Note 7 — Chapter XXV · WHY THE HEBREW SCRIPTURES IGNORE THE FUTURE LIFE.

Note.—After the foregoing Chapter was in type, it occurred to me to apply the light of the fact it accounts for to some prominent particulars of the Old Testament. Here are a few of the results: Moses gives as a reason for our first parents having been driven out of Paradise, that God desired to preclude the possibility of their eating of the fruit of a certain tree, whereof if they were to eat they would become immortal; and that He afterwards carefully guarded the tree from them by Cherubims, and a flaming sword that turned every way. This was to prevent their becoming immortal. Previously, too, God had threatened that, if they disobeyed a certain commandment, they should become incapable of immortality (for the context shows that this was the meaning intended); and, on their disobedience, God had passed on them the sentence that they should return to the dust out of which they had been made. There can be no reasonable doubt but that in this part of the introductory history a foundation is designedly laid for the absence of the doctrine of a future life from the dispensation; and objections to its absence answered by anticipation. Popular hermeneutics, however, are incapable of explaining these particulars, notwithstanding the significant prominency assigned them in the narrative.

Again, on the theory of the popular interpretation, we can see no reason why Isaiah should have placed the ultimate suppression of evil, and the complete triumph of good, on this earth. That would be of no advantage to the generation to which he had to address himself; and it would be an arrangement that would give nothing to those who had borne the heat and burden of the day, and everything to those who had done nothing. The difficulty, however, vanishes, when we remember that he had no doctrine of a future life, or of any other stage than this earth for man. Everything, therefore, that was to be brought about, must be brought about on this earth, and during this earthly life, which were all.

Our fact also accounts for the conspicuous, and otherwise inexplicable, want of proselytizing zeal in the old Israelites. They quite believed that the best thing for man was the knowledge of God; but they had no disposition to communicate this knowledge. The reason was that the advantages of this knowledge were temporal. Had, therefore, Jehovah been brought to give protection, wealth, and strength to their neighbours, with whom they were generally in a state of hostility, it would have been a hurt to themselves. So soon as the objects of religion became moral only, and not of this world, Israelites had abundance of zeal for making proselytes among their neighbours.

Doubtless other particulars will occur to the reader, which, like those I have just noted, are explicable only by the aid of the direct opposite to that which the popular interpretation assumes, this direct opposite being, in fact, the most prominent and distinctive of the peculiarities of the dispensation.