--- title: Improvement Era description: Monthly periodical of the Mormon church, 1897 onward. This library holds the issues of November 1897 to December 1930. authors: - Nelson, N. L. collections: - periodicals tags: - magazine - improvement-era periodical: Improvement Era volume: 26 number: 6 published: 1923-04 publisher: Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations publisher_place: Salt Lake City language: en type: magazine reference: 'N. L. Nelson, "A Modern Study of the Resurrection", *Improvement Era* 26, no. 6 (April 1923): 497–510.' source: url: https://archive.org/details/improvementera2606unse transcription: Transcribed from the Internet Archive scan of each issue (the item for each issue is named in the issue's own source); unnumbered advertising leaves are omitted, printed page numbers are kept as page markers. identifier: improvementera2606unse start_page: 497 end_page: 510 rights: status: public-domain basis: US publication 1930 or earlier (published 1923-04) source: https://archive.org/details/improvementera2606unse publication_year: 1923 note: The Internet Archive item metadata carries a blanket "© Copyright by Intellectual Reserve, Inc." notice. The library owner judged it inapplicable because this issue was published in 1923, before 1931; a scan-level notice does not restore copyright. --- # A Modern Study of the Resurrection IMPROVEMENT ERA Vol. XXVI APRIL, 1923 No. 6 A Modern Study of the Resurrection By Professor N. L. Nelson "I am tJie Resurrection and the Life: he that believeth in me, though he die, yet shall lie live?— John 11:25. Next to celebrating the birth of our Savior, there could be no commemoration more appropriate than that of his resur- rection. The dates of both events were fixed arbitrarily by the Catholic church through the supposed need of Christianizing two noted pagan festivals: the Yule-fest of Scandinavian myth- ology, and Easter-tide, a spring festival in honor of a Saxon god- dess. Both of these epochal dates in the life of Jesus presum- ably fall in April; his birth on April 6, and his resurrection on the Sunday following the feast of the Passover, our present Easter Sunday, which varies from March 22 to April 25. It is not without significance that Christ's coming to earth and his return to the Father, both of which events resulted in new spiritual life to man, should fall during a season when nature is passing through her annual resurrection and new growth, new beauties of form and color, new prophecies of a glorious fruitage, have come to sleeping mother earth. During the last century, however, the concept of the resur- rection as it affects man has undergone a profound modification in many Christian churches. Instead of a reuniting of the dis- embodied spirit with a new immortal body of flesh and bone— "as ye see me have" said Christ — the resurrection is now con- ceived to be completed at the moment when the spirit is re- leased from its earthly tabernacle. This view has been adopted probably to escape the appar- ently insuperable difficulties connected with the Bible view, Entered at the Pc\st Office, Salt Lake City, Utah, as second class matter. Ac- ceptance for mailing at special rate of postage provided for in Section no?, Act of October 3, 1917, authorised on July t, 1918, $2 per annum. Address Room 406 Church Office Building, Salt Lake City, Utah 498 IMPROVEMENT ERA and also perhaps because modern, spiritualism demonstrates that the released spirit is a body as real and tangible in the spirit- plane, asxis the earthly body here and now. Such a conception, moreover, while it cannot be sustained by scripture, does nevertheless fit admirably into Paul's classic description of the great change which comes to the body; viz: "It is sown in corruption; it is raised in incorruption. It is sown in dishonor; it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness; it is raised in power. It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body there is also a spiritual body. So also it is written: The first man Adam became a living soul ; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit. * * * The first man is of the earth-earthy; the second man is of heaven."1 Now while the Latter-day Saint elder may abundantly mar- shal passages to overthrow this modern conception, yet for his pains he will have tumbling about his ears the agelong contra, dictions between what science and common sense seem to teach on one side, and what holy writ declares on the other. Let us, however, nothing daunted, try to think our way through this mystic jungle until we shall see daylight all along our pathway, for surely any contradictions between the natural and the supernatural can be only apparent, not real, if both are true. The very first difficulty occurs in the passage quoted at the head of this article, wherein Jesus says, "I am the resur- rection and the life." The resurrection must be regarded as an effect — a