: there is no resurrection, and asked him, saying, Master, Moses said, if a man die having no children, his brothers shall marry his wife, and raise up seed unto his brother. Now there were with us seven brethren and the first, when he had married a wife, deceased, and having no issue, left his wife unto his brother: likewise the second also, and the third, unto the seventh and last of all the woman died also: therefore in the resurrection, whose wife shall she be of the seven? for they all had her. Jesus answered and said unto them, Ye do err, not knowing the Scriptures nor the power of God; for in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels in heaven. But as touching the resurrection of the dead, have ye not read that which was spoken unto you by God, saying, I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? God is not the God of the dead, but of the living." This answer of our Saviour's has by some some been thought to be obscure, and not to go directly to the point of proving a resurrection, which the Sadducees denied, and which their objection was meant to overthrow. In our Lord's reply no argument seems to be advanced, nor any plain text of Scripture produced to establish the doctrine of a resurrection of the body, and its reanimation by the soul. It is only contended, that as God declares himself to be the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the souls of those persons must still be in existence in a separate state; because God could not be said to be the God of those who were no longer in being. This is undeniable, (it is said) does this prove a resurrection? To explain this, it must be observed, that Christ's answer consists of two parts: in the first, he solves the difficulty started by the Sadducees respecting a resurrection, by telling them that it arose entirely from their not attending to the power of God, which could affect with the utmost ease what to them appeared impossible; But how and from their ignorance of the state of human beings in heaven, which resembled that of angels, and required not a constant succession to be kept up by marriage. The case therefore they had stated respecting the marriage of the seven brethren with one woman was a very unfortunate one, because it happened that in heaven there would be no such thing as marriage; which destroyed at once the whole of that objection which they deemed so formidable. In the second part he completely subverts the false principle on which their disbelief of a resurrection and a future state was entirely founded. This principle was, that the soul had no separate existence, but fell into nothing at the dissolution of its union with the body. This we learn from the Acts of the Apostles *, where it is said "that the Sadducees believe neither angel nor spirit ;" and from Josephus, who tells us, that the Sadducees held that the soul vanishes (as he expresses it) with the body, and * Chap. xxiii. 8. and rejected the doctrine of its duration after death*. It was this principle therefore which our Saviour undertook to overthrow, which he does effectually in the 31st and 32d verses, by showing it to be a clear inference from the words of Scripture†, that although the bodies of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, had long been in their graves, yet their souls had survived, and were at that moment in existence. From hence it necessarily followed that the soul did not perish with the body, as the Sadducees believed, but that it continued in being after death; and at the general resurrection would be again united with the body, and live for ever in a future state of happiness or of misery. 1. But though arguments may be confuted, and absurdities exposed, the thorough paced caviller is not easily silenced. One should have thought that the disgraceful failure of so many attempts to surprise and * Zuvapavice Tois owari. Antiq. 1. xviii. c. 2. p. 793. Ed. Huds. + Exod. iii. 6. and ensnare Jesus, would have taught his - adversáries a little modesty and a little prudence; but these are qualities with which professed disputers and sophists do not usually much abound. When there-fore the Pharisees had heard that Jesus had put the Sadducees to silence, instead of being discouraged from making any more experiments of that nature, they were gathered together, probably to con-sult how they might renew their attacks upon him with more success. Then one - of them, which was a lawyer, asked him a question, tempting him, and saying, "Master, which is the great commandment in the law? Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.": The question here proposed to Jesus by the lawyer, or interpreter of the Mosaic law, |