OR THE DOCTRINE OF THE RESURRECTION OF THE BODY, RATIONALLY AND SCRIPTURALLY CONSIDERED. Εστι σῶμα πνευματικόν. PAUL. BY GEORGE BUSH: PROFESSOR OF HEBREW, NEW-YORK CITY UNIVERSITY. SECOND EDITION. /ited. 1844. NEW-YORK & LONDON: WILEY AND PUTNAM. ENTERED, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1844, by GEORGE BUSH, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the Southern District of New-York. J. F. TROW & CO., PRINTERS, 33 Ann-street, New-York. PREFACE. Ir is, I am persuaded, but seldom that a work is presented to the public under a more oppressive load of conscious solemn responsibility than that which presses upon my own spirit in delivering over to the verdict of the Christian community the present volume. By no possibility can I disguise from myself the fact, that the results which it announces are of very momentous import to the interests of revealed truth. From the inevitable relations of the doctrine of the Resurrection to the cognate announcements of the great scheme of Scriptural Eschatology, or the doctrine of the last things, a course of reasoning, or a theory of interpretation, which goes essentially to change the established view of that tenet, must necessarily work a correspondent change in our estimate of a whole class of subjects bearing upon the theme of human destiny in another life. Now it is certain that the conclusions to which I have arrived, and which will be found embodied in the ensuing pages, must, if built upon sound premises, present the grand future under an entirely new aspect. The resurrection of the body, if my reasonings and expositions are well-founded, is not a doctrine of revelation. I cannot be unaware of the shock which such a declaration is calculated to give to the settled preconceptions of a great portion of Christendom. Nor can I be insensible to the imputation, which it can scarcely fail to draw after it, of an uncommon degree of temerity in thus virtually assuming to arraign and to convict of error the currrent creed of the Church for the space of eighteen centuries. The severity of judgment reasonably to be expected on this score I know can be propitiated only by an overwhelming cogency of proof of the truth of the main position. This it would be doubtless rash to promise; but it may go some |