BL 535 .S6 Sneath, Elias Hershey, 1857- 1935, Religion and the future life Religion and the Future Life The Development of the Belief in Life After Death. By Authorities in the History of Religions EDITED BY E. HERSHEY SNEATH, Ph. D., LL. D. Professor of the Philosophy of Reli^on and Religious Education^ Yale University New York Chicago Fleming H. Revell Company London and Edinburgh Copyright, 1922, by FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY New York : 1 58 Fifth Avenue Chicago: 17 North Wabash Ave. London : 2 1 Paternoster Square Edinburgh: 75 Princes Street Preface DURING the academic year of 1920-1921 the undersigned conducted a seminar in Yale University for the purpose of studying the history of belief in life after death in religion and philosophy. He was most fortunate in securing emi- nent specialists in the history of religions to contribute papers — nearly all of which were read before its mem- bers by the writers themselves. Because of the per- petual interest in this important problem, it seemed very desirable that these valuable essays should be shared by an intelligent public; and the editor asked their authors to prepare them for publication in the form of a composite volume. This they very kindly consented to do and the result is the present volume. The undersigned's contribution to the seminar dealt with the idea of the future life as developed in the his- tory of philosophy. It will appear in a volume to be published later. Since the preparation of these essays one of the contributors, — Professor Morris Jastrow, Jr., of the University of Pennsylvania, — ^has entered " the Great Beyond.'' His death is a serious loss to American scholarship. E. Hershey Sneath. Yale University, Contents I. The Idea of the Future Life Among Primitive Tribes 9 Franz Boas, Ph. D., Sc. D., LL.D., Professor of Anthropology, Columbia University. II. Ancient Egyptian Ideas of the Life Hereafter 27 James Henry Breasted, Ph.D.. LL.D., Pro- fessor of Egyptology and Oriental History, University of Chicago. III. Immortality in India .... 65 E. Washburn Hopkins, Ph.D., LL.D., Pro- fessor of Sanskrit ^ and Comparative Phi- lology, Yale University. IV. Immortality Among the Babylonians and Assyrians 90 Morris Jastrow, Jr., Ph.D., LL.D., Professor of Semitic Languages, University of Penn- sylvania. V. The Ancient Persian Doctrine of a Future Life 121 A. V. Williams Jackson, Ph.D., L.H.D., LL.D., Professor of Indo-Iranian Lan- guages, Columbia University. VI. Immortality in the Hebrew Religion . 141 Lewis Bayles Paton, Ph.D., D.D., Professor of Old Testament Exegesis and Criticism, Hartford Theological Seminary. VII. Immortality in Greek Religion . . 164 Arthur Fairbanks, Ph.D., Litt. D., Director of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and for- merly Professor of Greek and Greek Archae- ology, University of Michigan. 7 8 CONTENTS VIII. Immortality in the Synoptic Gospels . 193 Benjamin Wisner Bacon, D.D., Litt. D., LL. D., Professor of New Testament Criti- cism and Exegesis, Yale University. IX. Paul's Belief in Life After Death . 225 Frank Chamberlin Porter, Ph.D., D.D., Pro- fessor of Biblical Theology, Yale University. X. Immortality in the Fourth Gospel . 259 Benjamin Wisner Bacon, D.D., Litt. D., LL.D., Professor of New Testament Criti- cism and Exegesis, Yale University. XI. Immortality in Mohammedanism . . 295 Duncan Black MacDonald, M.A., D.D., Pro- fessor of Semitic Languages, Hartford The- ological Seminary. XII. Life After Death 321 E. Hershey Siie:ith, Ph.D., LL.D., Professor of the Philosophy of Religion and Religious Education, Yale University. THE IDEA OF THE FUTURE LIFE AMONG PRIMITIVE TRIBES Franz Boas AMONG the many attempts that have been made to describe and explain the origin and devel- opment of the concepts of soul and immor- tality the one made by Edward B. Tylor in his " Primitive Culture " is most exhaustive and carefully thought out. Although since the publication of his work, much new evidence has been accumulated, the new data may well be fitted into his general treatment of the subject. We are, however, no longer quite ready to accept his interpretation of the material which he has so as- siduously collected and marshalled in logical order. To him the ideas by which primitive man expresses his sense experience are a result of speculative thought, of reasoning that leads to a consistent view of the world. These thoughts, being determined by the gen- eral state of cultural life, lead to concepts which nat- urally develop one from the other and represent a typical series which arises regardless of race and of historical affiliations. It is true that, sometimes, he sets aside the latter point of view and recognizes specific forms of thought which belong to various cultural groups, such as the Indo-Europeans on the one hand, the Semites on the other, but these ap- 10 RELIGION AND THE FUTURE LIFE preaches to a historical treatment are entirely subor- dinated to the general evolutional viewpoint in which certain cultural types appear as belonging to the evo- lutionary stages of primitive, barbaric or civilized society. We are, at present, more inclined to consider the growth of ideas, not as a result of rational processes, but rather as an involuntary growth, and their inter- pretation as the outcome of rationalization when, to- gether with correlated action, they rise into conscious- ness. We recognize that the rationalizing interpreta- tion of an idea does not by any means necessarily rep- resent its historical growth, and that a classification of ideas from a definite viewpoint, beginning with those that seem to be simple and proceeding to those that seem complex, cannot without further proof be interpreted as historical sequence, but may give an entirely distorted picture of historical happenings. We may trace the development of the concepts " soul '' and " immortality " in the history of Europe and of other countries in which historical data are available, but the attempt to give an historical inter- pretation for people without recorded history is liable to lead to quite fallacious results if based on nothing else than a classification of data according to their complexity. Nevertheless, the problem that Tylor set to himself remains. There are decided similarities in the views held regarding "soul" and "immortality" among peoples that in measurable time cannot have had any historical connection. There is, however, danger of overlooking, on account of a general resemblance, sig- nificant dissimilarities which may have value from a historical point of view. It is unavoidable that we should base our considerations, as Tylor did, on the FUTURE LIFE AMONG PEIMITIVE TRIBES 11 data of individual psychology and that we should try to understand how, in a given cultural setting, man may be led to form certain concepts. In following out this method, we should, however, take into con- sideration the effects of secondary rationalization and the historical facts that may have influenced the ways by which simple ideas grew into complex dogma. From this point of view Tylor's treatment appears to us as too schematic. He does not take into con- sideration the multifarious mental conditions that may lead to the concepts " soul " and '' immortality," but he selects a few and bases his conclusions upon their general applicability. Now and then he does mention the possibility of alternative mental states that might lead to similar results, only to revert to his main ex- planation. The difference in point of view appears most clearly in Tylor's summing up of his explanation of the occur- rence of the belief in multiple souls:' *' Terms corre- sponding with those of life, mind, soul, spirit, ghost, and so forth, are not thought of as describing really separate entities, so much as the several forms and functions of one individual being. Thus the confusion which prevails in our own thought and language, in a manner typical of the thought and language of man- kind in general, is in fact due not merely to vagueness of terms, but to an ancient theory of substantial unity which underlies them." We are inclined to take for our starting point pre- cisely the opposite point of view. The unconscious growth of concepts is expressed nowhere more clearly than in language. In many lan- guages we find the tendency to conceptualize a quality, * Edward B. Tylor, "Primitive Culture," lyondon, 1891, Vol. I, p. 435- 12 EELIGION AND THE FUTUEE LIFE a condition, or even an habitual action, which then appears in the form of a noun. It is not by any means necessary that the occurrence of such concepts must lead to an imaginative process by means of which they are given concrete form, but it gives ready opportunity for such development. We still feel the force in the use of metaphorical expressions which are based on the concrete form given to a term that from a logical point of view, is of attributive character. These metaphors may be modern or based on ancient patterns. It is noticeable that particularly the states and func- tions of physical and mental life do not appear to primitive man as qualities, conditions or actions, but as definite concepts which tend to take on concrete form. Even in modern science we are still struggling with the confusion between substance and attribute in the analy- sis of such concepts as matter and energy. We do not mean to imply by this that mythology, as Max Miiller states, is " a disease of language," that all mythological concepts originate from misinterpreted or reinterpreted linguistic forms, we rather mean that the formation of concepts is not the same in all languages and that in particular, the grouping of what is sub- stance and what attribute, is not always made in the same way, and that many attributes are conceived as substance. It does not seem plausible that linguistic form should be subsequent to the conscious conceptual- ization of an attribute as a substance. The two must rather be considered as concomitant and interdependent phenomena. It is quite conceivable that where the tendency to objectivation of attributes prevails, later on the transformation of other attributes into objects may follow by analogy, but the primary basis cannot be considered in any way as due to a conscious classifica- tion, — just as little as the classification of the spectrum PUTTJEE LIFE AMONG PRIMITIVE TRIBES 13 into a limited number of fundamental colour terms can be due to conscious conceptualization of a number of selected colours. On the basis of these considerations we interpret the fact that many manifestations of life take concrete forms as an effect of the tendency to conceive certain classes of attributes as substances. In modern lan- guages terms like hunger, courage, love, sin, conscious- ness, death, are either owing to traditional usage or to poetic imagination, endowed with qualities, even with concrete forms. The more distinctly a quality is conceived as a con- crete substance, the less will its existence be bound up with the object possessing the quality in question. If success in hunting is conceived as a substance that may associate itself with a person, it will exist independ- ently of the person who may acquire it or lose it and after his death it will continue to exist as it existed before its acquisition. When a sin is conceived as a substance, as is done by the Eskimo, it has an inde- pendent existence. It attaches itself to a person ; it may be separated from the sinner, and continue to exist until attached to some other person. They are no longer qualities that die with the individual to whom they belong. Sickness is often conceived not as a con- dition of the body, but as an extraneous object that may enter the body of a person and may be extracted again, or that may be thrown into it. This foreign substance that acts upon the living being may be as permanent in its existence as the earth, the heavens and the waters. In all these cases there is no integral association be- tween the object and its bbjectivated quality. Each leads an independent existence. The quality of the ex- pert hunter, or the faculty of the shaman may be con- 14 EELIGION AND THE FUTUKE LIFE ceived as objects or as personalities that assist the man with whom they are associated. They are different from his own personahty and we designate them as magical objects or as helping spirits. There is, however, another group of qualities con- sidered as substances which are most intimately con- nected with human life and without which a person is not a complete living being. Life, power of action, personality belong to this group. Wherever they oc- cur in one form or another we designate them as "soul." The soul represents the objectivated quali- ties which constitute either the ideal human being or the individual personality. A study of the terms which are ordinarily translated as " soul " shows clearly that the equivalents in primitive tongues repre- sent a variety of qualities of living man, and that their meaning varies accordingly. Often the term *' life " corresponds to what we call "soul." Thus the Chinook Indian of Northwest America says that when " life " leaves the body man must die, and that if it is returned to the body, he will recover. " Life " is an objectivation of all that differ- entiates the living person from the dead body. It leads a separate existence and, therefore, continues to exist after death. " Life " itself is not always conceived as a unit. When a paralyzed arm or leg has lost its power of mo- tion, its separate " life " has gone, but the person con- tinues to live as long as the " great life " that belongs to the whole body stays with him. It is not by any means necessary that the " life " should be conceived in anthropomorphic fonn; it is sometimes considered as an object or as an animal such as a butterfly. As long as it stays in the body, its owner is alive ; when it leaves, he dies; when it is hurt, he sickens. FUTURE LIFE AMONG PEIMITIVE TRIBES 15 In a wider sense the power to act, the will power, is classified not as a function of the living body, but as something substantial, of independent existence. We might call it the personality separated from the person. In a way it is another form under which life is con- ceptualized. On account of its closer association with the form of living man, it is very liable to appear in anthropomorphic form. There is no sharp line that separates this concept from the products of imagery, in so far as these are not understood as functions of mental life, but as in- dependent objects. Tylor and others have discussed fully and adequately the effects of the products of im- agination, of dreams and of trance experiences in which man finds his body in one place while his mind visits distant persons and sees distant scenes, or when he finds conversely distant scenes and persons appear- ing before his mental eye. These are based on mem- ory images which attain at times unusual intensity. Not by a logical process, but by the natural and invol- untary process of classification of experience, man is led to the concept of the objective existence of the memory-image. Its formation is due to the experi- ences of visual and auditory imagery. We may recognize the objectivation of life and of the memory-image as the principal sources from which the manifold forms of soul concepts spring. As the life-soul may vary in form, so the memory-image soul may take varying forms according to the particular aspect of the personality that predominates. These two concepts of the soul do not remain isolated, but the one always influences the other. A detailed study of their interrelation and of the variety of meanings that corresponds to our term " soul " would require a close Study of the forms of thought that have grown up on 16 EELIGION AKD THE FUTUEE LIFE this general psychological background, partly through an inner development, partly owing to diffusion of ideas. The most important results of these considerations for our problem is the recognition of the fact that those qualities, conditions, and functions which we combine under the term " soul " are looked upon as substances and that, for this reason, body and soul have separate existence and their lives are not encompassed in the same space of time. In fact, there is probably not a single primitive peo- ple that holds rigidly to the belief that the existence of the soul coincides with the actual span of life of the individual. The soul may be considered as existing before the birth of its owner and it may continue to exist after his death. However, the idea of immor- tality, of a continued existence without beginning in the past and without end in the future is not necessarily implied in these beliefs. Preexistence is necessarily connected with the idea. of rebirth! It is another expression of the primitive mythological thought which assumes that nothing has a beginning, that there is no creation of anything new, but that everything came into being by transforma- tions. The animals, plants, striking features of the landscape are commonly accounted for as due to the transformation of human being into new forms. Thus also the birth of a child is accounted for as a re- sult of the tranformation of a preexisting being. If the Eskimo believe that children, like eggs, live in the snow and crawl into the mother's womb, if some Australian tribes believe that a totem or ancestral spirit enters the mother's body, if some Indian tribes of America believe that salmon may be reborn as children, or that a deceased person may come back to be borne FUTUEE LIFE AMONG PEIMITIYE TEIBES 17 again by a woman of his own family, this is not neces- sarily due to a complete lack of knowledge of the physiological process of conception, but should rather be interpreted as a particular aspect of the concept of " life " or " soul," as independent of bodily existence. This appears very clearly in the case of the Eskimo who misinterpret sexual intercourse as intended to feed the child that has entered the mother's womb. These ideas are presumably analogous to the ideas surviving in our folk-lore in which children are presented as pre- existing. The belief in transmigration shows most clearly that we are dealing here with the soul which exists before the birth of the child. The term " immortality " is, however, applied more specifically to life after death. We have pointed out before that the visualization of the form of a person due to imagery is one of the principal sources of the concept of " soul." This form survives after the death of the individual as his memory-image. For this very reason the image-soul cannot possibly die with the death of the person, but will survive at least as long as his friends survive. The importance of the recollection of a person for the future life of the soul is brought out in the beliefs of many Bantu tribes of Africa. Thus among the Vandau, the soul of a person who is remembered will be kindly disposed toward his friends. When the deceased is forgotten, his soul becomes a malignant being that is feared and must be driven away. The memory-image is intangible, it arises suddenly and vanishes again when the calls of every-day life repress imaginative thought. It partakes of all the features of the departed and even his voice may dimly sound in the imagination of the surviving friend. In memory the departed will appear as he was known in 18 EELIGION AND THE FUTURE LIFE life, in his usual dress and engaged in his usual occu- pations so that with his image appear also his prop- erty that he used in his lifetime. The inanimate prop- erty partakes in a peculiar way in the continued exist- ence of the memory-image even after the objects have been destroyed. It is hardly necessary to assume with Tylor, that the belief in this continued existence of proprietary objects is due to an animistic belief. In many cases it may be based merely on the continued existence of the memory-image. The importance of the memory-image in the for- mation of the soul concept is nowhere clearer than in those cases in which the dead one is believed to con- tinue to exist in the land of souls in the same condi- tion in which he was at the time of death. When the aging Chukchee demands to be killed before he is in- firm and unable to withstand the hardships of life, he acts under the assumption that his soul will continue in the same condition in which he finds himself at the time of death. Whether or not this is the historical source of the custom is irrelevant for its modern interpretation by the Chukchee. In the same way the belief of the Eskimo that a person who dies of old age or of a lingering illness will be unhappy in future life, while he who is suddenly taken away in full vig- our, as a man who dies a violent death or a woman who dies in childbirth, will be strong and happy in future life is expressive of the memory-image that the de- ceased leaves in the minds of his survivors. If the belief in continued existence is based on the persistence of the objectivated memory-image, it might be inferred that there should be a widespread belief of the death of the soul at the time when all those who knew the deceased are dead and gone. As a matter of fact, we find indications of a belief in a FTJTUEE LIFE AMONG PEIMITIYE TEIBES "19 second death that conform with this idea, but in the majority of cases the soul is beheved to be immortal. There are a considerable number of cases in which the second death of a soul is described, but most of these are not of a character that may easily be reduced to the fact that the deceased is forgotten. They seem rather to be due to the imaginative elaboration of the continued life of the soul which is necessarily thought to be analogous to our own life and in which, there- fore, death is a natural incident. It does not seem difficult to understand why the objectivation of the memory-image should lead to the belief in immortality rather than in a limited existence after death. To the surviving friend the memory- image is a substance and he will talk of it as having permanent existence. It will, therefore, be assimied by his friends who may not have known the deceased, in the same way, and will continue to exist in their minds in the same way as all other qualities that are, according to the views held by their society, conceived as substances. Knowledge of the presence and actual decomposi- tion of the body and the long preservation of the skele- ton is the source of a number of other concepts that are related to the idea of immortality. When we speak of ghosts, we are apt to think more of the dis- embodied souls which wait to be redeemed, than of the skeletal remains that are thought to be endowed with life. Nevertheless we find, every now and then, that the ghost is not described as the transparent or vaporous apparition of the memory-image, but as bear- ing the features of a skeleton, often with grotesque additions of luminous orbits and nasal aperture. In this form the ghost is, of course, not the memory- image of the living, but a concept representing the re- 20 EELIGION AND THE FUTURE LIFE mains of the dead body endowed with life. For this reason it happens often, that these *' immortals " are not individualized, but are conceived as very imper- sonal beings who may wage war among themselves, or against man, who may waylay the unwary and who form a hostile tribe of foreigners, as though they were ordinary living beings, but endowed with unusual pow- ers. The lack of individuality of this type of ghost appears very clearly among many American tribes, while the idea does not seem to prevail in Africa. We can hardly .consider these ghosts as immortal souls, because they lack completely individuality. Nevertheless there arises at times confusion between the two concepts. The ghosts have their village or villages and often, when the soul, — in the sense of life and memory-images, — of the departed leaves the body, it is said to go to the village of the ghosts where it meets previously departed friends and many per- sons whom it does not know, — those who died long ago. This contradiction is not surprising, because there are many associative bonds between the two groups of ideas, so that the one calls forth the other and a sharp line between the two concepts is, there- fore, not established. It is most important, for a clear understanding of the questions with which we are dealing and of simi- lar problems, that we must not expect a consistent system of beliefs in primitive thought. We must re- member that concepts originating from different prin- ciples of unconscious classification must overlap, and that for this reason, if for no other, the same concept may belong to conflicting categories. Only when con- scious rationalization sets in and a standardization of beliefs develops may some of these conflicting or even contradictory views be harmonized. FUTUKE LIFE AMONG PEIMITIVE TEIBES 21 It would seem, therefore, best not to include in the idea of immortality of the soul, the idea of separate existence which is attached to the acquaintance with the decomposing body and the relative permanence of the skeleton, just as little as we can consider the permanence and separate existence of objectivated spiritual powers, such as skill and success as immortal souls. They appear to us rather as helpful spiritual beings or objects. The fundamental differences between the various forms of the soul concept and between the feelings and thoughts that lead to the assumption of a separate existence of the soul are the source also of many con- flicting views regarding the abode of the soul before birth, during life and after death. Except in the cases of a well-developed belief in transmigration, there is no clear and well-developed idea of the places and con- ditions in which souls exist before birth. Even when they are believed to be returned ancestors, there does not seem to be a well-defined belief regarding the mode of life of a preexisting soul. This may be due to the lack of congruity between the behaviour of the new- bom infant and the memory-image which is ordinarily associated with the full-grown person. This makes it difficult to bridge the gap between the existence of the soul and the birth of the child. During life, more particularly during healthy life, the seat of the soul is conceived to be in the body, or at least, closely associated with the body. Quite often the concepts of the relations between body and soul lack in clearness. The distinction between a spiritual helper or a protecting object and the " soul '' shows, however, very clearly that the former is thought of as existing apart from the body, while the latter is closely associated with it. We pointed out before, 22 EELIGION AND THE FUTUEE LIFE that we find in both groups conceptuaHzed attributes, but that the former are less firmly connected with the fundamental phenomena of life. In many cases, the *' life-soul " is believed to permeate the whole body, or the special part of the body to which it belongs. When the soul is considered as an object, it may be thought to be located in some vital part, as in the nape of the neck; or, still more commonly, it is identified with those functions of the body that cease with death, such as the breath, the flowing blood, or the moving eye. So far as these are visible and tangible objects of temporary existence, they are considered the seat of the "life-soul" during life, rather than as the "life-soul" itself. However, the latter always re- mains the objectivation of the functions of life. The concept of the memory-image soul leads to different beliefs in regard to its localization. Its es- sential feature is that it is a fleeting image of the per- sonality and that, for this reason, it is identical in form with the person. Shadows and reflections on water partake of these unsubstantial, fleeting charac- teristics of the image of the person. Probably for this reason they are often identified with the memory-im- age soul. There are, however, also mixed concepts, as that of a " Hfe-soul " which, after leaving the body, appear in the form of its owner, but of diminutive size. Much clearer than the idea of localization of the preexisting soul and of the soul of the living are those relating to the conditions of the souls after death. In imaginative stories, the details of life after death are often elaborated. They are confirmed and further em- bellished by the reports of people who, in a trance, be- lieve they have visited the country of the souls. The presence of the bodily remains, the departure FUTURE LIFE AMONG PRIMITIVE TRIBES 23 of life, and the persistence of the memory-image lead to many conflicting views which have certainly helped in the development of the belief in multiple souls. While the idea of a life-soul combined with the belief in a continued existence of the personality, creates readily the formation of the concepts of a distant coun- try of the dead, the memory-image based on the remem- brance of the daily intercourse of the deceased with his survivors and the presence of his tangible grave lead rather to the belief in the continued presence of the soul. In the conflicting tendencies which are thus established, and in the elaboration of detail which is necessarily involved in tales regarding future life, his- torical diffusion plays a much more important part than in the formation of the mere concepts of soul and immortality, and it would be quite impossible to understand the multifarious forms of description of the land of the dead without taking into consideration the actual interrelations between tribes. An attempt at a purely psychological analysis would be quite mis- leading. We find, for instance, in Africa a wide- spread idea of sacred groves in which ancestral souls reside; this must be taken as a result of historical adaptation, not as the necessary development of psychological causes that lead to the same result any- where, — in the same way, as the characteristic belief in the different behaviour of remembered and forgot- ten ancestral souls which is common to many South African tribes, must be due to historical assimilation. This is proved by the definite localization of these be- liefs in well-circumscribed areas. Nevertheless a number of features may be recog- nized which are of remarkably wide distribution and for which, therefore, a common psychological cause may be sought. 24 EELIGION AND THE FUTUEE LIFE The belief in a temporary presence of the soul in or near the place of death is quite common and may be based on the condition of mind which prevails until the survivors have adapted themselves to the absence of the deceased. It may be interpreted as the objecti- vation of the haunting consciousness of his previous presence in all the little acts of every-day life, and in the feeling that he ought still to be present. As this feeling wears down, he departs to the land of the souls. In the same way the difficulty of separating the dead body from the remembrance of the body in ac- tion may be the cause of the belief that the soul hovers for some time around the grave, to leave only when the body begins to decompose. The ideas relating to the permanent abode of the souls are not easily interpreted, largely on account of their complex mythological character which requires a detailed historical investigation. Nevertheless there are a few general features that are so widely dis- tributed that they may be briefly touched upon. Gen- erally the village of the dead is thought to be very far away, at the western confines of our world where the sun and moon disappear, below the ground or in the sky, and difficult to reach. Among the obstacles in the way, we find particularly a river that must be crossed by the soul, or dangerous passages over chasms. It is but natural that the souls should be conceived as living in the same way as human beings do. The ex- periences of primitive man give no other basis for his imagination to work on. Their occupations are the same, they hunt, eat and drink, play and dance. A living person who takes part in their dally life, par- ticularly If he taste of their food, cannot return to the land of the living. The objects which the immortal souls use are also immortal, but they appear to the FUTUKE LIFE AMONG PEBIITIVE TRIBES 25 living as old and useless, often in the form in which they are disposed of at the funeral ceremonies. Not- withstanding the identity of the social life of the dead and of the living, there is a consciousness that things cannot be the same there as here and this thought is given expression in the belief that everything there is the opposite of what it is here. When we have winter, it is summer there, when we sleep, the souls of the dead are awake. We cannot enter Into the great variety of beliefs regarding the land of the souls without overstepping the bounds of a socio-psychological discussion. The belief in a number of different countries of the dead, however, requires brief mention. We are ac- customed to think of these distinctions from an ethical point of view, of heaven for the souls of the good, of hell for the souls of the bad. It is doubtful whether in primitive life this concept ever exists. The differ- ence in the locations of the countries of the dead and of their conditions is rather determined by the mem- ory-image of the -person at the time of his death. The strong and vigorous who live a happy life, are as- sembled In one place — the weak and sickly at another place. When other principles of separation prevail, they may be reduced to other classificatory concepts. In simple economic conditions the whole community is equally affected by favourable and unfavourable con- ditions. Among the Eskimo, when the weather Is propitious, the whole village has enough food, and every healthy person is happy. When, on the other hand, no game can be obtained on account of continued tempests, the whole village is In distress. Therefore a conception of future life in which in the same village a considerable part of the people are unhappy, another considerable part happy, does not coincide with the 26 RELIGION AND THE FUTURE LIFE experience of Eskimo life and we may, perhaps, recog- nize in social conditions of this type a cause that leads to a differentiation of abodes of the dead. In the preceding discussion, we have considered only the general socio-psychological basis on which the con- cepts of " soul '' and " immortality " have arisen. It is necessary to repeat, that for a clear understanding of the great variety of forms which their beliefs take, the historical relations between groups of tribes must be considered, not only of those that are at present in close contact, but also of those which belong to larger cultural areas in which intertribal cultural influences may belong to early periods. II ANCIENT EGYPTIAN IDEAS OF THE LIFE HEREAFTER James Henry Breasted AMONG no people, ancient or modern, has the idea of a Hfe beyond the grave held so promi- nent a place as among the ancient Egyptians. This insistent belief in a hereafter may, perhaps, have been, and experience in the land of Egypt has led me to believe it was, greatly favoured and influenced by the fact that the conditions of soil and climate re- sulted in such a remarkable preservation of the human body as may be found under natural conditions, per- haps nowhere else in the world. In going up to the daily task on some neighbouring temple in Nubia, I was not infrequently obliged to pass through the cor- ner of a cemetery, where the feet of a dead man, buried in a shallow grave, were now uncovered and extended directly across my path. They were pre- cisely like the rough and calloused feet of the work- men in our excavations. How old the grave was I do not know, but any one familiar with the cemeteries of Egypt, ancient and modern, has found numerous bodies or portions of bodies indefinitely old which seemed so well preserved as to suggest those of the living. This must have been a frequent experience of the ancient Egyptian, and like Hamlet with the skull of Yorick in his hands, he must often have pondered 27 28 RELIGION AND THE FUTURE LIFE deeply as he contemplated these silent witnesses. The surprisingly perfect state of preservation in which he found his ancestors whenever the digging of a new grave disclosed them, must have greatly stimulated his belief in their continued existence, and often aroused his imagination to more detailed pictures of the realm and the life of the mysterious departed. The earliest and simplest of these beliefs began at an age so re- mote that they have left no trace in surviving remains. The cemeteries of the prehistoric communities along the Nile, discovered and excavated since 1894, dis- close a belief in a future life which was already in an advanced stage. Thousands of graves, the oldest of which cannot be dated later than the end of the fifth millennium b. c, were dug by these primitive people in the desert gravels along the margin of the alluvium. In the bottom of the pit, which is but a few feet in depth, lies the body with the feet drawn up toward the chin and surrounded by a meagre equipment of pottery, flint implements, stone weapons, and utensils, and rude personal ornaments, all of which were, of course, intended to furnish the departed for his future life. From the archaic beliefs represented in such burials as these it is a matter of fifteen hundred years to the appearance of the earliest written documents surviving to us — documents from which we may draw fuller knowledge of the more developed faith of a people rapidly rising toward a high material civilization and a unified governmental organization, the first great state of antiquity. When we take up the course of the development about 3000 b. c, we have before us the complicated results of a commingling of originally distinct beliefs which have long since interpenetrated each other and have for many centuries circulated thus. ANCIENT EGYPTIAN IDEAS 29 — a tangled mass of threads which it is now very difficult or impossible to disentangle. Certain fundamental distinctions can be made, how- ever. The early belief that the dead lived in or at the tomb, which must therefore be equipped to furnish his necessities in the hereafter, was one from which the Egyptian has never escaped entirely, not even at the present day. As hostile creatures infesting the cemeteries, the dead were dreaded, and protection from their malice was necessary. Even the pyramid must be protected from the malignant dead prowling about the necropolis, and in later times a man might be afflicted even in his house by a deceased member of his family wandering in from the cemetery. His mortuary practices therefore constantly gave expres- sion to his involuntary conviction that the departed continued to inhabit the tomb long after the appear- ance of highly developed views regarding a blessed hereafter elsewhere in some distant region. We who continue to place flowers on the graves of our dead, though we may at the same time cherish beliefs in some remote paradise of the departed, should cer- tainly find nothing to wonder at in the conflicting be- liefs and practices of the ancient Nile-dweller five thousand years ago. Side by side the two beliefs sub-*^ sisted, that the dead continued to dwell in or near then tomb, and at the same time that he had departed else- * where to a distant and blessed realm. In taking up the first of these two beliefs, the so- journ in the tomb, it will be necessary to understand the Egyptian notion of a person, and of those elements of the human personality which might survive death. These views are, of course, not the studied product of a highly trained and long-developed self-consciousness. On the contrary, we have in them the involuntary and 30 EELIGION AND THE FUTUEE LIFE unconscious impressions of an early people, in the study of which it is apparent that we are confronted by the earliest chapter in folk-psychology which has anywhere descended to us from the past. On the walls of the temple of Luxor, where the birth of Amenhotep III was depicted in sculptured scenes late in the fifteenth century before Christ, we find the little prince brought in on the arm of the Nile-god, accom- panied apparently by another child. This second figure, identical in external appearance with that of the prince, is a being called by the Egyptians the ** ka " ; it was born with the prince, being communi- cated to him by the god. This curious comrade of an individual was corporeal and the fortunes of the two were ever afterward closely associated; but the ka was not an element of the personality, as is so often stated. It seems to me from a study of the Pyramid Texts, that the nature of the ka has been fundamen- tally misunderstood. He was a kind of superior genius intended to guide the fortunes of the individual in the hereafter, or it was in the world of the hereafter that he chiefly if not exclusively had his abode, and there he awaited the coming of his earthly companion. He is roughly parallel with the later notion of the guard- ian angel as found among other peoples, and he is, of course, far the earliest known example of such a being. The actual personality of the individual in life con- sisted, according to the Egyptian notion, in the visible body, and the invisible intelligence, the seat of the last being considered the '' heart " or the " belly," which in- deed furnished the chief designations for the intelli- gence. Then the vital principle which, as so frequently among other peoples, was identified with the breath which animated the body, was not clearly distinguished from the intelligence. The two together were pic- ANCIENT EGYPTIAN IDEAS 31 tured in one symbol, a human-headed bird with human arms, which we find in the tomb and coffin scenes de- picted hovering over the mummy and extending to its nostrils in one hand the figure of a swelling sail, the hieroglyph for wind or breath, and in the other the well known so-called crux ansata/ or symbol of life. This curious little bird-man was called by the Egyp- tians the " ba." The fact has been strangely over- looked that originally the ba came into existence really for the first time at the death of the individual. All sorts of devices and ceremonies were resorted to that the deceased might at death become a ba. From these and other facts it is evident that the Egyptians had developed a rude psychology of the dead, in accordance with which they endeavoured to reconstitute the individual by processes external to him, under the control of the survivors, especially the mortuary priest who possessed the indispensable cere- monies for accomplishing this end. We may sum- marize it all in the statement that after the resuscita- tion of the body, there was a mental restoration or re- constitution of the faculties one by one, attained espe- cially by the process of making the deceased a " soul " (ba), in which capacity he again existed as a person, possessing all the powers that would enable him to sub- sist and survive in the life hereafter."* That life now involved an elaborate material equip- ment, a monumental tomb with its mortuary furniture. It was the duty of every son to arrange the material equipment of his father for the life beyond — a duty so naturally and universally felt that it involuntarily * Really a sandal-string. 'It is therefore not wholly correct to attribute to the Egyptians a belief in the immortality of the soul strictly interpreted as im- perishability, or to speak of his "ideas of immortality." 32 EELIGION AND THE FUTURE LIFE passed from the life of the people into the Osiris myth as the duty of Horus toward his father Osiris. The maintenance of the departed, in theory at least through all time, was, however, a responsibility which the Egyptian dared not entrust exclusively to his surviving family or eventually to a posterity whose solicitude on his behalf must continue to wane and finally disappear altogether. The noble, therefore, executed carefully drawn wills and testamentary endowments, the income from which was to be devoted exclusively to the main- tenance of his tomb and the presentation of oblations of incense, ointment, food, drink, and clothing in lib- eral quantities and at frequent intervals. The source of this income might be the revenues from the noble's own lands or from his offices and the perquisites be- longing to his rank, from all of which a portion might be permanently diverted for the support of his tomb and its ritual. The Pharaoh himself might reasonably expect that his imposing tomb would long survive the destruction of the less enduring structures in which his nobles were laid, and that his endowments, too, might be made to outlast those of his less powerful contempo- raries. The pyramid as a stable form in architecture has impressed itself upon all time. Beneath this vast mountain of stone, as a result of its mere mass and indestructibility alone, the Pharaoh looked forward to the permanent survival of his body, and of the per- sonality with which it was so Indissolubly involved. Each Pharaoh of the Third and Fourth Dynasties (early Third Millennium) spent a large share of his available resources in erecting this vast tomb, which was to receive his body and insure its preservation after death. It became the chief object of the state and its organization, thus to insure the king's survival ANCIENT EGYPTIAN IDEAS 33 in the hereafter. Resting beneath the pyramid, the king's wants were elaborately met by a sumptuous and magnificent ritual performed on his behalf in the tem- ple before his tomb. The increasing number of royal tombs, however, made it more and more difficult as a mere matter of management and administration to maintain them. Hence even the priests of Sahure's pyramid in the middle of the twenty-eighth century B. c, unable properly to protect the king's pyramid- temple, found it much cheaper and more convenient, to wall up all of the side entrances and leave only the causeway as the entrance to the temple. Not long after 2500 B. c, indeed the whole sixty-mile line of Old Kingdom pyramids from Medum on the south to Gizeh on the north had become a desert solitude. The pyramids mark the culmination of the belief in material equipment as completely efficacious in se-j curing felicity for the dead. The great pyramids of Gizeh represent the effort of Titanic energies absorb- ing all the resources of a great state as they converged upon one supreme endeavour to sheath eternally the body of a single man, the head of the state, in a husk of masonry so colossal that by these purely material means the royal body might defy all time and by sheer force of mechanical supremacy make conquest of immortality. The decline of such vast pyramids as those of the Fourth Dynasty of Gizeh, and the final insertion of the Pyramid Texts in the pyramids be- ginning with the last king of the Fifth Dynasty about 2625 B. c, puts the emphasis on well-being elsewhere, a belief in felicity in some distant place not so entirely dependent upon material means and recognizes in some degree the fact that piles of masonry cannot con- fer that immortality which a man must win in his own soul. The Pyramid Texts as a whole furnish us the 34 EELIGION AND THE FUTUEE LIFE oldest chapter in human thinking preserved to us, the remotest reach in the intellectual history of man which we are now able to discern. Written in hieroglyphic they occupy the walls of the passages, galleries, and chambers in five of the pyramids of Sakkara. They represent a period of aibout one hundred and fifty years from the vicinity of 2625 to possibly 2475 b. c, that is the zvhole of the twenty-sixth century and pos- sibly a quarter of a century before and after it. It is evident, however, that they contain inherited material much older than this. Within the period of a century and a half covered by our five copies, development is noticeable In the Pyramid Texts. Evidences of edit- ing in the later copies, which, however, are not found in the earlier copies, are clearly discernible. The proc- esses of thought and the development of custom and belief which brought them forth were going on until the last copy was produced in the early twenty-fifth century B. c. They represent a period of at least a thousand years, and a thousand years, it should not be forgotten, which was ended some four thousand five hundred years ago. While their especial function may be broadly stated to be to insure the king felicity in the hereafter, the Pyramid Texts constantly reflect, as all literature does, the ebb and flow of the life around them, and they speak in terms of the experience of the men who pro- duced them, terms current in the daily life of palace, street, and bazaar, or again terms which were born in the sacred solitude of the Inner temple. But notwith- standing the fact that these archaic texts are saturated with the life out of which they have come, they form together almost a terra incognita. As one endeavours to penetrate It, his feeling is like that of entering a vast primeval forest, a twilight jungle filled with ANCIENT EGYPTIAN IDEAS 35 strange forms and elusive shadows peopling a wilder- ness through which there is no path. An archaic or- thography veils and obscures words with which the reader may be quite familiar in their later and habitual garb. They serve, too, in situations and with mean- ings as strange to the reader as their spelling. Besides these disguised friends, there is a host of utter stran- gers, a great company of archaic words which have lived a long and active life in a far-away world now completely lost and forgotten. Hoary with age, like exhausted runners, they totter into sight for a brief period, barely surviving in these ancient texts, then disappear forever, and hence are never met with again. They vaguely disclose to us a vanished world of thought and speech, the last of the unnumbered seons through which prehistoric man has passed till he finally comes within hailing distance of us as he enters the historic age. But these hoary strangers, survivors of a forgotten age, still serving on for a generation or two in the Pyramid Texts, often remain strangers until they disappear; we have no means of making their acquaintance or of forcing them to reveal to us their names or the message which they bear, and no art of lexicography can force them all to yield up their secrets. Combined with these words, too, there is a deal of difficult construction, much enhanced by the obscure, dark, and elusive nature of the content of these archaic documents ; abounding in allusions to incidents in lost myths, to customs and usages long since ended, they are built up out of a fabric of life, thought, and experience largely unfamiliar or entirely unknown to us. We have said that their function is essentially to in- sure the king's felicity in the hereafter. The chief and dominant note throughout is insistent, even passion- 36 EELIGION AND THE FUTURE LIFE ate, protest against death. They may be said to be the record of humanity's earHest supreme revolt against the great darkness and silence from which none returns. The word death never occurs in the Pyramid Texts except in the negative or applied to a foe. Over and over again we hear the indomitable assurance that the dead lives. " King Teti has not died the death, he has become a glorious one in the hori- zon " ; '' Ho, King Unis ! Thou didst not depart dead, thou didst depart living " ; '* Thou hast departed that thou mightest live, thou hast not departed that thou mightest die "; *' Thou diest not." While the content of the Pyramid Texts may be thus indicated in a general way, a precise and full analysis is a far more difficult matter. The form of the literature contained is happily more easily disposed of. Among the oldest literary fragments in the col- lection are the religious hymns, and these exhibit an early poetic form, that of couplets displaying parallel- ism in arrangement of zvords and thought — the form which is familiar to all in the Hebrew psalms as " parallelism of members." It is carried back by its employment in the Pyramid