The Last Judgement and Second Coming of the Lord Illustrated/Chapter 5

by Elias de la Roche Rendell

CHAPTER V.

THE DEATH OF THE NATURAL BODY, AND THE RESURRECTION OF MAN.

The Argument.—Resurrection implies a death.—Death, the one great certainty, so far as the natural side of existence is concerned.—The fear of death the common inheritance of men.—Death not feared by animals.—This fear contrary to the Divine intention.—The source of this fear, and how it is to be avoided.—Death, a term only applicable to the natural body.—Man lives after the body dies.—The soul and body never designed for a perpetual conjunction.—The body not immortal.—The death, which is a consequence of disobedience, is sin.—Natural death in the world before man entered into it.— Illustration.— Sin, that which renders death a painful experience.— The separation of the soul from the body not an evil.—This separation must be effected before entering upon the full enjoyment of true spiritual life.—Death lays aside the natural body, never to be resumed.—The cause of the difficulty of believing that the soul will live without the natural body, explained.—The soul, the real man and the spiritual body which passes into the world of spirits when the natural body dies.—Illustration from historical parts of Scripture, showing that resurrections must have taken place without the resumption of the natural body.—Other arguments, showing the impossibility of raising natural bodies after death.— What is meant by the assertion that all things are possible with God.—Passages from the Old Testament, once supposed to treat of a natural resurrection, are not considered to do so by modern critics.—Orthodox admissions on the subject.—Passages from the New Testament examined, and shown not to treat of the resurrection of the natural body.—The argument of Paul, 1 Corinthians xv., examined.

If it be true, as we believe, that it is the soul which is the subject of Divine judgment, and that the world of spirits is the scene of its execution; then it will follow that the resurrection of the material body is no necessity, and that the doctrine which prevails concerning it must be a mistake. We will, however, proceed to inquire into the nature of death and the phenomenon of the resurrection, with a view to ascertain what the Scriptures teach, and what philosophy sanctions upon those subjects.

Resurrection implies a death; to have a clear idea of the first we must have some definite information concerning the second. Our conceptions respecting the coming of the Lord to judgment will be considerably enlightened by means of true views upon these points.

In this life death is the one great certainty. Every day is furnishing us with examples of the mortality of the body, and thus forcibly teaching us that this world is not our abiding place. Those who have gone into the other life have only started upon the journey a little while before us: and the Divine providence, by sparing us here, is mercifully giving us the opportunity to make further preparation for a state of blessedness hereafter, in which we may live for ever. Still we know not what a day may bring forth, and we are told by Him who is "the resurrection and the life" to be ready, for the Son of man cometh in an hour which we think not.^[1] Death is the term which denotes that natural mode by which we are removed hence; the coming of the Son of man expresses the spiritual side of that momentous event. Death is that stern fact which most men fear: they fear it because they have not sufficiently cultivated a knowledge of spiritual life; because their faith in immortality is not enlightened: because their belief in the life hereafter is lamentably obscure; because their reliance upon the Divine teaching is feeble and hesitating; because they have not arrived at that inward conviction from which it may be seen that death, in reality, is the prelude to a transference of life from the natural to the spiritual world.

The fear of death is man's common inheritance; it has grown up in him with the increase of his darkness concerning Divine things, and it has fixed itself upon him as a terror, in proportion to his evils and unbelief. The mere animals know nothing of this fear: they do not dread the cessation of their life: they gambol in the very place of slaughter, and never have a thought of death or a hereafter: thus the animals, which death really kills, do not fear it; whereas man, whom it cannot kill, lives in dread of its approach. Death, which is a reality to animals, occasions no alarm to them; but by men, who are immortal, and to whom therefore death is an impossibility, it is looked upon as "the cup of trembling."

Now this fear of death is a painful experience, which never could have been originally intended by the Divine providence. God is too good and merciful to have designed that man should live in the perpetual dread of an event which is one of the natural consequences of his existence in the world. "It is appointed unto all men once to die, and after that the judgment." We cannot doubt that it has always been the Lord's aim and endeavour to buoy us up with the hope of happiness and light; to give us joy with the sunshine of His teachings; to bless us with a true conception of our never-dying nature; to assure us that this world is the scene in which He has been pleased to place us, to give us the opportunity of preparing for a better: that this world is a school, in which He would be our schoolmaster, and in which we are to learn to love and to know the realities of His kingdom, and so to be educated for entering into its uses and enjoyments. No other view than this, it seems to us, can be consistent with the Divine character; and, therefore, man's fear of an event which is the natural conseqnence of his existence in this world, must be a feeling entirely opposed to the Divine intention. Men have declined from that primeval character in which the purposes of Providence, above adverted to, were thoroughly understood. If men loved God more truly, they would know the beautiful laws of His providence with more certainty; and, in that case, death would not be feared as an evil, but be regarded as the orderly means for transferring the "living soul" from the material body to the spiritual world. "There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear; because fear hath torment."^[2] Fear is a feeling which has fixed itself upon men, in consequence of transgression and the evil into which they are now born: it is the partner of conscious guilt: the innocent do not feel it: it does not haunt the infant, or the wise and good: true religion, with its light and life, removes this "torment" from the mind, and gives an antepast of those spiritual things which it has been revealed to teach.

The Lord has most encouragingly said, "If a man keep my saying, he shall never see death;"^[3] and again, "Whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die."^[4] Those who thus obey, who live and believe, know and feel the fact of their immortality so well that the fear of death is with them an impossibility. Their bodies may suffer disease; they will surely experience separation from their "earthly house," but they "never die;" and therefore they never see death; they are never distressed by the idea that the event so called will be an extinction of their life; they will regard it only as that necessary occurrence by which the real man passes from one stage of being to another. It is said that the obedient and faithful shall "never see death," "never die," because all such are delivered from condemnation, and gifted with the blessings of "life eternal."

