doubtless capable of "appearing" to every one of his saints at the time of their departure, somewhat, perhaps, as he did to Stephen at the time of his martyrdom. Thus he comes again and receives them unto himself (John xiv, 3), and unto each one will he give, in his own time and manner, his spiritual body as it shall please him. And so, each in his own order and time, shall we all "be clothed upon with our habitation which is from heaven." 8. Various Types of Biblical Doctrine. One result of our examination of what the different biblical writers say about the resurrection of the dead is that their statements, taken as a whole, are not altogether uniform or harmonious. Different types of doctrine appear in the canonical as well as in the apocryphal books. But in the main the various types of doctrine are not so divergent as to be pronounced inconsistent with each other. The Old Testament references are so few and vague that we cannot put them forward as conclusive on any one phase of the subject. The New Testament teaching is very much fuller, but neither Christ nor his apostles have told us all we desire to know about the nature and the conditions of those who attain to the resurrection from the dead. From what is written we may reasonably infer that the change from mortal to immortal modes of life is such that no revelation and no language can clearly impart to the human mind the actual realities. We should not, therefore, think it strange that differences of conception and statement, characteristic of individual modes of thought, appear among the different writers on a theme like this. The teaching of Jesus was suggestive and corrective rather than formal and discursive. He nullified the objections of the Sadducees by exposing their false notions of the resurrection life, but he offered no revelation on the subject beyond a few remarkable statements, partly negative, partly suggestive, but notably adapted to correct the current belief in a literal restoration of the fleshly body. 9. No Basis for Many Prevalent Theories. In a careful study of all that is written in the Scriptures touching the resurrection we are not able to find evidence sufficient to warrant most of the fancies and theories which have widely prevailed. That the body of the resurrection is to be a reconstruction of the same particles of matter which are buried in the grave is a dogma which has no support in the teaching of Christ or of his apostles. That it is constructed out of some indestructible germ, that belongs to the body and is buried with it, has been elaborately argued from Paul's figure of the grain (in 1 Cor. xv, 36-38), and from certain speculations of Jewish rabbis. But the conjecture is entitled to no serious consideration, for Paul's allusion to the grain that is sown is not of a nature to give endorsement to the peculiar rabbinical fancy, and his entire argument throughout that chapter is conspicuously different from the style and the thought of the Jewish schools of that time. The apostle, moreover, positively denies that flesh and blood can inherit the kingdom of God, and his concept of a new, spiritual, and heavenly organism is totally incompatible with the idea of a material body developed out of an infinitesimal germ. Some writers have enlarged upon the supposable impossibilities of restoring the bodies of the innumerable dead. They have cited the fact of one human body going to form some part of another, as when devoured by cannibals. The different members of one and the same body have in some cases been scattered far apart, and separated by intervening oceans. Some have argued that all the dust of the earth would be insufficient to reconstruct the material bodies of all men who have lived and died, and others have alleged that, if all who have ever lived were to stand up at one time, there would not be room enough on the entire surface of the earth to place them. These crass conceptions and the supposed impossibilities are all irrelevant and futile, and they have grown out of the notion of a resuscitation of the mortal body of flesh and blood. That several Old Testament writers entertained some idea of a future resurrection of the physical body, and cast their utterances in the forms of popular expression, may be true. But so far as they have done so, their utterances do not prove the truth of any particular dogma or theory. Incidental allusions are not proofs. Nearly all the issues of controversy on this subject have arisen over attempts to dogmatize on questions which the Scriptures have left undetermined. 10. The Main Idea is a New Organism. So far as the concept of the resurrection of the dead differs from that of the "immortality of the soul," it seems to consist mainly, according to the Scriptures, in some new and more enduring organism of the conscious personal life. It is the projection of that life, in the order of God, and with all that constitutes its spiritual nature and character, into the unseen and eternal future. This change from a condition of corruption to one of incorruption is conceived as a restitution of the individual who dies and is buried. He does not perish in the dust, but rises up in a new and imperishable body such as it pleases God to give to every one. A few very explicit declarations of Scripture affirm a resurrection both of the just and the unjust. The wicked awake to shame and contempt, and come forth to a resurrection of judgment, which is of the nature of a second death. But the righteous are clothed in light as with a garment. They shine as the stars forever, and like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. They put off the earthly tabernacle, but immediately receive from God their new house, not made with hands, eternal, in the heavens. 11. All the Dead Not Raised Simultaneously. It has been common with theologians to speak of "the general resurrection of the last day" as if all the dead were to be simultaneously raised up out of their graves at some future day or moment of time. But our study of the Scriptures has failed to find sufficient warrant for this dogma. On the contrary, we find numerous intimations that the resurrection of different persons and orders occurs at different periods of time, and indeed may be a process ever going on, although we know not how. The incidental use of such a phrase as at the last day cannot determine such a question, for every individual may and must in a very obvious sense have his own last day, whether it be simultaneous with that of others or not. The statement of John v, 28, 29, is not equivalent to saying that all who are in the tombs shall come forth at one and the same instant, for the context shows, as we have seen, that such a thought is not in the mind of the speaker, but rather a succession of resurrections. And when Paul writes that "as in Adam all die, so in Christ shall all be made alive," he does not say that they shall all be made alive at once. As well might one insist that