application for example, suppose we say, "The dead know not anything," i.e., they appear not to know anything. “In that very day his thoughts perish," i.e., his thoughts appear to perish. I should anticipate objection in some quarters to such readings, though, for myself, I see no evil that need follow, since they would neither prove the natural immortality of the soul nor contradict the tenor of Scripture teaching as to the intermediate state. It has been objected that if the veritable mantle of Samuel could not be reproduced-for mantles at all events have not spirits— neither is it likely that the prophet himself appeared. The mention of the garment is supposed to stamp the whole thing as a delusion. But the weakness of such an objection is felt while it is stated. It may not be possible for us to explain how spiritual beings are clothed, or what may be the nature of that which appears to constitute their apparel: but I can recall no example of a naked spirit, or an angel, being seen in any of the appearances mentioned in Scripture. Why then ought Samuel to be an exception ? I have admitted the probability that Saul did not himself see the form of Samuel at first, but I incline to the idea that he did so subsequently, for we are told that Samuel spoke to him. At any rate he spoke to him, and we say so on the direct authority of the inspired writer, notwithstanding all suggestions to the contrary. I hold to the integrity of the narrative, and feel my position unassailable. : Dr. Kitto says on the passage: "The king, looking closely at the place to which the woman's fixed regards were turned, discerned the figure she described condensing into visibility before him. It has been thought, and we once thought so, that the king did not see the shade, but merely judged it was Samuel from the woman's description but on looking more closely at the text, it becomes more emphatic than at first appears. It is stated that 'Saul perceived (knew, or assured himself) that it was Samuel himself." This is not what the woman saw but what Saul saw, and as the sacred writer gives us the authority of his own declaration for the fact that it was 'Samuel himself' that Saul perceived, we do not feel at liberty to suppose that it was anything else. All the circumstances agree with this, and are unaccountable on any other hypothesis." But objectors perforce must go on altering the passage, for having once begun they cannot well stop. The writer says that "Samuel said to Saul (not that the woman by ventriloquism did so), Why hast thou disquieted me to bring me up?" Saul then relates his distress, and asks Samuel's aid in making known to him what he should do. What follows renders it at once apparent to any one, not strongly prejudiced, that the intelligence of the woman will not cover the whole of the facts to be accounted for. If the former part of this narrative offered difficulties, both numerous and great, to the supposition that the scene enacted at Endor was a clever piece of deception and nothing more; I venture to say that, the latter part of it makes it utterly impossible while holding such a view to do anything like justice to the words of the Bible. It is seriously suggested that this "clever impostor," instead of seeking to curry favour with the king by speaking smooth things to him, proceeded at once to tell him, with great exactness, tidings of the most unwelcome kind. Nothing short of the overthrow of the nation, the death of himself and his three sons, and all this to happen the very next day! We must here say that such extraordinary cleverness is not usually found in people of the fortunetelling order. We should rather have expected her-if indeed an impostor-to tell Saul something agreeable and soothing. Bear in mind her circumstances. She had been under the royal ban but a few minutes previously; how was she to know that a dark tale of woe, gratuitously spun out of her imagination, would not so exasperate the king that he might order her to be put to death on the spot? If it were all deceit, is it not more likely that she would have predicted good things to the troubled monarch? And then again, to make all her predictious of evil fall due on the morrow, so that almost immediately she would be discovered as an arrant cheat and visited doubtless with the punishment of death. All this it is extremely difficult to account for on the supposition of fraud and imposition. And what shall be said of the predictions themselves? Let us mark that there were at least six distinct things predicted. The overthrow of Israel at the hands of the Philistines; the death (for that is understood, verse 19) of Saul; the deaths of his three sons; and that all these things should happen on the morrow. The woman, even supposing her a "clever impostor," "clever impostor," was not pressed in any way to predict evil, and far less such a crushing weight of it; and I cannot but think of her as anything but "clever " if she did all this on the barest chance of its coming true the next day. But it is impossible. That she should have uttered the predictions is, for the reasons given, improbable in the extreme; that, having uttered them, they should all of them be exactly fulfilled, impossible on the supposition of her being a