The Brighton Lectures

By the Rev. Dr. Jonathan Bayley

Lecture 4

Death and Resurrection

First published in London, 1858

reproduced by permission from a copy presented by the Rev. Lee Woofenden

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