CHAPTER XXVI.THE RESURRECTION.

As clearly as the human race have been taught by the experience of six thousand years that death is their common lot, so clearly are we taught by the word of God, and by some notable exhibitions of divine power, that all who have gone into their graves shall come forth again to life.

The words in the New Testament which express this fact areanastasis,egersis, andexanastasis. The two latter occur but once each, the first in reference to the resurrection of Christ, in Matt. 27:53, the last in Phil. 3:11, where Paul expresses a desire to attain to a resurrection out from among the dead.Anastasisoccurs forty-two times, being the word which is invariably used in the New Testament, with the exceptions just named, to express the resurrection. This word is defined by Robinson to mean, literally,a rising up, as of walls, of a suppliant, or from a seat. Specially in the New Testament, the resurrection of the body from death, the return of the dead body to life, as, first of individuals who have returned to life on earth, Heb. 11:35; secondly, of the future and general resurrection at the end of all things, John 11:24. It is oftenjoined to the word, dead; as in the expression, the resurrection of the dead.

From these well-established meanings of the word it is evident that that which goes down will rise again. That which goes into the grave will come up again out of the grave. The rising again of the body is certainly assured by this word, and the manner in which it is used. This resurrection is a future event: “The hour is coming, in the which all that are in the graves shall hear His voice, and shall come forth.” John 5:28, 29. Paul said, when disputing with Tertullus before the governor, I “have hope toward God, which they themselves also allow, that there shall be a resurrection of the dead, both of the just and the unjust.” Acts 24:15. And he tells us in chapter 26:7, that unto that promise the twelve tribes hope to come.

If, then, this is a firmly-established fact, that God is to make such a mighty manifestation of his power as to re-animate the scattered dust of those whom the grave has consumed from time’s earliest morn, there must be some cause for such an action. This great event has a tremendous bearing on the question of the intermediate state, and all views of that state must be adjusted to harmonize therewith. If any view is entertained which virtually renders such an event unnecessary, it must be shown that the resurrection as here defined is not taught in the word ofGod, or it must be admitted that the doctrine which nullifies it, is unscriptural.

The important inquiry now arises respecting the popular view, If the real being, the intelligent, responsible entity, ceases not its life and consciousness at death, but continues on in a more enlarged and perfect sphere of existence and activity, what need is there of the resurrection of the body? If the body is but a trammel, a clog to the operations of the soul, what need that it should come back and gather up its scattered particles from the silent tomb, and re-fetter itself with this material robe?

Wm. Tyndale, defending the doctrine of Martin Luther, that the dead sleep, addressed to his opponent the same pungent inquiry. He said:--

“And ye, in putting them [departed souls] in Heaven, hell, and purgatory, destroy the argument wherewith Christ and Paul prove the resurrection.... If the souls be in Heaven, tell me why they be not in as good case as the angels be? and then what cause is there of the resurrection?”

Andrew Carmichael (Theology of Scripture, vol. ii., p. 315) says:--

“It cannot be too often repeated:If there be an immortal soul there is no resurrection; and if there be any resurrection there is no immortal soul.”

Dr. Muller (Ch. Doc. of Sin, p. 318) says:--

“The Christian faith in immortality is indissolubly connected with a promise of a future resurrection of the dead.”

We now propose to show that the resurrection is a prominent doctrine of the Bible; and if this can be established, it follows, upon the judgment of these eminent men, that the immortality of the soul cannot be true. We need not stop to notice that impalpable and groundless theory which makes the resurrection take place immediately at death, by supposing it to be the rising of the soul from the earthly house of this tabernacle, and its entering at once into its spiritual house, this to be inhabited, and the former, abandoned, forever. For in this case there is no resurrection; since the soul lives right on, and does not die at all. The resurrection which the Bible brings to view is a resurrection ofthe dead. It cannot be applied to anything that continuously lives, however many changes it may pass through. A person must go down into a state of death before he can be raised from the dead. Hence this theory is no resurrection at all, and so is at war with all the Bible says about the resurrection of the dead. Moreover, it is utterly impossible to harmonize this with the many references to the general resurrection at the end of the world.

