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are scattered—involves the future res urrection of the body which will be like, and yet unlike, the present body. Though every physical particle of the body shall have seemed to perish, yet the1personal identity of that body shall not be lost. God has made the body for Himself, and He will pre serve it, for Paul’s teaching is: The body is “for the Lord, and the Lord for the body.” Though the mystery is profound, yet we most assuredly believe that, as Paul puts it in Philip- pians 3:21: God “shall change oUr vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body, according to the working whereby he is able even to subdue all things unto him self.” We should not allow this mystery to perplex us, because similar mys teries are all about us even now. For instance, Ruskin, in his “Modern Painters,” draws attention to t h e la tent possibilities that lie in the thick, black mud or slime of the.footpath. The black slime is composed of four elements—clay, sand, soot, and wa ter. These four may each be sepa rated one from the other. The clay particles, left to follow their own instinct of unity, become a clear, hard substance, so set that it can deal with light in a wonderful way and gather out of it the loveliest blue ray only, refusing the rest. We call it, then, a sapphire. The sand arranges itself in mys terious infinitely parallel lines, which reflect the blue, green, purple, and red rays in the greatest beauty. We call it, then, an opal. The soot becomes the hardest thing in the world, and the blackness which it had obtains the' power of reflecting all the rays of the sun at once. We call it, then, a diamond. Last of all, water becomes a dew- drop, and a crystalline star of snow. Thus Ruskin reasons concerning the marvelous beauties that can be drawn from the black, sooty slime, by the power of the sun. A more glorious transformation,will take place when Jesus Christ trans lates the bodies of His own believers at-His coming. It is indeed difficult for us, even in our fondest imagina tion, to understand how this poor body is to be wrenched from us at death and then restored to us, a thing of beauty, and crowned with eternal glory. But it is just this glorious des tiny that awaits the redeemed. Be cause by His death and resurrection He “ abolished death, and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel,” in our body, soul, and spirit we shall be “ like him for we shall see him as he is.” Saviour? • y
twelve, these white-robed slaves arose, and one joyful shout was heard throughout all the land: “We are free! We are free! We are free!” Slavery was abolished by enactment a year before that, time, but only then was it abolished in fact. At the cross, the divine decree went forth: “Death is abolished!” But in the outworking of the divine purpose, death for the redeemed shall not be abolished in fact until the glorious sec ond advent o f our Lord. There is another interesting feature in this illustration of the emancipation of the slaves of the West Indies. These slaves had prepared a solid mahogany coffin, and had filled it with manacles, instruments of torture, chains, and all the paraphernalia that went with slav ery. As soon as they were actually free they shouted, “The monster is dead! The monster is dead!” Sometimes we have heard o f “trium phant deaths,” of Christians who have died victoriously. Indeed, death does ;not have the sting for the believer that it had before Christ died, for the believer has been saved from the fear of it. However, as far as the ultimate triumph over death is concerned, we must w a i t until the Lord descends “from heaven with a shout, with the voice of thè archangel,” because it will be then that the dead in Christ shall rise, and the living shall be changed. It will be then that death will be swal- lowd up in victory, and the grave will lose its prey. Then there will be the shout going up throughout the vast universe: “The monster is dead! The monster is dead!” Life Imparted - But C h r i s t has done more than abolish death. He has “brought life . . to light through the gospel.” Of what life does the apostle speak here? Cer tainly his readers were familiar, as we are, with natural life; therefore it can not be to natural life that he refers. Life as we know it, is far removed from that which we ought to possess. Human life is created'life. It is capable of only that kind of living which is on the human plane; but the life which Christ made manifest is the uncreated life of God. It is the life of the ages and has all the qualities o f the divine life which is in God. The qualities of that life are spiritual. It was that life that Christ brought to light through the gospel, and he who possesses it shall never die. His body may turn to corruption, but he shall live. That is what our Lord said to Mary at the tomb of Lazarus: “Whosoever . . . be- lieveth in me shall never die.” These words startle us. We know multitudes of fellow Christians who • Are you
have believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, and yet,have died. In the light of these words of Christ, we are led to ask: “Did they really die?” What does our Lord mean by the word “ dead,” in this instance? To the Lord Jesus Christ, .real death is spiritual death which is alienation of the soul from the life and blessed ness of God. When He spoke of phys ical death, He referred to it as a sleep. When He spoke of death, He spoke of something far more terrible than phys ical death—something of which phys ical death is only a dim and imper fect symbol. To the holy eyes of the Lord, all men who are alienated from the life that is in God are dead, even now. “Thou hast a name that thou livest, and art dead” (Rev. 3:1). How'many people are liv ing, and yet are divorced from the life that is in God, and know nothing of His declared Will and purpose of what He desires to accomplish in them both now and in the life to come? They are so wholly out of touch with God that, as John Jowett put it: “It would be true to say that nothing in their life would be vitally changed if it could be authoritatively proclaimed that God is dead.” That is the real death—»to live as though God were dead, to have no vital communion with Him. Aloof ness from God, broken contact, sev ered relationship, alienation—that is death! But the message of the gospel is that man can have life through faith in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The moment he believes, he is quickened and made wholly alive to God. Such a one is risen with Christ and has entered upon a new life. The soul has emerged from the foulest of all tombs, and is now living in the light of the eternal hope.. Transformation Wrought Paul argues in 1 Corinthians 15:38-44 that there are points of likeness be tween the body that is sown in death, and the body that is raised. As that which springs from the bare grain that is sown bears a likeness to the bare grain, though it is different, so will the spiritual body bear likeness to the earthly body, though it will be far more glorious. Here we come upon mystery in deed, but why should we object to mystery in this realm? As in the seed, there is a real essence which underlies its temporary and physical organization of matter, which survives and produces that which is like, and yet unlike itself, so there is a real essence underlying the superficial phe nomena of the present temporary or ganization of the body, and this es sential germ—when all the particles' rejoicing in a risen
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