Secondly, in works of art sameness of substance holds a very subordinate part. The Apollo Belvidere once lay dormant in a block of marble. The central portion of that block containing every particle of matter in the statue was not the Apollo of the artist. Could every particle clipped off, be restored, the substance would remain, but the statue would be gone. Here form, expres- sion, the informing idea are the main constituents of identity. If a penitentiary should be taken down, and the materials be em- ployed in the construction of a cathedral, the substance would be the same, but not the building. When you look into a mirror the image reflected remains the same, but not the substance ; for that is changed with every new reflection. And if it were possible, or proved, that in like manner the Madonna del Sixti of Raphael had a thousand times changed its substance, it would remain the same picture stilL The soul here informs the body. The character is more or less visibly impressed upon the face. We know the for- mer by looking at the latter. If this be so, if the soul have power thus to illuminate and render intelligent the gross material of our present frames, why may it not hereafter render its ethereal vest- ment so expressive of itself as to be at once recognized by all to whom it was ever known. Thus we may at once recognize Isaiah, Paul, and John. It is not said that this will be so ; that herein lies the identity of their heavenly and earthly bodies ; but should it prove to be true, we should not stop to inquire or to care how many particles of the one enter into the composition of the other.
Thirdly, identity in living organisms is something still higher, and more inscrutable than in works of* art. The acorn and the oak are the same ; but in what sense ? Not in substance, not in form. The infant and the man are the same, through all the stages of life ; boyhood, manhood, and old age ; the substance of the body, however, is in a state of perpetual change. It is said this change is complete once every seven years. Hence if a man live to be seventy years old, the substance of his body has, during that period, been entirely changed ten times. Here, then, is an identity independent of sameness of substance. Our future bodies, therefore, may be the same as those we now have, although not a particle that was in the one should be in the other.
The object of these remarks on the different kinds of identity, is not to explain anything. It is not intended to teach wherein the identity of the earthly and heavenly consists ; whether it be an identity of substance ; or of expression and idea, as in works of art ; or of the uninterrupted continuity of the same vital
778 PART IV. Ch. II. — THE RESURRECTION.
force as in the plant and animal through their whole progress of growth and decay ; or whether it is a sameness which includes all these ; or something different from them all. Nothing is affirmed. The subject is left where the Bible leaves it. The object aimed at is twofold ; first, to show that it is perfectly rational for a man to assert the identity between our present and our future bodies, although he is forced to admit that he does not know wherein that identity is to consist. This is no more than what all men have to admit concerning the continued sameness of our present bodies. And, secondly, to stop the mouths of gainsayers. They ridicule the idea of a resurrection of the body ; asking if the infant is to rise as an infant ; the old man, wrinkled and decrepid ; the maimed as maimed ; the obese with their cumbrous load ; and by such questions think they have refuted a Scripture doctrine. The Bible teaches no such absurdities ; and no Church goes beyond the Scriptures in asserting two things, namely : that the body is to rise, and that it is to be the same after the resurrection that it was before ; but neither the Bible nor the Church determines wherein that sameness is to consist.
With regard to our present bodies, the fact of their continued identity is not denied. According to one view the principle of this identity is in the body and perishes, or, ceases, with it. Ac- cording to another, although in the body, it does not perish with it, but remains united to the soul, and under appropriate circum- stances fashions for itself a new body. According to others, this vital principle is in the soul itself. Agassiz, as a zoologist, teaches that with every living germ there is an immaterial principle by which one species is distinguished from another, and which deter- mines that the germ of a fish develops into a fish ; and that of a bird, into a bird, although the two germs are exactly the same (i. e., alike) in substance and structure. When the individual dies, this immaterial principle ceases to exist. This is Agassiz's doc- trine. Dr. Julius Miiller1 thinks that this vital organizing force continues in union with the soul, but is not operative between death and the resurrection. He says, "it is not the <rdp£, the mass of earthly material, .... but the <r<o//.a, the organic whole, to which the Scriptures promise a resurrection The organ- ism, as the living form which appropriates matter to itself, is the true body, which in its glorification becomes the o-tofia TrvevpariKov" But he understands the Apostle in 2 Corinthians v. 4, as clearly teaching that the soul during the interval between death and the
i Studien und Kritiken, 1835, pp. 777, 785.