and especially young pastors, will find this beautiful volume a real vade mecum. There will be times when, in their efforts to comfort the feeble-minded,' the teachings found herein will be of priceless value."

(6.) In a card published by a constellation of eminent pastors, with much other commendation, the closing words declare, "We feel assured that the publication and general circulation of your work would serve to supply an important desideratum in our Church theology, and that it would eminently contribute to accurate and satisfactory views of the Christian life."

Excepting a very limited number, this treatise on "Saving Faith" might be allowed to displace almost any book in the ministerial course of study, with immediate and permanent advantage to the Church. In this little book, treating of matters vitally essential to the Church, we have the crystallized thoughts of one of the profoundest thinkers of the present age.

ART. VI.-THE RESURRECTION.

"In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: 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."-1 Cor. xv, 52, 53.

I. The text announces a profound mystery, and one that affects every human creature. No matter how remote in the past he may have lived, or how widely scattered in the present, or how distant in the future, every human being, that has been, or that now is, or that will be, in this great mystery is to have a common destiny-the flesh is to be raised or changed to immortality. "In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the DEAD shall be RAISED INCORRUPTIBLE, and we shall be changed." The living and the dead are to meet incorruptible. "For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality:" the living to be changed into immortality and incorruptibility, and the dead to be RAISED incorruptible. And all in a moment. It is therefore no law process, nor life process, nor death process. It is the fiat of Almighty God," making all things new." It is done in the

twinkling of an eye. Not as one dies; not as one lives; not as law, either in the moral or natural world, moves; but "in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye." Not now, but "at the last trump" then the dead shall be raised, and the living changed. This, indeed, is mystery-mystery full of grandeur; mystery over which hangs the cloud from which emanates glory inconceivable and darkness indescribable. But mystery we concede that it is, and one entirely beyond the reach of reason, however pure or however strong. It needs the clear announcement of revelation to establish it. And this revelation we have; and the very clearness of the terms, and of the ideas thrown out in the terms, is proof of the Divine origin both of the words used and of the awful fiat, yet to come, announced in them. We take, therefore, the communication, so clear, so grand, so sublime, as proof of the presence of the Mind which alone could make to the world such an announcement. Man could not do this, because he reasons from premises within his grasp, which this is not. Angels could not discover this. God alone could be the author of so clear a revelation of the resurrection of the dead.

And here we ought to make another preliminary point. It is this: The fact that some things in connection with the resurrection of the dead are unrevealed, and are yet in darkness to the human mind, does not invalidate what is revealed. The fact that the continent of America lay hidden from Europe till seen by Columbus did not render Europe, that was seen, unreal. This fact that half the world only was revealed did not render less certain that which was known. And yet the mere fact that a vast continent lay embosomed between two seas, but unknown to the world, may have rendered it impossible to form correct views of the geography of the whole earth; but this circumstance did not render uncertain a single river, sea, mountain, hillock, or aught else that was seen. Neither did it render uncertain that which was not seen. The unknown was equally true with the known. So of the resurrection of the dead. Standing by some sea-shore I may perceive clearly in the distance an island upon which rises in beautiful proportions a lofty light-house, so clear, so distinct, so lofty, none can mistake. But if a bystander should ask me, "Of what material is the building," I could only say,

"I know not, but it looks incorruptible." This uncertainty in the one case does not affect the fact, of vastly higher grandeur, that the light-house is there and the architect declares it imperishable. So a man might ask me of the shore of the island-if there were herbage there; what the rock on which this glorious superstructure was, gneiss, or granite or solid crystal-and to all the questions I must be silent. Yet there stands the noble structure, still performing its work of guiding and saving, as perfectly, as beautifully, as wisely, as though every rock and hillock, and all the surroundings, were known like familiar household words. Though God had hidden every fact from the universe save one, and that his own being, his own being would have been as much a truth as though all else had been revealed. Thus it is with the resurrection of the dead.

But, says the objector, my difficulty lies in another direction. From the fact that wheat grows luxuriantly upon the battlefield, and that men are sometimes cannibals, and that changes are taking place constantly in all human bodies, it seems apparent to me that the resurrection is an impossibility that is absolute. I cannot believe it.

