THE UNITY OF MAN. An Essay read before the Philadelphia Association of Congregational Ministers, July 13, 1880.
That there is a certain threefold manner in which God makes Himself known — as in Nature, in Christ, and in Grace by His Spirit — and, consequently, a threefold aspect in which He may be viewed, is no doubt true; and for aught that we know, there may be an actual trinity in His nature. But this doctrine of the Trinity may be, and has been, carried to such an extreme as to become a monstrous error, and to differ but little from absolute Tritheism.
As a natural protest against this error, we have Unitarianism, which insists, as it should, upon the perfect unity of God; but in doing this, it has become obnoxious to the charge of error in the opposite direction. We are prone to extremes; and even in the line of truth we may, and often do, go beyond its limit and end in an untruth.
Have we not done this in respect to the nature of man, as well as that of God? Because he is endowed with a twofold or rather threefold power of action— physical, intellectual, and spiritual— and may be viewed under these several aspects, and regarded in a certain sense, as a dual, or tripartite creature, philosophy has come to regard him as actually two or three creatures in one.
Over against this extreme, we have materialism protesting against this error, and insisting so strongly on the complete unity of man as to discredit the existence of either soul or spirit within him, and to attribute all his exercises to the operations and changes of matter alone. Hence science, which has its proper sphere within material limits, comes, as in other questions of philosophy and theology, or rather of philosophical theology, into antagonism with what is called the orthodox doctrine of the true nature of man. It finds its justification in the erroneous manner in which this doctrine has been held and advocated.
Whatever objections, in a religious point of view, may be brought against the scientific materialism of the present day — and it is certainly open to serious objections as now held and advocated by some of our leading scientists — it emphasizes and insists on a truth which we do well to consider in discussing man's nature and destiny — the complete unity of man.
It is no doubt true, that man in a certain sense stands midway between the spiritual and the natural world, and may be considered as the connecting link between the two, and fitted to control in the one while he has intercourse with the other. He has his roots in the earth, like the tree, but the blossom and the fruitage are in the air above. But because he possesses, on the one hand, a physical body, in common with the brutes beneath him, and, on the other, “partakes of the divine nature" which is spiritual, it does not follow that he is two or three creatures in one. And yet our philosophical theology teaches us something very much like this. Indeed, it teaches exactly this. He is said to be, in the first place, a perfect animal; and then within this animal there is another complete nature, or rather being — for so it is regarded, according to the philosophy of Plato, which is the foundation of our popular theology — and this being is entirely spiritual.
Though that part of Plato's philosophy which teaches that this spiritual being within is uncreated and therefore eternal, is dropped, as essentially atheistic, yet the conclusion that it is actually and necessarily indestructible on account of its spiritual nature, is still insisted on. If instead of this dichotomous division, we adopt the trichotomous, which certainly better harmonizes with the teachings of Scripture — if we are to make any division at all — there are two beings in this one body in its normal state; a soul and a spirit. But without considering this point on which Christian philosophers differ, they may be said to agree very generally in regarding the lower and higher natures of man as so distinct and complete in themselves as to be actually divisible at death. Their union in this life is but temporary. Death dissolves the bond and lets them go apart. It is like the dissolution of the marriage tie, or of a partnership between individuals. However disastrous it may be to one of the parties, it only gives greater freedom and power to the other party or parties. Death is not death to the entire man, but only to one of the parties. The word "death" has no application to the other, excepting in a figurative sense, to denote a depraved condition of being.
That this is the popular notion, and that it is sustained by the current theology and literature — both secular and sacred — of the present day, no one will deny. But is it true — we do not say according to the teachings of science, for science teaches no such thing — is it true according to the teachings of God's Word, which must be our final appeal on questions of this nature? It is certainly true that man may be supposed to be divided into two or three or any number of subordinate parts for the purpose of analysis and philosophical treatment; and so may the brute animals, or indeed anything else in Nature. But is it true that any two or three or more of these parts are so independent of the others, as to be able to live and thrive and fulfill their proper functions apart from the rest? The Scriptures speak of the body, the soul, and the spirit; so also they speak of the mind, the heart, the head, the eye, the tongue, etc. But do they speak of them as so many separable and independent enities, and as having independent responsibilities of their own?
