The Resurrection.

No sensible person can possibly believe that on the last day—which never comes—our actual bodies will be restored from their graves. Myriads of them will be non-existant. For it is not the spirit or soul that is to be resurrected, But the Actual Human Body ! This doctrine only appears in the late Judaism—the Pharisees supporting it and the Sadduces rejecting it. (In this Christ and Paul were page 25 Pharisees). To-day there is hardly a person who thinks that our actual human bodies will be restored, but that our Spiritual souls will meet hereafter. That, of course, is not what is meant by Paul's teaching, upon which Christianity chiefly rests. Christians to-day are really Spiritualists, not Resurrectionists; so that the Church for some centuries has been masquerading under false colours (it being ever ready, I must confess, to mould its opinions to suit the times). My object in publishing these essays is to cause the laity to enquire and widen their mental view, especially the women. If they do so the individual clergy will readily abandon what they know to be error, but which their bishops, moderators and assemblies will not allow them, as individuals, to abandon. (The laity is much to blame for allowing their clergy so much license in the pulpit.) We simply know nothing of the hereafter, and the phenomena of the Spiritualists, or Occultism, requires the closest investigation. One thing is certain—that nothing is supernatural. That which we do not understand may be but the simple working of the etherial laws of nature. There may or may not be spiritual beings. Our souls may hover for a time near our homes and those dear to us as distinct entities, and then fade slowly away into the vital reservoir from whence we came; the reservoir being also here. In this God is very good to us. The silence of "the other side" is majestic in its spirit of rest. Is it not unkind to think that our life struggle here continues on for ever hereafter? After seventy years of joy, toil and pain we should thankfully accept the rest of the grave. But, let each of us die manly and womanly, bravely and honestly, and leave the rest to God. Let no one fear death. The priesthoods have cultivated the spiritual side of our nature far too much. There are so many material things to attend to that my advice to everyone is "Leave the spirits alone." (I ask to be pardoned for my brief disjointed sentences, necessitated by the space at my disposal.) I strongly advocate material matters with a humble reverence for God, but spiritual matters of any kind I have little respect for. I do not say there is no spiritual side to our nature, but it is clearly an offence against our good Creator, who has placed us here, to despise and neglect the material universe we see around us in order to cultivate a shadowy, uncertain and unknown spiritual universe, merely to allow an army of clerics and other spiritist charlatans to make a good easy living out of us. My own opinion is that there is no resurrection either of our body or spirit.