tremendous effect; and whatever the cause may be, it must be conceived as wider, deeper, more potent than that, for instance, of the sun, since it applies to organic changes in a million-million souls now waiting behind the veil. How, let us ask, is it possible for Jesus Christ, a limited personality, the resurrected and perfected Man, to be so widely distributed and so universal a Power as is implied in the words "Resurrection and Life"? Now it is evident, by a score of passages, that the Lord de- sires us to enlarge our conception of Him in just that way. Read, for instance, verses 6 to 13 of section 88, Doctrine and Cove- nants, wherein the spirit of (84:45-6) Christ is said to be "in all things and through all things, the light of truth;" the light and the power of the sun, the moon, the stars, and the earth; "the light that quickeneth our understanding; the light which is in all things, which giveth life to all things, and is the law by which all things are governed — even the power of God." If man can conceive Christ as being all this, it will not be difficult to understand how He can be the effective cause be- hind the resurrection. It would mean, however, that Christ ]I Cor. 15:42-47. R. V.; Doc. and Cov. 88:27, 28. A MODERN STUDY OF THE RESURRECTION 499 must be conceived as an infinite power, a power co-extensive with the universe, and the very quintessence of its eternal ■ energy. Let us realize, moreover, at the start, that the thoughtful man and woman of today — the man and woman educated to per- ceive how God creates, and how he controls, the forces of life in the world of nature — needs just such a conception of Jesus — or rather of the power called Christ which Jesus wields — in order to have a living, virile faith in the resurrection. Time was among the Latter-day Saints when the hey presto! superstition of how the long sleep is to be brought to an end, was widely prevalent: the notion embodied in the blowing of a trumpet, followed by the gaping of graves, and the rising of the "sheeted dead," gasping for breath and shaking the dust out of their hoary locks! But it is safe to say that no one has really ever had faith in such a conception— at least not the kind of faith advocated by Latter-day Saints; for to have such faith, the human mind requires that causes shall ever seem adequate to effects. If this article shall help create such a real faith in the resurrection, shall help take the how* when, and what of the resurrection out of the realm of mystery, so that our young peo- ple, trained as they now are in scientific thinking, shall give this epochal event in our psychic progress the same full-hearted credence that they give to the recurrent phenomena of nature, then it will have been worth while to disturb the cut-and-dried conceptions still lingering among us from sectarian theology. As a beginning, then, let us consider that splendid analogy of the resurrection, already referred to, which is just now tak- ing place over the whole northern hemisphere. No one finds unbelievable, or even strange, this universal awakening of the vegetable life that has slept through the long winter; simply because (1) it has happened so often before, and (2) we per- ceive that the cause of it, viz, the diffusion of light and warmth from the sun, is co-extensive with the effect, and exactly pro- portional to it. But suppose we had never actually seen the return of spring; that we had seen only the death which takes place dur- ing every autumn and winter. And then suppose some man — even a man claiming divine power — to proclaim, "I am the resurrection and the life of nature; whoever believes in me shall behold again the grass and the flowers." Do you see now, measuring the apparent littleness of the man against the bigness of reanimated nature, we should doubt his power to bring it about? In order to create a similar trust in so mighty an awaken. 500 IMPROVEMENT ERA ing of spiritual life as the resurrection, it also must seem to have behind it, not merely the word of command of the risen Redeemer, but also the application of a power co-extensive with the universe — "the power which is in all things and through all things, which givetli life to all things — even the power of God who is in the bosom of eternity." On the other hand, we must not fall into the error of Christian sects in general, to whom God is merely an unem- bodied essence; for the very opening revelation of Jesus to our dispensation was to teach mankind that this universal spirit of life interwoven with all things resides for executive purposes in a definite Personality — God the Father, and is delegated, so far as our earth is concerned, to another definite Personality — Jesus the Christ — which Christ not only created the world, but also controls it down to so small a thing as the falling of a sparrow. In other words, this Power — which is "in all things, through all things," which constitutes the "life and