worthy of a degree of attention which I am persuaded it will eventually receive; and I would fain have it distinctly understood, that it is in reference to this part of his system exclusively that any such concession is made.

The reader will perhaps be prompted to inquire why, as I have treated the Resurrection in connexion with the Judgment, I have not also displayed it in its definite relations to the Second Advent, with which it would appear to be equally intimately associated in the great scheme of Eschatology. To this I reply, that an accurate examination of what I have advanced on the general subject will readily disclose my own opinion that the Second Advent of the Saviour is not affirmed to be personal, but spiritual and providential, and that the event so denominated is to be considered as having entered upon its incipient fulfilment at a very early period of the Christian dispensation. To this view I am compelled to adhere, so long as the declaration stands unrepealed-"Verily I say unto you, there be some standing here, which shall not taste of death till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom." If the word of inspiration can be shown to contain the announcement of any other Second Coming than that which commenced in the lifetime of the generation then living; and if this can be proved to be truly a second, instead of a third coming, I shall be ready at once to embrace it. In the mean time I must confess my mind to be so constructed as to be incapable of receiving an alleged doctrine of revelation, without adequate evidence that the interpretation upon which it is founded is sound.

I shall, however, after all, deem it strange, if it should not be said, that my argument amounts to little, for the reason that it assumes to know what God has not been pleased to reveal. The simple fact of a resurrection, it will probably be maintained, is all that the Scriptures announce; and that it can be nothing short of perilous presumption to attempt to determine any thing as to the nature of the raised body, or the mode by which its resurrection is effected. All such attempts are, in the opinion of multitudes, to be set down to the account of mere empty speculation, and of being wise above what is written. They go, it is said, on the principle of subjecting Faith to the ordeal of Reason, and are to be peremptorily frowned down by all the genuine reverers of holy writ,

Now if it is implied by this, that there is really any more assumption on the theory which I propose than on the common one, I deny the truth of the implication at once. Indeed, it is precisely on the ground of the assumed knowledge of what is not and cannot be known, that I dissent from the popular view. That view takes it for granted that the truth of Scripture teaches the re-construction of the future body out of the dissolved and dissipated remains of the present one; and that, too, by a pure miracle, in entire independence of the working of the vital principle. This fact is assumed to be known, because it is held that revelation teaches it; and that knowledge is necessarily made the standard by which the alleged ignorance of any contrary theory is to be judged and convicted. How can any sentiment be arraigned on the score of ignorance or error, without some assumed criterion of knowledge and truth? Now I distinctly charge upon this assumption, that it is groundless, fallacious, and false. I hesitate not to aver, that the knowledge and certainty claimed for the prevalent views of the resurrection, and on the ground of which vain speculation is charged upon the contrary, have no foundation. When once submitted to the ordeal of the understanding, they are seen to involve ideas at war with each ohter, and therefore cannot be intelligently received. There is, then, to say the least, as much speculation on the one theory as on the other; and if that which is here proposed does not satisfy the reason, just as little is reason satisfied by the common view.

But here I am accosted again by the stern interrogatory, What right has Reason to demand satisfaction at all on a point of doctrine addressed solely to Faith? To this I reply, that Reason certainly has a rightful claim to be clearly informed as to what is the doctrine to be believed; nor can it possibly be required to forego its prerogatives in dealing with a professed revelation from heaven, containing the points to which our assent is demanded. While it is the office of Reason reverently to receive all that God has clearly and incontrovertibly taught, Reason must still act in determining the true sense of what He has taught. It is human Reason that originates the rules of interpretation for the inspired volume, and we claim nothing more for it than its appropriate function, when it is thus called in to decide the meaning of revelation. This meaning, when really attained, must always be in harmony with its own oracles.

