would soon become any thing but enviable among intelligent

men.

It is hardly necessary to pursue this subject, yet there is one more point which we shall refer to before concluding. Even so plain a subject as the existence of motion, presents difficulties which to reason are absolutely insuperable. Zeno, the stoic, argued strenuously against its very existence. His objections (one of which we have already referred to when speaking of the infinite divisibility of matter,) are substantially preserved by Aristotle, who has attempted to answer them in his Physics, lib. vi. cap. ix. But his answers only show the utter imbecility of reason to remove even the simplest difficulties which itself may suggest; for they are eminently sophistical and have done nothing to increase the world's admiration of his prodigious powers. I will state one or more of these objections, after first premising that it is certain that no part of time can co-exist with another part. Each must exist alone, whether it be a day, or a moment, or a second, or the smallest conceivable instant. One moment or instant must cease to exist before another can. exist. Each moment or second is therefore simple and indivisible, and perfectly distinct from time past, and time to come, and contains no more than present time. This will not be disputed. Nor will it be questioned that a body cannot be in two places at once.

Now if an arrow, which tends towards a certain place, should move (as it is called,) it must move and rest at the same time. But this is a plain contradiction, and therefore. the arrow does not move. The reason is plain; for the arrow is every instant of time in a space equal to itself. It is therefore in that instant of time at rest, for a thing is not in a space when it leaves it. And therefore there can be no instant of time in which it moves: for if it moved at any supposable instant, it would be at once in motion and at rest; and this, as before remarked, is a contradiction.

Then again: If there is motion, the thing that moves must pass from one place to another; for all motion must comprehend two extremes, the terminus à quo and terminus ad quem, the place from which it departs, and that to which it comes. Suppose, then, the distance which it is asserted to move, is a foot. The first inch of this distance is separated from the twelfth by an infinity of parts, since matter (as above remarked) is divisible in infinitum. How then

can the object which is said to move, proceed from one extremity to the other? The intermediate space is composed of an infinite number of parts through which it must run successively, one after the other, and each particle of matter must require a particle of time in passing it. But an infinity of particles of time is an unending duration. And, therefore, unless the object which moves, can be in several places at the same time, it cannot to all eternity pass from the first inch to the twelfth.

To these objections Aristotle replies, by asserting that time is infinitely divisible. The falseness of this, however, has been demonstrated above. And a child can see that if there were an infinity of parts in an hour, it could never either begin or end.

But again, if there is such a thing as motion, then the swiftest body in motion pursuing the slowest, can never overtake it. Suppose, for instance, that the "swift-footed Achilles" and a tortoise should run a race, and the tortoise has twenty yards the start of Achilles. We will suppose also that Achilles moves twenty times faster than the tortoise. Now it is perfectly obvious that while Achilles moves twenty yards, the tortoise advances one; and therefore she is before him still. And while he proceeds to the twenty-first pace, she will gain the twentieth part of the twenty-second; and while he gains this twentieth part, she will go through the twentieth part of the twenty-first part, and so on in infinitum. He will never be able to overtake the tortoise, but there will always be some distance between them.

Whole volumes have been written in answer to this objection with no better success than the above reply of Aristotle. We might mention other objections, and others also, equally invincible, against the very existence of extension.* But the foregoing are sufficient for illustration, and may serve to teach us the limits of our understanding, and the folly of thus reposing implicit confidence in the deductions of reason, when there are so many things connected with the plainest matters with which we are conversant, which effectually baffle all our efforts to comprehend them. Surely, then, it is both rational and proper for such weak, erring, shortsighted mortals to confide implicitly in the testimony of an

* The reader may find in Bayle, (Crit. Dict. V., p. 609, seq.,) from whom I have taken some of the foregoing remarks, a brief statement of a few of these objections.

All-Wise God, even though it should appear to conflict with the deductions of our reason.

