on until after the
resurrection. Pope Benedict XII. drew up a list of one hundred and
seventeen heretical opinions held by the Armenian Christians. One
of these notions was that the souls of all deceased adults wander
in the air until the Day of Judgment, neither hell, paradise, nor
heaven being open to them until after that day. Thomas Aquinas
says, "Each soul at death immediately flies to its appointed
place, whether in hell or in heaven, being without the body until
the resurrection, with it afterwards."16 Then came the

15 They are defended in all their literal grossness in the two
following works, both recent publications. The World to Come; by
the Rev. James Cochrane. Der Tod, das Todtenreich, und der Zustand
der abgeschiedenen Seelen; von P. A. Maywahlen.

16 Summa iii. in Suppl. 69. 2.

dogma of the orthodox Protestants, slightly varying in the
different sects, but generally agreeing that at death all redeemed
souls pass instantly to heaven and all unredeemed souls to hell.17
The principal variation from this among believers within the
Protestant fellowship has been the notion that the souls of all
men die or sleep with the body until the Day of Judgment, a notion
which peeps out here and there in superstitious spots along the
pages of ecclesiastical history, and which has found now and then
an advocate during the last century and a half. The Council of
Elvin, in Spain, forbade the lighting of tapers in churchyards,
lest it should disturb the souls of the deceased buried there. At
this day, in prayers and addresses at funerals, no phrases are
more common than those alluding to death as a sleep, and implying
that the departed one is to slumber peacefully in his grave until
the resurrection. And yet, at the same time, by the same persons
contrary ideas are frequently expressed. The truth is, the
subject, owing to the contradictions between their creed and their
reason, is left by most persons in hopeless confusion and
uncertainty. They have no determinately reconciled and conscious
views of their own. Rationalism sweeps away all the foregoing
incongruous medley at once, denying that we know any thing about
the precise localities of heaven and hell, or the destined order
of events in the hidden future of separate souls; affirming that
all we should dare to say is simply that the souls whether of good
or of bad men, on leaving the body, go at once into a spiritual
state of being, where they will live immortally