In matters of religion, many are, at the present time, proverbially afraid of new things. Had this fear existed before new things usurped the place of the old, it had been well. As it is, we have not only the state of things spoken of by the prophet, when men shall put darkness for light and light for darkness, and bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter, but we have them also putting old thing for new and new for old, clinging to the new things as if they were the old, and crying out against the old things as if they were new.
Such is emphatically the case with the doctrine discussed in the following pages. An immortal soul and consciousness in death are really the new things in this controversy. These are everywhere opposed by the writers of the Bible, and were only able to creep into the church by means of the great apostasy this side of the days of the apostles. Yet men would have us believe that these are the ancient doctrines of God's word, and that the truth has stood on the side of the serpent from the days of Eve to the present. Gen. 3: 4. Hence, anything which opposes these, is branded as innovation—as some new doctrine which has come newly up. It is to remove this deception from the minds of the people that we labor. And in sending forth such teaching as this work contains, we are only calling attention to one of the “old paths,” out of which the nations have been turned by the great enchantress that sits upon her seven hills, on the banks of the Tiber; Rev. 17: 1, 2; 18: 3; and which the prophet calls upon us to seek out, and, when we have found them, to walk therein. Jer. 6: 16.
To this truth, there have all along been witnesses; and those with whom great names are essential to authority, will find no lack of these connected with this doctrine. The name of John Milton, author of “Paradise Lost,” and who has been styled “The Christian Homer,” is all that could be asked in this direction. He was born in London, December 9, 1608, and stood at the head of his generation in literature and theology. With him we may mention, as holding the same views, such men as the Rt. Hon. Sir James Stephens, Regius Professor of Mod. Hist. in Cambridge College, Eng., Archbishop Whately, of Dublin, Bishop Law, author of a Call to the Unconverted, Edward White, Wm. G. Moncrieff, of Scotland, H. H. Dobney and Panton Ham, of England, eminent as ministers and authors, John Locke, the Christian philosopher, Olshausen, the German commentator, who says, “The doctrine of the immortality of the soul and the name are alike unknown to the entire Bible,” John Taylor, author of a Hebrew Concordance, Tholuck, the German critic, etc., etc.—PUBLISHING COMMITTEE.
The visible creation comprises the material universe, and all that is contained therein; and more especially the human race. The creation of the world in general, and of its individual parts is related in Gen. 1. It is also described in Job 26: 7, etc., and chapter 38, and in various passages of the Psalms and Prophets—Ps. 33: 6–9; 104: 14; 48: 5; Prov. 8: 26; Amos 4: 13; 2 Peter 3: 5. Previously, however, to the creation of man, as if to intimate the superior importance of the work, the Deity speaks like a man deliberating. Gen. 1: 26. “God said, Let us make man in our own image, after our own likeness.”
So that it was not the body alone that was then made, but the soul of man also (in which our likeness to God principally consists), which precludes us from attributing pre-existence to the soul which was then formed—a groundless notion sometimes entertained, but refuted by Gen. 2: 7. “God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; thus man became a living soul.” Job 32: 8. “There is a spirit in man, and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth them understanding.” Nor did God merely breathe that spirit into man, but molded it in each individual, and infused it throughout, enduing and embellishing it with its proper faculties. Zech. 12: 1. “He formeth the spirit of man within him.”
We may understand from other passages of Scripture, that when God infused the breath of life into man, what man thereby received was not a portion of God's essence, or a participation of the divine nature, but that measure of the divine virtue or influence which was commensurate to the capabilities of the recipient. For it appears from Ps. 104: 29, 30, that he infused the breath of life into other living beings also. “Thou takest away their breath, they die, . . . thou sendest forth thy Spirit, they are created;” whence we learn that every living thing receives animation from one and the same source of life and breath; inasmuch as when God takes back to himself that spirit or breath of life, they cease to exist. Eccl. 3: 19. “They have all one breath.” Nor has the word spirit any other meaning in the sacred writings, but that breath of life which we inspire, or the vital, or sensitive, or rational, faculty, or some action or affection belonging to those faculties.