Texts into the fourth millennium B. c. ; by far earlier than its appearance anywhere else. It is indeed the oldest of all literary forms known to us. Its use is not confined to the hymns mentioned, but appears also in other portions of the Pyramid Texts, where it is, however, not usu- ally so highly developed. Besides this form, which strengthens the claim of these fragments to be regarded as literature in our sense of the term, there is here and there, though not frequently, some display of literary quality in thought and language. There is, for example, a fine touch of imagination in one of the many descriptions of the ANCIENT EGYPTIAN IDEAS 37 resurrection of Osiris: "Loose thy bandages! They are not bandages, they are the locks of Nephthys," the weeping goddess hanging over the body of her dead brother. The ancient priest who wrote the Hne sees in the bandages that swathe the silent form the heavy locks of the goddess which fall and mingle with them. There is an elemental power, too, in the daring im- agination which discerns the sympathetic emotion of the whole universe as the dread catastrophe of the king's death, and the uncanny power of his coming among the gods of the sky are realized by the ele- ments. " The sky weeps for thee, the earth trembles for thee " say the ancient mourners for the king, or when they see him in imagination ascending the vault of the sky they say: " Clouds darken the sky, The stars rain down, The bows [a constellation] stagger, The bones of the Hell-hounds tremble, When they see King Unis, Dawning as a soul." While the Pyramid Texts have not been able to shake off the old view of the sojourn at the tomb, they give it little thought, and deal almost entirely with a blessed life in a distant realm. Let it be stated clearly at the outset that this distant realm is the sky, and that the Pyramid Texts know practically nothing of the hereafter in the Nether World. The men in whose hands the Pyramid Texts grew up took the greatest delight in elaborating and re- iterating in ever new and different pictures the bless- edness enjoyed by the king, thus protected, main^ tained, and honoured in the Sun-god's realm. Their imagination flits from figure to figure, and picture 38 EELIGION AND THE FUTURE LIFE to picture, and allowed to run like some wild tropical plant without control or guidance, weaves a complex fajDric of a thousand hues which refuse to merge into one harmonious or coherent whole. At one moment the king is enthroned in Oriental splendour as he was on earth, at another he wanders in the Field of Rushes in search of food ; here he appears in the bow of the Solar barque, yonder he is one of the Imperish- able Stars acting as the servant of Re. There is no endeavour to harmonize these inconsistent represen- tations, although in the mass we gain a broad impres- sion of the eternal felicity of a godlike ruler, ** who puts his annals (the record of his deeds) among his people, and his love among the gods." Over and over again the story of the king's trans- lation to the sky is brought before us with an indomi- table conviction and insistence which it must be con- cluded were thought to make the words of inevitable power and effect. Condensed into a paragraph the whole sweep of the king's celestial career is brought before us in a few swift strokes, each like a ray of sunshine touching but for an instant the prominences of some far landscape across which we look. Long successions of such paragraphs crowd one behind an- other like the waves of the sea, as if to overwhelm and in their impetuous rush, to bear away as on a flood the insistent fact of death, and sweep it to utter annihilation. It is difficult to convey to the modern reader the impression made by these thousands of lines as they roll on in victorious disregard of the invinci- bility of death, especially in those epitomizations of the king's celestial career which are so frequent. In so far as they owe their impressiveness to their mere bulk, built up like a bulwark against death, we can gain the impression only by reading the whole collec- ANCIENT EGYPTIAN IDEAS 39 tion through. The general character of such individ- ual epitomizing paragraphs is perhaps suggested by such as the following: The voice addresses the king: " Thy seats among the gods abide ; Re leans upon thee v^ith his shoulder. Thy odour is as their odour, tliy sweat is as the sweat of the Eighteen Gods. Thou dawnest, O King Teti, in the royal hood; thy hand seizes the sceptre, thy fist grasps the mace. Stand, O King Teti, in front of the two palaces of the South and the North. Judge the gods, (for) thou art of the elders who surround Re, who are before the Morning Star. Thou art born at thy new moons like the Moon. Re leans upon thee in the horizon, O King Teti. The Imperishable Stars follow thee, the companions of Re serve thee, O King Teti. Thou purihest thyself, thou ascendest to Re ; the sky is not empty of thee, O King Teti, forever." Such in the main outlines were the beliefs held by the Egyptian of the Old Kingdom (2980-2475 b. c.) concerning the Solar hereafter. There can be no doubt that at some time they were a fairly well-de- fined group, separable as a group from those of the Osirian faith. To the Osirian faith, moreover, they were opposed, and evidences of their incompatibility, or even hostility, have survived. It is clear that in the Solar faith we have a state theology, wath all the splendour and the prestige of its royal patrons behind it; while in that of Osiris we are confronted by a re- ligion of the people, which made a strong appeal to the individual believer. In the mergence of these two faiths we discern for the first time in history the age-long struggle between the state form of religion and the popular faith of the masses. It must now be our pur- pose to disengage as far as may be the nucleus of the Osirian teaching of the after life, and to trace the still 40 RELIGION AND THE FUTURE LIFE undetermined course of its struggle with the imposing celestial theology whose epic of the royal dead we have been following. Probably nothing in the life of the ancient Nile- dwellers commends them more appealingly to our sympathetic consideration than the fact that when the Osirian faith had once developed, it so quickly caught the popular imagination as to spread rapidly among all classes. It thus came into active competition with the Solar faith of the court and state priesthoods. This was especially true of its doctrines of the after life, in the progress of which we can discern the grad- ual Osirianization of Egyptian religion, and especially of the Solar teaching regarding the hereafter. There is nothing in the Osiris myth, nor in the character or later history of Osiris, to suggest a celestial hereafter. Indeed clear and unequivocal survivals from a period when Osiris was hostile to the celestial and Solar dead are still discoverable in the Pyramid Texts. The supreme boon which the identity of the king with Osiris assured the dead Pharaoh was the good offices of Horus, the personification of filial piety. All the pious attentions which Osiris had once en- joyed at the hands of his son Horus now likewise be- come the king's portion. The litigation which the myth recounts at Heliopolis is successfully met by the aid of Horus, as well as Thoth, and, like Osiris, the dead king received the predicate " righteous of voice," or " justified," an epithet which was later construed as meaning ** triumphant." While the Heliopolitan priests thus solarized and celestialized the Osirian mortuary doctrines, although they were essentially terrestrial in origin and character, these Solar theologians were in their turn unable to resist the powerful influence which the popularity of ANCIENT EGYPTIAN IDEAS 41 the Osirian faith brought to bear upon them. The Pyramid Texts were eventually Osirianized, and the steady progress of this process, exhibiting the course of the struggle between the Solar faith of the state temples and the popular beliefs of the Osirian religion thus discernible in the Pyramid Texts, is one of the most remarkable survivals from the early world, pre- serving as it does the earliest example of such a spir- itual and intellectual conflict between state and popu- lar religion. The dying Sun and the dying Osiris are here in competition. With the people the human Osiris makes the stronger appeal, and even the wealthy and subsidized priesthoods of the Solar religion could not withstand the power of this appeal. What we have opportunity to observe in the Pyramid Texts is specifically the gradual but irresistible intrusion of Osiris into the Solar doctrines of the hereafter and their resulting Osirianization. Thus in the royal and state temple theology, Osiris is lifted to the sky, and while he is there Solarized, he also tinctures the Solar teaching of the celestial king- dom of the dead with Osirian doctrines. The result was thus inevitable confusion, as the two faiths inter- penetrated. In both faiths we recall that the king is identified with the god, and hence we find him un- hesitatingly called Osiris and Re in the same passage. Nowhere in ancient times has the capacity of a race to control the material world been so fully expressed in surviving material remains as in the Nile valley. In the abounding fullness of their energies they built up a fabric of material civilization, the monuments of which it would seem time can never wholly sweep away. But the manifold substance of life, interfused of custom and tradition, of individual traits fashioned among social, economic, and governmental forces, ever 42 EELIGION AND THE FUTUEE LIFE developing in the daily operations and functions of life — all that made the stage and setting amid which necessity for hourly moral decisions arises — all that creates the attitude of the individual and impels the inner man as he is called upon to make these decisions — all these constitute an elusive higher atmosphere of the ancient v^orld which tomb masonry and pyramid orientation have not transmitted to us. Save in a few scanty references in the inscriptions of the Pyramid Age, it has vanished forever; for even the inscriptions, as we have seen, are concerned chiefly with the ^|Wr JmoLwelfare of the departed in the hereafter. What they disclose, however, is of unique interest, preserv- ing as it does the earliest chapter in the moral devel- opment of man as known to us, a chapter marking perhaps the most important fundamental step in the evolution of civilizatioa It is especially in the tomb that such claims of moral worthiness are made. This is not an accident; such claims are made in the tomb in this age with the log- ical purpose of securing in the hereafter any benefits accruing from such virtues. Thus on the ibase of a mortuary statue set up in a tomb, the deceased repre- sented by the portrait statue says: '' I had these statues made by the sculptor and he was satisfied with the pay which I gave him." The man very evidently wished it known that his mortuary equipment was honestly gotten. Over and over these men of four thousand five hun- dred to five thousand years ago affirm their innocence of evil-doing. " Never did I do anything evil toward any person," says the chief physician of King Sahure in the middle of the twenty-eighth century before Christ; " I was a doer of that which pleased all men." It is evident from such addresses to the living as this ANCIENT EGYPTIAN IDEAS 43 that one motive of these affirmations of estimable char- acter was the hope of maintaining the good-will of one's surviving neighbours, that they might present mortuary offerings of food and drink at the tomb. It is equally clear also that such moral worthiness was deemed of value in the sight of the gods and might in- fluence materially the happiness of the dead in the hereafter. An ethical ordeal awaited those who had passed into the shadow world. " I desired that it might be well with me in the Great God's presence," says a noble of the age. It is of great importance to identify these ideas of a moral searching in the hereafter wdth one or the other of the two dominant theologies, that is with Re or Osiris. Unfortunately the god whose judgment is feared is not mentioned by name, but an epithet, " Great God," is employed instead. This is expanded in one tomb to " Great God, lord of the sky." It is hardly possible that any other than Re can be meant. There can be no doubt that in the Old Kingdom the sovereignty of Re had resulted in attributing to him the moral requirements laid upon the dead in the here- after, and that in the surviving literature of that age he is chiefly the righteous god rather than Osiris. Contrary to the conclusion generally accepted at pres- ent, it was the Sun-god, therefore, who was the earliest champion of moral worthiness and the great judge in the hereafter. A thousand years later Osiris, as the victorious litigant at Heliopolis, as the champion of the dead who had legally triumphed over all his ene- mies, emerged as the great moral judge. In the usur- pation of this role by Osiris we have another evidence of the irresistible process which Osirianized Egyptian religion. To these later conditions from which mod- ern students have drawn their impressions, the current 44 EELIGION AND THE FUTURE LIFE conclusion regarding the early moral supremacy of Osiris is due. The greater age of the Solar faith in this as in other particulars is, however, perfectly clear. As we have so often said, it is not easy to read the spiritual and intellectual progress of a race in monu- ments so largely material as contrasted with literary documents. It is easy to be misled and to misinterpret the meagre indications furnished by purely material monuments. Behind them lies a vast complex of hu- man forces, and of human thinking which for the most part eludes us. Nevertheless it is impossible to contemplate the colossal tombs of the Fourth Dynasty, so well known as the Pyramids of Gizeh, and to con- trast them with the comparatively diminutive tombs which follow in the next two dynasties, without, as we have before hinted, discerning more than exclusively political causes behind this sudden and startling change. The insertion of the Pyramid Texts them- selves during the last century and a half of the Pyra- mid Age is an evident resort to less material forces enlisted on behalf of the departed Pharaoh as he con- fronted the shadow world. On the other hand, the Great Pyramids of Gizeh represent, as we have said before, the struggle of Titanic material forces in the endeavour by purely material means to immortalize the king's physical body, enveloping it in a vast and impenetrable husk of masonry, there to preserve for- ever all that linked the spirit of the king to material life. The Great Pyramids of Gizeh, while they are to-day the most imposing surviving witnesses to the earliest emergence of organized man and the triumph of concerted effort, are likewise the silent but eloquent expression of a supreme endeavour to achieve immor- tality by sheer physical force. For merely physical reasons such a colossal struggle with the forces of de- ANCIENT EGYPTIAN IDEAS 45 cay could not go on indefinitely; with these reasons political tendencies, too, made common cause; but combined with all these we must not fail to see that the mere insertion of the Pyramid Texts in itself in the royal tombs of the last century and a half of the Pyramid Age was an abandonment of the Titanic struggle with material forces and an evident resort to less tangible agencies. The recognition of a judgment and the requirement of moral worthiness in the here- after was a still more momentous step in the same di- rection. It marked a transition from a reliance on agencies external to the personality of the dead to de- pendence on inner values. Immortality began to make its appeal as a thing achieved in a man's own soul. It was the beginning of a shift of emphasis from objec- tive advantages to subjective qualities. It meant the ultimate extension of the dominion of God beyond the limits of the material world, that he might reign in the invisible kingdom of the heart. It was thus also the first step in the long process by which the individual personality begins to emerge as contrasted with the mass of society, a process which we can discern like- wise in the marvellous portrait sculpture of the Pyr- amid Age. The vision of the possibilities of individ- ual character had dimly dawned upon the minds of these men of the early world; their own moral ideas were passing into the character of their greatest gods, and with this supreme achievement the development of the five hundred years which we call the Pyramid Age had reached its close. When Egypt emerged from the darkness which fol- lowed the Pyramid Age, and after a century and a half of preparatory development reached the culmination of the Feudal Age (Twelfth Dynasty), about 2000 B. C, the men of this classic period looked back 46 RELIGION AND THE FUTURE LIFE upon a struggle of their ancestors with death — a strug- gle whose visible monuments were distributed along a period of fifteen hundred years. Of the thousand years wdiich had elapsed since the Pyramid Age be- gan, the first five hundred was impressively embodied before their eyes in that sixty-mile rampart of pyra- mids sweeping along the margin of the western desert. There they stretched like a line of silent outposts on the frontiers of death. It was a thousand years since the first of them had been built, and five hundred years had elapsed since the architects had rolled up their papyrus drawings of the latest, and the last group of workmen had gathered up their tools and departed. The priesthoods, too, left without support, had, as w^e have already seen, long forsaken the sumptuous tem- ples and monumental approaches that rose on the valley side. The sixty-mile pyramid cemetery lay in silent desolation, deeply encumbered with sand half -hiding the ruins of massive architecture, of fallen architraves and prostrate colonnades, a solitary waste where only the slinking figure of the vanishing jackal suggested the futile protection of the old mortuary gods of the desert. Even at the present day no such imposing spectacle as the pyramid cemeteries of Egypt is to be found anywhere in the ancient world, and we easily recall something of the reverential awe with which they oppressed us when we first looked upon them. Do we ever realize that this impression was felt by their descendants only a few centuries after the build- ers had passed away? and that they were already ancient to the men of 2000 B. c. ? On the minds of the men of the Feudal Age the Pyramid cemetery made a profound impression. If already in the Pyra- mid Age there had been some relaxation in the con- viction that by sheer material force man might make ANCIENT EGYPTIAN IDEAS 47 conquest of immortality, the spectacle of these colossal ruins now quickened such doubts into open scepticism, a scepticism which ere long found effective literary expression. It was a momentous thousand years of intellectual progress, therefore, of which these sceptics of the Feudal Age represented the culmination. Their men- tal attitude finds expression in a song of mourning, doubtless often repeated in the cemetery, and as we follow the lines we might conclude that the author had certainly stood on some elevated point overlook- ing the pyramid cemetery of the Old Kingdom as he wrote them. SONG OF THE HARPER " How prosperous is this good prince ! It is a goodly destiny, that the bodies diminish. Passing away while others remain. Since the time of the ancestors. The gods who were aforetime. Who rest in their pyramids, Nobles and the glorious departed likewise, Entombed in their pyramids. Those who built their (tomb) -temples. Their place is no more. Behold what has become of them ; Behold the places thereof; Their walls are dismantled, Their places are no more. As if they had never been. " None cometh from thence That he may tell (us) how they fare; That he may tell (us) of their fortunes, That he may content our heart, Until we (too) depart To the place whither they have gone. 48 RELIGION AND THE FUTURE LIFE " Encourage thy heart to forget it, Making it pleasant for thee to follow thy desire, While thou livest. Put myrrh upon thy head And garments on thee of fine linen, Imbued with marvellous luxuries, The genuine things of the gods. " Celebrate the glad day, Be not weary therein, Lo, no man taketh his goods with him. Yea, none returneth again that is gone thither." Self-indulgence and hereafter a good name on earth may be said to summarize the teaching of these scep- tics, who have cast away the teaching of the fathers. Nevertheless there were those who rejected even these admonitions as but a superficial solution of the dark problem of life. Suppose that the good name be inno- cently and unjustly forfeited, and the opportunities for self-indulgence cut off by disease and misfortune. It is exactly this situation which is presented to us in one of the most remarkable documents surviving from this remote age. We may term it ** The Dialogue of a Misanthrope with His Own Soul," though no ancient title has survived. This unhappy sufferer finds no solution of his problem of life but to end it, and his dialogue concludes with a song in praise of death. DEATH A GLAD RELEASE " Death is before me to-day (Like) the recovery of a sick man. Like going forth into a garden after sickness. " Death is before me to-day, As a man longs to see his house When he has spent years in captivity." ANCIENT EGYPTIAN IDEAS 49 Thus longing for the glad release which death af- fords, the soul of the unhappy man at last yields, he enters the shadow and passes on to be with " those who are yonder." In spite of the evident crudity of the composition it is not without some feeling that we watch this unknown go, the earliest human soul into the chambers of which we are permitted a glimpse across a lapse of four thousand years. In this document, then, we discern the emergence of a new realm, the realm of social forces; for while we have here the tragedy of the individual unjustly afflicted, his very affliction is due to the inexorable grip of social forces, calling for a crusade of social righteousness. The dawn of that social crusade and the regeneration which followed are still to be con- sidered. For concern for social misfortune, the ability to contemplate and discern the unworthiness of men, the calamities that befall society, and the chronic misery which afflicts men as a body now appear as the subject of dark and pessimistic reflections in this re- markable age of growing self-consciousness and earli- est disillusionment. The appearance in this remote age of the necessary detachment and the capacity to contemplate society, things before unknown in the thought of man, is a sig- nificant phenomenon. Still more significant, however, is a vision of the possible redemption of society, and the agent of that redemption as a righteous king, who is to shield his own and to purge the earth of the wicked. And this justice which was to rule the world of the living was to pass over also into the world of the dead. A pamphleteer for social justice nearly four thousand years ago admonishes the nobles of his time: " Do justice for the sake of the lord of justice. I. . . For justice (or * righteousness, right, truth ') 50 RELIGION AND THE FUTURE LIFE is for eternity. It descends with him that doeth it into the grave, when he is placed in the coffin and laid in the earth. His name is not effaced on earth; he is remembered because of good. Such is the exact summation of the divine word." "... this good word which came out of the mouth of Re himself: * Speak the truth, do the truth. For it is great, it is mighty, it is enduring. The reward thereof shall find thee, and it shall follow (thee) unto blessedness here- after.' " The moral obligation which men felt within them became a fiat of the god, their own abomination of injustice soon became that of the god, and their own moral ideals, thus becoming likewise those of the god, gained a new mandatory power. It was now not only religious belief and social axiom, but also formally announced royal policy, that before the bar of justice the great and the powerful must expect the same treatment and the same verdict accorded to the poor and the friendless. Here then ended the special and peculiar claim of the great and powerful to consideration and to felicity in the here- after, and the democratization of blessedness beyond the grave began. A friendless peasant pleading with a great lord for justice, says to him, *' Beware ! Eter- nity approaches." Ameni, a great lord of Benihasan, sets forth upon his tomb door the record of social justice in his treatment of all as the best passport he can devise for the long journey. Over and over again the men of the Feudal Age reiterate in their tombs their claims to righteousness of character. *' Sesenebnef (the deceased) has done righteousness, his abomination was evil, he saw it not," says an offi- cial of the time on his sarcophagus. The mortuary texts which fill the cedar coffins of this age show clearly that the consciousness of moral responsibility in ANCIENT EGYPTIAN IDEAS 61 the hereafter has greatly deepened since the Pyramid Age. The balances of justice to which the peasant just mentioned appealed so often and so dramatically were now really finding place in the drama of justifica- tion hereafter. " The doors of the sky are opened to thy beauty," says one to the deceased ; " thou ascend- est, thou seest Hathor. Thy evil is expelled, thy in- iquity is wiped away, by those who weigh with the balances on the day of reckoning." The conviction was now universal that every soul must meet this ethical ordeal in the hereafter. It now became, or let us say that at the advent of the Middle Kingdom it had become, the custom to append to the name of every deceased person the epithet " justified." The scepticism toward preparations for the here- after involving a massive tomb and elaborate mortu- ary furniture, the pessimistic recognition of the futility of material equipment for the dead, pronounced as we have seen these tendencies to be in the Feudal Age, were, nevertheless, but an eddy in the broad current of Egyptian life. As the felicity of the departed was democratized, the common people took up and con- tinued the old mortuary usages, and the development and elaboration of such customs went on without heeding the eloquent silence and desolation that reigned on the pyramid plateau and in the cemeteries of the fathers. It is not until this Feudal Age that we gain any full impression of the picturesque customs connected with the dead, the observance of which was now so deeply rooted in the life of the people. The tombs still sur- viving in the baronies of Upper Egypt have preserved some memorials of the daily and customary, as well as of the ceremonial and festival, usages with which the people thought to brighten and render more at- 52 EELIGION AND THE FUTUEE LIFE tractive the life of those who had passed on. We find the same precautions taken by the nobles which we ob- served in the Pyramid Age. The marvel is that with their ancestors' ruined tombs before them they nevertheless still went on to build for themselves sepulchres which were inevitably to meet the same fate. The tomb of Khnumhotep, the greatest of those left us by the Benihasan lords of four thousand years ago, bears on its walls, among the beau- tiful paintings which adorn them, the scribblings of a hundred and twenty generations in Egyptian, Coptic, Greek, Arabic, French, Italian, English. The earliest of these scrawls is that of an Egyptian scribe who entered the tomb-chapel over three thousand years ago and wrote with reed pen and ink upon the wall these words: " The scribe Amenmose came to see the temple of Khufu and found it like the heavens when the sun rises therein." The chapel was some seven hundred years old when this scribe entered it, and its owner, al- though one of the greatest lords of his time, was so completely forgotten that the visitor, finding the name of Khufu in a casual geographical reference among the inscriptions on the wall, mistook the place for a chapel of Khufu, the builder of the Great Pyramid. All knowledge of the noble and of the endowments which were to support him in the hereafter had disr- appeared in spite of every precaution. How vain and futile now appear the imprecations on these time- stained walls! But the Egyptian was not wholly without remedy even in the face of this dire contingency. He en- deavoured to meet the difficulty by engraving on the front of his tomb, prayers believed to be ef^cacious in supplying all the needs of the dead in the hereafter. All passers-by were solemnly adjured to utter these ANCIENT EGYPTIAN IDEAS 53 prayers on behalf of the dead. The belief in the ef- fectiveness of the uttered word on behalf of the dead had developed enormously since the Old Kingdom. This is a development which accompanies the populari- zation of the mortuary customs of the upper classes. In the Pyramid Age, as we have seen, such utterances were confined to the later pyramids. These concern exclusively the destiny of the Pharaoh in the here- after. They were now largely appropriated by the middle and the official class. At the same time there emerge similar utterances, identical in function but evidently more suited to the needs of common mor- tals. These represent, then, a body of similar mortu- ary literature among the people of the Feudal Age, some fragments of which are much older than this age. Later the Book of the Dead was made up of selec- tions from the humbler and more popular mortuary literature. Copious extracts from both the Pyramid Texts and these forerunners of the Book of the Dead, about half from each of the two sources, were now written on the inner surfaces of the heavy cedar cof- fins, in which the better burials of this age are found. The number of such mortuary texts is still constantly increasing as additional coffins from this age are found. Every local coffin-maker was furnished by the priests of his town with copies of these utterances. Before the coffins were put together, the scribes in the maker's employ filled the Inner surfaces with pen- and-ink copies of such texts as he had available. It was all done with great carelessness and inaccuracy, the effort being to fill up the planks as fast as possible. They often wrote the same chapter over twice or three times in the same coffin, and in one instance a chapter is found no less than five times in the same coffin. While the destiny, everywhere so evidently royal in 54 EELIGION AND THE FUTUEE LIFE the Pyramid Texts, has thus become the portion of any one, the simpler Hfe of the humbler citizen which he longed to see continued in the hereafter is quite dis- cernible, also in these Coffin Texts. As he lay in his coffin he could read a chapter which concerned '' Build- ing a house for a man in the Nether World, digging a pool and planting fruit-trees." Once supplied with a house, surrounded by a garden with its pool and its shade-trees, the dead man must be assured that he will be able to occupy it, and hence a " chapter of a man's being in his house." The lonely sojourn there without the companionship of family and friends was an intol- erable thought, and hence a further chapter entitled " Sealing of a Decree concerning the Household, to give the Household [to a man] in the Nether World." A tendency which later came fully to its own in the Book of the Dead is already the dominant tendency in these Coffin Texts. It regards the hereafter as a place of innumerable dangers and ordeals, most of them of a physical nature, although they sometimes concern also the intellectual equipment of the deceased. The weapon to be employed and the surest means of de- fense available to the deceased was some magical agency, usually a charm to be pronounced at the criti- cal moment. This tendency then inclined to make the Coffin Texts, and ultimately the Book of the Dead which grew out of them, more and more a collection of charms, which were regarded as inevitably effective in protecting the dead or securing for him any of the blessings which were desired in the life beyond the grave. But the imagination of the priests, who could only gain by the issuance of ever new chapters, un- doubtedly contributed much to heighten the popular dread of the dangers of the hereafter and spread the belief in the usefulness of such means for meeting ANCIENT EGYPTIAN IDEAS 55 them. The beHef in the efficacy of magic as an infal- lible agent in the hand of the dead man was thus stead- ily growing, and we shall see it ultimately dominating the whole body of mortuary belief as it emerges a few centuries later in the Book of the Dead. Powerful as the Osiris faith had been in the Pyra- mid Age, its wide popularity now surpassed anything before known. The blessings which the Osirian des- tiny in the hereafter offered to all proved an attraction of universal power. Although they had once been an exclusively royal prerogative, as was the Solar destiny in the Pyramid Texts, even the royal Solar hereafter had now been appropriated by all. One of the ancient tombs of the Thinite kings at Abydos, a tomb now thirteen or fourteen hundred years old, had by this time come to be regarded as the tomb of Osiris. It rapidly became the Holy Sepulchre of Egypt, to which all classes pilgrimaged. There must eventually have been multitudes of these pilgrims, especially at that season when in the earliest known drama the incidents of the god's myth were dramatically reenacted in what may properly be called a " passion play." Thus while the supremacy of Re was a political triumph, that of Osiris, while unquestionably fostered by an able priest- hood probably practising constant propaganda, was a triumph of popular faith among all classes of society, a triumph which not even the court and the nobles were able to resist. In all this popular movement the magic of daily life was more and more brought to bear on the hereafter and placed at the service of the dead. As the Empire rose in the sixteenth century B. c, we find folk-charms drawn from the life of this world serving among the mortuary texts inserted in the tomb. A charm by which a mother, soothing her baby as darkness gath- 56 RELIGION AND THE FUTURE LIFE ered, prevented an evil demon from stealing away the child, appears as a mortuary charm entitled: " Chapter of Not Permitting a Man's Heart to be Taken Away from Him in the Nether World," a chapter already found in the Coffin Texts of the Middle Kingdom. These charms now greatly increased in number, and each was given a title indicating just what it was in- tended to accomplish for the deceased. Combined with some of the old hymns of praise to Re and Osiris, which might be recited at the funeral, and usually in- cluding also some account of the judgment, these mor- tuary texts were now written on a roll of papyrus and deposited with the dead in the tomb. It is these papyri which have now commonly come to be called the Book of the Dead. As a matter of fact, there was in the Empire no uniform selection of texts making up this book. Each roll contained a random collection of such mortuary texts as the scribal copyist happened to have at hand, or those which he found enabled him best to sell his rolls ; that is, such as enjoyed the great- est popularity. There were sumptuous and splendid rolls, sixty to eighty feet long, containing from sev- enty-five to as many as a hundred and twenty-five or thirty chapters. On the other hand, the scribes also copied small and modest rolls but a few feet in length, bearing but a meagre selection of the more important chapters. Consequently no two rolls exhibit the same collection of charms and chapters throughout, and it was not until the Ptolemaic period, from the third cen- tury B. c. onward, that a more nearly canonical selec- tion of chapters was gradually introduced. It will be seen, then, as we have said, that, properly speaking, there was in the Empire no Book of the Dead, but only various groups of mortuary papyri of the time. The entire body of chapters from which these rolls were ANCIENT EGYPTIAN IDEAS 57 made up, were some two hundred in number, although even the largest rolls did not contain them all. Groups of chapters forming the most common nucleus of the Book of the Dead were frequently called " Chapters of Ascending by Day," a designation also in use in the Coffin Texts ; but there was no current title for a roll of the Book of the Dead as a whole. While the Book of the Dead is largely made up of magical charms, that which saves it from being ex- clusively a magical Vade mcciini for use in the here- after is its elaboration of the ancient idea of the moral judgment, and its evident appreciation of the burden of conscience. To this inner voice of the heart, which with surprising insight was even termed a man's god, the Egyptian was now more sensitive than ever before during the long course of the ethical evolution which we have been following. This sensitiveness finds very full expression in the account of the judgment, the most important if not the longest section of the Book of the Dead. Whereas the judgment hereafter is mentioned as far back as the Pyramid Age, we now find a very full account and description of it in the Book of the Dead. The judge Osiris is assisted by forty-two gods who sit with him in judgment on the dead. They are terrifying demons, each bearing a grotesque and horrible name, which the deceased claims that he knows. He therefore addresses them one after the other by name. They are such names as these: " Broad-Stride-that-Came-out-of-Heliopo- lis," "Flame - Hugger - that - Came - out - of - Troja," " Nosey-that-Came-out-of-Hermopolis," " Shadow- Eater- that-Came-out-of-the-Cave." It is evident that the forty-two gods are an artificial creation. As was long ago noticed, they represent the forty or more nomes, or administrative districts, of 58 RELIGION AND THE FUTURE LIFE Egypt. The priests doubtless built up this court of forty- two judges in order to control the character of the dead from all quarters of the country. The de- ceased would find himself confronted by one judge at least who was acquainted with his local reputation, and who could not be deceived. To each one of these forty-two judges the deceased addressed a plea of " not guilty " of some particular sin. The editors had some difficulty in finding enough sins to make up a list of forty-two, and there are several verbal repeti- tions with slight changes in the wording. These forty- two pleas of not guilty may be divided into four groups. The crimes which may be called those of (I) violence are these: " I did not slay men (5), I did not rob (2), I did not steal (4), I did not rob one crying for his possessions (18), my fortune was not great but by my (own) property (41), I did not take away food (10), I did not stir up fear (31), I did not stir up strife (25)." (II) Deceit fulness and other unde- sirable qualities of character are also disavowed: "I did not speak lies (9), I did not make falsehood in the place of truth (40), I was not deaf to truthful words (24), I did not diminish the grain-measure (6), I was not avaricious (3), my heart devoured not (coveted not?) (28), my heart was not hasty (31), I did not multiply words in speaking (33), my voice was not over loud (37), my mouth did not wag (lit. go) (17), I did not wax hot (in temper) (23), I did not revile (29), I was not an eavesdropper (16), I was not puffed up (39)." The dead man is free from (III) sexual immorality: "I did not commit adultery, with a woman (19), I did not commit self- pollution (20, 27);" and (IV) ceremonial transgres- sions are also denied: " I did not revile the king (35), I did not blaspheme the god (38), I did not slay the ANCIENT EGYPTIAN IDEAS 59 divine bull (13), I did not steal temple endowment (8), I did not diminish food in the temple (15), I did not do an abomination of the gods (43)." These, with several repetitions and some that are unintelli- gible, make up this declaration of innocence. This section of the Book of the Dead is commonly called the " Confession." It would be difficult to de- vise a term more opposed to the real character of the dead man's statement, which as a declaration of inno- cence is, of course, the reverse of a confession. The ineptitude of the designation has become so evident that some editors have added the word "negative," and thus call it the "negative confession," which means nothing at all. The Egyptian does not confess at this judgment, and this is a fact of the utmost im- portance in his religious development. To mistake this section of the Book of the Dead for " confession " is totally to misunderstand the development which was now slowly carrying him toward that complete ac- knowledgment and humble disclosure of his sin which is nowhere found in the Book of the Dead. Another record of the judgment was doubtless the version which made the deepest impression upon the Egyptian. Like the drama of Osiris at Abydos, it is graphic and depicts the judgment as effected by the balances. In the sumptuously illustrated papyrus of Ani we see Osiris sitting enthroned at one end of the judgment hall, with Isis and Nephthys standing be- hind him. Along one side of the hall are ranged the nine gods of the Heliopolitan Ennead, headed by the Sun-god. They afterward announce the verdict, showing the originally Solar origin of this scene of judgment, in which Osiris has now assumed the chief place. In the midst stand " the balances of Re where- with he weighs truth," as we have seen them called in 60 RELIGION AND THE FUTURE LIFE the Feudal Age; but the judgment in which they figure has now become Osirianized. At the critical moment Ani addresses his own heart: " O my heart that came from my mother ! O my heart belonging to my being ! Rise not up against me as a witness." Evidently the appeal has proven ef- fective, for Thoth, " envoy of the Great Ennead, that is in the presence of Osiris," at once says: " Hear ye this word in truth. I have judged the heart of Osiris [Ani]. His soul stands as a witness concerning him, his character is just by the great balances. No sin of his has been found." The Nine Gods of the En- nead at once respond. " How good it is, this which comes forth from thy just mouth. Osiris Ani, the justified, witnesses. There is no sin of his, there is no evil of his with us. The Devouress shall not be given power over him. Let there be given to him the bread that cometh forth before Osiris, the domain that abid- eth in the field of offerings, like the Followers of Horus." These accounts of the judgment, in spite of the grotesque appurtenances with which the priests of the times have embellished them, are not without impres- siveness even to the modern beholder as he contem- plates these rolls of three thousand five hundred years ago, and realizes that these scenes are the graphic ex- pression of the sam^ moral consciousness, of the same admonishing voice within, to which we still feel our- selves amenable. Ani importunes his heart not to be- tray him, and his cry finds an echo down all the ages in such words as those of Richard: " My conscience hath a thousand several tongues, And every tongue brings in a several tale, And every tale condemns me for a villain." ANCIENT EGYPTIAN IDEAS 61 The Egyptian heard the same voice, feared it, and endeavoured to silence it. He strove to still the voice of the heart; he did not yet confess, but insistently maintained his innocence. The next step in his higher development was humbly to disclose the consciousness of guilt to his god. That step he later took. But an- other force intervened and greatly hampered the com- plete emancipation of his conscience. There can be no doubt that this Osirian judgment thus graphically por- trayed and the universal reverence for Osiris in the Empire had much to do with spreading the belief in moral responsibility beyond the grave, and in giving general currency to those ideas of the supreme value of moral worthiness which we find among the moral- ists and social philosophers of the Pharaoh's court sev- eral centuries earlier, in the Feudal Age. The Osiris faith had thus become a great power for righteousness among the people. While the Osirian destiny was open to all, nevertheless all must prove themselves morally acceptable to him. Had the priests left the matter thus, all would have been well. Unhappily, however, the development of the belief in the efficacy of magic in the next world continued. All material blessings, as we have seen, might infallibly be attained by the use of the proper charm. Even the less tangible mental equipment, the " heart," meaning the understanding, might also be re- stored by magical agencies. It was inevitable that the priests should now take the momentous step of per- mitting such agencies to enter also the world of moral values. Magic might become an agent for moral ends. The Book of the Dead is chiefly a book of magical charms, and the section pertaining to the judgment did not continue to remain an exception. The poignant words addressed by Ani to his heart as it was weighed 62 RELIGION AND THE FUTUEE LIFE in the balances, " O my heart rise not up against me as a witness," were now written upon a stone image of the sacred beetle, the scarabeus, and placed over the heart as a mandate of magical potency preventing the heart from betraying the character of the deceased. The words of this charm became a chapter of the Book of the Dead, where they bore the title, " Chapter of Preventing that the Heart of a Man Oppose him in the Nether World." The scenes of the judgment and the text of the Declaration of Innocence were multi- plied on rolls by the scribes and sold to all the people. In these copies the places for the name of the deceased were left vacant, and the purchaser filled in the blanks after he had secured the document. The words of the verdict, declaring the deceased had successfully met the judgment and acquitting him of evil, were not lacking in any of these rolls. Any citizen, whatever the character of his life, might thus secure from the scribes a certificate declaring that Blank was a right- eous man before it was known who Blank would be. He might even obtain a formulary so mighty that the Sun-god, as the real power behind the judgment, would be cast down from heaven into the Nile if he did not bring forth the deceased fully justified before his court. Thus the earliest moral development which we can trace in the ancient East was suddenly arrested, or at least seriously checked, by the detestable devices of a corrupt priesthood eager for gain. It is needless to point out the confusion of distinc- tions involved in this last application of magic. It is the old failure to perceive the difference between that which goeth in and that which cometh out of the man. A justification mechanically applied from without, and freeing the man from punishments coming from with- out, cannot, of course, heal the ravages that have ANCIENT EGYPTIAN IDEAS 63 taken place within. The voice within, to which the Egyptian was more sensitive than any people of the earlier East, and to which the whole idea of the moral ordeal in the hereafter was due, could not be quieted by any such means. Nevertheless the general reliance upon such devices for escaping ultimate responsibility for an unworthy life must have seriously poisoned the life of the people. While the Book of the Dead dis- closes to us more fully than ever before in the history of Egypt the character of the moral judgment in the hereafter, and the reality with which the Egyptian clothed his conception of moral responsibility, it is like- wise a revelation of ethical decadence. In so far as the Book of the Dead had become a magical agency for securing moral vindication in the hereafter, irre- spective of character, it had become a positive force for evil. In the days of the Greek kings, the Osirian faith finally submerged the venerable Sun-god, with whose name the greatest movements in the history of Egyp- tian religion were associated, and when the Roman emperor became an Oriental Sun-god, sol invictus, the process was in large measure due to the influence of Asiatic Solar religion rather than to the Solar Pharaoh, who, as we have seen in the Pyramid Texts, had been sovereign and Sun-god at the same time many centuries before such doctrines are discernible in Asia. Whether they are in Asia the result of Egyptian influence is a question still to be investi- gated. In any case, as Osiris-Apis or Serapis, Osiris gained the supreme place in the popular as well as the state religion, and through him the subterranean hereafter, rather than the Sun-god's glorious celestial kingdom of the dead, passed over into the Roman world. There is not space here to 64 BELIGION AND THE FUTURE LIFE discuss the influence of Egyptian ideas of the here- after in the gradual spread of Christianity, but it is significant to note the recent discovery of a tomb in Upper Egypt containing a painting of the resurrec- tion of Osiris, in which the god is depicted in the form of a fish, lying on the bier. It is evident that the fish as used in Christian symbolism suggested far more than five initial letters, and the discovery is obviously additional evidence of the influence of Osirian religion on Christian ideas of the resurrection. Ill IMMORTALITY IN INDIA E. Washburn Hopkins FIFTY years ago it was generally assumed that if several branches of the Aryan race possessed any one belief, that belief must have been pre- historical, reverting to the period when Hindu, Greek, and Irish made one happy family. Thus, because these three peoples spoke of an existence beyond the grave, belief in such an existence was said to be " primitive Aryan." Doubtless such was the case, but not on this account, for the argument failed to recognize that in this as in many similar cases different human groups may arrive independently at the same conclusion. In this particular instance, since few savages are so lack- ing in imagination as not to believe in ghosts, it is most probable that the primitive Aryans (if as a group they ever existed, which is matter of dubiety) did be- lieve that there is a life beyond the grave. A more serious error in the ratiocination of a half century ago was the assumption that belief in a life beyond the grave implied belief in immortality. But the two beliefs are by no means identical. Thousands of savages think that, though they will live hereafter, their after-life will be short; the surviving ghost will die again once for all, or will be devoured of the gods. Others opine that only a few favoured or highly- gifted individual souls will continue to live for a time, 65 66 EELIGIOK AND THE FUTUEE LIFE while the mass of those who die will at once, or soon, cease to exist, evaporating forever. There are thus sundry varieties of belief in a future life that do not necessarily involve the notion of immortality. Even when that notion and the word for it are current, \Jl does not follow that " immortality " is regarded as inevitably associated with the future of a human being. The religious ideas of the people now called Hindus are contained in documents dating from various pe- riods, the oldest document (not yet a writing) being the Hymns of the Rig Veda, which reflect the faith of the second millennium b. c. Later Vedas, such as the Atharva Veda, and their prose Brahmanas portray the beliefs of the first half of the first millennium, be- fore Buddhism arose in the sixth century. The Upan- ishads, in the main contemporary with or slightly earlier than the first Buddhistic period, already reveal, though in a crude form, a fully developed belief in an All-Soul, whereof man's soul is a part and hence, like the All-Soul, is immortal. Thereafter, the doctrine of immortality was concerned with the relation existing between the soul of the individual and the All-Soul, or, since the monistic doctrine was not universal but was opposed by a dualistic conception, which admitted two immortal elements, the individual soul and matter, it was concerned with the relation existing between this soul and matter ; but in both views the individual soul was immortal. At the same time, however, there was a strong tendency, reaching back into remote ages, to interpret the philosophic All-Soul in a religious rather than in a logically philosophical way, to deny that it was without attributes, to endow it with personality; in short to regard the All-Soul as God, the creator, and preserver, a Divine Being who had for man a fatherly regard and to whom man's soul after death IMMOETALITT IN INDIA 67 would return; whether to be absorbed into the Divine Being or to live with it as a distinct individual soul, was matter of theological debate. The belief in immortality, of course, represents these various phases from the human point of view. The doctrine of immortality once established, as in some form or other it was established in the earliest period, persisted and has never ceased to be a potent element in Hindu religious life, fighting its way through the brief opposition of those radicals who maintained as early as the sixth century before Christ that " soul " was only a form of matter answering to fermentation, and successfully persisting through the period when the concept " soul " was reinterpreted by Buddha as a physical complex held together only by " desire," and immortality, as usually conceived, was regarded as a curse rather than a blessing. For the first belief of the Hindus, or of those Aryans who later became Hindus, the Rig Veda is of course the paramount authority. This work, consist- ing of more than a thousand devotional songs, with some admixture of worldly poems, is a collection rep- resenting widely different views developed during cen- turies of growth. It is in the later parts of the work that allusions to human immortality are most com- mon. Three-quarters of the actual instances of the use of the word itself as applied to man are found in the later hymns. As for the gods, they were from the beginning briefly characterized as "the immor- tals." The word " immortal " was synonymous with Deva (deus), as "mortal" was synonymous with man. " All the immortals " is a phrase used occa- sionally in the sense " all the gods." Between gods and men is recognized a class of active beings who were at first mortal but, owing to their good works. 