Page:The Last Judgement and Second Coming of the Lord Illustrated.djvu/120

 and yet they have failed to notice it. Matthew tells us that "when Jesus was come to Jerusalem, all the city was moved, saying. Who is this?" And if that circumstance could produce such a commotion among the people, surely the appearance in the city of many who had been dead and buried must have given rise to great commotion and inquiry. And yet nothing of the kind is mentioned; all appears to have been as quiet as if no such phenomenon had happened. But the reason for this silence; the reason for the absence of all reference to the effect of such a circumstance upon the people; and the reason why it took place after the Lord's resurrection,—is, because the scene of it was not in the natural but in the spiritual world. It was an event kindred to this which is related by Peter, where he says, that the Lord, after His resurrection, "went and preached unto the spirits in prison: in this case the subjects are called spirits in prison; in the other, which we are considering, they are spoken of as saints in their graves. But both the prison and the graves refer to certain external dismal surroundings, from which the internal characters of good spirits were delivered at the time of the Lord's resurrection. He thereby had taken to Himself His great power, and so provided the means for its accomplishment. "The bodies of the saints," were not the carcases of virtuous men on earth, but their living souls in the world of spirits: "There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body;" and the spiritual body is the human soul. It is the soul which loves and feels and cares, and incurs responsibility for what it does. The natural body is simply an instrument by which the spiritual body performs its purposes in the world of nature: this dies and returns to the dust from which it came; but the soul, being a spiritual body, lives