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Lecture
4
Death and
Resurrection
First published in London, 1858
But as touching the
resurrection of the dead, have ye not read that which was spoken unto you
by God, saying, "I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the
God of Jacob?" God is not the God of the dead, but of the living. (Matthew
22:31, 32)
It is impossible to
conceive of a theme around which our affections more fondly group, or that
is more interesting to us, than that which is comprised in the
consideration of the termination of our career in this world, and our
entrance into the final home in which all who are prepared become
everlastingly happy.
The first remark to
which we would direct your attention is that death--meaning the
termination of man's life here, and his entrance into a higher and an
everlasting state of existence--is not, as has often been supposed, the
consequence of sin, but is a result of the divine laws from which creation
has been effected, and of the divine intention, which was to people heaven
from earth. Man, as to his animal part, like all those myriads of animals
which geology tells us lived and died before man was created, was meant to
live and die. There is a death that has been the result of sin, but that
is not the death of the body; it is the death of the soul: spiritual
death.
Anyone who reflects
upon the subject will easily discern that it is a mistake of the most
decided character to suppose that the death of the body was a thing that
supervened in consequence of man's disobedience, and had not been foreseen
and intended by Infinite Wisdom. For if we remember and reflect upon the
fact that the divine admonition, when man was cautioned not to sin, was,
"In the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die" (Genesis
2:17), and if we bear in mind that what the Divine Wisdom declared, must
certainly have taken effect, we must conclude that, as there was no death
of the body on that day, it could not be that death which the Divine Being
intended. Besides, if we reflect again, we shall see a reason to conclude
that whatever the consequences of man's fall, Christ redeemed him from
them by his redemption; but inasmuch as Christ did not redeem us from the
death of the body, that could not have been one of the penalties of the
fall.
The death into which
man fell by sin was not the body's death, but the death of the soul; that
is, the death of purity, love, and light in the soul. The law from the
first was as it is now: "The soul that sinneth, it shall die" (Ezekiel
18:20). The death which paralyses all men's capacities for happiness is
kept before us in the Word as the one thing to be feared. From this death
the Lord, as the Redeemer in the Old Testament, ever strove to deliver us;
and as the Savior in the New, he brought life and immortality most fully
to light. What was lost in Adam was restored in him. "I am come," he said,
"that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly"
(John 10:10). He died and rose again that we might live. The death induced
by sin is conquered when, by the Savior's power, we overcome the sin.
Hence it will be
surprising to one who has only thought of his body, and conceived of its
rejection at last, as meant in the Scriptures by death, to read so often
of death as being abolished in those who are saved. "Return unto thy rest,
O my soul; for the Lord hath dealt bountifully with thee. For thou hast
delivered my soul from death, mine eyes from tears, and my feet from
falling" (Psalm 116:7, 8). "But if the wicked will turn from all his sins
that he hath committed, and keep all my statutes, and do that which is
lawful and right, he shall surely live, he shall not die" (Ezekiel 18:21).
Again, "when the wicked man turneth away from his wickedness that he hath
committed, and doeth that which is lawful and right, he shall save his
soul alive. Because he considereth, and turneth away from all his
transgressions that he hath committed, he shall surely live, he shall not
die" (Ezekiel 18:27, 28). "Make you a new heart and a right spirit; for
why will ye die, O house of Israel?" (Ezekiel 18:31). "For I have no
pleasure in the death of him that dieth, saith the Lord God; wherefore
turn yourselves, and live ye" (Ezekiel 18:32).
The victory over sin
is with equal distinctness set forth in the Gospel as the victory over
death: "Even so must the Son of Man be lifted up; that whosoever believeth
in him should not perish, but have eternal life" (John 3:14, 15). "He that
heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life,
and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life"
(John 5:24). "Verily, verily, I say unto you, the hour is coming, and now
is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God; and they that
hear shall live" (John 5:25). "He that believeth on me hath everlasting
life" (John 6:47). "This is the bread which cometh down from heaven, that
a man may eat thereof, and not die. I am the Living Bread which came down
from heaven; if any man eat of this bread, he shall live forever" (John
6:50, 51). "If a man keep my saying, he shall never see death" (John
8:51). "Jesus said unto her, I am the Resurrection and the Life; he that
believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live; and whosoever
liveth and believeth in me shall never die" (John 11:25, 26). "And you
hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins. . . . Even when
we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ (by grace ye
are saved), and hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in
heavenly places in Christ Jesus" (Ephesians 2:1, 5, 6).
It may appear
plausible to some that natural death was a consequence of man's
disobedience, while they are ignorant that this death existed long before
even the existence of man. But now it is well known to those that are at
all acquainted with the condition of the earth that geology teaches by ten
thousand lessons, that millions of years before man stood upon this earth
at all, both plants and animals lived and died--races even died out
altogether. So that it would be the merest ignorance to assume that
death--that is to say, the death which is simply the termination of one
portion of our career and the commencement of another--that this is
anything but an ordination of the Most High. The progression to a higher
state involves the death of the former; and if sin--the only death that
man need fear--if sin is shunned, then the death of the body is no curse,
but is in all respects a blessing.
In fact, to suppose
that death--meaning departure from this life--is other than a divine
ordination is to forget that the earth is but the nursery in which God
prepares his plants for paradise. This world is a world in which all
things are covered up--all things have their probation. There is not a
seed but has its sheath and covering. The seed gradually goes on to
ripening, and when ripened, it then throws off its covering and comes out
matured for its future use. It is in this light, therefore, that we ought
to regard this world in relation to ourselves. Man is covered up here.
This is not the man that we see; it is only the man's dwelling place; it
is only the bark of the man; it is but the outward covering. What we
touch, what we have to do with in this world of nature is but, as it were,
the mask in which the real man lives until he is prepared either for
future happiness or a future of self-will, and therefore of misery. And
when he is thus ripened for his future home, he leaves the body and enters
upon that home. If he has lived according to God's laws, he will then
enter into all the fullness of God's blessings.
From this point of
view, then, no one can suppose, with a show of anything like reason, that
death is a thing which we ought to regard with terror and dread. Rather we
should regard it as God's permission to move from this lower stage of
being and to enter upon a higher, a holier, and a happier. It is the
period when the soldier who has finished his campaign goes to receive the
soldier's crown. The workman has done his work, and goes to receive his
reward. In this point of view the Scriptures unceasingly present it to us.
They bring life and immortality to light, and they present it in this
aspect. Resurrection is immediately consequent upon death.
This is the
first
point. Resurrection is not a change that has to be waited for during
thousands of years of sleep or dispersion; but it immediately follows
death.
In the second place,
the Scriptures instruct us that man rises to his eternal home in a
spiritual body fitted for that home.
Thirdly, that
inasmuch as the earthly body is suited for this world, and not fitted for
a spiritual and eternal world, it is left behind, and will never be wanted
again.
1.
Resurrection is the Resurrection of the Man,
And Takes Place Immediately After Death
The doctrine of the
Sacred Scriptures, everyone who is acquainted with the Holy Volume will
know, is very strikingly placed before us, both by special instances and
didactic statement. As special instances, we may notice the divine
declaration to the thief upon the cross, "Today shalt thou be with me in
paradise" (Luke 23:43). Here we are informed, not that this day a part of
him would be in paradise, but "thou," the conscious being, the real man.
"Today shalt thou be with me in Paradise."
There are some who
take so strange a view of the body as to imagine the body to be half of
the man, and that man is only half a man so long as he is without the
material body, and will not be a real and full man until he gets it back
again. That is not the doctrine of sound thought, or of the Sacred Word.
The Scriptures know nothing about man being a half man, they never
describe man in the future life, or immediately after death, as having
left anything of the man behind him. The thing is inconceivable in itself.
Why should we imagine that man is a sort of nondescript after death?
