Lucy Larcom.

"If a man die shall he live again?" Job xiv-14. WHETHER or not the patriarch could answer his own perplexing question, it is hard to say. While there are passages which suggest some insight on his part into the great problem of eternal destiny, there are others like the following which are indicative of an absolute lack of any knowledge or conviction on the subject:

...

"There is hope of a tree if it be cut down that it will sprout again. . . . but man dieth and wasteth away; yea man giveth up the ghost and where is he?" Job xiv-7, 10.

The people, too, ainong whom his question was preserved not only were unable to answer it, but seemed to have cared little for speculating about it. With the ancient Israelite the grave, if it did not end all, at least allowed no hopeful outlook into the future. Hezekiah, who was a representative Hebrew of the better class in his day and generation, turned his face to the wall and wept sore when told that he must die; and when he was recovered, so far from having learned a lesson from his illness, he wrote these mournful words:

"For the grave cannot praise thee; death cannot celebrate thee; they that go down into the pit cannot hope for the truth." Isaiah xxxviii.-18.

Nor did the Psalmist take a less melan

choly view of the subject when he declared,

"The dead praise not the Lord, neither any that go down into silence."

Nor the preacher when he wrote,

"For the living know that they shall die; but the dead know not anything." Ecclesiastes ix-5.

Over patriarchs, judges, kings, prophets and scribes through all the Jewish dispensation hung the dark cloud of uncertainty and gloom.

1 Socrates. A translation of the Apology, Crito and parts of Phædo. New York: Chas. Scribner's Sons.

Nor when we survey the Gentile world do we find any clearer apprehension of the subject. The Greeks it is true, in common with the Egyptians and the Persians, held a certain abstract belief in immortality; which however was nothing more than an abstraction and afforded them no ground of hope or expectation. The average Greek was a materialist. His bright and buoyant temperament repelled the idea of death. "When he lost a friend he sighed a melancholy farewell after him to the faded shore of ghosts. Summoned himself, he departed with a lingering look at the sun and a tearful adieu to the bright day and the earth." green

It is to a man's tomb that we naturally look for some expression of his faith in the life to come. But in the Greek mortuary inscriptions we find only the sad farewell of those who are bereft of hope. Here are one or two specimens from tombs near Athens dating from about the fourth century, B. C. :

"She who lies here coveted not while alive garments or gold but desired discretion and virtue. But now, Dionysia, in place of youth and bloom the Fates have awarded thee this sepulchre."

"My name is Athenais and with grief I go to

my place among the dead, leaving my husband and my darling children. A grudging web the Fates spun for me."

Reading these and the larger number of epitaphs from which they are selected, one can hardly avoid concurring in the opinion of a recent writer. "It is certain that

throughout Greece in antiquity the future life was by the common people looked upon with distaste if not with dread; and that

1 Alger's "History of the Doctrino of a Future Life," p. 196.

Now in the light of these facts would it not be unexpected, at least, to find the earliest response to the patriarch's question coming from a Greek?

But "it is the unexpected," some one says, "which happens." And so it proves; for two hundred and fifty years before any expression of belief in Immortality appears in the Hebrew writings, four hundred years before the coming of our Lord, a voice was heard in Athens declaring in emphatic terms the imperishable character of the soul and the certainty of its after life. What could be more strange than that Job, the friend of God, should be answered by the pagan Socrates? And yet what could be more appropriate, by way of answer, than this fragment from Socrates, dying testimony:

"Then Cebes, beyond question, the soul is immortal and imperishable and our souls will truly

exist in another world?"

Plato: Phædo; 106. Other expressions of Socrates, mainly from the same conversation are not less emphatic and significant:

. . . . When death attacks a man the mortal portion of him may be supposed to die, but the immortal goes out of the way of death and is preserved safe and sound."

Plato: Phædo; 106.

"... But then, O my friends, if the soul is really immortal what care should be taken of her, not only in respect of the portion of time which is called life, but of eternity!"

Plato: Phædo; 107. "And can we suppose that the soul being invisible and on her way to a place like herself invisible and pure, a world worthy indeed the name of the Unseen, there to dwell with the good and wise God-whither if God please my soul must soon go... will when released from the body be instantly scattered to the winds and destroyed, as the mass of men assert?"

