AT HANASIA:
OR,
FOREGLEAMS OF IMMORTALITY.
EDMUND  H. SEARS.
"Shade here, authenticating substance there."
SIXTH EDITION.
BOSTON:
WALKER   W I S E, &  C O,,
245 WASHINGTON STREET.
1863.




Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1857, by
THE AMERICAN UNITARIAN ASSOCIATION,
in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts.
University Press, Cambridge:
Welch, biigetow, & Co., Electrotypers and Printcrs.




INTRODUCTION.
IT might well be supposed that man's prerogative as the heir of an endless life would be his
unfailing resource both in temptation and sorrow.
How could he fall into sin or into despondency,
if the august future were before him as an object
of living faith, and the pains and pleasures of this
mortal state took the inferior place which belongs
to them in the grand economy of things? And
how could the charm of existence ever depart, or
the humblest lot become poor and mean, if its
incidents were once discerned as belonging to a
plan which included eternity as well as time?
Nevertheless, it is hardly to be denied, that
with vast multitudes the years flow on very
much as they would if man were only an animal
more finely organized and more highly endowed.




iv              INTRODUCTION.
It is not that the future life is disbelieved or denied: there is an expectation perhaps not completely extinguished in ally mind, that there is
something which will survive the shock of death.
But for two reasons this expectation does not become controlling in human affairs.
It does not take form, and therefore it does not
rise to the dignity and strength of faith.  It is a
vague hope or fear which is nlot without its influence, but an influence too feeble to rule the
purpose of life and shape its ends.  Or if it takes
form, it is one so entirely factitious and irrational, that the future existence is completely foreign
from the present, and has no genial relations with
its concerns; and thus it becomes a portentous
and lurid superstition, to haunt our meditations
and compel us to prayer, and not an inspiration
to quicken our pulses and turn our daily business to hallelujahs.
We believe Divine Revelation to be exceedingly rich and full on the themes of immortality, and
that it contains a philosophy vastly comprehensive and exhaustive. Our object in the following pages is to unfold this philosophy and apply




INTRODUCTION.               V
it. Its annunciations on this sublject have been
neglected or partially heard, but the world will
come back to them at last from its wildering superstitions. Our purpose is twofold: first, so to
evolve the pneumatology of the Scriptures that
their theory of immortality may stand forth distinct and tangible; and, secondly, to show it ill
such relation to the present life that we may know
its hallowing influence now, and see where the
heavens meet the earth, and whence they are
interfused through all its duties.
Our theme spreads out before us into three departments of inquiry.  In Part First, after an
examination of partial and artificial theories, we
endeavor to unfold and illustrate the laws of the
Immortal Life, and show its relation to this outward and transitory condition; that of the inward
and imperishable man, to the cumbering and perishable body; and for this purpose we seek for
the principle of interpretation that shall draw the
curtains aside and let the light of the spiritual
world fall unobstructed upon the natural, so as
to illumine especially the solitudes of the tomb.
But since the resurrection of Christ, the great
exemplar of humanity, constitutes the luminous
a *




vi              INTRODUCTION.
centre whence light comes to us on this class of
subjects, we devote Part Second to a treatment
of this theme, as illustrating still more completely
the transit of human nature from mortal to immortal existence. In Part Third we Pursue our
tlheme yet further, in our endeavor to bring out
in as full relief as possible St. Paul's philosophy
of the resurrection and the Future Life, and to
show how it accords with and illustrates his entire Christian theology.
It is not much that the wit of man can avail
on such high mysteries as these, and therefore
we attempt little in the way of our own speculations. That certain doctrines are not true, reason rightly used we think abundantly able to
prove. To find what is true, reason must pause
reverently before the Divine disclosures, and on
heights above the disputings of the sects or the
shadows of their traditions and errors. It is, we
think, exceedingly to be desired that the truths
of Christianity should be held for their own intrinsic worth and grandeur, and as the sole property of the great Head of the Church, and that
no clique or association of men should be suffered
to label them with their names. And yet such is




INTRODUCTION.            Vii
the state of Christendom that it is hardly possible
to bring out with due prominence any one essential doctrine without seeing it baptized with some
party appellation. As we believe the theology
exhibited in the following pages belongs to Christ,
and not to any division of his followers, and as
we are entirely confident that it will win its way
among the candid of all denominations as the old
dogmas pass into oblivion, we accord to it a title
not less comprehensive than that of Christian.
This work is written at the request of the
Executive Committee of the American Unitarian
Association, but in the wholeness of freedom
which they have allowed. We have desired to
reproduce solely the catholic doctrines of the
Head of the Church, and to leave no denominational mark upon them. That we present them
without any mark of our own upon them, we will
not say; but such is our aim, and we commend
the argument to the attention of the candid of
all parties in the Church, who would see the light
of the heavens turned more brightly and warmly
into the sunless valleys of the earth, where thousands watch for the morning.
E. H. S.








CONTENTS.
PART I.
THE IMMORTAL LIFE.
CHAPTER I.               PAG
NATURALISM..                       3
CHAPTER II.
NON-BELIEF.                                  9
CHAPTER III.
THE THEORY OF METAPHYSICS.14
CHAPTER IV.
THE THEORY OF NATURALISM                    24
CHAPTER  V.
FORESHADOWS.                               39
CHAPTER VI.
FORESPLENDORS...   42
CHAPTER  VII.
THE BIBLE PNEUMATOLOGY.57
CHAPTER  VIII.
DEATH, AS GOD ORDAINED IT                   66




x                    CONTENTS.
CHAPTER IX.
DEATH, AS MAN MAKES IT.72
CHAPTER X.
THE RESURRECTION..                               79
CHAPTER XI.
ORGANIC CONNECTION OF THE PRESENT AND THE FUTURE
LIFE.......    88
CHAPTER XII.
THE JUDGMENT-DAY.102
CHAPTER  XIII.
CHRIST AS THE JUDGE.. 110
CHAPTER  XIV.
EVERLASTING YOUTH.121
CHAPTER XV.
ETERNAL LIFE..127
CHAPTER  XVI.
HOME..131
CHAPTER  XVII.
THE HEAVENLY PEACE.. 140
CHAPTER XVIII.
AGREEMENTS AND DIFFERENCES.150
CHAPTER XIX.
AGREEMENTS                                       165
CHAPTER XX.
SUMMARY                                          172
CHAPTER XXI.
CONCLUSION.177




CONTENTS.                   Xi
PART II.
THE EXCARNATION OF THE SON OF MAN.
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTORY.......... 181
CHAPTER II.
THE GREAT MORNING........ 183
CHAPTER  III.
THE FIRST MEETING.193
CHAPTER  IV.
THE SECOND MEETING                               197
CHAPTER V.
THE MEETING IN GALILEE.200
CHAPTER VI.
THE LAST MEETING, AND THE ASCENSION.... 206
CHAPTER VII.
THEORIES.. 210
CHAPTER  VIII.
THEORIES.. 219
CHAPTER IX.
THE GLORIFIED SAVIOUR.                         223
CHAPTER X.
THE POST-RESURRECTION BODY.232
CHAPTER  XI.
THE GRAND APOSTOLIC DOCTRINE.237
CHAPTER  XII.
CONCLUSIONS.........  248




X11                  CONTENTS.
PART III.
THE PNEUMATOLOGY OF ST. PAUL.
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTORY.......... 255
CHAPTER  II.
THE DOCTRINE OF TIIE PRIMITIVE CHURCH.. 258
CHAPTER  III.
THE IIEBREW DOCTRINE OF HADES.                  270
CHAPTER  IV.
THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE.              276
CHAPTER  V.
ST. PAUL ON TIHE RESURRECTION.                  291
CHAPTER  VI.
JEWISH AND HEATHEN IDEAS COMPARED WITH CHRISTIAN 302
CHAPTER  VII.
THE ALLEGED NATURALISM OF ST. PAUL.... 309
C'HAPTER  VIII.
THE HADES OF CHRISTIANITY.                     320
CHAPTER IX.
SUMMARY...........325
CHAPTER X.
CONCLUSION.. 330




PART I.
THE IMMORTAL LIFE.
1




" If a man has a statue decayed by rust and age, and mutilated
in many of its parts, he breaks it up and casts it into a furnace,
and after the melting he r9ceives it again in more beautiful form.
As thus the dissolving in the furnace was not a destruction, but a
renewing of the statue, so the death of our bodies is not a destruction, but a renovation. When, therefore, you see as in a
furnace our flesh flowing away to corruption, dwell not on that
sight, but wait for the recasting  And advance in your thoughts
to a still higher point, - for the statuary casting into the furnace
a brazen image but makes a brazen one again. God does not
thus: but casting in a mortal body formed of clay, he returns
you an immortal statue of gold." - CHRYSOSTOX.




CHAPTER I.
NATURALISM.
THE tendencies of the present age set strongly
and decisively towards what some would call by
way of distinction the practical. That which is
apprehensible by the senses, and can be.handled,
weighed, and measured, is sure to become sufficiently valued, while that which transcends the
senses hardly obtains an attentive hearing from
the working world. In the long run, however,
the highest truths are always the most useful,
and produce the most wide and thorough changes in human affairs. Material interests are always promoted by spiritual, and neither can be
undervalued without detriment to the other. It
is not, therefore, a love of what is really practical
which works any ill to religion: it always saves
religion from running into fanaticism and superstition. It is not a proper value of material
things, it is an intense and confirmed naturalism placing itself in opposition to the supreme




4            THE IMMORTAL LIFE.
good, which works all the mischief to religion of
which the preachers complain.
The preachers, however, do not always recognize the fact, that there are two species of naturalism, one lacking the religious element, the other including it; and that the latter is a cropping
out from the former, and borrows from it its
whole style of conception and reasoning. In describing these two kinds, and showing how one
runs into the other and shapes religious ideas,
we shall indicate, we think, a radical vice in our
theologizings, and disclose one of the deepest
wants of the present hour.
By the word " Naturalism" we describe a belief in nature alone. It is a new name for the
old infidelity. It indicates the creed of one who
has a lively faith in the objects of sense, but in
nothing beyond. What he can hear, see, handle, taste, and smell, he affirms to be veritable
existences, and he affirms no more. This material scene, therefore, spread out under the suin
and the stars, limits his hopes and expectations,
and the highest aims of his being do not reach
any farther. He does not of necessity deny that
there are other modes and realms of existence.
He simply does not affirm. If you aver anything beyond the limits of time, so far positive as
to be thought worthy to sway us and shape our
ends, he reminds you that you have no proof of




NATURALISM.               5
it, and that you have passed over into the region
of speculations and shadows.
Though religious ideas be excluded from this
creed and cultus, it does not follow of necessity
that religious names and rites must be, — such
names as God, the Soul, Immortality, and Eternal Life. But they are used invariably to describe things and processes on the hither side of
spiritual existence. God is the unconscious energy immanent in matter, circulating through all
nature, and showing ever a new phasis in the
trees and the grass, and man and woman. He
is not a Being out of nature and above it, but a
force subject to it and locked in with its conditions. In the ever-living and glowing Cosmos
we behold the beauteous face of the Supreme.
The.human soul is its life circulating in man,
instead of the cedar, the myrtle, and the violet.
The soul is immortal, not individually and consciously, but only in the sense that, when a man
dies, the life that was in him is drawn back into
the general vortex, to reappear by and by and
blossom anew in flowers and animals and little
children; and so man is sure of eternal life.
But when it attempts to transcend the sphere
of visible nature with its growths and decays, it
finds itself in a vast inane'or a hopeless and
boundless night. Death is not a transition to
another existence on the thither side of nature,
1 *




6            THE- IMMORTAL LIFE.
but a change of form within it.  The region beyond lies on the imagination without form  or
voice or motion.  Such is naturalism without religious ideas, sometimes with the pale adornment
of religious phraseologies from which religious
ideas have been expunged.
Religious naturalism differs from this mainly
in the fact that it extends the domain of nature
farther outward into space and time. It never
transcends nature; or if it does, it finds itself in
darkness or in spectral light, and comes back
straightway to materialism  for a place to stand
upon. As it cannot rise out of the natural degree of life, and shake off the clogs of sense, its
on11ly resource is to drag along its cumbrous material, and wield it in spiritual things as best it
may. It cannot-rise to the conception of a purely spiritual world, but it can push forward the
dominion of the natural world so as to include
the dread -hereafter.  It cannot rise above the
level of time, but it can extend its view longitudinally and get some glimpse of the adjacent
plains.
Hence its view of death and of what lies beyond it. Its immortality is only the natural life
prolonged.  The external body wastes and dies
and mingles with the dust again. To the natural
senses and conceptions the man exists no more.:But naturalized:-faith preserves the scattered dust




NATURALISM.               7
to be combined anew, and so its hopes are treasured up in charnel-houses.  Christ is to have a
new incarnation on the earth, whl-lich is to be burned
over and furnished for the risen saints; and here
under the reign of natural law is to be the -kingdom of Christ, amid the gorgeous flora of a sensuous paradise. Heaven and hell are not modes
and realms of being above the natural degree
of life, and freed of its conditions, but localities,somewhere among the planetary and stellar spaces,
whose precise position eludes for the present our
poor optics and clumsy telescopes. Though the
pains of hell are not physical altogether, yet the
sufferings of the body, and its unpropitious and
dismal surroundings, are the chief things that
strike the imagination with dread. The Divine
Being himself is naturalized and brought down to
the plane of these conceptions. He is the supreme
natural man. The creation and government of
the world are a more stupendous mechanism, and
its final destruction will be a mere tremendous
exercise of natural strength on the crashing or
crackling timbers of the universe. And so on.
There is not a subject in the whole range of religious thought which has not been, so to say,
completely carnalized by this mode of conceiving
and representing spiritual things. The real future, the eternity towards which we travel and
which is soon to fold us in, lies as completely




8            THE IMMORTAL LIFE.
void and formless to religious naturalism as to
non-religious, and not an echo comes back to
either as it sends its shout into the abyss. For
them there is no hereafter which is above the
plane of natural things. It is very true that
theologizers of the school we describe complain
loud enough of naturalistic tendencies leading
to doubts of immortality; but they themselves
go down and swamp in naturalism, the moment
they attempt to spread their sails on that mystic
and solemn sea.




CHAPTER II.
NON-BELIEF.
IT is generally a waste of effort to reason
against hard and stubborn Denial, and fortunately that is not the state of mind we usually
meet with when we discourse of a life to come.
There is, however, a wide-spread conviction, that
this is a subject that lies beyond the reach of human ken. It is well to ad~mit that we are to live
again. Probably we shall. But when we ask
how, when, and where, we trend upon forbidden
topics, which will yield us nothing but vain conjecture. No one has come back from the land
of mystery; the language of revelation itself is
indeterminate and variously understood. Let us
confine ourselves to what we know, and do the
work of this world instead of speculating about
another. Such is the attitude of a mind by which
this class of subjects is very commonly ignored.
Probably a distaste for them has been increased
by the fact that the sects have disputed about




10           THE IMMORTAL LIFE.
them and agreed in nothing, and so thousands
outside of the sects attend only to their present
business and "jump the life to come."
We would conciliate this class of minds if possible, and gain from them an attentive hearing.
There are two suggestions, we think, which will
not fail to get an audience with them at last.
The first is, that, if there be a future life, it has
probably some very important connection with
the present. It is not likely —no candid mind
will so affirm- that the after-scene, could we
discern it, has nothing to do in shaping the end
for which we live now; that two realms of being
lie closely proximate, and men pass daily from
one to the other, and yet have no inter-connection which it becomes us to know. Men do not
reason thus respecting other periods of their existence. They do not think it of no consequence
that childhood should have some preconceptions
of the period of youth, and indicate what its
studies are to be; that youth shall have some
forecast of its manhood, and be educated for its
work; that manhood shall comprehend in its view
the period of age, and prepare to go down the
stream sheltered from the storms. But what if
childhood and youth, manhood and age, are
only successive waves in the river of years, that
rolls onward its mighty waters till they stir the
vast ocean-waves whose throbs beat on for ever,




NON-BELIEF.               11
though they never touch the shore? Is it likely
that any period of an endless life is to begin de
novo,- that any one of its ever-moving billows
is independent of the rest, and not rather the resultant of all the antecedent forces? Does not
everything about us and within us indicate that
this life is preliminary and preparatory, -a segment, and not a circle; and do not all its consenting voices make up one grand prophecy of something to be hereafter? Can it fail, then, to occur,
at least to him who admits the possibility of a
future life, that what it is, and how, and where,
are questions of momentous bearing on what the
present life ought to be, and that hence the most
insignificant occurrence may be fitted in to a vast
and endless economy? If we are preparing for
something, shall we not ask what?  If we are
afloat, and the shores move from us, and farewells are wafted from the banks, shall we not ask
whither?  Does not even the material universe
indicate very distinctly an end beyond itself?
Was it prepared with so much splendid garniture
only for beings who perish and return to the
earth to be "rolled round with its stones and
trees "?  Was all this lavishment of the Divine
wisdom designed only to educate man for that,
or is it not rather for a worthier and more lasting
result that the worlds with rhythmic step travel
the celestial highways and pour together their un



12           THE IMMORTAL LIFE.
ending song? And if the light of the after-scene
were turned full upon the fore-scene, should we
not know better what to do and how to do it?
and would not the fore-scene be elevated into
new importance and grandeur, its smallest things
be rescued from meanness and insignificance, and
should we not feel as never before the dignity
and beauty of our daily life?
If all this be so, can a second suggestion fail to
occur to the non-believer,- that some means are
probably at hand of gaining a knowledge sufficiently clear and distinct of what the after-scene
is? Since it is probable that such knowledge
will have a bearing on all our doings now, is it
likely that the knowledge is withheld? -If some
have missed of it, is it not probably their fault,
and not that of the great Revealer? and may not
the sects have lost it through their own janglings,
and because they would not be hushed before the
Eternal Reason? And if we rise out of the
sphere of their noises and stand and listen, shall
we not be in a position to hear with sufficient
clearness, not what the synods, but what the
Spirit saith unto the churches? Yea, among all
the churches, do not thirsting and honest minds
obtain, under variant forms of statement, so much
of the substance of truth as serves to illumine
their steps, and is not the agreement more perfect than you suppose among all those who have




NON-BELIEF.             13
been separated from the disputings, and caught
inward towards the eternal melodies?
These considerations, we think, ought to gain
for our theme a candid hearing, even from those
who have excluded all such topics from their
daily thought.  They ought to convince the
practical man that it may be the most practical
subject that can possibly engage him, even as the
calculations and formulas of Bowditch in his
study were of more practical importance than
the figures of any merchant's ledger to the sailor
tossing at his helm upon the seas.
2




CHAPTER III.
THE THEORY OF METAPHYSICS.
IF we rise out of non-belief to positive affirmation, our thoughts must take one of three forms of
conception. There are only three possible theories to be applied to the future life. If we think
about it at all, we shall adopt one of them, either
consciously or unconsciously, for none other has
ever been conceived of by the mind or expressed
in language. It is an important point gained,
when modes of belief can be so distinctly classified that we can see clearly the range within
which our choice must lie.
The first is the faintest possible departure from
non-belief. It asserts that the state after death
is one of mind without body, or, in other words,
of" disembodied spirits"; and its mode of induction is to abstract all the qualities of body, and
take what is left as our knowledge of the life
hereafter. You must first go through the process of subtraction, and then look after your re



THE THEORY OF METAPHYSICS.           15
mainder; and by this careful ciphering you have
all that you may affirm of immortality. Thus:Body has form, color, extension, and divisibility
into parts. Take these away, and you have left
pure spirit, without form, without color, without
extension, and without parts. Body is conditioned in space.  Take away this condition, and
you have mind or spirit out of space. Very well.
Having denuded us to this extent, please tell us
what there is left of us.  We get for an answer,
" the thinking principle," "pure essence," " a
metaphysical entity," " a substance uncompounded and without parts," " pure simplicity," " a substance so simple that nothing can be simpler, and
which may be likened to a point which is of no
dimension," "a substance which has no parts and
no extension, and is circumscribed by no place,"
" a monad, indivisible and unextended, and therefore -immaterial." *  It must be a "substance,"
for what is not a substance is nothing. But the
substance must not have any form, for that would
look so much like a body that metaphysical hairsplitting could hardly show the difference. The
substance must not be extended, for extension re* Such definitions of disembodied spirit are made by Lord
Monboddo, author of "Ancient Metaphysics," by Archbishop
Seeker, by Lord Brougham (see Discourse of Natural Theology),
by Bishop Newton, by Dean Sherlock, by Dr. Good, author of
the Book of Nature, and by many others.




16          THE IMMORTAL LIFE.
quires space to be extended in, and you are now
supposed to be out of space; and it must be extended, if at all, either up and down, laterally or
lengthwise, and then you would expand into dimensions, and that would be body again; and
you are supposed to have left your body behind
you. So, having lost your body, remember that
you have become pure simplicity, or a mathematical point, from which you must neither be
extended nor expanded a hair's breadth; for then
you would expand into a heresy which so great
a metaphysician as Lord Monboddo has pronounced " as absurd and impious as can well be
imagined," and which Dr. Mosheim thinks endangers a very important doctrine of the Christian Church, namely, the resurrection of the
material body.
The remainder, therefore, after our subtraction,
is uncompounded substance compressed to a mathematical point, and without parts. If the reader
should be disposed to ask, If there are no parts,
how can there be any whole? let him remember
that, in metaphysics, not only the whole is not always made up of parts, but that two and two do
not by any means make four. And if he should
be disposed to burnish his faculties in order to
get at the profound meaning of these philosophers, we beg that he will spare himself that
trouble; for we assure him, on their own aver



THE THEORY OF METAPHYSICS.      17
ments, that they do not mean anything at all.
Some of them are candid enough to tell us that
they do not attach any ideas to their own language except negative ones, and that, when they
affirm anything of the state beyond death, they
use phrases very much as an algebraist uses the
terms of an unknown quantity. There is this
difference, however.  The algebraist has sure
data by which to determine the value of the unknown term. The metaphysician has not; and
we are left in woful doubt of how much value
it stands for, or whether indeed it stanfds for
any. "In the Scripture," says Edward Irving,
as quoted by Clissold,* "the state of the soul,
where it is set forth, is set forth to be a state of
imperfection, as'it needs must be without the
body "; and again, "the actings and sufferings,
the blessedness and misery, of a disembodied soul
are what no man can conceive of, let him imagine
and let him fancy till the day of doom." Lord
Monboddo says, " No one can have a clear conception of a substance existing without parts ";
and Sherlock acknowledges that it " sounds very
much like nothing," and is what we can " form
no positive idea of." Dr. Mosheim thinks we
ought to be modest in our ignorance, and let the
question alone. He is very sure that, when we
* New Church Essays, p. 46.
2*




18           THE IMMORTAL LIFE.
step out of this world, we shall be without bodies; but he thinks we ought to shut our eyes, and
bravely make the plunge, trusting in the power
of God that we shall not go out in total darkness.
Our case, then, under metaphysical regimen,
seems disastrous enough. They give us husks,
which we eagerly strip away; but we find not a
kernel of grain, or even a cob for the grain to
grow on. Our existence tapers down to a point,
and there they leave us. On the negative side,
they are confident enough. On the affirmative
side, they have nothing but words. We shall be
without space and without body, but it does not
yet appear what we shall be. Or rather it does
appear; for Dr. Good says, ominously, " The mind,
or thinking principle, can have no PLACE of existence: it can exist nO-WHERE; for where, or place,
is an idea that cannot be separated from the idea
of extension, and hence the metaphysical materialists of modern times freely admit that the
mind has no place of existence, that it exists NOWHERE." *  Or, in the language of a clear and
forcible writer, who has run this theory down
into its last dismal absurdity, as soon as a man
dies, "' he goes nowhere and becomes nobody."
If this is not a direct plunge into annihilation,
* Book of Nature, Vol. III. p. 7.




THE THEORY OF METAPHYSICS.      19
we should think it was grazing as close as possible upon its borders.
Having left your body in the grave, therefore,
you are supposed to be in limbo, reduced to a
mathematical point. You must not expand, for
then you will become body again; and that will
render nugatory the doctrine of a future resurrection from the graves, and so be a dangerous
heresy. You are not to make any motion, for
motion implies space to move in, - requires a here
and a there, and you must by no means project
into space again.  These philosophers, however,
give you the assurance, that, when reduced to this:" pure simplicity," you shall be in no danger of
annihilation. You are not any further divisible.
You are reduced to your lowest terms. You are
" without parts," and therefore cannot be divided
again, and hence have become indestructible.
We think they are right here, for the destruction
of nothing is not a conceivable catastrophe.
It is perfectly clear that these writers not only
express nothing, but conceive of nothing, whenever they'think in strict accordance with their
own theory.  No man ever conceived of spirit
without form, or of anything without form, for
the simple reason that no one has the power of
suspending the laws of thought. Any mind may
try the experiment to its ample satisfaction. Try
to send your thought beyond death, and represent




20             THE IMMORTAL LIFE.
to it the region of " disembodied spirits" that
exist'" out of space." You may try, with Irving,
till the day of doom, and still the vast future lies
before you as a total blank. The moment you
evoke anything out of the boundless inane, it
shall rise on your thought as FORM AND BODY,
and put to rout the theories of the metaphysicians. This hypothesis, therefore, in everything
except the substitution of verbiage for ideas,
resolves itself back into the notion of the nonbeliever, who does not allow that the after-scene
should be made an object of thought at all. The
metaphysicians tell us, after they have done, that
we must not be curious and speculate upon these
things.   But why did they not say so at the
beginning, and take their place with the non-believer, instead of pretending they were giving us
wisdom, when they were only playing at shuttlecocks with words?
Form and substance are co-essentials of each
other. As they cannot be separated in the nature
of things, so it is not in the power of any one to
separate them in his idea.  As soon as you deny
form to substance, you deny it existence.* You
* Cudworth, in the fifth chapter of his "Intellectual System,"
reasons finely on the subject of spiritual and angelic bodies, and
introduces an array of authorities, both from the Christian Fathers
and the ancient philosophers, some of whose arguments it would
be difficult to evade. Dr. Mosheim, however, the scholiast of




THE THEORY  OF METAPHYSICS.                  21
remove it from  the category of actual things.  In
vain you take refuge in abstractions and verbiage.
In vain you instance the qualities of virtue, goodness, affection, intellect, and so forth: they must
attach themselves primarily to living beings, else
they fade off into airy nothings, not without a
name it may be, yet without a habitation. Qualities must attach to things and attributes to persons, or else be numbered among the quiddities
of the Schoolmen.
The theory of the future life under examination is not only powerless over human conduct,
Cudworth, undertakes to refute them. He holds fully to the doctrine, that not only spirits, but angels also, are without bodies, and
all his reasoning starts with the assumption that God is without
body. If God can exist and act without body, why not angels
and spirits? Such is his argument ab ignorantia.
The writer is a Trinitarian. It would be a luxury, if the topic
were not foreign to our subject, to take up his logic and run it
out. It would be pertinent to ask: Do you believe an article of
your own creed, - the essential Divinity of Christ? And has
Christ any body? Deny the first, and the road is wide open
towards " Socinianism," if you are not already there. Deny the
second, and the way looks pretty clear and direct towards the
most spectral kind of Gnosticism. Deny both, and the slide into
Pantheism is remarkably easy. Deny that God exists, and is
manifest in some form which is above nature, and you will end
by seeing him sunk in nature.  Hence the great doctrine of a
Mediator which the New Testament makes fundamental.
Pope says: —
"There, dim in clouds, the poring scholiasts mark;
Wits who like owls see only in the dark."




since it utterly fails to make the motives of a
spiritual world touch visibly on the affars of this,
but it fails as a motive power in calling a living
literature into existence. All the great productions of genius have been evolved and nurtured
under a very different regimen. No Iliad, that
brings down the living divinities, and makes them
mingle in human affairs,  no Divina Comcedia,
nor Jerusalem Recovered, nor Paradise Lost, —
not even those creations which the Drama calls
forth under her potent witchery to unveil human
nature to itself,-could ever have had existence
under the inspiration of such a supernal world.
As soon as the imagination crosses over the frontier, its wings drop frozen, and it falls into the
limbo and dies. What is imagination, or what is
faith, where all imagery is prohibited, and what
image can start out of the vast abyss, where there
is no form nor body in which it may appear?
Body is denied to substance, and then substance
straightway dwindles to a "point" and disappears, and we are in an unfathomable deathrealm, where black night takes the color from
things,* and not even a poet can find a myth for
his machinery. Not an angel must show his face,
or rustle with his wing, for these attach to bodies;
and our philosophers will have it —and must, if
* "Rebus nox abstulit atra colorem."




THE THEORY OF METAPHYSICS.       23
consistent — that angels are without bodies too,
they also being "pure simplicities." All those
great works of the human intellect which have
been utterances out of the heart of humanity,
and gone to its heart again, are so many protests
against these notions of the supernatural, - notions that do not even allow a spectre to come up,
for not a spectre can rise and gibber unless you
allow him to be bodied forth. And as for those
hopes and comforts which are the Christian's solace at the final hour, these metaphysicians have
the privilege, when their game at words is over,
of lying down to the great agony and being turned
into nobody. All the consolations of their system
go with them! But has the Gospel which brought
life and immortality to light become reduced at
last to this shrunken and shrivelled scroll?




CHAPTER IV.
THE THEORY OF NATURALISM.
As we rise towards something more affirmative
and tangible, we meet the theory of the resurrection of natural bodies which are to be made
the future organisms of spirits.  The resurrection is not to take place till the end of time, and
the scene of it is to be the churchyard or the
charnel-house, or whatever place may hold in
deposit our earthly corporeity. But during the
long period that is to interspace our death and
resuscitation, what sort of a foothold are we to
have in the universe? Three answers to this
question may be distinguished.
The first is, that we are to have none at all.
Our existence goes out altogether. We suffer a
temporary annihilation.  We are not only reduced to a point, but to nothing, until our bodies
are revived again. This was Priestley's doctrine,
who in holding it was a consistent materialist.
The second is, that we are to be altogether " dis



TIHE THEORY OF NATURALISM.       25
embodied," or by the reasonings of the last chapter be -a "pure simplicity " only till such time as
the sepulchres yield up their deposits. This is
something gained. It is some comfort to reflect
that we shall not be in vacuo for ever, though we
must be pushed off into it to remain some thousands of years.
The third answer is, that during this long interveniing sleep of the natural body we shall not be
deprived altogether of corporeity. But our bodies
will be so attenuated and intangible that we shall
look forward with longings for the resuscitation
of those which we have lost. Our bliss will be
incomplete till we get them again, our heaven
imperfect until consummated at the resurrection,
when we shall come back to the earth, and get
once more a secure foothold upon it, and in our
recovered bodies enjoy a millennium amid the
fauna and flora of renovated nature. The earth
will be destroyed and re-created in order to become the abode of the risen saints.
Or, if our final condition is to be an unhappy
one, we shall nevertheless suffer only a partial
and incomplete retribution during the ante-resurrection period. Brought back into our lost bodies,
their senses will be made more living than ever,
but will only be open avenues for suffering to
enter the soul and consummate its misery.
Meanwhile, in our attenuated corporeity, whith3




26           THE IMMORTAL LIFE.
er shall we betake ourselves to spend the anteresurrection period? As it is only a more rarefied matter that we shall wear, we must be
somewhere in space, and subject to natural law.
Speculations on this point are various. The author of " The Physical Theory of Another Life "
thinks we may possibly live in the sun, though
he says he holds the hypothesis " cheap." A recent writer, whose book is open before us,* and
which is recommended by sound authority, conjectures that hell may be in the craters of the
moon, or possibly Uranus may serve as a Botany
Bay to the bad spirits of our planetary system;
while he thinks he discovers the possible locality
of heaven in an unusually brilliant spot among
the fixed stars. He thinks it not impossible that
communication may some time be established between it and the earth, and that comets may serve
as vehicles for that purpose. It was an ancient
opinion that the wicked would be put inside of
the earth, and kept in subterranean discomfort
and darkness, and Bishop Horsely is said to have
adopted it.  Dr. Scott gives us the privilege of
ascending into the air; and, as our bodies will be
exceedingly rarefied, the ascent will be easy.
But wherever our locality may be, one thing
is agreed upon, -that at the resurrection, and
* The Heavenly Home, by Rev. H. Harbaugh.




THE THEORY OF NATURALISM.        27
in the post-resurrection state, we shall have our
lost bodies again, to be superindued upon those
attenuated ones, either for a more intense felicity
or suffering. After having been turned into spectres for some centuries, we shall come back to the
churchyards, and gather up our remains. But
what if they are not there? What if, in the endless flux and reflux of matter, every particle of
the poor dust that ever indued us has entered into a dozen other bodies also? Or what will those
poor Aztec children do who were eaten and went
into the bodies of other people? Or, as our bodies are changing all the while, which of those that
we have worn shall we have again, and why the
last one, that was laid, diseased and worn out, in
the sepulchre? Or, after our bodies have been
dissipated and flowed on again in the stream of
life, and been turned, some into wood, some into
leaf, and some into apple-blossoms, what reason
is there in the fitness of things why we should have
the same particles again, rather than any others,
and why will our corporeal and personal identity
be any better preserved? And why then locate
the scene of the resurrection among charnelhouses, rather than among orchards or open
fields? Is it a certain aggregate of particles that
constitutes the identity and makes them at any
time my body; or is it the ORGANIFIC PRINCIPLE
that belongs to my inmost life, and changes to




28           THE IMMORTAL LIFE.
its own purpose all the matter it incorporates?
That being the same, what difference does it make
whence come the particles which it sucks up into
its organism, and whether it has had the same
ones before or not?  And why, then, keep such
an anxious watch at the gates of sepulchres, ally
more than among clover and cornfields?
Or what, after all, if the doctrine should prove
true which Boscovich is said to have broached
some time ago in his " Theoria Philosophia Naturalis," and which Professor Faraday says now he
can demonstrate, —that the old notion of ultimate and indivisible atoms is a mere fiction, and
that what we call matter is resolvable in the last
analysis into points of dynamic force? It would
be difficult to answer such questions to any except those who think God will not only work
miracles, but self-contradictions, to meet all the
exigencies of theology.
But suppose bodies somehow to come up out
of the graves to meet us at the last day, and that
we are to go into them as the troop of spirits did
into the corpses in the Ancient Mariner, what
are we to do with them then? Being material
bodies, they will be subject to material laws; and
hell must be a pit of material fire, and heaven
a local paradise conditioned in natural space.
That God should bring us back into these bodies
to make us happier, if such indeed were a neces



THE THEORY OF NATURALISM.        29
sary means, might be made morally credible;
but that he will empty the churchyards in order
to furnish himself with more ingenious racks to
produce torture, is not credible. As if those
poor ghosts could not be made miserable enough
in the volcanoes of the moon, or down among
the central fires where no geologist would ever
find them, without being brought back to the
earth, and put into new bodies made for the express purpose of producing suffering. Search
the universe with a microscope, and you cannot
find that God has made any contrivance to produce pain. Pain always results from a perversion of the contrivances which he devised for
pleasure; and analogy gives not the faintest
whisper to teach us that he will ever create a
new enginery whose special end is to torment
the creatures of his hands.
But, aside from considerations of this nature,
it occurs to us that there are two very stubborn
objections against this whole method of theologizing. All theories made up after this fashion
rest solely on certain ecclesiastical props, which
are liable every moment to become more rotten
and to give way. It is vain to say that they have
the least scientific basis. It is vain to say that
the Bible teaches them. It only teaches them by
interpretations made in the interest of ecclesiasticism, whose disgrace and shame it has always
3*




30          THE IMMORTAL LIFE.
been to butt blindly against scientific truth until
in danger of knocking out its own brains. Columbus had to argue with it whole days, and
after all he did not convince it that, when he came
upon this side of the world, he would not be in
danger of pitching off into nowhere. Over the
active mind and the robust reason which leads
the march of discovery, whether in the domain
of spiritual or natural law, the influence of such
theories is feeble enough. They are not received
in the churches themselves by the common mind
in its highest and most active moods, except as
excorii which the authorities require of them to
keep dried and preserved. We never sat down
to converse with any one who had lost a friend,
with the warm idea tenderly cherished, whose
mind did not rise clean out of the sphere of this
churchyard pneumatology. It is left behind in
almost every earnest prayer, whose spontaneous
utterings rise to the throne of grace. It is totally forgotten when the believer lies down on the
pillow of death, and feels the throngs of the sweet
societies gathering about him more bright than
ever; not waiting among the fixed stars, and
pining for their lost members among cadaverous
bodies and dead men's bones.
We object to this method for another reason.
It does infinite mischief to theology. To project
carnal things into spiritual, and then judge of




THE THEORY OF NATURALISM.        31
the latter after the methods of the former, is to
introduce the abomination of desolation into the
holy place. It not only brings theology into
contempt with those outside the Church, but
turns it from its true end within, as a means of
making this life a preparation for another.
In the mind of every true believer there is one
idea that lures him on and gives unity to all his
efforts. It is his idea of heaven. Tell us what
that idea is in any one's mind, and we may know
whither he is travelling. It is- his highest conception of all that to him is:most lovely and desirable. It is the light that':gleams before him and
moves on like a beautiful star. It is the ideal
for whose realizations he will' spare no strivings,
sacrifices, and toils. If kept true, it will be the
most potent charmer to hallow grief and to sweeten care. You cannot do him a greater wrong
than to darken it, or turn it into a fatuous light
that shall lead him astray.
But what are you doing when you sink theology in naturalism, and bring down this idea to
the level of his carnal conceptions? What is the
consequence when heaven and hell are brought
down into the natural degree of life, and made
subject to natural law? Or, in fewer words,
what follows when heaven and hell are to be
reached by locomotion?  It follows inevitably
that we shall seek to enter the one or avoid the




32           THE IMMORTAL LIFE.
other by conditions arbitrarily appointed and imposed. The conditions will become intensely and
grossly natural. Salvation will be through external appliances, covenants, and arrangements.
The believer will expect heaven, not primarily by
what he IS, but by the creed, and by the ceremo~
nials required of him. It will not be by unfolding the angel firom within him, so much as by
ecclesiastical and precatory rites; not by a righteousness in him, but by a make-believe righteousness credited to his account, so that he can be
lifted up and shown in among angels by the proper certificate and countersign. Hence the evils
from which we suffer. Hence the ecclesiastical
villanies in all ages. Hence the masses of worldliness imported into the Church and embarked for
heaven. We do not mean that any church avows
this in terms, or neglects a great deal of talk
about sanctity and holiness. But sanctity changes insensibly into sanctimony, and myriads, with
all the holy talking and praying, are dominated
by the natural idea, and expect when they die to
travel somewhere and bring up at some good
place, for reasons that have no reference to their
most cherished love. In short, when theology has
sunk into naturalism, the highest type of character which it henceforth produces is that of the
natural man acting through religious forms and
sanctities, and its internally regenerating power
has gone for ever.




CHAPTER V.
FORESHADOWS.
WE rise from these theories to something more
positive than anything they can furnish.'But
before we attempt to unfold the pneumatology
of the Scriptures, let us pause one moment and
gather up the probabilities of the case. We may
not be able to discover the truth ourselves. But
we may be able to find some intimations and
finger-marks that show us which way it lies.
Is it rational, then, to suppose that what we
call natural body is the most substantial among
the creations of God, or that the materia which
composes it is the best substance of which bodies
can be made? Is it probable that the natural
degree of life is the most real of any, and puts
forth into the highest and most glorious forms?
Is it very likely that, while our spirits are clothed
in this material vesture, they get the most perfect
perceptions of form, color, figure, extension, contour, motion, distance, or see them under their




34          THE IMMORTAL LIFE.
highest laws and combinations? We trust we
are not insensible to the charms and the grandeur of this material scene, where the seasons
follow in their mystic round, and Day and Night
and Even and Morn spread out their ever-challging panorama; nor call we love a hand along
the surface of this body we wear, without a feeling of wonder and awe. We have not the least
regard for the old Manichaean doctrine of the
essential evil of matter, for it is the fair and beneficellt creation of God. We would not give
back to its kindred dust the clay garment which
our friends have worn and made sacred, with
indifference; rather would we watch over it with
tender interest, and keep both the sod and the
memory green. Whatever has invested a human
soul and imaged forth to us its holy affections,
we have a right to place among the treasured
memorials of our love. But when 3ou say that
the substance out of which these bodies are made
is the only kind there is, or the highest kind,
we hold it a most improbable assumption. The
human imagination in fact constantly transcends
Nature, and paints a world beyond the dominion
of her laws, where life flowers forth with sweeter
grace and more celestial beauty, and the vast and
the sublime are actualized in a higher expanse of
grandeur. What we call matter is the most outward creation of God, and, so to say, lies on1 the




FORESHADOWS.              85
circumference of his universe, the most inert of
all created substance. Is it not extremely probable, then, that, as you rise out of its domain, and
come nearer the Central Life out of which all
things are evolved, you come among substances
which are more real, instead of less so, and which
are carved into forms that radiate more brightly
the everlasting beauty? Will not the sense of
existence be more vivid and plenary as you advance inward towards God, and is it not least so
on the outer circumference? And if this be true,
is it probable that, having risen out of the natural
degree into that circle that gathers nearer around
Him who is Life and Substance itself, you will be
turned into a ghost, or into nobody, and be put
to the hideous necessity of coming back to the
churchyards for a substantial form to dwell in?
What is it that makes matter a substance at
all, or even permits it to be? If our naturalism
had not infected the whole subject of the creation, such a question would not be pertinent.
The conception of the natural mind is, that God
rose up at a certain epoch and made the universe
out of nothing, and after working six days brought
it under its present arrangements; since which it
has gone on like clock-work with God's oversight
and care.  Hie exists eitsi&e'f it s tt~ wet,
and reaches across space to regulate it and keep
it going; and when he thinks it has gone long




36           THE IMMORTAL LIFE.
enough, he will reach across again, and smash
it in pieces or burn it up.  The subjects of Creation, Providence, Divine Government, Eschatology, all are affected with our naturalism, and
God becomes an almighty mechanic, and not
a Creator and Governor. But can any reasonable mind doubt, in its highest thoughts and
moods, that the inmost principle of matter is
the Divine Life itself, - not the Divine Essence,
as the Pantheist would say, but an effluence
from it, whence all the qualities of matter are
but as the leaves and blossoms from a parent
stem? And is it not therefore true, - not that
he created it once out of nothing, - but that he
creates it every moment out of himself?  And
does not the great truth begin to dawn upon us,
that the relation of creator and created subsists
all the while, and if suspended for a single installt, the universe vanishes like a bubble that
breaks in air?
One of two things you must believe, —that
matter is self-existent, as the Atheist says, or
else that it exists because a Life not of itself
transfuses it and gives it laws.  We broach
no theory as to what matter essentially is. The
Atomic philosophers may be right, or Berkeley
may be right, who resolves matter into states of
mental perception, or Boscovich may be right,
who resolves it into points of resistant forces.




