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idea of death as a separation from God was denied. Fellowship with God means life and that life death cannot break. Thus there arose the doctrine of immortality. Now this is much more than mere existence. No one had doubted that the personality of man does not cease to exist at death. The doctrine of Sheol shows plainly a universal belief in continued existence. But this existence was mere vegetation. The doctrine of immortality stood for more than mere shadowy existence, it was continued fellowship with God. At first the Hebrew saints seem to have acquiesced in death. They continued to live in their people, in their children and in the good name and blessed memory which a righteous man leaves behind him. They were satisfied to lose themselves in the larger unit, the people. But when at the time of the exile the individual rose to greater prominence we notice also the new conception of an individual immortality, based upon the earlier idea of a national immortality. The new idea is expressed in the book of Job. After having gone through many conflicts and struggles, which led him to curse the day of his birth, Job finally conquered doubt and uncertainty when he exclaimed: "I know that my Redeemer (Vindicator) liveth and after this my body is destroyed, then free from my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see for myself and mine eyes shall behold and not another" (Job 19: 25). This same idea is found in three or four late Psalms. (Ps. 16:11): "Thou wilt show me the path of life; in thy presence is joy and at thy right hand there are pleasures forever more. (Ps. 17: 15): "I shall behold thy face in righteousness; I shall be satisfied when I awake with thy image." Although it is not quite certain that this refers to awakening after the sleep of death. (Ps. 49: 15): "But God will redeem my soul from the power of Sheol; for he shall take me.” The verb "take" is the same which is used in the experience of Enoch, of whom it is said that "God took him" (Gen. 5: 24). (Ps. 73: 24): "Thou shalt guide me with thy counsel, and afterward take me to glory." Finally there is one more passage in

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Isa. 26: 19: "Thy dead shall live, my dead ones shall arise." We thus find that this doctrine of a personal immortality is confined to Job, a late passage in Isaiah and four late, probably post-exilic, Psalms.

The second line of development took its start from the national destruction and consequent national resurrection, predicted by many prophets. Israel as a people could not cease to exist and though the threatened destruction of Jerusalem would break up its national unity, yet Phoenixlike it would rise to new life and continue its career as the

religious benefactor of the world. This was the firm conviction of the prophets. Thus Hosea says: "Let us return to the Lord. After two days he will revive us, and the third day he will raise us up and we shall live in his sight" (6: 2). And again: "I will ransome them from the power of the grave; I will redeem them from death: O death, I will be thy plagues; O grave, I will be thy destruction" (13: 14). This national resurrection is still more wonderfully described by Ezekiel in his remarkable vision of the valley of dry bones (chap. 37). These bones rose to new life through the breath of God. It was a prophecy of the restored commonwealth of Israel.

But gradually the idea of a national resurrection developed into the idea of a personal resurrection. This transition we notice in two passages. In the passage of Isa. 26: 19, already quoted: "Thy dead shall live, my dead ones shall arise, awake and sing, ye that dwell in the dust.” But the doctrine is most fully and clearly stated in Daniel 12: 2, "Many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt."

These two doctrines, the doctrine of immortality which teaches that the fellowship of the soul with God cannot be broken, that for the righteous Sheol does not exist, but that like Enoch he passes into the presence of God; and the doctrine of resurrection, these two thoughts are the real con

tributions of the Old Testament to eschatology, which set the popular view of a Sheol aside.

My task has come to an end. I have brought before you some of the varied contents of the Old Testament. I have pointed out to you some of the loftiest religious conceptions which have become an important part of the New Testament. There are many others, equally profound, of God and man, of sin and righteousness, which we were not able to discuss, but the few glimpses which you have had of the wide range of Old Testament thought must have convinced you that it will never cease to be of highest value to the Christian Church and that like the Hebrew saints of old we shall continue to draw comfort and inspiration from its spiritual treasures.

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The office of religion in the formation of national character is not always appreciated by the historian. The rush and noise of battle, the intellectual triumphs of the hustings and forum, the splendid achievements of human genius and the rapid accumulation of wealth have a special charm for the muse of history. To her, generally, prayer books do not compare with fat ledgers. Upper rooms, where men and women hold fellowship with God, seem insignificant in comparison with the rush and carnage of battlefields. The strenuous activities of modern life gorge the ear with their babel confusions, so that the still small voice which nerves the prophet is despised and rejected. To Gibbon the struggles of the catacombs, and the swelterings of the arena were but the vaporings of an overheated imagination. When Hume has seen the giants of Reformation story stalking across that great stage, and listened to those utterances that were louder than the bellowing of ten thousand bulls from the Vatican, he contemptuously speaks of it as a cawing of jackdaws. Buckle the march of English civilization is but the fatalistic play of force, as destitute of moral significance as the flowing stream out of the tangled wildwood. To such historians men and events come and go, as though religion had never appeared upon the earth; and God was as estranged from the course of history, as the dead man from the watch that his skill had fashioned. But to the practiced eye of him who can see the angels of God ascending and descending, and feel that the nations are coworkers together with God, all is changed. Then the thoughts of men widen by the process

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of the suns in ever-increasing circles of grace and beauty, all moving under the rhythmic guidance of God. Jesus is heard saying unto the nation come, and they come, and, to others go and they go. The kings of the earth that set themselves against the Lord and against His annointed are broken in pieces. The nations that forget God are cast into hell. When faith, duty and religion are relegated to the shades of forgetfulness, then patriotism, statesmanship and sacrifice for the perpetuity of the nation vanish as mists before the rising sun. The pursuit of wealth, lives of luxury and leisure and a general engrossment with the material things of time and sense endanger the existence of any republic. They nullify the principles upon which the fathers of the Republic erected the structure, which was at first the admiration of the other nations of the earth, but has at length become their astonishment. In looking at the lives, and listening to the conversations of those who laid the foundations of these great commonwealths, we will have the best illustration of religious patriotism; and when we shall follow in their footsteps and contend with the same holy purpose for the perpetuity of life of the Republic, we shall give a conspicuous example to generations yet unborn of patriotic religion.

The civil institutions of the Republic owe their glory and promise of perpetuity to the religious character of those who wrought with such Titanic energy upon their broad foundations. For the temple of liberty cornerstones were laid, arches swung, and the architraves hewed, when righteousness was laid to the line and judgment to the plummet. They built much better than they knew, because they built after the pattern that was shown them in the mount. Their sons and their daughters were prophesying, their old men were dreaming dreams, and their young men were seeing visions. By faith they conquered a new world. They had restored unto them the years that the locust had eaten, the canker worm and the catterpillar.

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