Death, as denoting the extinction of life, is a term applicable only to the natural body. It takes place when the disarrangement of its organization, by disease or other causes, unfits it for the habitation of the soul. Death then means that event by which the soul, as the real spiritual man, is separated from the body, which is merely its earthly covering. The body, which dies, is constituted of material substances, and therefore it is liable to all their mutations. It is not properly the man; it is only an instrument annexed to him, in order that the end of his creation may be promoted by a residence for a season in this world of nature. When the material body comes into such a condition that it is incapable of serving the soul's purposes as such an instrument, man is said to die: not that the man suffers an extinction of his life, but by that circumstance he is only separated from that outward covering by which he communicated with this world and its concerns, and has his existence transferred to the spiritual world.^[5] The man lives, though his earthly tabernacle is dissolved. The natural body dies, whether it belongs to the sinner or to the saint; still, in all cases, the real being survives the catastrophe; for it is said of the wicked that "their worm dieth not,"^[6] and of the good that they "shall never see death."^[7] The death of the natural body cannot for a moment interrupt the life of the soul: if it did so we must at once relinquish all belief in its immortality; for that which dies, even for a moment, cannot be immortal.

It is remarkable with what frequency the Scriptures declare that death is no predicate of the real man. They set forth life as his eternal inheritance in terms too plain for the slightest evasion. Besides the passages just cited, the Lord said, "He that believeth on me hath everlasting life;"^[8] "Every one which seeth the Son, and believeth on Him, may have everlasting life;"^[9] "I am the living bread which came down from heaven: if any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever;"^[10] "Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life;"^[11] "He that eateth of this bread shall live for ever."^[12] It is, indeed, true that those promises of eternal life are made to depend upon conditions; the reason is because the phrase, "eternal life," is intended to signify eternal happiness. But the life of the wicked is equally enduring; their worm dieth not, their fire is not quenched; he that is unjust will be unjust still, and he that is filthy will be filthy still;"^[13] "these shall go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into life eternal."^[14]

Death, then, is no destruction of that which is properly human life: it is simply the laying down of the material body, when it is no longer capable of being a habitation for the soul. The soul leaves the body to its own world: it is of the dust, and to dust it will return; but the soul itself, which is the real man, will pass on to another sphere more suited to its spiritual and liberated nature. The body is said to die; in truth the body never properly lived, since it is the soul which lived in it, and gave to it all the animation by which it appeared to live. When that animation ceases we see that the man is gone: this fact proves to us that the body is not the man, and that it is simply the habitation in which he dwells so long as it is fitted for the purposes of such a dwelling.

This separation—this withdrawing of the soul from the natural body—which we call death, is commonly supposed to have been induced by sin; and it is thought by many that the soul would have retained its natural body for ever, if man had continued in his original integrity and innocence. But these are ideas which the Scriptures do not teach. We do not read in the Bible anything about the immortality of the body, which those ideas necessarily involve. "God," it is written, "formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul."^[15] It is then the soul of man that lives; and this was said of him before "the fall." An everlasting connection between the material body and the "living soul" would necessarily have confined man to the territories of this world, and so have prevented him from entering into heaven, which is not a kingdom of this world,^[16] and where, the apostle expressly tells us, flesh and blood cannot enter.^[17] It follows, therefore, if the soul had been intended to live in perpetual conjunction with the natural body that it must have prevented the soul from enjoying the heavenly inheritance. For how could the soul have entered upon the felicities of heaven, if it had been inseparably united to a material substance which Divine order has excluded from that kingdom? The supposition, then, that at the period of man's original creation God intended to maintain an everlasting connection between the soul and the body involves consequences which prove it to be a misconception. It seems evident, that to enjoy the felicities of a kingdom which is not of this world, it must always have been designed to separate the soul, as the immortal man, from the body as his mortal covering. Hence this separation, which we call death, must have been among the merciful designs of the Omnipotent, at man's original creation. There is no law in revelation, no fact in nature, by which to show that integrity of mind is capable of maintaining a perpetual connection with the body. The most eminent saints have died; and the apostle plainly says, "whilst we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord," and intimates that to be "absent from the body" is "to be present with the Lord."^[18] The body is the instrument created for the soul's residence and manifestation in the world of nature; it is fearfully and wonderfully made; but it has not, nor is there any evidence that it ever had, any of the elements of immortality, and, therefore, it never could have been designed for inheriting a Spiritual kingdom. As a material substance, it must necessarily be excluded from heaven, because that is an immaterial world!

Still, it may be said that the Scriptures represent death as a consequence of sin. Certainly the Lord said to Adam, "Of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die."^[19] Now Adam did eat of the forbidden fruit, and yet he did not naturally die on the day of his transgression: he continued to live for a considerable period, and, therefore, it is plain that natural death is not the subject of the narrative. It is said that he would die in the day of his transgression, to indicate that he would sin by so offending. Death is spoken of in the sense of sin; this death did take place in the very day he sinned, and was the obvious result of his disobedience. Hence it is plain that the subject treated of in that narrative is sin, and not that separation which takes place between the soul and the body, and which we now call death.

