For the Christian Observer. ON THE RESURRECTION OF THE BODY.-1 COR. XV. RELIGION has been at different times greatly endangered from two opposite sources, connected with its deep and mysterious nature. The depth of its mysteries has so far captivated many of its defenders, particularly in ancient times, as to induce them to measure its truth almost by its obscurity, and to affirm their belief of its tenets on the well known ground, "Credo quia impossibile est"-I believe, because it is impossible. The absurdity of this principle, so well suited to popish chicane, has subsequently led some rational divines into the opposite extreme. With them, it has been the custom to assert, that mysteries are mysteries only before they are revealed; and that the act of revelation has in itself done away all that was mysterious in the doctrine revealed. It is sufficiently clear, whatever might have been the intent of delivering such an opinion, that its practical effect will be most per nicious;-nothing short of subject ing all Divine revelations to be tried by human standards, and of warranting the rejection of all truth which does not absolutely make itself bare to the prying eye of mortal presumption. That the great doctrine standing at the head of the present article has been so explained as to endanger the honour of our holy faith from both the causes here expressed, is sufficiently obvious. Total impossibilities, nay, contradictions, CHRIST. OBSERV. No. 184. have been assumed with triumph by some, for the genuine doctrine of Scripture, on the important article of the Resurrection of the Body. And by others, willing to avoid such manifest absurdity, an opposite mode of explaining these doctrines has been adopted, calculated to enervate, or directly setting aside, the plainest declarations of Scripture. It would, perhaps, be difficult to settle the account of mischievous effect between these very different errors; both apparently arising from an overweening conceit of human reason, though coming in at two opposite doors;-whilst the one, by presenting crudities for doctrines, has tended to make the Revelation appear unworthy to be received by the thinking part of mankind; and the other, by making no difference between natural and revealed truths, has inclined them to think Revelation itself to be of no use. In endeavouring to steer the middle course, which rational reflection on scriptural principles may without difficulty open to our view, let us at present inquire for the just notion of a future resurrection of the body, as revealed in Scripture; which may also lead us, on some future occasion, to investigate the still more important or at least practical question, upon what principles the final judgment which is to follow this event will, according to Scripture, be conducted. It is evident, from this enunciation of our subject, that some intermediate inquiries of a curious, but rather, at the same time, questionable nature, must be passed over in silence. The time, for in2 E stance, at which these great events are to be expected to take place, will not be thought a very fit object of curiosity to those who consider the answer of our Lord to a similar question: "It is not for you to know the times and the seasons which the Father hath put in his own power." The same answer might be given to those who would curiously inquire into the duration of this dread solemnity; or, who would suggest the possibility of a lengthened period, and a gradual process of judgment, on the ground of a supposed suggestion by St. Peter, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day." That the event is to take place, is surely sufficient for our purpose. Nor can any construction of that event escape the charge of rashness, which would invalidate the solemnity of a day, "the day of the Lord," on which "before Him shall be gathered all nations; and He shall divide the one from the other, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats." Much less need any scruple be felt in passing over the many obscure and uncertain inquiries respecting the supposed prior appearance of our blessed Lord upon earth in the millennial state. The question of the resurrection of the body and the future and final judgment stands clear, both in character and importance, of these preliminary questions. If a prior and partial resurrection is to take place, we cannot, at least, suppose any intermediate state of the body, so risen, essentially different from its final condition: the comparative glory of the first or the second resurrection will not materially affect the main doctrine of the return of the body from its native dust, as taught by Scripture; and we shall find ourselves still embracing all that is of essential and vital importance in these two queries: 1. In what sense are we to believe that the body will rise again? 2. On what principles shall the general judgment be conducted? In answering, then, the first of these, on the present occasion, let us content ourselves with acknowledging the mystery, as a mystery, so sublimely conveyed to us by the great Apostle. Behold, I show you a mystery: we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality." Words as strongly implying as words can do, the mysterious fact, that the very bodies we now wear, the very tabernacle of earth we now inhabit, and which constitutes, in conjunction with the soul, "one man," shall meet again in union with that Divine principle from which it had been separated for a time, and shall form with it the very same intelligent and conscious being as before, though in an inconceivably purer and higher state of existence. In this statement, it is true, from the very earliest period, various difficulties have been offered, and some founded on the very nature of things themselves, to which even an inspired Apostle thought fit to answer, "Some man will say, How are the dead raised up, and with what body do they come?" To