LETTER XIV.

ANCIENT JEWISH OPINION AS IN THE BOOK OF ENOCH, THE ASCENSION OF ISAIAH, THE TALMUD, AND JOSEPHUS.

FROM the common 'Apocrypha' we may now turn to the lately discovered 'Book of Enoch," which belongs, probably, like Esdras ii., to the half century B.C., and contains references in great profusion to the future state.

Now I grant that if we are willing to rest with the mere sound of words, such as 'for ever and ever,' then nothing can be easier than to satisfy oneself, and whoever else can be thus persuaded, that the author of this book intended to teach the doctrine of 'everlasting sufferings.' But, if we carefully enquire what he really meant by the expressions in question, the result, I believe, will be very different. The language referred to seems hardly, indeed, ever out of his mouth. But to say that he meant by it what we should mean is another

1 An Ethiopic version, in which alone it is now preserved, was brought from Abyssinia by Bruce, and, in 1821, translated by Dr. Laurence. I quote from his 3rd edition in 1838; and from Dillman's "Das Buch Henoch übersetzt und erklärt." 1853.

thing altogether. My firm conviction is this— 'Enoch' (let us call him) teaches that a great many generations (70, he says, c. 10) should elapse before the day of judgment;-after which there should be set up on this earth, for a period of countless ages, the kingdom of God, or the Messiah-during which the righteous should flourish in the perfection of bliss. Now, let us allow that he teaches an equal duration of torment for the wicked-although it is, I think, extremely questionable whether he had one mind, or two, in regard to that;-still, however long the supposed period of suffering, it has, according to him, a decided term; and, this once reached, the wicked shall be no more. As to the righteous-while there is no hint of their continuing longer, there is as little of their coming to an end. Let us, therefore, allow him the true spiritual instinct which assumed that these ages were, in regard to them, only the entrance upon their proper eternity. How one, like the author of the book of Enoch, with a mind so imaginative, and a style so full of exaggeration, could employ language as he does, will surprise us the less when we consider how different is the use which the Old Testament, with all its wonderful soberness, makes of certain expressions from the one which we should venture to make of them. With such language the ordinary Jewish writers of those days had been familiar from their childhood; and we need not wonder if, at times, they allowed a

license to their pens which has deceived some into the belief that they intended to express things that never entered their minds. And yet, as to the present case, I cannot but express my surprise that any thoughtful reader should ever have construed 'Enoch's' high sounding sentences as meaning anything approaching to everlasting suffering.

Let me now give a few specimens of the doctrine -if such it can be called-of the book upon the points that concern us.

(A) DESTRUCTION.

"Woe to you that extend your ill-doing to your neighbour; for ye shall be killed in hell." (c. 99.)

"I will cast them like hay into the fire, and like lead into the water. Thus shall they burn in the presence of the righteous, and sink in the presence of the holy; nor shall a tenth part of them be found." (c. 48.)

"Then shall the roots of iniquity be cut off; sinners perish by the sword; and blasphemers be annihilated everywhere." (c. 90.)

'Approach not the paths of evil, that ye may not perish. Ye are destined to the day of darkness and of the great judgment. This I declare to you, that He who created you will destroy you. He will not show you mercy, but will rejoice in your destruction. Nor hope that ye shall live, ye sinners; but ye shall

2 "No trace of them."-Dillman.

go hence and die, because ye know no ransom price, for ye are prepared for the day of the great judgment." (c. 93, 96.)

[What ambiguity could there be in such words to one brought up on the field of Old Testament language?]

"You who have laboured shall wait in these days till the evildoers are consumed, and the power of the guilty annihilated-shall wait till sin pass away; for their names shall be blotted out of the holy book; their seed shall be destroyed, and their spirits slain. They shall cry out and lament in the horrible waste, and in the bottomless fire shall they burn." (c. 99.)

The sentences that come next are the last in the book, and show the limit which the author attached to this misery, on the one hand, and to the glorious state of the righteous on the other. They show, in fact, how he intended his 'eternity' to be understood.

(B) 'ETERNITY' AND 'ETERNAL LIFE.'

"The righteous shall shine during unnumbered periods. . . . Sinners shall cry out, beholding therein how they exist in splendour, and proceed forwards to the days and periods prescribed for them. . . . The everlasting condemnation shall be far from you for all the generations of the world." (c. 104.)

3 Dillman's version contains these expressions-"The wicked shall go there where days and times are written for them," and "their time of punishment is appointed to them.”—Ihre Straf-zeit ist ihnen bestimmt.

They shall hope for eternal life, and that each of them may live for 500 years." (c. 10.)

[How this is to be explained I do not profess to say-nor the following:] "Righteousness and right shall men plant for ever with delight. Then shall all the saints give thanks, and live till they have begotten a thousand children; while the whole period of their youth and their sabbaths shall be completed in peace."-Ib.

[It seems, in fact, as if he were speaking of the ages of the earth as constituting the utmost extent of that eternity which he designed to picture. Thus he continues:]

"The earth shall be cleansed from all corruption, from every crime, from all suffering, from all punishment; neither will I again send a flood upon it from generation to generation for ever. Peace and equity shall associate with the sons of men all the days of the world, in every generation of it.”—Ib.

[It is the same state of things which he describes in the following:]

"The saints shall exist in the light of the sun, and the elect in the light of everlasting life, the days of whose life shall never terminate, nor shall the days of the saints be numbered. There shall be light interminable, nor shall they enter upon the enumeration of time." (c. 56.)

"The whole account of the luminaries of heaven is for ever, according to every year of the world