THE INSTINCT OF IMMORTALITY. 305 



At the same time, in the ancient Hebrew Church, 

 and still more among the heathen, much obscurity 

 hung over the immediate future of the human soul. 

 Death was ever a patent fact, and what the state of 

 the disembodied soul in " Sheol," and how or when it 

 would be reunited to a body, were not known to man. 

 Job might believe, notwithstanding the decay of his 

 body, that with his own eyes he would see God, but 

 this would be in the latter days. Martha might know 

 that her brother would rise again at the last day. This 

 was the common-sense faith of readers of the Old 

 Testament before the Christian era ; but it remained 

 for Jesus to raise the veil from the intermediate state, 

 and to bring "life and immortality to light/' This 

 He does by His own teaching that the believer in Him 

 can ' ' never die ; " that is, that to him death is not 

 really death, but the entrance at once into a higher 

 and broader life in and with Christ, who is Himself 

 the "resurrection and the life;" by His declaration to 

 the thief on the cross, " To-day shalt thou be with Me 

 in Paradise;" and by His own personal resurrection 

 as the " first fruits of them that sleep." Thus to the 

 Christian, not only are the future life and the resurrec- 

 tion more sure and plain than they could be to the 

 Jew, but all the terrors of the intermediate state are 

 taken away the soul unclothed by death is at once 

 " clothed upon," to be absent from the body is to be 

 " present with the Lord," to leave the earthly taber- 

 nacle' is to enter a "mansion in the Father's house" 

 prepared by the risen Saviour. True it is that these 



x 



