Page:The old paths, or The Talmud tested by Scripture.djvu/314

 they shall be ashes under the soles of your feet.' (Mal. iv. 3.) But heretics, and informers, and Epicureans, who have denied the law or the resurrection of the dead, or who have separated from the customs of the congregation, or who have caused their fear in the land of the living, who have sinned, or caused many to sin, as Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, all such go down to hell and are judged for ever." (Rosh Hashanah, fol. 17. 1.) According to this, the dying Israelite ought to expect twelve months of torment, and his surviving son ought to repeat the prescribed prayer for twelve months; but the rabbies have commanded that the prayer should be repeated only for eleven months, to intimate that the deceased was not so wicked as to be obliged to remain all the time of torment:—

"The custom is, not to say Kaddish more than eleven months, so as not to cast a reproach on the character of the deceased father and mother as if they were wicked, for twelve months are the term appointed for the wicked." (Joreh Deah, 376.) From this it is clear that a dying Jew's expectation must be to endure the torments of hell for at least eleven months; and when he is dead, his son confesses, in the most public manner, and the appointed prayers of the synagogue confess, of every departed Jew, that he died in sin, and was not worthy to enter into the bliss of paradise; and express, moreover, their conviction that his portion is actually with the damned. Thus it is evident that Judaism holds out no hope of the forgiveness of sins, and that all its prescribed observances are of no avail in the hour of need. A Jew's sad contemplation on his death is, then, that he is going down to hell, and his hope of liberation is based upon the prayers of his son, or upon the fact of his being an Israelite. But is this a reasonable ground of hope? No hope of salvation can be reasonable which is not built upon a plain promise of God. Our reason can tell us nothing about either heaven or hell; and therefore no speculations of our own can satisfy us respecting either one or the other. The only satisfactory testimony can come from God's revealed will; but in the whole volume of the Old Testament, there is not one promise declaring that an Israelite shall be delivered from hell after twelve months' punishment, or that the son's public prayers in the synagogue shall deliver the father. This is all the mere invention of the rabbies, without the least warrant from the Word of God. It is, therefore, not a hope on which any reasonable man can rest in peace. The sum of the whole matter is, that every Jew expects to go