154 



REV. J. O. F. MUERAY, D.D., ON 



evidence for the Empty Tomb. The fact to be attested is in itself 

 super-physical. But I do not see that it adds any fresh difficulty, 

 if we once accept the fact that the Tomb was empty as evidence 

 that a spiritual transformation had passed over the material body 

 that had been laid in it. 



It is a truism to say that we do not know what matter in itself 

 is. The whole relation of mind and matter baffles imagination: 

 but we are being forced to recognise not only that the physical 

 organism reacts on the mind, but also that the physical processes 

 of our bodies can be directly affected and controlled by our 

 psychical or spiritual condition. If that is true even now, is it 

 incredible that after death the spirit of man may attain to perfect 

 sovereignty over the organism, whatever may be its essential 

 nature, in and through which he has developed his distinctive 

 personality ? May it not be that the First-begotten from the dead 

 has given us in these strange ways such light on this coming 

 sovereignty as wdth our limited powers we are in this life able to 

 receive ? 



Discussion. 



Dr. ScHoFiELD, after thanking Canon Murray for his most ex- 

 cellent paper^ pointed out that it had been said that the Resurrec- 

 tion of Jesus Christ was at the same time the most incredible 

 event in the world's history, and the best established fact. With 

 the first statement few would agree who recognised our Lord's 

 Deity ; while most who have studied the evidence will endorse the 

 latter. 



I am glad on p. 146 the Canon has called attention to the wide- 

 spread theory of the day respecting "the husk and kernel," said 

 to be a revival of Rosicrucian teaching. This represents that while 

 the miraculous stories of the New Testament — the Virgin's Birth, 

 the Resurrection of our Lord, Lazarus and others — are but the husk, 

 and can be thrown away, we must never throw away the great 

 spiritual truths these allegories teach. In short, that these facts 

 in the Gospels are fiction, though they may contain valuable truth. 

 This specious error is widely spread in London to-day. 



With regard to Professor Kirsopp Lake's remarks about flesh and 

 blood, we do well to remember S. Paul's statements in 1 Cor. 15, 

 "It is sown a natural body (that is, one in whom the blood is 

 the life), it is raised a spiritual body." This is entirely different 

 from a spirit. The latter, the Lord says, has not flesh and hones 

 "as ye see Me have.'' Not, be it remarked, "flesh and blood,** 

 but ' ' flesh and bones ' ' ; for in this body the spirit is the life. 

 On p. 149 I must call attention to a most important sentence of the 

 Canon's: "It (the Resurrection on the third day), and it alone, 

 accounts for the peculiar veneration of the first day of the week 