It is true that the apostle says, "By one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned."^[20] But it is evident that by the death which is here spoken of as the result of sinning, is not meant natural death, but the spiritual consequence of transgression; and this is not the dissolution of the body, but calamity to the soul. The decease of the body, as a natural event, is no adequate equivalent for the sin of the soul, a spiritual circumstance. Death is frequently spoken of in the Scriptures as the symbol of man's separation from God. Thus, "sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death:"^[21] "To be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace:"^[22] "He that heareth my word, and believeth on Him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life."^[23] Hence it is certain that the death which is spoken of as the consequence of sin is condemnation—the separation of the soul from spiritual enjoyments,—its association with darkness and despair, and not the separation of the soul from its earthly tabernacle; for, surely, those who are now in heaven do not regret having been separated from their earthly bodies; nor can we reasonably suppose that they regard such separation as a calamity. We hold it to have been an orderly appointment from the commencement of our race, and not, as it is commonly believed to be, an evil resulting from the fall.

To suppose that death would not have come into the world, if man had remained in his integrity, is to suppose that the animals would have been immortal, and that vegetation could never have decayed. These things have not offended any law of their creation, and yet they die. Is it supposed that men were to see death seizing upon the thousand objects by which they were surrounded, and yet themselves be free from its approach? If natural death came to man through his transgression, how did it reach the beasts, who have always obeyed the endowments of their nature? Death reigned in the world myriads of years before man came upon the scene of being: this is proved by fossil remains which geological investigations have discovered; and decay and death are unavoidable attendants upon all physical organization.

Although, then, sin could not have been the origin of the separation of the soul from the body, and produced that result which we now call death, yet sin is that perversion of the original design of creation which has rendered this separation a fearful and a painful experience. It was sin, and its consequent ignorance, which gave origin to all those diseases and sufferings by which death is now frequently attended and brought about; it is sin which has induced all those states in which men have been led to fear it, and to regard it as an evil. The separation is not an evil, considered in itself; if it were, then the spirits of just men are not made perfect, because they must be experiencing that separation as an imperfection in their condition. But this cannot be maintained. It is the sufferings which now attend this separation, that render the approach of death so painful, and which cause it to be regarded as an evil. It is the breaking-up of the terrestrial attachments of men which makes them dread it. If they were pure and innocent, and lived as angels do; if their delights were heavenly, and their knowledge of spiritual truth were clear and certain, they would look forward with satisfaction to their deliverance from the trammels of mortality, and regard death as an orderly means of increasing their enjoyment. This is the reason why, even now, the death of the righteous is observed to be tranquil and resigned, and also why we are taught to pray for an end like theirs.

But will the body which death lays aside be at some future day resumed? This is a very general belief; it is associated with the idea that God never designed the separation which death effects; that this separation was intended as one of the punishments of sin; and that God will, at least, in part, carry out His original purpose by the future resurrection of the body, and so effect its perpetual reunition with the soul. But as the premises are erroneous, the conclusion cannot be maintained.^[24]

The resurrection of which the Scriptures speak is that which takes place immediately after the death of the body. It is the passage of the soul from the world of men to the world of spirits, there to undergo its judgment, which will be determined by the nature of the faith that has been loved, and the quality of the works which have been done. "It is appointed unto all men once to die; and after that the judgment." This passage does not contemplate any waiting for the resumption of the body; it seems to view one event as directly following the other in orderly sequence. The idea of the resurrection of the hody assumes that it will have immortality conferred upon it; for that must be the obvious consequence of its eternal reunition with the soul. But, certainly, this is nowhere taught in the Scriptures; from them we learn that immortality was conferred only upon the soul. God breathed into the nostrils of man, and he became a "living soul." The body is of dust; and the dust shall return to the earth as it was, and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it."^[25]

Men have felt a difficulty in realizing the idea of a future life, and of living without the natural body, in consequence of the materialism which has grown up among them; and specially because they have not had any very definite knowledge concerning the soul in a state of separation from the body. "The Church" has not taught her people any intelligible doctrines upon the subject; it occupies no place in her catechism, or articles of faith; and the populace are left to vague conjecture respecting it. Indeed, with the multitude, the "soul" has become a word without a corresponding reality in the mind; and the result is a difficulty in conceiving how men can exist after death without the resumption of their natural body. It is believed that man is to live for ever; but because the soul is thought of as a breath, a vapour, or a phantom, which might float away to nothing, if it were not fixed in a physical body, the Church has invented the doctrine of the future resurrection of the material body.

But this conceit conld never have found acceptance and a resting-place with men, if they had duly reflected on the fact that it is the soul which really constitutes the man. The material body is simply the house in which he lives for a time, and wherein it is the Divine purpose he should be educated to participate in the uses and enjoyments of the heavenly kingdom. When the soul leaves the body, it may at once be seen that the body is not the man; and if it is not the man when the soul has passed away from it, how can it have been the man when he was present in it? It is simply the man's temporary residence, the material instrument for his operations in the material world. Hence Peter says, "I am in this tabernacle to stir you up, by putting you in remembrance; knowing that shortly I must put off this my tabernacle."^[26] Paul also writes, "We know, that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens."^[27] These passages no more contemplated the resumption of the earthly tabernacle which death puts off, than the Deity intended that the butterfly should return to the chrysalis from which it has emerged; the reason is, because the soul is the true and proper man, and this being the case, the resumption of the natural body is not necessary for his existence in the future life. The soul is not an aërial, unsubstantial something, which notion of it is very closely allied to the idea of nothing; if it is anything, it must be a spiritual substance in the human form; if it were not so, it could have no human entity. How plain is this. If the soul exist, it must be a substance; and if a substance, it must have a form; for existence without both substance and form is impossible. Hence we conclude that the substance of the soul is spiritual, and that its form is human. It is present in the physical structure during its manifestation in the world, something like a hand within its glove; hence the death of the body by no means impairs the functions or mutilates the form of the soul, because its nature is definitely distinct from matter, and perfectly independent of it. This is why the Scriptures so frequently speak of it as the subject of "everlasting life;" for this fact necessarily excludes the possibility of any interruption to its being.