Man having been created after this manner, it is said, as a consequence, that “man became a living soul;” whence it may be inferred (unless we had rather take the heathen writers for our teachers respecting the nature of the soul), that man is a living being intrinsically and properly one and individual, not compound or separable, not, according to the common opinion, made up and framed of two distinct and different natures, as of soul and body, but that the whole man is soul, and the soul man, that is to say, a body, or individual substance, animated, sensitive and rational; and that the breath of life was neither a part of the divine essence, nor was it the soul itself, but as it were, the inspiration of some divine virtue fitted for the exercise of life and reason, and infused into the organic body; for man himself, the whole man, when finally created, is called in express terms “a living soul.” Hence the word used in Genesis to signify soul is interpreted by the apostle, 1 Cor. 15: 45, “animal.” Again, all the attributes of the body are assigned in common to the soul. The touch. Lev. 5: 2. “If a soul touch any unclean thing.” The act of eating. Lev. 7: 18, 20. “The soul that eateth of it shall bear his iniquity.” “The soul that eateth of the flesh,” and in other places. Hunger. Prov. 13: 25; 27: 7. “To the hungry soul, every bitter thing is sweet.” Thirst. Prov. 25: 25. “As cold waters to a thirsty soul.” Isa. 29: 8. Capture. 1 Sam. 24: 11. “Thou huntest my soul to take it.” Ps. 7: 5. “Let the enemy persecute my soul and take it.”
Where we speak of the body as a mere senseless stock, there the soul must be understood as signifying either the spirit, or its secondary faculties, the vital or sensitive faculty for instance. Thus it is as often distinguished from the spirit as from the body itself. Luke 1: 46, 47; 1 Thess. 5: 23. “Your whole spirit and soul and body.” Heb. 4: 12. “To the dividing asunder of soul and spirit.” But that the spirit of man should be separate from the body, so as to have a perfect and intelligent existence independently of it, is nowhere said in Scripture, and the doctrine is evidently at variance both with nature and reason, as will be shown more fully hereafter. For the word soul is applied to every kind of living being. Gen. 1: 30. “Every beast of the earth wherein there is life.” (Hebrew, a living soul.)Gen. 7: 22. “All in whose nostrils was the breath of life [Heb., living soul] of all that was in the dry land, died,” yet it is never inferred from these expressions that the soul exists separate from the body in any of the brute creation.
On the seventh day God ceased from his work, and ended the whole business of creation. Gen. 2: 23. It would seem, therefore, that the human soul is not created daily by the immediate act of God, but propagated from father to son in a natural order; which was considered the more probable opinion by Tertullian and Apolinarius, as well as by Augustine and the whole western church in the time of Jerome, as he himself testifies, Tom. 2, Epist. 82, and Gregory of Nyssa in his treatise on the soul. God would in fact have left his creation imperfect, and a vast, not to say a servile, task, would yet remain to be performed, without even allowing time for rest on each successive Sabbath, if he still continued to create as many souls daily as there are bodies multiplied throughout the whole world, at the bidding of what is not seldom the flagitious wantonness of man. Nor is there any reason to suppose that the influence of the divine blessing is less efficacious in imparting to man the power of producing after his kind than to the other parts of animated nature. Gen. 1: 22, 28. Thus it was from one of the ribs of the man that God made the mother of all mankind, without the necessity of infusing the breath of life a second time, Gen. 2: 22, and Adam himself begat a son in his own likeness after his image. Gen. 5: 3. Thus, 1 Cor. 15: 49, “As we have borne the image of the earthy;” and this not only in the body, but in the soul, as it was chiefly with respect to the soul that Adam was made in the divine image. So, Gen. 46: 26, “All the souls which came with Jacob into Egypt, which came out of his loins.” Heb. 7: 10. “Levi was in the loins of Abraham;” whence in Scripture an offspring is called seed, and Christ is denominated “the seed of the woman.” Gen. 17: 7. “I will be a God unto thee, and to thy seed after thee.” 1 Cor. 15: 44, 46. “It is sown a natural body.” “That was not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural.”
