in Theology, is a rising again from the state of the dead; and is that event, the belief of which constitutes one of the principal articles in the Christian creed.
In treating of this object of our faith, it has been usual to mention, first, the resurrection of our Blest Lord, with the character of the witnesses, and the authenticity of the gospel history by which it has been proved, and from which, as a consequence, ours is inferred. But as most of the arguments for his resurrection are contained in the gospels, and as merely to repeat them would afford, we hope, but little information to most of our readers, we mean here to take a view of the several grounds on which the belief of a future existence is supposed to be founded; to collect together some of the sentiments of authors and nations concerning the place where departed spirits reside; concerning the nature of their present state; concerning the kinds of their future definition; that we may afterwards see how far their notions differ and agree with what we consider as the doctrines of Scripture.
Of a future state, there have sometimes been found a few wandering and obscure tribes who seemed to entertain no notion at all; though it should be remarked, that some of these were likewise observed in so low a degree of savage barbarity as not to be acquainted with the use of the bow, the dart, or the sling, and as not knowing how to wield a club, or to throw a stone, as a weapon of defence*.
Wherever the human mind has been cultivated, or properly speaking, begun to be cultivated, the opinion has likewise generally prevailed that human existence is not confined to the present scene; nay, so very general has this notion been found among mankind, that many are puzzled how to account for what they suppose to be almost next to its universality.
To explain the phenomenon, some have imagined that it is a notion derived by tradition from primeval revelation. They suppose that the first parent of mankind, as a moral agent accountable for his conduct, was informed by his Maker of every thing which it was of importance for him to know; that he must have been acquainted with this doctrine of a future state in particular; and that he could hardly fail to communicate it to his posterity. They suppose, too, that the history of the translation of Enoch must have made a great noise in the world, and that the remembrance of it must have been long retained and widely diffused; and they find in the book of Job plain intimations of a resurrection from the dead, which, from the manner in which they are introduced, they think that very ancient patriarch must have received through this channel.
It is not thought to be any objection to these suppositions, that the Most High, when delivering his laws from the top of Mount Sinai, did not enforce them by the awful sanctions of a future state. The intelligent reader of the Scriptures knows that the sanctions of a future state belong to a different and more universal dispensation than was that of Moses; that the primeval revelation related to that dispensation; and that the Jewish law, with its temporal sanctions, was introduced only to preserve the knowledge and worship of the true God among a people too gross in their conceptions to have been properly influenced by the view of future rewards and punishments, of such a nature as eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive. He sees at the same time, everywhere scattered through the Old Testament, plain indications of the Mosaic economy being no more than preparatory to the bringing in of a better hope; and he thinks it evident, that such Jews as understood anything of the nature of that better hope, must have been convinced, that, however the ceremonial rites of their religion might be sufficiently guarded by temporal sanctions, the fundamental principles of all religion and virtue are supported by rewards and punishments to be dispensed in a state beyond the grave. See PROPHECY and THEOLOGY.
That the progenitors of the human race must have been inspired by their Creator with the knowledge of support of their immortality, and of every thing necessary to their everlasting welfare, cannot, we should think, be questioned by any one who believes that the world had a beginning, and that it is under the government of goodness and justice. The progress from sense to science is so slow, that however capable we may suppose the earliest inhabitants of this earth to have been of making philosophical discoveries, we cannot believe that the Father of mercies left his helpless creature to discover for himself his future existence. Death, when first presented to him, must have been a ghastly object; and had he been left without any hope of redemption from it, he would undoubtedly have sunk into little despontency.
But a prospect of immortality is so pleasing to the human mind, that if it was communicated to the first man, it would of course be cherished by his posterity; and there is no difficulty in conceiving how it might be handed down by tradition to very remote ages, among such of his descendants as were not scattered over the face of the earth in small and savage tribes.—In the course of its progress, it would frequently be new-modelled by the ever active imagination; and at last many absurd and fantastic circumstances would doubtless be combined with the original truth, that death puts not an end to human existence.
But though we are firmly convinced that the first principles of useful knowledge, and among them the doctrine of a future state, were communicated to man by his Maker; and though this doctrine, in large and permanent societies, might certainly be conveyed more or less pure to late posterity through the channel of tradition—we are far from attributing too much to tradition as some writers are disposed to do, or thinking it the only source from which mankind could derive the belief of their existence beyond the grave. In small tribes of savages such a tradition could hardly be preserved; and yet some indistinct notions of a future state have been found among tribes who are said to have lost all traditional notions even of the being of a God.
Others imagine the notion might be conjectured from natural phenomena; as from dreaming, &c.
Others, therefore, are inclined to believe that, independent of any traditions, mankind might be led by certain phenomena to form some conjectures of a future state. They observe, that although a few individuals perhaps may, yet it seldom happens that the whole individuals of any nation are exempted from dreaming: They observe, too, and this observation is founded on experience, that the images of the dead are from the remaining impressions of memory frequently summoned up in the fancy; and that it appears from all the languages of rude nations, who pay the greatest attention to their dreams, and who speak of seeing the dead in their visions, that these images (A) have always been taken by them for realities; nay, some of the learned, and the celebrated Baxter is of the number, are disposed to doubt whether these appearances be not something more than illusions of the brain: But whether they really be so or not, one thing is certain, that all nations in all countries, in the darkest ages and the rudest periods, are accustomed to dream; and whether sleeping or waking, in the stillness of the night, in the gloom of solitude, in the fondness of friendship, in the rovings of love, the delirium of fever, and the anguish of remorse, to see and converse with the shades of the departed; and Lucretius * has remarked, that even the inferior animals are not exempted from such illusions of a restless fancy.
For often sleeping racers pant and sweat, Breathe short, as if they ran their second heat; As if the barrier down with eager pace They stretch'd, as when contending for the race. And often hounds, when sleep hath clos'd their eyes, They toss, and tumble, and attempt to rise; They open often, often snuff the air, As if they prest the footsteps of the deer; And sometimes wak'd, pursue their fancy'd prey, The fancy'd deer, that seem to run away, Till quite awak'd, the follow'd shapes decay.
And foster curs, that lie and sleep at home, Do often roufe, and walk about the room, And bark, as if they saw some strangers come. And birds will start, and seek the woods, by night, Whene'er the fancy'd hawk appears in flight, Whene'er they see his wing or hear him fight.
CREECH.
These powers of fancy extend wide over animal creation; and it is on this general principle that necromancers and dreamers have in all ages established their trade, that the stories of goblins have at all times so very easily procured belief, and that
The village matron, round the blazing hearth, Suspends the infant audience with her tales, Breathing astonishment! Of witching rhymes. And evil spirits; of the deathbed call Of him who rob'd the widow and devour'd The orphan's portion; of unquiet souls Risen from the grave to ease the heavy guilt Of deeds in life conceal'd; of shapes that walk At dead of night, and clank their chains and wave The torch of hell around the murderer's head.
