Jesus and the Resurrection

The doctrine of the resurrection of the dead body is essential to the validity of Christianity. Christ was crucified, dead, and buried; he passed within the unseen world; and, aside from the verification of his own assertion that the third day he should rise again, his resurrection is necessary to our faith in him as a present and eternal Saviour; and in his resurrection we have the promise and pledge of our own.

The Jew had from his sacred books historic evidence that the dead had been made to live again, and in the days of Christ and his apostles he had the present experience of such occurrences. To the Jew, therefore, the doctrine of a resurrection was familiar, and though the sect of the Sadducees disbelieved all spiritual existence, they well knew the prevalent faith of their nation to be that the spirit lived after death, and at a coming day would reanimate the body long separated from it. But to a heathen hearer of the first preaching of the gospel, nothing could give greater astonishment than to be called on to believe that the dead bodies of all past generations should rise again. A Socratic philosopher, a speculative Platonist, and even an Aristotelian, who comprehended first and final causes in his dialectics, might-accept the doctrines both of pre-existence and a future state for the spirit; but a philosophy resting alone upon the uniformity of nature, and the prevalent convictions of mankind from common experience, could recognize nothing in the teaching of Christ’s raising the dead body but an incredible absurdity, to be met only with contemptuous rejection. Accordingly, when Paul preached the gospel first at Athens, “Jesus and the resurrection” was the setting forth of “strange gods” and “new doctrines”; and the Epicureans and Stoics encountered him by the derisive inquiry: “What will this babbler say?” And so with modern pagan people, who have been instructed only in the mechanical forces of nature and the laws of matter, the same incredulity appears. The educated, English-speaking Hindus feel the strongest repugnance to Christianity, on account of its two fundamental doctrines of the divinity of Christ and the resurrection of the dead; and, but for these doctrines, many of them do not scruple to say that it would be a desirable thing that the gospel should be preached to the whole world. Yet, as a plan of salvation for the lost, the gospel must go to the heathen nations with the truth of Christ’s divinity, tested by Christ’s resurrection, and that of his second coming to raise the dead and judge the world; for, stripped of these doctrines, its preaching would lose all power to change the heart and life.

Objections to the doctrine of the resurrection find their greatest force from the loss of adequate conceptions of man’s essential constitution, as combined of body, soul, and spirit, according to the scripture representation; and with a spiritual gospel philosophy, the rising of the dead, and even the divinity of Jesus Christ, would at once lose most of their speculative difficulties as articles of religious faith. A true conception of the essential constitution of humanity is conditional for an intelligent belief in either of these doctrines. We need thus to find:

I. Some adequate Idea of Man’s essential Constitution.

II. To recognize its full Accordance with Scriptural Representation.

III. Thereby to believe in the actual Identity of the Human Resurrection.

I. What Is A Philosophical Idea Of Essential Humanity?

The author of this Article must refer its readers to his previous writings for a comprehensive view of fact and philosophy in reference to material and living creation. All that is here needful is the presentation of such distinctions in inorganic and organic being as shall serve to accurately discriminate man from all existing species. The essence of matter is force, and the leading varieties of forces come from their internally distinctive order of working energies — the impulses working to, and the expulses working from, a common point. The former determines gravitating matter, and the latter the etherial essence of heat and light; and the interworking of both is purely mechanical. The essence of life is a want pervading force, which, as a feeling of its need, prompts the force it pervades to the specific end of the want; and this interworking of specific want and its possessed force is purely spontaneous. In plant life the end of the want is an embodying organism, in which the life may abide and therein reproduce successors of its own kind. In animal life, the want is a nervous organism, in which through sensation the life may wake in conscious activity for its own gratification as a living soul. In human life, the want is not merely to embody itself in an organism and reproduce its kind, as does the plant, nor merely for its own sentient gratification, as does the animal, but for the ultimate end of rising to full self-consciousness and acting in free personal responsibility. The human life-want so constructs the human body that it shall subserve both the ends of the animal soul in sentient gratification and the rational spirit in pure and perpetual self-approbation.

Whatever the bare life in any case may be in its own essence, it cannot manifest itself otherwise than in the construction of its appropriate organism by the spontaneous working of its possessed forces, and therein using the organism for its own respective ultimate end, as the plant for reproduction, the animal for conscious gratification, and the man for responsible self-approbation. The actual creation of the life is this origination of the specific want in pervasion of its possessed force, and then the created life-force constructs its organism spontaneously to the end, and thus according to the type, of its own want. The plant never rises above mere spontaneous activity; the animal soul rises in its spontaneously constructed body to conscious sense-activity; and the man to full personal responsibility. The human spirit is originally superior to animal soul, as that is to vegetable life, and while created in the “image of God,” is a distinct individuality from God. This God-like human spirit gives to man his peculiar prerogatives of personality and responsibility above the brute, and, as superinduced upon animal sense and made accountable for keeping all the appetites of sense subject to its approbation in all the period of its trial, it thus becomes incumbent that as one in probation so both sense and spirit must be one in retribution. The living soul in the animal is thus made immortal soul in the man, and while the rational spirit is expressed in its etherial forces, it secures also that the sentient soul of the man shall have its permanent expression in the material forces which it possesses and uses. The merely animal sense goes out in the dissolution of the brute body; but the human soul is held in balanced forces which never have their dissolution. On these permanently possessed and balanced forces are arranged the bodily adaptations for nutrition, sense-perception, locomotion, and reproduction, necessary to man’s terrestrial economy and experience, but which will be useless for the employments of his eternal abode. Man’s “earthy” body has as its basis both soul-body and spirit-body in the same individuality.

Death to man and animal, so far as the earthy organism is concerned, comes alike in its dissolution. All that has ministered to merely terrestrial experiences passes off in this dissolving, and the old modes of nourishment, special senses, and movement from place to place, are known no more. In the brute, however, all life and sensation go out with the dissolving form forever, while in man the balanced forces of the sentient life continue indissoluble, and therein the human soul is made immortal. The earthy husk drops off, while the essential kernel of the sense-life abides, and its appetitive capabilities are persistently retained within it. But the great peculiarity of death to man is not the dissolving of the earthy body, and the persistence of the sentient soul, so much as in the sudden painful sundering of the soul and spirit. In the death of man, the integrity of his human constitution is invaded, and there is actually “the dividing asunder of soul and spirit,” and created sense and reason are for the time in separate existences. After the parting pang the spirit reluctantly bears the separation, and waits in expectant hope the coming assured reunion.

