and consequently attached
the greatest importance to it. These people were almost materialists
as the result of their pagan views of life. They began to exert an
influence on the small body of original Christians, and soon the
original teachings were smothered by the weight of the pagan
doctrines. For instance, they failed to grasp the beautiful ideas of
Immortality held by the original Christians, which held that _the
soul_ survived the death and disintegration of the body. They could
not grasp this transcendental truth--they did not know what was meant
by the term "_the soul_," and so they substituted their pagan doctrine
of the resurrection of the physical body. They believed that at some
future time there would come a great Day, in which the Dead would
arise from their graves, and become again alive. The crudeness of this
idea, when compared to the beautiful doctrine of the Immortality of
the Soul of the original Christians, and by the advanced Christians
to-day, is quite painful. And yet these pagan converts actually
smothered out the true teachings by their crude doctrine of
resurrection of _the body_.

These people could not understand how a man could live without his
physical body, and to them future life meant a resurrection of their
dead bodies which would again become alive. To them the dead bodies
would remain dead, until the Great Day, when they would be made alive
again. There is no teaching among these people regarding the soul
which passes out of the body and lives again on higher planes. No,
nothing of this kind was known to these people--they were incapable of
such high ideas and ideals--they were materialists and were wedded to
their beloved animal bodies, and believed that their dead bodies would
in some miraculous way be made alive again at some time in the future,
when they would again live on earth.

In view of modern knowledge regarding the nature of matter, and the
fact that what is one person's body to-day, may be a part of another's
to-morrow--that matter is constantly being converted and
reconverted--that the universal material is used to form bodies of
animals, plants, men, or else dwell in chemical gases, or combinations
in inorganic things--in view of these accepted truths the
"resurrection of the body" seems a pitiful invention of the minds of a
primitive and ignorant people, and not a high spiritual teaching. In
fact, there may be many of you who would doubt that the Christians of
th