find nations more intelligent and more moral is presumptive proof that the destiny of men rests upon moral conduct and character. We must judge man, as we judge everything else, not by the lowest types but by the highest types, and the belief in future punishment of wicked men held by the highest tribes of primitive peoples is the soul's forecast of retribution.

The following is a list of the more important of the works which are authorities for the statements contained in this paper: "Primitive Culture," Tylor; "Prehistoric Times," Lubbock; "Descriptive Sociology," Spencer; "Principles of Sociology," Spencer; "La Sociologie," Letourneau; "Researches into the Physical History of Mankind,” Prichard ; "Conquest of Mexico," Prescott; "The Indian in His Wigwam," Schoolcraft; "The Native Races of the Pacific," Bancroft; "History of the Sandwich Islands," Jarves; "The Aborigines of Tasmania," Roth; "The Religion of the Northmen," Keyser (Pennock's translation).

V.-WHAT CONSTITUTES THE IDENTITY OF THE RESURRECTION BODY?

BY J. B. REMENSNYDER, D.D., NEW YORK.

THE resurrection of the body is a tenet peculiar to Christianity. The unearthed records of Egypt fail to bring any proofs of it to light. The emblem or scarab on the hieroglyphical monuments of the sacred beetle (which so often appears, owing to the metempsychosis which it underwent from the larval state to the chrysalis); and the phoenix, fabled as flying to the temple of the sun at Heliopolis, burning upon the altar, and reappearing the next day a young bird from the ashes; were not symbols of a resurrection, but only of the self-renewing life of nature. The faint hope of even the soul's immortality was conditioned upon the indestructibility of the body. Hence the extraordinary efforts to attain an embalming art that would be imperishable. As to Greece and Rome, there we find an utter absence of the emblems of hope of either immortality or resurrection. This contrast between Christian faith and pagan scepticism is vividly pointed in the sculptures of the catacombs as compared with those of the Pagan burial-places. Accordingly, the resurrection of the dead body found no place in ancient literature. It had not occurred to the greatest thinkers. The account of the death of Socrates proves that no suspicion of it was entertained by that sage. Plato, when discussing in the "Gorgias" the condition of the body after death, does not hint at the thought of a resurrection. The souls who come to Rhadamanthus for judgment are shades. They are disembodied, and have no expectation of a reunion with the fond earthly tenement of which they have been unstripped. In fact, as Eschylus makes Apollo to speak in the "Eumenides," they held it to be

impossible; and Pliny, specifying those two things which he holds to be beyond the ability of the gods, makes the second to be "aut revocare defunctos." Consequently, when St. Paul preached this doctrine at Athens to "certain philosophers of the Epicureans and of the Stoics," he encountered this prevalent scepticism. "And when they heard of the resurrection of the dead they mocked him; and some said: "He seemeth to be a setter forth of strange gods" (Acts xvii. 18). Perhaps, however, if Paul had presented the doctrine in as highly etherealized and sublimated a form as it is sometimes done now, these Athenian philosophers would not have had so much trouble in reconciling it with their reason, nor would it have presented so inviting a target for their pungent sarcasms.

The New Testament declares plainly, emphatically, and repeatedly the fact of the resurrection. We may only mention one as a type of a whole class of passages-viz.: "Marvel not at this, for the hour is coming in the which all that are in the graves shall hear His voice, and shall come forth" (John v. 28). As the Scriptures teach that the soul is not buried, so that which here comes out of the grave must be the body which had lain there. It is not worth our while, accordingly, to discuss the strange conceits of those who, professing to hold to Christianity, yet virtually eliminate this. doctrine by giving it a figurative or spiritual meaning, as only denoting the rising of the soul from a state of moral death to new spiritual life. Practically there is no dispute as to the fact that the Scriptures teach the resurrection of the body. The literal definition of the Greek Anastasis, a rising up, allows of no other significance than the revivification of the buried. material part.

