identical soul, but has lived in ten separate houses. With which
shall he be raised? with the first? or the fifth? or the last? or
with all? But, further, the body after death decays, enters into
combination with water, air, earth, gas, vegetables, animals,
other human bodies. In this way the same matter comes to have
belonged to a thousand persons. In the resurrection, whose shall
it be? We reply, nearly in the language of Christ to the
Sadducees, "Ye do err, not knowing the Scriptures, nor the will of
God: in the resurrection they have not bodies of earthly flesh,
but are spirits, as the angels of God."

The argument against the common theory of a material resurrection,
on account of numerous claimants for the same substance, has of
late derived a greatly increased force from the brilliant
discoveries in chemistry. It is now found that only a small number
of substances ever enter into the composition of animal bodies.20
The food of man consists of nitrogenized and non nitrogenized
substances. The latter are the elements of respiration; the former
alone compose the plastic elements of nutrition, and they are few
in number and comparatively limited in extent. "All life depends
on a relatively small quantity of matter. Over and over again, as
the modeller fashions his clay, are plant and animal formed out of
the same material." The particles that composed Adam's frame may
before the end of the world have run the circuit of ten thousand
bodies of his descendants: "'Twas mine, 'tis his, and has been
slave to thousands." To proclaim the resurrection of the flesh as
is usually done, seems a flat contradiction of clear knowledge.21
A late writer on this subject, Dr. Hitchcock, evades the
insuperable difficulty by saying, "It is not necessary that the
resurrection body should contain a single particle of the body
laid in the grave, if it only contain particles of the same kind,
united in the same proportion, and the compound be made to assume
the same form and structure as the natural body." 22 Then two men
who look exactly alike may in the resurrection exchange bodies
without any harm! Here the theory of punishment clashes. Does not
the esteemed author see that this would not be a resurrection of
the old bodies, but a creation of new ones

20 Liebig, Animal Chemistry, sect. xix.

21 The Circulation of Matter, Blackwood's Magazine, May, 1853.

22 The Resurrection of Spring, p. 26.

just like them? And is not this a d