A variety of notions
has been held upon this subject, but all are confessedly mere conjecture.
The Scriptures know nothing of them; sound philosophy knows nothing of an
idea of this kind. For, as we have already said, the man is not the body;
we feel that the man is something within the body; that, in fact, the body
is only the mere instrument annexed to him while he remains in the world;
and science teaches us that no two hours from birth to death is the body
precisely the same. There has been a change with you and with me since we
entered this room. Every breath we exhale takes a part of the impurities
of the used up material of the blood, removes it, and breathes it into the
room. Every inch of the skin of the whole body is moment by moment
perspiring used up material, and putting it away. So that every day a
certain weight of the body is put off, which science has taught us
accurately to estimate. In the course of a very few years indeed, the
whole mass of our body changes, and a new frame is built up for us from
the new material that is taken into the body in the way of food. So that
we have each had, in the course of seventy years, not only one body as was
formerly thought, but probably ten or twelve bodies.
The closest
resemblance to the constant change that is taking place in the material
framework of a man--the house in which he lives--is that of water ever
flowing on, and ever having its place supplied by new material; or like,
as the Apostle represents it, a tent that the Arab sets up in the
wilderness for a short time. Our material body is a tent in which we
remain while we are being trained for our everlasting home, and as soon as
its object is accomplished, the tent is struck and removed. "For we know
that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved," the Apostle
says, "we a have a building of God." There is something that will not be
dissolved; we have another house. The earthly house is the earthly body;
we have another house, the spiritual body, the form of the soul within, "a
house not made with hands"; and this is not dissolved, but is "eternal in
the heavens" (2 Corinthians 5:1).
If, therefore, we
have done without the first body we had, and yet the man exists, and grows
stronger and nobler; if we have done without the second, the third, the
fourth, the fifth, and sixth, it may be without a dozen, surely we may do
without the last. A man, you perceive, is not the body but the soul, as
Dr. Watts so beautifully sets it forth--it is the mind; it is the immortal
part; it is that which does not change; it is that whose perfections are
immeasurably more excellent than those of the body. This is the man, not
the mere earthly form. The doctor puts this beautifully before us in the
lines that have been so often written by us probably--as schoolboys:
Were I as tall to
reach the pole,
Or grasp the
ocean in my span;
I must be measured by my soul,
The mind's the
standard of the man.
It is this immortal
mind, this glorious complex of faculties of a higher and nobler kind than
aught of bodily excellence--it is this that forms the man; and therefore
our Savior said, not that thy soul or half of thee shall be with me in
Paradise, but "thou"--because that is the man--"thou shalt be with me in
Paradise."
Precisely the same
lesson is taught in the parable of Dives and Lazarus; and it is said at
the termination of the career of each that he went to his final home.
First, that "the beggar died, and was carried by the angels into Abraham's
bosom." You see there is no notice taken of the material part. "The rich
man also died, and was buried; and in hell he lifted up his eyes." The
beggar died, and was carried--not half of him was carried, but the whole
man was carried "by the angels into Abraham's bosom." As soon as his life
terminated in this world below, immediately the angels were with him. Yes,
and they were with him doubtless in his sorrows and in his trials, and in
his triumphs too, while he remained in this world, though he could not see
them. "The angel of the Lord encampeth round about them that fear him"
(Psalm 34:7).
Those who come into
the reception of heavenly things, come also into companionship with
heavenly beings. We are the inhabitants of two worlds even now. "But ye
are come unto mount Zion," says St. Paul to the Christians, as you will
read in Hebrews 12:22, "and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly
Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels"; and this is no vain,
no empty declaration, but a real truth. If the eyes of our spiritual
bodies were opened, we should now see the tenants of the heavenly world,
as we see the inhabitants of the earthly world around us.
We live in two
worlds, though only conscious of one at a time; only distantly do we feel,
because we are not prepared yet for the holy communications that might
otherwise be had from those blessed beings; only distantly we feel, yet we
do feel, what when reflected upon evidently confirms what the Sacred
Scriptures teach. Who has not, in hours of discouragement, had some sweet
balm of heavenly consolation, some holy thought dropped into the cup of
bitterness, that has helped to stir him up to look to better things? Who
has not had it suggested--when cast down by the loss of some dear friend,
perhaps of some child or parent much beloved; when in utter mourning and
distress, who has not had it suggested, like the sweet tones of an angelic
voice, "Not lost, but gone before; look up, think of what the Savior said,
and thus gather hope"? And have we not felt that the new star, which has
passed from this hemisphere to shine in a brighter, is only an invitation
for us to prepare soon to follow?
These infusions of
heavenly light and comfort, these inward helps that come sometimes when we
are not looking for them, are all intimations that we are united to other
minds. Thoughts come from minds; they do not move about in the air. Good
minds are joined, by God's Providence, to better minds, and the angels of
God ascend and descend upon the glorious ladder of heaven. Bad minds,
unhappily, are joined to worse minds that tend to bring them down lower
and lower. But we are in all cases, while we live here, the inhabitants of
two worlds. We should never forget that we are the inhabitants of two
worlds; it is a truth of the highest importance. We have capabilities open
to this outer home of our God, and others that open to an inner, a higher,
and a holier home.
2.
Man Rises to His Eternal Home
In a Spiritual Body Fitted for That Home
When the man has
matured himself, when he has determined his ruling love, when he has so
fixed and formed himself that his time of probation can be ended, he has
arrived at that period which all nature images--for all nature is full of
emblems of death and resurrection. He has come to that period when, just
as the kernel is ripened and the shell is broken; just as the caterpillar
life is finished and the butterfly comes out; just as when spring comes
and rises from the death of winter; just as when the sun that sets on this
hemisphere rises on another, so it is with man. He leaves this world and
its concerns, but to open immediately upon another and higher world.
Hence, as we have
said, the instructions of the Sacred Scriptures teach us that the doctrine
of the Bible is that the resurrection is immediate. Resurrection, some
say, is the rising again of that which has died. But what does our Savior
say here in these words respecting the resurrection? "And as touching the
dead, that they rise; have ye not read in the book of Moses, how in the
bush God spake unto him, saying, 'I am the God of Abraham, and the God of
Isaac, and the God of Jacob?'" that is, they had undergone the
resurrection; for as the passage continues, "He is not the God of the
dead, but the God of the living" (Mark 12:26, 27)--thus, it is the rising
up of the man.
Hence the Apostle
says, "For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain" (Philippians 1:21);
not loss--not the loss of one half of him, and that half the one which
many people think is best worthy of their care; for a vast number in the
world pay every attention to the body, but little or no attention to the
soul. They think that the body is the best half, or act as if they thought
so. But it is a most grievous mistake, and is always attended by misery
and distress. It is the giving of attention to the man's clothes, but
murdering the man; and hence it is that the Apostle says, "For me to live
is Christ, and to die is gain."
And it is gain. The
faculties of the soul are here, to a certain extent, cramped and
trammeled; but there they will be free. Everyone who reflects may see how
very imperfectly he can carry out in his body the designs and purposes of
his soul. A person can think clearly, but he has difficulty in finding the
words to express accurately what he means. A person can intend fully, but
his body has not the powers to carry out his intentions. The soul is
immeasurably more perfect than the body; and hence, when we come into the
soul world, and when we throw off the outer casement of the body with its
imperfections, we can see how fully it will be a "gain" to us. It will be
a gain in increased power; a gain in increased perfection; a gain in the
soul's living in a soul world, in a mind world, in a spirit-state of
existence; and therefore, whatever constitutes our living, interior energy
will be at once carried out to represent it. The mind itself, as well as
all the materials around, are adapted to represent and embody the purposes
of the soul; and hence the state of things after death is as much more
perfect than they are here, because man has thrown off the outer covering
of the body, as spirit is more perfect than matter. "For me," then, he
says, "to die is gain."
