RESURRECTION OF THE BODY

REV. T. A. WHARTON, PASTOR FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, SHERMAN, TEXAS.

"But some man will say, How are the dead raised up, and with what body do they come?" (1 Cor. xv. 35.)

We can never be too grateful that the early disciples were prone to ask questions. We are glad that doubting Thomases proposed their objections; that sceptical Sadducees and quibbling Pharisees strove mightily to catch our Saviour and His apostles with their barbwire questions. Much of the most delightful and helpful parts of the New Testament is constituted of these sometimes sincere, often silly, and most often hooked, crafty queries.

It was our privilege to have a man in our theological class who could ask more variegated questions than any other man whom I have ever known. His talent in this direction fell nothing short of genius. And yet I was always glad when, as the Scotch say, he was "spiering" his rapid-fire interrogatives at dear old sainted Dr. Peck, for they drew the doctor out. They made the treasures to flow forth of the most wonderful spiritual storehouse of modern times. And so we came to look upon our little inquirer as an angel who periodically went down into the pool and troubled the waters for the refreshment of the balance of the class.

There was a man of this class in Corinth, and he asked what Paul declared to be a foolish question. "Thou fool," he called him. The answer to this fool is the fifteenth chapter of Corinthians.

Is there any chapter in all this book more tenderly associated with the most precious memories of your beloved dead? It is this chapter which gives the Easter hope its certainty and its surpassing glory, and is the oaken staff the Master places in the hands of Christian pilgrims as they totter down the home stretch through the valley of the shadow.

The question, you notice, is a double one: "How are the dead raised up?" "With what body do they come?" Foolish questions both, says Paul, because you ought to have known the answer. There ought to be no discussion and no doubt on the part of any Christian as to a matter so clear and so absolute.

Christ and His people are one; one in life, in death, in resurrection; one in everlasting destiny. Whatever happens to Christ of necessity happens to His people. He is the first fruits of them that sleep; the harvest follows the law of the first sheaf. If he who in all points was made like unto His people arose from the dead, so must His people rise from the dead. The same spirit which raised up Jesus from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies. Now, if He arose from the dead, how say some of you that there is no resurrection of the dead? and if the dead rise not, then is Christ not risen. Not only on general principles, but on first principles, therefore, you ought to have known this; it is the elementary fact of the faith.

But He regarded it as a foolish question again, and for the further reason and more especially because he saw a covert, subtle unbelief at the bottom of the question. It implies doubt in the questioner. Why, Paul, I do not see how the dead can rise, or even if they could I cannot see where they are to get a body from. Paul, I am a student of nature; I believe in reason, and reason teaches me the whole thing to be absurd-a hopeless dream. Why, Paul, I have stood by the dying, I have seen the faculties of men grow numb and slowly fade into silence and darkness. I have seen corruption seize upon the body and destroy every feature of the loved face and form, and I know this body turns into dust and ashes in the grave; and really, Paul, you are asking me to believe that which reason denies and the whole course of nature contradicts. I cannot believe that the dead will come back or imagine how the dissolved body is to be raised into its old semblance again, even if they could."

"Thou fool," says Paul, "I will show you on your own territory of vaunted reason, since you deny the word of God, that neither right reason nor natural law is opposed to the doctrine of the resurrection.

"Now, as to the first question, How are the dead raised up? Thou fool, how is it with a grain of wheat you sow? That which thou sowest is not quickened except it die. My dear sir, had you studied nature to better purpose you had seen that death does not, and cannot destroy-it is merely antecedent to life and a process of life change. That is all.”

Paul knew and uttered by inspiration the now universally recognized law of conservation of force.

It has taken science thousands of years to find out what Paul calmly asserts here to be the fact and the impregnable basis of his argument.

Nature, O Corinthian sceptic, knows nothing of annihilation. Whatever is, continues to be. It may be changed into other shapes, it may pass into other form or other force; but it is never and can never be wholly blotted out.

There is not one drop of water the less today, however splashed about 'twixt earth and sky; there is not one grain of sand the less today, blown about the earth however widely; not one drop of water the less, not one grain of sand the less than when this world celebrated its first birthday. Those great fir forests of ages antecedent to man, buried deep in the earth by awful volcanic disturbances, were they lost? They were turned into coal without the loss of an atom. But when that coal is burned, is not that the end? Not so; every particle of its constituent carbon and oxygen and nitrogen and hydrogen are volitilized-set free in the air above us to enter other forms of lifeto develop other trees and plant life. Today there stands an oak or Southern pine where ages ago stood a fir. It was sown a fir. After a sleep of geological ages, it was raised an oak; it was sown a fir on the slopes of the Alleghenies-it was raised a climbing rose in Columbia or a cape myrtle in Louisiana. Thou fool, nothing is lost. God made everything out of nothing, but He does not permit anything to go back to nothing, and He never will. Transformation is not annihilation. What, then, is death-the great transformer-the miracle worker, the divinely anointed omnipotent chemist? In its touch there

is a hint of Hermon's glory. It takes the grain of wheat and does two things with it. It dissolves the outer husk and wrapping and quickens a new life, and it dissolves the old in order to quicken the new. A new life in the vegetable world cannot come except through the disorganization, the breaking up of the old. It is therefore not only the antecedent of a new life; it is the necessary, inevitable antecedent of the new. Death is the prolific mother of the whole world; she gives birth to all living things. Paul gets his lesson from the Master: "Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone; but if it die it beareth much fruit.”

Man is no exception to the law of the universe. The chemical constituency of every mortal body remains every atom. There is always the principle of life in the dying seed, and there is always the seed of life in the dying believer; a principle of life which the cold hand of death cannot chill nor destroy. It can only set free-strike off the swaddling husk of the old estate.

Beyond the view of mortal, beyond the reach of science to analyze, or discover, or explain, is the seed of eternal life which the great Sower has implanted, and which only puts forth the first tender blade when the last look is taken and the last long drawn sigh is breathed. "I give unto them eternal life, and they shall never perish."

As with the grain of wheat which you sow, so with the grain of immortal life which the Saviour sows. There is no more occasion for wonder in the one case than in the other; the outer wrapping of mortal life must be dissolved as the outer wrapping of