ut suscitarer, un nos, "why hast thou aroused or disturbed me?" The word is inconsistent with the idea of lifelessness, or even of torpor. It is a complaint of broken rest. It indicates a placid yet conscious state into which the troubles and unrest of the earthly life had been painfully intruded. Is not Samuel's repose, after his toilsome life in Israel, the same as the New Testament sleep?-not torpor, but a condition of conscious blessedness in strongest contrast with the tumult of the present world. Certain modern notions have transferred to the spirit-world generally all the business and bustle of this. Even its happiness is regarded as being essentially a neverceasing activity. Even when there is a discarding of the exceedingly gross notion of our modern spirit-rappers, there is still cherished the favorite idea of a continual restless "progress," which has taken the place of the primitive Old Testament and early Christian conception of the spiritual repose of the just. It is astonishing how strongly this thought has taken possession of the modern mind of the Church. It is assumed as a matter of course, but let one examine carefully the grounds of it, and he will be surprised to find how utterly silent are the Scriptures, Old and New, in respect to this petted idea of our latest theology. They are not merely silent; their representations are almost directly the reverse of what may be called the active, enterprising, progress-making spiritualism. How beautifully is this idea of rest set forth, (Isa. lvii, 2,) oma by im obe my, venit in pacem, rather, as the Vulgate has it, venit pax, requiescat in cubili suo; LXX, čoraι iv elpy-" he enters into peace; they rest in their beds." The righteous is taken away-“ he is gathered in (DN) from the evil to come." Compare what Christ says about gathering the wheat into his granary. Is all this blessed language predicated of no higher idea than that of a lifeless sleep in the grave, or even an unconscious torpor? For expressions most graphically descriptive of the opposite state, see the close of this very chapter. How it describes the unrest of the wicked, whether we predicate it of this or any other state of existence. Can there be a doubt that a contrast was intended between it and those commencing words in which the opposite ideas of quietude, security, and blessedness are so touchingly set forth: "The wicked are like the surging sea,

, that cannot rest, whose waters cast up mire and dirt;

there is no rest, saith my God, to the wicked." The solemn announcement must include their future being even more so than their present mundane existence, dark and turbulent as it

.לא יוכל השקט,issin is everlasting restlessness

The association of ideas is so natural that we are not surprised to find the vulgar notion of the bad soul's haunting disquietude set forth as a philosophic deduction by the wisest mind in antiquity. They are so naturalized, says Plato, in the Phaedon, 81, C. D., that they become visible, and these are the wandering spirits that haunt the earth in their horror of the purely spiritual state, and their longing desire to get back into their old bodies. Wherefore they are seen around the burying-places, and become shadowy apparitions that frighten the living, and from whom arise the stories of ghostly apparitions that have prevailed in every age. "It is the sluggish nature, the heavy, the earthly, the visible, (or the palpable to sense.) The soul that hath these is weighed down, and dragged back to the visible (or the world of sense) in its fear of the invisible, that is, of Hades, as it is said; and so it wallows around the monuments and burying-grounds, where these become visible shadowy apparitions of ghosts, idola, shades, or images, such as souls of this nature produce, seeing that they are not purely set free from the body, but still partake of the visible, (or the sensual,) wherefore they become objects of sight."

The imagery is different, but it is the same awful idea of unrest that is expressed by Peter and Jude. True, indeed, of the condition of the wicked in this world, but still more suggestive of their doom in the world of spirits,-" clouds are they without water, carried about by the winds; wild waves of the sea, foaming out their own shame; wandering stars, for whom is reserved the blackness of darkness forever," or, as Tanchum interprets, (1 Sam. xxv, 29 :) "cast out from the sling, sent whirling, quasi in impetu et circulo fundae, the sport of the waves and vortices, finding nowhere any place of rest."

The locality of all this, whether of the rest or the unrest, is comparatively of little consequence. There may be blessedness in an unterwelt or subterranean world, (the notion that some would regard as so gross,) if Christ be there-the good Shepherd or Bishop of souls in the mobs, or terra umbrarum-while

,סתר אהלו

an aerial locality may be the abode of beings more evil than any upon the earth: see Ephesians ii, 2, Tòv apxovтa τñç éžovoías 'AEPOE, "The prince of the powers (or power, collectively) of the air." It is not extravagant to suppose that there are allusions to such a state of rest in the spirit-world presented in certain favorite expressions of the Psalms, such as, 18, the secret place of his tabernacle. Psalms xxvii, 5; xxxii, 7, ,"the hiding-place of thy wings," and "thy tabernacle of the eternities," Dobyns; Psalm lxi, 4, by no, "the secret place of the Most High;" Psalm xci, 1, 5, "the shadow of the Almighty." All these, through similar imagery, present the same constant idea. It is protection, security, peace, having its significance for this world if any choose to rest there, but reaching its full complement of meaning only in a state of being to which these conceptions primarily and essentially belong. Such is the sense which the devout reader easily takes now, and we may rationally believe that it was not remote to the feeling and thinking of those who first employed this kind of language. It may find its application on earth, but it is too high and holy to rest there. It doubtless has a temporal significance, but, like other things in the Old Testament diction, it has the eternal shining through it. Among others, that remarkable language, Psalm lxi, 5, by 5, "thy tabernacle of the eternities," seems in direct contrast with the transient tabernacle of the Israelitish journeyings. It is the "tabernacle which God has pitched," and which never is to be taken down or removed.

