nity to your aid? The face of the question involves eternity; it necessarily refers to another world; and to have ocular demonstration of an event, which necessarily refers to eternity, without eternity, includes a contradiction. And, if ocular demonstration cannot be obtained, we must be content with such evidence as God has placed within our reach. We have all the proof that the progressive state of the subject can afford; and to expect more is unreasonable and unjust.

But, when the times of restitution shall arrive ; and the great period which is appointed by the allotment of heaven, for the renovation of human nature, shall be accomplished; we shall then, without doubt, have all that reason to expect the event to correspond with the elapsing period, which we have now to remain without it; and to be satisfied with such evidence as we have. But, until that period arrives, we have no more reason to charge the doctrine of the resurrection with an insufficiency of evidence, than we have to attribute to a grain of wheat a want of fruitfulness, before the great process of nature has passed upon it.

Objections may here be urged against the analogy between vegetation and the resurrection, from the disproportion of time in which the bodies of men repose in the grave. For answers to these objections, I refer the reader to chapter five, and section three of this work.

Admitting this germ, or principle of identity, for which I contend, to have existed in a seminal state from the first to the last of the human race; then

every movement of time, which has elapsed from Adam down to the present hour, must have had its influence in an equal manner, upon all the individuals of the human race, who have ever lived, or shall live to the latest periods of time. All, therefore, in the natural process will be alike prepared; and will be equally ready when the trumpet shall sound, to start forth at once into life and immortality.

The short interval of life, I consider of no moment, when compared to that stupendous range of time which reaches from creation, down to the day of judgment. It can be no more than a single point, which loses itself in the vast abyss with which it is connected. The importance of time can only be estimated from its connection with moral action. As it stands in relation to the grand process of that germinating principle, which shall be the stamen of our future bodies in eternity; it can be but as the minutest drop to the unbounded ocean, or as an insensible atom on the shore. It may, nevertheless, be a necessary and a constituent part of the great process itself, through which we must pass; and even the inequalities of the duration of human life, may be as necessary as life itself, to form and complete the minute parts of the amazing whole.

SECTION III.

The Objections against the Idea of a Germ, as constituting the Identity of the Body hereafter, no Argument against its Certainty. Several Objections considered. Several Changes of our Bodies highly probable.

We have already seen in some of the preceding sections, the difficulties which obstruct our progress in the various suppositions which we have formed. We are fully satisfied that a principle of identity must exist; but that which constitutes it, is not so easy to explore. We have already considered those suppositions, which place the identity of the body in all the particles which were deposited in the grave; and we have been led to obstacles which are not only insurmountable, but big with absurdities of the grossest nature. The same or similar obstructions have presented themselves before us in that supposition, which places the identity of the body in the greatest number of particles indiscriminately taken, either at the moment of the interment of the body, or at any previous period of life. The certainty of the principle obliges us to explore another region; and we are driven to some immoveable stamen as our last resort.

Whatever it may be, which constitutes the indentity of the body, it must be a something which retains an immoveable permanency in the midst of

Aluctuation; and continues the same through all those changes which the body is destined to undergo. Nothing, therefore, can be so congenial to the case before us as the supposition which we now make; that some radical particles must be fixed within us, which constitute our sameness through all the mutations of life; and which, remaining in a state of incorruptibility, shall put forth a germinating power beyond the grave, and be the germ of our future bodies.

Of the term itself, a definition has been already given; and I now proceed to examine the prin cipal objections by which it is opposed. It has been said, that, "if in the present life, we suppose the identity of the body to be lodged in any given num ber of immoveable particles; a part must then constitute the whole, which is an evident absurdity."

That a theory which makes a part to constitute a whole must necessarily be erroneous, I am willing to allow; because the supposition includes a contradiction. But, that such absurdities will follow, from the supposition and premises before us; is to me neither clear nor satisfactory. On the contrary, the objection which has been started will not apply to the case in hand; but to subjects with which our inquiry has little or no connection.

The subject before us is not an inquiry into the constituent parts of the human body; but into its identity. It is not its numerical particles, but the sameness of personality. These are distinct ideas, and can only have in this view, a distant connection with one another. The numerical particles, of

which our bodies are composed, are in a state of perpetual flux; but since sameness of person remains under every change which these numerical particles undergo, it plainly follows, that that in which sameness consists, must remain immoveable also; and hence it follows, that those particles which constitute the whole body, and the identity of that body, must necessarily be distinct from one another. For certain it is, that if the sameness of the body consisted in all the numerical particles of which that body was composed, sameness must be capable of a transfer; and, consequently, must be destroyed by the supposition which we are obliged thus to admit, that the identity of the body must not only be compatible with those changes which the body perpetually undergoes; but must be lodged in some secret recess which these changes cannot reach.

Having thus two distinct ideas, one of the identity of the body, and the other of the component or numerical parts of which the body is formed, we can plainly perceive that the latter may change, while the former remains perfect and entire; and the reason is, because the former is not dependent upon the latter for its existence. It therefore follows, that the admission of an inherent principle, which shall become a germ of future life, having only a remote connection with these floating particles which occasionally form the body, cannot include within it that contradiction which the objec tion has supposed. For, if to admit a germ or principle of identity, will oblige us to admit that a