All truth must of necessity be eternally consistent with itself. No man is required to hold views of revelation to which a sound and enlightened science or philosophy can solidly object. No intelligent believer in the Bible will yield the rationality of his faith to the skeptical assailant. He will give to no one on this score a vantage ground on which he can laugh in his sleeve at the weakness or credulity which receives, as points of faith, dogmas at war with known facts or unimpeachable deductions. If the averments of that word which professes to have emanated from the Omniscient Spirit, clash with any positive, fixed, irrefragable truth in the universe, then the word itself must be a forgery and a lie; for God would never set one truth in contradiction to another. Panoplied by this principle, which is as firm as the perpetual hills, if, in the careful scanning of that word, the letter speaks a language contrary to clearly ascertained facts in nature and science, he will take it as type, figure, allegory, metaphor, symbol, accommodation, anthropomorphism—any thing, rather than the declaration of absolute verity. His Bible comes from the same source with the philosopher's boasted Reason. God is the Infinite Reason, and it is impossible that the reception of his word can involve the denial of that lofty prerogative in man.

May I hope then for exemption from any special severity of judgment, on the score of the freedom with which I have entered upon the examination of the doctrine of the Resurrection as popularly held? Our grand object of quest, as rational and accountable creatures, is Truth. What possible interest can any man have in adhering to error rather than truth? What conceivable motive can weigh with any one to close his eyes to the real difficulties which may encompass any particular article of his faith? Can he wink them into non-existence? Is it not better to look them full in the face, and acknowledge all their force? Is it not well to inquire if there be not some solution of them which shall be consistent at once with right reason and with sound interpretation? This is the task which I have essayed in the present volume. With what success remains to be seen.

The idea maintained throughout the work, that the Resurrection is effected by the operation of natural laws, may strike some of my readers as a virtual "limiting the Holy One of Israel," who, as he was originally free and sovereign in the establishment of these laws, must be regarded as equally free to dis

pense with them in any part of his procedures. This we may doubtless admit, provided there is any thing in the nature of the case, or in his own declarations, which lays the foundation for such a belief. Otherwise, the presumption undoubtedly is, that he will adhere to the fixed constitution of things, in bringing about the purposed results of his providence, however grand or stupendous, or baffling to our comprehension. In the present case, we believe nothing can be cited from the express intimations of his word, which enforces upon us the necessity of referring the event announced to the purely miraculous agency of Omnipotence; and we know too little of the laws operating throughout the universe of being, to affirm their incompetency to the production of the result in question.

It can scarcely be necessary to remark, that the theory of the Resurrection disclosed in this volume, brings the present into entirely a new relation with the future life, and clothes the subject of human destiny with an interest to which no reflecting mind can be insensible. If well founded, it strikes an effectual blow at all those crude anticipations which would throw forward the awards of eternity to an indefinitely future period, interposing an interval of such extent as greatly to relax their force as moral sanctions, and plants us in the closest proximity to the spiritual world, with all its unutterable grandeur of interest and power of appeal. The ordinary gross conceptions of the local relations of heaven and hell to each other, and to the present sphere of our existence, are done away, and we look to the precincts of our own bosoms for the constitutive elements of each.

It remains but to close with an earnest invocation to the divine Spirit of Truth, to own and crown with his blessing the well-meant labor undertaken and accomplished in the present volume. G. B.

NEW-YORK, Oct. 1, 1814.

ANASTASIS;

OR

THE DOCTRINE OF THE RESURRECTION, &c.

INTRODUCTION.

The Knowledge of Revelation Progressive.

THE proposition which is virtually embodied in the heading of the present section, flows by natural sequence from the general and universally admitted truth, that the human race itself is progressive, not merely in physical continuity, but in mental development. That our collective humanity, like each individual that composes it, passes through a childhood, a youth, and a meridian manhood, can scarcely be a question with any one who casts his eye at the page of history or the universal analogies of nature. We should be far from doing violence to truth, should we slightly alter the poetic aphorism, and read-" Progress is heaven's first law." If so, the thesis may stand unassailable, that the knowledge of Revelation, like that of Nature, is destined to be continually on the advance. So far as the latter is concerned it will not be denied by the reflecting mind, that even at this period of the world man has arrived but at the threshold of that august temple of Truth into which he is called to enter, and to become a worshipper at its inmost shrines. He is now in the scene of his pupilage—in the lowest forms of that school in which he has been set to learn the lessons of the universe.