I come again, and will receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also." There are two other passages in this Gospel which we do well to study in connection with the one last cited. In vi, 38, 39, Jesus says: "I am come down from heaven, not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me. And this is the will of him that sent me, that of all that which he hath given me (nav 8 dédwnév μol; observe the neuter singular, and the concept of the whole vast body of believers as one gift) I should lose nothing, but should raise it up at the last day." In the intercessory prayer he again thus refers to this gift of the Father: "Father, that which thou hast given me (8 dédwrás μoi), I desire that, where I am, they also may be with me; that they may behold my glory, which thou hast given me; for thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world." In the preceding verses he has prayed "that they may all be one," and "that they may be perfected into one." The one great body of Christ's inheritance is here evidently contemplated as a unit, and this thought is prominent at the beginning of verse 24; but when the idea of "beholding his glory" finds expression, each individual believer is thought of as seeing for himself and not for another; for they are all to be with him, and the plural (kákētvo, they also) is employed in spite of the apparent grammatical impropriety. Thus each one and all of those whom the Father gives the Son as a glorious possession, and who thus become joint heirs with Christ (comp. Rom. viii, 17) are conceived as beholding the ineffable glory of his heavenly abode. He prepares a place for them among the mansions of his Father's house, and there he will receive them unto himself. They shall be like him and see him as he is (1 John iii, 2).

Alford's note on John xvii, 24, is discriminating and appreciative: "The neuter has a peculiar solemnity, uniting the whole church together as one gift of the Father to the Son. Then the Kákiētvo resolves it into the great multitude whom no man can number, and comes home to the heart of every individual believer with inexpressibly sweet assurance of an eternity with Christ."-Greek Testament, in loco.

CHAPTER X

THE DOCTRINE OF THE RESURRECTION

1. A Doctrine Variously Apprehended. The biblical doctrine of immortality and eternal life cannot be fully presented without a careful study of those scriptures which speak of the "resurrection of the dead." The fact or reality of resurrection, in some sense, is conceded to be a positive doctrine of the Scriptures, and Paul's argument, in 1 Cor. xv, 1-19, makes this doctrine fundamental to Christian faith and hope. But centuries of experience, observation, and controversy, since Paul wrote, have shown that a great doctrine may be generally and even universally accepted, while the modes of conceiving and stating it may vary to extremes which are quite irreconcilable. It may also be found upon careful investigation that the different biblical writers who deal with this subject are not in exact accord with one another.

2. Vaguely Expressed in Old Testament. It is not strange that the idea of a complete restoration of the dead body should become associated with the doctrine of a future life. But the idea seems to arise in the later elaborations of the doctrine, and in attempts to answer the question, "In what form and manner do the dead ones live hereafter ?" Thus in the Zoroastrian doctrines of the future we find in the older portions of the Avesta only a general affirmation of the renovation of all things, but in the later literature the resurrection of the body is shown to be as credible a thought as the creation of any bodily form at the first.' In like manner the Hebrew scriptures contain no very certain indications of this doctrine before the time of the Babylonian exile, and all that is found is of a vague and general character, and usually expressed in the poetic and apocalyptic style.

(1) Psalm xvii, 15. As an example of vagueness and uncertainty in a text often cited in proof of bodily resurrection we may note the different interpretations of Psa. xvii, 15. The common version is most familiar: "As for me, I will behold thy face in righteousness: I shall be satisfied, when I awake, with thy likeness." On this Adam Clarke thus comments: "I do not think that he refers to the resurrection of the body, but to the

1 Compare Yasna xxx, 9; Vendidad xviii, 51, and the more elaborate argument of the Bundahish xxx.

resurrection of the soul in this life; to the regaining of the image which Adam lost." The Anglo-American revisers carry the idea of beholding God, given in the first member of the parallelism, into the second member thus: "I shall be satisfied, when I awake, with beholding thy form." But the Polychrome Bible renders it, "I shall be refreshed at thine awaking, with a vision of thee." This follows the Septuagint and the Vulgate, which read, "I shall be satisfied when thy glory appears." Thus the awaking is understood of the awaking of Jehovah, not of the psalmist. The writer of the psalm is one in great trouble because of "deadly enemies that compass him about" (ver. 9), and he calls on Jehovah to arise and deliver him from their power (ver. 13), confident that when God's glorious form appears, he himself will behold it and be satisfied. All these are possible explanations of the text, and show that the thought intended is too uncertain for the passage to be of any value as a proof-text of the doctrine of resurrection. (2) Language of Other Poets and Prophets. In Deut. xxxii, 39, we read: "I put to death and make alive again." Similarly the parallelism in 1 Sam. ii, 6:

Jehovah puts to death and makes alive;

He brings down to Sheol, and he brings up.'

A similar thought is also expressed in Isa. xxv, 8: "He hath swallowed up death forever; and Jehovah will wipe away tears from off all faces." But such a statement determines nothing as to a resurrection of bodies from the grave, neither can we make the language of Hos. xiii, 14, mean more than a recognition of Jehovah's absolute power over death and the whole realm of the dead:

I will ransom them from the power of Sheol;

I will redeem them from death.

