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and even on to eternity, the only justification of them is this, that they flow from the prophetic spirit, and for the Christian they admit of no other adoption, except as, reiterating them, he gives the glory to the justice of God, and commends himself the more earnestly to His favour.
Also 4) the relation of the Psalms to the Last Things is such, that in order to be used as prayer expressive of the New Testament faith they require deepening and adjusting. For what Julius Africanus says of the Old Testament: οὐδέπω δέδοτο ἐλπίς ἀναστάσεως σαφής, holds good at least of the time before Isaiah. For Isaiah is the first to foretell, in one of his latest apocalyptic cycles (Psa 24:1), the first resurrection, i.e., the re-quickening of the martyr-church that has succumbed to death (Isa 26:19), just as with an extended vision he foretells the termination of death itself (Psa 25:8); and the Book of Daniel-that Old Testament apocalypse, sealed until the time of its fulfilment-first foretells the general resurrection, i.e., the awakening of some to life and others to judgment (Dan 12:2). Between these two prophecies comes Ezekiel's vision of Israel's return from the Exile under the figure of a creative quickening of a vast field of corpses (Psa 37:1) - a figure which at least assumes that what is represented is not impossible to the wonder-working power of God, which is true to His promises. But also in the latest psalms the perception of salvation nowhere appears to have made such advance, that these words of prophecy foretelling the resurrection should have been converted into a dogmatic element of the church's belief. The hope, that the bones committed, like seed, to the ground would spring forth again, finds expression first only in a bold, but differently expressed figure (Psa 141:7); the hopeless darkness of Sheôl (Psa 6:6; Psa 30:10; Psa 88:11-13) remained unillumined, and where deliverance from death and Hades is spoken of, what is meant is the preservation of the living, either experienced (e.g., Psa 86:13) or hoped for (e.g., 118:17) from falling a prey to death and Hades, and we find in connection with it other passages which express the impossibility of escaping this universal final destiny (Psa 89:49). The hope of eternal life after death is nowhere definitely expressed, as even in the Book of Job the longing for it is never able to expand into a hope, because