individuals; and, notwithstanding the apparent abandonment of all the details of that history to the operation of blind natural causes, brings about in the end, through their instrumentality, great moral purposes of his own; and when rendered more confident by this addition to our knowledge, we attempt to decide for what ends this human race, seemingly so perishable, was called into existence, we are led to extend our views beyond this world, the hope of immortality becomes no longer a baseless vision.* "Man we believe to be immortal," says the eloquent author of The Physical Theory of Another Life, "Man we believe to be immortal, (revelation apart,) not because his mind is separable from animal organization; but because his intellectual and moral constitution is such as to demand a future development of his nature. Why should that which is immaterial be indestructible? None can tell us; and on the contrary we are free to suppose that there may be immaterial orders, enjoying their hour of existence, and then returning to nihility." In contemplating man as a moral being, we ultimately obtain, though not without many occasions of misgiving, more ample and encouraging views of the Divine economy, and see reason to think that man was created for purposes which cannot all meet their accomplishment in this world, and will find it in another; and to conjecture that after death, the Creator may again put forth His power, in order to restore the spirit that had returned to him,† and rebuild the structure that could not preserve itself from decay. * The line of argument here alluded to is followed out by Dr. Chalmers, in his Bridgewater Treatise, in the chapter-On the Capacities of the World for making a Virtuous Species Happy. It is strange that any one should consider the predicted "return of the spirit (or life) to God who gave it," as an assurance and promise of immortality. As long as the breath of life remains in them, (for "the spirit" means no more) His creatures live; when the Giver resumes it, they die. So in Job, chap. iii. v. 34, "The Spirit of God hath made me, and the breath of the Almighty hath given me life." And (chap. XXXV. v. 14,) "If God gather unto Himself his spirit and his breath, all flesh shall perish together, and man shall turn again unto dust. breath of life breathed into the nostrils of Adam was animal merely. For compare Genesis, chap. vii. v. 13, "All (animals) in whose nostrils was the breath of life, of all that was in the dry land, died." The The Christian Resurrection. THE Christian's hope," says Archbishop Whately, "as founded on the promises contained in the Gospel, is the Resurrection of the Body." "Again, Isaac Taylor assures us that "what the Christian Scriptures specifically affirm is the simple physiological fact of two species of corporeity destined for (assigned to) Man: the first, that of our present animal and dissoluble organization; the second, a future spiritual structure, imperishable, and endowed with higher powers and many desirable prerogatives."+ The assertions of Scripture, plainly interpreted, show that Holy Writ instructs man to expect no future life that shall be unconnected with and independent of physical restoration. Death, for the period of his cold reign, is the cessation of all vitality, and, consequently, the actual though not final extinction, along with every corporeal power of the soul. Scripture and philosophy, however, unite in the non-encouragement of certain notions associated with the decease of relatives and friends, to not a few of whom consolation comes with the thought that the soul of him or her departed is in Heaven,-not waiting for the Judgment that should decide its fate. To not a few, moreover, It is a beautiful belief. That ever round our head, The beauty is, however, but poetical; and a firm faith in the Christian Resurrection should not be the less sustaining; for, agreeably to Christianity, the period of the separation of the beloved one taken and the sorrowing one left, is computable alone by the farther length of the sorrower's stay in this world; the moment of death being to both the virtual moment of re-union. Whenever “total insensibility takes place, the time during which this continues, whether a single minute or a thousand years, is to the person himself no time at all: in either case, the moment of his reviving must appear to him immediately to succeed that of his sinking into unconsciousness; nor could he possibly be able to tell afterwards whether this state had lasted an hour, a day, or a century."+ *Scripture Revelations of a Future Life. + Physical Theory of Another Life. Scripture Revelations. What eloquence and pathos are blended in the following passage from the Breathings of the Devout Soul, by Bishop Hall: What a comfort it is, O Saviour, that thou art the first fruits of them that sleep! Those, that die in thee, do but sleep. Thou saidst so once of thy Lazarus, and sayest so still of him again: he doth but sleep still. His first sleep was but short; this latter, though longer, is no less true: out of which he shall no less surely awaken, at thy second call; than he did before, at thy first. His first sleep and waking was singular; this latter is the same with ours: we all lie down in our bed of earth, as sure to wake as ever we can be, to shut our eyes. In and from thee, O blessed Saviour, is this our assurance, who art the first fruits of them that sleep. The first handful of the first-fruits was not presented for itself, but for the whole field, wherein it grew the virtue of that oblation extended itself to the whole crop. Neither, didst thou, O blessed Jesu, rise again for thyself only; but the power and virtue of thy resurrection reaches to all thine: so thy chosen vessel tells us, Christ, the first fruits, and afterwards, they that are Christ's at his coming; 1 Cor. xv. 23. So as, though the resurrection be of all the dead, just and unjust, Acts xxiv. 15; yet, to rise by the power of thy resurrection, is so proper to thine own, as that thou, O Saviour, hast styled it, the resurrection of the just: Luke xix. 14; while the rest shall be