138 Similar materialism among Christians. CHAP. 



that it is a foolish and unmeaning question which 

 ought not to have been asked. 



There is something strange in the words of His 

 rebuke : " Ye do err, not knowing the Scriptures, 

 nor the power of God." Not knowing the Scriptures ! 

 They were doubtless well acquainted with the letter 

 of Scripture. And not knowing the power of God ! 

 They had never thought of doubting it ; and, 

 besides, what had the power of God to do with the 

 question ? These words must have seemed to them 

 mere heated invective. But though they knew the 

 letter of the Scriptures, they did not know the 

 Scriptures aright ; and though they had never 

 doubted the power of God, they really, though uncon- 

 sciously, disparaged it, by suggesting as possible that, 

 if it were God's will to raise the dead, He could meet 

 with any difficulty arising out of the rights of husbands. 



The same answer may sometimes be appropriate 

 still. It has been seriously maintained maintained 

 not by scoffers, but by believers that the doctrine of 

 the Resurrection implies the gathering together, at 

 the voice of the Archangel and the trump of God, 

 of all the atoms of matter which constituted the body 

 of each individual man at the moment of his death, 

 in order that out of them the resurrection bodies 

 may be rebuilt. To such a needless and repulsive 

 fancy as this we may reply in the words of our Lord 

 and of Saint Paul, "Ye do err, not knowing the 

 scriptures, nor the power of God." * " Thou sowest not 

 1 Matt. xxii. 29. 



