21 Bretschneider forcibly illustrates this in his Handbuch der Dogmatik der Evang. Luther. Kirche, sects. 156-158, band ii.
baptism, wherein also ye are risen with him through faith in the working of God, who hath raised him from the dead." "Wherefore, if ye be dead with Christ, why are ye subject to worldly ordinances? and if ye be risen with him, seek those things which are above." When the disciple sunk beneath the baptizing waters, he was typically dead and buried, as Jesus was in the tomb; when he rose from the waters into the air again, he figuratively represented Christ rising from the dead into heaven. Henceforth, therefore, he was to consider himself as dead to all worldly sins and lusts, alive to all heavenly virtues and aspirations. "Therefore," the apostle says, "we are buried with Christ by baptism unto death, that like as Christ was raised up from the dead, even so we should walk in newness of life." "In that Christ died, he died unto sin once; but in that he liveth, he liveth unto God. Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God." "Therefore, if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new." This was strictly true to the immediate disciples of Jesus. When he died, their hearts died within them; they shrank away in hopeless confusion and gloom. When he returned to life and ascended to heaven, in feeling and imagination they went with him. Every moral power and motive started into new life and energy.
"The day when from the dead Our Lord arose, then everywhere, Out of their darkness and despair, Triumphant over fears and foes, The souls of his disciples rose."
An unheard of assurance of the Father's love and of their eternal inheritance flooded their being with its regenerating, uplifting power. To their absorbing anticipations the mighty consummation of all was at hand. In reflective imagination it was already past, and they, dead to the world, only lived to God. The material world and the lust thereof had sunk beneath them and vanished. They were moving in the universe of imperishable realities unseen by the fleshly eye. To their faith already was unrolled over them that new firmament in whose spanless welkin no cloudy tempests ever gather and break, and the serene lights never fade nor go down. This experience of a spiritual exaltation above the sins and degrading turmoils of passion, above the perishing baubles of the earth, into the religious principles which are independent and assured, peace, and bliss, and eternity, is attainable by all who with the earnestness of their souls assimilate the moral truths of Christianity, pressing in pious trust after the steps of the risen Master. And this, after all, is the vital essence of the doctrine of the resurrection as it makes practical appeal to us. This will stand, though gnawing time and hostile criticism should assail and shake all the rest. It is something not to be mechanically wrought upon us from without, but to be done within by our own voluntary effort and prayer, by God's help. To rise from sloth, unbelief, sin, from moral death, to earnestness, faith, beneficence, to eternal life in the breast, is a real and most sublime resurrection, the indispensable preparation for that other and final one which shall raise us from the sepulchre to the sky. When, on Easter morning, Christian disciples throughout the world hear the joyous cry, "Christ is risen," and their own hearts instinctively respond, with an unquenchable persuasion that he is now alive somewhere in the heights of the universe, "Christ is risen indeed," they should endeavor in spirit to rise too, rise from the deadly bondage and corruption of vice and indifference. While the earth remains, and men survive, and the evils which alienate them from God and his blessedness retain any sway over them, so oft as that hallowed day comes round, this is the kindling message of Divine authority ever fresh, and of transcendent import never old, that it bears through all the borders of Christendom to every responsible soul: "Awake from your sleep, arise from your death, lift up your eyes to heaven, and the risen Redeemer will give you the light of immortal life!" Have this awakening and deathless experience in the soul, and you will be troubled by no doubts about an everlasting life succeeding the close of the world. But so long as this spiritual resurrection in the breast is unknown, you can have no knowledge of eternal life, no experimental faith in a future entrance from the grave into heaven, no, not though millions of resurrections had crowded the interstellar space with ascending shapes. Rise, then, from your moral graves, and already, by faith and imagination, sit in heavenly places with Christ Jesus.
Before leaving this subject, it belongs to us to look at it as a theory; that is, to consider with critical scrutiny the conclusions which are supposed to flow from its central fact. We must regard it from three distinct points of view, seeking its meaning in sound logic, its force in past history, its value in present experience. First, then, we are to inquire what really is the logical significance of the resurrection of Christ. The looseness and confusion of thought prevailing in relation to this point are amazing. It seems as if mankind were contented with investigations careless, reasonings incoherent, and inferences arbitrary, in proportion to the momentousness of the matter in hand. In regard to little details of sensible fact and daily business their observation is sharp, their analysis careful, their reflection patient; but when they approach the great problems of morality, God, immortality, they shrink from commensurate efforts to master those mighty questions with stern honesty, and remain satisfied with fanciful methods and vague results. The resurrection of Christ is generally regarded as a direct demonstration of the immortality of man, an argument of irrefragable validity. But this is an astonishing mistake. The argument was not so constructed by Paul. He did not seek directly to prove the immortality of the soul, but the resurrection of the dead. He took for granted the Pharisaic doctrine that all souls on leaving their bodies descended to Sheol, where they darkly survived, waiting to be summoned forth at the arrival of the Messianic epoch. Assuming the further premise that Christ after death went down among these imprisoned souls, and then rose thence again, Paul infers, by a logical process strictly valid and irresistible to one holding those premises, that the general doctrine of a resurrection from the dead is true, and that by this visible pledge we may expect it soon, since the Messiah, who is to usher in its execution, has already come and finished the preliminary stages of his work. The apostle's own words plainly show this to be his meaning. "If there be no resurrection of the dead, then is Christ not risen. But now is Christ risen from the dead, become the first fruits of them that slept. For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. Every man shall be made alive in his own order: Christ the first fruits; then they that are Christ's, at his coming; then the last remnant, when he shall have delivered up the kingdom to God." The notions of a universal imprisonment of souls in the intermediate state, and of a universal raising of them thence at an appointed time, having faded from a deep and vivid belief into a cold traditional dogma, ridiculed by many, cared for at all by few, realizingly held by almost none, Paul's argument has been perverted and misinterpreted, until it is now commonly supposed to mean this: Christ has risen from the dead: therefore the soul of man is immortal. Whereas the argument really existed in his mind in the reverse form, thus: The souls of men are immortal and are hereafter to be raised up: therefore Christ has risen as an example and illustration thereof. It is singular to notice that he has himself clearly stated the argument in this form three times within the space of four consecutive verses, as follows: "If there be no resurrection of the dead, then is Christ not risen:" "God raised Christ not up, if so be that the dead rise not." "For if the dead rise not, then is Christ not raised." The fact of the resurrection of Christ, taken in connection with the related notions previously held in the mind of Paul, formed the complement of an irresistible argument to prove the impending resurrection of the dead, But if it be now perceived that those other notions were Pharisaic errors, the argument, as he employed it, falls to the ground.
