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LESSON V

 

RESURRECTION

 

            AS we have received a great number of questions all bearing on the subject of Resurrection, we have deemed it desirable to reply to a number of them in the following address which will be found to contain answers to a number of leading inquiries continually recurring in the minds of all who devote much thought to this intensely interesting theme.

 

            The resurrection of Jesus from the dead is the corner-stone of Christianity; without it the whole system falls to pieces. By Christianity in this sense we of course mean that great religious system which prevails throughout that part of the world commonly called Christendom, not that excellence of character and amiability of disposition which many people are accustomed to indiscriminately designate “Christian.”

 

            Now, so intensely important a doctrine as that of the resurrection can not be supported in any literal or external sense in the face of modern criticism. In its letter the doctrine is most surely doomed. It has long been dying, and is now almost if not entirely dead among earnest and liberal thinkers on the subject; but while in its letter it is rapidly becoming obsolete, and will soon have to be regarded as an effete dogma, a product of ancient ignorance and mediæval superstition,

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in its spirit it is revealing itself in a light always perceived by a few intuitive and clearly reasoning minds, but never until , very recently beheld by the masses of mankind, unless it be in some remote period lost in the dim haze of legendary narrative which antedates the so-called “historic period.”

 

            As an introduction to what we have to say concerning the resurrection of Jesus in particular, let us glance at a few of the numerous instances of resurrection from the tomb, or from death, recorded alike in the Old and New Testaments. The power to raise the dead, according to the Bible, is a gift bestowed upon all true prophets, whether under the Jewish or Christian dispensation. Elijah is said to have literally restored to life the beloved son of the hospitable woman at Zarephath, who entertained him at her home, and shared her scanty supply of provisions with him in a time of direful famine. Elisha, upon whom Elijah’s mantle fell, raised from the dead the son of a Shunamite woman who had shown kindness to him. Jesus raised Lazarus, the widow’s son at Nain, Jairus’ daughter, and others, and in giving his final commission to the disciples who were to succeed him in his ministry on earth after his disappearance from the plane of mortal perception, he declared that the works he had done they should likewise accomplish, and even do greater works than, any he had performed in consequence of his ascension to the Father.

 

            In the “Acts of the Apostles” we are told of the resurrections wrought by the divine gift bestowed upon the apostles very similar to those already referred to. Now, in these cases of resurrection from the dead, if

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the literal sense be strictly adhered to, not only is there no positive proof of human immortality offered, but we can scarcely behold even a faint intimation of the spiritual immortality of man. All these narratives are very popular with the Second Adventists and others who deny spiritual life, and affirm the necessity of a bodily resuscitation. Of course it would be quite possible, by means of not unfair or illogical special pleading, to argue immortality from the fact of the spirit being recalled after it had left the form; still there are so many ways of escape from this conclusion without very much verbal juggling, that in common fairness we are bound to admit that the testimony on behalf of human immortality, furnished by such narratives, is unsatisfactory because uncertain, and wherever ambiguity prevails positive conviction is out of the question among close reasoners.

 

            These physical resurrections, in the light of modern knowledge, are intensely interesting from a therapeutic standpoint, and are therefore really more important matters to medical men than to theologians, unless theologians are willing to return to their primitive and rightful position as healers of the body as well as the soul. Though it has always been the part of true theology to minister to sin-sick souls, it is none the less its province to minister with equal efficiency to beclouded minds and ailing frames; and because it has for centuries almost confined itself to one portion of its proper sphere, instead of working throughout that sphere, it has been not only severely reprimanded, but stoutly antagonized by utilitarians of every school, who can not see even the prospective advantages of a system

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which does not here and now demonstrate its beneficial influence upon mankind, even to the ultimates of physical expression.

 

            It is a singularly noticeable fact that priests and prophets in all ages have been healers of the sick. When James said in his epistle, “If any sick among you, let him call for the elders of the church,” he was but complying with a usage so ancient that no student of antique customs can discover a period (say in ancient Egypt) when such practices were not constantly resorted to. Indeed, we are very much in doubt whether in olden times a priest or prophet would have been accepted by the people at all if he had not presented his credentials in this manner. To heal the sick, even to the extent of raising the seemingly dead, was one of the leading proofs of a spiritual vocation. Words and deeds had to go together, or a claim to spiritual fitness for an exalted station was not received as genuine. Of course, it may always be argued by the materialistic school that the priests of old were versed in the knowledge of drugs, and, in spite of the mystery which surrounded their practice, they were really skillful physicians. This, of course, may be and is in a sense correct but, notwithstanding all allowance which can be fairly made for this admission, the singular evidence of the prophet’s gift was that he could perform works of healing far transcending the work done by the therapeutæ or medical men.

