right to say positively that in such cases it has not that meaning. The Master has not explained his words on this point, but has left them veiled. We can settle the question itself concerning the limitedness or the unlimitedness of future punishment only on other grounds than those of textual criticism, even on grounds of enlightened reason postulating the cardinal principles of Christianity and of ethics. Will not the unimpeded Spirit of Christ lead all free minds and loving hearts to one conclusion? But that conclusion is to be held modestly as a trusted inference, not dogmatically as a received revelation.
Another point in the Savior's teachings which it is of the utmost importance to understand is the sense in which he used the Jewish phrases "Resurrection of the Dead" and "Resurrection at the Last Day." The Pharisees looked for a restoration of the righteous from their graves to a bodily life. This event they supposed would take place at the appearance of the Messiah; and the time of his coming they called "the last day." So the Apostle John says, "Already are there many antichrists; whereby we know that it is the last time." Now, Jesus claimed to be the Messiah, clothed in his functions, though he interpreted those functions as carrying an interior and moral, not an outward and physical, force. "This is the will of Him that sent me, that every one which seeth the Son and believeth on him should have everlasting life; and I will raise him up at the last day." Again, when Martha told Jesus that "she knew her brother Lazarus would rise again in the resurrection at the last day," he replied, "I am the resurrection and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live; and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die." This utterance is surely metaphorical; for belief in Jesus does not prevent physical dissolution. The thoughts contained in the various passages belonging to this subject, when drawn out, compared, and stated in general terms, seem to us to be as follows: "You suppose that in the last day your Messiah will restore the dead to live again upon the earth. I am the Messiah, and the last days have therefore arrived. I am commissioned by the Father to bestow eternal life upon all who believe on me; but not in the manner you have anticipated. The true resurrection is not calling the body from the tomb, but opening the fountains of eternal life in the soul. I am come to open the spiritual world to your faith. He that believeth in me and keepeth my commandments has passed from death unto life, become conscious that though seemingly he passes into the grave, yet really he shall live with God forever. The true resurrection is, to come into the experience of the truth that 'God is not the God of the dead, but of the living; for all live unto him.' Over the soul that is filled with such an experience, death has no power. Verily, I say unto, you, the hour is coming, and now is, when the dead, the ignorant and guilty, buried in trespasses and sins, shall hear these truths declared, and they that believe shall lay hold of the life thus offered and be blessed. The Father hath given me authority to execute judgment, that is, to lay down the principles by which men shall be judged according to their deserts. All mankind shall be judged in the spiritual state by the spirit and precepts of my religion as veritably as if in their graves the generations of the dead heard my voice and came forth, the good to blessedness, the evil to misery. The judgment which is, as it were, committed unto me, is not really committed unto me, but unto the truth which I declare; for of mine own self I can do nothing." We believe this paraphrase expresses the essential meaning of Christ's own declarations concerning a resurrection and an associated judgment. Coming to bring from the Father authenticated tidings of immortality, and to reveal the laws of the Divine judgment, he declared that those who believed and kept his words were delivered from the terror of death, and, knowing that an endless life of blessedness was awaiting them, immediately entered upon its experience. He did not teach the doctrine of a bodily restoration, but said, "In the resurrection," that is, in the spiritual state succeeding death, "they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of heaven."
He did not teach the doctrine of a temporary sleep in the grave, but said to the penitent thief on the cross, "This day shalt thou be with me in Paradise:" instantly upon leaving the body their souls would be together in the state of the blessed.
It is often said that the words of Jesus in relation to the dead hearing his voice and coming forth must be taken literally; for the metaphor is of too extreme violence. But it is in keeping with his usage. He says, "Let the dead bury their dead." It is far less bold than "This is my body; this is my blood." It is not nearly so strong as Paul's adjuration, "Awake, thou that sleepest, and rise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light." It is not more daringly imaginative than the assertion that "the heroes sleeping in Marathon's gory bed stirred in their graves when Leonidas fought at Thermopyla; or than Christ's own words, "If thou hadst faith like a grain of mustard seed, thou couldst say to this mountain, Be thou cast into yonder sea, and it should obey you." So one might say,
"Where'er the gospel comes,
It spreads diviner light;
It calls dead sinners from their tombs
And gives the blind their sight."
