records again. If we have not read them correctly, in our new study and investigation new light will arise. We have been called to re-read our records and correct our reading, before. Once astronomy made the demand; and the church has been no more shocked at any assertions and demands made by science since, than she was by those made by Galileo and the pioneers of modern astronomy. But she gave her records a new reading, and to-day finds no difficulty in reconciling the statements of that record with the discoveries of the planetary science. A second glance showed the church that the inconsistency was only apparent. Geology next made the demand. It asked a longer period for the processes of creation than it had been thought the inspired account gave. The church looked to her records again. She found that without doubt she had lost the primitive idea of the Mosaic "day" of the creation, and that restored, she had no difficulty in reconciling the indubitable records of the stony science" with scripture.

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Such will always be the result. The two great works of God, Nature and Revelation, will only come into conflict when searched and explained by minds that are uncandid, and which God has not enlightened.

Meanwhile, the proper attitude of the Christian theologian and Newtonian lover of science is, patience. They can both afford to wait till science has advanced to a ground of unmistakable fact, and the light of truth shall beam unclouded from the pages of revelation.

ARTICLE V.

THE INTERMEDIATE STATE.

"THE souls of the righteous being made perfect in holiness are received into the highest heaven, where they behold the face of God in light and glory, waiting for the full redemption of their bodies; and the souls of the wicked are cast into hell, where they remain in torment and utter darkness, reserved to the judgment of the great day."-Presb. Conf. Faith.

THUS plainly do the standards of the Presbyterian church assert the doctrine of the righteous and the wicked, the former in a state of happiness, the latter in a state of misery, during the interval between the death of the body and the final judgment. And this faith has been, and is, the faith of nearly all evangelical Christians. The uniform testimony of the entire Protestant church in all its branches might therefore be appealed to as an argument in favor of the truth of this well-nigh universally admitted doctrine.

But, omitting all reference to human standards and philosophical arguments, except so far as may be unavoidable in the answer to certain objections, we propose in this article to exhibit as briefly and as clearly as in our power the teachings of the New Testament upon this subject.

If we mistake not they establish the doctrine asserted above, of the conscious existence of both the righteous and the wicked in a state of happiness or of misery, between death and the judgment. In proof thereof we refer first, to the absolute silence of the New Testament in reference to any other doctrine than that commonly received. This negative argument, or argument from silence, is the more convincing in proportion as we realize the importance of the subject under consideration, and the serious consequences connected with erroneous views on it. The neglect of Christ and his apostles to assert any other doctrine concerning the condition of the soul after death than that generally received is a strong presumptive argument in favor of its truth.

And we must remember that the Pharisees and Essenes of Christ's day believed in the immortality of the soul, its future conscious existence in a state of enjoyment or suffering, and in the final resurrection of the body and its reunion with the soul. On this point we have the explicit testimony of Josephus, who says of the Pharisees :

"They believe that souls have an immortal vigor in them, and that under the earth there will be rewards or punishments according as they have lived virtuously or viciously in this life, and the latter are to be detained in an everlasting prison, but that the former shall have power to revive and live again." Antiq. Jews, XVIII. 1:3. Cf. Jewish Wars, Bk. II. 8: 14. And of the Essenes, he says, they "teach the immortality of souls and esteem that the rewards of righteousness are to be earnestly striven for."

Tacitus also ascribes the same opinion to all the Jews.

Animasque prælio aut suppliciis peremptorum æternas putant. Hinc generandi amor, et moriendi contemptus. Corpora condere quam cremare e more Ægyptio, eademque cura et de infernis persuasio." Hist. L. 5, c. 5.

Had not Christ admitted these common opinions respecting the future state, he would have intimated a contrary. But instead of teaching a doctrine inconsistent with these views, he opposed the Sadducean theory and defended that of the Pharisees. Had any great number of the Jews or any of the disciples of Christ believed that souls pass, after death, into an intermediate state at all resembling that expressed by the Roman Catholic doctrine of purgatory, or into a state in which new opportunity would be given for repentance, their opinions would have been referred to, and if true would have received the Saviour's sanction. That we find no reference in the New Testament to these doctrines is conclusive proof, as we think, that they were not current in Christ's day, or in the time of the apostles. It therefore belongs to those who question the truth of the common doctrine to show that the statements of the New Testament are at variance with it. This has been attempted.

