EXTENT OF THE RESURRECTION. 285 merability of the aggregate of every individual of every species; who, having thus learned to apprehend the myriad forms, the countless multitudes, that are included in the sum of animated nature, can yet expect a resurrection for every one of them ;such a one (if such a one there be) is not the one with whom I have here any controversy. The controversy lies with those who while they are unable to admit a resurrection of this sort, are equally unable to show cause for rejecting it. To such, we have a right to say-Be consistent: maintain, if you please, the absolute universality of the death which came by Adam, and with it, maintain too, the similar universality of the life that came by Christ. Or, if you restrict the resurrection to the human race alone, apply the same restriction to the death which made that resurrection necessary. You may accept either alternative: but you cannot embrace both. abide by the declaration of Scripture, all is consistent and clear. The resurrection is for those bodies only, which have been the dwelling-place of soul. God is the Father of spirits and "there is a spirit in man." Not the mere "spirit of the beast which goeth downward," but "the spirit of man that goeth upward," even the "breath of the Almighty" (for that it is) which giveth him understanding. Thus, in Christ shall all men be made alive; and similarly, in Adam, did all men die. Coextensive with the death is the resurrection. So saith the If you Scripture. "As" is the one: "even so is the other. The truth of God in Scripture, and that truth in Science are in perfect harmony. The discord is of our own making—when we make the word of God of none effect by our tradition. But I go further. The scientific doctrine of "Death before the Fall" is not only not contradicted, it is positively supported, by the declaration of Scripture. Thus, even in that brief record of the first sin, its sentence, and execution, which we find in the earliest pages of the Bible, we are told that "Unto Adam also and to his wife did the Lord God make coats of skins, and clothed them.' The traditional interpretation has been a good deal puzzled to account for these skins at this early period. "It is probable," says Boothroyd, as animals were not used 99 68 63 Ge. iii. 21. for food previous to the deluge, that sacrifices were now instituted, and that the skins with which our first parents were clothed, were those of the victims which had been offered to God.” “It is supposed," says Matthew Henry, "that they were slain not for food but for sacrifice." Scott adopts the same view, and pronounces it "extremely probable; " for, says he, as Adam and Eve "certainly had never slain any animals before the Fall, and as we have no reason to suppose that any had died of themselves, it is hard to conceive in what other way these skins could be procured." But although he pronounces it "extremely probable," he classes it with "all other opinions on the subject" as being "mere conjecture." It is not difficult to perceive however, that his conjecture would have been of a very different kind if he had had what we possess-i.e., abundant "reason to suppose" that any animals had previously died of themselves. On the very face of it the narrative seems to imply this for they "certainly" had not been slain, and yet they had died. But the fiction of no death before the Fall being seriously believed, without question, without examination, and even without evidence; this other fiction of sacrifice thus early, seemed necessary to account for the existence of an undeniable fact, which the traditional interpretation found it not easy otherwise to explain. 68 Those who still find it difficult to receive this doctrine, will do well to ponder the fact established by physiology, that death is a general law of organic natures. For dead organic matter is essential to the support and nourishment of living beings. Admit, for the sake of argument, (although in respect to the carnivorous races the admission is absurd) that animals might be supported by vegetable food. Yet how could animals feed on plants without destroying, as they now do, multitudes of minute insects and animalcula? Without death, how could 68+ See dying vegetables life sustain, All forms that perish other forms supply, Essay on Man Ep. III. 11. 15-20. THREEFOLD HARMONY OF SCRIPTURE AND SCIENCE. 287 the multiplication of animals be arrested? those animals whose multiplication was impressed upon them as a law of their nature a law of blessing-a law before sin, and even before man? Yet, if not arrested, what could prevent the world from becoming too full? or the supply of food from becoming too scanty? To the existing system, death is as essential as gravitation, and apparently just as much a law of nature. To this it will be answered, that the existing system is not the original system. That apart from the effects of the fall upon man himself— "Discord first, Daughter of Sin, among the irrational Death introduced, through fierce antipathy; Beast now with beast 'gan war, and fowl with fowl, And fish with fish: to graze the herb all leaving, Devoured each other." " We reply, this is merely an ideal assertion. There