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ject , style , and composition , the doctrine of a future state of reward and punishment should neve * once appear to have had any share in the people's thoughts , if indeed it made part of ( heir religious opinions ?" The means by which the mind of the nation was prepared for the reception of this doctrine are obvious to all who read the history of its discipline . The obscurity of the fate of Enoch must have awakened curiosity ; for
whether he was translated , or whether an immature death be all that is implied in the phrase " he was not , for God took him , " the obscurity must have been as great to the earliest readers of the Mosaic records as to ourselves The disappearance of Mpses seems also to have been enveloped in mystery ; and by these circumstances , by the ambiguity before mentioned of the phrases relating to death and the dead , and by the threat of punishment extending to many generations , the people were prepared for speculation on the fate of
Elijah , and for the conception that a reward might await him after his translation . They also enjoyed the light of natural reason as abundantly as other nations ; for though temporal rewards and punishments were the sanctions of their law , those rewards and punishments were not individual but national ; and the strong argument for a renewal of life from the inequalities in the distribution of happiness , affected them equally with the rest of mankind .
Possessing the same natural advantages as . other people , and being besides subjected to an additional preparation , it seems as if the Jews ought to have arrived first at the most important conviction which the mind can entertain They were not , however , the first to attain it ; but when the conception was once formed , it was purer and more correct than any which prevailed eke- * where . Their faith consisted of more than an obscure notion of the
immortality of the soul , attended with fancies as various as the imaginations from which they sprang . As far as the Jews believed in a future state at all , they believed in it as a state of proper retribution ; and their faith became an actuating motive in the conduct of life and the submission to death . How early the conception attained this degree of purity , and to what extent it prevailed in the nation , we cannot ascertain * It is probable that faith in a future life was entertained by a few only of the most enlightened of the
Jews , previous to the Captivity , and that it was by intercourse with their Persian conquerors , with the Chaldeeans , and the disciples of the Greek phi- * losophy in Egypt , that the rest of the nation were familiarized with the idea of the immortality of the soul , and that they were thus induced to inquire into the ambiguities of their own records , to compare the events of their own history with this new philosophy , and thence to draw inferences dUtinct enough to become actuating motives . The history of the martyrdom o » f the
woman and her seven boos in the second book of Maccabees ( whatever may be its authority in other respects ) is invaluable aa proving the strength of conviction of a future state of reward which prevailed among the Jewish people ; a conviction powerful enough to Inspire a contempt of torture and a fearlessness of death . By comparing this narrative with the despondi ng expressions of Job and the mournful questionings of th » writer of Ecclesiastes , remarkable evidence may be obtained of the progress of the national mind on this important subject .
The conception , whenever formed , and however strengthened , still re * mained indistinct , partial , and variable . Tbe doctrine was a matter of inference , and the facts from which the inference was drawn were few and insufficient . It was as yet unqusoep&ibl * of proof , and destitute of authority , and must therefore have beeqi held on a different tenure from other doctrines of reiunoD , and have been inferior to them all in sanctity . The time
Untitled Article
454 TJie Education ( tf the Human Race ,
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), July 2, 1830, page 454, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2586/page/22/
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