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possess. He is not shut up in what he knows, but is allowed to go on into what he may know. He must philosophize, or deny his reason. From the nature of the mind, he is inly urged to complete the utmost circle of his knowledge, to follow truth back to its absolute cause, and out to its possible result. He may thus reverently theorize upon what is revealed of the future state, just as he does upon the nature of God and the principles of his moral government. But theory cannot add to revealed truth itself; even as science cannot add to the revelation of God's truth in nature. We may have "physical theories of a future life," but not new truths of a future life. The doctrine of the resurrection of the body may be philosophically studied, and the sublime fact may be relatively harmonized with all physical and psychological truth; but no new truth can be ingrafted upon the fact itself, or its circumstances, or the state of the raised body, or the reasons of its resurrection. Here is the falseness of Swedenborg's manifestation of a future state. It gives new facts. It is not a philosophy, but a revelation. It paints the architecture of heaven and hell, and lets us gaze into and scrutinize the apartments of glory and shame. The revelator says: "I can sacredly and solemnly declare, that the Lord himself has been seen of me, and that he has sent me to do what I do, and for such purpose has opened the interior part of my soul, which is my spirit, so that I can see what is in the spiritual world, and those that are therein."* Philosophy may indeed carry its rationalizing process in relation to revealed truth too far, while Cant cleaves off too much of liberty. There is sometimes an air of dictation in religious philosophizing, to which a simple believer of the Scriptures will not submit. After all its analysis of causes and development of laws, he says, "leave me to the honest Word of God." There has been much of this species of refined speculation in respect to the future life. Men are treated as unintelligent who will not assent to certain philosophical views of the next world, and to a kind of metaphysical immortality, and who even prefer the holy silence of inspiration.

Archbishop Whately's work on the Future State consists of lectures delivered to "a mixed congregation,"† and was intended to be "plain and popular; "† and it certainly is so in its transparent style and admirable arrangement of topics. There is not a word or sentence in it which a plain man could not comprehend. It has many of the unequalled qualities of Whately's writings, his precision in the use of language, robust reasoning, and sound common sense. The design of the book is distinctly said to be, "to clear and settle "s the scriptural doctrine of a future state. It is to bring out the mind of the Spirit on this important theme.

*

Quoted from Bush's Memorabilia.

† Page 1. Preface.

‡ Ibid.

§ Page 29.

To give the theories and assertions of men is not the purpose of the work. The Christian world needs such a book; for, as the writer hints, even the familiar views of the pulpit on a future life are generally vague, contradictory, and unimpressive. Yet, instead of "clearing and settling" all things, has not the author left many wholly theoretical and conjectural views standing bald and unsettled, very troublesome rocks for his common-sense hearer to break the ploughshare of his thought and faith upon ?

The opening chapter is upon the Immortality of the Soul. We stand as it were on the coast, and look on the dim ocean of eternity, before embarking upon it. The truth of immortality was revealed, the writer thinks, to the Jew, but not in its practical power. God seemed willing to have rested in the revelation of his own being, and of a moral government over his people, which drew its energy chiefly from the narrower compass of this life. Moses pointed the people principally to temporal rewards and punishments. Job and his friends did not seem to use the key of immortality to unlock the problem of evil. "Sheol," in its shadowy boundaries, may have afforded to them and to the general Jewish mind, the hope of a lengthened vitality, and even of a higher spiritual life; but so weak in comparison with the vivid promises and threatenings of God for the present life, as to be of less moment. But there is a marked advance in the Psalms and Prophecies in regard to this truth; and the advance is ever in connection with a growing clearness of faith in a Redeemer. Christ can never be disconnected from the truth of immortality throughout revelation, even from its beginning. The believing minds among the old Jews, as was the case with Abraham, grasped the truth of immortality. These susceptible and inspired minds stood like the peaks of an Alpine range along the line of Hebrew history, tinged with the light of immortality from their elevation of faith alone; they caught the rising of the Sun of Righteousness; but the greater mass of minds were in the struggling gloom and light, the duskiness of the first dispensation. The instinct of immortality was visible even in the classic pagan mind, though our author is positive in asserting its impractical and hopeless impotency. His view here is much stronger than that of most writers on the rational argument for the soul's immortality who see in Plato's reasonings something of the depth and spirit of New Testament truths, drawing the necessity of the soul's immortality from God Himself. Whately may be regarded by some as finding too little of immortality in the Old Testament; but if eternal life were fully revealed to the ancient Jew, and yet Christ as the way of life was not fully revealed to him, then of course eternal life was won or lost by him through his obedience or disobedience of the law. But this could not be; for obedience is a simple debt to