AIKENSIDE.
Mankind in general would willingly dispense with these troublesome visits of the dead. To prevent the return of the zumbi or the ghost, some nations of Africa use many superstitious rites; and Kolben tells us, * Voyage to Angola, that the frightened Hottentots leave in the hut where a Congo and person has died all the utensils and furniture, lest the angry ghost, incensed at their avarice, should haunt them in their dreams, and infest them in the night. Divines and moralists have laboured to show that these are merely imaginary terrors: but God and nature seem to have determined that they shall produce the same effects upon certain minds as if they were real; and that while there is any sensibility in the heart, while there is any remembrance of the past, and any conjuring power in the fancy; the ignorant, the benighted, the timid, shall often meet with the goblins of darkness, the spectres of the tomb, the apparitions that hover round the grave, and the forms of the dead in the middle dream. See SPECTRE.
From these phenomena, which have been so common in all countries and in all ages, what would mankind naturally infer? Would they not infer, that there is something in the nature of man that survives death, and that there is a future state of existence beyond the grave? Are not still many specimens of this reasoning preserved in the ancient poets? and is it not thus that Achilles† reasons after imagining that he saw the ghost of his friend Patroclus?
'Tis true, 'tis certain, man, though dead, retains Part of himself; th' immortal mind remains; The form subsists without the body's aid, Aerial semblance, and an empty shade.
This
(A) These images were called by the Greeks Θανάτοις; and among the Romans they had various names, as umbrae, lemures, manes, larvae, and were sometimes called occurfacula noctium, busforum formidamina, sepulchrorum terriculamenta, animae errantes, which are all comprehended under the species mortuorum. This night my friend, so late in battle lost, Stood at my side a pensive plaintive ghost; Ev'n now familiar as in life he came, Alas! how diff'rent, yet how like the same.
Lucretius*, a studious observer of nature, though no friend to the foul's immortality, acknowledges frankly that these phantoms often terrify the mind, haunt us in our sleep, and meet us while awake. He confesses, too, that by such appearances mankind have been led to believe the future existence of the soul; but, aware of the consequence,
Ne forte animas Acherunte reanimur Effugere, aut umbras inter vivos volitare,
he endeavours to explain these curious phenomena on some of the odd and fantastic principles of the Epicureans. In doing this, however, he pretends not to deny that these images appear to be real; but candidly acknowledges that
They strike and shake The airy foul, as when we are awake, With stroke so lively, that we think we view The absent dead, and think the image true.
We here see how the belief of the soul's immortality came to be general among mankind. But for this information we are much more indebted to the poets, who have given us faithful transcripts of nature, than to the philosophers who have wished to entertain us with their own theories, or to those laborious men of erudition, who have dreaded as much to examine the source of an ancient report as the friends of Ulysses to approach the coast of Cimmerian darkness. With them tradition is the ultimate boundary of research; and as gorgons, chimeras, and hydras, have come down to us by tradition; so they, with great sagacity, suspect, that tradition must likewise be at the bottom of the soul's immortality, and occasion the visions and phantoms of the dead.
To tradition we have allowed all that it can justly claim; but we cannot allow it to be the only source of this opinion: and we have felt the highest indignation upon hearing men of learning and genius affirm, from a false zeal for the honour of revelation, that mankind, without this instruction, could never have acquired the art of building huts to screen them from the cold, or have learned the method of propagating their species! The reader must not here suppose that we allude to Polydore Virgil (B). We have in our eye persons now alive, with whom we have conversed on the subject, and who (terrified at the length to which some philosophers have carried the doctrine of instincts, and others the reasoning powers of the mind) have contended, with the utmost earnestness, that we know nothing—not even the functions of our animal nature—but by tradition or written revelation.
Having now seen the source of the opinion concerning the future existence of the soul, and pointed out the philosophical phenomena by which mankind were led to embrace it, we come next to review the arguments by which the philosophers attempted to confirm it.
Pythagoras believed, with the rest of his country, that annihilation was never the end, and that nonentity was rash's notion never the beginning of any thing that is. His general transmigration doctrine upon this subject was shortly expressed in very few words, Omnia mutantur, nihil interit. He afterwards learned from Egyptian priests that the soul migrates into new bodies; and being, it seems, a person of a most extraordinary and astonishing memory, he found there was some truth in the story: for after musing, he began to remember that he was Euphorbus, the son of Pantheus, that was slain by Menelaus in the Trojan war; and upon a jaunt to Peloponnesus, recollected the shield which he had worn at the time of the siege, in one of the temples of Juno at Argos! That none might question the truth of his assertion, his followers presently removed all doubts by the famous argument, the IPSE DIXIT of Egyptian origin.
As Pythagoras taught that human souls are frequently thrust into brute shapes, and, as some imagined, by trine of pre-existence of punishment; it occurred to Plato, that all bodies, even the human, are a sort of prisons; and that, in consequence of this confinement, the soul was subjected to the rage of desire, appetite, and passion, and to all the wretched miseries of a jail. To explain this mystery, he supposed that desires and appetites belong to a soul that is purely animal residing in the body. But he was perplexed with another difficulty; for as he thought highly of the goodness of Deity, he could not imagine how he should imprison us without a crime. He supposed, therefore, that prior to its union with the present body the soul had existed in one of ether, which it still retains; but that even in this ethereal body it had felt something of impure desire; and happening to indulge the vicious appetite, had contracted some stains of pollution, for which it was confined in its present body as a house of correction to do penance and improve its morals.
To prove this ideal pre-existence of the soul, Plato availed himself of an opinion that was general in his proving time, that coincided with the doctrines of Pythagoras, and that was partly founded on a sort of reasoning and observation. He thought that matter and intelligence are coeternal (see Platonism); that there are various orders of souls; that those of both the man and the brute are parts or emanations (c) of the anima mundi, or soul of the world; that all are ultimately parts or emanations of Deity itself; and that all their faculties are
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(b) This writer allots part of a chapter to show, "Quis primum instituerit artem meretriciam," as being in his opinion, a traditional practice. See Lib. iii. cap. 17. De Rerum Inventoribus.
(c) The Deity was conceived by the ancients sometimes as a solid, when inferior souls were called ἀποστραμμέναι, i.e. fragments or parts broken off from him; and sometimes as a fluid, when they were considered as πορείαι or emanations; but from none of these hypotheses did they reason consequentially. Their ἀποστραμμέναι were often after death reunited to the Deity; and their πορείαι often remained separate and distinct for a long while, without flowing back as they ought to have done, and mingling with the great ocean of spirit. are more or less restricted and confined, according to those organized systems with which they are connected.
