THE MEANING OF LIFE

413

do. There was, no doubt, something supernatural in the visions of God which such prophets as Isaiah and Ezekiel saw, but there must also have been a peculiar mental characteristic which lent itself readily to such revelations. Perhaps another thing which helped the people to realise the presence of God so vividly with them was just this, that He did in fact dwell in a house among them where He had placed His name. When the worshipper came to this house, he felt he was near unto God; there he appeared before Him. We are familiar with the vividness with which God's presence was realised, and with the longing of saints to be near the place of His abode: "One thing have I desired . . . that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord" (Ps. xxvii. 4). But to whatever this vivid realising of God's presence was due, it certainly existed in the minds of His people, and the religious meaning of it is not affected. That which constitutes the essence of the future world to men now, the presence of God, the Israelite profoundly enjoyed on earth.

But no doubt a significant point of difference between the modes of thought among Old Testament saints and those now current emerges here. The difference lies in the different views of what constitutes life. To the Israelite, 'life' meant what we ordinarily call 'life in the body.' Life was the existence of man in all his parts. When Adam was created, God formed him of the dust, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and he became a living person (Gen. ii. 7). He lived; and in the fellowship of God his life was perfect. And so the pious Israelite always continued to think. To him, separation of the spirit from the body was what he called death. He was far removed from the philosophical view that the body was a prison-house, released from which the spirit could spread its wings and soar into purer and loftier regions. Neither yet had he attained to the Christian view, that there is a perfection of the spirit even apart from the body. His view of life was the synthetic one; it was the existence

of man in all his parts, living in the light of God's face. He stood before that analysis, so to speak, which experience teaches us takes place in death; and his view corresponded to that new synthesis which the New Testament teaches, when the dissolved elements of human nature shall be reunited in the resurrection life. And his nomenclature corresponded with that of the Apostle Paul; he called the existence of man in the body 'life,' as the apostle names existence in the resurrection body life.'

But of course, life being understood in this sense, a physical sphere was necessary for it. Hence, as the earth was the abode of man, it was to be his abode for ever. A transcendental sphere of existence, such as we conceive heaven, could not occur to the Israelite. He was far from being insensible to the imperfections that accompanied life. Though he enjoyed God's presence, it was not yet God's presence in its fulness. In a sense, therefore, the Israelite believed in a future life, and longed for it. But it was not a life in a transcendental sphere; it was a future life upon the earth. In the perfection of the people of God they would not be translated to be with God in heaven, but God would come down and reveal Himself in His fulness among men; the tabernacle of God would be with men, and He would be their God, and they His people. Then God would make a new covenant with men, forgiving their sin, and writing His law upon their hearts. And the kingdom would be the Lord's. And simultaneously with this manifestation of Jehovah among men, the earth would be transfigured, and all hindrances to a perfect life with God removed: "Behold I create a new heavens and a new earth, and the former shall not be remembered" (Isa. lxv. 17), This manifestation of Jehovah in His fulness was felt as if it were imminent; the salvation was ready to be revealed. And here, perhaps, just as much as anywhere, lies the explanation of the want of the kind of faith which we now have. The eternal abode of man was the earth; perfection lay in the perfect presence of Jehovah; but His perfect presence was always near in hope,—living men might behold it.

LIFE IN GOD'S FELLOWSHIP

2. Fellowship with God the Fundamental Idea.

...

415

These considerations may tend somewhat to remove our surprise at the absence of explicit teaching about immortality in the Old Testament. The pious Israelite had in truth, or felt he had in essence, all those things that constitute heaven. No doubt he had them in idea rather than in the fulness of reality. He had that sense of perfect retribution which to us seems to belong to the future, although the time came when painful doubts arose, and suggested that something was wanting. He had that presence of God which is that which gives its meaning to heaven. It was this that made up the joy of life to him— "Thou art the portion of my cup. the lines have fallen to me in pleasant places" (Ps. xvi. 5-7). So that the acute remark made by the authors of the work called the Unseen Universe is true, who say: "Not from want of religion, but from excess of religion, was this void [specific thoughts about future immortality] left in the Jewish mind. The future life was overlooked, overshadowed by the consciousness of the presence of God Himself" (p. 9). Yet this presence of God was not in such fulness as to satisfy, and in this sense the pious Israelite looked for a future life, when God would be present in His glory. But this perfection was one the scene of which still remained the earth; there was no translation of man into a transcendental sphere of spiritual existence.