Science may indeed be in error in ignoring the radical distinction between the physical and the psychical, the noetic and the material in man, and in asserting so positively that all thought, feeling, and action in man and in brutes alike, is due entirely to material agencies; and yet it may be fulfilling an important service to truth in calling attention so especially to the actual unity of man — a truth which is essential to any true understanding of the future state, and which has been greatly overlooked, if not quite subverted, in discussing the destiny of man.
It must be admitted that those who have insisted the most strongly on the duality or trinity of persons in man, have never been able to find any proper cleavage between the parties in this partnership, nor to agree with each other, nor with themselves, as to the proper division of the whole estate among the several partners. Indeed, when hard pressed, they have been constrained to confess that their arguments, for the most part, are as applicable to brutes as to men.
Have we any better warrant from Scripture, or sound philosophy, than we have from science, for our loose notions of the relation between the body and the soul — for the popular notion that it is a kind of marriage relation for this life only— a mere limited partnership, that may be formed and dissolved as between two individuals — that the soul, which is but one of two or, perhaps three partners, may assume the liabilities of both, and fulfill all the functions of life unimpaired?
Do not the Scriptures represent man as a complete solidarity? Was he not created as such in the beginning? The body, soul, and spirit which were requisite to constitute him a complete man, were not three persons with separate responsibilities, but were united in one responsible person. The law was laid upon man as one undivided and indivisible unity — not upon his body, nor upon his soul, nor upon his spirit, but upon the whole in one: "Thou shalt not eat," etc. And the penalty was not threatened against any one part of his complex nature more than another, but against his whole being: "Thou shalt die." He could not have understood it otherwise, nor did he, until the tempter suggested another solution. Nor could we, with out this false philosophy, which shows us how to read an other meaning into the plain and positive language of Scripture, and to say and believe that the threatening of actual death applied to but one of the partners in this firm, but as to the other or others, it is to be understood only in a figurative sense, as implying a sinful and miserable condition of being endlessly perpetuated. And so, when the Bible speaks of the death of man, as the natural and necessary result of sin, and of the utter destruction of the wicked, no matter how emphatic and definite the language it uses, we have learned to interpret it in this double sense, as applying to the body only in any actual real sense; but as to all the rest of man — to the man himself, the real, responsible sinning agent — it can have only a figurative application! The diseases, pains, and infirmities of the body which result from sin are regarded as the precursors of its death, or symptomatic of the certain end to which they point; but the disorders, pains, and distresses of the soul which result from the same cause are not regarded as the precursors of its coming death, nor as symptomatic of the approaching end, but as the end itself — for it can experience no other death.
Dr. A. A. Hodge, in his Outlines of Theology, truly says: "While the senses are several and the bodily organization is constantly changing, yet in every complex experience, and through all time, the central I, which thinks and feels, is an absolute unit." But he slips away from this fundamental truth when he comes to speak of the penalty of the law and the future state; and so do all Platonic Theologians. The penalty, "Thou shalt surely die,""Dust thou art and unto dust shalt thou return," is not addressed to the man that thinks and feels, but to the body, which, apart from this "central I," cannot think or feel. But, in order to save both their philosophy and their theology — which, indeed, are in opposition to each other — they say that while the body dies actually, the soul undergoes a kind- of moral transformation metaphorically called death, and lives on as sensitive and as active as ever and infinitely more so, to sin and suffer forever. They constantly affirm that the man himself does not and cannot die. So said the tempter; so said Plato; and so says our traditional theology which is founded on his philosophy.
But in opposition to all this the Word of God says, and repeatedly and constantly and uniformly says, throughout the whole Inspired Volume: "Sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death"— death to the sinning man— not merely to one part of him, but to the entire man. And so it is now working out its fearful and inevitable results in every sinning soul, and when its sad work is finished, whether sooner or later, the sinner must die; and were it not for that new life which is begotten in the children of God through grace in Christ, which is not natural, but altogether supernatural, there would be no hope for any man.
How clear and simple the teaching of the Scriptures when viewed apart from this blinding, bewildering philosophy. "And 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." Precisely the same thing is said of all the other animals which God made, though it hardly appears in our present version. When man dies he gives up the ghost or breath of life which God breathed into him, and he then becomes a dead man or a dead soul, and so he remains till he is raised again in the resurrection — the righteous to live again forever in His kingdom, and the unrighteous to perish in the second death from which there is no recovery.
