any just retribution be compatible with it, it necessarily
implies the vivification of the dead frame, not by the
introduction of new life, but by the reinstalment of the very same
life or spirit, the identical consciousness that before animated
it. Such is not represented as being the case in Ezekiel's vision
of the valley of dry bones. That vision had no reference to the
future state.

In this connection, the revelation made by the angel in his
prophecy, recorded in the twelfth chapter of the Book of Daniel,
concerning the things which should happen in the Messianic times,
must not be passed without notice. It reads as follows: "And many
of the sleepers of the dust of the ground shall awake, those to
life everlasting, and these to shame, to contempt everlasting. And
they that are wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament,
and they that turn many to righteousness, as the stars for ever
and ever." No one can deny that a judgment, in which reward and
punishment shall be distributed according to merit, is here
clearly foretold. The meaning of the text, taken with the
connection, is, that when the Messiah appears and establishes his
kingdom the righteous shall enjoy a bodily resurrection upon the
earth to honor and happiness, but the wicked shall be left below
in darkness and death.3 This seems to imply, fairly enough, that
until the advent of the Messiah none of the dead existed
consciously in a state of retribution. The doctrine of the
passage, as is well known, was held by some of the Jews at the
beginning of the Christian era, and, less distinctly, for about
two centuries previous. Before that time no traces of it can be
found in their history. Now, had a doctrine of such intense
interest and of such vast importance as this been a matter of
revelation, it seems hardly possible that it should have been
confined to one brief and solitary text, that it should have
flashed up for a single moment so brilliantly, and then vanished
for three or four centuries in utter darkness. Furthermore, nearly
one half of the Book of Daniel is written in the Chaldee tongue,
and the other half in the Hebrew, indicating that it had two
authors, who wrote their respective portions at different periods.
Its critical and minute details of events are history rather than
prophecy. The greater part of the book was undoubtedly written as
late as about a hundred and sixty years before Christ, long after
the awful simplicity and solit