body is assumed, the sameness of the whole is thought to be unaltered. The difference between the creeds and Paul in regard to the body lies in the identity of substance supposed to continue, according to the former, while the qualities are altered; and the heavenly, ethereal, spiritual' body sketched according to the latter. If immortality and incorruption belong to raised bodies including those of the wicked, as Paul's language implies, how can they be liable to suffering? And if material, how does that consist with qualities entirely different from the present ?

Insuperable difficulties attend the reception of the doctrine as it is held by the Churches. These have been stated so often as not to need repetition.1 Even on the supposition that the raised body is partially identical with the old one, the doctrine is liable to objection. Reason

1 See Wegscheider's Institutiones Theologiæ Christiana Dogmatica, § 195, ed. 8, pp. 704, 705.

interposes its veto. It was a right advance in Christian consciousness to hold that the resurrection of the spirit takes place at death without undergoing a hades-state; but another step should have been taken, viz. its final parting with the old body at the same time. After the soul has advanced toward perfection through centuries or millenniums, why should its union. with the body be thought desirable? Has it not already an ethereal covering? Can an earthly body suit the new relations of the soul? Does it not dissolve entirely in a few years? In view of these considerations, we hold that the doctrine of the resurrection presented in the creeds can only be accepted as a symbolic representation of immortality. In this light it is one of the factors in Christianity which tended to promote universal faith in that doctrine. The idea of immortality-of a new super-terrestrial life after death-has its negative and positive sides. The former is the hades-realm where

man still remains in a measure a denizen of the earth, to which he is bound by a tie he cannot loose; the latter is the reception of a higher life-organism after death, so that he awakes to a purer consciousness in a more perfect state, unimpeded by earthly influences. In another view, the resurrection begins here, and is proceeding at every step of eternal life, wherever men are conscious of their true destination. Allied as it is to the consciousness of the divine, it has the same gradations, and marks the progress of humanity towards the perfect life. The true resurrection is not simultaneous, but successive; it is a rising of the soul in the sphere of the spiritual world. The doctrine of the creeds, viz. that soul and body are reunited at the consummation of the world, is inadmissible. In affirming that it had taken place already, Hymeneus and Philetus, stripping off the materialistic form of the idea, had grasped its spiritual nature, recognizing its development

in the soul's forward movement towards closer union with God. Apelles also, the most prominent of Marcion's disciples, rightly denied the resurrection of the flesh, asserting that the redemption of Christ refers to souls only; a view which is more rational than that of Marcion's great opponent, who believed that the identical body will be resumed. The resurrection of the body is nothing more than a sensuous symbol of immortality. It is hard to conceive of pure spirit without an organ;1 and we may therefore suppose that some pneumatic, ethereal, luminous clothing awaits it at death. The essential thing, however, is the indestructible continuance of life in a sphere adapted to progressive union with God. The old body is cast off; the spirit soars aloft into higher life.

1 So, too, Leibnitz thought: "Spiritus intelligentia præditi sunt et corpore dissoluto persistunt; etsi ego quoque eo inclinem ut credam spiritus creatos etsi per se incorporeos, corpore tamen aliquo semper præditos esse."-Epist. ad Bierling, in Epistolæ ed. Kortholt, vol. iv. pp. 55, 56.

(63)

CHAPTER IV.

THE INTERMEDIATE STATE.

It

WHAT is the condition of the dead till they rise again, according to the Scriptures? The second coming of Christ is represented as the decisive event for all. For it departed confessors long. Believers wait for it, and mourners are consoled thereby for the loss of friends. is the general harvest of the world. If, therefore, the event be an object of general desire, neither the deceased nor those then alive have been perfected. They are in an incomplete state. The epithet applied to the departed is dead; and their emergence out of that condition is a resurrection from the dead, implying that