business that "he is too honest to succeed.”

It is not his

honesty but his lack of foresight, prudence, and good judgment that has caused his downfall. On the other hand we

see men who are tricky and dishonest acquiring great wealth and apparently living in prosperity. We recognize the dishonesty and so attribute their success to this, while we overlook the remarkable business tact and foresight which they also possess, and which are the real causes of their prosperity. They are successful in spite of their dishonesty, and not because of it. It is true that dishonesty may bring temporary advantage, but this is more than counterbalanced in the long run by the loss of the confidence of the community and the consequent loss of opportunity for acquiring new business. This is particularly true in manufacturing and mercantile affairs. The man who furnishes honest goods and sells them at a fair value and uniform price, if he also possesses foresight and business judgment, is almost sure to outdistance his competitor who is striving to overreach and swindle his customers.

What is true of honesty is also true of liberality and generosity. "There is that scattereth and yet increaseth, and there is that withholdeth more than is meet, but it tendeth to poverty." The employer who treats his employees. not only with fairness, but with liberality, who pays the full market price for wages, who supplies every needed appliance for their health and comfort during the hours of labor, who encourages among them habits of thrift and economy by which they become independent and self-respecting citizens, who assists and stimulates them in every possible way to use their spare hours in self-culture and improvement, will secure for himself direct returns in improved service which will more than repay him for the outlay.

On the other hand the workman who does all he can to develop his skill and perfect himself in the knowledge of his craft, whose heart is in his work and who is ever on the alert

to advance the interest of his employer, will find his daily work has become a pleasure instead of a burden, and will greatly advance his own interests by the more efficient service which he is able to render.

The existing feeling of distrust and animosity between employer and workman is to be exceedingly regretted. The solution of this difficulty is not to be found in mutual hatred and recrimination, but rather in an honest effort of each individual to do his own duty in the responsibilities which are laid upon him. This is the economic solution and is also the Christian solution. Individual responsibility for his own acts is the basis of Christian obligation. The reign of good will upon earth is to be brought about, not by each one neglecting his own duty and criticizing the acts of his neighbor, but rather by charity for our neighbor and the rigid holding of ourselves to responsibility for our own actions. When Christ shall reign supreme in the hearts of all men, the labor problem will disappear, and all will work together for the common good of mankind and for the glory of the Master's kingdom.

ARTICLE III.

IDEAS OF THE FUTURE LIFE IN THE PENTA.

TEUCH.

BY THE REV. THOMAS STOUGHTON POTWIN.

DR. L. H. MILLS, the learned Orientalist of Oxford, has thrown the great weight of his authority in support of the view that the early religion of Israel was "Sadducaic," and indeed hardly allows that the Hebrews before the exile had any real belief in immortality. In Sanscrit studies Dr. Mills

stands for a high antiquity of the literature and profound views in the authors; but when he turns his face toward the Hebrew, he seems to lose his happy power of insight and worthy appreciation.

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It is not strange, perhaps, that the average reader of the English Bible, when he meets the words that the patriarchs were gathered unto their people" (Gen. xlix. 29, 33), gets little, if any, idea beyond that they died as their fathers had died before them. Our modern notions of the future state are so inextricably interwoven with conceptions of reward and punishment, that any language which does not make account of these seems to be almost meaningless and unimportant. Men immersed in the life of to-day are insensibly drawn to interpret all literature by current ideas. But ignorance and confusion are quite sure to result. The whole matter of making Old Testament criticism seem rational and intelligible to men and women who are not scholars strikes upon this obstacle. But learned commentators and students of the world's primitive literatures ought to be able to free themselves from such 1 Nineteenth Century, January, 1894.

limitations, and present us broad and liberal views. I hardly need say, however, that such has not always been the case.

It is conceded, of course, that the moral and religious discipline of the Hebrews was not based directly on sanctions drawn from the life after death. That was conducted theocratically in the present life under promises of present blessings or punitive judgments. This no doubt tended somewhat to limit speculation and minimize controversy regarding the future. But we shall make a great mistake if we infer from this the absence of opinions and expectations for the coming state. This is the first point to fix, the separation, in our search for beliefs in regard to future immortality, of all connection with direct promises and threatenings. What then are our sources of information as to these beliefs?

First, we have the direct sources, in what is said in the Pentateuch of the relations of God to man, what is said of the close of the lives of individuals, and what is said of Sheol as a place of the dead. Then we get indirect but most important evidence by a comparative study of the ideas of other peoples contemporary with, or antecedent to, the Hebrews.

Interpreters of the Old Testament have not denied generally that the Pentateuch contains intimations of the immortality of man, but their conclusions have almost without exception been vitiated by their understanding of Sheol. They put everything under its shadow, and a dreadful shadow it is. Thus Lange says (Gen. xv. 15): "They must then still live upon the other side of death, in another state and life; the continued existence after death is here evident, and, indeed, as the word in peace intimates, a blessed existence for the pious"; but (under Gen. xxv. 8) he adds: The expression (gathered to his people) "designates especially the being gathered into Sheol." In fairness we must also say that he believes that it "also points without doubt, to a communion in a deeper sense with the pious fathers on the other side of death." Lange seems to have made an advance upon the

ideas of Delitzsch, Knobel, and Oehler. Oehler says of Sheol: "Man exists only as a weak shadow which wanders into the kingdom of the dead." "This kingdom is supposed to be in the depths of the earth . . . deeper even than the waters and their inhabitants"-" a region of the thickest darkness, where the light is as midnight"—"where every experience of communion with God is wanting to those resting there."—"The condition in the realm of death is supposed to be the privation of all that belongs to life in the full sense, and so the realm of death is also called simply destruction." He bases his view on such Scripture as Job x. 22; Ps. lxxxviii. 3-6; Job xxvi. 6; Prov. xv. 11. But to explain the state of the dead in this way is a plain case of building dogma out of elegiac poetry.

THE INDIRECT EVIDENCE.

Let us now look, first, at the indirect evidence of ancient Hebrew opinion as derived from a comparison of the opinions of surrounding peoples.

The earliest literature of the East reveals the conception of a blessed life in the spirit world with ancestors as common to Oriental nations. The Vedas show this for the early inhabitants of India. We quote from selections given in the fifth volume of Muir's "Ancient Sanscrit Texts": "By thy guidance, O Soma, our sage ancestors have obtained riches among the gods" (page 284). "The liberal man abides placed upon the summit of the sky; he goes to the gods" (page 285). "May I with my offspring attain immortality" (page 285). "They were the gods, those ancient righteous sages" (page 286). "I have heard of two paths for mortals, that of the fathers and that of the gods" (page 287). "Yama was the first who found for us the way. This home is not to be taken from us. Those who are now born follow by their own paths to the place whither our ancient fathers have departed" (page 292). "Meet with the fathers, meet with Yama. Throwing

1 Theology of the Old Testament, Vol. i. p. 246 f.