there is no rest, saith my God, to the wicked." The solemn announcement must include their future being even more so than their present mundane existence, dark and turbulent as it

לא יוכל השקט,issin is everlasting restlessness

The association of ideas is so natural that we are not surprised to find the vulgar notion of the bad soul's haunting disquietude set forth as a philosophic deduction by the wisest mind in antiquity. They are so naturalized, says Plato, in the Phaedon, 81, C. D., that they become visible, and these are the wandering spirits that haunt the earth in their horror of the purely spiritual state, and their longing desire to get back into their old bodies. Wherefore they are seen around the burying-places, and become shadowy apparitions that frighten the living, and from whom arise the stories of ghostly apparitions that have prevailed in every age. "It is the sluggish nature, the heavy, the earthly, the visible, (or the palpable to sense.) The soul that hath these is weighed down, and dragged back to the visible (or the world of sense) in its fear of the invisible, that is, of Hades, as it is said; and so it wallows around the monuments and burying-grounds, where these become visible shadowy apparitions of ghosts, idola, shades, or images, such as souls of this nature produce, seeing that they are not purely set free from the body, but still partake of the visible, (or the sensual,) wherefore they become objects of sight."

The imagery is different, but it is the same awful idea of unrest that is expressed by Peter and Jude. True, indeed, of the condition of the wicked in this world, but still more suggestive of their doom in the world of spirits,-" clouds are they without water, carried about by the winds; wild waves of the sea, foaming out their own shame; wandering stars, for whom is reserved the blackness of darkness forever," or, as Tanchum interprets, (1 Sam. xxv, 29:) "cast out from the sling, sent whirling, quasi in impetu et circulo fundae, the sport of the waves and vortices, finding nowhere any place of rest."

The locality of all this, whether of the rest or the unrest, is comparatively of little consequence. There may be blessedness in an unterwelt or subterranean world, (the notion that some would regard as so gross,) if Christ be there-the good Shepherd or Bishop of souls in the naby, or terra umbrarum--while

an aerial locality may be the abode of beings more evil than any upon the earth: see Ephesians ii, 2, Tòv äρxovta Tñs įšovolas 'AEPOΣ, "The 'prince of the powers (or power, collectively) of the air." It is not extravagant to suppose that there are allusions to such a state of rest in the spirit-world presented in certain favorite expressions of the Psalms, such as, the secret place of his tabernacle. Psalms xxvii, 5; xxxii, 7, TD, "the hiding-place of thy wings," and "thy tabernacle

,סתר אהלו

the secret * סתר עליון,,Psalm lxi ;אהלך עלמים ",of the eternities

place of the Most High;" Psalm xci, 1, 5, "the shadow of the Almighty." All these, through similar imagery, present the same constant idea. It is protection, security, peace, having its significance for this world if any choose to rest there, but reaching its full complement of meaning only in a state of being to which these conceptions primarily and essentially belong. Such is the sense which the devout reader easily takes now, and we may rationally believe that it was not remote to the feeling and thinking of those who first employed this kind of language. It may find its application on earth, but it is too high and holy to rest there. It doubtless has a temporal significance, but, like other things in the Old Testament diction, it has the eternal shining through it. Among others, that remarkable language, Psalm lxi, 5, by as, "thy tabernacle of the eternities," seems in direct contrast with the transient tabernacle of the Israelitish journeyings. It is the "tabernacle which God has pitched,” and which never is to be taken down or removed.

Opposed to these delightful expressions of security and rest there are others in the Scriptures whose true significance we get by regarding them in direct contrast, and as denoting a state in all respects the reverse: such, for example, as 2, rendered, "the horrible pit." more correctly fovea strepitus, "the roaring pit," or "the pit of the awful sounds;"* the

*There is an awful passage in the myth at the end of Plato's "Republic," whether we regard it a popular myth or tradition, or a mythological theosophism invented by the philosopher, though grounded on the popular idea. Among the purgatorial experiences is the passage of a thousand years in the fiery river until it comes round to the mouth or pit where the condemned souls meet the crises of their destiny, whether to escape their purgatorial pains or to remain in them forever. As they near this σróшov, or mouth, they wait in awful expectation for the pit to sound, uvкnoаolaι, to roar, or bellow. This is the signal of

