l
difficulties. The appearance of Moses and Elias, which is usually held to
be the most unintelligible point in it, is as easily conceived of as
possible, if we admit their bodily glorification."

Those passages which speak of Christ as the "first-fruits," the
"first-born from the dead," the "first-born among many brethren," "of
every creature," etc., refer only to the chief and pivotal importance of
his own resurrection, as related to all others; and Acts 26:23 does not
declare that Christ should be the first one to be raised from the dead,
but that he first, by a resurrection from the dead, should show light to
the Gentiles. (See the Greek of this passage.) These scriptures therefore
prove no objection to the idea that Moses had been raised from the dead,
and as a victor over the grave, appeared with Christ upon the mount. Thus
another supposed stronghold affords no refuge for the conscious-state
theory, or for Spiritualism.

9. _The Rich Man and Lazarus._--With the features of this parable, as found
in Luke 16, which is supposed to prove the dead conscious, and
Spiritualism possible, the reader is doubtless familiar. It should ever be
borne in mind that this is a parable; and in a parable, neither the
parties nor the scenes are to be taken literally, and hence no doctrines
can be built upon such symbolic representations. But not only is it a
parable, but it is a parable based upon traditions largely entertained by
the Jews themselves in the time of Christ. Thus T. J. Hudson ("Law of
Psychic Phenomena," p. 385) says:--

"It is a historical fact, nevertheless, that before the advent of
Jesus, the Jews had become imbued with the Greek doctrine of
Hades, which was an intermediate waiting station between this life
and the judgment. In this were situated both Paradise and Gehenna,
the one on the right, and the other on the left, and into these
two compartments the spirits of the dead were separated, according
to their deserts. Jesus found this doctrine already in existence,
and in enforcing his moral precepts in his parables, he employed
the symbols which the people understood, neither denying nor
affirming their literal verity."

Thus Christ appealed to the people on their own ground. He took the views
and traditions which he found already among them, and arranged them into a
parable in such a way as to rebuke their covetousness, correct their
notions that prosperity and ric