Thus we conceive of man’s constitution; and of this we farther extend our speculation in the case of Jesus Christ, as a being specially constituted for the work of mediation between God and man. “By the power of the Highest” he was made in the womb of the virgin completely a human being in rational spirit and sentient soul and earthy body, and for the completion of his Messianic constitution the Divine Word took this prepared human form, and united essential Deity to humanity. As literally Immanuel, the God-man works out the mediatorial plan of redemption in both saving the sinning subject and sustaining offended sovereignty. Being born as man, Jesus could live and suffer and die and rise again; and as being also God, he could control nature and command angels, good and bad, and on earth commune on terms of equality with the Father in heaven. He could lay down his life, and take it again, and can come the second time to raise the dead and judge the world. In such a constitution we have the conception of a perfect Saviour.

Summarily, then, we conceive man to have been constituted of body, soul, and spirit in living unity, and in such combined individuality the human species is distinguished from all others. Man’s earthy body of flesh and bones, though fitted instrumentally to serve the rational spirit as well as sense, is destructible, like the brute body; but this corruptible body has, beneath its coming and passing elements, an indissoluble base of balanced forces held in permanent colligation by the perpetually active sentient life, and in this is the constitution of an immortal human soul. This imperishable human soul is thus elevated above mere brute-sensation by the claims of the rational spirit which, in his own image, the Creator breathed into man. As created individually distinct from the absolute uncreated Reason, the spirit has its abiding lodgment in substantial ethereal forces, which it possesses and uses, and its moral character is given in the disposition it takes toward ruling, or toward serving, the sentient soul; and inasmuch as the disposing must be in alliance with sense in probation, so the sentient soul must be held together with the spirit in eternal retribution. The undying spirit in its forces holds the soul immortal in its balanced existing forces, and thus rational spirit superinduced upon sentient soul, in one individuality within the earthy body, acts out its conscious responsible agency during its period of terrestrial probation. And now, this philosophical conception is not only conformed to, but is necessary in explanation of, the scripture representation. The speculative idea underlies and expounds the recorded facts of revelation.

II. What Is This Accordant Biblical Representation Of Humanity?

Discriminative terms for distinctive elements of man’s constitution will be found applied in the Bible, and which have a precise peculiarity of meaning, though often some one will admit of a use inclusive of others. The scriptures repeatedly and clearly recognize the distinctions of body, soul, and spirit, as entering into the complex being of each human individual, and each distinctive element fills its place and bears its share in the entire construction of the man, though it is not always necessary that either term should be rigidly restricted to its primary, specific signification. When that which is common to all is to be expressed, then either term may be used, and so all may be interchangeable, and when the entire being is meant, any one of the essential elements may be comprehensively put as expressive of the whole. The context in all such cases easily prevents all misapprehension, and a careful note of what is prevalent in the expression will determine its own shade of specific meaning, which may have been intended in the selection of the term. Especially will the occasional use of equivalent words for these common terms make manifest a very precise and discriminate signification. There are very many such occasions for attaining the teaching of the scriptures in reference to what their doctrine of the constitution of humanity may be; but full satisfaction may be attained by noticing only what may be given in a few comprehensive examples. If we carefully note how the Bible represents personal character in human life, and also how it represents the perpetuation of personality in human death, we shall find abundant verification that our above speculative view of man is in full accord with revelation. The scripture facts necessarily presuppose the philosophical determining ideas. Having attentively followed out these in their order, we shall be fully prepared for the last general head, as a ground of faith in the resurrection of the identical human body.

1. Scriptural Representation of Distinction in Human Character.

Brute life is merely sentient; angelic life is wholly spiritual; human life is a complex of the animal and angelic, and carries along in its experience the blended peculiarities of both. Animal sense and rational insight into the experiences of sense induce a thinking process, which opens a sphere of speculative philosophy and practical activity, that is peculiarly the province for man to occupy, and in which he will meet responsibilities and form distinctions in character that can belong only to those of his own race. From a few scripture representations, we may attain a general conception of the distinctively human constitution and its processes of fixing a permanent disposition, such as, while exclusive of all but human character, shall be inclusive of all varieties of moral standing among men.

We begin with the following text, most remarkable in its human application, and its comprehension of all that is human: “For the word of God is quick and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart” (Heb. 4:12). Divine truth is here contemplated solely in its application to man. It cannot be made to reach animals, nor does it refer here to angelic experience, good or bad. Creatures compounded of body, soul, and spirit are alone included, and the truth of God is represented as cutting down into such a constitution, and laying bare every secret spring to action which can be found within it, and forcing to a moral discrimination of character in the conscious aim and end of the personal agent. Divine truth has a meaning for the spirit, and becomes keen and penetrating to a spiritual insight, fixing imperative obligations and forcing out the decisions of an excusing or accusing conscience. Ultimate and immutable right, and eternal obligation to it, as opposed to all considerations of prudential expediency and utility, is the distinction between spirit and soul, and the divine word cuts clean down to that line, and then penetrates to the ministering joints and sensitive marrow in the bodily appetites, and compels to the discernment of the character, as the heart’s thought and intention have been directed to the claims of the spirit, or to the interested plans of the soul and the lusting impulses of the body. Moral truth searches and tries the entire moral man, by determining the disposition taken by the spirit.

