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Instances of violent Death.

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to grow, after its vital energies had lain dormant three thousand years. Some seeds, after coming to maturity, need the frosts of winter, and then the warmth and moisture of spring, to bring their vitality into action. Germination, too, may be artificially hastened; and the wheat of this year's harvest, and of last year, and of three thousand years, may all be made to grow up together. The process of germination itself, after it has commenced, may go on with greater or less rapidity, as circumstances are more or less favorable, and may be artificially regulated, so that seeds planted at different times shall all spring up at once. Similar principles may regulate the resurrection of the bodies of men. There may be, in ordinary cases, a necessity of waiting for favorable circumstances, such as have not yet occurred; circumstances of which we know not the nature, and cannot predict the occurrence. Various analogies, both in the vegetable and the animal world, allow us to suppose that, in the great multitude of the dead, the process is suspended, or is retarded in different degrees, so as to be completed in all, when the set time shall have fully

come.

But what shall we say of instances of violent deaths; of cremation; of those devoured by wild beasts, or by cannibals? Must they not, of necessity, interrupt the process which is to result in the formation of a spiritual body?

In the first place, we say that some of these cases bear equally hard on all theories which admit a future body, to be derived from the present. If we suppose the future body to be evolved from the present at death by a natural process, all analogy would indicate that the process requires death by old age in order to its completion. The caterpillar which prematurely dies of disease, or is crushed, never becomes a butterfly. If natural death at full age is the natural process by which the spiritual body is evolved, it would seem that a violent extinction of life by crushing the body while yet immature, must render that process impossible, and thus prevent the result. If, however, the resurrection is a distinct event, occurring, not at death, but afterwards, then none of these things, happening to the body, is demonstrably incompatible with its resurrection. Not knowing what the process is, by which the body becomes spiritual, we cannot know that any of these events must of necessity disturb it. If the body is crushed, its substance still remains. If burned or eaten, we know not what may have taken place in it after death, and while yet entire. If burned, the greater part of it is transformed into gases;

and how can such a transformation hinder its rising as a spiritual, that is, a gaseous body

But are we, in the world to come, to have only gaseous bodies? As we have already suggested, the apostle selected this word, spiritual, or gaseous, to convey to our minds the best idea that we are capable of receiving, of a kind of bodies, such as we have never seen. It would be unreasonable to suppose that the idea which the word conveys to our minds now, fully answers to the fact as we shall hereafter find it. Doubtless, the glorified bodies of the saints will be far superior to anything which we are now able to imagine. Yet we may easily imagine a gaseous body to possess important advantages. Observe, it is to be really a body, all the parts of which will be combined into one system by one uniting power, and animated and controlled by one intelligent spirit. It may resist whatever would dissever its parts, with a force proportioned to the strength of the uniting power. It may be capable of we know not what degrees of condensation. The carbonic acid gas has actually been condensed into a solid, so that pieces could be seen by the eye and taken in the fingers. It may also be capable of indefinite expansion; so that the body may be able, at the spirit's bidding, to assume any size that convenience may require. Its form, or the form of any of its parts, may be equally subject to the will. The force which condensed gases may exert, is shown in every explosion, as of gun-powder. By contraction and expansion, the body may be able to change its specific gravity, so as to sink, or ascend, or float, at will, either in an atmosphere like that of our earth, or in that subtile ether, which, as some suppose, pervades the intervals between the different planets and planetary systems. Nor can we easily con. ceive, that such a body should need sustenance, or see corruption."

Philosophy, then, is obliged to confess that the doctrine of the resurrection is not within her domain. She can neither disprove the possibility of a future life in the body, nor the possible identity of the future body with the present. Her own light is sufficient to show, that her most plausible arguments to the contrary will not bear the test of a rigid examination. Her own laws of reasoning compel her to admit that, in one instance at least, the dead has been raised, in the same body in which he lived before his crucifixion; and therefore, that such resurrections are proved, by actual experiment, to be possible. Having brought us to this conclusion, she has done her work, and if we need further know

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Claims of Home Missions.

ledge, bids us seek it from some other source.

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Without stultify

ing her own decisions on subjects amenable to her tribunal, she not only admits, but vindicates, our liberty to believe what the Scriptures teach concerning the life to come. She imposes upon

us no necessity for wresting the Scriptures from their obvious sense, or of forcing out hidden meanings from their language by the pressure of violent interpretations: but leaves us free, without restraint from her, to receive and rejoice in whatever of glorious hope we may find set before us in the gospel.

ARTICLE II.

OBLIGATIONS OF THE EASTERN CHURCHES TO THE HOME MISSIONARY ENTERPRISE.'

By B. B. Edwards, Professor at Andover.

