DISCOURSE XIII.

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IMMORTALITY.

AND AS TOUCHING THE DEAD, THAT THEY RISE, HAVE YE NOT READ IN THE BOOK OF MOSES, HOW IN THE BUSH 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 THE GOD OF THE LIVING:

FOR ALL LIVE UNTO HIM.- Mark xii. 26, 27.

The cardinal doctrine of Christ and the New Testament is the doctrine of immortality, that our being is not extinguished at death, that the soul, the spiritual part of man, on its separation from the body, passes into the spiritual world, where it retains its consciousness and its identity, and is for ever afterwards incapable of extinction, and no more subject to death. This doctrine is agreeable to the natural convictions, impressions, and expectations of all mankind. It is not only a natural conviction, but a moral sentiment. There is an involuntary prejudice against that man who calls this doctrine in question. It is felt concerning him, that he has abdicated the highest honor of his being, and that for some reason, discreditable to himself, he has renounced the highest dignity of man. There must

be some moral deficiency which leads a man to judge himself unworthy of so high a destiny, or some moral degradation or delinquency, which makes a man afraid to meet the issues of a spiritual and immortal life. In Jesus there was no such bias, and no reason for it. His soul was ever in unison with the harmonies of the unseen world, and therefore he spoke of it with perfect serenity, as a fixed and assured reality.

He placed the doctrine upon the ground of supernatural knowledge, of argument, and of fact. On this ground it has rested securely ever since. Promulgated on this new and higher evidence, it became the main element of the moral power of the Gospel, by which it created the world anew, gave the intellectual, the moral, and the spiritual in man a more fixed and decided supremacy over the animal than they had ever attained before, and brought down to earth the peace and the power of that heaven which it promised. The great peculiarity of the Gospel was, that "it brought life and immortality to light."

I purpose to-day to consider these three chief grounds of the doctrine of immortality as laid down by Jesus, his own supernatural knowledge, the argument derived from the religious nature of man, and the fact of his own resurrection.

There is nothing plainer to my mind, in the record of the New Testament, than the claim advanced by Jesus to supernatural knowledge, and the consciousness he displayed of possessing it. It is testified to by the Evangelists. "Before that Philip called thee, when thou wast under the fig-tree, I saw thee." That this knowledge was miraculous, and

was exhibited by Jesus as miraculous, and as an evidence of his divine mission, appears from what immediately follows: "Because I said unto thee, I saw thee under the fig-tree, believest thou? Thou shalt see greater things than these. . . . Hereafter ye shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.”

To the woman of Samaria he said: "Thou hast well said, I have no husband; for thou hast had five husbands, and he whom thou now hast is not thy husband... The woman saith unto him, Sir, I

perceive that thou art a prophet."

"Now when he was in Jerusalem at the Passover, many believed in his name when they saw the miracles which he did. But Jesus did not commit himself unto them, because he knew all men." As an instance of this supernatural knowledge of the thoughts and characters of men, his conversation with Nicodemus is related, in which he speaks to his thoughts and purposes rather than answers his words.

"Our friend Lazarus sleepeth; but I go that I may awake him out of sleep." "Then said Jesus unto them plainly, Lazarus is dead; and I am glad for your sakes that I was not there, to the intent ye may believe," Here was certainly supernatural

knowledge.

"This night," said he to Peter, "before the cock crow, thou shalt deny me thrice."

Such are the claims which Jesus made to supernatural knowledge, and, coinciding with facts, they render probable the knowledge he claimed to possess of the spiritual and unseen world, and of the destiny of man after death. When he said to the thief upon

the cross, "To-day shalt thou be with me in Paradise," we have reason to believe that he, who could foreknow the time, manner, and circumstances of his own death, and could foretell his resurrection the third day, possessed a degree of supernatural knowledge not inferior certainly to the cognizance of that unseen state to which the soul of man passes when it leaves its terrestrial abode.

I now come to the argument. The argument is based upon a quotation from the Old Testament. It is there related, that Moses encountered a vision of a burning bush, out of which a voice proceeded which said, "I am the God of thy father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob."

As these words stand in the original, they are only the declaration by which Jehovah identifies himself with that being who, almost four centuries before, had revealed himself to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. In that sense, they would have no relation to the doctrine of the immortality of the soul, and could not logically be quoted as having any bearing upon that subject. That he was the same God who had once appeared to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob would not prove that they were now in being.

The source of the argument, in my judgment, lies deeper, and it seems to me to be this. In the spiritual relation which is recognized between God and the patriarchs, in virtue of which he was their God, immortality is implied. It lies in this: "I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob." In order to have a God, in the sense here intended, a being must possess a rational, moral, and spiritual nature, so as to recognize God's existence. The dumb, ir

rational animals have a God in the sense of having a Creator, Provider, and Benefactor, but they know nothing of it. They have no conscious relation to him, and, in the sense in which the Saviour speaks, they have no God. They can form no idea of him, are incapable of receiving any revelation from him. They therefore are incapable of religion. They have no moral ideas, and are incapable of moral discipline. Beyond a certain limit, there is nothing in their natures progressive, either in knowledge, character, or enjoyment. The very absence, then, of a moral and spiritual nature, and any recognition of God, makes their whole being commensurate with this present life, and shuts out all expectation of immortality from our minds, when we contemplate their whole being and all its relations. We have no evidence that such a conception ever enters into their minds, or whatever in them takes the place of mind. A continued existence, to a being so constituted, is comparatively valueless. Their existence is not cumulative in its nature, and when it ceases, there is no reason to be given why it should be renewed, rather than that another being of similar nature and capacities should be called into existence in its place.

The possession of these very faculties and endow ments, of which the brutes are destitute, constitutes the natural probability of the immortality of man. The gift of reason reveals to man a God, the things that are made make necessary the conception of a Creator and a belief in his existence. The knowledge of right and wrong is itself a perpetual revelation. Those qualities of actions reveal themselves to my