Page:Anastasis A Treatise on the Judgment of the Dead.pdf/8

Rh According to the electrical law of its formation it is globular and light-refracting, or sparkling in the open brightness of the dawn. These refractions are the hàdrai, brilliancies, splendours, or glorious vestments of the dew. Before the dawn, the dew-drops are all in the womb of night; from which both they and the dawn receive their birth, begotten by the orb of day. No figure can be more beautiful, no resemblance more complete.

After this similitude, then, we may discover the reproduction of living beings from dust. With this dust were combined, previously to death, fluids, in the proportion of five-sixths to the whole. These fluids were mainly water holding divers earthly particles in solution. The gathering of the spirit and breath of in the article of death, is the withdrawal of that antagonism which, during life, resists a man's return to dust (Job xxxiv. 14–15). The power that keeps bodies in living existence is "spirit," or electricity, as it is called by philosophers; who studiously avoid expressing things natural in the terms of scripture. The "breath of, by which frost is given" (Job xxxvii. 10), is the air we breathe; and consists of oxygen and nitrogen mechanically mixed. These three things are essential to life—oxygen, nitrogen, and electricity. Without them, "flesh, a wind that passeth away" (Ps. lxxviii. 39), cannot long retain its organic constitution; but rapidly runs into a state in which its original elements are set free. It is truly "a bag of wind;" for when the creature ceases to breathe, the wind, or gas, soon begins to distend the skin; nor does the process intermit until he is resolved into hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, carbon, and a little dust.

Such, in general terms, is the analysis of those who sleep and dwell in dust. In sheol all these elements are there ready for a synthetic operation to be elaborated by him, who, while tabernacling in the flesh among the Jews, said, "I am the resurrection and the life." He alone can perform the wonderful and mighty synthesis—the reunion of these gaseous elements with the dust, and their development into forms, the living images and likenesses of those to whom the dust formerly belonged. This is resurrection—the reproduction of a former intelligent being by almighty synthetic power, styled by Paul, "the energy whereby he is able to subdue all things to himself " (Phil. iii. 21). He who recombines these simple elements of the dead is, in whom is life, and by whom all things were made (Jno. i. 3–4). This Word is the resurrection—the Eternal Spirit, "who only hath immortality, dwelling in the light which no man can approach unto." His name is, by which He is well pleased to be extolled (Ps. lxviii. 4). He takes away men's breath, and they die, and return to their dust. He subjects them to analysis;