possession, or mere capacity of using the faculty, the reader may learn from my Diss. vol. ii. Diss. viii. part iv. 330-332, to which I refer him. Now judging from the analogy of these instances, if one suddenly endued with sight at a given time, was placed in the same situation, by an act of the power of God, as he would have been in, at that identical time, if he had always seen: what should we expect would be done in the case of Lazarus, who having died and passed in the natural way, into the locality of departed souls, was yet, for wise reasons, brought back thence, before the natural time, by an act of Divine omnipotence, to die again in the natural way, and to pass again into Hades in the natural way, and again to come thence, at the general resurrection, in the natural way? Why, that the same act of Divine power, which brought him to life again before his time, and thereby undid the previous act of his death, and placed him in the same situation as if he had never died-in point of the knowledge also which he had acquired or might have acquired in Hades, would place him in the same situation as if he had never died—and had never been in circumstances to acquire any knowledge of that description, no more than any others who had never yet died likewise.

It would not be proper, perhaps, to dismiss the subjects which we have been hitherto considering, without endeavouring to ascertain, in the last place, to what extent the above conclusions, as deduced from the evidence of scripture, are corroborated and confirmed by external testimony also; which testimony, under the circumstances of the case, must resolve itself into that of the Jewish church, before the birth of

Christ, and that of the early Christian church, after it.

With respect to the opinions of the Jewish church before the birth of Christ, upon these, or any other questions, if its testimony is considered a different thing from the facts or doctrines recorded in the Old Testament-perhaps the only authentic source to which we can go, for information concerning those opinions, are the two books of Maccabees, the book of Ecclesiasticus, and the writings of Josephus.

In the First Book of Maccabees-I am aware of nothing which would illustrate the opinions of the Jewish church, with reference to Hades, its locality, or the like. In the Second Book of Maccabeespassages occur, which express a confident expectation of the raising of the dead to life again-vii. 9. 14: and others, vii. 22, 23, which imply not only that, but that breath and life, or spirit and life, (πve~μa and Swǹ,) were originally derived from God. Compare vii. 36: and xiv. 46. There is a wellknown passage also in the same book, xii. 40-45— where Judas and his companions are represented as praying for those who had fallen in battle, and making an atonement for the sin of which they had been guilty, by a specific offering, under the hope and persuasion that they would rise again-which may perhaps be considered to imply that their souls were conceived to be somewhere existing, until the time should come for their reunion to their bodies. None of these passages however throws any light upon the opinions of the writer, concerning Hades, its locality, the intermediate state, or the other questions discussed above. The word Hades occurs but once in

the Book, vi. 23, where it is rendered in the English, "the grave."

The same may be said of the Book of Ecclesiasticus; in which though frequent allusions occur to Hades by name, they are mostly such as might have been taken from the Old Testament, with the books of which, and the sentiments and language of which the author of this book was no doubt familiarly acquainted. See ix. 12; xiv. 12. 16; xvii. 27; xxi. 10; xxviii. 21; xli. 4; xlviii. 5; li. 5, 6.

In the apocryphal production, entitled the Wisdom of Solomon, many sentiments occur which might illustrate the conclusions we have endeavoured to establish, were it certain that this book was the composition of a Jew, who lived before the birth of our Saviour. In my own opinion, it is later than the Christian era; and therefore cannot be properly appealed to in proof of the doctrines or belief of the Jewish church, upon any points, as contradistinguished to the Christian; or else we might refer, on this particular question, to such passages as iii. 13; iv. 7. 16; v. 15: xvii. 21".

The testimony of Josephus, in a case like this, is nothing more than his testimony to the opinions of the differect sects among his countrymen, upon the

u I purposely abstain from making any appeal to the testimony of the Jewish rabbis; under a conviction that very many opinions, especially in reference to the state of things after death, to Paradise, to the resurrection, to the millenary promises, and the like, however they may pass current for rabbinical, and appear in rabbinical writers, are ultimately borrowed from Christianity. The reader who thinks otherwise, will find a large collection of rabbinical lore on the subject of Paradise in particular, in Wetstein's Annotations on Luke xxiii. 43.

