RETURRECTION OF THE BODY.

Press, Volume LVIII, Issue 17451, 11 May 1922, Page 11

RETURRECTION OF THE BODY.

ECHO OP THE HERESY HUNT.

(ITBOH OCR OWU COBRKSFONDINT. J

LONDON, March 31

"What was known as the Heresy, Huut, which the Iter. O. E. Douglas attempted to set in motion, recently finds an echo iir a book by ' 'Hakluyt/ Egerton," issued from the Faith Press. Tho writer of the volume, "Th© liedemption of the Body," introduces four lectures by (Mir Douglas, tho accuser of the Rev. H. D. A. Major, Principal of Ripon Hall, Oxford. In reviewing the bools the "Guardian" says: "The very able controversialist gives the BishoD of Oxford with his theologians sprue tnree shrewd hitfl, and he rather petulantly explains that Mr Douglas is not 'an ill-informed obscurantist/ but an exceptionally well-informed scholar. We do not doubt it. But there is one great difference between Mr Douglas and his champion. 'Hakluyt Egerton' is nothing if not clear and crisp; Mr Douglas is fuliginous. In a cloud of "words lie I mingles relevant and irrelevant matters, until it becomes increasingly difficult to see what he is at. He circles about Mr Major's phrase, 'physical integument,' and seems to allow that | anything which can properly be so named is indeed finally shed at death. | Then what becomes of his P | But something intelligible does at last I emerge from the cloud,- and we find | ourselves in agreement with it- The real issue is between belief in the immortality of the soul escaped from the body and belief in the resurrection of the unit which is soul and body. The former is Platonism, or' Gnosticism, or j Buddhism, or something of the kind; the latter is Christianity. ' 'Mr Douglas originally accused Mr Major of Buddhism. • But Mr Major has now explicitly "Said that he believes in the resurrection of the body, and he has even confessed in plain terms the resurrection of the flesh. Evidently, then, the only question between them 'is one of the mode of resurrection. But 'Hakluyt Egerton' explains with the utmost clearness that Mr Douglas did not charge Mr Major with error about the mode of resurrection, but with denying the fact of resurrection. So the charge fails. 'Cadit quaestio.' • Then why go on talking about it?" It was necessary, however, for Mr Major to make a correction. Writing to the "Guardian," he points out that in the above-quoted review "there appears a statement which will come with as much surprise to those who know me as it has come to myself—''Mr Major has now explicitly said that he belwves in the resurrection of the body, ,and he has even confessed in pl ain wnns the resurrection of tho flesh. My belief is that expressed: in 'A Resurreotion of Relics'—'the survival of death by a personality which has sncj*, it® piivsical integument for over. I adtled nothing to this, nor have I vnuidiawn anything from it." J