It is a remarkable fact that the Greek words indicating the rising of men should have been translated, in our English Bible, by terms signifying something wholly different, and conveying another sense than that in the original. It is equally extraordinary that this change of meaning should seldom or never be alluded to by theological writers. These words, translated “resurrection,” “rise again,” and the like, all have, in the Greek, the sense of rising UP, not of rising AGAIN. They signify not return, but ascent; not coming back to this life, but going forward to a higher. The difference in meaning is apparent and very important. It is one thing to say, that at death we go down into Hades, or into dissolution, and at the resurrection we come back to conscious existence, or to the same life we had before, and quite a different thing to say that what we call death is _nothing_; but that we rise _up_, and go forward when we seem to die. This last is the doctrine of the New Testament, though the former is the one usually believed to be taught in it. The immense stress laid, in the New Testament, on the resurrection of Jesus is by no means explained by supposing that after his death he came to life again, and so proved that there is a life after death. What he showed his disciples was, that death was not going down, but going up; not descent into the grave, or Hades, but ascent to a higher world. This is the evident sense of such passages as these. We have not room to go over all the passages which should be noticed in a critical examination, but select a few of the most prominent. 1. Ἀνάστασις, commonly translated “resurrection,” or “rising again,” but which literally means “rising up.” (So Bretschneider, “Lexicon Man. in lib. Nov. Test.” defines it as “resurrectio, _rectius_ surrectio.”)(37) This word occurs forty-two times in the New Testament. In _none_ of them (unless there be a single exception, which we shall presently consider) does it necessarily mean _a rising again_, or coming back to the same level of life as before. In a large number of instances the word _can only_ mean a _rising up_, or ascent to a higher state. Of these cases we will cite a few examples.