Page:A brief discussion of some of the claims of the Hon. E. Swedenborg.pdf/29

 rection of the Lord Jesus Christ with his whole body complete, cannot be maintained unless it be first shewn that man is equal to God manifest in the flesh, and that he stands upon the same footing in this respect. But who will attempt this? The circumstances which are to mark the resurrection of the creature, cannot be regarded as having any just parallel with the events peculiar to the resurrection which distinguished the Creator. The body with which the Lord Jesus Christ arose must needs be different from that in which man is to rise. He is "The Life," thus life in its first principles; consequently He was capable of becoming life also in its last principles, and this He did by means of the body in which he rose. He, then, is "the First and the Last," possessing a body more in ultimates than it is possible for the resuscitated spirits of men to have.

The apostle says, "There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body." The former is of dust, and to dust it will return: the spirit only unto God who gave it. The material body is flesh and blood, and this cannot inherit the kingdom of God. It is the soul which constitutes the man; the body is only an instrument annexed to it for a season in the natural world, and intended as the medium of performing the desires and intentions of the soul. When the body dies, it passes into the elements of which it is composed; but the soul does not suffer the extinction of its life. No; it ascends, with all its spiritual faculties and powers, into the world of spirits, as the first common receptacle of all who depart this life; and in that world it awaits its examination and receives its sentence, whence it ascends into the joys of heaven, or passes off to the calamities of hell. The world of spirits then—the great gulph that existed between Dives and Lazarus —and not the world of matter, is the place where the Lord executes His judgment. As the soul or spirit of man is the subject upon which the judgment is to be performed, it is plain that the event must take place in a world of spirits, adapted for its reception and existence after its separation from the natural body.

The doctrines of the resurrection of dead carcases, and the execution of judgment on them in this world of matter, are but additional evidences of the naturalism and sensual imaginations of the fallen Christian church; and they, being founded