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God, not a ground for reward, and more than that, of infinite bliss. "Eternal life is the gift of God," and that "through Jesus Christ our Lord." Should not, then, the truth respecting the Old Testament be maintained, that it was a dawning light, in order that the glory of the gospel may be seen? "Our Saviour Jesus Christ, who hath abolished death, and hath brought life and immortality to light through the gospel "--this is the rising of the sun; and, living as we do in its light and heat, we forget there ever was a time when it had not risen upon the earth. Whately has perhaps done good by his arguments in favour of the consummate glory of the gospel. We read the Old Testament from the higher point of view in the New. It is new to the Christian mind, just as a chaotic landscape of night is brought out and, as it were, created by the morning light. It was there before; but we see in it what the old Hebrew never could have seen in it. Our gratitude to the Lord Jesus should be the more intense. "And this is the record, that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son." The lesser idea of immortality or incorruption is comprehended in the greater idea of "eternal life," which has a glorious moral truth, and which can even be begun to be blessedly realised in this life. The soul disconnected from God by sin is united in Christ to God, and has from him a spiritual and divine life. "He that hath the Son hath life," - not a mere continuous existence, but a living in the good, a partaking of the divine.

The next three lectures, forming a large part of the book, are upon the Intermediate State. There is and always will be a certain irrepressible desire to know where the soul, when it has left the body like a piece of kneaded clay, has instantly gone. What is its immediate condition? It is said at the outset of the lectures that there are two views of the intermediate state between death and the resurrection, the one that it is a condition of consciousness, the other, of unconsciousness. The arguments are then given in full for the two theories, the writer leaving them both standing without his decided approbation of either, but strongly leaning towards the theory of unconsciousness. Was this the way, we venture to ask, "to clear and settle" so obscure a point to plain minds? Was the point itself one to say so much upon theoretically, when the Word of God, which was to be the sole guide, says so little upon it? These chapters are really unsettling. How many of those unlearned hearers knew before that there was such a theory as that "the intermediate state of the soul " was one "of profound sleep, of utter unconsciousness?"* There is no proof adduced that this theory has ever been a general one. It is simply said that it "has been held by able and pious men."† But historically, it has been held by individuals here and there, who, in the earlier ages of the church, mingled materialistic ideas of sin with the Christian faith. In the instance of Justin Martyr, his Platonic views seemed to have led him to a theory of the gradual elimination of sin in a future state. But in the short fragment he has left us on this point, it is difficult to draw the conclusion that he believed in an unconscious state after death. In the case of Irenæus and also of Tertullian, their desire to save the doctrine of the resurrection of the body from the assaults of philosophy, drove them to the creation of a place for the detention or sequestration of departed spirits. They took up a kind of pagan under-world of shades, because they would keep back the army of spirits until the great voice of the resurrection met them, and permitted them to come forth. But even they did not hold the view of an unconscious state. Tertullian calls the abode of the righteous in the interim, "locum divinæ amœnitatis." * He characterises the intermediate state by the phrase " prælibatio sententiæ,"† the enduring of a mitigated sentence. The idea with him, so often expressed, seemed to be that of a condition of vivid enjoyment or suffering, but not the consummate blessedness or misery of the completed state of bodily existence after the resurrection. Martyrs alone had the prerogative of entering at once into the full felicity of that heavenly state. The expression in the burial service of the English Episcopal Church, "those that are asleep," is thought by Whately to favour the doctrine of an unconscious intermediate state.‡

* Page 80.