By those who believe in the unconscious state of the dead and in the annihilation of the wicked, such passages as Eccl. ix. 5, "The dead know not anything," (cf. iii. 19; Ps. cxlvi. 4; Isa.

xxxviii. 18,) are quoted in proof; passages which evidently refer to the dead as ignorant of what is occurring in this world, and which determine nothing whatever as to their consciousness or unconsciousness, in the future state. Much stress is laid also on the pretended assertions in Heb. xi. 13, 39, 40, "These all died in faith, not having received the promises," that the ancient worthies were not rewarded at death, and that therefore no Christians are, though it would seem that very little thought might convince any one that the apostle is speaking of those worthies" as being saved by faith in a Redeemer who did not appear till long after their death. They died in the faith of Christ though the promises of the gospel were never proclaimed to them in person.

Again, the dead are spoken of as asleep, as having "fallen in sleep," and are therefore, it is argued, unconscious. But to say that because death is likened to a sleep, there is no consciousness beyond the grave, is to beg the question, for it assumes that to be true which the best philosophers deny, that the mind ceases to think, or is unconscious in profound slumber. And suppose it were true that in deep sleep the mind is unconscious, is it not going too far to affirm on the strength of an analogy which may not hold good after death, that in a disembodied state the soul can have no consciousness? Vide 2 Cor. xii. 2-4.

Besides, the language of the New Testament is the language of common life, and is to be interpreted as words in daily use now are, and from the connection in which they stand.

The fact that death is called a sleep in the New Testament only proves that the outward resemblance between the two was observed and spoken of by Christ and his apostles, and can no more be appealed to as indicating their belief in the unconscious state of the dead, than the use of the word sleep now, can be cited as proof that he who employs it expresses thereby his faith in the assertion of consciousness in ordinary slumber. The opinions of men cannot always be determined from the language which they use in common life. Cicero was a firm believer in the soul's future conscious existence, (De Sen. c. 23), and yet he spoke of death as an everlasting sleep.

Those who disregard the general teachings of the Scriptures

can, of course, quote passages in proof of whatever theory they wish, especially when they overlook the fact that the same word is often used in different senses. Hence it is easy for believers in an unconscious state to defend their theory by reference to the use of the word death as denoting the destruction of the body, and therefore of the soul. Says a writer in the World's Crisis, (a Second Advent paper published at Boston,) Nov. 25, 1862,

part of man is alive between death and the resurrection," and another, in a tract entitled the "Key of Truth" affirms that "Man's soul never outlives his body." The righteous and the wicked are alike unconscious after death, or rather cease to exist. At the judgment both are "raised" (recreated?) in order to be judged, the righteous to receive eternal life from Christ, the wicked to be annihilated to suffer the second death. It is difficult to see how the advocates of such a theory, a theory which raises men from the dead merely to kill them, and that with the most exquisite tortures, can consistently object to the common doctrine of eternal punishment.

But this strange materialistic theory might have been avoided if its authors had only observed that the word death is used in different senses in the New Testament, that sometimes it denotes the death of the body merely, as in Rom. vii. 2, where the woman is loosed from the law of her husband after he is dead; that sometimes it is expressive of a spiritual state, as in Eph. ii. 1, "dead in trespasses and sins" (cf. "dead to sin,” "crucified to the world," etc.) a state which beginning in time will have its consummation in eternity; and again, in a sense more comprehensive still, that it denotes the penalty of sin, the results, the consequences of disobedience to the commands of God, as in Rom. vi. 23, "The wages of sin is death." (cf. v. 13, alive from the dead"; and v. 21, "the end of those things is death.")

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But a more serious, and if well established, a valid objection to the common doctrine, is based upon the use of the terms destruction, destroy, perdition. These it is said denote the extinction of conscious existence. Annihilationists, therefore, lay great stress on Matt. x. 28, "Fear not them which kill the

* Vide Hovey's State of the Impenitent Dead, chap. 2; Bib. Sac., July, 1858; Hodge's Com. on Rom. vi.