The denial of the true unity of man not only obscures the Divine Law and constrains us to such an interpretation of its penalty, as to bring reproach on the justice of God; but it also obscures the Gospel, and robs Christ of His real glory in our redemption. He did not die, they say, to redeem us from actual death — excepting so far as the body is concerned — but only from a state of sin and misery. The new life which He offers us is not actually a new life, but only an improved condition of our old life. "The Life Everlasting," of which He so continually spoke, and which He promised to all who would believe on Him, is no more enduring than our old Adamic life, which is also everlasting. It simply means a purification of our own immortal natures. The exhortation to "fight the good fight of faith, lay hold on eternal life," must mean infinitely less than the words seem to import; and the expostulation, "Why will ye die?" seems like bitter irony. For, the death of the body cannot be avoided; and as to what is called "spiritual death," it has already fallen on man; and what other death to come can there be but the second death? But this, in the sense of the actual death and destruction of the soul, cannot, according to this philosophy, be allowed.
Those pregnant passages of Scripture which set forth the love and mercy of God in our redemption — such as, “The wages of sin is death, but the Gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord ;" "God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on Him should not perish, but have everlasting life;" "I give unto them Eternal Life," etc., etc., — can not be literally understood, but must be taken in a modified and tropical sense to mean, man's recovery from a state of sin and misery to a state of purity and blessedness.
Here is the source of Swedenborgianism, Spiritualism, and the various phases of ghostism, which prevail at the present day. We are now told by Christian preachers and teachers that in dying we do not really die: we merely cast off our bodies like worn-out garments a. the door of death, and rise, at once, into greater freedom of thought and action. Death is a natural process; it simply marks one stage in the normal development of our immortal natures. There is nothing supernatural in the continuation of our lives beyond the grave. Not merely the supernatural character of the resurrection is denied, but the doctrine of the resurrection itself, as taught in the Scriptures, which Paul so much insisted on as the foundation of all our hopes for any life whatever beyond the present, and on which the early Christians fastened their hopes, is either denied altogether or reduced to an unmeaning pageant. And so, deprived of all its real significance and power, this great doctrine has fallen into neglect.
Well did the other early reformers insist upon this unity of man in life and in death, the unconscious state of the dead, the miraculous character of the resurrection and of the future life, in opposition to the Spiritualistic fancies of the Papal Church concerning the intermediate state, the purgatorial sufferings of the wicked and the ghostly bliss of the righteous.
This philosophy of Plato concerning the nature of man — so flattering to his pride, but so inconsistent with the simple teachings of God's Word — has been a fruitful source of error and confusion in the church. Notwithstanding Paul warned the early Christians against it, they soon fell under its corrupting influence and suffered it to mould and shape their whole system of doctrines. Although we have rejected some of the grosser errors of the Papal Church, and modified others to bring them into a better harmony with the spirit of the age, our Protestant notions of the intermediate state and of the final destiny of man, and our interpretation of the teachings of the Scripture on these questions, are still controlled to a great extent by the same philosophy.
A theological friend, in speaking of a recent volume entitled, The Soul Here and Hereafter, says in a private note: "What we want is a book on Man here and here after. So long as men occupy their thoughts with the 'soul' of modern philosophy and theology, they will miss the real vital question, 'What is man and what is his future?' Man is the subject of Divine Revelation, not a separate soul. A living man is a living soul. God created man; placed man under law; banished man from Eden; and made man the subject of redemption; and as to his future, the great question is, 'If a man die shall he live again?' This vital question the author ignores, and so do most writers on this question. They annihilate man as God made him, and devote whole libraries to a part of man — ' 'His soul here and hereafter.' We shall never have a biblical and scientific theology of man until he is studied and treated as a unit. Man is one being— genus, homo. He has body, soul and spirit, all essential to his manhood or humanity. Man is greater than body, greater than soul, greater than spirit. He is the perfect combination of all. And yet Christendom, for centuries, has magnified the soul to the utter neglect of man. The Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, magnifies man. 'God made man a little lower than the angels.' Christ honored humanity by appearing 'in the likeness of men.' 'He tasted death for every man,' and the whole economy of redemption is designed to bless and save man."
