The Layman's Legacy (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1840. Excerpt: ... SERMON VI. THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. "I am the resurrection, and the life." John xi. 25. In the preceding sermon, entitled The Prospect before us, we were arrested at the grave, Sheol, Hades, the house appointed for all the living. The whole tenor of testimony and weight of evidence, in possession of the nations when the Era of Grace, in the person of the Messiah, dawned, a light from heaven, on our benighted world, was contained in a mass of incongruous Heathenism; and resulted in the monstrous absurdity of a pagan hypothesis, ycleped " The immortality of the soul." This dogma was purely speculative; and, as such, was part and parcel of other absurdities. It had been nursed in the corruption of ages, when Truth descended from Above, and opened the only door from the tomb, in the life-giving-Spirit of the Son of the only living God, and Lord Jehovah--Jesus Christ the Righteous. He announced the great truth--"I Am The Resurrection, And The Life." He, and he only, said, "I have power to lay my life down, and power to take it again." The life of every successive generation of men, from Adam down, had been laid in Hades. The tomb was the boundary; and no mortal vision had penetrated beyond its precincts. Beyond the grave, darkness impenetrable hid futurity from man. Man gave up the ghost, and the inquiry for ages had been, Where is he 1 The answer--there was none No response was heard, till Jesus Christ burst the barrier of the tomb, and rose immortal; the first-begotten from the great congregation of ages and generations, the mighty host of Hades. The first Messenger from the world unseen: He rose a ConQueror, and led Death captive He opened futurity to man; and has given, in the Faith of his Gospel, a mean of looking beyond the vista of time--a celest...