which St. Paul returns back a similitude in answer, which, for cogency, as well as beauty and direct application to his subject, may be safely considered as unrivalled, certainly as not surpassed, by the most renowned efforts of philosophical reasoning. whether in the heathen or the Christian world. "Thou fool! that which thou sowest is not quickened except it die : and that which thou sowest thou sowest not that body (that kind of body) that shall be, but bare grain...but God giveth it a body as it hath pleased him, and to every seed his own body." No illustration can more accurately express all that we should aspire to know respecting the mysterious and truly miraculous transformation which is implied in the notion of the resurrection of the body. It expresses that which is the material and most important point of all, a certain and fixed identity between the risen body and the body defunct; as much, in truth, as between the blade springing in the field and the grain which had been first deposited. It conveys forcibly to the mind the absolute and strict necessity for the very body once deposited in the dust itself, to become the basis, the substratum as it were, of the reviving mass. It depicts, indeed, in a most striking manner, the boundless possibilities of superior excellence in which the revivified substance may surpass its own previous condition, just as the splendour of the oak, in its highest glory, surpasses that of the parent acorn. At the same time it convinces us of the close dependence of the one state on the other, just as every peculiar lineament and characteristic of the full-grown plant had a prior existence in the minute and evanescent involutions of the seed. strongly it tends to elucidate the absurdity of supposing that any other than the exact body which had been laid in the soil shall, though in a new and more refined state, belong to the soul which before animated it, by what would be the parallel absurdity of asserting that a blade of wheat, for instance, could have been produced by any other than the exact particle of seed which had been, in correspondence with it, previously inserted in the ground. In short, it illustrates what seems to be the main resting-point of the great doctrine of the Resurrection; namely, the personal identity of the body raised with that which had slept in the dust: nor do we apprehend that any thing beyond this position is either intended in Scripture, or in And deed intelligible to us, in our consideration of the great mystery in question. That this, at least, is to be believed concerning the resurrection of the body seems most clear, and that from arguments more obvious and undeniable than some that are commonly brought to prove it. Some persons are fond of asserting, that the same body which had been made the instrument in sinning or repenting, ought to be also made instrumental in sustaining their respective consequences. These imagine, rather, it seems, contrary to fact, that the body, as such, is guilty or innocent according to the actions of the soul, and becomes, equally with it, the proper object of reward or punishment. It might be maintained against such, that a mere passive instrument can never itself be properly said to deserve any thing: and the soul might, for any thing we know, fully repay all the demands of justice for the ill use it had made of its bodily organs, whether or not those organs were present again to convey appropriate sensations to the mind. But, at the best, this mode of reasoning, if just, is beyond our present power to determine: and the strongest probability upon the subject, perhaps, is this, that the body, as a part of the whole man here below, may be absolutely requisite to form up his total identity in the future state. But the clearer and more obvious argument for this belief is drawn from the text of Scripture itself; which would (with deference be it spoken) involve apparent levity, and even abuse of language, were no resurrection of the body itself, in some literal and direct sense, finally to take place. Take, for instance, the noted passage in the book of Job, and thence transferred to our own admirable funeral service. Could such words as the following have been used with any propriety, "Though after my skin, worms destroy this body; yet in my flesh shall I see God, whom I deed," is a declaration of which the effect can scarcely be estimated, in outweighing every possible objection to the reality of our own re shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not another," bad no such event been in contemplation as that which is here asserted? Suppose even with War-surrection, and establishing its cerburton a temporal deliverance to be tainty and even its manner beyond here intended, is not at least the all possible contradiction. It is reidea of a final bodily resurrection peatedly made the very picture as from the dead irresistibly conveyed well as pledge of our own; and we to the mind of the reader? And should vacate one of the most inwould such an idea have been valuable privileges of our Christian used, even to delineate a temporal hope, as well as one of the most redemption, with an obvious ten- important articles of our Christian dency to establish the belief of an- faith, were we to doubt, that “if other and greater, were this last the Spirit of Him that raised up never to take place? But the Jesus from the dead dwell in us, he Church of Christ had long deter- which raised up Christ from the mined the application of this text, dead shall also quicken our mortal before the master of paradoxes bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth above named attempted to perin us. The expectation we have vert it. Would the expression of patiently, yet firmly formed, of the "awaking from a sleep in the dust," re-appearance of the Saviour the of "all that are in the graves hear- Lord Jesus Christ from heaven, is, ing the voice of the Son of man