But besides the testimony of revelation, some arguments from reason may be alleged in confirmation of this doctrine. Whoever is born, or shaped and conceived in sin (as we all are, not David only, Ps. 51: 5), if he receive his soul immediately from God, cannot but receive it from him shapen in sin; for to be generated and conceived, means nothing else than to receive a soul in conjunction with the body. If we receive the soul immediately from God, it must be pure, for who in such a case will venture to call it impure? But if it be pure, how are we conceived in sin in consequence of receiving a pure soul, which would rather have the effect of cleansing the impurities of the body; or with what justice is the pure soul charged with the sin of the body?
But it is contended that God does not create souls impure, but only impaired in their nature and destitute of original righteousness. I answer that to create pure souls destitute of original righteousness—to send them into contaminated and corrupt bodies—to deliver them in their innocence and helplessness to the prison-house of the body, as to an enemy, with understanding blinded, and with will enslaved—in other words, wholly deprived of sufficient strength for resisting the vicious propensities of the body—to create souls thus circumstanced, would argue as much injustice as to have created them impure would have argued impurity; it would have argued as much injustice as to have created the first man, Adam himself, impaired in his nature, and destitute of original righteousness.
Again, if sin be communicated by generation, and transmitted from father to son, it follows that what is the original subject of sin, namely, the rational soul, must be propagated in the same manner; for that it is from the soul that all sin in the first instance proceeds, will not be denied. Lastly, on what principle of justice can sin be imputed through Adam to that soul, which was never either in Adam, nor derived from Adam? In confirmation of which Aristotle's argument may be added, the truth of which is, in my opinion, indisputable. If the soul be equally diffused through any given whole, and throughout every part of that whole, how can the human seed, the noblest and most intimate part of all the body, be imagined destitute of the soul of the parents, or at least of the father, when communicated to the son by the laws of generation?
It was probably by some such considerations as these that Augustine was led to confess that he could neither discover, by study nor prayer, nor any process of reasoning, how the doctrine of original sin could be defended on the supposition of the creation of souls. The texts which are usually advanced, Eccl. 12: 7; Isa. 57: 16; Zech. 12: 1, certainly indicate that nobler origin of the soul implied in its being breathed from the mouth of God; but they no more prove that each soul is severally and immediately created by the Deity than certain other texts which might be quoted, prove that each individual body is formed in the womb by the immediate hand of God. Job 10: 8–10. “Thine hands have made me and fashioned me together round about; yet thou dost preserve me. Remember, I beseech thee, that thou hast fashioned me as clay; and wilt thou bring me into dust again? Hast thou not poured me out as milk, and curdled me like cheese?” Ps. 33: 15. “He fashioneth their hearts alike.” Job 31: 15. “Did not he that made me in the womb make him?” Isa. 44: 24. “Thus saith Jehovah, . . . he that formed thee from the womb.” Acts 17: 26. “He hath made of one blood all nations of men.” We are not to infer from these passages that natural causes do not contribute their ordinary efficacy for the propagation of the body; nor on the other hand, that the soul is not received by traduction from the father, because at the time of death it again betakes itself to different elements than the body, in conformity with its own origin.