The prompting from bodily appetite and that from the soul’s deliberate planning for gratification may both be said to come from nature, and thus to mark the natural man, since both press upon the spirit to yield itself in servitude to natural impulse — in the first case, impulse to present passion, and in the last case, to the greatest gratification, carefully considered, in the long run; but the New Testament writers, more especially, make a clear distinction in terms between the immediate impulse of bodily appetite and that of the soul’s carefully estimated interest from prudential economy. So Peter, speaking of the naked sensuality and habitual licentiousness of some who blindly “walk after the flesh in the lust of uncleanness,” and “having eyes full of adultery that cannot cease from sin,” says they are “as natural brute beasts,” or more literally rendered, “thoughtless physical animals” (2 Pet. 2:12). Both their calculating soul and their responsible spirit have become thoroughly absorbed in the indulgence of bodily lusts; and so also Paul describes others of the same sort, “who being past feeling have given themselves over unto lasciviousness, to work all uncleanness with greediness” (Eph. 4:19). This term of “physical animal” may also be as appropriately given to all such as become engrossed in the indulgence of any bodily appetite, as the glutton and the drunkard. Even in the more cultivated sensuality in many forms of art and literature, genius has been utterly prostituted to voluptuousness.

But a different term than that by Peter is used by Paul where he says, “the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God; for they are foolishness unto him; neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. But he that is spiritual judgeth all things, yet he himself is judged of no man” (1 Cor. 2:14-15. The “natural man” is here literally the “psychical man”; the man of cultivated judgment according to sense, who may have “excellency of speech and of wisdom,” and whose “preaching” may be “with enticing words of man’s wisdom,” which “the princes of this world “may “know”; but to this considerate soul, spiritual things are foolishness, and utterly unintelligible, and however much of worldly wisdom and practical skill the psychical man may attain, he can have no discernment of supersensible truths and realities. The physical and the psychical man are distinguished in this, that the physical permits himself to be governed unresistingly by the impulses of animal appetites and passions, and thoughtlessly surrenders himself to sensual indulgences, while the psychical learns discretion from experience, and knows how to restrain his gratifications from prudential considerations of utility and expediency. But the “psychical man” is, in this passage, put in opposition to the “pneumatical” and with all his cultivation, derived from observation of nature’s order and the teaching of experience, has no insight to discern through nature the supernatural and spiritual verities which always underlie the empirical appearances. To these deeper truths the most cultivated soul is as undiscerning as the grossest sensualist. But the “pneumatical,” which is the spiritual man, discriminately judges all things, even “searches the deep things of God”; but is himself beyond all scrutinizing judgment other than that of Omniscience.

It is the province of the spirit to control the calculating soul as closely and constantly as the impulsive senses, for the character is as truly depraved, if not as brutally debased, in carefully getting and prudentially hoarding in the end of coming sense-indulgence, as in giving loose to passionate propensities. The spirit is the rational, responsible ruler of the entire human individuality, and to yield itself to the end of immediate gratification, or that of more prudential happiness in time to come, against the end of its own dignity and integrity, is to dispose itself perversely, and thus basely and wickedly. The “physical” is utterly sensuous; the “psychical” controls present indulgence from prudential considerations of greater gratification to come; the “spiritual “knows in itself what is due to itself, and controls all gratification in the end of ultimate righteousness. The highest soul-discernment is in the way of the most economical happiness; but the spirit’s insight is beyond all happiness as end, to the higher end of its own approbation. Just so far as the spirit gives way to gratification over approbation the man is “carnally-minded,” and so far as the spirit controls gratification in the end of approbation the man is “spiritually minded” (Rom. 8:6). And even when the spirit so far rules as prevailingly to maintain the warfare, the eruptions of sense-indulgence may be so frequent as to force the appellation of “carnal,” even to real Christians, and which the apostle does apply to those very Corinthians, “called to be saints,” to whom he was here writing; and he goes on to say that they were yet such “babes in Christ” that he could not “speak unto them as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal.”

And this conflict of the physically lusting, or the pyschically planning, sense against the rationally controlling spirit is habitually recognized by Paul: “The flesh lusteth against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh, and these are contrary the one to the other” (Gal. 5:17). “I see another law in my members warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members” (Rom. 7:23). This stated disposition of spirit either to the end of impulsive or of prudent gratification is one thing, and to the end of its own approving is quite another thing, and in such stated disposition is the human “heart,” out of which, according to its direction, the Saviour says, proceedeth all good and all evil things (Matt. 12:35; 15:19). The same conflict was, indeed, in the original trial of the race, and the fall of man was in his commitment of the spirit to both the lusts of the flesh and the speciously considered interests of the soul. And so also the regeneration of man is the recovery of just the pristine authority of the spirit over carnal impulse and calculating expediency. The flesh in its depraved concupiscence is brought under the recovered dominion of the spirit (John 3:6). And so, too, perseverance in holiness and complete sanctification is sought for by the apostle Paul when he “prays God, your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Thess. 5:23). And this prayer is answered when the spirit holds all appetites of the body and all interested schemes of the soul subject to its own approval, So far, speculative philosophy and the Bible go together.

2. Scripture Representation of Human Death.

Geological records abundantly teach that in the vegetable and animal kingdoms death has from the first prevailed, for their fossil remains are older than the fall of man and the curse of death upon him. But that at his creation man was designed for immortality is clearly witnessed by the scripture record of the tree of life in paradise, which was both the pledge and procuring cause of an undying constitution. The primitive penalty threatened for eating the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, was eternal death in perpetual exclusion from divine favor; and the promise of a Redeemer gave occasion for a delay in the execution of eternal death, and the opportunity for a second probation. But the curse of temporal death was instituted in the universal sentence, “Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return” (Gen. 3:19). And now, in the sense of organic dissolution, man and beast alike die, and return to dust. When we come to the more particular representations of the resurrection, we shall attain more full and clear recognition of the distinction made between the animal and the human constitution; but even the consideration of scripture statements about the dying and the dead will, of itself, pretty fully indicate that the point of difference is this, the individual brute perishes in the dissolution of the organism, but both the human soul and the human spirit survive organic dissolution, and while sundered themselves in death, they still keep the body in its identity for its resurrection in their reunion.