Know first (says one delivering his doctrines),
Know first, that heav'n and earth's compacted frame, And flowing waters, and the starry flame, And both the radiant lights, one common soul Inspires, and feeds, and animates the whole. This active mind, infused through all the space, Unites and mingles with the mighty mass: Hence men and beasts the breath of life obtain, And birds of air, and monsters of the main; The ethereal vigour is in all the same, And every soul is fill'd with equal flame; As much as earthly limbs, and grofs allay Of mortal members, subject to decay, Blunt not the beams of heav'n and edge of day (D).
DRYDEN.
Besides this hypothesis, that in some measure was common to others, Plato had an argument peculiarly his own. Happening to peep into the region of metaphysics, he was somewhat surprized on observing the ideas which we derive from reflection and consciousness; and supposing that they could not have entered by the senses, he naturally, though not very justly, concluded, that we must have received them in some state of prior existence.
As, according to him, the soul was eternal, as well as the matter which composed the body, and as their union was only temporary and accidental, he might have been satisfied that the death of the soul was not to be the consequence of their separation. But, somehow or other, satisfied he was not. He had recourse to a new argument. As the soul, he said, was an active principle, and a self-moving, it did not depend for its life on another; and therefore would always continue to exist, though the body were reduced to the general mass out of which it was formed. See Metaphysics, Part III, chap. iv.
Whether Plato had borrowed any of his doctrines from the eastern magi, we pretend not to say. We only observe a striking similarity, in some respects, between his and theirs. In Plato's philosophy, the sun, moon, and stars, were animated beings, and a sort of divinities that originally had sprung from the great fountain of heat and light, and our earthly bodies a sort of dungeons in which our miserable souls are benighted and debauched by desires, appetites, and passions. In the magian philosophy, the Supreme Being was called Ormazd; was the god of light, or was light itself, and represented by Mithras, a subordinate divinity, and the same with the sun. Another deity of very great power was Arimanus, the god of darkness, who presided over matter, and was the origin of all evil (see Polytheism). The ancient Gnostics, who derived their tenets from this source, believed, with Pythagoras and Plato, in a great number of subordinate genii; and said, that Demiurgus, the god of matter and the soul or spirit of this world, had contrived the bodies of men and brutes; and in the former particularly, as in so many prisons, had confined a number of celestial spirits, that by exposing them to the low desires of appetite and passion, he might seduce them from their allegiance to the God of light, and render them more submissive to himself. From these prisons the Supreme Being was continually making attempts to rescue them; and in the mean time was frequently sending divine messengers to enlighten and instruct them, and to render them capable of returning to the regions of light and happiness, to which they had belonged (E).
The Stoics attempted to simplify this system, which appears anciently to have pervaded Egypt and the east, and which would seem to be no more than variously modified by Orpheus, Pythagoras, Plato, and others of the more northerly and western nations. None of them allowed a creation out of nothing; and the shaping and modelling of matter into forms was variously explained, according as they happened to be most addicted to superstition, to morals, or to physics. Some ascribed these operations to ancient Time, Chaos, and Darkness, and explained the future changes in nature by the genealogies of these deities; some observing attraction and repulsion, or at least a sort of agreement and discordance among bodies, were inclined to ascribe them to Friendship and Hatred, or Love and Antipathy; some observing, that while one body rose another descended, made Levity and Gravity primary agents; and some taking notice that living bodies sprung from corruption, were
(d) The general doctrine, as delivered here in these verses of Virgil, is the same with that not only of Pythagoras, but of the Stoics.
(e) Plato made the stars the native residence of inferior souls; and when these were thoroughly purified below, returned them home again: and therefore, says Virgil, alluding to his doctrine,
Some have taught That bees have portions of ethereal thought, Endued with particles of heav'nly fires; For God the whole created mass inspires: Thro' heav'n and earth, and ocean's depth, he throws His influence round, and kindles as he goes. Hence flocks, and herds, and men, and beasts, and fowls, With breath are quicken'd, and attract their souls: Hence take the forms his precedence did ordain, And into him at length resolve again. No room is left for death, they mount the sky, And to their own congenial planets fly.
Dryden. were disposed to confer the same powers on Moisture and Heat.
The physical hypotheses were what had most charms for the Stoics. From their system immaterial beings were openly excluded; all things were regulated by physical laws or inexorable fate; and all things originated in the Το Εν or the First One, which was probably suggested by the Moses of Pythagoras. This Το Εν appears to have been a materia prima devoid of all the qualities of body. In their language it was an Αέριν or first principle, not subject to change. When it was invested with the properties of body, it then became a Στοιχεῖον or an element; and then, so far as respected its qualities, especially its forms, it was subject to changes almost perpetual. The gods themselves and the souls of men were in this system only modifications of matter (r). Man was composed of their four elements, Fire, Air, Water, and Earth; and upon dissolution, every part returned to the element from which it had come, as the water of a vessel swimming in the sea unites with the ocean when the vessel is broken. This system, it is plain, cannot possibly admit of any separate consciousnesses of existence (g). The same may be said of the systems of Democritus and Epicurus, and all those who undertook to explain things upon physical principles (h).
The chief merit of the physical systems appears to be this: Absurd as they were, it would seem from the whimsical and the almost childish reasoning of Lucretius, that they had a tendency to lead mankind from extravagant hypotheses to something that was similar to observation.
What Aristotle thought of the separate existence of the soul after death is not very certain. The soul he calls an Ενεργεία; and if the reader can divine the meaning of the word, he perhaps can divine the meaning of the Stagyrite, and will then be a better diviner than we. At other times he says, that the soul is something divine; that it resembles the element of the stars; that it is something of a fiery nature; that it is the vicegerent of God in the body; and that the acuteness of the senses, the powers of the intellect, with the various kinds of appetites and passions, depend entirely on the qualities of the blood (i).
Another opinion of very old date was that of the late ingenious Mr Hunter. According to him, the living principle resides in the blood. This opinion, which is mentioned by Moles, was adopted by Critias and others of the ancients. Harvey likewise embraced it. But Mr Hunter, who always wished to be thought an original, inclines to stand at the head of the opinion, and supports it by experiments similar to those of the famed Taliacotius in mending noses. Should any of our readers wish to extract the soul's immortality from such an opinion, we must refer them to the many resources of ingenuity, sophistry, and logic.
