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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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impatientCy expresses a wish that death had stepped in-at the very dawn of life , and put a period to .
Ms rising existence , —" For" then says he * , * should I now have laid still and been quiet , I should have slept : then had I been at rest , with kings and counsellors of the 5
earth , * &c . —With this agree the words of the psalmist ; cc Put not your trust in princes , nor in the son of man , in whom there is no help . His breath goeth forth , he returneth to his earth : in that
very day his thoughts perish . " To the same purpose it is expressed in the book of Eeclesiastes that Ci the living know that they shall die : but the dead know not any thing : —Their love , and their envy and their hatred is now perished ; therefore . — whatsoever
thy hand nndeth to do , do it with all thy might : for there is no work , nor device , nor knowledge , nor wisdom in the grave , whither thou £ oest . " In the book of Job it is declared " that man dieth
and wastcth away ; yea , man giveth up the life , and where is he ? As the waters fail from the sea , and the flood decayeth and drieth up ; so man li . eth down and risefrh not , till the heavens be no more ; they shall not awake nor be raised out of their sleep / ' To the
snme purpose is the language of kins : Hezekiah , when restored from the depth of affliction ; c * I said , I shall not see the Lord , even the Lord in the land of the living : 1 shall behold man no more with the , inhabitants of the world . — For the grave cannot praise thee , death cannot celebrate
thee : they that go down into the pit cannot hope for thy truth : —the living , the living , he shall praise thee as 1 do this day . " -The drath of a man and the death
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of a beast are represented by Solombn as differing in nothing , except that the former may indulge a hope which the latter has not intellect to realize . Beasts are
unable to anticipate death : their present happiness is not in thr least interrupted by the dread of it : as they have nothing to fear , so they have nothing to hope for . — They are incapable of moral discernment and improvement ; their highest gratifications are sensual ,
and to render these complete , the author of nature has made every provision in their favour . In the New Testament , death is represented as a sleep , a rest , &c . The terms mortality , corruption , &c . frequently occur : without the resurrectiondeath is uie resurrectio aeain is
, reoren , represented as an hopeless state ! 12 th . From the great stress that the scriptures of the New Testament lay upon a future resurrection , it may fairly be inferred , that it is in consequence of
this event , that we can hope hereafter to exist . Consciousness without existence is what a child knows to be impossible : and that the existence of the body should be essential to consciousness , is a manifest proof , that perception inheres in a material organization .
The resurrection is a doctrine of such great importance to mankind , that the Divine Being thought proper ' to exemplify it in the person of Jesus Christ , and indeed the whole Christian dispensation clearly ascertains this doctrine .
It was the publication of this great truth , that tended so greatly to moralize the world ; by this , the early Christians were comforted and established ; they endured every hardship and privation , which their profession exposed them with patience and serenity ?
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594 General Arguments in favour of the Doctrine of Materialism .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Nov. 2, 1808, page 594, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2398/page/18/
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