the higher revelation commonly yields before the lower one; we side with the lower because it is nearer. The wiser way is to harmonize them ; for God cannot be inconsistent with Himself. The view now offered is substantially this: that the resurrection is from the dead, and not from the grave; that it takes place at death; that it is general in the sense of universal; that the spiritual body, or the basis of the spiritual body, already exists, and that this is the body that is raised up,God giving it such outward form as pleaseth Him, and thus preserving that dualistic state essential to consciousness, if not to existence itself. I hold these views as both scriptural and rational, as according with the essence of the doctrine and with the analogies of nature. Let us notice some considerations that render these points probable. The analogy of nature. The continuance of life in the succession of plants and animals does not depend upon the transmission of matter, but of an immaterial principle or entity folded within the least possible amount of matter. The matter does not seem to be essential to the future life except as holding it during a very brief crisis. When an oak is about to become another oak, its life is committed to an acorn, a slight wrapping of matter, and thus left for a few days till the oak can begin again its general method of existence by air and light and moisture, when it lets go the enfolding matter which decays and becomes to the new oak no more than any other matter. It may foster its life by its decay, but it does this incidentally, as any other matter might. The acorn simply covers a crisis in the life of the oak; the continuance of the oak does not depend upon the continuance of the acorn, but rather upon getting rid of it. The principle is universal. The law of succession does not consist in one bodily form entering into another, but in something quite different. As applied to the resurrection, this analogy indicates that future life does not depend upon the preservation of the physical body, but rather upon its loss. - We find a similar analogy in the animal world. The butterfly emerges from the chrysalis a perfect creature not by working up the substance of the worm into itself, but by a growth within it. At a certain stage, the chrysalis may be opened, and the members of the winged insect may be seen, two bodies in one: one fed through the agency of the other, but not identical with it. The butterfly gains its perfect form, not by assimilating the worm, but by getting rid of it. It is the most beautiful analogy in nature, its very gospel upon the resurrection, at first a creeping thing, dull and earth-bound, a slight period of dormancy, and then a winged creature floating upon the air and feeding upon flowers; one life, yet possessing from the first the potency of two forms. The Greeks early saw it, and adopted it into their philosophy and literature, using it, however, better than we do. For, misled by false notions of a carnal resurrection, we have argued back upon the analogy and treated it as though the substance of the caterpillar were transmitted into the substance of the butterfly, which is not scientific truth. But the Greeks regarded it as both a body and a soul, not a soul made out of a body. The entire significance and value of the doctrine of the resurrection from the dead, centre in the fact that it sets forth human identity. There are two general types of thought in regard to the nature of man. One asserts that he is a person; the other that he is an essential part of nature. All special theorizing ranges itself under one of these types. Pantheism asserts that man is merely phenomenal, and at death sinks back into the general whole. Christianity asserts that man is an immortal person. It is the antagonism of these two systems that led St. Paul and the Fathers to lay such emphasis upon the resurrection. The latter, hard pressed by Pantheism in defending identity, did not carefully or correctly define in what identity consists, and so pushed on to the extreme of asserting a resurrection of the flesh. It remains for modern thinking to clear away the slight rubbish left by them about the foundations of the great truth, and make it consonant with revelation and science. Pantheism says that man is a part of nature; Christianity says that man is made in God's image, -a person and forever to be a person, or that he has an enduring identity. The resurrection is mainly the assertion that this identity continues after death in opposition to Pantheism, which claims that man is resolved into the elements. Any theory that preserves full identity is sufficient to meet the demands of faith, for this is the main point that the doctrine is designed to teach. The question now rises: In what does identity consist? Identity does not lie in matter, nor is it dependent upon matter. If it does, then matter and the will are the same; then mind is as phenomenal as matter and is under the same laws. Hence fatalism; hence pantheism; evil is good and good is evil. By a fiction of language, however, we apply identity to material things. It is on the assumption that this is a true use of the word, that the puzzles of the metaphysicians are constructed as to the sameness of a thing with changing elements; as a knife whose parts are lost and replaced successively, till no single part of the original remains. Is it the same knife? If the lost parts are found and reunited, is that the same knife? Did the original knife lose its identity; and if so, when? These insolvable puzzles show the logical impropriety of applying the word identity to matter. Matter has no real identity. Matter is one; it is in perpetual flux. The mist rising from the river is a visible illustration of an invisible, universal process. The lichens upon our granite hills are transforming rock into gas and soil as really as the sun is changing the river into mist. Neither rock, nor lichens, nor the gas and dust into which they change have identity. The only identity we can apply to matter is that of appearance. We say the river is the same, but it is the sameness of appearance only, it changes every moment. A ray of light, a column of smoke, a flame of fire, these are the same only in the sense that they offer the same appearance. The hunter leaves his cabin in the morning, and before he enters the forest, turns and sees the blue column of smoke ascending from his hearth. He returns at evening and sees the same column of smoke, but in reality it is another column in the same place. I go back at times to the spot where years ago I used to watch the coming and going of the ships, and I say to the dear friend who watches them still from that place of matchless beauty, "There are the same white sails we used to see twenty years ago." But they are not even the same ships; there is simply the same appearance and impression. Now what is the identity of the human body? Have we anything different when we come to the "human form divine?" There is one ever-acting enemy of material identity oxygen unceasing combustion. No material thing remains the same for the millionth part of a second. We see this transformation in flame; we do not see it in flesh, but the flesh is burning as really as the wood. If it burns too fast there is fever and death; if it burns too slowly there is also death. The chemists tell us that we are ablaze to the tips of our fingers. Food is the fuel, and the fire runs along the veins as flues, burning up certain particles that are replaced by others. This process makes up physical life. Stop it, that is, establish positive identity, and death speedily follows. Thus material identity, instead of being a factor of life is a factor of |