And in the latter days, when it has done its work, and the glorious measure of human redemption is full, liberty, intelligence, and love shall stand hand in hand on the mountain summits and raise up the long generations of the dead to behold the completed fruits of their toils. In this figurative moral sense Jesus probably spoke when he said, "Thou shalt be recompensed at the resurrection of the just." He referred simply to the rewards of the virtuous in the state beyond the grave. The phraseology in which he clothed the thought he accommodatingly adopted from the current speech of the Pharisees. They unquestionably meant by it the group of notions contained in their dogma of the destined physical restoration of the dead from their sepulchres at the advent of the Messiah. And it seems perfectly plain to us, on an impartial study of the record, that the evangelist, in reporting his words, took the Pharisaic dogma, and not merely the Christian truth, with them. But that Jesus himself modified and spiritualized the meaning of the phrase when he employed it, even as he did the other contemporaneous language descriptive of the Messianic offices and times, we conclude for two reasons. First, he certainly did often use language in that spiritual way, dressing in bold metaphors moral thoughts of inspired insight and truth. Secondly, the moral doctrine is the only one that is true, or that is in keeping with his penetrative thought. The notion of a physical resurrection is an error borrowed most likely from the Persians by the Pharisees, and not belonging to the essential elements of Christianity. The notion being prevalent at the time in Judea, and being usually expressed in certain appropriated phrases, when Christ used those phrases in a true spiritual sense the apostles would naturally apprehend from them the carnal meaning which already filled their minds in common with the minds of their countrymen.
The word Hades, translated in the English New Testament by the word "hell," a word of nearly the same etymological force, but now conveying a quite different meaning, occurs in the discourses of Jesus only three several times. The other instances of its use are repetitions or parallels. First, "And thou, Capernaum, which art exalted to heaven, shalt be brought down to the under world;" that is, the great and proud city shall become powerless, a heap of ruins. Second, "Upon this rock I will found my Church, and the gates of the under world shall not prevail against it;" that is, the powers of darkness, the opposition of the wicked, the strength of evil, shall not destroy my religion; in spite of them it shall assert its organization and overcome all obstacles.
The remaining example of the Savior's use of this word is in the parable of Dives and Lazarus. The rich man is described, after death, as suffering in the under world. Seeing the beggar afar off in Abraham's bosom, he cries, "Father Abraham, pity me, and send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue; for I am tormented in this flame." Well known fancies and opinions are here wrought up in scenic form to convey certain moral impressions. It will be noticed that the implied division of the under world into two parts, with a gulf between them, corresponds to the common Gentile notion of an Elysian region of delightful meadows for the good and a Tartarean region of blackness and fire for the bad, both included in one subterranean kingdom, but divided by an interval. 4
The dramatic details of the account Lazarus being borne into bliss by angels, Dives asking to have a messenger sent from bale to warn his surviving brothers rest on opinions afloat among the Jews of that age, derived from the Persian theology. Zoroaster prays, "When I shall die, let Aban and Bahman carry me to the bosom of joy."5 And it was a common belief among the Persians that souls were at seasons permitted to leave purgatory and visit their relatives on earth.6 It is evident that the narrative before us is not a history to be literally construed, but a parable to be carefully analyzed. The imagery and the particulars are to be laid aside, and the central thoughts to be drawn forth. Take the words literally, that the rich man's immaterial soul, writhing in flames, wished the tip of a finger dipped in water to cool his tongue, and they are ridiculous. Take them figuratively, as a type of unknown spiritual anguish, and they are awful. Besides, had Christ intended to teach the doctrine of a local burning hell, he surely would have enunciated it in plain words, with solemn iteration and explanatory amplifications, instead of merely insinuating it incidentally, in metaphorical
4 See copious illustrations by Rosenmuller, in Luc. cap. xvi. 22,
23.
"Hic locus est partes ubi se via findit in ambas:
Dextera, qua Ditis magni sub moenia tendit;
Hac iter Elysium nobis: at lava malorum
Exercet poenas, et ad impia Tartara mittit."