Old Testament saints, while they saw organic death and dissolution to be in man and beast alike, still believed that in the human there was that which survived the organic destruction. So Job, “Man lieth down and riseth not; till the heavens be no more they shall not awake nor be raised out of their sleep.” Yet his faith still holds on to continued existence, and coming up again in full consciousness: “Thou shalt call, and I will answer thee; thou wilt have a desire to the work of thine hands” (Job 14:12–15). David says: “My flesh shall rest in hope; for thou wilt not leave my soul in hell” (Ps. 16:9-10; and again, “As for me I will behold thy face in righteousness; I shall be satisfied when I awake in thy likeness” (Ps. 16:15). And so of Solomon: “For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts, even one thing befalleth them; as the one dieth, so dieth the other; yea they have all one breath; so that a man hath no pre-eminence above a beast; for all is vanity. All go to one place; all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again.” And yet he says, “The spirit of man goeth upward, and the spirit of the beast goeth downward to the earth” (Eccl. 3:19–21). And also, “Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was; and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it” (Eccl. 12:7). And Isaiah prophecies: “Awake and sing ye that dwell in dust, for thy dew is as the dew of herbs, and the earth shall cast out the dead” (26:19). In the Old Testament faith, something survived in the death of man which perished in the dying brute, while the New Testament faith has life and immortality more clearly brought to light. The following representation will be substantially sustained by what we shall find in the New Testament teaching of the process and results of human dying.

Vegetable life never rises into consciousness, and so vegetable death is vegetable disorganization. Animal life has instinctively built up an organization by which the spontaneous life-want comes into conscious recognition, and awakes in experience in the phenomenal forms of varied sensations. Conscious sensation continues in and with the nervous arrangement of the animal organism, and perishes when the nervous irritability ceases; and the individual animal is lost in the dissolution of the nervous organism. This is animal death, and in it the animal itself is forever destroyed and lost. Human life has superadded to its animal sense a rational spirit, which is in the image of God its Creator. The putting of the spirit in possession of the substantial forces it occupies and persistently uses is its created manifestation, and it has its express individuality and distinct personality in no other manner than in and through its possessed substantial forces; and therein is found each man’s distinction from other men, and that of all men from God in their personal identity. The rational spirit is in union with the animal sense in the man’s probationary period, and thus makes a demand for the perpetual preservation of the sense in coming retributive experiences. So, immortalized in the claim of the spirit, the animal fleeting sense becomes the permanently enduring human soul, and in its substantial forces permanently underlies the earthy elements continually taken in and thrown off to constitute the fleeting organism which subserves the ends of man’s terrestrial abode. Human death is essentially the sundering of this union of soul and spirit, followed by the dissolution and destruction of the earthy organism; while the underlying, substantial soul-force is still the identical substantial body, awaiting its reunion with the essential spirit.

And now this speculative idea of human death pervades and expounds the New Testament representations of it. To die is graphically presented by either of two compound words in the original — one indicating the dismissing of the spirit, and the other the dismissing of the soul. The meaning is a departing, in each case, of one from the other, and so a separation of the two, whether spoken of the spirit or of the soul. In some cases the same statement is given by a distinct verb in the dismission, without compounding the spirit in the verb.

We will first take some prominent cases of the dismission of the spirit: “Jesus cried with a loud voice, and gave up the spirit” (Mark 15:37); “When Jesus had cried with a loud voice, he said, Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit; and having said thus he gave up the spirit” (Luke 23:46). Distinct verbs are used for the same dismissing of the spirit (Matt. 27:50; John 19:30). This solemn commending of his spirit to God is sufficient evidence that on its departing it went to God. Then we have the first martyr, Stephen, who, while being stoned and looking into the open heaven, saw Jesus sitting at the right hand of God, and prayed: “Lord Jesus receive my spirit” (Acts 7:55–59). In the spirit only is proper personality, and not in the soul; and hence the declaration of Jesus to the dying thief, “This day shalt thou be with me in paradise” (Luke 23:43), should be understood as teaching that his spirit went to heaven; and so, also, it is to be taken that Paul expected his spirit to depart and be with Christ,” when he desired such departure rather than life (Phil. 1:23). It is a safe conclusion from the above, that the spirits of the righteous go immediately to Christ in heaven when they die. And the parable of the rich man and Lazarus is in the same way to be interpreted of the personal spirit, and not the impersonal soul. The scene is precedent to the resurrection; for the five brethren are still alive on the earth (Luke 16:19). The spirit of Lazarus is borne by angels to the heavenly feast where all good spirits are, and laid in Abraham’s bosom, just as the beloved disciple lay on Jesus’ breast at the last paschal supper. But the rich man’s spirit went to the eternal torment of Gehenna — the proper hell of future punishment. Good spirits thus at death go at once to heaven, and wicked spirits go immediately after death to hell, and the impassable gulf separates them.

We now turn to look at cases where there is said to be the dismission of the soul. Of both Ananias and Sapphira the original record is, they “gave up the soul” (Acts 5:5, 10). And so of Herod Agrippa, the father of King Agrippa, it is said, “He was eaten of worms, and gave up the soul” (Acts 12:23). This giving up of the soul was a parting of soul and spirit in death as truly as in giving up the spirit; and both alike would, in the order of nature, be followed by the dissolution of the earthy organism. But, while we fairly conclude from scriptural representation that the spirit at death goes to heaven or hell directly, according to its character, it is left less clear where we are to understand is the abiding-place of the soul immediately after death. The soul of Christ was in hades after death; but this can determine nothing further than the literal import of the word, as out of sight— beyond perception — in the unseen state. Indeed, the carefulness of statement in David’s prophecy, “Neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption” (Ps. 16:10), and Peter’s very significant comment upon it (Acts 2:25–31), and Paul’s also, to the same purport (Acts 13:35–37), strongly intimate that, while Christ’s spirit went direct to God, his soul lingered with the uncorrupted earthy organism, and the earthy elements did not dissolve and fall away from the permanent psychical body. There was real death, for there was separation of spirit and soul; but there was no bodily dissolution; and even if it were in the body, the soul was in hades, the unseen world; but it was not left there, since the reunion with the spirit reanimated the dead, yet uncorrupted organism, and the whole being of the Saviour lived again. This is much strengthened from the fact that of Jesus only it is said he dismissed his spirit, while of men it is said they dismiss the soul. And still further, Stephen prayed, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit,” and Jesus doubtless did; and having so prayed, “he fell asleep.” Not the departed spirit slept; the soul only rested, and the earthy body crumbled. The soul does not die, nor the psychical body dissolve. Man may kill the body, not the soul; God can destroy both soul and psychical body in hell (Matt. 10:28).

