge beyond the outline, so to call it, conveyed in the Book of Genesis. That outline, however, appears to show in the case of Enoch that one righteous man was specially saved from death; and the words of our Saviour in the Gospel give us to understand that there were at any rate glimpses of the future state underlying Jewish opinion. We must not, I think, forget the respect with which our Saviour treats that opinion.
Nor can we forget that the Mosaic dispensation, coming as it were upon the back of the old patriarchal religion, being essentially national, was also predominantly temporal, and tended very powerfully to throw the idea of the future state into the shade.
Nevertheless, it is, I think, generally admitted that, while in certain passages the Psalmist speaks of it either despairingly or doubtfully, in some Psalms the subject is approached with a vivid and glowing belief; as when, for example, it is said: "When I awake up after Thy likeness I shall be satisfied with it."
You know how much upon some occasions I have both sympathised with and admired your authorship. I do not dissuade you from following up the task to which you are now drawn. But I do not think you have as yet quite reached the point at which publication would do honour to yourself or justice to your theme. And I am sure this very imperfect reply will serve to show that I do not treat your letter with levity nor try wantonly to throw obstacles in your path.
I shall be interested to know what you decide about writing—with or without further study.
W. E. GLADSTONE.