is taken from death, and the victory over our souls from Resurrecthe grave. cc to have been a general opinion among the Pharisees; for although it was a notion of the sect of the Sadducees that there was no resurrection, neither angel nor spirit, yet the Pharisees, we are told, confessed both. And this assertion is plainly confirmed by St Paul himself when his countrymen accused him before Felix. "I confess unto thee (says this eminent apostle), that after the way which they call heresy, so worship I the God of my fathers, believing all things which are written in the law and in the prophets, and having hope toward God, which they themselves also allow, that there shall be a resurrection of the dead, both of the just and unjust." This resurrection of the dead to judgment, though ns. not perhaps in the same sense in which the old Pharisees conceived it, is now generally and almost universally (1) maintained by Christians (M). Yet the Christians differ considerably with respect to the nature of the human soul. Some imagine that this spirit is naturally mortal, and that it is propagated along with the body from the loins of the parent. In support of this opinion, it has been observed that a great number of insects and plants transfer their lives to their posterity, and die soon after the act of propagation; that after this act the vital principle is in the most vigorous of plants and animals always found to be much exhausted; and that Tertullian a father of the church, in attempting some experiments of the kind, became subject to a momentary blindness, and felt a portion of his soul going out of him (N). These imagine that immortality was only conditionally promised to man; that Adam forfeited this immortality by his disobedience; and that Christ has restored us to the hopes of it again by his sufferings and death: for as in Adam we have all died, so in Christ, they say, we shall all be made alive; and that now the sting Others have conceived the human soul as naturally immortal, and as setting death and the grave at defiance. Adam, they say, died only in a figure; and only from the consequences of this figure, which means sin, has our Lord saved us. In this sense Adam died on the very day in which he had sinned; or he died literally in 1000 years, which with the Lord are as one day. To these arguments their opponents reply, What then is the victory over death and the grave? You must still have recourse to a new figure, and betake yourselves to the second death; though, after all, where is your grave? To this it is answered, that the soul of itself is naturally immortal, and that it depends not either for its existence or the exercise of its faculties upon the body; that the properties of matter, as figure, magnitude, and motion, can produce nothing that is like to perception, memory, and consciousness. This is true, rejoin their opponents; but besides these few properties of matter, which are only the objects of that philosophy which has lately and properly been termed mechanical, the chemical philosophy has discovered other properties of matter; has found that matter is of various kinds; that it very often does not act mechanically; that it acquires many new properties by combination; and that no man, till farther experiment and observation, should venture to assert how far the soul is or is not dependent on its present organised system. The others, proceeding on their hypothesis, maintain that the soul, as being immaterial, is not divisible; and though the body of a frog may live without the head for a whole day; though the body of a tortoise may live without the head for a whole month though a human limb may for some minutes after amputation continue to perform a vital motion, independent of a brain, a stomach, or a heart; and tion. tion; and some are not even for allowing them, except they be men of piety and virtue. To render this resurrection probable, the rabbins say, with some of the Mahometans, that there is a certain bone in the body a which resists putrefaction, and serves as a seed for the next body *. What that bone is, is of no great moment, as any bone, we believe, in the skeleton will answer the purpose equally well. With respect to the manner of this resurrection, the learned Hody has quoted several opinions of the Jews, and among others, that of the Chaldee paraphrast of the Canticles, asserting that the prophet Solomon had said, "When the dead shall revive, it shall come to pass that the Mount of Olives shall be cleft, and all the dead of Israel shall come out from thence; and the just too that died in captivity shall come through the way of the caverns under the earth, and shall come forth out of the Mount of Olives." He has likewise quoted Saunderson's Voyage to the Holy Land, in which, we are told that many of the Jews, by their own account, are to rise up in the valley of Jehoshaphat; and that in the rowling or devolution of the caverns, those at a distance must scrape their way thither with their nails. (L) The sect of the Quakers explain it figuratively. (M) The last quoted author † (Resurrection of the same Body, asserted from the traditions of the Heathens, the ancient Jews, and the primitive Church) has endeavoured to show that this doctrine, in the same sense as we understand it, has been asserted by the ancient