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will perform, has declared that they who wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength: they shall mount up with wings as eagles: they shall run and not be weary, shall walk and not faint 16!"

LETTER XX.

On the Resurrection of the Body.

IF a being, which was constituted by the union of two substances essentially different, were appointed to continue, it must continue a mixed being, or it would be no longer the same being; so that if man is to exist in a future state, the doctrine of the resurrection of the body is a necessary consequence of his nature: those

16 Is. xl. 29, 31. An objecting correspondent has called upon me to reconcile the doctrine of Providence with the existence of moral evil. I entreat his attention to the following often quoted passage from Simplicius, a pagan writer before mentioned in this letter. Simplicius asks, "Whether God may be called the author of sin, because he permits the soul to use her liberty?" and answers the question thus:

"He who says that God should not permit the exercise of its freedom to the soul, must affirm one of these two things; either that the soul, though by nature capable of indifferently choosing good or evil, should yet be constantly prevented from choosing evil; or else that it should have been made of such a nature as to have no power of choosing evil.

"The former assertion (continues he) is irrational and absurd; for what kind of liberty would that be, in which there should be no freedom of choice? and what choice could there be, if the mind were constantly restrained to one side of every alternative? With respect to the second assertion, it is to be observed (says be) that no evil is in itself desirable, or can be chosen as evil. But if this power of determining itself either way in any given case must be taken from the soul, it must either be as something not good, or as some great evil. But whoever saith so, does not consider how many things there are which, though accounted good and desirable, are yet never put in competition with this freedom of will: for without it we should be on a level with the brutes; and there is no person who would rather be a brute than a man. If God then shows his goodness in giving to inferior beings such perfections as are far below this, is it incongruous to the Divine nature and goodness to give man a self-determining

who admit the immortality of the soul, and deny the resurrection of the body, therefore, forget the man, and, in effect, deprive him of existence beyond the grave. Still, it has been thought, by many persons in all ages, a thing incredible that God should raise the dead;" and the contrary is no where positively asserted, but in the Scriptures received by Christians, or in writings founded upon them. There are many passages in the Old Testament which either obscurely hint at the resurrection, or immediately refer to it2: yet they are by no means such as produced a firm belief in the doctrine among the Jews. The Sadducees, for example, "say that there is no resurrection, neither angel, nor spirit; but the Pharisees allow both"." And even among our Lord's disciples, though some of them, power over his actions, and to permit him the free exercise of that power? Had God, to prevent man's sin, taken away the liberty of his will, he would likewise have destroyed the foundation of all virtue, and the very nature of man; for there could be no virtue were there not a possibility of vice; and man's nature, had it continued rational, would have been Divine, because impeccable. Therefore (continues he), though we attribute to God, as its author, this self-determining power, which is so necessary in the order of the universe; we have no reason to attribute to him that evil which comes by the abuse of liberty for God doth not cause that aversion from good which is in the soul when it sins; he only gave to the soul such a power as might turn itself to evil, out of which he produces much good, which, without such a power, could not have been produced by Omnipotence itself."

:

Those who wish to go farther into this inquiry than the above observations of Simplicius will lead them, may turn to a very masterly "Essay on the Permission of Evil," in the second volume of the "Works" of Dr. Hamilton, late Bishop of Ossory; or to part the third of Mr. Samuel Drew's valuable " Essay on the Being, Attributes, and Providence of Deity." In the latter of these works most of the objections to what is denominated the doctrine of particular providence, have received a very decisive refutation.

1 Acts, xxvi. 8.

2 Such as Job, xix. 23-27. Dan. xii. 2, 3. Is. xxv. 8; xxvi. 19. Hos. vi. 2; xiii. 14. Ezek. xxxvii. 1-14. See also Ps. xlix. 14, 15, and Boothroyd's note, in loc. vol. ii. p. 124 of his Improved Version.

3 Matt. xxii. 23. Acts, xxiii. 8.

like Lazarus's sister Martha, believed that the dead would "rise again in the resurrection at the last day4,” others doubted and "wondered what rising from the dead could mean "." When Paul preached to the philosophers at Athens, and declared to them the resurrection of Jesus, they were astonished at the novelty and singularity of his doctrine, and "said, he seemeth to be a setter forth of strange gods, because he preached unto them Jesus and the Resurrection" these philosophers were so deplorably ignorant as, when the Apostle used the words Ιησους and Αναστασις, to fancy that he was labouring to introduce a new god and goddess amongst them! When he urged the matter still farther, they scoffed:" and on another occasion, when he was pleading before Agrippa and Festus, the latter interrupted him the moment he adverted to the resurrection of Jesus, exclaiming, "Paul, thou art mad, much learning driveth thee to madness"." Conformably with the conduct of most other heathens, Pliny classes it amongst impossible things which God cannot accomplish,- -revocare defunctos, "to call back the dead to life." And Celsus calls the hope of the resurrection, "the hope of worms, a very filthy and abominable as well as impossible thing: it is that which God neither can nor will do, being base and contrary to nature."