That this body, too, will be identical with our earthly body, appears certain from the Scriptures. It is our 66 mortal bodies" that are to be the subjects of this resurrection. "He that raised Christ from the dead shall "This form of expression," says Dr. . . Indeed, identity is in

also quicken your mortal bodies.” Hodge, "is decisive of the apostle's meaning. volved in the very idea of a resurrection; for resurrection is a living again of that which was dead, not of something of the same nature, but of the very thing itself" ("Systematic Theology," vol. iii., p. 775).

But the crux of the question is still to be reached when we come to the point: In what does this identity consist? Is it a literal sameness of the material of the body or not? What do the Scriptures teach? The terms they employ to describe that which rises again are : "Our mortal bodies;" "this corruptible body;""our vile body." They tell us it is that body which is sown." Its period of burial is not spoken of as an irrecoverable dissolution, but as a "sleep," so that it is the very body committed to restful slumber which is to be waked again. This idea found beautiful expression in the term KotuηThptov, cemetery-i.e., sleeping chamber, which the early Christians applied to their places of burial. As, also, the resurrection of Christ was 66 the first fruits" or type of that of each Christian's; and as in His case it was the same material body wearing the

marks of His crucifixion that arose from the grave, the natural inference would be that the very body laid down by the believer in the tomb would constitute his risen one.

This undoubtedly was the simple faith of the primitive Christians, who accepted the New Testament statements in their apparent natural sense, without troubling themselves about philosophizing difficulties. Thus Irenæus (Adv. Haer. v. 12) asserts the identity of the future with the present body, and appeals to the revivification-not new creation-of diseased organs of the body in the cures performed by Christ. Origen, however, held that the resurrection would only consist in the reproduction of the form and general appearance of the body; and some others advocated the still lower view that but the individuality of the body-some leading cast of it would reappear. These views, however, never found acceptance in the Church, and were combatted energetically by the orthodox party. So that Hagenbach, in his classic "History of Doctrines" states: "The resurrection of the human body, with all its component parts, was from the time of Jerome and Augustine regarded as the orthodox doctrine. of the Catholic Church." This view is that which was adopted in the Apostles' Creed. The Latin form used the term caro, not corpus, and the Greek, sarx-i.e., "flesh," and not sòma, "body," as the latter term was open to a more general significance, which the precise word "flesh" excluded. The literal rendering of the creed, therefore, is: "I believe in the resurrection of the flesh."

The reformers held the same views. The great theologian Quenstedt voices the consensus of that period, thus: "The subject of the resurrection is the entire man that had previously died and been reduced to ashes—the body, the same in number and essence, as we have borne in this life." In modern times, during the widespread prevalence of German rationalism, the doctrine of a literal resurrection was almost entirely swept away. Reason did not teach the doctrine, and therefore it could not be entitled to recognition. At the present period also, there is a prevalent tendency in the extreme effort to reconcile religion and science, to revive the Origenistic view. It is denied that the resurrection means the literal rising of the sensible materials making up our present frame, but only the ideal form or physical individuality which it is claimed is sufficient to constitute an identity with the earthly tabernacle in which we dwell during this temporal life.

This view is stated with great force by Martensen. The arguments adduced for it are the scientific impossibility of gathering together again the dispersed materials of the body, which, resolved into their original ele ments, have passed into the constituents of other bodies and gone “whirling round and round in the never-ceasing cycle of destruction and recombination, which makes up the course of this universe;" the fact that from infancy to old age the substance of the body is supposed to undergo a total change, and still we do not consider that thereby the bodily identity between the boy and the man is destroyed; and, moreover, that an absolute

reproduction of the body would carry with it its present defects and imperfections.