We return to the Bible doctrine of the resurrection of the dead, the literal resurrection and resuscitation of our natural bodies, and affirm that the Bible makes this resurrection necessary, by representing the dead to be in such a condition that without this event they can have no future existence.

1. Death is compared to sleep. There must, then, be some analogy between a state of sleep and a state of death, and this analogy must pertain to that which renders sleep a peculiar condition. Our condition in sleep differs from our condition when awake, simply in this, that when we are soundly asleep we are entirelyunconscious. In this respect, then, death is like sleep; that is, the dead are unconscious. This figure is frequently used to represent the condition of the dead. Dan. 12:2: “Many of them thatsleepin the dust of the earth shall awake.” Matt. 27:52: “Many bodies of the saints whichsleptarose.” Acts 7:60: After Stephen had beheld the vision of Christ and was stoned to death, the record says, he “fellasleep.” In 1 Cor. 15:20, Christ is called the first-fruits of them thatslept; and in verse 57, Paul says, “We shall not allsleep.” Again Paul writes to the Thessalonians, 1 Thess. 4:13, 14, that he would not have them ignorant concerning them which areasleep. In verse 14, he speaks of them asasleepin Jesus, and explains what he means, in verse 16, by calling them “dead in Christ.” And the advocates of the conscious state cannot dispose of these expressions by saying that they apply to the body merely; for they do not hold that the consciousness which we have in life (which is what we lose in death) pertains to the body merely. Job plainly declares that they will not awake till theresurrection, at the last day. “Man dieth and wasteth away; yea, man giveth up the ghost, and where is he? As the waters fail from the sea, and the flood decayeth and drieth up, so man lieth down and riseth not: till the heavens be no more, they shall not awake, nor be raised out of their sleep.” If, therefore, there is no resurrection, these dead are destined to sleep in unconsciousness forever.

2. The dead are in a condition as though they had not been. So Job testifies; for he affirms that if he could have died in earliest infancy, like a hidden, untimely birth, he would not have been; and in this respect he declared he would have been like kings, counsellors, and princes of the earth who built costly tombs in which to enshrine their bodies when dead. To that condition he applies the expression which has since been so often quoted, “There the wicked cease from troubling, and there the weary be at rest.” Job 3:11-18. If, then, a person when dead is as though he had not been, without a resurrection to release him from this state, he will never be, or exist, again.

3. The dead have no knowledge. Speaking of the dead man, Job says (14:21), “His sons come to honor, and he knoweth it not; and they are brought low, and he perceiveth it not of them.” Ps. 146:4. “His breath goeth forth, he returneth to his earth; in that very day his thoughtsperish.” Solomon was inspired to speak to the same effect as his father David: Eccl. 9:5, 6: “For the living know that they shall die, but the dead know not anything.... Also their love, and their hatred, and their envy, is now perished; neither have they any more a portion forever in anything that is done under the sun.” Verse 10: “There is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave whither thou goest.” Evidence like this can neither be mistaken nor evaded. It is vain for the immaterialist to claim that it applies to the body in distinction from an immortal soul; for they do not hold that the thoughts (διαλογισμός,thought, reasoning,) which David says perish in death, belong to the body, but to the soul. And according to Solomon, that which knows when the man is living, does not know when he is dead. Without a resurrection, therefore, the dead will forever remain without knowledge.

4. The dead are not in Heaven nor in hell, but in the dust of the earth. Job 17:13-16: “If I wait, the grave is mine house.” In chap. 14:14, he said, “All the days of my appointed time will I wait, till my change come.” The change referred to, must therefore be the resurrection, and he describes his condition till that time, in the following language: “I have made my bed in the darkness. I have said to corruption, Thou art my father; to the worm, Thou art my motherand my sister, ... whenour rest together is in the dust.” Isa. 26:19: “Thy dead men shall live; together with my dead body shall they arise. 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.” Is it possible that the phraseology of this text can be misunderstood? It speaks of the living again of dead men, of the arising of dead bodies, and of the earth’s casting out the dead. And the command is addressed to them thus: “Awake and sing.” Who? Ye who are still conscious, basking in the bliss of Heaven and chanting the high praises of God? No; but, “Ye who dwellin dust;” ye who are in your graves. If the dead are conscious, Isaiah talked nonsense. If we believe his testimony we must look into the graves for the dead; and if there is no resurrection, there they will forever lie mingled with the clods of the valley.