when Jesus says, "If I be lifted up, I will draw all men unto me," he means that all this drawing unto himself is the matter of an hour or a day. The language of Dan. xii, 2, clearly conveys, as we have seen, the idea of a partial resurrection. So too, in 1 Cor. xv, 20-26, Paul speaks of different orders and successive periods of the resurrection. The language of Phil. iii, 10, 11, seems also to imply a partial and special resurrection from among the dead, for why should the apostle have such longing and struggle "to attain unto the resurrection from the dead" if all the dead are necessarily and as a matter of course to be raised up in one general resurrection of the last day? The same comment may be made on the language of Jesus in Luke xx, 35, "they who are accounted worthy to attain the resurrection from the dead," for if all the dead are to be raised up in one general resurrection, what is the sense of being counted worthy of obtaining a part in the inevitable?1 It may be that in passages like the last two cited the reference is to the "resurrection of the just" (Luke iv, 14). We may conceive the righteous and the wicked as two great companies, and that Paul 1 According to Godet, "the resurrection from the dead is very evidently, in this place, not the resurrection of the dead in general. What is referred to is a special privilege granted only to the faithful who shall be accounted worthy." Commentary on Luke, in loco. was anxious to obtain a part in the resurrection of the righteous, and that Jesus also means the resurrection of the just when he speaks of being worthy to attain unto it. But even if we allow this interpretation of the language in Luke and Philippians, it will not fit the doctrine of successive orders and times as stated in 1 Cor. xv, 23. But if we suppose that the just and the unjust form the two classes to whom allusion is made, it is nowhere affirmed that all the individuals of either of these two classes are raised up simultaneously. What we have been accustomed to think of as a single and instantaneous event may be in the wisdom and power of God a continuous process, or it may have various times and seasons "which the Father hath set within his own authority." We deem it highly important for the expositor of this class of Scriptures to refrain from positive assertions where the sacred writers are not unquestionably clear. On these mysterious questions of the time and manner of resurrection we see at best but "in a mirror, darkly." We know only in a very small part, and we can at most explain only in part. 12. The Subject Belongs to the Unseen. It is worthy of special remark that in Paul's teaching in 2 Cor. v, 1-8, the new organ of the spirit, the building or habitation which we have in the heavens in place of the dissolved tabernacle of the flesh, is not a natural product out of the elements of the earthly house, but is from God and from heaven. How and from what he fashions it, we are not told. The most obvious import of the apostle's words is that, upon the dissolution of the mortal frame, God immediately clothes the spirit with a bodily organism, invisible as the spirit itself, immortal, eternal, glorious. How much of the mortal body is utilized for the immortal we cannot know. As the eternal things are declared in this context to be invisible, we ought not to err in assuming that the substance of the heavenly body is of a nature to be seen by mortal eyes, or touched by fleshly hands. There are millions of living creatures about us in this world which even the microscope reveals but imperfectly; much less can they be discerned by the naked eye. In the realm of the unseen and eternal mysteries of spiritual life there are many things which we must accept by faith and not by sight. John writes that it is not yet manifest what we shall be, but if he shall be manifested, we shall be like him and see him as he is. When the Lord was transfigured before the three disciples "his face shone as the sun, and his garments became white as the light." We may well regard that transfiguration as an ideal of the image of the heavenly which those who are risen in Christ shall ultimately bear. For aught that anyone can prove to the contrary, the resurrection of the dead may be a process that is continually going on, like all the other gracious work of the salvation of Jesus Christ. The great comprehensive announcement of our Lord, "If I be lifted up from the earth, I will draw all men unto myself" (John xii, 32), is quite analogous with the statement of Paul, "As in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive" (1 Cor. xv, 22). But neither of these general statements implies that the drawing unto Christ and the making alive of all men are to be accomplished at one last period or point of time. The mighty work is better conceived as going on during the whole time that the enthroned and reigning Christ is putting all his enemies under his feet (1 Cor. xv, 25). The new life of God, which is implanted by spiritual regeneration, develops day by day into eternal life, and whenever its mortal tabernacle is dissolved, the living soul receives its new building from God which is fashioned after the image of the heavenly and eternal. But on all these mysteries of the invisible world we must be content not to know all that we may very much desire to ascertain. 13. Summary of the Biblical Teaching. Recapitulating now, we may briefly sum up the results of the foregoing discussion in the following statements: 1. Jewish and Christian interpreters have read into certain poetical passages of the Old Testament a crass conception of a resurrection of fleshly bodies, and these notions have taken on various materialistic forms in popular thought. It is natural for the popular imagination to clothe all concepts of a future life in materialistic forms. 2. There was no uniformity of opinion on this subject among the Jewish people. Some of the Jews denied the resurrection altogether, and rejected the doctrine of angels and spirits. Those who affirmed the doctrine of a future resurrection differed among themselves as to its nature and extent: some believing in the resurrection both of the just and unjust, others only of the just. 3. The teaching of Jesus in the synoptic gospels does not favor any theory of the resurrection of the natural body. In his reply to the Sadducees he declared that in the resurrection they are not fleshly but spiritual beings like the angels in heaven. 4. In the fourth gospel Jesus affirms in one passage the resurrection of "all that are in the tombs," both the good and the evil; but in the same connection he outlines three kinds of resurrection, and in other parts of this gospel teaches that they who partake of his life and spirit shall never taste of death. 5. The Apocalypse accords with the fourth gospel in presenting the idea of a "first resurrection" and a "second death," but the doctrinal content is uncertain by reason of its setting in a composi |