CHAPTER V.

RESURRECTION OF THE BODY UNREASONABLE.

THE most popular and prevalent view of immortality is doubtless the following: The spirit or soul is immortal, and possesses the element of an eternal continuance of being, and is not dependent on organization, or any combination of matter for existence. At death it goes immediately to the spirit-world, and is there arraigned before the Judge of the universe, tried, and sentenced, according to the deeds which it had done while in the body, either to heaven or to hell, as the case may be; there to remain till the resurrection and judgment, which are to take place at some period yet future, and simultaneously. It will then be rejudged and clothed upon with the same material body which it occupied while dwelling upon the earth, and be sent back to the same place of happiness or misery that held it while in a disembodied state; more, vastly more susceptible of pleasure or pain than it was before the old body was raised from the dust and fastened upon it. A few, perhaps reject that part of this theory which relates to the judgment and retribution; yet, believe that the spirit of man is immortal, and will, immediately after the

death of the body, go to God and remain with Him, in some mysterious way, till the resurrection; then it will be united again with the same material body, in which it dwelt while sojourning upon the earth. This body may undergo some change, but, nevertheless, it will still be the same body.

The doctrine of the Resurrection, constituting, as it does, one of the main announcements of Christianity, and connecting itself with the most sacred hopes of the believer, urges its claims upon our profound attention. It is, indeed, a doctrine which is seldom interrogated. It is considered, for the most part, as one of those mysterious disclosures which are commended to our naked credence, and about which we are not to indulge a speculative curiosity or to ask prying questions. It is supposed, by the mass of Christians, that we are to regard the Resurrection in no other light than as a simple fact, the truth of which we are to receive on the bare authority of the Divine Word, and the accomplishment of which we are to expect solely on the ground of Divine Omnipotence. But is there, indeed, any interdict laid upon inquiry in this department rather than any other? Is the subject fenced about with a balustrading of sanctity, which it is a sacrilege or profanation to attempt to pass through ? Must we not, necessarily, submit every position, propounded in revelation, to that intelligence by which alone we can understand it? Understand it, we say, for we must understand it, in order to believe it. Let us, then, be apprehended aright. We say that we must understand a proposition, in order to believe it.

We may not, indeed, understand the mode in which the asserted fact or truth exists; the verbal proposition affirming it we must understand, or we cannot believe it. That all material bodies gravitate to the earth, is a fact, the mode of which I do not by any means comprehend; but I have no difficulty in understanding the proposition which affirms the fact. ** In like manner, we do not hesitate to assert, that although it may not be possible to comprehend the mode in which the resurrection of the body may be brought about, yet I must understand the terms in which the doctrine is announced. In other words, I must be able to affix an intelligible sense to the language employed for that purpose. Yet here is precisely the difficulty in regard to the doctrines as popularly held. We ask for a plain and explicit statement of the doctrine. What is the proposition, the belief of which will constitute me a believer in the doctrine of the resurrection of the body? To one who has not particularly reflected on the subject it might seem that there were no special difficulty on this score, but a closer consideration will probably reveal to multitudes of minds the vagueness and obscurity of their previous conceptions.

Should it be replied, in general terms, to our question, that the truth claiming credence is that the body, which we consign to the dust, is again to be raised and re-animated at some future day; we rejoin at once, that this reply does not cover the ground of the difficulty. The simple assertion that the dead body is to be raised does not constitute an intelligible

proposition, for the reason that it leaves it utterly uncertain what body is meant. **** No fact in physiological science is better ascertained than that the human body, in regard to its constituent particles, is in a state of constant flux. It is perpetually undergoing a process of waste and reparation. Strictly speaking, no man has the same body now that he had seven years ago, as it is in about this period that a complete change is held to take place in the bodily structure, by which we may be said to be corporeally renovated. This is a fact established by physiology, and the proof of it, we believe, is entirely beyond question, and must form an indispensable element in any judgment which we pronounce upon the subject. The phrase, the body, does not accurately represent the object intended, if the idea conveyed by it be restricted to the body as existing at any one moment. The idea of existence in continuity is indispensable to it. The question, then, again recurs— What body is to be raised? A person who dies at seventy has had ten different bodies. Which of these is to be the body of the resurrection? Is it the body of infancy, of childhood, of youth, of manhood, or of old age? Or is it the aggregate of all these? If we go back to the days of the Antediluvians, and apportion the number of the bodies of Methuselah, for instance, to the length of his life, and then suppose the whole to be collected into one vast corporeity, we should indeed be reminded that, as "there were giants in those days," so there will be giants in the day of the resurrection.

It is obvious that a very grave difficulty from this source pertains to the prevalent theory of the resurrection of the body, and one which we discover no mode of obviating on that theory. In the following extracts from "Pearson on the Creed," whose statements of doctrine are, for the most part, singularly luminous, and who has, perhaps, enunciated this doctrine with more explicitness than almost any other writer, it will be seen that his explanation goes, throughout, upon a basis that fails to recognize entirely any such principle of incessant change, in the bodily structure, as a sound physiology forces us to admit. Whether he was not aware of the fact in question, or did not duly appreciate its bearings upon the grand point in debate, we know not; but it obviously leaves the doctrine open to the full force of an objection, which, as it could not be expected to have occurred to the ancient fathers of the church, would neither be likely to have arrayed itself before the mind of one who was principally occupied in embodying their opinions on the various articles of the Christian creed. "That the same body, not any other, shall be raised to life, which died; that the same flesh, which was separated from the soul at the day of death, shall be united to the soul at the last day; that the same tabernacle which was dissolved shall be raised up again; that the same temple which was destroyed shall be rebuilt, is most apparent out of the same word, most evident upon the same grounds upon which we believe there shall be any resurrection." (Art. XI., p. 568.) So again, in a subsequent paragraph, "We can, therefore, no otherwise expound