Page:The Last Judgement and Second Coming of the Lord Illustrated.djvu/140

 From these considerations of spiritual philosophy, and the indications of revelation, we learn that the human soul is a spiritual body; thet it is this which constitutes the man, and which is distinguished by immortality: also, that death is simply the removal from him of his earthly covering, when he passes into the spiritual world, a spirit among spirits; and where, until the judgment, he continues to live, not a phantom or a vapour, but as a real man, possessing all the faculties and powers which had ever belonged to him as such, with the mere exception of his material covering; and which, because he has performed in it his probationary uses, he can want no more, and will, therefore, never be resumed.

This conclusion is supported by some historical facts of revelation. Were they not the spiritual bodies of Moses and Elias that were seen by the three disciples at the Lord's transfiguration? Those remarkable men had long departed from the natural world; we do not read anything about their having resumed their material bodies, and yet they were distinguished by all the forms proper to humanity and necessary for their identification. They evidently were