CONSCIOUSNESS IN DEATH, VS. RESURRECTION
By Eld. M. E. Cornell
Interesting Extracts. No. 12.
CONSCIOUSNESS IN DEATH, VS. RESURRECTION.
Archdeacon Blackburne says:— "If the promises of God may be depended upon, and if he is able to perform them, men may, and certainly will, be raised from the dead at the appointed time, whether the soul has, or has not, enjoyed its consciousness from the period of death to that of the resurrection. But on the other hand, if it may be demonstrated by philosophical principles, that there is one part of man which never dies, and which may be delighted or afflicted, rewarded or punished, by the means of its own peculiar feelings or sensations, in a state of separation from the other part, it is hardly credible that God should restore the other part to life, to accomplish a purpose which may be brought about without it." —Hist. of Controversy on Immortality, chap. xiv. UNCONSCIOUSNESS IN DEATH.
In chap. xxix, Blackburne says:— "I shall be of opinion, that not to think, and not to be conscious that we think, is one and the same thing." Locke is quoted on the same page, as follows, "We know certainly by experience that we sometimes think, and hence draw an infallible consequence, that there is something in us which has a power to think. But whether that substance perpetually thinks or no, we can be no further assured than experience informs us. For to say that actual thinking is essential to the soul, and inseparable from it, is to beg what is in question, and not to prove it by reason, which is necessary to be done, if it is not a self-evident proposition. The idea of duration arises from a succession of ideas, and by that succession, duration is measured in our minds. When that succession of ideas ceases, perception of duration ceases with it, which every one clearly experiments in himself, whilst he sleeps soundly, whether an hour, or a day, or a month, or a year, of which duration of things whilst he sleeps or thinks not, he has no perception at all, but it is quite lost to him, and the moment wherein he leaves off to think, till the moment he begins to think again, seems to him to have no distance." —Locke's Essays, b. ii, chap. xiv. In illustration of the above, Blackburne gives the following account from the Gazetteer, Sat., Sep. 28, 1771. "Yesterday, fortnight, the wife of a tradesman in May's building, St. Martin's lane, going to bed as usual, in good health, fell asleep, in which she continued till Tuesday morning, although several methods were taken to awake her, but without effect, till she awoke of herself, got up and went about her household business, and it was with difficulty she could be persuaded it was any other day but Saturday."173 EASTERN MARRIAGE CEREMONY.
The following is from "Ward's Views of the History of the Hindoos." "At a marriage, the procession of which I saw some years ago, the bridegroom came from a distance, and the bride lived at Serampore to which place the bridegroom was to come by water. After waiting two or three hours, at length, near midnight, it was announced, as if in the very words of scripture, "Behold, the bridegroom cometh; go ye out to meet him." All the persons employed now lighted their lamps, and ran with them in their hands to fill up their stations in the procession; some of them had lost their lights, and were unprepared, but it was then too late to seek them, and the cavalcade moved forward to the house of the bride, at which place the company entered a large and splendidly illuminated area, before the house, covered with an awning, where a great multitude of friends, dressed in their best apparel, were seated upon mats. The bridegroom was carried in the arms of a friend, and placed in a superb seat in the midst of the company where he sat a short time, and then went into the house, the door of which was immediately shut and guarded by Sepoys. I and others expostulated with the door-keepers, but in vain. Never was I so struck with our Lord's beautiful parable as at this moment:—and the door was shut."