The soul is that which the apostle designates the "spiritual body." "There is," says he, "a natural body and there is a spiritual body;"^[28] not that there is a natural body which is to become a spiritual body at some future time, but that they are two distinct coeval existences.^[29] The natural body he sometimes calls "the natural" and the "outward man;"^[30] and the spiritual body he sometimes calls the "inner" and "the inward man;"^[31] and that he regarded the former as for ever put aside by death, and the latter as for ever a living spiritual realty, is evident from his statement, "Though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day."^[32] It is the spirit that really lives; mere natural substance is always dead; and although, when in certain organizations it appears to live, it is only gifted with that appearance for a time by the spirituality that is within it. It is of the soul that the Lord said it should "never see death," "never taste of death," should "never die," should "have everlasting life." The soul is the spiritual man, and is that which, having once begun to live, can never die. Man cannot put himself out of existence; he may, if he be sufficiently wicked or insane, put his natural body to death, but the soul will live in defiance of every effort at such destruction. It is created with capacities to know God and to love Him; these capacities are God's dwelling-places in the human race; and therefore it is plain that the soul to which they belong cannot perish. This explains to us the Divine declaration, "Because I live, ye shall live also."^[33]

But although the soul is a spiritual body, endowed with immortality, we must always remember that it does not live of itself; it is simply an imperishable organism created for the reception and manifestation of life from the Lord. It is "in Him we live and move and have our being:"^[34] "there is a spirit in man; and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth him understanding:" "the Spirit of God hath made him, and the breath of the Almighty hath given him life."^[35] It is easy to see this difference between the soul of man and the life by which he lives; moreover, it is beautifully distinguished in the original Greek by two different words, namely, psyche and zoe, both of which are sometimes rendered "soul:" but by psyche is properly meant the spiritual organism of the soul, and by zoe the life from God by which it lives.^[36]

From these considerations of spiritual philosophy, and the indications of revelation, we learn that the human soul is a spiritual body; thet it is this which constitutes the man, and which is distinguished by immortality: also, that death is simply the removal from him of his earthly covering, when he passes into the spiritual world, a spirit among spirits; and where, until the judgment, he continues to live, not a phantom or a vapour, but as a real man, possessing all the faculties and powers which had ever belonged to him as such, with the mere exception of his material covering; and which, because he has performed in it his probationary uses, he can want no more, and will, therefore, never be resumed.

This conclusion is supported by some historical facts of revelation. Were they not the spiritual bodies of Moses and Elias that were seen by the three disciples at the Lord's transfiguration? Those remarkable men had long departed from the natural world; we do not read anything about their having resumed their material bodies, and yet they were distinguished by all the forms proper to humanity and necessary for their identification. They evidently were

among the spirits of just men made perfect, performing the uses and enjoying the advantages belonging to their state and character.

The like fact is taught by what the Lord said of the three patriarchs of the Jewish nation; namely, "That the dead are raised, even Moses showed at the bush, when he calleth the Lord the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. For He is not the God of the dead, but of the living: for all live unto Him." Here it is plainly affirmed that those persons are (not shall be) raised from the dead, and that they were then living unto the Lord; and this fact is said to have been proved at the bush, by the statement that He was their God, and that He is not the God of the dead, but of the living. Unless they were then living, this passage could have had no point; for the Lord referred to it as a proof of their resurrection, in answer to the Sadducees, by whom the doctrine of resurrection was denied. And it seems that even they admitted the argument to be unanswerable, for it is written, "that they durst not ask Him any question at all."^[37]

The Lord said unto the dying penitent, "This day shalt thou be with me in paradise." Was not this plainly telling him, that notwithstanding the death of his natural body, he would soon be raised into the spiritual world, and there find himself to be a living, thinking man, in a spiritual body?

John informs us that he was about to worship one in the spiritual world, who "said unto him, See thou do it not: I am thy fellow-servant, and of thy brethren that have the testimony of Jesus: worship God."^[38] The magnificence in which this angel appeared shows that he had been raised into the enjoyment of some distinguished glory; and yet we have no evidence that any earthly body had been resumed. He also tells us that he saw "the souls of them that were slain for the word of God, and for the testimony which they held:"^[39] and doubtless they presented all the appearances of living men, although they had not resumed their material covering. Indeed he declares that he saw in the spiritual world "a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations, and kindreds, and peoples, and tongues, standing before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, and palms im their hands."^[40] These, it is said, had come out of great tribulation; they had passed, by death, from the earth into the spiritual world, without resuming their natural bodies, and yet they were living people, with all the forms, faculties, and powers which are necessary to praise God for the salvation they had experienced. The book of Revelation is abundant in narratives which show that men continue to live as men, independently of the "earthly tabernacle" which has died and passed into all the elements of nature. We, who yet remain on this side of the eternal world, as it has been said, call the separation of man from his natural body, death; but, by this separation, the man is liberated from the trammels of mortality; and may not the angels who dwell upon the other side, see that it is the promised resurrection? Surely every one, as he becomes the subject of it will feel that it is so: he will experience that it is a transference of all that is proper to his living humanity, from the natural to the spiritual world. To us it is amazing that any other view should have obtained currency among mankind, when the Scriptures are so explicit in their statements on the subject, and so replete with examples to confirm it. Still such other view prevails. It is said that justice requires the body to be raised, that it may share the consequences of the deeds in which it has participated. This view, however, supposes the body to be an active agent, whereas it is only a passive instrument. It is the soul which has impelled it to do whatever it has done, and, therefore, all its doings are of the soul. Besides, they who place the matter on the supposed justice of the case, should, to be consistent, maintain that the body ought not to die any more than the soul; but, as the body does die, and is obviously, for unnumbered years, deprived of the consciousness and everything else that the soul possesses, it is plain, that equal participation in the consequences of that, which it has been instrumental in doing, is impossible, and that the argument on the ground of justice is an evident fallacy.

