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But at that early time he could not so well press that view of them. The materialist had either to concede immortality or abandon the "spiritual body." finally chose the latter alternative and regarded consciousness as a function of the physical organism when he could contend logically enough for its perishing at death.

But the moment that philosophy took hold of the problem, the tactics were changed. The "spiritual body" doctrine of St. Paul did not receive as much emphasis or defense as might have been necessary to make it the crucial incident in the system. The wider philosophy of the cosmos came in to predetermine the direction in which thought on this matter should move. Whether justified or not, the mind sought a general scheme of things in which immortality could be inferred as a probability or a necessity, rather than try a special doctrine for insuring it. In one respect this was wise. Any theory of the outcome of nature which does not make its peace with the whole of it will suffer in liabilities. In any case immortality must be consistent with the scheme of the universe, and this was seen very early. The Pauline doctrine, more from its associations than from its real nature, was more closely connected with the alleged miracles to secure support as readily as the general scheme of law in the world. Hence the movement of philosophy to defend immortality was through a view of the cosmos which made survival an inference from it, whether from some hypothetical nature of the soul or as a benign decree of Providence.

Christianity may be conceived as an attack on Materialism. But it could attack it in two ways. (1) It could take the course of the disciples of Christ and of St. Paul. It could appeal to real or alleged facts. In the earliest period it adopted this appeal and only came into contact with Epicureanism in the Pauline

acceptance of the "spiritual body" or "ethereal organism." Here it based its immortality on the materialistic conception of the soul and the indestructibility of matter, and it was only the abandonment by Materialism of its theory of the "ethereal organism" that offered the conflict between "science" and

religion any opportunity for continuance. (2) It could adopt a general theory of the world which would necessitate the existence of spirit as its cosmic background and then regard survival as a probable or necessary consequence of this view. It was the later period that adopted this course. This was when the scientific appeal had spent itself. development of this course.

Let us examine the

Greek philosophic speculation outside the atomic school had a tendency to suppose that there was only one kind of substance or reality in the world. It distinguished between different degrees of density in it, but it still believed that all reality was one in kind, whether called material or divine. There were, of course, inherent tendencies to dualism or pluralism there in spite of this monistic sympathy and this came out in the atomic doctrine and in Christianity, but before these systems triumphed the dominant tendency was to Monism, Pantheism or the belief that all reality could be reduced to one kind. Just in so far as it conceived this reality as matter and excluded from this any form of regulative intelligence it eliminated the divine from the scheme. Epicurean materialism did this more effectively than any other system. Hence Christianity faced Atheism, whether it accepted Epicureanism or Pantheism, as it saw them. Either form of philosophy was synonymous with Materialism as representing the sole explanation of things. I have shown that it attacked it first by a scientific appeal, but now it comes to the philosophic assault. Its ad hominem argument was directed to the Epicurean

"ethereal organism" and the fact of apparitions. But it had another resource, the philosophical one.

Greek philosophic thought had never made earnest Iwith the doctrine of inertia. Its monistic tendencies would not permit it to regard all matter as inert. It regarded some matter as self-active. This it called living matter, and in the very distinction between "living" and non-living matter it implied inertia, but limited it to a portion of the cosmos. Of such a thing as the absolute universality of inertia as a property of matter it did not dream. If it admitted the existence of the divine this was in matter, and thus it only followed the traditions of Animism, the primitive conception of Spiritualism. It did not put the divine outside of the cosmos. The dualism and transcendentalism of Christianity had not yet dawned. Hence it did not require to make all matter inert, if one form of it was capable of self-activity. In the person of Socrates, Plato and Anaxagoras, and to some extent that of Aristotle and the Stoics, it recognized a divine agent as creating the cosmic order. But it did not believe that matter was created. This it regarded as eternal and indestructible, uncreated and imperishable.

When Christianity came to the question it had two courses before it. (1) It might accept the eternity of matter and adopt the ideas of the men named and maintain a divine order in the world, whether you placed this divine outside of matter, transcendental to it, or in it, immanent in matter. It might conceive God as simply co-eternal with matter and directing its changes and cosmic order. (2) It decided to take a more direct course and to cut the Gordian knot more effectively. It affirmed the universality of inertia and the phenomenal or created nature of matter. The atoms, or all material substances, were supposed to be created, as well as the cosmic order. With the supposition that matter was essentially inert and

created, phenomenal and transient, it had to go outside of matter altogether for its creative agency. This it made God and endowed him with self-activity as opposed to the inertia of matter. It was forced by the logic of the situation to regard the divine as spirit and not as matter. Matter was not self-existent, but dependent, and with spirit as thus at the background of all things. There would be no difficulty in protecting the possibility of survival on such a basis as this. It might not prove it to be a fact, but with spirit as the absolute or background of the cosmos it would be natural to think it might respect its own creations, especially if it had implanted in them some measure of hope and moral law.

This philosophy was based upon a sort of dualism. I say "sort of dualism" because it was not so radical as Manichæanism which made two eternal principles in nature. Christianity conceded the existence of matter, but it refused to make it eternal, as did Greek thought. It was a dependent existence that matter had. The eternal was divine and spiritual. With this doctrine it could easily construct its theory of the destruction of the physical world at some date in the future, though it did not stop to consider the inconsistency of this with its doctrine of the physical resurrection. But in the course of its development it unconsciously modified this by maintaining that this physical body was refined and "spiritualized," probably influenced by the Pauline doctrine of the "spiritual body." All this aside, however, the chief thing is its turning the tables on Greek thought by supplanting the dominance of matter by that of spirit. The Greek started with sense perception for determining his idea of the world and though he admitted a transcendental world, he still made it material and like the world of sense in its properties. Its difference from the sensible world was only in density or degree, not in kind. But

its inertia even partly granted left some problems unsolved, as is apparent in the attraction and repulsion of Empedocles and the "swerving" of the atoms in Epicurus. But by setting up a self-active force and making it spiritual, not material, Christianity established a distinction in kind between matter and spirit, accounted for change, and made the dominance of the trancendental the primary doctrine, while it made the material ephemeral and phenomenal. In other words, while it admitted the existence of matter, it set up a reality over it as creative and regulative while it made this reality intelligent. With Greek thought the divine was but regulative and not creative, and also limited in its regulative agency. With Christianity this power was both creative and regulative and with no limitations on its power.

But

With faith in this power men would have little difficulty in maintaining some doctrine of immortality, whether they obtained evidence for it or not, and so Christianity ruled history for many centuries. a day of reckoning came with the revival of science. The first revolution to theological system was the discovery of the indestructibility of matter and the conservation of energy. It was, of course, Copernican astronomy that marked the rise of the scientific spirit and the crucial attack on the theological cosmogony, but the transcendental philosophy of Christianity was not primarily affected until the indestructibility of matter and the conservation of energy were discovered. These completely reversed the tables on religious thought. What had been regarded as created and phenomenal, now became eternal, and with the natural tendencies of the human mind toward a single reality behind all things, "spirit" began to be resolved into a phenomenon of matter. There was a return to the scientific point of view that starts with sensory experience as the basis for judging the nature of reality