to the kingdom of dead matter. It is at length dissolved and dissipated, and its various particles return to their appropriate places; the earth, the air and the water, each receiving its respective share. Its particles being thus returned into the various elementary forms of matter, continue to subserve the various purposes for which matter exists. Such is the certain and inevitable destiny which awaits the mortal body. Even while held together by the spirit's living energy it is every moment changing. It appears to be the same body from one year to another only because it is the same spirit that animates it, and retains its various and ever-changing particles in the same or a similar form. But when death removes it beyond the spirit's reach, it soon ceases to retain in any sense its identity as a human body. And will the various particles of the body thus dissolved and dissipated, ever be reorganized into a human body and given back to the spirit to which it once belonged?
We know that many great and learned men have entertained such an opinion, and continue to advocate it through the pulpit and the press. The doctrine of a literal resurrection of the material body is very clearly and forcibly expressed in its strictly orthodox form, in the following beautiful extract from a sermon by the Rev. Henry Melvill. The passage may also be found in No. 19, page 249 of the Christian Library, published by the American Tract Society. Mr. M. has long sustained the highest reputation as a pulpit orator, and is well known and highly esteemed as a talented and faithful expositor of those doctrines which are esteemed orthodox by the evangelical party, in the Church of England. A large volume of his Sermons has been republished in this country under the editorial charge of Bishop Mellvaine, of Ohio. Mr. Melvill says:
"We do not know, that, in the whole range of things effected by God, there is aught so surprising, regard being had only to the power displayed, as the resurrection of the
