resurrection of the dead cannot be true. Such is the whole basis of their argument. O great Apostle St. Paul, come and preach to those people! But they will be like those to whom thou didst preach at Athens: “And when they had heard of the resurrection of the dead,” so we read in the Acts of the Apostles, “some indeed mocked, but others said: We will hear thee again concerning this matter.”[1] Truly that is a clever argument: we can not understand it, therefore it cannot be true! As if God had to limit His Almighty power by the narrow bounds of human understanding! Truly He would be a poor, weak God if He could do nothing except what we could understand!
There are many natural facts we do not understand. Listen for a moment, you who argue in that manner. There is a peasant sowing rye and wheat in his field; ask him why he does that? to what purpose is he scattering the good grain over the ground? It will certainly rot away and die. Yes, indeed, he will answer, and that is the reason why I am scattering it. What? you reply; would it not be wiser for you to make it into bread? No, he answers, it is clear you do not know what you are talking about; if we peasants did not act as I am acting now neither we nor you should have any bread for a long time. Come back in a few months, after the scattered grain has had time to rot in the ground; then you will see the whole field covered with stalks grown out of the dead seed, and each bearing thirty, forty, fifty such grains. But, you exclaim, I do not see how that can be. Nor I either, answers the peasant; still there is not a doubt about it. Now if you continue your former argument, and say no, that cannot be, for I do not understand it, the peasant will laugh at you, and think to himself: that must be a most learned doctor who will not even believe that corn grows! What do you say to this? continues the peasant. The tree you see over there was not there twenty years ago; I put a small, dry kernel in the ground, and now it has become that tree. Can you understand how a small seed as big as a pea can conceal the force necessary to produce so many boughs and branches? Tell me why the branches bend? why the trunk and the roots are immovable? why is the rind hard? the leaves green? the fruit soft and full of sap? All this comes from the virtue of the little seed that died in the ground. Can you understand how all that happens? Yet you may prove it yourself; if you take the trouble to plant
- ↑ Cum audissent autem resurrectionem mortuorum, quidam quidem irridebant, quidam vero dixerunt: Audiemus te de hoc iterum.—Acts xvii. 32.
