Page:The Judgment Day.pdf/20

 the dead body cannot be the meaning of our Lord's words. And an equally strong objection exists against understanding the latter passage in a similar way. For the words declare that "all that are in the graves shall hear his voice, and shall come forth." That which comes forth from the grave, is the same that hears the voice. But we know that the dead body has no power to hear the voice of the Son of God; and with equal certainty we may know that the dead body will never come forth from the grave. But let us read these passages as referring to the resurrection of the spirit, from the dark and gloomy grave of spiritual death, to a life of heavenly love and truth, and we see at once the truth, beauty and harmony of our Lord's words.

The first reason, therefore, which we give for believing that the last judgment takes place in the spiritual world is, that the spirits of all the dead are in that world, and from all that we can learn from the word of the Lord, from the laws of our being, or from the analogies of nature, those spirits will never, can never return to this natural world, and clothe themselves with their former material bodies; and it is scarcely necessary to insist upon so plain a truism as that the spirit must be judged in that world where it is.

And what possible reason can be given why the material body should be brought back from the kingdom of dead matter to be rewarded or punished with the spirit to which it once belonged? That body consists simply of a collection of material particles, which, when separated from the spirit, have neither life, sensation nor intelligence. They are in no sense responsible for any thing the spirit has done.— While held together by the spirit's vital force, they constitute a medium through which its qualities and capacities are manifested—an instrument with which it acts. But the rewards of happiness or misery certainly belong to the voluntary agent—to the living and conscious spirit, not to the unconscious instrument. For if it could be supposed possible that the particles of matter which compose the mor-