cause of all things," and is consequently the power behind the resurrection — this Power stands evidently for the Christ-aspect of the man Jesus. It is what the Savior referred to in himself when He said, "All power is given me whether in Heaven or on earth." It is prob- ably what we mean by Priesthood, the fulness of which is God- hood. It is Christhood or the power that saves, develops, ex- alts, glorifies. Now while these two aspects, the God-power and the Being who wields it, are forever one and indissoluble in Jesus — nay, we may well suspect that as mortals we can know the nature of the first only as it is dispensed to us by the second — yet in order to have a living, virile faith in the resurrection, it is well also to remember that Christ is not merely a man, but a man clothed with a universal Power; a Power which saturates the universe and vibrates through all created things, and which in its wider aspects is the cause of all things (see John l"-3, 4) ; or to quote again from modern revelation, it is "the light which is in all things, which givetli life to all things * * * tne ]aw Dy which all things are governed — even the power of God;" but which, in its more limited or purely religious aspect is Life — that is to say, eternal Life, or "the life which is the light of men;" and one aspect of this Life or light is the resurrection, or power which conquers death ; in short, it iq that divine some- thing invested in Jesus, which makes of the son of Mary the Redeemer, the Savior; Christ is the power that saves and re- stores— the "power of God unto salvation." Let a person once know the reality and universality of Jesus as the Christ or as Christhood — a thing possible to man only as he is born anew (see John 3:3), and it is easy to have A MODERN STUDY OF THE RESURRECTION 501 faith in the resurrection. But without such a testimony, no other concept in man's eternal course of being is so hard to believe; for the lesson taught by what we falsely call death is overwhelmingly negative: "Out, out brief candle," says Shakespeare. "Man's but a walking shadow, a poor player that frets and struts his hour up- on the stage, and then is heard no more." And long before Shakespeare, indeed, over 3000 years ago, the same pessimistic idea was put into these words: "For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts; even one thing befalleth them: as the one dieth, so dieth the other; yea, they all have one breath; so that a man hath no preeminence over a beast; but all is vanity." (Eccles. 3:19.) And yet, whenever during the ages the "light of Christ" has illumined man's soul, this sublime truth of the resurrection has stood out bright and clear along with the other concepts in the plan of salvation. "Though after my skin worms destroy this body," ex- claimed Job, "yet in my flesh shall I see God." And to revive hope in Israel, who had lost faith in a resurrection, saying, "Our bones are dried, our hope is lost," the Lord led Ezekiel to a valley filled with the bleached remnants of men, and com- manded: "Prophesy upon these bones, and say — Behold I will lay sinews upon you, and will bring flesh upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and ye shall live." And the Prophet adds: "So I prophesied, as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood upon their feet, an exceeding great army."2 In spite, however, of such glowing testimonies, want of faith continued in Israel; so that an entire sect, the Sadducees, made specific denial of a resurrection the cardinal tenet of their religion. The time arrived at length when this glorious hope was to receive actual demonstration in the resurrection of Jesus. Yet even thereafter, and in the very ranks of the Church founded on this sublime truth, there were doubters. And to them Paul addresses himself in the first epistle to the Corinthians: "How say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead? * * * We have testified of God that he raised up Christ: whom he raised not up, if it so be that the dead rise not. For if the dead rise not, then is not Christ raised: and if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain: ye are yet in your sins. Then they also which are fallen asleep in Christ are perished. If in this life only we have hope in Christ we are of all men most pitiable."3 2Ezek. 37:1-16. Read the whole passage. As an exposition of the fact of the resurrection the picture is sublime and comforting. But whoever finds in it also the manner of the resurrection may get into difficulties. 3I Cor. 15:12-19. The writer avails himself of the Revised version, when the meaning seems clearer. 