Our Lord himself
expresses the same great truth when he says, "Thou hast been faithful over
a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things; enter thou into the
joy of thy Lord" (Matthew 25:23). All that we can be faithful over here is
comparatively a few things. We cannot make our bodies exactly what we
would have them; we have great power and influence over our bodies, but
that power is not only--by the heavy character of the material--cramped,
it is also hindered much by the hereditary tendencies to disease and
imperfection with which we are born; it is interfered with by the
circumstances of our business, and where and how we live. So that it is
not always the pure and noble mind that has a pure and noble and healthy
body--though there is a great tendency in a pure mind to make the body
pure also, and on the other hand great degradation takes place in the body
of a gross-minded, or a bad and ignorant man. This has its limits; and we
can only in a few things rule over this matter.
But when we come
into the eternal world, the spiritual body there is the exact outbirth of
the spirit--of the inclinations and principles that prevail in the mind.
The good man is as beautiful as he is good. In the language of the
Apostle, "God giveth it a body as it hath pleased him, and to every seed
his own body" (1 Corinthians 15:38). We can see the evidence of that even
in what we behold around us. Goodness, everyone knows, has a tendency to
make a person agreeable. Even in his outward form it throws a holy luster
out of the eyes, it gives a noble aspect to the face and forehead.
Children like to be near a good man. A person who has been embodying in
himself the divine beauty of holy principles year after year acquires a
heavenly aspect. And what is it? It is the beauty of the soul shining
through the forms of the body; and when the forms of the body are removed,
and you can see the soul itself--the inner beauty from which this
celestial luster comes--you can easily see then the meaning of the sacred
words, "God giveth it a body as it hath pleased him."
But this is a
spiritual body. It is remarkable that so many have overlooked the doctrine
of the Sacred Scriptures respecting the spiritual body, the heavenly body,
and have thought, wherever they have read of it, only of this outer
covering of clay. But what says the Apostle Paul? Read 1 Corinthians
15:40-44: "There are also celestial bodies, and bodies terrestrial"--that
is, there are heavenly bodies, and there are earthly bodies--"but the
glory of the celestial is one, and the glory of the terrestrial is
another. There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and
another glory of the stars; for one star differeth from another star in
glory. So also is the resurrection of the dead. . . . It is sown a natural
body." This is the sowing place; on earth we are sown.
And here I would beg
you to take a remark with you; for sometimes we arrive at very imperfect
thoughts of ourselves and of our destiny from supposing that when we first
come into existence we are then men. But we should ever remember that when
we are born into this world, we are only born with the germs of manhood.
This whole world is God's manufactory for making men. This is the place,
the field, where we are sown; and our whole career in this life, all the
activities of God's Providence within and around us, are his operations,
intended to make us to be men--if we will cooperate with him.
Simply to grow up
out of bread and cheese to a certain height and weight does not make a
man. Very often a man is but an imbruted serpent of selfishness, although
possessing the full outward proportions of a man. Very often it is the
embodiment only of the ambitious desire to oppress others that we call a
man; rather, call such a one a wolf. Very often it is but a two-legged
brute that moves about with vulpine cunning, and we call him a man. The
Savior called such a one a fox.
God's characteristic
of a man is one that executes judgment and does the truth. "Run to and
fro," said God to Jeremiah, "through the streets of Jerusalem, and see
now, and know, and seek in the broad places thereof, if ye can find a man,
if there be any that executeth judgment, that seeketh the truth" (Jeremiah
5:1). A person who is too lazy or too sensual to bring out the noble
faculties that constitute manhood and judge for himself--a person that
merely hangs onto somebody else's hook, is not a man. He only is a man who
uses the glorious Godlike capabilities of receiving and examining the
truth. Coming into God's universe, and looking up and around, and seeing
what God's truth teaches him, and examining it--this is to be a man. God
says, "Come now, and let us reason together" (Isaiah 1:18). He has given
us the capacity to reason; he has given us the light and the understanding
by which we can enter into the truth; and he says, "Come now, and let us
reason together." He who does come is a man: who comes to the light and
endeavors to receive truth and to see it in his own mind, not merely
because somebody else tells him it is so, but to acknowledge it because he
beholds its beauty, its harmonies and duties. He is a man who, choosing
truth, might say in the beautiful language of Cowper:
And truth alone,
where'er my lot is cast,
In scenes of plenty or the shining waste,
Shall be my chosen theme, my glory to the last.
This is a man.
The Sacred
Scriptures teach us that it is man who goes into the eternal world. This
man is the immortal being, and this man will receive the everlasting
blessings of that world.
Angels are men in
lighter bodies glad,
And men are angels loaded for an hour.
The idea has
prevailed with many that angels are a distinct race of beings from men,
were made before them, and are altogether of a better class. But such is
not the teaching of the Sacred Scriptures. They teach us that angels are
"men made perfect" (Hebrews 12:23). They are always treated so in the
volume of heaven. When Manoah said to the angel that appeared to him, "Art
thou the man that spakest unto the woman?" he said "I am" (Judges 13:11).
The first angels mentioned in the Sacred Scriptures, who appeared to
Abraham, are called "three men" (Genesis 18:2). The angels who appeared to
Lot are called "two men" (Genesis 19:10). The angel who spoke to John
said, when John was about to fall at his feet and worship him, "See thou
do it not. I am thy fellow servant, and of thy brethren that have the
testimony of Jesus. Worship God!" (Revelation 19:10).
Nay, not only so,
but when a glorious assemblage of angels was beheld in the eternal world
itself, when ten thousand times ten thousand were seen by the eyes, the
spiritual sight, of John, an angel came and said to him, "What are these
which are arrayed in white robes and whence came they?" And John said,
"Sir, thou knowest." And the angel then added, "These are they who came
out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes, and made them white
in the blood of the Lamb" (Revelation 7:13, 14)--evidently teaching that
all the shining ranks which were then sending up the hallelujah of triumph
to him that sat upon the throne were those who on earth had had their
tribulation; had had their sufferings and sorrows; had had their
persecutions and deaths; had made their robes white by the purifying
influences of the Holy Spirit of Jesus Christ. "They have made their robes
white in the blood of the Lamb."
Hence, then,
everyone may see that just as those who have gone before us, those who
have already had their trials and their triumphs, did not wait for some
unknown period until they should enter into the supernal beauty of "just
men made perfect," but are already, with the palms of victory in their
hands, clothed with the white robes of heavenly intelligence in all the
glorious atmospheres of the blest, sending up their loving songs of holy
praise and triumph, so will it be with us. When we lie down on a
Christian's bed of death, it will be but to sleep for a moment, and then
awaken in the Christian's glorious world of light and love. "Be thou
faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life" (Revelation
2:10).
3.
The Earthly Body is Left Behind,
And Will Never be Wanted Again
We have said further
that as the result of this, the earthly body will not be wanted in the
eternal world, and therefore will not be reassumed. The notion that the
body, the earthly carcass of man, is raised again after lying for a while
in the grave, or having mingled with the elements, the gases that are in
harmony with itself--that it is again to be brought up and form a part of
man's everlasting body, is one that has been supposed to be taught in the
Sacred Scriptures, but is really not taught there. Like many other notions
that have crept in and been assumed as parts of Christian doctrine for a
while, but which afterwards the advance of intelligence or of science has
shown to be mistaken, this ought now to be rejected.
The advance of
science has shown that this is a doctrine that involves most serious and
perplexing difficulties; and those who still suppose that the Scriptures
do teach the resurrection of the body, but who from science have seen that
it cannot be the truth, have been brought into very serious trial indeed.