THE reflecting Christian, as he surveys the condition of our country, will be the subject of various and conflicting emotions. There are lines of light bordered by the deepest darkness. While we seem to hear encouraging voices, there are other sounds which whisper that there is little hope. As we are reading the plain language on one leaf of God's Providence, another is turned whose hieroglyphic we cannot decipher. It is somewhat like standing on an eminence a few miles from a great city. We can catch the hum of its mighty population. But the murmur is distant and indistinct. It may be labor awaking to its daily toil, the tokens of a peaceful and prosperous commerce, or it may be that hurrying to and fro which precedes some deciding battle, some anticipated dire calamity.

We sometimes exultingly say that our territory extends from sea to sea. But in passing from East to West, shall we not find the poor remnants of once powerful tribes, far away from the graves of their fathers, and now congregated together as if to come more surely within the grasp of the Shylocks around them?

It is thought best to insert occasionally in this Journal an Article of a miscellaneous character. Yet the bearings of the topic discussed in the following pages upon the objects for which the Bibliotheca Sacra were established, are thought to be by no means indirect or unimportant.-EDS.

We speak of thirteen feeble Colonies grown into twenty-eight sovereign States, extending across the temperate zone and embracing the products of almost every clime. But may not all this be inherent weakness, presaging, that the country, like Rome, will fall by its own weight. We also boast of the federal constitution, simple in its forms, admirably adjusted in its various provisions. Yet does not our short history prove how easy it is to nullify that sacred instrument? We have in the bosom of our soil, it has been lately said, that dust which is immortality. Yet have not the countrymen of Washington been for several years, a bye-word and a hissing in most of the civilized countries of the earth, on account of our Punic faith? Light, it is thought, is breaking in upon that dark cloud which covers our southern horizon. Through the operation of certain powerful causes, the day of deliverance is supposed to be drawing near. But are not multitudes eager to spread the accursed thing over wide and fair regions yet comparatively free?

We may suggest that there is much which is encouraging in the decided testimony which is borne by men in our national councils, high in public life, in favor of the principles of morality and religion. But may not this testimony be utterly weak or positively pernicious when it is not carried out and affirmed in the morals of the private life?

We are also accustomed to trust in the hopeful prospect which attends the various efforts for the diffusion of the gospel, at home and abroad. But is it not with the extremest difficulty that the churches can retain the ground on which they stood six years since? How much actual progress is made towards the perfect consummation of our hopes?

Finally, we point to the revivals of religion, which have for many years gladdened the American churches, and on them place our sure confidence. These have been, indeed, the means of inestimable good on earth, and they have filled heaven with joy. Still, do they pervade the masses of society? Do they touch the springs of our political movements? Can we trace their influence in any perceptible degree among the great body of the members of two of the learned professions? Till something like this is effected, how can we remain satisfied with these partial and entirely inadequate exhibitions of divine grace? In the degree in which they have been enjoyed, can they save the country?

With all which is encouraging in the signs of the times, and

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Obligations of the Eastern Churches.

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which we should be among the last to underrate, is there, on the whole, any real advance made? Do our efforts keep pace with the progress of society? Are our prayers and charities commensurate to what is at stake? Has any American Christian an adequate apprehension of the energy of evil that is at work in our land, or the comparative feebleness of the means which are employed to extirpate it?

While we look at the subject even cursorily, as one mystery of iniquity after another in the drama of public affairs is unfolded, as the springs of national faith seem to be corrupt to the bottom, we are almost tempted to try to rend the vail which hides the secrets of the invisible world, and see if there be not some mightier benignant agency there, some hitherto untried cause which can work out our deliverance.

There are moments, perhaps, when all Christians are tempted to believe in the literal fulfilment of the prophecies, in the visible and personal advent of our Lord in the clouds of heaven, when he shall set his foot visibly on the Mount of Olives, and shall summon all nations to the decisive encounter. To our despondent hearts, some miraculous agency is demanded. All the old signs fail. The Lord answers no more, either by dreams, or by Urim or by prophets. We would interrogate the grave. The nation would hear, if one came to them from the dead.

But all these are idle imaginations. We have no need to force open any magazine of God's dread instrumentalities. We have the sovereign remedy; a cause which is adequate to produce any moral effect. It has been tested on the largest scale. It scattered to the winds the elaborate mythology of Greece; it overturned the throne of Augustus Caesar; before it, in the sixteenth century, demons fled like the mists of the morning; it has made Britain, from being the worshipper of a misletoe, the mistress of the world. It is the simple preaching of the gospel, particularly in the controlling part of our country, the western regions, which is the sure and sufficient remedy. If we are only disposed to apply it thoroughly, we are safe.

In this Article, we wish to call the attention of the reader to some of the grounds, why Christians in the Atlantic States, or the Eastern Churches, are called upon to assume and accomplish this work.

Before doing this, however, we will mention some of the reasons of the comparative apathy which has hitherto existed on the subject, why it has failed to secure that attention which it de