 

            In the days of Moses it appears that the manner of testing a true prophet, versus an ordinary magician, was at this very touchstone of his possessing or not possessing the healing gift. Pharaoh’s magicians, at a

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period when the court was one of infamy and despotism could do as wonderful things as Moses. When miracles were under consideration, they could claim full equality with the great founder of Mosaism, but when it came to removing plagues from the land, Moses and the magicians differed, as light and darkness, night and day. The magicians could convert rods into serpents, and then turn the serpents back into rods; they could multiply frogs, locusts, and all manner of pests; they could afflict the bodies of men and cattle in a most mysterious and fearful way; they were complete masters of the black art, but the white art of healing was altogether beyond them. We must never forget that mere wonders are no evidence of the operation of divine power. Wonders of beneficence are required to attest the action of celestial force.

 

            That the physical body of man ought to be under the complete dominion of reason, intellect, and will, needs no argument, neither does it need an argument to prove that intellect in its turn needs to bow before the moral sense. The three universally recognized principles in man, the animal, the intellectual, and the moral, must be rightfully subordinated, the one to the other, or harmony, which is wholeness, symmetry, or health, is impossible.

 

            The superiority of mind to matter needs not to be argued; it is self-evident, as evident to the practical mechanic, or the potter who molds the clay, as to the most abstract metaphysician. That the higher should govern the lower, that our higher instincts should hold our lower passions in subjection, is admitted by Colonel Ingersoll as much as by any ascetic, but with this difference,

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Ingersoll differs from the ascetic in his view of what constitutes the highest welfare of the race.

 

            Now, it stands to reason that as all material achievements are wrought by the power of intelligence, or, in other words, by mental and moral action; as it is beyond cavil that in order to subdue the material world, man must at least liberate his reason from the chains of passion, it inevitably follows that the more perfect mastery one gains over one’s own lover impulses, the greater will be one’s influence for good upon one’s neighbors.

 

            It needs no argument to prove that if one can remove a heavy stone from before one’s own door, he has sufficient strength to remove a stone of similar weight and proportions from another’s door, if he have but liberty to use that strength on a neighbors’ behalf, while if he is too weak to roll away a rock which bars the entrance to his .own domicile, he can not possibly remove one of equal size from some one else’s door.

 

            We can not impart what we do not possess. The more we have the more we can bestow. but at the same time nothing is truer than that the best and readiest way of learning is to teach what we do know, and thus put ourselves in the true way of learning, more, while the surest way to receive abundantly is to give freely to the utmost extent of our ability.

 

            Medical science is avowedly experimental. The highest medical testimony proves that while there are multitudes of open questions, there are very few set tied ones among the medical fraternity. Joseph Cook declared, in Boston some years ago, in Tremont Temple, before a very large audience, on the occasion of his

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memorable discourses on probation in death, in opposition to the theory of probation after death which he was combating, that an infallible test of death had not been discovered by modern scientists, and that a large reward would gladly be placed in the hands of any one who could furnish the colleges with such infallible test as they stood in need of.

 

            Now, if a champion of orthodox Christianity makes such a statement as this, and it can scarcely be refuted, what proof is there, we ask, that any one of the persons raised to life again by Jewish prophets, Christian apostles, or the Christ himself, were really dead? Medical opinion would doubtless be that they were in a stupor; buried in a trance, or something of the kind comparatively unusual, but by no mean unprecedented. You have all read and heard, doubtless with much interested wonder, of many persons rising from their graves after interment, and to raise the seemingly dead, even those already buried, would be less a wonder in a hot country than in a cold one, and still less wonderful at a time when epidemics being prevalent, interment in the ground follows almost immediately upon the supposition that breath has left the body.

 

            The statement that Lazarus had been buried four days would, of course, in that particular instance, add greatly to the marvel of his restoration, but even in that case it could scarcely be said that the wonder was unparalleled. The simplest exposition, by far the most reasonable, practical, and helpful one, is that these narratives have probably been culled from an immense mass of ancient testimony to the efficacy of direct spiritual healing after all external measures had proved futile.

 

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            The author of the fourth Gospel ends his record by saying that if everything which took place at the time concerning which he wrote had been recorded, the collection of manuscripts would have been so great that the world could hardly contain them, thereby leading us at once to infer that only sample illustrations were given, testifying to an exuberant outpouring of the spirit extending throughout Judea, and doubtless elsewhere, astounding the populace, arousing the bitterest ire and indignation of interested parties whose fortune was derived from monopolistic enterprises, and generally proving to the populace that even for bodily ailments there was a cure unknown to the practioners of the prevailing schools of medicine.