Among the Jews, the belief of a future and separate existence for a long time was deemed no essential article of their creed. Some thought that the soul was a spark in the moving of the heart; some imagined that it was the breath, and that upon the dissolution of the body it naturally vanished into soft air. The Sadducees denied the existence of either angel or spirit. Many believed the doctrine of ghosts, and were accustomed to invoke them at the grave. It is hence that we hear the prophets complaining that they were seeking from the living God unto dead men. Some imagined that there was a pre-existence of souls; and, in the case of a blind man, asked our Saviour, whether the man or his parents had sinned that he was born blind? Others inclined to a revolution of soul and body, and thought that our Saviour was either Elias or one of the old prophets returned; and a great many new-modelled their opinion of the soul's immortality according to certain passages in Scripture. The inspired mother of Samuel had said, "The Lord killeth and maketh alive; he bringeth down to the grave, and bringeth up." Isaiah had exclaimed, "Thy dead shall live; together with my dead body shall they arise: Awake, and sing, ye that dwell in the dust; for thy dew is as the dew of herbs, and the earth shall cast out the dead." Daniel had declared, that many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake to everlasting life, and come to shame and everlasting contempt. In the vision of the valley of dry bones, Ezekiel had seen that "at the word of the Lord" the bones came together, bone to his bone, the sinews and the flesh came upon them, and the skin covered them above, and the breath came into the bodies, and they lived and stood upon their feet. And a passage of Job led them to suppose, that at some distant and future period a particular time, which was called the last or the latter day, was appointed by heaven for the general resurrection of all those who are sleeping in their graves. "I know (says Job) my Redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth; and though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God."
Whether these passages were fairly interpreted agreeably to their true and original meaning, it is not here our business to inquire. It is sufficient for us to observe, that from them many of the Jews inferred the reality of a general resurrection (k). In this persuasion, Martha, speaking of her brother Lazarus, says to our Lord, "I know that he shall rise again in the resurrection at the last day." This resurrection appears to
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(f) The Αέριν of the Stoics appears to be the same with the Li of the Chinese. (g) Yet without regarding the inconsistency, many of the Stoics believed, that the soul continued separate long after death; though all in general seemed to deny a future state of rewards and punishments. (h) In his Physical Cosmogony, Plato differed but little from the Stoics; but he had another sort of cosmogony, in which all things appear to have sprung from, and to be almost wholly composed of metaphysical entities, as ideas of forms, numbers, and mathematical figures. These kinds of notions were common both to him and Pythagoras; and were originally borrowed from Egypt, where calculation and geometry were half deified. See PLATONISM. (i) The immortal Harvey has collected these different opinions of the Stagyrite in Exercit. 52. De Generatione Animalium. (k) At present some are for allowing only those of their own nation to share in the benefits of this resurrection; 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 hereby 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 not perhaps in the same sense in which the old Pharisees conceived it, is now generally and almost universally (i.) 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 (s).
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 is taken from death, and the victory over our souls from the grave.
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, rejoins 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 organized 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:
Vol. XVII. Part II.
* See Pla—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 paraphrase 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 is the rowling or deviation of the caverns, those at a distance must scrape their way thither with their nails.
(l) The feet 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 Gurus 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 ultime æstu quo genitalis virus expellitur, nonne aliquid de anima quoque sentimus exire, utque adeo marcescimus et devigescimus cum lucis detritione. 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 the vital principles of plants and animals, nor ought to be divided on reasons so slender as those of analogy.
Even 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 yours: 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.
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 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 (o).
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 groser 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 ideas, an opinion had very early prevailed, that the spirit 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.
From the dreams of the night and the natural tendency of the fancy to work and to summon up spectres when the world around us is involved in darkness, it has also been imagined, that these spirits delight in the night and shadow of death (p), or have been prohibited from enjoying the exhilarating beams of day. And hence we are told,
That in the dismal regions of the dead Th' infernal king once rais'd his horrid head; Leap'd from his throne, left Neptune's arm should lay His dark dominions open to the day, And pour in light.
The nations, therefore, who have fancied a general receptacle for the dead, have thus been induced to place it in the well (q), 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 Laestadius, Satan holds the empire of darkness, the Friendly Islanders have placed the westward of a certain island which they call Te Ie 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 The dusky nation of Cimmeria dwells; The sun ne'er views th' uncomfortable seats When radiant he advances nor retreats. Unhappy race! whom endless night invades, Clouds the dull air, and wraps them round in shades.
Another opinion entertained by the Greeks and some other nations was, that the place of departed spirits is 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 fort 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 hell, 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."
(o) 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.
(q) The well and darkness are synonymous in Homer. Ω φύλαξ, εν τετράδι ἀπὸ ἐκείνων ἐσπέρας, εὐθὺς ὁρᾷς νεῖς. (Odys.) "Oh my friend! which is the west, or which is the east, the place of darkness, or that of the morning, we cannot learn." Many of the ancient fathers of the church asserted only, that the dead are now in abditis receptaculis, or in certain hidden and concealed places.
Orpheus, Origen, and some others of the fathers, with the ancient Caledonian bard Ossian, and the learned Dodwell among the moderns, imagined that the soul, when it left the body, went into the air, and resided somewhere between the surface of the earth and the moon.
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 flood 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.
The opinions concerning the state of the dead are still more numerous than those concerning the place 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, huntmen 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.
The ancient Egyptians, who believed in transmigration, supposed that the soul was after death obliged to animate every species of bird and quadruped, of reptile and insect, and was not to return to a human form till after a period of 3500 years. Others have confined their transmigrations to particular animals, as the soul of man to the human form, and the soul of the brute to the bodies of the species to which it belonged. Some have changed the brute into man, and man into the brute, that man might suffer injuries similar to what he had inflicted, and the brute retaliate what he had suffered. Others have confounded the human soul in plants and in stones; and Bell of Antemmony mentions an Indian who supposed that his ancestors might be in fishes.
The notions of Homer were probably those of many of Accadu's time. But these notions were dismal indeed. When to Homer, his hero Ulysses visited the shades, many of the ghosts seemed to retain the mangled and ghastly appearance which they had at death; and, what is worse, seemed to be all starving with hunger, innumerable multitudes, with loud shrieks, flocking to the fleas of his slain victim as to a most sumptuous and delicious banquet.
For scarcely had the purple torrent flow'd, And all the caverns smok'd with streaming blood, When, lo! appear'd along the dusky coasts Thin airy shoals of visionary ghosts; Fair pensive youths, and soft enamour'd maids, And wither'd elders, pale and wrinkl'd shades. Ghastly with wounds, the forms of warriors slain, Stalk'd with majestic port, a martial train. These, and a thousand more, swarm'd o'er the ground, And all the dire assembly shriek'd around. Ulysses saw, as ghost by ghost arose, All wailing with unutterable woes.
