The entire absence of any allusion to a hereafter, in many passages of the Psalms, where the contemplation of death seems naturally, and almost unavoidably to lead to the subject, cannot fail to strike the attentive reader, and the glimpses of it which some others appear to disclose are derived rather from the interpretation and application of them under the light of the Gospel, than from the clear and inherent sense of the terms employed'; presenting a remarkable contrast to the continual allusions and unequivocal declarations on the subject, which meet us in the perusal of the New Testament.

One or two words, the use of which has an important bearing upon this point, may claim a little special notice. The word soul, by which, in accordance with the general usage of the New Testament, we are accustomed to denote a spiritual existence distinct from the body, has in the Old Testament a very wide range of signification. The corresponding Hebrew term, nephěsh, designates, in the narrative of the Creation, the vital principle, either in man or the inferior animals. Thus in the first chapter of Genesis we read: "And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life;" in the Hebrew, "the moving soul living." (v. 20). "And God created great whales, and every living creature (Heb., every living soul) that moveth." (v. 21.)" And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature (Heb., living soul) after his kind." (v. 24.) And again, "To every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life (Heb., wherein there is a living soul) I have given every green herb for meat." (v. 30.) In the next chapter the same terms are used in respect to man, but with a marked difference in the narration: "And the Lord God formed

excommunication, was either supernaturally or otherwise inflicted on the offender; but that the object was to reclaim, and finally to save, is unquestionable. The same mode of expression, and with the same object in view, occurs in 1 Tim. i. 20: "Whom I have delivered unto Satan, that they may learn not to blaspheme."

e. g.,

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man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul." (v. 7.) The word is employed in many subsequent passages to signify the physical life of any animated being: e. g., "Thou shalt give life for life," literally, "soul for soul." (Ex. xxi. 23.) "He shall give for the ransom of his life (Heb., his soul) whatsoever is laid upon him.” (v. 30.) "He that killeth any man (Heb., that smiteth any soul of man) shall surely be put to death And he that killeth a beast shall make it good; beast for beast," literally, "He that smiteth the soul of a beast shall requite it, soul for soul;" (Lev. xxiv. 17, 18)-in others, in a more restricted sense, to denote the rational soul or mind of man, as.the seat of the feelings, will, and affections. It is frequently used for the whole person, or as an emphatic substitute for the personal pronoun; Give me the persons, (Heb., souls,) and take the goods to thyself." (Gen. xiv. 21.) "Whatsoever soul it be that eateth any manner of blood, even that soul shall be cut off from his people." (Lev. vii. 27.) 66 Whatsoever soul it be that doeth any work in that same day, the same soul will I destroy from among his people." (Lev. xxiii. 30.) "Let me die (Heb., Let my soul die) the death of the righteous." (Num. xxiii. 10.) "They die in youth (Heb., their soul dieth in youth.)" (Job xxxvi. 14.) "My soul is among lions." (I am, or my person is.) (Ps. lvii. 4.) "Lest he tear my soul (me or my person) like a lion.” (Ps. vii. 2.) "None can keep alive his own soul," i. e., can keep himself alive, or preserve his own life. (Ps. xxii. 29.) This comprehensive use of the term for the whole person is recognized in our own language; as, in speaking of a shipwreck or sudden catastrophe, so many souls perished, or, not a soul escaped: but the Hebrew word is sometimes employed in a sense according to our idiom quite anomalous, that of a lifeless corpse, e. g., "All the days that he (the Nazarite) separateth himself unto the Lord he shall come at no dead body." (Heb. "he shall not come upon the soul of the dead.")

Another word of the kind referred to is Sheol, which in three instances is rendered by our translators pit, and in all others, the grave or hell. Neither of these two words, however, in their

Thus, in the very first lamenting for his son

ordinary acceptation, correctly represents the original, which signifies in a more general sense the place or state of the dead, that is, of all mankind without distinction. It is never used in the plural number, nor in any instance to designate a particular person's grave or place of sepulture, which is expressed in Hebrew by another term; and that this is not precisely the idea of the word Sheol is shown by an examination of some of the passages where it is employed, though their general sense may not be affected by the exact meaning attached to the word itself; as when we say that a certain disease or accident brought a person to his death-bed, to his coffin, or to the grave, we merely employ one of three modes, though each involving a separate and distinct idea, of expressing the simple fact that it was the occasion of his death. passage where the word occurs, Jacob, Joseph, exclaims: "I will go down into Sheol unto my son mourning" (Gen. xxxvii. 35); not into the grave, strictly speaking, for the patriarch, when he uttered these words, supposed that the body of his darling son had been devoured by wild beasts; nor into hell, in the sense we usually attach to that word, which we must be assured would have been utterly abhorrent to the feelings of the afflicted father; and a comparison of several passages where our translators adopt the latter rendering shows that it is employed alike in respect to the righteous and the wicked. Thus the Psalmist says: "Thou wilt not leave my soul in Sheol" (Ps. xvi. 10), which as a prediction of the resurrection of Christ, to whom it is applied by the Apostle Peter (Acts ii. 25), was literally verified, whether we take the word in its proper and more general sense, or the more limited one expressed by the version of Anthony Purver: "Thou wilt not leave my person in the grave;" or, as it is paraphrased by Milton:

