PROFESSOR VIRCHOW AND EVOLUTION^ 401 



tiral knowledge against the Churcli of Rome, but tlie char- 

 acteristic doctrines of that Church marked onlj for a time 

 the limits of inquiry. The eternal Sonship of Christ, for 

 example, as enunciated in the Athanasian Creed, perplexed 

 me. The resurrection of the body was also a thorn in my 

 mind, and here I remember that a passage in Blair' a 

 ** Grave" gave me momentary rest. 



Sure the same power 

 That rear'd the piece at first and took it down 



Can reassemble the loose, scattered parts 

 And put them as they were. 



The conclusion seemed for the moment entirely fair, but 

 with further thought my difficulties came back to me. I 

 had seen cows and sheep browsing upon churchyard grass, 

 which sprang from the decaying mould of dead men. The 

 flesh of these animals was undoubtedly a modification of 

 human flesh, and the persons who fed upon them were as 

 undoubtedly, in part, a more remote modification of the 

 same substance. 1 figured the self- same molecules as be- 

 longing first to one body and afterward to a different one, 

 and I asked myself how two bodies so related could pos- 

 sibly arrange their claims at the day of resurrection. The 

 scattered parts of each were to be reassembled and set as 

 they were. But if handed over to the one, how could 

 they possibly enter into the composition of the other? 

 Omnipotence itself, I concluded, could not reconcile the 

 contradiction. Thus the plank which Blair* s mechanical 

 theory of the resurrection brought momentarily into sight, 

 disappeared, and I was again cast abroad on the waste 

 ocean of speculation. 



At the same time I could by no means get rid of the 



