than the rules of his predecessors, is still destitute of the sacredness and binding force which belong to the treatises already consecrated by time. The good maxims which our fathers loved, we love on that account so much the more. Their authority is not diminished by the imperfections of the men who established them; for we are not affected by the faults of the dead, even if we notice them at all, as we are by those of the living. The lapse of ages mellows the good name of the virtuous, and effaces their deformities from our view; hence the spiritual writings which are hallowed by influence of antiquity, will have a certain degree of power which cannot be acquired by any fresh treatise, however excellent in itself. May the time be far removed, when the wholesome words of Herbert and of Jennings shall cease to command the homage of our ministers! By all means would we encourage the publication of original Essays on the pulpit; the more we have, the better; we are suffering for want of more; but these Essays must be added to, not substituted for the standard writings of our fathers.

An edition of the Psalms in Hebrew has just been published at the Andover press, in a convenient pocket edition, with uncommonly beautiful paper and type. It will well compare with the miniature editions published by Bagster.

An interesting Life of the philosopher Leibnitz, has been published the past year, by John M. Mackie, from the German biography of Dr. G. E. Gubrauer. Mr. M. has wisely rewritten the Life, for the purpose of divesting it of its German peculiarities and of presenting it in a more acceptable form to the American reader. Leibnitz was the great man of the age in continental Europe; to him modern German philosophy looks as its father; he was engaged in earnest disputes with the greatest thinkers among his contemporaries; the mere literary man must admire his wonderful mental activity and the extraordinary compass of his views. A popular and readable Life of the philosopher, such as Mr. M. has now prepared, has long been a desideratum.

BIBLIOTHECA SACRA

AND

THEOLOGICAL REVIEW.

NO. VIII.

NOVEMBER, 1845.

ARTICLE I.

REMARKS ON SOME PHILOSOPHICAL OBJECTIONS AGAINST THE DOCTRINE OF THE RESURRECTION OF THE BODY.

By Rev. Joseph Tracy, Boston.

THAT the bodies of the dead shall, at some future time, be raised to life, is the obvious doctrine of the Scriptures. This is conceded by all men, whether Christian or infidel. Some, however, maintain that the doctrine cannot possibly be true; and hence they infer that the Scriptures, which teach it, cannot be from God. Others, again, deny the truth of the doctrine; but instead of rejecting the Scriptures, maintain that on this subject, their obvious meaning must be rejected, and that another interpretation must be given them, consistent with the teachings of philosophy. With both these classes of men, our controversy has respect to facts, rather than principles. We readily admit that science may teach us some things with absolute certainty, and that, with respect to those things, it is neither our duty, nor is it possible for us, to believe the contrary. If a professed revelation, when taken in its obvious sense, teaches anything that science demonstrates to be false, we must either find, by fair means, another interpretation, not inconsistent with known truth, or reject the professed revelation, as not from God.

But are we under any such necessity, in respect to the resurrection? Has philosophy proved, or can she prove, that the obvious doctrine of the Scriptures on this subject cannot be true? VOL. II. No. 8.

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Are we thus forced, either to find a less obvious interpretation, consistent with the teachings of philosophy, or reject the Scriptures?

To bring us to such a conclusion, philosophy needs to argue with amazing force. Nothing short of absolute demonstration will answer her purpose. She must produce arguments strong enough to balance and neutralize all the evidences of Christianity. The arguments from history, from miracles, from prophecy, from our own intuitive perception of the truth of the great doctrines of the gospel, from the demand of conscience that we receive it as true, and from our own experience of its power to heal the diseases of the soul, are not lightly to be set aside. Nothing short of an absolute demonstration, in which we know certainly that there is no mistake, can be allowed, on philosophical principles, to justify our apostasy in the face of such evidence. No mere theory, unsupported by facts; no collection of facts which may be imperfect, either because all the facts in the case have not been observed, or because some of them have been observed imperfectly, can be sufficient. The evidence in favor of Christianity is too strong to yield to any imperfect proof.

Nor may we reject the natural and obvious sense of Scripture for any less sufficient reason. It is a well established canon of criticism, that the Scriptures are to be understood in their natural and obvious sense, unless we are absolutely compelled to seek another. It is not allowable for us to say that the Scriptures do, indeed, in their obvious sense, teach the doctrine of the resurrection; but we reject it, because another opinion appears to us more probable; thus exalting our own opinion of the probability of opinions above the authority of the word of God. Nothing short of certain and infallible knowledge that the obvious meaning of Scripture cannot be true, can justify us in rejecting it, and adopting another interpretation, which we perceive to be less obvious. We must be brought to the necessity of finding another meaning, or rejecting the Scriptures altogether, before we can be justified in resorting to forced and unnatural interpretations. We do not admit, as a matter of fact, that such a case ever occurred, or can occur. A certain interpretation may appear to certain men or sects to be the most obvious, because their minds are beclouded by ignorance, or distorted by prejudice, and a meaning less obvious to them may be the true one; but that Scripture, in the sense which is most obvious to well-informed and candid minds, is ever false, we by no means concede, except hypothetically, for

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The body of Christ actually raised.