With regard to the passage, Heb. 12: 9, where “the fathers of the flesh” are opposed to “the Father of spirits,” I answer that it is to be understood in a theological, not in a physical, sense, as if the father of the body were opposed to the father of the soul; for flesh is taken neither in this passage, nor probably anywhere else, for the body without the soul: not “the Father of spirits” for the father of the soul, in respect of the work of generation; but “the father of the flesh” here means nothing else than the earthly or natural father, whose offspring are begotten in sin; “the Father of spirits” is either the Heavenly Father, who in the beginning created all spirits, angels, as well as the human race, or the spiritual father, who bestows a second birth on the faithful, according to John 3: 6. “That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.” The argument, too, will proceed better, if the whole be understood as referring to edification and correction, not to generation; for the point in question is not from what source each individual originated, or what part of him thence originated, but who had proved most successful in the employment of chastisement and instruction. By parity of reasoning, the apostle might exhort the converts to bear with his rebuke, on the ground that he was their spiritual father. God is as truly the Father of the flesh as of the spirits of the flesh, Num. 16: 22, but this is not the sense intended here, and all arguments are weak which are deduced from passages of Scripture originally relating to a different subject.
With regard to the soul of Christ, it will be sufficient to answer that its generation was supernatural, and therefore cannot be cited as an argument in the discussion of this controversy. Nevertheless, even he is called “the seed of the woman,” “the seed of David according to the flesh,” that is, undoubtedly, according to his human nature.
There seems, therefore, no reason why the soul of man should be made an exception to the general law of creation. For, as has been shown before, God breathed the breath of life into the other living beings, and blended it so intimately with matter that the propagation and production of the human form were analogous to those of other forms, and the proper effect of that power which had been communicated to matter by the Deity.
The providence of God as it regards the fall of man, is observable in the sin of man, and the misery consequent upon it, as well as in his restoration.
Sin as defined by the apostle, is anomia, or the transgression of the law. 1 John 3: 5.
After sin came death, as the calamity or punishment consequent upon it. Gen. 2: 17. “In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.” Rom. 5: 12. “Death entered by sin.” Rom. 6: 23. “The wages of sin is death.” Rom. 7: 5. “The motions of sin did work in our members to bring forth fruit unto death.”
Under the head of death, in Scripture, all evils whatever, together with everything which in its consequences tends to death, must be understood as comprehended; for mere bodily death, as it is called, did not follow the sin of Adam on the self-same day, as God had threatened.
Hence divines, not inappropriately, reckon up several degrees of death. The first, as before said, comprehends all those evils which lead to death, and which it is agreed came into the world immediately upon the fall of man, the most important of which I proceed to enumerate.
In the first place, guiltiness; which, though in its primary sense, it is an imputation made by God to us, yet it is also, as it were, a commencement or prelude of death dwelling in us, by which we are held as by a bond, and rendered subject to condemnation and punishment. Rom. 3: 19, “that all the world may become guilty before God.” Guiltiness, accordingly, is accompanied or followed by the terrors of conscience. Gen. 3: 8. “They heard the voice of God . . . and Adam and his wife hid themselves . . . and he said, I was afraid.” Rom. 8: 15. “Ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear.” Heb. 2: 15. “Who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage.” Heb. 10: 27. “A certain fearful looking for of judgment.” It is attended likewise with the sensible forfeiture of the divine protection and favor; whence results a diminution of the majesty of the human countenance, and a conscious degradation of mind. Gen. 3: 7. “They knew that they were naked.”
Hence the whole man becomes polluted. Titus 1: 15. “Even their mind and conscience is defiled,” whence arises their shame. Gen. 3: 7. “They sewed fig-leaves together and made themselves aprons.” Rom. 6: 21. “What fruit had ye then in those things whereof ye are now ashamed? for the end of those things is death.”
The second degree of death is called spiritual death; by which is meant the loss of divine grace, and of that innate righteousness, wherein man in the beginning lived unto God. Eph. 2: 1. “Who were dead in trespasses and sins.” Eph. 4: 18. “Alienated from the life of God.” Col. 2: 13. “Dead in your sins.” Rev. 3: 1. “Thou hast a name that thou livest and art dead.” And this death took place not only on the very day, but at the very moment of the fall. They who are delivered from it are said to be “regenerated,” to be “born again,” and to be “created afresh,” which is the work of God alone.
