PREFACE. HAVING entered upon the composition of the following work, and being impressed with the consideration of the need there is for it, I have in the course of my attention to the subject, felt it as my willing duty, and that I was imperatively bound to the completion of it. Abstruse, as this subject appears to be, viewed through the dubious medium of a perplexed philosophy, yet, I trust, it has now been rendered clear and well-defined, by the application of correct principles; and that, freed from the extraneous mixture of errors of human opinion which have entered into and rendered it turbid, it will now appear with genuine lucidity, viewed in the appropriate light of divine revelation. Trusting that a paramount regard for truth has guided me throughout, I believe that nothing has been said but that which meekness and charity will justify, and that I have per formed this duty entirely free from that unkind animus which has often guided polemical writers. Though this production professes to be only the intended correction of certain errors which have crept in, yet it embraces so much of the transcendently important doctrine of the resurrection that it may be deemed a treatise upon that vital subject, so large an amount of theology having been somewhat incidentally introduced as would not probably under other circumstances have been elicited. G. HODGSON. THE following are the Chapters into which this Subject is divided, but the reader will perceive that some of the Arguments employed under one head are sometimes necessarily connected with and are also elucidatory of another point treated under its proper head. CHAPTER I. BRIEF GENERAL INTRODUCTION THE ERRONEOUS OPINION AS TO A SPIRITUALIZED BODY The grammatical meaning of the words "spiritual Para- Page. graph. 9 10 2 3 4, 5 9, 10, 11 12, 13, 14, 15, 16 ERROR RELATIVE TO 66 FLESH AND BLOOD No change of corporeal substance The inheritance of the kingdom. That flesh and blood will enter heaven. Philosophical arguments relative to matter and spirit |