dragged out of their graves, by the power of thy godhead, to their dreadful judgment. Already, therefore, O Jesu, are we risen in thee; and as sure, shall rise in our own persons. The locomotive faculty is in the head: thou, who art our Head, art risen; we, who are thy members, must and shall follow. Say then, O my dying body, say boldly unto death, Rejoice not over me, O mine enemy, for though I fall, yet I shall rise again: Micah vii. 8. Yea, Lord, the virtue of thy first-fruits diffuseth itself, not to our rising only, but to a blessed immortality of these bodies of ours: for as thou didst rise immortal and glorious, so shall we by and with thee; Who shall change these vile bodies, and make them like to thy glorious body: Phil. iii. 21. The same power that could shake off death, can put on glory and majesty. Lay them down, therefore, O my body, quietly and cheerfully; and look to rise in another hue: thou art born in corruption, thou shalt be raised in incorruption; thou art sown in dishonour, thou shalt be raised in glory; thou art sown in weakness, but shalt be raised in power; 1 Cor. xv. 42, 43. Baron Bunsen, in the second volume of the Divine Government in History, seems to imply that if he recoils from the fleshly resurrection and Judaic millennium of Justin Martyr, he still shares the aspirations of the noblest philosophers elsewhere, and of the firmer believers among ourselves, to a revival of conscious and individual life, in such a form of immortality as may consist with Resurrection of the same Body. 215 union with the Spirit of our Eternal lifegiver.-(Dr. R. Williams; Essays and Reviews.) In the same able work, Dr. Temple, in his eloquent essay on the Education of the World, says: "The spirituality of God involves in it the supremacy of conscience, the immortality of the soul, the final judgment of the human race. For we know the other world, and can only know it, by analogy, drawn from our own experience. With what, then, shall we compare God? With the spiritual or the fleshly part of our nature? On the answer depends the whole bent of our religion and of our morality. For that in ourselves which we choose as the nearest analogy of God, will, of course, be looked on as the ruling and lasting part of our being. If He be one and spiritual, then the spiritual power within us, which proclaims its own unity and independence of matter by the universality of its decrees, must be the rightful monarch of our lives; but if there be Gods many and Lords many, with bodily appetites and animal passions, then the voice of conscience is but one of those widespread delusions, which, some for a longer, some for a shorter period, have, before now, misled our race.' RESURRECTION OF THE SAME BODY. This expression is used to denote the revivification of the human body after it has been forsaken by the soul, or the reunion of the soul hereafter to the body which it had occupied in the present world. It is admitted that there are no traces of such a doctrine in the earlier Hebrew Scripture. It is not to be found in the Pentateuch, in the historical books, or in the Psalms; for Ps. xlix. 15 does not relate to this subject; neither does Ps. civ. 29, 30, although so cited by Theodoret and others. The celebrated passage of Job xix. 25, et seq. is quoted: For 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; Whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not another; though my reins be consumed within me. This passage has 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. That no meaning more recondite is to be found in the text, is agreed by Calvin, Mercier, Grotius, Leclerc, Patrick, Warburton, Durell, Heath, Kennicott, Döderlein, Dathe, Eichorn, Jahn, De Wette, and a host of others. That it alludes to a resurrection is disproved thus: 1. The supposition is inconsistent with the design of the poem and the course of the argument, since the belief which it has been supposed to express, as connected with a future state of retribution, would in a great degree have solved the difficulty on which the whole dispute turns, and could not but have been alluded to by the speakers. 2. It is inconsistent with the connexion of the discourse; the reply of Zophar agreeing not with the popular interpretation, but with the other. 3. It is inconsistent with many passages in which the same person (Job) longs for death as the end of his miseries, and not as an introduction to a better life. (iii.; vii. 7, 8; x. 20, 22; xiv.; xvii. 11, 16.) 4. It is not proposed as to a topic of consolation by any of the friends of Job; nor by Elihu, who acts as a sort of umpire; nor by the Almighty Himself in the decision of the controversy. 5. The later Jews, who eagerly sought for every intimation bearing on a future life which their Scriptures might contain, never regarded this as such; nor is it once referred to by Christ or his apostles.-From Dr. Kitto's Encyclopædia of Biblical Literature. In 1856, there appeared a tract entitled "The Resurrection of the same Body not an article of the Christian Faith;" containing the remarks of John Locke upon this subject, extracted from his Reply to the Bishop of Worcester's Answer to his Second Letter. The same tract contains the opinions of Bishop Newton; Archbishop Whately; Bishop Watson; Dr. Burton; and Dr. Burnet, Master of the Charter-House. The opinion of the latter is very concise : "Whether we are to rise with the same bodies we lie down with in the grave. Thereby we mean the numerical body, with the same matter and the same particles. This is a most celebrated question, though, in my opinion, more curious than necessary: it is not of any great consequence to us whether we shall have the same particles, or others of equal dignity and value, or what shall become of our cast-off* carcases when we shall live in light with angels." * But as we neglect the hairs cut off from our beards, so, when the Divine Spirit goes out from a man, what will become of the receptacle? Whether fire shall burn it, or beasts tear it in pieces, or the earth cover it, no more belongs to him, than what happens to a new-born child.— Sen. Epist. |