mere deceiver. It is only evidence of the strength of a preconceived opinion, to affirm that not only was the woman a wicked impostor, but that these six predictions and their exact fulfilment were just a sample of what such persons are sometimes lucky enough to experience; in other words, a mere coincidence. Those who make such an assertion must certainly do so in profound ignorance of the doctrine of probabilities, which would teach them that the chances against the supposition are practically infinite. But there is one other supposition, thrown in as a make-weight, with the same gratuitousness as is the assertion of her utter perfidy, to account for her prophetic gift. She may have been a clairvoyante! May she? In that case how much was imposture? If I understand rightly what clairvoyance is, it is not to be looked upon as imposture. I am disposed to regard this idea, however, as but an awkward expedient to get rid of the facts. It is ever a human weakness to explain away and argue against all difficulties in the way of an accepted theory, rather than take the unpalatable truth in the shape in which it presents itself. Now it so happens that this narrative stands right in the path of the notion that there is no such thing as consciousness after death in the intermediate state therefore it must be gagged, throttled, got rid of somehow. It was mere imposture;" it was a happy hit;" it was 66 clairvoyance!" In any case it must not be allowed to give any support to the common belief that the soul after death is still in conscious existence. 66 The conclusion of the narrative is in strict keeping with the whole. The king and all concerned behaved as if they felt and believed, and the author of the book writes as if he believed also, that Samuel really had appeared, and that the solemn words spoken were truthful and real. Saul was stunned at hearing of his approaching doom, and "fell straightway all along on the earth, and was sore afraid, because of the words of Samuel." And though his physical strength was exhausted not only by mental agitation but by long abstinence from food, it was only by the earnest importunity of the woman and his servants that he was prevailed upon to partake of the nourishment she provided ere they departed. Thus Samuel, after his death and burial at Ramah, appeared to and conversed with king Saul at Endor. * Z. MAN GIVETH UP THE GHOST, AND WHERE IS HE? JOB xiv. 10. F this question be new and strange to some reader, into whose hands this article may come, we would preface what we have to say by remarking that the popular idea of the intermediate state troubled us for years, by reason of the many difficulties it presented to an intelligent apprehension of the subject, until we went to the Scriptures to inquire for ourselves, how far the several passages which appeared to favour the view that instant death is instant glory would bear the construction based upon them. And in this our course of inquiry, we have been considerably helped by the many ably written articles that intelligent Christian men and scholars have contributed to this periodical, notably those of the Rev. Henry Constable, late Prebendary of Cork, which have since appeared in a volume, and recently in a second edition with certain additions, published by Kellaway & Co., 10, Warwick Lane, Paternoster Row, under the name of "Hades, or the Intermediate State of Man." Whether it is that this able production is not sufficiently known or not sufficiently studied, we cannot tell; but observing the question again asked in the April number of this magazine, Where are the dead? we have ventured an attempt to throw yet further light upon the subject, by considering more fully the effect of death upon the tripartite nature of man, agreed as we are supposed to be upon the terms adopted by the apostle, "spirit, soul, and body" (1 Thess. v. 23). What happens, then, when the earthly tabernacle wherein we dwell becomes dissolved?" The connection hitherto subsisting between spirit, soul, and body becomes dissolved, and no better term could be employed to express the change. The man that was, is man no longer. The body that we knew as our friend has become a corpse and we bury it; dust it was and to dust it returns. We speak of it as his remains, but we have no Scripture warrant for the term; our friend is dead since he is no longer found among the living. Abraham buried Sarah, and Jacob buried Rachel, and when Joseph died they embalmed him and he was put in a coffin in Egypt. And surely He best knew who said concerning the believer in him, "I will raise him up at the last day!" Then the he, the ego, the man proper, is that of him which men have put into a grave, where he continues until raised up again at the last day. Of course the intelligent reader will understand that our Lord, in speaking of the grave, spoke in general terms when he said, "All that are in their graves. shall hear his voice," mindful that many have had no graves other than the sea, the flames, or wild beasts. So much for the body, which more than either soul or spirit is acknowledged in Scripture to be the man. But now as to the soul that belonged to the man-What is it, and what becomes of it when death has gained dominion over the man? Perhaps all