THE RAINBOW: A Magazine of Christian Literature, with Special Reference to the Revealed Future of the Church and the World. WE JANUARY, 1881. THE CLOUD OF WITNESSES. We invited E are not surprised at the questions put to us. them from honest querists years ago. By honest querists of course we meant persons who did not wish to cavil, but to examine and weigh evidence, as those who are really in earnest always do. At the beginning of another year, whilst wishing grace and blessing to our friends, we repeat the invitation, and shall be glad to answer, or say we cannot, as the case may be, under the modest head of "Notices." We understand that these notices are valued, and that the answers we have been enabled to give have been helpful to our readers, or to those of them who needed only a hint to indicate the line of thought required by the subject. Sometimes those answers have been too brief from the necessity of condensation; but then, those who read the RAINBOW will understand the compliment paid to their intelligence by such condensation. The adage, "A word to the wise," has not lost its pith, old as it is. Sometimes, however, we are asked questions which cannot be answered by the summary process, because they cover a wide field of thought and touch doctrines of vast importance. Here, for example, is one, often put to us, which must have a brief paper instead of a paragraph: "Are not the great cloud of witnesses spoken of in Hebrews xii. 1, the disembodied souls of the saints, named in the previous chapter, looking down upon us from heaven as the witnesses of our conduct in the Christian race?" Of course our answer would be, "No, decidedly and emphatically, no!" But this, though a true answer, is too short to give satisfaction. It is a bald negative, and affords no helpful reason to the honest inquirer why he should give up the notion that the souls of the Hebrew heroes are looking down from heaven upon the conduct of Christians striving to be faithful in the midst of trials. We shall, therefore, as concisely as is compatible with clearness, state our reasons for the negative answer that we have assumed to be correct. 1. We have no authority from Scripture for the use of the term "disembodied souls." We should not, however, ask for the ipsissima verba, the identical words, if the idea they convey were found in the Bible in any other words; but it is not. The conception of conscious souls, that once animated men, thinking, acting, speaking, watching, is common to paganism, to fiction, to poetry and theology; but holy men of God, speaking as they were moved by the Holy Spirit, never allude to it in word or thought. But surely if the idea is in harmony with truth, if it represents an existing reality, the inspired writers were the men to tell us so. They are our guides in all matters respecting the unseen, and if they have told us nothing about disembodied souls, it is a proof of loyalty on our part to the voice of Scripture to believe that they had nothing to tell. It is true that some writers have lately speculated upon "the silence of Scripture," and have imagined it a rich mine for doctrines of which the Scripture says nothing. Of course if you make silence an oracle, forgetting the absurdity in your eagerness to establish a theory, you may teach anything; but where is the authority that makes the theory binding? Make silence a revelation, and the demand upon credulity will be enormous. But this eccentric whim must be taken for what it is worth, and that is-nothing. The word soul, or souls, occurs in the Bible five hundred times, and in this vast number of instances there are only two that can possibly suggest the idea of intelligent existence apart from the body, and on examination the suggestion is seen to be merely superficial, the passages being highly symbolical, whilst the actual doctrine at the heart of the symbol strengthens the position that we have no authority in Scripture for the use of the term "disembodied souls." 2. The eleventh of Hebrews opens by telling us that "faith is the confidence of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen,' and closes by saying, "These all having obtained a good report through faith, received not the promise; God having provided some better thing for us, that they without us should not be made perfect." These two sentences make it quite certain that the next sentence (xii. 1) cannot possibly bear the interpretation of human souls in heaven witnessing the conduct of men upon the earth. Besides, resurrection runs through the chapter as the hope of these Hebrew saints, and not the rapture of their souls to heaven with all their faculties of thought and observation complete. No doubt you will find this doctrine in ecclesiastical creeds and catechisms, poisoned by the leaven of an unsuspected paganism, but the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews and his illustrious countrymen whom he places in his picture gallery, knew nothing of it. These brave men witnessed for God; but who witnessed their fidelity to conviction, their loyalty to revealed truth, their consecration to God? 3. The answer is, Their enemies, persecutors, murderers. These formed "the cloud of witnesses," who saw with astonishment, and often with fury at what they considered the fanatical madness of their victims, their stedfast adherence to the God of their fathers. They refused to "accept deliverance " from horrible torture, though they knew it must end in death, because "they looked for a better resurrection." Any one acquainted with Grecian or Roman theatres knew what a "cloud of witnesses meant. The fact that suggested the eleventh chapter is found in the concluding paragraph of the tenth : "But call to remembrance the former days, in which, after ye were illuminated, ye endured a great fight of affliction; partly, whilst ye were made a gazingstock both by reproaches and afflictions; and partly, whilst ye became companions of them that were so used. 