Christ did not take upon himself the body of a man merely to redeem that from death; nor the soul of man simply, to redeem that; nor the spirit of a man; but the whole nature of a man, body, soul and spirit. He redeemed them all together in the redemption of man. And when He lifts man into life again, it will not be a life of the spirit alone that He will give him; nor the eternal life of his soul, but of spirit, soul, and body, again united in one. The body will, indeed, be purified and "made like unto His own glorious body." But it will, none the less, be a real body— the fit receptacle of the soul and the spirit, and the medium and agent as it now is, through which they shall act.
Viewing man from the Scriptural standpoint, as one undivided and indivisible creature, the teachings of God's Word concerning him, here and hereafter, appear to be as they really are, beautifully clear and consistent; the difficulties, perplexities, and contradictions into which our Platonic philosophy with its spiritualistic fancies, on the one hand, and materialism with its infidel tendencies, on the other, lead us, all vanish; nor can we hope to reconcile these doctrines, or understand them, or reason correctly about them, until we come back to the simple Scriptural doctrine of the actual Unity of Man.
Post Scriftum : —
The tendency of scientific thought at the present day is toward materialism, and, when divorced from religion, it says that "there is no resurrection, neither angel nor spirit." This is a result, in part at least, of a reaction from the extreme spiritualism of many religionists, who have gone quite as far from the plain teachings of God's Word in the opposite direction.
It has not seemed important, in considering this question of the Unity of Man, to discuss the theories of either party to this controversy between materialism and spiritualism, nor to employ their perplexing terminology. It is an old controversy, and has assumed many phases, as those who are acquainted with the history of philosophy well know. We have endeavored, in our studies, to follow the current of this history from the times of Heraclitus, Empedocles, Anaxagoras, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and Epicurus, to make ourselves acquainted with their various theories ; and to understand, as far as we were able, their subtile distinctions. We have read, with some care, the discussions of the earlier and later Fathers of the Christian Church, and the speculations of the schoolmen during the middle ages, and have paid considerable attention to the spiritualistic fancies of Swedenborg, and those of his school at the present day. We have also attentively listened to what such scientists, of the opposite school, as Haeckel, Huxley, Darwin, Tyndall, Spencer, and their disciples, have to say of cytods, monera, protista, dormant gemmules, spores, cell-germs, protoplasm, bioplasm, spontaneous generation, evolution, natural selection, and many other things in the arcana of Nature, and have tried to understand the meaning of the learned words they use. We have been impressed with the great wealth of imagination, the inexhaustible treasury of words, the dialectic skill, and keen logic of many of these thinkers and scholars, both ancient and modern; but we have to confess that we have found nothing upon which to rest our faith, nor indeed one single ray of light concerning the nature and destiny of man, beyond what comes to us from the Word, of God. Like the bird from the ark, we have found no place over the whole wide waste of waters upon which to rest the sole of our foot, until we returned to the ark we had left.
However attractive the speculations of these philosophers may be to the intellect or the imagination, so far as they depart from the Word of God, they seem to have nothing but assumption upon which to rest. They show more skill in demolishing the positions of their antagonists, than in establishing their own. Indeed, some of our Christian scholars who are enamored of the philosophy of materialism on the one hand, or of dualism on the other, are can did enough to admit that the point from which they start is, and must be, a simple hypothesis ; but the theories which they build upon it seem so perfect and beautiful in their eye that they must be true, and the Bible must be so interpreted as to sustain them!
Mr. A. Wilford Hall, in his remarkable work entitled The Problem of Human Life, dashes into the arguments of Haeckel, Tyndall, Spencer, and those of that school, like a bull into a china-shop, and fairly demolishes much of their fine ware; but he is quite as weak and open to attack in the positions he undertakes to establish for himself. He makes much sport of Haeckel's doctrine, that "life and mind are nothing but the complicated motions of the molecules of the brain and nerves, placed together in a most varied manner," and with the doctrines of spontaneous generation and evolution which are so earnestly advocated by not a few of our popular scientists; but, while he would seem to be arguing for the doctrine of the opposite school, his philosophy is nothing better than a sublimated form of materialism, or the double materialism of the pre-Socratic philosophers, and of Swedenborg, very much refined. He frankly admits that his theory is founded on a hypothesis in the first instance, but it so clearly answers all the conditions of the problem that it must be true. It is this: That man is composed of two organisms, each complete in itself. Both of them are material, but the one is of gross matter, and the other matter in its highest state of refinement, answering, we suppose, to the fourth state of matter of which Lockyer speaks, or, perhaps more truly, to Aristotle's quint-essence. His own language is as follows:
"It is a fundamental law of Nature, that every animated being, including man, is a dual organism, or double entity; the outer or physical structure being the visible and tangible half, while the incorporeal, though invisible and intangible, constitutes the other half, the one being the exact counterpart of the other." (P. 48.)
