160. Chapter 2: The Intermediate State.

Chapter 2 The Intermediate State. The question of an intermediate state concerns the condition of the dead between death and the resurrection. There is no place for such a question in religions which know nothing of the resurrection or the judgment. It is not clear that the Jews, particularly in their earlier history, possessed these truths in a manner to give them any definite view of such a state. Such may have been the case with the specially enlightened, but could hardly have been so with the mass of the people. There is, however, an open place for such a question in Christianity. As the resurrection and final judgment of the dead are therein clearly set forth, so the state of souls during the interval between death and these epochal events is properly viewed as an intermediate state. The peculiarities of a disembodied existence of souls constitute it such a state.