Alone, apart, in discontented mood, A gloomy shade, the fallen Ajax flood; For ever sad, with proud disdain he pin'd, And the lost arms for ever flung his mind.
Upon Ulysses saying to Achilles,
Alive, we hail'd thee with our guardian gods; And, dead, thou rent'st a king in these abodes;
The shade reply'd:
Talk not of ruling in this dolorous gloom, Nor think vain words (he cry'd) can ease my doom; Rather I choose laboriously to bear A weight of woes, and breathe the vital air, A slave to some poor hind that toils for bread, Than live a scepter'd monarch of the dead.
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 clasped 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 allotted only for the relations and descendants of the gods; and Menelaus goes to this country of perpetual spring (T), not as a person
---
(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 of superior merit, but because he had married the daughter of Jove.
Even long after a future state had become the scene of rewards and punishments, these for the most part were distributed, not according to moral, but physical 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 poultry, 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 him to his setting. After four years of this glorious life, they went to animate clouds, and birds of beautiful feathers 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 Æneid 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 judgement;
Who hears and judges each committed crime, Inquires into the manner, place and time.
The conscious wretch must all his acts reveal, Loth to confess, unable to conceal, From the first moment of his vital breath, To the last hour of unrepenting death.
The spirits of the dead no longer mingle together as in the less enlightened period of Homer; the vicious are dismissed to a place of torments, the virtuous sent to regions of bliss: indifferent characters are confined to a limbus*; and those who are too virtuous for hell, but too much polluted with the stains of vice to enter heaven without preparation, are for some time detained in a purgatory.
For there are various penances enjoined, And none are hung to bleach upon the wind; Some plunged in waters, others purged in fires, Till all the dregs are drain'd, and rust expires; Till nothing's left of their habitual stains, But the pure ether of the soul remains.
When thus purified, they become fitted to receive the rewards of their past virtues, and now enter into those regions of happiness and joy.
With ether vefted, and a purple sky, The blissful feats of happy souls below, Stars of their own, and their own funs they know; Where patriots live, who, for their country's good, In fighting fields were prodigal of blood, Priests of unblemish'd lives here make abode, And poets worthy their inspiring god; And searching wits, of more mechanic parts, Who grac'd their age with new-invented arts: Those who to worth their bounty did extend; And those who knew that bounty to command.
Those 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 founding lashes, and of dragging chains. Here, those who brother's better claim defend, 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. Vain is the throng of these; nor let the train Of lustful youths for foul adultery slain.
* Clarke's Hist. of Mexico, vol. i. p. 136.
His heaven.
His hell.
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 intimates, 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 Odyssey iv. l. 563. and Odyssey vi. l. 43. in the Greek. Hosts of defeters, who their honour sold, 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 Elysian 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 their 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 agree, 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 splendors 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, 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, and 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."
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 ravenous and malignant spirits, that are worse than furies; and have described it as full of sulphur, burning forever. 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.
Others 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 memories of conscience; and support their opinion by observing, that matter 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.
What seems to have tortured the genius of divines of the middle state, much more than heaven or hell, is a middle state. On this subject there being little revealed in Scripture, many have thought it incumbent upon them to supply the defect; which they seem to have done in different 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.
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 wilt not leave my soul in hell, i.e. the place of the dead." They observe, that the victory of Christ over death and the grave seems to imply, that our souls are subject to their power; that accordingly the Scripture speaks frequently of the soul's dwelling near to, or 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 anything; 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, whether they are gone.
Those who believe that the soul is not for the exercise of its faculties dependent on the body, are upon its feet; to others, a separation at death obliged to dispose of it some other way. In establishing their theory, they usually begin with attempting to prove, from Scripture or tradition, both its active and separate existence; but with proofs from tradition we intend not to meddle. 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 a vision; and, at any rate, it is no proof of a separate existence.
A third argument is, St Paul's wishing to be absent from the body, and present with the Lord. But, say their opponents, St Paul desired not to be unclothed, but to be clothed upon: and as some of those who maintain a separate existence, bring Scripture to prove that the body * continues united to Christ till the resurrection; in that case, St Paul, if he wished to be present with the Lord, should have rather remained with his body than left it.
A fourth argument is, the appearance of Moses and Elias upon the mount of transfiguration. To which their opponents reply, that these saints appeared in their bodies; that Elias was never divested of his body; and that the account which we have of the burial of Moses, has led some of the ablest critics and soundest divines to conclude, that he was likewise translated to heaven without suffering death. At any rate, say they, he might have been raised from the dead for the very purpose of being present at the transfiguration, as the bodies of other saints certainly were, to bear testimony to our Lord's resurrection and victory over the grave.
A fifth argument is, what our Saviour said to the thief, "Verily I say unto thee, today thou shalt be with me in paradise." The objection usually made here is, that the expression is evidently ambiguous, and that the sense depends entirely on the punctuation; for if the point be placed after today, the meaning will be "Verily, even now, I tell thee, thou shalt be with me in paradise." But the import of paradise in this place, say the opponents, is likewise doubtful. We learn from St Peter's explanation of the 16th Psalm, that our Saviour's soul was not to be left in hell; and we know that on the day of his crucifixion he went not to heaven; for after he had risen from the place of the dead, he forbade one of the women to touch him, as he had not yet ascended to the Father. Hell, therefore, and paradise, continue they, seem to be in this passage the very same thing, the place of the dead; and our Saviour's intention, they add, was not to go to heaven at that time, but to show his victory over death and the grave, to whose power all mankind had become subject by the disobedience of their first parents.
Without pretending to enter into the merits of this dispute, the ingenious Burnet, in his Theory of the Earth, endeavours to prove, upon the authority of the ancient fathers, that paradise lies between the earth and the moon; and the learned Dodwell, on the same authority, has made it the common receptacle of souls till the resurrection; but has not told us whether or not they are to be accountable for the actions of this separate existence at the latter day, or are only to be judged according to the deeds that were done in their bodies.
This notion of a common receptacle has displeased many. The state of purgation, obscurely hinted in the doctrines of Pythagoras, and openly avowed by Plato and Virgil, has been adopted by the Roman divines, who support their opinion on certain obscure passages of Resurrection Scripture, which are always of a yielding and a waxen nature, may easily be twisted to any hypothesis, and like general lovers espouse rather from interest than merit.
It has displeased others, because they are anxious that the righteous should have a foretaste of their joys, and hope that the wicked of their torments, immediately after death, but of which they infer to be certainly the case from the parable of the rich man and Lazarus (u). But to this it is objected, that the rich man supposed to be in hell, the place of torments, and that this punishment ought not to take place on their own hypothesis till after the sentence at the resurrection.