"This interior organism, could we see it after the body dies, would stand out a transparent manikin — with every outline of the human body intact — a perfect representation of our organic form in all its parts, as would a manikin of the arteries, veins, and nerves, could they be lifted from the body, without disturbing their relative position." (P. 46.)
"Thus inter-woven and inter-dependent upon each other, it is not surprising that a blow on the brain should temporarily paralyze the vital and mental structure, in proportion to the physical injury received; and should such in jury prove sufficient to result in a complete dissolution or separation' of the two organisms, it is not inpresumable but that the mental and vital entity might remain for some time in a state of entire unconsciousness, or until the effects of the dissolving shock should have sufficient time to subside. I say this is a reasonable supposition on the view that we are really dual, substantial beings ; and then it is equally rational that our interior, incorporeal enity, after recovering consciousness may actually continue on forever in a state of personal activity, as all religionists must hold, if their religion is to be of any practical value in this world or the next " (???) (P. 37.)
Because these philosophers cannot understand just how the noetic and physical properties in man are combined, or, indeed, how it is possible for the Creator to unite them in one substantial organism, they must needs resort to the hypothesis of a double organism, as though this would solve the whole mystery ; but in reality it only throws it one remove further back. It is quite as difficult to conceive how the manikin within can fulfill its spiritual functions unaided, without another still more etherial manikin within itself, or this third, without another, and so on ad infinitum.
This kind of philosophy is very much akin to that old philosophy which required something underneath the earth to keep it from falling, and something under this, and so on. And the arguments to prove it are certainly no better than the old philosophers used, nor is the theory any better. The philosophy, and the reasoning to sustain it, remind us of the method used by the old lady with her inquisitive grandson. "What," says he, "does the world stand on?" "On a great rock," she replies with promptness, supposing that would end the matter. But not quite satisfied, he inquired again: "And what does that rock stand on?" " Why, on another great rock," she replied, with some irritation at his dullness. But still unsatisfied, and determined to get at the bottom of the matter, he again asks: "Well, what does that rock stand on?" This was more than she had expected, but she was equal to the occasion, and cut off all further questioning by exclaiming, with a great show of astonishment at the boy's stupidity: " Why, you foolish boy, don't you know, it is rocks all the way down?"
Some of our good Christian men have become so fearful of the materialism of the present age, and of the atheistic, agnostic, or infidel position which some of its strongest advocates have taken, that they have run to the ¦ opposite extreme of error, and felt it incumbent on themselves to insist on this double-entity doctrine, as though the Christian religion depended on it. But it really explains nothing.. Indeed, it tends directly to the Infidelity which they so much fear ; for, so long as scientific thinkers are assured by those whose office it is to expound the Scriptures, that they teach a philosophy concerning man that is contrary to the teachings of science and actually absurd, they will sooner reject the Scriptures and the God of the Scriptures, than stultify their own reasons. But there is no such necessity on either hand. There is nothing in the Word of God in which the sober men of either party may not unite. What if we cannot understand how the mind and the body can co-exist and act together in one organism, any better than the ancients could understand how the earth could float in space without something beside the power of the Creator to sustain it? We can understand it as a fact, if we cannot explain the mode.
For the one party, Professor A. Bain, in his Mind and Body, well says : " The alliance itself is unaccountable, because it is an ultimate fact ; of it no explanation is competent or relevant, except generalizing it to the utmost." He also quotes Professor Ferrier as saying in his Institute of Metaphysics:
"In vain does the spiritualist found an argument for the existence of a separate, immaterial substance, on the alleged incompatibility of the intellectual and physical phenomena to cohere in the same substratum. Materiality may very well stand the brunt of that unshotted broad side. This mild artifice can scarcely expect to be treated as a serious observation. Such an hypothesis cannot he meant to be in earnest. Who is to dictate to Nature what phenomena, or what qualities inhere in what substance; what effects may result from what causes ? Matter is already in the field as an acknowledged entity — this both parties admit. Mind, considered as an independent entity, is not so unmistakably in the field ! Therefore as entities are not to be multiplied without necessity, we are not entitled to postulate a new cause, so long as it is possible to account for the phenomena by a cause already in existence; which possibility has never yet been disproved."
