Article. CONTENTS OF NO. XXII. Page. I. SPIRITUALITY OF THE BOOK OF JOB AS EXHIBITED 205 By Tayler Lewis, LL. D., Professor of Greek in the University of the City II. The Soofees, 229 Compiled from Tholuck's SSUFISMUS sive Theosophia Persarum Pantheistica, III. MÜLLER'S CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF SIN, 247 By Edward Robie, Assistant Instructor in Hebrew, Andover Theol. Seminary. § 3. The Origin of Sin, 248 4. The Universality of Sin, 255 5. The increasing Power of Sin in the Development of II. The relation of Language to Nature; or of Words to Things, 284 V. REINHARD'S SERMONS, 300 By Edwards A. Park, Professor in Andover Theological Seminary. § 1. Prefatory Remarks, 300 2. Life and Labors of Reinhard, 301 3. Novelty and Variety of his Themes for the Pulpit, 8. Their Fitness to excite the curiosity of hearers or readers, 330 314 325 BIBLIOTHECA SACRA AND THEOLOGICAL REVIEW. NO. XXII. MAY, 1849. ARTICLE I. SPIRITUALITY OF THE BOOK OF JOB AS EXHIBITED IN A COMMENTARY ON CHAPTER XIV, EXAMINED IN CONNECTION WITH OTHER PASSAGES. By Tayler Lewis, LL. D., Professor of Greek in the University of the City of New York. THE chief point of interest in this portion of Holy Writ is found in the touching interrogatory contained in the fourteenth verse-If a man die, shall he live again? It was to be expected that the unevangelical or Grotian class of commentators would give the least spiritual view of this and other similar passages. Critics of this kind generally profess to be, beyond all other expositors, free from any bias that may lead to results not sanctioned by the most legitimate principles of hermeneutics. And yet it may be maintained, that even they, with all their boasted claims to fairness and freedom from prejudice, do actually start with a prejudged theory, which modifies, controls, and in many cases, suggests the very interpretations on which they so strongly insist as arising directly from the usus loquendi, or strict philological examination of the text. They too, we maintain, have their prejudged theory. They start with the assumption that neither the writer of the book of Job, whoever he may have been, nor the age, nor the country in which he lived, could have had any idea of a future, separate, spiritual state of existence, much less of any future judgment, much less of any resurVOL. VI. No. 22. 18 rection of the body, and still less of any Divine Redeemer to appear in the flesh. By the light of this theory, opposed as it is to what we know of the most ancient nations mentioned in profane history, must its advocates, of course, decide all questions of probability. When, therefore, they meet with passages, which, as far as grammatical interpretation is alone concerned, may present either a spiritual or a naturalistic aspect according to the side from whence they are viewed, such interpreters do not hesitate to adopt the latter as the most easy, the most obvious, the most in accordance with what they assume to be the usus loquendi of the writer, and of the age in which he lived. What makes this, in some respects, the more strange, is the fact, that such an unevangelical view is held the more firmly by those who insist upon bringing down the date of the book to the latest period,-even to the time when, according to another of their favorite theories, the Jews themselves began to learn the doctrine of a future life from the nations among whom they had been led captive. These nations, too, they can believe, had long been in possession of it, whilst the chosen people of God had never risen above the grossest materialistic belief in our merest animal existence, and had never exhibited the least trace of that which forms the first essential element of spiritual religion. We may keep very far from that extreme which finds almost any doctrine of the New Testament in the book of Job, and yet believe, both from external and internal evidence, that it manifests a higher spirituality than has generally been conceded to it. The internal evidence of this kind may be concisely presented under three heads. 1st. Its pure moral theism, embracing such sublime views of the Divine purity, holiness and uncompromising righteousness, as have never, in any other age or country been found associated with materialism in respect to man. 2d. The positive doctrine of a spiritual world as presented in the introductory chapters, and to which we may rightly attach a similar inferential scholium, namely, that the belief in angels, or sons of God, and ministering spirits, and evil demons, has never since been found joined with that remaining dogma of the Sadducean creed which denies a separate spiritual life of the human soul. 3d. The revelation of an antagonism going on in this spiritual world for the trial of our moral integrity, which representation necessarily suggests the correlative idea of some great beneficent heavenly power contending on our behalf against the evil adversary, thus making probable what have been regarded as Job's allusions to a Redeemer, or Messiah, and also rendering easy of belief the supposition that he |