is no more shadow of evidence for it than for its parallel— "Some say he bid his angels turn askance The poles of earth, twice ten degrees and more, "Some The first is that of Dr. Pye Smith, who says, "In the state of pristine purity, the bodily constitution of man was exempted from the law of progress towards dissolution, which belonged to the inferior animals." The forfeit of this enviable distinction was the penalty of disobedience. In favour of this view there is a strong presumptive argument. For if man did not thus stand exempted from decay and death reigning around him, what weight or meaning could he attach to the penalty? What idea could he have of its nature, if he had seen nothing of its 69 Paradise Lost: B. x. operation? And we may be sure that God never promulgates a penalty without affording his subjects the means of comprehending it. A strong confirmation of this view is furnished also by the history of the tree of life that grew in the garden of Eden. The second was amply illustrated by Jeremy Taylor, long before geology had any existence. "That death," says the pious bishop, "which God threatened to Adam, and which passed upon his posterity, is not the going out of this world, but the manner of going. When he fell, then he began to die; the same day, (God said, and that must needs be true;) and therefore, it must mean upon that very day he fell into an evil and dangerous condition, a state of change and affliction; then death began; that is, man began to die by a natural diminution, and aptness to disease and misery. Death is not an action, but a whole state and condition; and this was first brought in upon us by the offence of one man." More recently this view has been substantially adopted by some of our ablest theologians. They take the "death" penalty of disobedience as extending to much more than mere physical death in the ordinary sense. They believe it to be a generic term, including all penal evils. And certainly, this interpretation seems in perfect agreement with the Scriptural declaration that "our Saviour Jesus Christ" "by the Gospel" "hath abolished death :" abolished it by plucking out its "sting."" 70 The third view of the subject traces the origin of death to the divine plan of the creation. Those who hold it, maintain that, man's apostasy being necessarily foreknown, God, in the beginning, adapted every other being and event in the world to the character and condition which he foresaw would soon be that of man. Had the original constitution of things been otherwise, the change to a state of decay and death, introduced by sin, would have amounted to an entirely new creation. Yet, as the constitution of the world is (and, on this view, always was,) very different from what it would have been if sin had never entered it, and as man alone is capable of sin, it is proper 70 See Chalmers's Lectures on Romans, Lect. xxvi; Stuart and Hodge on Ro. v. 12: and Harris's "Man Primeval," p. 178. UNIVERSALITY OF THE DELUGE. 289 to regard man's transgression as the actual cause of all the suffering and death that have ever existed on our globe. Any one of these theories is sufficient to show the entire agreement between Scripture and Science; " but the last is eminently so. It agrees with physiology and experience in representing death to be a law of all organic nature on the globe. It accords with Revelation in showing how this law may be the result of man's apostasy. And with geology it harmonizes in showing how death might have reigned over animals and plants before man's existence. Another very possible error of this sort may perhaps be found lurking under the popular interpretation which affirms the absolute universality of The Deluge. I do not pronounce this interpretation to be a demonstrable, but only a possible error. I am well aware, indeed, what fate I shall incur for speaking of it even thus gently. There are still but too many persons who affirm, with a peculiar significance of their own, that "to give up The Deluge is to give up the Bible." But this, I too, affirm. I affirm more. I affirm that the sure way to endanger the Bible is to substitute one's preconceived idea of the Deluge, for the Scriptural account of the Deluge. As to the fact of a general deluge, there is no question whatever. It is a fact which the stoutest opponents of the Bible will not dare to gainsay, in the face of the universal tradition by which it is attested. And the universality of that tradition is not easily accounted for, except by the admission that the Scriptural account of the preservation of a single family is true. The declarations of history are confirmed too, by the discoveries of geology, which shew us that in the elevation and subsidence of mountains and continents, and in volcanic agency generally, we have an adequate cause for extensive, if not universal deluges. Thus, it is one of the most eminent and judicious of all geologists, (Professor Sedg 72 They are treated more largely | Deluge marshalled by Grotius in Prof. Hitchcock's "Religion of ("De Veritate Rel. Christ." lib. I. Geology;" pp. 87–102. c. xvi), and by Faber ("Hora Mosaica" pp. 98-123). "See the array of ancient witnesses to the truth of the T |