502 IMPROVEMENT ERA Do you perceive how vital Paul makes the doctrine of the resurrection ? It is conceivable that the saints so sharply reprimanded may have admitted that Christ himself was resurrected, being the Son of God, and yet have denied the same glory for sinful hu- manity. Paul sets forth therefore, (1) that Christ's resurrection was not an individual miracle, but a typical example in the scheme of salvation, and was brought about to create a saving faith in mankind; and (2) that if this doctrine should be proved false, then the entire plan of salvation falls to the ground. Nor is it difficult to follow Paul's reasoning: Salvation im- plies eternal progress; to be barred at any stage along the line, is to be damned — as effectually and in like manner as a stream would be, if shut off by a dam. Thus were the sons of perdition damned by not winning for themselves a second estate: so should we be damned by not being able to move onward and upward from the spirit-world. Since, then, our salvation depends upon the fact of a ^resur- rection, let us briefly go over the objective evidences for it. Take first Paul's testimony concerning Jesus: "That He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the scriptures ; and that He was seen of Cephas, then of the twelve ; after that he was seen of above 500 brethren at once; of whom the greater part remain to this present [A. D. 59], but some are fallen asleep. After that He was seen of James, then of all the Apostles; and last of all He was seen of me also, as of one born out of due season." Paul mentions; only five 'appearances of the risen Savior; but the gospels enumerate ten before his ascension, and one — - to Paul — afterwards. And altogether there were over five hun- dred witnesses of the fact. Moreover, these visits occurred at intervals during forty days, and under circumstances which in- volved the senses of seeing and hearing, and in some instances touch. It is impossible therefore to doubt the fact of Christ's resurection. Consider next that these witnesses lived after the event, some of them for three quarters of a century; also that, al- though it was a period of the utmost recrimination and perse, cution, yet the enemies of the Church did not find a single wit- ness breaking down, showing collusion, or contradicting his testimony. It is not probable, therefore, that there could have been any error; Christ was really resurrected, the first fruits of an eternal principle of salvation. But Latter-day Saints have still further proof. The Book of Mormon adds its testimony of the risen Redeemer, as do also many witnesses during the present dispensation. More- over, this latter-day testimony extends to others besides Christ. A MODERN STUDY OF THE RESURRECTION 503 The first resurrected being to appear to the youthful Prophet, after the Father and the Son, was Moroni, whose mortal life wag passed on this continent only a few centuries ago. Next came John the Baptist, who conferred the Aaronic Priesthood upon Joseph and Oliver; then Peter and James, evidently resurrected beings, who were associated with John the Revelator, a trans- lated being, in conferring the Melchizedek Priesthood; then came Moses, Elias, and Elijah, resurrected or translated beings, who in the Kirtland Temple, April 3, 1836, delivered the keys of their respective dispensations to the Prophet. Associated with this last thought of the resurrection is a vivid incident in my own life. In 1887, thirty or more of us missionaries were returning from the Southern states; and President John Morgan, who was with us, had arranged for a private car. Here three times a day we held services, singing, prayer, and preaching. One sermon in particular is memorable. It was on the resurrection, and President Morgan closed with these words : "Brethren, if you are able to receive it, the resur- rection is going on now." The thought occasioned only momentary surprise; espe- cially when we recalled the great number of resurrected beings who have figured in the launching of our own dispensation. Not only is the resurrection now going on; it has probably been go- ing on since Jesus broke the bonds of death and the grave. It is only by considering the resurrection as continuous, that we can conceive it as part of an organic whole which we call the Plan of Salvation. Birth in heaven, preexistence, mortal birth, mortal life, death, after-life existence — are they not all organic links in a lengthening chain; events interwoven by eter- nal causes and effects? Why then should there be a halt at the next step? Must we not consider the resurrection, not as something arbitrary, spectacular, dramatic, or climacteric, as is often done ; but rather as the inevitable and logical outcome of all the previous steps? If this thought is correct, then our turn to be resurrected will come when we grow ripe for the advanced life to which resurrection is the door. And now shall we permit ourselves to ask how the marvel- ous event will be brought about? Only if we are willing to bear in mind that in doing so we enter upon purely speculative ground. However, if intensity of interest is ever a justification for wondering and pondering, then we have reason for venturing to feel our way to the answer of this question, with whatever wisdom we may possess. For which of us has not given heart- pledges to the grave? Which of us does not look, sooner or later, for his own summons into the valley of the shadow of death? 