from the body is to be present with the Lord;[1] and is this presence to be accompanied by a state of unconsciousness? Was the promise of Paradise[2] to the penitent malefactor to be realized in a condition of insensibility? Were those souls, whom the apostle tells us were under the altar and crying for judgment,[3] unconscious of their existence? It is amazing to consider how so helpless an idea could have found for itself an utterance among any reputable thinkers.[4]
Some, indeed, have supposed that the soul, immediately after death, passes into such a condition of enjoyment or suffering as the deeds done in the body may have merited. But to maintain this view, the common doctrine concerning the resurrection and last judgment must be abandoned, or the idea of sending souls to their destination first, and bringing them to judgment afterwards, must be adopted! This latter opinion will hardly be defended; and although a relinquishment of the two doctrines referred to would be no detriment to truth, yet neither can be advocated for a moment without first admitting the execution of a judgment: there must, therefore, be some place for receiving the souls of men, in which they must be judged before they can enter upon their final destiny. And what other place can be conceived of but an intermediate region in the spiritual world?
Moreover, such a region seems to be a necessity arising out of the condition of man at the period of his decease. Heaven is a state of felicity, into which nothing that is
- ↑ 2 Cor. v. 8.
- ↑ Luke xxiii. 43.
- ↑ Rev. vi. 9.
- ↑ "I think the doctrine of an intermediate state can never be effectually extirpated, so long as a belief of a separate soul is retained. For while that is supposed to exist independently of the body, it will not be easily imagined to sleep along with it, but will be thought to enjoy more or less of consciousness of its existence."—Dr. Priestley's "History of the Corruptions of Christianity," vol, i., p. 425.
