ted into the system of the world. Death that is,
a succession of generations is surely an essential part of the
very constitution of nature, plainly stamped on all those "medals
of the creation" which bear the features of their respective ages
and which are laid up in the archives of geological epochs.
Successive growth and decay is a central part of God's original
plan, as appears from the very structure of living bodies and the
whole order of the globe. Death, therefore, which furthermore
actually reigned on earth unknown ages before the existence of
man, could not have been a fortuitous after clap of human sin. And
so the foregoing theory of a general resurrection as the
restoration of God's broken plan to its completeness falls to the
ground.

The Jews, in the course of their frequent and long continued
intercourse with the Persians, did not fail to be much impressed
with the vivid melodramatic outlines of the Zoroastrian doctrine
of the resurrection. They finally adopted it themselves, and
joined it, with such modifications as it naturally underwent from
the union, with the great dogmas of their own faith. A few faint
references to it are found in the Old Testament. Some explicit
declarations and boasts of it are in the Apocrypha. In the
Targums, the Talmud, and the associated sources, abundant
statements of it in copious forms are preserved. The Jews rested
their doctrine of the resurrection on the same general ground as
the Persians did, from whom they borrowed it. Man was meant to be
immortal, either on earth or in heaven; but Satan seduced him to
sin, and thus wrested from him his privilege of immortality, made
him die and descend into a dark nether realm which was to be
filled with the disembodied souls of his descendants. The
resurrection was to annul all this and restore men to their
original footing.

We need not labor any disproof of the truth or authority of this
doctrine as the Pharisees held it, because, admitting that they
had the record of a revelation from God, this doctrine was not a
part of it. It is only to be found in their canonic scriptures by
way of vague and hasty allusion, and is historically traceable to
its derivation from the pagan oracles of Persia.

5 Frazer, History of Persia, chap. iv. Baur, Symbolik und
Mythologice thl. ii. absch. ii. cap. ss. 394-404.

Of course it is possible that the doctrine of the resurrection, as
the Hebrews held it, was developed by themselves, from i