Opposed to these delightful expressions of security and rest there are others in the Scriptures whose true significance we get by regarding them in direct contrast, and as denoting a state in all respects the reverse: such, for example, as ɲ, rendered, "the horrible pit," more correctly fovea strepitus, "the roaring pit," or "the pit of the awful sounds;" the

*There is an awful passage in the myth at the end of Plato's "Republic," whether we regard it a popular myth or tradition, or a mythological theosophism invented by the philosopher, though grounded on the popular idea. Among the purgatorial experiences is the passage of a thousand years in the fiery river until it comes round to the mouth or pit where the condemned souls meet the crises of their destiny, whether to escape their purgatorial pains or to remain in them forever. As they near this oróutov, or mouth, they wait in awful expectation for the pit to sound, uvкýσaσbaι, to roar, or bellow. This is the signal of

, the miry clay, Psalm xl, 2; the Toy, Psalm Ixix, 2, the miry deep, or the ever-sinking quicksands on which there is no standing, no rest, no security; an ever going down deeper and deeper into perdition. To the same class belong the ban, "the rivers of Belial," Psalm xviii, 5. Some of these expressions remind us of the Greek notions of the rivers in Hades and of the Bópßopoç or mire in which lie the profane or the uninitiated,* the muddy, fiery torrents, the abode of souls condemned to everlasting restlessness and disappointment. We cannot suppose the Hebrew conception borrowed from them. May it not be the other way? The Oriental mind is content with a primitive conception, and seldom expands it. Hence the reserve every-where maintained in the Old Testament, as though it would hold the thought in check, rather than encourage the fancy in respect to it. It presents a few grand yet shadowy images of both conditions, such as the "gathering to the fathers," the "bundles of life," the "casting forth," the "angel driving into darkness," the "wicked man driven away in his wickedness;" and then allows no shading or retouching of the picture. The Greeks, on the other hand, when they get hold of such an idea, set no limits to their fancy. Other nations go still further. They make it sometimes not only fanciful, but monstrous and grotesque. This is the way with the Scandinavian mythology. There was a similar tendency, though far short of that extent, among the latter Jews. The sacred writers, however, were held in check, and this continued until the canon of the older inspiration was completed. Then came the Targumists, the Talmudists, and the later Rabbinical writers. Here the check seems wholly withdrawn, as is shown by the extravagance and abundance of their Targumistic paraphrases and their Talmudic fables. Tanchum was one of the soberest of the Jewish commentators, and he only professes to interpret, instead of improving upon, the ancient text. Thus, this interpretation of 1 Samuel their eternal doom. The pains they suffer in the fiery stream are beyond conception, but the climax is the hour of suspense they experience as they near this fearful crisis. This is the crowning misery of the thousand years' purgation, ἔνθα δὴ φόβων πολλῶν γεγονότων τοῦτον ὑπερβάλλειν τὸν φόβον, εἰ μυκήσαιτο τὸ σтóμLOV. Though, during all this time, there are many fears, yet the fear surpasses them all lest the pit should bellow. Plato, "Rep.," 616, A.

* See the Gorgias.

xxv, 29, which he gives us, may be regarded as, in the main, faithful to the old thought of the text in its concise proverbial form; but we find no such expansions of it in the Scriptures themselves. It is not the way of the Bible to give exegesis of its own meaning. Yet such modes of expression are most significant when regarded as containing a thought so fixed and universal as to need no interpreter. Compare Daniel xii, 13, "But go thy way, Daniel, and take thy rest, (mɔn,) and stand in thy lot at the end of the days." man is used here as denoting something which the prophet well understood, as in accordance with the common belief of his nation. It is the same with that blessed holy rest of Samuel from which Saul's earthly trouble disquieted him, when safely "bound up in the bundle of lives with the Lord his God." It is the rest described Isaiah lvii, 2, "May he rest in peace:" "Requiescat in pace." This formula, too, is but another mode of saying, "Let his soul be bound up in the bundle of lives." In the mouth of the light and flippant Abigail it may have been a mere formal complimentary phrase, like the salutations of Boaz and his reapers already mentioned, Dominus vobiscum, or like a modern Eastern salaam; but in its origin it must have had a deeper significance. Had it denoted any common temporal good, and that alone, it would not have taken this highly figurative aspect and this succinct proverbial form.

There is another conclusion that Rabbi Tanchum derives from this passage, (1 Samuel xxv, 29,) which is well worthy of notice. He takes it as an unquestionable declaration of another life, implying even now a community of souls; not only of souls in the past who here had their earthly being, but of souls to be born who are yet, somehow, in the fasciculus vitarum, a great "bundle of life;" and he draws from it this remarkable inference as to the superiority of the Jewish nation in this knowledge (not philosophy) of the future life. "But if this be the fair intent of the words of Abigail in the text, namely, to convey this idea of another life, then is it a proof that a mystery so strange to the intellects of men, so remote from their thoughts to the knowledge of which those most illustrious for wisdom arrive only through much labor and study, and through difficult illustrations and argumentations-that such a mystery, I say, was known in those times, and made