The way out is
precisely that which has been successful in relation to other points. It
was supposed that the Scriptures taught that the earth was the center of
the universe before Galileo so successfully controverted that notion; and
the church of that time anathematized both him and all who taught this,
and said it could not possibly be true because, as they believed, it was
in contradiction to the Word of God. They found, however, on reexamining
the Scriptures to see if they did really teach it, that the Scripture was
right, but their interpretation was wrong. So it has been in a great
variety of cases of the same kind.
Now, it is just so
in relation to this notion of the resurrection of the earthly body. Many a
one who has been taught this from his youth has supposed that he has only
to take up the Bible and open it, and he will be sure to find the doctrine
that man's body is to rise again. But let me invite him to examine the
Scriptures carefully, and I can assure him that he will not find a single
text, from the first chapter in Genesis to the last in Revelation, that
says that the earthly body shall rise again, the material body shall rise
again, the natural body shall rise again, this body that we have shall
rise again, or any words equal to these. The Scriptures teach that the man
will rise, that the dead will rise, but never that the dead body will
rise. On the contrary, they teach the very reverse. "In the mouth of two
or three witnesses," it is said, "every word may be established" (Matthew
18:16). We give you the "two or three witnesses."
Take the passage in
the Book of Job: "As the cloud is consumed and vanisheth away, so he that
goeth down to the grave shall come up no more" (Job 7:9). Now, what is it
that goes down to the grave but the body? And that is to come up "no
more."
Take, again, the
apostolic teaching in 1 Corinthians 15:35 and following verses: "But some
man will say, 'How are the dead raised up?'" Now that is the question.
Some persons will
say that when we speak of the dead rising, we mean the dead body rising;
but this is plainly a mistake. We call men dead when they die to us; but
there are two sides to them. When we say the man is dying, the angels say
the man is rising. What is to us death is to them life; what is to us a
decease of being is to them the commencement of higher being. Mortals say
a man is dead, angels a child is born. So that, you perceive, this dying
of a man is a mere appearance to us--it is not a reality. When we say that
such a one died, the fact is, all that is meant is that he seemed to us to
die--he departed this life; that is a far better way of expressing it. He
departed this life, but he rose to everlasting life.
Hence, when the
Apostle says, "How are the dead raised up? And with what body do they
come?"--that is the real question. And how does he treat it? He treats it
as being a very silly thing for a person to ask. He says, "Thou fool, that
which thou sowest is not quickened, except it die; and that which thou
sowest, thou sowest not that body that shall be, but bare grain; but God
giveth it a body as it hath pleased him." That which thou sowest is not
the body that shall be. That which is sown is a body of this world; it
suits this world, it belongs to this world. This is the sowing place.
Every boy who has
sown a seed knows that when he puts it into the earth, it is not the same
seed that he gets up again. The outer portion of the seed swells; it
putrefies, it rots off, it mingles with the earth around; but from within,
the new plant rises. That is the image of the resurrection. The earthly
body, which is suited to this world, is given to us; it is our first stage
of life. But when it has done its work, it decays, it putrefies, it
mingles with the elements around; but from within, the man ascends. Just
so, the Apostle teaches that there is one body for this world, and there
is another, the spiritual body, for the eternal world. "God giveth it a
body as it hath pleased him, and to every seed his own body."
We must not be
understood to mean that when our bodies are laid by, we get the other
bodies for the first time when we go into the other life. It is not so.
"Every seed has his own body." It is the body that is being formed within
the outer body during our whole life, to which we have referred. An
angel-minded man has a beautiful spirit--more and more beautiful as he
perseveres in what is holy, pure, and good. It is his inner body that is
meant. Only the pure get it in all its luster and beauty. A bad man is
gradually forming within himself an ugly spirit.
The black-hearted
man has a black and malignant-looking spirit. Hence it is that everyone
who has paid any attention to the great subject of how mind shows itself
in matter, and has noticed, for instance, the low-minded criminals who are
often brought up in our police courts, will see such brutality and cunning
and malignancy of expression in the very face that he feels often he is
near a dangerous person, and he would rather keep him a few yards off. It
is the dark soul which has impressed its ugliness upon the body; and when
the malignant desires of the heart have formed a spirit of vice, and
expressed themselves through the body as far as the body will permit in
this world, at death the mask is taken off; and then comes the time in
which that is realized of which Moses spoke when he said, "Be sure your
sin will find you out" (Numbers 32:23).
Some people have
wondered how judgment will take place, and have thought that it would be a
strange thing for a person to come up before the bar of God, and to have
his friends and neighbors and associates--perhaps his own family--to stand
up there and testify what he has done and what he has said, and so on. But
that is not the way in which God's judgment takes place. We are preparing
ourselves for judgment every day; writing our own characters ourselves
every day. We are our own bookkeepers in this matter. Every bad principle
that a person deepens and strengthens produces its expression upon his
spirit; every foul, cunning malignity that a man cherishes and acts from
makes its impression upon his own soul; it injures him even before it does
anybody else any harm. That is the book of life we are writing every day;
either making it of the holy pages of life and love, or the defiled pages
of malignancy, wickedness, and falsehood.
Oh, that I could
impress this truth upon the mind and heart of everyone before me! It is a
fact we should never forget; no viciousness can we cherish, no wickedness
can we love, without its doing its mischief within us. We know we cannot.
Often that which we endeavor most secretly to do is that which makes the
strongest impression, and that which we have done without much concern and
thought and contrivance has soon passed away. Those plans we have schemed
about; that which we have proposed and contrived and cunningly carried
out; that is indelibly fixed upon the soul. That is not blotted out, and
never will be blotted out but in one way: by earnest, deep, practical
repentance.
Repentance is the
only way in which a blotted page can be covered over. God says, in
Ezekiel: "When the wicked man turneth away from his wickedness that he
hath committed, and doeth that which is lawful and right, he shall save
his soul alive" (Ezekiel 18:27). All his wickedness that he hath done
shall not be mentioned in that day. The blotted book will be closed. His
spirit will, in due time, have taken another and more beautiful form; and
from the time when he honestly and in the sight of God repented and
changed his mind and life, will he become new and purer and holier and
more beautiful. Better had he begun earlier. The formation of the soul is
not a mere mundane and transitory thing; it is the proper business of
life.
But when we do
really change in heart and mind and life, the change immediately begins to
take place upon the spirit; and though we may have been filthy and impure
before we began, as we persevere, and "work out our salvation with fear
and trembling" (Philippians 2:12), we acquire a holy and beautiful
character. The vile body that we had before gradually assumes the beauties
which emulate the Lord's glorious body, "according to the working whereby
he is able even to subdue all things unto himself" (Philippians 3:21).
This is the book of life, and when we go into the eternal world, we are
what we have made ourselves. God does not require anyone to tell what we
are, or to criminate us; we are there just what we have made ourselves to
be. We stand in the light of eternity; what we have been doing, and have
been in reality, there we are.
A gardener who truly
understands the nature of plants does not require in September to be told
that such and such a plant has been neglected; he sees from the plant
itself what has been going on; he sees from the effect what has been the
culture. It is of no use to tell him that a plant has been properly
placed, and trained according to true and proper means, and has had due
attention paid to it, when it is a poor, miserable, wretched thing; he
knows better. It is just so with God's plants. They need no foreign
witnesses; they are themselves the books of their own lives; and the
heavenly-minded have it written upon their countenances, upon their forms,
upon everything about them. The Lord--the divine judge--and his angels see
what they have been doing, and what they are. So with the
infernally-minded; they have all their vices and impurities portrayed
within them, and they, too, are there in the light of eternity just what
they have made themselves.
This, then, is the
mode in which man enters into eternity. His spiritual body is his own
body--"to every seed his own body" (1 Corinthians 15:38). The heavenly
seed is the heavenly body; the infernal is the ugly body. And so the
Apostle goes on, "There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body"
(1 Corinthians 15:44). Not, as some have supposed, that there is a natural
body, and that there will be a spiritual body--that the natural body will
be turned into a spiritual body--but he says expressly, "There is a
natural body, and there is a spiritual body." The natural body is the
outward one, the spiritual body is the inward one; and therefore the
Apostle goes on to say: "Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of
God; neither doth corruption inherit incorruption" (1 Corinthians 15:50).