Another argument used for the intermediate state is the vision of St John in the Apocalypse. In this vision the Evangelist saw under the altar the souls of those that were slain for the word of God and for the testimony which they held. Their opponents doubt whether these visible souls were immaterial, as St John heard them cry with a loud voice, and saw white robes given unto every one of them. If they had bodies, that circumstance might chance to prove a resurrection immediately after death, and so supercede the general resurrection at the last day.
While such conclusions as are here drawn from the parable and vision, say the opposers of an intermediate consciousness of existence, imply that the dead are already raised, and are now receiving the respective rewards of their virtues and their crimes; those who maintain an intermediate separate existence, who speak of the body as a prison, and of the soul as receiving an increase of power when freed from the body, are certainly not more than consistent with themselves, when they think that this soul would derive an advantage from its after union with either a new system of matter or the old one, however much altered. Baxter, they say, who saw the inconsistency, was disposed to reason somewhat like Aeneas,
O, Father! can it be that souls sublime Return to visit our terrestrial clime? Or that the generous mind, released at death, Should covet lazy limbs and mortal breath?
In no one instance, they continue, have Christians perhaps more apparently than in this argument wrestled the scriptures to their own hurt; by thus rashly attempting to accommodate the sacred doctrines of religion to a preconceived philosophical hypothesis, they have laid themselves open to the ridicule of deists, and have been obliged, for the sake of consistency, either to deny or to speak slightingly of the resurrection; which is certainly the surest foundation of their hope; seeing St Paul hath assured us, that if there be no resurrection of the dead, then they which are fallen asleep in Christ are perished, and those who survive may eat and drink, and act as they please, for tomorrow they die; and die, too, never to live again.
Though this reproof may be rather severe, we are forry
(u) Whitby shows that this parable was conformable to the notions of the Jews at that time; and even the Mahometans, who believe in the resurrection of the dead, suppose likewise a state of rewards and punishments in the grave. Refusen- forry to observe that there seems to have been some- times too much reason for it. A certain divine, whose piety was eminent, and whose memory we respect, hav- ing written "An Essay towards the proof of a sepa- rate State of Souls between Death and the Resurrec- tion, and the Commencement of the Rewards of Vir- tue and Vice immediately after death," has taken this motto, "Because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil." The doctrine, he says, of the resurrection of the body and the consequent states of heaven and of hell, is a guard and motive of divine force, but it is renounced by the enemies of our holy Christianity; and should we give up the recom- pense of separate souls, while the devil denies the resur- rection of the body, I fear, between both we should sadly enfeeble and expose the cause of virtue, and leave it too naked and defenceless."
This author, who wishes much that the punishment of crimes should follow immediately after death, is of opinion, that if heaven intended to check vice and im- purity in the world, it has acted unwisely, if it really has deferred the punishment of the wicked to so late a pe- riod as the resurrection. "For such, he observes, is the weakness and folly of our natures, that men will not be so much influenced and alarmed by distant prospects, nor so solicitous to prepare for an event which they suppose to be so very far off, as they would for the same event, if it commences as soon as ever this mortal life expires. The vicious man will indulge his sensualities, and lie down to sleep in death with this comfort, I shall take my rest here for 100 or 1000 years, and per- haps in all that space my offences may be forgotten; or let the worst come that can come, I shall have a long sweet nap before my sorrows begin: and thus the force of divine terrors is greatly enervated by this delay of punishment."
Thus far our author, who thinks that his hypothe- sis, if not true, is at least expedient, and that from mo- tives of expediency it ought to be inculcated as a doc- trine of Scripture: but how far his reasons can be here justified we mean not to determine; we shall leave that to be settled by others, reminding them only that the distance of future rewards and punishments is not greater on the supposition of the sleep of the soul than on the contrary hypothesis. Every man who has but dipped into the science of metaphysics knows, and no man ever knew better than he who is believed to have been the author of the work before us, that time unperceived passes away as if in an instant; and that if the soul be in a state void of consciousness between death and the re- surrection, the man who has lain in his grave a thou- sand years will appear to himself to have died in one moment and been raised in the next. We would like- wise recommend to those who may henceforth be incli- ned to inculcate any thing as a doctrine of scripture merely on account of its supposed expediency, always to remember that God is above, that they are below, that he is omniscient, that they are of yesterday and know little, that their words therefore should be wary and few, and that they should always speak with re- spect of whatever concerns the Sovereign of the universe, or relates to his government either in the natural or mo- ral world. For wilt thou, says the Highest, disannul my judgement? Wilt thou condemn me that thou may- est be righteous? shall he that contendeth with the Al- mighty instruct him? He that reproveth God let him answer it.
If, in stating these opposite opinions, we may seem to have favoured what has been called the sleep of the soul, it is not from any conviction of its truth, for there are particular texts of Scripture which appear to us to mili- tate against it. We are satisfied, however, that it is a very harmless opinion, neither injurious to the rest of the articles of the Christian faith nor to virtuous practice; and that those who have poured forth torrents of obloquy upon such as may have held it in simplicity and godly fervour, have either mistaken the doctrine which they condemned, or been possessed by a spirit less mild than that of the gospel (x).
Whatever be the fate of the middle state, the resur- rection stands on a different basis. It is repeatedly af- firmed in Scripture; and those grounds on which we be- lieve it are authenticated facts, which the afflication, the ingenuity, and the hatred of sceptics, have number- less times attempted in vain to disprove. These facts we are now to consider, referring our readers for the character of the witnesses, the authenticity of the gospel- history, and the possibility of miracles, to the parts of this work where these subjects are treated (See MIRACLE, METAPHYSICS, Part I. chap. vii. and RELIGION); or, should more particular information be required, to the writings of Ditton, Sherlock, and Well.