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the sake of argument. On the subject before us, it will not be denied that the Scriptures, taken in the sense most obvious to candid and well informed men, do teach the doctrine of the resurrection of the body. Force is needed, not to make them utter this doctrine, but to prevent it. That force we are not justified in applying, without absolute necessity. The exigency must be one which will justify us in rejecting the Bible, unless we can find another meaning.

Nor can the force of this reasoning be evaded, by an appeal to passages of Scripture which speak of the sun as rising and setting, and the like. The obvious meaning of the writers, in such passages, is not to settle the question of the sun's diurnal motion, but to speak of these phenomena as they appear to the senses; or rather, to designate an event of daily occurrence, by its usual name. The resurrection is an event of a different class, and lies entirely beyond the range of this principle of interpretation. It has no sensible appearance, exhibited before the eyes of all men, and giving rise to a current phraseology. The appeal fails, also, for another reason. Science has demonstrated that the phenomena of sun-rise and sun-set are caused by the earth's motion, and not by the sun's. We are compelled, therefore, either to reject the Scriptures, or to receive them in a sense consistent with this known fact. To make the cases parallel, the impossibility of the resurrection of the body must also be demonstrated, and we must be made to know it, as we know the fact of the earth's rotation on its axis. Apparent probabilities, deriving their plausibility, perhaps, from our own ignorance, will not answer this purpose. We must have demonstration. Whether philosophy has furnished it, or can furnish it, is the question before us.

If we receive the Scriptures, the necessity of turning what they say of the resurrection from its obvious meaning, must be evinced by higher testimony than that of the senses. There must be a necessity of reason. The obvious meaning must be shown to be irreconcilable, not merely with facts which we suppose our senses have observed, but with those intuitive truths which every rational mind must of necessity believe.

According to the Scriptures, the apostles believed, on the testimony of their senses, that the body of Christ,-the same body which he had before and at his crucifixion,—was actually raised from the dead. Here we need not go over the ground which has been abundantly discussed in treatises on the evidences of Christianity. It will doubtless be conceded, that the apostles were as

well convinced, by the testimony of their senses, of the resurrection of Christ's body, as they ever were of any fact whatever. They knew that he was alive, in that body, after his crucifixion, just as they knew that he was alive in it before. They knew it by seeing him, by hearing him, by conversing with him, in short, by the same testimony of sense, in both cases. They no more suspected, and had no more reason to suspect, an illusion in one case, than in the other. If Christ's body which they saw after his crucifixion, might be a mere phantom,1 then, on the same principle, the body in which they knew him before his crucifixion may have been a mere phantom. And not only so, but their own bodies may have been nothing but phantoms; and indeed, all human bodies may be nothing but phantoms. Interpret Scripture on this principle, and the doctrine of the resurrection becomes the doctrine of the reproduction of the same phantom that existed before death. Such a doctrine, we suppose, would not be easily overthrown by reasonings about carbon, and nitrogen, and phosphate of lime, and chemical decomposition. If we have only phantom-bodies now, then only phantom-bodies need to be raised; and we do not see how chemical changes, alleged or actual, are to prevent the raising of them.

This argument goes deeper than some may at first suppose. The seeing of Christ by the apostles after his crucifixion, whether fact or illusion, was not a mere casual event. It was brought to pass by the power of God, for the sake of making the very impression upon their minds which it did make. God placed those phenomena before their senses, with the intention of thereby making them believe that the body of Christ had risen from the dead; and they did believe it. Were they right, or wrong? When God speaks to us by sensible phenomena; when he produces phenomena before our eyes for the sake of making us believe a certain proposition, is he to be believed, or not? Does he always speak according to the actual fact, or does he sometimes deal in illusions? If the latter, how are we to distinguish illusions from facts? How are we to know when he exhibits a fact, and when he deceives us with an illusion? How can we know

1 We do not use the word phantom invidiously. If it offends, substitute any more acceptable phraseology in its place. Say that the witnessing of the phenomenon of Christ's risen body by the apostles was subjective, and not objective; or that the eyes of their spirits were opened, to see spiritual objects; or express the idea in any other terms whatever. So long as the idea is retained, the applicability of our reasoning is not impaired.