Taken by itself and analyzed by a severe logic, the resurrection of Christ proves nothing conclusively in regard to our immortality. If it did of itself prove any thing, the direct logical inference from it would be that henceforth all men, three days after death, would rise bodily from the dead, appear for a season on earth as before, and then ascend visibly into the sky. If at the present time a man who had been put to death and entombed three days should openly come forth alive, considered as an isolated fact, what would it prove? It would merely prove that a wonderful event had occurred. It would show that either by some mysterious means he had escaped death, or else that by some apparently preternatural agency he had been restored to life from the dead. Taken by itself, it could not prove whether the occurrence was caused by a demoniacal or by a Divine power, or by some occult force of nature developed by a peculiar combination of conditions. The strange event would stand clear to our senses; but all beyond that would be but an hypothesis of our own, and liable to mistake. Consequently, we say, the resurrection, taken by itself, proves no doctrine. But we may so suppose the case that such an event would, from its relation to something else, acquire logical meaning. For instance, if Christ had taught that he had supernatural knowledge of truth, a Divine commission to reveal a future life, and said that, after he should have been dead and buried three days, God would restore him to life to authenticate his words, and if, then, so stupendous a miracle occurred in accordance with his prediction, it would prove that his claims and doctrine were true, because God is no accomplice in deception. Such was the case with Jesus as narrated; and thus his resurrection appears, not as having doctrinal significance and demonstrative validity in itself, but as a miraculous authentication of his mission. That is to say, the Christian's faith in immortality rests not directly on the resurrection of Christ, but on his teachings, which were confirmed and sealed by his resurrection. It is true that, even in this modified form, some persons of dialectical minds will deny all validity to the argument. What necessary connection is there, they will ask, between the exhibition of mechanico chemical wonders, physical feats, however abnormal and inexplicable, and the possession of infallibility of intellectual insight and moral utterance? If a man should say, God is falsehood and hatred, and in evidence of his declaration should make a whole cemetery disembogue its dead alive, or cause the sun suddenly to sink from its station at noon and return again, would his wonderful performance prove his horrible doctrine? Why, or how, then, would a similar feat prove the opposite doctrine? Plainly, there is not, on rigid logical principles, any connecting tie or evidencing coherence between a physical miracle and a moral doctrine.22 We admit the correctness of this, on philosophical grounds. But the validity of a miracle as proof of a doctrine rests on the spontaneous assumption that no man can work a miracle unless God specially delegate him the power: thereby God becomes the voucher of his envoy. And when a person claiming to be a messenger from God appears, saying, "The Father hath commanded me to declare that in the many mansions of his house there is a blessed life for men after the close of this life," and when he promises that, in confirmation of his claim, God will restore him to life after he shall have been three days dead, and when he returns accordingly triumphant from the sepulchre, the argument will be unquestioningly received as valid by the instinctive common sense of all who are convinced of the facts.
We next pass from the meaning of the resurrection in logic to its force and working in history. When Jesus hung on the cross, and the scornful shouts of the multitude murmured in his ears, the disciples had fled away, disappointed, terror stricken, despairing. His star seemed set in a hopeless night of shame and defeat. The new religion appeared a failure. But in three days affairs had taken a new aspect. He that was crucified had risen, and the scattered disciples rallied from every quarter, and, animated by faith and zeal, went forth to convert the world. As an organic centre of thought and belief, as a fervid and enduring incitement to action, in the apostolic times and all through the early centuries, the received fact of the resurrection of Christ wielded an incomparable influence and produced incalculable results. Christianity indeed rose upon it, and, to a great extent, flourished through it. The principal effect which the gospel has had in bringing life and immortality to light throughout a large part of the world is to be referred to the proclaimed resurrection of Christ. For without the latter the former would not have been. Its historical value has therefore been immense. More than nine tenths of the dormant common faith of Christendom in a future life now outwardly reposes on it from tradition and custom. The great majority of Christians grow up, by education and habit, without any sharp conscientious investigation of their own, to an undisturbed belief in immortality, a belief passively resting on the demonstration of the doctrine supposed to have been furnished by the resurrection of Christ in Judea two thousand years ago. The historical power of that fact has therefore been inexpressibly important; and its vast and happy consequences as food and basis of faith still remain. But this historic force is no longer what it once was as a living and present cause. It now operates mostly through traditional reception as an established doctrine to be taken
22 J. Blanco White, Letter on Miracles, in appendix to Martineau's Rationale of Religious Inquiry.
for granted, without fresh individual inquiry. Education and custom use it as an unexamined but trusted foundation to build on by common assumptions. And so the historic impetus is not yet spent. But it certainly has diminished; and it will diminish more. When faced with dauntless eyes and approached by skeptical methods, it of course cannot have the silencing, all sufficient authority, now that it is buried in the dim remoteness of nineteen centuries and surrounded by obscuring accompaniments, that it had when its light blazed close at hand. The historical force of the alleged resurrection of Christ must evidently, other things being equal, lessen to an unprejudiced inquirer in some proportion to the lengthening distance of the event from him in time, and the growing difficulties of ignorance, perplexity, doubt, manifold uncertainty, deficiency, infidel suggestions, and naturalistic possibilities, intervening between it and him. The shock of faith given by the miracle is dissipated in coming through such an abyss of time. The farther off and the longer ago it was, the more chances for error and the more circumstances of obscurity there are, and so much the worth and force of the historical belief in it will naturally become fainter, till they will finally fade away. An honest student may bow humbly before the august front of Christian history and join with the millions around in acknowledging the fact of the resurrection of Christ. But we maintain that the essential fact in this historic act is not the visible resuscitation of the dead body, but the celestial reception of the deathless spirit. So Paul evidently thought; for he had never seen Christ in the flesh, yet he places himself, as a witness to the resurrection of Christ, in the same rank with those who had seen him on his reappearance in the body: "Last of all he was seen of me also." Paul had only seen him in vision as a glorified spirit of heaven.
We know that our belief in the fleshly resurrection of Jesus rests on education and habit, on cherished associations of reverence and attachment, rather than on sifted testimony and convincing proof. It is plain, too, that if a person takes the attitude, not of piety and receptive trust, but of skeptical antagonism, it is impossible, as the facts within our reach are to day, to convince him of the asserted reality in question. An unprejudiced mind competently taught and trained for the inquiry, but whose attitude towards the declared fact is that of distrust, a mind which will admit nothing but what is conclusively proved, cannot be driven from its position by all the extant material of evidence. Education, associations, hopes, affections, leaning that way, he may be convinced; but leaning the other way, or poised in indifference on a severe logical ground, he will honestly remain in his unbelief despite of all the arguments that can be presented. In the first place, he will say, "The only history we have of the resurrection is in the New Testament; and the testimony of witnesses in their own cause is always suspicious; and it is wholly impossible now really to prove who wrote those documents, or precisely when and how they originated: besides that, the obvious discrepancies in the accounts, and the utterly uncritical credulity and unscientific modes of investigation which satisfied the writers, destroy their value as witnesses in any severe court of reason." And in reply, although we may claim that there is sufficient evidence to satisfy an humble Christian, previously inclined to such a faith, that the New Testament documents were written by the persons whose names they bear, and that their accounts are true, yet we cannot pretend that there is sufficient evidence effectually to convince a critical inquirer that there is no possibility of ungenuineness and unauthenticity. In the second place, such a person will say, "Many fabulous miracles have been eagerly credited by contemporaries of their professed authors, and handed down to the credulity of after times; many actual events, honestly, interpreted as miracles, without fraud in any party concerned, have been so accepted and testified to.