68 EELIGION AND THE FUTUEE LIFE apparently in regulating the seasons, they '' attained to immortality," which is the same as saying " became gods." These are the Ribhus, whom some scholars identify phonetically with our '' elves." The language used in regard to their deification is, with the exception of one passage, virtually the same: " These, although mortal, got immortality (variant "attained godhead") through their work." ' The exception comes in a presumably late hymn where, although the same statement is made as elsewhere, namely that the Ribhus got immortality through their work, it is prefixed by the apparently contradictory statement that Savitar, the inspiring god, inspired their immortality, or as it is sometimes ren- dered, " gave them immortality." ' But Savitar as the abstract energizer or inspirer may be said to have given them energy, which resulted in their successful work being rewarded, without an actual contradiction of the received notion that their work was the cause of their immortality. The passage is not without importance because it shows an early tendency to attribute mortal happiness hereafter to a special act of a divine power as contrasted with the compelling power of a man's good works to attain the same result. The same phrase is used of Savitar as Inspiring or energizing the gods themselves, so that they also are represented in one passage as owing immortality, " the highest gift," to the energizing power of Savitar, who also gives to men " recurrent lives." ' This means only that to live long, either as immortals or in repeated generations, there must be a corresponding vital force or energy, the source of which is here said to be the ^ Rig Veda, iii. 60, 2-2, ; iv. ZZ, 4 ; ibid. 35, 3, and 36, 4. ^Rig Veda, i. no, 3 and 4, literally, "the inspirer inspired." *Rig Veda, iv. 54, 2; "lives one after the other," probably re- fers to the passing generations, not to transmigration-births. IMMOETALITY IN INDIA 69 abstract divinity called the inspiring or energizing power or god. It is quite possible that the notion of human im- mortality as consisting in successive lives of genera- tions was current alongside of the notion of life in heaven. The Fathers (ancestral spirits) always be- come rather vague images to the remote descendants and it may have been felt that a man's truest immor- tality was in being reborn in his children. There is a prayer in the Rig Veda to Fire: ** O Fire, I, the mor- tal, call upon thee, the immortal, may I obtain immor- tality through children,'' ' which implies desire for that physical immortality of which Diotima speaks in Plato's Symposium (page 208). That this notion per- sisted till a late period is evident from the legal litera- ture. In the aphorisms of Apastamba it is stated that the Sacred Tradition says '' immortality is offspring," and then a verse is cited: " In thy offspring thou art born again; that, mortal, is thy immortality." ' Again, even in this simple appeal to the Fire-god (''May I obtain," that is, from thee) there is a distinct recog- nition of the fact that to the Vedic people immortality is not inherent in man. The gift of immortality thus physically understood is in the power of Fire as giver of virility, just as Vishnu, " the protector of the seed " is invoked with the rain-gods (also seed-givers) * to ** give the strength for progeny." Perhaps the prayer, '' O Maruts, set us in immortality " may have the same *Rig Veda, v. 4, 10. Compare ibid. ii. 33, i, "may we be born again through children." ' Ap. Dh. Sutra, ii. 9, 24 i (TB. i. 5, 5, 6: tad u te^ martya amritam). The perverted use made of the quotation is to in- terpret it as meaning that the Manes are kept aHve by the food offered by their descendants. But the original sense is shown by comparing Vas. xvii. if.: "The father obtains immortaHty on seeing his son" (approved by Manu, ix.137). * Rig Veda, vii. 57, 6. 70 RELIGION AND THE FUTURE LIFE implication/ It is at any rate clear that man is not inevitably immortal. When once he has died he will, so to speak, naturally keep on living, barring the an- nihilation which will be his lot if he has deeply of- fended the gods. All the Vedic prayers for immor- tality imply the consent of the gods and that consent, as is clear from many passages, is not given in the case of unforgiven sinners. These, instead of living hereafter, sink into the " lap of destruction," other- wise called " black darkness," " the hole that has no hold," " the pit below," that is, a kind of Sheol, where life evaporates or ceases altogether. But in the earliest period there is no suggestion of corporal punishment in this pit or of torment other than this destruction. It is therefore a kind of negative punishment. Life and strength die and so dies utterly the man. Other men, not thus punished, go to heaven and that this is the expected event may be seen from the burial hymn which implies that the soul or " unborn part," after the physical body has reverted to its place of origin (eye to the sun, breath to the wind, etc.), is to go to " the pleasant place in the sky where the Fathers live with the gods in the third heaven." Nevertheless, though the natural event is the flight of the soul to the abode of bliss with the Fathers, it is still a favour of the gods when the soul thus arrived is permitted to stay there forever. Hence Immortality is begged of the gods as casually as are water and other good gifts. *' O Mitra and Varuna, we beg you for rain, for bless- ings, for immortality."^ So the prayer: ''May I be loosed from death as a gourd from its stem, not (loosed) from immortality.' ^ Ibid. vii. 36, 9 and v. 55, 4. ' Rig Veda, v. 63, 2. ' Ibid. vii. 59, 12. The expression " having an immortal soul " is used of man first in the later Atharva Veda {mnritasii, v. i, 7), IMMORTALITY IN INDIA 71 The men who " get immortality " are thus those who please the gods. Now the way to please the gods is to sacrifice to them. Hence the Angirasas, semi- divine ancestors of the poets, are said to have attained to friendship with Indra by sacrifice and sacrificial gifts to the priests.'" This leads to the next step, the priestly generalization that " those who give sacrificial gifts have a share in immortality." " Still more bluntly, with the use of the same phrase, is it said: '' Those who give gold (to the priests) have a share in immortality." '' These are the " good works " which, according to later belief, give immortality. Another passage even anticipates the philosophical dictum (" one attains to immortality by good works or by wisdom ") in a Vedic form by saying that those who understand the metres of the Rig Veda " attain to immortality." '' Such promises as these belong, however, to the latest stage of the Rig Veda and may be regarded as a perversion on the part of the priests in their own interest, of a general and not ignoble idea, to wit, that man must earn immortality through good works. Even of the gods it is said: ''They have through their worth attained to immortality." " The Yama myth is more or less concerned with the question of immortality. Yama is the first (mortal) that died, the ancestor of the human race, and he is represented as going to heaven, where he sits under a fair tree with the high gods in bliss; and to him go the souls of men upon the way which Yama discov- in which is found the first mention of a hell, naraka, under its usual later designation, 'Uhid. X. 62, I. ^^Ihid. i. 125, 6. '- Ihid. x. 107, 2. ^^ Ibid. i. 164, 23. "Completeness and immortality "are also the reward of works of righteousness in Zoroastrianism (Yasna, 45. 5)- " Rig Veda, x. 63, 4. " They made for themselves the way to Immortality," ibid. i. 72, 9 (cf. iii- 31. 9)- 72 EELIGION AND THE FUTUEE LIFE ered.'' Hence men are said to " seek the immortality born of Yama." '' Such in general is the earliest view of immortality. It is only in the latest part of the Rig Veda that specu- lation discusses the origin of things and the time when "there was neither death nor immortality," as it speaks of the world-spirit as " lord of immortality " and says that '' the Lord's shadow is immortality and death." " And at this period, though it is not stated, as it was later, that the gods were not immortal in the begin- ning, immortality even of the gods begins to be attrib- uted to the divine power of Fire or of the intoxicating drink Soma. " O Fire, through thy powers the gods came to immortality," says one poet, who adds that Fire is " the guardian of the immortal." Using the same phrase another poet says that the early singers, to whom Soma gave strength, '' came to immortality." " Thus Fire itself says to the gods: " I will by sacrifice effect for you immortality and heroic power," and the gods are represented as guarding Fire as (their) im- mortality.'" The explanation is that Fire is the fire- priest not only of men but of gods, and as men gain immortality by sacrifice, so must the gods. So Soma, the divine intoxicant, '' calls the divine race to immor- tality," or, as is said elsewhere, the gods became im- mortal through drinking Soma, the immortal drink (ambrosia).'" ^^ Ihid. X. 14, 2. He is thought of as the first man, who, first to die, became the god of death; later, he is conceived as god of hell and punishment. ^Uhid. i. 83, 5. "Rig Veda, x. 129, 2; 90, 2; 121, 2. " Ihid. vi. 7, 4, 7 ; ix. 94, 4- '" ^^^"^^ x. 52, 5 I i- 96, 6. '" Rig Veda, ix. 108, 3 ; compare ihid. 106, 8 : " The gods drank thee, O Soma, for immortality." In Rig Veda, iv. 58, i, " through the (Soma) stalk one gets to immortality" may be implied the belief in man's obtaining immortality through drinking the same ambrosia. In Rig Veda, i. 31. 7, if is said that Fire " daily sets IMMORTALITY IN INDIA 73 Scattered indications of variant ideas as to life after death are found in the Rig Vedic belief that stars are the spirits of the dead and that some of the departed Fathers may be living on earth or in the air, probably as birds, for a legal aphorism states that it is current belief that the Manes fly about as birds. One passage makes a seer say, " I who am now^ the seer and priest was once Father Manu and once the sun," as if trans- migration was natural, as indeed bird-forms of the Fathers would imply." There is, however, a differ- ence between being born again in a human form and in being reincarnated as an animal. Even when me- tempsychosis was the current Hindu belief it was not universally believed that a man was likely to be reborn as an animal ; only in some human form of low or high degree. One was liable to be reborn as an animal, just as one might instantaneously be converted into a beast, by virtue of a curse; but the probability was re- mote and animal-births were stories to amuse and in- struct, not actualities producing religious concern, de- spite all the moral threats of the law-books, which as- sumed a certain natural logic in some instances and then developed a crude system of future punishments by analogical transmigration." One cannot fail to be struck with the similarity be- a mortal in immortality for glory," a phrase perhaps merely poetic for " gives immortal glory," but apparently rather implying that daily sacrifice is one of the good works that yield immortal- ity. So the daily drinking of Soma is indubitably felt to be a means to the same end. Thus, ibid. viii. 48, 3 : " We have drunk Soma and become immortal, we have come to the light and found the gods." "Rig Veda, iv. 26, I (the seer as formerly Manu); ibid. x. 15, 2 (the Manes living on earth) ; Baudh. Sutra, ii. 8, 14, 10, "A Vedic passage says that the Manes move about as birds." "Sanskrit mush (English mouse) is from the root mushf steal; hence a thief will be reborn as a mouse (literally "stealer") ; but one who steals water becomes a water-bird, etc 74 EELIGION AND THE FUTUEE LIFE tween the rough transmigration beUef synchronous with a beUef in immortal heavenly bliss as found in early India and the like association in Egypt, where also metempsychosis was not a necessary condition and Avas not moral but was, so to speak, a side issue, an optional way, open to the good who, if they would, might live in the Elysian Fields, but, if they preferred to this, which was practically a continuation of earthly existence under ideal conditions, the more novel life of bird or beast, they might as a special privilege be- come bird or beast. Just so the Vedic poet believed that his normal destination was the ''Abode of Yama in the sky," a heaven of sensuous enjoyment, but that he might become a bird or a star according to his desire and his glory. Probably he had no very definite ideas on the subject; he had a general belief that men who were not so wicked that their very souls died naturally, lived with their Fathers, and sacred tradition had al- ready located their home in the sky. But whether they would live forever in that blissful abode was a question apparently dependent on the consent of the gods, over whose will the dead man at burial seeks (by the aid of a priestly formula) to get control. In such matters the most weighty evidence is given by the or- dinary standards. These standards are established by burial-hymns and hymns to the Manes. They show (as they are in universal use) that the ordinary man expected to rejoin his Fathers and Yama, and that the Fathers came regularly to their meals (offered by hu- man descendants), but that they might be resident either in the sky or on earth. All popular tradition, reflected in the subsequent literature, points to the same conclusion. Later Vedic belief, voiced in the speculation which eventually by imperceptible degrees passes into the for- / IMMOETALITY IN INDIA 75 mal theological and philosophical speculation of the Upanishads, plays with and elaborates the idea of im- mortality. The Father-god is said to be *' half death and half immortality," that is, both mortality and im- mortality are phases of the supreme divinity. The gods as a class of spiritual beings were (as now con- sidered) not naturally immortal. They became pos- sessed of certain symbolic facts In the sacrificial mys- tery, and through this wisdom attained to immortality. Death became alarmed, thinking that men also might gain knowledge which would exempt them from death and thereby rob him. Death, of his prey, which would entail the loss of offerings hitherto made to him. The gods, however, reassured Death, telling him that no man should be " immortal with his body," but that any man, *' after parting with his body," might become immortal " through knowledge or through works." But even this passage admits that a man who dies without gaining immortality through his knowledge or his works becomes again the prey of death: ''Those men who have neither knowledge or works come to life after death, but they become the food of Death again and again." ^^ In this second Vedic period, that of the prose Brah- manas subsequent to the Vedic Hymns, immortality " Sat. Brahmana, i. 3, 2, 4f . ; ii. 2, 2, 6 ; x. 4, 3, g-io. Here, as in the earlier conception, the dead man leaves his body behind, the e3^e going to the sun, the breath to the wind, etc., and as- sumes a " body of light " or " glory-body." Thus the stars are the glory-bodies, prakritayas, of ancient seers. The departed Fathers not only lived on in bliss but they fought on in pov^er for their families and were regarded (like mediaeval saints) as helpful spirits and powerful allies in the spiritual world. Yet the Hindu Fathers were alwa3^s dependent on their descendants for the food supplied them at their daily (in human terms, monthly) meal. "A human month is a night and day of the Fathers. The dark half of the month is their day and the bright half is their night, the former for activity, the latter for sleep" (Manu's Lavv-book). 76 EELIGION AND THE FUTUEE LIFE has become universal, not a special reward of virtue. All men are now believed to be born again and then they are recompensed according to their deeds, good being rewarded and wickedness punished. The good that man does is put into one side of a balance and the wickedness into the other side and the man's soul fol- lows the weightier. Hence the man still living is ad- jured to " weight himself in this world with good deeds." The ritualistic form of religion of the period made it inevitable that sacrifice should be the chief " good deed " and in fact the etherial character of the body after death was in proportion to good deeds (per- formed in life) interpreted in this sense. The more sacrifices one makes the more etherial will his body be hereafter, so that a man who performs the greatest of sacrifices will need in the next life to eat only once a year. But as a counterpart to this ideal of etherial bliss it is not uncommon to find a prayer or promise that a man after death shall be born with his whole body in the next life.'' One is liable to go to heaven incomplete, leaving his bones on earth, an undesirable state. Instead of living with Yama and the gods, however, it is expressly said that a man becomes "whatever god he will." That is, as the voice at death goes to Fire, and the eye to the Sun, the mind to the Moon, the ear to the directions (regions of air), and the breath to Wind, and each recipient is a god, so the man himself becomes a god, a view which re- flects the old belief that the pious become rays of the sun, saints become stars, etc. As late as the epic it is taught that " the stars which seem small because of their distance" are huge flaming bodies, incorporate forms of glorious saints. Good works or knowledge " Sat. Brah. xi. 2, 7, 33. Compare Weber in the Journal of the German Oriental Society, volume nine. IMMORTALITY IN INDIA 77 gives man the power thus to become " of the same nature " with the sun, fire, or with Brahman. Only incidentally and as if a rare event may one without dying go directly to heaven. Thus one sage is said by his knowledge to have gone to heaven and become united with the Sun-god without previously dying. But he first (on earth) became a golden swan and thus flew to heaven. Heaven itself is now no longer the common abode of gods and Fathers. The door of the gods' heaven lies in the northeast and the door of the heaven of the Manes lies in the south- east. Retribution after death may be implied in the tale of a seer called Bhrigu, the son of the god Varuna, who saw a vision of men cut up and eaten in the next life as a punishment for the cruelties they had inflicted in a previous existence upon those who were now their torturers. But neither reward nor punishment is, to speak strictly, everlasting. The duration of both is entirely indefinite. As the gods are also of indefinite duration, man is, however, assured of a reasonably long if not immortal existence either in heaven with the gods or as part of a god. The idea of this heav- enly existence is no longer sensuous. Absorption into Brahma excludes such an idea, and later Brahmanism expressly states what earlier Brahmanism implies, namely that "no slaves of passion are found in the sphere of Brahman." As between work and knowl- edge, again, the philosophic thought of the later period sets steadily toward the final solution of the problem, to wit, that works are vain and that knowledge is the only sure means of eventual and final bliss. By works, it is said, one is bound, by knowledge one is Uberated. The truly pious do no good works (of sacrifice, etc.,) but acquire wisdom ; only those who have divine wis- 78 EELIGION AND THE FUTUEE LIFE dom become immortal. It is nowhere said that retri- bution is unending. This idea comes with the notion of eternal transmigration ethically considered, which is comparatively late. First in the Upanishads (c. 700- 600 B. c.) occurs the statement which foreshadows the causal nexus utilized by Buddha in explaining the doctrine of an endless round of existence caused by unsuppressed '' desire." In one of the earliest of these Upanishads'' is found this dictum: *' as is man's de- sire, so is his will ; as is the will, so is the act ; as is the act, so will he reap; but he who desires only the World-Soul, he goes to Brahma; his immortal breath (soul, prclna) is Brahma, is light (glory) only.'' An- other Upanishad divides the way of the soul according to two paths. Some, even saints, desire offspring; at death they go to the moon and are reborn on earth and have children. But sages, who are ascetic, full of faith and knowledge, who have given up the desire of this earthly immortality and seek only union with the high- est, follow the northern course, going to the sun, where they become immortal and return to earth no more.'" This is a favourite theme with later writers. It cul- minates in that immaterial view of heaven which sets it against an immaterial hell, and declares that '' heaven is what delights the soul, hell is what pains the soul, hence heaven is virtue and vice is hell," or, " heaven is light eternal, hell is the darkness of igno- rance." Yet these are apophthegms of the philosophi- cal and spiritual saint rather than the beliefs of the practical man and of the mass. To discover what the latter were is, of course, not altogether easy in a litera- ture essentially didactic and reflecting always the creed inculcated by priests rather than naively held by the ^^ Brihad-aranyaka Up. iv. 4, 5f. '^"Prasna Up. i. 9. IMMOETALITY IN INDIA 79 people. Yet it may probably be assumed with some degree of verisimilitude that what is universally taught to the people is the current belief. Such teaching may be found in the law-manuals, where religion is second- ary to ethics and law. In these manuals, soul, a Su- preme Being, and an immortal life of some sort are assumed as a matter of course and occasionally become the subject of a few didactic remarks. Although os- tentatiously orthodox, that is, based on belief in the divine authority of the Vedas, the law-books actually inculcate a modified Vedism, partly through their ex- pansion of Vedic ideas and partly through their ten- dency to uphold the Vedic ritual at the expense of Vedic freedom of thought. In general, however, on the particular subject now under consideration, they teach that man obtains immortality if he will, but if he prefers he may enjoy the reward of heaven for his good works and then be born again ; or, for evil works, suffer in hell and then be born again. The question whether heaven would be an " endless reward " is not answered in Vedic nor in philosophical manner but is met with the dogmatic assertion that " the Vedas de- clare there is a reward without end called heavenly bliss." But where the law differs from philosophy, and it must be remembered that law and not philos- ophy is what is taught to the common people, is in the distinct denial that knowledge alone is sufficient to in- sure immortality. To admit this would have been to cut out the whole series of '' good works " (sacrificial ritual) as otiose. So Apastamba, who makes the dec- laration just cited, says emphatically: " Some say that knowledge of the All-Soul is sufficient to insure peace (immortal happiness) ; but this is incorrect. The dic- tum hiiddhe ksheinaprapanam ("attainment of im- mortal happiness rests on knowledge " ) is opposed to 80 EELIGION AND THE FUTUEE LIFE the treatises of law." " The most authoritative of these law-treatises, that of Manu, gives as its final word on the subject that one who has followed the law and learned all that philosophy can teach in regard to the All-Soul, " after death obtains whatever course he will," that is, he may become united with the World-Soul or become a god or pass into any form of existence. But Manu and most of his fellow-legisla- tors condemn the rejection of " good works." In other words, immortality is possible, but not on the basis of mere knowledge; one must have led a relig- ious life in form and ceremony to ensure salvation. The difference between the religious man who fulfills the law, no unimportant item of which is that he should lead a family-life and have children, and the ascetic philosopher, who discards all human ties and wishes by meditation and " knowledge " to attain to Brahma, is illustrated by Apastamba in his discussion of the *' two paths " discussed in the Upanishads. *' There were eight and eighty thousand sages who, desiring offspring, followed the sun on its southern course and so obtained the reward of heaven, and there were eight and eighty who desired no offspring but followed the northern course of the sun and ob- tained immortality." Some six hundred years later a writer who mingles philosophy with law discusses this question of the two ways, introducing the subject with a dissertation on the impossibility of discerning truth when the soul is clouded with passion: *'As a soiled mirror cannot reflect an image, so the soiled soul can- not reflect truth. But the clean soul sees that there is one spirit and one world, which is a combination of five elements, space, air, fire, water, and earth. Now "Apastamba, ii. 21, 14. This law-manual dates from about 300 B. c. IMMOETALITY IN INDIA 81 the Soul of the World emits from itself the world, as a silkworm out of itself [literally, out of its own spittle] makes a cocoon, shaping it with the elements, as a potter with clay, stick, and wheel shapes a jar, as a carpenter with clay, wood, and straw, shapes a house, as a goldsmith out of mere gold makes a thing of beauty. Thus using elements and organs the World- Soul shapes itself in different births. To reach im- mortality one must recognize the Soul in the world, but only by serenity and freedom from passion can one know the Soul and only he who is without desire can attain the highest desire. When one has thus attained the peace of the pure he will know the Soul and may thus immortalize himself." '' But tradition tells of the "two ways" (the writer continues) and these must be explained: " The path of the Fathers who de- sire offspring is one; that of those who desire none is different. Those who perform good works and have all the eight virtues go to heaven and abide in bliss till they descend to earth again as the seed of the right- eous. These are the eight and eighty thousand whereof Scripture speaks. But it speaks also of other eight and eighty thousand and they are the sages who do not desire heaven and their way is not thither but it goes near the Seven Seers (the constellation of the Great Bear, higher than the heaven of the other seers) and carries them to fire, to the day, to the light half of the moon, to the sun on its northern course, to glory everlasting in the abode of Brahma, whence there is no return to earth (no subsequent birth and death). These then are immortal. But the pious and vener- able ones who desire offspring, who have devoted themselves to asceticism, to sacrifice, to all good works ^* Yajnavalkya, iii. 159, coins here the word amriti-hhavet, as if in Latin i?mnortali-fiat. 82 RELIGION AND THE FUTUEE LIFE whose goal is heaven, their path is to smoke, to night, to the moon'' in its dark half, to the southern course of the sun, and on that course they reach the moon, the abode of the Fathers in heaven, and there they remain till, as rain and wind, they fall to earth and become reborn. For as rain they enter earth and develop into food for living beings and so become living beings, new creatures born again." Traces of this crude form of transmigration are found in the Upanishads.'" Rough as is the combina- tion of folk-lore and philosophy, it is clear that the teaching implies the possibility of immortality in the strict sense only in the case of those who have given up all desires. Other souls return to the course of transmigration, which implies unending births and deaths and hence is not '* freedom from death " (im- mortality) but only endlessness. The legislator, who is more philosophical than most of his kind, seems to approve of the eight and eighty thousand (a common periphrasis for a multitude) who renounce desire, es- pecially of offspring; but he is careful to confine the application of his teaching to sages. The ordinary man cannot be a sage of the sort that becomes immor- tal. He has to raise a family, and to sacrifice to the gods is one of his duties. His latter end is thus a temporary abode of bliss with descent to earth and re- birth followed by re-death. This teaching, however, does not contradict that of the old philosophers, who distinguish what is to be taught exoterically and esoterically. The Upanishads recognize the partial truth of a conditioned Brahma as they recognize that the ordinary man must believe in =°This is a refinement on the old notion that all the dead go to the moon (Kaushitaki Upanishad, i, 2). ^° Brihad-aranyaka, vi. 2, and Kaushitaki, i. 2. IMMOETALITY IN INDIA 83 gods and heavenly rewards. It is thus only for the philosopher that the truth is stated in these terms: " There are two forms of Brahma, immortal and mor- tal, immaterial and material; so man is both mortal and immortal, material and immaterial," and again: " When all desires cease, the mortal becomes immortal and obtains Brahma. He who knows the Soul of the World becomes immortal through that knowledge, be- comes himself the Soul of the World, which is seen nowhere but is felt in man's heart," or, as elsewhere stated, " those who in heart and mind know Him, the World-Soul, become Immortal." " The popular teaching tended, however, even when it rejected the sacrificial works of the law, to emphasize faith rather than knowledge. Thus the Bhagavad Gita, a sort of sectarian Upanishad in popular form, insists on freedom from desire and from hope of re- ward (in heaven). But one must through faith in Krishna rather than through knowledge, " free oneself from birth and death, from misery and old age " and by giving up all desires, save the desire to be with the Lord Krishna, " become immortal." Where the older religion then is divided between the tvv'o methods of obtaining salvation, which implies immortality, namely the way of knowledge and the way of ceremonial observance, the newer sectarian re- ligion is inclined to trust almost wholly to faith in the personal Lord. In a sense, this is closer to the second of the two older ways, for the way of ceremonial is essentially the way of faith in the gods and sacrifices to the gods handed down from Vedic times, and the new way of faith merely changes the object of devo- tion. At the same time this older faith had become stereotyped in expression, it was a faith in the Vedas 'Mvatha Upanishad, ii. 6, 14, 9; Svet. Up. iv. 20. 84 EELIGION AND THE FUTURE LIFE rather than a living faith in the gods to whom sacri- fice was made, and the sacrifice itself had long become a magical ritual rather than an expression of heartfelt devotion. The new religion, that introduced by the Gita, which has not inaptly been called the '' New Tes- tament of Hinduism," inculcates a living faith in Krishna as the saviour of man, through whom alone man attains to everlasting felicity. The formal philosophies represented by the system called the Vedanta of Sankara and that of Ramanuja, four centuries later than Sankara (circa 1200 a. d.), really advance along these same lines. That is to say, the monistic Vedanta is based on the statements of the old Upanishads, such as that of the Chandogya Upani- shad when it says, '' Delusion is death ; knowledge is freedom from death ; he who knows this does not see death," and that of the Svetasvatara Upanishad, '' By knowing Him only one passes over death," but it makes the living Him of the latter Upanishad an im- personal substratum of existence and the immortality of man an absorption into that substratum in which all personality is lost. Ramanuja, on the other hand, de- nies that the Soul of the World is without attributes and in his system the soul of man is immortally indi- vidual and personal, so that this system closely ap- proaches the Christian belief in God and immortal hap- piness of souls living in the presence of God. With these systems there was no question as to immortality, only as to the form thereof. The two systems are analogous to the beliefs of the Buddhists who about the same era, after divesting themselves of the primi- tive notion that annihilation was the sitmnnmi bonum, adopted the belief that Nirvana is not extinction but immortal being or peace, sometimes interpreted as everlasting existence in the Western Paradise. In IMMOETALITY IN INDIA 85 both Brahmanism and Buddhism, the belief in a per- sonal immortality was more general and more endur- ing; that in an immortality conceived as impersonal oneness with the Absolute was confined chiefly to phi- losophers. Thus in Buddhism as it is found in the Far East, the popular teaching to-day admits the hope of personal immortality; while in Brahmanism, the many systems deriving from that of Ramanuja or his fol- lowers inculcate a belief in one Supreme Being and in the immortal happiness of the believer. Also the fol- lowers of Krishna in their various modern forms all believe in a similar immortality of bliss for those who regard him as identical with the Supreme Being. It is to-day only the philosophers who look upon themselves as illustrating the ancient simile of " rivers mingling with the ocean and losing individuality." That even from the seventh century b. c. the general expectation of the devotee was that he should live forever in bliss with his Lord, is quite certain. It was combined in the following manner with the doctrine of metempsy- chosis. A man lives on earth subject to passion and other vitiating traits. If he is thereby led to commit sin, he will after death be punished in hell for his sin and then, after an uncertain period of time, be reborn in a state appropriate to his sin. On the other hand, by living a holy life he will be reborn in bliss, the dura- tion of which in heaven will depend on his virtue in the last existence ; but when his merit is exhausted he also will fall to earth, " like a shooting star," and enter a womb in accordance with his merit. Age after age this process is repeated till in the course of time he will, by giving up all desires and living nobly in each successive stage, overcome all demerit and will be bom on earth no more. The change in this view induced by the Krishna-cult and similar modifications is merely 86 RELIGION AND THE FUTUEE LIFE that through faith he may, on dying, at once obtain release and go to immediate immortal bliss. The resemblance between this non-sectarian belief and that of the Greek philosophers who taught metemp- sychosis is obvious. In Plotinus the soul is one with the Absolute, as it is in the Vedanta, and in both sys- tems it is estranged from the Absolute by ignorance. When illusion is cast out and the soul recognizes its true being by intuition it becomes, or rather that in- stant is, identical with the Absolute. So earlier, in Plato, punishment in hell and reward in heaven are combined with metempsychosis. But in the view of the Greeks the round of transmigration w^as not end- less. According to Pindar, souls that are punished beneath earth return in nine years, or the soul wanders thrice ten thousand seasons born in all forms of mortal beings. Souls are first punished in hell and then, as in India, are reborn in a certain round of existences. But the difference between the systems of India and Greece is marked. In Greece the soul forgets that it is divine and the philosopher seeks to awaken it to its true origin by ascetic observances, as did the Pythag- oreans and Orphic philosophers. Thus the soul owes its state in its earthly body to a mythical fall, either a transgression of divine law or inability to control pas- sion. No such idea as that of the fall of an originally pure soul is found in the Hindu doctrine. Moreover, according to Plato, souls that have suffered cast lots with those that have been blessed, after a thousand years, and then choose what life they will lead there- after. A soul's rebirth in animal form is voluntary. Only after three thousand years does a soul " recover its wings " and mount to the heavenly world from which it came. It is not probable that either early system was received from the other, though some think IMMOETALITY IN INDIA 87 that the philosophy of Plotinus may have been influ- enced by eastern ideas/' In one particular the doctrine of immortality in India is unique. The belief in the transference of merit was universal. So Buddha, from his own store of unrivalled merit, could bestow merit upon another, thus mitigating for that other the pangs induced by demerit. This doctrine was applied even to immor- tality and as late as our own times it is illustrated by the tale of Bharthari, as believed by the modern Sikhs. He was king of Ujjain and one of his priests had through austerity won immortality. As he loved the king, he made him a present of it. As the king loved his queen, he in turn presented her with this gift of immortality. As the queen was In love with the min- ister of police, she gave it to him; but, as he was de- voted to the king, he presented it to Bharthari again, who, however, was so disgusted at finding his gift returning in this way that he renounced immortality altogether.'^ It should be said in conclusion that although the dualistic view and the view that the soul is different ("similar but not the same") from the All-Soul, as the All-Soul or Supreme Being is different from Na- ture, prevails in general among the modern religious sects, yet in Siva-sects there have been and still are many who insist on the old Vedanta oneness of soul and Soul (of the World) and whose longing is for union with God in the non-dualistic sense. But these sects have not held their own with those that have prayed rather to " come to God " than to become God, and it is not improbable that their failure has been due ^ Compare on this point, George F. Moore, Metempsychosis (Cambridge, Mass., 1914). '^Macauliffe, The Sikh Religion, Oxford, 1909, Vol, I, p. 169. 88 religio:n^ and the future life to just this insistence. It is, too, a question in how far the hope of immortality thus regarded as eternal oneness with God is a reflection of book-learning and in how far it actually expresses the belief of the modern devotee. Many of the phrases used in these sects are mere translations or imitations of the old Gita gospel, in which " union " is spoken of but in effect this union is living with God, who by His grace saves the mortal that has faith and love for Him. But the Gita itself is not always consistent and it some- times harks back to the power of *' knowledge " as the means of Salvation. This salvation consists, as in the religion that centres about Amita Buddha, in " coming to the Lord " and living forever with Him, or, as it is said in the Awakening of Faith of the Mahayana School of Buddhism, the devotee '' passes to where he immortally sees Buddha." So, although Krishna speaks in the Gita of man as becoming united with Brahma, yet his final word is, '' Be devoted to me, revere me, and thou shalt come to me, to me as thy refuge, for thou art dear to me, and I will release thee from all thy sins," and it is Krishna who declares that his worshipper through devotion is *' fitted for Brahma and Brahma's support is Krishna," while in the lan- guage of the same speaker *' my devotees through faith come to immortality." No doubt there is also a strain of mysticism here which makes uncertain any too exact definition, for again it is Krishna who says: *' I am immortality and death, I am that which is and that which is not," but the essential meaning of " come to me " may perhaps best be seen in the words succeeding those just cited: " Those who worship the gods go to the gods, those who make vows to the Manes go to the Manes, those who worship devils go to the devils, and those who worship me go to me," apparently to IMMORTALITY IN INDIA 89 enjoy endless bliss, for it is added: " Those who wor- ship me abide in me and I in them — ^he who is my devotee obtains everlasting peace," or, as elsewhere expressed, " he comes to the highest place," " he will come to the Supreme divine being." In any event, immortality is the reward of loving devotion; and as in the Gita, so in the subsequent developments of Krishnaism, as in Ramaism, the faithful soul becomes immortal in or with the Supreme Soul. In the great modern religious poem of Tulsi Das, a poem which expresses the feeling and belief of generations of Rama-devotees, '' after piety and asceticism comes knowledge; knowledge is good, but higher than all knowledge is faith, the incomparable source of happi- ness." Faith here, as in the Gita, is '' the easy way by which one comes to God " and " finds immortal bliss." This attitude has even had the effect of com- bining the irreconcilable religious elements of theism and metempsychosis in that, as a modern pietist says, " even the infinite round of transmigration loses its terror if one has faith, for then one forever in ever new births may be the devotee of God and associate with Him in loving worship." ^* '*This religion of loving faith, bhakti, openly mocks af that of knowledge, as in the sarcastic statement: "I ask him why he is not singing the glory of God and worshipping Him with loving devotion and he replies, ' I have no time; I am too busy with the discussion oi the doctrine of the identity of God and the world.' " For the writers of this later period, compare Macnicol, Indian Theism, Oxford, 191 5. IV IMMORTALITY AMONG THE BABYLONIANS AND ASSYRIANS Morris Jastrow, Jr. I IN any discussion of the beliefs about immortality among Babylonians and Assyrians, our point of departure must be the view which, as the survival of the animistic stage in primitive religion, is common to antiquity, to wit, that life as such does not come to an end. Longfellow's utterance, " There is no death, What seems so is transition,'* voices the attitude of man before the age of sophisti- cated reflection set in to raise a doubt whether death was not the end of what we call consciousness. The belief that life in some form continues is the natural phase, the normal state of mind among all peoples up to a certain and in most cases up to a relatively high stage of culture. The doubt comes when more serious speculation sets in as to the meaning of human exist- ence, the mystery of life and the relationship of that mystery to the phenomena about us. In Greece we find a genuine scepticism arising through the influence of philosophical thought, leading to such a remarkable production as Plato's Phaedo to 90 THE BABYLONIAIS^S AND ASSYRIANS 91 prove by elaborate arguments a belief which primitive religion took for granted, while in India we find specu- lation likewise starting from the popular view that life is a perpetual process of transition but reaching the conclusion that extinction of consciousness is the de- sirable goal of life. The goal, however, can only be reached after one has passed through a series of ex- istences marked by the suppression of desires and cul- minating in the effacement of the last of all desires, the desire for life itself, which is at once the source of all misery and the cause of evil and injustice and w^hich makes life a struggle and a burden. The doubt thus unfolds itself in two directions ac- cording as life is viewed as a blessing or as a curse. It leads, on the one hand, as in the great monotheistic faiths essentially optimistic in their ultimate outlook, to a distinction between consciousness attached to a material body and the spiritualized conception of an immortality vouchsafed to the soul, and, on the other hand, to a doctrine of salvation through entering into the blissful state of complete unconsciousness. The heavenly Paradise of Jewish, Christian and Islamic theology finds its counter expression in the Nirvana of Buddhism. But both heaven and Nirvana are the out- come of doubt as to the sufficiency of primitive beliefs. If I may linger on the threshold of my subject a little longer, may I call attention to a confusion that one often encounters in discussions on Animism between Animism as a basic conception and Animism as a stage of belief through which man in the course of the evo- lutionary processes of his thought necessarily passes. It is, I believe, an error to think of Animism as a spe- cific form of religion ; it is merely a substratum to re- ligion in both its earliest and most advanced manifes- tations — a substratum representing a groove in which 92 EELIGION AND THE FUTUKE LIFE of necessity man's fancy runs when he contemplates the universe about him. Conscious of Hfe within him- self, man is inevitably impelled to predicate life of everything that manifests activity or power, whether in the bird soaring through the air or in the rustling of the leaves, whether in the flow of the streams or in the flowers that spring up out of the ground. He sees life in the wind that sweeps across the land, as in the fire that comes from above ; he sees it in the heat of the sun, as in the pale light of the moon sailing along the heavenly expanse. The constant renewal of life in nature and in the trees that after a period of barren- ness put on fresh leaves, or in the apparently lifeless seed that put into the ground awakens to fresh life, impresses him. But this process of renewal of life is not needed as an analogy to prompt him to the view that all life, including his own, is an endless chain; nor does he even need the analogy between sleep and awak- ening to suggest that when he lies down to a sleep from which there is no apparent awakening, his life nevertheless goes on in some form. It is sufficient for him that he is unable to conceive of himself as without consciousness. " A litde child that feels its life in every limb. What can it know of death ? " What indeed, except its mysterious aspect? But to primitive man as to the child everything is mysterious — life quite as much as death. The belief in the con- tinuation of life, or as we may also put it, the impos- sibility of conceiving of life as coming to an absolute terminus is instinctive with man. Nor does man when he becomes conscious of some- thing within him that is at the core of the manifesta- tions of life differentiate, or at all events he does not THE BABYLONIANS AND ASSYEIANS 93 differentiate sharply, between the hfe within him and the hfe that he predicates in what he sees about him, showing itself in activity and in power. He knows of no distinction between what we call animate and inani- mate being. All is animate and life everywhere is of the same kind. Hence it is again almost instinctive with him to assume that the vital spark or essence may pass from one form to the other, or, as primitive man would put it, the spirit of life may choose its abode with an unlimited choice. This spirit of life, to be sure, is regarded as something material, though also invisible. Animism moves in the groove of the mate- rial and so the " something " within him which he associates with life may manifest itself in a tree or in a plant; it may have its seat in an animal or in a stream. This corollary which ample evidence justifies us in assuming as an outcome of Animism comes to reinforce the instinct which leads man to the conclu- sion that his own life — or, as we would say, his con- sciousness — is part of the endless process of the varied manifestations and perpetual renewal of life; it forms the substratum to man's earliest religious beliefs, and just here we encounter the link that connects Animism with more advanced speculation. No matter how far maturer thought may lead us away from primitive beliefs, we cannot escape from the groove of Animistic conceptions in which the mind of man — apparently by a law of his being — necessarily runs. The advanced religions of antiquity, Egypt, Babylonia, Assyria, India, Greece, Rome, China, Ja- pan, are all inseparably bound up with Animistic con- ceptions. The gods are personified powers of nature; and when we encounter an apparently abstract concep- tion, as we do in Babylonia and Assyria, as well as in India, of a god of heaven, this dissociation from a per- 94 EELIGIOK AND THE FUTUEE LIFE sonified nature power is only apparent. The god of heaven turns out to be the sun-god who because of his wide control is enlarged to a general overseer of all the phenomena that appear in the vault above us, including rain and storms as well as the moon and stars. The hint has already been thrown out that what in the hands of the speculative Greek philosopher be- comes a carefully worked out theory of the transmi- gration of souls is actually inherent in Animism, which assumes, as we have seen, the possibility of the trans- fer of life from one form to the other. When, there- fore, we find on the one hand the Jataka, or Birth Fables, of India setting forth the previous existences of Buddha in the guise of various animals, and on the other Ovid's elaborate poem on Metamorphoses, fur- nishing the illustrations from Greek and Roman my- thology of the same idea of the exchange between hu- man and animal form, we are led back to Animism as the source of a belief capable of being adapted to ad- vanced thought. Similarly, such a widespread concep- tion as the incarnation of a god in a human being, play- ing an important role in Islamic as well as in Christian theology, is only a further extension of the Animistic point of view which in another form leads to the deifica- tion of earthly rulers in whom the spirit of the god has taken up his abode, just as the political doctrine of the divine right of kings, accepted even by so extreme a sceptic as Hobbes as at least possessing academic value, is merely a final outcome of primitive Animism. Nor would it be difficult to trace the doctrine of con- ception without carnal intercourse which leads in Christian theology to the twofold descent of Jesus, in the spirit and in the flesh, to Animistic views of life. Sir James G. Frazer brings illustrations in plenty of the various ways in which primitive peoples supposed THE BABYLONIANS AND ASSYRIANS 96 it possible for the life spirit to enter the body — through the ear or the mouth or the leg or by inhaling the sa- voury smell of roast fish/ trees, animals or plants may cause conception. When we pass to the ritual of advanced religions of antiquity we encounter on all sides practices that have their rise in primitive Animistic conceptions. The widespread view of the liver as the seat of the soul ^ leads to elaborate systems of divination through the inspection of the liver and animal sacrifices to the gods. Incantation resting on the vital power inherent in words finds its final expression in the subtle doctrine of the Logos. Astrology, based on the identification of the gods with stars which is again an extension of the Animistic conception regarding the sun and moon, leads to peopling the heaven with the spirits of the dead, who after separation from the body mount to the abode of the gods. Even when we reach the monothe- istic faiths we do not escape from the meshes of Ani- mistic points of view for the supreme power is in the popular mind invested with a personality not dissimilar from that associated by him with human life, though raised to the nth power of superiority. And if fol- lowing the thought of a central power in another direc- tion we reach a pantheistic conception of the divine, what is this but the diffusion of the vital essence throughout the visible and invisible universe? II Now with such a conception of life expressing itself in such various forms, we will be prepared to find in ^Attis, Osiris and Adonis, Volume i, page 102. ^ See the author's essay on " The Liver as the Seat of the Soul," in Studies in the History of Religions in honor of C. H. Toy, (New York, 1912, pp. 143-168). 