Page images
PDF
EPUB

object of the heart with all the system? Well, the lungs are mainly used to aerate the blood, and the blood is simply to convey the sustentation to the parts. The blood is a carrier, and it carries the small corpuscles which furnish the nutriment of the whole system. In the risen body the system does not seem to need that method of nutriment at all.* What is the nutriment of the angelic frame? We read in the Psalms that men did eat angels' food. Do angels eat food? How little we know.

66

It is evident that the Lord was able to reproduce for the benefit of witnesses the very same aspect, the height and colour, and the tone of the voice, which had been known before. He had but to utter one word, Mary," and she turned round and said, "Rabboni." There was no possibility of doubting that Jesus was the same person she had known before. When the two disciples were going to Emmaus they walked beside Him with burning hearts but did not know Him, but presently, at the breaking of bread, He was revealed. So it was in other instances.

What happened to the Lord's flesh at the Resurrection? I have often watched the process of an acorn's growth. One sees the development of the germ, and the manifestation of little rootlets, and then the parts of the acorn that seemed more important, perish; yet the essence remains in the rootlet and the shoot. But in Christ's case, so far as I can judge, the whole of the material was used up in the resurrection body. It was all turned to account. That body which had been a pure temple of a pure soul, and had never been injured in the way we so often injure our bodies by wrong-doing, that body in its pristine purity at the age of 33, was consigned to the grave, and the whole of the material of the body -apart perhaps from any remaining blood, if there was any, which may be doubted—the whole was turned to account in the resurrection body. It was sown in one condition; it sprang up in another condition. I do not think one is able really to say more on that subject. I notice some one said it was resolved into its elements. I would have liked to hear Professor Lionel Beale on this. He has

* It has been suggested to me that sin caused incipient decay, and that much less food would have been needed for the supply of waste tissue if it had not been for the constant antagonism with corruption to which we are subjected at present.-R. B. G.

often told us here of the germ in its original cell parting, parting, parting; there might be a vestige of an original cell of Adam in every one of us, and it might be there is that residuum in the resurrection body that secures its identification with the body that now is. But I dare not speculate on this subject. I will only add that death is abnormal; Christ is the Prince of Life; and if any one were to start a new human Race in its perfection and in full life, it would be that Being Who has done so much for the moral and spiritual welfare of the Race as it now is.

ORDINARY GENERAL MEETING.*

GENERAL HALLIDAY IN THE CHAIR.

The Minutes of the previous Meeting were read and confirmed, and the following paper was read by the Secretary, in the absence of the author.

THE INFLUENCE OF PHYSIOLOGICAL DISCOVERY ON THOUGHT. By EDWARD P. FROST, D.L.

1. The paper suggested by a sense of increasing difficulty of preserving one's religion.

2. No imputation cast upon Science.

3. For fifty years acquirement of miscellaneous information by uneducated multitudes who can read has been on the increase, as also has the popularisation of Science; while Science has made gigantic strides.

4. e.g., Matter has almost been analysed into imponderables so as to bewilder the half-educated as to spirit and matter. Who is to explain that the distinction between phenomenal and spiritual is unaffected by physiological analysis?

5. Geological discoveries and evolution, etc., have modified views on Divine government of universe dangerously.

6. Results of bewilderment.

7. Especially suppression of anthropomorphism.

8. Science enables men to get a better idea of God's infinity and foresight.

9. Difficulties in respect to order and continuity not insuperable.

10. "The Absolute" and "the Unknowable" upset by Science.

11. Toleration results from advance of Science.

12. Union of Religion and Science.

13. Conclusion.

*May 1st, 1905.

1. I have been impelled to give utterance to the reflections which form the subject of this paper by the feeling that, as the days of the new century pass, ever-increasing numbers of individuals are finding it more and more difficult to hold fast their religious beliefs and so maintain the life of their souls; while at the same time this serious state of affairs appears to be either unnoticed or ignored by many of those teachers and authorities who might have been providing help and relief.

2. In suggesting that certain elements of evil have attended the recent triumphs of Physical Science, I am not venturing to reproach Science or to blame scientific investigators for consequences which they could not be expected to foresee, to provide against which moreover does not appear to be their business. At any rate it is still more the business of those who are supposed to study moral rather than physical phenomena.

3. During the last fifty years, elementary education has become general, the facilities for the acquirement by the elementarily educated of miscellaneous information have been enormously multiplied, and the popularisation of Science has become prevalent; while through the same period physiological discovery has advanced with ever-quickening acceleration, until we seem to have arrived within measurable distance of the solution of some of the fundamental problems presented by that branch of Science.

4. For instance, before long matter may be analysed, relatively to human limitations, into imponderables, namely, energy, position and quantity; and what then becomes of the natural conception of "A positive antithesis between mind and matter, between the spiritual' and the material'?" And if it should appear to many an untrained intelligence that the conception of matter which seems to have been entertained is being inverted or shattered, is there not at once a grave menace to their conception of the correlative of "the material"? What is to become of their vague apprehension of the immaterial, of the spiritual? Their "little knowledge," if indeed undigested information deserve the name of knowledge, has become “a dangerous thing," and yet we can neither forbid them to "taste' nor bid them to "drink deep" with any reasonable expectation that they will do so. Who is likely to impress upon them the simple fact that no essential distinction has been affected, or can be affected by any such analysis, and that since matter is as phenomenal and mind as real as ever," a positive antithesis" between them is still maintained.

[ocr errors]

5. To take another instance-geologists and those who have developed the theories of evolution and of the adaptability of organisms to variations in environment, have seriously modified earlier notions respecting the physical side or aspect of the Divine government of the universe.

In comparison with the multiplication of general information during the last fifty years, the general information on this subject may be said to have been almost stationary for about a hundred and fifty years before the middle of the last century, while every recent discovery of importance, thanks to the press and to popular lecturers and writers, is made as impressive and "sensational" as possible.

The difference between the logical apprehension of this department of Divine government made possible by modern science, and the imaginative ideas on the same subject which survive the simple beliefs of childhood in men and women of average intelligence, has become so vast as to constitute a grave danger. The revelation of science has seemed to many to cast discredit on the various theological systems of Christendom. Some it has thrown into bewilderment and distress, to others it has furnished excuses for casting off the trammels of religion. It has overstrained intellects of mediocre capacity, causing them to snatch at all manner of faulty and fallacious solutions of their difficulties.

6. This bewilderment has been, and is, I believe, one of the causes (and not one of the least causes) of the alleged prevalence of indifference to religious matters anong both the rich and poor, of the "Pagan Londou" recently discussed in the press, of the increase in insanity, of the prevalence of inordinate curiosity about matters to which one ought to be indifferent, of much dabbling in (so-called) spiritualism, in "occult" mysteries, and in fortune-telling, as well as of avowed atheism and agnosticism.

7. A very important element in the bewildering process has been the impairment or suppression of the faculty of anthropomorphism, of imagining Deity in terms of humanity, a faculty which has for ages been a great help to the maintenance of religious feelings among simple folk. It must, I believe, constitute the religion of all childhood, and is often indulged in subconsciously by adults, who would repudiate any such notion if formally presented to them, very much as we speak of, and subconsciously imagine, the sun going round the earth. It is hardly venturesome to say that if Milton's Paradise Lost had not yet been written, it could not now be written by a

« PreviousContinue »