Roman Catholic Christendom claims to this day the performance of miracles within the Church; while all Protestant Christendom scouts them as ridiculous tales: and this may be one of them. How can we demonstrate that it does not fall within the same class on the laws of evidence?" And although our own moral beliefs and sympathies may force upon us the most profound conviction to the contrary, it is plainly out of our power to disprove the possibility of this hypothesis being true. In the third place, he will say, "Of all who testify to the resurrection, there is nothing in the record admitting its entire reliableness as an ingenuous statement of the facts as apprehended by the authors to show that any one of them knew that Jesus was actually dead, or that any one of them made any real search into that point. He may have revived from a long insensibility, wandered forth in his grave clothes, mingled afterwards with his disciples, and at last have died from his wounds and exhaustion, in solitude, as he was used to spend seasons in lonely prayer by night. Then, with perfectly good faith, his disciples, involving no collusion or deceit anywhere, may have put a miraculous interpretation upon it all, such additional particulars as his visible ascension into the sky being a later mythical accretion." This view may well seem offensive, even shocking, to the pious believer; but it is plainly possible. It is intrinsically more easily conceivable than the accredited miracle. It is impossible positively to refute it: the available data do not exist. Upon the whole, then, we conclude that the time is coming when the basis of faith in immortality, in order to stand the tests of independent scrutiny, must be historically as well as logically shifted from a blind dependence on the miraculous resurrection of Christ to a wise reliance on insight into the supernatural capacity and destiny of man, on the deductions of moral reason and the prophecies of religious trust.
Finally, we pause a moment, in closing this discussion, to weigh the practical value of the resurrection of Christ as acknowledged in the experience of the present time. How does that event, admitted as a fact, rest in the average personal experience of Christians now? We shall provoke no intelligent contradiction when we say that it certainly does not often rest on laborious research and rigorous testing of evidence. We surely risk nothing in saying that with the multitude of believers it rests on a docile reception of tradition, an unquestioning conformity to the established doctrine. And that reception and conformity in the present instance depend, we shall find by going a step further back, upon a deep a priori faith in God and immortality. When Paul reasons that, if the dead are not to rise, Christ is not risen, but that the dead are to rise, and therefore Christ is risen, his argument reposes on a spontaneous practical method of moral assumption, not on a judicial process of logical proof. So is it with Christians now. The intense moral conviction that God is good, and that there is another life, and that it would be supremely worthy of God to send a messenger to teach that doctrine and to rise from the dead in proof of it, it is this earnest previous faith that gives plausibility, vitality, and power to the preserved tradition of the actual event. If we trace the case home to the last resort, as it really lies in the experience developed in us by Christianity, we shall find that a deep faith in God is the basis of our belief, first in general immortality, and secondly in the special resurrection of Christ as related thereto. But, by a confusion, or a want, of thought, the former is mistakenly supposed to rest directly and solely on the latter. The doctrinal inferences built up around the resurrection of Christ fall within the province of faith, resting on moral grounds, not within that of knowledge, resting on logical grounds. For example: what direct proof is there that Christ, when he vanished from the disciples, went to the presence of God in heaven, to die no more? It was only seen that he disappeared: all beyond that except as it rests on belief in the previous words of Christ himself is an inference of faith, a faith kindled in the soul by God and not created by the miracle of the resurrection.
That imagination, tradition, feeling, and faith, have much more to do with the inferences commonly drawn from the resurrection of Christ than any strict investigation of its logical contents has, appears clearly enough from the universal neglect to draw any inferences from, or to attribute any didactic importance to, the other resurrections recorded in the New Testament. We refer especially to the resurrection narrated in the twenty seventh chapter of Matthew, "the most stupendous miracle ever wrought upon earth," it has been termed; and yet hardly any one ever deigns to notice it. Thus the evangelist writes: "And the graves were opened, and many bodies of the saints which slept arose and came out of the graves after his resurrection, and went into the holy city, and appeared unto many." Nothing is inferred from this alleged event but the power of God. Yet logically what separates it from the resurrection of Christ? In Greece there was the accredited account of the resurrection of Er, in Persia that of Viraf, in Judea that of Lazarus, in other nations those of other persons. None of these ever produced great results. Yet the resurrection of one individual from the dead logically contains all that that of any other individual can. Why, then, has that of Christ alone made such a change in the faith of the world? Because, through a combination of causes, it has appealed to the imagination and heart of the world and stirred their believing activity, because the thought was here connected with a person, a history, a moral force, and a providential interposition, fit for the grandest deductions and equal to the mightiest effects. It is not accurate philosophical criticism that has done this, but humble love and faith.
In the experience of earnest Christians, a personal belief in the resurrection of Christ, vividly conceived in the imagination and taken home to the heart, is chiefly effective in its spiritual, not in its argumentative, results. It stirs up the powers and awakens the yearnings of the soul, opens heaven to the gaze, locates there, as it were visibly, a glorious ideal, and thus helps one to enter upon an inward realization of the immortal world. The one essential thing is not that Jesus appeared alive in the flesh after his physical death, the revealer of superhuman power and possessor of infallibility, but that he divinely lives now, the forerunner and type of our immortality.
LET US first notice the uncommon amount of meaning which Christ and the apostolic writers usually put into the words "death," "life," and other kindred terms. These words are scarcely ever used in their merely literal sense, but are charged with a vivid fulness of significance not to be fathomed without especial attention. "If thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments." Obviously this means more than simple life; because those who neglect the laws of virtue may live. It signifies, distinctively, true life, the experience of inward peace and of Divine favor. "Whosoever hateth his brother hath not eternal life abiding in him, but abideth in death;" that is to say, a soul rankling with bad passions is "in the gall of bitterness and the bond of iniquity," but, when converted from hatred to love, it passes from wretchedness to blessedness. "Let the dead bury their dead." No one reading this passage with its context can fail to perceive that it means, substantially, "Let those who are absorbed in the affairs of this world, and indifferent to the revelation I have brought from heaven, attend to the interment of the dead; but delay not thou, who art kindled with a lively interest in the truth, to proclaim the kingdom of God." When the returning prodigal had been joyfully received, the father said, in reply to the murmurs of the elder son, "Thy brother was dead and is alive again;" he was lost in sin and misery, he is found in penitence and happiness. Paul writes to the Romans, "Without the law sin was dead, and I was alive; but when the law was made known, sin came to life, and I died." In other words, when a man is ignorant of the moral law, immoral conduct does not prevent him from feeling innocent and being at peace; but when a knowledge of the law shows the wickedness of that conduct, he becomes conscious of guilt, and is unhappy. For instance, to state the thought a little differently, to a child knowing nothing of the law, the law, or its purposed violation, sin, does not exist, is dead: he therefore enjoys peace of conscience; but when he becomes aware of the law and its authority, if he then break it, sin is generated and immediately stings, and spiritual happiness dies.
These passages are sufficient to show that Christianity uses the words "death" and "life" in a spiritual sense, penetrating to the hidden realities of the soul. To speak thus of the guilty, unbelieving man as dead, and only of the virtuous, believing man as truly alive, may seem at first a startling use of figurative language. It will not appear so when we notice its appropriateness to the case, or remember the imaginative nature of Oriental speech and recollect how often we employ the same terms in the same way at the present time. We will give a few examples of a similar use of language outside of the Scriptures. That which threatens or produces death is sometimes, by a figure, identified with death. Orpheus, in the Argonautika, speaks of "a terrible serpent whose yawning jaw is full of death." So Paul says he was "in deaths oft." Ovid says, "The priests poured out a dog's hot life on the altar of Hecate at the crossing of two roads." The Pythagoreans, when one of their number became impious and abandoned, were accustomed to consider him dead, and to erect a tomb to him, on which his name and his age at the time of his moral decease were engraved. The Roman law regarded an excommunicated citizen as civilis mortuus, legally dead. Fenelon writes, "God has kindled a flame at the bottom of every heart, which should always burn as a lamp for him who hath lighted it; and all other life is as death." Chaucer says, in one of his Canterbury Tales, referring to a man enslaved by dissolute habits,
"But certes, he that haunteth swiche delices Is ded while that he liveth in tho' vices."