The third degree of death is what is called the death of the body. To this, all the labors, sorrows, and diseases, which afflict the body, are nothing but the prelude. Gen. 3: 16, 17. “I will greatly multiply thy sorrow . . . in sorrow shalt thou eat of it.” Job. 5: 7. “Man is born unto trouble, as the sparks fly upward.” All nature is likewise subject to mortality and a curse on account of man. Gen. 3: 17. “Cursed is the ground for thy sake.” Rom. 8: 20, 21. “The creature was made subject to vanity not willingly.” Even the beasts are not exempt. Gen. 3: 14; 6: 7. So “the first-born of beast” in the land of Egypt perished for the sins of their masters. Ex. 11: 5.
The death of the body is to be considered in the light of a punishment for sin, no less than the other degrees of death, notwithstanding the contrary opinion with some. Rom. 5: 13, 14. “Until the law, sin was in the world . . . death reigned from Adam to Moses.” 1 Cor. 15: 21. “Since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection from the dead;” therefore that bodily death from which we are to rise again, originated in sin, and not in nature; contrary to the opinion of those who maintain that temporal death is the result of natural causes, and that eternal death alone is due to sin.
(To be continued.)
The Unseen Helmsman
Noah’s ark was to the outward sight a mere speck driven hither and thither in the fearful eddies; to the inward sight an unseen helmsman holds fast to an unseen helm; and that frail two inch plank is safe. In all great events, man finds conviction in his own soul, that God holds all in his hands.
Things.
By Uriah Smith
The word, things, when used otherwise than to denote actions or events, signifies, according to Webster, “any substance, that which is created, any particular article or commodity.” A thing, then, is something which has substance; it has length, breadth, and thickness; it occupies space; it can be measured, seen, felt, and handled. It is matter and possesses all the properties of matter. Among every people on the earth, thing means something material and tangible; and in every book on the face of the globe when the reader meets with this word, he attaches to it, and correctly, too, a similar meaning. I said every book; perhaps one must be excepted; for there is a book which in common with all others uses this word, and in which it is made to mean something entirely different, or rather, nothing. That book is the Bible; and whether it is lawful to thus change the meaning of this word, when found in this book, from that which is given to it in all other books, and under all other circumstances, is the point in question.
To illustrate, see Col. 3: 1: “If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God.” Things above! What! are there things above? No, says the rarefied theology of the present day; there is immateriality above and nothing more. There is an immaterial heaven, an immaterial God and Christ, immaterial angels, and immaterial spirits of dead people. But the text speaks of things above. Can these things by any process be evaporated into the immateriality which the popular belief attaches to them? It cannot certainly be done by the definition of the word; for that signifies any substance, something actual and real, and it cannot be done by its use as applied to any object on this earth; for here it always means something material, something that has body and parts. There seems then to be no reason for the meaning that is attached to the word things when applied to the objects above, save the mysterious belief that substance and reality are incompatible with the state of the blessed; and no reason can be given for this belief except the fact of its own existence; but behind this fact it thus entrenches itself; and while it forbids all questioning as to the right of its existence, it holds the theological world in slavery to its mystical demands.
Perhaps, however, this theory is wrong, and the Bible right. Perhaps the word things, when found in that book, with no conceivable reason to affect its signification, may mean the same as in any other book. The arbitrary claim of the popular view is set forth still more strikingly in the following verse, which reads: “Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth.” Things above and things on the earth. What do we understand by things on the earth? Anything immaterial and invisible? None will so claim; but things real and tangible. By what principle, therefore, can things above, in the antitypical portion of the sentence, be construed to mean just the reverse? When things mean something in one place, how can it in just three words from where it is so used mean nothing at all. Let every lover of consistency who is troubled with the mysticism that has been thrown over the word of God, consider this point.