The resurrection of the material body may be a theme for the poet, but it affords no grasp for the consideration of philosophy, and it vanishes before the light of revelation. Look for a moment at the condition in which bodies are placed by death. Some, indeed, may be quietly mouldering into dust: but others have been burnt, driven into vapours, scattered by the winds, devoured by beasts, converted into vegetables; some have been eaten by cannibals, and so been incorporated into the bodies of other men; while the limbs of some have been deposited in one portion of the world, and their bodies in another. Moreover, the natural body is continually changing; indeed, it is said that at the end of one period of seven years we have not the same body that we had at its commencement. It is quite certain that the body of the infant is not the body of the man. On this doctrine of physical mutations, a man who has lived seventy years will have changed or renewed his body ten different times; in each and all of which some good and evil have been done. Which body is, then, to be raised? If the argument that the bodies in which vice and virtue have been wrought, must in justice be raised to participate with the soul in the consequences of its acts, is of any value, then the resurrection of all that has been put off will be necessary, and, if so, we shall have men forty or fifty feet high, with proportionate breadth; for that, under such circumstances, will be the bulk of one who has lived to the age of promise. All this is sufficiently perplexing, the reason is because the premises, out of which it arises, are not true.

It may be said, "With men this is impossible; but with God all things are possible."^[41] This indeed is true; but when it is said with God all things are possible, the meaning is, all those things which are consistent with His Wisdom and His Love. If it could be shown that He has taught the doctrine of a physical resurrection, that would be a sufficient inducement for us to accept it. But this we have not seen, and certainly we cannot find it in the Scriptures. The revival of the dead man who was brought into contact with the bones of Elisha,^[42] the raising of Lazarus^[43] and the restoration of the widow's son,^[44] do not bear upon the subject; they were miraculous events for special ends; and though the bodies of the parties were returned to life they were not decomposed, and they died again.

But it will be proper to advert to some of the leading passages in which this doctrine is supposed to be taught.^[45] It is quite true that the Scriptures, in many places and in a variety of ways, treat of the resurrection; but they do not, in any instance, that we are aware of, speak of the resurrection of dead material bodies, nor do they in any case make use of language that countenances such a notion.^[46]

Before biblical criticism became a science it was customary to cite several passages from the Old Testament which were supposed to prove the resurrection of the body, but it is now admitted that they do not apply to the subject. There may, indeed, linger a disposition in the mind of the populace to retain them in the service, but the learned know that they have been wrested to maintain an idea which they were never intended to express, and therefore they have been placed, by orthodox critics, outside the pale of genuine evidence upon this point. Dr. Kitto, whose authority is respected, and whose "orthodoxy" is undoubted, says,^[47] "It is admitted that there are no traces of such a doctrine in the earlier Hebrew Scriptures. It is not to be found in the Pentateuch, in the historical books, or in the Psalms; for Psalm xlix. 15^[48] does not relate to the subject, neither does Psalm civ. 29, 30,^[49] although so cited by

Theodoret and others. The celebrated passage in Job xix.^[50] has indeed been strongly insisted upon in proof of the early belief of this doctrine; but the most learned commentators are agreed, and scarcely any one at the present day disputes, that such a view of the text arises either from mistranslation or misapprehension, and that Job means no more than to express a confident conviction that his then diseased and dreadfully corrupted body should be restored to its former soundness; that he should rise from the depressed state in which he lay, to his former prosperity, and that God would manifestly appear (as was the case) to vindicate his uprightness." Again, the same authority remarks, "Isaiah may be regarded as the first Scripture writer in whom such an allusion can be traced. He compares the restoration of the Jewish people and state to a resurrection from the dead (chap. xxvi 19),^[51] and in this he is followed by Ezekiel, at the time of the exile (chap. xxxvii.).^[52] These passages, however, are not very clear in their intimations." Certainly not; the first and only passage in the Old Testament which is considered to bear on the point, is cited from Daniel: "And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt."^[53] But a little reflection will show that the prophet is not treating of the general resurrection of the body. His phrase, many of, plainly excepts some. How, then, can it be employed to uphold a doctrine which demands the resurrection of all? The exceptions which are implied plainly show that the material resurrection is not the subject of his teachings.

But there is another point leading to the same conclusion. It is not said that many of the dead shall rise; but that many of those that are asleep shall awake, and sleeping is not death, nor is awaking a resurrection of the body. The sleep which is spoken of is a natural state of the mind that is not yet sensible of spiritual things. It was to such a condition that the apostle referred when he said, "Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light."^[54] To sleep in the dust is to be immersed in all manner of worldly loves; and doubtless some of those who have been so circumstanced have awaked to everlasting life, and some to everlasting shame and contempt; so that the passage has no reference whatever to the actual death and resurrection of the material body.