† Page 49.

* Tertulliani op. Apologeticus, 47.

† Tertullian op. de Anima, 48.

‡ "We have been asked once or twice if the Protestant Episcopal Church believes in the doctrine of an intermediate state, between death and the general judgment. We take this method of answering, most unequivocally, 'Yes.' It is a matter of great surprise that there should be the least shadow of a doubt on a matter which is so openly and plainly declared by all the standard writers of the church, such as Burnet, Tomline, Hobart, Whately, Burton, Sherwood, Waite, and others, as well as the Thirty-nine Articles. The dead in Christ do not go to heaven, but to Hades, where they remain until after the resurrection." -Western Episcopalian.

This is the first time we were aware that this was the general doctrine of the Episcopal Church. Clearly this is not archbishop Whately's representation. He claims it only to have been the opinion of individuals. He says:- "The authors of our church-services, at least of the burial service, seem to have adopted the former of these opinions (that of immediate introduction to conscious reward or punishment), though they have nowhere insisted upon it as an article of faith; nor is the point noticed at all in the creed (or symbol) of our church, which the Reformers of it drew up, and which is usually called the Thirty-nine Articles." p. 49.

Bishop Burnet, in his Exposition of the Thirty-nine Articles, uses the following language upon the Third Article-As Christ died for us, and was buried, so also is it to be believed, that he went down into hell: "Another conceit has had a great course among some of the latest fathers and the

The Scriptural argument for an intervening state of sleep is chiefly founded, according to our author, upon this expression, "asleep," or "sleep," as applied to death. It is said that it is singular the word "sleep" should be used for an active, conscious condition. It should rather denote a state of profound insensibility, when the disembodied soul, deprived of the means of manifestation, remains wrapped in slumber.

The application of the term 'sleep' to death in the New Testament, is evidently taken from the Old. Job says, "for now shall I sleep in the dust." David says, "lighten my eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death." It is not only a natural poetic analogon of death, but corresponds with the more dim ideas of the Old Testament writers, respecting a future state. The present life was the life of action with them, the time of suffering, enjoyment, toil. Sheol or Hades, signifying 'the whole future world,' and not necessarily the grave, was not yet filled with the holy activity of Christ's presence and kingdom, or with the entirely clear light of an everlasting day. The light in it was rather that of night, starlight and shadows, the time of sleep. To be hid from all trouble in the pavilion of God was one of the highest conceptions of the ancient Hebrews, of another state. The use of the word "sleep" for "death" was very common among the Greek poets. Homer, narrating the sudden death of a warrior in battle, calls it "the iron sleep of death." Sophocles, in Elec. 509, uses the term "slept" for death. Among harassed, warlike nations a peaceful sleep was a state of blessedness. Dr. Livingstone, the African traveller, gives a curious illustration of this on pages 241, 597. Am. ed. of his work. And in the early days of the Christian

schoolmen. They have fancied that there was a place to which they have given a peculiar name, Limbus Patrum, a sort of partition in hell, where all the good men of the Old Dispensation, that had died before Christ, were detained; and they hold that our Saviour went thither and emptied that place, carrying all the souls that were in it with him into heaven. Of this the Scriptures say nothing; not a word of either of the patriarchs going thither, or of Christ's delivering them out of it. And, though there are not in the Old Testament express declarations and promises made concerning a future state, Christ having brought life and immortality to light through his gospel, yet all the hints given of it, show that they looked for an immediate admission into blesseduess after death. So David: "Thou wilt show me the path of life; in thy presence is fulness of joy, and at thy right hand are pleasures for evermore. Thou shalt guide me by thy counsel, and afterwards receive me to glory." Isaiah says, that "the righteous when they die enter into peace. The bishop remarks further, that this Third Article could only mean that Christ really died, and was buried; that his soul truly departed from his body, and went into the place of blessed spirits, where all the righteous would be with him. Surely a Christian wishes nothing more than this, call the place what you will.

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