PHYSICAL LIFE AFTER DEATH.

Thames Star, Volume VII, Issue 2157, 2 December 1875, Page 4

PHYSICAL LIFE AFTER DEATH.

"The Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul." Gen. ii. " The Spirit of God liftth made me, and the breath of the Almighty hath given me life." .Job xxiii. " If God set His heart upon man, if He gather unto Himself' His Spirit and His breath, all flesh shall perish together, and man shall turn again unto dust," i.e. cease to have intelligent existence. Job xxxiv. ." Dust thou (man) art, and unto dust shall thou return." Gen. ii. ■

(To the Editor of the Evening Star.)

Sib, —In your issue of the Bth instant one Jeremiah Horn asks questions suggested, it appears, by the article " Physical life after Death" to be found in your paper of the sth inst., with the heading " A Puzzler." Mr Horn asks " what is vegetable, or animal life ? Is it anything, or nothing, and when it escapes from vegetables, or animals, does it still exist ? Mr Horn's questions are very proper ones, be he either Christian or non-Chris tion and no puzzles to a thorough bible student. I have waited very patiently to see if any of our "learned divines" would answer them, but I have waited in vain. I suppose they would say, such questions are unprofitable, their usual subterfuge when anything happens to cross them which goes one step beyond their ordinary dogmas ; it may be also that they'don't see any money cropping out as the issue of an answer and so it would be unprofitable in that respect. However, be that as it iriay, their quiet will hot quench a reflecting enquiring mind; such a mind is determined to be satisfied, and will only be so satisfied when it finds the truth. There exist a vast number of such minds in these latter days. With your permission, Sir, I will"answer Mr Horn's questions, and as shortly as possible, so as to make my answers intelligible. According to the Bible passages given above, the atmosphere which surrounds our earth is the breath or spirit of life, the Tital principle of all intelligent beings, and ,1 will add of everything that hath life, be it animal or vegetable. Not a man or a beast or a flying or a creeping thing could exist alive without it; neither could a vegetable germinate and grow if the atmosphere was removed; gainsay this.who can! This breath or spirit of of life which we all inspire comes in contact with, and makes lively blood in our lungs, which, by its circulation, gives life and substance to every part of our body. It is an undefinable portion of the Almighty Father (for " God is Spirit; " not a spirit as our Bible has it).> His lifegiving principle, by which His intelligent creatures perform their various functions, originally, no,doubt, this life-giving principle was pure—uncontaminated ; but it is not so now, for it is poisoned by the present "prince of the power of the air," that fallen heavenly spirit—Satan, "the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience." The seeds of death are in it, pestilences flow from it, and blights on the vegetable world proceed therefrom. What a noise there has been all over the earth during the last fifty or sixty years about impure air; Yes, gentlemen of the jury, ye wiseacres with your remedies for its purification; it will get more impure every day, bringing in its train new and unknown plagues and pestilences upon man and upon beast, with blights of a most puzzling character upon the vegetable world. All this will increase until the present " Prince of the power of the air," Him who hath the power of death, that is, "the Devil," is removed out of the' atmosphere or "arrangers," and another Prince, the Lord Jesus Christ, occupies his place, the true arranger spirit and the legitimate Prince of the Earth, and thePrince of the Kings of the Earth to come. But to proceed. If it be possible to make the above Bible passages more plain and clear than they really are, I will give an t illustration. The moon, it is. now pretty generally acknowledged by astronomers, has no atmosphere, consequently, it has no life, no trace of either animal or vegetable life will ever be discovered upon its surface, v nothing but large caverns and barren rocks and hills are there. Chaos reigns supreme. It is a dead creature; life is not in it. Thus it would be with the Earth, was it not for its vital, quickening atmosphere ; mj third passage of Holy Writ fully proves all this, and gives my answer to Mr Horn's first question. What is animal or vegetable life ? It is the atmosphere. ]Now, I will answer the second. Is it (the life) anything, or nothing, and when it escapes from vegetables, or animals, does it still exist. The' first part of this question is already answered, in the words, " It is an undefinable portion of the Almighty Creator." His vital principal, so it is something and not nothing, it quickens, animates, enlivens everything that has it,* and nothing could possibly live without it; here I am reminded how-' dependant we all are upon this Great Spirit, this wonderful life-giving power, for "in him we. live and move and have our being " as Paul told the Athenians— Act 17.' The latter part of the second question, " When it escapes from vegetables or animals does it still exist? I answer thus. Of course it does, it is the life of Jeremiah Horn himself and all the living of both animals and vegetables, but it is not the life of the dead for ceasing to inspire it they have no life; their organisms perish. The dust returns to dust, Shoe'l, or Hades, i. c., any receptacle for the dead, the sea for instance, or the grave, and there must man remain, until Christ who said " I am the resurrection and the life," that is, the new life which man is to live after his resurrection in a new body, not immediately after death, as "learned divines" say, but after his long sleep of death. Men do not live on and on after death going frt>m one sphere to another as the demon spirits of inesmer-spiritualisrn tell us, these demon spirits, or subordinate devils tell lies* as the Serpent or Satan their leader did at the beginning, to our first parents, saying to them, "Ye shall not surely die," &c. These demons would still mate man believe in his natural immortality, a lie the devil has kept afloat in men's minds during all time, and now seeks to enforce it on frail mortal man by actual demon teaching. Adamite man is every where in the Bible declared to be mortal, not immortal, and the wages of sin declared to be death. Only through the second Adam, Christ, can immortality be obtained for man, and that not until his resurrection in a new body. All the bugbears so often insisted upon by professed Christian teachers, in connection with future life immediately after death, sprang from the ancient Gentiles; these heathen had nothing to guide them but their own unaided judgment; they, guessed truly that there must be another life, but of the nature of that life and by what means all must enter upon that life they could know nothing, not having had the only irue gukle—the Bible—lß direct tlieui

