The unseen universe : $b or, physical speculations on a future stateStewart, Balfour
Religion
The unseen universe : $b or, physical speculations on a future state
Stewart, Balfour
Immortality; Religion and science
We have likewise the testimony of Josephus as well as of the
New Testament that the Pharisees believed in a resurrection.
Josephus tells us,—‘They [the Pharisees] say that all souls are
incorruptible, but that the souls of good men only are removed into
other bodies, but that the souls of bad men are subject to eternal
punishment.’[12] Again, we learn from the same two authorities that
the Sadducees held sceptical notions on the subject, and Josephus
says—‘They take away the belief of the immortal duration of the soul,
and the punishments and rewards in Hades.’
14. If we next turn to the Greek and Roman mythologies we find ideas
of a future state very similar to those entertained by the Egyptians,
from whom probably the Greek notions were originally largely derived.
They called by the name of Elysium the abode appropriated to the
souls of the good, while those of the wicked suffered punishment in
Tartarus. It has been well remarked by Archbishop Whately that these
regions were supposed to be of the most dreamy and unsubstantial
nature:—
‘The poet [remarks Whately] from whom so many were content to derive
their creed [meaning Homer] represents Achilles among the shades as
declaring that the life of the meanest drudge on earth is preferable
to the very highest of the unsubstantial glories of Elysium:—
Βουλοίμην κ’ ἐπάρουρος ἐὼν θητευέμεν ἄλλῳ,
Ἀνδρὶ παρ’ ἀκλήρῳ, ᾧ μὴ βίοτος πολὺς εἴη,
Ἢ πᾶσιν νεκύεσσι καταφθιμένοισιν ἀνάσσειν.
It is remarkable too that the same poet seems plainly to regard the
_body_ not the _soul_ as being properly “the man” after death has
separated them. _We_ should be apt to say that such a one’s body is
here, and that _he_, properly the person himself, is departed to the
other world; but Homer uses the very opposite language in speaking of
the heroes slain before Troy: viz., that their souls were despatched
to the shades, and that THEY themselves were left a prey to dogs and
birds:—
Πολλὰς δ’ ἰφθίμους ΨΥΧΑΣ Ἄϊδι προΐαψεν
Ἡρώων, ΑΥΤΟΥΣ δὲ ἑλώρια τεῦχε κύνεσσιν.’[13]
We agree with this writer that the belief in an unsubstantial
region of this description can have had no real influence either in
deterring men from vice, or in encouraging them to virtue. Indeed
its inevitable tendency must have been to foster an undue regard for
the pleasures of this present life to the absolute discouragement
of goodness and virtue. For while we of the present day regard the
future life as in some sense the reward of piety and goodness, the
antients looked upon Hades rather as a penalty which inexorable fate
had reserved for all men, and from which even piety and goodness were
powerless to exempt their possessors.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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