96 EELIGION AND THE FUTUEE LIFE the case of the Babylonians and Assyrians a striking continuity between earher and later views of life after death. The modification that earlier conceptions un- dergo, so far as we are able to trace them in literature and in certain practices, never leave the main highway of Animistic beliefs. So far as the evidence goes, burial of the dead was the earliest and remained the sole method of disposing of the dead; and this applies to Sumerians as well as to Akkadians ^ — the two ethnic elements that compose the population of the Euphrates Valley and through the commingling of which a high order of civilization, gradually spreading northvv^ards, is evolved. It was a natural outcome wherever burial was the prevailing custom to picture all the dead as gathered in a great hollow somewhere below the surface of the earth. The place was known as Arali among the Sumerians and passed over to the Akkadians under the form of Arallii. The etymology of the word is unknown, but ideographic designations like E-Kur Bad, '' Mountain House of the Dead " leave no doubt as to the nature of the conception. E-Kur {'' mountain house ") becomes in Sumerian the generic term for temple — presumably because the Sumerians, as a people, originally dwelling in a mountainous district ' before coming to the Eu- phrates Valley, worshiped their gods on mountain tops. Temples being places of assembly, the E-Kur Bad was, therefore, the assembly place of the dead. Another designation Uru-Gal "great city" — perhaps a word play on Arali — is a more fanciful one, though likewise suggesting a single gathering place. Other synonyms 'The Sumerian is the name for the non-Semitic element of the population ; Akkadian for the Semitic element. * Perhaps from central Asia Minor which we now know was at a very early period a great gathering place of many peoples. THE BABYLONIANS AND ASSYRIANS 97 in Akkadian are bU muti '' house of the dead," nakbaru " burial place " and irsitii, L e., '' land " par excellence, and which is qualified in a remarkable description of Arali on which I will dwell further on as *' the land of no return." From these and other designations we are justified in concluding that the Sumerians and Akkadians alike conceived of the dead as forever sepa- rated from the living — imprisoned, as it were, in a great mountain or subterranean hollow. The descrip- tions that have come down to us of Arali show that this existence after death was marked by gloom and inactivity. The dead in Arali were deprived of joy. Dense darkness enveloped the dead, and it is added that *' dust is their nourishment and clay their food." Unable by virtue of the Animistic compulsion to conceive of vitality without giving the dead some ma- terial shape, poetic fancy pictured the dead as '' clothed with wings like birds." The single positive attribute of the dead was consciousness, but this consciousness is not viewed with any degree of satisfaction. The Su- merians and Akkadians loved life, because it spelled activity. There is, therefore, a prevailing note of sad- ness whenever in myths, legends, hymns and prayers death is referred to. Those in distress pray that life may be granted in order that when released from mis- ery and suffering they may praise the gods. " Lengthen my days ! Grant me life ! " is a cry which like a refrain resounds through a special class of penitential hymns ' which picture a sufferer as beseeching the divine throne. The kings, reflecting the popular view, pray for long life as a sign of divine " See, for examples, Jastrow, Religion- of Babylonia and Assyria, chap, xviii. 98 EELIGION AND THE FUTUEE LIFE favour to their dynasty. We fail to encounter any trace of a feeling of resignation at the approach of death. On the contrary, the attitude is one bordering on despair, for fear that an offended deity apparently deaf to one's appeal is about to permit the demon of disease to carry his victim down to Arali. Perhaps the most significant testimony to the general horror which the thought of death aroused is to be found in a tale attached to the Gilgamesh Epic — a composite production ° in which various myths have been com- bined with historical traditions grouped around two heroic figures of the past — Enkidu and Gilgamesh. The two heroes after a hostile encounter become fast friends and engage in a number of adventures. En- kidu is smitten with disease for offending the goddess Ishtar and after lingering for twelve days succumbs. Gilgamesh weeps bitterly and dreads that the same fate may overtake him. " I myself will die and will I not then be like Enkidu? Woe has entered my heart. I fear death — therefore, I wander across the fields." Gilgamesh begins a long series of wanderings in the hope of finding some way to escape from death. To all whom he meets, he recounts the story of Enkidu's death and his fear of meeting the same fate: " My friend Enkidu whom I loved has become dust. Will I not be like him — lying down. Never to rise up again — never more?" Unable to throw off this fear, he has recourse to invoking the shade of Enkidu. He wishes to find out ' vSee Jastrow, ibid.. Chap, xxiii. and for a more recent discus- sion of the origin and growth of the Epic, Jastrow and Clay, An Old Babylonian Version of the Gilgamesh Epic, Yale University Press, 1921, pp. 32-52. THE BABYLONIANS AND ASSYRIANS 99 for himself how the dead fare In Arali. The god Ea, always depicted as the friend and helper of mankind, grants Gilgamesh's request for a sight of his friend. Nergal, the guardian of the realm of the dead, opens a hole and the iiHikku of Enkidu rises up " like a wind out of the earth," as the text reads. Gilgamesh, al- most reconciled to his fate of becoming a prisoner like all mortals in Arali, wishes at least to ascertain the conditions under which the dead continue their shad- owy existence: " Tell me, my friend, tell me, my friend ! The law of the earth which thou hast experienced, tell me ! " Mournfully the answer comes: " I cannot tell thee, my friend, I cannot tell thee. If I were to tell thee the law of the earth which I have experienced, [With me ( ?) ] ' thou wouldst sit down to weep ; [With thee( ?) ] I would sit down and weep." The text at this point becomes defective, but so much is clear, that Enkidu goes on to contrast the joy which he had with his friends while his heart was still beating with the sorrow at the thought of their bodies being turned to dust. " Worms eat him whose touch once brought thee joy." There is only one thing that one can do to lighten the sorrow of those who have passed through the por- tals of death — to provide a proper burial, which in- cludes keeping the memory of the dead alive by liba- tions and by food offerings. Those who are thus cared for rest on a couch and drink pure water: ' Restored words are placed in brackets. 100 EELIGION AND THE FUTUEE LIFE " But he whose corpse is thrown into the open, His etimmu (" shade " ) does not rest in the earth,. He whose etimmu has no caretaker Is forced to eat the offal that is thrown into the street." Such descriptions obviously must not be taken too literally. Their significance lies in the general picture that they convey of the depressing thoughts aroused by the thought of the dismal fate of the dead and of the attempt to soften this thought by inculcating a proper regard for the care of the dead, so that they may not at least suffer the pangs of hunger and thirst. Offerings to the dead, as a matter of fact, play a prominent part in the Babylonian-Assyrian ritual. The nearest relative becomes the nek me " the libation pourer " on whom the obligation rested to satisfy the simple needs of the dead. In accordance with this be- lief of the misery endured by those who did not receive proper burial, we find in historical inscriptions refer- ences to the punishment meted out to enemies by per- mitting their bones to rot on the field of battle. In one instance, the Assyrian king, Ashurbanapal, in or- der to set an example of Assyrian ''Schrecklichkeit "' for future ages, tells ^ how he exhumed the remains of Elamitic kings, exposed them to the sun, and brought the skeletons to his capital as a trophy of war. The ethnme were thus deprived of rest and of the comfort of being provided with food (kispu) and libations (nek me). The severest curse, therefore, that could be pronounced on any one was that " his corpse may be cast before his enemies, his bones be carried away and his body be without burial." " Similarly in the Assyrian Code of laws, recently published and dating •v. Rawlinson, PI. 6, Col. 6, 70. • See V. Rawlinson, PI. 61, Col. 6, 54-55. THE BABYLONIANS AND ASSYEIANS 101 from c. 1500 B. c, we find the punishment meted out to a woman who, by submitting to malpractice, brings about an abortion, that she be impaled and *' be without burial." " III Poetic fancy playing around primitive conception leads to further speculations regarding the world of the dead. So, for example, in a famous tale of the descent of the goddess Ishtar to Arali, she is repre- sented as passing through seven gates, each guarded by a keeper before she reaches the palace in Arali inhab- ited by Eresh-Kigal, " the lady of the great land " whose Akkadian name Allatu finds a strange counter- part in an old Arabic goddess el-Lat, the female con- sort of Allah. The story, in the form in which we have it, reverts to a Sumerian original " and is clearly a nature myth, symbolizing the change from the summer season with its glory and splendour to bare winter where nature is stripped as it were of its raiments. Ishtar, the god- dess of earth, who presides over the fields that yield their products out of the seeds laid in the womb of the earth, is the symbol of vegetation and fertility in the tale, but even Ishtar must submit to the inexorable law. She loses her vigour with the waning of the summer season until she appears to be held in the light embrace of death. The journey to the realm of the dead — which for mortals is the " land of no return " — sym- bolizes the steady approach of winter. The seven ^•^ See the translation by the writer in the Journal of the Ameri- can Oriental Society, Vol. 41, No. i, p. 47. "A fragment of the Sumerian prototype has been found and published by Dr. Arno Poebel in his Historical and Grammatical Texts (Philadelphia, 1914), No. 2^. 102 EELIGION AND THE FUTURE LIFE gates are so many stages in the journey. At each gate the gatekeeper removes some ornament from the god- dess or a part of her clothing, first the great crown on her head, then in turn her earrings, her necklace, the ornaments on her breast, the girdle of her loins set with precious stones, the spangles on her hands and feet and finally the loin cloth, so that when Ishtar arrives at the palace of her '' sister," Eresh-Kigal, she stands naked before her. The symbolical character of the tale is further illustrated by the answer that the gatekeeper at each gate gives to Ishtar's question as to the reason for thus stripping her of her ornaments and clothing: " Such are the decrees of Eresh-Kigal." IV The laws of nature demand that the earth after showing herself in all the glory of summer must shed her lustre. She must enter upon a period of apparent decay. Ishtar is smitten with wasting disease — sick- ness of the eyes, of the loins, of the feet, heart and head, aye, throughout her body. The symbolism of the loss of vigour with the approach of the wintry sea- son is extended to animate nature. Men and animals cease to be productive. Another interesting touch in the poem — reflecting the attitude of Sumerians and Babylonians toward death — is the portrayal of the hos- tility between the two sisters, between Ishtar, the god- dess of the living, and Eresh-Kigal, the mistress of Arali. They fly at each other's throats. Eresh-Kigal is enraged at Ishtar's invasion of her domain. She fears instinctively that Ishtar may rob her of her su- preme position in the nether world, that the goddess of the living may carry off the dead from Arali. THE BABYLONIANS AND ASSYEIANS 103 Eresh-KIgal, therefore, gives orders to smash the palace, to shatter its portals and to force Ishtar out of Arali by sprinkling her with the waters of life. And so Ishtar retraces her steps, passes through the seven gates, at each of which she receives back the garments and ornaments which on entering she was obliged to leave behind, and emerges once more to the earth in all her splendour. The closing lines of the poem which set forth its purpose are unfortunately so mutilated as to baffle at- tempts at a translation." Only so much is clear that the poem seems to have been composed for recitation at a festival of Tammuz in honour of the dead. Could the story have suggested, as some scholars believe, the possibility that as Ishtar emerges from the world of the dead, so human beings who have passed through the portals of death may hope for a release? Hardly — for there is nothing in the entire realm of Baby- lonian or Assyrian Literature to suggest the belief in such a resurrection of the dead. Rather the point of view is that of which Job complains (14: 7-12) : " For there is hope for a tree if cut down, That its tendril will not cease, Though its root wax old in the earth. And its stock die in the ground ; Through the scent of water it will bud, And put forth branches like a shoot. But man dies and passes away, He expires and how is it with him? Man when he lies down will not rise, Till the heavens be no more, they shall not awake." Nature revives — after apparent death. Ishtar is re- *^ A recently published Ass3^rian duplicate of the text Ebeling, Keilschrifttexte mis Assur, religiosen Inhalts, Part I, No. i ; see also Part 4, p. 321 (corrections and additions) is likewise mutilated at the close. 104 EELIGION AND THE FUTURE LIFE leased from Arali, but not man. All that one can do for those who have departed this life is to recall their memories on the festival of Tammuz — ^to sing laments and to offer the sacrifice for the dead. There are other tales in Babylonian Literature that illustrate the continuance of the primitive point of view — that death is the fate decreed for mankind from the beginning of time and that the laws of nature are unchangeable and inexorable. In the Gilgamesh Epic there is a significant passage bearing on this point. Gilgamesh, in his quest for escape from the fate which has overtaken his companion Enkidu, comes after a long wandering through a dark forest, filled with all kinds of dangers, to the seashore. There he encoun- ters a maiden who thus addresses him: ** Why dost thou wander from place to place ? The life which thou seekest thou shalt not find. When the gods created man, they decreed death for him, Life they kept in their own hands." And then follows the advice to enjoy life while it lasts. Much as in the Biblical Book of Ecclesiastes (9:7-9), Gilgamesh is told, " Let thy garments be white, Let oil not be lacking for thy head, Daily fill thy belly, Daily enjoy a feast. Live joyfully with the wife of thy bosom. With" the child at thy side."'' A strange materialistic point of view, though also be- traying a sane doctrine that life is made for enjoy- ment, and that the thought of death should not deprive one of the joy of living. ''See Jastrow-Clay, An Old Babylonian Version of the Gilga- mesh Epic, New Haven, 1920, p. 12. THE BABYLONIANS AND ASSYEIANS 106 V And yet there are some indications — though faint — that the primitive view did not altogether satisfy a more advanced age which, impressed by man's excep- tional place in nature, felt that at least an explanation was needed how man came to be subject to death. Sir James G. Frazer in his remarkable work. Belief in Immortality,^* has gathered from many sources the evi- dence for the belief that man was at one time destined for immortality, but forfeited it by an error, or by a failure to pursue a certain course, or through some mishap. There is a whole series of stories according to which death came into the world because men re- jected a certain kind of food which, if they had eaten it, would have made them immortal. Instead they se- lected a food externally more attractive, but which brought death in its wake. So among the natives of Piso, a district of Central Celebes, it is related that at a time when the sky was near the earth, the creator used to let down his gifts to men at the end of a rope. One day he lowered a stone, but the first ancestors of the human race declined it and asked for something else. So the creator let down a banana, which was more to the liking of the human pair. Then a voice called out: '' Because you chose the banana your life shall be as its life. When the banana tree has off- spring, the parent stem dies. So shall you die and your children step into your place. Had you chosen the stone, your life would have been like the life of the stone — changeless and immortal." Elsewhere, among the natives of Nias, an island off Sumatra, death was believed to have come to man because the original an- cestor ate bananas instead of river crabs to satisfy "I., pp. 72, seq. 106 RELIGION AND THE FUTURE LIFE their hunger. Had he selected the latter, human be- ings would have cast their skins like crabs and never died. Another type of stories rests on a change in a command given by the Creator. In Annam, the na- tives relate that Ngochoang, who dwelt in heaven, sent a messenger to announce to man that when he grows old he will cast his skin and renew his vitality, but when serpents become old, they shall die and be laid in coffins. The messenger did as he was told, but a brood of serpents heard this and fell into a fury. They said to the messenger: '' Repeat this order, but in contrary fashion, or we will bite you." That fright- ened the messenger, who accordingly changed the mes- sage. Hence it happens that when man grows old he dies and is laid in a coffin, whereas the serpent casts off his skin and constantly enjoys a new life. A third type of stories involves the sending out of two mes- sengers, one with a message that man should live for- ever, the other with the message that they would die ; and the latter messenger invariably arrives first. Among the Zulus, the two messengers are the chame- leon and the lizard. The chief deity Unkulunkulu (''the old old one") decided to let man live forever and sent the chameleon to make this announcement, but afterwards Unkulunkulu thought better of it and sent the lizard to announce that men will die. The chameleon loitered by the way to eat berries or, accord- ing to another version, he filled his belly with flies and fell asleep. The lizard ran posthaste and arrived first with its fateful message. As a consequence the Zulus hate both the lizard and the chameleon, the one for being so fast and the other for being so slow. Among the Babylonians we have a tale that evi- dently belongs to the same category of stories told to account for the presence of death. THE BABYLONIANS AND ASSYEIAKS 107 Omitting minor features of this tale '' concerning a certain Adapa, a fisherman who breaks the wings of the south wind that threatened to drive him into the sea, we find the chief scene to take place before Anu, the god of heaven, who summons Adapa to answer for his crime. Ea, the god of the waters, who is the pro- tector of Adapa, instructs Adapa how to conduct him- self in the presence of Anu. At the gate of heaven he will find two gods, Tammuz and Gishzida. In order to secure their sympathy Adapa is to clothe himself in mourning garb and when asked for the reason should say: " Two gods have disappeared from earth, Therefore do I appear thus." These two gods are, of course, Tammuz and Gish- zida — vegetation deities who, like Ishtar, disappear after the summer season has passed. Ea furthermore instructs his favourite not to accept food that will be offered him when he comes to Anu, for it will be the food of death, nor to accept drink, for it will be the water of death: ** They will offer thee a garment, put it on. They will offer thee oil, anoint thyself." Had Ea's plan succeeded, mankind would have es- caped death, but alas! Ea proposes, but some other god disposes. Tammuz and Gishzida, out of sym- pathy for Adapa, interceded on his behalf with Anu, whose anger is appeased. As a sign of grace it is de- cided to offer Adapa food of life and water of life, but Adapa, not aware of the change and recalling the in- structions given to him, refuses both in the belief that ^® See Jastrow, Religion of Babylonia and Assyria, Boston, 1898, pp. 544-555. 108 EELIGION AND THE FUTUEE LIFE the food and drink will bring on death. He puts on the garment that is brought to him and anoints him- self with the oil offered, but alas ! he has refused the chance of immortality and is thus condemned to en- counter death. So man by an act of obedience on his part, but by a deception on the part of the gods, for- feits the possibility of being like the gods — immortal. We are reminded, of course, of the Biblical tale in the third chapter of Genesis, likewise, in the original form, told to account for the presence of death in the world, but which, in the final shape that it assumed, became the medium of inculcating the lesson of obedi- ence to the divine will and, in further development, became the basis of St. Paul's doctrine of sin and sal- vation. No doubt both tales revert to a primitive stage of culture — as do the many similar ones collected by Frazer — but the point of interest for us is that old tales, entwined with myth and symbolism, become the medium of illustrating doctrines that arose in a later age of reflection and speculation on the mystery of life and death. The tale of Adapa is intended to illustrate the prevailing belief, as expressed in the speech of the maiden to Gilgamesh : " When the gods created man, death they decreed for him. Life they kept in their own hands." Even when a protector of humanity, like Ea, plans to avert the will of the gods he is foiled in his en- deavour. Even the heroes — the leaders of the race — cannot escape the common fate and no one can ascer- tain anything about death, except that decent burial and care of the dead insures to them as much comfort as their imprisonment forever in Arali will permit them to enjoy. THE BABYLONIANS AND ASSYEIANS 109 VI But is there, then, no hope of a release from the misery of being condemned to consciousness but with- out activity in a gloomy subterranean hollow ? Yes, a glimmer of hope is held out that those singled out for special favour by the gods may be transferred to a more cheerful place — to a distant isle situated at the confluence of the streams. It is again the Gilgamesh Epic that opens tip this faint ray of light in the en- compassing darkness. This Epic, comprising in its complete form twelve tablets, or some 3,000 lines, is the literary plum-pudding of ancient Babylonia and Assyria in which some of the choicest tales of the remote and less remote past have 'been welded together into a semblance of literai*y unity.^^ A critical analysis reveals the composite character of the production and shows that episodes, having originally nothing to do with Gilgamesh, are connected with the exploits of the hero by artificial links. In this way, incidental to the wanderings of the hero in search of an escape from death, the story is introduced of a destructive flood which wipes out all mankind with the exception of a favourite of the god Ea to whom the coming of the disaster is revealed by a mysterious message which Ziugiddu, "the one of long life," as the survivor is called in the Sumerian prototype of the tale," under- stands. Ziugiddu, who in the later Semitic or Akka- dian form becomes Utnapishtim, builds a house-boat on which he and his family with all their belongings " See the references in note 6. " Discovered and published by Dr. Arno Poebel Historical and Gramrnatical Texts (University of Pennsylvania, Museum Pub- Hcations, Vol. V., 1914) No. i, Col. 4. In this text the Deluge story is connected with a Creation myth as in the Book of Genesis, showing that its incorporation into the Gilgamesh Epic is of later date. 110 EELIGION AND THE FUTUEE LIFE take refuge and thus escape the common destruction. At the close of a terrific storm which lasts seven days, in which all mankind perished, Enlil, the god of storms, who brought on the catastrophe, is enraged upon discovering that some one has escaped, but his anger is calmed by Ea, who urges him in future to send whatsoever misfortunes he will — lions, pestilence, famine — but not a deluge: " On the sinner impose his sin. On the evil-doer his evil," but mankind as a whole should not be wiped out. The close of the episode bears directly on our sub- ject Utnapishtim, who tells the story of his escape and exceptional fate to Gilgamesh, says : "Ea" entered the boat; Took hold of my hand and lifted me up." He lifted up my wife and made her kneel at my side, Touched our foreheads and stepped between us and blessed us : Hitherto Utnapishtim was human, Now Utnapishtim shall be as the gods. And Utnapishtim shall dwell in the distance at the confluence of the streams. Then they took me and placed me in the dis- tance at the confluence of the streams." Evidently this single illustration of one who had es- caped the common fate was intended to hold out the faint hope that, under exceptional circumstances, one may avoid imprisonment in Arali. There is, however, little consolation to be found in an exception that '^ It is quite certain that Ea is intended by the deity designated in the text as belu or " lord." "Perhaps in the sense of lifting him on to the land. THE BABYLONIANS AND ASSYRIANS 111 proves the rule. It would be hazardous, therefore, to conclude from the story of Utnapishtim that the Baby- lonians or xA.ssyrians had taken more than the first step leading to a more hopeful view of life after death. The mass of incantation texts which date from the early period to the latest show the persistence of the dread inspired by the approach of death, due to the successful attack of a demon or of a group of demons, acting as messengers of gods who preside over Arali. A separate pantheon of the lower world was developed in contrast to the upper realms, which divided into three zones distributed among a triad: Anu, who as sun god became the controller of the heavens; Enlil, who from a storm-god expands into a deity, in control of the earth and the region immediately above it ; and Ea, who presides over the waters that surround the earth, pictured as floating like a rubber ball in a great sea. The upper gods are on the whole favourably in- clined toward mankind. Evil, sickness, plagues, and death come through the gods of the lower world. Nergal and his consort Ercsh-Kigal are surrounded by a court of deities of the second rank and by myriads of demons ready to do the bidding of the divine pair, who are portrayed in myths as gloomy, prone to anger and hostile to m^ankind. VII We have an interesting tale,'" showing that originally a goddess — the same Eresh-Kigal whom we encoun- tered in the tale of Ishtar's descent to the nether world, — was the head of the pantheon of Arali. She is portrayed as ferocious and ever ready to inflict in- jury, precisety as in the tale of Ishtar. She offends ^^ See Jastrow, Religion of Babylonia and Assyria, Boston, 1898, pp. 5S4-5S6. 112 RELIGION AND THE FUTURE LIFE Nergal, the god of pestilence and of death, who in revenge proposes to drag her from the throne. He forces his way into the domain of Eresh-Kigal, station- ing a watchman at each of the fourteen gates through which he passes in order to avert the escape of the goddess. When he bursts into her presence he seizes her by the hair until she prays for mercy: " Be my husband and I will be your wife, The tables of wisdom I will lay in your hands, You shall be master and I shall be mistress." Nergal accepts the offer, kisses Eresh-Kigal and wipes away her tears. The tale is of interest as showing the existence of tw^o conceptions of the pantheon of Arali that have been here combined, one in which Nergal was ruler and the other — probably the older one — in which this distinction was accorded to a god- dess. But the point of chief interest lies in the de- scription of the divine pair whose traits appear again in the large army of demons that pass through the world at the command of the rulers of Arali, bringing suffering and eventually death to mankind. The be- lief in these demons pervades the entire literature of Babylonia and Assyria and furnishes sufficient proof for the persistency of the popular views regarding the gloomy fate of the dead. The deification of kings, a belief which we encounter already in the Sumerian period and which crops up sporadically in later times, might be adduced as evi- dence that there existed a tendency at least to pass beyond primitive conceptions of the life after death, but it is the special position accorded to rulers as standing nearer to the gods than the rest of mankind that forms the chief factor in giving to kings occa- sionally the epithet of a god and in erecting statues to THE BABYLONIANS AND ASSYKIANS 113 some of them, as was done to the gods and occasion- ally even in offering sacrifices to them. The kings are in a special sense the offspring of the gods and this relationship is frequently stressed in official annals even when actual deification did not take place. The assumption of Divine descent was the manner in which the Akkadians expressed their belief that the kings acted as mediators between their subjects and the gods,'' while actual deification appears to be rather an instance of the Sumerian point of view. And yet even among the Sumerians, the belief never went so far as to assume that kings enjoyed immortality in the sense in which the gods were immortal. Deification partook more of an academic character; it was formal rather than real and at all events exercised no influ- ence on popular beliefs regarding the general fate of mankind after death had extinguished all activity. As already pointed out, there is a striking uniformity in the attitude toward death in all periods of Babylo- nian-xAssyrian history — from the earliest to the latest. So strong appears to have been the hold of primitive beliefs that even the development of an elaborate as- trological literature,'' which rested upon an identifica- tion of the great gods with the planets and of the minor ones with stars did not lead to the belief in an upper realm as the abode of the dead, as happened when the Babylonian-Assyrian method of divining the future through the observation of the movements of the heavens passed westward.'" There is no Intimation throughout the realm of Babylonian- Assyrian liter- "A widespread view which imderHes kingship In its earlier manifestations wherever we encounter it. " See Jastrow, Aspects of Religious Belief and Practice in Babylonia and Assyria, New York, 191 1, Lecture IV. ^'See Cumont, Astrology and Religion Among the Greeks and Romans, New York, 1912, Lectures III and V. 114 EELIGION AND THE FUTURE LIFE ature of a heaA^enly home for departed spirits who had merited a better fate than imprisonment in the nether world; and this is all the more amazing when we consider the comparatively early period at which the step was taken of identifying the goddess Ishtar with the planet Venus, Marduk with Jupiter, Nebo with Mercury,. Nergal with Mars and Ninib with Sat- urn. One might have supposed that such a purely abstract conception of deities that in the Animistic stage were associated with manifestations of nature having nothing to do with the heavens as in the case of Ishtar, who is a distinct earth goddess, or of Nebo who was in his origin either an agricultural or a water deity, would have led to further speculations, suggest- ing at least that the favourites of the gods would be transferred to the heavens after they had closed their earthly careers. Astrology led in the later period to the rise of a genuine science of astronomy, largely stimulated by contact with Greek culture after the middle of the fourth century b. c, but not to escha- tological speculations such as we find among the Jews in the second century and later among Greeks and Romans and in early Christianity.'* The reason for this rather remarkable stability of primitive views of life after death, despite steady intellectual advance and despite accompanying changes in social standards, is to be sought, as it seems to me, in the absence of any pronounced ethical factor in the view held of the gods, or perhaps we had better say in the weakness of ethical conceptions unfolded — despite cultural advance — in the relationship of the gods to mankind. Not only do the gods of the lower world remain forbid- ding in their aspect and cruel in their nature, but those " See C. H. H. Charles, A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life, London, 1899, Chapters V-VIH and XI. THE BABYLONIANS AND ASSYEIANS 115 of the upper world, while susceptible to appeals for help and often addressed as merciful, yet continue to be arbitrary. One could never be sure of the gods. They were always prone to anger; and often they showed themselves unfriendly without apparent cause. Strength, exercised at will, continued to be their chief trait and as long as this was the case, a genuine ethical development of the god idea was checked or at most was capable of a limited development only. The one aim of life was to try to keep the gods in good humour by offering them the homage that they craved. Man was created, according to the main version of the Babylonian-Assyrian creation story, to do the service of the gods. A recent publication, completing to a large degree the account of the creation of man, brings this out even more clearly than we had reason to be- lieve.'" After the rebellion of the lower order of di- vine beings — headed by Kingu and Tiamat — against the superior gods, the latter decided upon the advice of Ea to create mankind to take the place of the lower order of divine beings and to build temples in which the higher gods might be worshiped. The gods need homage and since Kingu and Tiamat and their fol- lowers had proven false, a new order was to be estab- lished with mankind to take the place of the rebel host. VIII With such as the chief motive for man's excep- tional place in nature, it is not surprising that a doc- trine of rewards and punishments in a future exist- ence to compensate man for the failure of justice in ''Ebe'lmg, Keilschrifttexte mis Assiir (Part 4) Text No. 164. See the translation in the third edition of Barton, Archaeology of the Bible, Philadelphia, 1920. 116 EELIGION AND THE FUTUEE LIFE this one should never have been evolved by the Baby- lonian and Assyrian schoolmen. The favour of the gods was shown by happiness, prosperity, good health and long life in this world. As long as one enjoyed the favour of the gods, things went well, but when misfortune came on in any form the conclusion was drawn that some deity had been offended, whether for a good cause or without apparent reason. Under such conditions a consciousness of guilt was developed but, as the hymns and prayers show, a ritualistic misstep was placed on a par with an ethical transgression ; and often the penitent appealing for divine mercy states that he does not know what wrong he has done nor what particular deity he had offended.'' The Baby- lonian-Assyrian religion may then be characterized as an instance of an arrested ethical development in the unfolding of religious beHefs, which likewise brought it about that the jurisdiction even of the most merciful and loving gods was limited to this world. When one passed beyond the portals of life into the shadowy realm where Nergal and Eresh-Kigal held sway, even Ea whose role in the pantheon is that of the protector of mankind par excellence is powerless to be of further service. One cannot even praise the gods of the upper world when one reaches Arali, as little as, according to earlier psalms, one cannot sing the praises of Yahweh when in Sheol (Ps. 6, 6). The Hebrews passed beyond this primitive view by virtue of the complete infusion of the ethical idea into the concep- tion of Divine government of the universe, though even among them centuries had elapsed after the ap- pearance of the great Hebrew prophets, who first em- '^ See examples in Jastrow, Religion of Babylonia and Assyria, Boston, 1898, pp. 320 seq.; and In the German (enlarged) edition, I. pp. 99-106. THE BABYLONIANS AND ASSYRIANS 117 phasized that Yahweh rules his people by self-imposed laws of justice and righteousness, before the corollary was drawn extending this rule beyond the grave. The high-water mark of the Babylonian conception of the relationship existing between the gods and man was reached in a remarkable composition that has come down to us in which a pious sufferer voices his despair at not being able to please the gods at all times. The composition, though reverting to a considerable an- tiquity, illustrates the views that continued to sway the popular mind to the latest period; and since the tale also shows that the last word of the religion was one of faith in ultimately overcoming the anger of the gods, it is worth while in conclusion to give some extracts from the composition, which is in many re- spects the most remarkable that has come down to us from ancient Babylonia.'' Like Job, in the poetic symposium which forms the first stratum of the book of Job,'' the Babylonian suf- ferer, whose name is given as Tabi-utul-Enlil and who represents himself as a king, complains of the bitter fate allotted to him without apparent cause : " As though I had not always set aside the portion for my god, And had not invoked the goddess at the meal, As though I had not bowed my face and brought my tribute. Prayer was my practice, sacrifice my law. The day of worship of the god was the joy of my heart, The day of devotion to a goddess more than riches." "For a full account see the author's article A Babylonian Parallel to the Sf.ory of Job, in the " Journal of Biblical Litera- ture," Vol. 25, pp. i3=;-ioi. '' See the author's ^Book of Job, Philadelphia, 1920, p. 67 seq. 118 EELIGION AND THE FUTUKE LIFE He indulges in reflection on the difficulty of pleasing the gods : " What, however, seems good to oneself, to a god is displeasing. What is spurned by oneself finds favour with a god; Who is there that can grasp the will of the gods in heaven ? The plan of a god full of mystei-y(?) — who can understand it? How can mortals learn the way of a god? He who is still alive at evening is dead the next morning ; In an instant he is cast into grief, of a sudden he is crushed; For a moment he sings and plays. In a twinkling he wails like a mourner. Like opening and closing, their [sc. mankind's] spirit changes; If they are hungry, they are like a corpse. Have they had enough, they consider themselves second to their god; If things go well, they prate of mounting to heaven, If they are in distress, they speak of descending into Irkalla." " His appeals to the various classes of priests are of no avail— none was able to furnish relief. He stands on the brink of the grave: " The grave was open, my burial prepared, Though not yet dead, lamentation was made, The people of my land said ' Alas ' over me." For all that, like Job in the folk-tale, Tabi-utul-Enlil retains his faith and is finally rewarded by complete restoration to health. The lesson is drawn not to lose faith in Marduk. "Another name for the nether world, reverting to the Sumerian Uru-gal " great city." See above. THE BABYLONIANS AND AS3YEIANS 119 " In the jaw of the lion about to conquer hmi Mar- duk places a bit. Marduk seized the one ready to overwhelm him and completely encircled him." Psychologically, then, it is interesting to note that the gloomy views of life after death did not lead to absolute despair when faced wdth misfortune, nor to sullen views of life itself. Both Sumerians and Ak- kadians were keenly alive to the joy of existence. Long life was a mark of favour from the gods, and grateful hearts sang praises to the superior beings who thus permit man to enjoy the sunlight. The Baby- lonians would echo the sentiment of Koheleth, himself without a hopeful outlook upon death: " Life is sweet, And it is pleasant for the eyes to see the sun." — Eccl. II, y. How are we to account for this? It seems to me that the answer is to be found in the nature of man which is normally optimistic. Pessimism is an ab- normal state, at least so far as the large masses are concerned. We encounter the pessimist in the blase individual who is surfeited with pleasure, in the closet philosopher whose thought is concentrated on the misery that he sees about him, in the disappointed and embittered soul — often starting out in life as an idealist; but the very need of husbanding one's strength for the struggle of life prevents the average man from indulging in the luxury of a pessimistic out- look either on life or on death. Such an outlook would lame his efforts, check his growth effectively, and block the endeavour to overcome obstacles. The hope that springs eternal in the human breast is the heritage of 120 EELIGION AND THE FUTUEE LIFE the average man. Lincoln is reported to have said that ** God loves the common people — for He made so many of them." The Sumerians and Akkadians were made up, as we are to-day, of common people. We may, therefore, well believe that despite the persistence of gloomy views of Arali the average per- son gave little thought to death and concentrated his efforts on the work and need that lay immediately at hand. He looked up gratefully to his gods when sun- shine played around his existence, and he prayed to them when sickness and suffering came, — -in a de- jected frame of mind, to be sure, but also in the hope that the anger of his god or goddess — even though he was often forced to face the inability of knowing which one had smitten him — would pass away. He was content when the end drew nigh and after he had enjoyed life to the full: " To fold his cloak about him, And lie down to pleasant dreams." THE ANCIENT PERSIAN DOCTRINE OF A FUTURE LIFE ' A. V. Williams Jackson AMONG all the nations of mankind that have cherished the spark of religious faith, that ember has kindled into a beacon flame, point- ing onward to a world beyond the present, and to a life, whatever its character, existing beyond the grave. The rude savage bears witness to this truth, as well as those great spirits of classical antiquity, Socrates, Plato, Cato, Cicero ; the ancient Egyptians and Hindus, the early Celts, Germans, and other races of antiquity, bear kindred testimony, as well as those who have received the blessed light of revelation. But among the nations of the distant past, outside the light of Biblical revelation, this feeling seems to have stirred in the hearts of none more strongly than it stirred in the hearts of the ancient Persians, those natives of old Iran, the worshippers of Ormazd and followers of Zoroaster, the prophet who spoke at least six centuries before the Saviour came preaching the truth. The confident belief that the good will be rewarded after ^ Cordial acknowledgment is made to the editorial board of the University of Chicago for the privilege of reproducing, with additions and changes, the material of an address made at the opening of the Haskell Oriental Museum of the University in 1896; see The Biblical World, 8, 149-163, Chicago, 1896. Since then has appeared the volume by N. Soderblom, La Vie future d'apres le Mazdeisme, Paris, 1901, 121 122 KELIGION AND THE FUTUEE LIFE this life and the wicked will be punished ; that right will triumph and evil will be destroyed ; that the dead shall arise and live again ; that the world' shall be restored and joy and happiness shall reign supreme — this is a strain that runs through all the writings of Zoroastrian- ism for hundreds of years, or from a time before the Jews were carried up into captivity at Babylon until after the Koran of Mohammed and the sword of the Arabs had changed the whole religious history of Iran. It is with reference to this doctrine of a future life for the immortal soul, and in respect to the views relating to eschatology, that there is a most striking likeness between the religion of ancient Iran, as modi- fied by Zoroaster, and the teachings of Christianity. The firm belief in a life hereafter, the optimistic hope of a regeneration of the present world and of a general resurrection of the dead, are characteristic articles in the faith of Persia in antiquity. The pious expecta- tion of a new order of things is the chord upon which Zoroaster rings constant changes in the Gathas, or Psalms. A mighty crisis is impending; every man ought to choose the right and seek for the Ideal state ; mankind shall then become perfect and the world renovated {frashem ahum, frashotema, frashokercti, etc.).^ This will be the establishment of the power and dominion of good over evil, the beginning of the true rule and sovereignty, " the good kingdom, the wished-for kingdom " (voJm khshathra, khshathra vairya). It Is then that the resurrection of the dead will take place. This will be followed by a general judgment, accompanied by a flood of molten metal in ^Avesta, Yasna, 30, 9; 34. 15; 55, 6; Yasht, 19, 10. 11, 89; Ys. 46, 19; 50, 11; Yt. 13, 58; Vend. 18, 51; Ys. 62, 3. The trans- literation of Avcstan and other technical words in this article is more popular than strictly scientific. THE AKCIEI^T PEESIAN DOCTEINE 123 which the wicked shall be punished, the righteous cleansed, and evil banished from the earth. So much by way of introduction. Before turning to the sacred books of Iran itself, it may be well to cite the testimony of early Greek writ- ers in regard to the Persian faith in their own time. The contemporaneous statements of these writers prove the existence of the Iranian belief in a resurrection of the body, a restoration of the world, and a life ever- lasting. It was this doctrine of a bodily resurrection, quite foreign to Greek idea, however strong might be the belief in immortality, that forms a cardinal tenet in the Magian faith. Let us listen for a moment to what Theopompus (end of the fourth century b. c), as quoted by Diogenes Laertes (Proem., p. 2), can tell us: '' In the eighth book of the Philippics, Theopompus says that, according to the Magi, men shall come to life again and will become immortal, and all things will continue to exist in consequence of their invocations." And Diogenes adds that Eudemus of Rhodes gives the same testimony. The authority of Theopompus is cited again by ^Eneas of Gaza (Dial. . de animi immort., p. 77) to show that Zoroaster had already preached the resurrection doctrine. "Zoroaster," he says, ** preaches that a time shall come when there will be a resurrection (^vdirrafTc?) of all the dead." The great biographer, Plutarch, also mentions Theopompus upon this article of the Magian creed. In his Isis and Osiris (ch. 47) he describes a coming millennium and restora- tion of the world, when the devil, Ahriman, shall be destroyed, and evil will utterly perish from the world, the rough ways be made smooth, and the earth will become a plain; there will be one life and one com- munity of the blessed, and one universal language of all mankind. This is nothing else than a description 124 EELIGION AND THE FUTUEE LIFE of the new dispensation (vidditi, division) which Zoroaster teaches in the Gathas. The whole passage is exactly in the spirit of the Avesta, and is precisely parallel with the tone of the famous chapter in the Bundahishn, which is quoted below. This corrobora- tive evidence deduced from Theopompus takes us back four centuries before the Christian era. In a passage in Herodotus, moreover, we can perhaps go back to the fifth century for an allusion to the Persian doctrine of the resurrection of the dead (c/. Hdt., 3, 62). Such are the important Greek statements that may be quoted on the subject. Turning from these indirect sources to direct Iranian authority we have the testi- mony of the Avesta and of the traditional literature of the Parsis as witness. These go hand in hand with the classics and testify to the antiquity of the belief. The Avesta, or sacred book of the Parsis, holds the same position in Zoroastrianism as the Holy Scriptures in Christianity; it is supplemented by the Pahlavi Books, or religious writings of Sasanian Persia, which answer in part to the writings of the Church Fathers. From the ancient Persian inscriptions of the Achsemen- ian kings we naturally could not expect to receive any specific knowledge on this subject, as the formal and official character of these edicts would preclude it. The Avesta is therefore both our oldest and our most immediate source of information on the topic. Three of its books or divisions are of special import in the present connection: They are, first, the Yasna, or book of the ritual ; second, the Yashts, or heroic hymns of religious praise; third, the Vendldad, an Iranian Pen- tateuch. Among the Pahlavi writings, most important are the Bundahishn, a sort of Iranian Genesis and Revelation, based upon the ancient " Damdat Nask " of Zoroaster; second, the theological treatises, Ddtistdn-i THE ANCIENT PEESIAN DOCTEINE 125 Denig, " religious opinions ; " Denkart, " acts of the religion;'' Dnid-i Manwg-i Khirat, ''opinions of the spirit of wisdom;" and, finally, the Artd-Viraf Ndmak, a Persian apocalypse or Dantesque vision of heaven and of hell, seen by the saint Arta Viraf. As to dates, different periods of composition must be recognized. Some portions of the sacred canon of the Avesta are older than others. The Gdthas, or Psalms of Zoroaster, inserted in the midst of the book of the Yasna, are the oldest portion. They are the sayings, metrical sermons or Psalms, of the Prophet himself, and in point of time they undoubtedly repre- sent a period that is not later than the seventh or the sixth century before Christ.