lly. The apostle's nonsense
about the seed that cannot quicken unless it die, was laughed at by the
African chief in Sir Samuel Baker's narrative. The unsophisticated negro
said that if the seed did die it would never come to anything. And he
was right, and Paul was wrong.

There _is_ a resurrection, however, for Paul says so, and his teaching
is inspired, though his logic is faulty. Men will rise from the dead
_somehow_, and with "a body of some kind." Not the body we have now.
Oh dear no! Great men have thought so, but it is an "incredible
supposition." Being a chemist, Sir G. G. Stokes sees the ineffable
absurdity, the physical and logical impossibility, of this orthodox
conception, which was taught by Mr. Spurgeon without the slightest
misgiving, and upheld by the teaching of the Church of England.

But what is it that _will_ rise from the dead, and get joined with
some sort of inconceivable body? We have shown that Professor Stokes's
distinction between "soul" and "spirit" is fanciful. It will not do for
him, then, to say it is the "spirit" that will rise, for he denies,
or does not believe, the renewed life of the "soul." Here he leaves us
totally in the dark. Perhaps what will rise is "a sort of a something"
that will get joined to "a sort of a body" and live in "a sort of a
somewhere."

"What," asks Professor Stokes, "is man's condition between death and the
resurrection?" He admits that the teaching of Scripture on this point is
"exceedingly meagre." He inclines to think that "the intermediate state
is one of unconsciousness," something like when we faint, and thus, as
there will be no perceptions in the interval, though it be millions of
years, we shall, "when we breathe our last," be brought "immediately
face to face with our final account to receive our final destiny."
And if our final destiny depends in any way on how we have used our
reasoning powers, Professor Stokes will be consigned to a warm corner in
an excessively high-temperatured establishment.

After all, Professor Stokes admits that all he has said, or can say,
gives no "evidence" of a future life. What _is_ the evidence then?
"Well," he says, "the great evidence which we as Christians accept is,
that there is One Who has passed already before us from the one state of
being to the other." The resurrection of Jesus Christ, he tells us, is
"an historical event," and is supported by an enormous amount of most
weighty evidence. But he does not gi