which are urged to show
that the reality of a retributive life after death is a revealed
doctrine of the Old Testament, will be found, upon critical
examination, either to owe their entire relevant force to
mistranslation, or to be fairly refuted by the reasonings already
advanced. Professor Stuart admits that he finds only one
consideration to show that Moses had any idea of a future
retribution; and that is, that the Egyptians expressly believed
it; and he is not able to comprehend how Moses, who dwelt so long
among them, should be ignorant of it.4 The reasoning is obviously
inconsequential. It is not certain that the Egyptians held this
doctrine in the time of Moses: it may have prevailed among them
before or after, and not during, that period. If they believed it
at that time, it may have been an esoteric doctrine, with which he
did not become acquainted. If they believed it, and he knew it, he
might have classed it with other heathen doctrines, and supposed
it false. And, even if he himself believed it, he might possibly
not have inculcated it upon the Israelites; and the question is,
what he did actually teach, not what he knew.

The opinions of the Jews at the time of the Savior have no bearing
upon the point in hand, because they were acquired at a later
period than that of the writing of the records we are now
considering. They were formed, and gradually grew in consistency
and favor, either by the natural progress of thought among the
Jews themselves, or, more probably, by a blending of the
intimations of the Hebrew Scriptures with Gentile speculations,
the doctrines of the Egyptians, Hindus, and Persians. We leave
this portion of the subject, then, with the following proposition.
In the canonic books of the Old Dispensation there is not a single
genuine text, claiming to come from God, which teaches explicitly
any doctrine whatever of a life beyond the grave. That doctrine as
it existed among the Jews was no part of their pure religion, but
was a part of their philosophy. It did not, as they held it, imply
any thing like our present idea of the immortality of the soul
reaping in the spiritual world what it has sowed in the physical.
It simply declared the existence of human ghosts amidst unbroken
gloom and stillness in the cavernous depths of the earth, without
reward, without punishment, without employment, scarcely
with consciousness, as will immediately appear.

We proceed to the second general divisi