MATERIALISM AND ITS LESSONS. 673 



form, and that the thinking power and faculties are the result of a 

 certain organization of matter," was the eloquent preacher and writer, 

 Rohert Hall. It is true that he abandoned this opinion at a later 

 period of his life ; indeed, his biographer tells us with much satisfac- 

 tion that " he buried materialism in his father's grave " ; and a theo- 

 logical professor in an American college has in a recent article exult- 

 antly claimed this fact as triumphant proof that the materialist's 

 " gloomy and unnatural creed " can not stand before such a sad feel- 

 ing as grief at a father's death. One may be excused, perhaps, for 

 not seeing quite so clearly as these gentlemen the soundness of the 

 logic of the connection. On the whole, logic is usually sounder and 

 stronger when it is not under the pressure of great feeling. 



The truth is, that a great many people have the deeply-rooted feel- 

 ing that materialism is destructive of the hope of immortality, and 

 dread and detest it for that reason. When they watch the body decay 

 and die, considering furthermore that after its death it is surely re- 

 solved into the simple elements from which all matter is formed, and 

 know that these released elements go in turn to build up other bodies, 

 so that the material is used over and over again, being compounded 

 and decompounded incessantly in the long stream of life, they can not 

 realize the possibility of a resurrection of the individual body. They 

 can not conceive how matter, which has thus been used over and over 

 again, can remake so many distinct bodies, and they think that to 

 uphold a bodily resurrection is to give up practically the doctrine of a 

 future life. It is a natural but not a necessary conclusion, as the ex- 

 amples of Milton and Robert Hall prove, since they, though material- 

 ists, were devout believers in a resurrection of the dead. Moreover, 

 there are many vehement antagonists of materialism who readily ad- 

 mit that it is not inconsistent with the belief in a life after death. 

 Indeed, they could not well do otherwise when they recollect what the 

 Apostle Paul said in his very energetic way, addressing the objector 

 to a bodily resurrection as " Thou fool ! " and what happened to the 

 rich man who died and was buried ; for it is told of him that " in hell 

 he lifted up his eyes and cried and said, ' Father Abraham, have mercy 

 on me, and send Lazarus that he may dip the tip of his finger in water 

 and cool my tongue, for I am tormented in this flame.' " Now, if he 

 had eyes to lift up and a tongue to be cooled, it is plain that he had a 

 body of some kind in hell ; and if Lazarus, who was in another place, 

 bad a finger to dip in water, he also must have had a body of some 

 kind there. 



Leaving this matter, however, without attempting to explain the 

 mystery of the body celestial, I go on to mention a second reason why 

 materialism is considered to be bad doctrine. It is this : that with 

 the rise and growth of Christianity there came in the fashion of look- 

 ing down on the body with contempt as the vile and despicable part 

 of man, the seat of those fleshly lusts which warred against the higher 



VOL. XT. 43 