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This doctrine of the Resurrection of the dead is, however, as I have already intimated, one of the great articles of the Christian faith. We believe that Jesus died and rose again; we also believe, for so we are taught in the New Testament, that " them which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him," that "Christ by his rising became the first fruits of them that slept," that 4 John, xi. 24.

6 Acts, xvii. 18.

5 Mark, ix. 10.

7 Acts, xxvi. 24.

8 Orig. cont. Cels. lib. v. This, of course, is refuted by Origen; and others of the Ante-nicene fathers, especially Justin Martyr and Tertullian, in their Apologies, most ingeniously defend the doctrine of the church as to this point. See also Clemens Romanus's 1st epistle. 9 See Letter VIII.

the

"the dead shall be raised incorruptible," that " grave and the sea shall give up their dead," that, at this resurrection, "the dead in Christ shall rise first," that the Lord Jesus Christ will change "our vile body, and fashion it like unto his glorious body, according to the working of that mighty power whereby he is able to subdue all things to himself1."

Clearly as this doctrine is revealed, in the above quoted and several other places of Scripture, it is notwithstanding doubted by many professing Christians. And it has been usually denied by infidels, and selected by them as one of the most vulnerable points in the system of Christianity. Yet, taking Deists upon their own ground, I conceive the reasonableness, if not the necessity, of the resurrection may be established: while, to those who allow the authenticity and correctness of the New Testament history, the matter will be placed beyond the reach of dispute.

In the estimation of Deists, God is a wise and just governor of the world: such a governor must reward the good and punish the wicked: but, in the present state, we often see good men under suffering, bad men following and enjoying pleasure, through the greater part of life: the character of the governor, therefore, requires that there should be a future state in which this great anomaly shall be adjusted; and, of course, a state of existence not for the body alone, nor for the soul alone, but for the man in his mixed nature, constituted of soul and body. It is the man, and not a part of him merely, which this simple train of reasoning requires us to expect shall be rewarded or punished",

10 1 Thes. iv. 14, 16. 1 Cor. xv. 20, 52. Rev. xx. 13. Phil. iii. 21.

11 I am aware it may be said, and indeed it has often been said, that since consciousness and feeling exist in the soul, the future existence of the soul is all that can fairly be inferred from this argument. But we have at least as good reasons for affirming as any can have for denying that in all probability the capacity of the soul for feeling the highest degrees of pleasure or pain depends upon its union with an organized body.

F F

Nor can the conclusion be fairly resisted, unless it can be shown that the resurrection of the body is impossible; and that it is not impossible may be safely inferred from history, and the analogy of nature, in the following manner.

From history we learn not merely that the body of Lazarus was reanimated after he had been interred four days, and that of Jesus Christ after it had lain in the grave part of three days; but farther, that" after His resurrection many bodies of the saints which slept arose from their graves," which had been thrown open by the earthquake at his crucifixion, "and went unto the holy city, and appeared unto many12; thus attesting the truth of his resurrection, and declaring their own rescue from the grave (in which some of them had long lain), by virtue of his power over death and corruption. So that to deny the possibility of the resurrection is to deny the truth of several matters of fact, all at least as well attested as any other facts in history; and that in contradiction to some very obvious modes of reasoning, and some striking analogies.

For, in the first place, the restoring to life a body deprived of motion, animation, and sensation, is not beyond the power of God: since the communication of any qualities to an organized body, or body capable of organization, which it had lost, cannot be imagined to require a greater exertion of power than the original creation of such body with certain appropriate attributes. Indeed, cases occur almost daily in which human efforts lead to a change to all appearance (and it should be remembered that we know little of death, except in regard to its mere appearances) as great as the deliverance of a dead man from the silence and inactivity of the grave. I allude to fainting-fits, and instances of suspended animation by drowning. In these the subject is often for a considerable time so completely void of motion, feeling, and, as it would seem, of life, that no one, who had never previously

12 Matt. xxvii. 52, 53.