And in a recent poem the following lines occur:
"From his great eyes The light has fled: When faith departs, when honor dies, The man is dead."
To be subjected to the lower impulses of our nature by degraded habits of vice and criminality is wretchedness and death. The true life of man consists, the Great Teacher declared, "not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth, but rather in his being rich toward God," in conscious purity of heart, energy of faith, and union with the Holy Spirit. "He that lives in sensual pleasure is dead while he lives," Paul asserts; but he that lives in spiritual righteousness has already risen from the dead. To sum up the whole in a single sentence, the service and the fruits of sin form an experience which Christianity calls death, because it is a state of insensibility to the elements and results of true life, in the adequate sense of that term, meaning the serene activity and religious joy of the soul.
The second particular in the essential doctrine of Christianity concerning the states of human experience which it entitles death and life is their inherent, enduring nature, their independence on the objects and changes of this world. The gospel teaches that the elements of our being and experience are transferred from the life that now is into the life that is to come, or, rather, that we exist continuously forever, uninterrupted by the event of physical dissolution. "Whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him," Jesus declares, "shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life." John affirms, "The world passeth away, and the lust thereof; but he that doeth the will of God abideth forever." Paul writes to the Christians at Rome, "In that Christ died, he died unto sin once; but in that he liveth, he liveth unto God. Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God." Numerous additional texts of kindred import might be cited. They announce the immortality of man, the unending continuance of the Christian consciousness, unless forfeited by voluntary defection. They show that sin and woe are not arbitrarily bounded by the limits of time and sense in the grave, and that nothing can ever exhaust or destroy the satisfaction of true life, faith in the love of God: it abides, blessed and eternal, in the uninterrupted blessedness and eternity of its Object. The revelation and offer of all this to the acceptance of men, its conditions, claims, and alternative sanctions, were first divinely made known and planted in the heart of the world, as the Scriptures assert, by Jesus Christ, who promulgated them by his preaching, illustrated them by his example, proved them by his works, attested them by his blood, and crowned them by his resurrection.
And now there is opened for all of us, through him, that is to say, through belief and obedience of what he taught and exemplified, an access unto the Father, an assurance of his forgiveness of us and of our reconciliation with him. We thus enter upon the experience of that true life which is "joy and peace in believing," and which remains indestructible through all the vanishing vagrancy of sin, misery, and the world. "This is eternal life, that they might know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent:" that is, imperishable life is to be obtained by union with God in faith and love, through a hearty acceptance of the instructions of Christ.
The two points thus far considered are, first, that the sinful, unbelieving, wretched man abides in virtual death, while the righteous, happy believer in the gospel has the experience of genuine life; and, secondly, that these essential elements of human character and experience survive all events of time and place in everlasting continuance.
The next consideration prominent in the Christian doctrine of death and life is the distinction continually made between the body and the soul. Man is regarded under a twofold aspect, as flesh and spirit, the one a temporal accompaniment and dependent medium, the other an immortal being in itself. The distinction is a fundamental one, and runs through nearly all philosophy and religion in their reference to man. In the Christian Scriptures it is not sharply drawn, with logical precision, nor always accurately maintained, but is loosely defined, with waving outlines, is often employed carelessly, and sometimes, if strictly taken, inconsistently. Let us first note a few examples of the distinction itself in the instructions of the Savior and of the different New Testament writers.
"That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the spirit is spirit." "Fear not them which kill the body but are not able to kill the soul." "Though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed." "He that soweth to his flesh shall reap corruption; he that soweth to the spirit shall reap life everlasting." "Being put to death in the flesh, but quickened in the spirit." "Knowing that I must shortly put off this tabernacle." "The body without the spirit is dead." It would be useless to accumulate examples. It is plain that these authors distinguish the body and the soul as two things conjoined for a season, the latter of which will continue to live when the other has mixed with the dust. The facts and phenomena of our being from which this distinction springs are so numerous and so influential, so profound and so obvious, that it is impossible they should escape the knowledge of any thinking person. Indeed, the distinction has found a recognition everywhere among men, from the ignorant savage, whose instincts and imagination shadow forth a dim world in which the impalpable images of the departed dwell, to the philosopher of piercing intellect and universal culture,
"Whose lore detects beneath our crumbling clay A soul, exiled, and journeying back to day."
"Labor not for the meat which perisheth," Jesus exhorts his followers, "but labor for the meat which endureth unto everlasting life." The body and the luxury that pampers it shall perish, but the spirit and the love that feeds it shall abide forever.
We now pass to examine some metaphorical terms often erroneously interpreted as conveying merely their literal force. Every one familiar with the language of the New Testament must remember how repeatedly the body and the soul, or the flesh and the spirit, are set in direct opposition to each other, sin being referred to the former, righteousness to the latter. "I know that in my flesh there is no good thing; but with my mind I delight in the law of God." "The flesh lusteth against the spirit, and the spirit lusteth against the flesh, and these are contrary the one to the other." All this language and it is extensively used in the epistles is quite generally understood in a fixed, literal sense; whereas it was employed by its authors in a fluctuating, figurative sense, as the critical student can hardly help perceiving. We will state the real substance of Christian teaching and phraseology on this point in two general formulas, and then proceed to illustrate them. First, both the body and the soul may be corrupt, lawless, empty of Divine belief, full of restlessness and suffering, in a state of moral death; or both may be pure, obedient, acceptable in the sight of God, full of faith, peace, and joy, in a state of genuine life. Secondly, whatever tends in any way to the former result to make man guilty, feeble, and wretched, to deaden his spiritual sensibilities, to keep him from union with God and from immortal reliances is variously personified as "the Flesh," "Sin," "Death," "Mammon," "the World," "the Law of the Members," "the Law of Sin and Death;" whatever, on the contrary, tends in any way to the latter result to purify man, to intensify his moral powers, to exalt and quicken his consciousness in the assurance of the favor of God and of eternal being is personified as "the Spirit," "Life," "Righteousness," "the Law of God," "the Law of the Inward Man," "Christ," "the Law of the Spirit of Life in Christ." Under the first class of terms are included all the temptations and agencies by which man is led to sin, and the results of misery they effect; under the second class are included all the aspirations and influences by which he is led to righteousness, and the results of happiness they insure. For example, it is written, in the Epistle to the Galatians, that "the manifest works of the flesh are excessive sensuality, idolatry, hatred, emulations, quarrels, heresies, murders, and such like." Certainly some of these evils are more closely connected with the mind than with the body. The term "flesh" is obviously used in a sense coextensive with the tendencies and means by which we are exposed to guilt and degradation. These personifications, it will therefore be seen, are employed with general rhetorical looseness, not with definite logical exactness.
It is self evident that the mind is the actual agent and author of all sins and virtues, and that the body in itself is unconscious, irresponsible, incapable of guilt. "Every sin that man doeth is without the body." In illustration of this point Chrysostom says, "If a tyrant or robber were to seize some royal mansion, it would not be the fault of the house." And how greatly they err who think that any of the New Testament writers mean to represent the flesh as necessarily sinful and the spirit as always pure, the following cases to the contrary from Paul, whose speech seems most to lean that way, will abundantly show. "Glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are his." "Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost?" "Yield not your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin, but as instruments of righteousness unto God." "That the life of Jesus might be made manifest in our mortal flesh." "Present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God." It is clear that the author of these sentences did not regard the body, or literal flesh, as necessarily unholy, but as capable of being used by the man himself in fulfilling the will of God. Texts that appear to contradict this must be held as figures, or as impassioned rhetorical exclamations. We also read of "the lusts of the mind," the "fleshly mind," "filthiness of the spirit," "seducing spirits," "corrupt minds," "mind and conscience defiled," "reprobate mind," showing plainly that the spirit was sometimes regarded as guilty and morally dead. The apostle writes, "I pray that your whole spirit and soul and body may be preserved blameless." The scriptural declarations now cited teach explicitly that both the body and the soul may be subjected to the perfect law of God, or that both may abide in rebellion and wickedness, the latter state being called, metaphorically, "walking after the flesh," the former "walking after the spirit," that being sin and death, this being righteousness and life.