FORESHADOWS.              37
All that we assume is, that God alone is selfexistent, and that nothing else can ever become
so, and therefore that what we call the qualities
of matter are manifestations from that inmost
life whose pulse-beats pervade every atom of the
mighty aggregate; that He alone is, and that
all things live by Him.
Follow this train of thought into its grand
results, and can you miss the conclusion, that
whatever is nearest in degree to the Divine nature receives the Divine effluence in such ampler
measures that it is more brightly real than anything we have on this low plane of carnal perception, and that the spiritual world must therefore spread out its phenomenal scenery in forms
the most substantial of all created things?
Then ask yourself the question, Which is
nearest in degree unto God, mind or matter?
Mind certainly, for here first we receive that
all-plastic energy which shapes the soul into the
Divine image before its pulses beat down into
our bodily frames. And if mind be nearer in
degree to the Divine nature than matter, is it
very likely the nonentity which the metaphysicians make it, and not rather an ORGANISM,
flooded with an intenser life and constituting a
diviner substance, and which, therefore, will appear in diviner form when free of its earthly
condition?  Will our existence then taper down
4




38           THE IMMORTAL LIFE.
to a point as we ascend towards God, and not
rather expand and glow into organic proportions,
compared with which earth has nothing so goodly
or so fair?
But put the subject in another light still, and
let the appeal be made to our highest experience.
Are there not times when the soul asserts her
supremacy over the earthly body, and even her
independence of it, and rises into a realm of bliss
and purity which the body knows not of? Yea,
when the body hangs about her not only as a
clog, but a torturing rack, has she not soared upward and left it stranded, and enjoyed converse
with eternal things such as it never helped her
to enjoy? Apart and " behind the wall of sense,"
have we never been caught up by high communings into that diviner sphere where are the substances of which earth is only the shadow,
"As sings the lark when sucked up out of sight
In vortices of glory and blue air"?
And is it not therefore probable that we wait here
for the consummation of the heavenly felicity
after the material organism has been excluded
for ever, and that we shall not be waiting there
to come back to natural life in a reunion with the
deposits of cemeteries and charnel-houses?
Put the subject in another light still.  Let the
argument start from  what has been very well
called the symmetry of the universe. The author




FORESHADOWS.               89
of " The Physibal Theory of Another Life" supposes that this symmetry can only be preserved
by ascribing to the universe a threefold extension; —' first, as extended through natural space;
secondly, as extended in duration or in time; and
thirdly, as extended in kind, or by diversity in
modes of being. He computes the vastness of
the material creation,- this lowest platform of
existence.  Notwithstanding the velocity with
which light travels, passing ninety-five millions
of miles in a little more than eight minutes, there
are millions of stars so remote that they may
have ceased to exist three thousand years ago
and yet appear in their places; and there may
be others which joined in the morning hymn of
the creation, whose light has not yet travelled
down to us, but is on its way, and when it reaches
us will disclose new gems in the firmament. With
these data, the writer puts an analogy like this:
"Let us imagine ourselves to have come up to
the exterior wall of a vast palace which we have
already seen to cover many acres; but on entering the outer gate, and in passing through its
courts, we find that the enormous structure rises
only one story from the basement; that its chambers are all of uniform dimensions, are all alike
in embellishment and furniture, and in seeing the
first of its thousand halls we have seen all. And
what if an unvarying ceremonial, an endless
round of dull manoeuvres, repeated day after day




40           THE IMMORTAL LIFE.
and year after year, comprises the history of the
personages of this palace. The very idea is insufferable."
Strange that from such a stand-point the writer should not have taken a higher step, that
would have cleared him at once of materialism,
and not suffered him to sink back and swamp inll
it again. The idea is insufferable, that with this
vast foundation there is no corresponding altitude; that the. universe is only one story in
height; that life is spread out over these boundless flats, but does not also RISE UPWARD IN DEGREES; that we have unlimited space and endless
time only to go through the dull manceuvres of
existence under material conditions; that the
creating Mind spreads out its multitudinous forms
and scenic glories over the plane of this natural
degree, without at the same time extending outward through those higher degrees, and giving
them also their phenomenal worlds to reflect his
brightness in variant hues and strike another chord
to his praise. The idea is insufferable, that such
phenomena as form, figure, color, extension, distance, which are only the exfoliation of the Divine mind, can take place only under natural
law, and for material purposes, and that in higher realms and modes of being they may not exist
solely under spiritual law, and open quite a new
page of wonders in the book of the Divine beneficence. The idea is insufferable, that bodies




FORESHADOWS.                     41
may be made to differ as greater or smaller, or
more or less rare, and not at the same time be
made to differ IN SPECIES, SO that the universe
can not only have vastness in extent, but vastness
in compass and range.
This being so, what will man's course probably
be as a progressive being? Will he tend from
the lower apartments towards the higher, or will
he be kept eternally in the routine of the basement?  Will he not ascend through those higher
chambers that rise rank above rank, and increase
in  splendor as they  rise?   And  having  once
passed out of the natural degree of life, will he
be likely to hover about the cemeteries in order
to get back into it again? or will he not see a
hand that still beckons him higher among the
angelic symphonies and hallelujahs? *
* A book bearing the singular title, " The Wisdom of Angels
concerning Divine Love and Divine Wisdom, by Emanuel Swedenborg," was published in this country in 1794. It contains,
among other things, a dissertation on the " Doctrine of Degrees,"
and under its peculiar terminology the reader does not at first
get the pith of its philosophy. But when he does get it, he sees
the amazing sweep of the principle set forth, and its constructive
power in theology, and that by missing it every school of materialists has stuck fast to the earth, - Pantheism, babbling of sacred
names that mean nothing, the Church glooming among the sepulchres, and modern Spiritualism offering us a future world of sublimated matter; and he sees, too, that without the key which this
principle offers they will never get out of that prison-house, but
knock their heads eternally against the bars.
4*




CHAPTER  VI.
FORESPLENDORS.
WE come now to the only theory that remains
to us of the future life, and our contemplations
must be in accordance with its principles, if we
think at all and think rationally on the themes
of immortality. It ceases, however, in our judgment, to be a theory, for it is not one of those
guesses at truth which are made by the wit of
man. It is the sacred pneumatology unfolded
to us in the whole course of Divine Revelation.
If any one will take his Bible and read it
through with his eye specially open to those
passages which bring the things of immortality
clearly within his range, he will be amazed at
the richness and fulness of the Divine disclosures upon this subject; and he will wonder
whence could have originated the current aphorisms of non-belief, that "little is said upon the
subject," and " we must not attempt to pry into
it." From the beginning to the end of the Di



FORESPLENDORS.             43
vine dispensations the fact of a spiritual world is
assumed. No attempt is made to prove it logically, for the simple reason that rents and openings are constantly made, through which it floods
the earth with sunbeams.
A spiritual WORLD, we say, and not a future
state merely; a world of forms and substances,
and organized existences, whose intense life and
giant realities are in striking contrast with the
pale tints and dull activities of this natural state
of being. Why have these passages to so great
an extent been blinked at and ignored? Is there
any other reason than our habits of sensuous
thought, which regards all objects but natural
ones as only shadows?
The Scriptures adopt two distinct methods by
which to give assurance to the believer and bring
him under the influence of eternal things. The
first is that of promise,- promise of the blessed
inheritance, - as Jesus when going away left the
assurance that he would prepare mansions for
his followers, or as Paul when lie wrote to relume the faith of those who wept for them that
had fallen asleep. The second is that of DIsCLOSURE, the visible evidence which comes in
those angelophanies which uncover eternal verities to human gaze. The former certifies us of
the fact of immortality.  The latter does more;
it unveils its laws and methods, and in so doing




44           THE IMMORTAL LIFE.
gives us in the Sacred Scriptures a clear, consistent, and beautiful pneumatology.
We will select a few passages of- the latter
class, and then we will indicate the laws of existence which they bring fully into light. The
Old Testament abounds in them; but the New
Testament is itself an apocalypse of tile Future
in the Present.
Genesis xxviii. 10-17. Jacob "dreamed," the
record says. But while the natural senses were
locked fast, an inner sense was touched, and
opened, and made to apprehend other and higher
things than dreams are made of. Another class
of agencies appear rising rank beyond rank, and
disclosing the future course of the Divine Providence. His natural senses open again, and so
impressed is the patriarch with the higher verities that exist within and beyond them, that he
pronounces the place " dreadful," and 1" the gate
of heaven."
2 Kings ii. 9-12. The history and writings of
a class of persons called prophets comprise a very
large portion of the books of the Old Testament.
The reader may not have noted the special significance of the fact that this class of persons have
two distinct functions. One is that of prediction,
by virtue of which they simply deliver the mes



FORESPLENDORS.             45
sage that comes to them, with the formula,'" Thus
saith the Lord." The other is that of prevision,
and is a higher and ampler endowment. By this
the prophet has open view of the realm of causes,
and with a new power of perception is confronted
with the objects and environed with the scenery of
a higher world. Let the reader keep carefully
in sight this distinction between prophecy and
seership in passages cited from the prophetic writings and history.
In the passage above cited we have the history
of what is generally called the translation of Elijah. Both Elijah and his companions have premonitions that his transition from natural to
spiritual existence is at hand.  " Knowest thou
that the Lord will take away thy master from thy
head to-day? "  " Yea, I know it; hold ye your
peace."  In view of the solemn parting which
was soon to take place, Elijah says to Elisha,
" Ask what I shall do for thee, before I be taken
away from thee." And Elisha said, " I pray thee,
let a double portion of thy spirit be upon me ";
that is, I pray that I may receive in the fullest
sense thine own special endowments. The reply
is, " Thou hast asked a hard thing; nevertheless,
IF THOU SEE ME when I am taken from thee, it
shall be so unto thee; but if not, it shall not be
so"; which means, if you have open vision of
the change that awaits me, that of itself will




46           THE IMMORTAL LIFE.
show that your prayer is granted, and that you
have the highest prophetic endowment. And as
they went on and talked, they were parted asunder, and Elisha saw the prophet ascend to heaven
on " the horses of fire and the chariots of fire."
What became of the natural body we are not
told. But that this was not what was taken into
heaven is clear from the fact that it required a
new kind of perception to witness the spectacle.
It was not a transfer from one locale to another,
but from a lower degree of existence to a higher,
and it required the gift of seership to apprehend
it and the stupendous agencies which it involved.
It was not therefore a translation, but a transfiguration; not an ascent through the air to heaven,
but an ascent through the altitude of being, precisely like the changes of mortal dissolution.
2 Kings vi. 11-17.  The mantle of Elijah
falls on Elisha; that is to say, the highest function
of the prophetic gift becomes his also, for he sees
those objects that lie within the realm of causes.
He reveals the secret counsels of the Syrian king,
and becomes obnoxious to his vengeance.  The
king sends to arrest him. To make sure of success, he arms a great host, and provides horses
and chariots; and they go by night and beleaguer the place where the prophet is abiding. It
is the town of Dothan, which lies twelve miles




FORESPLENDORS.                    47
north of Samaria.  A  great host of horses and
chariots to arrest one poor prophet, who has none
to defend him  but a single servant!   Morning
comes and lifts away the darkness, and the servant
looks out through the space that surrounds the
city, and the Syrian army appears in all its numbers. " Alas, my master, what can we do?"
The prophet regards -with indifference the glittering cavalcade, for he sees what his servant cannot.   " Fear not, for they that be with us are
more than they that be with them." And Elisha
prayed, and said, " Lord, I pray thee OPEN HIS
EYES THAT HE MAY SEE."   And a new  sense in
the young man is indeed opened, and the agencies of Divine Providence, invisible to mortal
sight, " the horses of fire and the chariots of fire,"
appear, -the ministries by which the good man
is engirded when others see it not, and drawn up
into the Divine protection, though in the midst of
difficulties and visible dangers.*
* It has been asserted by some writers, that, in the angelophanies both of the Old and New Testament, the angels assumed a
material body for the purpose of making themselves visible to
men. It is a sufficient reply to this, - first, that there is not a
shadow of evidence for it, and that you might just as well assume
that human beings have no bodies except while you are looking
at them; and, secondly, there is evidence enough against it in the
facts of the case. The disappearance of the angel is as sudden
as his appearance. What becomes of the assumed material body
when he has done with it? According to this notion, when he
disappears he ought to leave a corpse behind him.




48          THE IMMORTAL LIFE.
Ezekiel, first chapter.  In this, we have de,
scribed that highest of the prophetic state in
which prophecy passes into seership; when the
natural world is excluded, and a higher one rises
objectively on the inner sense, couched for this
very purpose by the Divine hand. A new order
of intelligences is revealed, another firmament is
over their heads, other scenery is round about
with its own series of imagery, and other forms
appear in which the spirit bodies forth its fulness of life. " And when I saw it, I fell upon
my face, and I heard a voice as of one that
spake."
Luke iii. 21, 22. " Now when all the people
were baptized, it came to pass that, Jesus also being baptized, and praying, the heaven was opened,
and the Holy Ghost descended in a bodily shape
like a dove upon him, and a voice came from heaven which said,' Thou art my beloved son; in thee
I am well pleased."'  In the parallel passage in
Matthew it is said, " The heavens were opened
unto him."  We hope it is not necessary to show
that other than the natural heavens are here spoken of, and that prayer with the Saviour was none
else, than opening upward the inward mind until
it lay manifest under divine and celestial presences, which were above it and with it as another
day.




FORESPLENDORS.                  49
Luke ix. 28-36.   The transfiguration  was
— __ —.P.       T                1. - - I _ l -.-.. -... _    e I1
I I-      "




50          THE IMMORTAL LIFE.
of the circumstances attending the resurrection
of, Christ, and we refer to it here for the special
purpose of educing the principle involved in the
appearance of the angels.  The variations of
statement on this subject have caused needless
perplexities and discussions on the falsely alleged
contradictions in the four narratives. On comparing them together, you find that the angelappearances were not the same to all the witnesses.  Mary looked into the tomb, and saw
there two men in shining garments. Peter and
John came out of the tomb just before Mary
looked in, and saw nothing. At the same point
of time some saw one and some saw two, some in
one place and one at least in another. All the
difficulties in the case arise from the absurd assumption that these angels appeared in bodies
like ours, and to the material organ, whereas
from the whole account it is evident they were
apprehended through a change in the minds of
the percipients, slight in some, more full in others,
complete probably in none; so that some saw more
and some less of those transcendent ministries
which, within the veil of mortal sight, waited
around the central fact in the Divine plan for human redemption. If there is any doubt as to the
nature and method of these appearances, it may
be dissipated by reference to verse twenty-third:
"They (i. e. the women) came, saying that they




FORESPLENDORS.             51
had also seen a vision of angels, which said that
he was alive."  The word rendered " vision" is
here o7rraatia,- a word which in the Scriptures
is never used to signify natural sight, but is invariably employed to describe the mind's open
apprehension of supersensual things.*
Acts i. 9-11.  This passage describes the
circumstances attending our Lord's ascension.
The reader's special attention is here directed
to the fact of the sudden appearance on the
scene of " two men in white apparel," and their
disappearance from it.
Acts vii. 55-57 describes the death of Stephen the protomartyr. " Being full of the Holy
Ghost, he looked up steadfastly into heaven, and
saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing on the
right hand of God, and said, Behold, I see the
heavens opened, and the Son of man standing on
the right hand of God." The reader will please
hote the fact that this solemn perspective expanded upon the martyr's gaze just before his
death, and that the by-standers saw nothing of
it. Had it been visible to those cruel murderers,
their deed would have been arrested. But while
the blows were falling upon the sufferer, and only
* See Luke i. 22; Acts xxvi. 19; 2 Cor. xii. 1.




52           THE IMMORTAL LIFE.
their bloody work was visible to them, he saw
the eternal gates lifted up, and looked full on
immortality.
Acts ix. 1-18, xxii. 6-16, xxvi. 12-18. We
have here three different accounts given of the
conversion of Saul of Tarsus, -one by Luke,
and two by Paul himself.  They are variant,
but being compared, and all the facts brought
together, their consistence is admirable and complete. The order of events is clearly this.
Damascus, a city of Syria, is about one hundred and thirty-six miles from Jerusalem, and
by the ancient methods of travelling was about
six days' journey. It is skirted on all sides by
sandy plains, that burn and glister under an orient sun, but the city itself stands on a little oasis, watered by a single stream, that divides into
many threads, which wind through the streets
and fill it with the low murmurs of rills. It is
the Syrian capital, is embowered in trees, and
thus rises like a green islet out of the wide sea
of scorching sand. It contained a Jewish synagogue, some of whose members had apostatized
from the Jewish faith and become Christians.
Saul is a young man and a bigoted Jew, educated in the best Jewish school of theology, and
learned in all its lore.  He is fresh from  his
studies, and full of zeal and endowed with high




FORESPLENDORS.             53
intellectual energies. He brings the case of the
Syrian apostates before the Sanhedrim at Jerusalem, obtains from them letters of authority and
an armed police, and starts for Damascus for the
purpose of arresting the heretics, and probably
putting them to death. He. has come within
sight of Damascus. It is high noon. and they
can see the city away through the hot and stifling air, and they feel sure of their prey.
The noon is blazing down upon the Syrian
plain, and we appreciate the force of the language when it is said that a brightness greater
than that of a Syrian noon now surrounds the
travellers and overpowers them.  And please
observe the difference in the impressions made
on the minds of the company. They all witness
a sudden and intolerable brightness. They all
hear a sound, resembling probably that of thunder,
rolling down out of a clear sky.* Damascus,
the green oasis, suddenly disappears from their
sighb; they perceive only the blaze that involves
them; they cannot bear it, and they fall prone.
But one of the company perceives something
more than a blaze of light, and hears something
more than a rumbling sound. Within that blaze
there is a person, and within that sound there
are Hebrew words, and he hears his own name
* Compare with John xii. 29.
5 *




54          THE IMMORTAL LIFE..
articulated aloud, "Saul, Saul, why persecutest
thou me?"  "Who art thou, Lord?"  "I am
Jesus whom thou persecutest. Rise and stand.
Go into the city, and it shall be told thee what
thou shalt do." The light pales away and disappears; they rise and stand, but all is a blank
now to Saul. He is blind. The intolerable
blaze is followed by midnight blackness, but his
attendants see again, and the green city looms
up in the distance as before. They lead the
blind and stricken man into it, and he now inspires pity rather than terror.  They conduct
him to the house of a friendly Jew, where he betakes himself to contrition and prayer. Though
all is dark without, light begins to dawn from
within. For, behold, as he is praying, a sweet
and kindly face seen in vision melts through the
gloom, until the form of a man stands before him
and lays his hand upon him -in blessing. He
knows not the benevolent face, but it is the presage of heavenly mercy. Three days pass away,
and a footstep enters his apartment. A hand is
laid upon his head, and a voice tells him to open
his eyes. His eyes are opened, and lo! he looks
up into the same face that came before him in
vision. It is the face of Ananias, a converted
Jew, - one of those persons whom he came from
Jerusalem to imprison and slay. He rises and
is baptized into the faith he so lately hated and
persecuted.




FORESPLENDORS.             55
The word again rendered " vision" in the Scripture narrative of Saul's conversion is o'7rao-a,
a word specially used to designate the sight of
objects which are not within the sphere of the
natural senses.
The Apocalypse. This is the only book of the
New Testament which is prophetical throughout;
that is, in which all the scenery is strictly and
entirely extra-natural.  The reader will note
carefully the expression of the writer at the
beginning, " I was in spirit," - C7rvevparT,an expression specially appropriated to describe
a change in the inner mind produced by quickening and elevating that sense which becomes
cognizant of the objects of a higher sphere. It
does not denote a sharpening of the natural sight
to discern things more subtile or remote, but
just the reverse. It denotes a closing up of the
natural sight, and the opening of a new eye to
a light that never strikes our fleshly eyeballs.
From this state the prophet of Patmos gives
us the vast and solemn panorama of what he
saw.
It comes not within our scope to expound the
Apocalypse. Abstine manus, improbe, —Keep off
profane hands. It has been constantly expounded as if it represented natural things by natural
things, and, following this method, Dr. Cum



56          THE IMMORTAL LIFE.
mings finds in these chapters cholera, potato-rot,
influenzas, Napoleon Bonaparte, and so forth.
Not till we purge ourselves of this vice in tlleologizing will the expositors be able to open the
book and loose the seals thereof. What we here
indicate is the fact of extra-natural scenery,
spread out in such wise as to body forth a life
so much more intense than aught we experience
here, that even the prophet could not bear the
sudden blazon, and fell as one dead under the
too ardent effulgence.  Let Lord Monboddo, and
the scholiast of Cudworth, put their eye here for
a moment where the prophet has so poised his
telescope as to sweep the higher heavens and
bring them near, and then let them say whether
God is beholden to dull matter alone in the creation of worlds, and whether the phenomena of
form, color, extension, distance, motion, may not
be produced otherwise than under the combinations of natural law, and in a sunlight so much
more warm and full, that the earth in comparison
seems to suffer eclipse, and to hang like a corpse
in the shadows.




CHAPTER VII.
THE BIBLE PNEUMATOLOGY.
WE have only indicated the more prominent
among the passages of the Divine Word which
contain the disclosures of a future life. We ask
the reader to take his Bible, and go through with
it with his mind intent on this subject, and note
how large a portion of it has been ignored. We
now proceed to enumerate the laws and modes of
existence which are here brought clearly into
view.
1. First, the reader will notice that a spiritual
world is revealed whose scenery is objective; that
it is a WORLD, and not a state merely; a world,
not only of substances, bhut of bodies and forms;
and that these bodies and forms glow and pulsate
with a more plenary life from Him who is the life
of all. Let him take note of the fact, that the
exhibition of body, form, figure, and extension
does not by any means cease, but, on the other




58           THE IMMORTAL LIFE.
hand, that these are continued with such higher
and more overpowering majesty that the percipients could not bear the disclosure. So far from
being unreal and spectral, it is the reality of
which earth is only a dull and feeble adumbration.
2. Then take note of the fact that it is not
disclosed to the natural senses of the percipients,
but invariably to an inner sense touched and elevated for this very purpose. Hence, that it is a
world that lies out of the range of natural space,
and its substances differ from natural ones, not in
tenuity, but in species.  Its fields are not to be
reached by travelling through the planetary distances, but by having the soul made cognizant of
its presence.  This may be made apprehensible
by illustrations and analogies.
There is a child asleep amid summer scenery,
shut in to a dream-world of his own. In that
dream-world he sees a variety of pleasing objects,
frolics with his companions, and plashes in the
brooks; and so delighted is lie that his cheeks
are aglow and a smile is playing around his lips.
It is all real to him, and he knows for the time of
no other mode of existence. But all the while
he is in a world still more bright and objective,
of which he has not the faintest cognizance.  The
fragrance of flowers is wafted over him unper



'THE BIBLE PNEUMATOLOGY.                  59
ceived, and the warble of birds falls unheeded
upon his ear. He is in two worlds at once, -
consciously in one, unconsciously  in  the other.
How will you transfer his relations from the first
to the last? How will you bring him from the
dream-world into the real one? Not by taking
him on a journey through space, but simply by
waking him  up.  Close one set of senses, and open
another, and the whole work is done. One world
vanishes, and another opens upon him its endless
range of objects. So it is with us. We dream
now; we shall wake anon, and wonder at the
fields which lie about us and the skies that bend
over us.*
* " Suppose that a man had been created without the sense of
hearing or of sight. He stands by the waterfall: the wild magnificence of the surrounding scene, the rainbow softness and repose blended with its energy, the deep and awful harmony of its
tones, uttering themselves in the solitude of nature, are there;
but to him all is silence and darkness. He goes out as the gray
dawn feebly spreads itself over the east, ray after ray shooting
up into the darkness of night, till the whole horizon is glowing,
and the sun comes forth amid a general burst of song from field
and grove. Still to him all is darkness and silence, - no voice,
no light,' and no intimation that such things are. A tradition
there may be, like our traditions from prophets, that to some of
his race, in distant ages, strange revelations respecting these things
were made; but they soon faded out,- the. light he supposes
shone but for a day, and ever after a universal blank overshadowed
the earth.  But suddenly his ears are opened, and unimagined
sensations throng upon him.  Melodies that seem from heaven,
all harmonious sounds of winds and birds'and flowing streaihs,




60               THE IMMORTAL LIFE.
3. The reader will not fail to notice another
fact of the first importance    What we call the
soul, the immortal man, is not a meta physical nonentity or " pure simplicity," but an organism more
perfect than that of the outward body, because
more replete with the Divine energies.  On this
break in upon the silence of centuries. Then his eyes are opened,
and a new creation is before him: earth and sky, with all the
changes that pass over them; the approach of morning and evening, of spring and summer; and not less than these, the human
face, on which are imprinted like passing lights and shadows the
various emotions of the soul; - all these, amid which he has lived
from childhood, come out as a new order of being
" Now is it unreasonable to suppose that a new sense added to
what we now have might reveal to us qualities and beings as
much brighter than any we now witness, as the revelations of sight
are brighter than the objects of touch?  For example, we now
see only effects, the plant, the tree, the man, and the coarse material out of which they are formed. But why might not a sense be
given to see the causes which we know must exist 2 And what
a revelation would this be, - to see all the secret causes that are at
work in matter, producing the marvellous revolutions that are now
in evervthing taking place on the earth! But suppose this faculty
so enlarged as to take in the causes that act not only on matter,
but on r tind. Might it not be that spiritual influences would be
reveale 1, surrounding us, going through our lives, coming when
we least suspect it, like songs and sunbeams upon the blind and
deaf, and lingering with a more exquisite beauty and melody
around what seem to us the most lonely, dark, and disconsolate
hours? Might we not then see that they who had seemed lost are
still around us, - that Jesus, that the wise and good of all times,
who lived and died for man, did not close their ministry with their
lives, but are still with unseen counsels helping forward the great
purposes of God? " —Rev. J. IL. 3liorison.




THE BIBLE PNEUMATOLOGY.          61
point we refer specially to the scene of the transfiguration, when Christ appeared to the disciples
as the Divine Man whom the Roman spear could
not pierce, the same as after the earthly organism
had been excluded, and he was revealed to St.
John, ev 7rrve6zaTt, from the glorified state. Man,
immortally organized, does not appear as such
when included within these earthly conditions,
for the simple reason that immortal substance
differs in species from natural, and is therefore
cognizable only to a higher order of perceptive
faculties. All the more, however, does the soul
live, an organization in itself, though acting now
through the instrumentalities of flesh and bone
and sinew.
4. Another truth dawns upon us, which we
pause to notice here, without attempting to spread
it out in all its bearings. It will be seen, that,
while all the qualities we have enumerated —
form, color, figure, motion, extension, nearness,
distanice — pertain also to the spirit-world, there is
this essential difference, that they exist there, not
under natural law, but under spiritual. In other
words, they exist there as the exhibition of moral
and spiritual qualities, and not as the exhibition
of an outward and sensuous beauty. No sensual
paradise is revealed.  Ev.rything is alive and
aglow with spiritual truth and celestial goodness,
6




62           THE IMMORTAL LIFE.
and from these come all its charms and glories.
As this principle signalizes most impressively
the pneumatology of the Bible, and clears it
heaven-wide of the slough of naturalism, we will
endeavor to give it as lucid an illustration as it
will bear.
In Revelation vii. 9-14, the Revealer describes
the ritual of heaven, and speaks of the worshippers as "clothed in white robes," and again as
having washed their robes " white in the blood
of the lamb."  We perceive at once that this describes the inmost life of the celestial worshippers,
that the " robes " are put on, not from without,
but from within, and are the exfiguratiolls of that
celestial purity and innocence which have been
wrought in the redeemed by the Lamb of God.
Again, xxii. 1- 2, we have a description of delightful scenery, -a river clear as crystal, fringed
on either side with trees that hang with delicious
fruits. But the reader is not in the least danger
of a relapse into naturalism, for he sees by the
whole description that all this scenery is the
manifestation of spiritual and moral attributes
and qualities.
Again, we have a description of day without
night, xxii. 3-5, but it is not day produced by
natural suns.   " Solemque suum  sua sidera
norunt," — they know their own sun and their
own stars. Such is the more full and open per



:iHE BIBLE PNEUMATOLOGY.        63
ception of God's presence, that this is the sun
which invests the fields with light and makes an
eternal day.
So again, with a secure grasp upon this principle, we are not in the least danger of being misled when we read the description of the state of
unhappy souls, -the lake of fire that ever burns,
and the smoke of their torment that ever ascends.
These also are descriptive of moral and spiritual
qualities, of unclean lusts and dark delusions become phenomenal, and flinging their colorings
and shapings over the world in which they dwell;
not of a place into which souls are transferred by
outward arrangements. There, too, is an outward world as well as an inward, but one unfolds
and glasses the other, and the spirit always imprints itself on its own surroundings.
We cite these as special illustrations; but take
any prophetical portion of the Bible, and seek
the principle that underlies its imagery, and you
shall find invariably that what we here regard as
the natural qualities of things there cease to be
such altogether, and are, so to say, completely
humanized.   They exist and combine under
another law, and body forth a redeemed or a dcgraded humanity. In the whole gorgeous panoranma which the prophet unrolls, there is not a
shade nor a tint which is not a reflection of a
more interior life, and all changes are but the




64           THE IMMORTAL LIFE.
variations in its lights and shadows. Mohammedan or millennial Paradises, or the Tartarus of
heathendom, or of a heathenized Christianity, are
there unknown.
5. The proximity of the spiritual world to this
is another truth brought distinctly into view;
but if the reader will exercise a moderate amount
of intelligence, he will perceive that this nearness
is not of the nature of juxtaposition of body with
body. Not as the author of the Physical Theory
conjectures, nor as the current "Spiritualism"
teaches, - that the spiritual world is a subtilized
natural one on the plane of materialism.  It is
above us, not in space, but in the higher degree
of. its life and the higher species of substances
that compose it. But it is near us, and we are
in it because our souls are of like substance, and
are organisms to receive its spirit and breathe its
airs, and have latent in them those orders of perceptive powers capable in due time of giving us
open relations with it, and unobstructed sight of
its transcendent glories.
Under the guide of these principles, very simple, and as it seems to us very plain, the Bible
pneumatology stands before us clear, distinct, and
rational.  We leave behind us alike the nonentities of metaphysics and the absurdities of naturalism, and the spiritual world rises out of the




THE BIBLE PNEUMATOLOGY.         65
dreary inane, rank beyond rank, away towards
the foot of the throne, each rank instinct with
new.life as it ascends, because nearer in degree
to the source of being, each occupying a plane
of existence that grows in beauty as it rises; —
"Largior hic campos sether, et lumine vestit purpureo," - where an ampler ether invests the fields
with purpureal gleams.
6*




CHAPTER  VIII.
DEATH, AS GOD ORDAINED IT.
THE change which we call death is to be contemplated from two points of view: first, as an
ordinance of Providence; and, secondly, as an
evil after the laws of Providence have been infringed by sinful agency.
What death is in its essential nature doth very
plainly appear. It -appears from our preceding
course of argument, and it appears from all that
we know of it in lower natures. Death is the
removal of an outgrowth after it has accomplished its functions and become a hinderance,
the outward bark of the tree become dry, and
scaling off that the tree may expand with more
thrift and freedom. Death is a necessary stage
in human progress, of which the lower analogies
prophesy in strains of joy.
Alan's progress has three distinct and successive stages. He has three times to be born before
he knows the full endowments of his nature. He




DEATH, AS GOD ORDAINED IT.        67
was not made perfect at once, because he would
not.then have had the bliss of an unfolding and
progressive life. It was designed that he should
rise from lower to higher, the goodly prospect
ever enlarging, each preparing for the one that
shall follow; so that nothing becomes old; all is
changing and all is new.
First is the natural birth. He begins his existence on the plane of nature, and seems only a
more fully developed species of the animal kingdom. He comes with sensuous wants and appetites, and when placed side by side with one of
the lower animals, you would not discover at once
those powers that distinguish him from them;
just as the living seed seems not to differ at first
from a portion of inorganic and lifeless matter.
But wait awhile, and the one crumbles and perishes, while that which contained the vital principle
shoots forth the living blade. The ignoble form
of the brute conceals no order of powers that are
held in waiting. It is otherwise with man. You
soon find that there is quite another series of faculties that stir within him and claim their birth.
Let the animal nature be satisfied to the full, and
the senses be regaled with all that is most seductive in sights and sounds and fragrance, —there
is a nature still which is not satisfied; but keeps
calling for objects of which sight and sound
and fragrance bring no sufficient tidings. The




68           THE IMMORTAL LIFE.
animal gradually disappears, and the man is disclosed. This shall increase, while the other shall
decrease. So far from finding here nothing but
animated flesh, you discover a spirit allied with
seraphim included in this animal frame. Not
from the sphere of sense without, but from witifin, and from a mystic world, come the idea of
God and tidings of immortality. Reason, and
conscience, and affections dear and holy, unfold
under these new ideas, and their highest combined action is that faith to which a new heavens
and a higher order of being unroll their mysteries and pour down their warm illuminations.
Now, therefore, comes the second birthday of man.
He wakes to a new consciousness, that of spiritual existence, that of relations to a world which
eye hath not seen, but which hath projected its
image into his soul. It is his spiritual birth.
Before, he trod the earth, but little higher than
the animals; now, he walks beneath the heavens,
but little lower than the angels.
But is this all? Is the man full grown, and
has he yet come into a world that gives full
range to his powers? No, it is not all. It is
true, that, up to a certain point in its progress
and enlargement, the spirit needs none other
than a material organization. But its powers
gather strength, and the sweep of its vision becomes wider. Fields of knowledge open upon it




DEATH, AS GOD ORDAINED IT.       69
which it cannot explore when cumbered with
clay. More than all, the affections are not satisfied. Objects of surpassing loveliness are disclosed to the eye of faith, which it would approach in a nearer and holier communion. Here
the soul takes hold of immortality only through
representatives, and though these copy out the
Eternal Power and Godhead in sensible forms,
they are copies only, and not the unveiled originals. Here she looks through a glass dimly,
and approaches her Saviour through symbols;
she yearns to go behind the symbols, and see the
unclouded face of her Beloved. Here she sees
only effects or gross results; she yearns to explore the realm of causes, and see into the life of
things. Shall all this be permitted? Or shall
the soul, when her faculties have ripened, and
when they demand a higher organism, be still
subject to the clogs of flesh? Must she creep
like the reptile, when ready to rise on the wings
of the eagle? When prepared for wider beneficence, and nobler activities, shall she have no
better implements than these clumsy organs,
" but little better than those of the brute that
grazes in a meadow "?
The powers of the body must now be put in
symmetry with the powers of the mind. Ripe
for its transformation, its exuviee drop off, and it
rises with nimble motion into a freer air. The




70          THE IMMORTAL LIFE.
growing faculties crowd against their prison-walls,
and crowd them down; and then the soul is in
conscious relations with a new world, and a new
order of beings, with an organism unimpeded for
new employments. It is the third stage of its
progress; not decay merely, but decay in order
to growth; not death only, but death for the sake
of birth; not ceasing to live, but ceasing to be
mortal. It is the heavenly birth, for it is the
heavenly mind put in symmetry with a heavenly
body with which to range among the objects of a
heavenly world.
Such is the death which God ordains; and it
seems strange to us, that the theologians are so
fond of representing that he introduced it into
the world as a penal calamity. It is a stage in
human progress to be passed as we would pass
from childhood to youth or from youth to manhood, and with the same consciousness of an everunfolding nature. And under healthful conditions as peacefully too; for our souls would be
full of the future, ever waiting to break into
new life, but never thinking of death and decay.
Immortality would not come upon us by surprise, but as manhood comes upon youth, as
childhood comes upon infancy, or as day comes
upon the darkness, melting away the bars of
night in soft surges of golden fire. As the
heavenly nature was unfolded, the earthly nature




DEATH, AS GOD ORDAINED IT.     71
would fall away of itself, and so we should grow
into our immortality; for the man would grow
into the angel, as the infant grows into the child.
Death thus conceived of does not imply disease,
but superabundant health. How pleasing the
sight! - the generations following each other in
unbroken ranks, youth treading on the steps of
manhood, and manhood on the steps of age, no
foe lurking in ambush to thin their ranks, and
strew the way with the corpses of the young, but
all moving on in charmed numbers to where the
ranks of age disappear together, melting out of
sight over the summits of the hill, their locks
tinged and their features kindled in a light that
streams from the country beyond.




CHAPTER IX.
DEATH, AS MAN MAKES IT.
FROM data which are precise and unmistakable,
certain naturalists undertake to interpret the Divine plan in regard to the length of human life.
From signs impressed on our animal machinery,
they think they ascertain exactly how long it was
intended to continue. It is so wound up as to go
a certain length of time, and then stop, - a chronometer which will measure off truly a certain
lapse of years, unless you derange and break it.
By the aid of comparative anatomy, and from a
careful collection of facts, they deduce the principle that all animal natures -are designed to continue five times longer than they grow. Hence
the allotted period of all inferior orders is ascertained. Take five times their period of growth,
and you have the length of life allowed to any
given species, —the years for which the timepiece
is conditioned and wound up.  The period of
growth is ascertained from the fact, that, when it




DEATH, AS MAN MAKES IT.            73
ceases, a certain change takes place in the anatomical structure, known to naturalists as " the
union of the bones to their epiphyses."   The
period of man's growth is just twenty years,
and therefore his animal economy was distinctly
planned to continue a century before it stops.
One hundred years, and not threescore and ten,
say these writers, is the natural age of man.
There are individual variations and exceptions,
but in none does it fall short of ninety years. If
some nren live beyond the hundredth, it is because
the period of growth was unusually prolonged,
or because of extraordinary prudence or constitutional strength. The actual average length of
human life, however, is less than forty years, and
therefore these naturalists will have it that the
race generally do not simply die, but rather kill
themselves. The plan of the Creator is thwarted;
we do not let the timepiece run down, but break
the chain or smash the wheels in pieces.*
That part of our complex natures which we
have in common with the animals, by which we
hold relations with the outward world, and the
cessation of whose functions we call death, was
* These principles have been deduced by Buffon, and with
more precision by his commentator, M. Flourens, in a book
which has recently awakened much attention in Paris,-De la
Longeztite' Humaine et de la Quantite de Vie sur la Globe, —reviewed in Blackwood's' Magazine, May, 1855.
7




74           THE IMMORTAL LIFE.
designed then to continue a century, and stop of
itself, and without disease, cast off as the coverings of the chrysalis when they are needed no
more. Diseases are a gang of foreign invaders
which have broken into the house of life, or rather which have come ill through the rents that
the inmates themselves had made. And so death,
which would only have come gently to cleave
away our effete coverings without pain or disorder, comes now with a company of butchers,
who not only remove the coverings, but stab our
persons with savage ferocity.  Set going for one
hundred years, and stopping at forty! What a
fearful view of the ravages of sin have we here
presented in the slaughtered generations! We
think, however, that something more will be
needed than new rules of regimen and dietetics,
important as these are, to disarm death altogether,
and make it the condition of health alone. The
evils of hereditary disorder the naturalists take
little account of, - the deep-lurking spiritual
damage which we receive from ancestry and
transmit to offspring, and which has much to
do in breaking up the orderly ongoings of our
animal machinery.
Death, as we make it, has two sources of terror,
one physical, one moral. We dread it as. a physical evil, because it is the consummation of disease, and therefore of suffering. Reason about it




DEATH, AS MAN MAKES IT.         T75
as we may, when we see youth and childhood
and helpless infancy writhing in its grasp, we cannot avoid the conclusion, that some great disturbance has been thrown in upon us, reversing the
order of nature, sending parents to bury the children, instead of the children the parents, making
them live an inverted life, as Burke says, and putting posterity in the place of ancestors. This is
overruled for good, as all evil is, and economized
in the plan of our regeneration. But not less
are we impressed with the fact that death, as we
see it, is disorderly, and that it has "' passed upon
all men " as a consequence of sin.
But even so, the dread of it may be removed
from our minds by moral and spiritual causes.
We easily learn to triumph over physical suffering, and even to rejoice in it. When we see only
the naked fact, it subdues and crushes us. When
we see beyond the naked fact, and the end to
which we can turn it, we rise elastic above it, and
look down and smile upon it. To a faith whose
eye is open and clear, death, even as we experience it, is a struggle out of disorder into light
and fruition. If our relations to the spirit-world
are rightly felt and apprehended, death, even
though it come through disease and suffering,
and reverse the order of natural succession, is
yet an inferior evil, and our victory over it is
made complete. It is only when man becomes




76           THE IMMORTAL LIFE.
buried in sense, and his faith only traditional, and
when, therefore, to lose his foothold on the earth
is to plunge into darkness, that he cowers before
the approach of the Destroyer.
It is constantly assumed by the theologians,
that death is a consequence of the fall, and essentially evil, — that man as originally created
would have been immortal upon the earth. It is
evident from two reasons that this is not so. It
is not so for the reason already given, that a
period is at length reached when man, as a progressive being, needs a higher than a physical
organization. It is not so, because the work ascribed to Christ is commensurate with the evil
doings of sin.  One is set off against the other.
He came to " abolish death," —the death which
Adam introduced. "As in Adam all die, even
so in Christ shall all be made alive."  The antithesis is complete.  All the death that Adam
brought in, Christ will thrust out, ere his work is
consummated. But he does not abolish the fact
of dissolution, or make mail immortal on the
earth. He abolishes all the evil that there is in
the mortality of our animal structure. He makes
the process a healthful instead of a diseased one,
and so restores it from what man made it to
what God ordained it.  This he does in two
ways. He restores our spiritual natures to heav*




DEATH, AS MAN MAKES IT.        7T
enly order, transfusing them with his own life
and health, and purging them of all acquired or
hereditary evil, and thence life and health spread
through our animal frames, restoring them to a
unison with divine laws. The inward nature in
time transmutes the outward one, and will make
it its befitting body and drapery, when not only
individual but humanitary regeneration is complete. And again, as we shall see more fully ill
what follows, Christ brings the realm of immortality distinctly within the range of the eye of
faith, making this life and the next one and continuous, so that to man as he essentially is, death
is banished from the view and is no more.
Under whatever conditions it occurs, whether
diseased or healthful, we cannot mistake the
nature of mortal change. it is closing one set of
perceptions, after man is to use them no longer.
It is abolishing one set of relations, after the objects to which they bound us have accomplished
all their intended work. Man may live in many
worlds at once, but he can have open and conscious relations with only one at a time. He may
live in many at once, for he has life concealed
within life, and each world may act on the correspondent province of his being and put him in
communion with it. But only one world is unveiled to him at a time and discloses its scenery,
— that in which his present duty lies. He may
7*




78          THE IMMORTAL LIFE.
attempt to break through and act in two at once,
but when he does, confusion is the pretty sure
result, - the blending of activities which do not
harmonize together, and which may clash with
awful and maddening disorder. The veil which
hangs between is the guard of an interposing and
protecting mercy. If our course is indeed progressive, our walk through the mystic galleries
of the universe is from the more outward to those
more inward, where God in greater fulness dwells;
but we must close the doors after us as we go!
Death is the orderly and withal the beautiful
method of travelling inward and upward through
those degrees of existence whose wards unlock
one after another towards the shining courts of
the Eternal King. In that ascent it is a glorious
privilege to die, to shut off the past when its ministries are done. Death does this, and no more,
when the duties of one department have been
accomplished. It shuts off the fore-scene, that
no fond longings may make us keep looking back,
and reaching back with divided attention. What
can we do with our mind parted and our affections cloven?  Death is shutting the door, shutting it on a pleasing retrospect it may be, on
sweet and loving faces, on objects around which
fond memories cling, on skies that smiled over
our infancy, and led on the gay procession of our
happy years; but then another door opens higher upward through the solemn galleries!




