is stated, it
would not so easily have passed from notice, but mighty
inferences, never to be forgotten, would have been drawn from it
at once. The story as it stands reminds one of the closing scene
in the career of Romulus, speaking of whom the historians say, "In
the thirty seventh year of his reign, while he was reviewing an
army, a tempest arose, in the midst of which he was suddenly
snatched from the eyes of men. Hence some thought he was killed by
the senators, others, that he was borne aloft to the gods."2 If
the ascension of Elijah to heaven in a chariot of fire did really
take place, and if the books held by the Jews as inspired and
sacred contained a history of it at the time of our Savior, it is
certainly singular that neither he nor any of the apostles allude
to it in connection with the subject of a future life.

The miracles performed by Elijah and by Elisha in restoring the
dead children to life related in the seventeenth chapter of the
First Book of Kings and in the fourth chapter of the Second Book
are often cited in proof of the position that the doctrine of
immortality is revealed in the Old Testament. The narration of
these events is found in a record of unknown authorship. The mode
in which the miracles were effected, if they were miracles, the
prophet measuring himself upon the child, his eyes upon his eyes,
his mouth upon his mouth, his hands upon his hands, and in one
case the child sneezing seven times, looks dubious. The two
accounts so closely resemble each other as to cast still greater
suspicion upon both. In addition to these considerations, and even
fully granting the reality of the miracles, they do not touch the
real controversy, namely, whether the Hebrew Scriptures contain
the revealed doctrine of a conscious immortality or of a future
retribution. The prophet said, "O Lord my God, let this child's
soul, I pray thee, come into his inward parts again." "And the
Lord heard the voice of Elijah, and the soul of the child came
into him again, and he revived." Now, the most this can show is
that the child's soul was then existing in a separate state. It
does not prove that the soul was immortal, nor that it was
experiencing retribution, nor even that it was conscious. And we
do not deny that the ancient Jews believed that the spirits of the
dead retained a nerveless, shadowy being in the solemn vaults of
the under world. The Hebrew word rendered soul in the text is
susceptible of three m