dispersed materials are to be re-collected again, and to enter into the composition of spiritual bodies? If that is the case with the antediluvian dust, it doubtless is with all other, and how this is to be effected without taking to pieces and unravelling, as it were, the whole framework of Nature, surpasses conception. And if this is to be the case, when? Is it to be at the period denominated the last day, when it is for the most part held that the conflagration of the heavens and the earth is to take place? If such be unequivocally the divine testimony, we must of course receive it. But it would surely seem to human view, a priori, a strange and incomprehensible procedure, that the re-gathering of these scattered particles, the re-building of these dilapidated human temples, should be going on in the midst of this scene of "telluric combustion !"

It is obvious beyond question that the popular theory reduces us to great extremities of solution. Indeed we see not but that the difficulties which cluster about it are absolutely insuperable; and if Faith has only this view of the resurrection to present to Philosophy, we cannot perceive any ground for wonder that Philosophy should be slow to receive it; and yet Philosophy and Faith, like Righteousness and Peace, in the economy of God, are and must be wedded together. True philosophy-and we are here speaking of no other-can never-never-be in conflict with true faith.

There is doubtless a great variety of shades in the prevalent belief on this subject; yet we cannot, we think, be mistaken in regarding it as the general sentiment, that notwithstanding there is a very long and indefinite period to. elapse between death and the resurrection, yet that the future body, when re-produced by the power of Omnipotence, is to be in some way connected with and raised out of the existing remains of the corporeal fabric which the soul inhabited during its earthly sojourn. It is probable indeed that the views entertained of the nature of this relation are

somewhat loose and vague in most minds, and that they rest in resolving it into the working of an Almighty power; yet that it will be somehow in the actual resuscitation, in whole or in part, of the dead bodies consigned to the earth that this event will be accomplished, is undoubtedly very generally held.

To this view of the received doctrine of the resurrection we have ventured to suggest the objection drawn from the established fact, that our bodies in this world are undergoing a constant change, from the escape and replacement of the particles of which they are composed, and consequently that as we have, in the course of our lives, several bodies, it does not convey a definite or intelligible idea to say that the body will be raised at the last day. It leaves us under the irresistible prompting to inquire, what body? It is a mode of expression very similar to that which should affirm of some kind of coat which a man has worn for twenty years, that at the end of that time it should be renewed. In ordinary circumstances a person in that period wears and wears out a great many coats. To say, therefore, that at the end of twenty years a man's coat shall be renewed, leaves the mind utterly at a loss to know what particular coat is meant. The difficulty is the same in regard to the future renovation of the body. What body is intended? The reply dictated by the more prevailing opinion probably is, that it is the last body in the series. This is not an unnatural impression on the basis of the common theory, that the body to be raised is in some way directly related to the body which was laid in the dust. This is certainly the body which dies; and if a new body were to be constructed out of the remains of the old one, it would strike us as most reasonable that it should be out of that which we saw quietly inurned." As the previous bodies have all evaporated and disappeared, the mind doubtless finds it extremely difficult to trace the connexion between these transmuted, volatilized and vanished structures, and the future glorious

corporeity. But let us suppose for a moment-and the supposition is perfectly legitimate-that this last body has just as much disappeared and become mingled with the universe as any of its predecessors: what is gained, we would ask, in the way of meeting the difficulty, by connecting the future raised body with the last of the series any more than with any of the former ones? In the space of some thousands of years they have all of them equally disappeared, and for aught that we can see, one of them has just as much relation to the future resurrection body as another-and just as little. Indeed we may ask if it is possible for any man in the exercise of his calm reflection, even by the utmost stretch of his faculties, to conceive the possibility that a risen saint should be able to recognize the splendid, sublimated, celestial fabric in which he soars upwards to the eternal mansions, as specifically related to that worn, wasted, withered, decrepit, or possibly marred, mutilated, and deformed body from which his soul took its exit? For ourselves, we are unable to discover any adequate grounds for this opinion, or to realize that the objection we are urging, from the successive changes of the human body, is not a valid objection. We are certainly at liberty to demand what particular body is to be raised. If any one is specified, then we ask why that rather than any other? If it be replied that the aggregate of the whole is to be raised, then we naturally ask how those portions of the huge fabric are to be disposed of which have equally belonged to other bodies?.

Our grand objection then to the common theory of the resurrection, is founded upon the lack of a conceivable relation between the former and the latter body. This relation we do not hesitate to affirm to be beyond the grasp of the human intellect, and a resort to Omnipotence leaves the difficulty, in our view, just where it was before. While we would not dare to limit the Holy One of Israel, or to deny that any thing is possible to him which is possible in itself, yet, as we apprehend the subject before us, the ideas

involved in the proposition of the resurrection of the same body are incompatible per se. The real question is, how Omnipotence itself can establish the relation of which we are in quest-how, not as to the manner, but as to the fact.

We are aware it is easily replied that it is no more difficult to conceive of the future body being built up out of the dispersed particles of the old one, than it is to conceive of the creation of the body in the first instance. But this reply loses sight of one important consideration which destroys the parallelism of the two cases. In the original creation there is the production of something by the simple fiat of Omnipotence that has no relation to any thing going before. But in the case of the resurrection there is the production of something out of a pre-existing substance, and consequently involving a relation of the former and the latter fabric to each other, which is of such a nature as utterly to confound and overwhelm our faculties, even when Omnipotence is called in to solve the problem. We may illustrate the difficulty that cleaves to the hypothesis by a fresh supposition. We can easily imagine that beneath the surface of a field of battle a human body, the body of a horse, and the wheel of a war-chariot may have been buried together. In process of time all these substances moulder away and become commingled in one indiscriminate mass of dust. The dust is there; but still it is but dust, and no power of human thought can conceive of one part of the earthy material being essentially different from the rest. No one can imagine any superior adaptedness in one part more than in any other for the construction of a glorified body. It is certainly impossible to conceive that any attributes should pertain to one portion of the mass, which should enable the soul to recognize itself as more at home in a body formed of that, than in one formed of any other.

Yet, if the popular view of the subject be correct, we

are required to believe that there is a discrimination to be made between these particles, now become homogeneous, and that a latent virtue in some which does not pertain to the others, is to appropriate them to the formation of a body "fashioned like unto Christ's glorious body." Can we conceive it? If it be said in reply, that the true question is, not whether we can conceive it, but whether inspiration has affirmed it, our rejoinder to this will be found in the sequel, where we consider the scriptural argument.

CHAPTER II.

Distinction of Personal and Bodily Identity.

THE position that the scriptural doctrine of the resurrection necessitates the belief of the resurrection of the same body, enforces upon us the consideration of the subject of identity. We are at once arrested by the inquiry, whether the identity of the person implies the identity of the body. In strictness of speech a body which is undergoing a constant change in its constituent particles cannot be said to be the same in any two successive moments of its duration. This of course applies to the human body, the component atoms of which are in a state of ceaseless fluctuation. A precise use of language will not warrant the assertion, that our bodies are the same this hour that they were the last. The paring of a nail, the clipping of a hair, leaves the body a different body from what it was before this subduction from its integrity took place. It is true indeed that for all the purposes of ordinary and popular discourse it is perhaps an unexceptionable mode of diction to say, that we have in mature life the same bodies that we had in childhood. But when we subject the phraseology to a rigid test,