into the way of truth. The whole world having forsaken God " They became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened; prefessing themselves to be wise they became fools," (feeRomans 1; thus they affected to believe the most monstrous delusions. Natural immortality, or immortality of the soul as it is termed, endless torment, purgatory, the worship .of the Virgin Mary as Queen of Heaven, the worship of supposed saints, Swedenborgenism, demonism or mesmer-spiritualism and a host of other vile abominations, believed in now even by the mass of professed Christians, all had their basis in the notions of old Gentile philosophy, and it is not a little singular that in connection with these lies the bulk of the money forced, or wheedled out of the people by designing, crafty, priests and parsons has been collected, while these people have been kept in perpetual bondage, numbers of them having been either frightened to death, or into a lunatic asylum, by such Pagan dogmas. By far the greater portion of the heresies of religious organizations consist of dogmas invented by man between death and resurrection, while the Bible teaches nothing but a sound • sleep between these two events. It is astonishing, in reading church history, to witness with what adroitness tho bug- | bears of heathen teaching have from time to time since the apostles been interwoven with. Christian doctrine ; even our English Bible is not free from them. How could it be when its translators were steeped in heathen notions? All religion is mystified by man's vain imagination. The Saviour when he camo taught the truth, and his apostles taught everywhere, simply, "Jesus and the Hesurrection," for Salvation, Redemption, and the Restitution of all things. Death whichis the wages of sin is non-existence, and consequently non-intelligence, a sound sleep until resurrection, our natural sleep is the type of it, which to a sound sleeper is complete unconsciousness. The Bible positively declares, "The dead know not anything." It must be an organism of one kind, or another an animal body, or a spirit body to have any intelligence whatever. Individuals who have died—ceased to breathe the breatk of life, can only live again in new bodies quickened, revived again by him who is the resurrection and, the new life of the world, there can be no consciousness again without this wonderful operation. Peter on the day of Pentu-ost declared—''David is not ascended into the Heavens " then according to most modern theologians he must have decended into the otber place ; for they have so simplified matters in theib way as to have only two places for ail mankind after death. Where then is David now ? The Bible tells us plainly where he shall be after his resurrection, but not a word about him between death and resurrection except that he is in his grave; but Christ is stronger still upon this matter, he says "No man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, &c. J'—John 3-13. Surely this distinct and emphatic statement ought to satisfy every Christian man and woman of what is the truth in this matter; at present only Christ is in. Heaven. He is the Head Man of the New Creation of God and the earnest of the resurrection and restoration of all mankind in the ages to come, and now about to be inaugurated. All men that have ceased to breathe are yet in their graves. The first great resurrection will be at the return of Christ from the far country, and will be composed of the Church of God of all ages. This great company of faithful witnesses now " lying all around us," or still in the flesh await the Second Coming of their Lord who will raise the dead from their graves and translate the living. i Christ at present sits at the right hand .of God on his Father's 'ihrone when ihe returns he will receive His own throne—the throne of the earth and His saints, the Church will share the kingdom with Him* Daniel 7, 22 and 25, and there will be given Him then " dominion and glory and a kingdom, that all people, nations and languages should serve Him ; His dominion being an age-enduring dominion, which shall not pass away or be interrupted like present kingdoms, but it shall endure a thousand years, gaining strength as it proceeds, until even a better age than that succeeds it, and until the "Restitution of all things " is an accomplished fact, and an entire new creation out of the old Adamic becomes manifest, for Christ has " abolished death, and brought life and immortality to light by the Gospel.' I —l am, &c, William Wood. Nov. 25.