es the
whole conception, turning all its details into allegories and
images. But this view is not the original nor the orthodox view.

The subject of the resurrection was a prominent theme in the
theology of the Middle Age. Only here and there a dissenting voice
was raised against the doctrine in its strict physical form. The
great body of the Scholastics stood stanchly by it. In defence and
support of the Church thesis they brought all the quirks and
quiddities of their subtle dialectics. As we take down their
ponderous tomes from their neglected shelves, and turn over the
dusty, faded old leaves, we find chapter after chapter in many a
formidable folio occupied with grave discussions, carried on in
acute logical terminology, of questions like these: "Will the
resurrection be natural or miraculous?" "Will each one's hairs and
nails all be restored to him in the resurrection?" "When bodies
are raised, will each soul spontaneously know its own and enter
it? or will the power of God distribute them as they belong?"
"Will the deformities and scars of our present bodies be retained
in the resurrection?" "Will all rise of the same age?" "Will all
have one size and one sex?" 11 And so on with hundreds of kindred
questions. For instance, Thomas Aquinas contended "that no other
substance would rise from the grave except that which belonged to
the individual in the moment of death."12 What dire prospects this
proposition must conjure up before many minds! If one chance to
grow prodigiously obese before death, he must lug that enormous
corporeity wearily about forever; but if he happen to die when
wasted, he must then flit through eternity as thin as a lath.

8 De Civ. Dei, lib. xxii. cap. 19, 20.

9 See the strange speculations of Opitz in his work "De Statura et
Atate Resurgentium.

10 Redepenning, Origenes, b. ii. s. 463.

11 Summa Theologia, Thoma Aquinatis, tertia pars, Supplementum,
Quastiones 79-87.

12 Hagenbuch, Dogmengeschichte, sect. 204.

Those who have had the misfortune to be amputated of legs or arms
must appear on the resurrection stage without those very
convenient appendages. There will still be need of hospitals for
the battered veterans of Chelsea and Greenwich, mutilated heroes,
pensioned relics of deck and field. Then in the resurrection the
renowned "Mynheer von Clam, Richest merchant in Rotterdam,"
will again have occasion for the services of the "patent cork leg
manufacturer," though it is ha