5. The dead, even the most holy and righteous, have no remembrance of God, and cannot, while in that condition, render him any praise and thanksgiving. Ps. 6:5: “For in death there is no remembrance of thee: in the grave who shall give thee thanks?” Ps. 115:17: “The dead praise not the Lord, neither any that go down into silence.” Good King Hezekiah, when praising the Lord for adding to his days fifteen years, gives this as the reason why he thus rejoiced: Isa. 38:18, 19: “For the grave cannot praisethee, death cannot celebrate thee; they that go down into the pit cannot hope for thy truth. Theliving, theliving, he shall praise thee, as I do this day; the father to the children shall make known thy truth.” Modern doctors of divinity have Hezekiah in Heaven praising God. He declared that when he was dead he could not do this. Whose testimony is the more worthy of credit, that of the inspired king of Israel, or that of the theologians of subsequent ages of error and confusion? If we can believe Hezekiah, unless there is to be a resurrection, the righteous dead are never more to praise their Maker.

6. The dead, even the righteous, are not ascended to the Heavens. So Peter testifies respecting the patriarch David: Acts 2:29, 34, 35: “Men and brethren, let me freely speak unto you of the patriarch David, that he is both dead and buried, and his sepulcher is with us unto this day. For David is not ascended into the Heavens: but he saith himself, The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand, until I make thy foes thy footstool.” We call the especial attention of the reader to the whole argument presented by Peter, beginning with verse 24. Peter undertakes to prove from a prophecy recorded in the Psalms, the resurrection of Christ. He says, verse 31, “He, seeing this before, spake of the resurrection of Christ, that his soul was not left in hell [hades, the grave], neither did his flesh see corruption.”And how does he prove that David speaks of Christ, and not of himself? He proves it from the fact that David’s soulwasleft inhadesand his flesh did see corruption; and his sepulcher was with them to that day. For David, he says, has not ascended into the Heavens. Now if David’s soul did live right on in consciousness; if it was not left inhades, no man can show that David, in that psalm, did not speak of himself instead of Christ; and then Peter’s argument for the resurrection of Christ would be entirely destroyed. But Peter, especially when speaking as he was on this occasion under the influence of the Holy Ghost, knew how to reason; and his argument entirely destroys the dogma of the immortality of the soul. But if David has not yet ascended into the Heavens, how is he ever to get there? There is no other way but by a resurrection of the dead. So he himself says, Ps. 17:15: “I shall be satisfied when I awake [from the sleep of death], with Thy likeness.”

7. And finally, Paul, in his masterly argument in 1 Cor. 15, states explicitly the conclusion which is necessary from every one of the texts which we have quoted, that if there is no resurrection, then all the dead, even those who have fallen asleep in Christ, are perished. Verses 16-18. “For if the dead rise not, then is not Christ raised. And if Christ be not raised, your faithis vain; ye are yet in your sins.Then they also which are fallen asleep in Christ arePERISHED.”

As we read this testimony, we pause in utter amazement that any who profess to believe the Bible should cling with tenacity to the doctrine of the immortality of the soul which so directly contradicts it. If the souls of the dead live right on, are they perished? What! perished? and yet living in a larger sphere? Perished? and yet enjoying the attendant blessings of everlasting life in Heaven? Perished? and yet at God’s right hand where there is fullness of joy, and pleasures forevermore? Perish, amid the ruins of the heathen mythology from which it springs, that theory which thus lifts its dead men on high, contrary to the teachings of the word of God!

Paul speaks of the whole being. As in Adam we die, so in Christ shall we be made alive. Is it conceivable that Paul drops out of sight the real man, the soul which soars away to realms of light, and frames all this argument, and talks thus seriously about the cast-off shell, the body, merely? The idea is preposterous to the last degree.

After stating that if there is no resurrection we perish, he assures us that Christ is risen and that there is a resurrection for all; then he takes up the resurrection of those who sleep in Christ, and tells us when that resurrection shall be. It is totake place, not by the rising from this mortal coil of an ethereal, immaterial essence when we die, but it is to be at the great day when the last trump shall shatter this decrepid earth from center to circumference.