It is hardly necessary to apply these illustrations, though we shall do so briefly. Suppose then that some diligent student had for the first time arrived at the foregoing "irrefra gable deductions of reason." He becomes at once fully satisfied that the world and the church are all wrong on the subject of motion, for "no two truths can be inconsistent with each other," and he has clearly demonstrated that the very idea of motion involves the most irreconcilable inconsistencies and contradictions. Yet he is a firm believer of the Bible. And as he finds the idea there asserted, both positively and by implication, that motion does exist, he thinks it necessary to investigate the matter philologically. He is satisfied, moreover, that the knowledge of revelation is progressive, and he is not to be deterred by such passages as Gen. i. 2, Levit. xi. 10, Deut. xxiii. 35, Rev. vi. 14, Ps. xix. 5, Eccles. i. 7, Dan. xii. 4, &c. &c., which seem to assert or imply the existence of that which he is satisfied has no existence. He then girds himself to the encounter, and after presenting the "argument from reason," he gives a view of the Scripture argument. First comes the plain declaration in Gen. i. 2: "And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters." He looks critically at the word moved, ; and though he finds it in the Hithpael, having the force of a reflexive verb, motitans se, he finds also that it will bear the rendering of incubans. Spirit of God brooded over the abyss." Hence this does not prove that there is such a thing as motion. And thus he disposes of all the positive declarations, one after another; by maintaining that the inspired writers "accommodated" themselves to the stupidity of the age in which they lived, and did not think about the generations to come, and in other parts of the world. And then he begins with the passages which simply imply the existence of motion. Ps. xix. 5, 6, is produced. "The sun is as a strong man to run a race; His going forth is from the end of heaven," &c. This certainly seems to imply the existence of motion. But our philosopher has ascertained that the sun is stationary. Then he inquires, "Must not this be figure? It is ascertained that the sun absolutely does not move.' And thus the other series of passages is disposed of. For he is determined to take them as type, figure, allegory, metaphor, symbol,

The

accommodation, anthropomorphism-any thing rather than the declaration of absolute verity," because they plainly conflict with the "dicta of reason;" and "all truth must be consistent." And finally having laboured through his argument, and surveying it with no small degree of satisfaction, he asks, “what then becomes of the scriptural evidence of motion? Does it not evaporate in the crucible of logical and philological induction? And is it not inevitable that a great change must come over our estimate of the doctrine viewed as a disclosure of Holy Writ? Can it hereafter present the same aspect to the reflecting mind as formerly," &c. See Anastasis, Preface, p. xi. and p. 347.

Professor Bush, will scarcely need that I tell him

mutato nomine

De te fabula narratur ;

for with a trifling qualification, here is a case perfectly analogous to his own. The argument from reason to disprove the existence of motion, is much more invincible and impregnable than Professor Bush's argument from reason, to disprove the resurrection of the body; and Professor Bush's argument is an old, stale, often refuted argument, while that in the illustration is unanswerable, so far as reason is concerned; and we have supposed it to be just discovered by the philosopher who uses it. With these differences the analogy is complete and perfect. One supposition may be more obviously absurd than the other, but the real absurdity and unreasonable. ness in both cases are equal.

In order to sustain the conclusion of his worthless argument, Professor Bush has done the most revolting violence to the word of God, and has openly sanctioned the Biblesubverting, and atheistic neology of Germany. We shall have occasion to refer to this hereafter, when we come to speak of his principles of interpretation. He does not know that the same body that dies will not be raised again as a spiritual body, though his whole book proceeds upon the assumption of such knowledge, and the argument upon which this conclusion is based, is as perfect a non sequitur, as the argument against the existence of motion.

It

Such then is Professor Bush's argument from reason. has no connexion with the advancement of our knowledge of Revelation; it proves but a small portion of his theory even if it were what it purports to be, and thirdly, it is based upon a sophism unworthy of Professor Bush, and of the Christian name.

CHAPTER IV.

A CONSIDERATION OF THE SECOND AND THIRD CHAPTERS OF PART I., OF THE WORK OF PROFESSOR BUSH.

THE titles of these chapters are as follows:-" Distinction of Personal and Bodily Identity," and "The True Body of the Resurrection as inferred by Reason:" and as they contain little other than repetitions of what we have already remarked upon, we propose to consider them here, in order to dispose of all that he has offered on this whole subject before we proceed to remark on the appropriate office of reason in the interpretation of the Scriptures.

On the first of these subjects, Professor Bush remarks as follows:-"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:" (p. 58,) and he proceeds with a great deal of speculation, (upon which we shall remark presently,) to show that the identity of the human body does not continue to be the same for any two moments of time. But it must not be lost sight of here, that there is no dispute between Professor Bush, and ourselves in respect to the " identity of the person." . I am not aware that any who believe in a resurrection, have ever questioned, whether the person who rises from the dead in a spiritual body, is identically the same person who previously had lived and died. The question is simply whether the body that is raised a spiritual body, is the same body that died? Professor Bush denies, and we affirm, that it is. And as Chapter II. of his book is professedly designed to bear upon this point, we shall proceed to ascertain whether he has offered any thing which really has any relation to it. The following is a continuance of the remark above quoted:" 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 fluc