II. disseminated throughout the race of man. I should CHAP. be content with receiving it as the general acquiescence of the human mind, in the necessity of some mediation between the pure spiritual nature of the Deity, and the intellectual and moral being of man, of which the sublimest and simplest, and therefore the most natural development, was the revelation of God in Christ-in the inadequate language of our version of the original "the brightness of (God's) glory, and the express image of his person." * State. No question has been more strenuously debated Future than the knowledge of a future state, entertained. by the earlier Jews. At all events it is quite clear, that before the time of Christ, not merely the im mortality of the soul, but what is very different, a final resurrectiont, had become completely interwoven with the popular belief. Passages in the later prophets, Daniel and Ezekiel, particularly a very remarkable one in the latter, may be adduced as the first distinct authorities on which this belief might be grounded. It appears, however, in its more perfect development, soon after the return from the captivity. As early as the revolt of the Maccabees, it was so deeply rooted in the public mind, that we find a solemn ceremony performed for the dead. From henceforth it became the leading article of the great schism between the traditionists and the anti-traditionists, the Pharisees and the Sadducees: and in the gospels we cannot but ̓Απαύγασμα τῆς δόξης καὶ χαρακτὴρ τῆς ὑποστάσεως αὐτου. He brews i. 3. It is singular how often this material point of difference has 2 Macc. xii. 44. II. CHAP. discover at a glance, its almost universal prevalence. Even the Roman historian was struck by its influence on the indomitable character of the people. In the Zoroastrian religion, a resurrection holds a place no less prominent, than in the later Jewish belief. On the day of the final triumph of the Great Principle of Light, the children of light are to be raised from the dead, to partake in the physical splendour, and to assume the moral perfection of the subjects of the triumphant Principle of Good. In the same manner, the Jews associated together the coming of the Messiah with the final resurrection. From many passages, quoted by Lightfoot, I select the following: "The righteous, whom the Lord shall raise from the dead in the days of the Messiah, when they are restored to life, shall not again return to their dust, neither in the days of the Messiah, nor in the following age, but their flesh shall remain upon them.”‡ Jewish notion of the Messiah. Out of all these different sources, from whence they derived a knowledge of a future state, the passages of their prophets in their own sacred writings (among which that in the book of Daniel, from its coincidence with the Zoroastrian tenet, might easily be misapplied), and the oriental element, the popular belief of the Palestinian Jews had moulded up a splendid though confused vision of the appearance of the Messiah, the simultaneous Animasque prælio et suppliciis peremptorum æternas putant. Tac. Hist. v. 5. + Hyde, de Vet. Pers. Relig. 537. and 293. Beausobre, Hist. du Manicheisme, i. 204. ̓Αναβιώσεσθαι κατὰ τοὺς Μάγους τοὺς ἀνθρώπους kai torσ0αi áðavárovę. Theopomp. apud Diog. Laert. Kleuker's Zendavesta and Anhang. part ii. p. 110. Boundehesch, xix. xxxi., &c. Compare Gesenius on Isaiah xxvi. 19. Lightfoot, v. 255. x.495. xi. 353. II. regeneration of all things, the resurrection of the CHAP. dead, and the reign of the Messiah upon earth. All these events were to take place at once, or to follow close upon each other. In many passages, the language of the apostles clearly intimates that they were as little prepared to expect a purely religious renovation, at the coming of the Messiah, as the rest of their countrymen; and throughout the apostolic age, this notion still maintained its ground, and kept up the general apprehension, that the final consummation was immediately at hand. It is no doubt impossible to assign their particular preponderance to these several elements, which combined to form the popular belief: yet, even if many of their notions entirely originated in the Zoroastrian system, it would be curious to observe how, by the very calamities of the Jews, Divine Providence adapted them for the more important part which they were to fill in the history of mankind; and to trace the progressive manner in which the Almighty prepared the development of the more perfect and universal system of Christianity. For, with whatever oriental colouring Jewish tra- Messiah, dition might invest the image of the great Deli- national. verer, in Palestine it still remained rigidly national and exclusive. If the Jew concurred with the worshipper of Ormusd in expecting a final restoration of all things through the agency of a Divine Intelligence t, that Being, according to the promise * Compare 2 Esdras vi. 24, 25. The Persians long preserved the notion of a restoration of the CHAP. to their fathers, was to be intimately connected with their race; he was to descend from the line of David; he was to occupy Sion, the holy city, as the centre of his government; he was to make his appearance in the temple on Mount Moriah; he was to re-assemble all the scattered descendants of the tribes, to discomfit and expel their barbarous and foreign rulers. The great distinction between the two races of mankind, fell in completely with their hereditary prejudices: the children of Abraham were, as their birthright, the children of light; and even the doctrine of the resurrection was singularly harmonised with that exclusive nationality. At least the first resurrection was to be their separate portion t; it was to summon them, if not all, siah. "Suivant les traditions des * 2 Esd. xi. 10-31. All Israel- II. at least the more righteous, from Paradise, from the CHAP. abode of departed spirits; and under their triumphant king, they were to enjoy a thousand years of glory and bliss upon the recreated and renovated earth.* Grecian system. We pass from the rich poetic impersonations, Judæothe fantastic but expressive symbolic forms of the East, to the colder and clearer light of Grecian philosophy, with which the Western Jews, especially in Alexandria, had endeavoured to associate their own religious truths. The poetic age of Greece had long passed away before the two nations came into contact; and the same rationalising tendency of the times led the Greek to reduce his religion, the Jew the history of his nation, to a lofty moral allegory. Enough of poetry remained in the philosophic system, adopted in the great Jewish Alexandrian school, that of Plato, to leave ample scope for the imagination: *Tanchuma, fol. 255. Quot sunt dies Messia? R. Elieser, filius R. Jose, Galilæus, dixit Messiæ tempora sunt mille anni, secundum dictum Jer. xxiii. 4. Dies enim Dei mille est annorum. Bertholdt, p.38. The holy blessed God will renew the world for a thousand years-quoted by Lightfoot, iii. 37. If I presume to treat the millenium as a fable "of Jewish dotage," I may remind my readers that this expression is taken from what once stood as an article (the forty-first) of our church. See Collier for the Articles in Edward the Sixth's reign. This was the kingdom of heaven, + Compare Bertholdt, ch. vi. |