504 IMPROVEMENT ERA Let U8, first, then, get fairly before us the essential factors of the question. Whenever we think of the resurrection we are likely to picture the grave as containing the sum total of our problem. But only a fraction of the dead ever get into graves, and of those that do, how many remain for even a hun- dred years where they were reverently planted? Where today are the millions of bodies overwhelmed by the flood? The millions that later swarmed the valleys of the Euphrates and Nile? Nay the billions that l^e returned to mother earth every century for thousands of years? Man seeks to protect his dead against the relentless forces of life, but all he gets for his anxiety is a brief delay. Essen- tially what happens to the mortal tenement of the beast and the tree, happens also to man; just as a certain text in Eccle- siastes tells us. They all disintegrate into gases and fertilizers, which are then promptly re-incorporated into new forms of life. It takes a little courage to face this grim fact, yet when we do face it, how beautiful it becomes! Death endlessly re- woven into life ! Instinctively we recall Whittier's fine lines : "For Life is ever lord of Death, And love can never lose its own." Moreover, by contrast, what a charnel house our fair world would soon become, were this beneficent law not in constant operation! Consider as a typical illustration the case of Roger Wil- liams, first apostle of religious liberty in America. When he passed on, his devoted followers planted an apple tree above his grave, and for a century and a half it remained a living shrine to thousands of religious pilgrims from all over the world, many of whom ate of its fruit. Finally when the tree too died, the good people of Rhode Island considered it a fit- ting time to collect the ashes of their moral hero, and place them beneath a more enduring monument. But the apple tree had anticipated them. Nine-tenths of his body, the moisture, had long ago been liberated into the blue of heaven through its leaves, and as to his dust, the diggers found on breaking through the mouldering casket only a whorl of hungry roots; whence arose the conundrum, "Who ate Roger Williams?" Life always finds its way, sooner or later, to the hiding place of death. It was the recognition of this beautiful law that led the beloved "poet of the Sierras" to meet his fair antagonist more than half way, and with a smile on his face; for he di. rected that his body be cremated and his ashes be scattered from a high peak to the four winds of his native state. Here was probably his reasoning: "Ninety-six percent of A MODERN STUDY OF THE RESURRECTION 505 my body is water which the furnace will immediately set free to mingle with the clouds; the rest of me is plant-food, the 'dust of the earth' which I have gathered from the living forms of life. If this dust shall help invigorate the roots of the flowers T have loved so long, and at the same time the over-hanging cloud shall distill its part of me to refresh their glorious petals, how could I ask a more delightful passage to the great Beyond?" In contemplating which thought, the reader may well ask, "What poem written during his life was more eloquent than that enacted at his death?" Our problem now narrows itself to two questions: First, Will it be more difficult for the Lord of Life to find new spiritual bodies for Roger Williams and Joaquin Miller, than, for instance, to resurrect that Pharaoh whose mummy is still intact enough to be photographed? Let the reader an- swer this question for himself. Second, Wherein resides the potentiality of being resur- rected: in the body that disintegrates to be interwoven again and again into new forms of life, or in the substance and texture of the spirit which lives on? Let us suggest the answer to this question by asking another: Wherein resides the potentiality of a new life: in the yellow leaf that flutters to the ground to be changed to mould, or in the bright new bud which is left be- hind on the tree? Our consideration of the foregoing factors of life and death enable us to reach with some degree of probability the following conclusions: In the first place we may say with much confi- dence that the resurrection will be a natural process. All life teaches that there are no other processes in God's economy, how- ever mechanical man's ways may be by comparison. Take for instance the event which opens the door out of pre-existence into earth-life — our human birth. To us it has become utterly commonplace and matter-of-fact; yet to spirits unborn may it not seem as inexplicable and difficult of belief as is the resur- rection to us? Indeed, looked at rightly, that is to say, through revela- tion