^ Other parts of the Avesta, like certain young pieces in the Vendidad or formulaic repetitions in the Yasna which are easily recognized as more recent, may be as late as the Christian era. But the great body of the Avesta is pre-Christian in material and in composition, if not in point of redaction. Metrical passages as a rule are antique. The time of the Pahlavi literature covers a period between the fourth and the ninth centuries of our era; this does not preclude the antiquity of some of the matter, much of which is based upon texts that antedate the first Christian years by several centuries. An example in point is the relation of the Bundahishn to the Damdat Nask and of other portions of the litera- ture founded upon lost original Nasks. The views with respect to a future life are not com- plete in the Gathas themselves, owing to the limited extent of this psalter portion of the Avesta. The ' I must here observe that I do not regard the views of the lamented scholar, Darmesteter, as expressed in Le Zend-Avesta, Vol. Ill, Introduction, respecting the late origin of the Gathas, as tenable ; nor have they met with general approval or acceptance among Iranists. 126 EELIGION AND THE FUTUEE LIFE compass of these versified utterances, dogmas and preachings of the Reformer, is less in extent than the direct words of Christ, but their spirit pervades the other parts of the Avesta and extends to the Pahlavi writings, as our Lord's teachings inspire all portions of the New Testament and are reflected in the patristic literature. In the detailed discussion of the present subject references will accordingly be generally given in the following order: (1) Gatha Avesta, (2) Younger Avesta, (o) Pahlavi and other sources. But in the first half of the article the references are reduced to a minimum, as a fuller number may easily be collected by any attentive reader of Zoroastrian literature. In the treatment of the topic, two divisions may logically be made, the (1) first dealing with the fate of the individual soul from death to judgment, the (2) second dealing with the general judgment, eschatology and the end of the world. As the fate of the soul from death to judgment is a favourite theme to dwell upon, dozens of references are found in the Avesta and Pahlavi books alluding to the journey of the spirit from earth to the world beyond this life. A perfect picture of the general belief can be obtained only by giving many quotations and citations from the texts, but there is not space here. We must content ourselves with the merest out- line based upon an exhaustive collection of passages and must emphasize only the most important. Several explicit descriptions, full of vivid imaginings, have been preserved as to how the spirit of the righteous or of the wicked, as the case may be, is believed to linger about the body, in joy or in pangs, for three days and three nights after death. At the dawn of the THE AKOIEXT PERSIAN DOCTEINE 127 fourth day the soul awakens to consciousness of the new life amid a breath of balmy wind fragrant with scents and perfumes, or in the face of a foul, chill blast heavy with sickening stench. According to a graphic image, the Conscience, or Religion personified, then appears before the dead, either in the form of a beautiful maiden or in the shape of a hideous hag, being the reflection of his own soul, and this image advances with him to the destined end. In some in- stances two dogs, guarding the soul from demons, ac- company the figure of the maid. This latter seems to be a refracimento of an old Aryan belief. The soul now stands at the individual judgment in the presence of three angels, Mithra, Sraosha and Rashnu, the assessors before whom the life account is rendered, and the good and bad deeds are weighed in the balance. According to the turn of these scales, which are coun- terpoised with perfect justice, the final decision is made." Next comes the crossing of the Chinvat Bridge of judgment, which (apparently conceived of as being somewhere in Media) stretches over Hell between the divine Mount Alborz and the Peak of Judgment.** * Among a number of illustrative passages that may be cited are: (Soul after death) Avesta, Yt. 22, 1-42 (=:r:Hatokht Nask 2) ; Yt. 24, 53-67 ; Vd. 19, 26-34 ; Pahlavi, Dat. i Den. 20, 1-4 ; Mkh. 2, 1 14-194; AV. 17, 1-27. — (Accounting, and the store of works), Avesta, Ys. 31, 14; 32, 7; Yt. i, 8; Vd. 19, 27; Ys. 55, 8; Afr. I, 7; Yt. 10, 32; 19, 33; Vsp. 15, i; Pahlavi, Mkh. 2, 96-97; Dat. i Den. 31, 1-25; 32, 1-16. — (Weighing before judges) cf. Avesta, Ys. 33, i; especially Ys. 57,, 2; Vd. 7, 52; Vd. 19, 28; compare also Av. heiikeretd, "reckoning, balance," in Ys. 31, 14; Pahlavi, Mkh. 2, 115; Art. Vf. 5, 5; Dat i Den. 24, 6; and (among other passages) Iran. Bund. ch. 34, 1-3 (cf. J. J. Modi, Bombay Roy. As. Soc, Aug. 1901, pp. 1-17). ''For example: (Chinvat Bridge) Avesta, Ys. 46, lo-ii; 51, 13; Ys. 19, 6; Yt. 24, 42; Sir. 2, 30; Vd. 13, 3; 18, 6; 19, 27; Pahlavi, Bd. 12, 7 (and references in numerous other Phi. works). 128 BELIGION AND THE FUTUEE LIFE This bridge plays an important role throughout all ages of Zoroastrianism. Across it the righteous and the wicked alike must pass; the one to felicity, the other to damnation ; the former with the assistance of minis- tering angels, or guided by the conscience-maiden as some accounts describe; the latter amid the howls of demons and tormenting fiends, or led by the horrid hag. The difficulties of the passage over this terrible bridge of death are often enough alluded to and dilated upon, from the Gathas down to the latest Persian religious writings.' The orthodox doctrine teaches that this bridge becomes broad or narrow according to the nature of the soul upon it ; and in some late accounts ' the bridge is described under the guise of a beam that turns various sides according to the doom of the spirit which crosses it, presenting now to the righteous a pathway " nine javelins " or a " league " in breadth, or again presenting to the wicked an edge like " the thinness of the edge of a razor," so that the lost soul falls off when half-way across, into the depths of Hell. As the spirit-journey is further pursued, the man- sions of the paradise of Good Thoughts, Good Words, Good Deeds, in the regions respectively of the stars, the moon, and the sun, are described." The description is only less brilliant in its colouring than the entry into the place of '' Eternal Light," the blissful Garonmana or '' house of song," " the abode of Good Thought " (the archangel), that "good dwelling of Good Thought, Ahura, and Righteousness," "the Best *For example: (Passaj^e over Chinvat Bridge) Avesta, Ys. 46, 10; 19, 6; 51, 12; Vd. 13, 3; Ys. 31, 20; Vd. 19, .30; 19, 27; 13, 8-9; Pahlavi, Dat. i Den. i, 1-7; and elsewhere in Phi. literature. 'Cf. Dat. i Den. 21, 2-8; Mkh. 2, 123, Art. Vf. 5, i. » Avesta, Yt. 22, 15-18; Pahlavi, Mkh. 7, 1-12; Art. V£. ch. 7-1 1. THE ANCIENT PEESIAN DOCTEINE 129 World," the heaven '' where Ormazd dwells in joy." ' But offsetting this, is the painful descent through the grades of Evil Thought, Evil Words, Evil Deeds, to the hell of darkness that can be seized by the hand, a place so foul, so gloomy and so lonesome that although the suffering souls be as many and as close together " as the hairs on the mane of a horse," still each one thinks he is alone (AV. 54, 5-8; Bd. 18, 47); this scene of frightful torment is *' the house of False- hood," '' the home of Worst Thought," '' the Worst Life." " With perfect logic, moreover, the religion taught the existence of a third place suited to the special cases in which the good and the bad deeds exactly counter- balanced. This is the Hamistakan, " the commingled, or equilibrium," an intermediate place between earth and the star-region, somewhat resembling a purgatory in which the soul is destined to suffer no other torment than the changes of heat and cold of the seasons, and must there abide awaiting the general resurrection and final judgment day. This doctrine is as old as Zoroaster in the Gathas and it continues throughout the history of the religion." All these ideas, so cursorily touched upon here, are clearly to be recognized in the Zoroastrian books and they each have their prototypes in the Gathas. But passing over these with this sketch so hasty that full ^Avesta, Ys. 28, 6-7; 43, 5; and especially Ys. 46, 15-17; 45, 8; 50, 4; 51, 15; 30, 10; and Ys. 16, 7; Pahlavi, Mkh. 7, 13; 2, 157; bat. i Den. 26, 2-4. '"See particularly Avest'a, Ys. 31, 20; 49, n; Yt. 22, 33-30; of. Vd. 4, 50-54; and Pahlavi, Mkh. 7, 19-30. '*See Ys. 33, I and compare the Pahlavi version of Vd. 7, 52; likewise Avestan misvana gaUi, Sir. i, 30; 2, 30; Vd. 19, 36; and Phi. version of Yt. i, i; furthermore, Pahlavi, Art. Vf. 6, I-12; Mkh. 7, 18; and often elsewhere in later Zoroastrian literature. Observe, in connection with the whole subject, Herodotus i, 137- 130 RELIGION AND THE FUTUKE LIFE references cannot be presented, attention may be given with more detail to the second half of the subject, the ancient Persian doctrine of eschatology, a mil- lennium, a resurrection, the coming of a Saoshyant or Saviour, the punishment of the wicked in a flood of molten metal, and the establishment of a kingdom or sovereignty of good which is to be the regeneration of the world. Notice has already been taken of the oft-recurring expression of pious hope in the Gathas of Zoroaster for the coming of a new order of things at the great crisis or final change of the world/' This final change, when there will be a decisive division and separation of the evil and the good forever," is to be the beginning of the wished-for kingdom or good sovereignty," and of a regeneration of the world/' This is the frasho- kereti, as it is elsewhere .called in the Avesta,'' the frashakart, as it repeatedly appears in Pahlavi, in other words "the renovation, perfection, preparation for eternity," accompanied by the purifying ordeal of molten metal." This Gatha doctrine of a renovation, frashem ahum the renewed world, as found likewise in the Avestan frashokereti and Pahlavi frashakart, is a distinctly millennial doctrine and Is closely associated with the general belief In the appearance of a Saviour and the resurrection of the dead. The doctrine of the thou- sand years — a belief parallel in a measure with Ideas "Cf. Ys. 30, 2 ma::e ydonho, Ys. 51, 6, apeme anheush nrvaese Ys. 43, 5, dCimdish urvacse apeme. "Cf. Ys. 31, 19; 47, 6; and Ys. 46, 12. " Cf. Av. khshaihra " kingdom," passim. "Cf. Ys. 30, 9, ferashem kerenaun ahum; Ys. 46, 19; 50, H, frashdte?na, and Yl. 19, 11, 89-96. " See Ys. 62, 3; Vd. 18, 31 ; Yt. 13, 58. " Cf. Ys. 51, 9; Vp. 20, I ; Yt. 17, 20; Bd. 30, 20, et al. THE ANCIENT PEESIAN DOCTEINE 131 found in the Book of Revelation— is unquestionably an old article in the Zoroastrian creed, although it first appears elaborated in the Pahlavi writings/' It is fully recognized as Magian as early as the fourth cen- tury before Christ, by Theopompus,'' and his state- ments are in exact agreement with the traditional literature of the Parsis. According to this literature, a period of 13,000 years is the length of the world's duration, and in the last oOOO years of this aeon occur the millenniums of Aushetar and Aushetar-mah/" These names are found in the Avesta (Yt. 13, 128) as Ukhshyat-ereta ; Ukhshyat-nemah, sons miraculously born, at the end of time, of the seed of Zoroaster, the heralds and forerunners of the Saoshyant Saviour. The development of the Persian idea of a Saviour is an interesting one to trace. The term Av. saoshyant. Phi. soshans occurs throughout the entire literature, Gathas, Younger Avesta, Pahlavi, but it seems to have different shadings of meaning according to the circumstances under which it is employed, and it shows perhaps a growth. In form the word is a future active participle from the root sil " to swell, increase, benefit, save" — a word connoting the highest degree of sanctity. The term saoshyant is employed to denote (1) priest, apostle, saint of the faith," and is so used both in Gatha and in Younger Avestan, being found oftenest in the plural; second (2) it marks especially "See in Pahlavi, Bd. 30, 2 (in which connection it is to be recalled that the Bundahishn is based upon the original Damdat Nask), and consult Bd. 34, i seq.; Zsp. i, 10; Byt. i, 5; 2, 22; 3, 9; Dt. Den. 37, 11, 33; 64, 4; 66, 10; 90, 7; Dk. 6, etc., 8, 14, 10-14. '^ Quoted by Plutarch, Is. and Os. 47- =" Pahlavi Bd. 30, 2, 3; 32, 8; 34, 2, etc.; Dk. 8, 14, lO-lS; 9, 41, 4-8. ='Cf. Ys. 48, 9; Yt. II, 17, 22', Vp. II, 13, 20; Vp. 5, i; Ys, 14, I ; 70, 4, and consult Darmesteter Le Zend-Avesta, 1, p. 85. 132 EELIGION AND THE FUTURE LIFE those holy men who have Hved or who will be bom, who are to appear in a goodly company at the millen- nium and lend their aid in renovating the world ; third (3) it designates in particular the Saoshyant supreme, their leader, the last of the three miraculously born posthumous sons of Zoroaster, the great apostle who will preside at the general resurrection. A question may arise as to whether the Saviour-idea in Mazdaism was a tenet that was taught by Zoroaster himself, or whether it may not possibly be due to some influence of the Messianic idea in Judaism. The an- swer is not at once to be given. The Apocryphal New Testament of the Bible, Infancy iii., 1-10, expressly states that the Magi who came to worship before the new-born Saviour, came in accordance with a prophecy uttered long before by Zoroaster. A similar assertion is made in a Syriac MS. commentary on Matt. 3: 1, by 'Ishodad of Hadatha in the ninth century of our era. An old metrical fragment of the Avesta (Frag. 4, 1-4), an extract from Yasht 13, 89 seq., and the well-known passage in the Bundahishn believed to be founded on the Damdat Nask (Bd. 30, 1 seq.), all lend their weight in ascribing this particular teaching to Zoroaster him- self. The whole system of the faith appears to be buih upon this tenet. To cite from the Gathas, it certainly seems in one passage, Ys. 46, 3, as if the use of saoshyantdni, in the special connection in which it is used by Zoroaster, did imply the existence and recogni- tion of the belief in the Saoshyant and his company of apostles.'' See also Ys. 9, 1-2. In Ys. 48, 9 saoshyds may possibly be employed by Zoroaster with a feeling that he himself was the grand apostle of Ahura Mazda. The distinction between the use of the word in the ^'And that too, in spite of such passages as Ys. 14, i; Yt. il, 17, 22. THE ANCIENT PEESIAN DOCTEINE 133 singular and in the plural should in any case be marked. At all events, there can be no doubt on one point, the Saoshyant doctrine in Zoroastrianism is pre-Christian as is shown by its occurrence in metrical composi- tions.'' The great Saoshyant (Saviour) w^ho is to appear at the end of time is the son of the maid Eredat-fedhri Vispa-taurvairi '' the all-conquering." '' It is believed that he will be conceived in a supernatural manner by a virgin bathing in the waters of Lake Kansavaya."^ In an Avestan prose passage (Yt. 13, 129) his name is called the Victorious (verethrajan) , Righteousness Incarnate (astvat-ereta) , and the Benefactor or Sav- iour (saoshyant). The Avestan text itself etymol- ogizes the titles and shows the connection with the resurrection (Yt. 13, 128-129 in prose) : "We worship the guardian spirit (fravashi) of the righteous Astvat-ereta who shall be the Victorious Saosh- yant (Benefactor, Saviour) by name, Astvat-ereta (In- carnate Righteousness) by name. He shall be called 'Benefactor, Saviour' (sao-sh-yant) because he will ' benefit, save ' (sav-a-yat) all the incarnate world. He shall be called * Incarnate Righteousness ' {astvat-ereta) because being ' incarnate,' endowed with vital power, he will acquire incarnate incorruptibility for withstanding the Fiend (Druj) with her two-footed brood, and for withstanding the malice done by the righteous." In the old metrical stanzas of the Zamyat Yasht (Yt. 19, 89 seq.) the idea is even more elaborately developed in verse. A rendering of the passage is here attempted so as to convey a more exact impression than a mere description can do. "^Cf. Yt. ig, 92; Frag. 4, i-4; Ys. 9, 1-2. ^*Yt. 13, 142; 19, 92; Cf. Dk. 7, et al. ^ Yt. 13, 62 ; 19, 66, 92 ; Vd. 19, 5, et al 134 EELIGION AND THE FUTURE LIFE "We worship the mighty Kingly Glory which shall attend upon 89. " The Victorious One of the Saoshyants, And attend his other comrades, When He makes the world perfected Ever ageless and undying, Undecaying, ne'er corrupting. Ever living, e'er increasing, ruling at will, When the dead again shall rise up, When immortality comes alive. And, as wished, the world made perfect. 90. " Then the beings become undying. Who uphold the laws of Righteousness ; And away shall the Druj (Fiend) vanish Thither whence she came destroying The righteous man, both seed and life. She the Deadly Fiend shall perish And the Deadly Lord (Ahriman) shall vanish. 92. " When arise shall Astvat-ereta From the waters of Kansavya, Envoy of Ahura Mazda, Offspring of Vispa-taurvairi, Flourishing a brand triumphant. . * • 94. " He shall look with eye of Wisdom, Beaming look upon all creatures. Those of evil brood excepted. He on all the world incarnate Beaming looks with eye of Plenty, And his glance shall make immortal Each incarnate living creature. 95. " Then, behold, advance the comrades Of Victorious Astvat-ereta, Thinking good and but good speaking. Doing good, of good Religion, Nor, indeed, have tongues like theirs Ever uttered word of falsehood. THE ANCIENT PEESIAN DOCTEINE 135 " From them flees the Demon Aeshma, Bloody-speared and of foul Glory, Righteousness smites evil Falsehood/' Fiend of sinful race and darkness; 96. " Evil Thought verily smiteth, But Good Thought in turn shall smite this; Though the Word False-Spoken smiteth, Yet the Word of Truth shall smite it. Saving-Health and Life Immortal Hunger and Thirst shall smite completely; Saving-Health and Life Immortal Smite down sinful Thirst and Hunger. Forth shall flee that evil-worker, Anra Mainyu, reft of power." To these unequivocal resurrection passages in the Avesta, there is to be added a remarkable fragment, Fr. 4, 1-3 (Westergard) which has been preserved from the missing Varshtmansar Nask {cf. Denkart, 9, 46, 1). The piece is in praise of the Airyama Ishya Prayer (Ys., 54, 1), is rhythmical, and is undoubtedly old. The words of the Airyama Prayer shall be in- toned by the Saoshyant and his glorious attendants, at the great day of judgment, as a sort of last trump whose notes shall raise the dead again to life; shall banish the devil, Ahriman, from the earth, and shall restore the world. This is in harmony with the pre- ceding extract and recalls the words of Theopompus, found in Plutarch and his phrase quoted by Diogenes Laertes regarding the continuance of the new order of things." The verses run thus in the words of Ormazd to Zoroaster (Fr. 4, 1-3) : ^^ Battle of the Archangels and Arch-Fiends. _ See also Biin- dahishn 30, 29 below. Observe the personifications throughout, as elsewhere in sacred literature. " Diog. lyaert. Proem., 6, /zai rd ovra rai2, 7; 30, 9-10; Yt. 17, 20; Vp. 20, I. "' Cf . Mkh. 2, 95, 193 ; 27, 36, 53, et al. '■ Cf. West Pahlavi Texts in S-. B. E. xxxvii, p. 14 n, 421. "' Cf . West in S. B. E. v. 120-130, 230-235, and in Geiger and Kuhn's Grundriss, ii, 96, 97. ^*Cf. West, Pahlavi Texts (Bundahishn) in S. B. E. v, 120- 130. 138 EELIGION AND THE FUTURE LIFE and ten years before the Soshans (Saviour) comes, they will desist altogether from eating. At his ap- pearance the dead will arise, each from the spot where life departed.'' '' First the bones of Gayomart (man primeval) are roused up, then those of Mashya and Mashyoi (the Iranian Adam and Eve), then the rest of mankind." '' They all assume their own bodies and forms and each will recognize his family, his relatives, and his friends. The preparation of the dead by Soshans and his company of attendants, fifteen men and fifteen damsels, will take fifty-seven years to ac- complish."' The resurrection finished, a great assem- bly of the risen dead now takes place. " In that as- sembly every one sees his own good deeds and his own evil deeds ; and then, in that assembly, a wicked man becomes as conspicuous as a white sheep among those which are black." '' Then follows the separation of the unrighteous from the just; the wicked are cast back into hell for three days of awful torment, while the righteous taste of the joys of heaven."" A star now falls from heaven; the metal in the mountains and hills melts with fervent heat, and flows upon the earth like a river. *' Then all men will pass into that melted metal and will become pure. When one is righteous, it seems to him just as though he walks continually in warm milk ; but when wicked, then it seems to him in such manner as though in the world, he walks continually in melted metal." '" Cleansed and purified by this fiery ordeal, all meet once more together and receive the reward of heaven. An ambrosial draft of the white horn juice, prepared by Soshans, makes " all men immortal for ever and everlasting ; " those «»Sec SLS. 17, 12, Bd. 30, 7- ''Bd. 30, 7- ''Bd. 30, 7, 17; Dk. 7th book (West). ^Bd. 30, 10, transl. West. »"Bd. 30, 12-13. ""Bd. 30, 20. THE ANCIENT PEESIAN DOCTRINE 139 who died as adults are restored at the age of forty years, those who were taken when children, will be restored as if fifteen years old; husband and wife to- gether attain heaven, but there shall be no more be- getting of children." The powers of evil, however, shall gather once more their forces for a final conflict with the kingdom of good. A mighty battle of the spirits ensues/' Each archangel seizes upon the arch-fiend that is his special adversary. The battle described in the metrical Avestan fragment translated above should be com- pared. Evil is finally routed. The devil Ahriman and the demon Az discomfited flee away to darkness and gloom. The serpent is burned in the molten metal, hell is purified, Ormazd " brings the land of hell back for the enlargement of the world ; the renovation arises in the world by his will, and the world is im- mortal for ever and everlasting.'' " The heavenly vs^ork completed, " all men become of one voice and admin- ister praise to Auharmazd and the archangels " '' — ^to him, " the merciful Lord, who makes the final retribu- tion, and who will at the end deliver the wicked from hell and restore the whole creation in purity." *' The lines of Marlow's Faustus involuntarily rise to one's lips: " When all the world dissolves, And every creature shall be purified All places shall be hell that are not heaven." Such is the ancient Persian doctrine of a future life, so far as this brief sketch can depict a notion of it. As we review it we must indeed look with e3^e of admira- tion at the flashes of truth that shed rays of light into "Bd. 30, 25-27. *^Bd. 30, 29. «Bd. 30, Z2. "Bd. 30, 23. '"Denkart, 2, 81.6, Casartelli. 140 RELIGION AND THE FUTURE LIFE the souls of those faithful worshipers of old. And knowing, as we do, '' that our Redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon this earth," we ought with all reverence feel that God in His divine goodness has left no time and no race without the kindness of His illumining grace in some way or other ; and perhaps properly we may count Zoroaster, the sage sprung of Persian stock and religious teacher of ancient Iran, as one among those "prophets which have been since the world began." VI IMMORTALITY IN THE HEBREW RELIGION Lewis Bayles Paton L The Primitive Period 1. Continued existence of the soul after death. — The conceptions of the soul held by the early Hebrews were identical with those of the Semites and of other ancient races throughout the world. They distinguished between the hasar, " flesh," and the nephesh, " breath," or rimh, " wind, spirit " ; and they believed that the spirit persisted after death. Dis- embodied spirits retained the intellectual, emotional, and volitional powers that they had possessed in life.' They also gained new and superhuman powers. They could occupy stones or images, thus creating fetishes or talismans;' they could obsess men, causing disease or insanity ;' they could possess men, inducing second- sight, mind-reading, and prevision of the future;* they could appear as ghosts, announcing impending disaster.' On the other hand, they lost their physical *Gen. 4:10; I Sam. 28:16-19; Isa. 14:9^.; Jer. 3i:i5; Ezek. 32:31; Job 24:12. For fuller discussion of this subject see L. B. Paton, Spiritism and the Cult of the Dead in Antiquity, New York, The Macmillan Co., 1921, Chaps, viii-xiii. 'Josh. 7:26; 2 Sam. i8:i7f.; Gen. 35:20; 31:30; 35:2, 4; I Sam. 15:23; 19:13- ^ , 'i Sam. 16:14; 21:12-15; 24:7; Judg. 9:23; 2 Kmgs 19:7. *i Sam. 28:3, 9; Isa. 8:19; 19:3; 2 Kings 21:6; 23:24; Deut. 18: 11; Lev. 19:31- ** I Sam. 28: 11-19; Job 4: I5; 2 Mac. 15: 12-16; Josephus, Ant xvii. 13:4; IVar, ii. 7: 4. 141 142 EELIGION AND THE FUTUEE LIFE powers in parting from the body, and were commonly known as rephaim, '' feeble ones." ^ 2. 71ie abode of the dead. — In the earliest times spirits of the dead were thought to maintain a close connection with their corpses.' A horror was felt of remaining unburied, and burial in the family tomb was earnestly desired in order that one might be " gathered unto one's fathers." ' Subsequently, under Bab3donian influence, the Hebrews came to think of the dead as dwelling in an Underworld called Sheol. The two conceptions,, that the dead live in the grave, and that they live In Sheol, were never harrnonized, but existed side by side down to the end of Old Testament history. 3. Worship of the dead. — Because of their super- human powers, spirits of the dead were known as elohim, " gods," (1 Sam. 28: 13), and were honoured like other gods. The mourning and funeral rites of the Hebrews were similar to those of the other Semites, and were originally acts of worship. Garments were " rent off " ' and a '' sackcloth," or kilt, was girded on," the head was covered," cuttings were made in the flesh,'" the hair was shorn," mourners wallowed In dust," and fasted at least until the evening of the day "Job 26:5; Psa. 88: 11 (10) ; Prov. 2: 18; Isa. 14:9^-; 26: 19; 59 : lo- 'Job I4:2if. ; i Sam. I7:5iff. ; 18:25, 27; 2 Sam. 4:12; 20 : 22. ^ Gen. 47 : 30 ; 50 : 25 ; 2 Sam. 17 : 23 ; 19 : 37 ; 21 : 14. "Mic. 1:8, 11; Isa. 20:2. ^°Gcn. 37:34; 2 Sam. 3:31; i Kings 21:27; 2 Kings 6:30; 19: I. "2 Sam. 13:19; 15:30; 19:4; Mic. 3:7; Ezek 24:17, 22; Est. 6: 12. " Jer. 16 : 6 ; 41 : 5 ; 47 : 5 ; 48 : 37 ; Lev. 19 : 28 ; 21 : 5 ; Deut. 14 :i. "Mic. 1:16; Isa. 15:2; 22:12; Jer. 16:6; 47:5; 48:37; Deut. 21: 12; Lev. 21 : 5. "Mic. 1:10; Jer. 6:26; Ezek. 27:30; Est. 4:3; Josh. 7:6; I Sam. 4:12, etc. IMMOETALITY IN THE HEBEEW KELIGION 143 of death/' The body was buried with the utmost honour; and with it were deposited food and drink, pottery, lamps, implements, weapons, ornaments, amulets, and images of various sorts. The graves of the patriarchs, judges, kings, and ancestors were seats of worship down even into Christian times/^ At these graves sacrifices were offered " and funeral feasts were celebrated.'' Prayer to the dead, particularly in the form of laments, was usual;'' and they were called up by necromancers to answer questions in regard to the future.'" II. The Pre-Prophetic Period 1. The primitive conception of spirits zvas un- affected by Yahwism. — The animistic ideas held by the early Hebrews were incorporated bodily into the re- ligion of Moses, and remained unchanged down to the times of the prophets. 2. The zvorship of spirits was forbidden by Yahweh. — The ancient commandment " Thou shalt have no other gods besides me," excluded worship of the dead as much as worship of other divinities. From 1 Samuel 28: 9 It appears that Saul made an effort to exterminate those who had familiar spirits and the necromancers; and was so successful that, when, to- ward the close of his reign, he wished to consult a medium, he had difficulty in finding one. The prot- " 2 Sam. 1 : 12 ; 3 : 35 ; 12 : 21 ; i Sam. 31 : 13, '®H. g.. Gen. 23:19; 25:9; 2 Sam. 5:3; 15:7, 12; Judg. 10 : if. ; Ezek. 43 : 7-9 ; Isa. 65 : 3. " Deut. 26 : 14 ; Jer. 34 : 5 ; 2 Chr. 16 : 14 ; 21:19; Psa. 106 : 28 ; Tob. 4:17. ^^Jer. 16:7; Ezek. 24:17; Hos. 9:4; Deut. 26:14. "Gen. 23:2; Deut. 21:13; 2 Sam. 19:4; i Kings 13:30; Isa. 63 : 16. '"'i Sam. 28:7-9; Isa. 8:19; 2 Kings 21:6; 23:24; Deut. 18 : II ; Eev. 19 : 31 ; 20 : 6. 144 RELIGION AND THE FUTURE LIFE estation of the bringer of the tithe in Deuteronomy 26: 14, "I have not given thereof for the dead," is probably a fragment of a liturgy far older than Deuteronomy." 3. Yahzvch appropriated the functions of the dead. — Oracular indication now became his work in the lots of Urim and Thummim. Disease and insanity were ascribed to his activity. Genius, inspiration, and prophecy were caused by the operation of his spirit. 4. Yahzveh appropriated the cidt of the dead. — Their tombs and standing stones became his sanctu- aries. The blood of their sacrifices became his most sacred offering. Everything that clearly belonged to their worship was already in the pre-prophetic period claimed as his due. 5. Rites of the dead that were not clearly acts of worship zvere tolerated, but they rendered one unclean. — Burial and the rites of mourning mentioned above had already lost their religious significance as early as the pre-prophetic period; consequently these were tolerated by Yahweh. At the same time it was felt that these ceremonies were connected with " other gods," and therefore rendered one " unclean." " 6. Sheol stood outside of the authority of Yahweh. — It was a foreign land, presided over by its own gods, the spirits of the dead; and over its border Yahweh never passed to exert his authority. In the creation narrative of J it is not mentioned with " earth and heaven" as created by Yahweh. Even in the late Priestly account It is omitted from the works of Elohim. Never once in pre-prophetic literature is Yahweh said to descend into Sheol, or to show his power there. " Cf. Deut. i8 : 1 1 ; Lev. 19 : 31 ; 20 : 6, 27 ; Isa. 8 : 19. "Amos 6: 10; Hos. 9:4; Deut. 26: 14. IMMOETALITY IN THE HEBEEW EELIGION 146 7. Retribution was limited to the present life. — ^To those who kept his commandments Yahweh promised that their days should be long upon the land which he, their god, gave them, that their bread and their water should be blessed, that sickness should be kept away from them, that none should cast their young or be barren, that all their enemies should be defeated. Those who broke his commandments were punished with sudden death, with loss of children or property, with sickness, misfortune and invasion by enemies. Nowhere in pre-exilic literature is any reward of virtue or any punishment of sin anticipated in Shedlf^ 8. Collective retribution, — In lack of a belief in future rewards and punishments the justice of Yahweh was vindicated by means of the theory of collective retribution. The penalty of a sinner, which he escaped by dying, was visited upon his relatives or his descend- ants. This was an outgrowth of the primitive Semitic sense of tribal solidarity. The clan was held respon- sible for the misdeeds of its individual members. Children were put to death for the sins of their fathers, and fathers for the sins of their children. It seemed natural, therefore, that Yahweh should deal with the group rather than with the individual. No difficulty was felt with this theory of retribution so long as the consciousness of tribal unity remained strong.''* III. The Prophetic Period The literary prophets from Amos onward differed from their predecessors chiefly in the emphasis that ^Ex. 20:12; 23:25-31; Gen. 38:7; 44:16; Judg. 9:56; 2 Sam. 16:8. ^ X , '^^Ex. 20:5; 17:16; I Sam. I5:2f.; Num. 16:27^.; Josh. 7:24; I Sam. 2:31; 2 Sam. 3:29; 12:10, I4£. ; i Kings li:ll. 146 RELIGION AND THE FUTURE LIFE they laid upon the moral character of Yahweh. They perceived that righteousness was his central attribute. The other gods, being unethical, were no gods at all. This new conception of Yahweh's character could not fail to modify the conception of the future life. 1. The vitality of the dead was denied. — Like the '' other gods " they were degraded from elohim, " mighty ones," to elilim, " non-entities." The pro- phetic and later literature denied consciousness and volition to them. They were not annihilated, but their existence was emptied of content; it was "eternal sleep." *^ 2. Rites of ancestor-zvorship zvere eliminated from the zvorship of Yahzveh. — Graves and the stones that stood upon them, that had been appropriated by Yah- weh in the older religion, were now condemned along with other " high places." '' The prohibition was in- tensified by the doctrine that graves were " unclean." " Bloody sacrifices which had been transferred to Yahweh from the cult of the dead were declared by the prophets to be hateful in his sight. 3. Rites of mourning for the dead zvere restricted. — This process was gradual, and w^as never carried through completely. Jeremiah and Ezeklel still regard shaving the head and making cuttings In the fiesh as permissible f but Deuteronomy and the Holiness Code prohibit both of these customs.'" 4. Yahzveh's poiver extended to Shcol. — With tlie recognition that Yahweh was the only God, because he *'Isa. 38:11; 63:16; E/^ek. 26:21; Job 7:9-11; 14:21; 17: I5f. ; 26:6; Psa. 8(S:iif. ; 94:17; ii.S:i7; Prov. 15:11; 27:20; Eccles. 9: 5, 6, 10; Ecclus. 30: i8f . ; 38: 20-23; Bar. 2: 17. ^°Deut. 12: 1-14, etc.; 16:22. "Ezek. 43:7f. ; Num. 19:11. =*Ter. 16:6; Ezek 7:18. ^^Deut. 14:1; Lev. 19:27; 21: if., 5, lof.; Num. 6:6f. IMMOETALITY IN THE HEBEEW EELIGION 147 alone was righteous, went the belief that his power was not limited to the land of Israel, but that the whole world stood under his rule. For this reason Sheol was now thought to be included in his realm/" When Yahweh's power was thus extended, it would seem as if a higher doctrine of immortality might have been developed; but this extension came too late. In the struggle against ancestor-worship the shades had been stripped so completely of their faculties that, although Yahweh was now present among them, they could not know him, and could not rejoice in his loving-kind- ness. 5. Retribution zvas limited to the present life. — Like the pre-prophetic literature, the Prophets and the Law never promise rewards or punishments in another world. This is not because Yahweh is unable to be- stow them, but because the dead are unable to receive them. Thus the paradox is explained that the pro- phetic religion, which was preeminently a religion of hope, had no hope of immortality. Over the gate of Sheol, as the prophets conceived it, might have been written the words that Dante saw written over the entrance to Hell, " Lasciate ogni speranza voi ch'entrate." 6. Collective retribution. — The prophets held the same conception as the earlier religion, that a man's rewards and punishments were often allotted to his relatives and descendants. The penalty due the ruling classes fell upon the nation, and the sins of parents were visited upon their children.'^' In like manner the rewards of virtues accrued to the family of the right- eous. ""Amos 9:2; Hos. 13:14; Isa. 7:11; Dent. 32:22; Job 11:8; 26:5f. ; 38:i6f.; Psa. 139:8; Prov. 15:11. *^Amos 7: 17; 8:8; Hos. 8:4; Isa. 5:25-30; Mic. 3:12. 148 EELIGION AND THE FUTUEE LIFE IV. The Post-Exilic Period (a) The rise of individualism in Israel. — As early as the period of the monarchy, through trade and Hfe in cities, the ancient tribal organization of Israel began to break up, and a new importance was attached to the individual. This shows itself in the social legislation of Deuteronomy and the Holiness Code, both promul- gated shortly before the Exile, in contrast to the Book of the Covenant and early Hebrew custom.'' Individu- alism was fostered also by the religion of the prophets. In their inaugural visions they were conscious of a per- sonal union with Yahweh that did not depend upon their membership in the commonwealth of Israel. The nation was against them, yet they were certain that they stood in the council of the Most High. This ex- perience was exemplified most perfectly in Jeremiah, whose faith in God's individual care triumphed amid the downfall of the nation,'" and led him to assert that in the coming age Yahweh would write his instruction in the heart of each individual, so that all should know him from the least unto the greatest.'* This doctrine was taken up by Ezekiel, and found magnificent expres- sion in the words, '' Behold, all souls are mine ; as the soul of the father, so also the soul of the son is mine.'"" The fall of Jerusalem and the breaking of the ancient national and tribal bonds through the Exile fostered this religious individualism, so that in post-exilic times it became a characteristic feature of Judaism that found frequent expression in the Psalter. (b) Doubt in regard to collective retribution. — The new conception of the worth of the individual could not "- Deut. 24 : if. ; 15 : 12 ; 23 : I5f . ; 20 : 5-8 ; 24 : 5 ; 12 : 31 ; 18 : 10 ; 24 : 16 ; I,ev. 25 : 42. "Jer. 1:17-19; 17:5-18; 20:7-11. •*Jer. 31:31-34. »Ezek. 18:4. IMMOETALITY IN THE HEBEEW EELIGION 149 fail to suggest difficulties in the ancient theory of collective retribution. If, as the prophets were never weary of asserting, Yahweh was supremely righteous, why did he not punish the sinners themselves, instead of visiting their penalty upon their children, their clan, or their nation ? In the time of Jeremiah popular dis- content with the old doctrine found expression in the proverb, "The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are blunted," "' a saying which im- plies that the divine government is unjust, and that therefore moral effort is useless. Ezekiel found the same proverb current among the exiles in Babylonia,"' who claimed that, although they were innocent, they were suffering the penalty of the sins of their fore- fathers. The same difficulty is voiced by Job: "Ye say, God layeth up his penalty for his children. Let him recompense it unto himself, that he may know it. Let his own eyes see his destruction, and let him drink of the wrath of the Almighty. For what pleasure hath he in his house after him, when the number of his months is cut off in the midst? " ^ The cardinal doctrine of prophetism, the righteousness of Yah- weh, was thus at stake, and it became necessary for Hebrew thinkers to formulate new theories of retribu- tion. (c) New theories of retribution. — 1. The theory of individual retribution in the present life. — Ezekiel met the problem of his age by a bold repudiation of the ancient postulate of solidarity in guilt. Instead of the doctrine that the penalty of the fathers is visited upon the children, he taught, " The soul that sinneth it shall die," '" and amplified this proposition at great length to show that each man received separately the reward "'Ezek. 18:2. ■^Ezek. 18:4. '"Jer. 31:29. ''Job 21 : igff. 150 EELIGION AND THE FUTUEE LIFE of his own deeds/" This recompense was, of course, in the present life, since Ezekiel, Hke the other prophets, held that tliere was no conscious existence in SheoL This theory found favour with Ezekiel's successors, and was defended by most of the Psalms and Proverbs. Thus Psalm 88:10 asks: ''Wilt thou for the dead work a wonder? Will shades arise to render thee thanks? Do they tell in the grave of thy goodness? Of thy faithfulness in the world down below? Can thy wonders be made known in the darkness ? and thy righteousness in the land of oblivion?"" This was also the theory of the three friends who argued against Job." Ecclesiastes (about 200 b. c.) knows that theories of immortality are current, but rejects them as un- proved: "Who knows the spirit of the sons of men, whether it ascends upward, and the spirit of beasts, whether it descends downward to the earth? " ^ " The dead know not anything, neither have they any more a reward. . . . There is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom in Sheol whither thou goest." " Sheol is the " eternal house." "" There are no rewards nor punishments in the future life. " One event happeneth to them all. Then said I in my heart, as it happeneth to the fool so it will happen even unto me " ;'' " I saw the wicked buried, and they came to the grave ; and they that had done right went away from the holy place, and were forgotten in the city " ;'' "All things come alike to all: there is one event to the right- eous and to the wicked, to the good and to the evil, to *^Ezek. 18:5-32; 9:3-6; 14:12-20. " Psa. 34 : iQff- ; 37 : 25, 28 ; 145 : 20 ; Prov. 3 : 33 ; u : 3i- « Job 4 : 8 ; 8 : 20 ; 1 1 : 20. *' Eccles. 3:21. '' Eccles. 9 : sf ., 10. "' Eccles. 12 : 5. "Eccles. 2:14. ^'Eccles. 8:10. IMMOETALITY IN THE HEBEEW EELIGTON 151 the clean and to the unclean, to him that sacrificeth and to him that sacrificeth not; as is the good, so is the smner. Ecclesiasticus also believes neither in resurrection nor in immortality. Activity ceases in Sheol.^^ It is eternal rest.'° Rewards and punishments are distrib- uted in the present life." Tobit and 1 Maccabees occupy the same position. Enoch" denounces those who say: '' Blessed are the sinners, they have seen good all their life long. Now they have died in prosperity and riches ; they have seen no trouble and no shedding of blood in their life. They have died in glory, and judgment was not executed upon them in their life- time." This was the doctrine of the priestly party of the Sadducees over against the Pharisees." The pre- exilic doctrine of Sheol and Ezekiel's doctrine of in- dividual retribution in the present life they preserved in a petrified form, regardless of the fact that great movements of thought had occurred that rendered these doctrines no longer tenable. In spite of its popularity, Ezekiel's theory was open to formidable objections. In the first place, experience taught that there was truth in the old theory of col- lective guilt. The children of the drunken and the sensual bore the consequences of their fathers' excesses, while the children of the godly entered into an in- heritance of health and prosperity. Ezekiel's message of individual responsibility and individual retribution was only a half-truth; and, in the extreme form in which he stated it, could not be made to square with the facts of life. It is no wonder, therefore, that the old doctrine that the sins of the fathers were visited " Eccles. 9:2. '' Ecchis. 17 : 27. '" Eccliis. 30 : 17. " Ecclus. 1 1 : 26f . ^ Enoch 103 : 5^ • " Mark 12 : 18-27 ; Acts 23 : 8. 152 RELIGION AND THE FUTURE LIFE upon the children maintained itself in Jewish thought even down into New Testament times." In the second place, it was contrary to experience that each man received in the present life the just recompense of his deeds. It was frequently observed that the sinners prospered, and the righteous suffered. Manasseh, the wickedest of all the kings of Judah, reigned in peace for fifty-five years ; while Josiah, the reformer, was slain in the battle of Megiddo. Prophets like Jeremiah suffered everything at the hands of their contemporaries, and pious worshipers of Yahweh at the time of the captivity fared worse than apostate Israelites. Such facts as these cast doubts upon the doctrine of individual retribution: ''Righteous art thou, O Yahweh, when I plead with thee ; yet would I reason the cause with thee: Wherefore doth the way of the wicked prosper? Wherefore are all they at ease that deal very treacherously ? Thou hast planted them, yea, they have taken root; they grow, yea, they bring forth fruit." " Defenders of Ezekiel's theory tried to answer this objection by asserting that the happiness of the wicked and the misery of the righteous are only temporary. In order to test the fidelity of His servants God permits injustice to exist for a while, but before the death of every man He will apportion a just recompense." En- couraged by this thought, Job's friends, the Psalms and the Proverbs, urge men, in the face of all apparent con- tradictions, to hold fast to the faith that God will "Job 5:4; 17:5; 20:10; 27:i4f. ; Psa. 109:9-15; Dan. 9:7- 16; Tob. 3:3; Judith 7:28; Bar. 1:15-21; 2:26; 3:8; Matt. 23 •■ 35- "Jer. 12: if.; cf. Job 21:7-34; Psa. 22:1-21; 44:9-26; 73:1-16; Hab. 1:2-4, 13-17. '"Job 5:3, 18-27; 2o:4f.; Psa. 39: if., 7^-; 73: 18. IMMORTALITY IN THE HEBREW RELIGION 153 reward the righteous and punish the wicked in the present life. An inevitable consequence of this theory was the as- sumption that happiness is the measure of goodness. If a man were a great sufferer, and no change came in his fortunes, it must be assumed that he was a great sinner. This was the logic of Job's friends. In view of his unparalleled calamities, they could only conclude that he was the chief of sinners. At first they only insinuated this, hoping to lead him to confession ; " but gradually, emboldened by what they regarded as his obstinacy, they openly accused him of secret sin."* Job was conscious of innocence and indignantly repudi- ated their charges ; still the fact remained that God af- flicted him and other upright men. In view of this, he was forced to abandon the theory of individual retribution in the present life: *' The just, the perfect man is a laughing-stock. . . . The tents of rob- bers prosper and they that provoke God are secure " ; ''' " It is all one therefore, I say, he destroyeth the perfect and the wicked. If the scourge slay suddenly, he will mock at the calamity of the innocent. The earth is given into the hand of the wicked." *" 2. The theory of retribution through resurrec- tion. — While Job was struggling with the mystery of suffering, the question suddenly flashed into his mind, Was it not possible that a vindication of his innocence might come after death ? That could not be in Sheol, since there conscious existence ceased, but might not God bring him back to life again, so that on earth and in the flesh he should receive the reward of virtue? The cut-down tree revives. May not man also awaken from the sleep of death ? " Job 4 : 7 ; 8 : 3ff. '' Job ii : ?>-6. '' Job I2 : 4-6. ®°Job 9:22-24; cf. 10:3; 16:11-17; 19:6-21; 21:7-34; 27:2, 154 EELIGIOJSr AND THE FUTURE LIFE There is hope for a tree, if it be cut down, that it will sprout again, And that the tender branch thereof will not cease. Though the root thereof wax old in the earth, And the stock thereof die in the ground; Yet through the scent of water it will bud. And put forth boughs like a plant (Job 14: 7-9). At first the poet rejects the thought of resurrection as inconceivable. But a man dieth, and is prostrate. And a mortal expireth, and where is he? As the water vanisheth from the sea. And as the river drieth up and is arid, So man lieth down, and doth not arise : Till the heavens be no more, they shall not awake, Nor be roused out of their sleep (14: 10-12). But the new hope that has risen within him still asserts itself. O that thou wouldest hide me in Sheol, That thou wouldest conceal me until thy wrath should turn away. That thou wouldest appoint me a set time and re- member me. If a man die, shall he live again? All the days of my enlistment would I wait, Till my discharge should come. Till thou shouldest call, and I should answer thee. Till thou shouldest long for the work of thy hands (14:13-15)- The hope here expressed does not mount to the height of assertion, and the theme Is not pursued far- ther at this point; but in 19: 25-27, Job again returns to it, and this time states as a conviction what before had been only a vague longing. IMMORTALITY IN THE HEBREW RELIGION 155 But I know that my avenger liveth, And one who shall survive after I am dust; And that another shall arise as my witness, And that he shall set up his mark. From my flesh shall I see God, Whom I shall see for myself, ^^ And mine eyes shall behold, and no stranger. This cannot refer, as many commentators have sup- posed, to a vision of God in the other world, for Job has asserted too often his conviction that there is no knowledge in Sheoir' It must be interpreted in the light of the hope that struggles to expression in 14: 7-15, that there is such a thing as a return from Sheol to the life upon earth. " From my flesh," ac- cordingly, cannot mean " disembodied," but must mean " reembodied." The vindication of a disembodied spirit would be at variance with the whole development of Old Testament thought up to this point, while resurrection would not seem inconceivable to one who believed that Yaliweh's power extended to Sheol'' and that at various times he had brought men back from the gates of death.^* There is no evidence for the existence of a doctrine of resurrection among the Babylonians or among the preexilic Hebrews. The sudden emergence of this hope in the Book of Job may be due simply to the logical working of the author's mind upon the two tenets of prophetic theology, the righteousness of Yahweh and the lifelessness of Sheol; but it may also be due to direct or indirect influence of the Persian re- ligion, in which the doctrine of resurrection was highly "Translated from the text as revised by Duhm on the basis of the Septuagint. ^Tob 7:9; 14:21; 17:15^- ^^Job 11:8; 26:5f.; 38:i6f. •*i Kings I7:2if.; 2 Kings 4*32ff.; 13:21. 156 KELIGION AND THE FUTURE LIFE developed. By most recent critics the Book of Job is dated late in the Persian period, and it is certain that Persian ideas exerted an influence upon the eschatology of later Judaism. The hope of an individual resurrection expressed by Job is extended to the righteous of Israel as a class by an apocalypse of the late Persian period in Isaiah, chapters 24^27: " Thy dead shall arise; the inhabitants of the dust shall awake, and shout for joy; for a dew of lights is thy dew, and to life shall the earth bring the shades." "" This idea is based upon a literal in- terpretation of Ezekiel's vision of the valley of dead bones."^ Here the raising of the dead army is only a symbol of the restoration of Judah, but in this apocalypse it is interpreted as a literal resurrection. According to this author only the righteous rise, and it is not stated expressly that all of these are included. The wicked, who have oppressed Israel, are to remain in the dreamless sleep of Sheol: " They will be swept together as prisoners into a pit, and led down to be confined in a dungeon ; thus after many days they will be punished " ; "' '' The dead will not live again, the shades will not rise ; to that end thou didst punish them, thou didst destroy them, and cause all memory of them to perish." ^ Here Sheol appears, not as the common fate of all men, as in the preexilic period, but only as the pimishment of the wicked, while the reward of the righteous is that they escape from Sheol, and partici- pate in the messianic kingdom of the restored Israel. Through the rising of the righteous dead the numbers of the feeble Jewish community shall be increased, and it shall become a conquering power in the earth. " Thus the eschatology of the individual is combined with the ^ Isa. 26 : 19, text of Diihm and Cheyne. *" Ezek. ^7. *" Isa. 24 : 22. ^ Isa. 26 : 14. '" Isa. 26 : 15-18. IMMOETALITY IN THE HEBKEW RELIGION 157 eschatology of the nation in a manner nowhere sug- gested in the Book of Job. 3. The theory of retribution after resurrection. — A further step in the doctrine of resurrection is taken in Daniel (165-164 b. c): ''And many that sleep in the land of dust shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt. And those that teach wisdom shall shine like the brightness of the firmament, and those that turn many to righteousness like the stars forever and ever." '" Here not all the righteous are raised to everlasting life, but only " many," apparently the righteous priests and scribes who suffered martyrdom in the persecutions of Anti- ochus Epiphanes. Many of the wicked also are raised. The reason seems to be that the sleep of Sheol is not regarded as a sufficient penalty for them. Justice re- quires that they too shall come to life, in order that they may receive the " shame and everlasting con- tempt " that their sins deserve. The prophetic con- ception of death as existence without thought or feel- ing is still too strong to allow the author to think of either rewards or punishments in Sheol. Hence he must bring both the good and the bad back to earth, in order that they may receive the just recompense of their deeds. The resurrection, which hitherto has been asserted only for the conspicuously righteous, or the conspicu- ously wicked, is extended by later writings to all the dead. Thus In 2 Esdras 4:41 we read: "In the grave the chambers of souls are like the womb; for like as a woman that travaileth maketh haste to escape the anguish of the travail, even so do these places haste to deliver those things that are committed unto them '"Dan. I2:2f. 158 EELIGION AND THE FIJTUEE LIFE from the beginning"; 7: 32: " The earth shall restore those that are asleep in her, and so shall the dust those that dwell therein in silence, and the chambers shall deliver those souls that were committed unto them '* ; Enoch 51: 1: '* In those days shall the earth give back those that are gathered in her, and Sheol shall restore those it has received, and Abaddon shall render up what has been intrusted to it"; Apoc. Bar. 21: 23: ''May Sheol be sealed up henceforth, that it receive no more dead; and may the chambers of souls restore those that are shut up in them.'