the man is dead. The material body is no essential part of man; it is merely a garment, as it were, which the man wears, while he lives here among material things, and which is necessary to him while he continues in this world. But when the time comes for him to rise into the pure spiritual state of existence, he leaves that garment behind, as a thing now useless, a thing too gross to be taken with him into that spiritual sphere. This is the true theory and view of death. It is simply a separation of the spiritual from the material part. The spirit, or the man himself, continues to live on, for it is a thing immortal; and in a higher and happier state, too, of existence,—as presently we shall see. But first let the point be made plain, that the spirit, and the spirit alone, is the essential man; for then it will be clearly seen, that, if the spirit does not die, the man does not die, but lives for ever.
In considering a man, what do we estimate him by—his body or his mind? In choosing a friend, do we consider at all his material body? is it not solely his character that we prize him for, that is, his mental or spiritual part, his intellect, his affections? It is possible we may have a friend,—a correspondent, for instance,—whom we have never seen, and yet whom we highly esteem and love, from the fine mind and beautiful spirit displayed in his letters. Do we ask or care what his material body is, whether large or small? We may have a kind of natural curiosity about this, but it is really no essential matter. The friend, the man, the whole man, to us, is the mind and spirit. Was Napoleon any the less intellectually great because his body was small? would he have been made any greater,
