ompleted, when the clock of time runs down and its lifeless
weight falls in the socket, and "Death's empty helmet yawns grimly
over the funeral hatchment of the world," the gates of this long
barred receptacle of the deceased will be struck open, and its
pale prisoners, in accumulated hosts, issue forth, and enter on
the immortal inheritance reserved for them. In the sable land of
Hades all departed generations are bivouacking in one vast army.
On the resurrection morning, striking their shadowy tents, they
will scale the walls of the abyss, and, reinvested with their
bodies, either plant their banners on the summits of the earth in
permanent encampment, or storm the battlements of the sky and
colonize heaven with flesh and blood.

5 Philosophy and Doctrines of Erigena, Universalist Quarterly
Review, vol. vii. p. 100.

All advocates of the doctrine of psychopannychism, or the sleep
of souls from death till the last day, in addition to the general
body of orthodox Christians, have been supporters of this
conclusion.6

Three explanations are possible of the origination of this belief.
First, a man musing over the affecting panorama of the seasons as
it rolls through the year, budding life alternating with deadly
desolation, spring still bringing back the freshness of leaves,
flowers, and carolling birds, as if raising them from an annual
interment in winter's cold grave, and then thinking of the destiny
of his own race, how many generations have ripened and decayed,
how many human crops have been harvested from the cradle and
planted in the tomb, might naturally especially if he had any
thing of the poet's associating and creative mind say to himself,
Are we altogether perishable dust, or are we seed sown for higher
fields, seed lying dormant now, but at last to sprout into swift
immortality when God shall make a new sunshine and dew
omnipotently penetrate the dry mould where we tarry? No matter how
partial the analogy, how forced the process, how false the result,
such imagery would sooner or later occur; and, having occurred, it
is no more strange that it should get literal acceptance than it
is that many other popular figments should have secured the firm
establishment they have.

Secondly, a mourner just bereaved of one in whom his whole love
was garnered, distracted with grief, his faculties unbalanced, his
soul a chaos, is of sorrow and fantasy all compact; and he solaces
himself with the ideal embodiment