From this we will pass on to the New Testament, and there we have not been able to find any evidence of such a view. Of course the subject of rising from the dead and resurrection, is frequently spoken of, but this is not the point; the question is whether these things are, in any case, affirmed of the material body. We have no hesitation in saying that there is no instance of this sort. We will, however, notice a few of the strongest passages commonly advanced to favour that opinion.

The Lord said, "If thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell. And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell."^[55] Although the body is here referred to as being that which may be cast into hell, it is not said that it is the material body; and as we know that there is a spiritual body, why may it not refer to that? Besides, it is stated that certain members may be cut off and perish, so that they at least will not rise. So that supposing a natural resurrection to be treated of, some are contemplated as rising and going to their final destiny, without their right eyes and right hands. But as no one can reasonably think that the actual plucking out of the one, or cutting off of the other, was intended to be taught; so it will follow that by the "whole body" is not to be understood the natural body, but rather that spiritual body from which offending thought and offending love ought to be removed.

Again, the Lord said, "Fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul; but rather fear Him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell."^[56] Now, if killing the body means killing the natural body on earth, then, to destroy both body and soul in hell, must mean absolutely to destroy them: but as it is certain that no such destruction is meant, it is plain that by the body referred to, as being the subject of such destruction, cannot be meant the natural body. But is it possible not to fear, those who would compass our death? Surely the Lord never intended to teach us that it was a Christian virtue not to fear the assassin who would kill us. Men may have courage to die, but it can hardly be said they should have no fear of those who would inflict a murderous death. On this, however, we need not dwell. Supposing the body mentioned in the first instance to mean the natural body, it does not follow that it is the natural body which is meant in the second instance: it certainly is not so said. Each must be taken with the signification which is given to it by its surroundings. As killing is only predicable of the natural body on earth, so destruction can only be predicable of the spiritual body in hell; destruction meaning the deprivation of all heavenly life. So that the body which may be killed in the world is not the same body as that which may be destroyed in hell. In the one case it is the natural body, in the other it is the spiritual body.

Upon another occasion the Lord said, "Verily, verily, I say unto you, The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God: and they that hear shall live. Marvel not at this: for the hour is coming, in the which all that are in the graves shall hear His voice, and shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation."^[57] If the Lord had intended by this to assert the resurrection of dead material bodies as some distant event, He certainly would not have said concerning it, The hour now is. But such bodies do not hear; the body which is dead in its natural grave cannot hear. It is the soul which hears: this cannot die, neither can it be buried. The passages say nothing about such bodies, nor is their resurrection referred to. That which is treated of is the revival into spiritual life of those who have been dead to the Divine purposes, and a deliverance of them from that grave of sensuality into which they had descended: and the hour for these results is not only coming, but it now is.

Jesus said, "This is the will of Him that sent me, that every one which seeth the Son, and believeth on Him, may have everlasting life: and I will raise him up at the last day."^[58] Now the sight and the belief are here not spoken of the material body, and therefore it cannot be that body to which the promise, "I will raise him up," applies. Besides, nothing is said of such a body, and the raising spoken of refers only to those who see and believe. Moreover that would be a strange sort of everlasting life which is interrupted by thousands of years of natural death, to which the material bodies of myriads must certainly be exposed. The raising spoken of is the elevation of the souls of believers into the enjoyment of heavenly life. It is the spirit which quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing. The soul is raised; the body is buried.

Other passages might be quoted, but these are among the most pointed, with the exception of the celebrated chapter in the epistle of Paul to the Corinthians.^[59] And it is amazing that, with the marked distinction which he draws, the positive assertion which he makes, the striking illustrations he has furnished, and the figurative language he has employed, that his argument should ever have been construed into an exposition setting forth the resurrection of the material body. It commences the argument by referring to the fact that "Christ rose from the dead;"^[60] hence he contends for the resurrection of man, and says, "Now is Christ risen from the dead and become the first fruits of them that slept: for since by man came death, by man, also, came the resurrection of the dead."^[61] From this to the thirty-fourth verse, nothing whatever is said about that body which is the subject of resurrection; but at the twenty-third verse he expressly tells us that "in Christ all shall be made alive: but every man in his own order: Christ the first fruits; afterwards they that are Christ's,^[62] at His coming." Here he plainly calls attention to the distinction which there is between the resurrection of Christ and the resurrection of ordinary men. Christ is called the first fruits, not to indicate that He was the first who had been raised since the death of Adam, for patriarchs and prophets had been raised before,^[63] but to inform us that He was the Chief, the Head, the Author of this astounding phenomenon. And when the apostle tells us "that every one is made alive in his own order," he plainly intends to point out a distinction between the resurrection of the Lord and the resurrection of ordinary men. Doubtless there is a divinity about the quality of the Lord's resurrection-body which cannot belong to man's. Ours "may be fashioned like unto His glorious body;"^[64] but there is the same distinction between His and ours as there is between the likeness and the original. There cannot be any true parallelism between the Lord's resurrection and man's: there being no equality between their essential natures, there can be no equality between their ultimate appearances. Jesus, because He was "the first"—the essential life, became also, "the last"—the ultimate of formal life, by rising in a Divine Humanity, and which, therefore, must be different from that which distinguishes the bodies of risen men. He who is the Resurrection and the Life, must needs present an appearance in His resurrection which cannot pertain to the bodies of risen men. He was "the Holy One" who did not "see corruption." Man is not holy, and his body sees corruption; therefore it may be evident that, however much the resurrection of the Lord may prove the resurrection of man, there are circumstances and characteristics attending the former which afford no parallel from which to argue concerning the resurrection body of the latter. Still, the Lord's rising almost immediately after the crucifixion, may be taken as strong presumptive proof that man's resurrection must follow immediately after his natural decease. And thus the doctrine which puts off the resurrection to some distant day abandons the parallelism which it ventures to assert. Moreover, such a postponement appears to us to be unfavourable to virtue. When the wicked are taught that the punishment of their crimes is a long way off, the motive is weakened which might otherwise induce them to desist from their misconduct: and when the good learn that the rewards of their faith and virtue are to be postponed to some indefinite period, they cannot but feel discouraged in the pursuit of those heavenly graces. And who does not see that such a delay would be really an indulgence to the wicked, and, also, that to the good it would be an injustice. How certain is it, then, that the doctrine of a material resurrection must be a mistake. Some, indeed, will say that the body will be changed: this at once relinquishes the whole position; if it is changed it ceases to be material, and cannot be the same.

