at day so taught, were it not for the undisputed historical records,
and the remnant of the doctrine itself embalmed in the "Apostle's
Creed," in the passage _"I believe in the resurrection of the body_"
which is read in the Churches daily, but which doctrine is scarcely
ever taught in these days, and is believed in by but few
Christians--in fact, is ignored or even denied by the majority.

Dr. James Beattie has written, "Though mankind have at all times had a
persuasion of the immortality of the soul, the resurrection of the
body was a doctrine peculiar to early Christianity." S.T. Coleridge
has written, "Some of the most influential of the early Christian
writers were materialists, holding the soul to be material--corporeal.
It appears that in those days some few held the soul to be
incorporeal, according to the views of Plato and others, but that the
orthodox Christian divines looked upon this as an impious,
unscriptural opinion. Justin Martyr argued against the Platonic nature
of the soul. And even some latter-day writers have not hesitated to
express their views on the subject, agreeing with the earlier orthodox
brethren. For instance, Dr. R.S. Candlish has said,

"You live again in the body,--in the very body, as to all
essential properties, and to all practical intents and
purposes, in which you live now. _I am not to live as a
ghost, a spectre, a spirit, I am to live then as I live now,
in the body_."

The reason that the early Church laid so much stress on this doctrine
of the Resurrection of the Body, was because an inner sect, the
Gnostics, held to the contrary, and the partisan spirit of the
majority swung them to the other extreme, until they utterly denied
any other idea, and insisted upon the resurrection and re-vitalizing
of the physical body. But, in spite of the official fostering of this
crude theory, it gradually sank into actual insignificance, although
its shadow still persists in creed and word. Its spirit has retreated
and passed away before the advancing idea of the Immortality of the
Soul which returned again and again to Christianity until it won the
victory. And as Prof. Nathaniel Schmidt has said, in his article on
the subject in a leading encyclopaedia, "... The doctrine of the
natural immortality of the human soul became so important a part of
Christian thought that the resurrection naturally lost its vital
significance, and it has practically held no place in t