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death a secondary place, or sweep it away in the rush of great principles regarding God and the universe, or sink it in the intense ecstasy of conscious life with God.

7. Problems of Righteousness and their Solution.

In many passages of the Old Testament the idea of immortality is connected with the problems of the Wisdom. The hope, the necessity, of immortality appears as the solution of problems which, it was felt, received no just solution in this life. As the Wisdom aimed at detecting and exhibiting the operation of fixed principles in the world and life, it became practically a doctrine of providence in a wide sense. And in a world where moral anomalies were so abundant, a doctrine of providence took oftentimes the shape of a theodicy or justification of the ways of God to man; and as this justification was seen to be imperfectly comprehended in this life, the necessity was felt of projecting the final issue into a region beyond death.

In no nation were the principles and conditions of well-being and misfortune so clearly distinguished as among the Hebrews. The lawgiver set out by laying before the people blessing and cursing. Though the kingdom of God was administered as to its principles in no way different from God's government of other nations, there was this great difference, that there was always present the inspired consciousness of the prophets and teachers of the people, in which was immediately reflected the meaning of God's providence with them. And it is possible that, though the principles of God's government of Israel were the same as those by which He governs other nations, there was a more immediate connection in their case between sin and misfortune, than there is among other peoples. cases the same connection; but it may be made a question whether, in addition to having the connection clearly set before the people by the prophets, the connection was not more strict and immediate in God's rule of His people.

There is in all

In addition to this general law, the individual was also taught the same lesson. When he sinned, there was immediately, in the ceremonial disability that ensued, a punishment of his offence. Thus that fundamental connection between sin and suffering being extremely prominent, it took possession of men's minds with a very firm hold. And, no doubt, this was intended. The law was a ministration of death; its purpose was to educate the people in the knowledge of sin and retribution. In the theology of Paul, the law stands not on the side of the remedy, but on the side of the disease. It came in to aggravate the malady— that the offence might abound. It had other uses, and this view of it is not meant to be exhaustive. But as an intermediate institution, coming in between the promise and actual redemption, this was one of its effects and purposes. It augmented the disease in the consciousness of the mind struggling with its demands, and perhaps also, as Paul argues, it increased the disease in fact by provoking the sinful mind to oppose it. It revealed both sin and its consequences: "By the law is the knowledge of sin"; "when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died " (Rom. iii. 20, vii. 9). The covenant of Sinai and its administration brought out very conspicuously the principles of all moral government.

It was natural in this way for a member of the Hebrew State to apply the principle of retribution very stringently and universally. All evil he knew to be for sin, any evil he concluded to be for some sin. Where there was evil, there must have been sin to bring it forth. Evil was not an accident, nor was it a necessary outcome of the nature of things; it arose from the sinful conduct of men: "Affliction cometh not forth of the dust, neither doth trouble spring out of the ground; but man is born unto trouble,-i.e. born so that he acts in such a manner as to bring trouble upon himself, as the sparks fly upward" (Job v. 6, 7).

This stringent application of the law was more natural in a state of society like that existing in the East than it

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would be with us. There, society is simple, and its elements more detached from one another. The tribes live apart, and draw their subsistence from the soil in the most direct way. One class does not depend upon another; indeed, there are no classes, no such complex and intricate interweaving of relations as in modern society. Hence the incidence of a calamity was generally direct; it did not pass through several sections, or ramify on all sides, affecting most severely those who were innocent of the evil. The move

ments of life were simultaneous, and a calamity was seen to fall generally where it was deserved. In this way, not in Israel only, but throughout the East, the principle of retributive righteousness was held very firmly with the man who doeth well it is well; with the sinner it is ill. This was right under the rule of a just God; for this rule was particular, and embraced every occurrence.

