too, it may be, came the suppression of the missing end of Mark.
Following this tendency it was natural to argue, as Paul had done, that
Christians like Jesus would be raised with the same bodies which they
had had.

A different motive was provided by moral considerations. It is clear
that there was danger, even in the Corinth of Paul's days, of men
arguing that, having obtained the Spirit and consequent immortality,
nothing carnal had any importance: the body had, as it were, but a
short time, and might be allowed to enjoy itself as it chose. To
combat this danger of an absolutely licentious position the Church
maintained that the body was as eternal as the soul, and that its
future happiness depended on its present behaviour.

Both these factors undoubtedly entered into the development of
Christian thought; and they were reinforced by the natural desire of
man to preserve the pleasures of life in a body of flesh and blood.

The whole question of the expectation of immortality is as obscure as
it is interesting. Direct evidence in favour of a survival of
individual consciousness after {93} death is provided in the present by
psychical research, and from the past by narratives of the apparitions
of the dead, among which the story of the appearances of the risen
Jesus must be classed. To most minds the evidence does not justify a
decisive verdict of any nature.

The "moral" argument is equally evasive. To certain minds in certain
moods it seems incredible that extinction can await beings who display
the qualities manifested by men at their best, animated by such high
purposes, so little fulfilled. In Christian circles the argument has
helped to secure the orthodox belief in the resurrection of the body.
But, on the other hand, this belief has received a succession of shocks
from other considerations. The resuscitation of the flesh has become
more and more incredible. Bishop Westcott endeavoured to meet this
feeling by reviving the Pauline notion of a body of "Spirit," and was
followed by Bishop Gore in so doing. The process was helped by the
fact that in the English creed _resurrectio carnis_ is translated
_resurrection of the body_, so that the denial of the Apostles' Creed
involved in the Westcott-Gore interpretation could be softened into an
apparent affirmation.

Even more serious, though less often expressed, is the moral objection
to the judgement, which dooms men to extremes of bliss or misery in