CHAPTER X.
THE RESURRECTION.
THERE is a general acknowledgment among
mankind of such a connection of the present
with the future as to necessitate some kind of
retribution.  We say that sin and suffering,
goodness and enjoyment, have the relation of
cause and effect; that if not in this life, yet in
some other, we shall reap down the harvest which
we sow. We need not say, however, to those
who observe human conduct very closely, how
much this doctrine is practically denied or evaded. It requires so little of special pleading for
one to make his own case exceptional, and such
abundant provisions to escape from it are supplied by artificial theologies, that men do not,
after all, regard this as an intrinsic LAW of spiritual existence. Those theologies do not make
the resurrection of man a fact included under
the operation of any law whatsoever, but a monstrosity thrust in among the orderly operations




80          THE IMMORTAL LIFE.
of the Deity. They make it not only a miracle,
but a miracle wrought mechanically, and not
spiritually. The idea of God coining down to
the cemeteries, and, potter-like, building up from
their contents a set of human frames externally,
and putting spirits into them afterward, is shocking enough, if we had not long ceased to be
shocked by the fantasies of religious naturalism.
And it is not very strange that a conception, of
which the human reason is so utterly intolerant,
comes to have the feeblest influence on human
conduct.
But the pneumatology of the sacred writers
brings home to us the doctrine of the resurrection in such wise as to give it the closest logical
connection with the subject of retribution and
the judgment-day. They do not make it a fact
thrust in from without, and arbitrarily inserted
between two dispensations.  They make it the
necessary result of the development of a divine
law, whose workings are brought home to us
with such graphic delineations as almost to
hinder us from sleep.  By a careful collation of
passage with passage, a truth rises upon us with
harmonious relations, and with features surpassingly bright and grand. We will call it THE
ORGANIC CONNECTION BETWEEN THE PRESENT AND
THE FUTURE LIFE, and we will endeavor to draw
it out in as clear an illustration as it will bear.




THE RESURRECTION.              81
First we will develop the Scripture doctrine of
the resurrection, and then we shall see how it
puts the present and future state in organic connection with each other.
The time when the resurrection is to take
place, and the nature of it, are the two points
in our inquiry.. On the first, we shall not need
to inquire long; for the Saviour has made this
point clear enough in his reasonings with the
pseudo-rationalists of his day.
The Sadducees held that all of human existence
was bounded between birth and death. They
were gross materialists, believing in no future
state, and thinking that the whole office of religion was to keep this world in order. The
Pharisees, on the other hand, believed in a doctrine of the resurrection, but they held it very
much as it has been taught since, namely, as a
resuscitation of dead bodies from  the graves.*
The Sadducees, knowing that Christ taught a
doctrine of resurrection, and supposing it was
the same as the Pharisees believed, for they were
incapable of conceiving of any other, came to him
with what they thought were very puzzling questions. If the carnal body is to be raised again,
they very naturally thought that its carnal re* This, however, they believed only in respect to the descendants of Abraham. For a view of their wlhole doctrine on this
subject, see Part Third.




82           THE IMMORTAL LIFE.
lations must be revived and continued. There
was a woman, said they, who had seven husbands
successively, all of whom died, and the woman
died after them. Now, then, ask the cavillers,
"1in the resurrection whose wife will she be of
the seven?"
Mark the answer: c" Do ye not err yourselves,
because ye know not the Scriptures, neither the
power of God? For when they shall rise from
the dead, they neither marry nor are given in
marriage, but are as the angels which are in
heaven. And as touching the dead that they
rise, have ye not read in the book of Moses, how
in the bush God spake unto him, saying, I am
the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and
the God of Jacob?  He is not the God of the
dead, but of the living, for all [though dead to
us] are alive to him." *
You misconceive the true doctrine, he tells the
cavillers, in two particulars.  You mistake the
nature of the resurrection state. It is not a carnal one, but those who enter it become like the
angels ( r ar7eXo&). You mistake the time of
it, for the dead have risen already. The patriarchs are not in their graves, but living with
God, as the language of Moses implies.  It is
perfectly clear that the whole pungency of his
* Mark xii. 18-27; Luke xx. 27-38.




THE RESURRECTION.            83
reply consists in the putting of these two points,
— that the " children of the resurrection " are
absolved from all carnal conditions, and that the
resurrection takes place at death, since with the
patriarchs it is not an event in the uncertain
future, but already transpired.
He is confronted on another occasion with this
same Pharisaic dogma, and in like manner he
brushes it clean away. Over the grave of Lazarus, the sisters, who held the current Jewish
doctrine, send their imaginations down the dim
future to a day when the body of their brother
shall be revived. " I know he shall rise again in
the resurrection at the last day." Jesus replied,
" I am the resurrection and the life; he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he
live, and whosoever livetll and believeth in me
shall never die." I am the resurrection, and as
well now as at any far-off future; I can abolish
death to him that puts his trust in me.*
St. Paul has handled this subject philosophically, and undertaken to disclose something of
the Divine method in the transition of man from
sensuous to spiritual existence. We will not attempt here to give his whole thought, reserving
that for a subject by itself. We will only give it
so far forth as it bears upon our present theme.
* John xi. 24- 26.




84          THE IMMORTAL LIFE.
He spreads out this topic at large in the fifteenth
chapter of his first letter to the Corinthians.
And the reader will please to observe how he regards the Jewish dogma, -that the same bodies
are to be raised which have been laid in the sepulchres. He rejects it somewhat more contemptuously than Christ had done, for the man who
could entertain such a notion he rather impatiently calls a fool. "'Thou fool! that which
thou sowest is not quickened except it die; and
thou sowest not that body that is to be. Thou
sowest grain merely; perhaps wheat, perhaps
some other grain. But God giveth it —the grain
-a body as it hath pleased him, and to every
seed his own body." The grain, dies; you see
nothing more of that, but it contains the germ of
a future body which rises out of it, and whose
nature is according to the nature of the grain,
since every seed puts forth its own germ, and not
another's. He then goes on from this exquisitely
fine analogy to construct the doctrine of man's
resurrection. He says there are two kinds of
bodies; one natural, one spiritual. The natural
is the one that dies, like the kernel that perishes in the ground. The spiritual is the one
that comes out of it, like the expanding blade
which breaks from the decaying capsula that
contained it.
Herein he develops a doctrine much higher




THE RESURRECTION.           85
than the Jewish, and well calculated, not merely
to touch our interest, but to seize the imagination
and hold it captive. It is this, -that manl's resurrection is the putting forth at death of new existence, just as the decaying seed puts forth the
blade. Its decay is necessary in order to release
the life and the beauty that were imprisoned
within its foldings. Death and resurrection describe processes, one the inverse of the other, but
the former helping on the latter and preparing
its triumphant way. Our future being is insouled
and inurned in our present.  The spiritual body
is included elementally in our present mode of
existence, with its perceptive powers all ready
for their enlargement. The soul is not a metaphysical nothing, but a heavenly substance and
organism, fold within fold. The material falls
off, and the spiritual stands forth and fronts the
objects and breathes the ethers of immortality. The future is wrapped up within us, and
waiting to be unrolled. Death will not transfer
us; it will only remove a hinderance and a veil.
We receive with our present being the germ of
all that we are to become hereafter. The physical comes first in the order of development,
forming a secure basis for all that is to follow,
holding it firm, and relaxing its compressure
when its function is done.  "' First that which is
natural, afterward that which is spiritual." The
8




86              THE IMMORTAL LIFE.
death of the first is the falling away of exuvial
matter, whe.a the life of our life becomes manifest and the spiritual body unfolds all its powers.
The w   in that crawls upon the ground and prepare, its own grave ill which to wait for its coming transformation, yet bears on its unsightly
form  those very prominences which  mark  the
places of gold and silver spangles on the wings of
the released and soaring  insect.  The lines of
Rogers "To the Butterfly," with the alteration
of a single word, are a fitting and brief summing up of the doctrine of Paul: —
"Child of the sun! pursue thy rapturous flight,
Mingling with her thou lov'st in fields of light,
And where the flowers of Paradise unfold,
Quaff fragrant nectar from their cups of gold.
There shall thy wings, rich as an evening sky,
Expand and shut, in silent ecstasy;- 
Yet wert thou once a worm,- a thing that crept
On the bare earth, then wrought a tomb and slept.
And such is man,- soon from this cell of clay
To burst a seraph in the blaze of day."
Such is the primary and essential doctrine of
the resurrection. We by no means claim that
we have yet given the whole idea which that
word is often made to represent, especially as it
occurs in the writings of St. Paul.   It means,
essentially, the immortal man breaking from the
carnal investitures of earth, and thence standing
up on a higher platform of existence, and having




THE RESURRECTION.            87
open relations therewith.  Applied specially to
the people of Christ, it includes the auspicious
results involved or presupposed; and what these
are in the spiritual philosophy of St. Paul we
will endeavor to show when that theme comes in
order before us.
There is nothing in the teachings of the Saviour which is not in the severest harmony with
the doctrine here evolved, unless we adopt the
literal interpretation of John v. 28, 29: "C 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, to the resurrection of life, and they that
have done evil, to the resurrection of judgment
(Kpiaeov)."  But the literal sense implies nothing short of annihilation.  " All who are in the
graves."  The pronoun refers to persons, not
bodies. If not only the body is buried, but the
person also who wore it, then all of man is deposited there; and Priestley and the materialists
are right, who make the soul only a function of
matter, and there is a period of total annihilation
till the function is restored. That this is not the
teaching of the Divine Master, we have already
seen. That the passage does not mean this, we
think is obvious enough: what it does mean will
be seen in a subsequent chapter.




CHAPTER XI.
ORGANIC CONNECTION OF THE PRESENT AND THE
FUTURE LIFE.
THE law of retribution involved in Paul's doctrine of the resurrection becomes obvious enough.
Within the concealments and envelopments of
this material body is the inmost indestructible
spiritual life, the real and immortal man, ready
to emerge in its own form; and it does emerge at
death, just as the flower emerges from the seed
that dies. But "to every seed its own body."
Every seed has its own specific life, and the form
in which it comes forth is the outgoing of that
life, —is its own body and configuration.  All
living forms, whether natural or spiritual, are the
outgrowth of an internal principle, seeking to
shape itself for the functions it has to perform.
All growth and enlargement are the effort of this
principle to act and be manifest, and the decay
of the outward is simply the falling away of that
which was a clog to its action and manifestation.
In the natural world it is this organific principle




THE PRESENT AND THE FUTURE LIFE.   89
of life at the centre of all living forms, arranging
to its own end the particles that enter into them,
and giving them figure and coloring, that spreads
out the scenery of woods and plains. That principle may be bad and noxious, or it may be good
and beneficent.  If the former, you have, the
Upas of the desert and the nightshade of the
jungles; if the latter, you have the vineyards,
and the olive-groves, and the exhaling sweetness
of gardens. Precisely the same agglomeration of
particles might make up the one as the other;
and yet vastly different bodies shall be the result,
according to the life-principle that gathers and
combines them around itself. The human body
is no exception, and it is always the creation of
the plastic life within. It is not because man's
body differs vastly from the brute's in the elements that enter into it, that one is human and
the other bestial. It is because the life within
the one is human, and the life within the other is
bestial. And just in that degree that man makes
his life-principle bestial and not human, does his
form become brutalized also in the progress of
generations. Man was created in the image of
God, and therefore when that image is preserved,
or restored after being lost, the human form
is the noble configuration of what is heavenly
and divine. When that image is darkened or
lost within, the human form sinks away towards
8*




90          THE IMMORTAL LIFE.
brutal deformity, or is changed into the figure of
demonizing passions; — not in one generation,
it may be, for matter is gross and inert; but it
surely yields at length to the plastic power of
spirit. Humanity, even here on the earth, presents you the ascending scale, - man rising and
becoming transfigured into the form of angelic
life and glory; or the descending scale, — man
sinking away from  humanity, till he becomes
transformed into the image of his own lusts, and
grows into the demon likeness of his own cruelties.  Can any one who thinks rationally suppose that this law is suspended at death? Yea,
can he doubt that a law which works so slowly
upon gross matter shall work more quickly and
completely on spiritual substance, in which form
and figure are subject to spiritual law, and not
natural?  We get here, then, the clearest foregleams of this organic principle of retribution.
Every man is cherishing that inmost and indestructible life which death cannot touch, and
which constitutes the elements of all that he is
to be. The inward man emerges the very image
and carving of the sin he has practised and loved,
or the image of the Christ who has been formed
within him to create him anew. It is only the
same principle acting in a higher degree, that
underlies all growths, decays, and resurrections.
It is the peculiar life, working not from without




THE PRESENT AND THE FUTURE LIFE.   91
inward, but from within outward, and taking
form, which causes the changes that occur in this
boundless sea of being, with all its ebb and flow.
" God giveth it a body as it hath pleased him,
and to every seed his own body."  Not more
true is it that a handful of acorns is prospectively
the lofty and wide-waving forest, than any concourse of human beings, seen in the glass of
prophecy, is prospectively the scenery of immortality, where waves a harvest of glory or a harvest of corruption.
We are very glad to fortify our position by the
authority of one whose intuitions on this class of
subjects were remarkably deep and clear. Dr.
Channing has left us a sermon on " The Evil of
Sin," in which his crystalline style is even more
than usually radiant with momentous truths.
He saw too well the deranging and deforming
nature of moral evil, to suppose its workings
were limited to the abstract qualities of the
mind. He says: "In the present state, we find
that the mind has an immense power over the
body, and, when diseased, often communicates
disease to its sympathizing companion. I believe that in the future state the mind will have
this power of conforming its outward frame to
itself incomparably more than here. We must
never forget that, in that world, mind or character is to exert an all-powerful sway; and




92           THE IMMORTAL LIFE.
accordingly, it is rational to believe that the
corrupt and deformed mind which wants moral
goodness, or a spirit of concord with God and
with the universe, will create for itself as its
fit dwelling a deformed body, which will also
want concord or harmony with all things around
it. Suppose this to exist, and the whole creation
which now amuses may become an instrument
of suffering, fixing the soul with a more harrowing consciousness on itself. You know that even
now, in consequence of certain derangements of
the nervous system, the beautiful light gives
acute pain, and sounds which once delighted us
become shrill and distressing. How often this
excessive irritableness of the body has its origin
in moral disorders, perhaps few of us suspect. I
apprehend, indeed, that we should be all amazed
were we to learn to what extent the body is continually incapacitated for enjoyment, and made
susceptible of suffering, by the sins of the heart
and life. That delicate part of our organization
on which sensibility, pain, and pleasure depend,
is, I believe, peculiarly alive to the touch of
moral evil.  How easily, then, may the mind
hereafter frame the future body according to
itself, so that, in proportion to its vice, it will
receive through its organs and senses impressions
of gloom which it will feel to be the natural productions of its own depravity, and which will in




THE PRESENT AND THE FUTURE LIFE.    93
this way give a terrible energy to conscience!
For myself, I see no need of a local hell for the
sinner after death.  When I reflect how, in the
present world, a guilty mind has power to deform
the countenance, to undermine health, to poison
pleasure, to darken the fairest scenes of nature,
to turn prosperity into a curse, I can easily understand how, in the world to come, sin, working
without obstruction according to its own nature,
should spread the gloom of a dungeon over the
whole creation, and, wherever it goes, should turn
the universe into a hell." *
In what province of the universe, in what
grade of existence, from the violet up to the
angel, do we find, or have any reason to believe,
that bodies are built up mechanically for future
occupants?   Ever and everywhere body is the
creation of life, and is the conformation of its
instincts and affections. These shape the tissues
and members which they are to use afterwards,
from the first embryonic pulse-beat to the last
development of the full-grown form. The instinct of the plant is different from  that of the
* Works, Vol. IV. pp. 164 - 166. Dr. Channing, in this sermon, recognizes the truth that the spirit at death is to continue embodied. He speaks, however, of the future body as " material,"
perhaps because his attention was not called distinctly to the
difference between natural and spiritual body, or because he was
not aiming at philosophic precision of statement.




94           THE IMMORTAL LIFE.
animal, because its function is different, and
through the all-inspiring Intelligence it moulds
a body to itself through which to do its office;
and so the green and serried ranks on hill and
plain come forth and accomplish their work in
the grand economy. The wolf is to prowl the
forest for prey; the instinct is in the first drop
of blood that rolls out of the heart to the extremities,- the living conatus to form tusks and
claws; and the whole animal is built up, not by
masonry from without, but by an organific power
within, till he roams forth the effigy of the instinct that animates and rules him. The lark is
to soar and sing, and the instinct sprouts forth
in the wings that are to lift him up, and the
pipes on which he is to play his tunes, and he flits
through the gates of the dawn the living embodiment of his own spirit of melody. Man has a
complex nature; yea, all the natures between
God and the animal inclusive are abridged and
folded up within him, - the whole range of instincts from animal up to angel. These put
forth successively their serial leaves, the lowest
or outermost first, then higher and yet higher;
the animal body first, and the spiritual afterwards; the first falling away and making room
for the next, until the man has grown into the
angel. And in this life, unfolding serially upward, the organization by which it shall be mani



THE PRESENT AND THE FUTURE LIFE.   95
fest and do its work is created from within;
from the infant that hangs on the breast, to the
seraph " white with gazing on the throne," and
swift on the errands of eternal mercy.
We come to understand the sharp significance
of a large class of Scripture passages, which oth
erwise we apprehend but dimly or not at all,those, we mean, which describe the scenery of
another life.  What are heaven and hell but
man opened? What are the celestial forms of
the one, but the Divine Life in man, disencumbered and flowering forth?  What are the hideous shapes of the other, but the corrupt life in
man, also disencumbered and flowering forth?
What are we to hope for in the one, but the
Divine Life in us perfected and shown, and
what are we to fear in the other, but the dark
apocalypse - of ourselves!
In Paul's second letter to the Corinthians he
has occasion to speak of the persecutions of the
saints, and of his own afflictions; but he learns
to look upon these as of no moment, in view
of the animating prospects of immortality. He
calls the earthly body a tabernacle-house, to indicate how unsubstantial it is, and how soon to disappear. The spiritual body he calls the heavenly
house, and declares it " eternal," in contrast with
the earthly.  "For we know that, if our earthly
tabernacle-house were dissolved, we have a build



96           THE IMMORTAL LIFE.
ing of God, an house not made -with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this tabernacle-house
we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed upon
with our heavenly body, our eternal building.
For we shall indeed be found clothed upon by it
at death, and shall not be found naked, or denuded of all body whatever..... For we must
all appear before the judgment-seat of Christ,
that every one may bear away with him the contents of his natural body (Ta B a'o TO o',,aaro9),
according to what he hath done, whether good or
bad";*- thus clearly setting forth his former
doctrine, that when this earthly body disappears,
like a tent pitched transiently upon the plain by
the passing traveller, it will only yield up the
spiritual man, not naked, but indued with an
eternal organization.
And there is a kindred passage in the Apocalypse
which is crowded and packed with meaning: " I
saw the dead, small and great, stand before God;
and the books were opened; and another book
was opened which is the book of life; and every
man was judged by those things which were writtell in the books, according to their works." We
are not claiming that this passage proves our doctrine. We only note in passing the bold relief
* 2 Corinthians v. 1 - 10. We follow Bloomfield's rendering,
in preference to Conybeare and Howson's.




THE PRESENT AND THE FUTURE LIFE.   97
with which its meaning stands out when the doctrine interprets it. That the book of man's life
is none other than the secret principle of his own
affections, thoughts, and actions, we hope does
not need any proving; and this book must indeed
be opened when that principle is imaged forth
in the body that clothes it. The immortal life
bursting from its mortal coverings reveals the
angel from within if he be there, or reveals and
releases the demon so far as demon principles rule
in any man's breast. And this by no arbitrary
appointment, but in consequence of an essential
organic connection between the present and the
future world. It is not entering upon a new
state, but the intensification of all that man essentially is. How the secrets of all hearts are to
be revealed, how there is nothing covered that
shall not be known, becomes obvious from the
tendency in all living organisms to put forth into
their own foliage and fruitage, whether natural
or moral, and thus produce the bane of the wilderness or the bloom and the beauty of Eden.
We have heard much of the dignity of human
nature, and its glorious possibilities; but all our
pompous phraseology does not indicate the future
that waits within us. This gross, material state of
being was designed doubtless to be to us a protection and a guard. This dim and sleepy life is induced upon us that we may not know at the begin9




98           THE IMMORTAL LIFE.
ning all that we are. We could not bear the intense workings of our inmost being if it all came
into our consciousness at once; and therefore this
muddy vesture of decay is made to close it in, in
order to dull it and to dim it. But we get even
now intimations and fore-gleams of what it is.
Sometimes physical laws are insanely broken
through, so as no longer to conceal a disordered
spiritual action, as if the soul were working itself free of matter, and the secret books were
opening; and then we see realized an untold
capability for suffering, which makes us tremble
to think what possibilities are within us and bide
their time. And there are seasons, too, when the
sanctified spirit seems free of the clogs of earth;
when, as Wordsworth says, "the weary weight of
all this unintelligible world is lightened"; and
then she becomes conscious of a being that is not
of earth, and that gives some idea of the angelic
bliss and the peace supreme. While yet the
animal body enfolds him, man in his deepest experiences neither enjoys nor suffers like an animal. There is an unearthly melody in his song,
and something more than mortal mingles in his
wail. Then we partly apprehend the truth that
the celestial and infernal scene-showing of the
Bible is only man uncovered and produced, and
that this vesture of decay folds him in, in order
to hide him from himself.




THE PRESENT AND THE FUTURE LIFE.   99
Our subject unfolds in a most practical way,
and comes home to all our business and bosoms.
We see in the light of it how vain are the decorations and shows of life, any further than they
manifest a life that is beautiful within. Here,
we can conceal the deformity of a perverted and
selfish nature amid the convenient seemings of
society. We can make the body in some sort
flexile to our purposes; we can put on a fair
outward morality, and make our deeds look handsome for the praise of men. But the moment
death touches us, we begin to change, as did the
fiend in the garden at the touch of the angel.
Our show-work falls away, our true self appears,
taking body and form according to its quality,
and grows into the very effigy of its ruling hatreds and loves.
We come to apprehend, with more sharp distinctness, the importance of our connection with
Christ as the "resurrection and the life," and
our faith in him as the Redeemer of our fallen
humanity. He came, not simply to develop humanity, but to create it anew; to put a fresh
organific force at the centre, that all its workings and shapings outward may be heavenly and
beautiful. He came to place his image within us,
that death might only disclose his likeness and
handiwork. We grow into the image of what
we love; and if Christ be received into our affec



100          THE IMMORTAL LIFE.
tions, we shall grow from within outward into his
likeness, who, as Paul says, " shall change our
vile body that it may be fashioned like unto his
glorious body, according to the working whereby
he is able to subdue all things unto himself."
We think, too, it appears that our self-examinations ought to be somewhat more deep and
thorough than self-examinations are wont to be.
They ought to go deeper than our creeds and
doctrines, since these call have no saving potency
any further than they go to purify our life of life.
If our connection with the future world is not
arbitrary, but organic, then how clear is it that
our faith saves us only as it regenerates our
hearts and gives us cleansed affections. If heaven and hell are man opened and intensified, then
there is no salvation by verbal covenants and appointments, by ecclesiastical imputations or substitutions. By the all-plastic law at the centre of
our being, by all the realities bound up and waiting within us, by the openings into immortality
through the veil which the Gospel withdraws, by
all the divine science of man, we know that,
when this coil of mortality is unwound from us,
it will only disclose us just as we are, that our
inmost self may be figured forth into the demon
or the angel.
An old writer hath said: "' To those to whose
imagination it has ever been presented, how




THE PRESENT AND THE FUTURE LIFE.  101
beautiful is the countenance of justice and wisdom, and neither the morning nor the evening star
is so fair. For in order to direct the view aright,
it behooves that the beholder should have made
himself congenerous and similar to the object beheld. Never could the eye have beheld the sun,
had not its own essence been soliform, - preconfigured to light by a similarity of essence to that
of light. Neither can a soul not beautiful within
attain to an intuition and enjoyment of beauty."
On this principle it is that the soul seeks its like,
and is formed into the image of its own essential
love; so that, when external things have- passed
away, and she gazes on the face of her Beloved,
she will spring towards him on the wings of a
more swift affection, and the promise of the Master shall be fulfilled, " I will raise him up at the
last day." She will gaze on the sun because
her eye has become soliform,- gaze openly on
the glorious countenance of Truth in its Source,
and the morning or the evening star is not so
fair.
9*




CHAPTER XII.
THE JUDGMENT-DAY.
AN old Catechism familiar to our childhood
has this question and answer: "What will be
done at the last day? The bodies of all mankind
will be raised, the earth will be burned up, and
the final judgment will take place."
If the material universe is not self-existent, it
follows of necessity that it lives only because God
lives in it, forming the inmost principle whence
all its phenomenal glories are evolved. The act
of creation, then, did not cease at the beginning,
but is prolonged and perpetual. Let it be suspended, and the firmaments roll up and vanish
away. The idea of the universe as a building
which stands of itself, which God put up carpenter-fashion, and which some day he will batter
down and destroy, is about as puerile as any of
the conceptions of religious naturalism. Nature
is not a mechanism, but a creation; on the lowest
plane of existence its myriad forms are an efflores



THE JUDGMENT-DAY.            103
cence out of the life of God. What, then, would
it be for God to destroy nature? It would simply be to suspend the creative act. It would
not be followed by the wreck of matter and the
crash of worlds, but by universal and total silence. It would not be to put forth his power,
but to hold it in. There would not be a conflagration, but a blank; as Isaac Taylor puts it,
" not a destruction, but a rest; riot a crash and a
ruin, but a pause."
Our Saviour speaks of the end of the world,
and of a judgment-day; and a careful attention
to the subject will show that it is not a judgment
arbitrarily imposed, but one which results from
the essential laws of existence.
One of the most impressive of our Lord's parables is that of the wheat and the tares, found
recorded in the thirteenth chapter of Matthew.
The tares were a species of darnel whose blade
resembled very much that of the wheat, but the
fruit of which was totally different in quality.
The Divine Teacher thus expounds his own analogy: " The field is the natural world; the good
seed are the children of the kingdom, but the
tares are the children of wickedness. The enemy
that sowed them is the devil, the harvest is the
end of this time, and the reapers are the angels.
As therefore the tares are gathered and burned
in the fire, so shall it be at the end of this time.




104-        THE IMMORTAL LIFE.
The Son of Man shall send forth his angels, and
they shall gather out of his kingdom all things
that offend, and those who do iniquity, and shall
cast them into a furnace of fire: there shall be
wailing and gnashing of teeth. Then shall the
righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom
of their Father."
Two Greek words (Kgc/oo and adotv) are rendered in the common English version by the
same word, namely, " world." Only the former,
however, is ever employed to denote this material
structure, and the latter is. uniformly employed
to denote a period or dispensation. In every instance where the phrase " the end of the world"
occurs, the word is aCorv, or period, and cannot
possibly be made to mean the economy of material things. The scene of the judgment, then, is
not here in the natural degree of life, and at the
end of the natural world; rather it is at the end
of this period of natural life, after we have done
with time, and our relations to this material scene
have come to a close; agreeably to the language
of the writer to the Hebrews, "It is appointed
unto men once to die, and after this the judgment."
When we use the word judgment, we ought
carefully to distinguish between the accidental
concomitants which the word suggests as a judicial term, and the essential meaning of the word




THE JUDGMENT-DAY.          105
itself. The Greek original is Kpl[IO; and the
meaning which lies at the heart of it is very
nearly the same as that of the English word which
comes immediately from it. It means A CRISIS.
It comes from, a verb which signifies to distinguish and to separate. It is the crisis made by
the separation of the elements of moral good and
moral evil. And in the Christian revelation, it
is a crisis and separation which take place as a
consequence of the resurrection.
This is invariably the Divine order,- first the
resurrection, and then the judgment; and if the
reader has a clear conception of what the resurrection is, lie is in a fair way to see how this
must be according to the eternal laws of being.
This we will endeavor to illustrate.
We have read somewhere of a number of individuals who broke away from their old ties and
hearth-stones, went into a new country, and
formed themselves into a new community. They
had an ideal of a perfect form of society, and
this ideal they expected to reduce to its realizations. Their external wants and tastes and interests were similar. They had the same notions
about property, about labor, about almost everything that pertains to the outward life, and so
they expected to open a terrestrial paradise in
the wilderness. For a while everything went on
charmingly well.  The little community grew




106          THE IMMORTAL LIFE.
into an organization of fair proportions and harmonious workings.  It was not long, however,
before it began to be manifest that man has an
internal life as well as external, and that this,
in the long run, is the more dominant of the
two. And they found, when brought into close
relations with each other, that this internal life
showed itself by little and little, and that no considerations of prudence and expediency could
cover it up. By and by there were conflicts
of self with self; opinion jarred against opinion,
and interest clashed against interest; truth and
falsehood met together, and did by no means
kiss each other; the secret heart of this person and that began to be opened and to be mutually repellent, and the divers elements of the
little community were in a general fermentation
and whirl. It was quite evident, that, though
this might be a good arrangement of body with
body, it was a decided mal-arrangement of spirit
with spirit. The pressure of spiritual affinities
and repulsions from within became greater and
greater, and the result was that the whole society
broke in pieces, each went to his own place, and
left the prairie-wolf to prowl over the place of his
imagined Paradise.
So it is. We have illustrated here the twofold relations that bind us, the wheat and the
tares growing together until the harvest. There




THE JUDGMENT-DAY.           107
are the relations which grow out of material and
bodily interests, and bring together souls in their
nature repellent. There is also illustrated here
the manner in which the lower interests- these
bodies and {heir wants - for a time overlay and
bury up our spiritual tendencies and affinities, so
that the real man is more or less shut in and
concealed beneath material forms and pursuits.
We see, too, the effort, even now, of the inmost
life to come forth and become dominant, and
break up all affinities growing out of the mere
external man.
But the resurrection is the emergence of the
immortal man out of the natural body, and the
consequent abnegation of all its arbitrary relations. And the spiritual body in which he emerges is, in the very nature of things, the form and
exponent of his inward life.  Hence the broad
and inevitable disclosures of the other world.
Hence, again, the new law according to which
the whole mass of humanity at that point breaks
up and parts asunder. It is appointed unto men
once to die, and after this the crisis, or the parting asunder of good and evil.
There are two principles which reign over human nature, and under all forms of religion and
of morals are always shaping it to their moulds
and affinities. One is self-love, always the same
in its quality, though multiform in its pursuits;




108         THE IMMORTAL LIFE.
essentially corrupt, though concealed sometimes
under thin and fair disguises; always having the
internal quality of the tares, though sometimes
resembling the wheat in the color and contour of
its leaves and flowers. The other is the Divine
love, or self-devotion to the Divine law; not
always ruling even the good man with an unmixed motive, but always shaping his inmost
being into a more perfect image of the Divine
Original, and under the hardest and roughest
exterior unfolding the angel form from within.
It is these which death uncovers and releases; it
is these which the resurrection brings forth in
demon shape or angel form, and so develops out
of a redeemed or perverted humanity either heaven or hell.
The resurrection of necessity brings forth the
inmost life, and configures it cleared of all deceptive appearances. Hence the aspect of Truth
and Goodness rises majestic and unclouded inl
contrast with that of moral evil, and hence " the
great gulf fixed," that yawns and deepens between them; on one side the paths that lead up
the terraced mountain of the Lord; on'the other,
the caverns and the pitfalls and the deeps that
exclude the day. These are solemn reflections,
and we are on ground where we fear to tread
with sandalled feet, while we look up through
the resplendent ethers above, or down through
the awful abysses below.




THE JUDGMENT-DAY.           109
It does not follow by any means that this separation will take place instantly at death, or that
each one's essential life will be instantly manifest.
The Divine laws work no violent and eruptive
changes, and for that reason they are sure of
their final results. How manifold are the concealments of the real man within us, not only
under material interests, but under church sanctities, under the comities of intercourse, under
artificial and mock moralities! The resurrection
places us in a state of being where these must all
disappear, where that which we only seem to
have will be taken from us, where what we essentially are will take its correspondent form;
and we will now see if stupendous agencies are
not revealed, adapted to hasten on the catastrophe.
10




CHAPTER XIII.
CHRIST AS THE JUDGE.
ALL through the New Testament we meet with
the prediction that Christ should come a second
time, and come in judgment at the consummation of things. The resurrection, the judgment,
and the second coming are events which are described as closely consecutive, sometimes under
imagery of overwhelming sublimity. In the twenty-fifth chapter of Matthew, which is only a portion of one great prophecy,-the last utterance
from the heights of Olivet, with Jerusalem, the
doomed city, lying under his eye, —the Saviour
looks down the eternal perspective and describes
the last act of the drama, —the grand crisis of
humanity. The Son of Man is to come in his
glory, and sit upon the throne of his glory; all
nations shall gather before him as a mighty multitude, and part to the right and left as if cleft
in twain and separated in the brightness of his
coming. Substantially the same prediction is re



CHRIST AS THE JUDGE.         11
corded by John, though made under different
circumstances, and with feelings of unspeakable
tenderness. In those divine discoursings which
followed the last supper, when Christ in person
was to be separated from his disciples, he promises to come to them again. "I will come and
receive you unto myself"; " I will not leave you
comfortless, I will come to you." This second
coming he describes in the context as that of the
Spirit of truth which the Father would send
through him out of his glorified state, and which
should be the Comforter to his disciples, but
which at the same time should be the Judge of
the world. "If I go not away, the Comforter
will not come unto you; but if I depart, I will
send him unto you. And when he is come, he
will reprove the world of sin, of righteousness,
and of judgment." *
In collateral and illustrative passages we have
further intimations of the means and the process
by which Christ is to judge the world. It is not
by an arbitrary or personal judgment. " If any
man hear my words, and believe not, I judge him
not; for I came not to judge the world (in person), but to save the world. He that rejecteth
me, and receiveth not my words, hatl one that
judgeth him: THE WORD THAT I HAVE SPOKEN,
the same shall judge him in the last day." t
* John xiv. 3, 18; xvi. 7, 8.  t Ibid. xii. 47, 48.




112         THE IMMORTAL LIFE.
Three dispensations are distinctly disclosed in
the New Testament, as making up and completing the circle of redemption. Each following
one grows out of the former, and is the fruit of
it, and all together constitute Christianity in its
organic completeness and grandeur. We have
Christ the TEACHER, Christ the COMFORTER, and
Christ the FINAL JUDGE, or the power that shall
cleave the nations and peoples asunder.
1. As a teacher he dwelt upon this earth,
drew disciples around him, lived out his life in
the flesh, and thus embodied the system of Gospel truth in his words and actions. The record of this constitutes what we call historical
Christianity. It was the golden future of the
old patriarchs and prophets, to which they ever
looked forward; it is the golden past of the
modern times, to which we ever turn back.
There the heavens bent and kissed the plains;
there the Eternal Word came down and touched
the earth, and clothed itself in flesh and in human language, and thence it darts its radiances
backward and forward through the ages. But
historical Christianity alone would have been
powerless to move the world, for the simple reason that the world had sunk too low to understand it, or even to hear it. The words of the
Divine Teacher lay dark and dead in the memo



CHRIST AS THE JUDGE.         113
ries of his own disciples until after his ascension.
The only tie that bound them to him was affection for his person and admiration of his works,
and these would have soon passed away.
2. But the dispensation of the Spirit followed.
The whole work which Christ did on the earth
was preparatory to another, a higher and more
interior work, which he was to accomplish afterward. He went away from the earth, that he
might come nearer to it. He took up into his
comprehensive experience all the weaknesses and
woes of humanity, and then left them behind
and ascended as the Glorified,- the fulness of
the Godhead bodily, the Mediator out of whom
God might pass over into humanity, and sweep it
through, and create a new consciousness within
it. Even thus Christ came anew as the Spirit of
truth, -came into the souls of his own disciples
first, with the rush of pentecostal gales, making
the dead truths in their memories to rise and
live. But he came not thus to his own disciples
alone. He came into the universal heart in the
creation of a new conscience, and new susceptibilities for the Gospel. The Spirit of truth descending from the Glorified lay on the Jewish
and Gentile mind as a mantle of light, sending
its darts into the soul, and claiming to be obeyed.
Before this influence Paul fell, and was convert10 *




114         THE IMMORTAL LIFE.
ed. Before it the Gentile world woke to a consciousness of a new divine presence, and churches
rose and multiplied before historical Christianity
had a record. Ever since, the incumbent Christ
has rested on the mind of the nations, to be received or to be rejected, and on the mind of the
Church, to make historical Christianity, not a
dead letter, but a living and moving power.
Nor have we any reason to suppose that this
dispensation of the Spirit of truth is confined to
the earth alone. It was a universally received
doctrine of the primitive Church; that the redeeming work of Christ extended also to the spiritual world, and that the previou~s dead had the
Gospel preached unto them also. The atrocious
dogma, that men are to be damned eternally for
not believing what they never heard of, had no
favor, at least with many of them, and the words,
"He descended into hades," so far from being
with them a meaningless formula, expressed their
most vivid conception of the power of the Christian redemption.  The accidents of birth and
death cut off no man, said they, from the benefits
of the Gospel.  The Spirit of truth, the Christianity descending from Christ out of heaven,
came both to "the quick and to the dead," —
to multitudes in the spiritual world, with whom
the choice still lay between heaven and hell. In
the Word speaking to them from within in a new




CHRIST AS THE.JUDGE.        1I6
awakened consciousness, and saying, "Receive
me or reject me, - choose ye this day which,"
Christ went and preached to " the spirits in
prison "; that is, to those who died before his
coming, but "had not yet ascended into heaven."  And those who had not perverted or
rejected the measure of light which they had
before enjoyed, received gladly the Gospel when
it came, so that not only from the earth, but out
of hades also, Christ " went up with a shout,"
with throngs of the redeemed attending him.
This, we say, was a doctrine of primitive Christianity; and it is pretty distinctly shadowed forth
by more than one Christian Apostle. We shall
return to it again, and we only name it here to
show the power and comprehensiveness of this
doctrine of the mediatorial Christ, in the conceptions of the early believers.
3. Two things are implied in the Gospel, laid
as an incumbent law upon the conscience or the
Spirit of truth from the nearer and more influent
heavens. It is either a comforter or a condemner.
If welcomed and received, our inmost natures are
caught up and moulded into the moral image of
Christ, until he lives within us, as our life, our
righteousness, our unfailing peace. It is Christ
formed within as the earnest of future glory.
He becomes the central power of the spirit,




116         THE IMMORTAL LIFE.
whence he subdues all things unto himself, - the
spiritual mind, and thence the spiritual body,
with its robes of whiteness; so that when the
natural body falls off, we rise to him by that unerring law of spiritual affinity whereby Christ
seeks his own and draws them to himself. " I
will raise him up at the last day." Christ, the
subjective peace and truth and love, is seen also
as the objective image of the Divine charms and
glories, at whose feet the elders cast their crowns
and cry, " Worthy."
But Christ as the Eternal Word laid on the
conscience, and not embraced and followed, comes
only to condemn. Then the truth stands apart,
and gleams awfully and portentously over the
chaos within us. It shows both the heart and
the life, in afflicting contrast with the Divine
commandment; and it must be rejected as a light
too intolerable to bear, and the mind in its central love and all its shapings thence is formed
into the image of hell.
It is perfectly clear, then, what must take place
by the inevitable laws of being in the last day
and in the spiritual world, —the gathering-place
of souls. There divine truth, revealed in clearer
and broader splendor from the bending heavens,
gathers to itself all who have lived it and loved
it; and drives away from itself those who have
rejected it, and who love it not, and therefore




CHRIST AS THE JUDGE.         117
cannot bear it. To the former, the evening star
is not so fair; to tile latter, no portents in the
sky are so baleful; and the Son of Man coming
out of the heavens in his all-revealing glories
would be the judgment and the judgment-day
whereby the peoples would cleave asunder and
sweep to their opposite poles. And hence Christ
is everywhere spoken of in the New Testament
as the judge of men, because, in his spiritual coming, he brings on the grand crisis of humanity.
Turn now to the celebrated passage, John
v. 28, 29, and its meaning becomes abundantly
clear:  "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 to the resurrection of life,
and they that have done evil to the resurrection
of damnation."  The literal sense is, that the
men themselves, not their bodies, are in the
graves, and that Christ is to come and utter
words over the turf that lies upon them, at which
the sleepers shall wake up and come forth to
judgment.  No intelligent reader needs to be
shown that this is a false interpretation.  It
cannot be taken in the literal sense. The " voice
of the Son of Man " means his forthgoing truth
coming in upon the soul. Those who are " in
the graves" are those who, like the heathen, are
locked in to their natural state of darkness, with



118         THE IMMOtiTAL LIFE.
out light and without privilege.  So the word
is used in Ezekiel xxxvii. 12, " Behold, 0 my
people, I will open your graves, and cause you
to come up out of your graves." Those who
have "' done good," means those who have lived
well the natural life, — the lowest plane of existence and the only one which has been opened
to them; and those who have " done evil" are
those, on the other hand, who have lived an evil
natural life. With this interpretation, listen now
to the solemn enunciation which rings with mnarvellous clearness out of the skies.
" The time is coming, and now is, when the
spiritually dead shall hear the voice of the Son
of God, and they who were listening for it shall
live. Marvel not at this, for the hour is coming
when the whole world, now entombed in its darkness, shall hear the Gospel, and shall awake to it:
those who have done good, to receive and welcome
it and live in its renovating beams; those who
have done evil, to see the evil adjudged, and themselves condemned beneath its blaze."
We imbibe false and fantastic notions of the
after-scene by losing sight of the fact that death
does not abolish the principles of human nature,
but rather sets them free; and that, therefore, by
knowing them here and now, we get the surest
preconceptions of the things that shall be hereafter. The nature of the final judgment is often




CHRIST AS THE JUDGE.         119
foreshadowed by the crises of the present life. In
a mixed state of society, with all its clanging interests, where the good and the bad have relations which run together and intertwine, we sometimes see the cleaving power of truth to resolve
communities, states, and'empires into their elements. Purity and corruption, truth and error,
may live for a while together.  But in that state
of things let God's trumpet be blown, and let
the truth be applied sharply and cogently to the
business of men; let corruption be unroofed, and
let the light be let in from above on the ghastly
faces of its votaries. The elements are immediately astir, and there are commotions and earthquakes in divers places.  Those who love the
evil and the false, who live by it and profit by it,
band together more closely, gnash their teeth
against the coming light, and perhaps strive to
put it out in blood. Those who love truth and
righteousness for their own sake, and for their
beneficent influence, band together beneath them,
and put on strength from their inspirations. Self
and demonism muster their hosts on one side,
God and humanity on the other, and the chasm
yawns and deepens. And unless the evil is reformed, or unless the truth is crucified and put
down, the final and inevitable catastrophe follows: they part asunder, one to the curse that
cleaves to it and blasts it, the other to the un



120            THE IMMORTAL LIFE.
alloyed blessings of a purer and better state.
So communities and kingdoms have their crises
through which they pass, sometimes to a loftier
fruition, sometimes, as Judaea, Rome, and Carthage, to a darker and more dreadful doom.
"Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide,
In the strife of truth with falsehood, for the good or evil side.
Some great cause, God's new Messiah, offering each the bloom
or blight,
Parts the goats upon the left hand, and the sheep upon the
right,
And the choice goes by for ever'twixt that darkness and that
light."
We have only to suppose humanity to have
passed onward into the spiritual realm, where artificial restraints and relations are left behind,
and God's angel-truths fall unclouded upon its
opened senses, and we realize the full power of
Christ's dramatic  description, —the  elect and
non-elect gathered each to its own place, as on
the wings of the wind.