 

            It is impossible to vouch for the accuracy of all the details of these narratives. They are often more or less romantic in their style. They may even be parables, but whatever they are they afford a close insight into the actual occurrences of that age. To say that they are not original, to state even that they came from Egypt, by no means disposes of then, because facts of such a nature can not depend upon time and place, but upon nature and degree only.

 

            If such things can be, if they ever were, they can be now, provided we learn to comply with necessary requirements for their production. Their place in the Bible gives them a historic base in the minds of men, and makes them capable of stimulating hope and inquiry, if not positive faith in the minds of the millions the world over who read them. We can safely leave them in their literal sense as challenges to modern disciples of truth to put the Master’s theory into practice, and learn by the three-fold agency of faith, prayer

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and abstinence to accomplish for suffering humanity to-day benefits as great as any that occurred, from a complete surrender of sense to spirit, ages ago in far-off countries.

 

            But it is not with the letter of these narratives, interesting and profitable though it be, that we are most particularly concerned, for through the dimness of the letter beams the everlasting brightness of the spirit; and while the letter breaks when too hardly strained, and fails to justify itself to human reason in some particulars, the spirit to which the letter is often sacrificed, but which is never sacrificed for the sake of the letter, bursts upon us with a refulgence so glorious that we cease to care whether the letter is accurate or not, so satisfied do we become with the kernel of truth after we have broken the shell in which it has been so long enclosed.

 

            Whatever phenomenal Spiritualists may say to the contrary, the evidences of human immortality are, in their final analysis, totally subjective; and when we say this, we do not for a moment intend to repudiate or disparage such objective proofs of spiritual action over material things as may be necessary to conduct the doubting hind, immured in sordid materiality, step by step out of the darkness of materialism into the light of true and abiding Spiritualism. We do, however, most emphatically declare that phenomenal evidences of spiritual power over mortal things are only means to an end – useful and necessary means in many instances, means to be honored and not despised, but still only means – the end not being attained till the means are no longer needful.

 

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            If all Spiritualists, metaphysicians, Swedenborgians, and others would but compare notes and be reasonable on this point, a rand, united army of spiritual workers could at once be found to storm the citadels of error, and let in the light of truth to multitudes of darkened minds. •But just so long as blind and bigoted antagonisms are inflamed by hot-headed partisans of a particular view of truth, people who see from one point of view only, and persist in maintaining that what they see is all the truth there is to see; so long, we say, as such people are to the fore in any movement, whatever name and proportions it may assume, that much to be desired harmony and genuine spiritual co-operation of scattered forces so sorely needed in the present juncture of human affairs can never be consummated. One side denies phenomena, calls it all fraudulent, delusive, or debasing; the other side extols it beyond all reasonable limits, even to the extent of denying the very existence of the end to which, if useful, it must of necessity lead.

 

            The New Testament presents to us the golden mean, and so do all rational teachers who are at the same time what all rational people should be, eminently spiritual. In the accounts furnished by the evangelists of the resurrection of Jesus we have, when we take only a literal view, many reasons for doubt. Thomas Paine, in his “Age of Reason,” has borne unwitting testimony to the spiritual sense, which he evidently did not perceive, when he positively ridicules the account as it stands literally.

 

            The story is that Jesus expired physically on the cross on a Friday afternoon, and that certain women

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remained at the foot of the cross till all was over. They saw their Master’s dead body removed from the cross, or, at all events, they saw him during the very latest moments of his earthly existence. Not more than forty hours later, very early, before daybreak, the following Sunday morning, they were at the tomb, which they found empty, and when these same women, especially Mary Magdalene, saw the risen Jesus, and held a conversation with him, she had no conception ,that it was he; but, mistaking him for a gardener, she confided her sorrow and amaze to him, without the least suspicion, it appears, entering her mind that she was talking with the •very friend of whose physical whereabouts she was so diligently inquiring.

 

            Now, if the writers had intended to convey the idea that Jesus rose from the dead in the literal physical form which was buried, why did they not so record the event as to encourage belief, rather than provoke the most decided unbelief in this connection? If a physical form were raised, then why should the women and the disciples, in the case of the resurrection of Jesus, have any more difficulty in identifying him outwardly than the friends and relatives had in identifying those whose bodily y resurrection has been already under review?

 

            What would have been more natural than for Mary Magdalene to have been struck dumb with amazement at beholding Jesus standing beside her, and, for the time being, supposing she had seen a vision or beheld an apparition? But nothing of this nature, nor anything approaching it, enters into the narrative, so far, at least, as she is concerned. He looks to her like an ordinary man attending to the duties of a gardener,

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and it is not until, he turns to her and pronounces her name in some peculiar and doubtless characteristic way, accompanying the words with some silent, subtile appeal to her inner consciousness, that she is in the least aware that her beloved teacher, whom she mourned as dead, is talking with her, – truly alive, but not in outward appearance like unto what he was before his physical decease.

