According to the Hindu system men have not to wait for the conclusion of one of these great cycles to be absorbed in the Su- preme Being. By a life strictly conformed to prescribed rules, and by a process of complete self-abnegation, they attain a state in which they are lost in the Infinite as drops of rain in the ocean. As individuals they can never be reproduced, any more than the drops of rain can be recovered from the ocean. The ocean, by evaporation may produce other clouds which shall fall in other drops of rain; but this is not a reproduction of those which fell a thousand years ago. There is therefore no analogy between this theory and the Christian doctrine of the resurrec- tion.
" The same general conception," continues Mr. Alger,1 " in a modified form was held by the Stoics of later Greece, who doubt- less borrowed it from the East, and who carried it out in greater detail. ■ God is an artistic fire, out of which the cosmopceia is- sues.' This fire proceeds in a certain fixed course, in obedience to a fixed law, passing through certain intermediate gradations, and established periods, until it returns into itself and closes with a universal conflagation The Stoics supposed each succeed- ing formation to be perfectly like the preceding. Every partic- ular that happens now, has happened exactly so a thousand times before, and will happen a thousand times again. This view they connected with astronomical calculations making the burning and recreating of the world coincide with the same position of the stars as that at which it previously occurred. This they called the res- toration of all things. The idea of these enormous revolving identical periods — Day of Brahm, Cycle of the Stoics, or Great Year of Plato — is a physical fatalism, effecting a universal res- urrection of the past, by reproducing it over and over forever." 2
In the first volume of this work the attempt was made to show that the Brahminical and several Grecian systems of philosophy, were only different modifications of the pantheistic theory of the Infinite by fixed and necessary laws manifesting itself in the finite in all its endless diversities of forms. This endless succession of individuals, however, has no affinity with the Bible doctrine of the resurrection of the dead. The flora and fauna of this are not a resurrection of the plants and animals of the geologic periods.
In the religion of Zoroaster there is a far nearer approach to the doctrines of the Bible.3 As the Scriptures teach that God at
1 Alger, ut supra, p. 489.
8 Bitter's Geschichte d. Philosophic d. alt. Zeit., 3ter Th. xi. 4; Hamburg, 1831, p. 582. 8 See Ten Great Religions: an Essay in Comparative Theology. By James Freeman Clarke. Boston, 1872, ch. v., specially p. 200.
788 PART IV. Cw. II. — THE RESURRECTION.
first created all things good, and made man after his own image, and placed him upon probation in Eden ; so Zoroaster taught that Ormuzd created all things good, and that all were sinless and happy, and fitted for immortality. And as the Bible teaches that through the seduction of Satan man fell from his original state, and became the subject of sin, misery, and death ; so in the re- ligion of the ancient Persians it is taught, that Ahriman, the per- sonal principle of evil, co-eternal with Ormuzd the principle of good, effected the ruin of man for this world and the next. Such was the origin of evil ; such was the beginning of the conflict between good and evil, of which our earth has been the theatre. Both systems teach the ultimate triumph of the good, and the re- demption of man ; both teach a future state, the resurrection of the body, and the renewal of the earth, or, that there are to be a new heaven and a new earth. It is certain from the teachings of the New Testament that the Hebrews did not derive these doc- trines from the Persians ; it is, therefore, in the highest degree probable that the Persians derived them from their neighbours of the family of Shem, who were the depositaries of the revelations of God.
It has already been seen that the doctrine of the resurrection of the body was clearly taught in the Old Testament, and in the apocryphal books of the Jews ; that it was a cardinal article of faith among the Jews when Christ came into the world ; and that it was emphatically asserted by Christ and his Apostles. We have also seen that the Bible teaches nothing on this subject beyond (1.) That the body is to rise again. (2.) That its identity will be preserved. And (3.) That it is to be so changed and refined as to adapt it to the high state of existence to which it is des- tined. In this simple form the doctrine has ever been held by the Church, which is not responsible for the fanciful theories adopted by many of its members.
The philosophical theologians of the Alexandrian school, in the early Church, were disposed to spiritualize all the Bible says of the resurrection of the body, and of its future state. The Latins, on the other hand, adhered to a literal interpretation of Scriptu- ral language, often to the grossest extremes. Augustine, as we have seen, thought the resurrection body was to be composed of all the matter that ever belonged to it in this world, and Jerome asks : " If men are not raised with flesh and bones, how can the damned gnash their teeth in hell ? " 1
1 See Jerome. Contra Joannnem Hierosolvmitanum, 33, Works, edit. Migne, vol. k. pp. 384, 385 T441].
§2. j HISTORY OF THE DOCTRINE. 789
During the Middle Ages, the faith of the Church, on this sub- ject, remained unchanged. The speculations of individual writers were diverse, inconsistent, and of little interest, because of no authority.
At the time of the Reformation the simple doctrine of the Bible was reaffirmed ; and theologians beyond those limits were left to their own guidance. The form in which the doctrine was usually presented by the theologians of the seventeenth century, was : (1.) That the resurrection body is to be numerically, and in substance, one with the present body. (2.) That it is to have the same organs of sight, hearing, etc., as in this life. (3.) Many held that all the peculiarities of the present body as to size or stature, appearance, etc., are to be restored. (4.) As the bodies of the righteous are to be refined and glorified, those of the wicked, it was assumed, would be proportionately repulsive. The later Protestant theologians, as well Lutheran as Reformed, con- fine themselves more strictly within the limits of Scripture.
Rationalism, as far as it prevailed, swept the whole doctrine away. Reason does not teach the doctrine, and cannot explain it ; therefore, it has no title to recognition. Deistical rationalists admitted that the doctrine was taught in the Scriptures, but this was to them only an additional reason for denying their divine origin. The more moderate rationalists, who admitted the Bible to be a revelation of the truths of reason, or of natural religion, explained away all that it teaches concerning the resurrection, making it refer to the rising of the soul from a state of sin to a state of holiness ; or, as relating not to the resurrection of the body, but to the continued life of the soul in a future state.
Of course the modern speculative, or pantheistic theology, ig- nores the doctrine of a resurrection. It does not even admit of the existence of the soul after the dissolution of the body. The race is immortal, but the individuals of which it is composed are not. Scientific materialism admits of no other resurrection than the reappearance of the same chemical elements which now form our bodies, in the bodies of future plants, animals, or men. The lime in our bones may help to form the bones of those who come after us. Thus philosophy and science, when divorced from the Bible, lead us only to negations, darkness, and despair.