ing rejoinder: "Jesus answered and said unto them, Ye do err, not knowing the Scriptures, nor the power of God. For in the resurrection they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven. But as touching the resurrection of the dead, have ye not read that which was spoken unto you by God, saying, I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? God is not the God of the dead, but of the living. And when the multitude heard this, they were astonished at His doctrine." "*

The Pharisees now return to the charge; they were not pleased, but disappointed at the defeat of the Sadducees. Political and theological factions then, as now, would coalesce with any one who would help them to gain a point. Well, the Sadducees having been proved culpably ignorant, the Pharisees make the last onslaught, and their arrogance receives the death-blow. Their mouth

piece, who was a lawyer, asked, "Master, which is the great commandment in the law?" The lawyers had discovered six hundred and thirteen precepts in the law;† oh, if they could but get Him on a subject in which there was room for difference of opinion! But again defeat was the assailants' experience. "Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets." There could be no two opinions on the subject, notwithstanding that the lawyers tabulated the first and great commandment as the 418th in the 613 precepts.

and

But the great Teacher Preacher had also to propound a great question, an all absorbing question:-"What think ye of Christ? Whose Son is He?" The Saviour was determined to take His audience back to the contemplation of the

* Matt. xxii. 29-33.

+ See our vol. for 1873. ↑ Matt. xxii. 37-40.

66

things which happened on the previous days, at Jericho, which the great multitude' who "followed Him" must have narrated, at His triumphal entrance into Jerusalem. The Redeemer now brings His Temple congregation face to face with the most wonderful Messianic Psalm in the whole of that Prophetic collection, the 110th Psalm. "If David call Him Lord, how is He his son?" Do you still wonder at the blind men at Jericho having been inspired to cry, "Have mercy on us, O Lord, Thou Son of David!" Do you still wonder at the multitudes in the streets and the children in the Temple having been inspired to sing those glorious Hosannas which are prescribed in a subsequent Psalm? (cxviii. 22-26.) Do you still persist in your insolent question :-" By what authority doest Thou these things? and who gave Thee this authority?" "What think ye of Christ? Whose Son is He?" That Psalm which begins with "The LORD said unto my LORD," tells you that the Messiah is not only David's Lord, but also a Priest for ever. I have, therefore, the best possible authority to do these things, to order about in this Temple, to drive out the desecrators and mercers of religion from this holy place. Is it to be wondered at that "no man was able to answer Him a word, neither durst any man from that day forth ask Him any more questions?" Is it to be wondered at that His enemies of every political faction and theological school-with whom the Temple was then crowded-should have listened, cowed and daunted as they must have been, in unprecedented submission to the most terrible denunciations, on the part of the gentle Jesus! as recorded in Matt. xxiii.? How He ruled in the midst of His enemies, as David in spirit said of Him in the 110th Psalm! How in conclusion of that withering and lacerating address He endorses the cry of the multitude, and owns that He is that Son of David, and that Lord! "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together,

even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not! Behold, your house is left unto you desolate. For I say unto you, Ye shall not see me henceforth, till ye shall say, Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord."*

I ask Mr. George Grove, and all who think with him, by whom have the Scribes and Pharisees been misunderstood? By our Lord and His Apostles, or by Mr. Deutsch? But I have already demonstrated how Mr. Deutsch and Mr. Deutsch differ. The grandiloquent defence of the Pharisees furnishes another illustration of the contradictory characteristic of that expounder of the beauties of the Talmud. Thus does the Talmudist of the Quarterly proceed to explain himself touching his clients, on the same page, part of which I have already quoted:-" But that there were very many black sheep in their flock-many who traded on the high reputation of the whole bodyis matter of reiterated denunciation in the whole contemporary literature. The Talmud inveighs even more bitterly and caustically than the New Testament against what it calls the 'Plague of Pharisaism,' the dyed ones,'' who do evil deeds like Zimri, and require a goodly reward like Phinehas, they who preach beautifully, but do not act beautifully.' Parodying their exaggerated logical arrangements, their scrupulous divisions and subdivisions, the Talmud distinguishes seven classes of Pharisees, one of whom only is worthy of that name. These are-1, those who do the will of God from earthly motives; 2, they who make small steps, or say, just wait a while for me; I have just one more good work to perform; 3, they who knock their heads against walls in avoiding the sight of a woman; 4, saints in office; 5, they who implore you to mention some more duties which they might perform; 6, they who are pious because they fear God. The real and only Pharisee is he who does the will of his father which is in Heaven because he loves Him.' Among these chiefly 'Phar

