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    evidence in support of such conjectures , not merely from the light of reafon * but from whatever dark and imperfect hints they can find or imagine in various incidental references to the subject in scripture ; yet the opinions which nave been espoused , as is well known , are very various , and , as far as the countenance is concerned which they derive , or are supposed to derive from the New Testament , perhaps nearly equally balanced . The srenerality of Christians , in the first place , taking it far granted that the

    descriptions of a day of judgment in the twenty-fourth and twenty-fifth chapters of Matthew , and other similar passages , are meant to refer to what is to happen in a future state , and then presuming that they are to be received as literal details of the awful transactions which will succeed the general resurrection , believe that all who are laid in the grave remain in the state of the dead , whatever that state is , till the end of the world , when a grand crisis or revolution is to take place , when the present order of things is to be destroyed , and all things to become new .

    Nothing , I think , can be more manifest , on a calm and rational consideration of these passages , than that the literal interpretation of them is , in its own nature , impossible , and inconsistent with other declarations of scripture ; at least an opposite inference might be deduced from other parabolical descriptions , ( as for instance from the history of the rich man and Lazarus , ) which we have just as good grounds for interpreting literally , as the parable of the sheep and the goats . Assuming that an interval , probably of very great length , is

    interposed between death and the resurrection , another question presents itself , upon which , partly in consequence of its connexion with a noted metaphysical controversy , much eager discussion has arisen ; what is the nature of this intermediate state ? The hody , it is evident , is resolved into its constituent elements , and its materials pass into other forms and combinations , from whence , if we must needs have it so , ( though the supposition is of no practical importance , noT essential to the maintenance of personal

    identity , ) there is no contradiction , and consequently , where divine power is concerned , nothing impossible in the idea that they may be reassembled , and organized bodies be again formed of the same identical particles at the resurrection . But what , it is said , becomes of the soul during this awful chasm ? If thought , according to the most prevalent notions , is essential to its existence , it must be somewhere in a state of consciousness , exercising consequently thought and reflection , and various active powers . This

    supposition , however , seems to be involved in mauy insuperable difficulties , which have been well stated by Bishop Law and other eminent writers . Their opinion is , that the soul is in a state of insensibility , subject to no change during all that period . This notion corresponds , and indeed almost coincides , with that of the Materialists ; both parties agreeing in the opinion that all conscious existence is entirely suspended during the interval between death and the resurrection . The advocates of this doctrine lay great stress

    on several expressions of St . Paul in the fifteenth chapter to the Corinthians ; particularly the 18 th verse , " Then they also who are fallen asleep in Christ are lost . " As far as their opinion is considered as opposed to the notion of an intermediate state of mental activity between death and the resurrection , it muBt , 1 think , be admitted that these passages are almost conclusive . Perhaps , however , it may be doubted how far they are conclusive , as some have supposed , in the dispute between those who contend for a literal general resurrection at the end of the . world , and those who think that the future state is to commence for each individual immediately , or at least after on | ya short interval from the termination of the present . They present

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    340 Thoughts on an Intermediate State .

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), April 2, 1830, page 240, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2583/page/24/