O death, where are thy plagues?
O Sheol, where is thy destruction?

Nevertheless, it is not difficult to recognize in this language some idea of resurrection from death. The earliest readers of these poets and prophets might easily have supposed that the mighty God, who has all power over the realms of the dead, and who is himself the author of life, could rescue his people from the bands of Sheol and restore them to a life more glorious than they had known before. Certain it is that the readers of a later time have

"

These lines are repeated in Tobit xiii, 2:-"He leads down to Hades, and he leads up again." Also in a slightly changed and enlarged form in the Wisdom of Solomon, xvi, 13: "Thou hast authority over life and death, and thou leadest down to the gates of Hades and leadest up again."

thought the words appropriate to the doctrine of a personal resurrection from the dead, and Paul so cites them in his discussion of the doctrine (1 Cor. xv, 54, 55).

(3) Hosea vi, 1-3. The following language from Hos. vi, 1-3, has been variously understood and applied:

Come and let us return unto Jehovah;

For he hath torn, and he will heal us;

He hath smitten, and he will bind us up.

After two days he will revive us:

On the third day he will raise us up,

And we shall live before him.

And let us know, let us follow on to know Jehovah;
His going forth is sure as the morning:

And he shall come unto us as the rain,

As the latter rain that watereth the earth.

Whether we understand these words as the language of smitten Israel exhorting one another to turn to Jehovah, or the utterances of the prophet himself appealing to the fallen people of Israel and urging them to return to their God, the idea of a resurrection attaches to the words revive us, and raise us up. But the entire context shows that the persons addressed are not physically dead, and therefore there can be no thought here of a resurrection of dead bodies, or of a calling back departed souls to life in the flesh. The other metaphorical allusions employed in the passage indicate a spiritual and national quickening, a restoration to God's favor, a healing of that which had been torn (comp. v, 14), a binding up of that which had been smitten by divine judgments, and a refreshing such as the morning brings and such as comes with the welcome rain. So the metaphor of resurrection is to be spiritually taken, and cannot be cited to prove that this prophet or the Israelites of his time believed in the doctrine of a resurrection of the body.'

(4) Isaiah xxvi, 19. The concept of a physical resurrection is much more definitely expressed in Isa. xxvi, 19. The entire context (vers. 12-21) must be studied in order to grasp the author's range of thought. He represents the people of Jehovah as having been under the rule of other lords; in their distress they call upon him, writhe as in labor-pains, and confess their helplessness to

1 Many of the older expositors, however, insisted that verse 2 contains an express prediction of the resurrection of Jesus on the third day. Some displayed a disposition of bitter hostility towards those who could find no such specific prediction. Such facts admonish us that not only have predictions of Christ been discovered in Old Testament texts where no sound exegesis finds them, but also that ideas of a physical resurrection have been evolved out of poetic metaphors, which, when first used by the biblical writer, were not at all designed to inculcate such a dogma, nor to affirm it as a fact.

save their land or multiply their nation. The prophet impersonates the penitent and prayerful people, and referring to the lords who had oppressed them, he says (ver. 14): "The dead ones shall not live; the shades shall not rise up; therefore didst thou visit and destroy them, and cause all memory of them to perish." Then, after telling how Jehovah had multiplied the nation that kept pouring out prayers even while he was chastening them, he breaks out in the following poetic strain:

Thy dead shall live; my body-they shall rise;
Awake and sing, O dwellers in the dust;

For the dew of lights is thy dew, and the earth shall cast
forth her shades.

These dead ones who shall live are the deceased ones of Jehovah's people and nation; they are conceived as one body, the collective Israel, of which the prophet considers himself a part and calls it "my body." Each individual of this collective body is destined to live again, and he uses the plural "they shall rise." The divine power which shall bring them forth is called "the dew of lights"; not earthly dew which quickens perishable vegetation, but the dew of heavenly luminaries, which starts forth into life the spirits of the dead, "the shades." So enrapturing is the thought that the prophet breaks out with emotion, and calls upon the dwellers of the dust to awake and sing for joy. But this highly wrought poetic scripture cannot be legitimately construed to support the doctrine of a universal physical resurrection. Jehovah's dead ones live again, but the shades of the lords who oppressed Israel shall not live nor rise (ver. 14). This statement is as positive as that in Job xiv, 10-12:

The strong man dies and is laid low;

Yea, man breathes out his life, and where is he?

As waters go off from the sea,

And the river wastes and dries away:

So man lieth down and shall not rise;

Till the heavens be no more they shall not awake,
Nor shall they be roused up from their sleep.

No future resurrection is compatible with these assertions, and the language in Isaiah is equally explicit touching the dead oppressors of Israel. But the dead body (na, carcass) of God's people shall live and rise again; the dwellers in the dust may

1 Some understand , lights, here as in Kings iv, 39, to signify herbs; but this interpretation seems to miss the true and deeper thought of the prophet. "The prophet means to say," says Cheyne, "Thy dew, O Jehovah, is so full of the light of life that it even draws forth the shades from the dark womb of the underworld."-Commentary on Isaiah, in loco.