The natural instinct of immortality is the spirit, or sense of the infinite and eternal. But it needs to be reënforced by the influence of Christian conviction, hope, and experience, in order completely to conquer the sense of death. It is not by logical arguments in proof of a future existence that immortality becomes clear to us, but by living an immortal life. Dr. Channing says truly, “Immortality must begin here.” And so Hase (Dogmatic, § 92) says, “Any proof which should demonstrate, with mathematical certainty, to the understanding, or to the senses, the blessings or terrors of our future immortality, would destroy morality in its very roots. The belief in immortality is therefore at first only a wish, and a belief on the authority of others; but the more that any one assures to himself his spiritual life by his own free efforts and a pure love for goodness, the more certain also does eternity become, not merely as something future, but as something already begun.”(36) Whenever Jesus is said to give eternal life, or to be the life of the world; whenever the apostles declare Christ to be their life, or say that as in Adam all die, so in Christ shall all be made alive; when Paul says, “The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death;” “to be spiritually minded is life and peace;” “the life of Jesus is manifested in our dying (mortal) flesh;” when John says, “He that hath the Son hath life;” when in Revelation we read of the book of life, and water of life, and tree of life,—the meaning is always the same. It refers to the spiritual vitality added to the soul by the influence of Jesus, who communicates God’s love, and so enables us to LOVE God, instead of merely fearing him or obeying him. Love casts out all fear, the fear of death included. He who looks at the things unseen and eternal, partakes of their eternal nature, and though his outward human nature perishes, his inward spiritual nature is renewed day by day. § 5. Resurrection, and its real Meaning, as a Rising up, and not a Rising again. One part of the Christian doctrine of immortality is conveyed in the term “eternal life;” the other part in the other term, usually associated with it—“the resurrection.” The common Orthodox doctrine of the resurrection, is that the dead shall rise with the same bodies as those laid in earth; and this identity is usually made to consist in identity of matter, though Paul expressly says, “Thou sowest _not_ that body that shall be.” On the other hand, many liberal thinkers of the Spiritual School deny any resurrection, and think the whole doctrine of the resurrection a Jewish error, believing in a purely spiritual existence hereafter. Others, like Swedenborg, teach that the soul hereafter dwells in a body, though of a more refined and sublimated character; and in this we think they approach more nearly the teaching of the New Testament.