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THE KINGDOM OF GOD.
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or in some other comfortable or uncomfortable part of the post-mortem world. The accent, it will be observed, is, in the first instance, on the death of the patriarchs, not on the Living Principle. Besides this, according to the general notion of the resurrection, which is to take place on a future day, at the end of the world, the deceased patriarchs cannot have arisen from the dead yet. And yet Luke unhesitatingly adds the most per. tinent words of all-_" for all live unto him,”—at the end of the passage in question, thus making the last sentence read :
“For he is not a God of the dead, but of the living: for all live unto him."-(Luke, XX. 38.)
What does he mean if not that the souls of the patriarchs are still living in the universe, though not in their old bodies? If so, they can only live in the heavenworld or in our own; and, in the former case, either as having already had a resurrection, or in the sense of the Indian eschatology of the soul. But since resurrection has not yet taken place and is to be an affair of the future, they could not have risen from the dead in the Christian sense. Therefore, they must be either now enjoying themselves as residents of heaven prior to being re-born in this world, or must have already reincarnated in flesh and blood on our globe. The only other hypothesis of Nirvana need not be considered, since no one claims that privilege for them, though, for aught we know to the contrary, they might have attained it already
Let us dwell a little longer on the denial of the Most High to be the God of the dead. This is not the only
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