The testimony on this point is well summed up by Bishop Law, who speaks as follows:--

“I proceed to consider what account the Scriptures give of that state to which death reduces us. And this we find represented bysleep; by a negation of alllife,thought, oraction; byrest,resting-place, orhome,silence,oblivion,darkness,destruction, orcorruption.”

This representation is abundantly sustained by the Scriptures referred to; and by all these the great fact is inscribed in indelible characters over the portals of the dark valley, that our existence is not perpetuated by means of an immortal soul, but that without a resurrection from the dead, there is no future life.

But it is objected that, from our standpoint of the unconsciousness of the dead, a resurrection is impossible; for if a person ever ceases to exist as a conscious being, the re-organization of the matter of which he was composed would be a new creation, but not a resurrection. It is sufficient to say in reply that continued consciousness is not necessary to preserve identity of being. This is proved by nearly every member of the human family every day. Did the reader ever enjoy a period of sound, unconscious sleep? If so, whenhe awoke, how did he know that he was the same individual he was before? How does any one know, after a good night’s sleep, that he is the same person that retired to rest the night before? Simply because his organization is the same on awaking that it was when he became unconscious in sleep. Now suppose that during this period of unconsciousness, while the soul itself, if there is in man such a distinct entity as is claimed, is also unconscious, the body of a person could be cut up into innumerable fragments, the bones ground to powder, the flesh dissolved in acids, and the entire being, soul and all, destroyed. After remaining in this condition a little time, suppose all those particles could be put back again substantially as they were before, the general arrangement of the matter, especially of the brain, the organ of the mind being identically what it was; and then suppose that life could be imparted to it again, and the person be allowed to sleep on till morning; when he woke, would he be conscious of any break in the line of his existence? Any one must see that he would not. Being organized just as before, his mind would resume its consciousness just as if nothing had happened.

So with the dissolution of death. After its period of unconsciousness is passed over, in the resurrection the particles of the body are reunited, re-organized, and re-arranged, essentiallyas they were at the moment of death, and reanimated; then the line of life is taken up, and the current of thought resumed just where it was laid down in death, it matters not how many thousands of years before. This, the power of God can do; and to deny this is to “err, not knowing the Scriptures, nor the power of God.” In this way, we can have a true and proper resurrection, a living again of the whole person, as the Bible affirms. On the supposition of continued consciousness, this is impossible; for in this case the real man lives right on, the body, which the Bible makes of so much importance, being only the garment with which it was temporarily clothed; and in this case the resuscitation of the body would not and could not be the resurrection of the man. The popular view makes the Bible as inconsistent on the subject of man, as it would be for a historian to give the history of some celebrated man’s coat, and call it the history of the man himself.

Then it is further objected that if persons come up in the resurrection as they went down in death, we should have a motley group, bloated with dropsy, emaciated with consumption, scabbed, scarred, ulcered, maimed and deformed; which would be both unreasonable and disgusting. And this, it is claimed, is a necessary consequence from the view that the same matter is raised that went into the grave, and so far re-organized accordingto its previous arrangement as to constitute identity of being. But when we speak of the re-arrangement of the particles of the body, is it not evident to all that there are fortuitous and abnormal conditions which are not to be taken at all into the account? and that the essential and elemental parts are only to be understood? Who would imagine that the body might not differ in the resurrection from what it was before, as much at least as it differs at one period in its earthly history from its condition at another, and yet its identity be preserved? But we are sometimes in health, sometimes in sickness, sometimes in flesh, and sometimes wasted away, sometimes with diseased members, and sometimes entirely free from disease; and in all these changes we are conscious that we have the same body. Why? Because its essential elements remain, and its organization is continued. Whatever change can take place in our bodies during our earth life, and our identity be continued, changed to the same degree may be the body when raised from the dead, and yet it be the same body. But a missing member might be instantly replaced, a diseased limb healed, the consumptive restored to the bloom of health, or the body, swollen with dropsy, reduced to its natural size, and the individual still be conscious that he was the same person.

It is said still further by way of objection, thatthe matter of one body, after being decomposed by death, is absorbed and taken into other bodies, and becomes constituent parts of them; so that at the resurrection the same matter may have belonged to several different bodies, and cannot be restored to them all; therefore the doctrine of the resurrection of the body is unphilosophical.

