of atonement with any
reference whatever to a future life. To ancient Israel, Jehovah was a
God of the present,--not the future. He did things _then_,--in the
present tense. He was the God of the _living_,--not of the dead. And
Jesus affirmed the same thing.

He was exclusively a God for this world and this life. The atoning
sacrifice was offered to appease his wrath against them for their past
sins, not the sin of the individual only, but the sins of the whole
nation. The benefits they expected to receive from this remission of
sins thru the blood of the atonement were _here_ and _now_,--not in
some future life.

We pass rapidly now to the time of the Christ. Altho the canonical
books of the Old Testament give us no clue to any definite, fixed
beliefs among the Jews concerning a future life, heaven, hell or the
resurrection of the dead, yet, according to the New Testament
literature, these views were all quite clearly defined, and generally
believed among all the Jews, except the party of the Sadducees,
relatively a very small party. Whence came these beliefs? If they had
come by some divine revelation they would certainly have been recorded
in some of their sacred books. But they were not. The only rational
answer is that they learned all these things from their Eastern masters
during the captivity, where all these beliefs are now known to have
been current centuries before the captivity, and brought them back on
their return; and with some modifications incorporated them into their
own system. Yet there is no indication in the New Testament, nor any
contemporary literature now extant, that the atoning sacrifice that was
continually offered in the temple, even down to the destruction of
Jerusalem, was ever offered with any view, or reference to a future
life; much less as a means of escaping hell.

We turn now to the Christ. It has already been said that he nowhere
makes the least reference to a vicarious atonement to be made by
himself for the sins of world. True, he warns his disciples that he
must needs go up to Jerusalem, there to suffer and be put to death; but
nowhere does he say that this death is to _redeem back_ mankind from
the devil; nor appease the wrath of God against mankind by the sight of
his blood; nor to vindicate the majesty of a broken law, for the
benefit of mankind. It is all but universally acknowledged that his
disciples had no such conception of his mission, but followed him