Superior information. Throwing off the mask. Yet these men pretend to know more about the matter than all who have gone before them! Are they, with their confessed inexperience of such a change, more worthy to be believed than those who have experienced it and therefore speak? It is true, indeed, that" charity believeth all things;" but he must have more charity, and less love for the truth, than Paul or John had, who can believe that such expounders-nay, such "exploders"—of the word of God, are the successors of the apostles, or the true disciples of Christ. Too long have they deceived the people with their vain pretensions. Let them throw off the mask, and appear in their true character. CHAPTER XIX. THE RESURRECTION-STATE. Resurrection-Time of it indefinite-Its nature-Resurrection of the whole man-At death man annihilated-Man and beast perish alike—Resurrection is a new creation—Resurrection denied-The same body not raised again—All equal in the Resurrection. "Is that, all nature starts at, thy desire ? A monstrous wish, unborn till virtue dies.”—YOUNG. HAVING disposed of man during his mortal life, and seen that he has no concern with another, that his whole existence is bounded by the grave, except as, at some period far distant, God shall be pleased to renew that existence, let us extend our view forward to the end of time, and learn what Universalism teaches in regard to the resurrection. However much they may differ as to the time when this event may take place, they agree that XXI. ALL MANKIND WILL BE EQUAL IN THE RESURRECTION. That they have not settled the question as to the What shall be raised? Strange ignorance. time when the resurrection will take place, appears from the following statement. "Universalism involves," says Mr. Cobb, ('Expos.' III. 31,) "the doctrine of a resurrection of the human race from the state of death into a state immortal, where they shall all at length know, and love, and enjoy God. But whether the resurrection instantly succeeds the death of the body, or whether it is a progressive work in the hands of God, performed upon different individuals at different times, as he shall please to raise them, or whether it is to take place with all simultaneously, at some future time, Universalism, as such, does not decide. Different individuals have their different opinions on this question." What can the man mean? Universalism, he tells us, does not decide whether the resurrection of the dead "instantly succeeds the death of the body, or not!" Let him go and ask the charnelhouse, where the bodies of the generations past have slept for ages, and never more assert so foolish a thing. Universalism must be the very quintessence of scepticism, if it cannot decide a question so simple. But it is proper to consider what it is that shall be raised in that day. What kind of a resurrection do the Christian scriptures reveal? Plainly a resurrection of the body alone. "With what body do they [the dead] come? It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body." It is called "the redemption of the body." The change that is to take place at the resurrection, is a change of the body: "Who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his Body alone dies. Annihilation. glorious body." At the time of the resurrection of Christ, it is said that "many bodies of the saints arose." Now, 'body' is, in all these and similar passages, spoken of in distinction from soul or spirit. It would be difficult to show that Paul did not believe in the separate conscious existence of the soul, when the body should be dissolving in dust. "Knowing," he says, "that whilst we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord; and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord." It is the body, and not the soul, that dies and is to be raised up at the last day. It is the body alone that is then to undergo this wonderful change. The soul retains its conscious existence through the intermediate state, and when restored to the body after the latter has undergone this great change, the identity of the man will be preserved most perfectly. But this is not the resurrection in which our Universalists believe. Theirs is a resurrection of the whole man. That which we call soul, they maintain dies with the body-returns to dust, for it is matter also. At death man is so far annihilated, as to be deprived of all conscious existence; to crumble, the whole of him, to dust, so that he never would exist again but for the resurrection. Universalists not only "wish themselves all clay," but actually profess to believe that they are such, and only such. They who died before the flood, and they who have since followed them, have perished. They are as much out of existence-Moses, David, and Paul-as the brutes that perish. Man but little better than a brute. No separate existence of the spirit. Their life was nothing but breath, which God takes back at death; and this they say is the spirit which "shall return unto God who gave it." On this point, hear what Mr. Balfour teaches: “What, say some, ("Three Essays,” p. 36,) is there no difference between men and beasts? I answer, yes; but man's pre-eminence consists in his superior powers of mind, and in his being raised again from the dead incorruptible and glorious. The beasts totally perish, and so would man, if Jesus Christ had not risen from the dead. If it is contended that man exists after death, because he has a spirit, it ought also to be contended, that beasts live after death, for they have all one breath or spirit.' And this is the same as to say that Balaam has now no more existence than the animal on which he rode, by whom he was rebuked. All mankind who have deceased, are as truly annihilated as the beasts that have perished. As to what will be hereafter, we shall see presently. Commenting on the text, the spirit shall return. unto God who gave it,' he says, (p. 37,) "We have no more reason to conclude from this text, that the spirit will exist distinct from God after death, than that the body will exist distinct from the ground after it returns to the dust. And we may with equal truth believe in pre-existent spirits, as in disembodied spirits. In short, we may as well assert the pre-existence of bodies and spirits before God created man, as assert the separate existence of either after death. Both return to their original condition.-But we have seen, that |