Psalm,יון מצולה ואין מעמד the miry elay, Psalm xl, 2; the ,טיט היון

lxix, 2, the miry deep, or the ever-sinking quicksands on which there is no standing, no rest, no security; an ever going down deeper and deeper into perdition. To the same class belong the bana, "the rivers of Belial," Psalm xviii, 5. Some of these expressions remind us of the Greek notions of the rivers in Hades and of the Bópßopos or mire in which lie the profane or the uninitiated,* the muddy, fiery torrents, the abode of souls condemned to everlasting restlessness and disappointment. We cannot suppose the Hebrew conception borrowed from them. May it not be the other way? The Oriental mind is content with a primitive conception, and seldom expands it. Hence the reserve every-where maintained in the Old Testament, as though it would hold the thought in check, rather than encourage the fancy in respect to it. It presents a few grand yet shadowy images of both conditions, such as the "gathering to the fathers," the "bundles of life," the "casting forth," the "angel driving into darkness," the "wicked man driven away in his wickedness;" and then allows no shading or retouching of the picture. The Greeks, on the other hand, when they get hold of such an idea, set no limits to their fancy. Other nations go still further. They make it sometimes not only fanciful, but monstrous and grotesque. This is the way with the Scandinavian mythology. There was a similar tendency, though far short of that extent, among the latter Jews. The sacred writers, however, were held in check, and this continued until the canon of the older inspiration was completed. Then came the Targumists, the Talmudists, and the later Rabbinical writers. Here the check seems wholly withdrawn, as is shown by the extravagance and abundance of their Targumistic paraphrases and their Talmudic fables. Tanchum was one of the soberest of the Jewish commentators, and he only professes to interpret, instead of improving upon, the ancient text. Thus, this interpretation of 1 Samuel their eternal doom. The pains they suffer in the fiery stream are beyond conception, but the climax is the hour of suspense they experience as they near this fearful crisis. This is the crowning misery of the thousand years' purgation, ἔνθα δὴ φόβων πολλῶν γεγονότων τοῦτον ὑπερβάλλειν τὸν φόβον, εἰ μυκήσαιτο τὸ OTÓμLOV. Though, during all this time, there are many fears, yet the fear surpasses them all lest the pit should bellow. Plato, "Rep.," 616, A.

* See the Gorgias.

xxv, 29, which he gives us, may be regarded as, in the main, faithful to the old thought of the text in its concise proverbial form; but we find no such expansions of it in the Scriptures themselves. It is not the way of the Bible to give exegesis of its own meaning. Yet such modes of expression are most significant when regarded as containing a thought so fixed and universal as to need no interpreter. Compare Daniel xii, 13, "But go thy way, Daniel, and take thy rest, (man,) and stand in thy lot at the end of the days." man is used here as denoting something which the prophet well understood, as in accordance with the common belief of his nation. It is the same with that blessed holy rest of Samuel from which Saul's earthly trouble disquieted him, when safely "bound up in the bundle of lives with the Lord his God." It is the rest described Isaiah lvii, 2, "May he rest in peace:" "Requiescat in pace.” This formula, too, is but another mode of saying, "Let his soul be bound up in the bundle of lives." In the mouth of the light and flippant Abigail it may have been a mere formal complimentary phrase, like the salutations of Boaz and his reapers already mentioned, Dominus vobiscum, or like a modern Eastern salaam; but in its origin it must have had a deeper significance. Had it denoted any common temporal good, and that alone, it would not have taken this highly figurative aspect and this succinct proverbial form.

There is another conclusion that Rabbi Tanchum derives from this passage, (1 Samuel xxv, 29,) which is well worthy of notice. He takes it as an unquestionable declaration of another life, implying even now a community of souls; not only of souls in the past who here had their earthly being, but of souls to be born who are yet, somehow, in the fasciculus vitarum, a great "bundle of life;" and he draws from it this remarkable inference as to the superiority of the Jewish nation in this knowledge (not philosophy) of the future life. "But if this be the fair intent of the words of Abigail in the text, namely, to convey this idea of another life, then is it a proof that a mystery so strange to the intellects of men, so remote from their thoughts to the knowledge of which those most illustrious for wisdom arrive only through much labor and study, and through difficult illustrations and argumentations-that such a mystery, I say, was known in those times, and made

familiar even to the women! Surely this is a most valid argument to show that there was, in our nation, a deep and widely diffused wisdom, even as is said of them, (Deut. iv, 6,) 'surely a people wise and understanding is this great nation.""

והיתה נפש אדני צרורה,and the prayer צרור חיים,The expression

D", "May the soul of my Lord be bound up in the bundle of life," Maimonides regards as the opposite of the Jewish form of excommunication on the Cereth (n) in the formula, "Let that soul be cut off from the people." This means, says Maimonides, (" Porta Mosis," Pocock's edition, page 154,) л7

world, it is cut off in the olam habba, or world to come, and is

By being exscinded (cut off in this בעולם הזה הכרת לעולם הבא

,והיתה נפש אדני צרורה,thus opposed to that other word of Scripture

"Be the soul of my Lord bound up in the bundle of life." Quare: Did the ideas of binding and loosing in our world what is bound or loosed in the other come from these forms into the Jewish, and from thence into the language of the Christian Church?

Cereth, Kereth, n, was the excision, the excommunication from the Jewish nation, from the Jewish Church, from its community of life, its fasciculus vitarum, or ". Like other symbolical words of the Old Testament, it has a sense beyond the merest letter. It has a significance deepening and expanding, according to the spiritual stand-point of the interpreter, or his view of the Jewish life as merely historical, like any other national life, or as symbolical, throughout, of a far higher and more spiritual community.

Maimonides regards Kereth (n) as denoting annihilation. See "Porta Mosis," Pocock's edition, page 154, 10: "The most complete wretchedness is the Kereth or excision of the soul, which is its destruction-that it may no longer have continuance of being. And this is the Kereth or excision mentioned in the law; for the meaning of Kereth is the cutting off of the soul, as it (the law) explains and says, 'that soul shall be surely cut off and so they say, (our wise men,) by being cut off in this world it is cut off in the world to come, and the Scripture saith, 'Let the soul of my Lord be bound up in the bundle of life,' etc. For whoever continues in mere bodily pleasures, pursuing them alone, and rejecting truth, while ever embracing the false, is cut off from that high degree,