Page:The Last Judgement and Second Coming of the Lord Illustrated.djvu/131

 to us that the body is not the man, and that it is simply the habitation in which he dwells so long as it is fitted for the purposes of such a dwelling.

This separation—this withdrawing of the soul from the natural body—which we call death, is commonly supposed to have been induced by sin; and it is thought by many that the soul would have retained its natural body for ever, if man had continued in his original integrity and innocence. But these are ideas which the Scriptures do not teach. We do not read in the Bible anything about the immortality of the body, which those ideas necessarily involve. "God," it is written, "formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul." It is then the soul of man that lives; and this was said of him before "the fall." An everlasting connection between the material body and the "living soul" would necessarily have confined man to the territories of this world, and so have prevented him from entering into heaven, which is not a kingdom of this world, and where, the apostle expressly tells us, flesh and blood cannot enter. It follows, therefore, if the soul had been intended to live in perpetual conjunction with the natural body that it must have prevented the soul from enjoying the heavenly inheritance. For how could the soul have entered upon the felicities of heaven, if it had been inseparably united to a material substance which Divine order has excluded from that kingdom? The supposition, then, that at the period of man's original creation God intended to maintain an everlasting connection between the soul and the body involves consequences which prove it to be a misconception. It seems evident, that to enjoy the felicities of a kingdom which is not of this world,