Flesh and blood cannot go there; it is a world for a different material.
Flesh and blood going there would be something like a person attempting to
turn matter into thought, which is impossible--the two things are so
entirely distinct. The spiritual world is only discernible and tangible to
a spiritual body; the earthly world requires an earthly body. When a man
enters into the spiritual world, he takes that with him which is
accommodated to that world, and flesh and blood go to the elements in this
to which they belong.
We have given, then,
the "two or three witnesses" by which it is plainly taught that the
material form is not required after death, and that therefore we leave it
forever. It will never more be wanted by its present owner; it may go to
form other bodies.
On the other hand,
as we have seen in the case of the angels, when they are described they
are not without bodies. All the multitude of angels whom John saw, and
whom no man could number, of all nations and kindreds and people and
tongues, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, were "clothed
with white robes, and palms in their hands" (Revelation 7:9). They must
have had hands to hold the palms; and they must have had bodies, or how
could they be clothed with robes?
The beggar who died
and was carried by the angels into Abraham's bosom, and whose finger was
mentioned that it might be dipped into water to cool the rich man's
tongue, must have had a finger, or how could he dip it in the water? The
rich man must have had eyes to have seen him afar off in Abraham's bosom,
and he prayed that water might be given to cool his tongue; and if he had
a tongue he had a mouth, and if he had a mouth, he had a head, and if he
had a head, he had a whole body.
The whole form is
implied in all these cases. In fact, in every case in which the Scriptures
give us a glimpse of the eternal world, it shows us that it is not a great
way off; it is near to us. It is an inner world pervading this outer
world; and as soon as a man's spiritual sight is opened, he sees that
world. And when, therefore, the servant of Elisha was in consternation
that his master was about to be taken away from him, the prophet prayed
that his eyes might be opened, and he saw a chariot and horses of fire (2
Kings 6:17), and Elijah when he went up by a whirlwind into heaven (2
Kings 2:11). The prophet's seeing implies the opening of his spiritual
sight; and he beheld the world which is ordinarily unseen.
The powers unseen,
brethren, are, however, always more efficient--are always immeasurably
more perfect than the things that are seen. The seer saw the world
unseen--the glorious and everlasting world. And when we have our inward
powers open to behold it, we shall see its perfections, its glories, just
as John did. He was on the isle of Patmos when he was brought into the
spirit, and then he saw all that he describes through the twenty-two
chapters of the Book of Revelation. He was not wafted somewhere through
the air, an immense distance beyond the stars, where some people dream
that heaven is to be found--a region so far distant that, as some of those
philosophers who have most profoundly gauged the depths of space tell us,
there are certain stars so distant, that it would take millions of years
for light from them to reach us! Heaven is not so far off as all that. But
when John was on the isle of Patmos, and he was brought into the spirit,
he saw immediately, he says, and he beheld his Lord and Master; he beheld
heaven open--and so will it be with us. If our spiritual sight were opened
by the Divine Being, we should also see, what we may now know, that the
two worlds are close together.
Well, then, all that
is needed is that we should have a body adequate to that world when we
pass from this; and such a body we have in the form of the soul itself.
"There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body."
There are a few
places in the Sacred Scriptures that have been supposed--some from
incorrect translation, and some from other circumstances--to teach the
resurrection of the material body. But when these are examined carefully,
it will be found they all of them harmonize with the great lessons we have
already traced from the sacred volume.
I have pointed out
that Job taught that "he that goeth down to the grave shall come up no
more." But others have supposed that they learn the contrary from what Job
said in the same book--a passage that has been very much used because it
was introduced into the Burial Service of the church of England--in which
Job speaks of his body being destroyed by worms, and says, "yet in my
flesh shall I see God" (Job 19:26). But if you examine the passage, you
will find that its strongest part is made up of italic words--words
printed in a different character from the rest; and wherever you meet
words in italic letters in the Bible, it means that they do not occur in
the original. They are what the translators supposed was meant, but they
are not the words of Holy Writ themselves.
In this passage you
have the word "worms," a term that naturally leads a person to think of
the grave, and what is done with the body in the grave; that word is in
italics. The word "body," which is also in italics, has further caused the
passage to be thought of as having something to do with the body perishing
in the grave. But if the passage is read without these italics, you will
find it simply expresses the confidence of Job that though he may be
brought into the extreme of sorrow and affliction; though his very reins
may be consumed; though he be so distressed by disease that he has
scarcely anything left but his skin, "Yet," he says, "in my flesh shall I
see God," meaning he would see him before he died; and this hope was
inspired into him--no doubt by God himself, who intended to deliver him.
And it was fulfilled: God did appear to Job. He was faithful,
notwithstanding his affliction and bitterness and sorrow; and you will
find at the end of his book it is said that God appeared to him,
vindicated him, taught him that he had been right to maintain his
integrity and truth, and that his friends had been wrong in accusing him.
There was no more
reason to conclude because he was afflicted that he was a sinner more than
others, than that we should conclude our Divine Savior was a sinner,
because he was so deeply afflicted. All men are sinners, and all need
purification. God knows what we need, and how we need it best. But in
Job's case, when God appeared to him, he referred to this very hope. In
Job it is said, "I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear; but now
mine eye seeth thee" (Job 42:5). In the former chapter he expressed a hope
that he should see God before he died, and in his latter end it was
fulfilled; he had seen God before he died. "So the Lord blessed the latter
end of Job more than his beginning" (Job 42:12). So that when we take the
whole teaching of this Book of Job, it is entirely harmonious with the
fact that man rises immediately after death.
Job himself again
assures us several times that death is a final departure of man from the
world and of the body to dust; neither will be recalled. "So man lieth
down, and riseth not; till the heavens be no more, they shall not awake,
nor be raised out of their sleep" (Job 14:12). As the heavens will remain
forever, that which would not take place till the heavens be no more will
never take place. "Before I go whence I shall not return, even to the land
of darkness and the shadow of death" (Job 10:21). "When a few years are
come, then I shall go the way whence I shall not return" (Job 16:22).
There are two other
passages of a figurative kind in the Old Testament which are supposed to
teach the resurrection of the earthly body. But they are figures only of
the resurrection of the Jewish nation from political death and burial. We
will notice them. It is written in Isaiah: "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" (Isaiah 26:19). Again, in Daniel: "And many of them that sleep
in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some
to shame and everlasting contempt" (Daniel 12:2).
The key to these
passages is given in the prophecy of Ezekiel concerning the dry bones. The
miserable state of Israel in captivity was represented by the valley full
of dry bones. The restoration of their nation to their own land was
symbolized by the resurrection and vivification of the bones, and their
reconstruction into perfect bodies. Thus the Prophet explains it: "These
bones are the whole house of Israel; behold they say, 'Our bones are
dried, and our hope is lost; we are cut off for our parts.' Therefore
prophesy and say unto them, 'Thus saith the Lord God: Behold, O my people,
I will open your graves, and cause you to come up out of your graves, and
bring you into the land of Israel'" (Ezekiel 37:11, 12). Those, then, who
are said to be dead, and to sleep in the dust, are the people of Israel
buried in captivity. Their being called to freedom, and raised to become a
nation once more, and to rejoice in their restored temple and the glories
of home, is the awaking and singing of those who had dwelt in the dust.
"Shake thyself from the dust; arise and sit down, O Jerusalem; loose
thyself from the bands of thy neck, O captive daughter of Zion" (Isaiah
52:2).
In the spiritual
sense, these texts imply the resurrection of religion in the soul, and
have nothing to do with the raising again of dead bodies.
