CHAPTER XLVIII.

The philosophical speculation on the transmigration of souls is admitted, but our doctrine of the resurrection of the body scouted, and the mystery of our present existence forbids a hasty rejection of our belief respecting the future, though Nature illustrates it. On this subject revelation must suffice.

COME now, if any philosopher should affirm, as Laberius says was the opinion of Pythagoras, that a man is made out of a mule, or a snake out of a woman, and by the force of eloquence should twist [138] all arguments to establish such a theory, would he not gain assent and bring about a belief in the opinion, even to the point of abstinence from animal food? And any one who held this view would be persuaded to abstain on the ground that he might in eating beef be feasting on one of his ancestors. But if a Christian holds out the assurance that a man will be re-formed out of a man, and Caius himself from Caius, will he not be assailed by the people rather indeed with stones, than with gauntlets ¹²⁵? As if any argument that holds good for the re-entrance of human souls into bodies did not also demand their recal into the same bodies; since restitution consists in being what one was before. For if they are not the same as they were before, namely, human, and clothed with the same body, then they are not in that case the same as they were. Further, how shall they be said to have returned, when they will not in that case be themselves? Either, having become something else, they will not be themselves; or, remaining identical, they will not be derived from any other source. If we wished to disport ourselves on this point there would be opportunity for many jests and much waste of time, as to what kind of beast any one might seem to be turned into. But keeping rather to the lines of our own pleading, we lay down, and it is surely more worthy of belief, that a man will be restored from a man, any given person from any given [139] person, but still a man; so that the same kind of soul may be reinstated in the same mode of existence, even if not into the same outward form ¹²⁶. Yet, as the very reason for the restoration is to be found in the appointed judgement, it is certainly necessary likewise that the same person, who once existed, should be presented, that he may receive from God the judgement whether of good or of evil desert. And hence the bodies also must be present, because the soul alone cannot suffer at all without a material substance, that is, the flesh; and because souls generally have incurred whatever it is their due to suffer from God's judgement not without the flesh, within which all their actions were performed.

'But how,' you say, 'can matter be again presented after its dissolution?' Consider thyself, O man: and thou will find that this fact is credible. Reflect what thou wast, before thy life began : surely nothing; for thou wouldst remember it hadst thou been anything. Since therefore thou wast nothing before thy life began, and likewise wilt become nothing after thy existence ceases; why canst thou not again be brought into existence from nothing by the will of the same Originator Who willed thy first existence out of nothing? Nothing new will happen to thee! Thou, who wast not, wast made; when again thou shalt not be, thou shalt again be made. Shew first, if thou canst, [140] the method by which thou wast made, and then seek to know how thou wilt be re-made. And yet surely thou shalt more easily be made that which thou hast once been, since without difficulty thou hast been made what thou wast never before.

There will be a doubt, perchance, about the power of God, Who formed the great body of this world from that which was not, no less than from a deathlike vacuity and emptiness, and animated it with a spirit that gives breath to all souls, and stamped it throughout with types of man's resurrection as a witness to us. The light which dies daily shines again; and the darkness comes and goes in a like variation : the stars which die out live again : the seasons constantly succeed each other: fruits perish and again return: the very seeds, unless they decay and dissolve, do not spring up in greater fruitfulness : all things are preserved by perishing, all things are restored from death. Shalt thou, a man—a name so noble, didst thou but understand thyself, learning even from the Pythian inscription ¹²⁷,—who art the lord of all things that are continually dying and rising again,—shalt thou so die as to utterly perish? Into whatever substance thou shalt have been resolved, whatever material means shall have destroyed thee, absorbed thee, effaced thee, or reduced thee to nothing, it shall restore thee again. To Him belongs that very 'nothing,' Whose is also 'the whole.'

'Then we must be constantly dying and rising [141] again,' thou sayest. If the Lord of all had so appointed, thou wouldst experience, however unwillingly, that law of thy being. But as it is, He has appointed it to be no otherwise than as He has declared. That same Reason Which constructed the universe out of diversity, so that the whole consists of antithetical substances brought under unity,—of vacuity and solidity, animate and inanimate, comprehensible and incomprehensible, light and darkness, even life and death,—has also so disposed the whole course of existence according to an appointed and divided plan; according to which the first part of it, in which we are living, reckoned from the Creation, flows on to its end in the age of Time; and the following part, which we look for, extends into infinite Eternity. When therefore the end and mid-boundary which yawns between shall have come, so that even the fashion of this world, itself equally a thing of Time, may be transformed, which is spread like a curtain before the system of Eternity; then shall be restored the whole human race for the adjusting of the account of its deserts, whether of good or of evil, incurred during that temporal period of its life, and thereafter for the payment of its debt throughout the measureless perpetuity of Eternity.

There is therefore neither death absolute nor recurring resurrections; but we shall be the same as we are now, and thereafter no other : the worshippers of God ever with God, clothed upon with the proper substance of Eternity; but the wicked, and those not perfect towards God, in the punishment of fire equally [142] lasting, and possessing in its very nature, which is divine, the supply of incorruptibility. The philosophers know the difference between hidden and ordinary fire. Thus that in common use is far different from that which ministers God's judgement, whether it strikes as lightnings from heaven, or belches forth from the earth through mountain-tops; for it consumes not what it burns, but renews even whilst it destroys. So the mountains remain though always burning; and he who is struck from heaven is preserved, since he is not now reduced to ashes by any fire. And this will be a proof of eternal fire, an example of a judgement continually feeding its own punishment. Mountains burn and endure : what of the guilty and of the enemies of God?