of the spiritual side, and through the discoveries of science on the material side, what event could be more marvelous? A microscopic cell fertilizing an infinitesimal ovum, then divid- ing and subdividing, billion-fold, till it produces a full-grown man! Out of the dust of the earth, too, as was Adam; but dust refined through the flowers into honey, the grasses into milk and flour, and through a thousand other of nature's laboratories in- to human food! Why should we not believe that our celestial body will be built up organically, atom by atom, from spirit-elements pro- 506 IMPROVEMENT ERA duced in the celestial world? in a way, if not similar, at least analogous to that in which our mortal bodies are drawn from the natural world? At any rate, such is the suggestion made by St. Paul: "But some one will say, how are the dead raised, and with what man- ner of body do1 they come? Thou foolish one, that which thou thyself sowest is not quickened except it die— thou sowest not the body that shall be — but, [like unto] a bare grain, it may chance of wheat or some other kind: God giveth it a body as it hath pleased him, and to each seed a body of its own. * * * It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body."4 What more perfect analogy of a natural resurrection could we have than this? Something passes, truly, from the dying kernel into the green stalk of wheat — the soul of the dying kernel, as it were ; but the new kernels are not formed from the old body, but are drawn from soil and air and sunshine. Will not the immortal tabernacle probably be drawn in a similar way from the spiritual laboratories of an immortal world? Those passages like Ezekiel 37:12, where the Lord says, "I will open your graves and cause you to come out of your graves," can hardly be taken literally ; since only a fraction of the world's dead have ever been put into graves, and the last traces of all buried bodies are soon gone, by reason of their transmutations in the laboratories of nature. As before intimated, it is prob. ably the fact of the resurrection rather than the method which is here set forth. And if it be asked why God chose this particular imagery, the answer is that in communicating any mystery to man, God is conditioned by man's range of interpretation. To have spoken to ancient Israel in terms of the modern scientific world — such as are being used in this article — would have been tantamount either to conveying no message at all, or one of utter confusion. At this point it may be well to think ourselves into line with a notable interpretation by the Prophet Joseph Smith, reiterated years after by President Brigham Young, who main- tained that howsoever the natural material of one body may disintegrate and be incorporated into another, there is in man's tabernacle an essence which never enters into any other being, 4Acts 15:35-38. Revised Version. The words in brackets seem ob viously necessary in this comparison between what happened respectively to the kernel of wheat planted and the body laid away in the grave. It may be objected that the seed which succeeds the seed, is posterity. True enough, looked at from one angle; but for Paul's purpose of showing how the immortal body is to come, it serves equally well to shadow forth the resurrection. A MODERN STUDY OF THE RESURRECTION 507 but awaits the resurrection to be builded back into the body from which death has released it for a time.5 The Prophet does not deny that the water of our bodies is water; the lime, lime; the carbon, carbon; and so on of a score of minerals. Nor does he deny that these elements act in nature precisely like identical elements found elsewhere. His idea, as I interpret it, is that behind and beneath these mortal sub- stances is a spiritual entity which once having been specialized to a given ego, remains individualized in God's infinite store house, awaiting the call of the resurrection to form the new im- mortal tabernacle. This great thought will be better understood when we consider the kind of body our Savior had after the resurrection. It was indeed of "flesh and bones" as he declared; but what kind of flesh and bones is that which passes through solid sub- stances, like doors or walls, and which at one instant can be seen and felt on the mortal plane, and at the next, becomes in- visible? To build up a resurrected body of this type, that is to say, a spiritual, immortal body, would require something like that very essence or entity of which the Prophet Joseph and President Young speak. But why quibble over so refined a detail as this? Sufficient for us to believe that our Father who found a natural way to give us our mortal bodies, will find a way — quite as natural and inevitable, to give us our new spiritual bodies. If then our faith can once accept this beautiful thought of a spiritually organic resurrection, it will forever set at rest all doubts and quibbles as to the kind of