the "sanative influences" of this intermediate abode. 0, when will Christians learn to look to Christ, and Christ alone, as the great and all-sufficient source of salvation! He is our life. In him we have wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption. What more can we need in order to salvation-to fitness for heaven, even-than that which Christ supplies?* "Where he displays his healing power, Death and the curse are known no more; More blessings than their father lost." 5. Another error relating to the intermediate state, and one that is more revolting to all the instincts of our nature than any of those we have considered, is that the soul dies with the body. It is strange that such a doctrine should ever have found place with those who believe in the resurrection and in everlasting life after death. Yet such is actually the case. This theory is thus stated by some of its modern advocates: "The whole man, whatever are his component parts, suffers privation of life, in what we call death." And, again, "The period which elapses between the time of death and the resurrection is spent in unconsciousness and inactivity; the soul is either extinct or in a profound and dreamless sleep, forgetful of all that is past, ignorant of all that is around it, and regardless of all that is to come." The philosophical basis of this doctrine is the assumption that the soul is only the result of the physical organization, and, therefore, can have no separate existence. But all reason and all philosophy demonstrate the falseness of this assumption. The premises being taken away, the conclusion is of no force. The Scriptural argument is absurd and unsustained. The assumption that the -Bible teaches such a doctrine is a monstrous fraud upon *Heaven, or the Sainted Dead, p. 122. all revelation. Quickened and revived, as this doctrine has been repeatedly amid the heresies of the present day, it has so little to give it countenance, either in reason or revelation, and is in itself so repugnant to all the instincts of the soul, that no degree of fanaticism can give to it more than a brief and sickly existence. A sufficient refutation of this assumption will be found in the Scripture doctrines we shall develop in the subsequent discussion of this subject. But we may inquire here, How can this state. of unconscious sleep, or of absolute extinction, be consistent with the living union of the believer in Christ? "Because I live, ye shall live also." This is the great pledge of our uninterrupted life. He that believeth hath eternal life; he that liveth and believeth on Him shall never die; and he that hath the Son hath life. Christ is the source of our life; and as the source can not become extinct, neither can the life that flows from it. Death has no power here. Instead of locking our faculties up in unconsciousness, and isolating us from our union with Christ, it can only break down some of the obstructions to that intercourse that have heretofore existed. "The star that sets Beyond the western wave is not extinct; It brightens in another hemisphere, And gilds another evening with its rays. O glorious hope of immortality! At thought of thee the coffin and the tomb III. THE INTERMEDIATE STATE OF THE DEAD ONE OF CONSCIOUS EXISTENCE. How profound our interest in this question! Many of our dear friends have gone away into this region and shadow of death; our hearts follow after them, and we would fain know where and how they are. We ourselves are trembling, as it were, upon the borders of that dark and dreamy land, and our very instinctive solicitude impels us to the inquiry what our condition will be when we enter there. Never for once has the curtain that hides that invisible land from our sight been thrown aside that we might behold it; no one of its innumerable inhabitants has ever returned to these mortal shores to bring intelligence of our departed friends; no voice nor sound is heard; no signsignalizing of that dreamy land, and telegraphed across the invisible space that separates us from it is seen. Philosophy fails us; it has found itself able to solve but few of the subtile mysteries of the soul even in its present state. No wonder, then, that it is still less able to solve the mysteries of its separate state. Here it is blended with an organic, material body, and manifests its being, power, and condition in a thousand ways; and yet it must be confessed that as to the modes of its existence-its peculiar relation to the body, its dependence upon it or control over it we know comparatively little. How, then, can we expect to unravel all the mysteries of its separate state? Yet we are not left in any necessary darkness in relation to the great facts of that mysterious state. And, perhaps, the most important of all those facts-as it is fundamental to all the rest is that which we have just announced; namely, that the intermediate state of the dead is a state of conscious existence. "I will hear what God the Lord will speak." And does not God reveal to us this great fact a fact that constitutes a broad platform upon which rest our most glorious hopes in relation to our intermediate state? If such be not the case, why did St. Paul "desire to depart" that he might be with Christ?" If the soul sleeps with the body till the resurrection of the dead, he would be no nearer to the accomplishment of his wish in dying than he was while he lived. Indeed, if the doctrine that the intermediate state is one of annihilation or of unconscious existence be true, St. Paul is no nearer heaven than he would be had he lived to the present hour. Neither is he so near the attainment of his desire now as he was during his life; for while he lived he enjoyed communion with Christ, but, being dead, even the communion he did enjoy is cut off, if the spirit sleeps with the body in unconscious repose. All intercourse with the Deity, with heaven, with the saints of God on earth, and even with the glorious truths of the Gospel, is utterly broken off, and in one long oblivious. sleep has that intellect so vigorous, those affections so pure and so ardent, and those aspirations so glorious and sustaining, been pent for nearly eighteen centuries; and altogether unconscious of the history of the Church, and of the fate of the Gospel, of the glory of Christ or the bliss of heaven, will he still continue to slumber till the trump of God shall arouse the unconscious dead on the resurrection morning. Call you this "being with Christ?" Alas! then, what is it to be separated from him? If, between death and the resurrection, "the soul is either extinct or in a profound and dreamless sleep, forgetful of all that is past, ignorant of all that is around it, and regardless of all that is to come," how fearfully mistaken was the great apostle when he desired to "depart" in order that he might "be with Christ!" Better, indeed, were it to return to life, for here we may see, even though it be only as through a glass darkly; but there we see it not all! It is, truly, a land of darkness as darkness itself! To the penitent thief upon the cross our Savior said, "To-day shalt thou be with me in paradise." On that very day both our Savior and the penitent thief expired. Did he mean that the penitent thief would with him that day cease from all conscious existence? What mockery to make such a promise as an antidote to the agonies of the dying man! Upon the Mount of Transfiguration Moses and Elias, though the one had been dead nearly fifteen hundred years, and the other had been translated over a thousand years before, not only appeared in the form of living men, though with bodies glorious-emblematic of the glorious resurrection state-but they also conversed, thus demonstrating that they were not only alive but conscious. And if Moses has a conscious existence in the intermediate state, why may not all others? While reasoning with the Sadducees, one of whose doctrines was that there is no spirit, no conscious existence independent of the body, our Savior says, "God is not the God of the dead, but of the living." And yet God said to Moses, "I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob," two hundred years after the dust of the last had been consigned to the cave purchased by Abraham in the field of Macpelah. Hence, it must follow, if there be any verity in God, that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, though dead, still had a conscious life. The same conclusion will be reached with an equally-invincible force, when we remember our Savior himself declared, “ Abraham rejoiced to see my day; and he saw it, and was glad." The parable of the rich man and Lazarus is also perfectly in point. (Luke xvi, 22, etc.) The beggar died and was carried by angels to Abraham's bosom. The rich man also died, but death was to him no dreamless, unconscious sleep; for in hell he lifted up his eyes, being in torment. From the deep gulf of his misery he beheld Abraham in his blissful abode, and Lazarus in his bosom. From him he besought relief. "But Abraham said, Son, remember that thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things; but now |