12. Very little is said about man’s future state in the Scriptures of the Jews. The Hebrews, like the Assyrians and Chaldeans, believed in Sheol (Hades), a dark and gloomy abode peopled by the shades of the dead. But the continued existence of the ‘pithless’ shades (Rephaim) in this land of powerlessness and forgetfulness was not thought of as constituting immortality, but rather as the essence of death itself. The religious hope of immortality which appears in some passages of the Old Testament takes the form of a victory over or rescue from the fear of Sheol. But this higher hope was not brought before the mind of the Hebrew nation in the same way as was the presence and unity of God. It seems to us that Dean Stanley’s conjecture is probably correct where he says, with reference to this omission, ‘Not from want of religion, but (if we might use the expression) from excess of religion, was this void left in the Jewish mind. The future life was not denied or contradicted, but it was overlooked, set aside, overshadowed by the consciousness of the living, actual presence of God Himself. That truth, at least in the limited conceptions of the youthful nation, was too vast to admit of any rival truth, however precious. When David or Hezekiah shrank from the gloomy vacancy of the grave, it was because they feared lest, when death closed their eyes in the present world, they should lose their hold on that Divine friend with whose being and communion the present world had in their minds been so closely interwoven.’[8] 13. As the nation grew older we find frequent and distinct allusions indicating a belief in a resurrection of some kind. Thus we find the angel saying to Daniel, ‘And many of them which sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt. And they that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament; and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars for ever and ever.’[9] And again: ‘Go thy way till the end be; for thou shalt rest and stand in thy lot at the end of the days.’[10] Again, in the Apocrypha, we find one of seven brethren who were put to death by Antiochus, saying to that tyrant,—‘It is good, being put to death by men, to look for hope from God, to be raised up again by Him; as for thee, thou shalt have no resurrection to life,’[11] and the other brethren spoke in like manner. Here it is evident from the whole chapter that the hope expressed was rather the result of perfect trust in God than derived from any process of their own reason, or even from any revelation on the subject which they imagined to have been made.