*^"T^This general resur- rection of all men, to receive tliF judgment of the last day, became the orthodox doctrine of the Pharisees and of the Talmud." '' Through a return* to life on earth, in which the righteous are rewarded and the wicked are punished, the problem of individual retribution received a fairly complete solution ; nevertheless, some difficulty still re- mained. It did not seem just that the righteous should suffer the temporary extinction of Sheol along with the wicked, even though they were raised again at the last day. Pious souls, who had known communion with God in this life could not believe that He would leave them to the oblivion of Sheol for centuries be- fore He would renew His fellowship with them. More- over, those who were living when the last day came, or those who had died recently, enjoyed a great ad- vantage over the ancient saints who were compelled to wait for ages before their release came. These con- siderations led in the Grseco-Roman period to the as- sertion of a larger vitality of disembodied spirits and to belief in a judgment that took place at death. 4. The theory of retribution zvithoiit resurrec- " Acts 23 :6ft. IMMORTALITY IN THE HEBREW RELIGION 159 fion. — The magnificent heritage of Greek thought on the subject of immortahty from the early Orphists down to Plato was well known to the Jews in Alex- andria, and must have been accepted more or less ex- tensively in Palestine. Wherever it was received men could believe that retribution occurred at death, and could try in one way or another to combine the Greek conception with the Perso-Jewish doctrine of resur- rection. These efforts led to a number of new theories of the future life, some in accord with the Platonic doctrine, others similar to the ancient Hebrew con- ceptions. The Book of Wisdom never mentions a resurrec- tion, but teaches exclusively the Platonic doctrine of immortality. '' God created man for incorruption, and made him an image of his own being." " Birth is a fall from a higher existence," in which the soul receives a body in accordance with its deserts in a previous life.'* The body is a clog upon the immortal spirit,'' and death is a blessed release from imprison- ment.'" The righteous pass at death to an immediate reward," but the wicked are punished with eternal tor- ments.'^ These thoughts are beautifully expressed in genuine Platonic language in Wisdom 2 : 23-3 : 6. God created man for Incorruption, -"" And made him an image of his own proper being; But by the envy of the Devil death entered into the world, And they that are of his portion make trial thereof. But the souls of the righteous are in the hand of God, -^ « Wisd. 2 : 23. " Wisd. 7:3- " Wisd. 8 : 20. "Wisd. 9:15- ^'Wisd. 4:7-15. "Wisd. 1:15; 3-2^; 4*7. 10, 13. "Wisd. 2:24; 3:18; 4:i8f. 160 EELIGION AND THE FUTUEE LIFE And no torment shall touch them. ,^ In the eyes of the fooUsh they seemed to have died; And their departure was accounted their hurt, And their journeying away from us to be their ruin; But they are in peace. For even if in the sight of men they be punished, - Their hope is full of immortality ; And having borne a little chastening, they shall re- ceive great good ; Because God made trial of them, and found them worthy of Himself. The same view meets us in 4 Maccabees.'' The patriarchs and other saints dwell with God, and are joined at death by the righteous, particularly by martyrs for the faith. A similar belief was held by Philo, and by the Essenes, if we may trust the testi- mony of Josephus."" It is possible that the doctrine of immortality with- out resurrection is taught in a few psalms of the late Greek period. Thus in Psalm 16: 9-11 we read: *' Thou dost not commit me to Sheol, nor sufferest thy faithful ones to see the Pit. Thou teachest me the pathway of life; in thy presence is fulness of joys, fair gifts are in thy right hand forever"; Psalm 17: 15: " I, who am righteous, shall look on thy face, and shall be refreshed at (thine?) awakening, with a vision of thee"; Psalm 49: 13-15: "This is their fate, who are full of self-confidence, and the end of those in whose speech men take pleasure. Like sheep unresisting they are cast down to Shcol, Death is their herdsman, their form soon falls to decay, Sheol is be- come their dwelling. God alone can redeem my life from the hand of Sheol when it seizes me " ; Psalm "4 Mac. 5:37; 7'Z, 19; 9:8; 13:17; 14:5^-; 15:3; 16:13; 17: 5, 12; 18: 16, 23. ^ ^Antiquities, xviii. 1:5; War, ii. 8: ii. IMMOETALITY IN THE HEBREW RELIGION 161 73: 23-26: " Yet do I stay by thee ever, thou holdest my right hand fast, thou leadest according to thy counsel, and takest me by the hand after thee. Whom have I in heaven? Whom beside thee do I care for on earth ? My body and my heart pass away, but the rock of my heart and my portion is God evermore/' " In these passages it is doubtful whether an individual speaks, or the nation; and, if it be an individual, whether the redemption from Sheol means more than that one is kept from dying. The probability is that none of these utterances refer to a survival of the indi- vidual after death. In that case the Greek doctrine of immortality is not found in any of the writings that have been admitted to the Old Testament canon. 5. The theory of retribution before resurrection. — This doctrine first appears in the oldest portion of the Book of Enoch, chapters 1-36,"' which some critics date as early as ITO b. c, but which others assign to the reign of John Hyrcanus ( 135-105 B.C.). In chap- ter 22 Sheol is described as containing three divisions, - two for the wicked and one for the righteous. One contains the souls of the wicked who have received their punishment in this life. They shall remain there forever, and not be raised at the last day. The second contains the wicked who have not been punished in this life. *' Here their spirits are placed apart in this great pain, till the day of judgment, and punishment, and torment of the accursed forever." The third division contains the saints. These dwell already In Paradise, and drink of the water of life, while they await their resurrection. " These passages are quoted from the revised text and version of Wellhansen. *^See Charles, The Book of Enoch; Kautzsch, Apocryphen und Pseudepigraphen ; Charles, Apocrypha and Psendepigrapha of the Old Testament. 162 EELIGION AND THE FUTUEE LIFE In the Parables of Enoch (chaps. 37-71), which probably date from a time shortly before the beginning of the Christian era, the righteous pass at once after death into blessedness in the presence of God, and are guarded by the preexistent '' Son of Man." "' At the time of the coming of the " Son of Man " they are to be raised to life, in order that they may share in the blessedness of the messianic kingdom.'* A similar conception appears in another independent section of the Book of Enoch (chaps. 102-4) : " I swear to you now, ye righteous . . . that good of every sort, joy and honour, are prepared and recorded for the spirits of those who have died in righteous- ness. . . . Woe to you sinners, w^hen ye die in your sins, and your comrades say of you, blessed are the sinners. . . . Know ye not that their souls are brought down to Sheol, that they fare ill, and that their affliction will be great? " ^ In this development of the doctrine of retribution it is impossible not to recognize Greek influence. The theology of the Prophets and of the Law culminated in a denial of conscious existence in Sheol. Consequently a belief in rewards or punishments In the other world was impossible on a purely Plebrew basis. Resurrec- tion, with the final attendant judgment, was the only conception that was natural for a Jewish mind trained in the eschatology of the canonical Scriptures. The difficulty with all such combinations was that a judgment at death made a last judgment unnecessary ; consequently there was no longer need for the dead to rise in order that they might receive the rewards of their deeds; the temptation, accordingly, was strong "' Enoch 38: i; 40:5; 43^4; 49:3; 60:6; 61:12; 70:4. "Enoch 51:1. •"Enoch 103: if.; cf. Apoc. Bar., 30; 2 Esd., 7. IMMOETALITY IN THE HEBEEW EELIGION 163 either to abandon the Perso-Jewish doctrine of resur- rection in favour of the Greek doctrine of inherent im- mortality, or to abandon the Greek doctrine and return to the Perso- Jewish doctrine of resurrection. From this survey it appears that in the time of Christ some of the Jews still held the ancient belief in the unconsciousness of Sheol and the divine allotment of rewards and punishments in the present life, either to a man himself, or to his relatives. Others had out- grown the eschatology of the Prophets and the Law and believed in a life after death, either through resur- rection, or through a continuation of the soul's powers in the other world. No clear conceptions had, how- ever, been attained, and many remained sceptical on the whole subject. A new revelation was needed to clarify thought. Fresh light must be thrown upon the nature of God, the nature of man, and their relation to one another before the problem of immortality could be solved. That light came in Him, through whose life, and teaching, and rising again from the dead, life and immortality have been brought to light. VII IMMORTALITY IN GREEK RELIGION Arthur Fairbanks IN the extant literature of the classic period in Greece the only writer who has discussed at length the question of immortality is Plato. He treats it in connection with his system of philosophy, basing his views indeed on Greek religious belief but not handling the subject as primarily a religious one nor giving any hint of the development of a belief in immortality in religion. Consequently the writings of Plato throw only indirect light on the subject under consideration. It must be approached from the point of view of Greek religion and studied in connection with different phases in the development of that re- ligion. The study of Greek religion, as contrasted with Greek mythology, is relatively modern. It has been hindered first by the great development of stories about the gods and heroes in Greece which obscured the conception of the gods as objects of worship, and secondly by the tendency of investigators to indulge in brilliant speculation rather than to interpret the facts available. Although the data for such a study are abundant, they are not always easy to interpret. Especially for the earlier periods the study results in general and abstract statements, which depend largely on the soundness of the investigator's judgment. It is 164 IMMOKTALITY IN GREEK RELIGION 165 all the more important to focus attention on what facts we have, in order to reach sound conclusions. Before the fifth century b. c. three periods, or better three phases in the development of Greek religion may be distinguished, the phase depicted in the Homeric poems, the earlier phase presupposed by the epic, and the succeeding phase when the rationalism of the epic was succeeded by a more personal, mystic type of re- ligion. The conception of immortality must be ex- amined in connection with each of these three phases of religion. I. For the period before Homer our knowledge of religion and in particular of the belief in immortality rests on data from three sources. The Homeric poems themselves throw some light on the subject. In addi- tion to literary evidence we have secondly archaeolog- ical evidence, mainly from graves. And thirdly there is the evidence from later religious practices which can best be understood as persisting from a primitive age. We cannot reconstruct the history of religion or in particular of a belief in the future life in the period before Homer. At best we can secure some concep- tion of the attitude toward death and the spirits of the dead existing before the epic and modified by the epic point of view. Early graves in Greek lands, to speak first of archaeological data, suggest a belief not out of line with that in other eastern Mediterranean countries. In more primitive graves the remains show that the body was in a crouching posture, the knees drawn up to the chin; later it was laid flat, and with no partic- ular orientation. In parts of Crete a square burial chamber with a passage leading to it was presently cut in the rock for chieftains and nobles; later the characteristic Mycenaean " beehive tomb " was devel- 166 KELIGION AND THE FUTURE LIFE oped, with its entrance passage, its domed chamber used in funeral ceremonies if not in worship of the dead, and its burial trenches or second burial chamber. The occurrence of beehive tombs widely scattered in Mediterranean countries indicates the extent of this phase of civilization. In general the dead were furnished more or less fully with the apparatus of daily life, in simpler graves with a few pottery vessels and figurines, in the splendid Mycenasan graves with vessels of bronze and silver and gold, arms, jewellery, carved ivory, etc., and in one set of graves portrait masks of gold were placed over the faces of the dead. Very thin objects of gold and the occasional use of miniature vessels suggest the unsubstantial nature of the dead. There is evidence, though slight, that food was placed in these vessels at burial and was brought to the tomb after burial. Fragments of bath vessels at the entrance of a Mycenaean tomb seem to mean that baths were provided for the dead. Layers of ashes with fragments of bones from animals are evi- dence of continued burnt offerings at and in the large beehive tombs, and the sacrificial pits at Tiryns and in the grave circle at Mycenae presumably indicate that blood was allowed to flow down to the dead. Schlie- mann found remains of human sacrifices at these early graves.' These practices are, of course, evidence of honour and respect to the dead. Further they imply an effort to prolong a shadowy existence of the soul at the grave, doubtless an existence in some relation to sur- viving members of the family. Such is the view which was so highly developed in Egypt where most ^ Schuchhardt, Schliemann's Excavations, English trans., pp. i62f., 301, 107, 157, 296; Stengel, Festschrift fiir L. Fried- lander, S. 425f.; Jahr. Arch. Inst. XIII (1898), I3f . ; XIV, io3f. IMMOETALITY IN GEEEK EELIGION 167 elaborate provision was made to provide the soul with an imperishable body in the form which it would rec- ognize as its own, to furnish it with food or the sem- blance of food for indefinite ages in the future, and to provide it with the magic formulae needed for its safety and happiness. In themselves the early Greek remains do not throw much light on the question whether the ceremonial is purely an act of piety, or whether it aims to prevent harm and secure blessing for the sui-vivors. Although the more interesting fea- tures occur in the large Mycenaean tombs, tombs of chieftains of a race which was subdued by the ances- tors of the Greeks we know, the evidence cannot be neglected. The second line of investigation for the period be- fore direct literary evidence, is the study of later prac- tice. Perhaps no customs are so slow to change as religious ritual, and where changes are introduced the old forms still tend to survive and reappear. Just as heathen customs persist to-day from centuries ago, their origin forgotten now that a Christian interpre- tation has so long been given them, so — ^but in far more marked degree — forms of ritual from early ages persisted in the periods of Greek history which we know best. Sometimes they find a place in the Olympian religion, sometimes they remain in spite of it. Their existence is attested by allusions in classical authors, though many details come from late com- ments on these allusions. None of the greater gods has a worship entirely free from alien elements, rites apparently from a primitive age and to be explained only by habits of thought among savage races. Pigs of Demeter, left to rot that their remains might be scattered on the fields and bring fertility ; animals torn in pieces and eaten raw in the worship of Dionysus; 168 KELIGION AND THE FUTURE LIFE sheep burned to ashes at the Diasia to Zeus Meilichios, often himself represented as a serpent; two men driven from the city or in early time put to death to appease Apollo at the Thargelia; rites of initiation when man- hood was attained ; rites in connection with the rebirth of vegetable life in spring; rites of purification gen- erally — all these are out of line with the conception of the Olympian gods and the communion-meal sacrifice in their honour. Rites for the dead were not limited to the funeral and to gifts which men brought to the tomb. At Athens offerings and libations were made to the dead at the grave on the thirtieth of each month, on the birthday of the deceased, and at the city ''All Souls " festival, the Genesia in early autumn. The most strik- ing rites, however, occurred at the Anthesteria, a spring festival to Dionysus when the casks of new wine were opened.' Though the first two days of the feast were filled with Bacchic revelry, culminating in the marriage of the king archon's wife to Dionysus, the temples of the gods were closed because the spirits of the dead were abroad. Not only wine jars, but tombs conceived as burial jars, were open; each man summoned to his house the spirits of his dead and feasted them, while pitch on the door posts kept other souls away and every pains was taken not to anger them; finally, on the third day the souls are banished to their proper haunts. The particular interpretation of these rites is difficult to ascertain with any confi- dence; that they are an inheritance from early ages is a reasonable assumption; and their significance as touching belief in souls surviving after death is fairly clear. There is no question that the soul survives, that it has power to harm if not to bless the living, and 'A. Mommsen, Feste der Stadt A then in Altertum, S. 384£. IMMOETALITY IN GEEEK EELIGION 169 that the family and tribal relations continue between the souls of the dead and living men. The souls de- sire food and are pleased by it ; they are easily stirred to anger; they are free to visit the living only at cer- tain times ; but whether they have any real conscious- ness, whether they can be called " immortal," what their life is, we do not know. It is fair to say that the rites are not simply rites of aversion or riddance, but also rites of tendance; that these mysterious powers are known to men not simply as objects of fear, but as sources of blessing. Thirdly survivals in early literature, particularly in the Homeric poems, throw light on belief in the period that preceded. The epic conception of the uni- verse, as we shall see, is clear, definite, and reasonably consistent. The universe is ruled by gods patterned after man; mysterious incalculable forces in the spirit realm, the divine beings of a more primitive age, find no longer any place in the world ; and with other such forces, the reality or effective existence of the spirits of the dead pales to the merest shadow. Souls go to _ the House of Hades when the body of the dead is \ burned; thenceforward they affect living men no \ more. But to use the comparison of Erwin Rohde: ' Just as certain organs remain in the human body as mere rudiments, after their usefulness in earlier bio- logical phases has ceased, so in the epic there appear rudiments of an earlier belief, the reality of which has been set aside. Such a phrase as " propitiate the dead by fire" (II. 7.409), and the need of burial lest the neglected soul be an " occasion of divine wrath " (II. 32.358; Od. 11.73) are such '' rudiments " of be- lief, only to be understood as remainders from a time ^ E. Rohde, Psyche: Seelencult und Unsterblichkeitsglaube der Griechen, S. 14. 170 EELIGION AND THE FUTURE LIFE when spirits of the dead were potent forces in a man's world. The spirits (/^r7/>e9, kpt^^ue^) which avenge wrongs to strangers (Od. 17.475), enforce the rights of the first-born, and fulfill curses due to neglect of duties to the family (U. 9.454, 571), like the " spirits from Erebus'* that avenge broken oaths (II. 19.260), are presumably spirits of the dead; such things point back to the period when spirits of the dead were real powers retaining their relation to the family and the social group, and effective to enforce social institutions. Prophecy at the moment of death (II. 16.851; 22.358-380) and in dreams is a familiar expression of the belief that tlie soul has prophetic knowledge of the future when released from the body. The rites of burial, described in the twenty-third book of the Iliad in connection with the burial of Patroclus, sacrifices of cattle, of spirited horses, of dogs that ate under the dead man's table, and even of twelve Trojan youths, are in themselves tokens of respect paid to the dead ; at the same time they can hardly be understood except on the supposition that they are drawn from early practice, based on a belief that souls are potent to harm and to bless their survivors. Certainly they would not have served the purpose of the poet if they had been strange, unknown practices which his hear- ers did not understand. Finally the picture of the lower world in the eleventh book of the Odyssey, poetic picture that it is, cannot be regarded as a pure product of the imagination. That souls live on with at least a thirst for blood, that souls of the unburied dead wan- der without rest and may be dangerous, that some souls like Teiresias retain powers they possessed while living, and the particular rites for the evocation of souls, are elements drawn from earlier belief and prac- tice. IMMORTALITY IN GREEK RELIGION 171 Combming the evidence from these three sources, we find that the facts justify the following interpre- tation: The souls of the dead survive and preserve both their identity and their relations to their family, their tribe, and their locality. They retain some de- gree of consciousness; they may have knowledge of the future; they have a mysterious power to harm and presumably to bless those with whom they lived ; they are not " immortal," for when this idea arises it is an attribute of gods, but depend on remembrance of them and offerings to them in some undefined way. Accordingly it is man's duty and only means of safety, to avoid their wrath, to make them " keep their dis- tance," and so to meet their desires that they will help and not harm him. Psychologically, the souls of the dead exist because and while the memory of them exists among their survivors; their existence is changed from a visible and familiar form to one that is mysterious and awe-inspiring; and because they exist in such a form, man must inevitably perform toward them such rites as he conceives the facts to demand. There is no evidence of a general belief in retribution after death in early times and similarly no evidence that men looked forward to a blessed state of existence after death. Two points deserve clear and definite statement. First, we cannot speak of a developed ancestor wor- ship in this period. So far as we can discern, men felt themselves surrounded by vague and mysterious forces, the matter of which gods are made, and be- lieved that in a measure they could modify these forces to avert evil and to secure blessing. These forces or influences, whatever word one may use to denote so vague a belief, were very real In their effect on man, otherwise their nature was not known ; to modify their 172 EELIGION AND THE FUTUEE LIFE effects, to ward off their evil and to secure their co- operation was a very important part of the business of life. Among these vague forces or influences were the spirits of the dead from the particular family and group and locality, but we cannot say either that the spirits of the dead occupied a prominent place in man's spirit world, or that the ritual for them was developed into a considerable ancestor worship. Secondly, there was no question whatever that souls survived after death. No one asked about immor- tality, how long they survived. No one asked, so far as we know, what it was that survived. The unques- tioned fact was that souls survived and retained some relation to the men with whom the dead had lived. The fact was unquestioned because it was rec- ognized as a part of human experience. Men saw crops grow, they saw the sun rise, they felt the wast- ing power of disease, death was a fact of experience, and similarly they recognized the survival of the soul as a part of experience. Out of this fixed belief the later Greek view of immortality was developed. 11. The second period or phase of Greek religion is that described in the epic. Granted that the view previously stated of the period preceding the Homeric poems is correct, the importance of the epic as a docu- ment for the history of religion becomes evident. It is in no sense a religious document, but the light it throws on a vital change In Greek religion is compa- rable to the light thrown on the history of religion else- where by religious documents. In order to grasp its significance two points must be constantly kept in mind, (1) that we are dealing with poetry composed to entertain the people of Greece with its pictures of these heroes, and (3) that the poetic imagination in- evitably, necessarily, used material drawn from hu- IMMOKTALTTY IN GEEEK EELIGION 173 man experience. The poems were purely a work of the imagination ; it is equally a matter of course that the imagination played on familiar facts in creating its pictures. These statements apply to the epic lan- guage, the epic story, the picture of social and political and moral conditions, the account of the physical world; and they apply similarly to religion and the account of man's spiritual world. The '' Olympian religion " of the epic was created by the poet out of material he found ready to his hand. The Olympian religion of the epic means the belief in and the worship of gods fashioned in human moulds. The vague, mysterious, non-material forces or influ- ences that beset men of earlier ages are here replaced by gods of human nature but with powers far greater than man's. Their knowledge and power are very great, their passions are great, their justice as rulers is far beyond man's, and their care for their favourites is stronger and more effective than man's. Because of their human nature they can be influenced as human princes are influenced, namely by gifts and by the ex- pression of man's feeling of dependence. For the same reason they have definite social relations with man, which he may cultivate. Before the splendour of these divine rulers, the vague spiritual powers men used to fear pale into nothingness and are almost en- tirely ignored by the poet. This is not the place to enquire into the origin of Olympian gods, but only to state their significance for man's view of his spiritual environment. I need only remind you that how- ever much the poet did to develop the picture of these gods, he cannot have created them out of noth- ing. The account of death and survival after death is quite in line with other features of this Olympian re- 174 EELIGION AND THE FUTURE LIFE ligion. Death is a discordant note in the cheer and gladness of life for these epic princes; still it cannot be banished ; the fact remains and is called " evil " (II. 3.1Y3), " most hateful " (II. 3.454), "abhorred" (Od. 12.34), the symbol of what is most to be dreaded. When death comes, the body is burned and the soul which has left the body goes to Hades. In poetic phrase, the soul flies out of the mouth (II. 23.467), or the limbs (II. 16.856), or the wound (II. 14.518) ; in one instance it is represented as mourn- ing its departure from manhood and youth (II. 16.856-22.362). It preserves the form of the de- ceased, it is in a sense the continuing self, but it has no substance any more than has a shadow. The reality; of life, the pov/er of achievement, the power to enjoy'' are ended. This shadovv^y soul goes to Hades, the; Invisible King, and relations with its survivors are.- ended. ^ Attention has already been called to inconsistencies in this view of the dead, particularly in books eleven and twenty-four of the Odyssey, and book twenty- three of the Iliad. The influence of early belief was still strong, and the poet could still draw on this ma- terial when he chose; but he uses it purely for his poetic purpose in drawing pictures of a splendid burial and pictures of a lower world with which men might establish connection Avhen they chose. The epic view was, of course, helped by the practice of cremation. In certain localities the bodies of the dead had been burned before; but for the lonians who had left their ancestral homes to win new homes in Asia Minor it became a general practice. Instead of trying to keep up a more or less fictitious life of the dead by gifts of food and ritual in their honour, the spirits of the dead were once for all laid to rest. And IMMOETALITY IN GREEK RELIGION 175 as Zeus with his attendant gods ruled this world from Olympus, so Hades and dread Persephone were im- agined as ruling the world of shades whither the dead went. While the practice of cremation no doubt helped the epic view, the change in belief and practice cannot thus be accounted for. It finds its explanation in the Olympian religion. As other vague non-material forces were supplanted by gods, forces to be feared for their very indefiniteness, by gods with whom men cultivated definite relations, so the spirits of the dead as factors in human life were also supplanted. The spiritual powers affecting men came to be defined as gods, and the souls of the dead found no place in the new spiritual universe. Too much emphasis can hardly be laid on the fact that for the epic it was a new conception of the gods which all but nullified be- lief in the reality of existence after death; it was a more developed stage of religion which ended fear of r^ the dead and continued care of the dead. A close parallel may be traced in the religion of the Hebrews.* Here also are survivals of a belief in mysterious powers of the dead and of superstitious rites in deal- ing with souls. We read of the lamp for the dead, of gifts of food to the dead, of sacrificial feasts for the dead, and of vague practices at the grave, as forbidden things. We read of the evocation of the soul of Sam- uel by the witch of Endor, and of " returning spirits " and '* consulters of spirits." Here also It Is a more de- veloped stage of religion in the worship of Jehovah which ends such beliefs and practices. The spirits of the dead come to be regarded as powerless ; they do not *B. Stade, Die aUtestamentlichen Vorstellungen vom Znstand nach dem Tode; F. Schwally, Das Lehen nach dem Tode nach den Vorstellungen des alien Israel. 176 RELIGION AND THE FUTURE LIFE remember God ; they become silent ; they do not know what happens to their own f amiUes ; they go to Sheol. The old religion which included a worship of the dead, is gradually set aside by the religion of Jehovah in which life after death is represented as a shadowy, joy- less existence in Sheol. The analogy is useful in emphasizing the fact that for the Greeks as well as for the Hebrews it was primarily a development of religion which destroyed an earlier belief in supernatural pow- ers of the dead. The objection may well be raised that the epic is poetry and as such should not be regarded as a state- ment of belief. My purpose, however, is to point out that the epic inevitably describes, not the belief of any given time, but a tendency toward the belief in Olympian gods; not an actual attitude toward life after death, but an account of life after death which gained its sway because it was consistent with the be- lief in Olympian gods. Moreover the tremendous in- fluence of the epic for centuries was exerted in favour of belief in the rule of these gods, and correspondingly in favour of the epic view as to the spirits of the dead. In connection with the epic it should be noted that here the idea of immortalitv first appears in a definite form, not as applied to souls of the dead but as an attribute of the gods. Gods differ from men in the degree of their power, their passions and emotions, their knowledge, the justice of their rule; the one fun- damental difi'erence, however, the one difference in kind as opposed to differences in degree, is that the ^-gods Jiever die. Later stories based on early belief and" practice speak of the death and rebirth of gods, but the Olympian gods of the epic have the attribute of immortality. It may be a mere device of the poet IMMOETALITY IN GEEEK EELIGION 177 to make the happiness of the gods more complete by removing the fear of death; more probably it was a real development of religious thought, seized on and emphasized by the poet ; but in either case no question can arise as to the epic view. If we may call the epic account of religion rationalistic, the immortality of the gods as distinct from men is part of that ration- alism. III. The third phase of the Greek view of life after death is connected with the revival of mystic religion in the seventh and sixth centuries B. c. The epic ac- count of the gods as divine heroes in the drama of the universe corresponds to a development of religion in the Greek city-state ; it runs parallel to the communion meal sacrifice, the splendid procession, the athletic games, all the worship by which the state honoured its divine rulers and sought their favour. The very ef- fort of religion to magnify its gods removed them farther from the individual and made them more vague. The new individualism which during the sev- enth century gained sway in politics, in commerce, in literature, and in art, appeared also in religion; the individual sought redemption from the woes of his own experience, a personal salvation which the appara- tus of the state religion had not furnished. There is abundant evidence of a change in religous thought and practice, which may best be described as a revival of mystic religion. The change was dramatically described in Greek story as the coming of Dionysus to Greece from his northern home in Thrace ; the religious revival appear- ing sporadically in many places was explained as due to the visits of Dionysus and his cortege. What these visits meant Is most graphically told In the Bacchantes of Euripides. The povv^er of the movement on popu- 178 EELIGION AND THE FUTUEE LIFE lar thought Is attested by the many pictures of Bacchic revels on Athenian vases before and after COO b. c." Dionysus is said to have come from Thrace, at- tended by his followers. Their progress was attended by wild orgies of the people: — frenzied dances with cries to the god and clashing cymbals, women fon- dling wild animals and then tearing them in pieces to drink their blood and eat the raw flesh, women and men drinking unmixed wine as itself the essential be- ing of the god. The result was a religious frenzy in which men felt the very presence of the god in them- selves, or the identification of themselves with the god. So far was this true that worshippers were called by the name of the god — Bacchoi (Bacchus), Saboi (Sabazius), Bassaroi (Bassareus). The goal of religion, the oneness of the man himself with the god, was here realized in its crudest form. Feeling himself freed from the restraints of the body and the material world, man saw what the god saw, prophe- sied the words of the god, lived the very life of the god. Somewhat the same result was obtained in the worship of Demeter, where men shared the experiences of the goddess, her sorrows and her joy, so intimately as to feel her presence if not to share her very nature. It is now a fixed principle that the nature of the gods is immortal ; consequently the soul which experi- ences a sharing of the divine nature has the experience of its own immortality. Mystic religion thus appears in contradiction to the epic in Its view of the soul; just as religion had tended to destroy the fear of dis- embodied souls, so now a new phase of religion de- °E. Meyer, Geschichte des Alteriums II, S. 729 f . ; E. Rohde, Psyche, S. 299f. ; cf. von Wilamowitz, Homerische Untersuchun- gen, S. 2o6f . ; K. Sittl, Dionysisches Treihen und Dichten um 7 und 6 Jahrhimdertj Wurzburg, 1898. IMMOETALITY IN GEEEK EELIGION 179 veloped belief in the divine nature of the soul. In both instances we are dealing not with a theological proposition as such, but with belief based on the re- ligious experience of the individual. When a man felt himself possessed by Dionysus, when a man him- self shared the experiences of Demieter till he felt the bond uniting him with the goddess, then his experience taught him that his own spirit was akin to the divine and consequently was immortal. The profound effect of the new phase of religion should cause no wonder. While it proclaimed itself as the coming of a new god from the north, its appeal found an immediate response in the minds of the peo- ple. On the one hand it met a religious need not sat- isfied by the religion of the city-state, that splendid ritual in honour of divine rulers on Olympus whose relations to men were no more intimate and personal than the relations of human rulers to their subjects. On the other hand it found among the peasants ele- ments of ancient ritual of kindred meaning, which it adopted and extended to serve its purpose. Alien as it was to the Olympian religion, it was not wholly alien to Greece. The fear of vague spiritual forces had never been wholly banished by the epic. Old mystic rites, particularly rites for reviving the spirit of vege- table life in the spring, readily lent themselves to a re- ligion which taught the rebirth of the soul at death. The new movement found expression during the sixth century in the Orphic religion.^ Who Orpheus was, where he lived, whether there ever was one founder of this religion we do not definitely know. We do know that under his name there developed a more refined, more spiritual form of Dionysus wor- ' E. Maas, Orpheus: Untersuchungen sur griech. roni. altchrist. J enseits-dichtung tind Religion, 1895. 180 EELIGION AND THE FUTURE LIFE ship, which was of a nature to appeal to the Greek genius. We know that reHgious associations, some- what like our churches, sprang up as a protestant movement in different parts of Greece; and we know that the main centres of the movement were found at Thebes, at Delphi, at various points in Sicily, and more particularly at Croton in southern Italy and at Athens. We know that a definite theology developed about the story of the Titans, powers of evil, who de- voured Dionysus and were burned to ashes by the thunderbolt of Zeus, a pantheistic theology which rec- ognized one god as ruler of the world and manifest in it. This theology recognized clearly a duality of man's nature which was sometimes explained by saying that he was born of the ashes of the Titans and conse- quently had in himself an evil and material element from the Titans and a divine element from the Dionysus-Zagreus whom the Titans had devoured. However it was explained, the fact of man's dual na- ture was thrust into the foreground of thought. The soul, released from the body in dreams and in ecstatic worship, was recognized as a distinct entity over against the physical, bodily self; it was an entity of spiritual, divine nature and therefore immortal ; it was the real man as distinguished from the accidents it ex- perienced in the physical frame of the body. It was " a fugitive from god and a wanderer " ; ' it was " yoked with the body and buried in it as a tomb " in the language of later Greek thought; on an early Orphic tablet from southern Italy the soul says " I am a child of Earth and starry Heaven, but my race is of heaven." ^ The idea of the soul as immortal led to be- lief in rebirths and a cycle of existences. When a man died, the soul went to Hades only to be reborn perhaps 'Empedocles, i. 381. ^Kaibel, CIGIS, No. 638, 17. IMMOETALITY IN GEEEK EELIGIOK 181 as a man, perhaps in some other form. So Empedocles declares he had been born " a youth, a maiden, a bush, a bird and a mute fish of the sea." ^ But at length it might hope for freedom. A series of Orphic tablets gives the words of such a soul: " I have flown out of the sorrowful, troublous round: with eager feet I have entered the ring desired; I have passed to the bosom of the Mistress, the Queen of the lower world." '" The conception of the soul as an immortal being imprisoned for a time in the body necessarily meant a new view of the significance of human life. In the epic men accepted what befell them as fated, or as the will of God, and found the satisfaction they might in what life brought them. For the followers of Or- pheus, evil was retribution for sin in the past, and the one aim of life was to avoid sin which would bring suffering in the future, — not necessarily or in the first instance sins against morality, though that was in- cluded, but rather the sinful mode of life which bound the soul more closely in its prison and brought suffer- ing in future existences. The theodicy was new, and it brought with it a new principle governing human practice. Outside the definite sphere of Orphism the conceptions of impurity that demanded ritual purifica- tion, and of sin that needed expiation gained wide sway. The oracle at Delphi was a potent force in ex- plaining plagues, failure of the crops, disaster in bat- tle, and other human ills as the result of pollution; and the same oracle prescribed the means of purifica- tion to escape these ills. The follower of Orpheus, however, guided his whole life by the purpose to free his soul from the bonds of evil. Clay and pitch were used to absorb the taint of evil from his body; he did ® Empedocles, U. 383-384. ^Compagno Tablets, Kaibel, CI CIS, No. 481. 182 KELIGION AND THE FUTUEE LIFE not eat eggs or beans ; meat was abjured ; woolen gar- ments were taboo. Special piacular rites were em- ployed to meet special occasions. Initiations served to develop the divine nature of the soul by promoting union with the god. Presumably they were rites adopted from places like Phrygia and Crete, rites sav- age in themselves, but here instinct with spiritual meaning. We are told that the Cretans sought to possess themselves of the divine nature by eating the raw flesh of the bull; the same rite in Orphic initia- tions was revived to symbolize the union of the soul with the god of all life. By these initiations Orpheus, who had himself visited the lower world, taught his followers to win release at length from the chain of re- births and to reach the divine freedom to which they were entitled. By initiations, by magic incantations, by moral and ritual purity, the soul might hope to real- ize its true nature. So far as we can learn, Pythagoras was an apostle of this movement. He taught the divine nature of the soul, and man's duty to free the soul from the bonds of evil. His significance lies fij'st in his effort to real- ize the goal of human life by means of an ethico-re- ligious state at Croton, and secondly in the philosophic form he gave to his conception of the universe. To the combination of religion and philosophy in his work may be traced the origin of the concept of the soul in later Greek philosophy. The Orphic religion remained the cult of a relatively small and decreasing number of votaries, a protestant religion over against the public worship of the city- state. But another element of the same religious re- vival found an important place in the state religion of Athens. The mysteries celebrated at Eleusis and simi- lar rites elsewhere were based — like some phases of IMMOETALITY IN GEEEK EELIGION 183 Dionysus worship — on the old peasant worship of agricultural deities. The gods of the dead who were buried in the earth and of the grain which grew out of the earth were quite generally associated, but the earlier worship of these gods at Eleusis was devoted to the earth-goddesses in order to secure abundant crops. The Homeric Hymn to Demeter tells the story of the Eleusinian goddess, her sorrow in the loss of her daughter, her wanderings in the search for Perseph- one, her kindly reception at Eleusis, the restoration of Persephone, and Demeter's grateful gifts to Eleusis, the gift of the grain and the gift of the mysteries. The same goddess who gave man the bread of life, the grain which dies in the ground only to live again in the growing crop and the ripening harvest, gave man also rites in which he found the assurance of a life for himself after death. After Eleusis became part of the Athenian state the festival began in Athens with rites of purification, following a proclamation of the secrecy of the rites and of their limitation to men of Greek race. In a grand procession the participants then marched to Eleusis, sacrificing at shrines along the way, and bringing with them the statue of lacchus (a form of the infant Dionysus). At Eleusis the rites lasted three nights and days; they included sacrifices to many gods, nightly wanderings in imitation of De- meter to visit the spots she had visited, fasting which ended like Demeter's by drinking the holy mixture of meal and water, and finally the celebration in the great Hall of Initiation. What went on there we do not know ; there were " things done " and '' things said," presumably a kind of mystic drama representing the loss and restoration of Persephone and the birth of lacchus, as well as the exhibition of sacred objects; quite surely no elaborate teaching, but perhaps a sim- 184 EELIGION AND THE FUTUEE LIFE pie ritual or some explanation of what was shown. Aristotle says '' the initiates are not to learn anything, but they are to be affected and put into a certain frame of mind." Of the result for the initiates we are not left in doubt. The existence of something after death, shade though it be, had never been questioned by the Greeks. For the initiates the conviction of the reality of this existence of the soul after death became vivid, and the life of the soul associated with the gods be- came a life of consciousness and blessedness. As men shared the experiences of Demeter in her sorrow, in her joy, and in her gifts to men, they felt a mystic bond uniting them with her and with her daughter who was Queen of the lower world. To be able to claim these goddesses as their personal friends and protectors, goddesses who sympathized with them in their deepest human experiences, was what men gained by sharing the rites of Eleusis. The chorus in Aris- tophanes' Frogs sing in the flowery meadows of the lower world: *' We alone have the sun and its gra- cious light, we who have been initiated in the mys- teries, and have lived a pious life toward strangers and our own people." " In the words of Sophocles ** Thrice blessed they of men who see these mystic rites before they go to Hades' realm ; these alone have life there, for others there all things are evil."" There is abundant evidence that the result of the mysteries was the clear hope of a real and happy ex- istence of the soul after death. Greeks had always believed in an existence after death, shadowy and joy- less as it might be. Those who at Eleusis felt for themselves the favour of Persephone, confidently ex- pected the same blessing when they came into her pres- ence after death. Moreover they saw Hades in the " Aristophanes, Kan. 455f. " Sophocles, Frag. 719. IMMORTALITY IN GREEK RELIGION 185 visions, not as a dread and awful king, but as the kindly husband of Demeter's daughter. Nor was this hope only for themselves. Worshippers who shared Demeter's sorrow at the loss of her daughter, who shared her love which won back her daughter and her joy in the restoration of Persephone, could but feel that their own bereavements would be consoled in a life after death where they would rejoin the loved ones they had lost. As contrasted with the Orphic conception of the soul, the worship at Eleusis was not connected with a theology which taught man's dual nature, nor with a religious practice which aimed to free man's divine immortal soul from the prison house of the material world. It was simply an experience of mystic com- munion with the gods of Life and Death. A bond was established between these gods and the worship- pers when the worshippers actually shared the experi- ences of Demeter, and felt for themselves the love of Demeter which conquered death and won back her daughter. The experience held good both for the Orphic who theoretically believed in an immortal soul and for others who had no such definite philosophy of its existence. Herodotus's reference to the tens of thousands who annually made the pilgrimage to Eleusis, along with the many allusions to the Eleu- sinian mysteries In Greek literature, indicates the pro- found impression of this worship on Athenian life and thought. Of similar " mysteries " elsewhere we do not know the details, but we know that they existed quite generally in Greek cities. It Is not easy to say how far the thought of a blessed life after death for the religious man pre- vailed for example In the Athens of Pericles. It Is 186 EELIGION AND THE FUTURE LIFE clear that the Athenians and the Greeks generally, or- dered their lives with reference to this world rather than with reference to a future state of existence. The epic point of view w^as never foreign to Greek thought. No people has enjoyed the satisfactions of life as they came more than the Greeks, none has been more sensitive to the impressions of the world about them, none has thrown itself with greater zest into the business of life as this was conceived. Old age and death were inevitable evils, to be forgotten amid the joys and efforts of life. " To serve the present age, my calling to fulfill " was essentially a Greek ideal in contrast to the view that the only real life was in the future, and that human existence must be or- dered to secure blessings after death. Heaven and Hell found a small place in myth, and a relatively temporary place in some phases of religion; they never were determining factors in Greek life. At the same time the Greeks never failed to pay honour and respect to their dead. Old practices of sacrifice and libation were kept up, though excesses were limited by law. The dead were buried with honour, ritual was continued at the grave on certain occasions each year, and gifts were brought to the tomb. The nature of these gifts is seen in the pic- tures on white lekythoi, perfume phials found in Athenian graves of the fifth century, b. c. Men are pictured bringing to the tomb flat baskets of cakes and fruit, offering phials of oil or perfume, pouring libations to the dead. A sword, a helmet, a mirror, or a fan is brought to the dead ; dolls are brought to the graves of children; ducks, finches, rabbits, pets of the living, are brought to amuse the dead. The seated man playing a harp before the tomb is probably one of his family making music for the soul, as he had IMMOETALITY IN GEEEK EELIGION 187 made music for the dead man while he lived. On the tombstones of the fourth century at Athens " the dead person is represented with members of his family, a man clasping the hand of his wife or brother, the mother attended by her husband and her children. The scenes do not represent parting or sadness, they represent the dead in intimate association with those with whom he had lived. They are monuments to the relations maintained in life ; in so far as they have any meaning, they mean that these relations are conceived as continuing after death. Like the gifts brought to the grave, they suggest not souls in heaven or hell, but men who still care for the things, the occupations, the persons for whom they cared when living. The dead are conceived not as in a different state of existence, but as they had lived. The monuments presuppose an existence, apparently a conscious existence, of the souls of the dead; but the nature and permanence of this existence is in no way defined. It was the business of philosophy to make this defi- nition. In a paper on immortality in Greek religion it is hardly fitting to take up the teaching of Greek philosophy on the subject of immortality; yet since this teaching was based on religion and in later ages had a profound influence on religion, a very brief statement of it is not out of place. In a word Greek philosophy of the fifth and fourth century in Athens accepted the dual nature of man, the only theory of human nature which had been consistently worked out in religious thought. Plato argues for the immor- tality of the soul as the real, the divine element in man. It is man's business to develop the controlling power of the reason as over against appetite and pas- "P. Gardner, Sculptured Tombs of Hellas, 1896. Chaps, X-XI. 188 EELIGION AND THE FUTURE LIFE sion; education is directed to this end; the state pro- vides the medium through which it is to be attained. Not by mystic rites of weird content, not by strange theologies, but by the grasp on eternal ideas and ideals the soul finds its true existence. Philosophy becomes the business of life and the guide of life. It is not a question of what follows death, but a question of how man is to live; and the answer is that man does not live by bread alone, but by the eternal truth for which his soul is fashioned. From the Orphics and the Pythagoreans Plato adopted the idea of the transmi- - gration of souls, and he pictures in various ways the retribution for wrongs done in the body, the wander-, ings of the soul in its various existences, and its final return in purity to the Divine. But for Plato it is man's reason which is the means of his spiritual ascent. The goal of life is attained when the soul by its power of reason has vindicated its superiority to its bodily frame, has won freedom from the weaknesses and ills connected with the body, and has attained to the Di- vine likeness. As such it is immortal. Aristotle also recognized the divine nature of man's soul in contrast to the material body. But Aristotle based his conception of the soul on its creative power. Man passively receives ideas from the world ; his abil- ity to perceive and know the world, to feel, to assimi- late, is passive. On the other hand the human mind reflects on these ideas and creates new ideas of its own ; here it Is not dependent on the material world ; because the reasoning element of the mind shares the creative nature of God as pure reason. It Is immortal and eternal. Man's business is to establish the control of reason In his life as over against the appetites which he shares with the animals, and thus to vindicate the immortality of his soul. IMMOETALITY IN GBEEK EELIGION 189 I have merely touched on the work of Greek philosophy, in order to show what a hold the concep- tion of immortality gained on the best Greek thought. Worked out first in a popular mystic religion, the idea was loosed from weird rites and strange beliefs and given a form in which it had a profound effect on later thought. In Greece, however, the philosophical con- ception of the immortal soul was the property of the few, not of the many. It was the gift of Greece to future generations, not to its own people. In Plato's Apology he makes Socrates say that death is either a dreamless sleep or a blessed life with the gods, in either way a gain." Such is perhaps the view of the ordinary Athenian as he approached old age. His fear of death, his longings for happiness here- after, his desire to see again loved ones who had died, might be met emotionally by sharing in the celebration of the Mysteries at Eleusis. He might argue con- vincingly that the soul is divine in its nature and there- fore immortal. But in any case, if his experiences and his arguments were wrong, death was at its worst a dreamless sleep, and the man's business was with the duties and pleasures which life brought him. Probably Thucydides expressed the general Athenian view when he reported the funeral oration of Pericles as containing no reference to a personal existence after death. " I do not now commiserate the parents of the dead who stand here," Pericles says." " I would rather comfort them. You know that your life has been passed amid manifold vicissitudes; and that they may be deemed fortunate who have gained most honour, whether an honourable death like theirs, or an honourable sorrow like yours, and whose days have ** Plato, Apol, 40 Cf. " Thucydides II, 44 ; trans, by Jowett. 