Till guilt is awed, and shrinks beneath your glance.
Ye bright and visible rewards! held forth
From God’s high sanctuary, to work in us
A pure ambition for eternal things,
And glories which our spirit heaves to grasp!
M. Tylden.
It is foreign from the intention of this work to dilate on theoretical subjects of any kind: suffice it to say, that the following are simply my own sentiments, which I must be permitted to retain, and which indeed nothing on this side the grave can shake.
The omnipotence of the Deity in our creation and destruction—in the union and separation of our bodies and souls—and in rendering the latter responsible for the acts of the former,—no Christian denies: and if the Deity be thus omnipotent in forming, destroying, uniting, separating, and judging, he must be equally omnipotent in reproducing that spirit and that form which he originally created, and which remain subject to his will, and always in his power.
It follows, therefore, that the Omnipotent Creator may at will reproduce that spirit which he reserves for future judgment, or the semblance of that body which he created, and which once contained the undecaying soul. The smallest atom which floats in the sunbeam cannot (as every body knows), from the nature of matter, be actually annihilated: death consequently only decomposes the materials whereof our bodies are formed, and the indestructible atoms remain susceptible of recombination. The Christian tenets maintain that the soul and body must appear for judgment, and why not before judgment,—if so willed by the Almighty? The main argument which I have heard against such appearances tends nearly as much to mislead, as a general disbelief or denial of Omnipotence—namely, that though this power may exist in the Deity, he never would permit such spectacles on the earth, to terrify the timorous, and give occasion to paltering with the credulity of his creatures.