 

            Two disciples journey between Jerusalem and Emmaus the same day. At evening they hold a long conversation with Jesus, without in the slightest degree recognizing him physically. He made himself known to them at a supper by some characteristic way he had of breaking bread, and they then remembered how their hearts had burned within them as he expounded Scripture to them while they were on the road; but physical evidences of a personal character were altogether lacking, and it does not appear that any physical proofs were given to any disciple except Thomas, whose skeptical mind required more tangible evidence in his case. To meet his necessity, to use a modern word, Jesus “materialized,” i.e., he produced an outward form so closely resembling the physical organism he had once worn, that even the doubts of Didymus yielded to so convincing a display of the absolute power of spirit over matter.

 

            What became of the physical body of Jesus is a very interesting query. Most answers are totally unsatisfactory. The only really helpful one is that derived from a study of occult chemistry, and a comparison of the claims put forward by theosophists concerning the faculties of adepts, with prevalent views put forward by distinguished naturalists.

 

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            Scarcely a physiologist of any note can be encountered anywhere, who does not give seven years as the longest time for those changes to become complete which periodically remodel the organic structure of man. Camille Flammarion, a Frenchman of great eminence, declares that the entire physique is remodeled in less than one year, while many parts of the body change entirely in not more than thirty days. Now, with such testimony as this before us, how utterly futile must be every attempt to establish a theory of physical resurrection among intelligent persons.

 

            And what is far more important even than the light thrown on the resurrection in its literal sense, is the amazing testimony thus brought forward by physical scientists to the reality of the spiritual man and the utter impossibility of the physical organism being anything  – more than a temporary and ever – changing instrument. The physical body, in the light of natural science, is a chemical compound, susceptible of complete disintegration, when volatilized, as all hard substances can be, according to scientific testimony, – for even the rocks as well as the osseous formations in the human frame are only solidified ether or condensed atmosphere, – the most rigorous external substances can be reduced to a state of absolute invisibility.

 

            When the human will shall gain such power over the physique as rightfully belongs to it, and as can be obtained by a life of complete abnegation of the lower instincts, that the higher may wield unrestricted sway, the disappearance of a physical form will not occasion much surprise, as the power of will is thoroughly adequate to separate all the particles of the structure, and

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compel them, one and all, to return to their respective places in the external kingdoms of which they form a part.

 

            The body of Jesus, in our opinion, was not stolen, or in any way removed from the tomb. It was dispersed, or, as some would say, “de-materialized.” When the human will becomes so sovereign over sense that it is no longer held in captivity to sensuous proclivities, death will not occur even to the outward body. When the intelligent principle which has used it for a temporary work has outgrown the need of it, then will it be thrown aside painlessly and willingly. It will not slowly decay, it will be simply cast off when it has served its use. To teach the necessity of disease, and to call decay natural before the spirit has left the body, is to teach a most damnable error, one which is afflicting the world with innumerable sorrows of man’s own creation, and one which, in common justice to enlightened physiologists, it must be admitted they do not teach.

 

            Dr. T.L. Nichols and many others have argued splendidly against the prevalent notion that sickness is natural. To attribute disease and premature passing from the mortal form to an act of nature or Divine Providence is to call darkness light, error truth, guilt righteousness, and the unnatural time natural which is the quintessence of mischievous absurdity. The sublime spectacle, of Jesus quitting the mortal form after having declared his earthly work finished, is a picture on which all need to gaze whose shallow pessimism leads them to regard the effects of their own weakness and immorality as harmonious with the divine natural

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order, against which their own ignorance or willfulness causes them to rebel. Illness is something to be ashamed of, and when one meets with accident, it is conclusive proof to the lynx-eyed philosopher who knows something of the true nature of causation, that spiritual perception is but dim and instinct obscure in the one who stumbles and falls into danger, while if he were more foreseeing and discerning he could readily have escaped.

 

            The Egyptian custom of embalming the dead is not one which it is well for modern nations to copy. Cremation is, in its turn, far preferable to burial, while the disposal of human remains by electrical agency will doubtless soon supersede cremation, till at length what Bulwer Lytton, in The Coming Race, calls vril will at length be the agent employed in all such undertakings; while there is yet to be discerned, still farther ahead, the sovereign action of will, which will leave even vril, with all its potencies, far in the background.

