Favorite Water-Colors. New York: Frederick A. Stokes Company. Price, $7.50. As a book of its class-a work of art-it is without a rival. It contains the fac-similes of favorite works by Francis Day, Charles Howard Johnson, H. W. McVickar, Percy Moran, James M. Barnsley, and James Symington, with portraits of the artists and representations of their works in black and white. In mechanical outfit-paper, length and breadth of page, and type-it is superior, while in colors, portraits, and the general effect of the whole it is as captivating as a picture-gallery, with beauty and simplicity rivaling for recognition. For holiday purposes it is superb and a great success. The Good Things of Life. Eighth Series. New York: Frederick A. Stokes Company. Price, $2. Another work of art from this popular publishing company, consisting of various comic, tragic, and sober scenes and experiences in life in representative engravings, with accompanying conversations and self-evident explanations. A Galahad of Nowadays. By MARTHA BURR BANKS, Author of The Children's Summer, etc. 12mo, pp. 354. New York: Hunt & Eaton. Cincinnati: Cranston & Stowe. Price, cloth, $1.20. Sheila. By ANNIE S. SWAN, Author of Gates of Eden, etc. 12mo, pp. 381. Cincinnati Cranston & Stowe. New York: Hunt & Eaton. Price, cloth, 90 cents. The Colonel's Charge. A Companion Volume to The Little Corporal. By Car- The Gilead Guards. A Story of War-Times in a New England Town. By MRS. Rockton. A Story of Spring-Time Recreations. By KEL SNOW, ESQ. 12mo, pp. 280. Cincinnati: Cranston & Stowe. New York: Hunt & Eaton. Price, cloth, 90 cents. The South Ward. By KATHARINE DOORIS SHARP, Author of Eleanor's Courtship and the Songs that Sang Themselves. 12mo, pp. 299. Cincinnati: Cranston & Stowe. New York: Hunt & Eaton. Price, cloth, 90 cents. Una and Leo; or, Changes and Chances. By JULIA GOODFELLOW. 12mo, pp. 276. New York: Hunt & Eaton. Cincinnati: Cranston & Stowe. Price, cloth, $1. Healthful in sentiment, excellent in composition, and attractive in print, the above group of books is admirably adapted to the uses of Sundayschool libraries. As Christmas volumes of this sort they are to be recom mended. METHODIST REVIEW. MARCH, 1892. Art. I.—WHAT IS THE RESURRECTION? IS THE RESURRECTION the persistence of life through that state which we call death-the non-destruction at death of our personality? Is it the restoration to life of the body—the soul discarded at the moment of death? Is it the reorganization into their original bodily form and state of the atoms of which the human frame had once been composed? Is it the springing forth of a new body from the disintegrated body, as the grain by germination grows out of the decaying kernel of corn from which it derives its origin, the oneness being genetic, the persistence of species? Is it the re-appearance of the original bodyidentical therewith, but not necessarily composed of the same particles of matter-an absolute sameness of organic condition, to secure which the employment of the same particles are not essential? Is it the conversion of our bodies, which are corruptible, into an incorruptible state? Is it the carrying away with itself by the soul at death of a spiritualized organic body through which, in its pre-spiritualized condition, the soul had wrought, and which alone as such had come within the scope of our consciousness? Is or is not the Bible declaration of the fact of the resurrection simply a mode of expressing the immortality of the soul? Is a spiritual body spirit, or must it be composed of matter? The reader must remember that this is only a paper, not a book. We have not space for the formal discussion of half a score or more of theories, but only to find, if possible, some safe and rational standing-ground. The aim of much that we shall 12-FIFTH SERIES, VOL. VIII. say will be the removal of false and blinding conceptions, so that the doctrine may be permitted to rest on its merits. This, however, we need to say just at this point, that the affirmations of the Bible in regard to the resurrection proclaim an event that is something other and more than the entrance of the soul upon an eternal state. For any one to maintain that Paul in the fifteenth chapter of his first letter to the Corinthians was simply insisting on the doctrine of an hereafter, showing us that death is not annihilation, would be in the most extreme sense absurd. Did we find in the Bible simply some detached passages in which terms were employed that etymologically would express more than the mere conception of a life after death, some doubt might be entertained as to the real teachings of the Scriptures. But here we have an argument, an historical, theological, and philosophical argument in behalf of the doctrine. Paul tells us that Christ died; that he was raised from the dead on the third day; and that as an evidence of his resurrection he was seen by different persons at different times. To deny the resurrection; he tells us, we must deny the proven fact of Christ's resurrection, and to deny the resurrection of Christ would be a rejection or denial of the entire gospel scheme. Then he triumphantly re-affirms the resurrection of Christ, joining with it this great truth, that he was "the first-fruits of them that slept." A little further on he hears the doubter say, "Ilow are the dead raised? And with what body do they come?" How can a