But on the other hand, death and life in the mind of the psalmists are such deep-rooted notions (i.e., taken hold of at the very roots, which are grounded in the principles of divine wrath and divine love), that it is easy for the New Testament faith, to which they have become clear even to their back ground of hell and heaven, to adjust and deepen the meaning of all utterances in the Psalms that refer to them. It is by no means contrary to the meaning of the psalmist when, as in passages like Psa 6:6, Gehenna is substituted for Hades to adapt it to the New Testament saint; for since the descent of Jesus Christ into Hades there is no longer any limbus patrum, the way of all who die in the Lord is not earthwards but upwards, Hades exists only as the vestibule of hell. The psalmists indeed dread it, but only as the realm of wrath or of seclusion from god's love, which is the true life of man. Nor is it contrary to the idea of the poets to think of the future vision of God's face in all its glory in Psa 17:15 and of the resurrection morn in Psa 49:15; for the hopes expressed there, though to the Old Testament consciousness they referred to this side the grave, are future according to their New Testament fulfilment, which is the only truly satisfying one. There is, as Oetinger says, no essential New Testament truth not contained in the Psalms either νοΐ́ (according to its unfolded meaning), or at least πνεύματι. The Old Testament barrier encompasses the germinating New Testament life, which at a future time shall burst it. The eschatology of the Old Testament leaves a dark background, which, as is designed, is divided by the New Testament revelation into light and darkness, and is to be illumined into a wide perspective extending into the eternity beyond time. Everywhere, where it begins to dawn in this eschatological darkness of the Old Testament, it is the first morning rays of the New Testament sun-rise which is already announcing itself. The Christian also here cannot refrain from leaping the barrier of the psalmists, and understanding the Psalms according to the mind of the Spirit whose purpose in the midst of the development of salvation and of the perception of it, is directed towards its goal and consummation. Thus understood the Psalms are the hymns of the New Testament Israel as of the Old. The church by using
