The absence in the Mosaic books of any reference to a future life is only
intelligible by the prominence into which this truth is brought. Nothing could
have been more familiar to the Hebrews of the Exodus than the doctrine of immortality.
The continued existence of the soul, the judgment after death, the rewards
and punishments of the future state, were the constant subjects of Egyptian
thought and art. But a truth may be hidden or thrown into the background by
the intensity with which another truth is grasped.
And the doctrine of immortality, springing as it does from the very depths
of human nature, ministering to aspirations which become stronger and stronger
as intellectual life rises to higher planes and the life of the affections
becomes more intense, may yet become so incrusted with degrading superstitions,
may be turned by craft and selfishness into such a potent instrument for enslavement,
and so used to justify crimes at which every natural instinct revolts, that
to the earnest spirit of the social reformer it may seem like an agency of
oppression to enchain the intellect and prevent true progress; a lying device
with which the cunning fetter the credulous.
The belief in the immortality of the soul must have existed in strong forms
among the masses of the Hebrew people. But the truth that Moses brought so
prominently forward, the truth his gaze was concentrated upon, is a truth that
has often been thrust aside by the doctrine of immortality, and that may perhaps,
at times, react on it in the same way. This is the truth that the actions of
men and women bear fruit in this world, that though on the petty scale of individual
life wickedness may seem to go unpunished and wrong to be rewarded, there is
yet a nemesis that with tireless feet and pitiless arm follows every national
crime and smites the children for the father’s transgression; the truth
that each individual must act upon and be acted upon by the society of which
he or she is a part, that all must in some degree suffer for the sin of each,
and the life of each be dominated by the conditions imposed by all.
It is the intense appreciation of this truth that gives the Mosaic institutions
so practical and utilitarian a character. Their genius, if I may so speak,
leaves the abstract speculations, where thought so easily loses and wastes
itself, or finds expression only in symbols that become finally but the basis
of superstition, in order that it may concentrate attention upon the laws which
determine the happiness or misery of humanity upon this earth. ... Read
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