ficant facts—as lugubrious as they are startling and repellent, it clearly appears that death is to be contemplated as a very serious and important matter, and that to encounter it bravely and with becoming resignation, "the faith that hath the promise of everlasting life," is greatly needed, and hence deserves to be thoroughly verified to command the respect and secure the approval of all intelligent and reflecting minds. The following pathetic incident will serve as a further illustration of the truths here pointed out and inculcated. The body of an ill-fated prophet, having received the customary sepulchral rites, as a token of their friendship, and an evidence of their humanity, the mourners: a father and several sons-overwhelmed with profound grief, exclaimed in tones of bitter anguish, and with a singular unanimity of a spontaneous expression of a keen individual distress, 1 Kings, xiii. 30, "Alas, my brother!" An exclamation significant at once of their sincere affection for the dead seer, and their dreary and desponding apprehensions of an inauspicious and sad destiny of the spirits in Sheol.

1

PARAGRAPH XII.

Death is Corruption and Destruction.

Death in Hebrew physics, Tabhelith: destruction. The following texts clearly prove that some of the sacred writers of the Old Testament, entertained the idea during at least a part of the different stages of their spiritual

are forgotten by their Creator, must be interpreted to mean that the dead are no longer favored with a Providence such as they enjoyed upon earth, and that they are thus left to pine in their shadowy and woeful realm.

training and psychical development, that in death man returns again to his pristine, inanimate state-the dust of the ground: Yaphar Min-Hadamah, before "the Lord God breathed into his nostrils, the breath of life," Genesis, ii. 7. A few instances in point, may suffice to illustrate and confirm the proposition. Thus in Job, x. 8-9, we read: "Thine hands have made me, and fashioned me together round about; yet thou dost destroy me. Remember, I beseech thee, that thou hast made me as the clay, and wilt thou bring me into dust again ?" Adverting to Psalm, xc. 3, we meet with the same gloomy and disheartening idea, taught in the following concise and forcible sentence: Thou turnest man to destruction"-into the dust; according to the exegesis of de Wette: thou reducest him to his original soulless state. "Hell and destruction," writes the sagacious author of the Book of Proverbs, xxvii. 20, "are never full;" that is, Sheol, which is emphatically the destruction, is never done destroying! Again Job says, xxvi. 6, "Hell is naked before him, and destruction has no covering." In this passage, the Hebrew word Abadon-destruction, means according to Gesenius the same as Sheol or Hades, and signifies, of course, as the great philologist states, "The subterranean world; the region of the dead." Hence Sheol has the infamous reputation of being synonymous with destruction! I shall refer to but one more passage on this subject, recorded in the inexhaustible Job, xvii. 14-15, and reading thus: "I have said to corruption, Thou art my father: to the worm, Thou art my mother, and my sister. And where is now my hope? As for my hope, who shall see it?" Alas, we here find man's hope of a future existence, despairingly en

tombed with his frail and perishable body! The grave of the one, is the sepulcher of the other! Oh, how the soul sickens and writhes in the contemplation of thoughts so dismal; so appalling; so utterly and hopelessly crushing! Is there no light, no ray of mercy, that-coming to the rescue of poor mortals, will dispel the night, and resolve the doubt that impend over the grim and shadowy realm. of ghastly Sheol?

PARAGRAPH XIII.

In Sheol is no Hope.

As we have already had occasion to verify, it will appear further evident from other parts of the profoundly interesting and instructive Book of Job, as the sequel will show, that its sorely stricken and severely tried author-though a philosopher: as the whole poem proves, and a righteous man as chapter xxvii. 5-6, attests, entertained most dismal and dejecting ideas of the state of the dead in Sheol: an evidence that a supernatural revelation, on the condition of the dead in the dark spirit-world, had never shed its rays on the mind of "the man of Uz," though he had not as " a perfect and an upright man," as God himself declares, his "like in the earth." Or, if his thoughts must be supposed to have been imbued with a beam of miraculous light, then that light is but darkness, and brings no consolation!

In conformity with the facts discussed in the preceding disquisition, Job writes, xiv. 10, "But man dieth and wasteth away; yea, man giveth up the ghost, and where is he?" Poor mortal, ever treading upon the verge of the grave, at last descends into it, with the sad inquiries:

Where am I going? Where will be my future habitation? What, ab, what will be my final destiny? In the same fertile volume, xiv. 14, the sick and languishing authorfaint with pain, almost worn out with grief, and full of solicitude about the future, again reverts to the somber, all-absorbing subject of the dead in Sheol, ever present to his anxious soul, and asks, with seemingly the last effort of expiring nature, "If a man die, shall he live?" His faith in a certain and happy existence hereafter, is deeply shaken, or only feebly developed, and, therefore, in a most pitiable mood, bordering apparently upon despair, he sorrowfully exclaims: "And where is now my hope? As for my hope, who shall see it?" The inquisitive and scrutinizing author of Ecclesiastes, iii. 18-22, recognizes no distinction between the destination of man and that of the brute. The last tremulous glimmer of hope, in a future life, seems here for ever to set in the gloom of night. Nay, the soul itself, appears to sink irrecoverably into the profound nadir of blank despair. Let us hear him, be amazed, and-in wonder lost: "I said in mine heart, concerning the estate of the sons of men," writes this skeptic Hebrew and deep thinker, "that God might manifest it, and that they might see that they themselves are beasts. For that which befalleth the sons of men, befalleth the beasts; even one thing befalleth them: as the one dieth, so dieth the other; yea, they have all one breath: for all is vanity. All go unto one place; all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again. Who knoweth the spirit of man that goeth upward and the spirit of the beast that goeth downward to the earth? Wherefore I perceive that there is nothing better than that a man should rejoice in his own works;

for that is his portion: for who shall bring him to see what shall be after him?" Finally, this same orthodox writer and author of a canonical book of the Old Testament, teaches in Ecclesiastes, xii. 7, that "then"—at death, "the dust"-human body, "shall return to the earth as it was," while the spirit-which God breathed into him "to make him a living soul," shall "return again unto God who gave it," thus evidently resolving man into his original elements, and for ever annihilating his personal identity !*

PARAGRAPH XIV.

In Sheol the Good are at Rest, and Virtue or a Worthily-Spent Life on Earth, enjoys Precious Advantages-a Heaven in its Incipient State: the Blessings are Diversified, and may be regarded as the Rising Pledges of a Brighter Future.

Our vision into the future begins to brighten a little, and a better hope gradually dawns upon the expectant soul. Numerous references will attest the vantage-ground which we have gained, and evince its nature and its importance. "There" in Sheol, says the sorely diseased and sadly care-worn Job: the exuberant source of Sheollore, iii. 17-18, "the wicked cease from troubling; and there the weary are at rest. There the prisoners rest together; they hear not the voice of the oppressor." In death, according to the Book of Proverbs, xi. 8, "The righteous is delivered out of trouble." Yes-such is the meaning of the teaching here, to the weather-beaten and life-weary, a home in the spirit-land brings relief, and is therefore as refreshing as it is acceptable to the fainting, drooping soul. A beautiful, truly Christian, and most

As the sequel will show, these shocking ideas of Ecclesiastes are destined eventually to undergo a salutary change.