Other scriptures bear testimony to the reality of heavenly things. Peter, in his first epistle 1: 4, speaks of an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled, reserved in heaven for us. In Heb. 10: 34, Paul says, “For ye had compassion of me in my bonds, and took joyfully the spoiling of your goods, knowing in yourselves, that ye have in heaven, a better and an enduring substance.” This language is unmistakable; we have in heaven not immateriality and nonentity, but a substance. And when Paul would set before us the hope that inspired the worthies of old, he speaks of it in contrast with this earth, as “a country,” a “better country,” a “heavenly country.” Strange language, if this earth is the only real and substantial thing of the two. He also tells us that they looked for, not an airy nothing, but a tangible city; not founded on nothing but one which had foundations, whose builder and maker was God.
Yes, there are things above. We can rejoice in the glorious hope of something real, something upon which a scriptural, sober, and intelligent faith can lay hold, an inheritance as literal as the earth upon which we now tread, glorified as infinite power, exerted in infinite wisdom can alone do it, where we shall know as we are known, and with the fine-strung sensibilities of the redeemed, be enabled to appreciate the exquisite joys that dwell in the presence of God, and at his right hand forevermore.
Things above. But perhaps some one may ask, May there not be things somewhere above, and yet heaven itself be the intangible, spiritual place it is commonly supposed? Let the apostle answer. He tells us in the very text under notice, the definite location of these things; he tells us just where they are; “Seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God.” That is sufficient. The things above, are just where God and Christ have their glorious abode.
There is the holy city, New Jerusalem, with its rainbow of precious foundation stones underlying its jasper wall; there are its gates of pearl, and its streets of gold; there is the tree of life, and the river of water of life; there is the true tabernacle, pitched not by man, but by the living God where our great High Priest is now ministering for us; there is the great original of the ark, the mercy-seat, and the tables of testimony, inscribed with the great law of Jehovah; there is the throne of God and the Lamb, and there the many mansions of the Father's house, made ready for those who are found prepared when the Lord shall return, to be taken with him.
It is the things above that we are to seek. How shall we seek them? The next verse explains: Set your affection, your mind, your earnest desire, upon things above. And is it necessary for the apostle to exhort us to do this? Must a people so prone as we are to set our affections on the blighted and perishing things of this earth, when we have revealed to us the incorruptible, the surpassing, and unfading glories of heaven, which may be had by seeking—must such a people be exhorted before we will turn our attention to them? Not when faith in the reality and certainty of these things is lively and strong. Lord, increase our faith, and give us an earnest of the inheritance prepared for thy faithful followers. U. S.
Thoughts on the Book of Daniel.
By Uriah Smith
CHAPTER IX—(CONTINUED).
VERSES 25–27. Know therefore and understand, that from the going forth of the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem, unto Messiah the Prince, shall be seven weeks, and threescore and two weeks: the street shall be built again, and the wall, even in troublous times. And after threescore and two weeks shall Messiah be cut off, but not for himself; and the people of the prince that shall come, shall destroy the city and the sanctuary; and the end thereof shall be with a flood, and unto the end of the war desolations are determined. And he shall confirm the covenant with many for one week; and in the midst of the week he shall cause the sacrifice and oblation to cease, and for the overspreading of abominations, he shall make it desolate, even until the consummation, and that determined shall be poured upon the desolate.
The angel now gives to Daniel the event which is to mark the commencement of the seventy weeks. They were to date from the going forth of the commandment to restore and build Jerusalem. And not only is the event given which was to determine the time of the commencement of this period, but those also which were to transpire at its close. Thus a double test is provided by which to try the application of this prophecy. But more than this, the period of seventy weeks is divided into three grand divisions, and one of these is again divided, and the intermediate events are given which were to mark the termination of each one of these divisions. If, now, we can find a date which will harmonize with all these events, we have, beyond a doubt, the true application; for none but that which is correct could meet and fulfill so many conditions. Let the reader take in at one view the points of harmony to be made, that he may be the better prepared to guard against a false application. First, we are to find at the commencement of the period, a commandment going forth to restore and build Jerusalem. To this work seven weeks are allotted. As we reach the end of this, the first division, seven weeks from the commencement, we are to find, secondly, Jerusalem in its material aspect, restored, the work of building the street and the wall fully accomplished. From this point sixty-two weeks are measured off; and as we reach the termination of this division, sixty-nine weeks from the beginning, we are to see, thirdly, the manifestation before the world of the Messiah, the Prince. One week more is given us, completing the seventy. And fourthly, in the midst of this week, the Messiah is to be cut off and cause the sacrifice and oblation to cease; and, fifthly, when the last week expires of that period which was allotted to the Jews as the time during which they were to be the special people of God, we naturally look for the going forth of the blessing and work of God to other people.