CHAPTER XIV.
EVERLASTING YOUTH.
OLD age in some of its aspects is a most interesting and solemn mystery, and to the outward
eye merely, is the gradual waning and extinction
of existence.  All the faculties fold themselves
up to a long, last sleep. First, the senses begin
to close, and lock in the soul from the outward
world. The hearing is generally the first to fail,
shutting off the mind from the tones of affection
and the notes of melody. The sight fails next,
and the imprints of beauty on the canvas hung
round us by even and morn become blurred, and
the doors and windows are shut towards the
street. The invasion keeps on steadily towards
the seat of life. The images of the memory lose
their outline, and run together, and at length
melt away into darkness; now and then you put
forth a special effort, and make rents in the
cloud, and see away through the green glades
of other years; but the edges of the cloud close
11




122          THE IMMORTAL LIFE.
again, and it settles down more dense than ever,
and all the past is blotted out. Then the reason
fails, and the truths it had elaborated flicker and
die. Only the affections remain, happily if these
too have not become soured or chilled   It is
our belief, however, that these may be preserved
in their primitive freshness and glow, and that in
the old age where the work of regeneration is
consummating the heart's love is always preserved sweet and bright, like a rose of Eden that
occupies a charmed spot in the midst of snows.
In old age men generally seem to have grown better or worse. The reason is that then the internal
life is more revealed, and its spontaneous workings are more fully manifest. The intellectual
powers no longer are vigilant to control the expression of the internal feelings, and so the heart
is generally laid open. What we call the moroseness and peevishness of age are none other than
the real disposition, no longer hedged in and kept
in decency by the intellect, but coming forth without disguise. So, again, the beautiful simplicity
and infantile meekness, sometimes apparent in old
age, beaming forth like the dawn of the coming
heaven through all the relics of natural decay,
are the spontaneous effusions of sanctified affections. There is, therefore, a good and a bad
sense in which we speak of the second childhood.
Childhood is the state of spontaneity. In the




EVERLASTING YOUTH.          123
first, before the intellect is formed, the heart answers truly to all impressions from without, as
the wind-harp answers to the touch of the breeze.
In the second, after the intellect is broken down,
the same phenomenon comes round again, and in
it you read the history of all the intervening
years. What they have done for the regeneration of the soul will appear now that its inmost
state is translucent, and concealed no more by
intellectual prudence and expediencies. In the
second childhood which is true and genial, the
work of regeneration approaches its consummation, and the light of heaven is reflected from
silver hairs, as if one stood nearer to Paradise
and caught gleams of the resurrection glories.
But. alas! is this all that is left of us amid the
memorials of natural decay? Sense, memory,
reason, all blotted out in succession, and instinctive affection left alone to its spontaneous workings, like a lone flower to breathe its fragrance
upon the snows? And how do we know but
this, too, will close up its leaves and fall before
the touch of the invader? and then the last remnant of the man is no more. Or if otherwise, is
this the plight in which so many must enter
upon their immortality, denuded of everything
but the heart's inmost and ruling love?
How specious and deceptive are natural appearances! What seemed to the outward eye the




124          THE IMMORTAL LIFE.
waning of existence, and the loss of the faculties,
is only locking them up successively, in order to
keep them more secure. Old age, rather than
death, answers strictly to the analogies of sleep.
It is the gradual folding in and closing up of all
the voluntary powers after they have become worn
and tired, that they may wake again refreshed
and renovated for the higher work that awaits
them. The psychological evidence is pretty full
and decisive that old age is sleep, but not decay.
The reason remains though its eye is closed, and
will some day give a more perfect and pliant form
to the affections.  The memory remains, though
its function ceases for a while, and all its chambers may be exhumed, and their frescos, like
those of the buried temples of Meroe, will be
found preserved in unfading colors. The whole
record of our life is laid up within us, and only
the overlayings of the physical man prevent the
record from  being always visible. The years
leave their debris successively upon the spiritual
nature, till it seems buried and lost beneath. In
the old man's memory every period seems to
have obliterated a former one, but the life which
he has lived successively can no more be lost to
him or destroyed than the rock-strata can be destroyed by being buried under layers of sand.
In those hours when the bondage of the senses
is less firm, and the life within has freer motion,




EVERLASTING YOUTH.                125
or in those hours of self-revelation which are
sometimes experienced under a more pervading
and burning light from above, the past withdraws
its veil, and wo see rank beyond rank, as along the
rows of an expanding amphitheatre, the images
of successive years called out as by some wand
of enchantment.  There are abundant facts which
go to prove that the decline and the forgetfulness
of years are nothing more than the hardening of
the mere envelopment of the man, thus shutting
in and repressing the inmost life, which merely
waits the hour to break away from its bondage.*
The resurrection is the exact inverse of natural
decay, and the former is preparing ere the latter
has ended. The affections, being the inmost life,
are the nucleus of the whole man, the creative
and organific centre whence are formed the reason, the memory, and thence their embodiment
in the more outward form  of members and organs.   The whole interior mechanism  is complete in the chrysalis, ere the wings spotted with
* " Of this I am assured, that there is no such thing as forgetting possible to the mind. A thousand circumstances may and
will interpose a veil between our present consciousness and the secret inscriptions of the mind, but alike whether veiled or unveiled
the inscription remains for ever; just as the stars seem to withdraw from the common light of day, whereas we all know that it
is the light which is drawn over them as a veil, and that they are
waiting to be revealed when the obscuring daylight shall have
withdrawn." - De Quincey.
11*




126          THE IMMORTAL LIFE.
light are fluttering in the zephyrs of morning.
St. Paul, who in this connection is speaking
specially of the resurrection of the just, presents
three distinct points of contrast between the nat-ural body and the spiritual. One is weak, the
other is strong.  One is corruptible, the other
incorruptible. One is without honor, the other
is glorious. By saying that one is natural and
the other spiritual, he certainly implies that one
is better adapted than the other to do the functions of spirit, and more perfectly to organize
and manifest its powers. How clearly conceivable then is it, that, when man becomes free of
the coverings of mere natural decay, he comes
into complete possession of all that he is and all
that he has ever lived; that leaf after leaf in our
whole book of life is opened backward, and all
its words and letters come out with a more vivid
blaze! In the other life, therefore, appears the
wonderful paradox, that the oldest people are the
youngest. To grow in age is to come into everlasting youth, to become old in years is" to put
on the freshness of perpetual prime. We breathe
the ethers of immortality, and drop from us the
debris of the past, and our cheeks mantle with
an eternal bloom.




CHAPTER XV.
ETERNAL LIFE.
ETERNITY and time, or eternal things and temporal, throughout the New Testament, are placed
in contrast. The reader discovers, with only a
moderate degree of attention, that the former is
not a continuation of the latter; that eternity is
not time extended on indefinitely, but that one
differs generically from the other. Two worlds
are ours, in both of which we live and have our
being. One is almost as changing as cloud-land,
or as the scenery of a dream; the things of the
other are beyond the reach of accident or fluctuation. By our material bodies we are placed in
connection with the former, by our interior natures with the latter, by our inmost souls with
God himself, whence come the heart-beats of
eternal life.
By eternal life, the sacred writers mean a life
in which the elements of time do not enter, a
life whose infusions are out of an eternal state,




128         THE IMMORTAL LIFE.
and which, though overlaid by temporal conditions, is subject to none of their accidents and
decays. The natural body moves about upon the
earth, is subject to its laws, and sometimes suffers beneath them; but " lifted up and separated,"
the inmost soul reclines on the Divine bosom, and
smiles on the phenomena of outward change.
Hence eternal life is conditioned in the present,
and is a possession now and here. " This is life
eternal, that they might know thee, the only true
God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent."
" Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood,
HATH eternal life, and I will raise him up at the
last day." In our external condition, we rise
and fall, our riches fail us, our houses crumble,
our purple robes fade and become tatters, our
bodies become diseased, and the brow counts
the years by its wrinkles; the face of the earth
changes, and if the sleepers should rise up from
the cemeteries, they would not know the places
of their habitation. These things are temporal, and woe to him whose happiness is bound
up with them.  Eternal life, beneath the surfaces of time, only changes from less to greater; and when these surfaces roll off, it flowers
into a world of its own, — a world where the
beauty without mirrors the beauty within, and
where the leaf is ever green, and the bodies we
wear are ever young, because they are the out



ETERNAL LIFE.            129
growths of that which cannot die. Hence the
special significance of the promise, ".I will raise
him up at the last day."  It is by the life received through the Great Mediator, and which
is independent of all mortal mutations, that we
attain to this glorious resurrection.
Death is the negation of life, and eternal death
is the negation of that spiritual life which comes
from the soul's communion with the Eternal
Mind, —death, therefore, deep-seated and beyond
the scope of earthly change.  It is the death
and the consequent disorder that abide in the
immortal nature, and which are just the same
though the worldly condition and prospects be
propitious and fair.  The shows of time may
cover it up, the superinduction of hollow moralities may conceal its virulence, but there it is.
No medicines remove it, no appliances from without can reach it; so that when these time surfaces
roll off from that also, its deformity emerges,
and it simply finds itself in its own place, its
own surroundings and home.. The same word,
acoviov, eternal, is applied to the punishment of
the bad and the happiness of the good, and it refers not at all to duration in months and years.
It means, rather, those opposite states of mind
from which the idea of time and all its contingencies has been completely eliminated; one
lifted up into the eternal glories, the other de



130          THE IIMMORTAL LIFE.
pressed into the shadows of the eternal gloom.
It is a happiness or a disorder, transfused not
from  this world but from another, and which,
therefore, survives temporal duration and mortal
dissolution, and exists in sharper contrast than
ever after the fashions of this world have passed
away.




CHAPTER XVI.
HOME.
HEAVEN and hell are the opposite conditions
of humanity. In the former, God is supreme;
in the latter, self. In this natural sphere they
are mingled and interfused, and they could not
be separated without destroying the framework
of society. This condition of things must needs
be, in a preliminary and probationary state, based
on external relations and material interests and
pursuits. We have seen that the necessary result
of the resurrection will be to bring on the crisis,
or the judgment-time, and that the necessary result of the judgment will be to resolve humanity
into its elements, and separate the wheat and the
tares when the reapers come to the harvest..
But what is heaven, and what is hell? It is
not so difficult to answer these questions, when
once possessed of the truth that their elements
are bound up and waiting within us. We shall
dwell now, however, more exclusively upon the




132          THE IMMORTAL LIFE.
former, because it is a more welcome theme, and
because if we know what heaven is, we shall
know also its opposite, without attempting to
evoke its awful imagery.
We know of no subject so practical as this.
The whole business of the present life, with all
its discipline of labor, sorrow, and joy, is to prepare and ripen us for heaven; and if it shall not
do this, life will be a miserable failure. But how
shall we prepare for it, unless we know what we
are to prepare for?  How can we travel, unless
we know the point of the compass towards which
we are steering?
Let it not be said that we have not data, and
very distinct ones, too, from which to reason. If
heaven and hell are not places to be entered by
locomotion, but states of being to be evolved out
of man, then they are already in man, and so our
souls are prophetic, and through them we have
an opening into the wonders of immortality.
You will always find that one's notions of heaven correspond to his own spiritual state. They
are his idea of the supreme good. Examine that,
and it will show you precisely your spiritual position, -just as the traveller knows his latitude
by looking at the north star and noting its distance above the horizon. What would you have,
if your most ardent desires were gratified, and
your loftiest ideals were actualized? Suppose




HOME.               133
you stood at the fabled wishing-gate, what is the
petition you would send up? What are the suspirations that go up from the profound within
you? What sort of a world would you make for
yourself, if you could have everything your own
way, and embody around you your own best
imaginations? Answer these questions honestly,
and your idea of heaven is defined to you, and
you will see whether it be carnal and selfish, or
spiritual and pure.
Hence it is important that our idea of heaven
shall correspond to the reality. It is our idea of
the supremely good and fair, always shedding its
lustrous beauty on our toilsome road, to cheer
and gladden us along the climbing way.
Dismiss from your thought at the beginning
the idea that all the departed saints are to be
gathered into one assemblage for unceasing worship, and that you are to be merged in that vast
multitude. Remember that all the past generations outnumber the thousand millions that are
now upon the earth.  What would you be in
such a great mob of saints, hoarse with hallelujahs? Descend into your heart, and you will
find there a deep and unquenchable instinct, —
one which belongs to the spiritual nature,which death, therefore, cannot quench, but which
it rather sets free for a more unreserved enjoyment of its objects. It is the instinct of home.
12




134          THE IMMORTAL LIFE.
It is this which determines human loves and sympathies around special points and centres, and forbids ever the notion of a formless multitude. It
is this which will determine every soul to its special place by quick and unerring affinities, just
as the matter of the vast and shapeless nebula
determined around innumerable points of twinkling flame, till the whole became thickly studded
with stars.
There is one grand motive, love and obedience to the Lord, which rules in all regenerated
hearts; but it has a thousand modes and forms of
manifestation, according to each one's mental and
moral structure, special tastes, habitudes, and
affections. It is so here; it will be so always.
The instinct of home is simply the drawing together of souls most alike and congenerous
around their own special centre, that there the
ruling love may have the fullest gratification and
nourishment, and from that centre radiate in
most delightful exercise for the good of others.
Two or more minds toned alike, and acting as
one, from a common centre and for a common
end, make up the idea of home. It is so now, it
will be so always. Let the instinct of home be
destroyed, and man would be utterly demoralized, or hopelessly insane.  His life becomes
aimless, and he wanders in spiritual vagabondism, he knows not whither or for what. The




HOME.                 135
animals have not this instinct, except so far as
they reflect it from man, and are drawn by him
within its influence. It is his by eminent endowment and prerogative. Hence the peculiar and
utter loathsomeness of those crimes which are
committed against it, - which either disturb the
unity of home or soil its purity; for the lusts that
tend to this destroy the very image of humanity,
and break it in pieces under the hoofs of the most
swinish pollution.
Our home is always where our affections are.
We sigh and wander, we vibrate to and fro, till
we rest in that special centre where our deepest
loves are garnered up. Then the heart fills and
brims over with its own happiness, and spreads
sweetness and fertility all around it. Very often
when the eyes are closing in death, and this
world is shutting off the light from the departing
soul, the last wish which is made audible is " to go
home." The words break out sometimes through
the cloud of delirium; but it is the soul's deepest
and most central want, groping after its object,
haply soon to find it as the clogs of earth clear
away, and she springs up on the linle of swift
affection, as the bee with unerring precision
shoots through the dusk of evening to her cell.
How admirable are the arrangements of Providence by which he gradually removes the homecentre from this world to the other, and so draws




136          THE IMMORTAL LIFE.
our affections towards the heavenly abodes! We
start in life an unbroken company; brothers and
sisters, friends and lovers, neighbors and comrades,
are with us; there is circle within circle, and
each one of us is at the charmed centre where
the heart's affections are aglow, and whence they
radiate outward upon society. Youth is exuberant with joy and hope, the earth looks fair, for it
sparkles with May-dews wet, and no shadow hath
fallen upon it. We are all here, and we could
live here for ever. The home-centre is on the
hither side of the river, and why should we strain
our eyes to look beyond? But this state of things
does not continue long. Our circle grows less
and less. It is broken and broken, and then
closed up again; but every break and close make
it narrower and smaller. Perhaps before the
sun is at his meridian the majority are on the
other side, the circle there is as large as the one
here, and we are drawn contrariwise and vibrate
between the two. A little longer, and we have
almost all crossed over; the balance settles down
on the spiritual side, and the home-centre is removed to the upper sphere. At length you see
nothing but an aged pilgrim standing alone on
the river's brink, and looking earnestly towards
the country on the other side. In the morning,
that large and goodly company rejoicing together
with music and wine; in the evening, dwindled




HOME.                137
down to that solitary old man, the last of his
family and the last of his generation, waiting to
go home, and filled with pensive memories of the
Long Ago!
A question, which the bereaved heart has sometimes revolved painfully, receives now a full and
satisfactory solution: " Shall we know our friends
after death?" How do we know them here?
We know them since their peculiar qualities of
mind and affection are imaged in the features,
and expressed and toned in the living form, made
effusive of the soul within. But all this is more
completely true of the spiritual man, since spiritual body is more quickly and perfectly the exponent of the soul, and the very effigy of its affection; and hence it will result that we shall
know those we have loved even better than we
knew them here. For there when thought meets
thought, and heart opens to heart, it will be the
fond gaze of the old, familiar faces; —faces that
have not changed except to be made more familiar, since more than ever they are the living
transparencies through which we look into the
well-springs of hearts that have beat in unison
with our own. The doctrine of friendly recognition is once formally stated in the New Testament,* and always implied. It needed no other
* 1 Thessalonians iv. 13, 14.
12 *




138          THE IMMORTAL LIFE.
statement than the doctrine of the resurrection,
from which it comes as a necessary corollary.,
while it chimes in with the prophetic yearnings
of human hearts. The resurrection body is not
manufactured and put on afterwards, but it is the
heart's most cherished love growing into its most
perfect form and likeness, putting on robes bright
with the colors of the spirit and wavy with
its tremblements, and looking unclouded from
its own features and aspect. Recognizing our
friends! We hardly do as much now; for if we
journey too far from each other, we find when we
meet again that time has been so busy with our
clay tenement, and has so beaten and battered it,
that we look long, and must trace the old signs
and lineaments as Old Mortality traced the inscriptions on the tombs. Death does not obliterate the handwriting, but removes the moss and
the rubbish that had gathered over it, and the
resurrection brings it out more boldly than altoreliefs. Death removes the mask of time and age,
that the undecaying affections may take on the
face and features that belong to them in the freshness of their immortal prime. Yea, further, it
results, if we choose to follow out the deduction,
that we shall not only recognize the friends we
have seen and loved, but friends we never saw
before, though they have long been near us; for
souls congenerous with each other will meet as
if they had been kith and kin from the beginl



HOME.                  139
ning, -just as here there are minds which on
their first meeting seem each the complement of
the other, and they will almost have it that they
knew each other in some pre-existent world.
Our present topic is exceedingly suggestive on
the whole subject of the future retribution. The
home-instinct constitutes the essential law that
arranges the societies of heaven and hell. It is
the " Come, ye blessed," and " Depart, ye cursed,"
not imposed as an arbitrary sentence from without, but executed by sure impulsions from within. The soul which is foul, and whose life is perverted, is excluded from heaven, because there it
would be the most wretched. It has no homecentre there, and the clash of life opposed to life
would be sharp and dreadful. It goes where its
most cherished and ruling affection shall find its
sphere and exercise, because there it will suffer
the least of anywhere in the universe, and there
it finds all which in the nature of things it can
enjoy; though, alas! how baleful is the glow of
unclean lusts, and how dense the smoke of false
illusions that ever rise out of them! The homeinstinct is the law that dots the circles from
highest to lowest, and concentres around them
all spirits in their class and order; and they
shine forth star-like up the terraces of the heavenly mountain, or they gleam out point beyond
point along the vales of Gehenna, and constitute
the downward range of its lurid fires!




CHAPTER XVII.
THE HEAVENLY PEACE.
THE imagination paints the heavenly state as
one of eternal peace, the sunshine after the storm,
the haven securely reached after the waves of
trouble have ceased to roll. But let us be careful not to confound two very different things.
Peace is not rest or repose. It is the highest
and most intense activity, but the activity of
concording elements. When the elements conflict and counter-work each other, they produce
a state of war; when they join and act as one,
the result is the most perfect life and the profoundest peace.
1. This present preliminary state is called one
of warfare; not primarily because we have to
contend with evils external to us, but because
the elements of the warfare are within us. Within is the battle-plain between self and God, between the opposing forces of heaven and hell.




THE HEAVENLY PEACE.          141
One comes on as the other recedes, one towers
in its strength as the other becomes weak and
slinks away. When the selfish nature is entirely
subdued and expelled, then God becomes all in
all, inspiring all our affections, tinging all our
fancies, swaying all our faculties; and when this
work is complete, we are lost in God; and this
is heaven. There is no more conflict in the soul,
for the victory is gained. All its powers are in
harmony, and all its motions are sphere-melodies.
Peace is the profound hush and tranquillity after
all our evil dispositions have been expunged, and
the activities of our higher nature are unimpeded
and uncontrolled. Then come a new sense of
the Divine presence, and clearer perceptions of
the Divine attributes and person, fulfilling the
promise, "Blessed are the pure in heart, for
they shall see God." Just in the degree that
evil goes out of us, God comes within us, and
he is the peace supreme.  We get foregleams
of this even now, for when sinful passions are
hushed or expelled, and doubts that went over
our sky have cleared off, the soul opens inward
even up to God, and he floods all her faculties
with sulnshine, - suggesting that noontide of the
Divine glory when, in the body celestial, with
the susceptibilities quickened, and the faculties
exalted and new-organized, God shall be her sun
that never sets, and her moon that never wanes.




142           THE IMMORTAL LIFE.
"No sun arose, - I saw no moon
Go paling through the air;
God's glorious presence, like a sun,
Was here,- was everywhere;
It brooded o'er the flowering plains,
On all the hills it glowed;
If here I looked, or there I looked,
I saw the face of God."
If we stop here, and only conceive of heaven as
being that state where self is extinguished, God
is in all and all are in him, we have a vivid idea
of its unchanging bliss, and its golden peace.
2. But further than this, we get a very distinct
conception of the moralities of heaven as. an
essential element in its happiness. Conceive that
social state which results from the extinction of
the selfish loves, where the good of all others is
the supreme object for which every one lives,
where there are no by-ends, no exclusively private interests to be made paramount, but where
each lives for all and all for each; conceive this,
and you get an idea of the moralities of heaven.
The more of happiness there is for all, the more
there is of rejoicing for every one, for each lives
in all, and all in each, and the whole in God.
Think of the sources of our trouble here. Our
pride is mortified, our social ambition is frustrated; somebody is above us, and our envy rankles;
somebody is below us, and we scorn them; some



THE HEAVENLY PEACE.         143
body has wronged us, and we brood upon the
injury. Or private good, and not social, is made
sole and paramount, and then we clutch for our
portion, that we may enjoy it alone, and hence
lust and avarice with their grovelling train. But
when the grand crisis resolves humanity into its
elements, these last part off to that scale that
slides downward towards the abysses, while the
others rise into the purpling ethers that ever lie
on the celestial summits as a smile dropped from
the face of God. In that hallowed air self cannot
breathe, and on those sky-bathed summits every
one lives for every other one, and thus the bliss
of all is poured in full measure into the heart of
each, and there is no discording element, but one
pulse-beat of everlasting love.
3. There is another element of the heavenly
happiness. We do not know each other now.
We shall know each other then. These fleshly
externals do as much to conceal us as to reveal
us to each other.  Through these' dull instrumentalities we utter ourselves imperfectly, and
sometimes we utter what we never intended.
Even the poet, who becomes golden-mouthed,
halts and stammers in provincialisms, and we
wonder what he means. We tune our pipes and
launch out bravely for the sphere-melodies, but
break down into tavern-music. Hence the clouds




144          THE IMMORTAL LIFE.
and separations that often come in between hearts
that do not know each other, and cause the love
of many to wax cold. Hence the suspicions and
misconstructions that infect human intercourse
here below. Suppose all these to be removed.
Suppose these clumsy externals that lie upon the
spirit, and which she vainly endeavors to struggle
through, to have fallen away. Suppose the outward man so to answer to the inward that it
mirrors it forth as in God's crystals, so that souls
lie open to each other as the day, and nothing
hinders the interflashings of the sunshine, and we
have supposed nothing more than our whole doctrine necessitates and the Scriptures describe.
" The earnest expectation of the creature waiteth
for the manifestation of the sons of God."  " We
see now through a glass darkly, but then face
to face. Now I know in part, but then shall I
know even as I am known." The imagination
can hardly depict too vividly the elevation of the
social state through the removal of earthly clogs
and concealments, and the giving the sons of
God to each other without reserve.
4. There is still another element of the heavenly happiness. It follows logically from the doctrine of the resurrection, that it will introduce us
to new facilities for the acquisition of knowledge
and the development of a higher intelligence.




THE HEAVENLY PEACE.          145
What hinders us here?  The limitations of the
natural body and the grossness and clumsiness of
its instrumentalities. Our knowledge of things
now is for the most part mere surface-knowledge.
Even matter, that we handle so much, we only
know by its external properties. But rising out
of its sphere, and being new organized for higher
acquisitions, we shall see things in their internal
principles and causes, and not merely in their
gross results, not "through a glass darkly," but
" face to face." Chalmers, Taylor, Dick, and kindred writers, all of them swamped in materialism,
give us the privilege of ranging from planet to
planet in the resurrection body. They do not
seem to consider that much better than these excursions into outer space would be a knowledge
of the first principles whence all this goodly universe was evolved; that to approach undazzled the
primal essence, whence suns and stars and galaxies rolled out like sparkles from an undying flame,
is to comprehend the universe more perfectly
than to roam over its surfaces and square miles.
To reason from spiritual things downward to natural, or from the centre to the surface, is to reason surely and rapidly, for the eye gathers up the
results in groups and classes. Knowing things
in their principles and causes, we shall know the
rest without counting up the details. We could
know what matter is better by discerning its es13




146          THE IMMORTAL LIFE.
sence than by handling its forms; we could know
what spirit is better by seeing into its life than
by counting up its actions. And better than telescopes and crucibles in understanding the universe would be a knowledge of its causes, and a
perception of its glory and beauty as flashings
from the eternal fire.
5. There is another element still.  The love
of beauty innate in all human hearts is an endowment of our immortal being. It is very true
that in the child and in the merely natural man
it only ministers to a sensuous gratification, since
to them the grand or the beautiful in the external world are not the symbolization of moral and
spiritual qualities.  They admire it for the form
and the coloring, and for nothing more. It is far
otherwise after the soul has become new-born,
and is haunted and tormented with ideals of
moral perfection, and yearns to see a nature that
shall copy them down upon her tablet, or shade
them off in her innumerous lines of perspective.
She longs to see her conceptions of what is perfect in grace and grandeur exfigured and taking
form, the outward answering to the inward, the
real to the ideal, as the sky down in the still lake
answers to the sky above, when
"Two equal heavens with rival splendors glow."




THE HEAYENLY PEACE.          147
Then it is that this world becomes merely a
language and a symbol, and the whole beautiful
Cosmos is loved, not for what it is in itself, but
because it seems a reflection - though, alas! how
cold and dim! - of something more bright and
perfect on the other side of Time. Poetry, when
doing its highest office, is nothing more than art
attempt to make the things that are seen the
prints of the things invisible. Imagination then
becomes a prophet by making nature, with all
her treasure-house of imagery, the analogue of
what shall be hereafter; or, for it comes to the
same thing, of what is already in the human soul
waiting for its expression and symbolization.
The highest work which genius ever does is to
humanize nature, to take up her forms and im-.ages, and set them in new array, and show them
aglow with human loves and passions, like the
precious stones on the high-priest's breastplate,
whose colors changed and sparkled to the influx
of spiritual fire.
Still we confess to the inadequacy of nature as
the expression of our loftiest ideals. The plaguespot of sin and imperfection is on all things here
below.  In her sublimest moods, in her most
charming holiday festival, in the utterance of all
her choral voices, the heart revolves the question,
and demands if this be all.  Has God hung
down these pictures from bis throne as the most




148          THE IMMORTAL LIFE.
perfect imprints of the good and the fair, and
not rather as dim shadowings of what may be,
as helps to our faith and stairs to our thoughts
climbing towards realms of a more refulgent
summer or a more enduring spring? Is there
no world where the worm never gnaws at the
root of the rose, where the yellowness of decay
never comes upon the woods, or winter never
pours over them his desolating howl? Such is
the heart's question, after a nature that is above
nature, and art is nothing else than that. It attempts to actualize that conception by stealing
from nature its finest colors and extracting its
purest quintessence, and then spreading them
out again, and exhibiting them in new combinations upon the easel. But the forms of art are
all dead, and we breathe over them the prayer
of Pygmalion in vain. Art is the reaching upward after a more transcendent beauty, and confessing, after her work is done, that she can only
give you its corpse without the reality.
It is, therefore, only a fulfilment of the deepest prophesyings of renovated souls, - prophesyings which the poet and the artist utter in broken
speech, when the Divine Revealers Show us a
spiritual world that transcends the natural; not
the disembodied entities or ghostly abstractions
of the metaphysicians, but a world of forms and
substances so much nearer in degree to spirit




THE HEAVENLY PEACE.           149
that they pulsate with its life and breathe with
its fragrancy, and put on robes chromatic with
all its beauty, and quick with all the rustlings of
its love; a world of objective scenery, on which
ever lies the sweet morning light of subjective
peace; a world, therefore, whose leaf can never
fade, and whose flower can never wither, because
it wears the colorings of souls that are flooded
with the life everlasting. " They shall hunger
no more, neither thirst any more, neither shall
the sun light on them, nor any heat; for the
Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall
feed them, and shall lead them unto living fountains of waters."  "As the appearance of the
bow in the cloud in the day of rain, so was the
appearance of the brightness round about." *
* Rev. vii. 17; Ezekiel i. 28.
13*




CHAPTER XVIII.
AGREEMENTS AND DIFFERENCES.
IN the preceding chapters we have spoken freely of the tendencies of religious naturalism, and
we have dwelt upon the absurdities of the old and
commonly received doctrine of the resurrection.
We hasten to say, that the doctrine as thus exhibited is not given as the special badge of any
-ne of the Christian denominations. Among those
reputed the most sound in religious belief there
is considerable range of opinion on this subject,
and the best minds of all sects pass out of dark
and gross literalism towards the mount where
the letter is transfigured by the truth within it.
It would not be candid if we did not also exhibit
the highest and best aspect which the doctrine
of a material resurrection has assumed; and for
this we pause a moment in our inquiries. We
find an article on the Resurrection in the Biblical Repository of November, 1845, and we have
before us two works by Dr. Hitchcock in which




AGREEMENTS AND DIFFERENCES.    151
he handles this topic, in one of them with considerable fulness and care. It is delightful to
follow Dr. Hitchcock in whatever he writes, even
when we cannot agree with him, on account of
the spirit of piety and charity with which every
page is fragrant. His teachings may be summed
up as follows.
1. He fully admits the difficulties and absurdities which the old doctrine involves, — that of a
resurrection of the same bodies that die. " The
chemist knows full well that they suffer entire decomposition, and that the ultimate elements are
scattered by the winds and waves, and are taken
up by other bodies, it may be by those of other
men; so that the same particles may enter into
the composition of a multitude of human beings.
How, then, can the body which is laid in the
grave be raised; since not'even Omnipotence can
make the same particles a part of two or more
bodies at the same time. " *
2. Alive to the force of this objection, he argues that identity between the ante-resurrection
and post-resurrection body is not an identity of
particles. We do not even now wear the same
bodies from year to year. Not an atom that
composes our physical structure at this moment
will remain in it twenty years hence. " Compare
* Lectures on the Four Seasons, p. 10.




152          THE IMMORTAL LIFE.
a forest-tree weighing many tons with the seed
weighing a few grains, from which it sprang, and
then recollect, also, that only a small part of the
seed finds its way into the future plant, and we
may safely say that the proportion between the
particles derived from the seed and from other
sources is as one to a million."  So of our present
and our resurrection bodies.  " It is not necessary to suppose that more than a millionth part
of a ten-thousand-millionth part" is common
to them both, but this atom, however minute,
serves as an "infinitesimal germ" for the future body. 
3. He believes that the resurrection body will
differ vastly from our present bodies. The organization we now have will not enter into it at
all. The " infinitesimal germ" will be a nucleus around which the future body will be
formed; but the future body will not be flesh and
blood, will not be subject to decay, but immortal,
and will be powerful and glorious beyond anything we now conceive of.
The reader will perceive that the doctrine, as
here modified by Dr. Hitchcock, differs essentially from the old traditional one, and that he
comes within an " infinitesimal " particle of
clearing himself from  the church-yards alto*Lectures, p. 17.




AGREEMENTS AND DIFFERENCES.    153
gether. But for this " millionth part of a tenthousand-millionth part," his theory, and what
we have unfolded as the Bible theory, might
easily be made to blend together. But naturalism in theology, though infused homoeopathically,
gives its cast to the whole, and colors the entire
conception of the future life. When this excellent writer comes to the construction of his
theory, the "infinitesimal germ," rescued from
the sepulchres, plays a most important part, and
organizes everything in conformity with itself.
Thus:
1. He thinks the Scriptures aver, in terms not
to be explained away, that at the resurrection
something will be actually "raised out of the
grave." The Bible, he says," constantly" speaks
in this manner, and to save the veracity of the
text, he holds to the "infinitesimal germ," which,
at the second coming, will rise again. Omniscience has watched over it for this specific purpose, and Omnipotence will bring it forth, and
organize the new body around it.*
2. Of course, then, the resurrection body will
be composed of matter; the best to be found, but
matter still. Though a better and more glorious
body than the one we have now, it will be made
of material particles, and therefore it must ex* Lectures, p. 17.




154          THE IMMORTAL LIFE.
ist in space and time, and under natural law.
The germ, though ever so small, holds us to the
natural plane of existence.  "The Apostle cer
tainly means that the spiritual body is composed
of nma'ter, unZess,  InQceedc, Alere he fn Pe  universe a third substance distinct from matter and
spirit "; and of this, he says, " we have no positive evidence." *
3. The writer throws out a conjecture as to
what this matter may be, which shall compose
bodies so much more glorious than those we
wear now. Philosophy furnishes an example
of such matter. " The phenomena of light, heat,
and electricity, as well as the history of several
comets, make it almost certain that there exists,
diffused through every part of the material universe, an exceedingly subtile and active fluid,
sometimes called the luminiferous ether.  It
seems to be the agent by which light, heat,
-and electricity are transmitted by undulations
in every direction with inconceivable velocity,
not less than 200,000 miles per second.  It
exists wherever light, heat, and electricity penetrate, and therefore it is found not only in what
we call empty space, but in the most solid bodies,
since they are more or less permeated by these
agents.  There is no evidence that this ether
* Religion and Geology, p. 398.




AGREEMENTS AND DIFFERENCES.    155
possesses weight, though it has the power of
resistance, since it obstructs the movements of
several comets. No force which the mechanism
of the chemist can exert has the least effect upon
it. Nor is it cognizable by any of the senses;
and yet certain phenomena indicate its existence
and prodigious activity.
" Now, without asserting that the spiritual
body is made up of the luminiferous ether, or
of a substance analogous to it, it is interesting
that we have evidence of the existence of such
a substance in nature, and great reason to believe it to be attenuated matter. Reasoning on
the subject, we should presume that the future
body would be of such a nature as to be unaffected by mechanical and chemical action, and
which might exist with equal freedom and without change in the midst of the sun, or the volcano, or in the polar ice; and yet that it would
possess great activity and energy; and such a substance we have before us in the universal ether.
Of such a substance the spiritual body may be
composed, or of something analogous to it."
It is a portion of this " luminiferous ether"
which Dr. Hitchcock supposes may rise out of
the graves at the last day. This may be the
" infinitesimal germ."  "Who knows but a
portion of this wonderful form of matter, connected with'the body in this world, may remain




156           THE IMMORTAL LIFE.
isolated till the resurrection morning, and await
the Divine summons to be reunited with the immortal spirit?" *
4. The luminiferous ether enters still further
into the theory of this learned writer on the subject of Eschatology, or the Last Things. The
saints having been indued with these wonderful
bodies at the resurrection morning, the earth will
then be "burned up," and prepared anew for
their final abode. But the burning up will not
be by a sudden miracle. It will constitute a geological epoch, and it will be thousands of years
before the earth emerges out of destruction, and
becomes green and peaceful again, so as to be the
scene of the Millennial Eden. But, meanwhile,
the risen saints are safe in their bodies of luminiferous ether. They can live in fire without
being injured, and therefore may exist on the
earth through the conflagrations and commotions
of the transition period.t
The resurrection of material bodies, with its
congenial doctrines, is here stated probably in a
form as free from difficulties and objections as it
can be in the nature of the case.  Our object is
not controversy, but fair representation.  The
truth, brought out in its own divine features,
commends itself, and no one who once has a
* Lectures, pp. 27-29.  t Religion and Geology, p. 398.




AGREEMENTS AND DIFFERENCES.    157
clear and affectionate grasp on the true Bible
doctrine upon this subject will ever lose it. We
throw in, however, a few comments by the way.
1. The venerable writer, whose views we have
just given, will find, we think, if he gives his attention specially to the point, that the Scriptures
do not " constantly" speak of a resurrection of
something " out of the grave."   He will find,
we are confident, that they never use that or any
equivalent expression, if we except the passage in
John v. 28, already expounded. They speak of
the resurrection of the dead, never of dead bodies, or bodies of any description raised out of
the graves.
2. The reader will at once observe, that, in the
theory just described, Paul's beautiful analogy
fails, and becomes completely nugatory.  The
infinitesimal germ does not fulfil the conditions
of his statement. The spiritual body, in Paul's
description, rises, not out of the grave, but out
of the natural body, as the blade out of the
riven and decaying capsula.  One unfolds continuously from the other, and that not arbitrarily, but under the operation of a most admirable law. But what have we here? The whole
seed decays, germ and all; its particles are scattered to the four winds, and ages afterwards some
one of its infinitesimal atoms is taken, and by
arbitrary appointment and miracle made the
14




158         THE IMMORTAL LIFE.
nucleus of another body. The analogy is destroyed.
3. The distinction which Paul makes between
the natural and spiritual body is not preserved.
Make matter as rarefied as we may, it is natural
body still, and though made of luminiferous ether,
it locks us within the conditions of space and
time, though haply we may endure the polar ice
or the volcanic fires. Here we are again, stuck
fast in naturalism, and on the dead flats of matter, and all we have gained is the liberty of moving with swifter locomotives. By the luminiferous ether we dispense with the railroads and the
telegraphic wires, but none of the ethers or agencies of planetary space, nor all of them combined,
shall conduct us upward, through THE DEGREES
OF LIFE, out of natural space into the eternal
world, and among " celestial bodies," - among
the immortals that gather nearer and gaze on the
sun-robes of the Highest.
4. The old doctrine of a disembodied state returns upon us. We do not get even our portion
of the luminiferous ether till the end of time.
The seed-spark of our resurrection-body will not
appear till Gabriel blows after it with his trumpet and kindles it up somewhere. During the
thousands of years that must first roll away, we
are nobody and nowhere. We cannot lie down
to the last agony and see the shores of immortal



AGREEMENTS AND DIFFERENCES.    159
ity in all their bloom and fragrancy come down
and touch our very feet.  They recede away,
away, " like one in anger drawing back her
skirts," and the long, formless void sweeps between, into which we must be crowded off, and
there we must remain till the end of the world.
This is not the immortality of the Bible. There,
its substantial shores are in sight and in hearing,
and the chimes of its belfries are wafted to the
ear of the dying believer. "The welcome will
sound in the heavenly world ere the farewell is
hushed in this."  We have not a doubt that the
venerated divine whose words we have quoted so
conceives in his inmost thought, when that heaven, now so near to him, and whose mellowing
light lies already on his spirit, rises on the eye of
his faith; and that he knows, by intuitions which
are more unerring than his theorizings, that he
shall meet the sainted dead from whom he has
been separated, as soon as death has lifted the
veil, - meet them, not " disembodied," and waiting for the luminiferous ether, but with warm
grasp;.igs, and "clothed upon " with celestial
bodies, and amid the resurrection glories.
5. Let us look one moment at the scientific basis of this luminiferous theory.  Our common
atmosphere is composed of three principal gases,
mingled in unequal proportions, oxygen, nitrogen, and carbonic acid gas. These, with a fourth




160           THE IMMORTAL LIFE.
called hydrogen, which in volume forms the chief
ingredient in water, are the basis of material
bodies.  Oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen, and carbonic acid gas, with some other subordinate gases,
make up all natural substances, from the most
subtile to the most solid.  The chemist knows
very well that the hardest rocks, as well as liquids, vegetables, fruits, and flowers, the human
frame with its nerves and muscles, are nothing
more than the consolidation of these gases in
their endless combinations. All bodies first existed in the form of atmospheres or ethers, and
they may be resolved back into them again.
These four gases, however, are not simple and
uncompounded. There are others still more subtile, called " imponderable," which enter into their
composition, and through them, therefore, constitute essential elements of all material substances. These latter, the imponderable, are known
as heat and electricity, and they are latent, one
or both, in all bodies, and sometimes may be
evolved with prodigious force. If water be united
to sulphuric acid, the fluid very soon becomes
boiling hot, solely by the evolution of latent caloric; and it is said that Professor Faraday considers it an ascertained fact, that there is enough
electricity for the destruction of human life in a
single drop of water.  The luminiferous ether is
still more subtile, and eludes the analysis of the




AGREEMENTS AND DIFFERENCES.   161
chemist; but, like the others, it performs its use in
the grand economy, and there seems little reason
to doubt that it forms one of the essential elements of matter.
Dr. Hitchcock, then, is not only reasonable in
supposing that it is " connected with" our present bodies; he would be pretty safe in supposing
that it formed a constituent part of every particle
of every corpse that is laid in the grave.
But observe, again, that all atmospheres and
ethers, from their very nature and intrinsic quality, are inorganic substances, and physical life is
a divinely appointed means whereby to change
their form and convert them into solid organisms,
that they may serve us while in this world for
our instrumentalities. Ethers and atmospheres
are essentially elastic and expansive, and they lie
about us furnishing the prime material out of
which bodies and organizations are to be made.
In every heaving of our lungs, we turn them into
blood on their way to form a still more solid basis; and every tree spreads out its leaves that
flutter in the air, the lungs through which it
sucks in the gas which it needs, to turn into
carbon or woody fibre. The worlds that roll
through space are nothing but condensed ethers,
and the exquisite organizations that cover their
surfaces are the living processes for condensing
them still in endless proportions and variations,
14*




162          THlE IMMORTAL LIFE.
so as to run through all the forms of grace and
all the tints of beauty. But that atmospheres as
such can be organized bodies, is utterly inconceivable, and looks very much like an anomaly and
a solecism. To change an organism back into its
gases, is simply to destroy it. Omnipotence must
here be called in again, not only to work a miracle, but an incongruity, unless we suppose the
laws and qualities of matter are to be changed
altogether; and that is supposing matter will
cease to be matter and become the tertium quid
of whose existence the Doctor says there is no
evidence. If, therefore, the spirit is to come
back to the sepulchres, why should it come seeking its luminiferous ether, rather than its electricity, its caloric, or its oxygen? and even if
it should find some particle held ill special reserve down in the bottom of the grave where
Omniscience has kept watch over it, what can be
done with it till it has been changed from an
ether to a solid, and is made the nucleus, not of
a collection of gas, but an ORGANISM? And then
will it be comfortable to live with it in the transition fires?
We cannot possibly receive the theory of Dr.
Hitchcock, but our respect and gratitude towards
him shall not be diminished on that account, for
his distinct and candid acknowledgment of the
falsity of the old doctrine, and his attempt to




AGREEMENTS AND DIFFERENCES.    163
supply a better one; and if he fails of what we
consider the. true theory, it is because no human
ingenuity can build a system of pneumatology
out of naturalism, that shall not tumble to pieces
by its own specific gravity.
6. Truth always presents us with an organic
whole, whose relations of part to part are not
forced and factitious. A system with seams and
gaps at which Omnipotence must constantly be
called in to work miracles, in order to keep the
whole from going to pieces, wears the signet of
human error and contrivance. The reader will
judge whether the system just described has any
such organic proportions; whether it is put together mechanically, like mason-work, or whether
it unfolds to him part from part, like a flower or
a palm-tree. If a spiritual body is desirable at
all, why are the saints kept waiting for it in
limbo?  And what conceivable purpose is answered by having the infinitesimal germ the
same that was buried in the graves? Omniscience must specially discriminate and keep watch
over it through the centuries, and then Omnipotence must make that and none other the commencing particle of a new body, which must be
built up by special miracle for the spirit ab extra, and not be a growth from it ab intra. And
yet, confessedly, it is not necessary that a single
atom of our present earthly bodies should enter




164             THE IMMORTAL  LIFE.
into  the future  spiritual ones, in order to preserve our personal or corporeal identity.* Does
all this work in the potter's fields, then, look like
the Divine operations, or like human systembuilding? Is it likely to take place under that
law of continuous and orderly progression by
which humanity puts forth its powers from lower
to higher, from  animal existence to spiritual,
"first, that which  is natural, afterward  that
which is spiritual "; - by which individual man,
without any breaks or cataclysms in his being,
unfolds his faculties from external to internal,
leaf above leaf, till the flower that was inmost
opens up and wafts its perfume towards the sun, —
from the babe all sense that creeps on the lap of
earth, to the being all seraph that basks in the
open splendors of the living God?
* Dr. Hitchcock says, that, for the preservation of our personal
corporeal identity, "it is not necessary that the resurrection body
should contain a single particle of the body laid in the grave." (Lectures, p. 26.) The Italics are his own.  He holds on to the infinitesimal germ, not for philosophical reasons, but because he
thinks the letter of Scripture requires it.




