hear definite sentence pronounced upon them. The
_mise-en-scene_ demands of course the presence of bodies, and I suppose
it is needless to point out the dogma of the resurrection of the body,
insisted upon by all the Christian Churches, is a blank impossibility.
We may acquire other bodies in that unknown state, should we stand in
need of such appurtenances--a fact which we may wholly disbelieve--but
of one thing we may rest assured, that these identical bodies in which
we die can by no possibility conceivable to us be brought back.

I once read a highly imaginative article in a religious magazine which
attempted to solve the unsolvable by suggesting that after men's bodies
had been buried in sufficient numbers, the whole soil of our planet
would consist of nothing but the substance of the bodies of the dead,
and that when that momentous epoch arrived, the Almighty would give the
order for the sounding of the final trump, and the whole solid globe
would be forthwith transmuted, or rather re-transmuted, into human
bodies--in what condition it was not stated--for the countless myriads
of "souls" ready to take possession of them. Probably, this pious
romance was woven in the days before cremation, and as the next century
will not be very old before we shall be compelled to resort to that
method of disposal of the dead, at all events in our larger cities, it
becomes increasingly difficult to comprehend how men of the future, to
say nothing of the past, are going to be provided with their own bodies
so as to put in an appearance at the great assize.

We may rightly wonder how men and women of the nineteenth century can
still believe in the Churches and Chapels which teach such deplorable
absurdities as the revelation of God, and how it happens that when
religion appears upon the scene of their daily life, their common sense
can so totally desert them. One need say nothing of the inadequacy of
the judgment pronounced, the summary classification of the myriads of
humanity as white sheep or black goats, or the character of the rewards
and punishments allotted. The one redeeming point in the narrative is
that whatever judgment is pronounced is decided, not on doctrinal
grounds, about which no two of Christ's followers can be got to agree,
but on ethical grounds, on character manifesting itself in public
spirit and care for the unfortunate--the bruised reeds and smoking
flax--of our communities. It would seem impossible to