Resurrection of the Dead.
THAT the dead shall rise again, is the universal belief of Christians. As no historic fact was ever more invincibly established than the resurrection of our Divine Redeemer, so no article of our faith is more clear and indisputable than the doctrine of our rising like Him at our appointed time. It is hardly worth while, in this connection, to accumulate proofs and authorities to support what is so generally admitted and believed, and so clearly announced in the Holy Scriptures. Certainly, no one will deny that the raising of the dead lies entirely within the reach of divine power. No one will say that it is a thing impossible to omnipotence. It involves no contradiction. It is prohibited by no fore-gone law or necessity. It is not rendered impossible by incapacity in the decomposed bodies of the departed for reorganization. God knows each atom, and where it rests. Our substance was not hid from him when we were made in secret. His eye saw it yet being imperfect. All our members were written in his book when yet there was none of them. He has his number for every hair upon each head. Wherever the particles of these dissolving bodies may be scattered or lodged, they lie completely within his knowledge and power. And he who could at the first so attemper the vulgar dust as to constitute a man can also again recover these attempered particles and restore them to their places. If he can bring a new and glorious ear out of the rotting seed, he can also bring a spiritual body out of the corruptible one. And as the resurrection of the dead is not a thing impossible, so it is not a thing improbable. Faint analogies of it may be traced in the ordinary changes and revolutions beheld in nature around us. Clement, the contemporary and friend of St. Paul, says, “The Lord does continually show us that there shall be a future resurrection. Day and night manifest it. The seed sown in the earth displays it.” The day fades and dies. It is buried in sleep, silence and darkness. In the morning it revives, opens its grave of gloom, and rises from “the dead of night.” The summer dies, and lies down in its wintry grave. The winds of heaven sigh and weep over it as if they would not be comforted. In the spring, life begins to work again in the buried roots and seeds; the plants and flowers burst out of their dark cerements; and everything arrays itself in newness and glory. The sower goes forth and casts his seed upon the earth. It falls down dry and naked, and in time dissolves. But the great power of the providence of the Lord raises it again from that dissolution; and from the old seed new germs arise, and bring forth fruit. The caterpillar builds himself a tomb, and then lies down in it and dies. But out of the grave of the ugly worm comes forth the butterfly which sallies forth in the sunshine like a living flower. And so there are many things in nature that are repaired by corrupting, preserved by perishing, and revived by dying. And so we behold man, the lord of these things, dying like them, it is but a fair presumption that he will revive again hereafter as we see them revive. But God has not left us in the school of nature, nor given us over to settle our persuasions upon mere likelihoods. In the glorious record of his word, he has put the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead beyond dispute. Distinct glimmerings of it may be found all through the Old Testament; and it is predicted in the New in language which no one can misunderstand. Paul says there were many saints before his day who “were tortured, not accepting deliverance, that they might obtain a better resurrection.” He says that the Jews allowed “that there shall be a resurrection of the dead, both of the just and unjust.” The heroic Maccabees hoped for it. The sisters of Lazarus consoled themselves by thinking of it as they lingered at their only brother’s grave. Christ explicitly pointed to a coming period, when “they that are in the graves shall hear the voice of the Son of man, and come forth.” The great apostle to the Gentiles argued it as a thing demonstrated by the resurrection of the crucified Saviour. It was the great consolation of the noble army of the martyrs. And in every age of christianity it has been cherished as the glad hope by which the believer triumphs over the gloom of corporeal dissolution. God has also added a seal to this doctrine which cannot be counterfeited. He has actually restored deceased persons to life again. When Elijah prayed for the resuscitation of the dead child of the widow of Sarepta, God heard him, “and the soul of the child came into him again, and he revived.” Elisha, in his lifetime, received power to raise the young Shunammite; and the mere touch of his bones caused a dead man to revive and stand upon his feet. When the daughter of Jairus died, Jesus “said unto her, Talitha cumi, and her spirit came again, and straightway the damsel arose.” When he came “nigh to the gate of a city called Nain, there was a dead man carried out; and he came near and touched the bier, and said, Young man, I say unto thee, Arise; and he that was dead sat up, and began to speak.” And not only in the chamber and in the street, from the bed and from the bier, did Christ call the dead to life. His voice was heard with equal effect even in the putrid grave. When Lazarus had been “dead four days,” and so long buried that his sisters said, “Lord by this time he stinketh,” Jesus “cried with a loud voice, Lazarus, come forth; and he that was dead” and putrid, obeyed and lived again. And the blessed Saviour himself, after being “crucified, dead and buried,” took to himself the might of his superior nature, and came forth from the sepulchre, and showed himself to hundreds with many notable signs. In these cases the problem has been solved, and the fact demonstrated forever, that there is such a thing as the resurrection of the dead. Though we may not be able to comprehend the processes by which it shall be effected, we may rest assured that it is no idle dream, no cunningly-devised fable, but a sublime and stupendous reality.—Last Times.