 

            But when we dismiss all questions pertaining to the outward shell, and consider as we should what resurrection means, in its higher aspect, the old Greek word anastasis, which has excited so much controversy, appears before us radiantly transfigured, as it carries with it no further thought of a physical envelope, but admits to our view that spiritual body which Paul speaks of as altogether separate from the natural (animal) body. There are two bodies, the animal and the psychical. The former, as an individual shape, knows no permanency whatever, at any time, but is only an ever changing aggregation of molecules, attracted and upheld by ever-varying conditions of mortal disposition.

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Beyond this outward form, and altogether independent of it, is the spiritual body, which is a perfect structural organism, beautiful and harmonious in all its parts.

 

            In giving spiritual treatment, one is not called upon to deny the existence of the body, and to use such a ridiculous formula as for instance, “You have no head, therefore it can not ache.” Quite the contrary. A perfect head, not the absence of a head altogether, should be presented to the patient’s thought. It is highly important that all should learn to see beyond all external limitations, and regard the whole human family as perfect interiorly and really as regards our common essential spiritual being; and when the thought does turn thoroughly to the spiritual, and all material things are forgotten, intromission to the spiritual world is the result.

 

            We are told that David, who mourned bitterly for his child before the breath left his body, after the child was actually dead physically, consoled himself in these words, “I shall go to him, but he shall not return to me.” Going to our beloved in spirit need not be postponed to a distant day, and indeed we have no reason to expect that the dropping of the material form will introduce any of us at once into spiritual society. We must, while on earth, cultivate our spiritual perceptions, and learn to discern spiritual things spiritually, or after the demise of the physical organism we may find ourselves hovering on the earth, unconscious of all things spiritual. What more credible than that many who have dropped the garment of flesh still continue to imagine themselves encased in matter?

 

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            The principal danger attending promiscuous séances and sittings with mediums, with a view to the acquisition of material wealth, is that even though communications are absolutely genuine, they are with an order of mind not far enough removed above the stock-broking level to be really profitable to those who hold interviews with it. Editorials in the Golden Gate, Banner of Light, and other avowedly spiritualistic newspapers, have frequently pointed to the cui bono of spiritual intercourse as a something entirely distinct from worldly emolument, and we will go so far as to say that it is usually demoralizing to drag earthly business into what ought to be a means for promoting the noblest and most unselfish instincts of human nature.

 

            The chief cause of sickness among well-meaning and affectionate people is sorrow. No grief can be so poignant as that occasioned by the loss of beloved friends. We are repeatedly asked, in our classes and elsewhere, how such grief can be assuaged, and by a radical removal of the cause the effects be compelled to subside. Our answer invariably is that the only salutary treatment in such cases is to direct the mind of the afflicted one to the spiritual state, to use all the moral and mental persuasiveness you possess to induce your patient to look away from sense to spirit, and if you can but get the thought finally off material things and on to spiritual reality, the outward symptoms of disorder at once give place to a placid and even joyful exterior. As light breaks in from the unseen world, immediately we cease to dwell upon external things.

 

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            For this reason, Mary’s attitude is preferable to Martha’s, for an inordinate concern for worldly affairs is like an insect or a cinder in one’s eye. When one is traveling through some delightful country, the most exquisite scenery is imperceptible to one whose visual organs are blocked up. So may we not conclude that the only reason why we are not usually conscious of the presence of spiritual influences is because grief, repining, or some other earthly emotion keeps us absorbed in those externals, which, when they engage our attention, shut out from us all view of spiritual life. After all, all that matters is that those in sorrow should be brought out of their low estate by a realization of spiritual truth.

 

            If the various resurrections recorded in the Scriptures are literal facts, they afford no evidence that those who were thus marvelously raised in flesh did not die again. Parents and sisters whose brothers and sorts and daughters were thus physically restored to them, must ever after have been tormented with the fear of losing them again, unless some guarantee was given that their life was immortal. Our greatest source of unhappiness is our own materiality. We love the things of sense far too dearly, and thus whatever we may know of spiritual immortality, we are not content, because we sigh perpetually for companionship on the material plane.

 

            True spiritual resurrection is not the resuscitation of a corpse. It is nothing in any way physical. It is an illumination of one’s interior being, an opening of one’s spiritual perceptions to discern the spiritual state. Sorrow often helps us toward this end because it loosens

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our hold on outward things. Thus we can comprehend Job’s exclamation addressed to the Almighty at the end of his affliction, “I have heard of Thee with the hearing of the ear, but now mine eye seeth Thee.” Those who are truly resurrected, in the spiritual sense, are those blessed ones who, even while they dwell on earth, are in conscious and continual communion with the spiritual realm.