Magi, and by the present heathen Gaurs of Persia, the relics of the ancient Magi; by some of the ancient Arabians; by some of the Banians of India; by the present inhabitants of the island of Ceylon, of Java, of Pegu, of Transiana; by some amongst the Chinese; by the Arderians in Guinea; and by the ancient Prussians. The proofs which he brings, it must be confessed, are not however always very satisfactory. It appears, even from his own account, that some of these had derived their notions from certain Christians, Mahometans, or Jews. But the reader may judge of the great accuracy of his ideas from his bringing old Pythagoras and the Stoics, and even Democritus and Epicurus, in support of the same or a similar opinion. (N) In illo ipso voluptatis ultimæ æstu quo genitale virus expellitur, nonne aliquid de anima quoque sentimus exire, utque adeo marcescimus et devigescimus cum lucis detrimento. VOL. XVII. Part II. 5 E tion. tion. Resurrec and though the parts of a plant, a polype, or a worm, may survive their separation and become living wholes* yet the soul, they observe, is not to be compared with *See Po- the vital principles of plants and animals, nor ought to lupus and be divided on reasons so slender as those of analogy. ReproducEven granting, they say, that the soul were not naturally immortal of itself; yet the justice of God, which is not remarkable for its equal distribution of rewards and punishments in the present world, is bound to make some amends in the next. And to this again their opponents answer, as to the equal distribution of justice in a future world, of that we are assured on much better grounds than any of your's: our Lord has declared it in express terms; and whether the soul be immortal or not, we can easily believe what he said is true, as we know him whom we have trusted. 22 Place of the dead These, with Plato, suppose, that the soul is here as in prison; though how or at what time it should first have come into this dungeon they have not determined. They have only agreed, that upon its enlargement all its faculties are to receive an increase of power; and "having already equipped it so exquisitely with consciousness, activity, and perception in and of itself, and put it into so complete a capacity for happiness and misery in a separate state," their hypothesis does not require them to admit the least occasion for a resurrection; which accordingly is said to have been an article of Baxter's creed (0), A third opinion, which extends likewise to every species of plant and animal, is, that all souls were created at once with bodies of ether; that these bodies, occupying only a very small space, were packed up in their first progenitors, and there left to be afterwards evolved and clothed with matter of a grosser kind by acts of generation and consequent nutrition. For the proof of this theory we are referred to the small animals seen through the microscope, and likewise to those which are supposed to escape even microscopic observation; but, above all, to the eggs of insects, which, though scarcely perceptible, yet contain in embryo a future caterpillar and all its coats, and within these a future butterfly with its legs and wings. These philosophers can perhaps account for the general taint of original sin in some other way than has hitherto been done. We have only to add, that on their scheme the resurrection is not a matter that seems to be indifferent. The next thing that falls to be considered is the place of the dead. From a natural enough association of near to the ideas, an opinion had very early prevailed, that the spigrave. rit continued near to the body; and the offerings therefore intended for the dead were by most nations presented at the grave; and that on which the departed spirit is supposed to rest is always placed near the grave in China. 23 In dark Ress. From the dreams of the night and the natural ten 24 The nations, therefore, who have fancied a general receptacle for the dead, have thus been induced to place it in the west (a), where the night begins and the day ends. That part of the world which, in the division of his father's dominions, fell to Pluto the infernal god, and where, according to Lactantius, Satan holds the empire of darkness, the Friendly Islanders have placed in the to the westward of a certain island which they call Te-west. jee; some tribes of American Indians, in a country beyond the western mountains; and Homer, somewhere to the westward of Greece at the boundaries of the ocean, Where in a lonely land and gloomy cells Another opinion entertained by the Greeks and some Under the other nations was, that the place of departed spirits is earth. under the earth. This opinion is frequently mentioned in Homer, in Virgil, and alluded to by the Jewish prophets. As for the prophets, we know the circumstance from which they borrowed it: it was borrowed from those subterraneous vaults where their chiefs were buried, and which have been described by modern travellers. In the sides of these caverns there is ranged a great number of cells; and in these cells the mighty lay in a sort of state, with their weapons of war and their swords at their head. To these kinds of Egyptian cemeteries Ezekiel alludes, when he says, " that they shall not lie with the mighty that are fallen of the uncircumcised, who