The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-05-07
HEA VENLY RECOGNITION.

Both reason and Scripture may be applied 70
the question of the recognition of saints In
Heaven. The human mind was made to know,
and has the capacities of intelligence. We see
that human body alone has no sensation or
knowledge. By the continued cessation Of the
use of the senses, and of all the knowing facul-
ties, we perceive that person Is dead. And
yet the body is entire; no organic matter has
been separated from it. Reason tells us that
there is an intelligent mind or spirit joined to
the body when it is alive, and that il is undoubt-
edly separated from it when the body is dead.
Why should it remain with
dead, deeaying body, which ii does
not use? If the mind remains
with the body at all after death, then where is
it after the body is wasted away and utterly dis
solved? Reason also says that when the spirit
leaves the body there is no evidence that it
ceases TO exist or loses its capacities of know
ledge, because reason also indicates that God is
a spirit, and that His spirit is omniscient.
We have reason to suppose, for example, that
the power of memory is not lost by death.
Several clear cases are on record where persons
have to all appearance died from drowning, and
yet have barely been restored to life.
Those persons state emphaticaly that, while
they were thus unconscious of all things
here, and were perhaps surrounded
by mourning friends almost utterly de-
spairing of their restoration, their own
minds were the furthest from an unconscious
and unknowing state; that often they ran back
in thought over multitudes of events in their
past lives, that they recalled circumstances and
scenes and interviews that long before had gone
from their recollection, and that they seemed in
a few moments to live over again the experience
of many former years. Many who die of dis
Il ,,,,X.
ment of life. The last signal of the unclouded
mind, when about to depart from the mortal
body, is not that memory and other powers are
lost by lack of union with the flesh; rather that
they are vivifed and unfettered as they pass into
the spirit land.
With no mental faculties lost by death, why
will not friends and kindred know each other ia
the future state as they did here, and better?
There is no reason for believing in the transmit
grafton of souls-that what was q man here be-
comes q horse or an OK or another man, beyond
death. 1t is only some idolatrous heather reli-
gion that can tolerate such supposition. Be-
sides, supposing that there is a spiritual body
after death, may not the mind use that with
more vigor and efficiency than it could this
mortal frame. Assuming the fact of the fall of
our first parents, may not a part of the curse
have been that they henceforth should not be
able to use their bodies for knowledge and
happiness after the introduction of sin as BEFORE
and that what was lost in Adam will be restored
and far more than restored, to believers in
Christ? A common sense anecdote is this:-A
Mrs. - Somebody said to her husband
John, do you think we shall know each other
in heaven.?" "Yes. Do you suppose we shall
be bigger fools there than here?" His reply is
a brief epitome of the argument from reason;
but Scripture gives us our great light.