CHAPTER  XIX.
AGREEMENTS.
IT very often occurs that disagreements in doctrine are kept up from want of a proper nomenclature, and because the same words convey
different ideas to different minds.  We have
suspected, while writing the last chapter, that
this might be true of the subject in hand, and
that differences of opinion might sometimes be
more apparent than real, and the agreements
more real than apparent.  The terms " matter,"
and " material body," in distinction from spiritual
body, are not always used with precision; and
we will now proceed to state more distinctly our
conception of what matter is, and wherein the
distinction lies.
What, then, do we mean by " matter," and
what and how much do we affirm by the words
" material body "? We affirm nothing in regard to
its inner essence, for we know nothing about it.
Its substratum eludes our analysis; its external




166          THE IMMORTAL LIFE.
properties and laws are all that come under our
definition, and all that can in the nature of the
case. When I use the word " matter" or "' natural body," I mean two things, viz.: -
First, I mean certain properties exhibited to
my perceptions, - extension, form, hardness or
resistance, attraction, and, under certain conditions, color and elasticity. These are essential to
my idea of matter. But these are not all. I may
have a perception of all these, and yet the idea
be inWomplete. I may shut my eyes and dream,
all my natural senses being locked close, and
still have vivid perceptions of extension, form,
hardness, attraction, color, and elasticity. I may
even have them more vividly than when my eyes
were open.  But no one will say that in this
latter case I have had a perception of natural
body. But in what does the difference lie? Perhaps you will say, in the fact that in the one
case my perceptions were real, and in the other,
not; in other phrase, that in one case the object
perceived existed solely in my own mind, or,
as the philosophers say, was purely subjective;
whereas in the other case it existed both in the
mind and out of it, or was both subjective and
objective at the same time. But there I remind
you that you are beyond your depth. You are
there assuming to know something of the substratu.m or essence that lies behind the exhibitioa




AGREEMENTS.             16T
of these properties, of which thing we agreed at
the beginning you and I are both profoundly
ignorant. Were the things of Jacob's dream
purely subjective? of Isaiah's vision in the temple? of Zachariah's? You do not know it. And
how do you know, in any two given cases where
these properties are exhibited, that they have a
substratum in one, but not in the other? You
do not know it, and you had better say so; for
this is not where the -distinction lies between
what is matter- and what is not.
But we come to a second condition of the idea
of matter, and it is clearly this. There must not
only be the exhibition of extension, form, hardness, attraction, and so forth, but THEY MUST BE
EXHIBITED ACCORDING TO THAT ORDER OF SEQUENCE
AND COMBINATION WHICH WE CALL NATURAL LAW.
Then your idea of matter is complete. We must
have not only these properties, but we must have
them under the laws of nature, or in what we
call the natural world.
Suppose body to exist, either with other properties, or with these same properties, but produced
and exhibited under a totally different law. We
have body still, it may be more substantial and
real than ever; but it is not material body, and
it is a misnomer to call it so. Suppose, for instance, the natural law of attraction, according
to the squares of the distances, to be abolished,




168          THE IMMORTAL LIFE.
and another law of affinity substituted in its
place; suppose body to become visible or invisible, not according to the angle of the sun's rays
falling upon it, but according to a certain state
of the will; or suppose it to exhibit the seven
colors and their shadings, not according to its
capacity for reflecting natural light, but on some
other condition; or suppose the phenomena of
proximity and distance between two bodies to be
conditioned, not on the fact that they shall travel
through so many feet of planetary space, but on
the fact that the moral state of the souls that
occupy them shall be like or unlike; and so on.
Who does not see, that, when we take this aggregate of properties out from under natural law,
and give them an altogether new law of sequence
and combination, they cease to make up what we
call matter or material body, and become something else; and who then cannot apprehend the
stress of Paul's language, when he says, " There
are celestial bodies, and bodies terrestrial; but
the glory of the celestial is one, and the glory of
the terrestrial is another "?
In the Bibliotlheca Sacra for November, 1845,
there is an article on the Resurrection. Our
readers are probably aware that this periodical
is the organ of the prevailing orthodox thought in
Massachusetts. The writer* maintains the posi* Rev. Joseph Tracy.




AGREEMENTS.             169
tion, that neither Scripture nor common sense requires us to believe that a single particle of our
present bodies is to enter into our resurrection
bodies. His language is very explicit. He says:
" The particles of a man's body change once in
seven years; and yet, according to the idea of bodily identity as it exists in all sane minds, the
man has all the time the same body."  "In
perfect accordance with the same idea, all the
particles may be changed again during the process of death and resurrection, and the body yet
retain its identity."  " If it be granted that the
identity remains as entire from the age of seventy
to the resurrection inclusive, as it did from birth
to the age of seventy, all is granted which the
obvious sense of Scripture or the common belief
of Christians requires." " There must be a uniting power combining the several parts into a
unity."  "The identity of body, according to the
common sense of mankind, and according to the
deepest and most exact philosophy, is found in
the identity of the uniting power, and not in the
continuous presence of the same particles."
We are out of the grave-yards at last, then!
Theology is free from the charnel-houses, and can
escape the smell of corpses, orthodoxy itself being judge. The umbilical chord that held her
to corruption and the clay-pits has become not
only "infinitesimal," bus is completely sundered.
15




I70          THE IMMORTAL LIFE.
Thank God for that!  Now she can fly or she
can run. If we carry along with us the " uniting
power," retaining that after death, we can draw
up by it the elements of our new body wherever we please, —from the air, from the sun,
from Sirius, or from  some paradise unknown.
Not even the smallest germ need come out of the
grave, and so farewell to its contents for ever.
Still the writer argues that the spiritual or resurrection body will be material. He does this,
however, on the assumption that* nothing else
than matter can be body, and that, if it- is not
matter, it is only a phantom. But when he gives
his conceptions of the spiritual body, he assigns to
it new laws and properties, and says " it will be
far superior to anything which we are now able
to imagine," thus taking it expressly out of the
category of natural body, making it a third substance, or something else than matter as we know
it. So at least it seems to us, and he leaves the
way open for a full agreement between his doctrine and ours on this particular point, though
under a difference of phraseology. Both his
thought and his language, however, seem to us
here to lack consistency and clearness.
What difference remains?  None, except in
the mere point of time when we are to be indued
with immortal bodies. His philosophy would admit of the resurrection of every man at death,




AGREEMENTS.              171
and render the dreary " intermediate state" unnecessary. We die, but we retain the " uniting
power" that shall form a new body; and not
only might it be formed immediately and continuously, so as to leave no breaks and chasms in
our history, but the philosophy would seem to
fit in most harmoniously with that conception.
But the writer thinks that the most obvious sense
of Scripture requires a belief in a future simultaneous resurrection at the end of the world, and
not till then will the " uniting power" take up
and organize the new body.  So, therefore, we
must go into limbo, among the "simplicities,'
", monads," and "mathematical points," and wait
there. HIere, then, on a mere puncturem temporis, we part with much regret from this sensible
writer, though grateful for this better aspect which
orthodoxy presents to us in him. For the full
fruition of immortality he looks down the centuries, and across an unknown gulf: we expect
it at death, and see the eternal shores come down
to meet us, yea, firm already beneath our feet.




CHAPTER XX.
SUMMARY.
OUR course of argument has led us through
subjects of inexhaustible interest, and we hope
we have carried the convictions of our readers
along with us. Some of them, holding the traditional interpretations respecting the resurrection of Christ and of the philosophy contained in
St. Paul's Epistles, may think that the letter of
Scripture is against us. We promise to show, if
they will leave their traditions a moment, that
the letter is for us when it speaks for itself, and
that too with a peculiar majesty of utterance.
Something remains to be said, therefore, in expositions confirmatory of the reasonings which
we have presented. But before we go on, we will
review our steps and gather up the conclusions
in which we now rest.
1. When we attempt to think clearly and
rationally respecting the future life, we must
choose between three hypotheses. We stand in




SUMMARY.               173
a trilemma, and we must adopt one of three sets
of conclusions, and exclude and reject the other
two. We may join the metaphysicians, when we
shall have the privilege of talking wisely and
meaning nothing; of remaining in ignorance, yet
showing off a quasi knowledge; of leaving the
fools agape after us as if we were philosophers,
and concealing the fact that we are more fools
ourselves. Or, secondly, we may join the materialists and keep on the level of naturalism, in
which case we cling to the corpses, and reiterate,
These shall live again! Between death and the
resurrection is a region of dusk, filled with disembodied entities; but after long centuries the
trumpet blows, the church-yards yield up their
mould from which frames of men are built, the
disembodied entities or " monads" come back
into them, and become real men and women once
more, prepared to enter on their final heaven or
hell.  Each of these is a locale somewhere in
space, to be reached by locomotives of some
kind. Or, thirdly, leaving the flats of naturalism, and getting above its clay-pits, you ascend
into the region of what we call the Bible Pneumatology, viz.: —
2. The Christian doctrine of the resurrection
and the spiritual world. There are celestial bodies and bodies terrestrial; the glory of the celestial is one thing, that of the terrestrial quite
15*




174          THE IMMORTAL LIFE.
another thing. They differ generically, not in
fineness of texture; and so neither is perceived
by the senses of the other. The natural body is
not the man, nor any essential part of him. The
spirit itself is an immortal organism, folded in
by its clay coverings in order, for probationary
purposes, to hold connection awhile with material things. It is the most real part of man, since
nearer in degree and kindred to the eternal realities. The resurrection is the emergence of the
immortal being in a spiritual body out of material
conditions, when first it has open relations with
a spiritual world, and is set face to face with spiritual things.
3. " But to every seed his own body." The
spiritual body is not manufactured, but created,created from within, - and comes out of the natural body as the rose out of the bursting calyx,
and therefore fragrant with all the moral qualities of the spirit, the form and figure of its very
life. Hence the resurrection is the disclosure
of man, the resolving of humanity, lost or redeemed, into the demon or the angel; and there
is nothing covered that shall not be revealed, or
hid that shall not be known.
4. Hence the great assize and the judgmentday. The life of life comes forth into the noon
of truth, and all merely external and arbitrary
connections are abolished; and society forms




SUDASRY.                175
anew according to the affinities of the inmost nature.  Truth and falsehood, good and evil, are
repellent, and they rise or fall and gather each
to its place of central rest.  Hence the cleavings
that cannot err which take place at the grand
and solemn crisis.
5. Yet not by way of revenge, but that each
may seek the home centre, and find there all
which in the nature of things he may enjoy. We
gravitate towards the spot where our affections
cling, till we find it; and thence we reach out
again to do the work which we love. Hence the
homes that rise up through all the zones that
belt the heavenly hills, each a centre of radiances
whose circlets throb outward over all.
6. Hence again the spiritual world is neither
the limbo of the metaphysicians, nor some place
which the materialists peer after among the
stellar spaces. It is out of natural space and
above it, and has its own spaces; it is not a sublimation of the material world, but higher in the
order of existence; it is nearer in degree to the
creative mind, therefore a more substantial world
than this. It differs from this, not because it is
without substance, form, extension, distances,
but because these exist, not under natural law,
but under spiritual, and are therefore redolent
with all the moral perfections and excellences
of spirit itself, and open quite a new page of the




176          THE IMMORTAL LIFE.
everlasting'beauty andL glory. Hence the elements of the heavenly happiness when the soul
is new organized for its work, knows God by
nearer and more open communion, is brought
into the clear exercise of its central love and of
the perfect moralities, and sees its highest imaginings of the good and the fair always passing over
into their most beautiful realizations.
We are on themes where the heart as well as
the intellect must lend us its aid, and make the
chain of logic warm, and not brittle with frost.
The Church creeds will not avail us much, and
if any one scruples at breaking away from their
letter, let him remember that the Church has
gone down so deep in naturalism as not only to
"splash the altars with mud," but the windows
too, whence the light has small chance of getting
through. The scholiasts will not avail us much;
they are in the clay-beds themselves, and they
plaster the text with clay till that which shone
with the light of the empyrean is dingy and emits
no more white sparkles as you touch it. But we
will take the word without the clay-plasters, happily if, sitting before it bowed in prayer and with
a high purpose, the truth may break out of the
letter, the Son of Man out of the clouds of heaven
already purpling before the presence of his coming.




CHAPTER XXI.
CONCLUSION.
As our theme has led us on, I have not thought
it worth while to interrupt the course of it by
appeals to the reader. They come of themselves,
sometimes with a power that presses upon us
with a weight too painful. We have trembled
in contemplating the capabilities of human nature, and the consequences that hang on our
power of moral choosing. Heaven and hell are
within us in their first principles, and held in
waiting. The Christ who came, and who comes
yet, lies on our souls as the shining and perfect
law, and claims us as his own. If we yield and
become his, keeping nothing back, but giving up all our faculties as pliant beneath his
hand, we receive him as a new creative power;
he shapes our affections, and thence our whole
outward nature, even to the spiritual body, in
which we rise out of earthly conditions to breathe
in immortal air. If we reject and deny, the same
law still lies upon us, a sword that gleams sharp




178         THE IMMORTAL LIFE.
and dreadful, and shows the awful antagonism
between us and the Divine justice. We grow
into the image of hell, and the antagonism
widens and deepens; we rise in the spiritual
body, that unveils our corrupt life and gives it
form, and shows the antagonism to be eternal;
and the Christ that should have saved us judges
and dooms us at the last day. And so heaven,
that rises through the endless ranks, or hell, that
yawns through the endless deeps, is humanity
led forth and dramatized; and our choice of.the
Christ or our rejection of him is the point whence
the drama unfolds,-upward among the seraphim
or downward among the lost. It is a humanity regenerated, transfigured, and lifted up, and
clothed upon from within by God's righteousness;
or it is a humanity inverted, and tending away
from God, and shaped by its own deforming lusts
and passions. Theological substitutes and fictions may divert our attention from this, and lead
us to depend on something else than personal
character, personal holiness, and personal righteousness. Woe to him who puts his trust in the
substitutes!  And happy he who listens to the
Christ who went away that he might come near
to us and call! " Behold, I stand at the door
and knock. If any man hear my voice and open
the door, I will come in and sup with him, and
he shall sup with me."




PART II.
THE EXCARNATION OF THE SON OF MAN.




"Does it follow, that by this term (resurrection) they mean to
imply nothing more than the naked fact of his rising from the
tomb? Or do they also mean to include the glorious concomitants and consequences of that great fact, his ascension into
heaven, and his exaltation to the right hand of God, thus to be'Head over all things to the Church'? The latter I must believe
to be the case in most instances, if not all." - PROF. ROBINSON.
" His robe was white as flakes of snow
When through the air descending;
I saw the clouds beneath Him melt,
And rainbows o'er Him bending!
And then a voice - no, not a voice -
A deep and calm revealing
Came through me, like a vesper strain
O'er tranquil waters stealing.
"And ever since that Countenance
Is on my pathway shining;
A sun from out a higher sky,
Whose light knows no declining:
All day it falls upon my road,
To keep my feet from straying,
And when at night I lay me down,
I fall asleep while praying."
Morning Breaking.




CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTORY.
THE resurrection of Christ, or his ascent out
of the natural degree of life into the heavenly,
is uniformly appealed to in the New Testament
as the special evidence on which Christianity
reposes.  For many reasons, it is of the first
importance. As the exemplar of man's entrance
upon the immortal life, it flings back a flood of
light upon the whole subject which we now have
under investigation. It sheds light, too, collaterally upon other topics. It is the central fact
of the Gospel history, yea, of all human history;
and, clearly apprehended, it shapes our entire
conception of the Divine plan, and shows where
lies the peculiar stress of Christianity as a system of doctrines revealed for the salvation of
the race.
In the pages that here follow, we propose to
ourselves as unobstructed and intimate a view
of the great event as the case admits. We will
16




182  THE EXCARNATION OF THE SON OF MAN.
comprehend in-it the whole doctrine in its various relations, but we shall have special reference
to that aspect which it presents as illustrating
man's resurrection and immortality. First, we
will apprehend the simple fact as the narratives
present it to us, and from the fact we will ascend
to a view of its mighty significance.




CHAPTER II.
THE GREAT MORNING.
OUR Lord's resurrection is related by the four
Evangelists, each in a manner somewhat variant
from the others, because each selects the facts
according to his own special purpose. But put
them all together, and we have an unbroken
series, and a consistent and perfect whole. Let
the reader follow the events in their lucid order,
and he will have the entire scene before him.
The Saviour expired about three o'clock on
Friday afternoon. With the cry, " It is finished! "
his head dropped, and the form that walked
through Palestine, radiant with majesty, hangs
a corpse upon the tree. The darkness had continued for three hours, - not total darkness, but a
lurid gloom paled on the faces of men, as if the
sun also hung as a corpse in the sky. At three
o'clock there was an earthquake; not the violent
shock which that word often implies, for the walls




184  THE EXCARNATION OF THE SON OF MAN.
of Jerusalem were not thrown down; but the
earth had tremors and shiverings as if nature also
were expiring. These had passed away before
nightfall, and the terror which had possessed
men's minds had perhaps passed away too. The
next day was the paschal Sabbath, and according
to Jewish notions it would be profaned by the
spectacle of a dead body; therefore the corpse
must be buried on Friday evening. The soldiers
are preparing to do just what in ordinary cases
was always done with the bodies of malefactors,
heap them together in a pit dug for the purpose, perhaps with scoffs and execrations. Imagine what this would be to the sensibilities of
the two Marys, bleeding already beyond endurance as they watched the scene on Calvary. At
this moment a man ventures to do what, under
the circumstances, required a high degree of
moral courage.  Some one is seen about dusk
knocking at the palace of Pilate, -not a poor
and obscure man who had nothing at stake, but
a rich Jew, and a member of the highest Jewish
council; and Pilate must have been surprised
when Joseph of Arimathea came into his hall
and begged for the body of one of the crucified
malefactors, - thus showing, even at that hour of
peril and darkness, and before the storm of passions had spent its rage, that he sympathized with
him and his cause. Pilate writes an order for




THE GREAT MORNING.          185
the delivery of the body, and Joseph goes with
it and takes the body out of the keeping of the
brutal soldiers, and wraps it in clean linen cloth.
Jerusalem, says Josephus, was surrounded
with gardens owned by the wealthier residents of
the city, and sometimes beautifully shaded and
ornamented. It so happened that the garden of
Joseph was not far from the place of crucifixion,
and, in it was a sepulchre just hewn out of limestone rock, such being the composition of the
rocks about the city. Joseph and Nicodemus,
both of them secret disciples of Jesus, and both
members of the Jewish Sanhedrim, laid the body
in this sepulchre. The two Marys, Magdalene
and the mother of James, had followed into the
garden and were sitting at a little distance over
opposite the mouth of the tomb, as it was deposited in the clean recess, and there left lying upon
the bier. The door is closed, and a great stone
rolled against it. Night comes down upon the
great tragedy, and what a night to those disciples who had seen their fondest hopes that day
sink down in blood!
The triumph of the Jewish council seems complete. The man is out of the way whose rebukes
had stung them to the quick, and who was
undermining their authority, while the populace
were flocking after him in crowds. But he predicted that he should rise again the third day.
1 4*




186 THE EXCARNATION OF THE SON OF MAN.
"What if his disciples should steal away the
body, declare the prediction fulfilled, and so
trouble us again!" Under this apprehension
they petition Pilate for a guard; and sixteen Roman soldiers are placed about the sepulchre,
four watching at a time, while the rest are reclining about, thus relieving each other through
the four watches of the night.
Saturday passes away, and none but the few
disciples think of the tragic events of yesterday.
The execution of state criminals of the lowest
sort is soon to be forgotten. But the stricken
disciples meet on that gloomy Sabbath for mutual condolence, and on Sabbath (Saturday) evening the women agree together on a last mournful duty. The body has not been embalmed.
It only lies in its winding-sheet and on its bier.
They get their spices ready, and agree to meet
together at the tomb about sunrise, the next (that
is Sunday) morning, for this office of love. How
many there were who had made this appointment
we do not know. The names of the two Marys
and Saloam are given, and Mark mentions " othor women." But before the hour appointed a
scene took place at the tomb they little dreamed
of. Let the reader note here the exact order of
events, and he will see how the four Evangelists
lock into each other with exquisite harmony.
Saturday night has passed into the third watch.




THE GREAT MORNING.          187
That is, it is between twelve and three o'clock;
and the four Roman soldiers sit watching at the
door of the tomb, two on each side, while the other twelve are reclining and sleeping about. Suddenly the earth jars beneath them, shock after
shock; they wake up, and in the darkness of the
third watch there comes a blaze of light that fills
the garden, and glares down the avenues of trees,
and makes the smallest objects visible. In the
midst of it a man appears whom they dare not
challenge, for his face darts radiances which affect them like strokes of lightning, and his raiment shines, not by reflected light, but with a
dazzling whiteness like that of snow in the sunbeams. He touches the stone, and it rolls from
the sepulchre, whose door flies open, and then he
seems to sit down upon the stone, as if assuming
to be the guard of the place. Of course it is not
long before the drowsy soldiers are wide awake,
and rushing in terror from the garden.
All this has taken place before break of day.
Meanwhile Mary Magdalene has started for the
place of appointment. Her thoughts ran on the
events of Friday afternoon, and that corpse in
Joseph's tomb, whose pale features have been before her all night long. She does not wait for
the sunrise, or for the other women, but starts
in the dim twilight and walks on. But as she
comes to the garden limit she sees what fills




188  THE EXCARNATION OF THE SON OF MAN.
her with alarm. The tomb door is wide open.
Somebody has been here during the night. She
sees not the angel, for he has disappeared from
the stone, and is watching at the bier, inside.
She only sees the open door, and her thought is,
"The Jews have robbed the tomb, to vent their
last rage upon the body "; and she runs back to
the city and tells Peter and John.
Those two disciples immediately repair to the
place, Mary Magdalene following timidly and
more slowly after them. John outruns the sturdy Peter and comes up first, and looks down
into the sepulchre to see if the body indeed be
gone. Peter comes up, and with characteristic
boldness rushes past John down into the recess,
and finds that it is even so. The body is gone.
The woman's apprehensions are right, and the
Jews doubtless have stolen it; and with this impression they both return to the city.
But Mary Magdalene, who had followed back
again, lingers fondly at the door of the tomb
after the other two have departed; sitting there
and weeping over this new and unexpected sorrow. At length she ventures to the door and
looks in to see the bier which had held its precious load, when, lo! two men in white clothing
appear, one at the head and the other at the foot
of the bier. One of them is the selfsame angel
that terrified the guard, but now inside the tomb




THE GREAT MORNING.         189
instead of outside, and another appears with him.
" Why weepest thou? " he says to Mary. " Because," she replies, "they have taken away my
Lord, and I know not where they have laid him."
And turning to go, she sees Jesus himself standing before her. But it is yet dusk, and her eyes
are bent downward and blinded with tears, and
she does not recognize him.  He speaks: "Why
weepest thou?  Whom  seekest thou?"   She
supposes from these words that he is the gardener, whose questions imply that she is an intruder
upon his ground.  "Tell me where thou hast
laid him, and I will take him out of your way."
Jesus now speaks in the old, familiar tones, and
says, "Mary." She looks up, opens her eyes in
amazement, sobs out, "My dear master! " and
clings convulsively to those feet which she had
washed and wiped with her hair.
While this is taking place, the other women
are on the road with their spices and balm. The
appointed hour arrives when they were to be at
the sepulchre.  The shadows of the night have
fled, and the first shaft of sunlight is shooting
across the hills. As the other women come up,
they are consulting how they shall get into the
tomb, when they see that it is already open, and
they pass on and enter in, supposing that some
other of their company had got there before
them, and found means of entrance.  So they




190 THE EXCARNATION OF THE SON-OF MAN.
descend into the recess.  They have hardly time
to look for the body, when several beings in shining garments are seen hovering about the spot
where the Lord had lain. The spiritual sight of
the women is not touched precisely alike, or
opened to the same extent in all. One of them
sees one angel at the right of the bier. Others
see two, one at the head and the other at the
foot: each sees according to her state of perception, and each enough for the message she is to
receive. That message is, " He is not here, he is
risen. Go, tell the news to his disciples."  The
women bow down and hide their faces till they
have recovered from their throbbing emotions
and their holy surprise, and then emerge from
the sepulchre and run to seek the disciples with
the joyful tidings.  But scarcely have they got
beyond the garden gate, when Jesus himself appears before them, not as to Mary, in the dusk
of morning, but now in the broad light of day.
He meets them with his " All hail! " and they
fall down and cling around his feet, and tremble
and worship,
Such were the events of what has been appropriately called "' the great morning." Their order of succession is lucid enough.
1. The descent of the angel, who opens the
tomb, disperses the guard, and then retires within the sepulchre.




THE GREAT MORNING.         191
2. The approach of Mary in the dusk, who
sees only the open tomb, and runs back to tell
Peter and John.
3. The visit of those two disciples to the place,
who see nothing and return.
4. The appearance of the two angels to Mary,
who had come back again, followed by the first
appearance of the Lord Jesus.
5. The coming up of the other women at the
appointed hour, who go into the tomb, where one
sees one angel and another two.
6. Their departure, and their meeting Jesus
by the way.
All the difficulties, or seeming discrepancies,
in the four narratives, have grown out of the
most absurd assumption that the angels appeared
in bodies like ours, and to the mortal senses.
The variations are just what they would be to
the variant perceptions of the half-opened spiritual vision. John and Peter saw nothing, some
of the women probably saw nothing, and doubtless none of them saw all. We do not imagine
that the divine messengers had been absent from
any part of that scene of sorrow and dismay on
Friday afternoon, as they certainly were not absent from Gethsemane the night before. True,
the Roman soldiers might not know it till the
gleaming terrors dispersed them; and the women
saw but one or two among the divine powers that




192 THE EXCARNATION OF THE SON OF MAN.
engirded and guarded to its sure accomplishment the central fact in the world's history, and
heralded the victory of the Son of God over
death and the grave.




CHAPTER III.
THE FIRST MEETING.
So the morning was ushered in. What we
have now related took place during the last watch,
that is, from three o'clock to six. What followed
during the day is of scarcely less importance.
Christ has not yet appeared to any of the Apostles, and they will not believe that he is risen.
The women come and tell what they have seen.
" Idle rumors these," say they among themselves,
" for it cannot be. They are the stories of excited women. Peter and John have been there
and seen nothing." Thus the morning hours
have passed, and early in the afternoon two of
the disciples set out from Jerusalem to travel on
foot to Emmaus, a town which lies about seven
and a half miles distant. One of them was Cleopas, a brother probably of the Joseph who was
the husband of the mother of Christ. Who the
other was, we are not told. It might have been
Nathanael. They both belonged to that inner
17




194  THE EXCARNATION OF THE SON OF MAN.
circle of friends who had been drawn so closely
unto Jesus, and who now felt all the sorrows of
a natural bereavement. They want to get out
of the city with its noise and din, now the
scene of that dreadful tragedy whose shadow lies
heavy on their hearts. Passed the gates of the
city, they unburden their minds to each other.
"Alas! it is all over. How bitterly have we
been disappointed! We thought him beyond the
power of his enemies. On what a height he
stood, and what a glory surrounded him! We
thought him the Messiah, and that he would redeem us from the Roman yoke.; But he is dead!
He mistook his own power and mission, and all
our hopes have ended on that bloody cross."
While this conversation is going on, a third person joins them and walks with them. It is Christ
himself, but his appearance is so different from
that before his crucifixion that the two disciples
do not know him. He reproves their doubts,
discourses to them divinely from. the Scriptures,
opens their meaning, and shows them Christ out
of the Old Testament in such a warm blaze of
light that their hearts burn under his words.
Charmed and animated by his discourse, they
arrive at Emmaus, and they make him go in to
eat with them; when, instead of sitting down as
a guest, he sits at the head of the table, and
breaks the bread as the symbol of the bread of




THE FIRST MEETING.        195
life. They look up into his face, and through
his altered appearance his outbeaming Divinity
breaks upon them, the same glorified features
that had thrilled them so often before, and they
recognize their Lord.  And then he becomes
suddenly invisible (/a{avros).
The day speeds on to the great evening. Since
morning the Lord has appeared unto Peter. How
or where, we are not told. But the news runs
from one disciple to another, " Peter also hath
seen the Lord, and so it cannot be an unfounded
rumor, or the mere imagination of those women
at the tomb."  This new announcement makes
them eager and breathless, and the eleven are
called together with some others to hear Peter
tell his story. They all assemble except Thomas,
who perhaps has not heard of the good tidings.
Meanwhile the two disciples at Emmaus speed
swiftly back to Jerusalem, to tell what they have
seen, and they arrive in season for the meeting.
It was probably in that upper room where they
had been wont to meet together, and whose walls
were now fragrant with the memories of Jesus.
They have locked fast the door, lest some of the
Jewish police should break in upon them. Peter
has told his marvellous tale, and it has fallen
into thirsting ears. Then the men from Emmaus
stand up to corroborate the story; are telling of
the conversation by the way; how he unveiled




196  THE EXCARNATION OF THE SON OF MAN.
the meaning of the law, the prophets, and the
Psalms, and made them a continuous chain of
light; and how, when he broke the bread, the same
divine face they had known before beamed over
the table. They have not done speaking when
Jesus himself is seen standing in the midst of
the little company; and he interrupts the narrative with his heavenly benediction, " Peace be
unto you!"  They are affrighted from the sudden and unexpected appearance; they distrust
their eyes, and think it a spectre and not a reality.
Christ, in order to assure them, appeals also to
their sense of touch. " Handle me and see! A
spectre has not flesh and bones, as ye see me to
have. Behold my hands and my feet; touch
them, and know that it is I myself." They touch
them and wonder, and half believe, in a delirium
of joy. To confirm their faith still more, he commands food to be brought, — a piece of broiled fish
and of honeycomb, — and sits down and eats with
them; and as he eats, he opens to them the Scriptures, showing how this is the Christ of the Old
Testament, and how all the lines of prophecy converge here in their glorious fulfilment. And so
closes the first Christian Sabbath, and with what
a contrast to the gloom of the previous evening!




CHAPTER IV.
THE SECOND MEETING.
ONE week passes away, during which these
wonderful events are constant themes of conversation among the disciples.  Thomas was not
there, and he will not believe even the united
testimony of the other ten.  He thinks their
senses may have deceived them, and he will not
be satisfied without a surer test than has yet
been applied. " True, you have seen and touched
some one whom you think to have been the Lord
Jesus; but it could not have been the same person who was nailed to the tree, whose heart was
pierced by the soldier's spear, and who was laid
as a corpse in Joseph's tomb. I will not believe
it' unless I can put my finger into the fatal
wounds themselves. Some other person might
counterfeit his appearance, but nobody would
counterfeit these."  His doubts have been regarded as criminal and unreasonable; but they
were perfectly natural, and in strict accordance
17*




198  THE EXCARNATION OF THE SON OF MAN.
with the laws of the human mind; and the test
which he insists upon was precisely the one
which would be likely to occur to a person of
clear, practical reason, who, amid the excitements of the hour, resolved not to be imposed
upon by false appearances. It is one of the numerous incidents whose air of perfect naturalness affords unmistakable evidence of the entire
truthfulness of the narratives.
A second Sunday evening comes round, and
the disciples assemble again, probably at the
same upper room, careful now to have the
doubting disciple with them, and saying to
him and to each other, " Perhaps he will appear
again." The doors, as before, are shut and fastened. The word used does not necessitate the
inference that the doors were locked, but the
whole connection clearly does. Doubtless their
hearts were throbbing with expectation. They
are not disappointed, for, behold, the same benignant form rises in the midst of them, and drops
the benediction, "' Peace be unto you! " Then
lie turns specially to Thomas, " Reach hither thy
finger and behold my hands, and reach hither
thy hand and thrust it into my side, and be not
faithless, but believing."  The doubter comes up
under a supernatural awe, and feels cautiously
for the scars, and gasps out, "0 my Lord and
my God!"  There is a twofold reason for his




THE SECOND MEETING.        199
amazement. He not only wonders at seeing his
master, but at finding his own thoughts known,
and the very language in which his doubts had
been expressed given back to him, indicating a
knowledge which was more than human. We
are not told how Christ was parted from his disciples on this and the former occasion; but it is
evident from the entire complexion of the narrative, that he did not tarry with them during the
intermediate time; and the inference is, that he
went suddenly as he came, or, as at Emmaus,
became invisible.




CHAPTER V.
THE MEETING IN GALILEE.
THE Sea of Galilee lies some eighty miles
northeast of Jerusalem, and has been very well
called the Lake Geneva of Palestine. It is a
clear mirror, deep-set in a beautiful framework
of hills. The hills rise precipitous on all sides
and shut out the winds, except when some transient gust finds its way over them to break up the
surface of the otherwise smooth and ever-peaceful waters. The shores of this lake in the days
of our Saviour were thickly studded with cities
and villages. They extended from the edge of
the waters up the sides of the hills, and sometimes over their level summits. The country,
lying on the west or the Galilean side, is described by Josephus as unsurpassed in beauty
and fertility.  "Its nature is wonderful," he
says, "producing the fruits of all the climates
and zones."
On the shores of this lake, and among these




THE MEETING IN GALILEE.       201
cities and villages, our Saviour began his public
ministry. He sailed over its waters, and travelled around its borders, working miracles, and
uttering his Divine message; and there the multitudes thronged around him, always eager to
see and hear. Near the head of the lake was the
mount on which the first sermon was preached
to listening crowds, since called the Mount of the
Beatitudes. Somewhere in the same region was
the Mount of Transfiguration. The Sea of Galilee, therefore, and the hills that rise up around
it, were clothed in the dearest memories in the
earliest ministry of Jesus. Not here did he meet
the hard defiance of Jewish bigotry and hate, but
the people were yielding and receptive beneath his
word. Here he had found his first disciples as
humble fishermen, and here most of his converts
were made and still resided. Therefore he announced, even before his death, that he should
appear after that event among his converts in
Galilee; and the first message to the eleven, after
his resurrection, was, " Hasten up to Galilee, for I
shall meet my people, there." Not only the time
had been appointed, but the place too; and it was
one of the mountains on the shores of the lake,
probably the very one where he had met them
before, and which, therefore, was hallowed by
the recollection of sweet Sabbatic hours.
The town of Bethsaida stood on the western




202 THE EXCARNATION OF THE SON OF MAN.
shore of the lake, and was the birthplace and
early residence of two of the disciples, namely,
Andrew and Peter. Here Jesus found them,
and drew them into his band of followers. Hither one of them has come again, and probably
both, having travelled from Jerusalem in anticipation of the meeting upon "the mountain." Ill
company with Peter have come Thomas, Natlhanael, and the two brothers James and John,
who revisit the shore where Jesus first found
them  "mending their nets," and called them
into his train. These are all waiting together,
probably at Bethsaida, thinking of the marvellous
events they have just witnessed at Jerusalem,
and looking forward with eager hopes to the
appointed day. The converts all along the Galilean shore have doubtless heard the strange
rumors, and they, too, have been warned of the
spot and the hour at which they are to assemble,
when the Crucified will appear among them.
Before the appointed day has arrived, Peter,
with his fellow-travellers, looking out at evening
on the expanse of waters over which they have
sailed so often, is reminded of his old business,
and proposes that they try their skill at it again.
It must have been now in the last quarter of the
waning moon, whose light, therefore, glimmered
rather feebly upon the lake. They row all night
without success, and seeing the morning glance




THE MEETING IN GALILEE.      203
over the hills and begin to purple the waves,
they make for the shore. As they near it, they
discern in the twilight a stranger's form standing
on the banks, who calls to them, and asks if they
have caught anything. Being answered in the
negative, he tells them to drop the net on the
right side of the ship. They obey, and the net
is immediately filled; whereupon John whispers
to Peter, "It is the Lord." Peter cannot wait
for the ship to come ashore, but snatches his
upper garment, which in rowing he had thrown
off, girds it about him again, and plunges into
the water and swims ashore in his impetuous
haste to greet his Master. The incident is strikingly characteristic, and Peter's whole character
appears in it. The others come up afterward
in the ship and step ashore, when Jesus invites
them to a repast on the fish they had caught,
and, taking up his usual representative style, he
charges Peter while they are eating, " Feed my
sheep, feed my lambs." They feared to ask him,
"Who art thou? " and the inference from the
whole cast of the narrative is, that they saw and
felt that there was something supernatural in his
appearance, and that it overshadowed their minds
with an indescribable awe.
All this, however, is only preparatory to that
meeting upon "the mountain," where all the
Galilean converts are to have an opportunity of




204  THE EXCARNATION OF THE SON OF MAN.
seeing the Lord. Probably the eleven were there;
with divers others from Jerusalem. Would that
Matthew or John might have given us another
stroke of the pen in describing it, though without
any description we readily conceive with what
throbs of feeling they hastened up to the spot.
It has been supposed that this was the assemblage
of the " five hundred brethren," who Paul says
were at once made witnesses of the Lord's resurrection. We are convinced from all the circumstances that it was probably so. There is some
slight ground for conjecture that the appointed
mountain was the very one which had been the
scene of the transfiguration. " Tell the vision to
no man, till after I am risen from the dead ";
words possibly suggested by the thought that on
this very height there would then be another
transfiguration, not privately, but before the assembled people. " Say nothing of this now, they
would not believe your story about it, but they
shall be eyewitnesses of another." Be that as
it may, they come; the five hundred brethren
throng the summits of the mountain at the appointed hour, and he appears to them much as
he did to the three disciples, amid the dazzling
glories of that former scene. His personal appearance on this latter occasion is not described, but
his words imply, that in first things and last, in
his inmost nature and outermost form, he had




THE MEETING IN GALILEE.       205
put on the power of the Highest. " All power is
given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye
and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name
of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy
Ghost. Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the
end of the world!" John says of one of these occasions, and we infer from the connection that it
applies also to this: " He breathed on them, and
said, Receive ye the Holy Ghost." We think
the commentators are signally at fault in moiling at this passage. It does not mean that he
breathed on them with his mouth, as if the air
out of his lungs was the Holy Ghost. It means
that his outward form had become so glorified as
to fit the Divine plenitude within and become
perfectly transmissive.  So that when he appeared, the power that went from him was the
Divine breathing from his whole person, and it
came to his disciples like pulsings of celestial air.
The language of Paul implies that this meeting
of the five hundred was ever memorable, and was
afterwards recounted over and over as unimpeachable testimony, so long as any of them survived to tell the story. Such was our Lord's
appearance that the multitude, with few exceptions, bowed down their faces and worshipped.*
* Compare Matt. xxviii. 16, 20; John xx. 21-23; 1 Cor.
xv. 6.
18




CHAPTER VI.
THE LAST MEETING, AND THE ASCENSION.
NEARLY forty days have now passed since the
thrilling incidents of the great morning, during
which time Christ has frequently manifested
himself to his disciples. We have no right to
infer that the Evangelists, in their exceedingly
brief narratives, have told us of every meeting
that took place. On the other hand, it is reasonable to suppose that his communications to his
rising Church, and his charge to his chosen Apostles, embraced a great many things which have
not been specially recorded. A last meeting with
them is appointed at Jerusalem. The Feast of
Pentecost is now close at hand. The eleven hasten
back from the familiar scenery around the shores
of the Sea of Galilee, and some of the Galilean
converts go with them, probably some of the " five
hundred brethren," on their way to a last meeting
with their risen Lord. The meeting may have
taken place in that same " upper room," which




THE LAST MEETING, AND THE ASCENSION. 207
had been hallowed by the tender communings of
the last supper. They are conscious that they are
now to see him for the last time, and it is very
natural that they should seek to be satisfied on a
subject which had filled them so often with doubt
and anxiety. They thought him the promised
Messiah; "but if so," how often had they said
among themselves, "' why does he not assert his
power and majesty, and restore Israel to her ancient freedom and grandeur? " And when he was
crushed apparently beneath the Jewish and Roman authorities, their hopes subsided into despair. But behold! he rises and reappears, and
now their hopes rise with him again, and they
expect at this last meeting some disclosure of his
plan. They venture to put the question, " Lord,
wilt thou at this time restore again the kingdom
of Israel?"  He sees that as yet they do not
comprehend the nature of his reign; he goes into
no explanations, but tells them to wait at Jerusalem until the Feast of Pentecost, which will commence in a few days, and then they shall have a
practical answer to their inquiry. "Ye shall receive power after that the Holy Ghost is come
upon you; and ye shall be witnesses unto me
both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost parts of the earth."
The nature of this new power which they are to
receive they do not as yet understand, though




208  THE EXCARNATION OF THE SON OF DIAN.
they have some conception of the source of it as
they bow before their risen Lord and feel the new
effluence that passes over them in wavelets like
the breezes of heaven.
The town of Bethany was about two miles
from Jerusalem, and on the opposite side of the
Mount of Olives. Coming out of the city, and
crossing the brook Cedron, that flows through
the valley of Jehoshaphat, and passing the garden
of Gethsemane, they come to a path that winds
up the slope of the mountain to its summit; and
there on one side they have Jerusalem spread beneath them, its temple gleaming in orient splendor; and just over the brow of the hill, on the
other side, the modest village of Bethany, where
Lazarus and his sisters dwell. How often had
this path been trodden by the Saviour's feet,
back and forth between Bethany and the city!
Here he passed along in his last journey up to
Jerusalem on the eve of his crucifixion, and here
it was that the children shouted hosannas, and
strewed the way with palms. And this is the
road which he now passes over again, at his last
meeting with his disciples. One writer supposes
that it is at early dawn, since we do not read
that they met any one by the way. He is in
close communion with them, giving them promises of the Holy Ghost, and they seem to know,
as did the attendants of Elijah, that this is the




THE LAST MEETING, AND THE ASCENSION. 209
last charge to them, and they hang with rapt attention upon his words. They have reached the
top of the hill where Bethany comes in sight:
the clear blue is above them, and their most beloved haunts all around and beneath them, perhaps bathed in the first splendors of the morning. While the Lord is speaking, his form rises
and grows indistinct, till it seems to melt into a
cloud that floats above their heads, and they
stand and gaze upon its folds with wonder-stricken faces. At the same moment two men in white
apparel appear standing by, who speak to them:
"Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up
into heaven? This same Jesus who is taken up
from you into heaven shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven." And
the disciples bowed reverently on the place of the
holy scene, and returned to Jerusalem, there to
wait the fulfilment of the blessed promises they
had heard.
180




CHAPTER VII.
THEORIES.
FROM these distinct groupings of the circunistances, we get a clear view of the events included between the moment of our Saviour's death
on the cross, to the moment of his reunion with
the Father in the heavens; and we are now prepared to understand in some measure the nature
and the mighty significance of these fundamental
facts of the Gospel.
We observe, first, and before coming to the
heart of our subject, that the opinion has been
entertained and defended, that Christ not only
rose in the natural body, but ascended in the
natural body into heaven; that the very corpse
which hung on the fatal tree was revived and
taken up through the planetary spaces to some
place where God specially resides; and in close
congruity with this opinion is the notion that he
there exhibits his wounds to the Father, in order
to make him placable towards the human race.