"Though now I yield to death, and am his due,

All that of me can die; yet, that debt paid,

Thou wilt not leave me in the loathsome grave,

His prey, nor suffer my unspotted soul,

For ever with corruption there to dwell."

In Psalm ix. 17 we read: "The wicked shall be turned into hell."

:

This, however true in the usual sense of our English word, is more than the original imports, which is simply, shall be cut off or destroyed. "Sheol," remarks Hengstenberg, "appears specially as the dwelling-place of the wicked only in so far as they terminate their days before they are half spent, and descend before the time that the ordinary fate of mortality would have brought them to it." Purver, as in the preceding case, renders grave: "The wicked shall return to the very grave;" and subjoins in a note, "shall return to the earth whence they originally came, dying for their wickedness." Psalm lv. 15 is one of the imprecatory passages already referred to, as assuming a more repulsive aspect in our version than in the original "Let death seize upon them, and let them go down quick into hell;" to which, however, our translators add in the margin, or the grave." The word quick is here used in the sense, now almost obsolete, of alive or living, and the phraseology of the original is identical with that describing the fate of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram: "If the Lord make a new thing, and the earth open her mouth, and swallow them up with all that appertain unto them, and they go down quick into Sheol," or, as it is there rendered, "the pit." (Num. xx. 30.) And again: "They and all that appertained to them went down alive into the pit." (v. 33.) The Psalmist evidently alludes to the sudden destruction inflicted on that rebellious company, and the purport of the clause is, "Let them (or they shall) be cut off in the vigour of life; for," it is added, "wickedness is in their dwellings and among them :" being equivalent in sentiment to the concluding verse of the Psalm: "But thou, O God, shalt bring them down into the pit of destruction; bloody and deceitful men shall not live out half their days." (Ps. lv. 23.) Sheol, from the verb shaal, to ask or demand, may signify literally the insatiable; and it is mentioned, (Prov. xxvii. 20, and xxx. 16), as one of the things which are never full and never satisfied; and in like manner by the prophet Habakkuk (ii. 5.) "Who enlargeth his desire as Sheol, and is as death, and cannot be satisfied; but gathereth unto him all nations, and heapeth unto him all people." So far as can be gathered from incidental allu

sions to the subject, it appears to have been regarded by the ancient Hebrews as a lower world, or deep subterranean region, enveloped in thick darkness, the common receptacle, for a period at least, of all the dead; who there remained in a state of silence and unconsciousness, devoid of thought and sensation. They," says the prophet Ezekiel of the Egyptians," are death

Ez. xxxi. 14.

Amos ix. 2.

Job xi. 8.

Ps. cxxxix. 8.

To the nether parts of the earth;
In the midst of the children of men,
With them that go down to the pit." *

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all delivered unto

Though they dig into Sheol [English translation, hell], thence shall my hand take them;

Though they climb up to heaven, thence will I bring them down."

"It (the knowledge of God) is high as heaven, what canst thou do?

Deeper than Sheol [E. T., hell], what canst thou know ?" "If I ascend up into heaven," (says the Psalmist,) "thou art

there;

If I make my bed in Sheol," [E. T., hell],—in the deepest recesses of the earth,-" behold! thou art there."

"Have the gates of death been opened unto thee? Job xxxviii. 17. Or hast thou seen the doors of the shadow of death ?" "I said," (exclaimed Hezekiah,) "in the cutting off of my days, Isa. xxxviii. 10. I shall go to the gates of Sheol" [E. T., the grave.] Cease, then," (says the afflicted Job,) "and let me alone,

That I may take comfort a little ;

Before I go whence I shall not return,

To the land of darkness and the shadow of death;

A land of darkness, as darkness itself,

Of the shadow of death, without any order,
And where the light is as darkness.'

"In death there is no remembrance of thee;

In Sheol [E. T., the grave] who shall give thee thanks ?" "The dead praise not the Lord,

Neither any that go down into silence."

"Unless the Lord had been my help,

* Several Hebrew terms, analogous to our word pit, are occasionally substituted for Sheol.