But it is objected that, from our standpoint of the unconsciousness of the dead, a resurrection is impossible; for if a person ever ceases to exist as a conscious being, the re-organization of the matter of which he was composed would be a new creation, but not a resurrection. It is sufficient to say in reply that continued consciousness is not necessary to preserve identity of being. This is proved by nearly every member of the human family every day. Did the reader ever enjoy a period of sound, unconscious sleep? If so, when he awoke, how did he know that he was the same individual he was before? How does any one know, after a good night’s sleep, that he is the same person that retired to rest the night before? Simply because his organization is the same on awaking that it was when he became unconscious in sleep. Now suppose that during this period of unconsciousness, while the soul itself, if there is in man such a distinct entity as is claimed, is also unconscious, the body of a person could be cut up into innumerable fragments, the bones ground to powder, the flesh dissolved in acids, and the entire being, soul and all, destroyed. After remaining in this condition a little time, suppose all those particles could be put back again substantially as they were before, the general arrangement of the matter, especially of the brain, the organ of the mind being identically what it was; and then suppose that life could be imparted to it again, and the person be allowed to sleep on till morning; when he woke, would he be conscious of any break in the line of his existence? Any one must see that he would not. Being organized just as before, his mind would resume its consciousness just as if nothing had happened. So with the dissolution of death. After its period of unconsciousness is passed over, in the resurrection the particles of the body are reunited, re-organized, and re-arranged, essentially as they were at the moment of death, and reanimated; then the line of life is taken up, and the current of thought resumed just where it was laid down in death, it matters not how many thousands of years before. This, the power of God can do; and to deny this is to “err, not knowing the Scriptures, nor the power of God.” In this way, we can have a true and proper resurrection, a living again of the whole person, as the Bible affirms. On the supposition of continued consciousness, this is impossible; for in this case the real man lives right on, the body, which the Bible makes of so much importance, being only the garment with which it was temporarily clothed; and in this case the resuscitation of the body would not and could not be the resurrection of the man. The popular view makes the Bible as inconsistent on the subject of man, as it would be for a historian to give the history of some celebrated man’s coat, and call it the history of the man himself.