The spirit, then, after death, is in its heaven or hell, and the soul is separate from it, and is somewhere on earth; for the resurrection call is heard “in the graves” (John 5:28-29, and “the sea gives up the dead which are in it” (Rev. 20:13). And the spirit and soul, thus widely sundered, come from “death and hades” up again, and in their reunion constitute the incorruptible resurrection-body.

While thus it seems plain that spirit and soul are sundered in dying, and that the spirit goes at once in perpetual rationality to its heavenly reward or its woful retribution, and that the soul remains on earth unseen; yet a question less clearly decided is, whether the soul has full and uninterrupted consciousness in its separation from the spirit. Old Testament saints, with all their faith in covenant promises and coming spiritual inheritance, had less distinct conceptions of death and the resurrection than were attained through gospel instructions. Their view was through the stillness of the dead in their dark sepulchres as apprehended by sense, yet the revelation made to them, and the inspiration communicated by them, fully recognize continued existence, and expected conscious experiences to come. Deceased patriarchs and kings slept with their fathers, but the sleepers individually were there together. The spirit departed and the soul detained below were dimly conceived, yet a slumbering sense and an enduring personality was held sacred and constant in the Old Testament faith. Still the slumbering part was to them most prominent. So with Job: “Oh that thou wouldest hide me in the grave, that thou wouldst keep me secret until thy wrath be past, that thou wouldst appoint me a set time and deliver me” (Job 14:13). David says of his enemies slain in battle: “The stout-hearted are spoiled, they have slept their sleep; and none of the men of might have found their hands” (Ps. 76:5). And Solomon writes: “There is no work nor device nor knowledge nor wisdom in the grave whither thou goest” (Eccl. 9:10). Especially is to be noted the solemnly striking scene, when the prophet represents the king of Babylon cut down in his pride and sent into the abodes of the dead: “Hell from beneath is moved for thee, to meet thee at thy coming; it stirreth up the dead for thee, even the chief ones of the earth; it hath raised up from their thrones all the kings of the nations “(Isa. 14:9). These kings were quiet and still in their tombs, “lying in glory, every one in his own house,” and though roused at his coming, they yet fall back in their slumber, and this mightiest monarch of them all is denied a place among them, and “cast out as a carcass trodden under foot.” The dead sleep, but have occasional wakings in partial consciousness.

The New Testament representation is also that of rest or sleep in death: “Our friend Lazarus sleepeth; but I go that I may awake him out of sleep” (John 11:11). And a voice cries from heaven to John in his Patmos exile, “Write, blessed are the dead which die in the Lord, from henceforth; yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labors” (Rev. 14:13). The souls of the martyrs cry out from their seclusion “under the altar” for avenging judgments on living persecutors, and though robed for glory it was said to them, “that they should yet rest for a little season “until all coming persecutions shall have ended (Rev. 6:9–11). In the coming millenial glory “the souls” of beheaded witnesses for Jesus live and reign with Christ after a special resurrection (Rev. 10:4); but all through the gospel, while the spirit is free the soul, like Stephen’s, sleeps or rests. The separate soul, even in wakeful consciousness, could have only animal sense and not spiritual reason, and this may account for the obscurity in which the Bible leaves its experience during its isolation. However it may be in this intermediate state, it has participated with the spirit in forming character in time, and with the spirit must participate in the rewards of eternity.

We have thus, both a speculative and a scriptural conception of the human constitution, and they are manifestly alike, each to each. The conception is no abstract deduction from the facts, but an universal and a necessary prerequisite for the facts. The facts themselves could not have been, if precisely this constitution of humanity had not first been. It is a truth for the insight of the comprehensive reason, and not at all for the reflective understanding. It fully prepares us for apprehending an intelligent ground of faith for our last general proposition.

III. The Certainty And Identity Of A Resurrection Body.

Man’s constitution is body, soul, and spirit, and death separates soul and spirit, and dissolves the earthy body, and there can be no rising again except as in the rising we have the identical body, soul, and spirit which were in the dying.

Many scripture passages, and some extended paragraphs, teach the doctrine, and present varied points of view of a general resurrection, but the one comprehensive account is that of the Apostle Paul in 1 Cor. 15. A careful exposition of the entire subject is here made, and a plain, passing commentary on this will admit also all desirable reference to any-other scripture notices of the doctrine.

From the beginning of the chapter to the thirty-fifth verse, attention is confined to the facts of Paul’s preaching the truth of Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection, in accordance with all apostolic example, to the Corinthians, and their confession of faith in the same, and, then, reasoning therefrom to their consequent obligation to accept the faith of the resurrection of all those fallen asleep in Jesus, and to live in accordance with such a belief. The course of the argument here admits of embracing in the conclusion only the resurrection of Christian believers, and were there only this statement of the doctrine we should not have any revelation of the raising up of the wicked from death. Other portions of scripture reveal all we need to know of the rising of the wicked dead; and what is here given will satisfy all speculation about the identity of all raised human bodies. But well aware that there was, and still would be, much question and scruple about the doctrine, and that, from alleged intrinsic absurdity and self-contradiction in the very conception of raising up the old dead to a new life in the same body, there would be unbelievers, the apostle proceeds to a full philosophical elucidation of the mystery. “How are the dead raised up? And with what body do they come?” (vs. 35). There is herein condensed the many sources of disbelief and perplexity concerning the doctrine of the resurrection, and the questionings about it may be proposed either captiously or honestly. The apostle, in his answer, regards first the “what body,” not the “how raised.”