our readers may not know, or knowing may not have considered sufficiently, that the word soul, as given us by our translators, has, at the least, eight distinct meanings in the Scriptures, making it to appear that the translators have used it loosely according to their understanding of the text in which it occurs. In some places, without any violence to the text, and with much more intelligence, we might, instead of soul, read breath; in others, life; in others, reason; in others, affection; in others, the responsible faculty; in others, the individual person; in others, the living body; and in three places, even the dead body. Too much importance then has been attached to the word soul, as if it necessarily expressed the immortal part of man, the all-important entity, instead of the least important, because the most evanescent part of man. If the Scriptures are to be our guide to an understanding of its nature, let us be content with its primary definition, as given us in Gen. ii. 7: "The Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul," i.e. man became alive; a man he was before he had breath, and a man he continues after his breath has left him, but breath becomes life to him. But the living and breathing creatures around him have this kind of soul too. To them likewise is ascribed a soul (see Gen. i. 20, 30; vii. 22; Eccles. iii. 19); so that we think too much has been made of the words, "The Lord God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life," because it is expressed only of man, and not of the fish, fowl, or brute, in whose nostrils also is the same breath of life. What then becomes of the soul or breath of either man or beast when they die? What is it but the surrounding atmosphere inhaled and exhaled, and their last breath becomes their last because they lose power to inhale another? Again, man and beast derive their life not from oxygen alone, they must have meat and drink, and these three combine to supply the body with that living motive power which we call, and rightly call, life. But oxygen without meat and drink, or meat and drink without oxygen, would soon prove insufficient to keep body and soul together. Not less dependent is the breath than the body upon both meat and drink. Suspend these, and what becomes of those? But we call the breath the soul, because its presence indicates life as a rule. We are not unmindful of exceptional cases of apparently suspended animation, but they affect not the rule that breath is the surest indication of life. The soul then is not the man, but something that once belonged to him, something that he can part with, but when parted with, he still remains a man, only a dead man. In answer then to our question, What becomes of it? we reply: It goes forth (Psa. cxlvi. 4.), and failing to return, ceases to be an entity. But now we come to the third and last part of man, the first named by the apostle, and hence we account it the most important of the whole, viz., the spirit. "Yet there is a spirit in man, and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth them (therein) understanding" (Job xxxii. 8). And here let us observe the inspiration or breath of the Almighty giveth this their spirit understanding such as the beasts have not. This also belongs to man, it bespeaks the man, it portrays the man more than any other part of him, while it is not the man. He may have a weak or strong frame to do and dare little or much. He may have strong or weak lungs, to inhale and exhale much or little oxygen, to speak with a voice loud or weak as a whisper. But we make account of the man according to this part of him, which speaks in the memories of his friends long after he has gone, and in his writings long after memories have faded and passed away. Yes; long, very long after his body has returned to his native dust, and his words have ceased to vibrate in the air, we make account of man according to this part of him wherein dwelt his understanding. What then is this which is mine while not myself? My spirit containing character. Character! How shall I speak or think thereof when as yet unformed, unmade? Or is the beautiful simplicity of childhood in its loving trustful confidence, the God-given faculty capable of formation or deformation, according to the usage it has at my hand? Yes, verily, a well-bound book, blank, clean, and clear, stained somewhat indeed by original sin, but only to make me the more conscious that I can only do a divine work by divine aid—a block of Carrara marble with just one black vein running throughout, but unwrought as yet by chisel or mallet: the canvas all prepared for the artist's pencil with a certain dark tint only to set forth the subject better, but as yet, no line or feature traced. Not myself, but something given me to mould and fashion, form and fit to the best of my ability. What then becomes of this at death? It returns to God who gave it, and remains in his keeping against that day. Not as it came does it return, but a vessel unto honour, meet for the Master's use; or a vessel of wrath fitted for destruction, according as I have used or abused my opportunity to glorify God therein. Yes; this my spirit bearing my character, returns to him, and lives in his keeping, and thus, and thus |