An explanation of the origin of these metaphors will cast further light upon the subject. The use of a portion of them arose from the fact that many of the most easily besetting and pernicious vices, conditions and allurements of sin, defilements and clogs of the spirit, come through the body, which, while it is itself evidently fated to perish, does by its earthly solicitations entice, contaminate, and debase the soul that by itself is invited to better things and seems destined to immortality. Not that these evils originate in the body, of course, all the doings of a man spring from the spirit of man which is in him, but that the body is the occasion and the aggravating medium of their manifestation. This thought is not contradicted, it is only omitted, in the words of Peter: "I beseech you, as strangers and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul." For such language would be spontaneously suggested by the fact that to be in bondage to the baser nature is hostile alike to spiritual dignity and peace, and to physical health and strength. The principles of the moral nature are at war with the passions of the animal nature; the goading vices of the mind are at war with the organic harmonies of the body; and on the issues of these conflicts hang all the interests of life and death, in every sense the words can be made to bear.
Another reason for the use of these figures of speech, undoubtedly, was the philosophy of the ineradicable hostility of matter and spirit, the doctrine, so prevalent in the East from the earliest times, that matter is wholly corrupt and evil, the essential root and source of all vileness. An old, unknown Greek poet embodies the very soul of this faith in a few verses which we find in the Anthology. Literally rendered, they run thus:
"The body is the torment, hell, fate, load, tyrant,Dreadful pest, and punishing trial, of the soulWhich, when it quits the body, flies, as from the bondsOf death, to immortal God."
It was this idea that produced the wild asceticism prevalent in the Christian Church during the Middle Age and previously, the fearful macerations, scourgings, crucifixions of the flesh. It should be understood that, though some of the phraseology of the Scriptures is tinged by the influence of this doctrine, the doctrine itself is foreign to Christianity. Christ came eating and drinking, not abjuring nature, but adopting its teachings, viewing it as a Divine work through which the providence of God is displayed and his glory gleams. He was no more of a Pharisee than nature is. As corn grows on the Sabbath, so it may be plucked and eaten on the Sabbath. The apostles never recommend self inflicted torments. The ascetic expressions found in their letters grew directly out of the perils besetting them and their expectation of the speedy end of the world. Christianity, rightly understood, renders even the body of a good man sacred and precious, through the indwelling of the Infinite. "We have this treasure in earthen vessels," and the poor, dying tenement of flesh is hallowed as "A vase of earth, a trembling clod, Constrain'd to hold the breath of God."
The chief secret, however, of the origin of the peculiar phrases under consideration consisted in their striking fitness to the nature and facts of the case, their adaptedness to express these facts in a bold and vivid manner. The revelation of the transcendent claims of holiness, of the pardoning love of God, of the splendid boon of immortality, made by Christ and enforced by the miraculous sanctions and the kindling motives presented in his example, thrilled the souls of the first converts, shamed them of their degrading sins, opened before their imaginations a vision that paled the glories of the world, and regenerated them, stirring up the depths of their religious sensibilities, and flooding their whole being with a warmth, an energy, a spirituality, that made their previous experience seem a gross carnal slumber, a virtual death. "And you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins." They were animated and raised to a new, pure, glad life, through the feeling of the hopes and the practice of the virtues of the gospel of Christ. Unto those who "were formerly in the flesh, the servants of sin, bringing forth fruit unto death," but now obeying the new form of doctrine delivered unto them, with renewed hearts and changed conduct, it is written, "If Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin; but the spirit is life because of righteousness;" that is, If Christian truth reign in you, the body may still be tormented, or powerless, owing to your previous bad habits; but the soul will be redeemed from its abandonment to error and vice, and be assured of pardon and immortal life by the witnessing spirit of God.
The apostle likewise says unto them, "If the Spirit of God dwell in you, it shall also quicken your mortal bodies." This remarkable expression was meant to convey a thought which the observation of common facts approves and explains. If the love of the pure principles of the gospel was established in them, their bodies, debilitated and deadened by former abandonment to their lusts, should be freed and reanimated by its influence. The body to a great extent reflects the permanent mind and life of a man. It is an aphorism of Solomon that "a sound heart is the life of the flesh." And Plotinus declares, "Temperance and justice are the saviors of the body so far as they are received by it." Deficiency of thought and knowledge, laziness of spirit, animality of habits, betray themselves plainly enough in the state and expression of the physical frame: they render it coarse, dim, and insensible; the person verges towards the condition of a clod; spiritual things are clouded, the beacon fire of his destiny wanes, the possibilities of Christian faith lessen, "the external and the insensate creep in on his organized clay," he feels the chain of the brute earth more and more, and finally gives himself up to utter death. On the other hand, the assimilation of Divine truth and goodness by a man, the cherishing love of all high duties and aspirations, exert a purifying, energizing power both on the flesh and the mind, animate and strengthen them, like a heavenly flame burn away the defiling entanglements and spiritual fogs that fill and hang around the wicked and sensual, increasingly pervade his consciousness with an inspired force and freedom, illuminate his face, touch the magnetic springs of health and healthful sympathy, make him completely alive, and bring him into living connection with the Omnipresent Life, so that he perceives the full testimony that he shall never die. For, when brought into such a state by the experience of live spirits in live frames, "We feel through all this fleshly dresse Bright shootes of everlastingnesse."
Spiritual sloth and sensual indulgence stupefy, blunt, and confuse together in lifeless meshes, the vital tenant and the mortal tenement; they grow incorporate, alike unclean, powerless, guilty, and wretched. Then "Man lives a life half dead, a living death, Himself his sepulchre, a moving grave." Active virtue, profound love, and the earnest pursuit, in the daily duties of life, of "Those lofty musings which within us sow The seeds of higher kind and brighter being." Cleanse, vivify, and distinguish the body and the soul, so that, when this tabernacle of clay crumbles from around it, the unimprisoned spirit soars into the universe at once, and, looking back upon the shadowy king bearing his pale prey to the tomb, exclaims, "O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?" The facts, then, of sin, guilt, weakness, misery, unbelief, decay, insensibility, and death, joined with the opposite corresponding class of facts, and considered in their mutual spiritual and physical relations and results, originally suggested, and now interpret and justify, that peculiar phraseology of the New Testament which we have been investigating. It has no recondite meaning drawn from arbitrary dogmas, but a plain meaning drawn from natural truths.
