III. The intentions of his providence carried into effect by the A.M. 2484. ministration of a heavenly hierarchy.R IV. The heavenly hierarchy, composed of various ranks and orders, possessing different names, dignities, and offices." V. An apostacy or defection in some rank or order of these powers;10 of which Satan seems to have been one, and perhaps chief.11 VI. The good and evil powers or principles, equally formed by the Creator, and hence equally denominated "sons of God;" both of them employed by him in the administration of his providence; and both amenable to him at stated courts, held for the purpose of receiving an account of their respective missions.12 VII. A day of future resurrection, judgment, and retribution, to all mankind.1 13 14 VIII. The propitiation of the Creator, in the case of human transgressions, by sacrifices, and the mediation and intercession of a righteous person.15 B.C. 1520. manner Several of these doctrines are more clearly developed than others: In what yet I think, says our author, there are sufficient grounds for deducing developed. the whole of them. Some critics may, perhaps, conceive that the different names by which the heavenly host are characterised may be mere synonyms, and not designed to impart any variety of rank or order. Yet the names themselves, in most instances, imply distinctions, though we are not informed of their nature. (memitim), destinies, or destroyers, ministers of death, cannot possibly apply to all of them, and appear to be nearly synonymous with the Móga Aical, or Parcæ, of the Greek and Roman writers. The term itself, indeed, is obviously used in a limited and appropriate sense, in ch. xxxiii. 23, and is distinctly opposed to (malacim), angels; (melizim), intercessors; and ממתים (alep), chiliad, or thousand: As his soul draweth near to the grave, Surely will there be over him an ANGEL, An INTERCESSOR,-one of THE THOUSAND. The general term for the whole of these different ranks appears to Heavenly be (kedosim), SANCTI, or HOLY ONES; (obedim), “ministers hierarchy. or servants, seems to convey in every instance in which it occurs, a subordinate idea, in office as well as in name, to □ (malacim), "angels, thrones, or princedoms." (alep), "the chiliad, or thousand," distinctly imports a particular corps or class; and is probably denominated by a rule common to most countries and 8 Chap. i. 6, 7; iii. 18, 19; v. 1; xxxiii. 22, 23. 9 As obedim, servants; malacim, angels; melizim, intercessors; memitim, destinies or destroyers; alep, the chiliad or thousand; kedosim, SANCTI, the heavenly saints or hosts generally. See chap. iv. 18; xxxiii. 22, 23; v. 2; xv. 15. S. H. H 10 Chap. iv. 18; xv. 15. 13 Chap. xiv. 13, 14, 15; xix. 25-29; 14 Chap. i. 5; xlii. 8. A.M. 2484. languages, from the number of which it consisted,-as militia, B.C. 1520. centurion, decemvir, heptarch, tithingman. Apostacy in heaven. Mr. Good proceeds to inform us that the same general belief has descended in Arabia, to the present day; and forms a distinct and prominent doctrine of the Alcoran; which he exemplifies at considerable length; and then shows that a similar belief was common to all the nations of the East, from whom it descended to the Greeks, and is especially adverted to by Hesiod, who calculates the whole number of heavenly guards, or deputies, appointed to watch over the earth, at thirty thousand: Op. et Dies, I. 246. With this passage he compares the strikingly similar and well-known description of Milton, Par. Lost, IV. 477, but derived from a superior authority. Millions of spiritual creatures walk the earth Unseen, both when we wake and when we sleep, &c. The source, says our author, from which these lines of Milton are derived is the Bible; and it is of far more consequence to us that the doctrine they develop pervades the Bible, than that it pervades any other work; and especially that it runs through the whole of the Scriptures, both Jewish and Christian, from Genesis to the Revelations-there being scarcely a book which has not a reference to it— and without a single caution or hint that the language employed is merely figurative, or designed to convey any other than the obvious and popular idea which must necessarily have been attached to it, by those to whom it was delivered. Thus especially, Coloss. i. 16, in which we have, in few words, a description of invisible, as well as of visible beings, inhabiting the earth, and the different orders of which the hierarchy consists: "For by him were all things created that are in heaven, and that are IN EARTH, VISIBLE and INVISIBLE, whether THRONES, or DOMINIONS, or PRINCIPALITIES, or POWERS. Whence Milton again, Par. Lost, V. 600: Hear all ye angels, progeny of light, Thrones, dominations, princedoms, virtues, powers. The doctrine of an apostacy among the celestial orders, as ascribed to the patriarchal religion from the poem before us, is derived from two or three passages, to which a different explanation has been given, but none that seems to afford an obvious sense. In chap. i. and ii. Satan is abruptly, and without ceremony, introduced as an evil spirit, as though the writer of the poem felt it unnecessary to offer a syllable upon the subject, from the general notoriety of the fact. In chap. iv. 18, the passage runs as follows: Behold! he cannot confide in his servants, What, then, are the dwellers in houses of clay? In chap. xv. 15, the same fact is again alluded to, and in terms equally strong, and equally general, as though of universal publicity:— Behold! he cannot confide in his ministers, And the heavens are not clear in his sight, How much less then abominable and corrupt man, &c. Where, observes Tyndal, "under the name of the hevens, under- a.m. 2484. standeth he the aungels:" on which account the Alexandrine version B.C. 1520. gives ΑΣΤΡΑ δὲ οὐκ ἀμέμπτα—“the STARS are not clean, i.e. 66 the MORNING STARS. It is, in truth, under this precise image that the same fact is a third time referred to in the speech of Bildad; ch. xxv. 5. though, for want of due attention, it has seldom been understood to have this reference :: Behold! even the moon-and it abideth not, The common close, or burden, drawn from the greater impurity of man, shows obviously that this is the sense in which it ought to be understood. And the different passages taken collectively lead to a clear proof that the defection among the heavenly hosts was generally known at the time the poem was composed, and is, in all of them, generally referred to. body. Concerning the doctrine of an universal resurrection and retribution, Resurrecthe