*Matt. xxiii. 37-39. "The connecting link" proves to be a leaf out of our own book. See our vol. for 1873, pp. 561-3.

isaic 'masters of the Mishnic period, whose names and fragments of whose lives have come down to us, are some of the most illustrious men, men at whose feet the Christians sat, whose sayings-household words in the mouths of the people—prove them to have been endowed with no common wisdom, piety, kindness, and high and noble courage: a courage and a piety they had often enough occasion to seal with their lives."

So that, according to Mr. Deutsch himself, only a seventh part of the Pharisees-whether it was the largest or the smallest in point of numbers, the Essayist does not inform his readers-were entitled to respect. I shall, D. V., in my essays on the Talmud, demonstrate that the seventh class of Pharisees was not only the smallest, in point of numbers, but that almost every one belonging to that class owned the claims of Jesus to the Messiahship of Israel.

I have endeavoured to give in this introduction, a digest of the first half of the romantic essay which, as I have shown, consists of a tissue of platitudes and fine spun verbosity. The second half, which professes to deal with the very subject the essayist set before himself to illustrate and expound, consists of superficial padding, in the shape of legend and fable, which no genuine Talmudist would think of palming off on such a class of readers as patronise the Quarterly Review. I shall have many an opportunity of exposing its flimsy texture and its transparent shallowness, in the body of my work on the Talmud. I shall not therefore increase the number of my introductory pages, by an analysis of the second half of the superficial essay. If Mr. Grove had not been a partizan, at all hazards, of the essayist on THE TALMUD, in the Quarterly, he would have acquiesced in the just estimate which the writer on the same subject in the Edinburgh put upon Mr. Deutsch's performance. Moreover, if Mr. Grove, or any other scholar, will deal with the essay which I now have in my crucible, impartially, and eliminate from it all that is irrelevant to the subject, he will scarcely have a page of relevant matter left. I reiterate that it was

Mr. Grove's indiscreet zeal, which challenged the exposure of his friend's presumptuous mastery in Talmudical lore.

The way I propose to answer the portentous question, "What is the Talmud?" will be to give a digest of each treatise separately; to separate the wheat from the chaff, and thus give the English reader an accurate idea of the proportion of either to other. I shall studiously eschew all German, French, or English dilutions on the subject. I shall make the Talmud speak for itself as much as it dares. I say at once that there is much, too much, which it dares not give utterance to in the English language, by reason of Lord Campbell's salutary act in re obscene literature. I am determined such of the English reading public as care for the subject shall have an opportunity of reading a fair and impartial account of the voluminous work from the pen of A TALMUDIST OF TALMUDISTS.

At present I furnish the following

statement in brief, by way of solution to the problem," WHAT IS THE TALMUD?":-After the destruction of Jerusalem, and the dread calamities which befell the Jews in Alexandria, in the second century, Jewish learning found a retreat partly in Judea, and partly on the borders of the Euphrates. The learned Jews of Judea established a school at Jamnia, which, at a subsequent period, was removed to Tiberias. The descendants of the celebrated Hillel presided over that school, in lineal succession, under the title of NASIE, or Prince. About the beginning of the third century-circa A.D. 230Rabbi Yehudah, now called Nasie, now termed KADOUSH saint, compiled the opinions, utterances, assertions and expositions of about one hundred and seventy Rabbis on the various precepts and enactments contained in the Pentateuch. This collection the

compiler designated MISHNAH, or DUPLICATE.