A careful study of the Scripture passages will remove these seeming difficulties. Thus St. Paul admits that to some extent it will be a new body: "Thou sowest not that body that shall be" (1 Cor. xv. 37). This passage Rev. MacQueary quotes as utterly repudiating identity in the resurrected body, but what it repudiates is only absolute and total material identity. But another leading passage shows clearly how this one is to be understood, and demarks its limitation. We all understand the essential difference between a change or reconstruction and a new creation. The same substance may be cast in a quite different mould, worked over in a variety of ways, altogether changed in form, and yet it remains virtually and actually the same. Only with a new creation does identity absolutely depart. Now St. Paul teaches that the resurrection is a change, not a new creation. "Who shall change our vile body that it may be fashioned like unto His glorious body, according to the working whereby He is able even to subdue all things unto Himself" (Phil. iii. 21). Here we learn that while it is to be our very same "vile body" worn now, yet it is to be "changed," transformed, "fashioned" anew, "glorified." It will be so renovated and exalted as to be a "spiritual body," not as to its substance, but as to its qualities, capacities, and endowments. It will be just as Christ's spiritual resurrection body, of which He could still say: "Handle Me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see Me have." This is to be the result of Christ's omnipotent "working" but if there were no resurrection of the material part, no room would be left for the employment of miracle. Furthermore, St. Paul teaches that the resurrection is to be analogous to the natural process in the burial and growth of grain. There the seed sown dies except some vital part, which becomes the physical base of the reproduction of the plant. What this vital organizing force or material is, science cannot discover. But it is present as an inherent principle of the seed, determining its structure, and passing over into its new life. Thus the bond of material identity between the seed and the plant has never for an instant been severed. For had this occurred, reproduction would have ceased. Luther pursues this analogy into the domain of physical science. He says: "I like the science of alchemy for the sake of the allegory and secret signification, which is exceedingly fine, touching the resurrection of the dead at the last day. For, as in a furnace the fire extracts and separates from a substance the accidental portions, and carries upward the life, the sap, the strength, the finest material, while the unclean matter, the dregs, are rejected, like a dead and worthless body, even so will it be in the case of the resurrection" ("Table Talk," p. 396). Natural analogies and scientific facts, then, oppose no insuperable bar to the doctrine of a literal material resurrection. There is no profounder mystery and no mightier miracle here than in the other cardinal tenets of Christianity. In accordance, then, with the meaning borne upon the face

of Scripture teaching to the simple reader, and with the faith of the universal Church, we hold the resurrected body to be identical with the earthly both in essential substance and in general structure. It need not be all the particles of our present body, but it will not be either a totally new material-not a new creation-but a transformation of that whose substance yet remains. The resurrection body will be built upon the material basis of our present mortal one. To hold that the identity of the resurrected body consists merely in form is utterly inadequate. Substance is not a quality of form, but form is a quality of substance. Primarily we do not bury the form, but the substance of the body. And if that which we bury is to rise again, how can the form rise without the substance? Form does not constitute a body, and if this resurrected form must have a material basis to give it reality, why shall it not, in accordance with Scripture, be the very body we have worn in this life? It is not the likeness of our dead body which is to rise again, but that body itself.

And if philosophical difficulties encounter us here, it is sufficient that they are at least as great on one side as on the other. In fact, the question involved here is not as to the nature of the resurrection body, but as to the point whether there be a resurrection body-i.e., whether there be a resurrection at all or not. Do the Scriptures really mean anything, or do they only delude us with empty words and juggling phrases when they speak of a "resurrection of the body," of "our bodies rising again," and of that which has been committed to the grave and sleeping there "coming forth" at the last trump? If there is to be no literal resurrection of even a germinal atom, a vital seed of our present body, then certainly there is no resurrection, and this charming but meaningless fable had far better been. left out of the Scriptures. Then we cannot look forward to any reunion of the soul with its freed bodily mate. the spirit's earthly tenement is final. of the pious dead in hope. If but the old form is to be stamped upon a totally new material, this may be spiritual, but it is not bodily identity, and such a consummation might as well be enacted without the slightest connection with the grave, with which it will have no real association whatever.

Then our separation in death from Then we do not sow the holy seed

The doctrine of the resurrection is indeed one of the mysteries which are characteristic of the Christian religion. These have always to its enemies seemed the most vulnerable points of our holy faith, those aspects which make it harder for them to tolerate than the natural religions. But we should have a jealous care lest we show hesitation and weakness in guarding these. For what really are the Christian mysteries? They are the oceans of truth over which brood low the shadowing wings of the Holy Spirit; they are the mountain peaks of revelation lost in the clouds. And though reason cannot measure the expanse of these oceans or scale the heights of these summits, yet in the ceaseless swell of the one sounds the diapason of the eternal majesty, and on the brow of the other shines the