If the reader will take the trouble to submit this objection to a little intelligent scrutiny, he will find it to grow rapidly and beautifully less, until finally it vanishes entirely away. Let us take the extremest case supposable: that of the cannibal who might possibly (though this would not naturally be the case), make an entire meal of human flesh. We cannot admit the statement of a certain minister who, in his zeal to make this objection appear very strong, claimed that a cannibal might have the whole body of his victim within his own at the same time. For this supposes that he would eat a whole man at one meal, and, further, that he would consume the viscera, skull, bones, brains, and all. But it is hardly supposable that, cannibals though they are, they have such an enormous capacity, or are such unpardonable eaters.

Nevertheless, let us suppose that a cannibal would, in process of time, consume an entire victim; what proportion could he use in this way? Not one-half, by weight. And what proportion of this would be taken up by the body and becomeincorporated with it? But a small fraction. And to what parts would this naturally go? To those grosser and unessential parts which most rapidly change, and demand the most constant supply. But while a few pounds of matter are supplied to the body, if that body maintains a uniform condition, an equal amount of matter has been thrown off. Thus it will be seen that at no one time is it possible for any material amount of one body to be a part of another. But if there was danger, in these rare cases, that an essential element of one body would become a constituent part of another, and so remain, could not the providence of God easily interpose to prevent this, by giving these particles another direction? Most assuredly it could. And this is not beneath His care who numbers all the hairs of our heads, and without whose notice not a sparrow falls to the ground. This objection not only betrays an utter lack of faith in God’s power and care in such matters, but philosophically considered, it amounts simply to a cavil.

It is the resurrection of the body of which the Bible treats. It knows no other. In 1 Cor. 15:35, 36, Paul asserts an obvious fact, that nothing can be quickened (revived or resuscitated, as from death, or an inanimate state--Webster,) except it first die. To talk of a quickening or making alive of that which does not die, or of a resurrection from the dead of that which does notgo down into death, is richly deserving of the epithet which Paul there applies to it.

And what is it that shall be quickened in the resurrection? The holy and infallible word of God replies,This mortal body. Rom. 8:11: “But if the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus Christ from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall alsoquicken your mortal bodiesby his Spirit that dwelleth in you.” Again, in verse 23, Paul says: “Even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, theredemption of our body.” And in 1 Cor. 15, Paul is as explicit as he well can be on this subject. Verse 44: “It is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body.” What does he mean by the natural body, and by its being sown? He means the burial of our present bodies in the grave. So he says in verses 42, 43: “So also is 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.” What is sown? The natural body. Then what is raised? The very same thing. IT is sown; IT is raised; raised in incorruption, in glory, in power, a spiritual body. Raised in this manner, the natural body becomes a spiritual body. Why? Because the Spirit of Him that raised up Christ quickens, resuscitates, or makesit alive again, as Paul wrote to the Romans. Should it be said that there is a natural body and a spiritual body in existence at the same time, we answer that according to Paul, that is not so. He says, verse 46: “Howbeit that was not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural; andafterwardthat which is spiritual.” In verse 49, he says we have borne the image of the earthly, and we shall bear, future, the image of the heavenly; and this will be when this mortal and corruptible, which is this mortal body, puts on incorruption, verses 52, 53, or is clothed upon with the house from Heaven. 2 Cor. 5.

To the Philippians, Paul testifies again on this point: “For our conversation is in Heaven, from whence also we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ, who shallchange our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body.” This language is explicit. A change is to be wrought in the vile, mortal or corruptible body of this present state, not a spiritual body released from it, which never sees death and needs no change; and the change that is promised is, that this body taken as it now is, is to be fashioned, changed over, into the likeness of Christ’s glorious, immortal body.

Having thus shown that a future resurrection is an event of the most absolute necessity, inasmuch as without it there is no future existence for the human race (a fact which entirely destroysat one blow the doctrine of the immortality of the soul), we now propose to notice the prominence given to this event in the sacred writings, and some of the plain declarations that it will surely take place.

1. The resurrection is the great event to which the sacred writers looked forward as the object of their hope. In the far distant ages a day rose to their view in which the dead came forth from their graves, and stood before God; and before the coming of that day, they did not expect eternal life.