It is to this point of the enjoyment of God's fellowship and life in His favour upon the earth that the chief developments of the Old Testament doctrine of immortality attach themselves. The event of death interrupted this fellowship, and turned the joy of life with God into darkness. For, to the Israelite, death was truly death; and the dead were cut off from fellowship with the living, whether man or God. It may seem surprising that the references to death are so few in the Old Testament. Yet, if we count them up, the passages are pretty numerous. Naturally, these passages are generally of the nature of reminiscences

of feelings that were present when the prospect of death was near. Hence they are all personal, and not of the nature of abstract teaching; though they often rise to the expression of principles, particularly the principle that fellowship with God constitutes an indissoluble bond, which death cannot sever. The kind of immortality demanded, or inferred or prayed for, is always a religious immortality, the continuance of that life with God already lived on earth. The mere existence of the spirit after death is never the point, for this was never doubted; it is the existence in the fellowship of God and in the light of His face that is supplicated for or assumed. Hence every contribution made to the question is of a practical religious kind. It is a demand of the religious mind, what seems to it of the nature of a necessity; or it is a flight of ecstasy of the religious experience; or it is what seems involved in the very relations of God and the mind of man.

To the Old Testament saints, immortality seemed the corollary of religion, for immortality was the continuance of fellowship with God. If religion was true, i.e. if God was, then that experience which religion was would continue, and men would live. The teaching of the Old Testament is summed up by our Lord: "God is not the God of the dead, but of the living" (Matt. xxii. 32). The prophets and saints of the Old Testament kingdom of God were not speculative men. They did not reason that the soul was immortal from its nature; this was not the kind of immortality in which they were interested, though for all that appears the idea that the immaterial part of man should become extinct or be annihilated, never occurred to them. They did not lay stress, in an objective, reflective way, on man's instinctive hopes of immortality, though perhaps they may be observed giving these instinctive desires expression. They could not, with the patient eye of inductive observation, gather up what we call analogies to the passage of beings from a lower to a higher life, such as we conceive our own death to be, as the entrance of a fuller life. They did not reason: they felt, and they knew. They set the

VIEW OF MAN'S NATURE

417

Lord before them; and because He was at their right hand they were not moved, and every element of their being rejoiced. They had life with God, and they felt that immortality was involved in their communion with Him. He

was their God; and He was not the God of the dead, but of the living. This communion was the object of their hopes and the ground of their faith. Their faith in immortality was but a form of their faith in God. It was entirely subjective and religious, the corollary not of reason, but of experience drawn from their actual life with God. And even if it had remained but a record of subjective conditions, of postulates of faith, of demands not of reason, but of religious life, without any objective verification, it would have been a distinct contribution to the belief of men in immortality, a contribution in a region and from a side altogether different from those in which other nations made their contributions-the contribution not of man's reflection, but of his religious nature.

But the Old Testament age did not pass away without these subjective aspirations receiving an external seal. In Christ these subjective hopes and demands of faith and man's heart became real outward facts. In His life they passed into history.

3. Preliminary Questions as to Man's Nature.

Any question concerning death and immortality and resurrection must be preceded by other questions relating to the nature of man. For if death be in some sense a dissolution, and that which is simple is incapable of separation, the nature of man must be compound; and its elements will demand consideration, the dissolution of which is death, the continued separation of which is the state of the dead, and the reunion of which is resurrection. But there is no question more difficult in Biblical Theology than the question of the nature of man. Not only is there no certain answer given to it in the Old Testament, but the New Testament seems to leave it equally unsettled.