But even in such an approach towards organised society as was made on the settlement of the people in Canaan, this simple faith must have received rude shocks. In the happy times of the early monarchy, indeed, when the kingdom of God was everywhere prosperous, and heathen States on all sides bowed before it, and when justice was administered with equal hand, and society still preserved its ancient moral authority, the principle was receiving continual verification. But in later times, when great heathen monarchies rose in the East and trampled the kingdom of God under their heel, the principle could not but come into danger of question. At first, indeed, the principle itself afforded an explanation of these calamities-they were the first judgment of God upon the sin of the people. And, so far as the nation was concerned, the explanation might satisfy the pious mind.

But the case of individuals was different. In the fate that overtook the different classes of the people the failure of the principle was most signally manifested. It was the most godly of the nation that suffered the severest calamities. The disloyal, ethnicising party, agreeing with their conquerors, or at least submitting to their

idolatries, escaped suffering; while the true theocratichearted men, whether those left at home or those carried into exile, were the victims of extreme hardships and indignity, both at the hands of their enemies and from their false brethren. And even in regard to the nation, though the sense of the national sinfulness might compose the mind and humble it more deeply before God, there could not but rise occasionally in the heart thoughts of a disturbing kind. Though the people had deeply sinned, and though their sin was aggravated by the fact that they had sinned against the knowledge of the truth, yet by comparison the people of God, though sinful, stood above those idolatrous powers into whose hand their God had delivered them. Already this thought appears in the prophet Habakkuk, when he compares Israel and the Chaldeans, which latter acknowledge no right but force, and no God but their own right hand. And, further, as time wore on under the sorrows of the Exile, and a new generation arose who had not been guilty of the sins that caused the national dispersion, and yet continued to suffer the penalty of them, there arose not only a sense of paralysis and helplessness, as if they lay under a cruel ban which no conduct of their own could break, but also questionings as to the rectitude of God.

Now, these questionings were met in three ways. First, in the prophet Ezekiel, himself an exile, the old conception of the national unity is subjected to analysis. The unity is resolved and decomposed into individuals, and the relation of the individual to Jehovah is declared to be direct and immediate; the son does not suffer for the sins of the father, nor the individual for the sins of the nation,

-the soul that sinneth shall die. This was an emancipation of the individual from the ban of national sin, and a profound advance towards a spiritual religion. Of course, the prophet's conception is true only in the region of spiritual relation to God; externally, the individual may be involved in national calamity, but his own conduct is that which determines God's spiritual relation to him. It may

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not be quite certain that the teaching of the prophet is presented with all the limitations necessary to it. But great truths are everywhere presented broadly, and the limitations come in their own time.

A second line was that of hope in the future, as we observe it in the second half of Isaiah. The very calamities of the Exile and the apparent dissolution of the nation led to a profounder meditation upon what the people of God was,-what designs Jehovah had in calling it to be His servant, and a deeper conception of what Jehovah Himself was, and of the scope of His purposes. Thus it became plain what it was to know the true God, and what must yet, in spite of all appearances, be the issue of the fact that there was a true God, and that the true knowledge of Him had been given to Israel, His servant. When we look at the circumstances of the time, at that which was powerful in the world, and at the state of Israel scattered in every land, the faith of this prophet in the destiny of his people becomes one of the most surprising things in the Old Testament. But this was only part of the conception. A judgment was formed of the meaning of the chastisement of the people, and hope found satisfaction in the idea that these chastisements exhausted the nation's sin and atoned for it. The precise form of the prophet's conception, as we saw, is matter of difficulty; but his general idea, that the sorrows and evils of the Exile, falling on some element in the people, removed their guilt, is plain.

But a third line is also followed. In the second half of Isaiah the sorrows of the people are due to their sins. Their sorrows are the expiation of their sins, and the national unity is still firmly retained. But in another book the distinction is drawn between the godly and the sinful among the people, and the question is raised, What is God's purpose in the chastisements which He inflicts upon the godly? This question is put and answered in the Book of Job. Though Job be an individual, it is scarcely possible to avoid regarding him as a type of the godly portion of