Page:Anastasis A Treatise on the Judgment of the Dead.pdf/17

18 new corporeal being is originally quickened by the truth, or spirit-and-life Word, in the heart of the Old Man (John vi. 63). "It is the spirit that quickeneth, and the words which I speak unto you, spirit is and life is"—. This is true, whether the quickening be moral or corporeal; in the former case, the quickening power is in divine ideas, of which "the words" are the signs; while in the latter, the quickening power is what philosophers would term electrical.

According, therefore, to the analogy of nature, the second stage in the process of raising, answers to the interval between the begettal, or conception, in the dust of sheol, and the quickening after judgment. This interval is perceptible in the case of the last Adam. He was begotten in the tomb, in fulfilment of the second Psalm, "this day have I begotten thee" (Acts xiii. 33). But, when Mary afterwards saw him in the garden, he had not been quickened; for he told her then not to touch him, because He had not yet ascended to His Father, who was His, strength or power (John xx. 17). But subsequently to this, we find Him in the midst of His disciples, when He breathed upon them holy spirit. When the breath of a man from the tomb is holy spirit, that man must have been corporeally quickened, or have become spirit. He came forth from the sepulchre so early that it was yet dark; and it was the same first day at evening that he breathed upon them. Here was a day. Eight days after this he appeared among them, and on that occasion invited Thomas to touch him. He had given the same invitation to the rest eight days before, when he declared that he was flesh and bones, and not a phantasm, as they supposed (Luke xxiv. 37, 39). Now some time in the interval between the dawn and the evening of the resurrection day, the cause for the interdict, "Touch me not," must have been removed; in other words, the ascent from the lower nature, begotten to incipient life in the tomb, to the Father, " who is Spirit " (John iv. 24), must then have taken place. This transition from the one nature to the other, when the fulness of the time is come, is "in the twinkling of an eye": which instantaneous operation of Almighty power constitutes the putting on of incorruptibility and deathlessness; and confers upon the quickened being a life independent of the natural laws, by which "death is swallowed up in victory."

In the original, the word rendered quickened is, and signifies "to impart life; to make alive." Now, as there are two natures, there are also two sorts of lives. The life of the lower nature is an inferior life, which depends upon the natural laws for its precarious continuance. It partakes of the quality of the nature or body through which it is manifested. This being corruptible, the life