Page:The old paths, or The Talmud tested by Scripture.djvu/315

 to hell, and that he has no promise of God to assure him that he shall be redeemed thence. Judaism is not, therefore, a religion which affords a rational hope of salvation. In asserting that every Israelite must go down to hell, it teaches that sin is not forgiven by God, but must be atoned for by the personal suffering of the offender; and that happiness cannot be enjoyed until personal satisfaction has been yielded by twelve months' torments. Now if this principle were true, there could be no salvation at all. Sin, as being an offence against an infinite Being, is infinite in magnitude, and therefore, requires infinite punishment. The justice of God is also infinite, and requires an infinite satisfaction; so that if this satisfaction is to be rendered by the personal suffering of the offender, that suffering must be infinite, that is, it must endure for ever and ever, and thus salvation is altogether out of the question. The Jewish hope is, therefore, unwarranted by Scripture, and contrary to reason, and, we may add, inconsistent with itself. In the custom and doctrine which we have just considered, a dying Jew is taught to hope that he shall be delivered from that place of torment, whither he is going, either on account of his son's prayers, or on account of his Jewish origin. But on his death-bed he is taught to believe that his death will be an atonement for his sins, for in his dying confession, these words are put into his mouth:—

"But if the time of my visitation to death be near, O let my death be an expiation for all my sins, iniquities, and transgressions, wherein I have sinned, offended, and transgressed against thee, from the day of my existence." These two doctrines are plainly contrary the one to the other. If death be an atonement for all sins, then, when it is once suffered, all these sins are forgiven, and there is no need of further punishment in hell for twelve months. But if this further punishment be inflicted, then the death of the individual is not an atonement for his sins. The Jew may choose which of these hopes he pleases; but whichever he may assert to be true, the other is necessarily false; and if one be false, then the oral law teaches falsehood, and cannot be depended upon with respect to the other. There is, then, in these two statements, a glaring inconsistency, which makes them both suspicious in themselves: and the Word of God is as opposed to this last statement, as to the former. The Bible represents death as a consequence and punishment of Adam's sin, not as an atonement: and hence it is that infants die, who have never committed actual sin, and