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. Cast not away therefore your confidence, which hath great recompense of reward. For ye have need of patience, that, after ye have done the will of God, ye might receive the promise. For yet a little while, and he that shall come will come, and will not tarry. Now the just shall live by faith: but if any man draw back, my soul shall have no pleasure in him. But we are not one of them who draw back unto perdition; but of them that believe to the saving of the soul." The word rendered "gazingstock," Ocarpio, means made a spectacle in a theatre, or in places set apart for wrestling, fighting, and so forth for the amusement of spectators. In these places criminals were sometimes exposed and punished. The following affecting passage, from the First Epistle to the Corinthians, brings these exhibitions vividly before us : "For I think that God hath set forth us the apostles last, as it were appointed to death: for we are made a spectacle unto the world, and to angels, and to men. We are fools for Christ's sake, but ye are wise in Christ; we are weak, but ye are strong; ye are honourable, but we are despised. Even unto this present hour we both hunger, and thirst, and are naked, and are buffeted, and have no certain dwelling-place; and labour, working with our own hands; being reviled, we bless; being persecuted, we suffer it: being defamed, we intreat: we are made as the filth of the world, and are the offscouring of all things unto this day. The word rendered "spectacle" in this passage is earpovtheatron-so that the Apostle felt that he and his fellow sufferers for Christ's sake were, like the Hebrew confessors in a previous age, gazed upon by a great cloud of witnesses. Hence the words in the verse under notice (Heb. xii. 1). "We also "-equal to: There are many spectators of our conduct now, as there were of theirs formerly. Mr. Conybeare translates 1 Cor. iv. 9 thus:-" For Conybeare and Howson's, " Life and Epistles of St. Paul." I think, God has set forth us the apostles last of all, like criminals condemned to die, to be gazed at in a theatre by the whole world, both men and angels." And he gives the following illustrative note: "Literally, because we have been made a theatrical spectacle. Compare Heb. x. 33. The spectacle to which St. Paul here alludes was common in those times. Criminals condemned to death were exhibited for the amusement of the populace on the arena of the amphitheatre, and forced to fight with wild beasts, or to slay one another or gladiators. These criminals were exhibited at the end of the spectacle as an exciting termination to the entertainment ('set forth last of all.') So Tertullian paraphrases the passage, Nos Deus Apostolos novissimos elegit velut bestiarios."" If it were at all needful we might further strengthen the argument by quoting Phil. iii. 13, 14, and 2 Tim. iv. 7, 8, as well as several other passages in Paul's Epistles; but perhaps the reader will see from what has been said that the notion of souls in heaven witnessing the career of saints on earth must be given up as destitute of foundation either in fact or Scripture. But let us remember that the world is watching us, who profess that we are not of it; and let us live accordingly. I. A REGENERATION AND RESURRECTION. T the Conference of "The Conditional Immortality Association," held in Maberly Chapel in 1879, I was startled at hearing a tenet asserted to the effect that the true period of Regeneration is at the Resurrection from the dead. I made no remark at the time, for I imagined the assertion to be merely a private interpretation" of some hitherto obscure Scripture, and confined to Mr. George Brown. To my surprise, however, at the Conference lately held at Liverpool, I found that the above tenet was believed in by several of the brethren there present; I deemed it therefore right to examine its claim for acceptance. Having searched in vain for the Scriptural authority on which it is supposed to rest, I sought from some of the brethren the reason for their belief; and learn (subject to correction) that it is necessary in order to uphold the doctrine of the unconscious state of the believers who die. They suppose, that if a man is "born again" during this age, he cannot die absolutely, but must exist continuously in a spirit form. II. Now it is evident that the question turns on the nature of the "New Birth," its effect on the believer, and the object for which it is conferred. In the course of our investigation opportunity will be afforded for dispelling the illusion that the present state of a regenerated person concedes any ground for belief that |