39. We have now reached in the history of our problem the period known as the dark ages, during which the spirit of scientific inquiry was well-nigh extinct. At length, however, there arrived a time when the human mind, from a variety of causes, suddenly awoke from the lethargy into which it had sunk. When scientific thought was once more directed to the subject of immortality it was easily seen that the doctrine of the resurrection in its vulgar acceptation could not possibly be true, since a case might easily be imagined in which there might be a contention between rival claimants for the same body. We might, for instance, imagine a Christian missionary to be killed and eaten by a savage, who was afterwards killed himself. It is indeed both curious and instructive to note the reluctance with which various sections of the Christian Church have been driven from their old erroneous conceptions on this subject; and the expedients, always grotesque, and sometimes positively loathsome, with which they have attempted to buttress up the tottering edifice. Some deem it necessary that a single material germ or organised particle of the body at death should survive until the resurrection, forgetting that under such a hypothesis it would be easy to deprive a man of the somewhat doubtful benefits of such a resurrection, by sealing him up (while yet alive) in a strong iron coffin, and by appropriate means reducing his whole physical body into an inorganic mass. Boston, again, in his _Fourfold State_, goes still further, adopting the idea that a single particle of insensible perspiration which has escaped from a man during his life, will be sufficient to serve as a nucleus for the resurrection body. So that according to the disciples of this school, the resurrection will be preceded by a gigantic manufacture of shoddy, the effete and loathsome rags of what was once the body being worked up along with a large quantity of new material into a glorious and immortal garment, to form the clothing of a being who is to live for ever! Unquestionably we have continuity in this hypothesis, but it is the continuity of the Irishman’s coat in the story, the owner of which always made a point of retaining as many as possible of the rags which were present on the last occasion, those only which had absolutely fallen to pieces being replaced by something new! We have only to compare this grotesquely hideous conception with the noble and beautiful language of Paul, to recognise the depth of abasement into which the Church had sunk through the materialistic conceptions of the Dark Ages.