dead body be raised? Death has come and the body has parted with life, whence and how the resurrection? He then gives his argument drawn from the intermediation of death in the perpetuation of being in the vegetable kingdom. After telling us that the resurrection body will be a spiritual body he reaches the grand consummation that we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality." Then the shout, "Death is swallowed up in victory! O death, where is thy sting?" Paul, who is always severely logical, would not employ words like these in stating the doctrine of the immortality of the soul. Though his intellectual conceptions are always clear and vivid, his logic is never sacrificed to the poetry. He is a prince of reasoners, and his imagery never buries up his argu ment. There is no other doctrine of the Bible more plainly stated than that of the resurrection of the dead; there is no other doctrine in which the dogmatic statement is so elaborately discussed and enforced by argument. Paul even says to us that to reject this is to reject the historic Christ, and to fling back from us all the provisions of the Gospel. And yet there is no other teaching of Scripture on which more doubt has been expressed. Very largely the Church itself practically assumes its unimportance, if, indeed, it be not interpenetrated with the thought of its unreality. Notwithstanding Paul's insistence of the fundamental character of this doctrine, making it the basis of the Gospel, making it also to contain the highest hopes of a redeemed soul, it is not one of the great themes of the pulpit employed in evangelizing the world. It is not handled as a specific spiritual truth to take hold upon the minds and consciences of men. For this two reasons are apparent: 1) There are no general clear convictions of the nature of the resurrection itself. The subject is so thoroughly shrouded in mystery that men hesitate to declare it as a revealed truth. 2) As growing out of the fact just stated there is a wide-spread belief that science, in its determinations, interposes to the doctrine objections of great weight, if, indeed, they be not fatal to its claims. If Paul's teachings and science seem to antagonize each other we need surely to proceed with great deliberation. The subject becomes a grave problem. It is better to be silent than to be rash--to teach nothing rather than to teach possible error. In view of the internal evidence of the supernatural origin of the Bible and the divine commission of Paul as a teacher of the supernatural, the scientist should hesitate to issue a pronunciamento against so plain a declaration of the New Testament. And the biblical scholar, if wise, will be equally cautious about provoking a quarrel with the scientist. But if there be any antagonism, where is the battle-ground? The Christian is a theist. He holds to the infallibility of nature. God is the Creator of the universe, and he has not and could not put an untruth into it. The Christian also maintains that the Bible is God's word. The great Author does not and cannot proclaim an untruth there. The divine works and the divine word may be diverse, covering different spheres of divine thought and purpose, but they cannot contradict each other. But to say that. nattire could not utter a falsehood—that it is an expression of the absolute thought and infinite will of the infinite Creator, is not the same as saying that science is necessary truth. God ordained nature; man created science. Science is man's conception of creation, his reading of nature. Are his readings infallible? Has not the scientist been compelled at different times either to abandon or modify nearly every theory he has announced? It therefore becomes him to be modest in his claims. The ground on which he stands is too uncertain for very pronounced dogmatism. Thus nature is one thing-the embodiment of absolute truth-but science, man's notion of nature, may be quite another thing. If the Bible is God's word, which we hold it to be, it is infallible; but theology is man's interpretation of the Bible; and surely much of this is not infallible. If it were infallible, all theological creeds would be true, though they contradicted one another at every point. All this leads us to say that the battle-ground is not the common ground occupied by nature and the Bible, but the common ground occupied by science and theology. It is a human battle-ground. If this be a conflict who is wrong? Has the theologian put a false meaning into the teachings of Scripture, or the scientist made an erroneous reading of nature? Or may not both have failed to find the truth? Science may contradict the Bible and still the Bible be true, and it will continue to contradict the Bible until it (science) becomes on accurate expression of the law of nature. The liability of error in translating nature into terms of truth is even greater than in the translation of the Bible into theological formula. Both efforts have often failed, and the end is not yet. May not the Bible student have erred in his conception of the resurrection, and hence have held up before the scientific world. a theory that deserves to be rejected? And if the theory be false or untrue to fact, and yet maintained as biblical, must not the result be the undermining of the authority of the Scriptures among scientists, provided they succeed in correctly interpreting |