6 - RESURRECTION OF THE BODY.
The caviler inquires whether all these particles
that have ever entered into the composition of
the human body, and which consequently as much
belonged to it as those it happened to be in pos-
session of at the particular moment of death, are
to enter into the composition of the resurrection
body ? and if not all, what portion of them is to
be rejected? Some have pushed this objection so
far as to descant in terms of ridicule upon the
bulky appearance of that resurrection body, which,
after remaining here its fourscore years, and be-
ing changed many times, should call back all the
particles which ever entered into its composition.
This is the old objection encountered by the
apostle: “How are the dead raised up ? and with
what body do they come?” It isan attempt to
apply the little we know, and know imperfectly,
too, to the mysteries that lie beyond. It richl
merits the reply of the apostle—¢ Thou fool I”
We might content ourselves by replying to the
technical form of this objection’; that its claim
for the body of the ownership of all the particles
which ever entered into its composition, is a
stretch of fancy that would hardly be thought of
in any other connection. Just as well might the
individual prefer a claim to all the bits and par-
cels of property he had ever owned during his life,
however long ago he might have parted with them,
and however regular the process, or full the equiv-
alent received for them. But it will be more sat-
isfactory to enter upon the subject in detail.
Now, with reference to this entire change of
the body, it is rather assumed than proved. Some
change is, undoubtedly, constant going on in
our system; but that every particle of the body,
in process of time, passes from us, and the entire
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OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED. ff
body is changed so that it is made up of an en-
tirely new class of particles, is a supposition not
only unproved, but one that is not susceptible of
proof by any process known to human science.
Certain it is that the bodily identity is still main-
tained through all the changes of the longest life.
The man feels that the present is the same body
—essentially—that he possessed in past time, and
the same he will possess in the future. All his
modes of thought, and all his consciousness of ac-
countability, are based upon this idea. The old
man, tottering upon the brink of the grave, still
adheres to the thought that the body now worn
out with age and enfeebled by disease, is essen-
tially the same body that was fresh and blooming
in the day of his youth. He does not say, “The
body I then possessed was a lively, active body ;
but it has been exchanged for one that is decrepit
and old.” No, he says, “I have now exchanged
the sprightliness of youth for the decrepitude of
age.” Thus, the bodily identity—that is, the
idea of its being essentially the same body—seems
as inseparable from us as life itself.
Great changes may take place in our bodies,
within short periods of time, but we never waver
in the recognition of their identity through all
these changes. Disease may shrink us from the
full habit to the skeleton form; we may suffer
mutilation ; the leg, the arm, may be amputated ;
the eye may be cut out; the flesh torn from the
body; and the very form of humanity be almost
obliterated ; but we rise from all this suffering
with an undoubted, unmistaken, bodily identity
still remaining.
The conclusion, then, to which we are led, is that
much of our hodily nature, the coarser parts of the