“Thou fool, that which thou sowest is not quickened except it die; and that which thou sowest, thou sowest not that body which shall be, but bare grain, it may chance of wheat or some other grain; but God giveth it a body as it hath pleased him, and to every seed his own body” (vs. 36-37. The whole import is, that a criminal ignorance lies at the source of all your scruples. The old body must die, and the new body must come out of it, and not in elemental matter and form as the old body, but modified according to God’s pleasure, and yet to each individual still his own body. The analogy is not to the power working, but to the necessity of the dying of the old that the new may be raised from it. Jesus Christ also used the same analogy, not to the point of teaching how his dead body could be raised to life again, but the necessity for his death and resurrection in order that an extended church of believers might be raised up in the world. “Verily, 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” (John 12:24). All the mystery of how the dead shall be raised is left unsolved by this reference to the sprouting wheat; but the necessity for its dying in order that the fruit may come is made plain, as is also the fact that the raised product is a changed body, and yet an outcome from the old body.

And now that God may make any such modification of elemental matter and form in bodies as he pleases is manifest from what he is everywhere doing, not only in the vegetable world, but in the animal kingdom, and the material bodies on earth and in the heavens. “All flesh is not the same flesh; but there is one kind of flesh of men, another flesh of beasts, another of fishes, and another of birds. There are also celestial bodies, and bodies terrestrial; but the glory of the celestial is one, and the glory of the terrestrial is another. There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, another glory of the stars; for one star different from another star in glory” (vs. 39–41). Universally, God is making bodies differing in splendor and excellency at his discretion. “So also in the resurrection of the dead. It is sown in corruption, it is raised in incorruption; it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body” (vs. 42–44). We may pass all comment on the changes specified in the preceding verses till we come to the forty-fourth verse, and here is a distinction occurring of much deeper meaning. It discloses the conception already observed in the human constitution of the combined soul and spirit in each individual, and in such a way as to clear up the mystery in the perpetuation of the same body through the transformations of the resurrection. The “natural body “here is not the “physical animal,” as before referred to by us in 2 Pet. 2:12, for the merely physical animal has no independent sentiency, as a soul which can survive death and pass essentially over into an imperishable resurrection-state, but that which is sown is a “psychical body” of essentially balanced forces held by the sentient life in substantial combination, and which cannot be separated when the elements of corruptible flesh and blood and bones built upon it shall dissolve in death. There can be no creation, as an outer manifestation in space and time, of either pure sense or pure reason, except as they are made to take on and be infused through substantial forces that may be used by them as their essential bodies; and thus in our mortal constitution “there is a psychical body,” and “there is a pneumatical body,” — more vernacularly rendered a soul-body and a spirit-body,—which now underlies and sustains our earthy organism of continually fleeting elements. The soul-body is sown in death; the spirit-body is not sown with it, but goes to God at the dying moment. So much is to be understood of the apostle’s explanation of the query: “With what bodies do they come?”

He then turns to teach “how the dead are raised up.” “And so it is written, the first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit. Howbeit that was not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural, and afterward that which is spiritual. The first man is of the earth, earthy; the second man is the Lord from heaven” (vs. 45–47). That there is in the human constitution such a psychical body as above affirmed is here conclusively proved from the inspired record of man’s original creation. “The Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul” (Gen. 2:7). The inspiration of the Creator, conferring the rational spirit in the image of God, superinduced the spiritual upon the sentient, and so man’s “living soul” was originally a divinely inspired soul. And such constitution of the first Adam as combined spirit and soul is the occasion for introducing the desired statement of how the last Adam was constituted; not as man, with merely the human soul and spirit, but a higher spirituality, which was “a quickening,” or a “life-making, spirit.” The precise meaning of this superior prerogative of the second Adam is given by the evangelist: “For as the Father raiseth up the dead and quickeneth them, even so the Son quickeneth whom he will” (John 5:21). And to the same purport the same evangelist gives Christ’s words again: “I am the resurrection and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live” (John 11:25). Sentient animals preceded man, and man’s sentient life is first in order, and the spirit is superinduced upon it in conferring rationality on man; and so the humanity in the last Adam is precedent in order, and the life-making Spirit is superimposed on the human. The first man as soul and spirit was enveloped in an earthy body, and was thus “earth-made”; but the second man — truly human, as earthy, sentient, and spiritual — was yet the pre-existing “Lord from heaven.”

And now, just here, we shall attain additional light on this pre-existing spirit of Christ and his power to raise the dead, if we compare this text of 1 Cor. 15:47 with that in 1 Pet. 3:18–21:“For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God; being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit: by which also he went and preached to the spirits in prison; which sometime were disobedient, when once the long-suffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing, wherein few, that is eight souls, were saved by water. The like figure whereunto even baptism doth also now save us (not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience toward God) by the resurrection of Jesus Christ; who is gone into heaven, and is on the right hand of God; angels and powers being made subject unto him.” The two scriptures reciprocally elucidate each other. In Peter we have the quickening which raised Christ from death, and in Corinthians we have that which raises all the dead. Christ was “quickened by the Spirit”; but in order unmistakably to designate this Spirit by which Christ was quickened, Peter refers to the clearest and earliest case on record where the Jehovah-Spirit had wrought in the world, and affirms that the spirit which quickened the crucified, dead and buried body of Christ was the Spirit which preached to spirits in prison in the days of Noah, and so his own preexisting Spirit, and nothing that pertained to his mere humanity. Such design in Peter’s reference to the times of Noah determines the interpretation to be given of his version of the Mosaic account found in Gen. vi., about which there has been so much diversity and perplexity. It must be understood of what Christ’s pre-existing Spirit did in Noah’s days. The account gives the licentious intercourse of the sons of Seth, called “sons of God, with the daughters of Cain, called “daughters of men,” at the early peopling of the earth; and this rejection of religious restraint induced the most ambitious and monstrous crimes, constituting the “giants” and “mighty men” of those days. And Jehovah said: “My Spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh” (vs. 3). Man was so given to the lusts of the flesh, the divine honor demanded a cessation of the gracious spiritual striving, and God fixed the period of forbearance by saying: “Yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years.” This final determination of Jehovah shut up the spirits of the antediluvians to certain coming retribution, just as his vindictive purpose reserves the angels that kept not their first estate “in everlasting chains under darkness unto the great day” (Jude vs. 6). To these spirits, imprisoned in the period of fixed forbearance, the Jehovah-Spirit went and preached in and by the preaching of Noah (2 Pet. 2:5), and saved the few, eight souls, of the family of Noah in the ark from the flood of water — a like typical figure of salvation as that of Christian baptism through the resurrection and ascension and reigning of Jesus Christ. This “striving “and “preaching” while the ark was preparing was by the same Spirit that “quickened” Jesus’ dead body, and also that which Paul, in the Corinthian Epistle, says made “the last Adam a quickening spirit,” and also “the last Adam the Lord from heaven.” “How, then, are the dead raised up?” Jesus Christ answers: “I have power to lay down my life, and I have power to take it again “(John 10:18). “This is the will of him that sent me, that every one which seeth the Son and believeth on him may have everlasting life, and I will raise him up at the last day “(John 5:40). And thus both questions of “what body” and “how raised” are fairly answered.