Our Lord, after proving his divine mission by the miracles which he wrought, and by the completion of ancient predictions in which he was described, declared that the doctrine of a resurrection was one of those truths which he came to announce. To show that such an event was possible, he restored to life the daughter of Jairus, a ruler of the synagogue, a young man of Nain, who was carried out on his bier to be buried, and his friend Lazarus, whose body at the time was thought to have become the prey of corruption. Though the two first of these miracles were wrought in the presence of a number of witnesses, yet the last, owing to particular circumstances, produced a much greater noise among the Jews. It was performed on a person seemingly of some note, in the village of Bethany, not far from Je- rusalem, and in the presence of a great many persons who from the metropolis had come to console with Mary and Martha. No doubts were entertained of the reality of Lazarus's death. Our Lord was at a distance
(x) Perhaps no man has been more culpable in this respect than the celebrated Warburton, who seems at first to have himself denied an intermediate state of conscious existence. He afterwards imagined that such a state is sup- posed, though not expressly asserted, in Scripture; and at last he maintained it with all the zeal and warmth of a profelyte. To prove the sincerity of his conversion, he treated his adversaries with scurrilous nicknames, banter, and abuse; a species of reasoning which seldom succeeds in recommending a bad cause, and which never confers credit on one that is good. when he expired, and his body had already been lying for some days in the grave. When he came forth at the voice of our Lord, all were astonished. Those from Jerusalem, on returning home, are impatient to relate what they had seen; those who heard of no memorable event cannot conceal it; the report reaches the ears of the Pharisees and chief priests. They are soon made acquainted with every circumstance; and dreading the issue, they think it necessary to call a council upon the occasion, and concert the measures that ought to be pursued in a matter which was likely to be attended with so many and important consequences. In this council, it seems to be agreed, that our Lord had performed, and was still continuing to perform, many miracles; that this last miracle, as being of an extraordinary kind, would make many converts; and that if measures were not speedily taken to prevent these uncommon displays of his power, all would believe on him; the jealousy of the Romans would be excited, the rulers deplored, and the nation of the Jews deprived of its few remaining privileges. Yet notwithstanding these private concessions made in the council, the members who dreaded to let their sentiments be known to the people, affect in public to treat our Saviour as an impostor. But he who had already demonstrated the absurdity of their opinions, who supposed that his miracles were wrought by Beelzebub prince of the devils, is again ready to confute the ridiculous affections of those who pretended to say that they were a deception. His friend Lazarus was still living at the distance of only a few miles, and many of the Jews who had gone to see him were ready to attest the truth of the report. If the rulers, apprehending the consequences of the truth, be afraid to know it, and if they are unwilling to go to Bethany, or to send for Lazarus and those who were present at his resurrection, our Lord gives them a fair opportunity of detecting his fraud, if there was any such to be found in him. To preserve their power, and remove the jealous suspicion of the Romans, it had been already determined in council to put him to death; and our Lord foretells that the third day after his death he shall rise from the grave. Here no place was reserved for deception. The feet of the Pharisees and the chief priests are openly warned and put upon their guard; and very fortunately for the cause of Christianity, this singular prediction was not heard with scorn, or indeed, if with scorn, it was only affected. We know from the sentiments expressed in the council, that our Lord was secretly dreaded by the rulers; and that his predictions, in their private opinion, were not to be slighted. The means accordingly which they employed to prevent, even in the very appearance, the completion of his prophecy, were admirably calculated to remove the scruples of the most wary and sceptical inquirers, if their object was only to search after truth. At the next festival of the passover, when the scheme of Caiaphas was put in execution, and when it was deemed expedient by the council that he should die, to save the nation from the jealousy of the Romans; as a proof of their steady loyalty to Rome he was apprehended, was tried as an enemy to her government, was at last condemned upon false evidence, and suspended on a cross until they were fully satisfied of his death. Even after his death, the spear of a soldier was thrust into his side; and the water that gushed out with the blood is a proof to those who are acquainted with the structure and economy of living bodies, that he must have been some time dead.
After he was taken down from the cross, a seal was put on the door of the sepulchre in which he was laid, and above as the best check against secret fraud; and a guard of all His soldiers was stationed around it, as the best security against open violence. In spite, however, of all these precautions, the prediction was accomplished; the angel of God, descending from heaven with a countenance like lightning, and with raiment white as snow; the watch flake, and become as dead men; the earth quakes; the stone is rolled from the mouth of the sepulchre; the angel sits on it, and our Lord comes forth.
It was in vain for the Jews to allege that his disciples came in the night, and stole him away, while the watch were asleep. One must smile at these puerile affections. How came the disciples to know that the watch were asleep? or what excuse had the watch for sleeping, and incurring a punishment which they knew to be capital in the Roman law? and how came they, in the name of wonder, to be brought as an evidence for those transactions that happened at the time when they were asleep?
Whatever credit may be given by modern infidels to this ill-framed story, it is past dispute that it had none among the Jewish rulers at the time that it was current. Not long after our Saviour's resurrection, the apostles were called before the council, and threatened with death for teaching in the name of Jesus. Their boldness upon that occasion was so provoking to the rulers, that the threat would have been instantly put in execution, had not Gamaliel, a doctor of the law of high reputation, put them in mind of other impostors who had perished in their attempts to mislead the people; and concluded a very sensible speech with these remarkable words: "And now, I lay unto you, refrain from those men, and let them alone; for if this counsel, or this work, be of men, it will come to nought; but if it be of God, ye cannot overthrow it, lest haply ye be found even to fight against God." This advice the council followed. But is it possible that Gamaliel could have given it, or the council paid the least regard to it, had the story of the disciples flealing the body been then credited? Surely some among them would have observed, that a work or counsel, founded on imposture and fraud, could not be supposed to be of God, and they would unquestionably have slain the apostles.
The story of stealing the body is indeed one of the most senseless fictions that ever was invented in support of a bad cause. Our Lord was on the earth 40 days after he arose. He appeared frequently to his disciples. He ate and drank in their presence; and when some of them doubted, he bade them handle him and see that he was not a spectre, showed the mark of the spear in his side, and the prints of the nails in his feet and hands. Besides thus appearing to his disciples, he was seen by more than 500 brethren at one time; all of whom, as well as his disciples, must necessarily have known him previous to his suffering, and could therefore attest that he was the person who was once dead, but was then alive. Yet for strangers in general, who had not seen him previous to his death, and could not therefore identify his person after he arose, our Lord reserved many other proofs that were equally convincing. Before his ascension, he bade his disciples wait till they received power, by the Holy Ghost. Ghost descending upon them: That then they should be witnesses with him, both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost ends of the earth; in order that the people of all these nations, observing the miracles wrought in his name, might themselves become ocular witnesses that those who preached his resurrection were warranted to do so by his authority; and that this authority, on which so numerous miracles attended, must be divine.
We intend not here to examine the minute objections and cavils that have been advanced respecting the truth of this important fact. The kinds, however, we shall mention in general. Some have doubted of our Lord's resurrection, as being an event which is not confirmed by general experience, because they imagine that what happens once should happen again, and even repeatedly, in order to be true. Some, taking their own to be preferable schemes, have objected to the way in which it happened, and to the manner in which it is narrated.—Some have imagined, that possibly the gospel history may be false; that possibly the disciples were very ignorant, and might be deceived; that possibly, too, they were deep politicians, and a set of impostors; and that possibly the writings which detected their falsehoods may have been destroyed. It is difficult to reason, and worse to convince, against this evidence of possibilities: but we flatter ourselves, that to the candid reader it will appear sufficiently overturned in our article Miracle; where it is shown that neither clowns nor politicians could have acted the part that was acted by the apostles, had not the resurrection been an undoubted fact.
