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 ESCHATOLOGY

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ESCHATOLOGY

which the body is but a temporary prison, and the doctrine of a retributive transmigration are more or less closely associated. It is hard to say how far the common belief of the people was influenced by these mysteries, but in poetical and philosophical literature their influence is unmistakable. This is seen especially in Pindar among the poets, and in Plato among the philosophers. Pindar has a definite promise of a future life of bliss for the good or the initiated, and not merely for a few, but for all. Even for the wicked who descend to Hades there is hope; having purged their wickedness they obtain rebirth on earth, and if, during three successive existences, they prove them- selves worthy of the boon, they will finally attain to happiness in the Isles of the Blest. Though Plato's teaching is vitiated by the doctrine of pre-existence, metempsychosis, and other serious errors, it repre- sents the highest achievement of pagan philosophic speculation on the subject of the future life. The divine dignity, spirituality, and essential immortality of the soul being established, the issues of the future for every soul are made clearly dependent on its moral conduct in the present life in the body. There is a divine judgment after death, a heaven, a hell, and an intermediate state for penance and purification; and rewards and punishments are graduated according to the merits and demerits of each. The incurably wicked are condemned to everlasting punishment in Tartarus ; the less wicked or indifferent go also to Tar- tarus or to the Acherusian Lake, but only for a time; those eminent for goodness go to a happy home, the highest reward of all being for those who have purified themselves by philosophy.

From the foregoing sketch we are able to judge both of the inerits and defects of ethnic systems of eschatol- ogy. Their merits are perhaps enhanced when they are presented, as above, in isolation from the other featiu-es of the religions to which they belonged. Yet their defects are obvious enough; and even those of them that were best and most promising turned out, historically, to be failures. The precious elements of eschatological truth contained in the Egyptian religion were associated with error and superstition, and were unable to save the religion from sinking to the state of utter degeneration in which it is foimd at the approach of the Christian Era. Similarly, the still richer and more profound eschatology of the Persian religion, vitiated by dualism and other corrupting influences, failed to realize the promise it contained, and has sur- vived only as a ruin in modern Parseeism. Plato's speculative teaching failed to influence in any notable degree the popular religion of the Grfeco-Roman world; it failed to convert even the philosophical few; and in the hands of those who did profess to adopt it, Platonisra, uncorrected by Christianity, ran to seed in Pantheism and other forms of error.

II. Old-Test-a.ment Eschatology. — Without go- ing into details either by way of expo.sition or of criticism, it will be sufficient to point out how Old- Testament eschatology compares with ethnic systems, and how, notwithstanding its deficiencies in point of clearness and completeness, it was not an unworthy preparation for the fullness of Christian Revelation.

(1) Old-Testament eschatology, even in its earliest and most imperfect form, shares in the distinctive character which belongs to O.-T. religion generally. In the first place, as a negative distinction, we note the entire absence of certain erroneous ideas and tenden- cies that have a large place in ethnic religions. There is no pantheism or dualism, no doctrine of pre-exist- ence (Wisdom, viii, 17-20, does not necessarily imply this doctrine, as has sometimes been contended) or of metempsychosis ; nor is there any trace, as might have been expected, of Egj'ptian ideas or practices. In the next place, on the positive side, the O. T. stands apart from ethnic religions in its doctrine of God, and of man in relation to God. Its doctrine of God is pure and un-

compromismg monotheism; the universe is ruled by the wisdom, justice, and omnipotence of the one, true God. And man is created by God in His own image and likeness, and destined to relations of friendship and fellowship with Him. Here we have revealed in clear and definite terms the basal doctrines which are at the root of eschatological truth, and which, once they had taken hold of the life of a people, were bound, even without new additions to the revelation, to safe- guard the purity of an inadequate eschatology and to lead in time to richer and higher developments. Such additions and developments occur in O.-T. teaching; but before noticing them it is well to call attention to the two chief defects, or limitations, which attach to the earlier eschatology and continue, by their persist- ence in popular belief, to hinder more or less the cor- rect understanding and acceptance by the Jewish peo- ple as a whole of the highest eschatological utterances of their own inspired teachers.

(2) The first of the.se defects is the silence of the earlier and of some of the later books on the subject of moral retribution after death, or at least the extreme vagueness of such passages in these books as might be understood to refer to this subject. Death is not extinction; but Sheol, the underworld of the dead, in early Hebrew thought is not very different from the Babylonian Aralu or the Homeric Hades, except that Jahve is God even there. It is a dreary abode in which all that is prized in life, including friendly inter- course with God, comes to an end without any definite promise of renewal. Dishonour, incurred in life or in death, clings to a man in .Sheol, like the honour he may have won by a \'irtuous life on earth; but otherwise conditions in Sheol are not represented as retributive, except in the vaguest way. Not that a more definite retribution or the hope of renewal to a life of blessed- ness is formally denied and excluded ; it simply fails to find utterance in earlier O.-T. records. Religion is pre-eminently an affair of this life, and retribution works out here on earth. This idea, which to us seems so strange, must, to be fairly appreciated, be taken in conjunction with the national as opposed to the indi- vidual viewpoint [see under ('S) of this section]; and allowance must also be made for its pedagogic value for a people like the early Hebrews. Christ Himself explains why Moses permitted divorce (" by reason of the hardness of your heart" — Matt., xix, 8); revela- tion and legislation hatl to be tempered to the capacity of a singularly practical and unimaginative people, who were more effectively confirmed in the worship and service of God by a vivid sense of His retributive providence here on earth than they would have been by a higher and fuller doctrine of future immortality with its postponement of moral awards. Nor must we exaggerate the insufficiency of this early point of view. It gave a deep religious value and significance to every event of the present life, and raised morality abovethe narrow, utilitarian standpoint. Not worldly prosperity as such was the ideal of the pious Israel- ite, but prosperity bestowed by God as the gracious reward of fidelity in keeping His Commandments. Yet, when all has been said, the inadequacy of this belief for the satisfaction of individual aspirations must be admitted; and this inadequacy was bound to prove itself sooner or later in experience. Even the substitution of the national for the individual stand- point could not indefinitely hinder this result.

(.3) The tendency to sink the individual in the na- tion and to treat the latter as the religious unit was one of the most marked characteristics of Hebrew faith. And this helped very much to support and prolong the other limitation just noticed, according to which retribution was looked for in this life. Deferred and disappointed personal hopes could be solaced by the thought of their present or future realization in the nation. It was only when the national calamities, culminating in the exile, had shattered for a time the