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Egyptians were the first who asserted the doctrine that the soul of man is 
immortal.” 
Mr. Gorman.— I think there can be no doubt that the Egyptians held the 
doctrine of the resurrection of the body ; and so clear is this, that the whole 
book called The Ritual of the Dead but which should be called “A Mani- 
festation to the Light,” is a ritual which propounds that doctrine throughout ; 
and one important point of such papers as this is that they show that the 
belief in the immortality of the soul, and the doctrine of the resurrection of 
the body, were held ages before Moses. It becomes a very important and 
curious question why Moses did not bring out that doctrine prominently. 
The doctrine of the resurrection is taught in the Old Testament, and is not 
peculiar to Christianity. In the proof which our Lord gave of the resurrection, 
He took His argument from the Pentateuch, which was believed by the Sad- 
ducees, who did not believe in the resurrection. I hold in my hand a little 
book which any one interested in the subject should get without delay. It is 
by M. Lenormant, and is entitled, A Manual of the History of the Last, and 
gives a succinct summary of all that has been done with reference to arche- 
ology in Assyria and Egypt, and it is astonishing to find the many points 
in Old Testament history upon which it throws light. There are many who 
would find a great deal of light thrown on civilization, in the time of such 
subjects as the journey of Joseph, and the history of his father and his 
brethren ; and the volumes enable one to realize the state of Egypt at that 
time. It is also an admirable analysis of the Egyptian j Ritual of the Dead, 
or Manifestation to the Light. T he drift of all these investigations is to 
show that the further we go back into the mists of antiquity in connection 
with this wonderful people, the nearer we shall come to the one primeval 
religion. 
Rev. Dr. Fisher. — If the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead was a 
doctrine in the East at that time, and held by the Egyptians and the Shemite 
races, that is one reason why Moses did not bring it out more prominently. 
Our blessed Lord, speaking to the Sadducees,* says, “ I am the God ot Abra- 
ham ; not the God of the dead, but the God of the living.” I never supposed 
for a moment that the Old Testament writers did not believe in the resurrec- 
tion of the body ; indeed, I have been fully convinced that it was held at that 
time and previously. There are some things that Moses takes for granted, and 
does not attempt to prove ; for instance, he says, “ In the beginning God 
created the heaven and the earth.” All believed that there was a God, and 
therefore he did not attempt to prove it ; and he acted in the same way with 
regard to the resurrection of the body. 
Mr. Drach. — May I call attention to one or two points in the paper l In 
* See also Josephus as to the doctrine of the immortality of the soul, held 
by the Pharisees and Essenes ( Antiq ., xviii. 1 , 2, et seq.).— {Ed.] 