How can these objections be obviated? Let us make the effort:

1. It will be seen at once that, of the vast amount consumed by an individual in a life-time or in a day, but the merest particles are retained by the system. An infant that consumes from six hundred to a thousand pounds a year will perhaps retain of that large amount ten pounds. The mother, or the cow, or the goat that yields this amount will lose nothing. The cow that yields nine thousand five hundred and fifty-six pounds of milk per year loses nothing herself; she is simply a large manufacturer. Give her good material, and she will, perchance, increase her own weight by the means, and remain as intact as the mill that grinds out your corn. An adult that consumes, it may be, in a year, two thousand pounds, more or less, may not retain in the system a single pound. Much that he did take was pure water or fluid, which never incorporates itself into the system at all.

2. In the second place, the difficulties lessen by a reference to what is probably the true theory of life, which is this: The

human body, as it first appears in life, consists of "innumerable membranes, exquisitely thin, that are filled with circulating fluids, to which the solid parts bear a very small proportion." "Into the tubes composed of these membranes nourishment must be continually infused; otherwise, life cannot continue, but will come to an end almost as soon as it is begun. And suppose this nourishment to be liquid, which, as it flows through those fine canals, continually enlarges them in all their dimensions; yet it contains innumerable solid particles, which continually adhere to the inner surface of the vessels through which they flow; so that in proportion as any vessel is enlarged it is stiffened also. Thus the body grows firmer as it grows larger, from infancy to manhood. In twenty, five and twenty, or thirty years, it attains its full measure of firmness. Every part of the body is stiffened then to its full degree; as much earth adhering to all the vessels as gives the solidity they severally need to the nerves, arteries, veins, muscles, in order to exercise their functions in the most perfect manner." At length life is filled up; its wants are met. Stiffened now to excess, wrinkles appear, age comes on, and death ensues-apparently by the very means ordained for life. But a deduction of the theory is this: Much that appears to be of the body is not of the body. The other day I took up a piece of sponge, then dry, and weighed it, and found it to weigh about an ounce. I immersed it in water, and again weighed it, and found it more than ten times its former weight. I compressed it, and again filled it-compressed and filled-but there remained the sponge, as at first seen. Thus, too, I have seen one of our New England mills. The pond would sometimes be full to excess, sometimes low; sometimes the mill would go fast or slow, till the pond dried up, and the mill stayed its movement; but yet the mill stood in its glory, and so remained, whether the tide was up or down. The body bears a similar relation to much that passes through it.

3. One other remark may be made, which will lessen the real difficulties of the case. Human bodies have from the beginning been divinely regarded as sacred, and they have been sacredly cared for. The mass of humanity lies safely interred beneath the ground, so as really to be unaffected by what passes above it. So do those, doubtless, whose burying place was the

deep sea. They lie far down, where life goes not-down in its awful depths, where no disturbing influences shall reach them, "till the sea gives up its dead, and they shall stand before God." And if some have been crushed by the monsters of the deep, and others consumed by the beasts of the wilderness, yet the dust of each may be as safely deposited, the one in the depths of the sea, the other in the earth, as though sealed up in a metallic urn, only to be opened at the resurrection at the last day.

4. So far as the objection lies against the doctrine of the resurrection from changes supposed to take place in the whole body in a term of years, we reply: (1.) The theory we propose does not admit of these immense changes. We say they do not take place. They never did take place. (2.) Recent microscopic discovery admits that that which was supposed to be change in the substance of the body is but the change incident to the reception and rejection of want and supply, and not invading the integrity of the system at all.

5. But after all it may be asked, If there be but one human body exposed to some of the objections here named, and the resurrection is to be universal, will not the objection lie against that one as broadly as against the whole? We answer, Yes, unless you make an exception of this one to the great fiat that shall give life to the rest. But there is no necessity of this resort; and we have only attempted to meet the objections heretofore met, so as to help the weakness of the understanding till it should bow itself without reserve to faith-faith in the divine word; faith in the power of God, and in Jesus Christ, our adorable Lord, at whose voice the dead shall rise.

But to all objections raised against the doctrine of a literal resurrection—a resurrection, however, that admits of a change into immortality and incorruptibility; a change from weakness to power, from dishonor to honor, from corruption to glory-we answer that such as have any solid basis may be met by the following considerations: (1.) God is ABLE to preserve every particular human body intact, or free from all other bodies. Now, if able to do this, and if he has pledged his word for it, will he not do it? Can he not keep as safely, as separate, every particle of dust as can the chemist his minerals in his laboratory? Cannot the chemist separate them, even if they become