"Crush not the feeble, inoffensive worm: Thy sister's spirit wears that humble form. Why should thy cruel arrow smite yon bird? In him thy brother's plaintive song is beard. Let not thine anger on thy dog descend: That faithful animal was once thy friend."
There is a strange grandeur, an affecting mystery, in the view of the creation from the stand point of the metempsychosis. It is an awful dream palace all aswarm with falling and climbing creatures clothed in ever shifting disguises. The races and changes of being constitute a boundless masquerade of souls, whose bodies are vizards and whose fortunes poetic retribution. The motive furnished by the doctrine to self denial and toil has a peerless sublimity. In our Western world, the hope of acquiring large possessions, or of attaining an exalted office, often stimulates men to heroic efforts of labor and endurance. What, then, should we not expect from the application to the imaginative minds of the Eastern world of a motive which, transcending all set limits, offers unheard of prizes, to be plucked in life after life, and at the end unveils, for the occupancy of the patient aspirant, the Throne of Immensity? No wonder that, under the propulsion of a motive so exhaustless, a motive not remote nor abstract, but concrete, and organized in indissoluble connection with the visible chain of eternal causes and effects, no wonder we see such tremendous exhibitions of superstition, voluntary sufferings, superhuman deeds. Here is the secret fountain of that irresistible force which enables the devotee to measure journeys of a thousand miles by prostrations of his body, to hold up his arm until it withers and remains immovably erect as a stick, or to swing himself by red hot hooks through his flesh. The poorest wretch of a soul that has wandered down to the lowest grade of animate existence can turn his resolute and longing gaze up the resplendent ranks of being, and, conscious of the god head's germ within, feel that, though now unspeakably sunken, he shall one day spurn every vile integument and vault into seats of heavenly dominion. Crawling as an almost invisible bug in a heap of carrion, he can still think within himself, holding fast to the law of righteousness and love, "This is the infinite ladder of redemption, over whose rounds of purity, penance, charity, and contemplation I may ascend, through births innumerable, till I reach a height of wisdom, power, and bliss that will cast into utter contempt the combined glory of countless millions of worlds, ay, till I sit enthroned above the topmost summit of the universe as omnipotent Buddha." 17
17 Those who wish to pursue the subject further will find the following references useful: Hardy, "Manual of Buddhism," ch. v. Upham, "History of Buddhism," ch. iii. Beausobre, "Histoire du Manicheisme," livre vi. ch. iv. Helmont, "De Revolution Animarum." Richter, "Das Christenthum und die Kitesten Religionen des Orients," sects. 54-65. Sinner, "Essai sur les Dogmes de la Metempsychose et du Purgatoire." Conz, "Schicksale der Seelenwanderungshypothese unter verschiedenen Volkern und in verschiedenen Zeiten." Dubois, "People of India," part iii. ch. vii. Werner, "Commentatio Psychologica contra Metempsychosin."
CHAPTER III.
RESURRECTION OF THE FLESH.
A DOCTRINE widely prevalent asserts that, at the termination of this probationary epoch, Christ will appear with an army of angels in the clouds of heaven, descend, and set up his tribunal on the earth. The light of his advancing countenance will be the long waited Aurora of the Grave. All the souls of men will be summoned from their tarrying places, whether in heaven, or hell, or purgatory, or the sepulchre; the fleshly tabernacles they formerly inhabited will be re created, a strong necromancy making the rooty and grave floored earth give up its dust of ruined humanity, and moulding it to the identical shapes it formerly composed; each soul will enter its familiar old house in company with which its sins were once committed; the books will be opened and judgment will be passed; then the accepted will be removed to heaven, and the rejected to hell, both to remain clothed with those same material bodies forever, the former in celestial bliss, the latter in infernal torture.
In the present dissertation we propose to exhibit the sources, trace the developments, explain the variations, and discuss the merits, of this doctrine.
The first appearance of this notion of a bodily restoration which occurs in the history of opinions is among the ancient Hindus. With them it appears as a part of a vast conception, embracing the whole universe in an endless series of total growths, decays, and exact restorations. In the beginning the Supreme Being is one and alone. He thinks to himself, "I will become many." Straightway the multiform creation germinates forth, and all beings live. Then for an inconceivable period a length of time commensurate with the existence of Brahma, the Demiurgus the successive generations flourish and sink. At the end of this period all forms of matter, all creatures, sages, and gods, fall back into the Universal Source whence they arose. Again the Supreme Being is one and alone. After an interval the same causes produce the same effects, and all things recur exactly as they were before.1
We find this theory sung by some of the Oriental poets: "Every external form of things, and every object which disappear'd, Remains stored up in the storehouse of fate: When the system of the heavens returns to its former order, God, the All Just, will bring them forth from the veil of mystery." 2
The same general conception, in a modified form, was held by the Stoics of later Greece, who doubtless borrowed it from the East, and who carried it out in greater detail. "God is an artistic fire, out of which the cosmopoeia issues." This fire proceeds in a certain fixed course, in obedience to a fixed law, passing through certain intermediate gradations and established periods, until it ultimately returns into itself and closes with a universal conflagration. It is to this catastrophe that reference is made in the following passage of Epictetus: "Some say that when Zeus is left alone at the time of the conflagration, he is solitary, and bewails himself