It remains next to see what is the Christian doctrine concerning literal, physical death, concerning the actual origin and significance of that solemn event. This point must be treated the more at length on account of the erroneous notions prevailing upon the subject. For that man's first disobedience was the procuring cause of organic, as well as of moral, death, is a doctrine quite generally believed. It is a fundamental article in the creeds of all the principal denominations of Christendom, and is traditionally held, from the neglect of investigation, by nearly all Christians. By this theory the words of James who writes, "Sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death" are interpreted with strict literalness. It is conceived that, had not evil entered the first man's heart and caused him to fall from his native innocence, he would have roamed among the flowers of Eden to this day. But he violated the commandment of his Maker, and sentence of death was passed upon him and his posterity. We are now to prove that this imaginative theory is far from the truth.
1. The language in which the original account of Adam's sin and its punishment is stated shows conclusively that the penalty of transgression was not literal death, but spiritual, that is, degradation, suffering. God's warning in relation to the forbidden tree was, "In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." Of course, Jehovah's solemn declaration was fulfilled as he had said. But in the day that man partook of the prohibited fruit he did not die a physical death. He lived, driven from the delights of Paradise, (according to the account,) upwards of eight hundred years, earning his bread by the sweat of his brow. Consequently, the death with which he had been threatened must have been a moral death, loss of innocence and joy, experience of guilt and woe.
2. The common usage of the words connected with this subject in the New Testament still more clearly substantiates the view here taken of it. There is a class of words, linked together by similarity of meaning and closeness of mutual relation, often used by the Christian writers loosely, figuratively, and sometimes interchangeably, as has been shown already in another connection. We mean the words "sin," "flesh," "misery," "death." The same remark may be made of another class of words of precisely opposite signification, "righteousness," "faith," "life," "blessedness," "eternal life." These different words frequently stand to represent the same idea. "As the law hath reigned through sin unto death, so shall grace reign through righteousness unto life." In other terms, as the recognition of the retributive law of God through rebellion and guilt filled the consciences of men with wretchedness, so the acceptance of the pardoning love of God through faith and conformity will fill them with blessedness. Sin includes conscious distrust, disobedience, and alienation; righteousness includes conscious faith, obedience, and reconciliation. Sin and death, it will be seen, are related just as righteousness and life are. The fact that they are sometimes represented in the relation of identity "the minding of the flesh is death, but the minding of the spirit is life" and sometimes in the relation of cause and effect "the fruit of sin is death, the fruit of righteousness is life" proves that the words are used metaphorically, and really mean conscious guilt and misery, conscious virtue and blessedness. No other view is consistent. We are urged to be "dead unto sin, but alive unto God;" that is, to be in a state of moral perfection which turns a deaf and invincible front to all the influences of evil, but is open and joyfully sensitive to every thing good and holy. Paul also wrote, in his letter to the Philippians, that he had "not yet attained unto the resurrection," but was striving to attain unto it; that is, he had not yet reached, but was striving to reach, that lofty state of holiness and peace invulnerable to sin, which no change can injure, with which the event of bodily dissolution cannot interfere, because its elements faith, truth, justice, and love are the immutable principles of everlasting life.
3. In confirmation of this conclusion, an argument amounting to certainty is afforded by the way in which the disobedience of Adam and its consequences, and the obedience of Christ and its consequences, are spoken of together; by the way in which a sort of antithetical parallel is drawn between the result of Adam's fall and the result of Christ's mission. "As by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin, and so death passed upon all men, so much more shall all receive the gift of God by one man, Jesus Christ, and reign unto eternal life." This means, as the writer himself afterwards explains, that "as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners" and suffered the consequences of sin, figuratively expressed by the word "death," "so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous" and enjoy the consequences of righteousness, figuratively expressed by the word "life." Give the principal terms in this passage their literal force, and no meaning which is not absolutely incompatible with the plainest truths can be drawn from it. Surely literal death had come equally and fully upon all men everywhere; literal life could do no more. But render the idea in this way, the blessedness offered to men in the revelation of grace made by Jesus outweighs the wretchedness brought upon them through the sin introduced by Adam, and the sense is satisfactory. That which Adam is represented as having lost, that, the apostle affirms, Christ restored; that which Adam is said to have incurred, that Christ is said to have removed. But Christ did not restore to man a physical immortality on the earth: therefore that is not what Adam forfeited; but he lost peace of conscience and trust in the Divine favor. Furthermore, Christ did not free his followers from natural decay and death: therefore that is not what Adam's transgression brought upon his children; but it entailed upon them proclivities to evil, spiritual unrest, and woe. The basis of the comparison is evidently this: Adam's fall showed that the consequences of sin, through the stern operation of the law, were strife, despair, and misery, all of which is implied in the New Testament usage of the word "death;" Christ's mission showed that the consequences of righteousness, through the free grace of God, were faith, peace, and indestructible happiness, all of which is implied in the New Testament usage of the word "life." In the mind of Paul there was undoubtedly an additional thought, connecting the descent of the soul to the under world with the death of the sinful Adam, and its ascent to heaven with the resurrection of the immaculate Christ; but this does not touch the argument just advanced, because it does not refer to the cause of physical dissolution, but to what followed that event.
4. It will not be out of place here to demonstrate that sin actually was not the origin of natural decay, by the revelations of science, which prove that death was a monarch on the earth for ages before moral transgression was known. As the geologist wanders, and studies the records of nature, where earthquake, deluge, and volcano have exposed the structure of the globe and its organic remains in strata piled on strata, upon these, as upon so many pages of the earth's autobiography, he reads the history of a hundred races of animals which lived and died, leaving their bones layer above layer, in regular succession, centuries before the existence of man. It is evident, then, that, independent of human guilt, and from the very first, chemical laws were in force, and death was a part of God's plan in the material creation. As the previous animals perished without sin, so without sin the animal part of man too would have died. It was made perishable from the outset. The important point just here in the theology of Paul was, as previously implied, that death was intended to lead the soul directly to heaven in a new "spiritual body" or "heavenly house;" but sin marred the plan, and doomed the soul to go into the under world, a naked manes, when "unclothed" of "the natural body" or "earthly house." The mission of Christ was to restore the original plan; and it would be consummated at his second coming.
5. There is a gross absurdity involved in the supposition that an earthly immortality was the intended destiny of man. That supposition necessarily implies that the whole groundwork of God's first design was a failure, that his great purpose was thwarted and changed into one wholly different. And it is absurd to think such a result possible in the providence of the Almighty. Besides, had there been no sin, could not man have been drowned if he fell into the water without knowing how to swim? If a building tumbled upon him, would he not have been crushed? Nor is this theory free from another still more palpable absurdity; for, had there been no interference of death to remove one generation and make room for another, the world could not support the multitudes with which it would now swarm. Moreover, the time would arrive when the earth could not only not afford sustenance to its so numerous inhabitants, but could not even contain them. So that if this were the original arrangement, unless certain other parts which were indisputable portions of it were cancelled, the surplus myriads would have to be removed to some other world. That is just what death accomplishes. Consequently, death was a part of God's primal plan, and not a contingence accidentally caused by sin.
6. If death be the result of sin, then, of course, it is a punishment inflicted upon man for his wickedness. In fact, this is an identical proposition. But death cannot be intended as a punishment, because, viewed in that light, it is unjust. It comes equally upon old and young, good and bad, joyous and wretched. It does not permit the best man to live longest; it does not come with the greatest terror and agony to the most guilty. All these things depend on a thousand contingencies strung upon an iron law, which inheres to the physical world of necessity, and has not its basis and action in the spiritual sphere of freedom, character, and experience. The innocent babe and the hardened criminal are struck at the same instant and die the same death. Solomon knew this when he said, "As dieth the fool, so the wise man dieth." Death regarded as a retribution for sin is unjust, because it is destitute of moral discrimination. It therefore is not a consequence of transgression, but an era, incident, and step in human existence, an established part of the visible order of things from the beginning. When the New Testament speaks of death as a punishment, it always uses the word in a symbolic sense, meaning spiritual deadness and misery, which is a perfect retribution, because it discriminates with unerring exactness. This has been conclusively proved by Klaiber,1 who shows that the peculiar language of Paul in regard to the trichotomist division of man into spirit, soul, and body necessarily involves the perception of physical death as a natural fact.