...

Plato: Phædo; 80. "If upon her release the soul be found pure and free from all that appertains to the body she goes to the world which is invisible like herself; to the world divine and immortal and full of thought; there set free from error, folly, fears

and the fierce passions and other evils of humanity her lot is a happy one indeed . . . but if on her 2 Percy Gardner in the "Contemporary Review,"

December, 1877.

intercourse with the body.. do you think that a soul in this condition will be found pure and uncontaminated when she is set free?"

Phædo; 81.

Is there not here the subtance of the doctrine taught afterwards by the apostle :

"To them who by patient continuance in well eternal life; but unto them that are contentious doing seek for glory and honor and immortality, and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, indignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish upon every soul of man that doeth evil?" Romans ii-7, 8, 9.

Upon his own age and people, Socrates' teachings seem to have had but little effect. It is due not to any popular acceptance of his philosophy, but to the devotion of his attached disciples and notably of the greatest among them, Plato, that we have it preserved. Much of Socrates' ill-success was no doubt due to his individual unpopularity. The man who makes it the business of his life, as he made it, to expose the ignorance and self-conceit of his neighbors can hardly expect and probably does not care to win their confidence and regard.

In a later age, however, and among an alien people, Socrates' sowing found a fertile soil and bore rich fruit. It was seventy years after his death that the enterprise of Alexander the Great created in Egypt an intellectual and commercial rival to Athens. Here for the first time in the world's history were brought together the cultured, speculative Greek and the devout, enquiring Jew. Each borrowed from the other his literature. The Greeks received the Scriptures and gave Plato. And while he was reading, with wonder, no doubt, and with that distinctive appreciation of courage and fidelity which marked the Greek mind, of the Hebrew heroes and their valiant deeds, the Jew was learning, with not less wonder and admiration of the blameless life and fearless death of Socrates, and receiving at the same time and that from a heathen source his first definite impressions as to the immortality of the soul. With what emphasis this influence began to stamp itself upon the Jewish mind may be judged from the expressions of the Apocryphal Book of the Wisdom of Solomon, written, presumably, at Alexandria

"The souls of the righteous are in the hand of God and there shall no torment touch them .... for though they be punished in the sight of men yet is their hope full of immortality." Wisdom of Solomon, iii-1, 4. "But the righteous live forevermore; their reward also is with the Lord and the care of them is with the most high; therefore shall they receive a glorious kingdom and a beautiful crown from the Lord's hand;"

Wisdom of Solomon, v-15. or from the following passage ascribed by sound criticism to the same period, and probably the only text in canonical Scripture which directly asserts the doctrine of immortality:

"And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life and some to shame and everlasting contempt;" Daniel xii-2.

or from that revolting story in the Maccabees, which is yet invaluable for the insight which it gives into the current religious experience of that time of the Seven Brothers, who while tortured for their faith gave utterance to this bold confession :

"Thou like a fury takest us out of this present life, but the King of the world shall raise us up who have died for his laws unto everlasting life."

II Maccabees vii-9.

"So when he was ready to die he said thus, It is good being put to death by men to look for hope from God to be raised up again by him."

II Maccabees vii-14.

"In the course of that Insurrection," says Dean Stanley, referring to the Maccabean period, "or at least in the records of it, the belief in immortality which the Grecian philosophy had communicated to the schools of Alexandria, started into a prominence

which it had never achieved before and which it never lost afterward." 1

Foremost among the Alexandrian disciples of the doctrine, and a most important link between Socrates and the Christian system, was the great and devout Jew whom we know as Philo of Alexandria. Born

twenty years before Christ and outliving him thirty years, though not himself a Christian, he played an important if uncon1 Stanley's "History of the Jewish Church," Third Series, Lecture xlviii.

tianity. Without referring to the striking analogy between his philosophy and that of the Gospel of John and the Epistle to the Hebrews, it is enough for our purpose to quote here one or two of his expressions bearing upon the subject in hand:

"Man's bodily form is made from the ground, the soul from no created thing but from the Father of all; so that although man was mortal as to his body he was immortal as to his mind."

Philo's Works: Mangey's ed., Vol. i, p. 32. "A polished, purified soul does not die but emigrates; it is of an inextinguishable and deathlution and corruption which death seems to inless race and goes to heaven, escaping the disso

troduce."

