CHAPTER X

THE RESURRECTION

HUMAN beings find themselves as members of a race which has existed for an immense period of time, while individually they are beings of comparatively very brief duration, at least as regards memory and physical continuity. Each can trace back his consciousness a little distance, and then there is a blank, this limit of memory corresponding to immaturity in the physical organism to which the consciousness is attached. Some consciousness evidently existed for a while previous to the extreme limit of memory in the adult. But the physical organism itself a little earlier began to be, becoming separated from a pre-existent human being in whom it first took shape. For some years consciousness with continuous memory acts through the physical organism, accumulating knowledge and forming character. But each adult human being sees that his fellows in course of time lose their physical vigour and finally cease to control their bodies and pass out of communication with him, though violence and certain other agencies may cause this to happen previously to the normal course of weakening and decay; and after this their bodies disintegrate, and the component particles become scattered and go to form new bodies.

But the human race is evidently going through a process in which the present lives constitute a stage. Scientific investigation into past history and the laws of human life and development has made it seem

probable that this is a process which tends to the growth of more elaborate and in some sense higher forms of consciousness. In particular, the progressive elimination of certain elements which seriously mar this brief human life, and the progressive development and protection of certain elements which seem valuable have already in some measure taken place and apparently will continue. As against this, however, the perfecting of life in other respects might render it really more miserable, if there were found no hope for life beyond death.

Human beings naturally recoil from the idea that death is the absolute end for them of consciousness, in which they have had, at any rate, had, at any rate, tastes of good. Furthermore, at certain moments in certain more highly developed souls there arises a sense of permanence as belonging to personality as such. And religion, with its trust in the good ordering of all things, brings assurance that there is life for the individual beyond death.

But deep and intense religious experience also indicates a certain escaping or rising above death of those who attach themselves to God. Death seems to be a kind of limitation belonging to the lower form of human life, from which a higher life, attained through earnest religion, would be exempt. But we may wonder how to relate the two intuitions—namely, that death does not put an end to personality, and that through religion souls escape from the kind of life in which death is involved.

But there naturally arises desire, not only to survive death and to escape death, but also to develop life. Now it is seen that life is developing in the race. And since this sort of development is normally development of such life as the individual already possesses, he desires to participate in it, so far as it seems to him to make for good. Consequently the mind is inclined to rebel against the suggestion that death cuts the indi

vidual off from the growing and improving life which appears in mankind. On the other hand, there comes desire for a kind of life free from certain limitations which seem to attach necessarily to human life of the kind which exists. Wherefore there are apt to alternate a wish to participate in the growing life of mankind and a wish for an ethereal life which could be attained only by a break with the present conditions of humanity.

In the New Testament there are indicated two orders of immortality. The first belongs apparently to all souls. Jesus in the parable of The Rich Man and Lazarus shows His belief that both good and bad have consciousness after death. The rebuke to the rich man who planned a scheme of increasing his wealth"Thou fool, this night they require thy life of thee; and the things which thou hast prepared, whose shall they be?"-implies the same.

We should also notice this passage in the Fourth Gospel, which, if, as supposed, not authentic of Jesus, bears witness to a belief in the survival of all souls current among the early Christians: "Marvel not at this; for an hour cometh, in which all that are in the tombs 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 judgment."

The second order of immortality is that which is granted only to the true children of God, to the faithful or redeemed. In the Synoptic Gospels it seems to be implied, though it is not expressly stated, that only the saved are to rise, at least in this saying: "When they shall rise from the dead, they neither marry, nor are given in marriage; but are as angels in Heaven." Accordingly the wicked, who, presumably, do not become as angels in Heaven, do not rise. the parallel passage in St. Luke this is clearly understood. The life without marriage and without death

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is for those "that are accounted worthy to attain to that world [age] and the resurrection from the dead." And the sons of God" are identical with "the sons of the resurrection." We should also notice the words, "Neither can they die any more." Does this indeed represent the mind of Jesus? Those in whom sin still reigns, He seems to say, have a consciousness beyond death, but they die again. And death and marriage go together, marriage replacing the lives which death takes away. But there is coming an age in which death, and consequently marriage and birth, for some at least, shall have ceased. At present mankind is wholly in the condition of mortality; but there will be for mankind a life of immortality, in which those who have become like God shall partake.

And then follows this argument: "But as touching the dead, that they are raised; have ye not read in the Book of Moses, in the passage about the Bush, how God spake unto him, saying, I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? He is not the God of the dead, but of the living [for all live unto Him-St. Luke]: ye do greatly err." Jesus drops, as it were, from the high level of present revelation to the common ground of appeal to Scripture. Apart from what I have been telling you, He seems to say, you should have known from the Sacred Book that God does not allow those who serve Him aright to perish. But is there not here indicated a form of immortality intermediate between that belonging to the wicked and that to which the true children of God will at last attain-one, namely, in which good men who have not yet attained to the resurrection partake, and such as may be fittingly spoken of as "life unto God"? And yet it is generally hazardous to decide as to the mind of Jesus from a single sentence.

The idea, however, that immortality is a condition. to which the devoted children of God attain in a coming age is stated elsewhere: "There is no man that hath

left home or brethren or sisters or mother or father or children or lands for my sake and the Gospel's sake, but he shall receive a hundredfold now in this time, homes and brethren and sisters and mothers and children and lands with persecutions, and in the world [age] to come eternal life." The restriction of the resurrection to the righteous springs from the general conception of the salvation of man as life, in contrast to the death which is the consequence of sin (Mark ix. 43, 45; x. 17; Luke x. 25).

In the mystical language of the Fourth Gospel eternal life both is a possession in this mortal existence and is to be attained hereafter, as in this saying: “He that eateth My flesh and drinketh My blood hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day." The believer in Jesus Christ-such appears to be the doctrine -has even between the barriers of birth and death the seed of life eternal; and death does not affect him as it does others; and this seed will grow into true deathlessness anon.

St. Paul's view of immortality closely resembles this. Already are the faithful risen with Christ (Colossians ii. 12; Ephesians ii. 6). But they shall be raised in another sense hereafter: "As in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive." The final conquest of death is yet to be gained: “The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death." But he seems also to have held, perhaps only later, that a spiritual body is obtained immediately on death: "We know that if the earthly house of our tabernacle be dissolved, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens."

Thirdly, the ultimate salvation of all is involved in the nature of God as represented by Jesus, and even implied in some of His sayings, for instance, that the publicans and harlots will enter the Kingdom of God

The words "at the last day," in vi. 39, 40, 44, 54, have been thought by eminent critics to be an interpolation (vide p. 273),