word is essentially the word itself, in contradistinction to the nearly unanimous exposition of the great body of acknowledged standards, (which, forsooth, are mere opinions,) he shows an arrogance that nearly forfeits a right to our attention. Especially insufferable is all this when the doctrine, like that of the bodily resurrection, is one to which not only Methodism, but all Christendom, whether Greek, Roman, or Protestant, has given its unanimous assent in the most pronounced terms; an assent not only during the modern and middle ages, but through the martyr age, as attested by the most primitive creeds, by the inscriptions on the tombs of the Catacombs, by the earliest uninspired writings, and so in all presumption by the words of the apostles and of Christ, where such an interpretation of their words is even allowable. Dissent on this point, save by an occasional writer or by heretical sects, is unknown. Nor is the force of this unanimity at all broken by the fact that when orthodox writers have voluntarily gone beyond the proposition of the simple doctrine, and entered into explanatory details and incidentals about the process of the resurrection, their individual views have varied in numerous directions; for that is true of all doctrines-even of the atonement itself. It is of no use, then, for Mr. Dryden to spread out upon his pages the numerous subordinate peculiarities of writers on the resurrection, so long as from the present moment back to the apostolic day the Church has with singular and most articulate unanimity been able to say, "I believe in the RESURRECTION OF THE BODY," meaning by "the body" the body that died. Backed by such a unanimity upon this one great PROPOSITION, we enter the New Testament with a justly powerful, though not absolute, presumption in our favor; and we surely have some right to expect in our opponent great modesty of speech and temper, and great decisiveness of exegesis and logic, to overcome such a presumption. Neither of these qualities seems remarkably conspicuous in this volume. Its theory is, so far as we understand it, that at the death of the body the soul takes so much from the body with it as will form a soul-body and thus constitute a complete personality, and it thence departs to hades, the place of departed spirits. At the advent it will therefore rise a complete person-not from the earth, but from hades-and ascend to the eternal heaven. Such being the theory, it is all important for the theorist to show then that the dead that rise are not the dead bodies in the earth, but-what? The reply is at once a refutation of this whole theory. They, those "resurrected" dead, are the LIVING persons in hades! Mr. Dryden's real resurrection, there

fore, is a resurrection of the already living, and consists in their ascension from hades or paradise to heaven. His rising dead are the living! His is therefore no resurrection of the dead. The compound person that rises, by his theory, not only is not dead the moment before, but in fact never was dead.

To prove that the dead that are in Scripture said to rise are not dead bodies, (which really disproves the resurrection of the dead!) he takes the texts in which the dead are said to rise, and in the place of the word dead or its pronoun he substitutes the words dead bodies; and as the text then reads incongruously, he infers that the word dead does not mean dead bodies. Thus:

Questioning one with another what the rising from the dead bodies should mean? "Brought again from the dead bodies our Lord Jesus Christ; "Marvel

not at this, for the hour is coming in which all the dead bodies that are in the graves shall hear his voice, and shall come forth; they (dead bodies) that have done good unto the resurrection of life; they (dead bodies) that have done evil unto the resurrection of damnation," John v, 28, 29; "Jesus, who is the first begotten of the dead bodies," Rev. i, 5; "But the rest of the dead bodies lived not again," Rev. xx, 5; "Blessed are the dead bodies that die in the Lord," Rev. xiv, 13.

Now we will give him a few more texts of the same sort. Abraham, speaking of the corpse of Sarah, says to the sons of Heth (Gen. xxiii): "If it be your minds that I should bury my dead (my dead body?) out of my sight," etc. Now we know here that my dead does signify my dead body; and yet to substitute the latter phrase would change the meaning. Matt. viii, 22: "Let the dead bury their dead" would not well read, Let the dead bodies bury their dead bodies; and yet that is the literal image underlying the figure. Matt. x, 8: "Raise the dead" means certainly a raising performed upon dead bodies by the recall of their souls; but the text would not read well, Raise the dead bodies. Matt. xi, 5: "The dead are raised up" certainly signifies that dead bodies are raised up from their prostrate state by being reanimated with the returning soul.* It is in every case the body that is raised; it is a bodily resurrection, and the requisite condition of that bodily resurrection is its reanimation by the soul from hades. Similarly we affirm that in every passage quoted by Mr. Dryden the word dead does refer to the dead bodies in the earth, and does not refer to the soul or soul-person in hades. The uncouthness of the reading arises not

*And as in these passages the bodies (Greek neuter) alone are called of vɛkpot, (Greek masculine plural,) and are raised under condition of the returning souls, so we have a contradiction to Mr. Dryden's repeated statements that this word always (for he must mean always if he means any thing to his purpose) "takes in the whole idea of personal being." In every one of these cases the masculine Greek plural for dead, or dead bodies, is applied to bodies or corpses.

from any inconsistency of meaning. It arises from a violation of the ordinary idiom of speech, yet that idiom having its origin in a real association of thought. When, for instance, Dr. Young speaks of "the pale nations of the dead," he means not living souls in hades, for he would not call them pale, but he means collectively the dead bodies. Yet "pale nations of the dead bodies" would read ludicrously. Why? Because the phrase "the dead" has a more elevated tone than the phrase dead bodies. The dead in the graves are not merely so many dead bodies, but are taken as a collective community, a dread domain, and even a state. Thus, when Christ rose in body from the dead, the image is not that he rose from among a parcel of individual dead bodies, but that he rose from the solemn society, the collective state, of the inanimate.