But the apostle having argued for the resurrection of man, from the resurrection of the Lord, contemplated a distinction between the two phenomena; for he said, "Some will say, How are the dead raised, and with what body do they come?"^[65] And his reply is at once strong in its terms and striking in its philosophy. "Thou fool," says he, "that which thou sowest is not quickened except it die: and that which thou sowest, thou sowest not that body that shall be, but bare grain, it may chance of wheat or some other grain: but God giveth it a body as it hath pleased Him, and to every seed his own body." He then goes on to declare, "There are also celestial bodies and bodies terrestrial: but the glory of the celestial is one, and the glory of the terrestrial is another:" thus there is an essential distinction between the quality of the bodies of which he speaks,—the one plainly belonging to nature and subject to its mutations, and the other as plainly belonging to the spirit. And it is of importance to notice, that he expressly tells us "we sow not that body which shall be;" that God giveth it a body as it pleaseth Him, to every seed his own body; thus, to that which is natural He giveth a natural body, and to that which is spiritual He giveth a spiritual body. He likens the resurrection to the sowing and germination of wheat or some other grain, and tells us that what is sown is not quickened except it die, and that so also is the resurrection of the dead. Thus, death is not only the necessary prelude to the resurrection, but the death of one body is indispensable to the raising of the other. When the grain of wheat dies it does not rise again: it is the germ, the kernel, the soul of the wheat which lives and rises; and the resurrection of the one is concurrent with the death of the other. "Thou sowest not that body which shall be." Can anything be plainer? Is it not evident that man's resurrection body is a spiritual body? A natural body is sown, a spiritual body is raised. "There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body." The facts, the arguments, and the ilustrations of the apostle all go to show that the resurrection body of which he treats is not that material covering which had experienced disease, death, and burial. The real resurrection follows these events with as much closeness as a dream succeeds to sleep. In sleep the body passes into a condition of insensibility to all the phenomena of the outer world; and yet, in the dream which sometimes follows, the mind is awakened to many experiences before unknown. It is somewhat similar with death and the resurrection; death lays down the natural body to an eternal sleep, and the soul rises up into a condition of spiritual wakefulness. The natural body is for the uses of this world; the spiritual body is for those of the next: the one dies, the other is immortal. The natural is as a tabernacle in which the spiritual may be educated, and when the end is accomplished the means are no longer necessary. That which is natural can no more enter into the spiritual, than a stone can be thrust into the mind. When the natural body dies it is consigned to its kindred elements, and we, who remain on this side of the eternal world, call it death; but by this death the soul is liberated from the trammels of mortality, and they who dwell upon the other side behold it as the resurrection. It is thus that we pass from death unto life: "And they that have done good shall come forth unto the resurrection of life, and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation." The Lord said, "He that is unjust, let him be unjust still: and he which is filthy, let him be filthy still: and he that is righteous, let him be righteous still: and he that is holy, let him be holy still. And, behold, I come quickly; and my reward is with me, to give every man according as his work shall be."^[66]

aspect. The fourteenth verse speaks of those who, being in the death of sin, will not rise into the life of righteousness; and the nineteenth verse treats of those who, though in the death of sin, are willing to be regenerated, and thus will rise into the life of righteousness. Hence the two passages beautifully harmonize with each other, and each presents us with a fact for the deepest consideration.

1. Luke xii. 40.
2. 1 John iv. 18.
3. John viii. 51.
4. John xi. 26.
5. Burial Service of the New Church Liturgy.
6. Mark ix. 44.
7. John viii. 51.
8. John vi. 47.
9. John vi. 40.
10. John vi. 51.
11. John vi. 54.
12. John vi. 58.
13. Rev. xxii. 11.
14. Matt. xxv. 46.
15. Gen. ii. 7.
16. John xviii. 36.
17. 1 Cor. xv. 50.
18. 2 Cor. v. 6-8.
19. Gen. ii. 17.
20. Rom. v. 12.
21. James i. 15.
22. Rom. viii. 6.
23. John v. 24.
24. "When you talk of a man, I would not have you tack flesh and blood to the notion; no, nor those limbs neither which are made of them; these are but tools for the soul to work with, and no more a part of the man than an axe or a plane is a piece of a carpenter."—Collier.

    It is somewhere said that when Socrates was asked where he would be buried, that his reply was "Anywhere, provided I do not slip out of your hands;" and then turning to his auditors said, "I can never persuade my friend that this body is not Socrates."