subjects in question. These sects were the Sadducees, the Essenes, and the Pharisees, more particularly. With respect to the Sadducees, it is almost unnecessary to observe that they were materialists; and consequently not believing in the existence of the soul after death, in a state of disunion from the body, they could not believe in the existence of Hades, nor of an intermediate state. As to the opinions of the Essenes upon these latter points, Josephus himself tells us their notion of Hades differed in no respect from that of the Greeks, or the Gentiles, in general; that is, they had their fortunate islands reserved for the good, and their Tartarus for the bad : καὶ ταῖς μὲν ἀγαθαῖς, (sc. ψυχαῖς) ὁμοδοξοῦντες παισὶν Ἑλλήνων, ἀποφαίνονται τὴν ὑπὲρ ὠκεανὸν δίαιταν ἀποκεῖσθαι, καὶ χῶρον οὔτε ὄμβροις, οὔτε νιφετοῖς, οὔτε καύμασι βαρυνόμε νιν, ἀλλ ̓ ὃν ἐξ ὠκεανοῦ πραὺς ἀεὶ ζέφυρος ἐπιπνέων ἀναψύχει· ταῖς δὲ φαύλαις ζοφώδη καὶ χειμέριον ἀφορίζονται μυ χὸν, γέμοντα τιμωριῶν ἀδιαλείπτων : Bell. Jud. ii. viii. 11. Of the Pharisees on the same occasion he tells us, that they entertained an idea of Hades, which would be much more strictly in accordance with the Greek or Roman conception of it-as consisting of an Elysium, for the reception of the good, and a Tartarus, Erebus, or Orcus, for that of the bad, and each of them underground; the souls of the good continuing to exist in the former, until the time arrived for their returning to life again, in some other body and some other form. A metempsychosis, then, the Pharisees held, or a transition of the soul from one body to another, through a series of constant successions, at definite intervals of time; but not a resurrection of the soul in the same body again, in which it had once lived and died before.

On this subject, see the note, supra, vol. iv. 300. In another passage of his work, De Bello, the author, who was himself a Pharisee, having occasion to dissuade from the crime of suicide, talks of the different disposals of the souls of the good, and of such as had been guilty of that crime, or any resembling it, in such language as to place the Hades of the former, while awaiting their metempsychosis, somewhere in heaven-that of the latter in Hades, properly so called, under the earth; ἆρα οὐκ ἴστε, ὅτι τῶν μὲν ἐξιόντων τοῦ βίου κατὰ τὸν τῆς φύσεως νόμον, καὶ τὸ ληφθὲν παρὰ τοῦ Θεοῦ χρέος ἐκτινόντων, ὅταν ὁ δοὺς κομίσασθαι θέλῃ, κλέος μὲν αἰώνιον, οἴκοι δὲ καὶ γενεαὶ βέβαιοι, καθαραὶ δὲ καὶ ἐπήκοοι μένουσιν αἱ ψυχαί, χῶρον οὐρανοῦ λαχοῦσαι τὸν ἁγιώτατον, ἔνθεν ἐκ περιτροπῆς αἰώνων ἁγνοῖς πάλιν ἀντενοικία ζονται σώμασιν· ὅσοις δὲ καθ' ἑαυτῶν ἐμάνησαν αἱ χεῖρες, τούτων μὲν ᾅδης δέχεται τὰς ψυχὰς σκοτιώτερος, κ', τ. λ. Lib. iii. viii. 5.

In the treatise entitled, περὶ αὐτοκράτορος λογισμοῦ, or De Maccabæis, cap. 13. 1238. ad med., a sentiment occurs which implies that in the expectation of the speaker, (who is the mother of the seven children, the story of whose martyrdom is related 2 Macc. vii.) the souls of the righteous dead among the Jews passed into the bosoms of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob ; οὕτω γὰρ θανόντας ἡμᾶς ̓Αβραὰμ, καὶ Ἰσαὰκ, καὶ Ἰακὼβ ὑποδέξονται εἰς τοὺς κόλπους αὐτῶν, καὶ πάντες οἱ πατέρες ἐπαινέσουσι. This is so far New Testament language, and reminds us of the parable, where it is said that Lazarus was carried when dead into Abraham's bosom. Whosoever was the writer of this treatise, there is good reason to believe it was not Josephus.