It will not do to conclude that we are not a “missionary people.” It is useless to reason against facts. That we have risen, and, in opposition to the established bodies of people in the different parties in this country, successfully planted the cause in the best parts of the country and among the most effective and intelligent people, and, in less than two-thirds of a century, made it one of the most formidable and powerful bodies in the land, and swelled the numbers above that of any Protestant parties in the United States, excepting the Baptists and Methodists, is now a _matter of fact_. This has been done and is now in history. A people “not a missionary people,” and not an _evangelizing people_, have never done the like of this. We are to-day going ahead and spreading more rapidly than any people in this country that depend on turning people to the Lord to augment their numbers. We say nothing about a people that count their infants as members of the church, and exclude nobody for disorder.
The resurrection of Lazarus was like the healing of the sick, giving sight to the blind, and other miraculous benefits, only _temporary_. They were only restored to health in their mortal state, and liable to be afflicted again. The resurrection of Lazarus was only his recovery from death for the time being, and he was liable to die again. No doubt he did die again. But Jesus rose to die no more. Death has no more dominion over him. Those thus raised up _temporarily_, or simply raised up to what they were before they died, were not counted where Christ is spoken of as “the first-fruits of them that slept,” “the first-born from the dead,” etc. They were raised to immortality and died no more. The body was sown a mortal body, but raised immortal, or raised to die no more.
This, we presume, is the solution of the matter, though but little can be said, with any point, for or against it. It is, however, the ground on which we satisfy our own mind. It is one of the matters left a little obscure, and but one on which nothing of importance depends. The view we take of it obviates any apparent discrepancy between the passages above referred to. The word “begotten,” in “the first-begotten from the dead,” should have been _born_, as the same original word is elsewhere. A bare resurrection only raised a man to what he was before he died, and left him as liable to death as he was before he died; but the resurrection of Christ and those who rose after he rose was more than this. The body was sown a mortal body, but raised immortal, or to die no more. It was a complete and final deliverance from the grave and from death—the final triumph over death and him who has the power of death.