The New Testament
also has a few passages which have in like manner been misunderstood,
because they have been applied to the body when they ought to be applied
to the soul. The idea which should always be borne in mind when reading
the New Testament is that the soul of man in its fallen condition is dead,
and the work of religion is to raise it to life and health. Its covering
and pretences are compared to a grave in which the soul is entombed. It
has to be brought out of these graves, and enabled to walk vigorously in
the light of the spirit of the Savior.
With this view,
every passage which has been deemed by the naturally-minded reader to
speak of the resurrection of the body takes its place in describing a far
more important subject: the resurrection of the soul. The Lord's words in
this respect also "are spirit, and they are life" (John 6:63). And each
one of us ought to be striving, as the Apostle said, "That I may know him,
and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings,
being made conformable unto his death; if by any means I might attain unto
the resurrection of the dead. Not as though I had already attained, either
were already perfect" (Philippians 3:10-12). Viewing the regeneration and
resurrection of the soul as the grand objects of Gospel care, each passage
falls readily into its place, and we learn by them all how to rise from
the death of sin to the life of righteousness. They all form a solemn call
like that of the Apostle: "Awake, thou that sleepest, and arise from the
dead, and Christ shall give thee light" (Ephesians 5:14).
Considered in this
point of view, we apprehend at once the divine meaning when the Lord said,
"The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the
Son of God; and they that hear shall live" (John 5:25). The dead who then
heard were those who had been dead in trespasses and sins, but who rose to
newness of life. And when the Savior continues, "Marvel not at this; for
the hour is coming, in the which all that are in the graves shall hear his
voice, and shall come forth; they that have done good unto the
resurrection of life; and they that have done evil unto the resurrection
of damnation" (John 5:28, 29); we think of the "graves which appear not"
(Luke 11:44); the "whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful
outward but are within full of dead men's bones, and of all uncleanness"
(Matthew 23:27); and out of which men must come when they are judged. All
appearances are put off when judgment is executed. The real inner men come
forth. "They that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they
that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation."
The "vile body,"
when it is fashioned like unto the Lord's glorious body (see Philippians
3:21) is also the spiritual body, vile by sin in its unregenerate
condition, but lighted up with beauty by the glorious working of the Holy
Spirit. This, too, is the mortal which puts on immortality, the
corruptible which puts on incorruption, when God giveth us the victory
through our Lord Jesus Christ, and death is swallowed up in victory (see 1
Corinthians 15:54, 55, 57). All becomes harmony when we think of the
resurrection of the soul; and he who has attained to this priceless
resurrection may with fullest faith exclaim with the Apostle, fearing
nothing, doubting nothing: "For we know that if our earthly house of this
tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, a house not made
with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this we groan, earnestly
desiring to be clothed upon with our house which is from heaven" (2
Corinthians 5:1, 2).
Let us not think,
then, that Adam has been waiting somewhere for thousands of years without
a body, and not knowing what shape or sort of life he has been in, or is
in. Let us not suppose that Job, or any other of the worthies of the Old
Testament, have been waiting in a sort of nondescript half-existence
without shape, and in a world that has no shape. Oh, no! That is as near
nothing as possible. But they have taken with them the real man which has
been formed during life into their everlasting home, where God gives to
every man as his work shall be (Revelation 22:12). "Behold, I come
quickly" (Revelation 3:11; 22:7, 12), he says--not, "I will let you wait
for thousands of years, not knowing what will be your lot, until some
judgment at a remote period takes place."
You are forming
yourselves every day, and judging yourselves. You may, if you look within
yourselves, find what you have written there, either good or bad; you may
see what you have been, and what you are. That, therefore, is the reason
why, if you have been negligent of God's laws, you should now endeavor to
live by them. Obedience to right is no vain thing; it is our life. We are
now in the process of being made. We are made in conformity with our life.
"They shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of
life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation."
Death is but the period for the disclosure of our work, fully, fairly,
completely, and forever.
Let us, then, take
the glorious assurance of this truth to our hearts, first of all, to make
us earnest in endeavoring to live for heaven: we are living either for
heaven or for hell every day. Let us write upon ourselves the glorious
principles that make an angel: love to God, love to man, heavenly wisdom,
constant progress, doing and acting after the Savior's great example, and
by his power; and when we have written these upon every part of our
nature, we are as the Apostle said: "Ye are our epistle" (2 Corinthians
3:2).
We are, each of us,
writing the gospel upon ourselves if we so live. We shall then come forth
when health is fading away from us, when the body is becoming feeble and
withered like the chaff of the ripened corn. When the chaff falls away,
the corn comes out in its perfection; so will it be with us. When our
covering falls off, when our sheath becomes chaff, and goes to its mother
earth, the spirit will ascend in its glorious beauty to God, who gave it.
We shall mingle with those who are like-minded with ourselves; we shall
live to make others happy, each having heaven within himself; we shall
dwell in one of the "many mansions" (John 14:2) of our heavenly Father. We
shall enter into a glorious world where all are happy, all are beautiful,
all are wise, because all are good.
The Discussion
Rev. Vicar Of ____: I should leave
this room, Christian friends, in a very different state of feeling, and
with very different views to those that I entered it, if the sentiments
which have just been broached by the lecturer were scriptural. I believe
they are anti-scriptural, and on that account I rise simply to give it as
my deliberate opinion, that however honest the lecturer may be, and
however anxious he may be to impress upon our minds those things which he
regards as truth, I look upon them as directly opposed to what God in his
Holy Word has taught us. (Hear.)
He has referred over
and over again to various passages--sometimes in the Old Testament, and
sometimes in the New--and he has labored to prove that there is no such
thing as the resurrection of the body. All that I have to say is this,
that if the Apostle Paul and the other Apostles, and other inspired and
holy men in the Old Testament, do not distinctly and emphatically teach
the resurrection of the dead, then I neither understand my own language--I
know nothing of Hebrew, and still less of Greek.
The Apostle, in
language, as it appears to me, incontrovertible, does most emphatically
and plainly teach, so that the plowman may understand what the man says.
He tells the plowman--if I have any correct apprehension of what the
Apostle of the Gentiles teaches in the sublime and inconceivably beautiful
chapter, where he treats of the resurrection of the dead--I say he does
there distinctly teach the poor peasant as well as the philosopher, who is
oftentimes too wise to be taught, that the body which is sown in
corruption will be raised in incorruption, and that that which is sown a
natural body will be raised a spiritual body.
I declare solemnly
that I should leave this room a miserable man if I did not believe, not
only that my immortal spirit would live forever in the presence of God,
but if I did not also believe that the body--in its spiritualized
state--not in this gross material form--in that we are all agreed, I
think--but that the material body that will be sown in corruption will be
raised in incorruption; that is to say, will be raised an incorruptible
body, and that this body will be the vehicle of the operations of the
immortal spirit.
Touching the passage
in Job, we know that some have taken one view of that subject, and some
another. The Hebrew term, for example, has been rendered "vindicator"; but
in my humble judgment, that grand and glorious passage does as distinctly
and emphatically teach the resurrection of the dead, as does the Apostle
in the beautiful chapter, the 15th of his First Epistle to the
Corinthians.
There is another
sublime and beautiful passage in one of the minor prophets, "I will ransom
them from the power of the grave"; but according to the lecturer, if I
understand him, there is no grave from which to ransom them. "I will
ransom them from the power of the grave; I will redeem them from death. O
death, I will be thy plagues; O grave, I will be thy destruction;
repentance shall be hid from mine eyes" (Hosea 13:14). I could say a great
deal more; time, however, is fast proceeding, and I shall now wait to hear
what the lecturer feels disposed to say in answer to what I have advanced.
(Applause.)