7. Finally, natural death cannot be the penalty of unrighteousness, because it is not a curse and a woe, but a blessing and a privilege. Epictetus wrote, "It would be a curse upon ears of corn not to be reaped; and we ought to know that it would be a curse upon man not to die." 2 It cannot be the effect of man's sin, because it is the improvement of man's condition. Who can believe it would be better for man to remain on earth forever, under any
1 Die Neutestamentliche Lehre von der Sunde and Erlosung, ss. 22 45.
2 Dissert. ii. 6, 2.
circumstances, than it is for him to go to heaven to such an experience as the faithful follower of Christ supposes is there awaiting him? It is not to be thought by us that death is a frowning enemy thrusting us into the gloom of eternal night or into the flaming waves of irremediable torment, but rather a smiling friend ushering us into the endless life of the spiritual world and into the unveiled presence of God. According to the arrangement and desire of God, for us to die is gain: every personal exception to this if there be any exception is caused through the marring interference of personal wickedness with the Creator's intention and with natural order. Who has not sometimes felt the bondage of the body and the trials of earth, and peered with awful thrills of curiosity into the mysteries of the unseen world, until he has longed for the hour of the soul's liberation, that it might plume itself for an immortal flight? Who has not experienced moments of serene faith, in which he could hardly help exclaiming, "I would not live alway; I ask not to stay: Oh, who would live alway away from his God?"
A favorite of Apollo prayed for the best gift Heaven could bestow upon man. The god said, "At the end of seven days it shall be granted: in the mean time, live happy." At the appointed hour he fell into a sweet slumber, from which he never awoke.3 He who regards death as upon the whole an evil does not take the Christian's view of it, not even the enlightened pagan's view, but the frightened sensualist's view, the superstitious atheist's view. And if death be upon the whole normally a blessing, then assuredly it cannot be a punishment brought upon man by sin. The common hypothesis of our mortality namely, that sin, hereditarily lodged in the centre of man's life, spreads its dynamic virus thence until it appears as death in the periphery, expending its final energy within the material sphere in the dissolution of the physical frame is totally opposed to the spirit of philosophy and to the most lucid results of science. Science announces death universally as the initial point of new life.4
The New Testament does not teach that natural death, organic separation, is the fruit of sin, that, if man had not sinned, he would have lived forever on the earth. But it teaches that moral death, misery, is the consequence of sin. The pains and afflictions which sometimes come upon the good without fault of theirs do yet spring from human faults somewhere, with those exceptions alone that result from the necessary contingencies of finite creatures, exposures outside the sphere of human accountability. With this qualification, it would be easy to show in detail that the sufferings of the private individual and of mankind at large are, directly or indirectly, the products of guilt, violated law. All the woes, for instance, of poverty are the results of selfishness, pride, ignorance, and vice. And it is the same with every other class of miseries.
"The world in Titanic immortality Writhes beneath the burning mountain of its sins."
3 Herod. i. 31; Cic. Tusc. Quast. i. 47.
4 Klencke, Das Buch vom Tode. Entwurf einer Lehre vom Sterben in der Natur und vom Tode des Mensehen insbesondere. Fur denkende Freunde der Wissenschaft.
Had there been no sin, men's lives would have glided on like the placid rivers that flow through the woodlands. They would have lived without strife or sorrow, grown old without sadness or satiety, and died without a pang or a sigh. But, alas! sin so abounds in the world that "there is not a just man that lives and sins not;" and it is a truth whose omnipresent jurisdiction can neither be avoided nor resisted that every kind of sin, every offence against Divine order, shall somewhere, at some time, be judged as it deserves. He who denies this only betrays the ignorance which conceals from him a pervading law of inevitable application, only reveals the degradation and insensibility which do not allow him to be conscious of his own experience. A harmonious, happy existence depends on the practice of pure morals and communion with the love of God. This great idea that the conscientious culture of the spiritual nature is the sole method of Divine life is equally a fundamental principle of the gospel and a conclusion of observation and reason: upon the devout observance of it hinge the possibilities of true blessedness. The pursuit of an opposite course necessitates the opposite experience, makes its votary a restless, wretched slave, wishing for freedom but unable to obtain it.
The thought just stated, we maintain, strikes the key note of the Christian Scriptures; and the voices of truth and nature accord with it. That Christianity declares sin to be the cause of spiritual death, in all the deep and wide meaning of the term, has been fully shown; that this is also a fact in the great order of things has been partially illustrated, but in justice to the subject should be urged, in a more precise and adequate form. In the first place, there is a positive punishment flowing evidently from sin, consisting both in outward inflictions of suffering and disgrace through human laws and social customs, and in the private endurance of bodily and mental pains and of strange misgivings that load the soul with fear and anguish. Subjection to the animal nature in the obedience of unrighteousness sensibly tends to bring upon its victim a woeful mass of positive ills, public and personal, to put him under the vile tyranny of devouring lusts, to induce deathlike enervation and disease in his whole being, to pervade his consciousness with the wretched gnawings of remorse and shame, and with the timorous, tormenting sense of guilt, discord, alienation, and condemnation.
In the second place, there is a negative punishment for impurity and wrong doing, less gross and visible than the former, but equally real and much more to be dreaded. Sin snatches from a man the prerogatives of eternal life, by brutalizing and deadening his nature, sinking the spirit with its delicate delights in the body and its coarse satisfactions, making him insensible to his highest good and glory, lowering him in the scale of being away from God, shutting the gates of heaven against him, and leaving him to wallow in the mire. The wages of sin is misery, and its gift is a degradation which prevents any elevation to true happiness. These positive and negative retributions, however delayed or disguised, will come where they are deserved, and will not fail. Do a wrong deed from a bad motive, and, though you fled on the pinions of the inconceivable lightning from one end of infinite space to the other, the fated penalty would chase you through eternity but that you should pay its debt; or, rather, the penalty is grappling with you from within on the instant, is a part of you.
Thirdly, if, by the searing of his conscience and absorption in the world, a sinner escapes for a season the penal consequences threatened in the law, and does not know how miserable he is, and thinks he is happy, yet let him remember that the remedial, restorative process through which he must pass, either in this life or in the next, involves a concentrated experience of expiatory pangs, as is shown both by the reason of the thing and by all relevant analogies. When the bad man awakes as some time or other he will awake to the infinite perfections and unalterable love of the Father whose holy commands he has trampled and whose kind invitations he has spurned, he will suffer agonies of remorseful sorrow but faintly shadowed in the bitterness of Peter's tears when his forgiving Master looked on him. Such is the common deadness of our consciences that the vices of our corrupt characters are far from appearing to us as the terrific things they really are. Angels, looking under the fleshly garment we wear, and seeing a falsehood or a sin assimilated as a portion of our being, turn away with such feeling as we should experience at beholding a leprous sore beneath the lifted ermine of a king. A well taught Christian will not fail to contemplate physical death as a stupendous, awakening crisis, one of whose chief effects will be the opening to personal consciousness, in the most vivid manner, of all the realities of character, with their relations towards things above and things below himself.
