In the seventh century Mohammed flourished. His doctrinal system, it is well known, was drawn indiscriminately from many sources, and mixed with additions and colors of his own. Finding the dogma of a general bodily resurrection already prevailing among the Parsees, the Jews, and the Christians, and perceiving, too, how well adapted for purposes of vivid representation and practical effect it was, or perhaps believing it himself, the Arabian prophet ingrafted this article into the creed of his followers. It has ever been with them, and is still, a foremost and controlling article of faith, an article for the most part held in its literal sense, although there is a powerful sect which spiritualizes the whole conception, turning all its details into allegories and images. But this view is not the original nor the orthodox view.
The subject of the resurrection was a prominent theme in the theology of the Middle Age. Only here and there a dissenting voice was raised against the doctrine in its strict physical form. The great body of the Scholastics stood stanchly by it. In defence and support of the Church thesis they brought all the quirks and quiddities of their subtle dialectics. As we take down their ponderous tomes from their neglected shelves, and turn over the dusty, faded old leaves, we find chapter after chapter in many a formidable folio occupied with grave discussions, carried on in acute logical terminology, of questions like these: "Will the resurrection be natural or miraculous?" "Will each one's hairs and nails all be restored to him in the resurrection?" "When bodies are raised, will each soul spontaneously know its own and enter it? or will the power of God distribute them as they belong?" "Will the deformities and scars of our present bodies be retained in the resurrection?" "Will all rise of the same age?" "Will all have one size and one sex?" 11 And so on with hundreds of kindred questions. For instance, Thomas Aquinas contended "that no other substance would rise from the grave except that which belonged to the individual in the moment of death."12 What dire prospects this proposition must conjure up before many minds! If one chance to grow prodigiously obese before death, he must lug that enormous corporeity wearily about forever; but if he happen to die when wasted, he must then flit through eternity as thin as a lath.
8 De Civ. Dei, lib. xxii. cap. 19, 20.
9 See the strange speculations of Opitz in his work "De Statura et Atate Resurgentium.
10 Redepenning, Origenes, b. ii. s. 463.
11 Summa Theologia, Thoma Aquinatis, tertia pars, Supplementum, Quastiones 79-87.
12 Hagenbuch, Dogmengeschichte, sect. 204.
Those who have had the misfortune to be amputated of legs or arms must appear on the resurrection stage without those very convenient appendages. There will still be need of hospitals for the battered veterans of Chelsea and Greenwich, mutilated heroes, pensioned relics of deck and field. Then in the resurrection the renowned "Mynheer von Clam, Richest merchant in Rotterdam," will again have occasion for the services of the "patent cork leg manufacturer," though it is hardly to be presumed he will accept another unrestrainable one like that which led him so fearful a race through the poet's verses.
The Manichaans denied a bodily resurrection. In this all the sects theologically allied to them, who have appeared in ecclesiastical history, for instance, the Cathari, have agreed. There have also been a few individual Christian teachers in every century who have assailed the doctrine. But, as already declared, it has uniformly been the firm doctrine of the Church and of all who acknowledged her authority. The old dogma still remains in the creeds of the recognised Churches, Papal, Greek, and Protestant. It has been terribly shattered by the attacks of reason and of progressive science. It lingers in the minds of most people only as a dead letter. But all the earnest conservative theologians yet cling to it in its unmitigated grossness, with unrelaxing severity. We hear it in practical discourses from the pulpit, and read it in doctrinal treatises, as offensively proclaimed now as ever. Indeed, it is an essential part of the compact system of the ruling theology, and cannot be taken out without loosening the whole dogmatic fabric into fragments. Thus writes to day a distinguished American divine, Dr. Spring: "Whether buried in the earth, or floating in the sea, or consumed by the flames, or enriching the battle field, or evaporate in the atmosphere, all, from Adam to the latest born, shall wend their way to the great arena of the judgment. Every perished bone and every secret particle of dust shall obey the summons and come forth. If one could then look upon the earth, he would see it as one mighty excavated globe, and wonder how such countless generations could have found a dwelling beneath its surface." 13 This is the way the recognised authorities in theology still talk. To venture any other opinion is a heresy all over Christendom at this hour.
We will next bring forward and criticize the arguments for and against the doctrine before us. It is contended that the doctrine is demonstrated in the example of Christ's own resurrection. "The resurrection of the flesh was formerly regarded as incredible," says Augustine; "but now we see the whole world believing that Christ's earthly body was borne into heaven." 14 It is the faith of the Church that "Christ rose into heaven with his body of flesh and blood, and wears it there now, and will forever." "Had he been there in body before, it would have been no such wonder that he should have returned with it; but that the flesh of our flesh and bone of our bone should be seated at the right hand of God is worthy of the greatest admiration." 15 That is to say, Christ was from eternity God, the Infinite Spirit, in