Dr. Bayley: As for our friend's
opinions and convictions, their weight will depend, of course, precisely
upon the weight that is attached to the arguments he has offered on their
behalf. Our friend's mere statement of his convictions being this or that,
of course, merely announced his conviction. (Hear, hear.)
You have heard,
during the course of this lecture, some of the reasons for my convictions,
which tell me not of the distant resurrection about which our friend has
spoken, but of a present resurrection--of our immediate entrance into the
fullness of heavenly glory which I believe the Scriptures teach. Our
friend has not referred to any of the passages or to the instruction I
have offered upon the subject, but simply announced in answer to them his
convictions and his opinions, which, of course, will have just the weight
that the arguments in support of them have, and nothing more.
In relation, first
of all, to Job, I pointed out both what the passage really said, and how
it was really fulfilled in relation to Job. Our friend has said nothing at
all to show that this was not the accurate construction--only that some
people think so, and other people think different. But Job tells us in the
10th and 16th chapters, at the end, that when he leaves this world by
death, he will not return. I have already quoted Job's declaration, "He
that goeth down to the grave shall come up no more." What we hope is that
each of you will read Job carefully--leaving out those words that are in
italics--taking in what Job announces as the fulfillment of his hope, that
he would see God--and then judge for yourselves which is the right view.
(Applause.)
The only other
passage that our friend has referred to in the Old Testament is the
announcement of Jehovah himself that he will ransom us from the power of
the grave; he will redeem us from death. But the fulfillment of that
glorious declaration is not to be waited for yet, as a thing in the far
distance. When did the Redeemer come into the world? Has not the Redeemer
appeared? Has he not done his work? Did he not come into the world
eighteen hundred years ago, and did not he, when he was in the world, say,
"He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath
everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from
death unto life?" (John 5:24). There is the fulfillment of the promise of
redemption. ("Doubtful.")
What graves are we
anxious to be delivered from? Is it not those graves of which he speaks,
when he says to the Pharisees, "Ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which
indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men's bones,
and of all uncleanness?" (Matthew 23:27). (Applause.) These are the
graves, and that is the death, that Christ desires to deliver us from. He
does not leave it for us to guess whether, in some far distant time, it
will be done or not; but he announces that it was done. Every person that
comes out of the grave of sin and corruption--out of the death of
evil--can say now, "Thanks be to God, who has given us the victory through
our Lord Jesus Christ" (1 Corinthians 15:57). There is no longer any grave
or any death for him; his is already a life that is certain.
What did Christ say
again? "He that liveth and believeth in me shall never die" (John 11:26);
may I not say to my brother, "Believest thou this?" If you believe this,
then you believe that the fulfillment of the passage you have referred to
has been wrought out, has been amply completed; and you and I have only to
rejoice that we are living in the real life, the glorious life of heaven
now, and we shall enter the holier life of eternity at last when this
earthly body is put away.
I entered very fully
into the 15th chapter of the First Epistle to the Corinthians; all that
our friend has replied to what was said--and the words were quoted and
dwelt upon--is to misquote one little passage. He says that we shall be
sown in corruption and will be raised in incorruption. That is not what
the Apostle says; he says, "It is sown in corruption, and is raised in
incorruption" (1 Corinthians 15:42); not "will be." That "will be" is
altogether of our friend's introducing; it does not occur in the
Scriptures. (Hear, hear.) The Scriptures say, "There is a natural body,
and there is a spiritual body" (1 Corinthians 15:44). Now our friend
talked about Hebrew and Greek; it only needs plain English to know that
"is" does not mean "will be." It is quite as plain in the Hebrew and Greek
as it is in the English. The plain English is precisely as it is rendered,
and as it ought to be rendered. There is now a natural body, and there is
now a spiritual body. It is the natural body that is sown, and it is the
spiritual body that is raised. That is precisely the doctrine we have been
teaching.
Our friend thinks
that he would be a sadder man if he took this doctrine; I can assure him
from experience he is mistaken. I have been in his state; I have held his
doctrine. But now I have this doctrine, and it makes me a happier man. I
should be grievously sad if I had an idea, when I saw my dear ones go away
from my side, that they were going to be a sort of half nothing, in no
shape, and nowhere, to wait for some thousands of years till it was
settled where they were to go. Our friend thinks there is to be a future
very distant judgment, whenever it may come. If I thought so, it would
make me very sad.
I am, however,
certain as the fullest investigation can make me that everyone who has had
a true devotion to his Lord, who has lived for Christ in this world--I
have not the slightest doubt that when they pass from among the abodes of
men, they go in bodies more perfect, more glorious, and more beautiful, at
once to the abode of angels; and that makes me happy. (Loud cheers.) It is
a happy thing for me to think that those whom I have loved here and
striven to make happy go to better hands than mine; that they have not to
wait in any half existence, or no existence; but as for them to live is
Christ, so for them to die is gain. I feel sure that if our friend will
give to it the attentive examination that so weighty a matter requires, he
will find there will be no loss of happiness, but great gain, in the
reception of this advanced view of the Sacred Word.
Rev. Vicar: Nothing that has been
advanced by the chairman in the shape of replication has in the least
altered my views or my feelings. It appears to me almost beyond--I was
going to say--contempt, that he should have stated that I quoted a passage
incorrectly for the sake of impressing my view. I know as well as the
lecturer that the Apostle's words are, "It is sown in corruption; it is
raised in incorruption." Why, the material body, flesh and blood, is sown
in corruption, and it is raised in incorruption. And I believe all the
sophistry, and all the eloquence, and all the false logic, and all the
Biblical criticism which he, or any other man, can bring to bear upon that
passage, or upon the whole of that inimitably sublime composition of the
great Apostle of the Gentiles, will fail--and fail to the end of time--to
prove that he has there spoken of mere spiritual resurrection. He is
speaking, if I understand human language, of the general resurrection from
the dead.
I believe, as well
as the lecturer, that dear friends who die sleep in Jesus--go to heaven. I
believe their spirits enter an ineffably blessed state, and that they are
not in some far distant region wondering--if they have the power to
wonder--when the resurrection is to take place, and what they are to be.
Mothers who lose their darling children may rejoice in the thought that
they are gone to be with Jesus; but their bodies, as well as their
spirits, will be with Jesus--that is their resurrection body.
There is no
language, I conceive, in the whole of the New Testament for the lecturer
to put the matter in the way he has done. It appears to me not at all
Christian. He says this is my opinion; and I suppose every man and every
woman in the United Kingdom has a right to his or her opinion. It is the
opinion of the Universal Church--it is the opinion of the first
philosophers that have ever existed, that our bodies shall all be raised.
Why is a man to be punished solely in his spirit, seeing that its partner,
the body, has been one great instrument and cause of sin? I want to know
how that which has sinned in many, many instances is to receive no
punishment? Or how that which has been active in the service of God is to
receive no reward?
Another friend (Mr. Wilkins, Baptist minister):
Whatever the decision of this meeting will be, it will not affect the
thing itself. There is one thing that has struck me forcibly, and that is
in reference to the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ: if he has risen
from the dead, which certainly he has; and if he has become the first
fruits of them that slept; and if he is gone into the invisible
world--into the heaven of heavens, as a pattern of what his church is to
be--I want to know how we shall resemble him, unless our bodies are raised
as his body was? Jesus Christ said, "Handle me and see; for a spirit hath
not flesh and blood, as ye see me have" (Luke 24:39). (Hear, hear.) Now,
if Jesus Christ be a pattern of his church, which certainly he is, how can
we imitate him, unless our bodies are raised like his? (Applause.)
