While the above scientific discussions were taking place at Paris,
meetings of a similar character were being held at London, Chicago, St.
Petersburg, Yokohama, Melbourne, New York, and in all the principal
cities of the world, in which every effort was made to throw light upon
the great problem which so universally preoccupied the attention of
humanity. At Oxford a theological council of the Reformed church was
convened, in which religious traditions and interpretations were
discussed at great length. To recite, or even to summarize here the
proceedings of all these congresses would be an endless task, but we
cannot omit reference to that of the Vatican as the most important from
a religious point of view, just as that of the Institute of Paris was
from a scientific one.
The council had been divided into a certain number of sections or
committees, and the then often discussed question of the end of the
world had been referred to one of these committees. Our duty here is to
reproduce as accurately as possible the physiognomy of the main session,
devoted to the discussion of this problem.
The patriarch of Jerusalem, a man of great piety and profound faith, was
the first to speak in Latin. “Venerable fathers,” he began, “I cannot do
better than to open before you the Holy Gospel. Permit me to quote
literally.” He then read the words of the evangelists[2] describing the
last days of the earth, and went on:
Footnote 2:
St. Matthew, xxiv. and xvi.; St. Mark, xiii.; St. Luke, xvii. and xxi.
“These words are taken verbatim from the Gospels, and you know that on
this point the evangelists are in perfect accord.
[Illustration:
THE PATRIARCH OF JERUSALEM ADDRESSING THE COUNCIL.
]
“You also know, most reverend fathers, that the last great day is
pictured in still more striking language in the Apocalypse of St. John.
But every word of the Scriptures is known to you, and, in the presence
of so learned an audience, it seems to me superfluous, if not out of
place, to make further citations from what is upon every lip.”
Such was the beginning of the address of the patriarch of Jerusalem. His
remarks were divided under three heads: First, the teachings of Christ;
second, the traditions of the Church; third, the dogma of the
resurrection of the body, and of the last judgment. Taking first the
form of an historical statement, the address soon became a sort of
sermon, of vast range; and when the orator, passing from St. Paul to
Clement of Alexandria, Tertulian and Origen, reached the council of Nice
and the dogma of universal resurrection, he was carried away by his
subject in such a flight of eloquence as to move the heart of every
prelate before him. Several, who had renounced the apostolic faith of
the earlier centuries, felt themselves again under its spell. It must be
said that the surroundings lent themselves marvellously to the occasion.
The assembly took place in the Sistine chapel. The immense and imposing
painting of Michael Angelo, like a new apocalyptic heaven, was before
every eye. The awful mingling of bodies, arms and legs, so forcibly and
strangely foreshortened; Christ, the judge of the world; the damned
borne struggling away by hideous devils; the dead issuing from their
tombs; the skeletons returning to life and reclothing themselves with
flesh; the frightful terror of humanity trembling in the presence of the
wrath of God—all seemed to give a vividness, a reality, to the
magnificent periods of the patriarch’s oratory, and at times, in certain
effects of light, one might almost hear the advancing trumpet sounding
from heaven the call of judgment, and see between earth and sky the
moving hosts of the resurrection.
[Illustration:
MAYERSTROSS.
]
Scarcely had the patriarch of Jerusalem finished his speech, when an
independent bishop, one of the most ardent dissenters of the council,
the learned Mayerstross, rushed to the tribune, and began to insist that
nothing in the Gospel, or the traditions of the Church, should be taken
literally.
“The letter kills,” he cried, “the spirit vivifies! Everything is
subject to the law of progress and change. The world moves. Enlightened
Christians cannot any longer admit the resurrection of the body. All
these images,” he added, “were good for the days of the catacombs. For a
long time no one has believed in them. Such ideas are opposed to
science, and, most reverend fathers you know, as well as I do, that we
must be in accord with science, which has ceased to be, as in the time
of Galileo, the humble servant of theology: theologiæ humilis ancilla.
“The body cannot be reconstituted, even by a miracle, so long as its
molecules return to nature and are appropriated, successively, by so
many beings—human, animal and vegetable. We are formed of the dust of
the dead, and, in the future, the molecules of oxygen, hydrogen,
nitrogen, carbon, phosphorus, sulphur, or iron, which make up our flesh
and our bones, will be incorporated in other human organisms. This
change is perpetual, even during life. One human being dies every
second; that is more than 86,000 each day, more than 30,000,000 each
year, more than three milliards each century. In a hundred centuries—not
a long period in the history of a planet, the number of the resurrected
would be three hundred milliards. If the human race lived but a 100,000
years—and no one here is ignorant of the fact that geological and
astronomical periods are estimated by millions of years—there would be
gathered before the judgment throne something like three thousand
milliards of men, women and children. My estimate is a modest one,
because I take no account of the secular increase in population. You may
reply to me, that only the saved will rise! What, then, will become of
the others? Two weights and two measures! Death and life! Night and day,
good and evil! Divine injustice and good-will, reigning together over
creation! But, no, you will not accept such a solution. The eternal law
is the same for all. Well! What will you do with these thousands of
milliards? Show me the valley of Jehoshaphat vast enough to contain
them. Will you spread them over the surface of the globe, do away with
the oceans and the icefields of the poles, and cover the world with a
forest of human bodies? So be it! And afterwards? What will become of
this immense host? No, most holy fathers, our beliefs must not, cannot,
be taken literally. Would that there were here no theologians with
closed eyes, that look only within, but astronomers with open eyes, that
look without.”
