ing. It seems as if mankind were contented with
investigations careless, reasonings incoherent, and inferences
arbitrary, in proportion to the momentousness of the matter in
hand. In regard to little details of sensible fact and daily
business their observation is sharp, their analysis careful, their
reflection patient; but when they approach the great problems of
morality, God, immortality, they shrink from commensurate efforts
to master those mighty questions with stern honesty, and remain
satisfied with fanciful methods and vague results. The
resurrection of Christ is generally regarded as a direct
demonstration of the immortality of man, an argument of
irrefragable validity. But this is an astonishing mistake. The
argument was not so constructed by Paul. He did not seek directly
to prove the immortality of the soul, but the resurrection of the
dead. He took for granted the Pharisaic doctrine that all souls on
leaving their bodies descended to Sheol, where they darkly
survived, waiting to be summoned forth at the arrival of the
Messianic epoch. Assuming the further premise that Christ after
death went down among these imprisoned souls, and then rose thence
again, Paul infers, by a logical process strictly valid and
irresistible to one holding those premises, that the general
doctrine of a resurrection from the dead is true, and that by this
visible pledge we may expect it soon, since the Messiah, who is to
usher in its execution, has already come and finished the
preliminary stages of his work. The apostle's own words plainly
show this to be his meaning. "If there be no resurrection of the
dead, then is Christ not risen. But now is Christ risen from the
dead, become the first fruits of them that slept. For since by man
came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. Every
man shall be made alive in his own order: Christ the first fruits;
then they that are Christ's, at his coming; then the last remnant,
when he shall have delivered up the kingdom to God." The notions
of a universal imprisonment of souls in the intermediate state,
and of a universal raising of them thence at an appointed time,
having faded from a deep and vivid belief into a cold traditional
dogma, ridiculed by many, cared for at all by few, realizingly
held by almost none, Paul's argument has been perverted and
misinterpreted, until it is now commonly supposed to mean this:
Christ has risen from the dead: therefore the soul of man is
imm