This is his work of intercession, — always to
point to his wounds or scars, and on the ground
of his vicarious sufferings plead for mercy towards
those who believe in him. Such is another abortion of religious naturalism; and we only state
it that our readers may have a view of the whole
case.  We certainly shall not take up time in
addressing an argument to that mind which can
entertain such conceptions of Christ's resurrection and redemption.
Turning away from this ghastly theology to
what promises some reward to investigation, we
find the theories which have been applied to the
foregoing facts dividing themselves mainly into
two.
The first is the purely spiritual theory.  It
supposes that the crucified body was dissipated
in the tomb, being there resolved back into its
gaseous elements so as to disappear entirely; and
that Christ arose in the spiritual body, and was
only apprehensible to the spiritual senses of the
disciples, couched and opened for that very purpose. He became visible to them at times in the
same way that the angels became visible, —that
is, through a subjective change in the beholders,
and his apparent ascension into heaven was simply the closing again of this inner faculty of perception, so that they saw him no more.
This view has been received and defended in




212 THE EXCARNATION OF THE SON OF MAN.
-all ages of the Christian Church. It was held by
Clement of Alexandria, by Origen, by Chrysostom, and it is understood to prevail in the Roman
Catholic Church, where it holds some relation to
the doctrine of transubstantiation. More recently
it has been brought out with great distinctness,
and defended with conspicuous ability, by writers
of another school, and everything which argument and learned exegesis can render in its
favor may be found displayed in a treatise by
Hindmarsh on' the resurrection of Christ, and
a more recent one by Professor Bush, on the
same subject. Its alleged proofs are mainly as
follows: -
1. Christ was seen by no one after his resurrection, except by his own friends and followers.
Not the least intimation is dropped anywhere that
it was a fact of public notoriety, or that the Jews
were witnesses of it. If they had been, all Jerusalem would have been filled with wonder and
commotion; his murderers would have been overwhelmed at the sight, and we should have had
some relation of it in the Evangelic narratives.
Moreover, Paul, in enumerating the "' witnesses"
of the resurrection, names none but personal followers. " He was seen by Cephas, then by the
twelve, after that by about five hundred brethren at once, after that by James, then by all the
Apostles."  But if he rose again ill the natural




THEORIES.             213
body, why was he not seen walking the streets of
Jerusalem on that great morning, and why was
not all Judaea, and indeed all Palestine, made a
witness of an event so important and astounding?
2. But, again, Christ was not seen, even by his
own friends and followers, except at special timesand on special occasions. Where was he during
the intervals? Where did he abide, or with
whom did he live? During the forty days' sojourn on the earth, why are we not told of his
travellings to and fro? Whenever he appears to
his disciples, he takes them by surprise, and the
interview is short; which shows conclusively that
at other times they had no knowledge of the place
where he was, and that they did not even conceive
of him as living in any locality upon the earth.
3. The manner of his appearance and disappearance proves that he did not inhabit a body
which was subject to the laws of space and time.
He vanishes out of their sight, or becomes suddenly invisible.  He appears suddenly among
them, while the doors are shut and bolted. He
does not meet them by travelling from place to
place. The two disciples who saw him at Emmaus hasten to Jerusalem to tell the tale, and
lo! he is there with them. They journey away
to Galilee, eighty miles and more, and Christ is
there. They come back to Jerusalem, and he is
there. Had he, like them, travelled through the




214 THE EXCARNATION OF THE SON OF MAN.
intermediate space?  If so, why did he iot go
and return with them, as his custom used to be?
4. Such was the entire transformation, that his
nearest friends did not know him after his resurrection. Mary recognized him at the tomb, not
through his appearance, but through the tones of
his voice. The two disciples walk and converse
with him through a good part of seven miles, and
sit down with him at table, and yet they know
him not. And the reason of this is not to be
mistaken, for the narrator expressly avers that
he appeared in another form.
5. The whole color of the narratives shows
that the intercourse between Jesus and his disciples was on an entire new basis after his resurrection.  There is an awful distance between
them, totally unlike the old familiarity, and their
minds are impressed with the fact that this intercourse is not normal, but supernatural.  Hence
his words to Mary, " Touch me not"; hence the
spell laid on their faculties in the upper room,
by the Sea of Galilee, and on the mountain where
the five hundred assembled. It was not the forimer colloquial intercourse, but their minds were
bowed down in posture of adoration, as if beneath
some demonstration from a supernal world.
6. The language which is used to describe the
post-resurrection appearances of Christ is peculiar and distinctive. It is equivalent to the ex



THEORIES.              215
pression, "He made himself visible."  It does
not indicate the journeying from place to place
for the purpose of meeting a friend, but rather
the unveiling of his person from a superior state
to the cognizance of those who were suddenly
made sensible of his presence.
It is vain to deny that some of these reasons
are cogent and strong; and, in the absence of
countervailing testimony, they would be irresistibly conclusive.  But there are opposing facts,
too clearly stated and too stubborn to be reasoned
away. They are as follows: —
1. The entire phenomena at the tomb on the
great morning. Why are we brought there at
all to see the open door, and to look down
through the awful recess? If Christ arose only
in the spiritual body, what more have we to do
with the natural body or the place where it lay?
Nothing whatever. Spiritual body does not pass
through natural space, and it did not need the
stone to be rolled away, or the tomb door to be
opened, in order to its emergence into the spiritworld. Christ would have passed into the other
life, as all men do, by ordinary death, - the spiritbody being evolved from the natural, and the
latter left to the usual process of decay. Yet
the angel descends, removes the stone, and opens
the door, as if for the body to emerge from its




216  THE EXCARNATION OF THE SON OF MAN.
recess, whereupon the body disappears from within the tomb, leaving its grave-clothes behind, and
Jesus immediately after is seen standing without; and if, after all, there was no resurrection
of the natural body, these appearances are the
most systematic and stupendous illusion to the
senses that history has anywhere described.
2. Christ avers that he is not a mere spirit,
but that he appears in a body of veritable flesh
and bones; and he invites them to test the fact
by the sense of touch as well as sight. We are
told that there is spiritual touch as well as spiritual sight, and that these words have an important
spiritual meaning; that the idea of the times
was, that a spirit was nothing but a phantom,
and that Christ now intended to dissipate that
fantasy from their minds. All this may be so.
But the fact which here stands out in boldest and
sharpest outline is this — that Christ impresses
on their senses the truth that he is clothed in
flesh and bones,- that is, material substance:
they so understand him, and he means they shall
so understand him;- and if, after all, there were
no flesh and bones in the case, then we think
that the science of hermeneutics is worthless, and
that we cannot be satisfied that the Bible has a
literal sense anywhere on which its truths may
repose secure.
3. Christ not only offers to Thomas the test of




THEORIES.               217
touch, but gives him assurance that he is touching the same body that was wounded upon the
cross. He believes it, and on that ground rests
his conviction of the Lord's resurrection. To
say that this ground was specious and false,
would seem to us to involve the supposition that
his Master studied and practised an imposition
upon his disciples.
4. Christ ate with his disciples after his resurrection, and ate natural food, -" broiled fish and
honeycomb."   Not only so, but he ate before
them for the avowed object of convincing them
that he had " flesh and bones." To suppose that
spiritual bodies partake of material food implies
an incongruity and anomaly that shocks the reason, and the case is not rendered a whit more
rational to our minds by quotations from Genesis,
which are supposed to assert the same thing of
angels. As we do not believe that any such
thing is there asserted or implied,* we reject all
such interpretations, and receive this passage in
its obvious and literal meaning.
We conclude, then, that Christ arose in the
same body that was crucified. This, however,
does not imply that there was no important
* Genesis ix. 1. The word there rendered angels is from'7]~, which means "a messenger of God, whether an angel or
prophet or priest." See Stuart's Lexicon.
19




218 THE EXCARNATION OF THE SON OF MAN.
change in it, and that his post-resurrection appearances and relations were the same as before.
That they were very different we readily grant,
as, indeed, the arguments which we have above
displayed most clearly demonstrate.  But they
demonstrate nothing more. They show a change
of some kind in the natural body, and its methods
of appearing; but, taken in connection with all
the facts, the reader will judge whether they do
not fail utterly in showing that Christ rose only
in a spiritual form.




CHAPTER VIII.
THEORIES.
WE come to another view of the subject, and
one which has been more generally adopted, as
in strict accordance with all the facts of the narratives. It is that Christ rose in the natural body,
but that it was changed for the glorified or celestial body during the forty days between his resurrection and ascension. The writers who adopt
this view do not agree precisely as to the time
and the progress of this change, but they agree
in the essential fact, and their diversities of conception and statement do not seem to us of the
least practical importance. Three shades of variation may be distinguished.
Thus, some of the early Fathers represent Christ
after his resurrection as possessing the same body,
but changed as to its qualities, and made " impassible, immortal, and incorruptible." In this class
are reckoned Irenoeus, Tertullian, Cyprian, and
Augustine. In this class, too, are many of the




220 THE EXCARNATION OF THE SON OF MAN.
scholastic writers of the Middle Ages. The early
Lutheran divines are of the same belief, for they
describe the Lord's post-resurrection body as endowed with the qualities of "impalpability, invisibility, and illocality," that is, we suppose, of
assuming these qualities at will. Some German
writers of the present day, belonging to the orthodox school, take the same view, with only this difference, - that the process of transformation was
not performed at once and at the time of the resurrection, but was gradual and progressive, extending through the whole forty days, and only
completed at the ascension.  Such is the view of
Hahn, Olshausen, Hengstenberg, and several others.* Another class of writers suppose that this
change was not gradual, but took place instantly
at the ascension; that during the forty days
Christ had the same body as before his death,
unchanged in its qualities; but that at the moment he was " taken up" into heaven it was
transformed and glorified, and fitted for the
heavenly abodes. Such is the opinion defended
by some of the Christian Fathers, —by Jerome
with considerable fulness.  It was adopted by
Calvin and his followers, and more recently by
Herder, Neander, and Tholuck, and more recent* Bibliotheca Sacra for July, 1845, Article on Christ's Resurrection, by Professor Robinson.




THEORIES.              221
ly still by Professor Robinson, in an article in the
Biblical Repository already referred to.
It will be perceived that these three classes of
writers differ on a mere puncturem temporis, the
first supposing that the essential change took
place on the resurrection morning; the second,
that it was progressive through forty days; and
the last, that it was accomplished at the moment
of ascension; all coming, however, to the same
result, that the natural body was changed for the
glorified body before Christ ascended out of his
earthly relations to his place at God's right hand.
But in none of them is there the least glimmer
of light as to the essential nature of this change.
Do they mean that the material body had some
new qualities added to it, increasing its splendor
and adaptability, but remaining the same in
essence as before, as a material body here may
change from crass to fine, or from dull to bright?
or do they mean that it was changed, not only in
external properties, but also in internal essence?
or, what is more likely, do they use language
without meaning anything more than that some
change took place, they know not what, and may
not presume to know?  This last, they would
probably say; and yet it is plain, that, until we
get some clear conception on this point, we not
only fail to " discern the Lord's body," but have
hardly advanced one step towards the apprehen19*




222  THE EXCARNATION OF THE SON OF MAN.
sion of a doctrine which occupies as a luminous
centre the first place in the scheme of Christian
truth, and, indeed, lights up the dull annals of
this earth with a heavenly glow.




CHAPTER IX.
THE GLORIFIED SAVIOUR.
LET the reader open almost any chapter in the
Evangelic narratives which describes Jesus in the
days of his fleshly humiliation. Let him follow
him, for instalce, in his journeyings on foot into
the humble lodgings of the sisters of Bethany, or
on the night of his great sorrow into the protecting shadows of Gethsemane, where drops thick
and heavy like gore oozed from his forehead and
fell upon the ground as he bent down in prayer.
Or let him follow into the judgment-hall of Pilate, and thence on the road towards Calvary,
where Christ walks beneath the heavy beam on
which he is to be nailed, till he faints and sinks
under the load.
And then let him open the first chapter of the
Apocalypse, where the Son of Man is described
as walking in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks, clothed with a garment down to the
foot, and girt about the breasts with a golden gir



224  THE EXCARNATION OF THE SON OF MAN.
die; his head and his hairs white as with a crown
of dazzling snows, his eyes as a flame of fire, his
feet like unto fine brass, as if they burned in a
furnace, his voice as the sound of many waters,
his word like a sharp-gleaming sword, his countenance like the sun shining in his strength, and
the effluent power and majesty such that the beloved disciple fell as dead beneath the unveiled
and refulgent mercy.  Having compared these
two together, he will get some adequate idea of
that change which Christ foreshadowed to his
disciples when he spoke of the coming " glorification of the Son of Man.'
And the nature and process of this change will
begin to dawn upon him if he will follow with affectionate and reverent tread in the footsteps of
his Lord.  Let him first exclude and drive far
away the idea that the glory on which Christ entered was a reward bestowed upon him for his
sacrifices and labors; so much splendor and consideration hereafter, for so much work and painful service done. He worked for no selfish end,
and no personal reward. For man's sake was
he crucified; for man's sake no less was he
glorified, and not for his own; and without the
latter and consummating event, - we have the
Apostle's word for saying it, —his death would
have been in vain.
The end of Christ's incarnation was, that he




THE GLORIFIED SAVIOUR.       225
might draw up into his own experience all the
woes and temptations of humanity. For this
purpose the Divine nature within was indued
with the corruptible body without, and subjected
to all human and mortal conditions. He was to
help, not angels only, but men; not men only,
but men who lay the lowest, or who occupied the
extremest verge of suffering and ruin. Hence
the process of his incarnation was to draw around
him all the swathings of our imperfect nature,
and make its wants his own, till not a cry could
go up from it which had not first come into his
own consciousness, and thence " swept up between
the righteous Son and Father."
But after his humiliation, yea, along with it,
and keeping chime with its results, was the inverse process of his glorification; and what that
was, the narratives make abundantly clear. It
was the growth and putting on out of the divine
life within of that divine body best adapted by
its instrumentalities and organisms to help the
weaknesses and supply the needs of our human
nature,- weaknesses and needs of which he became successively conscious in his own person.
As the work of humiliation was accomplishing,
the inverse or divine work was accomplishing
too. One waxed as the other waned, so that
when the earthly body with its relations was extinct, the other might be complete in its power




226  THE EXCARNATION OF THE SON OF MAN.
and glory.  On this dark or earth-side of his
nature, men saw the grief, the wounds, the temptation, and the agony; on the thither or the sunside of the same nature, only his own select disciples, and they only at special times, had gleams
of the coming on of the divine plenitude, till it
was completely orbed and ultimated in that immortal body whose majesty and splendor were
above the summer's noon.
We have said that one process was the inverse
of the other.  As fast as the divine substance
from the life within took form and organism, the
substances of the outward body were excluded
and dropped away. As fast as the divine life
was coming out towards its fulness, the natural
was waning towards its extinction. Before his
crucifixion took place, the divine and glorified
man had been ultimated in so much completeness of form, that the veilings of the natural
body served hardly to conceal it, and once, from
behind the coverings of sense, its glories broke
forth and gave presage that its resurrection was
nigh.
Let the reader follow his Lord step by step
through his path of humiliation, and lie will
have gleams of this double process, the natural
and the earthly waning, and the divine and the
heavenly coming forth. There is an instance of
this kind in John xii. 23-32. The whole pas



THE GLORIFIED SAVIOUR.       227
sage is so impressive, that we quote it entire.
" The hour is come that the Son of Man should
be glorified. Verily, I say unto you, Except a
corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone; but if it die, it bringeth forth much
fruit. He that loveth his life shall lose it, and
he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it
unto life eternal. If any man serve me, let him
follow me; and where I am, there shall also my
servant be. If any man serve me, him will my
Father honor. Now is my soul troubled, and
what shall I say? Father, save me from this
hour? But for this cause came I unto this hour.
Father, glorify thy name! Then came there a
voice from heaven, saying, I have both glorified it,
and will glorify it again. The people, therefore,
that stood by and heard it said that it thundered; others said, An angel spake to him. Jesus answered, This voice came not because of
me, but for your sakes. Now is the judgment of
this world; now shall the prince of this world be
cast out. And I, if I be lifted up from the earth,
will draw all men unto me." How clear is it
that Jesus is here made intensely conscious of
this inward work of glorification, the very heavens passing into his soul so rapidly that they
broke in angel-voices or muffled thunders on the
air! And how does he anticipate the hour, when,
this process being complete, the natural body en



228 THE EXCARNATION OF THE SON OF MIAN.
tirely excluded and the divine organism fullorbed and unobscured, the procession of the Holy
Spirit should go from it like sunbeams from the
orb of day, breaking with new power on the
minds of men, and bringing the world to its crisis, casting out " the prince of this world," and
laying hold of his own people with stronger
bands and drawing them up to himself with unresisted grace!
It hence becomes broadly manifest why the
Holy Spirit could not be "given" until the Son
of Man was " glorified," - given, that is, in the
sense that made it the special inheritance of the
Christian Church, and through it a new and allsubduing power to change the face of the world.
The Holy Spirit, as a new and special gift to humanity, was the procession of Divine power from
his glorified nature, and that could not be in its
fulness till the double process we have spoken of
was complete,- till the Divine plenitude from
within had ultimated itself in the body and form
which should be the medium of its forthgoings,
and until all of the earthly and the natural had
cleared away and vanished; as clouds that obscured the noontide are broken and dissipated
that they may give it full way to the earth's cold
bosom, when the spring flowers leap up and
laugh at the sun's appearing.
At the last supper, when the traitor goes out




THE GLORIFIED SAVIOUR.       229
from his presence and reminds him that his trial
hour is near, the Saviour rises into a strain of
rapture, — " Now is the Son of Man glorified,
and God is glorified in him," - being made sublimely conscious that the inward and divine process is approaching its consummation. And in
that garden agony, where the last temptation occurred, when the extrusion and rending away of
the natural, into which all the tempting fiends
came with their final assault, made the great
Redeemer bend low under a mountain-load of
anguish, we are made cognizant of the same fact,
- heaven coming in as hell was resisted and
earth was waning; coming with such influx that
the face of a strengthening angel broke visible
upon the scene.
We have referred in a preceding page to the
scene on Mount Tabor, (or rather Mount Hermon,
for there, more probably, Christ was transfigured,)
as illustrating the truth that man's inward being
is not a metaphysical abstraction, but an organism in human form, and more substantial than
its material coverings. Christ was there seen in
that body that lived immortally within the senses;
that body which the Jews could not crucify; and
the glorified prophets were seen, not as " mathematical points," but, we should naturally infer, as
beings clothed with a more imperishable corporeity. The transfiguration also illustrates the
20




230  THE EXCARNATION OF THE SON OF MAN.
subject we have in hand. It unveils the process
of the glorification of our Lord. It shows the
spiritual form of the Divine Man, as it had been
put on from its first beginnings in the cradle at
Bethlehem, till now it approached its fulness of
time, and was almost ready to drop the cumbering bands of mortality.
Hence a great portion of the language of
Christ, which were otherwise obscure, becomes
entirely transparent. He always spake as if he
had an appointed time to remain on the earth, a
fixed work to accomplish, during the progress of
which he must continue incarnate; and until
"his hour was come," the Jews had no power
over his physical life. Twice he was delivered
out of their hands in a mysterious way. But
when " he knew that his hour was come," and
that "the Father had delivered all things into
his hands," he was given up unresistingly to the
malice of his enemies.  It was not that some
blind fate had fixed the time of his death; not
that he had accomplished everything possible in
gaining converts or imparting truth to his disciples. His converts were very few, and his
disciples, at the moment of his death, understood
very little as to who and what he was. He might
have lived on half a century more under the
Divine protection, teaching the truth and gaining followers, and exhibiting to the world the




THE GLORIFIED SAVIOUR.               231
charms and graces of his character, and then he
would only have lived through the common period of human existence. But the time came at
thirty years of age when he could say, " It is
finished,"  since the work for which he came into
the world was done.  What was it?  Evidently
the very thing we have been describing. It was
his glorification. It was when the material had
served its end as the basis of the spiritual, and
within its continents that divine organism  was
completed whose processions of power were to
come in Pentecostal gales, and sweep down our
human nature till they woke from it new tongues
of utterance, and drew lyric praises from all its
strings.*
* In connection with this topic, the reader is requested to open
his mind to the import of the following passage: -" Father, the
hour is come; glorify thy Son, that thy Son also may glorify thee;
as thou hast given him power over all flesh, that he should give
eternal life to as many as thou hast given him.  And this is life
eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus
Christ, whom thou hast sent. I have glorified thee on the earth:
I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do. And now,
O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self, with the glory
which I had with thee before time was." -John xvii. 1 - 5.




CHAPTER X.
THE POST-RESURRECTION BODY.
WRITERS on the subject of the resurrection are
in the habit of speaking of the change of the
natural body into the spiritual; and one class
suppose that Christ's body was so changed by
instant miracle at his ascension. They imagine
that this represents the transmutation which bodies raised out of the graves will have at the last
day, and which the bodies of living men will then
have before being received into heaven.
We know of no particle of evidence that any
such change will be effected, and to us it is philosophically inconceivable. There is no such thing
as changing material substance into spiritual.
We know of matter only as a certain combination
of external qualities; we know of spiritual body
only as a certain other combination: one combination may cease, and the other may take its
place in orderly succession, but that would be a
destruction and a new creation.  Or one may




THE POST-RESURRECTION BODY.    233
exist within the other; spiritual body potentially
within the natural, as the living ovum within
the shell; the latter may be extruded, and the
former come forth and be clear of it. That is
not changing natural body into spiritual, but
causing it to be put off, that the other may
come forth and take its place.
Precisely this, as we conceive, was the change
in the post-resurrection body of our Lord. He
rose in the natural body, but its extrusion was
rapid, and was completed at his ascension, after
which he was seen no more by the natural eye.
So we understand the Evangelic narratives.
We will not dogmatize on the question, but remember we are treading on holy ground, and
may not presume to know all that lies within
these stupendous phenomena. It is clear to our
apprehension, however, that our Lord's subjective
glorification was consummating at the moment of
his crucifixion, and that when he exclaimed, "It
is finished," the divine was becoming full-orbed
within the natural; that the material body was
taken up from the sepulchre to be put off successively, and by virtue of the divine plenitude from
within, and that to this rapid transformation are
to be ascribed the anomalous appearances during
the forty days. Hence Mary at first did not know
him; hence the " other form " in which he walked
to Emmaus with the two unrecognizing disciples;
20 *




234  THE EXCARNATION OF THE SON OF MAN.
hence (possibly) his comparative " illocality," as
the natural waned, and was less subject to the
laws of motion; and hence, perhaps, the " cloud"
that enveloped him at his ascension, it being the
last dispersion and sublimation of all that was
earthly; and then he was no more to be seen,
except as by Stephen and St. Paul, when the
spiritual sense was opened to the transcendent
realities of another sphere.  The fact that he
passed through closed doors needs no more explanation than the opening of the tomb, the
walking upon the waves, or the opening of
Peter's prison-gates by angel hands.
We are no such masters of the Divine Psychology that we shall pretend to give all the reasons
why it was necessary that Christ should have
resumed the natural body. Perhaps it was necessary that it should serve yet further as the basis and scaffolding of the glorified man. Perhaps
it was not in accordance with essential Divine
laws, that from such a soul as his the natural
should be put off by a disorderly and violent
death. Perhaps it illustrates to us what death
must ever be to a sinless nature; what it will be
to man if ever he becomes purged of all spiritual
and moral evil. The actual death of Christ was
not on the cross, but on the ascension mount;
that putting off mortality which typifies the transition of renovated humanity from the natural




THE POST-RESURRECTION BODY.    235
degree to the spiritual; such a death as Adam
would have had if he had never sinned; not a
violent rending away of the body, but its gradual
extrusion, more slow or more rapid, according
to the degree in which the heavens are englobed
within us; the spiritual waxing, the natural
waning, till our last earthly integument breaks
away from us, softly as a summer's cloud, which
conceals from those that gaze after us the sunlit
side where the eternities shed their "unfiuctuating peace."  So, at least, the Saviour put
on immortality. We do not mean that the expiration on the cross was apparent and not real,
or that the body laid in Joseph's tomb was not
a veritable corpse. We have no doubt it was.
But it were not possible in the nature of things
that it should so remain. Not with him could
the natural so be put off, but rather in its divine
and beautiful order. Long before his crucifixion his real death began; for that was the decrease of the natural before the incoming fulness
of the Divine Man. The crucifixion did not even
interrupt the process, but it went on to its completion, till on ascension mount the last of the
earthly broke away, and the Glorified Form stood
in the unclouded effulgence of God. Thus, and
not on Calvary, was that death of the Saviour
which exemplifies the transition of redeemed and
renovated man.




236  THE EXCARNATION OF THE SON OF MAN.
For another and more obvious reason, it was
necessary that the natural body should be resumed. It was to bring down the evidence of
the resurrection to the lowest plane of human
perceptions. Christ could not break upon his
disciples unveiled from his glorified state, for as
yet their minds could not bear it. The natural
served to them as a protecting disguise, through
which the annunciation might be made; and
even then their reason swayed and trembled beneath it. Men were immersed in sense, and
therefore into the regions of sense the Divine
Mercy let down the proofs of Christ triumphant
over the grave, so that the Thomas of his own
disciples and the Thomases of every age might
not only see, but feel and handle and believe.
It is very fortunate, however, that the real
doctrine of Christ's resurrection depends on no
uncertain hypothesis respecting the natural body.
Whether the last of what is mortal was excluded
on the cross and left for ever in the sepulchre;
or whether it was excluded progressively during
the forty days following, which we believe; or
whether it was excluded instantaneously in the
act of ascension; - it is broadly evident that it
was excluded; and the way is open to us for a
right apprehension of the fundamental fact of
Christianity.




CHAPTER XI.
THE GRAND, APOSTOLIC DOCTRINE.
WE are now prepared to understand what the
Apostles mean by the resurrection of Christ, and
why they put forward the fact as one on which
the whole stress of the Gospel lies. They do
not mean by it the reanimation of the corpse in
Joseph's tomb. That were a fact of quite too
narrow significance to rear upon it the broad
superstructure of the Christian economy. If that
were all, then the revivification of the corpse of
Jairus's daughter, of the widow's son at Nain,
and of Lazarus at Bethany, belonged to precisely
the same class of phenomena. If that were all,
it would have been no such proof of a future life
as would ever have wrought a radical change in
human belief on that subject. The revivification
of Christ's crucified body may have had its place
in the grand composite doctrine; but the Apostles
often lose sight of this circumstance altogether.
They mean by the resurrection of Christ the Ex



238  THE EXCARNATION OF THE SON OF MAN.
CARNATION OF THE SON OF MAN, AND HIS CONSEQUENT EMERGENCE OUT OF NATURAL CONDITIONS TO
HIS PLACE OF POWER ON HIGH. If the reader will
attend one moment to the proofs of this proposition, his reason shall be abundantly satisfied.
1. We have no evidence that Paul ever saw
Christ in the flesh. We have presumptive evidence that shuts off any such supposition, and
renders it certain, at least, that he never saw
him during the time between his crucifixion and
ascension. He first saw him on the journey to
Damascus, when the Lord broke upon him from
amid the supersensual glories that smote him to
the earth. Yet from this fact he comes forward as
a personal witness of the Lord's resurrection; for
after enumerating the other witnesses, the eleven
Apostles and the five hundred, he says, " Last of
all he was seen of me also, as of one born out of
due time."  What he means, and what he was a
witness to, was, not the Lord's resumption of
flesh, but his putting it off, and the consequent
power with which he swept the soul even of such
a persecutor as himself.
2. The new life and fervor with which they
felt themselves endowed after the Pentecostal
scene, they ascribe to the Lord's resurrection.
It was the Comforter descending in showers of
grace, because the double process was now accomplished, - the flesh put off, and the glorified




THE GRAND APOSTOLIC DOCTRINE.   239
form left unclouded, whence came the pulsing
splendors that melted all souls beneath them.
"This Jesus," so speaks the loosened tongue of
Peter, " hath God raised up, whereof we are all
witnesses. THEREFORE, being by the right hand
of God exalted, and having received of the Father the promise of the Holy Ghost, he hath shed
forth this, which ye now see and hear." Paul's
language is to the same point: " But each one
of us received the gift of grace which he possesses
according to the measure wherein it was given
by Christ. Wherefore it is written, When he
went up on high, he led captive the captives and
gave gifts unto men. Now that word,' he went
up,' what saith it but that he first went down
into the lower parts of the earth? Yea, he who
came down is the same as he who is gone up, far
above all the heavens, that he might fill all
things." *  And to this "coming down," and
" going up," -in other words, his incarnation
and excarnation,- he goes on to ascribe all that
effluent energy by which the Church was formed
and edified, and from which "the whole body,
being knit together and compacted by all its
joints, derives its continual growth in the working
of His bounty, which supplies its needs, according
to the measure of each several part, that it may
build itself up in love."
* Acts ii. 32, 33; Eph. iv. 7 - 11.




240  THE EXCARNATION OF THE SON OF MAN.
Paul is so full of this thought, that, whenever
he touches upon the theme, his language gurgles
from his lips. The following is another of these
utterances, where the images crowd fast upon
each other to find way: " The eyes of your understanding being enlightened, that ye may know
what is the hope of his calling, and what the
riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints,
and what is the exceeding greatness of his power
to us-ward who believe, according to the working of his mighty power which he wrought in
Christ, WHEN HE RAISED HIM FROM THE DEAD, AND
SET HIM AT HIS OWN RIGHT HAND IN THE HEAVENLY
PLACES, far above all principality, and power, and
might, and dominion, and every name that is
nlamed, not only in this world, but also in that
which is to come; and hath put all things under
his feet, and gave him to be the head over all
things to the Church, which is his body, the fulness of Him that filleth all in all." *
It hence becomes clear enough why, and in
what manner, the resurrection of Christ is made
the ground of man's justification. It is because
his resurrection is none other than his excarnation, or his emergence out of all natural conditions, whence he imparts, not a putative, but
a subjective, righteousness to the believer. Faith,
says the Apostle, is reckoned to us for righteous* Eph. i. 18-23.




THE GRAND APOSTOLIC DOCTRINE.    241
ness, " if we believe on Him who raised up Jesus
our Lord from the dead; who was delivered for
our offences, AND WAS RAISED AGAIN FOR OUR JUSTIFICATION."   And there is a parallel passage
which is as full of meaning as it can hold: " Yea,
doubtless, I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my
Lord; for whom I have suffered the loss of all
things, and do count them vile, that I may win
Christ, and be found in him, not having mine
own righteousness, which is of the law, but that
which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith; that I may
know  him, and the power of his resurrection,
and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made
conformable to his death, if by any means I might
attain to the resurrection of the dead."  The
Apostle here describes the double process of outward humiliation and subjective glorification,
transferred from Christ to his followers, though,
of course, in lower and finite degree. By receiving his life, and following in his steps, the natural
man is put off, as the heavenly man is put on; so
that when death cleaves away our fleshly envelopments, the body celestial is full formed, and
emerges free and glorious, and the disciple, in
his humble measure, attains to his Master's resurrection from the dead.*
* Romans iv. 24, 25; Phil. iii. 8-11.
21




242  THE EXCARNATION OF THE SON OF MAN.
We are at a loss where to stop, as this grand
Apostolic doctrine blazes forth from almost every
page. Another passage crowds upon us, and as
we think it has fared poorly in the hands of the
commentators, both orthodox and heterodox, we
will quote it entire. " IN HIM DWELLETH ALL THE
FULNESS OF THE GODHEAD BODILY; and ye are
complete in him, which is the head of all principality and power; in whom also ye are circumcised with the circumcision made without hands,
in putting off tile body of the sins of the flesh
by the circumcision of Christ; buried with him
in baptism, wherein also ye are risen with him
through the faith of the operation of God, who
hath raised him from the dead." * The fulness
of the Godhead BODILY, is none other than the
divine organism unfolding from the life within,
and made complete in his glorification; and this
process was the " operation of God," whereby
the flesh was excluded, and the Divine Man
came forth in his plenitude to pour life and
strength through our wasted humanity, and put
off the "body of our sins."
And hence the forgiveness of sin, or the putting
away of our iniquities, is predicated on Christ's
resurrection. Whenever his death is named as
the ground of forgiveness, it is perfectly clear to
our mind that this is only done as describing the
*  Col. ii. 9-12.




THE GRAND APOSTOLIC DOCTRINE.    243
reverse side of this grand conmposite doctrine.
His death does not mean a certain amount of
penal agony at the moment of his crucifixion.
It means the whole work of his excarnation. It
means the wanling of the natural, albeit through
blood and tears, and the consquent coming on of
that " fulness of the Godhead bodily," from which
he operates the salvation of the world. One is
the earth-side and the other is the divine side of
the same fact, - each essential to the other, and
keeping chime with it; and it is all the same
thing, whether you say salvation comes by his
death or by his resurrection, since it is by that
double process which placed him in the seat of
mediatorial power.  In his exhortation to the
people of Antioch, Paul testifies, first, that God
raised Christ from the dead never to see corruption, and then proceeds: " Be it known unto you,
therefore, that through this man is preached unto
you the forgiveness of sins." And to the same
purpose he tells the Corinthians: " If Christ be
not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your
sins."  The forgiveness of iniquity, or the expunging of evil from the soul of man, was
through that suffusion of Divine grace which
came from the humanity of Christ, glorified and
made transmissive of the eternal truth and love.
In Acts iv. 31-33, we have the Pentecostal scene
repeated, when the place was shaken by the rush



244  THE EXCARNATION OF THE SON OF MAN.
ing breezes of the Holy Spirit, which is described
as evidence of "the resurrection of the Lord
Jesus." *
3. The coming of Christ to judgment is named
as a necessary concomitant of his resurrection,a coming which has no perceptible relation to the
reanimation of his natural body, but which follows his excarnation and glorification as an effect
flowing irresistibly from its cause.  Thus Paul
delivers his message to the Athenians: " God
hath appointed a day in which he will judge the
world in righteousness by that man whom he hath
ordained, whereof he hath given assurance unto
all men in that he hath raised him from the
dead "; that is, his resurrection is a pledge and
prelude of the judgment. Peter's testimony is to
the same purpose: "Him God raised up the
third day, and showed him openly."  "And he
commanded us to preach unto the people, and to
testify that it is he which was ordained of God
to be the judge of quick and dead." t
4. These passages, which might be multiplied
indefinitely, show us pretty clearly what was the
Apostolic doctrine, and they let us far into the
animus of the primitive Church, on which a
power from the risen Christ lay like the brooding glories of the noon, and before his imparted
* Acts xiii. 30-33; 1 Cor. xv. 17; Acts iv. 33.
t Acts xvii. 31; x. 40, 42.




THE GRAND APOSTOLIC DOCTRINE.   245
righteousness was given up for an imputed one,
and paled away in Athanasian and Arian wranglings. But we turn back to the words of Christ
himself, and they become doubly luminous as we
read them in the light of history. He delineates
just before his crucifixion what was to be the
centre-truth in his system of doctrines, from which
all the rest were to trick their beams. Read the
following passage in the light of our preceding
expositions.
" It is expedient for you that I go away; for
if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I depart, I will send him unto you.
And when he is come, he will reprove the world
of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment.  Of
sin, because they believe not on me. Of righteousness, because I go to my Father, and ye see
me no more. Of judgment, because the prince
of this world is judged. I have many things to
say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now.
Howbeit, when the Spirit of Truth is come, he
will guide you into all truth: for he shall not
speak of himself, but whatsoever he shall hear,
that shall he speak, and he will show you things
to come.  He shall glorify me, for he shall receive of mine, and shall show it unto you. All
things that the Father hath are mine; therefore
said I that he shall take of mine and shall show
it unto you. A little while and ye shall not see
21 *




246  THE EXCARNATION OF THE SON OF MAN.
me, and again a little while and ye shall see me,
because I go to the Father." *
We hope the reader does not need to have it
proved to him that by " going away " and " coming again" the Saviour does not mean a journey
into natural space and back; that by ascending
to the Father in order that he might descend
again from the Father, he does not intend vertical motion up and down. He means ascent
through THE DEGREES OF LIFE from the natural
plane up to the Divine, and his consequent descent again in the effluent energies of the eternal
love. He means his excarnation, or the decrease
and disappearance of the natural, so that "for
a little while they should not see him." And,
as the result of this, his glorification, or such a
union with God that his exalted humanity should
so embody the Divine life, and image down the
Divine splendors, that he should stand in the
midst of the seven golden candlesticks, as the
source whence their lights should be ever burning; and thus after a little while they should
see him, because he went to the Father. In this
wise, all things that the Father hath are his, and
he shows them unto men. Such was the primitive and all-renewing doctrine of the Mediator,
and such its close and organic relation to the
doctrine of our Lord's resurrection.
* John xvi. 7 -16.




THE GRAND APOSTOLIC DOCTRINE.   247
5. There was only one article of faith among
the first converts to Christianity. " Believing on
the Lord Jesus Christ" constituted their whole
creed. But when they descend to the particulars
which compose this comprehensive theology, and
state what they consider its vitalizing element,
we generally find it to be the Lord's resurrection.
That one truth being admitted, all others followed in their place and order: " If thou shalt
confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and believe in thine heart that God raised him from
the dead, thou shalt be saved." *  Obviously
enough, the reanimation of the Lord's natural
body is not even thought of here; and, as a
mere historical fact, could have no such saving
potency. Believing in the heart that God raised
Christ from the dead, was to have the heart melted down under the baptizing fires which fell
from the exalted Saviour, and which were the
necessary consequence of his excarnation and
emergence to the place of mediatorial power.
Believing in the heart the Lord's resurrection,
was being made conscious of that august truth,
when the Holy Ghost fell on them at the name
of Jesus.
* Romans x. 9.




CHAPTER XII.
CONCLUSIONS.
WE will now proceed to sum up the results
which we become fairly possessed of from the
preceding investigation. They have a direct and
auspicious bearing on thle great subject which we
have in hand.
i. Immortality under the new dispensation is
not merely announced, but " brought to light."
It is not merely taught, but exhibited to the eye.
We have sometimes been told that the resurrection of Christ, understood merely as the resumption of his crucified body, proves a future life,
and that this was its principal object. "We have
a right to infer" (this is the argument) " that
a man may live again after death, since God may
interpose and raise him up. He did so in the
case of Christ, which shows that he may do so in
the case of all his followers, though not on the
third day, yet at the end of time, since with him
one day is as a thousand years." But how much




CONCLUSIUNS.             249
deeper and broader is the significance of this great
fact! Immortality is not made presumptive, as
a conclusion hanging on the last link of a syllogism, but its giant glories are disclosed. These
men stood up and looked upon them, not undazzled by the disclosure. Their inner sight
was touched and opened, and they saw the risen
Christ, not on the natural side only, but the spiritual side also, and they walked in hallowed light
and breathed in hallowed air. True, the same
thing had been vouchsafed at times from the beginning of the world, and under all dispensations.
But never, till the excarnation of Christ had prepared the way, was a supersensual world revealed
in such clear shining to the inward perceptions
of men. He was more present with his infant
Church after his death and ascension than before,
and they were "witnesses," not merely of the
resuscitation of a dead body, but of eternal things
unveiled. And the vision closed, and the glories
waned, because too much for mortals, in their
normal condition, to bear; and they turned from
them only as Herschel tells us he took his eye
from the telescope, when Sirius came on like the
dawn of the morning, and he was obliged to turn
away from the beautiful sight.
2. The bat-like fallacies of our godless metaphysics vanish before the unfolding of our present theme. Everything above the plane of ma



250  THE EXCARNATIQN OF THE SON OF MAN.
terial existence, we have been taught to believe,
is phantasmic and shadowy, and man at death
ceases to be man and becomes a " monad," or at
best only a ghost. How was it with the great
Exemplar of immortalized human nature?  He
took his three favorite disciples behind the walls
of sense, and caught them up a moment within
the sphere where he lived with the prophets of
old; and they said, Let us pitch our tents and
dwell here. Was that shadowy? After the natural body had been excluded, he broke upon Saul
in a light out of the heavenly state, and smote
him blind to the earth beneath the blaze. Was
that shadowy?  The prophet of Patmos, by introversion among the eternal verities, crossed the
line which separates the objective scenery of matter and spirit, and saw " Iim that was dead and
is alive again," and fell as beneath the stroke of
sunbeams. Was that shadowy? All the revealings of Christ's resurrection, before and after,
show that the inward man is the real one, while
the outward is the symbol; that is the substance,
while this is the shadow.
3. The analogy between the resurrection of
Christ and that of his people is exact and complete.  With him there was no " intermediate
state" of disembodied and ghostly existence, but
a continuous putting off the natural body and
putting on the Divine, and each was coincident




CONCLUSIONS.             251
with the other. This, and not the reanimation
of the corpse in the tomb, was the resurrection
of the Lord Jesus, which is made the great fact
of the Gospel; corresponding precisely with that
excarnation of man which abolishes his relations
to material things, and makes him eternally the
denizen of a spiritual world. Buried in the likeness of his death, we rise in the likeness of his
emergence out of it, and breathe our farewells
over the grave. Death is not the mere expiration of the last breath, but the waning and final
extinction of the natural functions; sometimes
sudden and violent, but always progressive if
orderly; and resurrection is the ascension out of
them of the substantial and immortal man. So
it was with the Divine Exemplar, and his is the
splendid type of what all resurrection is.
4. The analogy between the sufferings of Christ
and those of his followers is inexpressibly animating to the true believer. His glorification is
the image and representation of the regeneration
of the disciple. In the disciple, too, there is the
same double process, - the putting off the natural and the putting on the spiritual.  On the
earth-side there is the agony and the trial through
many a vale of humiliation; on the other side,
the angel-form unfolding from within, and preparing.to take the place of the natural; so that
by the time the material organism has reached its




252   THE EXCARNATION OF THE SON OF MAN.
period, the body celestial emerges into its own
clime beyond the concealing clouds of this lower
world.   Not a self-denial nor a pang is rightly
endured which is not wrought into our life plan,
so as to help on the decease of the natural and
the corresponding resurrection of the spiritual in
the image of the risen Lord.*
* "Ye faithful souls who Jesus know,
If risen indeed with him ye are,
Superior to the joys below,
His Resurrection's power declare.
"Your faith by holy tempers prove;
By actions show your sins forgiven;
And seek the glorious things above,
And follow Christ, your Head, to heaven.
"To him continually aspire,
Contending for your native place,
And emulate the angel-choir,
And only live to love and praise.
"Your real life with Christ concealed,
Deep in the Father's bosom lies;
And glorious as your Head repealed,
Ye soon shall meet him in the skies."
WATTS.




PART III.
THE PNEUMATOLOGY OF ST. PAUL.
22




" Great and learned men affirm angels to consist of a double
substance; that is, of a spirit incorporeal, whereby they never
cease from the contemplation of God, and a body whereby they
are sometimes visible to men." -JOHN OF THESSALONICA.
" Our soul, which in its own nature is incorporeal and invisible,
in whatever corporeal place it existeth, doth always stand in need
of a body, suitable to the nature of that place respectively: which
body it sometimes beareth, having put off that which before was
necessary, but is now superfluous for the following state; and
sometimes, again, putting on something to what before it had,
now standing in need of some better clothing, to fit it for those
more pure, ethereal, and heavenly places." — ORIGEN.




CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTORY.
THE New Testament comprehends three classes
of writings, each clearly distinguishable from
both the others. We have first the Evangelic
narratives, in which the life of Christ on earth is
embodied, from the manger in Bethlehem to Ascension Mount. In these is exhibited the Divine
Word, incarnate, living, speaking, shining in the
midst of earthly darkness, and again becoming
excarnate, and ascending to a reunion with God.
This was heaven opening down to man, its truths
descending and touching the earth. Then, secondly, we have the first development of these truths
~ into history, their first influence on men's minds,
and their first practical workings in the formation
of new communions called churches. We have
this in the description of the first preaching of
the Apostles, and in their letters to the churches which sprang up under their ministrations.
These letters and history contain no addition to




256   THE PNEUMATOLOGY OF ST. PAUL.
the truths originally revealed, but they are the
first practical commentary upon them, and important to their full comprehension. Thirdly, we
have the strictly prophetic portion, which describes prospectively the consummation of Christianity in its final results upon humanity, for
such we regard the Apocalypse. The revelation,
the commentary, and the prophetic view of the
ultimate issues.
It is our purpose now to examine the second
of this class of writings, so far forth as they bear
upon our subject. Though they contain not the
original revelation, they show how its first preachers understood it, and how its first converts received it. They may not have received it at once
in all its fulness and symmetry. It would be very
strange if they had done so. It would be very
strange if a system of infinite truth, which is to
unfold through the ages, yea, through the eternities, should have obtained a complete lodgment
at once in the minds of its first disciples. Our
object will be to reproduce the revelation precisely as it lay in the minds of these Apostolic men
and their earliest converts. We shall endeavor
to avoid the error of trying to accommodate their
opinions to modern doctrines, or to what we
think the truth ought to be, - a method of interpretation which has twisted St. Paul's language




INTRODUCTORY.            257
and philosophy into all grotesque and fantastic
shapes.
We have an account of the life of St. Paul as
given us by Luke and by himself, and we have
thirteen letters written by him, either to the
churches or to individuals. These writings have
fared poorly in the hands of the sects, and they
are so jumbled together in our English version,
without reference to dates and incidents, that it
is hardly possible in this form to get at the system of doctrine which they contain. But in the
late work of Conybeare and Howson, we have all
that can be desired in a commentary upon St.
Paul. Over the gulf of eighteen hundred years
he is brought near to us amid all his surroundings, not as a dry dialectician, but as a great man,
greatly and supernaturally endowed, whose deeds
and words did more to change the aspect of the
world, than those of any other man since the ascension of the Lord Jesus. His writings contain
a system  of Pneumatology, whose outlines we
think cannot be mistaken. This.bears with special significance upon our main topic, and we
shall aim, therefore, to bring forth the outlines in
as bright relief as possible.
22 *




CHAPTER II.
THE DOCTRINE OF THE PRIMITIVE CHURCH.
THE words heaven and hell, as they are used
in popular speech, describe the complete ultimations of good and evil. The essential idea of
heaven, as it falls into the common mind, is a condition of sinless purity and peace. No evil can be
admitted there. Its last remnant must have been
purged away from us before we can enter the
blest abodes, else we should bring in a disturbing
element among its harmonies.
"There from the past no gloom is shed
Upon the present hour."
Hell, on the other hand, is the abode of evil,
and only evil. Nothing good can enter there.
It is the state of souls in which all good has been
perverted or destroyed. This we suppose to be the
generally received doctrine of heaven and hell, -
opposite states of unmingled good or unmingled
evil, and not like the present state, in which good
and evil are inwoven together.




THE DOCTRINE OF THE PRIMITIVE CHURCH. 259
We have no fault to find with this view, though
perhaps we might state our conception in a somewhat different form. There are degrees of goodness, natural, spiritual, and Divine. There are
degrees of evil, from the mildest to the most malignant; but the popular philosophy, which makes
good and evil essential opposites, and heaven and
hell the state of each in their entire separation
and antagonism, we have no disposition to controvert, for we think it so far mainly true.
Closely connected with this same view of heaven and hell, we find a prevailing opinion that
every individual at death goes immediately to
the one or the other.  You have no standingplace between the two, after you lose vour foothold upon the earth. You rise immediately to
the heavenly peaks of light, or else you sink into
the pit of despair.  This we suppose to be the
prevailing belief of Protestant communities, and
it furnishes the ground of popular appeal from
Protestant pulpits.
It would seem to follow, if people were accustomed to put two ideas together, that every one
while on the earth must become entirely good or
entirely bad. Death is not a moral change, but a
physical one. It is also momentary. If, therefore, just beyond that point, all persons are fit
only for an abode of perfect purity or of unmingled evil, they must be found, when just on the




260    THE PNEUMATOLOGY OF ST. PAUL.
hither side, saints entirely regenerated, or else
consummate fiends.   But people holding the
faith above described, especially on their deathbeds, are most sincere in disclaiming entire regeneration. They confess the remnants of evil
that are in them, and expect only to be saved by
an imputed righteousness, while their souls are
yet foul with sin. But will you not take your
souls along with you into heaven, and if so, will
there not be a great deal of foulness there, the
imputed righteousness notwithstanding?
In theological matters, however, people generally practise very little constructiveness; and if
they put two ideas together, they do not mind
whether they make a joint or not, so as to give
theology a chance to rise and walk. They seem
to imagine that God takes care of the poor cripple by successive miracles, with such crutches as
the school Doctors are able to supply, and that a
symmetrical form, which is the natural development of part from part, is not to be expected;
and so the opinions we have sketched above, incongruous as they are, prevail extensively in
Protestant communities to the present day.
If the reader has not been accustomed to look
much into ecclesiastical history, he may be surprised when we say, that this doctrine of instantaneous salvation or damnation at death is entirely modern; that it is one of the extremes of




THE DOCTRINE OF THE PRIMITIVE CHURCH. 261
Protestantism; that it is the offspring of the Lutheran Reformation; that it was invented as an
accompaniment of Luther's doctrine of justification by faith alone; that it is utterly repudiated by
nine tenths of the Christian Church now, and that
it was never heard of in those primitive churches
which were founded by the Apostles themselves.
The history of opinions on this subject is full of
interest and instruction, and we will give it in as
clear and succinct a summary as we can.
Let the reader, then, go back with us to the
Apostolic churches, at the point of time when
they first emerge fully into the light of history.
The Apostolic labors closed with the first century.
By the year 100 all the Apostles had done their
work and gone to their rest, with the exception,
perhaps, of John, who may have lived a little
while after that date. Then follows a period of
about seventy years, of which we have no very
certain memorials. The writings of the Apostolic
Fathers, so called, which have come down to us
as belonging to this period, are some of them of
doubtful genuineness, and none of them of much
value as bearing on the history of opinions.
Passing over this period, therefore, to the last
quarter of the second century, we come to the
writings of the Christian Fathers, commencing
with Justin and Irenmus, and extending downward, and reflecting with more or less fulness




262     THE PNEUMATOLOGY OF ST. PAUL.
the opinions of their times.   What were those
opinions, say from the year 175 onward, touching the state of man  after death?, On many
points of faith their doctrines were in conflict,
and sharp controversies belong to the history of
this period. On one subject, however, they. are
all agreed; namely, that there are three conditions after death, heaven and hell, and a state
mediate between them  called Hades.  In all controversies the disputants stand alike on this, as a
common substratum  of belief, which had never
been disturbed or called in question. Into this
mediate state all men passed alike at death, and
there awaited the issues of the final judgment.
There all the patriarchs and prophets were.
Thither all the nations, Jewish and heathen, had
alike gone.  They were not all in the same condition in respect to happiness or suffering, but
they awaited there the ultimate bliss or the ultimate woe.*
* "The Belief of the First Three Centuries concerning Christ's
Mission to the Underworld, by Frederick Huidekoper," is the title of a small volume designed by the author as an argument for
the genuineness of the Gospel narratives, but which we regard as
an exceedingly valuable contribution to ecclesiastical history. The
writer makes the following statement, fortified by copious quotations from the Fathers: "It can scarcely be that at the opening
of the second century, or the close of the first, the doctrine of
Christ's Underworld Mission, so far, at least, as regards the
preaching to, and liberation of, the departed, was not a widely
spread and deeply seated opinion among Christians.  The evi



THE DOCTRINE OF THE PRIMITIVE CHURCH. 263
Hence the teachings of these early Fathers respecting the work of redemption were in close
congruity with their opinions respecting the mediate place of souls. Christ came down to the
earth, and the Word became incarnate, not only
for the sake of the generations that were to come,
but for the sake of the generations gone.  He
went into Hades, and there broke up the reign of
moral evil, and opened the way for men to ascend
out of it into heaven. They describe it as a fierce
conflict with Satan, Christ despoiling him of his
power over God's people in Hades, and hence of
his power over the minds of men on the earth.
Whether they really regarded this conflict as
strictly personal, —whether their language, and
especially Origen's, was meant to be taken as
baldly literal, — we very much doubt. But such
is their conception, and such the language in
which they clothe it.*
It hence became one of the controversies of the
dence of its general reception is far stronger than if it were a
mere doctrine of the creed; for articles of the creed have in nearly every instance been opinions which were NOT generally received,
and to which the stronger party, therefore, gave a place in their
confessions of faith as a means of defining their position. On the
essential features of the present doctrine, the catholics and heretics were of one mind. It was a point too settled to admit dispute." -p. 138.
* Neander, Church History, pp. 640 - 642, Torrey's translation.
Huidekoper, pp. 69- 81.




264    THE PNEUMATOLOGY OF ST. PAUL.
early Church, whether just men, who had gone
into Hades from the Gentile world, might not be
saved. "What! " exclaims Clement of Alexandria, "do not the Scriptures manifest that the
Lord preached the Gospel to those who perished
in the deluge; or rather to such as had been
bound, and to those in prison and custody? It
has been shown by me that the Apostles, in imitation of the Lord, preached the Gospel to those
in Hades. For there also, as here, I think it behooved the best of the disciples to be imitators of
their teacher, that the one should lead to conversion of the Hebrews, and the others the Gentiles;
that is, such of both as had lived according to
the justice of the law or of philosophy, not perfectly, indeed, but imperfectly." Clement is followed by Origen and by some others in his liberal and merciful doctrine, though their opponents
contended stoutly, yet not very consistently,
that not Gentiles, but only Jews and Christians, could be raised up out of Hades into
heaven. The liberal party very naturally asked
the question, If Christ is offered to the inhabitants of Hades, why may not the just men
among the Gentiles receive him there, as well
as here?
The Roman Catholic Church inherited from
the primitive Church this doctrine of a mediate
state of the dead, as the gathering-place of souls.




THE DOCTRINE OF THE PRIMITIVE CHURCH. 265
Out of it she shaped the doctrine of Purgatory,
which turns Hades into a place of penal fires for
such offences as may be venial, and places the
key of it in the hands of the priesthood. She
knew too well with what potency to wield this
doctrine, and how to turn it into a source of revenue. Hence her prayers for the dead, and hence
the millions that have flowed into her coffers for
her intercessory offices for the souls in purgatory.
This was one of the abuses which the Reformers
vehemently assailed.  They very naturally assaulted the doctrine which they regarded as the
ground and support of these corruptions, and
rejected the whole notion of purgatory as a tradition of Rome. - They did not fall back upon
the primitive belief, but tore down the whole
structure, corruptions and all, and between the
vast extremes of heaven and hell they left no
foothold or resting-place, but an eternal void;
so that the soul, as soon as she leaves the earth,
must take her flight to the one or drop incontinently into the other. On the brittle thread of
life she hangs poised between the two, and her
eye measures the terrific and empty gulf between. Let the thread snap, and we tread on
nothing, and there is a flight upward fearfully
steep and difficult, or an awful plunge downward
with nothing to break the fall. As the "New
England Primer" taught us, —
23




266     THE PNEUMATOLOGY OF ST. PAUL.
"There is a dreadful, fiery hell,
Where wicked ones must always dwell;
There is a heaven full of joy,
Where godly ones must always stay;
To one of these my soul must fly,
As in a moment, when I die."
hence the sects which inherit these opinions, and
occupy the extreme of Protestantism, find some
pretty hard problems to be solved.  What shall
be done with the virtuous heathen?  What with
infants and young children?   What with the
multitudes of Christian professors, never half
regenerated, and perhaps not half converted?
They generally assign the heathen nations in one
body to perdition, albeit those nations include
multitudes who have lived up to their light more
nearly, perhaps, than the Christian churches have
ever done. Infants have sometimes been assigned
to one place, and sometimes to the other. But
children that have somewhat developed, and in
whom, therefore, evil has begun to appear, for it
does universally, — where is their place when they
die?  A fearful question, as you will read in the
faces of distressed parents, when they weep over
the small coffins, or as you will perceive in the
cautious wording of the funeral prayer, which
fears to compromise an essential doctrine, - a
question to which our eviscerated Protestantism
is incapable of returning a consistent answer.
Nearly half the race die between the ages of




THE DOCTRINE OF THE PRIMITIVE CHURCH. 267
three and fourteen.  They have never understood the nature and conditions of salvation, or
attained to full moral responsibility; and if they
sink immediately to eternal perdition, what will
you say of the Divine justice? If, on the other
hand, they ascend to heaven, " as in a moment
when they die," alas for the influx of selfishness
and stubbornness which heaven must be always
receiving!  We take it that, in the masses of
children, moral evil has become considerably rampant at seven years of age, while the work of regeneration has not even begun.
It is only our ultra Protestantism that involves
itself in these difficulties and absurdities. The
English Episcopal Church rejected the medieval
doctrine of a purgatory, but she did not throw
away the idea of a mediate place of souls. Her
liturgy still recites the old clause, Christ descended into Hades, and she still holds it in her creed
as the state of the dead, thus bridging the gulf
between earth and heaven, or between earth and
hell. The Greek Church also retains it, and the
doctrine of immediate salvation or damnation at
death by an "ictus Dei," is not likely to have
any place in the creed of the Christian world, except among those smaller sects whose fierce resilience from Catholicism isolates them from  the
common reason, and from ideas which have had
their development through all the Clhristian ages.




268    THE PNEUMATOLOGY OF ST. PAUL.
Thus, then, the matter stands historically. In
the last quarter of the second century, when the
Christian churches emerge clearly into the light,
we find them universally in possession of the idea
of a mediate place of souls, - one which was neither heaven nor hell, but preliminary to either.
It was not an idea broached by heretics here and
there. It was the belief of the Church Universal,
which nobody called in question. Out of this belief the papacy shaped its purgatory, and practised on human credulity and fear. In Dante's
Divina Comcedia it expands into terrible sublimity, as the terraced hill that leads up from
the concentric circles of hell towards the starry
spheres. Protestantism made its assault on the
purgatory of Rome, and in tearing it away tore
away the primitive doctrine along with it, leaving to itself only two conditions after death, and
looking into the immense vacuum between with
blank amaze; necessitating the hideous logic that
damns childhood and all heathendom, and which
would damn all Christendom too, were it not
that some may be saved by Christ's supererogatory and accredited righteousness.
How came the early churches by the doctrine
of a mediate place of souls? How happens it,
that, when we first get a clear historic view of
them, separated only seventy years from the Apostles themselves, this belief among them was unl



THE DOCTRINE OF THE PRIMITIVE CHURCH. 269
questioned and universal? From whom did they
inherit it?  We have no faith in church authority, nor do we think it necessary to adopt an
opinion because the Christian Fathers believed
it. But how came they to believe it, and that
unanimously? It will be seen that this question
is one of exceeding interest and importance.
23 *f




CHAPTER III.
THE HEBREW DOCTRINE OF HADES.
BEFORE we come to this question, however, we
ask the company of the reader while we go back
yet farther, and, stepping across the Apostolic age,
inquire what was the ante-Christian doctrine respecting the condition of the dead? What was
the state of opinion among t.he Jews at the advent of Christ? Christianity came out from the
bosom of Judaism, somewhat as Spring breaks
forth from  the bosom  of Winter, making the
germs that had slept in death burst out in refulgent green. For Judaism furnished to Christianity the moulds of its thought, and the imagery
under which its distinctive truths were bodied
forth.
The Hebrews in the earlier stages of their history had no very definite ideas respecting the
state of the dead. They believed in human immortality, and that Hades was the common receptacle of all departed souls. But of man's con



THE HEBREW DOCTRINE OF HADES.   271
dition in Hades they conceived nothing more
than that it was one of comparative weakness and
shadowy repose. It was the region of the phantom nations, into which all passed alike at death.
Kilngs reigned there, but on dusky and unsubstantial thrones. The language which the prophet
puts into the mouth of Israel in exultation over
the fall of Babylon, her former oppressor, describes probably the state of belief among the
Hebrews at that time. " Hades from beneath is
moved for thee to meet thee at thy coming: it
stirreth up the dead for thee, even all the chief
ones of tile earth; it hath raised up from their
thrones all the kings of the nations. All they
shall speak and say unto thee, Art thou also become weak as we? art thou become like unto
us? " Heaven was the abode of God and of his
angels above the sky. The more modern and
Christian idea, that it was ever to be the place of
human souls, seems not at this time to have been
entertained by the Hebrew. Heaven above, as
the abode of superhuman intelligences, and Hades the shadowy realm beneath into which all
the dead had departed, seems to comprise the
whole of the early Hebrew pneumatology.
In process of time, however, and under the
teachings of the later Rabbins, the idea of Hades
became developed into something far more distinct and tangible. They divided it into separate




272   THE PNEUMATOLOGY OF ST. PAUL.
regions or compartments.  We distinguish at
least three. The upper region was a place of
comparative rest and happiness, where the good
of all ages were gathered together. There were
the patriarchs and prophets, and all the people of
God. This region the Pharisees called the Lower
Paradise, and there the descendants of Abraham
dwelt till the final judgment. Lower down than
this were the wicked, and probably all the heathen
nations, in comparative discomfort and darkness,
though not suffering the final punishment. Lower down still was the region of Gehenna, with its
baleful fires, not yet occupied, but ready to receive the wicked after the final judgment. This
region of Hades, and this alone, was a place of
punishment answering to the modern idea- of
hell.
The Pharisee believed that all the dead would
be raised out of Hades at the final judgment, that
there would be " a resurrection both of the just and
of the unjust." *  And the reader will here distinguish carefully between two things, - between
the resurrection and the re-incarnation of the
dead. Though the Pharisee believed that all the
dead would be raised out of Hades to judgment,
only a part of them would be re-incarnated, or
enter again into their former bodies. These were
the people of God, or the descendants of Abra* Acts xxiv. 15.




THE HEBREW DOCTRINE OF HADES.   273
ham. Their souls would be raised out of the
Paradise below, be clothed again with flesh, and
after that occupy an upper or terrestrial Paradise,
where they would ever live with the Messiah and
nevermore go back into Hades. Not so of the
wicked. They would be raised up to judgment,
but not be re-incarnated. They would be sent
back into Hades, not into their former region,
but into Gehenna, the lowest of all, where they
would suffer eternal punishment. So that, after
the final judgment, Hades will have been emptied
of all its people, the righteous to live in their
former bodies in a terrestrial Paradise, the unrighteous to go back into the lowest region of
HIades, called Gehenna or hell.
There was still another sect among the Jews,
who believed in human immortality, and who
seem to have been a much better people than the
Pharisees. These were the Essenes; men of sillgular purity in life and manners. Their belief
differed from that of the' Pharisees, at least on
one essential point. They believed all souls were
immortal, and passed on to judgment; but they
rejected totally and heartily the dogma respecting re-incarnation.  On this point Josephus is
clear and positive, but he is not so explicit as to
the other doctrines of their faith. We infer,
however, from his too general statement, that
they believed in Hades as a mediate region of




274    THE PNEUMIATOLOGY OF ST. PAUL.
souls, and in a universal resurrection of the dead
out of it, both good and bad; none of them, however, to enter into their former bodies, but the
good to rise into heaven above all corruption,
and the bad to sink back again, and be adjudged
to Gehenna, the lowest region of Hades. They
were strong anti-materialists, and rejected the
notion of a reunion of the soul with flesh, with
peculiar aversion.
We gather up the following principles, therefore, as constituting the Jewish pneumatology at
the time of Christ's appearing.
1. The vague and dreamy notions of the early Hebrews had become developed into forms
of doctrine exceedingly distinct and tangible.
Among those who believed in a future life,
however, there was a diversity of opinion, the
Pharisees sinking into materialism, the Essenes
Tising clear above it.
2. The Pharisee discriminated the old general
idea of Hades, shaping it into a threefold region;
one place for the children of Abraham, one for
heathen and wicked men, and one lower down
still, which, however, was uninhabited, and was
to continue so until after the final judgment.
3. Then- at the judgment- all mankind
would arise from Hades; the children of Abraham to receive their former bodies, and live with




THE HEBREW DOCTRINE OF HADES.    275
the Messiah in a Paradise on the earth; all other
peoples, without being re-incarnated, to sink into
Gehenna, which now for the first time becomes
the receptacle of souls and the place of endless
retribution.
4. The Essenes rejected totally the dogma of
the Rabbins about re-incarnation, and believed
that good souls rise of their own tendency to a
region of purity and bliss when freed from matter,
and that wicked souls, because of their corruption,
gravitate downward, and sink into Gehenna.*
We are now illn full possession of the prevailing ideas respecting the state of the dead, among
Jews just before the Apostolic age, and among
Christians just after. It will be perceived that
the points of resemblance are many and striking;
that the same terms are used, and that the same
philosophy of the future life underlies the belief
both of the later Jew and the early Christian,
though the work of Christ as a Redeemer, and
as opening the way for man's ascent out of the
mediate state of the dead, comes in and forms
an essential part in the scheme of early Christian doctrine.
* Josephus, Antiquities, Book XVIII. Chap. I. 3; Wars of the
Jews, Book II. Chap. VIII.  1, 14; Robinson's Calmet, under the
word Hell; Greek and English Lexicon, under "Atlsq; Campbell,
Dissertation VI. Part. II.,'ALaqS and rI'vva.




CHAPTER IV.
THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE.
THE important question now occurs, What
do the Sacred Scriptures teach on this subject of
a mediate state? Is it a doctrine of revelation,
or is it not?  We premise, that THE BIBLE DISTINCTLY RECOGNIZES A THREEFOLD CONDITION OF
THE DEAD, HEAVEN AND HELL, AND A STATE MEDIATE BETWEEN THE TWO. We will draw out the
evidence, and we trust the fact will be broadly
manifest.
1. The New Testament employs the same terms
that were in use. among the Jews, Heaven and
Hell and Hades. We do not mean to say that the
writers use these words in precisely the same
sense that the Jews did, for they came to have a
fulness of meaning under the Gospel which the
Jew as such could not fathom or receive. Of
this afterwards. What -we say is, that they use
the same words, with the same range of meaning,
and with the same analogous discriminations.




THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE.      277
The. word "hell" occurs twenty times in our
English version of the New Testament, and with
one exception it is rendered indiscriminately from
the two words Gehenna and Hades. And yet,
as Dr. Campbell has shown conclusively in his
admirable and luminous essay, those two words
have not the same meaning, and only the former
answers to the modern and Christian idea of hell.
The word Hades, occurring ten times in the New
Testament, never answers to that idea, and never
ought to have been so rendered. In almost all
the versions of the Scriptures except ours, the
distinction between these two words is carefully
preserved. Why it was not so preserved in ours,
is obvious enough. Luther, in his German trainslation, uniformly confounded them, because he
would recognize none but the extreme Protestant
doctrine of only two states after death. Hades,
therefore, which describes the third or mediate
state, he has confounded with Gehenna, and the
English translators have followed in his track.
That "iHades" never means hell in the modern
sense, but the state of the dead without reference
to their ultimate bliss or ultimate woe, will be
abundantly evident from the connection wherever
the word occurs.
We proceed to cite a few instances, where the
context clearly establishes the fact that it describes the mediate place of souls.
24




278    THE PNEUMIATOLOGY OF ST. PAUL.
Acts ii. 27: " Thou wilt not leave my soul in
Hades, neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to
see corruption." These words are quoted from
Psalm  xvi. 10, where they have apparent, primary reference to David. Peter argues that they
have reference to Christ, and not to David; and
he does tlhis from the fact that David was buried
and his flesh saw corruption, whereas Christ rose
in the flesh on the third day and saw no corruption. In both instances - in the primary reference to David and in the secondary reference to
Christ -there is no mistaking the import of the
word " Hades." It means the receptacle of souls,
whether good or bad, immediately after their exit
from the body. To suppose that David descended at death into the place of punishment among
the damned, to the Hebrew mind would be little
less than blasphemy; to suppose that Christ did,
would to the Christian mind be something worse.
Revelation xx. 13, 14. In this passage we have
a distinct recognition of the doctrine that Hades
is a state of the dead, differing from that of hell,
and, on the, part of the internally corrupt and
profane, preliminary to it; that, in the final judgment, Hades will deliver up all that are in it in
order that their most interior quality may be discerned; that this being adjudged corrupt, they
will be cast into Geh]enna or the lake of fire, after
which Hades will be abolished or merged in Ge



'THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE,      279
henna; there being no need of any mediate or
preliminary condition after all who were in it
have passed on to their state of consummation.
" And death and Hades delivered up the dead
which were in them, and they were judged every
man according to his works. And death and
Hades were cast into the lake of fire. This is
the second death." Our translators, by rendering
Hades in this passage by tile word " hell," make
the inspired writer assert the gross absurdity that
hell will be cast into itself.
1 Corinthians xv. 55: "0 death, where is
thy sting? O grave (Hades), where is thy victory? "  This is the only instance where the
translators of our version have departed from
their rule. They here render Hades, not "hell,"
but "'grave." The reason is obvious. If they
rendered, " O hell, where is thy victory? " they
saw at once they were driving into blank universalism. It is plain enough that the word here
does not mean " hell," and it is just as plain that
it does not mean " grave."  Neither in Scripture
nor in classic usage does the word ever denote
the mere place of sepulture for dead bodies.
Luke xvi. 19- 1. The parable of the rich
man and Lazarus. Verse 23: " And in hell
(Hades) he lifted up his eyes, being in torments."  It may not be so clear, at first sight,
that the word in this connection means the medi



280    THE PNEUMATOLOGY OF ST. PAUL.
ate state of souls.  And yet, on a full investigation, the fact is abundantly evident. Hades is
here discriminated according to the conceptions
of the later Jews; the children of God enjoying
the blissful society of each other, the children of
evil suffering a grievous though partial retribution. They are not sundered by the vast distance between heaven and hell, but they are in
regions so nearly conterminous that they hold
converse together. It is clear that a condition is
here described preliminary to the divisions of
the final judgment.
Still more conclusive ill fixing the meaning of
the word "Hades " is the almost uniform usage
of the Greek Seventy in their translation of the
Hebrew Scriptures. We have already seen that.
the Hebrew, from the earliest times, had some
indeterminate idea of the future life. The general state of the dead is denoted in the Old Testament by the Hebrew  word "Sheol."   Our
translators have sometimes rendered it "hell,"
sometimes " grave";;but, as those words are currently understood, it means neither one nor the
other, as every scholar knows perfectly well. It
means the general receptacle of departed souls,
without reference to the discriminations of character, or the final separation into antagonistic
conditions.  It is the scene proximate to this




THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE.      281
earth-scene, which the good and the bad enter
alike by the gateway of death. It answers neither to our idea of heaven nor our idea of hell,
but simply describes the gathering-place into
which all the generations have gone. Such is
the "Sheol" of the Old Testament, and the
Greek Seventy almost always render it by the
word " Hades." It never means Gehenna or hell
in the modern sense. See the shocking absurdity of rendering the words of the sorrowing old
patriarch: " I will go down to hell (Sheol), to my
son, mourning."  So that at the time of Christ
the Jewish mind, at least with so many as used
the Septuagint version, - and these were the
majority, including the Apostles, - must have
become perfectly familiarized with the meaning
of " Hades," not as a place of final retribution,
but the receptacle of all departed souls.
2. We pass now to a second class of passages,
— those which by direct or remote allusion represent Christ as entering Hades on some important mission.  We will not now enlarge upon
this topic; we only wish to hold the reader's
mind steadily to the point that it was a topic familiar to the thought of the Apostles, and that it
necessitates the doctrine of a mediate condition
of the dead.
When they speak of the resurrection of Christ,
24*




282    THE PNEUMATOLOGY OF ST. PAUL.
they often include as an important element in
their doctrine the emergence of the soul of Christ
out of Hades into heaven. Unlike other and inferior souls, who are compelled to remain a long
time in that middle state, he came out of it the
third day through his own Divine strength, and
went up on high, thus making an open and available path to all his followers. Acts ii. 31 - 33:
"He (David) spake of the resurrection of Christ,
that his soul was not left in Hades, neither his
fleshl did see corruption. This Jesus hath God
raised up, whereof we all are witnesses. Therefore, being by the right hand of God exalted," &c.
We understand Paul to speak to the same purpose in Ephesians iv. 7-11: "But unto every
one of us is given grace according to the measure of the bounty of Christ. Wherefore the
Scripture says (Psalm lxviii. 8), When he went
up on high, he led captive the captives, and
gave gifts unto men.   Now  that word,'he
went up,' what does it imply but that he first
went down into the lower parts of the earth?
He that went down is the same as he that went
up, far above all heavens, that he might fill
all things."  "The lower parts of the earth,"
(es    - c KarCorepa pIeprI'qp 7Ar) is a periphrase for
Hades.*
* We are aware that the commentators try to make something
else of this pasage by sacrificing the literal sense.




THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE.           283
1 Peter iii. 18- 20: " Christ once suffered for
sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring
us to God, being put to death as respects the
body, but made alive as respects the Spirit; by
which Spirit HE WENT AND PREACHED TO THE
SPIRITS WHO ARE IN CUSTODY,* who formerly were
disobedient when the long-suffering of God in
the days of Noah waited while the ark was preparing." This passage has been called obscure
and difficult. It is so only when we are determined to push aside the doctrine of the mediate
place of the dead, to whom still -Christ comes
with the message of salvation. With that doctrine the significance of the passage stands out
bold and sharp enough.
1 Peter iv. 5-7:" Who (the Gentiles) shall
give account to him who is ready to judge the
living and the dead. For to this end THE GOSPEL
WAS PREACHED TO THE DEAD ALSO, that they might
be judged according to men in the flesh, but live
according to God in the spirit "; that is to say,
that they may still have the same privilege that
men in the flesh have of choosing the Gospel and
of living according to God in the spirit. The
*,vXaKaT does not mean of necessity a prison. It may mean
a place for those who are kept secure for a beneficent purpose.
The Peshito Syriac, the earliest version of the New Testament,
translates, it is said, " He preached to those souls which were detained
in Hades." Christ's Mission, by Huidekoper, p. 50.




284    THE PNEUMATOLOGY OF ST. PAUL.
fact that they died before the Gospel came, shall
not exclude them from its offers of mercy. The
choice lies with them just the same, and according to their choice they shall be judged, even as
men in the flesh are judged, —a principle of
such unquestionable equity that it seems utterly
strange how the expositors could have so stumbled at this passage, or set themselves to haggle
at its most obvious meaning.
Revelation i. 18: "I am he that liveth and
was dead, and behold I am alive for evermore,
Amen; and have the keys of HADES and death,"
-which means, evidently, Because I have been
into Hades, and risen out of it, I hold its keys
in my hand, and can raise my people out of
it also.
3. We cite a third class of passages, in which,
by other terms, and by incidental allusions, the
Apostles indicate that the doctrine of a mediate
place of souls was familiar to their thoughts.
Acts ii. 34: " DAVID IS NOT ASCENDED INTO THE
HEAVENS."  Most obviously Peter assumes beforei
his hearers, as a conceded fact, that David was
still in Hades, and was to remain there till the
final judgment; which leaves him at liberty
to apply exclusively to Christ language in the
Psalms which described the exaltation of some
one to God's right hand. The syllogism is, This




THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE.       285
cannot mean David, for you know yourselves that
he has not yet risen into the heavens. We know
that Christ has, and therefore he is the person
here described.
Philippians ii. 10: "That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven,
and things in earth, and THINGS UNDER THE
EARTH."  The expression here used (icaraXOoy[lv) is the appropriated synonyme of Hades.*
By things in heaven, things on the earth, and
things in Hades, the Apostle means to include the
whole rational universe.  He does not name
things in hell or Gehenna, for that was not conceived of as having inhabitants until after the
last judgment should take place.
4. We now approach reverently the language
of the Divine Teacher himself; and, as Paul will
be found by and by using  substantially the
same imagery, it is of some consequence that we
understand its meaning. We have seen already
that Christ uses the word " Hades " in distinction
from Gehenna, when discoursing of the state of
the dead, and evoking his imagery from the realm
of departed souls.
Open, then, the twenty-fifth chapter of Matthew, and turn to that passage of awful sublim* See Robinson's Greek Lexicon, ad loc. Also Homer, Iliad,
IX. 457.




286    THE PNEUMATOLOGY OP ST. PAUL.
ity, whose meaning, so far as we have seen, no
exegesis has ever been able to evolve clearly:"When the Son of Mail shall come in his
glory, and all the holy angels with him, then
shall he sit upon the throne of his glory. And
before him shall be gathered all nations, and he
shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats.!'
The scene of this judgment and separation is
the point to which we wish to call special attention. Is it in the natural world, or is it in the
spiritual? It is where all the nations are gathered together, and therefore it must be the
realm  to which all the generations have gone.
The theology which places the scene of this great
drama upon the earth, and makes the subjects of
it the corpses that have been exhumed from the
sepulchres, has not the faintest hint for its support in the record itself.  The subjects of this
judgment are those who have passed out of natural conditions, into that state where all the peoples are gathered, and where they wait for that
" coming of the Son of Man " which divides the
peoples asunder.
And what is this " coming of the Son of Man
in his glory," -" coming in the clouds of heaven," - when he sends forth his angels " with the
great sound of a trumpet," to " gather together
his elect "? What is it but the Christ, the Eternal




THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE.       287
Word, breaking on the soul in clearer splendor,
so as to search it and show its quality? what but
the voice of truth sent home to the conscience, as
if tongued for a sharper utterance?  Conceive all
men to have passed from earth into a mediate
state in the spiritual world, each one bearing
his own affinities, and polarized with the love of
the good and the true, or of the evil and the
false. Conceive, moreover, that into such mediate world the Christ shall appear, and the heavens open down their angelic illuminations. What
must follow from the irrepealable laws of the human mind? Exactly what is here described, or
rather painted by the Divine pencil in colors of
flame. The peoples and nations would be cloven
asunder, part drawn up among the blest societies,
and part repelled. or driven deeper down among
the coverings of darkness, and " Hades" would
be emptied of its inhabitants. What the primitive
Church believed universally, what the Apostles
preached with fragmentary speech, we have here
set forth in majestic utterance, not as the arbitrary appointment of God, but as the grand result
of the eternal laws of being. Must not this be
so, we exclaim, even if no Bible had ever told
us! We do not say that the doctrine of a mediate state is asserted in terms in this discourse of
our Saviour; we say it is presupposed, and we
are confident that no other view can give his language a tolerable explanation.




288    THE PNEUMATOLOGY OF ST. PAUL.
We are now prepared to take in the plenary
sense of a passage to which we have twice referred, but to which until now we could not offer
a complete illustration. " 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 to the
resurrection of damnation." (John v. 28, 29.)
The leading terms of this passage we have already explained. The " voice or the Son of Mall "
is Christianity preached and applied, or, what is
the same thing, the efflux of Divine truth as it
touches the conscience. And it is obvious now
why Christ enounces here a universal rule of
judgment, to be applied to all men, not only to
those who were then living, but to all who had
ever lived or ever should live.  "The hour is
coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the
voice of the Son of Man." And immediately after,
" The hour is coming when ALL WHO ARE IN TIlE
GRAVES" shall hear the same voice; and here the
Saviour sends forward his thought to the gatllering-place of all the peoples, where every soul
shall be opened up to the same truth which he
was declaring on the earth; shall have its quality shown and its class and order assigned to it in
the ranks of the universe. Not only those who
have heard Christ preached on the earth, but all




THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE.      289
that have ever lived, shall hear the Gospel and
be judged by the Gospel, according as they have
"done good" or " done evil," under previous
privilege, or by such light of nature as had been
given them while living in the flesh.
John vi. 39: "This is the Father's will who
hath sent me, that of all which he hath given
me I should lose nothing, but should raise it up
again at the last day." Verse 44: "No man can
come to me except the Father that hath sent me
draw him, and I will raise him up at the last
day."  John xii. 48: " He that rejecteth me,
and receiveth not my words, hath one that judgeth him: the word that I have spoken, the same
shall judge him in the last day." "The last
day " is a phrase which has been so appropriated
to describe an imaginary destruction of this material structure, that the clear force of this.language is liable to escape us. And yet nothing
could be in more complete harmony with our preceding expositions, than these words of our Saviour. It is evident to us that "the last day"
means that grand crisis of humanity referred to
all through the New Testament, and that these
sweet and blessed promises of our Lord, alike
with the warnings of the passage last quoted,
point to the solemn results of that crisis. "I
will raise him up at the last day," is the same as
saying, I will draw him up from the mediate
25




290   THE PNEUMATOLOGY OF ST. PAUL.
state into the angelic abodes by the bonds of attractive love, when the separating judgment shall
come on, and each determines to the place he
loves, as doves that fly to their windows.




CHAPTER V.
ST. PAUL ON THE RESURREGTION.
ST. PAUL was born and educated in a city
where flourished the most celebrated schools of
the Grecian philosophy. Afterwards he went up
to Jerusalem, and there at the feet of Gamaliel,
the most distinguished of the Jewish Rabbins,
who was called afterwards the Beauty of the
Law, his mind was stored with Hebrew learning,
and imbibed the very spirit of the Jewish theology. He was a Pharisee of the Pharisees, and
though he had become familiar while at Tarsus
with the Greek language, literature, and philosophy, he adhered firmly to the faith of his fathers.
Of course his mind had become thoroughly indoctrinated in the tenets of his sect touching the
resurrection of the dead, and the formulas under
which they bodied forth their doctrine had become
to him as household words. Christianity came
afterwards, using the same forms of speech and
imagery on this subject, which, however, were




292    THE PNEUMATOLOGY OF ST. PAUL.
not only filled out with a new spirit, but made
also the receptacles of new ideas.
We are now prepared for a full exposition of
Paul's language when he touches upon this theme.
This he does three times, but he handles it at
large in his first letter to the Corinthians, among
whom the doctrine had been explained away, and
its substance nearly evaporated in the gilded
fog of Gnosticism.  It is inferred that some of
the Corinthian teachers had made the resurrection a mere figure of speech, meaning nothing
more than a rising out of ignorance into knowledge, out of sin into holiness, in this present
world.* Hence Paul sets forth to them the Christian doctrine, philosophically and at length, and
answers the objections of the cavillers as he goes
along. After appealing to Christ as the grand
exemplar of man's resurrection, citing witnesses,
and taking care to say that he had seen him with
his own eyes in the resurrection state, his argument proceeds mainly under two divisions. First,
he unfolds the doctrine logically and rationally,
and, secondly, he describes some of its concomitants now for the first time disclosed.
Under the first of these heads he develops his
doctrine of a spiritual body, in contradistinction
* Of the same nature evidently was the heresy of Hymeneus
and Philetus, who taught that " the resurrection is past already."
2 Timothy ii. 17, 18.




ST. PAUL ON THE RESURRECTION.    298
from  the natural, and to rise out of it as the
blade rises out of the kernel that dies.  He
brushes away the objections which come from
the false idea that the resurrection body is to be
the same body that died. It is not to be the same,
but a body of another species, emerging from the
natural one, substantial and immortal.  "There
are celestial bodies and bodies terrestrial, but the
glory of the celestial is one, and the glory of the
terrestrial is another."  He then proceeds to depict the concomitants of his doctrine, the resurrection culminating into its last results, thus: —
( Behold, I show you a mystery. We shall not
all sleep, but we shall all be changed in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last
trump; for the trumpet shall sound, and the
dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall
be changed. For this corruptible must put on
incorruption,.and this mortal must put on immortality. So when this corruptible shall have
put on incorruption and this mortal shall have
put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass
the saying that is written, " Death is swallowed
up in victory. O death, where is thy sting? O
HADES, where is thy victory? "
1. Observe, first, that, while Paul asserts with
great emphasis the fact of the resurrection, he
does not assert the Pharisaic notion of a reincarnation. That must have been familiar to
25*




294   THE PNEUMATOLOGY OF ST. PAUL.
his thoughts, but he rejects it altogether, having just unfolded his philosophy of the spiritual
body, which totally excluded the Pharisaic dogma. " The dead shall be raised"; they shall
be brought up from the mediate state in bodies
which are incorruptible, and which can die no
more, so as to warrant the language of exultation,
O iHades, where is thy victory? "  This, and
not the reanimation of dead bodies that lie in the
graves, is here asserted by the Apostle in most
unequivocal language. Hades, or the mediate
world, where all the generations of Adam had
gone, burdened still with hereditary evil, should
be despoiled of its captives through Christ, who
raises up his own out of it, and so completes their
redemption.
2. The same imagery is here employed by
Paul that Christ had used before him in describing the same consummation. " The trumpet shall
sound, and the dead shall be raised."  We trust
the reader does not need to have it proved to
him, that there is no connection between blowing
a trumpet over graveyards and the reanimation
of the sleepers, inasmuch as their organs of hearing are not only gone, but changed into other organizations. Where there are no ears to receive
the sound, it matters not whether the sound be
loud or low, a trumpet-blast or a whisper, or
whether there be no sound at all. " The trump of




ST. PAUL ON THE RESURRECTION.    295
God," both in the language of Christ and that of
St. John, in the Apocalypse, is an image specially
appropriated to denote the efflux of Divine Truth
as it falls on the consciences of men, so that Paul
here describes the same thing that Christ had
done before, —the descent of the Eternal Word, or
the " voice of the Son of Man," into the mediate
place of souls; that Word which gathers its own
around it, and " raises them up at the last day."
- 3. The language of Paul in the first part of
this chapter, which seems at first obscure, becomes now translucent enough. " Now is Christ
risen from the dead, and become the first fruits
of them that slept."  And again, "' Every man in
his own order. Christ the first fruits, afterwards
they that are Christ's at his coming."  Christ is
the first of the human race who has arisen out of
the mediate world into heaven. He burst the
prison-gates, and made a clear pathway between
Hades and the skies. And when he comes again,
breaking through the clouds of heaven into the
mediate world, "they that are Christ's," or those
who have been touched with his life and spirit,
will be the first to be drawn up into his complete
redemption; or, as the thought is otherwise expressed, will "have part in the first resurrection." This idea, we have no doubt, is in the
Apostle's mind when he speaks of himself as striving, "if by any means he rnight attain unto the




296    THE PNEUMATOLOGY OF ST. PAUL.
resurrection from the dead," using the word here
in the special sense of emergence out of the mediate state into the blest societies of the redeemed.
4. In the fervency of his faith the Apostle evidently expected that the time would come, and
was even close at hand, when Christian believers,
while yet in the flesh, would become so completely regenerated, redeemed, and glorified, as
to render no longer necessary any descent into a
mediate world. Their chanKe, while yet on earth,
would be so complete, that their translation to
heaven would be immediate and instantaneous,
when they had done with time. " We shall not
all sleep, but we shall all be changed." By sleeping, or, as he has it in a parallel passage, "sleeping in Jesus," he does not mean the repose of
the dead bodies in the tombs; he means the repose and waiting of the departed saints in Hades.
We shall not all, he says, pass through that mediate state of waiting and repose. The time is
near, when the trump of God, which raises the
dead out of Hades, shall so change us in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, that we shall be
prepared for our immediate ascent into heaven,
when unclothed of mortality. In other words,
under the dispensation of the second advent of
Christ, such shall be the effluence of his truth,
and such its increased power over the believer,
that it shall change him at once into a glorified




ST. PAUL ON THE RESURRECTION.   297
saint, prepared already for his ascent into heaven.
We are candid to say that we suppose Paul used
this language in a sense more strictly literal than
our exposition implies. In common with the
early Church, he looked evidently for some personal reappearing of Christ to his Church on
earth during the lifetime of the Apostles, and we
have no doubt that in this expectation this language had to his mind a more special significance
than the Holy Spirit intended, or than was warranted by the subsequent history. And yet it
sets forth a great truth; this, namely, that, under
the influence of Christ's second or spiritual coming, the concomitants of death shall yet be so
abolished, that the believer shall not so much die
as become transfigured for the skies.
1 Thessalonians iv. 13-18.  We turn now to
a parallel passage, in which the same truths are
asserted, and in nearly the same order. The
church at Thessalonica, probably from a too literal interpretation of the language of Christ, had,
in common with the first Christians, fallen upon
the belief that he was soon to appear again in
person, and wind up the affairs of this world.
Amid difficulties and persecutions, they looked
forward to this reappearing with impatient longings, when Christ would overthrow the enemies
of his Church and establish his kingdom on the
earth. But a question now troubled them. How




298   THE PNEUMATOLOGY OF ST. PAUL.
would it be with their friends who had died, and
who would not be with them to witness the second advent of the Lord? Probably there had
been recent bereavements in the church at Thessalonica. Will not our joy (say they) of witnessing the second coming of Christ be much dimninished, because the dear friends we have lost
cannot be here to share it with us? It was in
part to meet this state of mind that Paul wrote
from Corinth the first letter to the Thessalonians.
"I would not have you to be ignorant, bretlren, concerning them which are asleep, that ye
sorrow not even as others which have no hope.
For as surely as we believe that Jesus died and
rose again, so surely will God through him bring
with Jesus those who are asleep. For this we
say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we
who are alive and remain unto the coming of the.
Lord shall not enter into his presence sooner
than the dead.  For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice
of the archangel and with the trump of God.
And the dead in Christ shall rise first. Then we
who may be alive and remain unto that day shall
be caught up with them  among the clouds, to
meet the Lord in the air, and so both we and
they shall be for ever with the Lord. Wherefore
comfort one another with these words."
The annunciation here made, drawn out in, dis



ST. PAUL ON TEa  RESURRECTION.    299
tinct clauses, and in harmony with Paul's pneumatology, would be as follows s:1. Christ is to reappear in great power and
glory from the heavens, not only to his people on
the earth, but also to them  who have "fallen
asleep," and rest in the mediate state of the
dead.
2. Hence they, as well as we, those who have
died, as well as those who are now alive, will be
raised up into heaven, and there meet each other
again and be for ever with the Lord.
3. Hence, though the believers who may be living at that day may be so changed and glorified
while yet on earth, as not to enter the mediate
world, but have an immediate transit to heaven,
they will have no advantage over those who
had died before, and will not anticipate them in
their entrance upon the future glory.
4. "The voice of the archangel" and "the.
trump of God" are expressions equivalent to,
those of our Saviour, "the voice of the Son of
Man," the angel sent forth " with. a great sound
of a trumpet," and mean, wherever they occur,
in the symbolic language of prophecy, the influx
of Divine Truth with power, or heaven opening
down into the soul with intenser and clearer utterance.*
* That such is the prophetic meaning of this phraseology, see,
who will, Rev. viii. 2, 6, 7, 8, 12, 13; ix. 14. Also Psalm xlvii. 5.