But though Jesus Christ be “a quickening spirit,” and “the Lord from heaven,” and has “power” to raise the dead, as he will, yet in this change of the dying and the rising there is still farther difficulty. “As is the earthy, such are they also that are earthy; and as is the heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly. And as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly” (vs. 48-49. Jesus’ human body was earthy, as ours is earthy; his pre-existent personality was heavenly, as we are to become heavenly; here is a glorious transformation, but how shall the body pass from what it has been to what it shall be?

“Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; neither doth corruption inherit incorruption. 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 corruption 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” (vs. 50–54). Here is farther explanation about the “coming body.” To suppose that the earthy elements making the flesh and bones of our terrestrial organism constitute the proper body, and have in themselves its permanent identity and individuality, is to introduce absurdity and self-contradiction into the very conception of the resurrection, and preclude the possibility of any intelligent faith that the same dying body shall be perpetuated in the rising body, and enter upon an eternal spiritual inheritance. Material flesh and blood continually change their elements, passing on and off, while the essential body abides, and this corruptible “cannot inherit incorruption.” The earthy dead bodies, and the earthy bodies that when the trump shall sound shall not then have died, neither of them can “bear the image of the heavenly.” The apostle directly and very plainly applies the conception of the human constitution here just as we have before considered it.

The psychical body of substantial forces, which the sentient soul pervades and holds in permanent combination, is essentially the body of the man, and on which the fleeting elements of the earth-made organism gather and successively pass away; and this, with its material envelopment, at death it is that is sown as the grain in the ground. At the sound of the last trumpet the separated spirit reunites with the soul, and this essential psychical body, with its earthy elements left behind, is “raised incorruptible”; and because the spirit henceforth keeps and guides it, this psychical body, as sown, becomes in the resurrection the glorious spiritual body. Instantly as the dead arise, the material flesh and blood of the living generation dissolves in “the twinkling of an eye,” and the soul and spirit not having been separate in death hold still their unity and integrity in the case of each individual. The entire human family of dead and living at the resurrection morning stand thus together, immortal and indestructible, and universally “death is swallowed up in victory.” Here closes this wonderful apostolic exposition of the general resurrection.

This raising the dead and immediately thereafter changing the living is in accordance with another representation by the same apostle: “For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep. 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 which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air; and so shall we be ever with the Lord” (1 Thess. 4:15–17). The like order is here as before; the dead in Christ first arise, then the living are changed, and both enter together the heavenly state. And so also we get help to interpret the account of Christ’s resurrection. At his crucifixion the parted spirit went to God in heaven. The soul staid behind, and may have still retained the fleshly organism about it which “saw no corruption,” and remained there in the unseen state, as hades, till his resurrection. From the necessity of giving sensible testimony to his rising, the reunion of soul and spirit quickened the whole earthy body of “flesh and bones,” and Jesus spoke and walked and ate and was handled as before his death. But though raised in flesh and blood, as was Lazarus, he died not again as Lazarus did. The earthy part was dissolved at his ascension, “and a cloud received him out of sight,” just as at the last day the earthy bodies of living saints are changed, when caught up to meet the raised dead “in the clouds.”

We have yet another remarkable passage, in Paul’s second Epistle to the Corinthians, generally inclusive of the condition and experience of good men after death, although the end in view does not induce to the particular distinguishing between soul and spirit, nor to their separation in death and reunion at the resurrection. It assumes the human constitution to be, as so carefully represented by him in his first Epistle, a combination of an earthy body, sentient soul, and rational spirit, and uses so much of this conception as is needed for his immediate design, without regard to the old difficulties about “how the dead are raised,” and “with what bodies they come,” which had been already obviated by him. Both what he here uses and what he passes over corroborate the truths taught in the more minute specifications of the first Epistle. In the early part of the second Epistle he is defending the authority of his apostolic office and maintaining the consistency of his apostolic deportment against the calumnies of opposers; and, among other appropriate considerations, he appeals to their consciousness of the sincerity and fidelity of his plain preaching the truth to the Corinthians, and the perpetual persecutions thereby induced, and then he proceeds to state the abundant consolation he finds under his trials from the clear anticipation of the “eternal weight of glory” which is to follow. And it is in this connection we have the remarkable passage referred to above.

“For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens” (2 Cor. 5:1). The body of flesh, blood, and bone in which is our terrestrial abode, and where we pass our probationary life, is but a frail tent, fabricated of perishing materials, and if at any time it shall be taken to pieces, we have another house not manufactured of dissolving elements, but God-built and eternal in heaven. In the contemplation of this there was sufficient support for every affliction, and he expands the theme to the Corinthians, as he habitually had it in his own spirit amid his perils, and in the prisons to which his apostolic fidelity had so often brought him. And if we will keep close to the expression and intention of the apostle in this communication, we may set before us the very vision which so sustained him in his persecutions, for our support in all terrestrial tribulations.