190 RELIGION AND THE FUTTJEE LIFE been so ordered that the term of their happiness is likewise the term of their Hfe. . . . Some of you are at an age at which they may hope to have other children, and they ought to bear their sorrow better; not only will the children who may hereafter be born make them forget their now lost ones, but the city will be doubly a gainer. She will not be left desolate, and she will be safer. For a man's counsels cannot be of equal weight or worth, when he alone has no chil- dren to risk in the general danger. To those of you who have passed their prime I say: * Congratulate yourselves that you have been happy during the greater part of your days ; remember that your life of sorrow will not last long, and be comforted by the glory of those who are gone. For the love of honour alone is ever young, and not riches, as some say, but honour is the delight of men when they are old and useless.' '* Any examination of the concept of immortality in Greece cannot fail to impress the student with the in- fluence of religion on its development. Not that the idea of a soul surviving after death w^as necessarily religious in origin. Living in the memory of his as- sociates and appearing in dreams, the dead man can hardly be conceived as no longer existent ; on the con- trary, something has survived and passed into the category of vague, undefined influences which sur- round the living. Its wants must be defined and met, else it may be a force for evil; if it is properly treated, it may bring indefinite forces to bear for the good of its survivors. It has passed into that spirit world which Is often more real to early man than the ma- terial world. If we use the word "gods," for the mysterious Influences about men, the dead become IMMOETALITY IN GEEEK EELIGION 191 gods, — not immortal, not in a blessed state, certainly not personal gods, but forces of tremendous im- portance to man and greatly to be feared. As was pointed out in speaking of the epic point of view, it was a new phase of religion which destroyed the fear of spirits of the dead. When the gods were defined as rulers of the world and religion was or- ganized into worship of these rulers, no place was left theoretically for such vague forces as the dead had been. It was religion, the new conception of the gods, which reduced them to mere shades and banished them to another world. Moreover it was the religion of the epic which developed the idea of immortality as an attribute of its gods, and paved the way for an ulti- mate belief in the immortality of the soul. Finally, it was yet a third phase of religion, a re- vived and developed mysticism in contrast with the rationalism of the epic, which gave man the experience of union with the gods and thus taught him by ex- perience that his own nature was divine and immortal. Buddhism did not need gods, for it postulated the di- vine eternal nature of the soul; Confucianism is often said to find its gods in the souls of the departed dead ; various forms of religion never reached the idea of the soul as immortal; but for the Greeks, and in a measure for the Hebrews, the idea of life after death was developed under the influence of the idea of God, till it led to a belief in the divine and therefore im- mortal nature of the soul. VIII IMMORTALITY IN THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS Benjamin Wisner Bacon I. The Synoptic Viewpoint FOR the modern Occidental, more or less directly affected in his conceptions of the life to come by philosophic argument largely derived from Plato and the Greek thinkers, it is difficult to appre- ciate symxpathetically the Jewish conceptions which un- derlie the teaching of our Synoptic Gospels. Yet these must be understood if we would obtain the real mean- ing of the evangelists. It comes to us with something of a shock of sur- prise to read the following passage in the leading Church writer of the second century: "If you have fallen in with some who are called Christians, but who do not admit this (he has been speaking of the millennial reign), and venture to blaspheme the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob; who say there is no resurrection of the dead, and that their souls when they die are taken to heaven; do not imagine that they are really Christians. ... I, and others who are orthodox Christians on all points, are assured that there will be a resurrection from the dead, and a thou- sand years In Jerusalem, which will then be rebuilt, adorned, and enlarged, as the prophets Ezekiel and Isaiah and others declare." ' Justin Martyr, who ^Dial. with Trypho, Ixxx. 192 IMMORTALITY IN THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS 193 writes this about 150 a. d., could tolerate Jewish- Christians who held that Christ was "man born of men," so long as they did not insist on Gentile be- lievers observing the Mosaic ordinances to which they clung themselves. But he refused the very name of Christian to those whose doctrine of immortality in- cluded no return from the underworld to reign with Christ in a visible restored Jerusalem. To say that " our souls when we die are taken to heaven," was for Justin equivalent to blasphemy of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who had promised the patriarchs this reign. How many of us would be able to call ourselves Christians if Justin's standards pre- vailed to-day? And yet Justin regards himself on the general ques- tion of immortality as a devout disciple of Plato, Pythagoras and other Greek philosophers, though his doctrine is of conditional, not intrinsic or inalienable immortality. *' The souls of the pious remain in a better place, while those of the unjust and wicked are in a worse, waiting for the time of judgment. Thus some who have appeared worthy of God never die; but others are punished so long as God wills them to exist and be punished." ' If we go back another cen- tury to a Christian environment scarcely affected by Greek philosophy we shall find a still wider divergence from modern ideas. We shall be approximating those Jewish and Jewish-Christian sources to which Justin had accommodated his Greek philosophy. The viewpoint of Mark, the earliest of our extant Gospels, is already affected, as I shall later attempt to show, by the teaching of Paul. The same is true of the two subsequent writings whose narrative Is mainly based on Mark, the double work Luke-Acts, and the 'Ibid. V. 194 KELIGION AND THE FUTUEE LIFE Gospel of Matthew. These writers are affected not only in what they take over from Mark, but to an even greater extent in portions where they depend upon other unknown sources. Never- theless all three of the Synoptic writings (thus called to distinguish them from the widely dif- ferent, completely Pauline, fourth Gospel) in spite of the Greek dress for which they have ex- changed their original Semitic idiom, are fundamen- tally Jewish in their world-conception and point of view. And the characteristic thing about this Jewish idea of the life to come is that it is not primarily a doctrine of immortality at all. It is really a doctrine of escape from what stood for immortality in primi- tive Jewish belief. Resurrection in its proper sense means return from the grave to a renewed life in the body, — indeed Justin, and the rest of the second century fathers, who give us the original Greek of the so-called Apostles' Creed say plainly " in the flesh " (rr;? Resurrection Jewish-Christian thought may claim as its very own. No Greek thinker will dream of disputing it. The Greek's belief is really a belief in immortality. He holds to a persistence of soul-life after death, whether in heaven or elsewhere. He may imagine Isles of the Blest beyond the setting sun, or Tartarus beneath the earth as a place of torment for the damned. He never thinks of return to earth. The Jew is either a Sadducee who admits no persistence at all of conscious soul-life, or else a Pharisee, one of the sect who in the later years of Judaism were driven to admit a return from Sheol, that shadowy realm of ghost-life beneath the earth, of at least the most heroic and deserving of the dead to share in the joys of the messianic reign. IMMOETALITY IN THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS 195 Of course from the moment when Pharisees began to dispute with Sadducees, the question could not fail to be asked, '* With what body do they come?" It received various answers. But the essence of the mat- ter was the escape of the soul thus divinely redeemed from Sheol, brought back from the gloomy prison- house of the dead. For indeed the soul's mere persist- ence after death was deemed a poor boon indeed. In the best of cases it was only a provisional storing up for the glorious " age to come " ; in the worst it would be a corresponding holding in chains for ultimate pun- ishment. In all cases immortality alone, for the Jew, means a mere survival of the belief common to all primitive peoples of the ghost-life of the shadow- world. To allege that Jehovah's promise to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob means no more than this is " blas- phemy." For Jehovah, in all Jewish thought both earlier and later, is emphatically not a God of the dead, like Minos or Rhadamanthus, or Pluto, or Hades, but a God of the living. To become members of the king- dom which He intends to inaugurate, the souls of the righteous dead must be delivered from their prison. The gates of Sheol must be broken down before them, as when Israel came forth out of the house of bondage and the darkness of Egypt, or as when Jehovah a sec- ond time put on the armour of His vindication and de- liverance and broke the gates of brass and bars of iron of the captivity in Babylon. Moreover, the returning dead must be clothed with some sort of body, else they will be but pitiful shadows and ghosts, present at the banquet of the Kingdom, but deprived of all real share in it. In the older days the prophets had been the states- men of the national religion. Hence necromancy, and the attempt to hold converse with the dead was con- 196 EELIGION AND THE FUTUEE LIFE demned and denounced along with witchcraft. It in- volved disloyalty to Jehovah, illicit dealing with the enemy." The very contact with any dead body made one ritually " unclean." Much more was it forbidden to participate in rites symbolizing the death and resur- rection of Adonis, or to cut one's flesh for the dead. One might not even meet the thirst of the pitiable shades for momentary renewal of their former exist- ence by pouring for them libations of wine or blood to reanimate their bloodless frames. In the later time all hope of restoration of the national life lay in a super- natural intervention of Jehovah. But mere deliver- ance of the living from the alien yoke was conceived as but the lesser part of His working. His conquest of the powers of death and hell was the greater part. A late addition to Isaiah * promises this deliverance of the dead. In Jesus' time the masses of the people be- lieved that the gates of Sheol would not prevail against the Deliverer, when at last He should come. Their struggle was not so much against the yoke of Rome as " against the principalities and powers in heavenly places " who were " world-rulers of this darkness." The history of this belief in Palestine makes it widely different from that of Greece. It is essentially a re- turn from the grave, a restoration of the spirit to the body; not a release of the soul from the body to enter its natural sphere of immortality somewhere beyond the grave. Israelites who come at last to believe in a share (for at least some of the dead) in the life of " the age to come " do so in spite of centuries of oppo- sition on the part of all the religious leaders of the ' The remark is a just one that where messianism is strong the hope of immortality is weak, and conve^sel3^ The personal hope tends to flourish at the expense of the national. * Is. 26-27. See especially 26: 19. IMMOETALITY IN THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS 197 past to everything pertaining to the nature-worship of the Canaanite reHgions whose ritual looks toward par- ticipation in nature's annual renewal of life. When they accept the doctrine they do so purely and simply on religious grounds, not in the least because they have learned from their philosophers to consider the soul a monad incapable of dissolution, or believe in the con- servation of energy in the form of a mysterious force known as vitality. It is simply a reasonable religious hope in Jehovah, a confidence that He will keep His promise to the patriarchs to make their seed His people even should it require His invasion of the gloomy re- cesses of Sheol and rescue of its prisoners. Both Greek philosopher and Jewish religious teacher fall back ultimately upon the Animistic view, instinc- tive to all primitive peoples, that the spirit which leaves the body inert with the parting breath is hovering somewhere about, revealing its presence in dreams, capable (if only the right spell were found) of being recalled to its accustomed haunts and ways. The Greek philosopher finds a rational ground for the an- cient belief. He argues from the nature of soul as ethereal and indestructible. The Jewish teacher takes refuge in the power and goodness of Jehovah, whom he personifies as champion of his imprisoned people. Both postulate immortality in the sense of continued existence of the soul; and the Jew is even truer than the Greek to the primitive form of the belief, since he scarcely advances beyond the conviction that this life of the " shades " is, and must ever remain, a poor, weak, bloodless existence, more pitiable than that of the lowest menial in the upper regions of sunlight and the zest of life. "Art thou become weak like one of us? " cry the peering shades in Isaiah 14: 10 as Nebu- chadnezzar is " brought down to Sheol." But the 198 EELIGION AND THE FUTUEE LIFE Greek tries to reconcile himself to this inevitable fate. He paints scenes of delight in the Elysian Fields or fables Gardens of the Hesperides. He even persuades himself by his philosophy that he is better off without the body. The cumbrous flesh is but the prison of the soul. As the butterfly emerges from the chrysalis to soar on wings of beauty in the light, so will it be for the spirit when it frees itself from the clay. It will find itself in its true environment, and recognizing at last that the things which are seen are temporal, the things not seen eternal, will marvel that ever it mistook shadow for substance, and rejoice that the illusion is past. So the Alexandrian-Jewish author of Wisdom of Solomon (9: 15). But this author, like Philo, Platonizes. It is the opposite road that is taken by genuinely Jewish faith. So long as it is true to itself it is never reconciled to the shadow life. In the later time, when it is forced to meet the scoffs of Greek philos- ophy at its crude picture of the coming age, it changes here and there a detail, or adapts itself where it must. It borrows from Persian and Greek a Paradise and a Gehenna, thus providing preUminary limbos of par- tial bliss for the righteous, foretastes of perdition for the wicked. It accommodates its doctrine of physical restoration to the unsuitability of this earthly frame, especially if crippled or mutilated here, mak- ing certain qualifications and provisos to meet the ideal conditions assumed for the " age to come." For purposes of recognition all bodies when they first arise will retain their earthly blemishes and imperfections. As soon as friends have identified one another these will be miraculously removed. All bodies will be per- fect. Since there should no longer be need of the command " Increase and multiply and fill the earth " IMMOETALITY IN THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS 199 those who have a share in the '' age to come '* will be uni-sexual.'. Other adjustments and accommodations are found, as difficulties are suggested by reflexion or cast up by opponents. All these are mere expedients, evasions rather than answers, to the question, " With what body do they come?" Ever the hope of the Jew is against separation from the land he loves and the bodily life that to him is alone real " life." He cannot be satisfied while a realm remains outside the dominion of Jehovah, holding captive those who once had been loyal subjects of Jehovah's rule. The Greek makes the most of his '' immortality." The Jew either will hear nothing of life beyond, or he insists upon " resurrection." He must have return from among the dead. First the Kingdom of God, the supremacy of God's will upon the earth, in the presence and with the participation of all His people. After that add what you will. II. The Teaching of Jesus in Galilee Encounter with Sadducees was a great exception in the ministry of Jesus. In Galilee, at least in the hum- bler circles among whom Jesus lived, there w^ould sel- dom be seen one of the priestly aristocracy of Jeru- salem. Even in Jerusalem Jesus would have little oc- casion for any interchange with the Sadducean priest- hood save as He roused their hostility by exciting messianic agitation liable to bring on Roman inter- vention to the taking away of their tolerably com- fortable place and partial control of the nation. As a rule, therefore, we cannot expect in the Galilean min- istry any record of argument in proof of a doctrine ^ Bth. Enoch 1:4; Apoc. Bar. 49-51. " They shall be made like unto the angels." 200 RELIGION AND THE FUTURE LIFE which the mass of Jesus' hearers would accept as mat- ter of course. We must consider first His ordinary teaching, afterward the exceptional case. The matter-of-course references to the future life, if I may so designate those in which Jesus merely takes for granted the traditional beliefs of His hearers, are all, I think, of one class. They are alLappjsaJs. to the great moral law of retribution which Paul sum- marizes in the ancient proverb, '' Whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap." They reenforce the motives to right living of the old-time prophets by extending the boundaries of Jehovah's kingdom with- out limit either in time or space. " Fear not those that kill the body, but fear Him that hath power to destroy both soul and body in hell.'* " Learn the higher use of money. A mere swindling steward is shrewd enough to know that by making concessions to the landlord's creditors he can feather his own nest for times of adversity. Let us take the hint that friend- ship and gratitude are powers that can bridge even the grave. " I say unto you. Make to yourselves friends by means of the mammon of unrighteousness, and they will receive you into the eternal habitations." ' So Jesus broadens and deepens moral motives by the power of an endless life. He bids the self-indulgent rich realize that the moral law outlasts all provision for fleshly appetite, and remember that a time is com- ing when the starveling at his gate may have the com- forts and he the torment. To the penitent thief he offers a share in His own place in the Father's house. These teachings are not new so far as they merely "Cf. Aboth R. Nathan 24, the saying of R. Jochanan b. Zacchai on the greater terrors of the divine judgment. ^ Cf. the rabbinic teaching cited by Nork (Rahb. Quellen, p. 147) from the preface of Chesed Samuel 2b " The poor make intercession on behalf of the (charitable) rich in heaven." IMMOETALITY IN THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS 201 presuppose the common Pharisean doctrine of the ** Age to Come." They are to be studied for two purposes: first, that we may appreciate their essential message, the true new principle that Jesus appHes to the conditions He confronts ; second, that we may avoid a certain misuse of them that is very common. We must cease to draw from them unwarranted inferences in matters that do not concern the message, but are only part of the common background of current behef. Let me give first an ihustration of the misuse I have in mind. In Mark 9 : 43-48 Jesus gives three ex- amples of the relative importance of values in things material as against things eternal. It is better, He says, to enter into life maimed as to right hand, right foot, or right eye, than having every member whole to be cast into the unquenchable fire. I suppose there are no longer any so materialistic in their views of the life beyond as to hold that the possession or lack of hands and eyes and feet at death makes any difference to the spiritual body. Christians will probably now grant that we are not compelled to hold to the persist- ence of mutilations in the life to come because of the particular form of Jesus' illustration. Even if we assumed because of the ordinary form of belief in His time that He Himself presupposed this conception, we should not consider that He endorsed it. We say quite rightly. He was not talking about the nature of the resurrection body, or its relation to the earthly; He w^as simply reminding His followers as they faced possible martyrdom that no sacrifice is too costly for entrance into the eternal life. He was measuring the value, as He so constantly does, of things temporal by comparison with things eternal. But what about the closing verse? Do we apply the same logic there? The warning ends, if you re- 202 EELIGION AND THE FUTUEE LIFE member, with a characterization of the Gehinnom into which those are cast who are adjudged unworthy to " enter into life." It is " where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched." Is not that a direct endorsement of those lurid pictures we find in the apocalyptic writings of the time, Ethiopic Enoch, or the Apocalypse of Peter? Does it not imply the eternal torments of the damned? Must we not judge of this as of the great phrase which our first evan- gelist coins into a refrain five times repeated in his Gospel: " There shall be the weeping and the gnashing of teeth," or of the awful picture of judgment with which he concludes his account of the public ministry: '' These shall go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life " ? Does not Jesus here pave the way for Tertullian, and make Himself spon- sor for the vindictive hell of our human craving for vengeance ? If we so reason we are not only, as it seems to me, inconsistent with our own logic, but we do a threefold injustice to the real message of Jesus. To begin with, let me venture a general caveat. We have no right (in my personal judgment) to insist to this extent upon the ipsissima verba of the Gospels. They are not only translations of Jesus' originally Aramaic ut- terances; they are free traditional reports, w^ritten down a full generation later, by evangelists who often vary widely from one another in reporting the same utterance. Moreover all scholars wall agree that the particular utterances characteristic of our first Gospel which threaten the penalties of hell with such reitera- tion, utterances of w^hich the great concluding parable of the last Judgment (Matt. 25:31-46) is typical, must be taken to reflect in peculiar degree the special convictions of this evangelist. The passage in Mark IMMOETALITY IN THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS 203 9: 43-48, with which we are now dealing, is not in- deed to be classed with the special denunciations of judgment characteristic of Matthew, but it is of the Matthean type. It has the same literary structure which characterizes many of Matthew's longer dis- courses. And this polished artistic form is not easily explained in comparison with most of the sayings of Jesus, unless we admit some degree of literary recast- ing by the writer to give rhythmic form, strophic bal- ance and cadence. Especially does the recurrent re- frain (verses 43, 45, 47) belong rather to poetic art than to colloquial speech. I am not here propounding an argument which can be pressed to avoid a difficulty, and I do not propose to deal with the record otherwise than as if every word were an exact transcript of the actual utterance of Jesus. But I do offer a warning to those who attempt to build on particular words and phrases rather than on underlying principles. Jesus Himself would have rested only on the underlying principles, since He never took the trouble to write out a body of precepts. Fortunately the great principles of His teaching are really determinable, in spite of variability in the report. Returning, then, to the threefold refrain. " Hav- ing two hands, two feet, two eyes, to be cast into hell," what shall we say as to the closing utterance attached in Mark 9 : 48, " Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched " ? Is not this an endorsement of the doctrine of endless torment? First of all we note that the clause is a simple c^uo- tation of the last words of Isaiah, where the prophet depicts the safety and peace of the redeemed city. Its inhabitants look forth with infinite relief and thankful- ness upon the heaps of offal and refuse swept out upon the dunghills of the southwestern valley, Gehinnom- — 204 KELIGION AND THE FUTUEE LIFE Aceldama of the later time. The elements of evil have met a destruction so complete that they can never plague the city again. Jesus borrows this Isaian im- agery of decay and burning not for the purpose of insisting upon the particular nature of the doom that is to overtake the wicked, but (as usual) to reinforce His appeal to men to choose the higher values. He uses for this purpose the higher lights and deeper shadows of the " age to come." We do injustice to His real message if we fail to remember (1) that we have no right to insist upon the ipsissima verba of the evangelists' later reports, without carrying them back to the general underlying principles of Jesus' teaching; (3) that we ought to differentiate between the new lesson Jesus is trying to bring home, and that which is mere assumption by common consent among all parties at the time, such as the Isaian picture of the dung- heaps of Gehinnom outside the new Jerusalem, which Bthiopic Enoch develops at great length. In this case the new lesson is simply the futility of seeking to save one's life in this world if thereby one loses it unto life everlasting. We must remember (3) that Jesus as well as Paul was an opponent of the letter that killeth, and an advocate of the Spirit that giveth life. I have dwelt at some length upon this particular Galilean teaching of Jesus because I believe it to be typical of all. It certainly affords a fair example of that misuse of the records which I deprecate, because here as much as anywhere men are disposed to cling to the husk and disregard the kernel. But I think it is also typical of all because it shares with the rest of Jesus' appeals to the current eschatology the funda- mental purpose of deepening the significance of moral distinctions by indefinitely enlarging the sphere of their IMMOETALITY IN THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS 205 application. " Reward in heaven," hopeless remorse in the " outer darkness." These are not new doctrines forming part of the individual message of Jesus. They are axioms of the faith in which both He and His auditors have been brought up, but whose implica- tions His generation have failed to fully realize.' Jesus appreciates their full significance, because He has a sense of the infinite value of human personality which they do not share. Their belief in a resurrec- tion, limited (it would seem) at first to the supremely heroic and deserving, rested, it is true, historically upon similar ground. They had come to know " souls that were not born to die," heroes and martyrs who had given their lives for God's Kingdom, and could not be excluded from it. On this ground they had begun to cherish the new hope, but without consistent applica- tion. Jesus applied the principle of human worth con- sistently. " Not a sparrow f alleth to the ground with- out your Father." ^ He clothes the lily. He feeds the ravens. Are not ye much better than they? Therefore ask, and ye shall receive, seek and ye shall find, knock — knock even at the gate of heaven — and the doors of your Father's house shall be opened unto you. Jesus accepts and applies the doctrine of the Pharisees. But He does not give the endorsement of His own authority to the details of the conception, the place of torment for the unmerciful, Abraham's bosom (that is, a reclining-place next to Abraham on the couch before which the messianic banquet is spread) as compensation for those that suffered here undeserv- 'A century later we find R. Jochanan b. Zacchai making similar application of the new doctrine. Cf. Berachoth 28b. *Cf. Simon b. Jochai in Bereshith R. §79, f. 77, col. 4. "No bird falls from the sky without the decree of heaven. How much less can danger beset the life of a man save by permission of the Creator?" 206 EELIGION AND THE FUTUEE LIFE edly. He uses these conceptions because as a whole they are in Hne with His own consciousness of the value of a human soul in the sight of the heavenly Father. But the lesson lies elsewhere. The parable of the rich man and Lazarus does not teach anything as to the particular nature of reward and punishment in the world to come. It does teach that what we see in this world of the distribution of happiness and wealth is not the last word upon the subject. There is something more to the divine justice than can be in- ferred from earthly experience. Whether Jesus had ever read that great Alexandrian-Jewish argument for immortality, the Wisdom of Solomon, I cannot say. The parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus does show, however, that Jesus would have heartily welcomed the noble faith of this Alexandrian poet-philosopher in its expression of the conviction that immortality is neces- sary not merely to give room for the real greatness of finite moral beings, but also to give room for the ade- quate self-expression of a moral Creator. Because God created man for immortality, And made him an image of His own proper being (cf. H Cor. 5:5) . . . But the souls of the righteous are in the hand of God, And no torment shall touch them. In the eyes of the foolish they seemed to have died ; And their departure was accounted their hurt, And their journeying away from us their ruin: But they are in peace. For even if in the sight of men they be punished. Their hope Is full of Immortality : And having borne a little chastening, they shall receive great good. Because God made trial of them and found them worthy of Himself. As gold In the furnace He proved them, IMMOETALITY IN THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS 207 And as a whole burnt-offering He accepted them. They that trust on Him shall understand truth And they that keep faith in love shall abide in His presence.''* HI. Jesus' Teaching in Jerusalem Thus far I have spoken only of the implications of Jesus' utterances when He and His hearers occupy common ground, accepting the modernist doctrine of the time, the Pharisean doctrine of return from Sheol (at least for some of the worthiest of its occupants) to share in the glories of the messianic age. We have now to consider the single occasion on which we hear of the belief being challenged. In Jerusalem, as Jesus was teaching in the temple, " there come unto him Sad- ducees, who say that there is no resurrection." Against the scoffing objection raised by these Jesus is obliged to make good His acceptance of the belief it- self. The objection presupposed only the cruder form of Pharisean doctrine, in which the resurrection body was assumed to have the same substance, form, functions, and relation to its environment as its predecessor. Ac- cordingly it was not difficult to answer. From what we know of the answers made at the time to the ques- tion, " With what body do they come ? " it is probable that most intelligent Pharisees would have taken sub- stantially the same ground as Jesus. He explains, you remember, (1) that the life hereafter is the gift of an almighty Creator v^ho is not limited to the forms of which we happen to have had experience; (2) that the angels are not supposed to have families, and that in ^° Cf. Paul's twice cited extract from Ass. Mos. (so Euthalius, Georgius Syncellus, and a MS. of the xi. cent.) in Gal. 5 • ^» ** faith working through love " the only ground of acceptance. 208 KELIGION AND THE FUTURE LIFE the age to come marriage may be an obsolete institu- tion." This is a quite adequate rebuttal of the crude objection. But Jesus does not stop here. The sig- nificant part of the recorded saying follows after. It is the added rebuke of Sadducean unbelief from the incident of God's promise to Moses when He sent him to bring Israel forth out of Egypt. This reveals the real basis of Jesus' faith, as well as that of His people. It shows His insight into the things that belong unto God: " But as touching the dead that they are raised; have ye not read in the book of Moses, in the place concerning the bush, how God spake unto him saying, I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? He is not a God of the dead, but of the living: ye do greatly err." I must dwell for a few moments on this great utterance. The later evangelist Luke attaches a clause taken in substance from IV Maccabees 16: 25, " For they well knew that men dying for God live unto God, as live Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all the patriarchs." But Jesus was not here appealing to the Alexandrian belief expressed in IV Maccabees of a special, imme- diate resurrection of the martyrs to the abode of the patriarchs with God. Hence we cannot admit the Lucan gloss, " For all live unto Him." Again those modern interpreters who think that Jesus is inferring from the use of the present tense, " I am," instead of " I was the God of Abraham " are still more wide of the mark ; for there is no verb at all either in the Greek or the Hebrew. And there surely would be, if this subtle distinction of tense were intended. Both in the " Cf. e. g. Ber. lya " In the age to come there is neither eating nor drinking, nor marrying, nor envy nor hatred; but the righteous repose with crowns on their heads and are satisfied with the glory of God"(c£. Ps. 17:15). See also Bth. Bnoch, 51:4. IMMORTALITY IN THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS 209 original and the quotation the utterance is simply: " I, the God of " the fathers. The copula must be sup- plied. Moreover, we have not, as even our American Revisers render, " the " God of the dead, but " a " God of the dead. Jesus is contrasting the " God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob," with such gods of the dead as Pluto, Hades, Rhadamanthus, Osiris, etc. At " the place concerning the Bush," Jehovah, the cove- nant-keeping God, had commissioned Moses to bring forth their descendants from the house of bondage, that they might be a peculiar treasure, a people for an own possession unto Him. Jesus believes in this prom- ise, which could only be fulfilled when Jehovah reigned supreme in the midst of His own delivered people. And no such redemption was possible unless, as in the days of redemption out of Egypt, Jehovah should manifest the glory of His strength by prevailing over the gates of Sheol. It was because the Sadducees knew neither the Scriptures nor this *' power of God," the power shown in His triumph over the powers of the Underworld that they so greatly erred. To appreciate the real ground of Jesus' argument, and how completely the faith of Israel in His time is based on their hope in God's promise of national deliv- erance, we must place alongside this rebuke of Sad- ducean materialism the ancient prayer, second of the so-called Eighteen Blessings. It is among the oldest of all, a prayer as familiar to their ears, no doubt, as the Shema itself, the Credo of Israel, with which Jesus answered the question of the scribe immediately after. This well-known Blessing of Jehovah, second of the Eighteen, may not actually have been called The Power of God, but at all events it celebrates Jehovah's power in restoring the nation from death to life after the Captivity, and it makes further appeal to His 210 EELIGION AND THE FUTUEE LIFE promise to the Patriarchs. But we must couple to- gether the first two Blessings, probably the oldest of the Eighteen, to bring out the completeness of the connection with Jesus' reply to the Sadducees: ( 1 ) " Blessed art thou, O Lord, our God and the God of our fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, the great God, the mighty and tremendous, the Most High God, who bestowest gracious favours and createst all things, and rememberest the piety of the patri- archs, and wilt bring a redeemer to their posterity, for the sake of Thy name in love. O King, who bringest help and healing and art a shield. (Response?) ''Blessed art Thou, O Lord, the shield of Abraham." After this follows the Blessing for the Power of God: (2) "Thou art mighty forever, O Lord; Thou restorest life to the dead, Thou art mighty to save; who sustainest the living with benefi- cence, quickenest the dead with great mercy, sup- porting the fallen and healing the sick, and setting at liberty those who are bound, and upholding Thy faithfulness to those that sleep in the dust. Who is like unto Thee, Lord, the Almighty; or who can be compared unto Thee, O King, who killest and makest alive again, and causest help to spring forth ? And faithful art Thou to quicken the dead. (Response?) "Blessed art Thou, O Lord, who restorest the dead." The symbolism for this sublime hymn of confidence IMMOETALITY IN THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS 211 in God's faithfulness to His promise to the patriarchs is taken from Ezekiel's vision of the Valley of Dry Bones, from which the broken, crucified, dead nation is raised up when the wind from God breathes upon them, and they rise up an exceeding great army. In the dark times that had come for Israel under an alien yoke the figure had been many times recalled. We have in the fragments of pseudo-Isaian literature a form of it which describes in poetic imagery how " The Lord God descended to his dead people that slept in the dust of the grave, that he might proclaim unto them his own salvation.'' " Paul, in Ephesians 6 : 14, even quotes a similar hymn in which God does this in the person of the Messiah: *'Awake," cries the poet to despairing Israel, " and arise from the dead, and the Christ shall shine forth upon thee." But the essential point of resemblance between the utterance of Jesus and the Blessing for the demon- stration of God's power in restoring life to the dead, is that both rest upon His faithfulness to His promise to the patriarchs. God had declared that He would make their descendants His '* people for an own pos- session." In the place concerning the Bush He de- clares to Moses that the time has come. Now if He were '* a god of the dead " His " people for an own possession " might be conceived as a vast company of shades, like the pitiable denizens of the empire of the underworld. But neither Jesus' contemporaries nor their forbears could tolerate the idea of Jehovah as a God of tlie dead. No more than we moderns can log- ically conceive the Creator, whose very nature it is to give life and breath to all things, turning all back again to primeval chaos, reckless of the values wrought "Quoted by Justin Martyr (Dial. Ixxil.) as from "Jeremiah," by Irenseus (Haer. Ill, xx. 4) as from " Isaiah." 