1010 Dynamic Theory. 



cessation of all the activity of the mind by way of natural consequence, 

 to continue forever, unless the Creator should interfere;" and he main- 

 tained that in the grave ' ' man lies spell-bound soul and body, under 

 the dominion of sin and death," and that there is to be no activity, nor 

 sensation of happiness or misery till after the resurrection of the dead. * 



Sometime in the fifth decade of this century, George Bush, Professor 

 of Hebrew in the New York University, published a book to prove the 

 continued existence of the soul after death, and to disprove the doc- 

 trine of the resurrection of the body. He believed that at death a spirit- 

 ual body is developed or disengaged from the physical bod}*, and lives 

 on forever, while the physical body decays and is resolved into its elements 

 never to be revived or recover its identity. Phis was regarded as rank 

 heresy by the orthodox; and an answer was written by Calvin Kings- 

 ley of the Methodist "Alleghany College," and published for the 

 Methodist Episcopal church in 1847. In this answer which may be re- 

 garded as an authoritative announcement of the creed of the M. E. 

 church on this subject, Mr. Kingsley tries to prove that the identical 

 body which dies, will at the time of the general resurrection be raised 

 from the dead, and that this resurrection will be miraculous, and en- 

 tirely out of the common order of nature, and depends for its reality on 

 the fact of the meritorious death and corporal resurrection of Christ. 

 During the last 40 years there is no doubt that opinions similar to those 

 of Prof. Bush have steadily gained ground, and are largely held by 

 church members and others who vainly imagine they believe the bible. 

 The spread of these opinions has been no doubt largely stimulated by 

 the Spiritualists who claim to be possessed of experimental knowledge 

 on the subject of the future state. The assurance with which this claim 

 has been put forward, as based upon scientific facts, has proved too se- 

 ductive to many Christians whom the realistic fashion of modern 

 thought has made ashamed to carry about with them a blind faith, un- 

 supported by provable facts. They have in man}' cases without really 

 knowing it, abandoned their faith and taken up what purports to be a 

 natural science instead, and they look for immortality, not because it 

 has been supernaturally promised, but because they suppose it to be a 

 natural and necessary condition of human existence. 



But the abandonment of a dogma founded on a revelation, for an- 

 other, or even for the same one, founded upon human knowledge or 

 speculation, is not only a discrediting of the revelation, but of the 

 power or Person, by whom the revelation was supposed to be given. 

 All revelations must necessarily be attributed to a personal being or 

 beings. The doctrine of the resurrection having therefore been con- 

 sidered a revelation from a personal God, the subversion of the doctrine 

 1 Huxley on Priestly. 