This thought leads us to a fourth and final consideration, more important than the previous. The tremendous fact that all the inwrought elements and workings of our being are self retributive, their own exceeding great and sufficient good or evil, independent of external circumstances and sequences, is rarely appreciated. Men overlook it in their superficial search after associations, accompaniments, and effects. When all tangible punishments and rewards are wanting, all outward penalties and prizes fail, if we go a little deeper into the mysterious facts of experience we shall find that still goodness is rewarded and evil is punished, because "the mind is its own place, and can itself," if virtuous, "make a heaven of hell, if wicked, "a hell of heaven." It is a truth, springing from the very nature of God and his irreversible relations towards his creatures, that his united justice and love shall follow both holiness and iniquity now and ever, pouring his beneficence upon them to be converted by them into their food and bliss or into their bane and misery. There is, then, no essential need of adventitious accompaniments or results to justify and pay the good, or to condemn and torture the bad, here or hereafter. To be wise, and pure, and strong, and noble, is glory and blessedness enough in itself. To be ignorant, and corrupt, and mean, and feeble, is degradation and horror enough in itself. The one abides in true life, the other in moral death; and that is sufficient. Even now, in this world, therefore, the swift and diversified retributions of men's characters and lives are in them and upon them, in various ways, and to a much greater extent than they are accustomed to think. History preaches this with all her revealing voices. Philosophy lays it bare, and points every finger at the flaming bond that binds innocence to peace, guilt to remorse. It is the substance of the gospel, emphatically pronounced. And the clear experience of every sensitive soul confirms its truth, echoing through the silent corridors of the conscience the declarations which fell in ancient Judea from the lips of Jesus and the pen of Paul: "The pure in heart shall see God;" "The wages of sin is death."
We will briefly sum up the principal positions of the ground we have now traversed. To be enslaved by the senses in the violation of the Divine laws, neglecting the mind and abusing the members, is to be dead to the goodness of God, the joys of virtue, and the hopes of heaven, and alive to guilt, anguish, and despair. To obey the will of God in love, keeping the body under, and cherishing a pure soul, is to be dead to the evil of the world, the goading of passions, and the fears of punishment, and alive to innocence, happiness, and faith. According to the natural plan of things from the dawn of creation, the flesh was intended to fall into the ground, but the spirit to rise into heaven. Suffering is the retributive result and accumulated merit of iniquity; while enjoyment is the gift of God and the fruit of conformity to his law. To receive the instructions of Christ and obey them with the whole heart, walking after his example, is to be quickened from that deadly misery into this living blessedness. The inner life of truth and goodness thus revealed and proposed to men, its personal experience being once obtained, is an immortal possession, a conscious fount springing up unto eternity through the beneficent decree of the Father, to play forever in the light of his smile and the shadow of his arm. Such are the great component elements of the Christian doctrine of life and death, both present and eternal.
The purely interior character of the genuine teachings of Christianity on this subject is strikingly evident in the foregoing epitome. The essential thing is simply that the hate life of error and sin is inherent alienation from God, in slavery, wretchedness, death; while the love life of truth and virtue is inherent communion with God, in conscious freedom and blessedness. Here pure Christianity leaves the subject, declaring this with authority, but not pretending to clear up the mysteries or set forth the details of the subject. Whatever in the New Testament goes beyond this and meddles with minute external circumstances we regard as a corrupt addition or mixture drawn from various Gentile and Pharisaic sources and erroneously joined with the authentic words of Christ. What we maintain in regard to the apostles and the early Christians in general is not so much that they failed to grasp the deep spiritual principles of the Master's teaching, not that they were essentially in error, but that, while they held the substance of the Savior's true thoughts, they also held additional notions which were errors retained from their Pharisaic education and only partially modified by their succeeding Christian culture, a set of traditional and mechanical conceptions. These errors, we repeat, concern not the heart and essence of ideas, but their form and clothing. For instance, Christ teaches that there is a heaven for the faithful; the apostles suppose that it is a located region over the firmament. The dying Stephen said, "Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God." Again: Christ teaches that there is a banishment for the wicked; the apostles suppose that it is into a located region under the earth. In accordance with the theological dogmas of their time and countrymen, with such modification as the peculiar character, teachings, and life of Jesus enforced, they believed that sin sent through the black gates of Sheol those who would otherwise have gone through the glorious doors of heaven; that Christ would return from heaven soon, raise the dead from the under world, judge them, rebanish the reprobate, establish his perfect kingdom on earth, and reascend to heaven with his elect. That these distinctive notions came into the New Testament through the mistakes and imperfect knowledge of the apostles, how can any candid and competent scholar doubt?5 In the first place, the process whereby these conceptions were transmitted and assimilated from Zoroastrian Persia to Pharisaic Judea is historically traceable. Secondly, the brevity and vagueness of the apostolic references to eschatology, and their perfect harmony with known Pharisaic beliefs, prove their mutual consonance and the derivation of the later from the earlier. If the supposed Christian views had been unheard of before, their promulgators would have taken pains to define them carefully and give detailed expositions of them. Thirdly, it was natural almost inevitable that the apostles would retain at least some of their original peculiarities of belief, and mix them with their new ideas, unless they were prevented by an infallible inspiration. Of the presence of any such infallibility there is not a shadow of evidence; but, on the contrary, there is a demonstration of its absence. For they differed among themselves, carried on violent controversies on important points. Paul says of Peter, "I withstood him to the face." The Gentile and Judaic dissensions shook the very foundations of the Apostolic Church. Paul and Barnabas "had a sharp controversy, insomuch that they parted asunder." Almost every commentator and scholar worthy of notice has been compelled to admit the error of the apostles in expecting the visible return of Christ in their own day. And, if they erred in that, they might in other matters. The progress of positive science and the improvement of philosophical thought have rendered the mechanical dogmas popularly associated with Christianity incredible to enlightened minds. For this reason, as for many others, it is the duty of the Christian teacher to show that those dogmas are not an integral part of the gospel, but only an adventitious element imported into it from an earlier and unauthoritative system. Take away these incongruous and outgrown errors, and the pure religion of Christ will be seen, and will be seen to be the everlasting truth of God.
In attempting to estimate the actual influence of Christianity, wherever it has spread, in establishing among men a faith in immortality, we must specify six separate considerations. First, the immediate reception of the resurrection and ascension of Christ as a miraculous and typical fact, putting an infallible seal on his teachings, and demonstrating, even to the senses of men, the reality of a heavenly life, was an extremely potent influence in giving form and vigor to faith, more potent for ages than every thing else combined. The image of the victorious Christ taken up to heaven and glorified there forever, this image, pictured in every believer's mind, stimulated the imagination and kept an ideal vision of heaven in constant remembrance as an apprehended reality. "There is Jesus," they said, pointing up to heaven; "and there one day we shall be with him."
Secondly, the obloquy and desertion experienced by the early Christians threw them back upon a double strength of spiritual faith, and opened to them an intensified communion with God. As worldly goods and pleasures were sacrificed, the more powerful became their
5 Eschatologie, oder die Lebre von den Letzten Dingen. Mit besonderer Rucksicht anf die gangbare Irriehre vom Hades. Basel, 1840. De Wette interprets the doctrine of Christ's descent into Hades as a myth derived from the idea that he was the Savior not only of his living followers but also of the heathen and the dead. Bibl. Dogmatik, s. 272.