212 EELIGION AND THE FUTURE LIFE out through aeons of evolution, an immutable Absolute enthroned over a lifeless universe. Jesus is appealing to His nation's hope, the messianic Hope, the hope and faith that God jneans something by the vast vicissi- tudes of history, and that the faith of the generations past that sought the " city that hath the foundations '' is not in the end to be put to shame. He takes the nature of God as a faithful Creator, that has not made all men in vain, as the ultimate ground of His doctrine of immortality. And because our Christian faith is rooted in this genuine national hope of Jesus and His people it can never be merely a hope of immortality, but must be a hope of resurrection. It rests upon the value of the individual soul and of human society. IV. The Effect of Calvary We have considered the teaching of Jesus in its two aspects, first where there is no challenge to the com- monly accepted faith, second where He is thrown back to render a reason for the hope that is in Him. In both cases we found that the teaching of the Master is typically Hebrew. It is exactly what we might expect from one thoroughly grounded in the law and the prophets. Indeed it scarcely differs from that of the most spiritual-minded of contemporary Jewish teach- ers save in going deeper, and laying the foundation in the worth of man and the goodness of God. Even the details of the picture coincide with current conceptions, though we know from the whole course of Jesus' teaching that He wished His disciples to distinguish the weightier from the less vital, and not to be slaves of the letter. But it was not the teaching of Jesus which gave rise to the Christian doctrine of immortality. Paul never IMMOETALITY IN THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS 213 dreams of citing any word of Jesus in support of his doctrine, though he does once refer to an unknown saying on the Gathering together of the Elect (a fea- ture of Jewish conceptions of the estabHshment of the messianic kingdom), to the effect that the living would have no precedence over the dead. We should not ex- pect Paul to cite teachings. In the nature of the case no Apostle or witness to the Resurrection would think of resorting to sayings of the Master in exposition or vindication of the accepted views of the Synagogue, when he could point to his own visions and revelations of the risen Lord. Jesus had taught them, of course, to think less meanly and ignobly than they had pre- viously thought about the conditions of the age to come; but He had brought life and immortality to light by the resurrection itself. All their highest mes- sianic hopes were now proved true since they had seen Him clothed in His resurrection glory, and heard the voice " as of many waters " proclaiming: " Fear not; I am the first and the last, the Living one. I was dead, and behold I am alive forevermore, and hold the keys of death and of Hades." It is the story of Calvary which made the Christian religion. The teachings of Jesus were gathered up afterward as a precious treas- ure of which they had at first not realized the value. Pastors and teachers turn them to account when the churches begin to feel the need of admonition, training and discipline in the way of righteousness; but the Apostles were " witnesses of the resurrec- tion." However, there is a sense in which we may say that the teaching of Jesus (though not the public teaching) was itself the origin of this faith in His resurrection. I do not mean the forewarnings of His fate which the evangelists relate as preceding the last journey to 214 EELIGION AND THE FUTUKE LIFE Jerusalem. Whatever the degree of definiteness with which Jesus then placed before them His own assur- ance of victory even through death, we know that they disregarded it and only recalled it afterward, when they had become convinced by other means that He had been raised again from the dead. It was another ut- terance which made it possible for them to receive the Easter message. What I refer to is a much more in- timate and more unmistakable utterance than any of these warnings on the way to Jerusalem, a saying given under such circumstances that the disciples neither did nor could disregard it. We know that Jesus' farewell utterance in the upper room, declaring that His body was broken. His blood poured out for the disciples' sakes, and " making cov- enant " with them in His blood, that they should eat and drink with Him at His table in His Kingdom, was neither forgotten nor disregarded. For, as Paul tells us, the breaking of the bread was observed as a me- morial rite '' from the Lord himself." The very fact that the words were thus reinforced by symbolic act was a guarantee that though heaven and earth should pass away this farewell message at least should not pass away, but should testify the Lord's own faith '* till he come." It is hardly possible for us to say what effect reports of visions and revelations of the risen Lord might have had on the minds of disciples destitute of any prepara- tion in His own words for a belief in His resurrection. Yet experience would seem to indicate, if indeed the references to His being recognized *' in the breaking of the bread," and similar reawakenings of past im- pressions in the Gospels do not suggest it, that without some such preparatory nucleus personal visions might not have been experienced, and reports of visions IMMORTALITY IK THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS 215 granted to others would scarcely have found accept- ance. There is, then, a sense in which we may say that it was the private teaching of Jesus Himself which gave rise to the Christian doctrine of the resurrection. If we hold that only hearts made ready could have had the experience we might almost say it was this doc- trine which produced the resurrection visions, rather than the visions which produced the Christian doc- trine. But what was this doctrine, or belief, to which Jesus appealed when He declared that His body and blood were " given " for His followers' sake, when He made tryst with them at the messianic banquet? Was it simply the current Pharisean teaching referred to by the sisters in the story of Lazarus, when Martha says with more of resignation than of hope, '' I know that my brother shall rise again in the resurrection at the last day " ? If so, there can have been but little con- nection between the belief and the acceptance of the Easter message. The broken bread would have be- tokened only a very remote comfort. But there is reason to think that quite a different be- lief is here made use of, a behef which looked for no prolonged sojourn in the treasury of righteous souls, or other place of preliminary safe-keeping until " the last day," but for immediate restoration to life and activ- ity; a belief which concerned not the generality, but only those who " died on God's account," who when escape was offered them chose rather the way of mar- tyrdom; a belief, in short, of an immediate "first resurrection," given to those who had willingly dedi- cated themselves in martyrdom " on God's account." For, according to IV Maccabees 17: 18, those who thus dedicated themselves " are already standing before the throne of God, and are living the blessed life; for 216 EELIGION AND THE FUTUKE LIFE Moses also saith, 'AH who have sanctified themselves " are underneath thy hands.' " It is true that the clause we have just quoted comes from an Alexandrian- Jew- ish writing of marked affinities with Platonism. Even II Maccabees, where a similar doctrine is expressed at an earlier date, is also probably Alexandrian, though the resurrection of the martyrs is here in bodily form. But both books were written to promote the observance of the feast of Dedication of the temple, a Palestinian feast. Both continue the thought of res- urrection as we have it in Daniel, a Palestinian apoca- lypse of ca. 165 B. c, as a special intervention of God in behalf of exceptional heroes; and both stand mid- way between this and the New Testament Apocalypse, with its special '' first resurrection " of the martyrs, and its representation of them as '' underneath the altar," interceding there on behalf of their people. The words of the second martyr in II Maccabees 7:9: '' The King of the world shall raise up us who have died for his laws, unto an eternal renewal of life " might easily have been uttered by a Palestinian martyr of Jesus' time. Those of the last of the seven in verse 36: " These our brethren having endured a short pain have now drunk of everflowing life under a covenant with God " would sound no unaccustomed accent. When the youthful martyr concludes: " But I, as my brethren, give up both body and soul for the laws of our fathers, calling upon God that He may speedily become gracious to the nation," he at least helps us realize how those who sat with Jesus at the farewell Supper must have understood His words when He said: ** This bread is my body that is given for you, " 'HyuKTiiivin cf. John 17:19: "for their sakes I sanctify {ayidZio, i. e. dedicate) myself." The citation is from Deut. 33 : 3- IMMOETALITT IN THE SYI^OPTIC GOSPELS 217 this cup is the new covenant in my blood that is shed for the many. Do this in remembrance of me." They did not need to be told what it meant that one who for the Kingdom's sake had refused escape when it was open to Him should dedicate His body and blood in martyrdom that God might be propitious to His people and forgive their sin. They were not un- familiar with the hope of joyful reunion to which the mother of the seven martyrs looks forward, and which Jesus holds before the twelve when He covenants with them that they shall drink the wine of the redemption feast new with Him in His kingdom. We have as yet no definite proof that they accepted the idea current in Alexandrian Judaism at about this time, that such dedicated souls pass at once into the very presence of God, to " live even now the blessed life," and to inter- cede " before the throne of God " for His people. But we have some indications that such a belief was not distinctive of Alexandrian Judaism alone, but be- longed to all sections of popular Judaism, however the later conflict with Christianity may have tended to procure its obliteration from the records of the official Judaism of the Synagogue. It is no less an authority than the great historian Tacitus " who gives it as a Jewish belief that " the souls of those who perish in battle, or by the execu- tioner, are eternal." This special immortality for heroes and martyrs rests, of course, upon the case of Eleazar, the Arnold Winkelried of Jewish history, who, according to I Maccabees 6: 44, " gave himself to deliver his people " in the battle against Antiochus, and the other Maccabean martyrs, who perished as Second and Fourth Maccabees relate, at the hands of the exe- cutioner. Tacitus could very well know of this pecu- ''Hist. V. iff. 218 EELIGION AND THE FUTURE LIFE liar form of the belief in immortality, because there was not only a great annual Jewish feast at winter solstice but even the beginnings of a literature, in cele- bration of the Maccabean heroes and martyrs. In fes- tival and literature alike resurrection was the central theme. The very Talmud itself, purged as it is of everything that could be suspected of favouring Christianity, fur- nishes unwilling witness to this doctrinal fruit of the heroic struggle of the Maccabean times. In Jewish literature of the times contemporary with and imme- diately following the age of Jesus we have many refer- ences to a widespread belief in the assumption to heaven of two individuals corresponding to the '' two sons of oil" (R. V. "anointed ones") whom Zecha- riah sees in vision ** standing in the presence of the Lord of the whole earth " and supplying with oil the lamp of remembrance of Israel that stands ever-burn- ing before Jehovah." In Revelation 11: 3-13 these are called the "two witnesses" (or "martyrs") of God, and are unmistakably identified with Moses and Elijah. It is their function to descend from heaven before the great and terrible Day of Jehovah to effect the Great Repentance, which, according to Malachi 4: 4-6, is to precede the messianic judgment and re- newal of the world. When they shall have finished their " prophecy," and the " martyrdom " which will be inflicted on them in Jerusalem by the agents of the Beast " the breath of life from God " will again enter into them, and they will again be taken up into heaven in a cloud in obedience to " a great voice from heaven " which says " Come up hither." It is well known that our Gospels also furnish many traces of this expecta- tion of the second coming of Elijah, and not a few of «Cf. Isa. 62:6f. IMMORTALITY IN THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS 219 the return with him of Moses, to whose supposed tak- ing up into heaven a whole book called The Assump- tion of Moses was devoted, of which some fragments are still extant. Those who are interested in the study can trace much of the long history of this Jewish belief in "The Two Witnesses of Messiah" in Bousset's well-known work entitled The Legend of Antichrist. The special point of present interest is simply the ground on which the figure of Moses comes to be asso- ciated with Elias in the heavenly mission to prepare for the messianic Judgment. In less orthodox sources outside the Canon the asso- ciate of Elias in the role of "the Lord's remem- brancers " seen by Zechariah is Enoch, who like Elias had " never tasted death " but had been " taken up " alive into heaven. Enoch, whom even angels entreat to intercede for them with the Heavenly Judge {Eth. Enoch xiii, 4), was an obvious surrogate. But in the New Testament, and apparently in orthodox Jewish circles as well, it is not Enoch but Moses who plays this extraordinary part. Nor can it be accounted for by the currency of any legend regarding Moses similar to the story of the translation of Enoch and Elijah, for the story of the death and burial of Moses in Deuter- onomy 34: 1-8 does not easily lend itself to such leg- endary development. On the contrary the legend which we know to have been current was the out- growth of the belief, not the belief of the legend Moses, as we know from a host of Talmudic passages, was looked to as the great Intercessor for Israel with God, because at Horeb he had obtained the forgiveness of Israel's sin by the power of his " atonement " (Ex. 32: 30-32). The Talmudic comment upon this pas- sage {Deharim R. Ill, 255b) relates that after Moses had prayed " Forgive now their sin, or else, blot me, I 220 EELIGION AND THE FUTUEE LIFE pray thee, out of thy book (of Hfe) which thou hast written" God answered him: "Because thou didst offer thy life for Israel in this world, so shall it be again in the world to come. When I shall send Elias to my people thou shalt appear together with him." As EHas, who at Carmel had been Jehovah's agent to " turn the heart of Israel back again " to Himself, be- comes in the last days His agent to effect the Great Repentance, so Moses who " offered his life " to make atonement for their sin becomes the partner of EHas in the work of the final Reconciliation. With these almost forgotten elements of contempo- rary Jewish faith in mind it will be easier for us to appreciate that the resurrection faith of the first Chris- tian believers was something quite beyond the ordinary expectation of rising again " in the last day," and more like the belief that spread at once in Galilee after the martyrdom of the Baptist, when they began to say of John, " This is EHas that should come," or " John, whom Herod beheaded, is risen again." The new resurrection faith of the followers of the Crucified was not the mere conventional belief of the Synagogue in which they had been brought up. It was not the mere rising again in the last Day, but went back to the deep- lying root from which that now conventionalized faith had sprung, the special resurrection for heroes and martyrs, who had " offered their lives " for the re- demption of God's people. The nature of the appearances which the earliest records describe confirm this view of the origins of our Christian resurrection faith. The " visions and reve- lations of the Lord " of which we hear were not visita- tions in the night of some poor bloodless ghost, wan- dering from the abode of shades; nor do the witnesses describe a mutilated corpse galvanized into a few IMMORTALITY IN THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS 221 weeks of forced reanimation. Such conceptions may be left to an obsolete rationalism or to fiction writers of the nineteenth century. The appearances that sent the new faith on its victorious way were not of one issuing from the nether world or from the tomb. What we have of stories of this type is of later date. They concern themselves with the secondary question of debate ignored by Paul, as to what became of the buried body. He whom the disciples saw came from heaven, clothed in the glory of God, bearing in triumph the keys of death and of Hell. The radiance of His form outshone the noonday sun, and His voice was " as the sound of many waters.'* The wounds of His martyrdom were there, for by these He made interces- sion for the saints before the eternal Judge. They saw Him as a new Passover Lamb " in the midst of the throne,'* standing " as it had been slain " ; and they looked for reunion w^ith Him at the wedding feast of the eternal redemption. The witnesses of the resur- rection saw what they were prepared to see. But the preparation was that of the parting feast below, re- newed as the Memorial of Jesus' " covenant of life from week to week and from year to year *' until he should come again." I say, then, that the experience of Calvary introduced a new factor into the Christian doctrine of immortality. V. Further Development In speaking of the Teaching of Jesus in both its as- pects, and of the Effect of Calvary I have not ex- hausted the information to be drawn from the Synoptic writings alone on the question of the further development of the Christian doctrine of the Resur- ^® II Mace. 7 : 36. 222 EELIGION AOT) THE FUTTJEE LIFE rection. These writings in their present form are not mere records of transactions of the generation already past when they first saw the Hght. By the most an- cient tradition and by internal evidence as well they are documents of the post-apostolic age. Their un- derlying material is translated from older Aramaic rec- ords and gives us trustworthy report of the teaching and life of Jesus in its main outline and substance. But not without evidences of the intervening time of discussion and interpretation as well. During the life- time of Paul, as we know, the air was full of debate as to the nature and implications of this new-found faith. If already in Judaism the doctrine of return from the grave had precipitated conflicts as to the con- ditions and environment of that life of the '' age to come," if Alexandrian and Palestinian Judaism were already at odds as to whether when we die our souls are taken to heaven, or whether our souls return from Sheol to the surface of the earth, how much more when the resurrection doctrine in Christian form came directly in contact with the Greek doctrine of immor- tality. The question "With what body do they come? " IS one of those which no teacher in the days of Paul could possibly avoid, least of all Paul himself. Fortunately a discussion of this subject will be given in the present series by a scholar of ample qualifications. You will have opportunity to perceive how Paul accom- modates his own conception of resurrection and the life of the age to come, a conception based indeed upon Pharisean teaching but in everything conformed to his personal vision of the risen Christ, to Greek ideas of immortality. The essence of it is what he designates " transfiguration " {fieTafiopxyj and is often practically * See on this further, S. M. Zwemer, The Influence of Animism in Islam. 298 EELIGION AND THE FUTURE LIFE equivalent to our " the flesh," in such usages as " the temptations of the flesh/' In that it goes beyond 4'oyif<:6<; if (poiifzoq means only " emotional, sensu- ous " — as the tendency seems now to translate it — for the nafs can be specifically sensual and must be sharply broken from its false cravings. The second word, ruhy should be the equivalent of nv^hiia in its Hebraistic and New Testament usage; but either our conception of that usage is to be modified, or ruh for Arab antiquity and for Islam meant and means some- thing different.' It is the old question of the nature of " spirit," a question round which the whole history of philosophy might be written. Is " spirit " essen- tially opposed to " matter," or is it merely highly re- fined matter, a phase of the material? It is evident that ruh for Mohammed was a puzzle; Christian and Jewish ideas had confused the primitive Arab concep- tion; but for his contemporaries and for the most or- thodox Islam since his time it was and is a phase of the material. It indicates the world of spirits, of an- gels, jinn, Satans, the invisible world, " the Unseen " of our occultists; but still it is material. Only Allah himself is spirit in our sense; but Arabic and Islam have no positive term by which to render that sense of spirit. You can say in Arabic that Allah is not this and is not that, but you cannot say in Arabic that Allah is a spirit.^ If you attempt it you will produce a blasphemy at which all orthodox Moslems will stop their ears in horror. But both Mohammed and later ' In connection with my article " From the Arabian Nights to Spirit," in the Moslem World for October, 1919, Professor F. C. Burkitt reminded me that Hatch, in his essays on Biblical Greek, held that -nveotxa in John, " however subtle, is still material." 'Of course the later scholastics made up contrasting phrases to express this idea but the plain mind viewed them with dis- approval. IMMOETALITY IN MOHAMMEDANISM 299 Islam did not hesitate to apply nafs to the human soul, and later Islam came to use ruh very much as a syn- onym. Yet so far as the evidence of the Koran is con- cerned Mohammed did not so use riih. In the Koran it has always angelic and divine associations, and it is plain that Mohammed felt himself in difficulty as to its meaning and resented too close questioning on the sub- ject. One, and I think the best, interpretation of Koran xvii, 87, makes Allah tell him to reply to such questions, " The ruh is my Lord's affair " — and not yours! But when he used nafs of the soul this evi- dently meant nothing as to materiality ; he was simply using the vocabulary which he found at hand and which seemed to meet his need. Later orthodox Islam, however, felt tied down by it to a theory of the soul which Mohammed himself would probably have re- jected. Fortunately Mohammed was not an orthodox Mos- lem ; also he was a most disjointed and chaotic thinker. The emotional reality of his faith was so great that the systematic expression of it counted for little with him. At fundamental paradoxes he never hesitated; he stated their two equally valid sides and left them there. Yet, I do not think that he saw them as paradoxes. They were two separate conclusions in his mind, one of which he held at one time and under certain circum- stances, and the other at another time and under other circumstances, and in his mind they never collided. A logician might say that his feeling for disparate con- clusions was very wide. And perhaps the greatest of these par ado xa a-paradoxa, if I may coin such a term, was the relation of God to man. On one side his relig- ious position had led him to open a really impassable gulf between the two. The name for the Deity which he had chosen had become confused in the Arab mind 300 BELIGION AND THE FUTURE LIFE with all manner of polytheistic and animistic syncre- tisms. This is not the place to enter upon the god- desses who were the daughters of Allah and who linked Allah up with tribal deities and stone and star worship, or upon the jinn who were the kindred of Allah and linked him up with the fear, if not the worship, of Na- ture and of the wild. From all that Mohammed had to cut free. His new conception of the old Allah was Hebrew and Christian; but laid enormously greater stress on the transcendence of God. He could not risk the Words worthian pantheism on the verge of which the old Hebrews had trembled, nor the immanence which the Christian theologians had expressed in the doctrine of the Trinity. His Allah must be entirely apart from the world, the Creator from the Created. We can almost hear an echo in the Koran of the Arian hymns, " there was when it (the Creation) w^as not.'* In the absoluteness of this conception Mohammed rev- elled with a divine intoxication. A dialectic necessity had become a spiritual obsession. But, on the other hand, the basis of all his Faith was his personal experience. God had revealed Himself to him and he had been able to receive the revelation. The human spirit, then, could meet and know the Di- vine. Not, observe, the prophetic spirit, but the hu- man spirit. Mohammed had no delusion of greatness and of difference in himself. He held firmly to his dignity and rights as the Messenger sent by Allah to the Arabs; but he was sent because he was a human being, " sent of flesh to flesh." All human beings, by their created nature, are capable of prophecy, and all human beings do, as a matter of fact, at some time or other, enter into contact with the Divine. We may not all be sent with a message to others ; but we can all know God for ourselves. The developments from this IMMOETALITY IN MOHAMMEDANISM 301 on the part of Moslem mystics have been of the widest; for Mohammed, his personal experience led him to a fundamental spiritual fact. For Mohammed, then, and for all Islam after him, there Is a something in the nature of man capable of \^ intercourse with the Divine. This fact was accepted and used by Mohammed without examination and without question; it has been the problem of later Islam to adjust the fact to theological system, and that has been done in different ways. To this something in human nature Mohammed applied the word nafs, one of the two terms I have already described to you. He implied that the other term, ruh, exists also in man because God breathed into man some of His ruh (Kor. XV, 29; xxxii, 8; xxxviii, 72). In old Arabic ruh meant apparently and in the first instance, " breath." * These terms were all that he had, and he used them much as the early Christians used inadequate or mis- leading Greek words. But he was also aided by the Jewish and Christian stories of man's creation, fall and possible salvation. With this connected, further, a doctrine of evil spirits, which suggests to us the Mil- tonic universe far more than that of either the Old Testament or the New. God has created man as a symmetrical being. On his physical symmetry Mohammed is never tired of en- larging; it is part of the evidence in the vast analogy of nature for the power and the beneficence of God. But his soul also is symmetrical, and here Mohammed shows himself as an ethical genius handling the great paradoxes of life. God has made it of balanced good and evil ; or, more exactly. He has instilled into it op- posing instincts. That man is also In the Image of God and that his life is given him by the very breath * In old Arabic you blow a fire with your rilh. 302 EELIGIOI^ AND THE FUTURE LIFE of God came for Mohammed from the chaos of Bib- Heal stories fermenting in his brain and did not modify this assured perception which he had reached person- ally, of the ethical struggle in man's soul. These Bib- lical pictures expressed admirably for Mohammed the difference between man and the lower animals; they made possible the assured fact of contact between God and man, and were in the sequel to give a point of de- parture for the speculations of all types of mystical theologians. But let me remind you in all this that w^hile such phrases were working in Mohammed's mind and acting as stimuli and suggestions, the essential asis for him was his own experience and the conclu- sions to which his ov^^n observation of the facts of life had forced him. So now he saw the soul of man, here in the world, facing its eternal destiny, with a kinship to God, vague yet real, but also open to the influences, " whisperings " the Koran calls them, from the Evil One. And here Mohammed linked up with a very confused demonology ; he found it confused and he did not disentangle it, and it is confused in Islam to this day. Shortly it may be put thus: Along with man and the angels and the jinn there exists another family of intelligent beings, the Head of which is called IbHs, pretty evidently derived from ScdiSoXo^, and all the members of which are called Satans, used as a descrip- tive term. Whether these are a sub-class of the jinn or are fallen angels the Koran is in doubt, and with it Islam. They are spirits, immortal and evil; but al- though they, like the jinn, come under the plan of sal- vation, only the most eccentric Moslems have conceived that they could repent and be saved.' They are, there- " There is a single exception. According to tradition Mohammed met a great grandson of IblTs, accepted him as a Moslem and taught him various chapters of the Koran. IMMOETALITY IN MOHAMMEDANISM 303 fore, under the curse of Allah and Moslems may curse them. Most orthodox Moslems do so; but, in all strictness, they may be required in the inquisition at the Last Day to give a reason why they have done so. Ever since the historic scene in the Garden of Eden, when Adam and his wife ate of the forbidden fruit, there has been a wager between Allah and Iblis. Of the real meaning of that story in Genesis Mohammed had no idea ; he took it and handled it as did Milton. The upshot is that God and the Devil are at war for the souls of men. God leads them aright through per- sonal illumination of their separate souls — the Vision of the mystic — and by historical revelations through accredited messengers ; and the Devil leads them astray through assiduous " whisperings " working on their twy-nature. According to the Koran the Devil has good hopes of getting them all before the Day of Judg- ment. There are other stories current in Islam to ex- plain man's essential tendency toward evil, stories which corrupt or at least confuse the simple reality of Mohammed's own idea. It is deduced from a passage in the Koran (iii, 31) that Iblis touches every infant at birth and thus infects him with evil. The only infants who have escaped this have been Mary and her son Jesus ; Mohammed himself was purified from such evil at an early age. A more realistic legend tells how -Adam and his wife were induced to eat one of the Satanic house and of how, in consequence, evil runs now in the veins of men with their blood. Mohammed would have smiled at such childishness; like the Old Testament he traced man's evil back to his created nature. So the stage is set for the great drama on earth ; the closing scene of which will be the final Judgment with its endless weal or woe. The Arabs to whom Mo- 304 RELIGION AND THE FUTURE LIFE hammed preached seem to have been accustomed to the idea of some kind of continuation of the personality after physical death. There is much evidence that they held, as did the Hebrews in general, that the whole individual was buried in the grave and continued a kind of life there. You will remember how existence in the grave is described in Job 14: 23, *' Only his flesh upon him has pain and his soul within him mourneth." Ex- actly so in tradition Mohammed says, or is made to . say, "A dead man is pained in his grave just as a living -Tnan in his house/* In Hebrew this is often combined with the quite different idea of Sheol; but we do not find anything analogous to Sheol with the Arabs of Mohammed's time. It was not necessary, therefore, for Mohammed to demonstrate that the soul continued to exist after physical death. But it was necessary for him to demonstrate to his somewhat cynical contem- poraries that it was their business to prepare for this existence ; that it was not a negligible thing to be faced by all and the same for all, a shadow of life, a life that was not living; that there would come to each man a ; Judgment and that for that Judgment there would be a /'Resurrection of the entire man, body and soul. Be- ' '*yond the two ideas of Judgment and Resurrection Mo- hammed does not seem to have formulated his belief as to the state of the soul after death. The old Semitic Life in Death in the individual grave seems to have dominated him to the end. Islam has added many vain imaginings, and a great part of its literature of edification deals with eschatology. That literature is full of the wildest and crassest contradictions, and from the evidently tendentious traditions of which It consists, the most opposed systems have been con- structed. It has been found possible to demonstrate that all who have had the slightest believing rela- IMMORTALITY IN MOHAMMEDANISM 305 tion to Islam and its Prophet will be saved, and also that the saved will consist of a small minority of bellig- erent ascetics who have combined a scholastically exact creed with a scrupulous adherence to the details of the canon law and a complete ignoring of the claims of human ties. But the theologians have recognized that these were pious opinions and were not to be held as of faith, and the more exact and systematic a treatise on theology is, the less space it gives to such matters. I shall follow their example, although I am fully con- scious how much picturesqueness this course excludes. As a separate subject the devout eschatology of Islam would be a most interesting study in popular psy- chology. I return, then, to Mohammed, face to face with his Arabs. Up to a certain point, as we have seen, he and they held the same view as to the situation after death. But while, for them, after a man was dead, there was nothing more to be hoped or feared, for him the whole future was dominated by moral earnestness and reality. God was ruling and working here and God would rule and judge hereafter. It was the business of man to prepare for that Judgment and to flee from that wrath to come. He could do so by submission to Allah and by acceptance of the message sent to him through Allah's messenger, the Prophet. That message was of warning and guidance ; warning to arouse one's self to the real situation in the world — Mohammed has much to say about " reality," translated mostly " truth," in our versions of the Koran — and to enter into and fol- low the straight road, trodden by those to whom Allah had been gracious, those who had escaped his wrath and had not gone astray. Over all Mohammed's preaching the thunders of that Dies Irse rolled. The terrors of the Judgment, the horrors of the Fire, the 306 EELIGION AND THE FUTUEE LIFE joys of the Garden — all these he painted over and over again. This hfe is fleeting; the life of the world to come is abiding; Allah himself is the only reality; he rules and will rule. There is no escaping him; his judgments can be seen already in this world, and the final Day will crown them. Thereafter all will be over; the damned will abide eternally in the Fire and the blessed in Paradise, and Allah will be all in all. Such, in broad outlines, was Mohammed's position upon the soul of man in its conflicts here and its final fate hereafter. But there remains much detail, some of which I must attempt to fill in. It will often be hard, in what follows, to distinguish between what was fully in the mind of Mohammed and that which was there only, in a sense, subconsciously; between what was a legitimate development and systematization of Mohammed's thought and the purely arbitrary super- structures of theologians. These last usually, or al- ways, have as their basis some Koranic expression or other, a bit of free imaginative phrasing on Moham- med's part, but separated by them from its context and grotesquely wrested to form part of a system. Let me put before you first an example of this latter method of development, which may be called theologi- cal fiction from its likeness to the legal fiction of con- structive lawyers. In Koran vii, 44-46 there is a little picture of a company called " the people of al-A*raf," or " the Heights," who look down from their *' Heights " on both heaven and hell, expressing their ; desire for the one and their horror of the other and pronouncing on both the sentence of God. This state- ment of mine is a great deal clearer than the broken and enigmatic Arabic of the Koran which could hardly be rendered exactly. There is more, too, in the con- text, to which I can only refer you, which suggests to IMMOETALITY IN MOHAMMEDANISM 307 me that the germ in Mohammed's mind was the picture in the parable of Dives and Lazarus, with its view of heaven and hell and of the uncrossable gulf between. It was exactly in this way that Mohammed was af- fected by, rather than consciously used, his vague scrip- tural memories. But Islam, having no such explana- tion open to it, has been of a divided mind. Earlier Islam saw in these people certain Judges whom Allah associated with himself in the final Assize — it is strange how even the most orthodox Islam has la- boured to escape in one way or another from the limi- tation which it, itself, lays down, that all Judgment on that Day shall belong to Allah alone — and thus re- garded them as prophets and early Caliphs, or as Prophets and the Twelve Imams, or as martyrs and Sufi saints, accordingly as Sunnites or Shi'ites or mys- tics were the exegetes. But later Islam, at least from the time of al-Ghazzali (d. a. d. 1111), has struck out a bolder doctrine which if not now absolutely dominant is tenable for the most orthodox Moslem. It is that with which you are all familiar in Poe's early little poem, ''Al-Aaraaf." These are souls abiding in eter- nal rest, remote equally from the active, positive joys of Heaven and from the pains of Hell, beings imper- fect as to good works, having no claim upon Allah, but too good for the Fire. — You will remember the classic judgment of Andrew Fairservice in " Rob Roy," " Ower bad for blessing and ower guid for banning." — The doctrine is of a natural growth but it belongs to a dying down of the first rigours of a faith and to the coming into play of combined sentiment and reason. Exactly the same development has led to the limbo of the Roman theology, whether " limbus infantum " or " limbus patrum." In the Church of Islam it has come to be a perfectly orthodox and almost a dominant doc- 308 KELIGION AND THE FUTUEE LIFE trine. But it was very far from the mind of Moham- med. His, rather, would have been the judgment of Patmos on the Church of Laodicea. " Because thou art . . . neither hot nor cold, I will spew thee out of my mouth." It is a case, as I have said, of theological fiction in the most extreme form. We shall see, here- after, the working to somewhat the same effect of the doctrine of the mercy of Allah ; but that is another doc- trine entirely. Another development, but this time quite according to the mind of Mohammed, was the doctrine of the Vision of Allah in Paradise. There are many phrases in the Koran which speak of the Face of Allah. In some of these the meaning is evidently, just as in the similar Hebrew and Greek phrases, Allah himself ; but in others we are left with the feeling that the words are to be taken more literally and that the force of the picture requires the face, in its primary sense, just as in the prayer to " lift up the light of Thy countenance upon us." Further I think that there is evidence that the text (Matt. 18: 10), which says of the "angels" of children that they " do always behold the face of my Father who is in heaven " haunted the mind of Mo- hammed, like so many other disjointed fragments held in his memory. There has grown up, therefore, in Islam a doctrine that the recompense in Paradise will be twofold. There will be, first, the ordinary system of rewards for good conduct and obedience in life — ritual, canonical, theological, which is described so often and fully in the Koran. To this Allah is, in a sense, bound by the terms of his bargain with men ; it is specifically promised in the Koran to those who ful- fill certain conditions. But it was very early felt, and, I think, by Mohammed himself, that this did not at all meet the case of the especially chosen of Allah, of those IMMORTALITY IN MOHAMMEDANISM 309 Saints of his who are, in the Moslem expression, " near '* to him, whose Hves upon earth have been hved in his presence and to whom the Garden itself, if with- out that presence of Allah, would mean little or noth- ing. All consideration of mysticism in Islam — let me here throw in — must be guided by this conception of the religious life as a " nearness " to God ; the saint, in Islam, is not, as in our word, sancHis, a holy man; but one of the court of heaven here for a time on earth. Orthodox Islam has, therefore, formulated that there is a second recompense in Paradise for those fitted to enjoy it, which will consist in the Beatific Vision of Allah. The specific basis for this doctrine consists of an allusion in a passage of the Koran (Ixxv, 23) and certain alleged traditions from Mohammed. Such tra- ditions are, as you know, in high disrepute at present with the critical student of Islam; but in this case they give, I feel tolerably sure, if not the words, at least the mind, of Mohammed. Although the doctrine itself is not directly mentioned In the Koran, a couple of Ko- ranic texts were early quoted in its support (Kor. x, 37 ; Iv, 46, 60; Ivi, 23-25; Ixxxiii, 15) and when it was as- sailed on the rationalistic ground that, inasmuch as Allah is not in any place nor in space at all, the laws of vision cannot apply to him; a very odd grammatico- scholastic defense was found In yet another Koranic text (viii, 139). In the end, the doctrine, while ac- cepted by all orthodox Islam, was brought under the technical rubric of bild kayfa, " without how.'* That is, we must accept the doctrine as fact although we can- not explain its nature — must not. Indeed, attempt to do so. It Is, therefore, for Islam a theological mystery to the reality of which, in spite of Its Inexplicability, Mos- lems have been driven by the facts of their religious experience. In exactly the same way the facts of ex- 310 RELIGION AND THE FUTURE LIFE perience drive us all to the acceptance of a relationship between the mind and the body, while philosophy, and even modern psychology, have no answer as to the na- ture of that relationship. Yet they have seldom the candour to call it a philosophical mystery. I lay some stress upon this, not for the sake of a cheap jibe at the psychology before which we all, at present, fall down and worship, but to show that the theological positions of Islam have a genuine foundation in experience and have been and can be defended in accordance with the laws of analogy. Yet another development was required by unre- solved elements in the statements of Mohammed him- self. In the descriptions in the Koran of the Garden and the Fire their inhabitants are regularly described as " abiding " in them. This expression Islam has all but universally understood to refer to an eternal abid- ing. It was left for mediaeval scholasticism to point out that the root " to abide '* does not necessarily con- note eternity; but this, which strongly resembles the arguments we all know about seonial life in the New Testament, has not met with favour. Mohammed, it has been felt, while he believed in a very emphatic hell, believed also that those in it would remain in it to all eternity. But Mohammed had also a very Pauline doctrine of Faith, and managed to combine it with a very Petrlne doctrine of Works. There were also greater sins and lesser sins, though the greater sins, in Islam, have never assumed the importance which mor- tal sin bears in the Roman theology. There is, too, the justice of Allah; but this side of Allah's character bears very little stress in the Koran. Even Moham- med seems to have felt that it would limit the absolute- ness of Allah, as Fate limited Zeus, and to have shrunk instinctively from such conceptions. Similarly, he IMMOBTALITY IN MOHAMMEDANISM 311 never associated " reason " with Allah and later Islam has formally forbidden such a descriptive. Then there are the threats and promises of Allah; these he must keep by his very dignity as absolute ruler ; his promises absolutely, his threats as modified by his clemency. Finally, there is the Mercy of Allah — reiterated over and over — certainly Allah's most prominent character- istic after his absoluteness of Unity and Will. These elements, then, had to be reconciled in some fashion. It is not my business here to enter on the Moslem doctrines of Salvation, of Faith and Works, of Predestination and Free Will. My present point is that a doctrine of purgatory was required in Islam and that it duly appeared. Mohammed himself had not, I think, reached any such idea ; but the complex of facts which he recognized led to it of necessity. The result for Islam has been that while " the People of the Fire " are the specifically and finally lost, the Fire will have also, for a time, other inhabitants to whom it will be Purgatory and who will eventually leave it and be ad- mitted to the Garden. These are Moslems who have died guilty of some " great " sin of which they have not repented. As Moslems they cannot abide in the Fire ; as. unrepentant sinners they must be purified be- fore they enter into the Garden. That is the broad principle ; but a multitude of quali- fying possibilities enter. First, the Mercy of Allah, upon which there are no limits of justice or consis- tency, may pardon and cleanse even a great, and in his life unrepentant, sinner and pass him straight into the Garden. This unlimited Mercy and irresponsible Will of Allah were so stressed by one quite orthodox school that another equally orthodox school said that on these premises there was no reason why In the end all the sinners should not be In the Garden and all the believers 312 EELIGION AND THE FUTUEE LIFE in the Fire. Secondly, the doctrine of early Arabia that the dead man, combined body and soul, inhabited his grave as in life he had his house was joined to the doctrine of the double judgment, as developed in the Christian Church ; that is, of a lesser judgment of the individual at death, and of a greater judgment of all men together after the Resurrection at the Last Day. These two apparently most separate ideas produced, when brought together, the Moslem doctrine of the Punishment of the Grave. It is that the dead man is visited in his grave, on the night after his burial, by ■ two angels who catechize him as to his Faith. If his answers are satisfactory he rests thereafter in his grave until the general resurrection, receiving a foretaste of the joys of Paradise. But if his answers are not satis- factory his grave becomes a place of torment, an antici- pation of what awaits him in the Fire. But in this punishment of the grave it is possible that, if he was a believer, he may work out his purgatorial period and may, after the general judgment, be admitted directly to the Garden. Thirdly, there entered, in gradually extending width, the doctrine of Intercession. This doctrine Moham- N, . med had known and had rejected. For him it had ^, X been an illegitimate interference with the Will and ' choice of Allah. Especially as to the final fates of men must that Will be left unswayed by external influ- ences. But later Islam has thought otherwise, and exercising its right to develop doctrine by Agreement, it has overridden the expressed word of the Koran and ascribed a power, and even right, of intercession to all men who by any chance stand in special relation to Allah, to Saints, Prophets and especially to Mohammed himself. Because of this, at one extreme, the smaller sins of a dead man may be removed by doles of food at IMMOETALITY IN MOHAMMEDANISM 313 his funeral — the poor, and among them, certainly, some " near *' to Allah, will make intercession for him — and at the other extreme, at the Day of Judgment itself, the Prophet himself will intercede for his whole People and lead them all, and as a whole, into the Gar- den. This is the Moslem Harrowing of Hell and marks the most complete overthrow of the Koranic doctrine of the Judgment. For, in the Koran, the Judgment is specifically Christian, in that it is indi- vidual and not by peoples or religious communities. Each man is to be judged by himself, on Allah's systerr^t of bookkeeping and weighing, and must answer for: himself. He has sent before him good deeds to be put to his credit and evil deeds to be registered against him. He has been attended by angels who have written down the details of his conduct to be filed in the heavenly archives. He has made good business with his life or is a bankrupt in the eyes of Allah. The soul (nafs), given to him, he has purified or corrupted and it, that is he himself, must testify for and against himself. None can help him or intercede for him ; by himself he must stand or fall. At the most he can appeal to the Mercy of Allah. " But for the Mercy of Allah," the Prophet said, or is made to say in a tradition, and this tradition is for my subjectivity psychologically prob- able, " not even I shall enter the Garden." It is plain how utterly opposed all this is to the triumphal proces- sion of Mohammed into Paradise at the head of his People ; so complete has been the victory of the solidar- ity of Islam over the ethical faith of its Prophet. But all this time you have probably been waiting for me to deal with those supposed burning questions, " Does woman have any soul in Islam ; and what is her position in the Garden? " The answer must be a little complicated. There cannot be the slightest doubt that 314 BELIGION AND THE EUTUKE LIFE on the point of salvability Mohammed put both men and women on the same footing ; women, for him, had a soul to be saved ; although I think that he felt also that it would take a good deal of saving. But it is equally plain that in his picture in the Koran of the life in the Garden human women play no part ; it is an en- tirely masculine Paradise. Where, then, are the be- lieving women ? The Koran does not tell us, and even the standard collections of traditions, containing those regarded as most authentic, have very little on the sub- ject. There is more in such collections as deal with eschatology ; but the fact is that Mohammed, and after him, the general body of Moslems, did not and do not like the subject and consider it only when driven by technical necessity. Yet Moslem writers and even theologians, as you probably know, are by no means squeamish in discussing the most intimate relations be- tween men and women. Their literature like their Paradise is masculine. What, then, is the explanation of this reticence, first in Mohammed and later among Moslems in general? I can only make guesses, but I would risk the following. You will remember a pas- sage in which Montaigne (Essais, Livre III, chap. 5) explains the attitude of respect which his code required him to maintain toward his wedded wife. It was an attitude which, to our mind, must have kept her a good deal outside of his intimate life. Montaigne, per- haps, was not a conspicuous example of Christianity; but his attitude was not, I think, individual in his time, and it goes a good way to make real to us, and grasp- able by us, the attitude of Moslems of honour toward their women of honour. It means not only a code which forbids, but also an attitude which shrinks from considering and which takes for granted. Montaigne's own statement was an infringement of it and an illus- IMMORTALITY IN MOHAMMEDANISM 315 tration of the Pepys-like frankness of his Essais. This conception, as you will of course see, is vital to the status of women in Islam, and indeed in the whole East ; but I cannot pursue it further here. Again, you may remember the deceased old lady who came back through Mrs. Piper and testified that her new surroundings were " more secular " than she had expected. That is essentially the w^ay in which the Paradise of the Koran strikes us ; it is distinctly more secular than our current notions of heaven. Also it is more masculine, and, although we are accustomed to hearing Islam called a " masculine religion," this seems a rather violent extension. But the Paradise of the Koran and of Islam is — I do not speak here of the super-ecstatics of the mystics — simply the secular and masculine world of Moslems rather touched up, of course, as to its enjoyments. It is an idealized, glori- fied reflection of the social life of the Moslem men, into which their women of honour never in the slightest enter. Naturally when that life was expressed sub specie etcrnitatis, these women could have no part in the picture. How much evil this has meant for Islam I need hardly say. And the evil lies at Mohammed's own door. For the old life of Arabia, like the present- day life of the unsophisticated desert, was far more fa- vourable to the easy social intercourse of men and women of good reputation. It would be difficult to construct a picture of pre-Moslem Arabia, in which such intercourse did not play a large part. And the matter goes farther. The early Moslems themselves observed a marked degeneration In the sexual life of Islam from that of the old pre-Moslem life. We can ourselves see the same reflected In the surviving litera- ture. Rough and violent as the old life was — no more a beautiful life than our own ages of chivalry — it was 316 EELIGION AND THE FUTURE LIFE clean in thought and expression compared with that of Islam. The exclusion of respectable women from public social intercourse had its inevitable conse- quences, and that exclusion must be traced back to Mohammed himself. And it is that attitude which we see reflected in the pictures of Paradise in the Koran. But, again, as I said above, I can only touch on this subject here. An informed and honest History of Woman under Islam has still to be written. But there is another side of the matter upon which I must enter because it has led already to an enormous amount of confusion. There is much evidence that amongst Turks, at least, and these not only of the un- educated masses, women are regarded as not having souls, at any rate on the same footing as men. This idea can be traced in European descriptions of the East, at least back to Lady Mary Wortley Montague (Letters, Everyman ed., pp. 140, 175). Her testimony admits the souls but surrounds them with qualifications. This will, probably, be more than confirmed by every missionary at the present day to the Turks. I have had such confirmation myself from several. Further, according to Lady Mary Montague, the future status of women in Paradise is connected with child-bearing, and this is confirmed by some of the few traditions in Arabic on the subject. Wc have, in fact, an echo of 1 Timothy 2: 15 as to women being saved through child-bearing, which, in turn, goes back to Genesis 3 : 15, 16." Others connect that status with the stand- ing of the woman in the eyes of her husband in this world. Generally, I fear that Islam does not regard "I need not say that I know the modern interpretation — to come safely through chtld-l)carini^ (Moffat, We\Tnonth, etc.) — but I cannot accept it. It ignores the, to me certain, reference to Genesis. IMMORTALITY m MOHAMMEDANISM 317 the old maid — such few as it has — with favour, and does not assign her any high rank in the Garden. Fi- nally, no Moslem theologian would dream of denying that women have souls, of exactly the same kind as men, and in exactly the same degree as men. The atti- tude of the Turks is probably a lingering relic of their pre-Moslem beliefs; there are many such contradictory survivals in the syncretisms of Islam. But even after all this, the Moslems were left with that fundamental, philosophical question, *' What is Spirit ? " Into the ultimate developments to which that question led them, I cannot possibly enter. It would conduct us through all the forms of mysticism and into all the phases of Pantheism. It might bring us out into a Nirvana, where the individual vanishes entirely in the One, or into multitudinous Paradises, each the dream of its inhabitant. In avoiding such complications I hold by the clue of possible orthodoxy — what can a Moslem hold as answer to that question and still remain within the pale of normal Islam ? For Moslems the most absolute division of all ex- istent things is into the Creator and his Creation. But what does this mean as to the difference between these two? Going beyond the question of origin, a gulf of fundamental nature had to be fixed. So the Moslem world passed, in its conception of Allah, the Creator, from a crass anthropomorphism to a vague and imagi- native spiritualization, while its conception of the cre- ated world In all its parts — the solid earth, mankind in body and soul, the jinn, the Satans and the Angels — remained material, of one density or another. To this view, spirit was only breath — a highly tenuous matter. But, in spite of our modern occultists who assert that the soul of man weighs between two ounces and two ounces and a half, even Islam found itself unable, in 318 EELIGION AND THE FUTUEE LIFE the long run, to maintain this materiaHty. The phe- nomena of thought, the experiences of rehgious emo- tion, the working of dreams convinced Moslem think- ers that there was in themselves a something akin to the Deity, if dependent upon the Deity, and absolutely different from their bodies. Their conception, too, of the nature of God expanded; an existence apart from space and from time entered their possibilities; *' spirit " in the philosophical sense was reached. To their idea of God, thus clarified and made more precise, their idea of man had to be adjusted. But, naturally, all Moslems could not and did not follovs^ this development. Among ourselves the con- ception of spirit as highly attenuated matter is not, I fear, quite extinct, and the '' etheric body," of which we hear now, probably owes some of its popularity to its freedom from metaphysical strain on the powers of thought. Among Moslem theologians the spirituality of spirit was taught by al-Ghazzali, at the end of the eleventh and the beginning of the twelfth centuries A. D. ; but even then only in tractates intended for theo- logical specialists. The absolute anthropomorphist re- mained — and still remains — for whom God was a gi- gantic man in the sky, and even the scholastic theolo- gians who passed beyond such crudities declined to ad- mit that the soul of man could be spirit in the same sense that God is spirit. For al-Ghazzali himself, however, man's spirit was derived from God and was the link between him and God. It is thus similar to God, though I doubt whether he would have said that it is the same as God. We are back at the old and vital distinction between 6fj.t,u>ij(no^ and 6i±oob