bodies that will be resur- rected; whether crippled, aged, decrepit, deformed, weakly, sickly, demented bodies shall rise, because such were laid in the grave; also it will set at rest all other questions such as Job's, of worms consuming the body, or sharks, or the roots of trees, or other vegetable life, such as must quickly happen to the recent terrible plantings in the shallow trenches of Europe; for if the new body shall grow naturally out of some dormant bud of a previous life hidden as it were, in the very texture of the spirit as it goes unto the spirit world, there is no reason to sup- pose that the new body will be affected by the mere accidents 5At a conference, April 6, 1843, at which President Brigham Young was present, the Prophet Joseph Smith spoke as follows to a remark of Elder Orson Pratt that a man's body changes every seven years: "There is no fundamental principle belonging to a human system that ever goes into another in this world or in the world to come; I care not what the theories of men are. We have a testimony that God will raise us up, and he has the power to do it. If anyone supposes that any part of our bodies, that is, the fundamental parts thereof, ever goes into another body, he is mistaken." — History of the Church, volume 5, page 339. — Editors- 508 IMPROVEMENT ERA or congestions of that previous existence; any more than a plant which springs anew from the root, should he fated to repeat last year s accidental deformity. But more fascinating, perhaps, than even the when and how is the what that will be resurrected. Here, fortunately, we are on safer ground. "Whatever principles of intelligence we attain unto in this life," says Joseph Smith, "will rise with us in the resurrection." Note the fact that he does not say whatever knowledge we attain to, will rise with vis; only such knowledge as shall have been transmuted into power; in which case it has ceased to be knowledge and has become character or intelligence. This is precisely what our knowledge of psychology should lead us to expect. Facts not apperceived cannot remain very long with us even in mortal life. Why then should we expect to have them cross the grave? Moreover, we already have a com- plete analogy of this law. From pre-existence comes, with our spirits, not a single fact of that previous life which might be called knowledge; whereas our intelligence evidently does come from that primal world — comes as the accumulated effect or mo- mentum in character of such pre-mortal facts as were then ap- perceived and so made integral parts of our spirits.6 Our intelligence is the measure or degree of our likeness to our heavenly Father; the daily trial-balance of our state of perfection — and therefore also of our imperfection. Intelli- gence, being eternal, must go with us; it could not be left in the grave. But what of our ignorance, our weaknesses, our sins? Will these be mercifully left behind? Certainly not. They may be forgiven, but that fact does not change them to virtues. They will be there, not perhaps as something positive or ag- gressive, but as represented by the blanks and gaps in our in- telligence— crevices which we shall thereafter have to fill out and round off. In mortal life no functioning of intelligence — or of wis- dom, character, power, or virtue, for they are all synonymous — is conceivable without its physical correlative in head or heart or hand. Now, as above pointed out, the intelligence will be resurrected, as a matter of course, being a thing inherent in the soul; but could this intelligence function in that advanced life, any more than here, without the reconstitution of its physi- cal vehicle? Could the musician play without his delicately trained fingers, the thinker invent without his marvelously in- 6It does not follow, however, that the memory associated with mortal or post-mortem intelligence, will be veiled by the resurrection, as our pre- existent memory is now occluded by mortality. Indeed, all the communi- cations we have had with resurrected beings indicates the contrary. A MODERN STUDY OF THE RESURRECTION 509 terwoven brain.cells, the scientist experiment without his keenly alert senses? It will be a trained body we take up, if it be a trained body we lay down. Space precludes further philosophizing in sup- port of this thought; but is it not reasonable and even matter of observation that exercise knits ever finer and finer the cells of the organ used? Presumably therefore it must effect a sim- ilar modification in the soul-texture corresponding thereto. Con- sequently, will not the new immortal matter — or if you prefer, will not the spiritual matter individualized by us in mortality — when it comes to be reinterwoven with the spirit, follow, cell by cell, the pattern of the spirit-meshes wrought into the soul by mortal life? Nor is it reasonable to hold that mortal experiences only, will effect modification of the resurrected body. That