The principal points of the teaching of Jesus concerning the life which follows the dissolution of the body are these: _First._ As against the Sadducees, he argues that the dead are living (Matt. 22:31, and the parallel passages), from the simple fact that God calls them _his_. If God thinks of them as _his_, that is enough. His thinking of them makes them alive. No one can perish while God is thinking of him with love. Such an argument, carrying no weight to the mere understanding, is convincing in proportion as one is filled with a spiritual conception of God. _Secondly._ Jesus abolishes death by teaching that there is no such thing to the soul which shares his ideas concerning God and the universe. This is implied in the phrases, “He that liveth and believeth in me shall never die.” (John 11:26.) “He that believeth on me hath everlasting life.” (John 6:47.) “I am the living bread, whereof if a man eat, he shall live forever.” (John 6:51.) “Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life.” (John 6:54.) “If a man keep my saying, he shall never see death.” Here, “eating Christ’s flesh, and drinking his blood,” is plainly equivalent to “keeping his saying,” and “believing on him.” As “food which we eat and drink changes itself so as to become a part of our own body by assimilation,” so Christ intends that his truth shall not be merely taken into the memory, and reproduced in words, but shall be taken into the life, and reproduced in character. _Thirdly._ He teaches that as feeding on his truth changes our natural life into spiritual life, and lifts temporal existence into eternal being, so it will also place us outwardly in a higher state and higher relations, to which state he applies the familiar term the “resurrection” or “ascent,” the “going up.” “I will raise him up at the last day.” The “last day,” in Jewish and New Testament usage, means the Messianic times, as appears from such passages as Acts 2:17, where the term is used of the day of Pentecost; Heb. 1:2, “hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son;” 1 John 2:18, “Little children, it is the last time.” Jesus tells his disciples that he is going to the Father (John 14:15), in whose house are many mansions, where he is to prepare a place for his disciples. (John 14:2.) That “resurrection” was understood to mean a present higher state, and not a future return to life, appears also from its use by the apostles. Christians are spoken of as having already “risen with Christ” (Col. 3:1); “risen with him in baptism” (Col. 3:1); walking “in the likeness of his resurrection” (Rom. 6:5). And, no doubt, it was by making this idea of a present resurrection too exclusive, that some Christians maintained that it was wholly a present resurrection, and not at all future—that “it was past already.”