Luke ix. 30. "_And behold there talked with him two men, which were Moses and Elias_." The transfiguration of our Lord is recorded also by both Matthew and Mark, and it is plainly stated that the disciples "saw his glory and the two men that stood with him." If Moses and Elias were dead, their bodies crumbled to dust, and their minds in a state of insensibility, then they were not Moses and Elias who talked with him. Even if God had represented those two persons by other forms, they could no more have been Moses and Elias than Adam and Noah. It is _consciousness and memory_ which constitute personal identity; and if a conversation was carried on with Jesus by any means that human ingenuity can invent, while Moses and Elias were wrapped in as profound insensibility as the dust with which their bodies mingled, then it could not have been Moses and Elias who conversed with Jesus any more than if they had never had an existence. Perhaps it may be said that, as it is called a _vision_ by Matthew, it might have been nothing _real_. But as the word _horama_ means a _sight_ as well as _vision_, and as the other Evangelists do represent it as an actual appearance and nothing visionary, it is to be taken in this sense. Was it not a _reality_ that the three disciples saw Jesus transfigured, and though in that condition was it not still their _identical_ Lord? Certainly. Then the vision was so far _real_, and I see no ground on which the other personages can be considered phantoms. Mark says, "he charged them that they should tell no man _what things they had seen_," &c. See also Luke ix. 36. Here it is made certain that it was not an appearance in a dream, but a real and visible sight of three persons whose names are given. Consequently Moses and Elias were there as certain as was Jesus Christ. If so, they must have been raised from the dead, for man can have no conscious existence hereafter in a disembodied state. The scriptures teach that the resurrection is our only hope of a future conscious state of being. As to the translation of Elijah we shall not here notice it. Phil. i. 23, 24. "_For I am in a strait betwixt two, having a desire to depart and be with Christ which is far better; nevertheless to abide in the flesh is more needful for you_." To depart and be with Christ must, I conceive, mean in the resurrection world, for in no other sense could he be with Christ so as to render his condition "far better." Nothing can be _good or bad_ for a man in a state of perfect insensibility, any more than for a man unborn--Neither could he be with Christ in such a State, any more than before he existed. Between the condition of a man in non-existence [pardon the expression] and in life, no comparison as to enjoyment or suffering can possibly be drawn. The apostle therefore draws a comparison between his present condition of conscious existence with his brethren, and his future condition of conscious existence with Christ which was far better.