ur body shall rather be such "If
lightning were the gross corporeal frame Of some angelic essence,
whose bright thoughts As far surpass'd in keen rapidity The
lagging action of his limbs as doth Man's mind his clay; with like
excess of speed To animated thought of lightning flies That spirit
body o'er life's deeps divine, Far past the golden isles of
memory."

What man knows constitutes his present world. All beyond that
constitutes another world. He can imagine two modes in which his
desire for a life after death may be gratified, a removal into the
Unknown World, or a return into the Known World. With the latter
supposition the restoration of the flesh is involved.

Upon the whole, our conclusion is, that in the original plan of
the world it was fixed that man should not live here forever, but
that the essence of his life should escape from the flesh and
depart to some other sphere of being, there either to fashion
itself a new form, or to remain disembodied. If those who hold the
common doctrine of a carnal resurrection should carry it out with
philosophical consistency, by extending the scheme it involves to
all existing planetary races as well as to their own, should they
cause that process of imagination which produced this doctrine to
go on to its legitimate completion, they would see in the final
consummation the sundered earths approach each other, and
firmaments conglobe, till at last the whole universe concentred in
one orb. On the surface of that world all the risen races of being
would be distributed, the inhabitants of a present solar system
making a nation, the sum of gigantic nationalities constituting
one prodigious, death exempted empire, its solitary sovereign GOD.
But this is pure poetry, and not science nor philosophy.

25 Lange on the Resurrection of the Body, Studien und Kritiken, 1836.

CHAPTER IV.

DOCTRINE OF FUTURE PUNISHMENT; OR, CRITICAL HISTORY OF THE IDEA OF
A HELL.

A HELL of fire and brimstone has been, perhaps still is, the most
terrible of the superstitions of the world. We propose to give a
historic sketch of the popular representations on this subject,
trace them to their origin, and discuss the merits of the question
itself. To follow the doctrine through all its variations,
illustrating the practical and controversial writings upon it,
would require a large volume; but, by a judicious arrangement, all
that is necessary to a fair understanding of the subject, or
really