These words had been uttered in the midst of an indescribable tumult;
several times they wished to silence the Croatian bishop, gesticulating
violently and denouncing him as schismatic; but the rules did not permit
this, for the greatest liberty was allowed in the discussion. An Irish
cardinal called down upon him the thunders of the Church, and spoke of
excommunication and anathema; then, a distinguished prelate of the
Gallican church, no less a person than the archbishop of Paris himself,
ascended the rostrum and declared that the dogma of the resurrection of
the dead might be discussed without incurring any canonical blame, and
that it might be interpreted in entire harmony with reason and faith.
According to him one might admit the dogma, and at the same time
recognize the rational impossibility of a resurrection of the body!
“The Doctor Angelicus,” he said, speaking of St. Thomas, “maintained
that the complete dissolution of every human body by fire would take
place before the resurrection. (Summa theologica, III.) I readily
concede with Calmet (on the resurrection of the dead) that to the
omnipotence of the Creator it would not be impossible to reassemble the
scattered molecules in such a way that the resurrected body should not
contain a single one which did not belong to it at some time during its
mortal life. But such a miracle is not necessary. St. Thomas has himself
shown (loco citato) that this complete material identity is by no means
indispensable to establish the perfect identity of the resurrected body
with the body destroyed by death. I also think, therefore, that the
letter should give way to the spirit.
“What is the principle of identity in a living body? Assuredly it does
not consist in the complete and persistent identity of its _matter_. For
in this continual change and renewal, which is the very essence of
physiological life, the elements, which have belonged successively from
infancy to old age to the same human being, would form a colossal body.
In this torrent of life the elements pass and change ceaselessly; but
the organism remains the same, notwithstanding the modifications in its
size, its form and its constitution. Does the growing stem of the oak,
hidden between its two cotyledons, cease to be the same plant when it
has become a mighty oak? Is the embryo of the caterpillar, while yet in
the egg, no longer the same insect when it becomes a caterpillar, and
then a chrysalis, and then a butterfly? Is individuality lost as the
child passes through manhood to old age? Assuredly not. But in the case
of the oak, the butterfly, and the man, is there a single remaining
molecule of those which constituted the growing stem of the oak, the egg
of the caterpillar or the human embryo? What then is the principle which
persists through all these changes? This principle is a reality, not a
fiction. It is not the soul, for the plants have life, and yet no souls,
in the meaning of the word as we use it. Nevertheless, it must be an
imponderable agent. Does it survive the body? It is possible. St.
Gregory of Nyssus believed so. If it remains united to the soul, it may
be invoked to furnish it with a new body identical with that which death
has destroyed, even though this body should not possess _a single
molecule_ which it possessed at any period of its terrestrial life, and
this would be as truly our body as that which we had when five, fifteen,
or thirty, or sixty years of age.
“Such a conception agrees perfectly with the expressions of holy writ,
according to which it is certain that after a period of separation the
soul will again take on the body forever.
“In addition to St. Gregory of Nyssus, permit me, most reverend fathers,
to cite a philosopher Leibnitz, who held the opinion that the
physiological principle of life was imponderable but not incorporeal,
and that the soul remains united to this principle, although separated
from the ponderable and visible body. I do not pretend to either accept
or reject this hypothesis. I only note that it may serve to explain the
dogma of the resurrection, in which every Christian should firmly
believe.”
“This effort to conciliate reason and faith,” interrupted the Croatian
bishop, “is worthy of praise, but it seems to me more ingenious than
probable. Are these bodies, bodies like our own? If they are perfect,
incorruptible, fitted to their new conditions, they must not possess any
organ for which there is no use. Why a mouth, if they do not eat? Why
legs, if they do not walk? Why arms, if they do not work? One of the
fathers of the early church, Origen, whose personal sacrifice is not
forgotten, thought these bodies must be perfect spheres. That would be
logical but not very beautiful or interesting.”
“It is better to admit with St. Gregory of Nyssus and St. Augustin,”
replied the archbishop, “that the resurrected body will have the human
form, a transparent veil of the beauty of the soul.”
Thus was the modern theory of the Church on the resurrection of the body
summed up by the French cardinal. As to the objections on the score of
the locality of the resurrection, the number of the resurrected, the
insufficiency of surface on the globe, the final abode of the elect and
the damned, it was impossible to come to any common understanding for
the contradictions were irreconcilable. The resultant impression was,
however, that these matters also should be understood figuratively, that
neither the heaven or the hell of the theologian represented any
definite place, but rather states of the soul, of happiness or of
misery, and that life, whatever its form, would be perpetuated on the
countless worlds which people infinite space. And so it appeared that
Christian thought had gradually become transformed, among the
enlightened, and followed the progress of astronomy and the other
sciences.
The council had been held on Tuesday evening, that is to say on the day
following the two meetings of the Institute, of which an account has
been given above. The Pope had made public the advice of the president
of the Institute to leave Italy on the fatal day, but no attention had
been paid to it, partly because death is a deliverance for every
believer, and partly because most theologians denied the existence even
of inhabitants upon Mars.
[Illustration]