7. And finally, Paul, in his masterly argument in 1 Cor. 15, states explicitly the conclusion which is necessary from every one of the texts which we have quoted, that if there is no resurrection, then all the dead, even those who have fallen asleep in Christ, are perished. Verses 16-18. “For if the dead rise not, then is not Christ raised. And if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins. _Then they also which are fallen asleep in Christ are_ PERISHED.” As we read this testimony, we pause in utter amazement that any who profess to believe the Bible should cling with tenacity to the doctrine of the immortality of the soul which so directly contradicts it. If the souls of the dead live right on, are they perished? What! perished? and yet living in a larger sphere? Perished? and yet enjoying the attendant blessings of everlasting life in Heaven? Perished? and yet at God’s right hand where there is fullness of joy, and pleasures forevermore? Perish, amid the ruins of the heathen mythology from which it springs, that theory which thus lifts its dead men on high, contrary to the teachings of the word of God! Paul speaks of the whole being. As in Adam we die, so in Christ shall we be made alive. Is it conceivable that Paul drops out of sight the real man, the soul which soars away to realms of light, and frames all this argument, and talks thus seriously about the cast-off shell, the body, merely? The idea is preposterous to the last degree. After stating that if there is no resurrection we perish, he assures us that Christ is risen and that there is a resurrection for all; then he takes up the resurrection of those who sleep in Christ, and tells us when that resurrection shall be. It is to take place, not by the rising from this mortal coil of an ethereal, immaterial essence when we die, but it is to be at the great day when the last trump shall shatter this decrepid earth from center to circumference. The testimony on this point is well summed up by Bishop Law, who speaks as follows:-- “I proceed to consider what account the Scriptures give of that state to which death reduces us. And this we find represented by _sleep_; by a negation of all _life_, _thought_, or _action_; by _rest_, _resting-place_, or _home_, _silence_, _oblivion_, _darkness_, _destruction_, or _corruption_.” This representation is abundantly sustained by the Scriptures referred to; and by all these the great fact is inscribed in indelible characters over the portals of the dark valley, that our existence is not perpetuated by means of an immortal soul, but that without a resurrection from the dead, there is no future life.