are gone down to hell with their weapons of war, and they have laid their swords under their head.” And Isaiah, when thus speaking of the prince of Babylon, "Thou shalt be brought down to bell, to the sides of the pit. Hell from beneath is moved for thee, to meet thee at thy coming; it stirreth up the dead for thee, even all the chief ones of the earth; it hath raised up from their thrones all the kings of the nations. All the kings of the nations, even all of them, lie in glory, every one in his own house.” Many (0) An Historical View of the Controversy concerning an Intermediate State, and the Separate Existence of the Soul. (P) Some Turkish ghosts are an exception, who use lamps or candles in their tombs, when their friends choose to supply them with these luxuries. (α) 'The west and darkness are synonymous in Homer. Ω φίλοι, ου γαρ τ' ιδμεν όπη ζόφος, ουδ' όπη πως. (Odys.) "O my friends! which is the west, or which is the east, the place of darkness, or that of the morning, we cannot learn." bo- Those who believed in a transmigration caused the soul at death only to enter a new body, and kept the departed always with the living. This creed has been found in India, in Egypt, in Mexico, and in all those countries where picture-writing has been much used. In this species of writing, the same picture is on fancied analogy transferred by metaphor to signify either a god or a man, a brute or a plant; and in those countries where it was practised, men had usually their names from animals, and were represented by their figure in writing (R). From this last stage of the process, a transmigration was easily supposed: and hence we hear of the gods of Egypt wandering about like so many vagrants in brute shapes, and of princes being translated into stars, because a star was their emblem in hieroglyphic, or stood for their name in figurative language. And, in like manner, we see, from the specimen of this character which is still preserved on celestial globes, how the heavens at first came to be filled with bears, scorpions, and dragons, and with a variety of other animals. 1 : The opinions concerning the state of the dead are still more numerous than those concerning the place g where they reside. Rude nations have generally thought that the future state is similar to the present; that plants, animals, and inanimate things there, have their shades and that these contribute as much to the pleasures and conveniences of the dead as their realities do to the living; that husbands have their wives (s), lovers their mistresses, warriors their battles, huntsmen their sport; and that all their passions, amusements, and business, are the same as formerly. For this reason, that the dead may not appear unprovided in the next world, like the ancient Gauls, some tribes of India, America, and Africa, bury with them in the same grave their wives, their arms, their favourite animals, and their necessary utensils. For scarcely had the purple torrent flow'd, ; Alone, apart, in discontented mood, Upon Ulysses saying to Achilles, Alive, we hail'd thee with our guardian gods; Talk not of ruling in this dol'rous gloom, A weight of woes, and breathe the vital air, A SLAVE TO SOME POOR HIND THAT TOILS FOR BREAD, In this gloomy region no one is rewarded for his virtue, nor is punished for his crimes, unless committed, like those of Sisyphus, Tantalus, and Ixion, against the gods. All indeed are classed into groups, from a certain analogy of age, sex, fate, and disposition; but all appear to be equally unhappy, having their whole heart and affections concentrated in a world to which they are fated never to return. The Elysium of Homer is alloted only for the relations and descendants of the gods; and Menelaus goes to this country of perpetual spring (T), not as a person of (R) A military gentleman who resided at Penobscot during the late American war, assured us that the Indians, when desired to subscribe a written agreement, drew always the picture of the object or animal whose name they bore. But for fuller information on this subject, see Clavigero's History of Mexico. (s) The question which the Sadducees put to our Saviour about the wife of the seven brothers, is a proof that the Pharisees thought there was a marriage and giving in marriage in the future state, and that it was somewhat similar to the present. (T) Homer sends the ghost of Hercules to the shades, while Hercules himself is quaffing nectar with Hebe in 5 E 2 in 32 Becomes a punish ments. 33 These at first distri buted ac Even long after a future state had become the scene of rewards and punishments, these for the most part pace of re- were distributed, not according to moral, but physical wards and distinctions. With the Greeks and Romans, the soul was condemned to many calamities for a number of years, if the body was not honoured with funeral rites. Among the Scandinavians, a natural death was attended with infamy, while a violent death, particularly in battle, gave a title to sit in the halls of Odin, and to quaff beer from the skulls of enemies. Among the Tlascalans, it was only the great that were permitted to animate birds and the nobler quadrupeds; the lower ranks were transformed into weasels, into paultry beetles, and such mean animals. Among the Mexicans, those who were drowned, who died of a