For the other party, Dugald Stewart, who had no partiality for materialism, says : "Although we have the strongest evidence that there is a thinking and sentient principle within us, essentially distinct from matter, yet, we have no direct evidence of the possibility of this principle exercising its various powers in a separate state from the body. On the contrary, the union of the two, while it subsists, is evidently of the most intimate nature." And he goes on to adduce some of the strong facts that show the dependence of mind on body. He says that the mental philosopher is rightly occupied in ascertaining " the laws that regulate their connection, without attempting to explain in what manner they are united."
John Locke also admits, that he cannot see that we are in any way committed to the immaterial nature of mind, inasmuch as Omnipotence might, for anything we know, as easily annex the power of thinking to matter directly, into an immaterial substance to be itself annexed to matter. In his Essays on the Human Understanding, he uses this language:
"We have the ideas of matter and thinking, but possibly shall never be able to know whether any mere material being thinks or not ; it being, in respect to our notions, not much more remote from our comprehension to conceive that God can, if He pleases, superadd to matter a faculty of thinking, than that He should superadd to it another substance of thinking ; since we know not whence thinking consists, nor what sort of substance the Almighty has been pleased to give that power. For I see no contradiction in it, that the first eternal thinking being should, if He pleased, give to certain systems of created senseless matter put together as he thinks fit, sense, perception, and fought."
Professor Bain concludes his History of the Theories of the Soul with these words : "The rapid sketch thus given seems to tell its own tale as to the future. The arguments for the two substances have, we believe, now entirely lost their solidity ; they are no longer compatible with ascertained science, and clear thinking. The one substance, with two sets of properties, two sides, the physical and the mental — a double-faced unity — would appear to comply with all the exigencies of the case. We are to deal with this as in the language of the Athanasian Creed, ' not confounding the person, nor dividing the substance.' The mind is destined to be a double study — to conjoin the mental philosopher with the physical philosopher ; and the momentary glimpse of Aristotle is at last converted into a clear and steady vision."
It has not been our purpose to favor, or oppose any particular school of psychology, but merely to set forth what we think to be the simple doctrine of Divine Revelation as to the nature of man, namely: That man, however constituted, is one person in his life, and in his death, and in the world to come ; that the second life, for which he hopes, is not the natural prolongation of the present into another state of being, but is altogether supernatural. It is only through Redemption in Christ that he lives again, and lives forever. We believe that this is not only the truth of God's Word, but it is the only doctrine that will meet the skepticism of the present day,' whether in the direction of spiritualism or materialism, and give efficiency to the Gospel, which human speculations have so long perverted and obscured.
It is rather to what is falsely asserted to be the doctrine of the Scriptures concerning the nature and destiny of man, than to what they really teach, that so many of our scientific men are opposing themselves. They cannot be made to believe without any evidence whatever — and in spite of much to the contrary — that man is a creature with two organisms, when all the phenomena of his being, according to their view, can be quite as well and even much better explained on the theory of one. They cannot be made to believe, in spite of the evidence of all their five senses, as well as- the analogies of nature, that man is naturally exempt from actual death, and that he naturally and inevitably rises into greater freedom and activity when he seems to die.
It is because the professed expounders of God's Word have insisted upon their acceptance of these fictions of a false philosophy, as the very foundation of the Gospel, that they have been repelled from it, and forced to declare them selves agnostics or unbelievers.
But there is nothing in the doctrine of a resurrection from death by Divine power, and of an Eternal Life through a new spiritual birth from above, that conflicts with the teachings of reason or science, however much it may he beyond them. This is just what the Gospel does teach ; and just what must be preached, if we would save them from Infidelity, or save a world of perishing men. "I am the Resurrection and the Life," says Christ. "And this is the will of Him that sent me, that every one which seeth the Son and believeth on Him may have Everlasting Life; and I will raise him up at the last day."
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