632 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 



versed in Scripture; for I loved the Bible, and was 

 prompted by that iove to commit large portions of it to 

 memory. Later on I became adroit in turning my 

 Scriptural knowledge against the Church of Rome, but 

 the characteristic doctrines of that Church marked only 

 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 pas- 

 sage in Blair's " Grave" gave me momentary rest. 



Sure the same power 



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

 Can reassemble the loose, scatter'd 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 mold 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. I figured the selfsame molecules as 

 belonging first to one body and afterward to a different 

 one, and I asked myself how two bodies so related could 

 possibly 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 idea 

 that the aspects of nature and the consciousness of man 

 implied the operation of a power altogether beyond my 

 grasp an energy the thought of which raised the temper- 

 ature of the mind, though it refused to accept shape, 

 personal or otherwise, from the intellect. Perhaps the 

 able critics of the Saturday Review are justified in 

 speaking as they sometimes do of Mr. Carlyle. They owe 

 him nothing, and have a right to announce the fact in 



