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"it was: and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it." Cf. Job xxxiv. 14.

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These testimonies may suffice for the proof of our second proposition. Let us now proceed to the consideration of the third; viz. that the soul in its disembodied state, by passing into the hands of God, becomes added or joined to a certain society, company, or congregation of disembodied souls, like itself.

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Among phrases of regular occurrence, peculiar, or nearly so, to the Old Testament, the reader may probably have remarked the following, as frequently as any; "Go to thy fathers," "Gathered to his people," "Gathered unto their fathers," "Go to "be with thy fathers," "Gather thee to thy fathers," Sleep with thy fathers," "Go to the generation of "his fathers;" all more or less akin to each other in the form of the expression, and all used in reference to the disposal of such and such persons, after death. The first of these phrases is the first to be met with; and occurs for the first time, Genesis xv. 15, in reference to the disposal of Abraham after death. The second occurs, of the same, Gen. xxv. 8: of Ishmael, Gen. xxv. 17: of Isaac, Gen. xxxv. 29; and of Jacob, Gen. xlix. 29. 33: of Aaron, Numbers xx. 24. 26: of Moses and Aaron, Numbers xxvii. 13: of Moses, Numbers xxxi. 2: and of Moses and Aaron, Deuteronomy xxxii. 50. The phrase, "Ga"thered unto their fathers," occurs Judges ii. 10, of the generation contemporary with Joshua. The phrase, "Go to be with thy fathers," occurs 1 Chron. xvii. 11. of David: the phrase, "Gather thee to thy "fathers," 2 Chron. xxxiv. 28. of Josiah; the phrase, Sleep with thy fathers," Deuteron. xxxi. 16. of

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Moses, and 2 Sam. vii. 12. of David. The phrase, "Go to the generation of his fathers," occurs Psalm xlix. 19-of one of the wicked, but the prosperous in the present life, in general. And to these we may add the phrase, "Gathered unto his fathers," πрoσεTÉON TрOS TOÙS Tатépas avтou, Acts xiii. 36, which is used by St. Paul of David.

In all these instances, the thing predicated in general being one and the same, viz. the disposal of such and such a person, or persons, in dying, and by dying, either as what had ensued upon that event, or should ensue from it; and the manner of the disposal being the same in each instance, viz. by the gathering unto the going unto, the sleeping with-his or their fathers, of the person or persons in question; that an aggregation of the person or persons in question to his or their fathers had been made, or would be made, by the act of his or their dying, and its consequences to the individuals, seems to follow as matter of course: and if this aggregation was not to be made of the whole individual, it must have been to be made of the parts of the individual; and if it was not to be made of each of his parts, it was to be made of one of them, but not of the other. Now no one will say that this aggregation of the individual to his fathers by dying, was an aggregation to be made of the whole individual; for the whole individual consisted of a body and a soul, and the aggregation of the whole individual to his fathers would be the aggregation of a given body and a given soul, at once; which aggregation would be the aggregation not of the dead individual, but of the living one; for as long as the same soul and the same body, composing one individual, are still

united, the individual is not yet dead. Of the parts of the individual, on the other hand, the body is one and the soul is the other, while alive; and the aggregation of the individual by his death to his fathers, being to be made in one or other of these parts, not in both, it must be to be made in the body distinct from the soul, or in the soul distinct from the body. It cannot be to be made in the body distinct from the soul; first, because the body distinct from the soul, neither is, nor can be, the individual after death, as well as before; and secondly, because no individual could be said to be added or gathered to his fathers in any sense after his death, by being gathered to them in his body, distinct from his soul, unless his body were supposed to be gathered to the bodies of his fathers; that is, except he were buried in the grave of his fathers, or one locality received and contained the bodies of them all in death. This might be possible in some instances; but it could not be possible in an infinite number of instances more; and it is certain that whether possible or not, in other instances, it was not the case in the greater part of the instances, quoted above, to which we find the phrases in question applied. The bodies of the ancestors of Abraham, for example, doubtless rested in Ur of Chaldæa, and his father's body in Haran, beyond the river, when his own was sleeping in Machpelah. The bodies of the fathers of Aaron, with the exception of Jacob and the twelve patriarchs at the utmost, (see Acts vii. 16.) were resting in Egypt, and the remainder of them in the land of Canaan, when he himself was buried in mount Hor; and the same may be said of Moses, and of all the generation con

temporary with Joshua-who were gathered to their fathers, by being committed to the grave in Canaan, while their fathers were most of them sleeping in Egypt. In none of these instances, then, can the phrase be understood of the individual's being gathered to his fathers after death, in his body, distinct from his soul; a conclusion, confirmed by this additional consideration, that in some of them, if not in all, the individual is said to have been gathered to his fathers, by the mere act of his dying, and before any thing had been, or could have been done, for the disposal of his body after death. He is said to have died, and been gathered to his fathers by that event; and his burial is afterwards related. It must be understood, therefore, of his being gathered to his fathers by the event of his dying, in his soul, distinct from his body; both because the soul, though apart from the body, may still be the same individual as before, (the same individual out of the body, who before was in the body,) if the soul retains its consciousness and personality, out of the body, as well as in it; and because, if the souls of the dead are formed into a common society, complex, or congregation by themselves, any particular soul may be, and must be, added to that complex in its turn, as soon as it is dead. The use of these modes of speaking-which are of such frequent occurrence in the Old Testament, and which are sanctioned also, as we have seen, by their adoption in the New-does almost necessarily lead to the inference, that every soul, by dying and being disunited from the body, and passing into the hands of God, becomes added or joined, in its disembodied state, to a society, complex, or aggregate of disembodied

souls like itself; which in every individual soul's case, might be called the company of its fathers, in the general sense of its ancestors, its predecessors-of those, in short, who had lived before it in point of time, if not in the special relation of its fathers in point of descent. In one sense, indeed, the whole race of mankind who have lived at any time on the face of the earth, being all derived from the same first pair, the living on the face of the earth, at a given time, are all to be considered and styled the descendants and offspring of those who have ceased to live before that time, but did live once in their turn, on the same locality. In this general sense of the relation between the living and the dead, it may be literally true, that every one by dying, if added or gathered to the complex of the dead before him, is added or gathered to his fathers.

After the explanation thus given of these phrases, we shall have no difficulty in understanding the meaning of the answer returned by David to his servants, when they required a reason why he had acted so differently before and after the death of the child, borne him by Bathsheba; fasting and weeping while it was alive, but rising from the ground, anointing himself, and eating bread, when he knew it was dead: "Now he is dead, wherefore should I "fast? Can I bring him back again? I shall go to "him, but he shall not return to me," 2 Sam. xii. 23. The meaning of this declaration is now perceived to be something more than his merely following his child to the grave, his merely dying like him, or resting with his own body in the same locality which might contain his: a circumstance, in parti

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