Page:The Annihilation Theory Compared with Holy Scripture.pdf/6

6 in the idea that the child itself was dead and done for: but in the thought that, though absent from the body, it was still living in a world where he should some day rejoin it was comfort indeed.

(c) The scene upon the Mount of Transfiguration, Luke ix., where the disciples saw Moses and Elias talking with their Master, also teaches us that those we regard as dead still live. We are aware that an attempt has been made to evade the force of this illustration of the doctrine of immortality by calling the matter a dream, because it is called a “vision,” and “vision” and “dream” are sometimes used in the Bible as convertible terms. But every student of Greek knows that the word “eidon,” here translated “they saw,” never means to dream, but invariably implies not the mental act of perception only, but the object of it also.

(d) The parable of Dives and Lazarus (Luke xvi.), if it teaches anything, teaches that the event of death does not destroy either the good or the wicked, but that both continue to exist in a state of consciousness in harmony with their lives on earth. Of course this is a parable, but it is a parable intended to teach us something, viz., that the good and the evil live again.

(e) The Apostle says, “To live is Christ, and to die is gain,”—to die could never be gain if it meant that existence was to be suspended. To die is gain to the Christian, because his absence from the body brings him present with the Lord, agreeably to 2 Cor. v. 1–4, “For we know that, if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God,