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    Miscellaneous Correspondence. 863

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    On The Ihcssinn-S Of The General Resurre...

    rales discerned the least traces of auy conscious existeuce appertaining to Jesus in ihe interim between his death and resurrection ; every clieuinstance tends to prove that during ahat interval every

    power had shared the saroe fate as the body ; his frcends witnessed nothing to cheer their spirits , his enemies nothing to alarm their apprehensions . On the other handy no sooner had it resumed its functions , than the most undeniable proofs were afforded of his conscious existence . His enemies , indeed , had no direct intercourse with him , but proofs , less liable to be mistaken than any such indications through the medium

    of his presence , were afforded them , and together with the invisibility of bis person , established the fact that his whole nature hid undergone the sauie glorious transformation , and was elevated above the power of death . To the disciples we have seen that every indication was

    afforded of his ordinary invisible existence ,, not in consequence of auy separation of the spirit from its corporeal tenement , but in consequence of the complete translation of his person . It was a state of spiritual existence , the result not of the death of the body or person , but of its revival and translation to a state in which it is no more liable to suftVr dissolution . It is observable that no indications were ever given of the presence of Jesus but through the medium of his person , the evidences of liis presence were always corporeal ; and every proof which was offered of his invisible presence was through the manifestation ; of his person from ,, or its return to , a state of invisibility . Thus the immortal life of Jesus was

    realized ; , amd the proof of its existence established , by means precisely the reverse of those on which the belief in shades or ghosts of persons actually in the state of dealh was founded , lltey were mere transient vestiges of those who had once lived floating in the injagitaatiouis of survivors , but whose real

    persons were mouldering to dust ; while lie was translated above the power of corruption ,, and the evidences of his existence iu that state were . such as could not have been anticipated nor imagined by those to whom the phenomena were presented . They were so far from giving any . substantial or satisfactory proofs of their actual existence as external

    realities , that they eluded every attempt to obtain evidence , being as intangible as *< empty wind , or dreams , the mere elusions of the mind ; " and 4 < vanishing at

    On The Ihcssinn-S Of The General Resurre...

    the crowing of the cock , " the approach of day ., and the steady eye of sense and reason ; while he gave no proofs of his presence and of the great changes in his person , but such as were substantial and satisfactory , calculated to produce conviction in minds under prepossessions of a quite opposite description , and who could be induced to believe in the

    seemingly inconsistent phenomena presented to them only by the strong force of reality . In short , the whole system of flitting apparitions , shades ., or souls of the dead , while the person remains inanimate , is as void of real evidence as it is gloomy and unsubstantial , while the doctrine of a resurrection from death , as exemplified in the person of our great

    forerunner and deliverer from the grave , is based on evidence as solid as its nature is glorious and everlasting . By establishing this principle , Christianity dispels all the idolatries and superstitions arising from the belief in the existence of human ghosts , and vindicates the absolute authority of the only Irving and true God , over both the present and the future existence .

    The greatest adulteration to which ( Christianity has been subjected appears to me to have been that which has arisen from confounding its doctrine of the resurrection with that of the separate existence of the soul , and its destination to a state either of eternal happiness or misery . Its supposed transit to regions of bliss or woe immediately after

    decease , which is still the prevailing idea of Protestants , differs from the hades of the Heathens , with its elysium and tartarusy chiefly by the heightening it gives to the images , and the additional faith it may in general have con ferret ! upon the persuasion . It . is truly surprising that the mass of professing Christians should appear to have no distinct ideas of the difference between such an immediate

    transit of a disembodied soul to its final state cither of reward or punishment , and a resurrection of the person at some future period appointed by God ; but that the former persuasion should be predominant in most men ' s minds , while the latter , if regarded as a proper revival of the whole man from previous

    inanimation , or in scriptural terms , ' a resurrection of the dead , " not of the body only , should be represented an a most dangerous and pernicious heresy ! Such was not the doctrine of the Apostle Paul , who in opposing the assertion that " there is no resurrection , " or , as some represented , that it " is past already , "

    Miscellaneous Correspondence. 863

    Miscellaneous Correspondence . 863

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Dec. 2, 1830, page 863, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/mrp_02121830/page/63/