JOB'S mournful and rather uncertain query, "If a man die, shall he live again?" has been insistently echoed all through the ages, and will be until the riddle of mortal experience is solved in Truth's way. That it was much discussed in Paul's day is evident, and that wonderful fifteenth chapter of his first epistle to the Corinthians greatly illumines the subject of immortality. Here the question, "How are the dead raised up? and with what body do they come?" is answered by an illustration from nature, the sowing of seed, and is followed by a simple yet decisive statement of identity which reads : "God giveth it a body as it hath pleased him, and to every seed his own body ;" or, as it might be expressed in Christian Science, To every individual his own identity, which is of God and like God, and which can no more be lost than can God Himself. In the great English classic. "In Memoriam." Tennyson says:—
Thou wilt not leave us in the dust:
Thou madest man, he knows not why;
He thinks he was not made to die;
And Thou hast made him: Thou art just.
This agrees with what Paul says in the chapter already quoted, "For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead," a statement which expresses the firm conviction that God is in no wise responsible for death, and that we must rise above it by knowing that it is no part of the divine plan.