So Job testifies: “I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that he will stand at the latter day upon the earth. And though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God.” Job 19:25, 26.

David entertained the same satisfactory hope. “As for me,” he says, “I shall be satisfied when I awake with Thy likeness.” Ps. 17:15.

Isaiah struck some thrilling notes on the same theme: “Thy dead men shall live, together with my dead body shall they arise. 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.” Isa. 26:19.

It was the hope of Paul, that eminent apostle, through all his sufferings and toils. For this he could sacrifice any temporal good, and take up any cross. He assures us that he considered hisafflictions, his troubles on every side, his perplexities, persecutions, stripes, imprisonments, and perils, but light afflictions; yea, he could utterly lose sight of them; and then he tells us why he could do it: it was in view of “the glory which shall be revealed in us,” “knowing,” says he, “that He which raised up the Lord Jesus,shall raise us up also by Jesus, and shall present us with you.” 2 Cor. 4:14. The assurance that he should be raised up at the last day, and be presented with the rest of the saints, when the Lord shall present to his Father a church without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, Eph. 5:27, sustained him under all his burdens. The resurrection was the staff of his hope. Again he says that he could count all things loss, if by any means he might attain to a resurrection (exanastasis) out from among the dead. Phil. 3:8-11.

We refer to one more passage which expresses as clearly as language can do it, the apostle’s hope. 2 Cor. 1:8, 9: “For we would not, brethren, have you ignorant of our trouble which came to us in Asia, that we were pressed out of measure, above strength, insomuch that we despaired even of life. But we had the sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves, but in Godwhich raiseth the dead.” Paul here gives us to understand that he could not trust in himself because he was mortal. He must therefore put his trust in God; and he tellsus why he does this: not because God had promised him any happiness as a disembodied soul; but because he was able and willingto raise him from the dead. Paul “kept back nothing that was profitable,” and did not shun “to declare all the counsel of God,” yet he never once endeavored to console himself or his brethren by any allusion to a disembodied state of existence, but passed over this as if it were not at all to be taken into the account, and fixed all his hope on the resurrection. Why this, if going to Heaven or hell at death, be a gospel doctrine?

2. The resurrection is the time to which prophets and apostles looked forward as the day of their reward. Should any one carefully search the Bible to ascertain the time which it designates as the time of reward to the righteous, and punishment to the wicked, he would find it to be not at death, but at the resurrection. Our Saviour clearly sets forth this fact in Luke 14:13, 14: “But when thou makest a feast, call the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind; and thou shalt be blessed; for they cannot recompense thee; for thou shalt be recompensed,” not at death, but, “at the resurrection of the just.”

Mark also the language by which the Lord would restrain that voice of weeping which was heard in Ramah. When Herod sent forth and slew all the children in Bethlehem from two years old and under, in hopes thereby to put todeath the infant Saviour, then was fulfilled, says Matthew, what was spoken by the prophet, “In Ramah was there a voice heard, lamentation, and weeping, and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children, and would not be comforted, because they were not.” But what said the Lord to Rachel? See the original prophecy, Jer. 31:15-17: “Thus saith the Lord, Refrain thy voice from weeping, and thine eyes from tears; for thy work shall be rewarded, saith the Lord; and they shall come again from the land of the enemy. And there is hope in thine end, saith the Lord, that thy children shall come again to their own border.” Not thus would the mourning Rachels of the 19th century be comforted by the professed shepherds of the flock of Christ. They would tell them, Refrain thy voice from weeping; for thy sons are now angel cherubs chanting their joyful anthems in their Heavenly Father’s home. But the Lord points the mourners in Ramah forward to the resurrection for their hope; and though till that time their children “were not,” or were out of existence, in the land of death, the great enemy of our race, yet, says the Lord, they shall come again from the land of the enemy, they shall return again to their own border, and thy work shall be rewarded; and he bids them refrain their voices from weeping, their eyes from tears, and their hearts from sorrow, in view of that glorious event.

