Survival of the Fittest. 465 



Spirit!' Therefore, the proof of the apostle's proposition, 

 that there is a natural body^ as distinct from a spiritual body, 

 lies in the testimony that "Adam was made into a living 

 soul, showing that he considered a natural, or animal body, 

 and a living soul, as one and the same thing. If he did not, 

 then there was no proof in the quotation of what he 

 affirmed. Mortality, then, is life manifested through a cor- 

 ruptible body, and immortality is life manifested through an 

 incorruptible body. Hence, the necessity laid down in the 

 saying of the apostle, " this corruptible body must put on 

 incorruption, and this mortal put on immortality," before 

 death can be "swallowed up in victory," a doctrine of " life 

 and incorruptibility " that was new to the Greeks and Romans, 

 and brought to light only through the gospel of the kingdom 

 and name of Jesus Christ. To them it was foolishness, and to 

 many at the present day incredible, because they do not 

 understand the glad tidings of the age to come. God could 

 have created all things upon a spiritual or incorruptible basis 

 at once, but in that case the globe would have been filled 

 with men and women equal to the angels in nature, power 

 and intellect, and hence would have been without a history, 

 and its population characterless. And this would not have 

 been according to His plan, for in it the animal must precede 

 the spiritual just as surely as the acorn must precede the oak. 

 The Bible has to do with things and not with imaginations ; 

 with bodies and not phantasms ; with living souls of every 

 species ; with corporeal beings of other worlds, and with 

 incorruptible and undying men, but is as silent as the grave 

 about such souls as men pretend to cure. For the sons of 

 Adam to become sons of God, they must be the subjects of 

 an adoption, which is attainable only by a divinely appointed 

 means. It must be by a process of selection. " Since by a 

 man came death, by a man also came a resurrection of dead 

 persons. For as in the Adam they all die, so also in the 

 Christ shall they all be made alive. But every one in his 

 order. Christ the first fruits ; afterward they that are Christ's 



