The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah Vol 1 - Predestination

One other mode-of tracking the footsteps of Israel's
wanderings seems strangely significant. It is by
tracing their records among the dead, reading them
on broken tombstones, and in rained monuments.
They axe rude, and the inscriptions—most of them
in bad Greek, or still worse Latin, none in Hebrew
—are like the stammering of strangers. Yet what a
contrast between the simple faith and earnest hope
which they express, and the grim proclamation of
utter disbelief in any fiiture to the soul, not
unmixed with language of coarsest materialism, on
the graves of so many of the polished Romans I
Truly the pen of God in history has, as so often,
ratified the sentence which a nation had
pronounced upon itself. That civilisation was
doomed which could inscribe over its dead such
words as: ' To eternal sleep ;' * To perpetual rest;'
or more coarsely express it thus, ' I was not, and I
became; I was, and am no more. Thus much is true;
who says other, lies; for I shall not be,' adding, as
it were by way of moral, * And thou who livest,
drink, play, come.' Not so did God teach His
people; and, as we pick our way among these