tabernacles they formerly
inhabited will be re created, a strong necromancy making the rooty
and grave floored earth give up its dust of ruined humanity, and
moulding it to the identical shapes it formerly composed; each
soul will enter its familiar old house in company with which its
sins were once committed; the books will be opened and judgment
will be passed; then the accepted will be removed to heaven, and
the rejected to hell, both to remain clothed with those same
material bodies forever, the former in celestial bliss, the latter
in infernal torture.

In the present dissertation we propose to exhibit the sources,
trace the developments, explain the variations, and discuss the
merits, of this doctrine.

The first appearance of this notion of a bodily restoration which
occurs in the history of opinions is among the ancient Hindus.
With them it appears as a part of a vast conception, embracing the
whole universe in an endless series of total growths, decays, and
exact restorations. In the beginning the Supreme Being is one and
alone. He thinks to himself, "I will become many." Straightway the
multiform creation germinates forth, and all beings live. Then for
an inconceivable period a length of time commensurate with the
existence of Brahma, the Demiurgus the successive generations
flourish and sink. At the end of this period all forms of matter,
all creatures, sages, and gods, fall back into the Universal
Source whence they arose. Again the Supreme Being is one and
alone. After an interval the same causes produce the same effects,
and all things recur exactly as they were before.1

We find this theory sung by some of the Oriental poets:
"Every external form of things, and every object which
disappear'd, Remains stored up in the storehouse of fate: When the
system of the heavens returns to its former order, God, the All
Just, will bring them forth from the veil of mystery." 2

The same general conception, in a modified form, was held by the
Stoics of later Greece, who doubtless borrowed it from the East,
and who carried it out in greater detail. "God is an artistic
fire, out of which the cosmopoeia issues." This fire proceeds in a
certain fixed course, in obedience to a fixed law, passing through
certain intermediate gradations and established periods, until it
ultimately returns into itself and closes with a universal
conflagration. It is to this catastrophe that reference is made in
the following passage of