our life in the spirit world, between death and the resurrection, will also help to modify the texture of our immortal tabernacles, seems evident from Paul's allusion to souls "tortured, not ac- cepting delherance, that they might receive a better resur- rection." (Heb. 11:35.) Suffice it to close further discussion of this subject with the scriptural assurance that without such a double resurrection (of intelligence and its vehicle), perfection is impossible. "The elements," says a modern revelation, "are the tabernacle of God. * * * Man is spirit * * * and spirit and element inseparably connected, receiveth a fulness of joy ; and when sep- arated man cannot receive a fulness of joy." (Doc. and Cov. 93:33.) If now Christ's saying, "I am the Resurrection and the Life," has been made deeper in meaning and more significant; if we have learned something of the how, the when, and the what of the resurrection, let us consider next the meaning of the Savior's gracious promise: "He that helieveth in me, though he die, yet shall he live." Two questions present themselves: (1) What does it mean to believe in Christ? and (2) What is the nature of the life he promises to those who believe? Both questions are answered in this splendid passage from modern revelation, perhaps the most illuminating of all scripture concerning the resurrection: "And again we bear record — for we saw and heard, and this is the testimony of the gospel of Christ concerning them who shall come forth in the resurrection of the just — they are they who received the testimony of Jesus, and believed on his name and were baptized after the manner of his burial, being buried in the water in his name, and this according to the commandment which he has given — that by keeping the! commandments they might be washed and cleansed from all their sins, and receive the Holy Spirit by the laying on of the hands of him who is ordained and sealed unto 510 IMPROVEMENT ERA this power; and who overcome by faith, and are sealed by the Holy .Spirit of promise, which the Father sheds forth upon all those who are just and true. \ "They are they who are the church of the Firstborn. They are they into whose hands the Father has given all things — they are they who are priests and kings, who have received of his fulness, and of his glory; and are priests of the Most High, after the order of Melchizedek, which was after the order of Enoch, which was after the order of the Only Begotten Son. Wherefore, as it is written, they are gods, even the sons of God— where- fore, all things are theirs, whether life or death, or things present, or things to come, all are theirs and they are Christ's, and Christ is God's. "And they shall overcome all things. Wherefore, let no man glory in man, but rather let him glory in God, who shall subdue all enemies under his feet. These shall dwell in the presence cf God and his Christ forever and ever. These are they whom he shall bring with him, when he shall come in the clouds of heaven to reign on the earth over his people. These are they who shall have part in the first resurrection. These are they who shall come forth in the resurrection of the just. "These are they who are come unto Mount Zion, and' unto the city of the living God, the heavenly pla e, the holiest of all. These are they who have come to an innumerable company of angels, to the general as- sembly and church of Enoch, and of the Firstborn. These are they whose names are written in heaven, where God and Christ are the judge of all. These are they who are just men made perfect through Jesus the mediator of the new covenant, who wrought out this perfect atonement through the shedding of his own blood. These are they whose bodies are celestial, whose glory the sun of the firmament is written of as being typical."7 Would that this passage might be said truly to picture the resurrection of all who make covenants with God by bap- tism. Unfortunately, it portrays the state of only a fraction, even in the Church; of those, namely, who achieve the celestial glory. For those who "receive not a testimony," or who, hav- ing received one, are "not valiant" in living up to the divine ideal, there is a lower resurrected state, the terrestrial; while for those who know not Christ at all, the schismatics of all sects, "innumerable as the stars," there is a third glory, the telestial. As to these two lower resurrected states, the reader should study the rest of this marvelous revelation. 7Doc. and Cov. 76:50-70. The Resurrection "The soul shall be restored to the body, and the body to the soul; yea, and every limb and joint shall be restored to its body; yea even a hair of the head shall not be lost ; but all things shall be restored to their proper and perfect frame." — Alma 40:23. "Ye shall have hope through the atonement of Christ and the power of his resurrection, to be raised unto life eternal, and this because of your faith in him." — Moroni 7:41.