When our minds are enlightened to see the mighty changes, that we
mortals are represented, in the scriptures of truth, as destined to
experience by being raised in a holy and deathless constitution, we
are then led to consider the resurrection of embracing all those
realities that we are called upon by Jesus Christ and his apostles to
embrace by faith and enjoy in this life. So great and sublime is the
gift of God, and so far surpassing thought does it magnify the
perfections of the divine character, and in so amiable a light does it
manifest his love to the children of men, that a living faith in its
reality cannot but obtain a salutary influence on our life and
conversation. So much stress did the apostles lay upon its importance,
that they went every where preaching the resurrection of the dead, as
the gospel of Christ.

There is one point we will here notice. All denominations acknowledge
that for any man _by faith_ to pass from death to life is a change for
the better. If so, then the _reality_, namely to pass from the sleep
of death to an immortal existence, must be a change for the better.
Because it is by believing that future reality we are said to have
passed from death to life here. The conclusion is unavoidable that the
_reality_ must correspond with its antepast _by faith_. To understand
this let us reverse it. Suppose it should be an established law in the
nature and constitution of things that all mankind should pass from
death to immortal misery in the future world. Let this be revealed and
proclaimed as an unchanging truth. As many as believed it would of
course pass from death to immortal misery in _faith_, which would lead
them to curse the being who made them, and destined them to this
unhappy end. It would be a change for the worse.

Our subject is now so far plain (according to our views) that the