poem, upon a cursory view, may in many places appear to be at tion of the variance with itself; for there are several passages which at first sight seem to point to an opposite conclusion: and hence a cloud of learned and excellent men in all ages, from St. Chrysostom and St. Ambrose, among the fathers, to Le Clerc, Reiske, Vorgel, Michaelis, Warburton, Geddes, and Stock, among modern commentators, have denied that any such doctrine is fairly to be collected from the poem as a whole. The question is, therefore, entitled to be examined with minute attention. It must be admitted that the only person amidst all the interlocutors who distinctly alludes to the subject, either on the one side or the other, is Job himself: and it certainly appears not a little extraordinary that none of his companions when reminding him, in succession, of the advantages of real contrition, and a restoration to the favour of the Almighty, should, even in the remotest manner, direct his attention to a future as well as to a present reward: and it is hence, perhaps, but fair to conceive that the doctrine of an after-state was no more in universal reception in the last of what may be denominated the patriarchal ages than it was among the Jews at the advent of our Saviour, and that the friends of Job did not themselves accede to it. Yet, in opposition to such a conclusion, there are two or three passages in the different speeches of Job which distinctly refer to it as a doctrine in general acceptation, and admitted by his companions themselves. But let us trace the principal passages which have any relation to the subject, in the succession in which they occur: and, in order to our reconciling the wide difference they exhibit, it should be constantly borne in mind that they are only brought forward by a man who, in the midst of extreme bodily pain, and the most complicated mental affliction that ever fell to the lot of any one, is perpetually agitated by every change of contending A.M. 2484. emotions; hope, fear, confidence, despondency, indignation, tenderB.C. 1520. ness, submission, and triumph; each abruptly breaking upon the other, and frequently hurrying him away from his habitual principles to an utterance of transitory thoughts, urged by transitory feelings. The following are the chief passages against the existence of a future life: CHAP. XIV. 15-22. And for ever as the crumbling mountain dissolveth, As the waters wear to pieces the stones, As their overflowings sweep the soil from the land So consumest thou the hope of man; Thou harrassest him continually till he perish: Thou weariest out his frame and despatchest him, His sons may come to honour, but he shall know it not; Or they may be impoverished, but he shall perceive nothing of them: For his flesh shall drop away from him, And his soul shall become a waste from him. CHAP. XVI. 22.-CHAP. XVII. 1. But the years numbered to me are come, And I must go the way whence I shall not return; Upon all these passages it may be observed, that they rather refer to an insensibility or dissipation of the soul upon death, than to the question of a re-existence or resurrection at some future period: and hence they cannot strictly be said to annihilate this latter doctrine. In the midst of his deepest despondency, as expressed in these extracts, the speaker still alludes to his hopes, though to hopes which, at the immediate moment, he felt incapable of cherishing; still proving, however, that, even on such occasions, the DOCTRINE itself was known to him, and existed before him, and had been agitated by him, although his fears or his sufferings impelled him at the time to relinquish it. It should also be observed, that, except the last of these passages, they are all uttered in the earliest part of his affliction, when the disease itself appears to have raged most violently, and the reproaches of his companions to have been most bitter. From chap. xix. he seems, in a considerable degree, to have recovered possession of himself: A.m. 2484. he is conscious of his superiority over the speeches urged against B.C. 1520. him; and, for the most part, exchanges his exclamations and complaints for sound logical reasoning; and from this period, the only relapse into a state of despondency and disbelief, in any way discoverable, is contained in the last quotation. The following are the chief passages in favour of a future existence: CHAP. XIV. 10-15. But man dieth and mouldereth; But the mortal expireth-and where is he? As the billows pass away with the tides, So man lieth down, and riseth not: TILL THE HEAVENS BE DISSOLVED they shall not awake; No-they shall not rouse up from their sleep. O! that thou wouldst hide ME in the grave, That thou wouldst conceal me-TILL THY WRATH BE PAST; THAT THOU WOULDST APPOINT ME A FIXT TIME, AND REMEMBER ME. But if a man die-shall he, indeed, live again? All the days of my appointment will I wait Till my RENOVATION Come. Thou shalt call-and I WILL ANSWER THEE; Thou shalt yearn towards the work of thy hands. This is a very important passage in relation to the general question, and is, at the same time, full of poetic beauty of every kind. It proves the tumult of the speaker's mind, and the abruptness and transition of his feelings. It is demonstrative of the existence of the DOCTRINE of a future state, because it is here fully brought forward, and reasoned upon: but it shows also, that though the doctrine was at that era in existence, it admitted of debate; and that the speaker himself, under the immediate pressure of suffering, at one moment doubted, and at another was thoroughly convinced. CHAP. XIX. 23-29. O! that thy words were even now written down; With a pen of iron upon lead! That they were sculptured in a rock for ever! For "I KNOW that my REDEEMER liveth, And will ascend at last upon the earth; And after the DISEASE hath destroyed my skin, Whom I shall see for myself, And my own eyes shall behold, and not another's, Though my reins be consumed within me." Then shall ye say, "How did we persecute him!" When the root of the matter is disclosed concerning me. O tremble for yourselves before the sword; For fierce is the vengeance of the sword; For the different senses which have been given to this sublime passage, and our author's happy and simple extrication of it from the difficulties by which it has hitherto been involved, we must refer to his translation itself. Taken in connection with the preceding and succeeding passages it appears decisive, not only as to the existence of the doctrine at the era in which the work was com |