25. Eccles. xii. 7.
26. 2 Pet. 1. 13, 14.
27. 2 Cor. v. 1.
28. 1 Cor. xv. 44.
29. See this subject discussed at large in the author's work on The Peculiarities of the Bible, chapter iii.
30. 1 Cor. xv. 44.; 2 Cor. iv. 16.
31. Eph. iii. 16.; Rom. vii. 22.
32. 2 Cor. iv. 16.
33. John xiv. 19.
34. Acts xvii. 28.
35. Job xxxii. 8.; xxxiii. 4.
36. The term soul is made use of, in the literal sense of the Scriptures, with at least seven different significations. It is this variety which led Cruden to say that the word is very equivocal (Concordance, Soul); nevertheless he has enumerated five different meanings of it. Hence, with only one idea attached to the word, it is easy to get confused when speaking of the soul of the Lord Jesus Christ. The Scriptures assign to Him a soul different from that soul which is signified by 'the life' which He is. For instance, He said, 'My soul is exceeding sorrowful even unto death.' 'Now is my soul troubled.' But in these passages the original term is ψυχη (psyche) which is well known to denote the anima of the body; yet the same word is sometimes rendered 'life;' as 'I lay down my (ψυχη) life for the sheep;' and thus the translators of, our English version, in departing from a uniform rendering of the original term, have introduced what must be a source of much perplexity to the merely English reader, who attaches to the word soul no other idea than what it commonly bears in his own language. The original Greek word which properly means the Lord's 'life,' is ζωη (zoe). This is the word employed when it is said, 'In Him was life; and the life was the light of men,' and also, when of Himself He said, I am 'the life.' Hence it is easy to perceive the distinction between the soul which was 'the life' of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the soul which was the anima of His manifested body. The soul which was exceeding sorrowful even unto death, which was troubled, and which was laid down, was ψυχη, the anima of the manifested body derived from the mother, and not ψυχη, the Lord's principle of Divine and eternal life." See the author's work. The Deity of Jesus Christ Asserted.
37. Luke xx. 39, 37, 40.
38. Rev. xix. 10.
39. Rev. vi. 9.
40. Rev. vii. 9.
41. Matt. xix. 26.
42. 2 Kings xiii. 21.
43. John xi.
44. Luke vii. 12—15.
45. It is not intended to notice all the passages which are usually forced into the service of this doctrine; nor is it purposed to enter into a long discussion or an elaborate criticism of those which we think it useful to examine. Our main design is only to touch upon leading passages and salient points. The readers who are wishful for a more extensive exposition, are referred to "Anastasis," by Professor Bush: to the section on the Resurrection, in the Rev. S. Noble's "Appeal on Behalf of the Doctrines of the New Church:" to "The Scriptural Resurrection Asserted and Defended," by the Rev. Dr. Bayley: to "A Lecture on the Scriptural Doctrine of the Resurrection," by the Rev. W. Woodman, etc., etc.
46. See this view ably treated by Locke in his correspondence on the subject with Stillingfleet. Bishop of Worcester. Locke's Works.
47. "Biblical Cyclopædia"—Art. Resurrection of the body.
48. "God will redeem my soul from the power of the grave; for He shall receive me."
49. "Thou hidest Thy face, they are troubled: Thou takest away their breath, they die, and return to their dust. Thou sendest forth Thy Spirit, they are created; Thou renewest the face of the earth."
50. "I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that He shall stand at the latter day upon the earth. And though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God," 25, 26. The terms worms and body are not in the original: and that Job never meant to teach the doctrine of a physical resurrection is plain, for he distinctly says, "He that goeth down to the grave shall come up no more," vii. 9.
51. "Thy dead men shall live, together with my dead body shall they arise." This is not an accurate translation. Bishop Louth has shown that the terms which are rendered "together with my dead body,"' simply mean deceased: and that the whole passage ought to read thus, "Thy dead shall live: my deceased they shall arise." And this view of the passage at once removes its supposed teaching. But at the fourteenth verse of the same chapter it is written, "They are dead, they shall not live; they are deceased, they shall not rise." If, therefore, the former passage is to be understood as teaching the resurrection of the natural body, the latter is equally strong in declaring that no such resurrection shall take place. The passages, if taken in their literal sense, stand in opposition to each other, and it is for those who so interpret them to reconcile their seeming disagreement. To us they present no such
52. This chapter describes the vision of dry bones: it refers to the deliverance of the Israelites from their bondage in Babylon; and not the collection of scattered particles of matter, their reorganization and revivification by the re-introduction of the soul into them. The people had been complaining of their hard bondage, and saying, "Behold our bones are dried, and our hope is lost: we are cut off for our parts" (ver. 11). These bones are said to have been the whole house of Israel, and their deliverance from captivity is spoken of, as causing them to come up out of their graves, and bringing them into the land of Israel (ver. 12). The subject treated of then, is not the resurrection of the dead bodies of all men, but the restoration of a particular people from the grave of their captivity, and their re-introduction into their own land. Dr. Faber, in commentating on some passages of a similar import in Hosea, makes use of these words, in which we agree, namely, "to express the political revivification of the house of Israel, Hosea, like Isaiah and Ezekiel, uses the allegory of a resurrection."
53. Dan. xii. 2.
54. Eph. v. 14.
55. Matt. v. 29, 30.
56. Matt. x. 28.
57. John v. 25, 28, 29.
58. John vi. 40.
59. 1 Cor. xv.
60. 1 Cor. xv. 12.
61. 1 Cor. xv. 20, 21.
62. It is interesting to notice that the resurrection treated of throughout the whole of this chapter, is only the resurrection of "them that are Christ's;" the resurrection of the wicked is not at all referred to. Hence it is that the apostle, throughout the whole argument, connects the resurrection with regeneration.
63. See Luke xx. 37; Matt. xxii. 32.
64. Phil. ii. 21.
65. 1 Cor xv. 35.
66. Rev. xxii. 11, 12.