29.
Can anyone, who really wants to, fail to see in the light of reason that a person after death is not really a breath, which can hardly be thought of as anything but a puff of wind or air or ether; and
that it is or contains his soul, longing and waiting for reunion with his body, so as to be able to enjoy the use of the senses and the things that delight them, as previously in the world? Is it not
obvious that if this is what happened to him after death, he would be in a worse state than the fish, birds and land animals, whose souls do not live on, so that they have no longing or waiting to
trouble them? If man after death were such a breath, a mere puff of wind, then it would either flit about in space, or, as some traditions insist, be stored in some Pu or, as the Fathers [of the early
Church] call it, limbo until the Last Judgment. Does it not follow logically from that that those who have lived since the beginning of creation, a period estimated at six thousand years,* are still
in a similar state of worry, becoming progressively worse, since longing makes any period of waiting wearisome, and as time goes on more so? Hence must not these people still be flitting around in space
or shut up in Pu, and therefore in utter misery? And this would be so for Adam and his wife, for Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and everyone else from that date on? The result of this would be that
being born a man was the most lamentable fate imaginable. But it is the reverse of this which has been provided by the Lord, who is Jehovah from everlasting, the Creator of the universe. He has seen to
it that a person who links himself to Him by living according to His commandments, is more blessed and happier after death than in the world before it. What makes a person more blessed and happier is
that he is then spiritual, and a spiritual person feels and perceives spiritual pleasure, which so far surpasses natural pleasure that it is a thousand times greater. * By Archbishop Ussher's Biblical
chronology.
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