IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL—A PART OF THE JEWISH BELIEF UNDER THE LAW OF MOSES.

Wellington Independent, Volume XXVIII, Issue 3901, 4 September 1873, Page 2

IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL— A PART OF THE JEWISH BELIEF UNDER THE LAW OF MOSES.

TO THX-B£Dl&nt bVTgiiHiiTOESHBItDENXr Sir, ythe crowded state of your, columns," on account of: Parlia- ." mentary. debates and othe^niatj^rs, your correspondents keep .you ''jetf^^y^ on the vexedVquestion of marriage %ish a deceased .wife's r sister. As fbr ; me, I would not, trouble you any r more,-jwere-it not for the letter signed:" How is it." That letter contains, shocking assertions, and the.! scandal they would produce muatbe removed. It will be sufficient to deal with one -of those sentences in my present reply. - "I am, not aware," says "your correspondent, "of one instance in theJaw "of Mooes in which the immortality of the soul and pjraishment in after life ifr mentioned. I take up the vs»y words with which he Bignß himself, aid VI exclaim,. How is it that he is not aware 1 Wellj simply on account of nis ignorance. Let us instruct him. I accept being limited strictly to the Book of Moses, and; there? fore X will quota neither^ from the Prd- | phete .nor fromtHe .hol^ mi^n Job, f wh» proclaimed sb eloquehtly^his, Relief in thefuture.resurrection.of the dead. Inroad in the first 'chapter of Genesis v. 27 : " God created man to his own image, to the image of. ; God he created -him.." I ask: Can we conceive man being created to the image of God without having a soul immortal ? .It is sufficient to read attentively the Book of Genesis, says a most well learned Israelite, Mr Munk, to see that *the reunion of the ancestry is perfectly distinguished from the jsepulture. (Dissertation on the dogma of the immortality, of the soul among the ififebrewa» Annals of Christian Philosophy, vofcxiii.,. p. 166.) (.i/i.nil) * Abraham is gathered to his people,. Genesis, 25— 8. Yet he is buried in Canaa.n, far from , his father, who died at Harah on the Euphrates \ far' from his ancestors, who were . buried, in Chaldea. Therefore the soul. of Abraham reunited to the souls of ids ancestors. Hence man's soul is immortal, ' according to the law of. Moses. Aaron dies, and is buried on Mount Hor r Not a single tomb of Israel lies there'; and yet he is gathered to his peoplewhere? In the sojourn of souls. Moses, too, died on Mount Nebo, without anybody knowing the place of his sepulture j and yet he is also gathered to his people*. Deuteronomy, chap. 18, v. 11 : There Moses forbids, under severe pains, to interrogate the dead. Such prohibition would have been, futile had not the Hebrews believed the immortality of the soul. Moreover, despite the prohibi" tion of Moses, we see in after times that the same people were much inolined to openr communication with ~ the dead. Witness Saul who, having caused the soul of Samuel to be « evoked by the Pythoness of Gondor, heard from Samuel himself those terrific words, /' To-morrow thou and thy sons will be 'with me." If for the patriarcha everything, would have ended with the present life, how would they have called themselves strangers and travellers on this earth : Thus speaking, says St Paul, so well conversant* with -the laliguage and traditions' of his people, they showed Clearly enough that they sought after theft" country —the heavenly ..country. —."When Moses forbids the Hebije|rs to ,griev» to excess over T. their dead (Deuter. v. 14), he —surely hints to them that- all does not perish with this lifeSt Paul still thrown light upon this passage when he addressed to Christians the same recommendation — Ist Thessaloniang iv. chap, verse 12— "We will have not you ignorant, brethren, .concerning them that are asleep, that you be not sorrowful even as, others, who have no hope. '*" Frequently, in the Old Testament, Jehovah calls himself the God of Abraham and Jacob, oven after the demise of those two , great patriarchs.. But^. as Christ said, "God is not the God of the dead but of ithe living." . - The Hebraic name of the abode of the souls after death was scheol, and the name of the sepulture was keber. -Hence Jacob, hearing of Joseph's „- death, cries out, " I will go dp vm ig my son into the scheol." Jacob would not, could ngt, mention heaven as the immediate place of rendezvous for himself and his son, for they knew well, even at that time, that | Heaven would remain shut against men until the coming of the Redeemer. The above proofs of the immortality of the soul are more than sufficient for a man who, limits his researches to the Books of Moses. It is true that doctrine is not so frequently and so abundantly explained in the law of Moses as it might be expected; but for a people so carnal, so much . inclined to superstition, in the midst of nations so grosslj^jdolafrous, it was enough .to maintain the substance of this teaching, without those particular points of which credulity and superstition would have made an : im- ' mediate and constant , abuse. For similar reasons temporal- recompenses were proposed in a vivid .manner to those material people ; they we're proposed as a national reward to their fidelity to God, but without excluding the pure and eternal recompense of the next world. > . In conclusion, I will still ash; : How ia it that correspondent did not understand those things ? No wonder ' that being completely in the dark he made , . such a fall. But I hope we have come to his rescue. — I am, &c. A Samaritan.