Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Discourse volume 1.djvu/125

78 At the time of Jesus, the Pharisees believed in the resurrection of the body; a state of rewards and punishments. Some of them connected it with the common notion of the transmigration of souls; perhaps with that of preëxistence. The Essenes, still more philosophically, taught the immortality of the soul, and the certainty of retribution, without the resurrection of the body. The soul is formed of the most subtle air, and is confined in the body as in a prison; death redeems it from a long bondage, and the living soul mounts upward rejoicing. We find similar views in Philo. Perhaps they were common in reflecting minds at the time of Jesus, who always presupposes a belief in immortality. The Sadducees alone opposed it. Such were the beginning and history of this dogma with the Jews. Its progress and formation are obvious.

Among savage nations this belief is common. It appears in prayers and offerings for the dead; in the mode of burial. The savage American deposits in the tomb the bow and the pipe, the dress and the tomahawk of the de-