Some of the objectors to it have also maintained, that possibly there is nothing material without us, that there is nothing mental within us, and that possibly the whole world is ideas. This mode of arguing we pretend not to explain; it is thought by some to proceed entirely from a pervertent of mind or disposition, while in books of medicine it is always considered as a symptom of disease, and the patient recommended to be treated in the hospital, and not in the academy.
By his raising others, and particularly by rising himself, from the dead, our Saviour demonstrated that a resurrection from the dead is possible. And on that authority, which by his miracles he proved to be divine, he declared to his followers, that there is to be a general resurrection both of the just and of the unjust, instructing his disciples to propagate this doctrine through all nations; St Paul confessing, that if there be no resurrection of the dead, preaching is vain, and our faith is vain.
As to the order of succession in which the dead are to be raised, the Scriptures are almost silent. St Paul says, that every man is to rise in his own order, and that the dead in Christ are to rise first: and St John observed in his vision, that the souls of them which were beheaded for the witness of Jesus, and for the word of God, and which had not worshipped the beast, neither his image,
Vol. XVII. Part II.
Neither had received his mark upon their foreheads, or resurrection in their hands, lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years; but the rest of the dead lived not again until the thousand years (y) were finished.
A question that has much oftener agitated the minds of men is, with what sort of bodies are the dead to be raised? St Paul has answered, with incorruptible and immortal bodies (z). And to silence the disputatious caviller of his day, he illustrated his doctrine by the growth of grain. "Thou fool (said he), that which thou sowest, thou sowest not that body that shall be, but bare grain, it may chance of wheat or of some other grain." To us it appears very surprising, that any one who reads this passage with the slightest attention, should perplex himself, or disturb the church with idle attempts to prove the identity of the bodies with which we shall die and rise again at the last day. The apostle expressly affirms, that "flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; that we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump; that there are celestial bodies and bodies terrestrial; and that the glory of the celestial is one, and the glory of the terrestrial another."
That this implies a total change of qualities, will admit of no dispute; but still it has been considered as an article of the Christian faith, that we are to rise with the same bodies in respect of substance. What is meant by the identity of substance, with qualities wholly different, it is not very easy to conceive. Perhaps the meaning may be, that our incorruptible bodies shall consist of the same material particles with our mortal bodies, though these particles will be differently arranged to produce the different qualities. But as the particles of our present bodies are constantly changing, and as different particles compose the body at different times, a question has been put, With what set of particles shall we rise? Here a singular variety of opinions have been held. Some** Leibnitz contend, that we shall rise with the original stamina of our bodies derived from our parents; some are for rising with that set of particles which they had at birth; some with the set which they are to have at death; and some with the particles which remain after maceration in water; though, God knows, that if this maceration be continued long, they may arise with few or no particles at all. Another query has given much alarm. What if any of these particles should enter a vegetable, compose its fruit, and be eaten by a man, woman, or a child? Will not a dispute, similar to that apprehended by the Sadducees about the wife of the seven brothers, necessarily follow, whose particles are they to be at the resurrection?
Against this confusion, they trust that the goodness and wisdom of heaven will take all the proper and necessary measures; and they even venture to point out a way in which that may be done. A foot deep of earth, they observe, in two or three of the counties of England, supposing each person to weigh on an average about seven stones and a few pounds, would amply supply with material
(y) These thousand years formed the happy millenium so often mentioned in the ancient fathers; and the learned Burnet, in his Theory of the Earth, has endeavoured to prove, that a similar notion prevailed among the Jews See MILLENIUM.
(z) Our Saviour rose with the same body, both as to substance and qualities; because it was necessary that his person should be known and identified after his resurrection. RESURRECTION
Material bodies 600,000,000 of souls for no less a space than 20,000 years; and therefore there seems to be no necessity for the vamping up of their old materials to lodge and accommodate new souls.
But, unluckily here, the question is not about the possibility of keeping the particles of different bodies separate and distinct. The question is rather, What have the Scriptures determined on the subject? Now the Scriptures say, that the spirit returns unto God who gave it. And should it be asked, in what place does he refer it till the resurrection? the Scriptures reply, in the place of the dead; because the soul descends into the pit, is redeemed from the grave; and the sting of death, the last enemy that is to be destroyed, shall be taken away when the trumpet of God shall sound: at which time the dead that sleep in their graves shall awake, shall hear the voice, and shall come forth. There is not here so much as a word concerning the body; and therefore it was asked, with what bodies are the dead to be raised? To which it was answered, the vile body is to be changed. The body which is, is not the body which shall be; for the incorruptible must put on incorruption, and that which is mortal, put on immortality.
This curious discovery of the sentiments of Scripture we owe to a layman, the celebrated Locke; who, in one of his controversies with the bishop of Worcester, came to understand what he knew not before, namely, that nowhere have the Scriptures spoken of the resurrection of the same body in the sense in which it is usually conceived. The resurrection of the same person is indeed promised; and how that promise may be fulfilled, notwithstanding the constant change of the particles of the body, has been shown in another place. See METAPHYSICS, Part III, Chap. iii.
The advocates, therefore, for the resurrection of the mortal body, have again been obliged to betake themselves to the shifts of reasoning. It is proper, say they, that the same bodies which have been accomplices in our vices and virtues, should also share in our rewards and punishments. Now, granting they will, shall one set of particles be bound for the crimes, or be entitled to receive the rewards, of the animal system, from its first commencement to its dissolution? or shall every particle rise up successively, and receive its dividend of rewards and punishments for the vices and virtues that belonged to the system during the time that they were in union with the sentient principle? and is the hand that fell in defending a father to be (as is supposed in some of the eastern countries) rewarded in heaven; while the other that struck him when the son became vicious, is dismissed into torments?
Finding this hypothesis supported by neither Scripture nor reason, they next appeal to the ancient fathers. And they, it is confessed, are for the resurrection of the very same flesh. But this notion is directly contrary to the Scriptures, which have said, that flesh and blood are not to inherit the kingdom of God.
But whatever be the bodies with which the dead are to be raised at the general resurrection, all mankind must appear in judgment, and receive sentence according to the deeds done in the body, without regard, so far as we know, to their actions and conduct in the middle state. After this sentence, the righteous are to enter into celestial and eternal joys, and the wicked to suffer the punishments of hell. These punishments some have supposed to be everlasting; others think, that after some temporary punishment, the souls of the wicked are to be annihilated; and others imagine, that after doing purgatorial penance for a while in hell, they are to be again received into favour; inclining to explain the denunciations of the Almighty as a child would do the threatenings of his mother, or a lover the affected chiding of his mistress.