“What then is this _gathering_to the body or the soul? It cannot refer to the body, for while his body was buried in the cave of Macpelah, in Canaan, his fathers were buried afar off; Terah, in Haran, in Mesopotamia, and the rest of his ancestors far off in Chaldea. Of course, then, this gathering relates not to the body, but to the soul; he was gathered to the assembly of the blessed, and thus entered his habitation.” To show how gratuitous, not to say preposterous, is this conclusion, we raise a query on two points: 1. Does the expression, “gathered to his people,” denote that he went to dwell in conscious intercourse with them? 2. Were his ancestors such righteous persons that they went to Heaven when they died? In answering these queries, the last shall be the first. It is a significant fact that Abraham had to be _separated_ from his kindred and his _father’s house_, in order that God might make him a special subject of his providence. And in Josh. 24:2, we are plainly told that his ancestors were idolaters; for they served other gods. Such being their character, death would send them, according to the popular view, to the regions of the damned. At the time, then, of Abraham’s death, they were writhing amid the lurid waves of the lake of fire. And when Abraham was gathered to them, if it was in the sense which the theology of our day teaches, he, too, was consigned to the flames of hell! Oh! to what absurdities will men suffer themselves to be led blindfold by a petted theory. God had said to Abram, Gen. 15:15: “And thou shalt go to thy fathers in peace; thou shalt be buried in a good old age.” Was this the consoling promise that he should go to hell in peace in a good old age? And is the record of his death an assertion that he has his place among the damned!? Yes! if the immaterialist theory be correct. Children of Abraham, arise! and with one mouth vindicate your “righteous father” from the foul aspersion. Renounce a theory as far from Heaven-born which compels you thus to look upon the “father of the faithful.” Does, then, the expression, “gathered to his people,” mean his personal, conscious intercourse with them? If man has an immortal soul which lives in death, it does; and if it does, Abraham is in hell. There is no way of avoiding this conclusion, except by repudiating the idea that man has such a soul, and denying his conscious happiness or misery while in a state of death.