which was dead ; not of something of the same nature, but of the very thing itself. And all the passages already quoted as prov- ing the resurrection of the body, assume or declare that it is the same body that rises. It is our present " mortal bodies ; " " our vile body ; " it is " this corruptible," " this mortal ; " it is that which is sown, of which the resurrection and transformation is pre- dicted and promised. Our resurrection is to be analogous to that of Christ ; but in his case there can be no doubt that the very body which hung upon the cross, and which laid in the tomb, rose again from the dead. Otherwise it would have been no resurrec- tion. This identity was the very thing Christ was anxious to prove to his doubting disciples. He showed them his pierced hands and feet, and his perforated side. On this subject, how- ever, there is little difference of opinion. Wherever the resurrec- tion of the body is an article of faith the identity of the present and future body has been admitted. The usual form of Christian burial, in the case of the faithful, has ever been, " We commit this body to the grave in the sure hope of a blessed resurrection."
Wherein does this Identity consist?
It is obvious that identity in different cases depends on very different conditions. First, in the case of unorganized matter, as a clod of earth or a stone, the identity depends on the continuity of substance and of form. If the stone be reduced to powder and scattered abroad, the same substance continues, but not in the same combination ; and therefore the identity is gone. In what sense is water in a goblet the same from hour to hour, or from day to day ? It is the same substance resulting from the combination of oxygen and hydrogen, and it is the same portion of that substance. If that goblet be emptied into the ocean, what becomes of the identity of the water which it contained ? If you separate the water into its constituent gases, the elementary substances con- tinue, but they are no longer water. You may change its state without destroying its identity. If frozen into ice and again thawed, it is the same water. If evaporated into steam, and then condensed, it is the same water still. This sameness, of which continuance of the same substance is the essential element, is the lowest form of identity. In the Church it has often been assumed that sameness of substance is essential to the identity between our present and future bodies. This idea has been pressed sometimes to the utmost extreme. Augustine seems to have thought that all the matter which at any period entered into the organism of
776 PART IV. Ch. II.— THE RESURRECTION.
our present bodies, would in some way be restored in the resur- rection body. Every man's body, however dispersed here, shall be restored perfect in the resurrection. Every body shall be com- plete in quantity and quality. As many hairs as have been shaved off, or nails cut, shall not return in such vast quantities as to deform their original places ; but neither shall they perish ; they shall return into^ the body into that substance from which they grew.1 Thomas Aquinas was more moderate. He taught that only those particles which entered into the composition of the body at death, would enter into the composition of the resurrec- tion body. This idea seems to have entered into the theology of Romanists, as some at least of the theologians of the Church of Rome labour to remove the objection to this view of the subject derived from the fact that the particles of the human body after death are not only dispersed far and wide and mingled with the dust of the earth, but also enter into the composition of the bodies of plants, of animals, and of men. To this Perrone an- swers, " Difficile Deo non est moleculas omnes ad corpus aliquod spectantes, etiam post innumeros transitus ex uno in aliud colli- gere. Hsec mutatio seu transitus accidentalis est, minime vere es- sentialis, ut ex physiologia ac zoobiologia constat universa." 2 It is true, as our Lord teaches us : " With God all things are pos- sible ; " and if sameness of substance be essential to that identity between our present and future bodies, which the Bible asserts, then we should have to submit to these difficulties, satisfied that it is within the power of omniscient omnipotence to do whatever God has promised to effect.
Others assume that it is not necessary to the identity contended for that all the particles of the body at death should be included in the resurrection body. It is enough that the new body should be formed exclusively out of particles belonging to the present body. But as the body after the resurrection is to be refined and ethereal, a tenth, a hundredth, or a ten thousandth portion of those particles would suffice. It would take very little of gross matter to make a body of light. Tertullian thought that God had rendered the teeth indestructible in order to furnish material for the future body. Many others also suppose that there is some- where an indestructible germ in our present body, which is to be developed into the body of the future.3
i De Civitate Dei, xxn., xix., xx.; Works, Paris, 1838, vol. vii. pp. 1085-1089. 2 Preelections, edit. Paris, 1861, vol. i. p. 503.
8 See Essay on the Identity and General Resurrection of the Human Body, by Samuel Drew, chapter vi. section 7, Brooklyn, 1811, p. 315 ff.