Philo's Works: Mangey's ed., Vol. i, p. 513. "Complete virtue is the tree of immortal life." Philo's Works: Mangey's ed., Vol. i, p. 38. "Abraham leaving his mortal part was added to the people of God, enjoying immortality and made similar to the angels. For the angels are

the army of God, bodiless and happy souls.”

Philo's Works: Mangey's ed., Vol. ii, p. 164.

There is no difficulty, as it happens, in tracing these opinions to their source. Of all the men who lived after Socrates no one was more deeply imbued with the Socratic or the Platonic spirit, as we may choose to call it, than Philo. Among the early Christian fathers it was a common saying: "Vel Plato Philonizat, vel Philo Platonizat." In all essential respects the teaching of Philo upon the subject of Immortality was that of Plato and of Plato's master. And Philo's teaching, according to the judgment of such authorities as Lücke and Norton, exerted "a greater influence upon the history of Christian opinions than any single man excepting the Apostle Paul."

If any additional testimony is needed to establish our debt to Socrates, let us take these expressions which seem to indicate an expectation on his part of the coming of some one, who should dispel in men's minds the fear of death. The passage is from the conversation of which we have already quoted a part:

"Cebes answered with a smile: Then Socrates you must argue us out of our fears, and yet strictly speaking they are not fears, but there is a child within us to whom death is a sort of hob

goblin; him too we must persuade not to be afraid when he is alone with him in the dark.

Socrates said: Let the voice of the charmer be applied daily until you have charmed him away. And where shall we find a good charmer of our fears Socrates when you are gone?

Hellas, he replied, is a large place, Cebes, and has many good men, and there are barbarous races not a few: seek for him among them all far and wide, sparing neither pains nor money; for there is no better way of using your money. And you must not forget to seek for him among yourselves, too; for he is nowhere more likely to be found."

Phædo-77, 78. Hardly any one will read this without recalling its Scripture parallel:

he also himself likewise took part of the same, that through death, he might destroy

him that hath the power of death that is the devil; and deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage." Hebrews, ii-14, 15.

And no one who thus holds up Socrates' ideal charmer side by side with the Apos tle's picture of Him who brought life and immortality to light, however much the former may be paled by the apposition, can fail to remark the extraordinary likeness, or to acknowledge the debt which we owe to the man who first gave to the world, wherever or however he learned it, a tangible notion of the life to come, and a correct apprehension of the way in which that life was to be obtained.

Eliot McCormick.

There were three of them-Paulus, Mabelle and Bethesda. There were four of us if you counted me; but I sat in a corner behind my veil, for the wind was chill, and took no part in the conversation.

The wind was chill perhaps, but only to the convalescent, To common mortals whom the Lord and not the doctors had made it was sweet and serene as a sheltered and lovely woman. There was no stab in it to them, and they were as obtuse to its menace as those who have never been led up into the wilderness for forty days, are obtuse to the presence or the passage of the subtlest temptations.

We were not exactly strangers; we were not precisely friends; thrown together by the chance of summer travel, meeting today, parting to-morrow, and stricken with moral inability to leave a piazza where, though far on in the year, one could sit without a shiver to watch the lights of the town nodding across the bay, to be bewitched by the flitting of green and scarlet color as the fishing-fleet crept home with sailing-signals up, to hear the busy lips of waves that one could not see, in the sheer

blackness below the cliff at one's feet, and to receive upon one's cheek for the last treasured time, the breath of the summer sea. The glory is over. The harvest is ended. The color and the carelessness and the surrender of the year are gone. Tomorrow we go our ways; we gird and guard ourselves; we meet the white intolerant winter.

Only old friendships can take the privi lege of silence in places and in times like these, and we for very distance must needs talk the mood and the evening out. The weather is exhausted, finance inflated, politics collapsed, poor-relief scanty, and the temperance cause not soporific. But the dog is here. His name is Daniel Deronda.

"A dull book" pronounces Paulus. Mabelle observes that she had not thought of that.

"Introspective, agonizing, overwrought. I hate to see an author say: 'Come hear me think!""

"The faults of the age," remarked Bethesda languidly. She is wondering where the two herring-boats will go, that glide across the reef, and thrust the glare of