The doctrine has fared ill in previous ages, as have all the great doctrines. But the perversion of truth is due not so much to ignorance as to an overmastering desire to guard against corresponding errors. Over against nearly all the false and gross forms that Christian truth has taken on from age to age, may be discerned the shadows of errors that have faded from our view, but were very real to the men whom they first confronted. It has been the way of the world thus far to meet error by exaggerating the truth. The human mind loves the truth and is ever seeking it, but it has not yet reached the point of resting calmly and steadily upon it; its action is like the swing of a pendulum rather than like the poise of the needle,vibrating across the centre of truth instead of pointing straight towards it. We must not allow ourselves to be either shocked or disgusted by the forms given to the doctrine of the resurrection in the early Christian centuries. Let us rather remember that the generations after us may hold our views of truth, on many points, as cheap as we hold those of the ancients on the subject before us. Not that there is no attainable standard of truth; we have a compass pointing to the exact truth as well as a pendulum vibrating about it, a divine revelation whose source is in the heavens, as well as a human reason swayed by the forces of earth.

find in the Scriptures the doctrine of the resurrection set down in forms that not only agree with reason, but stimulate it to higher exercise. Neither in Christ nor in St. Paul do we discover the pres

sure of worldly influence in their treatment of it. Christ was Himself the resurrection; He did not so much teach it as act it; and therefore we find in Him the absolute truth of the subject. St. Paul's discussion of it grows more and more luminous as it is subjected to the advancing thought of the ages. It cannot be denied, however, that very early it took on a crude and gross aspect. The Fathers taught not only the resurrection of the flesh, but drew it out into the most absurd particulars; the hair, the teeth, the nails, and every specified organ of the human frame would be raised up; some claiming that the bodies would be raised as they were at death; others as in their highest perfection; others that the hair and nails cut would not be lost, neither would they be raised "in such enormous quantities as to deform their original places, but shall return into the body, into that substance from which they grew." Such views strike us as ludicrous, but there is an explanation of them.

Two great enemies threatened the early life of the Church: Pantheism and Gnosticism. There are but two philosophies the Christian and the Pantheistic: one asserting the personality of God and man; the other denying all personality. The doctrine of the one ever-living God kept the Jewish nation free from the latter; for the personality of God carries with it the personality of man. Christianity reasserted it, and gave it intensity by exalting man, and investing him with supreme duties, and assigning to him a personal destiny. It is this

single fact that underlies modern civilization, an intense sense of the personality of man. It is the mainspring of the energy, the humanity and the faith of Western civilization as contrasted with the Oriental and the Ancient. If the question be raised again that is now so often raised as a taunt "What has Christianity done for the world?" we answer: it established a philosophy of man that has inspired whatever is great and good in modern civilization, and it supplanted a philosophy that unnerved man's spirit, stripped him of all dignity, and made him not only an easy victim of tyrants but of little worth in his own sight.

Wherever the Christian theory does not prevail, the Pantheistic does; it is the only alternative of the human mind; it haunts the world continually; all lapses of Christian faith are in its direction. It was the philosophy of the world when Christ entered it; it will be the philosophy of the world if Christianity is ever driven out of it. Its effect is to blast human energy by destroying human personality. The Fathers felt its encroachments upon the Church, and well understood its influence. By assailing personality, it denied an enduring identity, which is the total significance of the resurrection. In order to meet the Pantheistic spirit and influence, they went to an extreme and claimed that the resurrection covered the whole man, flesh and bones as well as mind and spirit. In the main they were right; in the details they were wrong. It is common to flout the memory of these great names by holding up the unseemly details of their teaching,

but they did not act under the inspiration of ignorance; they were guarding the most sacred truth ever committed to human keeping against the most insidious foe that ever assailed it. Their philosophy was not yet fine enough to teach them that personal identity consists not in flesh and blood, and so, in their noble zeal for this vital truth, they asserted the resurrection of the flesh.

Another enemy that threatened the Church, more definite and specific than Pantheism, was Gnosticism with its Oriental doctrine of contempt of the body, holding that there is an antagonism between the flesh and the spirit, and that the flesh itself is evil, a dangerous doctrine, as it makes sin external, transfers it from the heart to the body, and so turns all the forces of religion into mere discipline of the flesh. The Fathers perceived its danger, and not only denied that the flesh was evil, but emphasized their denial by asserting its literal resurrection. Again, they were right in the main but wrong in detail. This doctrine of contempt for the body was not only injurious to religion but to civilization. Its tendency was to paralyze society by reducing the wants of the body to the lowest point. Had the Fathers allowed this doctrine to prevail, not only would the Church have been subverted, but civilization itself would have been checked. Thus we see that the assertion of the resurrection of the flesh, with all its gross absurdity, was an assertion in favor of breadth of thought and of toleration; it was a protest against narrowness and bigotry. We are accustomed to think of the

ancient creeds as putting limitations about thought and belief, but they were rather assertions of liberty, veritable bills of human rights, prescribing not so much that men shall think in right ways, as that they shall not think in narrow and shriveling ways. It is very easy, it costs but little mental effort, to throw contempt upon the doctrines of the early church, but no broad thinker, no wise, charitable mind, will indulge in such a habit. The forms given to the early doctrines may be criticised, but they are not to be despised.

It was this sturdy defense of great imperiled interests that secured for the doctrine of the resurrection the place it has so long held in the Church. The occasion for the form first given to it has passed away, but the form itself remains. We still assert in words a literal resurrection of the body, but none of us believe it. Our hymns, our prayers, our epitaphs, and too often our sermons, imply that the dust of our bodies shall be reanimated in some far-off future and joined to the waiting soul. At the same time, we know that science declares it to be impossible; our reason revolts from it; it is sustained by no analogy; it is an outworn and nearly discarded opinion. There is, however, a general feeling of perplexity in regard to it. The present state of the question rather breeds skepticism than ministers to faith. Teach a thinking man chemistry and he must be skeptical; mathematics even is against the traditional view. It is an unhappy thing when one revelation of God is set in apparent opposition to another. When such is the case,