The apostles represent the day of Christ’s coming and the resurrection as the time when the saints will receive their crowns of glory. Says Peter, “And when the Chief Shepherd shall appear, ye shall receive a crown of glory that fadeth not away.” 1 Pet. 5:4. And Paul says that there is laid up for him a crown of righteousness, and not for him only, but for all those also that love his appearing, and which shall be given him in that day (the day of Christ’s appearing). These holy apostles were not expecting their crowns of reward sooner than this.

All this is utterly inconsistent with the idea of a conscious intermediate state, and rewards or punishments at death. But the word of God must stand, and the theories of men must bow to its authority.

In 1 Cor. 15:32, Paul further tells us when he expected to reap advantage or reward for all the dangers he incurred here in behalf of the truth: “If after the manner of men I have fought with beasts at Ephesus, what advantageth it me, if the dead rise not? let us eat and drink; for to-morrow we die.” If without a resurrection he would receive no reward, it is evident that he expected his reward at that time, but not before. His language here is moreover a re-iteration of verse 18, that if there is no resurrection, they which are fallen asleep in Christ are perished.

Our Lord testified that of all which the Fatherhad given him he should lose nothing, but would raise it up at the last day. This language is also at once a positive declaration that the resurrection shall take place, and that without this event, all is lost. To the same effect is 1 Cor. 15:52, 53, “The trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. For this corruptiblemustput on incorruption, and this mortalmustput on immortality.” Here is a plain announcement that the resurrection will take place; that the change mentioned will be wrought at that time; and that this change must take place or we cannot inherit the kingdom of God. Verse 50. Therefore, without a resurrection, none who have fallen in death will ever behold the kingdom of God.

3. The resurrection is made the basis of many of the comforting promises of Scripture. 1 Thess. 4:16, 17: “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 ever be with the Lord.” We have already referred to this passage in this chapter on the Resurrection. We quote it again to show that God designed that from these promises we should comfort ourselves and one another in that keenest of all our afflictions, and the darkestof all our hours, the hour of bereavement. For the apostle immediately adds, “Wherefore comfort one another with these words.” Is it to such facts as these, the second coming of Christ, and the resurrection of the dead, that the theology of our day appeals to alleviate the sorrow which the human heart will feel for the loss of departed loved ones? Here, if anywhere, and on this subject, if on any that the apostle has anywhere taken up, should come in the modern doctrine of uninterrupted consciousness in the intermediate state. But Paul was evidently against any such doctrine, and so denies it a place on the page of truth, but passes right over to the resurrection as the place where comfort is to be found for the mourners.

As the resurrection is inseparably connected with the second coming of Christ, the words of Christ in John 14:1-3, are equally in point on this question. When he was about to leave his sorrowing disciples, he told them that he was going to prepare a place for them; he informed them moreover of his design that they should ultimately be with himself. But how was this to be accomplished? Was it through death, by which a deathless spirit would be released to soar away to meet its Saviour? No; but, says he, I willcome againand receive you to myself, that where I am, there ye may be also. Should any say that this coming of the Saviour is atdeath, we reply that the disciples of our Lord did not so understand it. See John 21:22, 23. Jesus incidentally remarked concerning one of his followers, “If I will that he tarrytill I come, what is that to thee? follow thou me;” and the saying went immediately abroad among the disciples, on the strength of these words, that that disciple shouldnot die.

The eminent and pious Joseph Alleine also testifies:--

“But we shall lift up our heads because the day of our redemption draweth nigh. This is the day I look for, and wait for, and have laid up all my hopes in. If the Lord return not, I profess myself undone; my preaching is vain, and my suffering is vain. The thing, you see, is established, and every circumstance is determined. How sweet are the words that dropped from the precious lips of our departing Lord! What generous cordials hath he left us in his parting sermon and his last prayer! And yet of all the rest these are the sweetest: ‘I will come again and receive you unto myself, that where I am there ye may be also.’ What need you any further witness?”

Dr. Clarke, in his general remarks on 1 Cor. 15, says:--

“The doctrine of the resurrection appears to have been thought of much more consequence among the primitive Christians than it isnow. How is this? The apostles were continually insisting on it, and exciting the followers of God to diligence, obedience, and cheerfulness through it. And their successors in the present day seldom mention it.... There is not a doctrine in the gospel on which more stress is laid; and there is not adoctrine in the present system of preaching, which is treated with more neglect.”

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