raise the dead?' Clearly no answer can be given by the pure agnostic.
But he will naturally say in reply, 'the question rather is, why should
it be thought credible with you that there is a God, or, if there is,
that he should raise the dead?' And I think the wise Christian will
answer, 'I believe in the resurrection of the dead, partly on grounds of
reason, partly on those of intuition, but chiefly on both combined; so
to speak, it is my whole character which accepts the whole system of
which the doctrine of personal immortality forms an essential part.' And
to this it may be fairly added that the Christian doctrine of the
resurrection of our bodily form cannot have been arrived at for the
purpose of meeting modern materialistic objections to the doctrine of
personal immortality; hence it is certainly a strange doctrine to have
been propounded at that time, together with its companion, and scarcely
less distinctive, doctrine of the vileness of the body. Why was it not
said that the 'soul' alone should survive as a disembodied 'spirit'? Or
if form were supposed necessary for man as distinguished from God, that
he was to be an angel? But, be this as it may, the doctrine of the
resurrection seems to have fully met beforehand the materialistic
objection to a future life, and so to have raised the ulterior question
with which this paragraph opens.


We have seen in the Introduction that all first principles even of
scientific facts are known by intuition and not by reason. No one can
deny this. Now, if there be a God, the fact is certainly of the nature
of a first principle; for it must be the first of all first principles.
No one can dispute this. No one can therefore dispute the necessary
conclusion, that, if there be a God, He is knowable, (if knowable at
all) by intuition and not by reason.