dropsy, tumors, or wounds, or such like diseases, went along with the children that had been sacrificed to the god of water, and in a cool and delightful place were allowed to indulge in delicious repasts and varieties of pleasures: those who died of other diseases, were sent to the north or centre of the earth, and were under the dominion of the gods of darkness. "The soldiers, who died in battle, or in captivity among their enemies, and the women who died in labour, went to the house of the sun, who was considered as the prince of glory. In his mansions they led a life of endless delight. Every day the soldiers, on the first appearance of his rays, hailed his birth with rejoicings and with dancings, and the music of instruments and voices. At his meridian they met with the women, and in like festivity accompanied * Clavige. him to his setting. After four years of this glorious life, ro's Hist. of they went to animate clouds, and birds of beautiful feaMexico, vol. vi. p. 136. cording to physical distinctions; 34 and after wards ac. cording to moral distinctions. thers and of sweet song; but always at liberty to rise again, if they pleased, to heaven, or descend to the earth, to warble their songs, and to suck flowers *." These sentiments of a future state, conceived in a savage and a rude period, could not long prevail among an enlightened and civilized people. When the times of rapine and violence therefore began to cease; when societies regulated by certain laws began to be established; when martial prowess was less requisite, and the qualities of the heart had begun to give an importance to the character, the future state was also modelled on a different plan. In the Eneid of Virgil, an author of a highly cultivated mind, and of polished manners, it becomes a place of the most impartial and unerring justice; every one now receives a sentence suited to the actions of his past life, and a god is made to preside in judgment; Who hears and judges each committed crime, The conscious wretch must all his acts reveal, 3 in the less enlightened period of Homer; the vicious For there are various penances enjoin'd, With ether vested, and a purple sky, These good men are engaged in various amusements, according to the taste and genius of each. Orpheus is still playing on his harp, and the warriors are still delighted with their chariots, their horses, and their arms. The place of torment is at some distance. A gaping gulf, which to the centre lies, And twice as deep as earth is distant from the skies; From hence are heard the groans of ghosts, the pains Of sounding lashes, and of dragging chains. Here, those who brother's better claim disown, Expel their parents, and usurp the throne; Defraud their clients, and, to lucre sold, Sit brooding on unprofitable gold. Who dare not give, and even refuse to lend, To their poor kindred, or a wanting friend. Vast is the throng of these; nor less the train Of lustful youths for foul adult'ry slain. Hosts ༡༥ Virgil's purgatory His hea ven His bell in the skies. One soul of the hero is therefore repining with the ghosts of mortals in the regions below, while the other is enjoying all the happiness of the gods above. (See Odyssey, book ii. near the end). Philosophers since have improved on this hint of the poet; and men have now got rational, animal, and vegetable souls, to which sometimes a fourth one is added, as properly belonging to matter in general. Homer insinuates, that Menelaus was to be translated to Elysium without tasting death. This Elysium is the habitation of men, and not of ghosts, and is described as being similar to the seat of the gods. Compare Odyss. iv. 1. 563. and Odyss. vi. 1. 43. in the Greek. ec- Hosts of deserters, who their honour sold, 1 e :ad led And basely broke their faith for bribes of gold: All these within the dungeon's depth remain, Despairing pardon, and expecting pain. The souls of babes, of unhappy lovers, and some others, seem to be placed in a paradise of fools residing in a quarter distinct from Elysium, Tartarus, and Purgatory. It is curious to observe, how much these ideas of a future state differ from the vague and simple conjectures of rude nations; and yet from their simple and rude conjectures, we can easily trace the successive changes in the writings of Homer, Plato, and Virgil ; and may easily show, that those laws which different nations have prescribed for their dead, have always borne the strongest analogy to their state of improvement, their system of opinions, and their moral attainments. Some nations, as those of India, have fancied a number of heavens and hells, corresponding to some of the principal shades in virtue and vice; and have filled each of these places respectively with all the scenes of happiness and misery, which friendship and hatred, admiration, contempt, or rancour, could suggest. But having already observed the progress of the human mind in forming the grand and leading ideas of a future state, we mean not to descend to the modifications which may have occurred to particular nations, sects, or individuals. The belief of Christians respecting futurity demands our attention, as being founded on a different principle, namely, on express revelations from heaven. From many express declarations in Scripture, all Christians seem to be agreed, that there is