29 G THE EVOLUTION OF THEOLOGY V in 



beliefs respecting the nature and ways of spiritual 

 beings. 



Even without the confirmation of other 

 abundant evidences to the same effect, it leaves no 

 doubt as to the existence, among them, of the fun- 

 damental doctrine that man consists of a body and 

 of a spirit, which last, after the death of the body, 

 continues to exist as a ghost. At the time of 

 Saul's visit to Endor, Samuel was dead and 

 buried ; but that his spirit would be believed to 

 continue to exist in Sheol may be concluded from 

 the well-known passage in the song attributed to 

 Hannah, his mother : 



Jahveli killeth and niakcth alive ; 



Hi- I'rin.urth ilmvn to Sheol ami briiigeth up. 



(1 Sam. ii. 6.) 



And it is obvious that this Sheol was thought to 

 be a place underground in which Samuel's spirit 

 had been disturbed by the necromancer's summons, 

 and in which, after his return thither, he would 

 be joined by the spirits of Saul and his sons \\li< n 

 they had met with their bodily death on the hill 

 ofGilboa. It is further to be observed that the 

 spirit, or ghost, of the dead man presents itself as 

 the image of the man himself it is the man, not. 

 merely in his ordinary corporeal presentment (even 

 down to the prophet's mantle) but iii his moral and 

 intellectual characteristics. Samuel, who had begun 

 as Saul's friend and ended as his bitter enemy, gi 