We now inquire for the date which will harmonize with all these particulars. The command was to include more than mere building. There was to be restoration; by which we must understand all the forms and regulations of civil, political, and judicial life. When did such a command go forth? At the time these words were spoken to Daniel, Jerusalem lay in complete and utter desolation, and had thus been lying for seventy years. The restoration, pointed to in the future, must be its restoration from this desolation. We then inquire, When and how was Jerusalem restored after the seventy years’ captivity?
There are but four events which can be taken as answering to the commandment to restore and build Jerusalem. These are, 1. The decree of Cyrus for the re-building of the house of God, B. C. 536. 2. The decree of Darius for the prosecution of that work which had been hindered, B. C. 519. 3. The decree of Artaxerxes to Ezra, B. C. 457. Ezra 7. 4. The commission to Nehemiah from the same king in his twentieth year, B. C. 444. Neh. 2.
Dating from the first two of these decrees, the seventy weeks, being weeks of years, 490 years in all, would fall many years short of reaching even to the Christian era; besides, these decrees had reference principally to the restoration of the temple and the temple-worship, of the Jews, and not to the restoration of their civil state and polity, all of which must be included in the expression, “to restore and to build Jerusalem.”
These made a commencement of the work. They were preliminary to what was afterward accomplished. But of themselves they are altogether insufficient, both in their dates and in their nature, to meet the requirements of the prophecy; and thus failing in every respect, they cannot be brought into the controversy as marking the point from which the seventy weeks are to date. The only question now lies between the decrees which were granted to Ezra and to Nehemiah.
The facts between which we are to decide here, are, briefly these: In 457 B. C., a decree was granted to Ezra by the Persian Emperor, Artaxerxes Longimanus, to go up to Jerusalem with as many of his people as were minded to go with him. The commission granted him an unlimited amount of treasure, to beautify the house of God, procure offerings for its service, and to do whatever else might seem good unto him. It empowered him to ordain laws, set magistrates and judges, and execute punishment even unto death; in other words, to restore the Jewish state, civil and ecclesiastical, according to the law of God and the ancient customs of that people. Inspiration has seen fit to preserve this decree; and a full and accurate copy of it is given in the seventh chapter of the book of Ezra. In the original, this decree is given, not in Hebrew, but in the Chaldaic (or Eastern Aramaic), the language then used at Babylon; and thus we are furnished with the original document by virtue of which Ezra was authorized to restore and build Jerusalem.
Thirteen years after this, in the twentieth year of the same king, B. C. 444, Nehemiah sought and obtained permission to go up to Jerusalem. Neh. 2. Permission was granted him, but we have no evidence that it was anything more than verbal. It pertained to him individually, nothing being said about others going up with him. The king asked him how long a journey he wished to make, and when he would return. He received letters to the governors beyond the river, to help him on his way to Judah, and an order to the king’s forest for timber for beams, etc. When he arrived at Jerusalem, he found rulers, priests, and nobles and people, already engaged in the work of building Jerusalem. Neh. 2: 16. These were, of course, acting under the decree given to Ezra thirteen years before. And finally, Nehemiah, having arrived at Jerusalem, finished the work he came to accomplish, in fifty-two days. Neh. 6: 15.