300   THE PNEUMATOLOGY OF ST. PAUL.
5. Though Paul here, as before, evidently expected a second and personal advent of Christ,
and thought it might be near at hand, and
though this gives a somewhat sharper literalism
to his language, yet it is an expectation, and not
an opinion, and seems to have exerted no adverse
influence over his life or his system of doctrine.
6. The expression "to meet the Lord in the
air," will receive explanation when we come to
consider Paul's supposed naturalism.
A third passage in which this theme is specially
treated is found 2 Corinthians v. 1-10, commencing, " For we know, 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." This does not present any important point distinct from those of the two passages
we have just quoted. By a careful collation of
the three, with a slight paraphrase, the writer's
thought would be enunciated as follows: —
"Though our earthly body be dissolved, we
still bear away from it a body which cannot die.
Thus all the generations from the first Adam to
Christ have gone and wait in Hades. But Hlades
cannot retain for ever those tliat belong to the
Lord. His second appearing shall be there, as
well as here, and his truth shall sink with trumpet voice among those who have died, as well as
those who are living. Then those who have died




ST. PAUL ON THE RESURRECTION.   301
in the faith of Christ will be raised up into heaven, there to be with the Lord. There we shall
meet the friends who had died before us. Though
we may be so changed while on earth, by the new
influx of Divine Power, that those of us who
may be living at the expected consummation
shall enter heaven instantly at death, we shall not
anticipate those who have died before and entered
Hades. Christ will have brought them up thence
to meet us above, and so we with them shall be
for ever with the Lord. Then death no longer
will have any terror, and.. Hades no longer will
have the victory."
26




CHAPTER VI.
JEWISH AND HEATHEN IDEAS COMPARED WITH
CHRISTIAN.
THE rude primitive ideas, whether Jewish or
heathen, on the subject of the future life, were
grossly naturalistic.  Both Heaven and Hades
were located in natural space. The earth was a
broad, level plane, and Heaven was situated vertically overhead, while Hades was situated directly beneath, and was hence "the underworld."
Therefore the periphrase, "things in heaven,
things in earth, and things under the earth,"
comprehended the whole creation. This (revelation aside) was the substance both of'the Hebrew and the Pagan mythology. Heaven, however, was not single, but multiform, and the
Hebrew almost always used the word in the plural number. The first or lowest heaven was the
region of the air, or the earth's atmosphere, in
which the clouds appear. The second or middle
heaven was the starry firmament. The third or
highest was above the firmament, and there God




JEWISH IDEAS COMPARED WITH CHRISTIAN. 303
himself dwelt in his ineffable splendors. The
later Rabbins increase the number to seven, but
the primitive conception seems to have been only
that of these three heavens, —the aerial, the stellar, and the highest, called the heaven of heavens.
The Hebrew Sheol, or the Greek IIades, which
corresponds very nearly to it, being under the
earth, was deprived of the sunlight. Hades means,
etymologically, a dark place; for since the earth
was an immense plane, it cut off the light of the
sun and the stars from the people of the underworld.  It was an obscure and shadowy region.
The Greek Hades, however, came to have its
Elysian fields, and the Hebrew Sheol its lower
paradise, where the better and purer of the departed spirits were gathered together. All, however, who were in this obscure underworld, pined
for the upper regions, and there were two methods by which they might ascend again to the
earth. One was by the transmigration of souls,
the other was by the resurrection of the dead.
The first was the Pythagorean doctrine, and
was a conception essentially and exclusively heathen.  Transmigration is simply passing into
other bodies through the process of natural birth,
and living over again the life in the flesh. Virgil describes a whole shoal of these ghosts in
Hades, longing for their transmigration into the




304      THE PNEUMATOLOGY OF ST. PAUL.
earthly life, once more to enjoy the upper light
and air.
The Jews, or rather a sect among them, believed the same end would be attained by resurrection, and re-incarnation in the identical bodies
that had died. The " resurrection of the dead "
was an idea entirely foreign to the Greek mythology.  It was the Hebrew  method of getting souls
out of the underworld, though it may not have
been of Hebrew  origin.  It involved the idea of
raising them  up from  Sheol, the good into an upper or terrestrial paradise, or else into the heavens; the bad only to be condemned and remanded to a deeper place in the underworld, called
Gehenna.   The idea of re-incarnation was not
essentially included in that of the resurrection,
but was wholly extrinsic, and might be coupled
with it or not, to suit the general faith of the believer. The Pharisees, as we have said, believed
it only as respects the saints, and the Essenes
rejected it altogether.*
* The language of Josephus is: " The Pharisees say that all
souls are incorruptible, but that the souls of good men only are removed into other bodies [re-incarnated], but that the souls of bad
men are subject to eternal punishment." (Wars, II. 10. 14.)
Whereupon the annotator of Josephus remarks, that this looks
like a contradiction to St. Paul's account, that the Jews allowed
"that there should be a resurrection of the dead, both of the just
and the unjust." This apparent contradiction arises from persistently confounding two things, and identifying the resurrection of
the dead (emergence out of Hades to judgment) with the re-incarnation of the soul.




JEWISH IDEAS COMPARED WITH CHRISTIAN. S05
Such were the ideas of mankind while dominated by the senses.  Similar to these are the
ideas of natural men in all ages, who attain only
to a belief in a naturalized spirit-world.  Now
that science has demonstrated that the earth is
not a flat surface, with a region of shadow under
it, but a globe that revolves about the sun, hell
is located sometimes within the earth, as by Bishop iorsley, sometimes in the craters of the moon,
as by Mr. Harbaugh, - anywhere in space that
affords a spot sufficiently uncomfortable for the
purpose. There is no question that the Jews up
to the very time of Christ were immersed completely in this naturalism, notwithstanding the
disclosures of their own Scriptures and the highest boon of the Gospel is a pneumatology that
raises the believer thoroughly out of it.
This is done by making the natural world REPRESENTATIVE OF THE SPIRITUAL. Revelation does
not reject the old nomenclature, but fills it with
new ideas. The natural world, as it lay on the
conceptions of natural men, is taken up and
framed into a picture-language, and thus made
to represent the things which are invisible. Indeed, the most beneficent office which nature
performs is to image forth on the plane of the
senses what the senses of themselves could not
apprehend, and so stand before us as the symbol
of higher realities.  The material universe be26 *




306    THE PNEUMATOLOGY OF ST. PAUL.
comes the treasure-house of imagery, whereby
spiritual truth can be bodied forth, so that the
things which are visible are made the living transparencies through which we gaze inward upon
eternal verities.
In the system of truth taught by Jesus Christ,
the future bliss and glory are not a place vertically higher up in the air than the earth, but a
state of mind raised into a higher degree of life
than that of the corporeal senses.  The skies
hang over us in their eternal purity, above the
clouds and the storms and the rolling thunders,
smiling down over all earthly turmoil in their
deep and boundless tranquillity.  What other
image could be selected to describe the soul's
unfluctuating bliss, and its serene abodes in the
realms beyond death and the grave? Precisely
the same word, ovpavo4, -the heavens,- is used
by Christ, as was used to denote the visible expanse above; but in his language it is not the
starry firmament, but the spiritual state here and
hereafter, which the starry firmament represents.
The word " Gehenna" meant, originally, a loathsome valley, and, in the language of the later
Rabbins, the deepest pit in the underworld. In
their topography of the universe it was the exact
opposite of the highest heaven, as far beneath the
earth as heaven is high above it. Christ uses this
very image to describe the spiritual state opposite




JEWISH IDEAS COMPARED WITH CHRISTIAN. 307
to that of heaven; the condition of the mind with
all its powers inverted, immersed in the darkness of its own delusions, and preyed upon by its
unclean and lurid passions. This is Gehenna,
away down in the spiritual nadir, and these are
the infernal fires. The visible universe, above
and below, becomes the ever-present symbol to
describe opposite spiritual states and their ultimations in a spiritual world hereafter; and so
heaven and Gehenna are not localities in space,
but representative images of things that transcend the senses. The style of speech which our
Saviour adopts in describing his kingdom, his
second coming, and the opposite results of receiving and rejecting him, is that of parable, or
comparison, throughout; making all nature a vast
analogue of the spirit, and a copying down of
eternity into time. Thus he lifts us out of naturalism, and sets us face to face with the everlasting verities.
Well had it been if the Church could have been
kept on the level of this lofty spiritualism, and
could have ever seen the truths which, in his
speech, shine through and transfigure the letter,
like clouds made white and purpling with the
sunlight. But always the natural mind relapses
into literalism, like heavy bodies that fall to the
earth. So the Christian Church began to relapse
very early;. His promised spiritual coming was




308   THE PNEUMATOLOGY OF ST. PAUL.
understood to be a literal and personal one, even
in the times of the Apostles; and as early as the
second and third centuries, if not before, we find
the old Pharisaic doctrine of re-incarnation coupled with that of the resurrection, and even substituted for it; we find Heaven and Hades made
localities again in space, to be reached by locomotion; we find, in fact, the Jewish pneumatology
in its main features reproduced. Origen, and the
Alexandrian school generally, kept out of this
slough; but the Western Churches went down
heavily into it, there to "grow the grimy color
of the ground on which they are feeding."




CHAPTER VII.
THE ALLEGED NATURALISM OF ST. PAUL.
A MOST important question remains to us, and
one which affects materially the authority of the
great Apostle to the Gentiles. He affirms that
he was caught up into the third or highest heavens, and he could not say whether in the body or
out of it. He speaks of Hades as the underworld,
(" things under the earth,") and of Christ as
having descended into it.  He describes the
second coming of Christ from heaven as sudden
and unexpected, "with a shout," and with "the
trump of God." He affirms that, when the dead
are to be raised out of Hades, those living at the
time shall be caught up, and with them " meet
the Lord in the air."  These and similar allusions provoke the inquiry, Does Paul use this
language as literal, or does he employ this imagery as representative? Did he still believe in
the Jewish and Heathen topography.of the universe, that the heavens are vertically over our




310    THE PNEUMATOLOGY OF ST. PAUL.
heads, into which the saints are to be "caught
up " at the last day, and that Hades, or the abode
of departed spirits, is underground? And when
he says Christ will descend from heaven, and
the archangel blow his trumpet, does he mean a
descent through the air, and a blast to be blown
on the natural ear? In short, was St. Paul, notwithstanding his extraordinary illumination, still
locked in naturalism, and is this what he has
taught to the churches?
It has been supposed, and ably argued, that this
is the case.* Paul had been a Pharisee, and his
mind had become thoroughly imbued with Jewish lore; and it is inferred that he has imported
the Jewish pneumatology into his scheme of
Christian doctrine.
We have studied his writings with reference to
this point, and our conviction is clear that this is
not the case, and that no system of naturalism
was ever taught by the Apostle. We will give
our reasons in full, and then abide the judgment
of the reader.
1. All the imagery which he employs is found
also in the picture-language of the Saviour,
wherein he describes the second coming, the
last judgment, and the spiritual world.  The
* See an article in the Christian Examiner for March, 1853,
"Paul's Doctrine of the Last Things."




THE ALLEGED NATURALISM OF ST. PAUL. 311
heavens (oipavoi), and the descent of the Son
of Man out of them with "a great sound of a
trumpet," Gehenna, and Hades or the underworld, are terms, as we have just seen, employed
by Christ in the way of parable; and if he committed these truths to his Apostle, would he not
convey them under the same divinely-selected
symbols? Paul introduces his description with
the solemn averment, "Behold, I show you a
mystery," and " This I declare unto you by the
word of the Lord "; and it is some confirmation
of his declaration, that he goes on to employ
the very imagery drawn from the natural world
which the Lord had selected before; as if, when
these truths rushed in upon him from their Divine Source, they came in the same investiture,
and thus claimed their utterance from his lips.
That Paul saw the whole range of meaning as
Christ had done in the language that came to
him, were too much to affirm; for the long sweep
of the centuries does not yet fulfil these high
prophetic enunciations.  That he perverted it
or sunk it into a sense merely literal, we have no
right to say, unless there is some collateral evidence, drawn from his language and experience
elsewhere, that warrants the affirmation.
2. But the experience of the great Apostle
shuts out the possibility that he could have been




312   THE PNEUMATOLOGY OF ST. PAUL.
in the bondage of a naturalized faith. His inward eye had been couched and opened; yea, he
had been admitted by introversion among those
"' things in heaven " whereof he speaks. He had
seen the Lord after his resurrection among the
supersensual glories Hie had seen him, not with
the fleshly eye, but with his spirit laid open beneath the insufferable blaze.  Can we suppose
he believed that the Christ who smote him to the
earth under his too ardent mercy, descended to
him from somewhere beyond the stars, and in a
material body, and not rather that he broke or
his inner sight from a sphere above the natural,
and within the bourn of immortality?  c' I was
not disobedient to the heavenly vISION." The
word he uses is o7rraoria, a word, we have said,
specially appropriated to describe supersensual
sight, and never used for the perception of objects
on the plane of nature. He assures us that this
vision was afterwards repeated, and that he had
direct and open communication with the Lord
Jesus.  How utterly improbable, therefore, is
the hypothesis, that Paul should have been ignorant of the fact that the heavens to which the
Lord had arisen were not higher up in space,
but higher up in the order of existence! How
groundless the presumption, that he did not know
the nature of the terminus that divides the natural from the spiritual world!




THE ALLEGED NATURALISM OF ST. PAUL. 313
This suggests to us what was the probable
nature of his anticipations touching the personal
coming of the Lord Jesus. He probably expected a second advent for the Church, such as had
come within the range of his own wonderful experience; not a coming again in the flesh, and
out of the literal heavens, but such a demonstration from Christ and his holy angels out of the
spiritual sphere as arrested him on his way to
Damascus, and should yet overwhelm the enemies of the Gospel, and bring a fallen world
to its crisis. The sensualized conceptions of the
millenarians could never have entered his mind;
they were discordant with his whole scheme of
doctrine, and for any trace of them you shall
search his writings in vain.
3. There is a remarkable passage in which the
Apostle discloses unmistakably what he understands by being "' caught up into heaven." That
experience, he says, had been vouchsafed to him.
" I know a man who was caught up fourteen
years ago,- whether in the- body or out of the
body I cannot tell, God knoweth, —caught up,
I say, in the power of Christ, even to the third
heaven. And I knew that such a man -whether
in the body or out of the body I cannot tell, God
knoweth- was caught up into paradise, and
heard unspeakable words." These he gives us
27




314   THE PNEUMATOLOGY OF ST. PAUL.
as instances of " visions and revelations." The
word is again 0rwraolaq, - a word appropriated
to describe open spiritual perceptions while the
corporeal senses are sealed up, - and his meaning is, " I was raised up as to my inward and immortal nature among the scenery of the highest
heaven, and so completely were my external
senses closed, and so unconscious was I of the
mortal body, that I did not know then, amld cannot
tell now, whether I remained in it or not." He
might very well have been in doubt, for either of
those psychological states is possible, and not always distinguishable by him who is the subject of
them. Since man is the denizen of two worlds,
his spirit may be introverted and raised up among
supersensual things, its vital connection with the
mortal body yet remaining; or the same may
take place by dissolving that connection, which
is the simple process of death. That the Apostle
here recognizes the fact of a spiritual world above
natural space and out of it, and to be entered by
introversion and not locomotion, is past all question. The third heaven, according to the Jewish topography, was the one above the firmament.
Did Paul suppose that he had been up on a journey beyond the fixed stars, and was in doubt
whether he took his body with him through those
billions of miles or not? It would require some
boldness, we should think, to charge him with an
absurdity quite so concentrated as that.




THE ALLEGED NATURALISM OF ST. PAUL. 315
4. We have not merely Paul's experience; we
have his spiritual philosophy drawn out with remarkable distinctness, and it shows that no one
was more clearly cognizant than he of the difference between natural and spiritual substance.
His chapter on the resurrection ought to exonerate him for ever from the charge of naturalism,
since it was written expressly to refute the first
principle of the naturalistic faith.  That faith
assumes that veritable body is composed of matter alone, and that none other is conceivable or
possible. Hence the fantasies both of the Hebrew
and the Heathen mythology. Hence the ghosts
that flit in their underworld; the " phantom
nations," as Homer calls them, pining to come
up again and be indued with flesh and blood.
Hence the Pharisaic dogma of the re-incarnation,
and the Pythagorean notion of the transmigration of souls. Matter alone, in their philosophy,
constitutes real body, and the bodies of the ghosts
in Hades were so rarefied, that  uneas in embracing old Anchises found he had grasped nothing
but an empty shade. It was composed of matter
too aerial and attenuated, and hence the spectres
longed for their solid investiture again. All but
carnal existence was wan and mournful. Paiul
enounces a principle that subverts this whole fabric of superstition. " There are CELESTIAL BODIES
and bodies terrestrial," and the celestial bodies




316    THE PNEUMATOLOGY OF ST. PAUL.
surpass the others immeasurably in being incorruptible, comely, and strong. They differ not in
degrees of solidity, as one of air differs from one
of flesh; they differ generically, and on this difference he predicates the distinction between the
life before death and the life after. This essential
dualism discretes for ever the two worlds of spirit
anld matter; whereas in the creed of naturalism
they run together, spirit being exhaled and sublimated matter, or nothing at all. H1ence Paul, in
asserting the doctrine of the resurrection, rises
sublimely clear both of the Pythagorean and Jewish dogmas; but without this dualism he would
have fallen inevitably upon the Pharisaic tenet of
re-incarnation, and stuck hopelessly there. As a
disciple of Gamaliel, it had been made familiar
to his thought. As a Christian, he rejects it with
an expression of scorn. Unless he liad been
taken up into the counsels of the risen and glorified Christ, he could never have evolved a
spiritual philosophy from which every element
of the naturalism of his age, and of the sect to
which he had once belonged, is extruded and
cleared away.
5. It hence becomes plain enough that the
ovpavot of St. Paul were not the material canopy
of the old Hebrew mythology, but the spiritual
heavens of which that is made the type and




THE ALLEGED NATURALISM OF ST. PAUL. 31T
shadow.  They were that upper sphere into
which his own spirit had been caught, and in
which he had seen the glorified Saviour, and received a commission from his lips. We see no
reason to doubt that he uses the word "heaven"
in the same representative sense that Christ had
done; the state of eternal peace imaged forth
sublimely in those galaxies hung down by the
evening skies. Christ uses the word in the plural number, as if indicating the fact that the
state of the blest is not single, but multiform,
rising upward in degree; just as the expanse
over us rises above earth's lowly plains, sky
beyond sky, with growing and multiplying splendors. The Hebrew conception of three heavens,
the lowest, the middle, and the highest, thus represents the heavens of the world to come.  If
Paul speaks with any decent consistency, he uses
the word casp (air), which means the aerial or
lower sky, and the phrase'rplroc opavrs, the third
heaven, after the same analogy; making the Hebrew topography of the visible expanse to furnish
a language descriptive of the invisible glories.
-When he says he was caught up into paradise,
does he mean that he was taken into a hanging
garden overhead?  Not at all.  No more does
he mean by the heavens (whether the aerial or
lowest, or the third, the supreme) the visible
dome above us, but the eternal abodes. And in
27 k




318   THE PNEUMATOLOGY OF ST. PAUL.
describing the ascent of " the saints that slept"
out of Hades, or the mediate state, he would of
course make them reach first the heaven proximate to'them, and not the third or highest of all.
Thither, too, their friends from earth would rise
first, and there they would meet each other.
" We who are alive and remain shall be caught
up together with them to meet the Lord in the
lower sky, and so shall we ever be with the
Lord."  Allusion, too, is evidently had to the
appearances at the Lord's ascension, when he
arose and melted from sight in a cloud on the
visible expanse of air, the outward semblances
indicating the spiritual reality to the men who
stood gazing below.
The writings of St. Paul are fragmentary, and
contain nowhere an orderly development of his
whole plan of doctrine. That plan only gleams
out upon us now and then, here an arch and
there a column; leaving us to infer the consistence and grandeur of the edifice.  We readily
admit that there are phrases which may be singled out and fitted in to a system of materialism.
But the main sweep of his argument, his being
made a personal witness of the risen Christ, his
whole wonderful experience under Christianity,
and the prominent features of his system of
pneumatology, standing out in boldest relief, are
each ald all totally inconsistent with material



THE ALLEGED NATURALISM OF ST. PAUL. 319
ism.  Single phrases are to be interpreted in
the light of his known spiritual philosophy, and
are not by a narrow and tortuous criticism to be
made to say something in conflict with it; and
then that philosophy becomes luminous enough,
and breaks from the old Judaism  as from the
shell that had enclosed it. Me uses the terms
which had belonged to the old topography of the
material universe, but both its overworld and its
underworld become the images and representatives of eternal things.




CHAPTER VIII.
THE HADES OF CHRISTIANITY.
WE trust that the reader is abundantly satisfied as to the Christian meaning of the words
"heaven" and " hell," and that they are rescued
effectually and totally from the circle both of
pagan and Jewish ideas.  If heaven is not the
zenith overhead, but the zenith of the eternal
purity and peace, -if Gehenna or hell is not the
lowest pit in the depths under our feet, but the
nadir of a reversed and degraded humanity,then it becomes obvious enough what the spiritual
Hades is, or the condition mediate between. It
is not a place under ground in the natural world,
but a position in the spiritual world to which that
place answered as the image and the sign.
Two ideas are vastly prominent in the writings
of the Apostle: first, that under "the Law," or
the ante-Christian economy, there was no power
available to the race for removing from it the




THE HADES OF CHRISTIANITY.      321
burden of hereditary evil; secondly, that Christ
brings this power, so that "the curse " rolls off
and humanity can spring at once into its glorious
fruition.  These two thoughts, putting Christ
and the Law in contrast, reappear on almost
every page.
Hence none who died under former dispensations can have entered heaven. From Adam to
Moses, as well as from Moses to Christ, " death
reigned."  He does not mean physical dissolution, for that must always take place; but he
means that inheritance of a disordered moral
nature which had been a cleaving curse to all
the generations.  Men might fulfil all the outward ceremonial righteousness of Judaism, but
still the curse would cling to them, and consequently when they entered the spiritual world
they would remain under its shadow, and there
they must wait till the great redemption comes.
There even the saints and patriarchs of the former dispensations must be, for they are still under
the bondage of entailed moral evil, still " included under sin," which no religion of mere legal
observances could ever remove. Hence the state
of the dead was neither heaven nor hell. The
entailed burden rested still on all alike. "The
whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain."
But this state of things was not always to continue. The heavens have opened at last, and the




322    THE PNEUMATOLOGY OF ST. PAUL.
Christ hath descended out of them. They have
opened down to the earth, and down also into
that mediate world, and from both alike the way
is now clear to the skies.  Christ descended to
the earth, and he descended also into Hades; he
rose out of it again, the " first fruits" of all who
had gone thither. Henceforth the curse under
the Law is removable, for Christ is so revealed,
and comes into the soul with such power and
effulgence, as to transform it into his own image,
and roll off from it the whole burden of inherited
evil. Hence, as in Adam all die, even so those
who are in Christ shall all be made alive. The
Adam of consciousness is excluded before the
Christ of consciousness, coming in with power
and changing the whole man into his glorious
likeness. Hence he raises up his own out of
the mediate world, for all who have lived according to the measure of truth which was given
them belong to him; and he will raise them up
at the last day. He comes there as well as here
to resolve its peoples into their opposites, down
among the lost or up among the seraphim.
And hence, too, it will come to pass under the
Gospel that there will be no necessity of waiting
after death in a mediate world. Such will be
the renewing and transforming efficacy, that the
inherited curse will be cleared away from us in
this life, and death will be an immediate transfer




THE HADES OF CHRISTIANITY.     323
to the celestial abodes. It is not at all strange
that Paul, with his new and wonderful experience
and glowing faith, supposed this consummation
was nearer at hand than it really was. It will
come some time, as sure as Christianity is to accomplish its work among the nations. Individual
and humanitary regeneration proceeds apace under it, and the day must dawn when the bondage
of hereditary evil will be broken, and the saints
on earth become so ripened for heaven that they
have only to be unclothed of mortality to find
themselves among the glorified. The mediate
world will become narrower, till it dwindles to a
point and disappears; and then earth and heaven
meet, and to step from one is to stand already inll
the other. No doubt it has been so with many;
no doubt that, under the potent sway of Christianity as a renewing power, the regeneration of
thousands has been so complete, that death has
transferred them from earth to heaven " in a
moment, in the twinkling of an eye."  Paul
expected this for himself; for as soon as he was
"absent from the body," he believed he should
be "present with the Lord."  He looked upon
this as the boon of Christ to his whole Church.
And if he anticipated it too soon, it was because
his faith was so lively that it made all things in
the perspective to stand out and come near to
him, and appear on one ground in the picture, —




324    THE PNEUMATOLOGY OF ST. PAUL.
just as the distant and hazy landscape is brought
near by the lens, and makes its objects almost
touch the glass.
Such is the Hades that lay evidently in the
conception of the Apostle, and such its place in
his comprehensive scheme of theology. That
scheme is a plan in which one part fits to another
with admirable consistency; and under every
variety of phrase and illustration some portion of
it will be found looking out from almost every
chapter of his Epistles. Let the reader peruse
them carefully in the light of this exposition, and
we are persuaded that a system of doctrine will
rise and expand before his eye, not gnarled and
distorted as when it has been shaped for modern
use, but with a symmetry both grand and beautiful, glowing in the light of Divine truth, and
warming the soul with the exhalations of Divine
iove.




CHAPTER IX.
SUMMARY.
THE outlines of Paul's system of Pneumatology, comprising his whole thought on the subject
of the resurrection, we trust have been sufficiently evolved in the preceding pages. The points
which we have brought out may be summed up
and set in order as follows: -
1. The notions of the primitive men, while
dominated by the senses, respecting the state of
the dead, were those of gross materialism. They
believed there was an overworld where God resided in space, and an underworld where all departed spirits were gathered together. The first
they called Heaven, the last they called Hades.
The Hebrew believed that the souls in Hades
only remained there for the final judgment, when
they would all be raised out of it, some to be
made more happy in an upper Paradise, others
to be remanded to a deeper place in the under28




306    THE PNEUMATOLOGY OF ST. PAUL.
world called Gchenna or Hell. Hence the origin
of the three terms, - Heaven, the place of supreme bliss; Hell, the place ofthe final woe;
and Hades, the place of waiting preliminary to
the other two.
2. Christianity makes use of the same terminology, but makes it representative of a higher
order of ideas. It makes the appearances of space
the analogy wherewith to shadow forth the things
of a spiritual world. Heaven is not the firmament overhead, but the condition of the redeemed
after death, of which the blue serene gives us
the most appropriate symbol. Hell is not the
lowest pit underground, but the lowest condition
of man's reversed and degraded faculties. Hades
is not an intermediate place in the underworld,
but all intermediate state in the spiritual world
into which men pass at death. Thus Christianity clears itself of naturalism, while framing out
of it a language to set forth its transcendent
realities.
3. In strict accordance with these ideas Paul
unfolds the doctrine of the resurrection.  In his
essential distinction between natural and spiritual body, he discretes the two realms of matter
and spirit, so that, though the natural body dies,
man emerges in an immortal body, and as such




S.UMMARY.             327
enters the spiritual world.  But he does not
enter heaven, even though a descendant of Abraham.  Hereditary evil was entailed on all the
children of the first Adam, which the ceremonial
law had no power to remove. Jew and Gentile
alike must have passed into the mediate realm
where the people of God wait the coming redemption. By the deeds of the Law no man who
has ever lived can be justified.
4. But Christ has appeared, and the redemption comes. He appeared on earth; he died and
entered the mediate realm, and rose out of it
into heaven, the first fruits of them that waited
in those preliminary abodes. And he promised
a second appearing out of the heavens to which
he has gone.
5. What the Law could not do, the Son of God
is mighty to accomplish. He can remove the
hereditary curse laid upon humanity by the first
Adam, for in the second Adam shall all be made
alive. At the second coming of Christ with his
angels, or the opening down of heaven to the
earth and into Hades, all who belong to him will
be raised up, and meet the Lord in the skies,
and be with him for ever. Those who belong
not to him, that is, whose inmost life is not in
unison with his divine perfections, will be driven




328   THE PNEUMATOLOGY OF ST. PAUL.
from " the presence of the Lord and the glory of
his power"; and thus the second coming will
bring on the judgment-day, and Hades will be
cleared of its inhabitants.
6. Those Christians who live to see that time
will be " changed," without resting in the mediate place of souls. The entailed curse shall
cling to God's people no more, but under the
new redemptive force now made available to the
race, the death-realm  shall have no power to
retain the believer in Christ, and "to be absent from  the body is to be present with the
Lord."
These several points are brought out in Paul's
writings, now for one purpose and now for another, sometimes to confute the Jew, sometimes the
Gnostic, and sometimes the half-believing Gentile.  Whatever heresy he finds invading the
Church, he confronts it with that special truth
adapted to bear it down. It is only when you
gather them together that you see their severe
logical coherence, each fitting into a comprehensive plan of Christian doctrine, and harmonizing
with the teachings of Christ, and showing that
the ideas and the imagery that clothes them
flowed into his mind from the same fountain of
inspiration.




SUMMARY.                329
In treating of the resurrection of Christ, we
saw that the phrase in its extended signification
did not mean merely the reanimation of the natural body on the third day, but the whole process through which Christ emerged out of earthly
conditions to his place of power on high. The
reader will be impressed with the close congruity
between the resurrection of the Divine Exemplar
and that of all his followers, as illustrated in the
Pauline pneumatology. As a universal fact applicable to all mankind, the resurrection is the
emergence of the spiritual body out of mortal
decay into immortal existence. But applied specially to the people of Christ, it includes the glorious adjuncts of that fact, -rising out of the
mediate state, freed from the whole burden of
evil, to complete redemption with Christ on high.
As a universal fact, it is that stage through which
every one must pass in his transit to immortality.
It is the fact with those concomitants so auspicious and animating to the Christian believer, that
Paul treats of in his first letter to the Corinthians.
It is the emergence of the spiritual body out of
mortal dissolution, and its further emergence out
of the Hadean shadows, that inspire the exclamation of double triumph, — " 0 Deathli, where
is thy sting?  0 Hades, where is thy victory?"
28*




CHAPTER X.
CONCLUSION.
OUR object in the preceding pages has been
accomplished, if we have brought out in bold relief the Pauline philosophy respecting the immortal life. It has not fallen in with our plan to
show how it accords with the universal reason, or
how it is necessitated in the development of the
well-known principles of human nature. We are
persuaded, however, that after the sectarian theologies have all perished, after the tangles of
metaphysics in which they sought to involve the
great Apostle have been brushed away by time,
after Romanism and Protestantism have both
subsided, and a universal theology, having its
scientific basis in the indisputable facts of nature
and psychology, shall have taken their place, his
writings more than ever will be regarded as the
utterance of a reason that transcends that of man
and speaks to the ages.
What is it to be prepared for heaven? It is to




CONCLUSION.             331
be entirely regenerated, to have the last remnant
of evil extinguished within us, and angelic affections unfolded, so as to fill our whole nature,
and become solely effusive in all our speech and
actions.  Entire regeneration has not been accomplished until all necessity for self-denial has
ceased, and the Divine Love has a spontaneous
flow into our whole external life.  So long as
there is self-denial, there is conflict between the
Holy Spirit working in us and our own unextinguished selfishness. We are as yet in the Church
militant, not in the Church triumphant. Our redemption is but partial, so long as there is not
perfect harmony between our external and internal man. When the external man with its passions and appetites, down to the very body which
it wears, has become cleansed of evil and interfused by the Divine Love from within so as to
bend to it spontaneously in all its motions, all
conflict ceases; the whole nature is a unit, and
redemption is complete. Then " it is finished,"
and, the thin veil of mortality dropping from
around us, we should stand forth glorified. This
is the heavenly state in its fulness, and he who
has attained to it has only to be freed of the
natural body to find himself the companion of
angels.
None can say how many have thus attained
since Christ hath become a new power in human




332   THE PNEUMATOLOGY OF ST. PAUL.
redemption. We suppose the number has been
great. We suppose the divine work has been
accomplished in multitudes under the hard disguises of temptation and trial; that for them
earth and heaven have met with no mediate
world to interspace them, and that the numbers
will increase, and the interspace will grow narrower, as humanitary regeneration goes on with
cumulative power.
Conceding all this, we cannot be blind as to
the actual condition of the world at large. That
Judaism, a merely legal dispensation, had no such
regenerative efficacy, we have not only the authority of the Apostle to assure us, but the Jewish character in all its manifestations.  That
Christianity does not produce this result in most
believers, we also know; they go hence bearing
with them  abundant remnants of moral evil.
From these postulates the inference is inevitable
that the spiritual world must have its mediate
condition, and the disclosures of the Bible on
this subject are only human nature revealed
in more open day. There are, moreover, as
we have remarked already, myriads who die
in infancy and childhood, and there are heathen nations in a moral state entirely analogous to that of childhood, who have had no
truth given them to reject, and whose minds
have not even expanded to the point of moral




CONCLUSION.              333
responsibility.* They have never had the'" conscience " formed within them which the Apostle
accredits to the Gentiles of his day, and which
rendered them  " without excuse."   This tide
of humanity sweeps on into the spirit-realm.
Whither?   If you say at once into heaven,
you utter the grossest solecism. If you say into
hell, never having had a probation even, you do
something worse, for you fly into the face of the
Eternal Justice!
Hence the judgment scene is in the mediate
world, and hence it becomes obvious what of
necessity it must be.  Christ coming there as
here, " through the clouds of heaven," in other
words, the Divine Truth revealed in unclouded
splendors will open all the spiritual graves, and
cause the dead to come forth.  Those who have
accepted him  here, and whose inmost life has
been touched and toned by his love, will hail him
as their Friend and Deliverer.  The remnants
of evil that engirded them will be cleared away,
the inward life made more intense, will assume
the form and body in complete harmony with itself; and they will rise to meet their Beloved in
spotless robes. Those whose inmost life is corrupt and perverted, whose motive principles are
selfish, though these have been concealed under
* Read, who may, the testimony of late travellers in Southern
Africa and Patagonia.




334   THE PNEUMATOLOGY OF ST. PAUL.
fair moralities and godly seemings, would have
those seemings stripped away, and the lurking
corruption made bare, and left to take its correspondent form and manifestation; precisely as
here, when the truth has a nearer advent, and is
brought home to men's business and bosoms, it
resolves society into its opposites, and as by the
touch of Ithuriel arranges Christ and his elect
over against the Devil and his angels. The enunciation of Paul, therefore, is the voice of the
prophesyings that go up from the deep within us.
" We must all stand before the judgment-seat of
Christ, that every man may take away with him
what was in his body, whether it be good or bad."
And as for those in whom the spiritual degree of
the mind had remained closed, infancy and childhood, and the tribes and peoples whose minds
have never had a development above the state
analogous to infancy and childhood, how obvious
is it that their natures would be warmed into life,
and their understandings opened, and their day
of choice come to them in the Christ revealed
from heaven! All the intimations which we obtain from the condition of men here, of the generations where they disappear from  our sight
and enter the mystic land, all the dictates of the
enlightened reason, confirm the doctrine of the
primitive Church and of the New Testament,that with the mass of human beings the first




CONCLUSION.              335
state after death is neither heaven nor hell. And
just as clear and loud are the intimations that
such an influx of the Eternal Truth into that
middle realm as the Scriptures describe, such an
unveiling there of the face of the Divine Word,
"' the Lord Jesus descending with his mighty angels in flaming fire," such a falling into it of
trumpet voices, like drops of light upon the conscience, would resolve it speedily into heaven or
hell. Therefore the mediate state is not the purgatory of Popery, where men suffer so much pain
for so much venial sin; it is the state where
every man's real and dominant life is cleared of
disharmonizing elements, and bodied and robed
according to its intrinsic quality, and drawn by
unerring affinities to its place and home..
There is a process known familiarly to the
chemist as crystallization, and it is produced
sometimes by the action of the solar rays. Let
the liquid mass which holds the particles in solution be placed in the light, and lucid points shoot
here and there, around which every luciforin
atom arranges itself in beautiful transparencies,
and is no longer a component of the residual
mass.  Even so it is when Christ touches the
souls of his own people with light. Death dissolves our weak and suffering humanity, breaks
up the societies and families of earth, and pours
the individual atoms disintegrated into the spiritrealm.  But all whose qualities are luciforn




336    THE PNEUMATOLOGY OF ST. PAUL.
there move obedient to the touch of the solar
rays, are separated from the residual portion and
formed into gems that become radiant in the
Eternal splendors. Thus the crystalline societies
of heaven are arranged.  Thus all which the
Father gives to the Son shall be raised up again
at the last day.
We have not touched upon the question of the
duration of the state called "hell" after the separating judgment has taken place. It is more
important, we think, to hold the attention awake
to the solemn issues of the present scene, and the
awful antagonism between the essentially good
and essentially evil in human character. It lies
with every one who lives under the noon of Gospel light, to choose which shall become his dominant and intrinsic life beneath these frail timerobes of flesh, and whether, therefore, when the
robe falls from him, his home centre shall be down
in the abysses or up among the ascending Paradises
towards the summits of day. Happy is he whose
progress here is such that those summits come
clearly into his view; who passes over, while yet
in the flesh, the interspace between earth and
heaven, so that when death touches him, " in a
moment, in the twinkling of an eye," lie changes
from the man into the angel!




CONCLUSION.            337
THE object which we proposed to ourselves
when we commenced the foregoing treatise was
twofold, - a living apprehension of the great doctrine of Immortality, and such a practical realization of it as shall bring down its comforts and
its monitions upon the humblest scene of our daily
duties. Our aim has been to show it clear of the
superstitions which have been gathered around it
by Church traditions, through which it loses its
hold on reasoning minds, and by a rational interpretation to obtain an unclouded view of that
spiritual world which the Gospel unveils to our
sight. Once disclosed, how solemn, and yet how
entrancing, are its perspectives, and how near
they come and open beneath the eye! There is
no death; for that which seemed so was only a
spectre that haunted the natural mind, and vanishes in the blessed dawn. There is no death,
for the " sweet fields" are not " beyond the
swelling flood," but under our feet; and there is
no dark river that flows between. Those fields
are only concealed by the overlayings of the material senses, and these being lifted away, we stand
on immortal ground, from which the concealing
clouds have vanished for ever. There is no intermediate state of ghostly existence, but the immortal man within is more than the flesh that
cumbered it, and is eternally organized the moment the encumbrance disappears. There is no
29




338             CONCLUSION.
death, therefore, but only the removal of deathly
coverings; the word vanishes from the Christian
vocabulary, and the thing it represented vanishes
from the prospect of the Christian believer. For
ourselves, we cannot raise to heaven a song too
jubilant for this victory over the grave. All fear
is.removed springing from the fact of mere physical dissolution; we put our clay statue in the
furnace, and let it flow away to corruption, knowing, not that we shall receive ages llence, but
that we possess already an indestructible statue
of gold. All fear of mere death is removed, and
that done, we can fix our undisturbed attention
upon the only thing to be feared in any state of
being, — the moral evil that glooms from within
us, and clouds the landscape, and shuts out the
smile of God.
And when the eternal world is brought so wondrous near, yes, folds us in already, what department of our present activities is not irradiated by
it, what range of duties which it does not lift up
and adorn? Whatever our place, if we are doing
its work well, it is the anteroom of heaven, and
we are breathing in hallowed air. The whole
space between earth and heaven we may pass
over while yet in the material body, and so our
souls may be among the encircling angels, while
our hands and feet move here on the errand of
love. IIappy is he who has thus passed on and




CONCLUSION.             339
yet remains, for in him the heavens and the earth
have met together, and through him the latter
receives from the former the odors that breathe
from Paradise.
As we take our leave of the reader, we cannot
withhold our fervent congratulations at the auspicious results of our inquiry; for if he has followed us with the grateful interest which we
have felt in pursuing the revealed way to a serene
and all-sufficing faith, he will acknowledge that
there is no greater boon which God bestows upon
us than those sunbright convictions which make
the present and the future life meet and blend
together. He will never despond, for the gates
are ever open through which another sun streams
down upon the field of care. He cannot sin
without an inexpressible dread of the nature of
sin, since hell is the dismal apocalypse of unforsaken evil in man, and to cherish it now is to lay
up the material whence its hideous imagery is
sure to be unrolled. He cannot sorrow without
hope, for the faith which brings the future near,
and shows us the friends who rose at the burial
hour to walk in light, is a faith which makes hope
elastic and gay. He cannot live without lifting
every day a hymn of praise for that existence
whose line stretches unbroken through the enldless avenues and the mellowing radiance of the
city of God. And he cannot lie down to the last




340             CONCLUSION.
agony without feeling the strength that gives him
wings to rise above it, and pronounce with the
last motion of his lips a cheeerful good night to
the world.
THE END.