in our minds, inseparably riveted and coming forth," of "the sea to the further hope, that "he shall giving up the dead that are in it," change our vile body, and fashion it of the dead body itself arising," like unto his glorious body :"-and with a multitude of similar phrases that the same individual substance that might be accumulated, if neces- which once appeared in mortal sary, both from the Old and the frailness, shall equally, in both New Testament, have been so cases, again appear in immortal pointedly selected and studiously glory, is a belief founded alike on maintained by the Spirit of Inspi- the credit of " that mighty working ration without intending to convey whereby he is able to subdue all the notion which they most ob- things unto himself." viously do convey? The same might be said of the appeals not unfrequent in Scripture to the almighty power of God, in reference to this very article, which would be wholly superfluous were no miracle of the kind about to be effected. Nor can those solitary instances of a resurrection of the body really taking place, in different periods of the Sacred History, be without their due weight of influence on this point. To which is, lastly, to be added-as that which is most important and most conclusive, and which embraces within itself, whilst it infinitely corroborates, the force of many of the foregoing suggestions-the resurrection of our Lord himself from the dead, "The Lord is risen in That no objections can tend, in the least degree, to invalidate this reasoning, which admit of any direct appeal to the omnipotency of God in answer to them, is most obvious. The dust of Abraham or of Adam is as clearly in his sight, and within the grasp of his almighty hand, as will be that of the latest body which is gathered to its native soil. The impotent and insensate defiance of the Christian faith adopted by the heathen persecutors of old-who first reduced the mutilated remains of their victims to ashes, and then, in derision of this their avowed belief, scattered those ashes to the winds, or threw them down the steep bed of impetuous rivers to be dispersed and lost in the ocean-may well pass without a comment. Nothing but what is contradictory in itself can for a moment be supposed beyond the reach of the Divine fiat. Some consequences, it is true, of this nature have been at different times charged upon the doctrine. But, in answer to these objections, it might be sufficient to say, that nothing in them amount to the condition of a positive contradiction to which are to be limited all appeals against the sovereignty and omnipotency of God. There is no contradiction in believing that all the particles which ever entered into our composition upon earth may be re-assembled at the day of resurrection, and all be employed in forming one glorious body, of the nature and construction of which we indeed know so little. Much less would it be impossible to suppose, that the exact particles remaining at the bour of death shall be those selected by God for the mysterious and renovated form in which we are led. to expect we shall finally appear. If we should hint at certain essential, indestructible, and permanent parts of the human frame which may never be suffered to lapse with its more fugitive and non-essential portions, we shall still more readily conceive that such may be awakened into a new existence with more splendid additions at the great day. Imagine these parts to bear no greater proportion to the future body itself than the least of all seeds to the greatest amongst herbs which it produces, the difficulty will still be lessened. Nor, further, is it to be maintained, that any contradiction is necessarily implied in supposing these several particles, be they more or less, which are to constitute the rising body, will have been miraculously preserved from age to age, and carefully separated from all other inferior and less honoured portions of matter. Even that part of one body which may enter as food into the cavities of another, may, for any thing we positively know to the contrary, be kept so completely apart from the body which it enters as to cause no confusion whatever in the views or the plans of Infinite Wisdom and Divine Power. But after all that may be directly advanced in answer to the above objections, perhaps the most effective reply is rather of an indirect nature, and may be made by asking, Do we know for certain, or can we even conjecture, what it is which forms the personal identity of our bodies? Or can we say whether matter at all, or merely some modification of matter, be necessary to constitute the sameness of a body at one period of its existence and at another. No one doubts the sameness of the body at an advanced period of life with that at any former period, though a space may have intervened sufficient to have effected the most material changes, or even to have altered all that was alterable in the substance of the body itself. And is it not sufficient for us to know, on the authority of Revelation, that something of the same kind will take place at the general Resurrection: and that by some means or other, as yet perhaps concealed within the infinite recesses of the Supreme Mind, the same body, which is now deposited as a seed in the bosom of its parent earth, shall finally be recalled thence? Yes! we believe, that as the same plant which deposits at autumn its fading leaf, and seems to die in winter, again buds forth in vernal life and summer radiance; so that, at the times of the restitution of all things," new brightness and immortal beauty await the same mortal frame which we now follow to the grave. "This mortal shall put on immortality." Nay, as all things are repaired by corrupting, are preserved by perishing, and revive by dying ;* so we believe that the very death itself .* * Pearson on the Creed. See also Seneca, Ep. 30. Natura....non aliam voluit legem nostram esse quam suam. |