'RESURRECTION OF THE BODY'
"Never the spirit was born; the spirit shall cease to be never."
EDWIN ARNOLD
In the whole unknown drama of the soul the episode of bodily
existence must have profound significance. Matter cannot only be
obstructive, even usefully obstructive,--by which is meant the kind
of obstruction which stimulates to effort and trains for power,
like the hurdles in an obstacle race,--it must be auxiliary too.
Whatever may be the case with external matter, the body itself is
certainly an auxiliary, so long as it is in health and strength;
and it gives opportunity for the development of the soul in new and
unexpected ways--ways in which but for earth life its practice would
be deficient. This it is which makes calamity of too short a life.
But let us not be over-despondent about the tragedy of the present.
It may be that the concentrated training and courageous facing of
fate which in most cases must have accompanied voluntary entry into
a dangerous war, compensates in intensity what it lacks in duration,
and that the benefit of bodily terrestrial life is not so much lost
by violent death of that kind as might at first appear. Yet even
with some such assurance, the spectacle of thousands of youths in
full vigour and joy of life having their earthly future violently
wrenched from them, amid scenes of grim horror and nerve-wracking
noise and confusion, is one which cannot and ought not to be regarded
with equanimity. It is a bad and unnatural truncation of an important
part of each individual career, a part which might have done much to
develop faculties and enlarge experience.
Meanwhile, the very fact that we lament so sincerely this dire
and man-caused fate serves to illustrate the view we inevitably
take that the earth-body is not only a means of manifestation but
is a real servant of the soul,--that flesh can in some sense help
spirit as spirit can undoubtedly help flesh,--and that while its
very weaknesses are serviceable and stimulating, its strength is
exhilarating and superb. The faculties and powers developed in the
animal kingdom during all the millions of years of evolution, and
now inherited for better for worse by man, are not to be despised.
Those therefore who are able to think that some of the essential
elements or attributes of the body are carried forward into a higher
life--quite irrespective of the manifestly discarded material
particles which never were important to the body, for they were
always in perpetual flux as individual molecules--those, I say, who
think that the value derived and acquired through the body survives,
and becomes a permanent possession of the soul, may well feel that
they can employ the mediæval phrase "resurrection of the body" to
express their perception. They may feel that it is a truth which
needs emphasising all the more from its lack of obviousness. These
old phrases, consecrated by long usage, and familiar to all the
saints, though their early and superficial meaning is evidently
superseded, may be found to have an inner and spiritual significance
which when once grasped should be kept in memory, and brought before
attention, and sustained against challenge: in no case should they be
lightly or hastily discarded.
It seems not altogether fanciful to trace some similarity or analogy,
between the ideas about inheritance usually associated with the name
of Weismann, and the inheritance or conveyance of bodily attributes,
or of powers acquired through the body, into the future life of the
soul.
When considering whether anything, or what, is likely to be
permanent, the answer turns upon whether or not the soul has been
affected. Mere bodily accidents of course are temporary; loss of an
arm or an eye is no more carried on as a permanent disfigurement than
it is transmissible to offspring. But, apart from accidents which may
happen to the body, there are some evil things--rendered accessible
by and definitely associated with the body--which assault and hurt
the soul. And the effect of these is transmissible, and may become
permanent. Habits which write their mark on the countenance--whether
the writing be good or bad--are not likely to take effect on
the body alone. And in this sense also future existence may be
either glorified or stained, for a time, by persistence of bodily
traits,--by this kind of "resurrection of the body."
Furthermore it is found that although bodily marks, scars and wounds,
are clearly not of soul-compelling and permanent character, yet
for purposes of identification, and when re-entering the physical
atmosphere for the purpose of communication with friends, these
temporary marks are re-assumed; just as the general appearance at
the remembered age, and details connected with clothes and little
unessential tricks of manner, may--in some unknown sense--be assumed
too.
And it is to this category that I would attribute the curious
interest still felt in old personal possessions. They are attended to
and recalled, not for what by a shopman is called their 'value,' but
because they furnish useful and welcome evidence of identity; they
are like the _pièces de conviction_ brought up at a trial, they bear
silent witness to remembered fact. And in so far as the disposal or
treatment of them by survivors is evidence of the regard in which
their late owner was held, it is unlikely that they should have
suddenly become matters of complete indifference. Nothing human, in
the sense of affecting the human spirit, can be considered foreign to
a friendly and sympathetic soul, even though his new preoccupations
and industries and main activities are of a different order. It
appears as if, for the few moments of renewed earthly intercourse,
the newer surroundings shrink for a time into the background. They
are remembered, but not vividly. Indeed it seems difficult to live
in both worlds at once, especially after the life-long practice here
of living almost exclusively in one. Those whose existence here was
coloured or ennobled by wider knowledge and higher aims seem likely
to have the best chance of conveying instructive information across
the boundary; though their developed powers may be of such still
higher value, that only from a sense of duty or in a missionary
spirit can they be expected to absent them from felicity while in
order to help the brethren.
Quotation of a passage from Plotinus seems here permissible:--
"Souls which once were in men, when they leave the body, need not
cease from benefiting mankind. Some indeed, in addition to other
services, give occult messages (oracular replies), thus proving by
their own case that other souls also survive" (_Enn._ IV. vii. 15).
* * * * *
As a digression of some importance, I venture to say that claims of
thoughtless and pertinacious people upon the charitable and eminent,
even here, are often excessive: it is to be hoped that such claims
become less troublesome and less effective hereafter; but it is a
hope without much foundation. Remonstrances are useless, however,
for only the more thoughtful and those most deserving of help are
likely to attend to remonstrances. Nevertheless--useless or not--it
behoves one to make them. We are indeed taught that in exceptional
cases there may ultimately supervene such an extraordinary elevation
of soul that no trouble is too great, and no appeal is unheard. But
still, even in the Loftiest case of all, the episode of having passed
through a human body contributes to the power of sympathising with
and aiding ordinary humanity.