THE RESURRECTION NOT IMPOSSIBLE.
A FEW weeks since, an article from the Phrenological Journal designed to prove the impossibility of the resurrection of the dead, was shown up in the REVIEW. Here is a similar statement of the case, from the Spiritual Rostrum of May, 1869: “Dust returning to dust.—It is asserted by scientific writers that the number of persons who have existed on our globe since the beginning of time amounts to 36,627,843,273,075,256. These figures when divided by 3,095,000—the number of square leagues on the globe—leave 11,320,689,732 square miles of land; which being divided as before, give 1,314,622,076 persons to each square mile. If we reduce these miles to square rods, the number will be 1,853,174,600,000; which, divided in like manner, will give 1,283 inhabitants to each square rod, and these being reduced to feet, will give about five persons to each square foot of terra firma. It will thus be perceived that our earth is a vast cemetery. On each square rod of it 1,283 human beings lie buried, each rod being scarcely sufficient for ten graves, with each grave containing 128 persons. The whole surface of our globe, therefore, has been dug over 128 times to bury its dead!”
“From this extract it will be seen that there is not dust enough now, if all the soil were converted to dust, to re-make the bodies that have existed on earth.”
REMARKS. 1. The writer in the Phrenological Journal stated the whole number of human beings that have lived upon the globe at 27,000,000,000,000,000. The writer in the Spiritual Rostrum makes the number one-third larger, and even gives the exact figures; viz., 36,627,843,273,075,256! 2. But neither of these writers gives any data to show that their statements are really calculations, and not mere guesses, or random figuring. Here is a brief statement of the case, that can be appreciated by all. Our world has stood some 6000 years, according to the chronology of the Bible. The calculations of geologists assign an immensely longer period to our world's existence, but they do not claim that man has existed on the earth for a longer period than the Bible allows. So we may, upon the authority of the Bible, and with the consent of geology, fix the duration of men upon the globe at 6000 years. If we fix the period from one generation to another at an average of 30 years, and this is certainly as small a number of years as we can adopt, we shall have 200 generations from the beginning, to the present time. There are now alive upon the earth, about 1,000,000,000. If we allow this number to each of the 200 generations of mankind, we shall have a sum total of 200,000,000,000. This calculation is probably too large, in the number of generations of mankind, and in assigning 1,000,000,000 to each generation it is immensely larger than the actual number. But the Spiritual Rostrum makes it 180,000 times that number! 3. The writer next divides 36,627,843,273,075,256, the number of persons which he asserts have lived upon the globe, by 3,095,000, “the number of square leagues on the globe,” and to use his extraordinary language, the result is that these figures “leave 11,320,689,732 square miles of land”! That is to say, dividing the number of inhabitants, by the number of square leagues of the earth's surface, gives us the number of square miles! This is a most preposterous absurdity. What would the reader think of this plan of ascertaining the number of square miles in a township? Suppose the town to have 2,000 inhabitants, and six square leagues of territory; this method of computation would give us 330 square miles in the six square leagues! Or if we should more exactly imitate our author, and make all the people that ever lived in the town the dividend, we would have a much larger number of square miles for that town's surface! 4. This writer asserts that there are 3,095,000 “square leagues on the globe.” But in the same sentence he says that there are “11,320,689,732 square miles of land.” Now a square league contains just 9 square miles. In other words it is a piece of land three miles square. Now if we multiply 3,095,000, the number of square leagues he assigns to the land upon the earth, by 9, the number of square miles in a square league, it gives 27,855,000, as the number of square miles upon the earth's surface. But he makes it 11,320,689,732! If, therefore, he has stated the number of leagues rightly, the number of square miles would be readily ascertained at 27,855,000, as each league has 9 square miles! But this writer makes it 400 times that number! He has a different way of getting at the facts. Instead of multiplying the number of square leagues by 9, in order to get the number of square miles, he takes the whole number of inhabitants that he says have lived since the world began, and divides that by the number of square leagues! 5. But he does not state the number of square leagues of land upon the earth's surface correctly. Instead of 3,095,000 there are more than twice that number. Johnson's large Family Atlas in that part assigned to Physical Geography, p. 6, states the number of square miles of land at 60,000,000, which divided by nine gives 6,666,666 square leagues. 6. But though the number of square leagues really determines the number of square miles, yet this writer makes the square leagues only half as many as they really are, and then makes the number of square miles 11,320,689,732 instead of 60,000,000! That is, he makes the square miles of our earth about 188 times their real number! 7. He does not even divide correctly the number of inhabitants he assigns to the earth, by the number of leagues of our earth's surface; to say nothing of the absurdity of this method of ascertaining the number of square miles. 8. Having ascertained the number of square miles, he next asserts that there have been 1,314,622,076 to each square mile. Yet if we divide the number of inhabitants as he gives them, by the number of square miles as reckoned by him, we shall make the number to a square mile 3,235,478. In other words he makes the number to a square mile 406 times as many as his own data allow! 9. Having stated the number of square miles with so many strange blunders, he does not even succeed in correctly reducing these to square rods. He says that there are 11,320,689,732 square miles, and that this amounts to 1,853,174,600,000 square rods. But if the reader will multiply the number of square miles as he gives them, by 102,400, the number of square rods in a square mile, it amounts to 1,159,238,628,556,800, or 625 times more than he gives it! 10. But he says there have been 1,283 inhabitants to each square rod. If, however, we take the number of inhabitants as he gives them, and divide this by the number of square rods which he assigns to the land upon the earth, instead of 1,283 we have 19,764! But if we take the number of square miles as he gives them, and correctly reduce them to square rods, and then divide the number of inhabitants as estimated by him, by the number of square rods, it gives just 31 to a square rod, instead of 1,283, as he has it! 11. If his figuring of 1,283 to each square rod were correct, then it would indeed assign about 5 persons to a square foot. But dividing his number of inhabitants by his number of square rods gives about 15 times as many to a square foot! If we reduce the square miles he assigns to the earth, to rods, and make this the basis of our calculation as above, then we have only 31 to a square rod, or about one to every 9 square feet. So his figuring here is very similar to all that precedes it in his article. 12. But the writer is quite too modest. He says that the globe has been dug over 128 times, allowing 10 graves to a square rod. But if we take his figures and make no effort to make them consistent with themselves we shall have the globe dug over 1,076 times, there being 10 times this number to a square rod! But if we reduce his square miles to square rods, we shall have the globe dug over three times to bury its inhabitants. There is therefore no consistency to his statements but contradiction and incoherence. 13. But we invite the reader's attention to a calculation more worthy of his confidence. We have seen that the inhabitants of the earth cannot have exceeded 200,000,000,000. There are 60,000,000 of square miles or 6,144,000,000,000 of square rods. This gives us 30 square rods for the burying place of each man. So much for this statement that “the whole surface of our earth has been dug over 128 times to bury its dead.” So much for the strange assertion “that there is not dust enough now if all the soil were converted to dust, to re-make the bodies that have existed on the earth.”