About a century afterwards, a disciple of that school, Rabbi YEHOCHANAN by name, then the Principal of the same, collected the various opinions of about two hundred Rabbis, explanatory of the MISHNAH. This compilation goes by the term G'MARA, or completion. Rabbi Yehochanan added his collection to the MISHNAH, and denominated the whole TALMUD YERUSHALMY, the Jerusalem Talmud.

The Jews who settled on the borders of the Euphrates and Tigris established three schools there; one at Nahardea, another at Pumbeditha, and a third at Sura; all in the dominions of the Kings of Persia. These Persian or, as they were commonly called, Babylonian schools, would not at first accept Rabbi Yehochanan's production. In the sixth century, about A.D. 512, therefore, RABINA and RAB ASHY compiled the opinions, expositions, sagas, legends, fables, and many other things after their kind, of about thirteen hundred of their learned men. These the compilers also called G'MARA; they added the same to the MISHNAH, and called the whole TALMUD BABLY, BABYLONIAN TALMUD. An appropriate designation for more reasons than the two editors conceived. It is a most extraordinary miscellany of some valuable truths, borrowed from Christian teachers, and other few subjects worthy of attention, but its ethics, political economy, astronomy, logic, metaphysics, jurisprudence, are so entangled, enmeshed, and enmessed in such mountains of rubbish-very frequently unsavoury rubbish-as to make me very reluctant to approach the bad odoured heaps, notwithstanding that I have been brought up and educated,

A TALMUDIST OF TALMUDISTS.

THOUGHTS ON

REALITIES OF THE FUTURE LIFE,

IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE REVELATION OF GOD'S WORD, AND CONSISTENT WITH REASONABLE DEDUCTIONS, RESPECTING IMMORTALITY, HEAVEN AND HELL, THE INTERMEDIATE STATE OF THE SOUL, THE MILLENNIAL, AND THE EVERLASTING LIFE.

BY THE REV. W. STONE, M.A.

"Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him. But God hath revealed them unto us by His Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, even the deep things of God."-1 Cor. ii. 9, 10.

CHAPTER I.

INTRODUCTORY, ON THE GENERAL
SUBJECT.

So many vague notions are abroad in society at the present day concerning the soul and body after death, the intermediate state between death and the resurrection, and the general condition of the righteous and the wicked in the life to come, that the fact seems to call for some interposing statements of the truth, in accordance with God's holy revealed word, which may help to throw some light on subjects of deepest interest; on which some have thought very little, and others have thought vaguely, for want of patient investigation and reflection in a right direction.

Better not think or write at all on the "deep things of God," than to think wildly and wantonly, and write things contravening the clear teachings of sacred writ and the unmistaken sentiment of antiquity in the voice (almost) unanimous of the Church. Agreement on mysteries of the Faith, with apostles and prophets, martyrs and saints, is far safer than divergencies from the "old paths," to modern innovations. These divergencies are wont to win considerable success in beguiling the unstable and misleading the simple, from the undoubted talent of most propagators of new and strange doctrines, their worldly tact, mixed up with apparent piety, amiability and zeal, with adoption of many of the essential Articles of the Church's Creeds.

The honeyed sop is all the more seductive, and the poison underneath all the less suspected, when the cake is presented with sweetness and ornamentation. The soul has to be most on its guard against the Tempter when he comes with the smile of Innocence, and conceals his dragonfangs under the garb of an "Angel of Light."

Among other false notions, dangerous to sound Doctrine, and injurious to the faith and hope and peace of the true children of God, may be mentioned the following, which are held largely in the present day, and even by some of whom better things might be expected, on account of their early education, and profession of the Truth:

1. The sleep or unconsciousness of the soul, between death and the resurrection of the body.

2. The destructibility of the soul, its materialism, and non-immortality.

3. The annihilation of body and soul, of some of the wicked, and the limitation of future punishments to others.

4. No first resurrection, no millennial rest nor blessedness, no reign of Christ in person, no national restoration of the Jews-nor their distinction above others.