“For in this we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with our house which is from heaven; n so be that being clothed we shall not be found naked. For we that are in this tabernacle do groan being burdened; not that we would be unclothed, but clothed upon, that mortality might be swallowed up of life” (vs. 2–4). The literal meaning is here as closely kept by saying “covered with our house” as “clothed upon with our house,” and the unseemly figure of taking a house as a garment should, if practicable, be by all means avoided. In our common rendering this violation of metaphor, with other more serious errors, has manifestly been occasioned by the mistake that “the building of God, a house not made with hands,” means the resurrection-body, just as “the earthy house of this tabernacle” means our terrestrial organism. But such meaning is inadmissible. The body raised is the body that has been sown, which is the “psychical body,” yet not inclusive of the perishable elements of “flesh and blood, which cannot inherit the kingdom of God.” Nor can the several additional solecisms hence following be tolerated; viz. that the resurrection body is put over the flesh and blood organism; and that while the earthy body is here in probation, the resurrection body is in heaven, and to come “from heaven”; and that living saints “earnestly desire” to have the heavenly body first put on to the earthy body, lest in the interval between earth and heaven the saint “shall be found naked.” If we strictly observe the rules for metaphorical representation, and keep in clear view the apostle’s intention to show how he was supported in his official burdens and persecutions, we may avoid all these improprieties and positive errors.

The following free paraphrase will give correctly what we apprehend to be the apostolic meaning. While in this perishable tent of our earthy body we continually suffer, both from its own frailty and its insufficient protection; and we earnestly desire to be sheltered in our house which is from heaven, since thus protected we shall no more be open to these afflictions. Not that we want merely to get away from bodily trials, but we long for the home where all mortal ills are lost in endless life. The personality here, “groaning” and “earnestly desiring,” is the rational human spirit seeking for immortal heavenly rest, and there is no occasion for the sharp distinctions made between the psychical and pneumatical in order to explain the severance of soul and spirit in death and identical reunion in the resurrection, as had been the case in his former Epistle (1 Cor. 15:44). Not any question is here about sameness of body, and only the consideration of a better dwelling; and the entire figure is kept throughout by the passing from a frail and suffering residence to a permanent and safe abode with no notion of a body put off or put on like a garment. This was Paul’s habit of mind and method of relief amid his trials, to look away from all perils in the house below to the house above, and so to kindle and keep in constant intensity a “desire to depart and be with Christ” as better than anything earthly.

Even Old Testament saints confessed they were strangers and pilgrims on earth, and that they desired a better country, that is, a heavenly (Heb. 11:13–16). And Abraham looked also “for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God” (vs. 10). How much more clearly and fully could New Testament saints anticipate going from the earthly to the heavenly house, since Jesus, on the eve of his crucifixion, had said to his defenceless disciples: “In my Father’s house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to myself, that where I am there ye may be also” (John 14:2-3. The earthly tent falls in ruins; the spiritual personality goes out from it into the God-built house — the “Father’s house” —which has its prepared mansions sufficient for all his spiritual children.

“Now he that hath wrought us for the self-same thing is God, who also hath given unto us the earnest of the Spirit. Therefore we are always confident, knowing that whilst we are at home in the body we are absent from the Lord; for we walk by faith, not by sight: We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord. Wherefore we labor, that, whether present or absent, we may be accepted of him” (vs. 5–9). God has wrought in us, and prepared us for this heavenly house, just as he has prepared this abode for us, and has given the pledge of his Spirit for our inheritance of it; hence our confidence of its possession. And we know that while our home is in the earthy body we are exiled from the home where the Lord is; for we journey onward to it in faith, and have not yet its fruition; and in this our confidence we choose rather to be exiled from this terrestrial home, and be at home where the Lord is, in the heavenly mansions. His approbation alone gives home-contentment anywhere, and thus our great effort is to be accepted by him, whether in the heavenly or the earthly house.

“For we must all appear before the judgment-seat of Christ; that every one may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad. Knowing, therefore, the terror of the law, we persuade men; but we are made manifest unto God: and I trust also are made manifest in your consciences” (vs. 10-11. The apostle evidently expected, when he went out from the perishing earthly house, to go at once to the heavenly home, and there be in communion with the Lord. But his acceptance by the Lord, and the reasons for it, must be made publicly manifest, and the retribution rendered for every deed done in the body, good and bad, must be openly shown to be righteous; hence “all must appear before the judgment-seat of Christ.” It would have been a needless repetition to have introduced here the particulars of the resurrection before the judgment. The apostle had already, in his first Epistle to them, taught fully this doctrine, and let them know that in the human constitution there was a “psychical body” and a “pneumatical body”; that the psychical was sown in death, and the spiritual lived with God; that at the resurrection there was to be a reunion of soul and spirit combined in an imperishable body — the same that had lived on earth, with its material elements of flesh and blood fallen off and passed away; and he omits all representation of this resurrection scene, that he may contemplate the more intently the personal going out from the earthly to the heavenly home; but it is important to admonish them of the great and terrible judgment day which is coming, as a motive for constant solicitude to have Christ’s approbation. He and they were to pass this rigid scrutiny, and the terror of it made him faithful to persuade, and should make them prompt in yielding to his persuasion. He knew that this his apostolic fidelity was manifest to God, and he also trusted that he had their consciences as witnesses of his sincerity.

And now, interpreted as above, this passage of 2 Cor. 5 fully accords with 1 Cor. 15, and goes directly to confirm our above idea of humanity as the constant truth of man’s constitution running through the scriptures. On earth, man is made up of a psychical and a spiritual body in a perishable flesh-and-blood body; in death, his individuality is impaired by the separation of soul and spirit, but his personality is preserved entire in the spirit’s constant rationality; and in the New Jerusalem the reunion of soul and spirit gives the imperishable resurrection-body in the same essential individuality that had stood under the fleshly elements, and the putting off of this corruption has been the putting on of the incorruptible. With this comprehensive conception of humanity we harmonize all scripture declarations descriptive of human probationary life and destined retribution. The facts of man’s creation, his trial and fall, his renewed probation under a Mediator, and final return to dust, his state after death, and his standing up again in the resurrection, and then the judgment-day and eternal retribution,—all are seen to be harmonious parts in one design, self-consistent, and perfectly parallel with the most rigid exactions of reason and conscience. The Bible view and the most comprehensive speculative view of human being and destiny are truly one and the same in the history of the past, the experience of the present, and the opening of the unending future.