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Mr. Dryden expends a great deal of Greek erudition on the fact that the dead, as deceased bodies, have a Greek neuter owμa, and yet the personal masculine vɛkpoí, and other adjectives or pronouns and participles, are applied to the dead. These masculines, he imagines, cannot accord with neuter dead bodies, and so they must require the soul in order to constitute a person. Yet the most ordinary Greek grammar will tell him that a masculine agrees (ad sensum as the grammarians say) with a neuter Greek word that designates a personal being. So in Matt. xxvii, 52, 53: Many bodies [owμara, bodies, neuter] arose, and coming [Greek masculine participle agreeing with the neuter bodies] out of the graves [same word as in John v and John xi] went into the holy city." It was purely a bodily resurrection by the incoming of the soul; bodies (neuter) are the only subject of participle and verb; and yet the participle agrees in the masculine plural with these bodies. We have above shown that in Matt. viii, 22, and x, 8, and xi, 5, dead bodies are called by the masculine vɛKOOί. The dead body of Lazarus is called by his personal name. The whole pretense that bodies alone cannot be mentioned as persons is contradicted in all languages by every-day life. A man's corpse is still spoken of as a man, a woman's corpse as being a woman. the relative words of personality are in myriads of cases applied to the lifeless body. No one would hesitate to speak of the corpse of a daughter as a female person: "She lies in her coffin, but she will come forth; or of a son: "He is cold in death, but he will rise to immortality." In vain will Mr. Dryden stand by, grammar in hand, and say: "The word she is personal and feminine, and cannot mean or agree with that dead corpse; it must designate the soul in hades with its soul-body, so as to

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include the whole person. Certainly you do not mean that a mere dead body will come forth! And how can a dead body rise to immortality? If it is dead it cannot be immortal. A dead body cannot live at all." This is no caricature of the great mass of the reasoning of this volume. And if personal terms are thus normally applied to dead corpses, much more may they be applied to the same corporeities passing through the successive stages of death, animation, coming forth, and completed resurrection. Thus 1 Thess. iv, 14, 15: "Them which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him. We which are alive shall not prevent them which are asleep; and the dead in Christ shall rise first," etc. Mr. D. does not accomplish a great deal when he paraphrases this thus: "Even so the dead bodies which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him; we which are alive shall not prevent the dead bodies which sleep in Jesus; and the dead bodies in Christ shall rise first, and the dead bodies shall be raised incorruptible." As it happens, the phrase dead bodies does not occur in the passage; but simply personal terms which are equally susceptible of being applied to bodies or to persons through all their stages from corpses to glorified personalities, as the same personal but varying subject.

And this answers the argument from the words, "How are they [the dead] raised up, and with what body do they come?" On this our author remarks: "Is it possible to limit the dead to mean bodies?" Suppose, we reply, the text were, "How is Lazarus raised up? with what body does he come ? Every one can see that the personal name "Lazarus" applies to the dead body, and yet in the same breath the person Lazarus comes with his risen body.

Of nearly every leading position taken in the book a square contradiction could be furnished from the narrative of the resurrection of Lazarus alone. He says (p. 29) that the dead body of Christ is not Christ, and yet the dead body of Lazarus before being revivified is addressed by Christ himself as "Lazarus." John xi, 43. He says that the personal pronoun is not applicable to the dead soma, and yet it is, (v. 33.) He tells us that in John v, 29, the word graves means tombs, and must be made to mean figuratively hades; but the same word, as used xi, 31 and 38, is applied to Lazarus's burial-place, and it is said that "it was a orýλatov,” cave, or little excavation, (the Greek word is a diminutive term,) covered by a stone." So that this little stone-covered hole must be figuratively so enlarged as to take in the whole invisible region of departed spirits, both hades and paradise included!

That the earth, not hades, is the scene of resurrection, and that the bodies are the dead which are raised, are decisively proved by Rev. xx, 13: "The sea gave up the dead which were in it." Mr. D. protests against the "literal interpretation of the sea," and asserts that if the dead means dead bodies, then, in v. 12, "the dead were judged" means a judgment of dead bodies. But, we reply, when it is affirmed that the dead were judged, the idiom is just the same as when it is said, Matt. xi, 5, "The deaf hear;" not that they were deaf and heard at the same time, but that the previously deaf now hear. So Matt. xv, 31, the multitudes saw the dumb speak, the lame walk, and the blind see. Not that they were blind and seeing at the same time, but in succession. So the judged were not dead and judged at the same time, but the previously dead are now judged.

These considerations will disperse the imaginary difficulties which Mr. D. gathers around John v, 28, 29: "All that are in their graves shall hear his voice, and shall come forth; they that have done good, to the resurrection of life," etc. This pictures the process of bodies in their graves being reanimated, and coming forth into a complete retributive resurrection state. The graves, or tombs, signify graves, or tombs, and nothing else. Nor is there any thing ungrammatical in the dead occupants of those graves being called by the Greek masculine plural word for dead, mere bodies at the beginning of the process though they were. The neuter word for bodies does not in fact occur in the text; and this is one of the million cases in which the dead body of a man is spoken of as a man or person. When asked, How could the dead hear? we reply, just as the deaf' hear. Simultaneously with the voice come the soul and the sensibility. No sophistry can evade this text. It proves, defying all perversion, that the scene of the resurrection is the earth; that its subjects are the bodies dead and normally buried; that it consists in the reorganization of those self-same material bodies into glorious modifications preparatory for the ascension to the judgment-seat of the Son of man.

Our remarks are lengthened not in proportion to the value of the book, which is (with all personal kindness to the author) very slight, but to the importance of the subject. We cannot indorse Dr. Briggs's recommendation to read the book, as that would usually be a waste of time. We are pleased to note that though printed at one of our publishing houses, it bears no official imprint.