5. The terrors of the law and "judgment to come," a fable.

6. Communications between the living and the dead kept up by spirit-rapping, and spiritualism,consulting "familiar spirits" concerning future events,

Such opinions and practices, it will be shown, overstep the proper bounds of the faith once delivered to the saints, and foster speculations opposed to the plain tenor and reasonable interpretation of the sacred text. In too many instances it is feared they lead to much restlessness of mind on matters of greatest moment, and draw onward to the deadly gulf of Deism, Rationalism, and Infidelity. Anything that detracts from the finished atoning work of Christ upon the cross-from the

complete redemption of soul and body, or, from the assurance of immediate happiness to the redeemed after death; which makes heaven less glorious, and hell less dreaded; which takes the mind off from the revealed and perfect will of God, and the regenerating influences and office of the Holy Ghost, the Comforter, and to derive comfort instead from presumptuous, self-willed, and therefore forbidden intercourse with "familiar spirits," must, of course, be highly dangerous to the faith and injurious to the soul's purity, safety, and peace. It may be allowed, that a strong and growing desire is manifested in the present inquiring age to know more of the Future State of departed spirits, of the paradise of "the blest," and the destinies of" the lost," both in the Intermediate period of separation between soul and body, and in the further off future of the Resurrection, the Reunion, and the general judgment. Such inquiry is perfectly natural and quite legitimate, under certain restrictions. Those restrictions are, that the investigation must not be indulged in for the sake of vain curiosity or in a speculative spirit, nor regardless of the voice of Holy Scripture and antiquity, Within such proper bounds the inquiry may not only be lawful and reasonable, but most interesting and useful.

In this spirit, and within these limits, we hope to pursue the present inquiry. And, believing that the best mode of refuting error is by plain and unvarnished scriptural statements of truth, consistent with reasonable deductions, we shall not call upon our readers to follow us through long lines of argumentation, which have been ably thrown out by others in past times; but we shall ask them candidly to consider and weigh the amount of evidence on the side of the revealed Word, as far preponderating, and even overwhelming, against the value of trivial, speculative novelties in the opinions on the opposite side.

Every age of the Church, we know, has witnessed heresies and strange doctrines. From the earliest propagation of the Gospel of the kingdom, according to the warning and prediction of its Great Founder, the

enemy has been most busy in sowing "tares" among the good "wheat;" and in the present age of rapid interchange of thought, when the prophecy in Daniel's last chapter seems fulfilling-"many are running to and fro," and "knowledge" of all kinds, good and evil, is on the swift "increase' the evil, alas! is threatening society, hurrying on to a fearful extent, because it is of man's depraved nature and bent to receive it, and the good is in danger of being left behind, despite all the powerful agencies of the Church of God to instil truth and counteract error.

Mind, now more than ever, acts quickly upon mind; and physical agitation to and fro has a deteriorating influence on solidity of thought and stability of character. Hence, old and safe Rock-foundations of faith are often deserted for some new theory, some speculative and sandy basis. Religion must have something highly sensational and exciting to be largely attractive to the fast thinkers and actors, and general literature must be crowded with idle tales, that touch the passions and defy sober reason and Scripture, in order to draw round it the giddy host of light readers, who flit like evening moths about a newlylighted candle. Further than this, the doors must be forced open into the invisible world of spirits, to get help and information from the dead; it being too tame and common a thing to learn from the ever-living Word, and ever-present Spirit of God, the things which belong to faith, hope, and duty, to inward joy and peace in believing.

A work called" Gates Ajar," by an American lady (Miss E. S. Phelps), should rather be styled "Gates thrust Open:" it goes far beyond revelation, and often contradicts it, implying that departed spirits take the place of ministering angels, and even of the Holy Comforter.

In certain remarks by the editor of A. Barron's "Glimpses into the Supernatural," there is some discernment shown as to the causes of the present dangerous spread of Materialism and denial of the soul's immortality. "The stupendous achievements of mechanical skill with which we are surrounded;