a heaven appointed for the good and a hell for the wicked. In this heaven the saints dwell in the presence of God and the uninterrupted splendours of day. Those who have been wise shine as the firmament, and those who have converted many to righteousness as the stars. Their bodies are glorious, immortal, incorruptible, not subject to disease, are to pain, or to death. Their minds are strangers to sorrow, to crying, to disappointment; all their desires are presently satisfied; while they are calling, they are answered; while they are speaking, they are heard. Their mental faculties are also enlarged; they no more see things obscurely, aud as through a cloud, but continually beholding new wonders and beauties in creation, are constantly exclaiming, "Holy, holy, holy! is the Lord of hosts; worthy is he to receive glory, and honour, and thanksgiving; and to him be ascribed wisdom, and power, and might; for great and marvellous are his works, and the whole universe is filled with his glory." 1. Their notions of hell differ considerably. Some understanding the Scriptures literally, have plunged the wicked into an abyss without any bottom; have made this gulf darker than night; have filled it with rancorous and malignant spirits, that are worse than furies; and have described it as full of sulphur, burning for ever. This frightful gulf has by some been placed in the bowels of the earth; by some in the sun; by some in the moon; and by some in a comet: but as the Scriptures have determined nothing on the subject, all such conjectures are idle and groundless. Öthers imagine, that the fire and sulphur are here to be taken in a figurative sense. These suppose the torments of hell to be troubles of mind and remorses of tion. conscience; and support their opinion by observing, that Resurrecmatter cannot act upon spirit; forgetting, perhaps, that at the resurrection the spirit is to be clothed with a body, and, at any rate, that it is not for man vainly to prescribe bounds to Omnipotence. 42 What seems to have tortured the genius of divines Of the midOn dle state, much more than heaven or hell, is a middle state. and diffethis subject there being little revealed in Scripture, rent opimany have thought it incumbent upon them to supply nions about the defect; which they seem to have done in different it. ways. From the Scriptures speaking frequently of the dead as sleeping in their graves, those who imagine that the powers of the mind are dependent on the body, suppose that they sleep till the resurrection, when they are to be awakened by the trump of God, reunited to their bodies, have their faculties restored, and their sentence awarded. 43 to some a This opinion they support by what St Peter says in the Acts, that David is not ascended into heaven; and that this patriarch could not possibly be speaking of himself when he said, "Thou will not leave my soul in hell, i. e. the place of the dead." They observe, too, According that the victory of Christ over death and the grave state of seems to imply, that our souls are subject to their power; sleep; and accordingly the Scripture speaks frequently of the soul's drawing near to, of its being redeemed from, and of its descending into, the grave; that the Psalmist, however, declares, plainly, that when the breath of man goeth forth, he returneth to his earth, and that very day his thoughts perish. And should any one choose to consult Ecclesiastes, he will find, that the living know that they shall die, but that the dead know not any thing: that their love, and their hatred, and their envy, are perished; and that there is no work, nor device, nor wisdom, nor knowledge, in the grave, whither they are gone. 44 state of Those who believe that the soul is not for the exercise According of its faculties dependent on the body, are upon its se- to others, a paration at death obliged to dispose of it some other way. conscious In establishing this theory, they usually begin with at-existence. tempting to prove, from Scripture or tradition, both its active and separate existence; but with proofs from tradition we intend not to middle. Their arguments from Scripture being of more value, deserve our serious consideration; and are nearly as follow. Abraham, they say, Isaac, and Jacob, are still living, because Jehovah is their God, and he, it is allowed, is not the God of the dead, but of the living. But their opponents reply, That this is the argument which our Saviour brought from the writings of Moses to prove a future resurrection of the dead; and that any person, who looks into the context, will see it was not meant of a middle state. From the dead living unto God, our Saviour infers nothing more than that they shall live at the resurrection; and that these gentlemen would do well in future to make a distinction between simply living and living unto God: For though Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, be living unto God, our Saviour has assured us that Abraham is dead, and the prophets dead. A second argument is that glimpse which St Paul had of Paradise about 14 years before he had written his Second Epistle to the Corinthians. To this argument their opponents reply, That as St Paul could not tell whether, on that occasion, he was out of the body or in the body, it is more than probable that the whole was |