Dr. Bayley: Allow me first to answer
my first friend. Although I do not know that he has presented any new
argument--only the very strong declaration of its being his opinion--that
the Apostle meant so-and-so. He admitted that the correction which I made
of his quotation was a correct rendering, and he said he knew it. Our
friend, perhaps, might feel a little hurt from his supposing that I meant
to insinuate that he intentionally misquoted a passage for a certain
purpose. I did not mean to insinuate anything of the kind, but simply that
when we have been used to a certain doctrine, and suppose it to be in a
certain part of the Scriptures, we unconsciously quote the Scriptures as
we have been in the habit of doing, although, perhaps, mistakenly. Many
people quote the Scriptures as they have been used to them, but never have
their attention directed to see what the Word exactly says. What it
exactly says in this case is what I have been saying all night: that we
have a spiritual body as well as a natural body, and that the natural body
is sown, and the spiritual body is raised. Now that is precisely what we
need to take home with us, and then we shall have all the requirements for
a true idea of spiritual life.
Our friend has
offered an argument, not a scriptural one, but an argument which has
sometimes been proposed before--namely, that as the body has sinned, why
should not the body be punished as well as the soul? And this argument
seems to have some little weight in it, only that it would go farther than
those who use it would intend it to go; for it would go thus far: if the
body is really wanted to bear part in either the reward or punishment, why
is not it taken when the soul is taken? (Cheers.) Why does not it go, at
the same time as the soul, if it is to be happy in heaven? Nay, why not
all the bodies?
But the reason is
evident. The body is only an instrument in the soul's hands. The body
never sinned in its life. (Loud cheers.) It is the soul that sins. A man
might as well say when a horse has run away with the cart, the cart is as
bad as the horse, and whip them both. (Hear, hear.) He might as well say
that because an assassin uses a pistol to murder a person, and he is hung
for the crime, that you should hang the pistol as well as the man. Our
friend's arguments--I say it with all respect--are as weak as water.
I have no doubt that
he is quite aware of the present condition of science, and knows that the
body is being changed continually; so that we have a dozen bodies if we
live to be old men. Would he say that these bodies are all to be brought
up? These are things our friend would do well to take into consideration.
(Friend: "Thank you," sarcastically.)
As to the soundest
philosophers who thought in this way: he knows surely that what we teach,
the present philosophers teach. (Friend:
"Present infidels, you mean!") The old philosophers, who had a
philosophy as false as the old notions of the Scriptures, might have
taught as our friend does. But Sir Humphrey Davy was no infidel, and he
taught precisely what we teach in relation to the body: that it is changed
every day, and that it would be no more wrong to punish the whip than it
would be to punish the body. Tillotson taught it, and he was no infidel,
but an archbishop. Watts taught it. I would say further, that there is not
a leading philosopher of the present day that does not teach the same
thing. I will invite our friend to try if he can find a philosopher of any
name whatever, within the last twenty years, that does not teach what we
teach. Let him then uphold, if he will, the old philosophy, but let us
seek for the true philosophy, founded on facts, which has advanced
something higher and grander and nobler than that of bygone days.
And now I will
address our second friend. Many have regarded this as an evidence, as our
friend has, that inasmuch as Christ rose with his body, therefore our
natural bodies will rise too. But the Apostle says, "Every man in his own
order" (1 Corinthians 15:23). Jesus rose, and we shall rise, but every man
in his own order; and the "order" of Jesus is that he was Governor of
heaven and earth. "All power is given unto him in heaven and in earth"
(Matthew 28:18). His body inwardly was an incorruptible body; it was the
Word from his divine soul made flesh; his body was gradually glorified and
perfected. The glorious form that appeared on Mount Tabor, when "his face
did shine as the sun" (Matthew 17:2)--that was his real body within the
form from Mary.
Besides what men
saw, there was another divine form continually expanding itself until,
when he arose, his body was perfectly divine, like his soul. "I do cures
today, and tomorrow, and the third day I shall be perfected" (Luke 13:32).
His risen body could move in and out of houses without the doors being
opened. It was a body that those who had their spiritual sight open could
see; but no common Jew, with only his natural eyes, saw his body after his
resurrection. His body, therefore, was a divine body; but ours is only an
earthly one, suited to this world. And, therefore, he rose in his own
order, as the glorious God that had to rule heaven and earth, but had
glorified and perfected his body while he lived in the world, and now from
that glorious body governs heaven and earth.
Jesus took his body
with him. Our body is not the "Word made flesh" (John 1:14); our bodies
are merely the outward corruptible forms that pass into dust. "Every man
in his own order." We do not want these bodies, and so we leave them
behind us. He wanted his, and so he took it with him. That is my answer to
our second friend.
Second Friend: If his answer proves
anything, it proves that it was by death and by the resurrection that the
body of Jesus became what it really was; so that it could pass from place
to place without hindrance. If, as the lecturer has told us, the body of
Christ was divine, then Divinity can bleed and die--the body of Christ
bled and died. The lecturer has been telling us that his body was made
divine. If that be true, his body was perfectly divine before his death.
As I have said, if that argument shows anything, it goes to prove that
Divinity must die, because Jesus Christ bled and died.
I do not see how the
lecturer can prove from that, in any measure, that our body is not to be
raised. After the resurrection, Jesus Christ went in and out unseen; but
before death he went about with the disciples, and was seen as we are. The
change was after the resurrection of Christ, just as the change will be
with us. I can say with our friend who has spoken on the subject, in reply
to the lecturer, that the body is sown in corruption, and raised in
incorruption. As this is a subject so vast and of so much importance, I
will endeavor to give my views more fully on Sunday evening next, at the
Queen Square Baptist Chapel; and I shall be glad to see as many of my
friends as possible on that occasion.
First Friend: Bacon, the great
experimental philosopher, Boyle, Sir Isaac Newton, "not less than the
least of philosophers,"--these men died, and were buried in a certain hope
of a resurrection of their bodies into everlasting life.
Dr. Bayley: I have only to remark
further, that I am exceedingly obliged to the gentlemen who have placed
these matters before us, and to the one who seems likely to make them
still more interesting, by turning the attention of the people to them on
Sunday night. I hope there will be many present, that there will be an
earnest and interesting examination of the subject, and that we shall
endeavor to "prove all things, and hold fast that which is good" (1
Thessalonians 5:21).
Our respected friend
has named some of the philosophers--which he, I suppose, has done, because
of my referring to the philosophy of the present day--but without quoting
even what the philosophers have said on the subject before us. It is very
possible that had he done so, he would have found they would have been
like Locke, who was a great philosopher, and who taught precisely as we
teach, and in a very contrary sense to what our friend has named. When he
brings up any argument from Newton or Boyle, we shall be very glad to
attend to the argument, and to see whether there is anything in it, and to
give it all the weight that a respectable proposition ought to have at all
times.
For anything else
but argument, I assure him, we have no respect. Anything that our friend
has to say about demeanor and so on will be better left to those who hear
to judge. (Hear, hear.) I have tried to give at least a respectable and
courteous hearing to what has been brought before us. (Cheers.)
I will just add a
word or two to our friend's (the Rev. Mr. Wilkins) remarks, which may
assist him not to misrepresent our ideas. Our doctrine is that the Lord
through life, and at death, was going through a work of perfecting and
glorifying his humanity. That at the beginning there was within the human
nature from Mary a germ of the divine nature from God himself--that "holy
thing" (Luke 1:35) that was born was the Son of God within, as there was
the Son "made of a woman" (Galatians 4:4) without. This divine nature in
the human was being more fully brought out during the Savior's life; but
the mere human from Mary remained so far that it might be crucified; and
it was crucified. It was not the divine body that was crucified or died. I
hope our friend, in stating his ideas, will keep to what we assure him are
our views upon the subject. It was the human from Mary which suffered and
died, but there had been from the first gradually expanding a Divine
Humanity from himself, and that was the Son seen on mount Tabor, when "his
raiment was white as the light" (Matthew 17:2). The divine body from
within was that which rose--the glorious, the perfect body; and it was
that which John saw when he beheld the First and the Last (Revelation
1:17).
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