T H E K I N G ’S B U S I N E S S which all th a t are in th e graves shall h ear His voice, and shall come fo rth ." Now what does th a t verse mean but this: in the same way Lazarus heard th e voice of Qjirist and rose from the dead, in the same way shall every man, woman, and child come fo rth when He calls them from the dead. The Apostle Paul expounds th is idea in Rom. 8:11, when he says: “He th a t raised up Jesus from th e dead shall also quicken your m o rtal bodies by His Spirit th a t dwell- eth in you." There is no doubt bu t we shall rise again w ith a body. The soul is th e sword, and it is to have a sheath. The soul will not be naked and home less; it will have an abode— the temple of a glorified body suitable for the after-life, and the whole man shall in habit eternity. . If th e re is no literal resurrection, tru th becomes confused. I am con scious of many difficulties which sur-i round my contention for a literal resu t- rection. F o r instance, some one m ight say. Suppose a man loses a limb in A ustralia and finally dies in England, Will th a t man’s limb travel across th e ocean and seek out h is body? Or again, one m ight say th e body becomes dissolved and passes into o ther forms of lif e .. Yes, quite so. I am aware of al most every difficulty you <^an propound and bring forward, and all 1 can say is, W ith God all things are possible. Be cause if you say the body does not rise, then you land yourself in th e awful posi tion of denying the resurrection alto gether, and Christ is not risen. When Christ died, His body was laid in the grave by loving hands, but if bodies rise not He is th ere still. “But if th ere be no resurrection of the dead, th en is Christ not risen” (1 Cor. 15 : 13 ). You can see the confusion and dis order th a t would arise if you say the fu tu re life is only spirit. All the gifts consequent on th e resur-
349 rection are false. F o r instance, th e Spirit was tc come a fte r His ascension, but if th e dead rise not,Pentecost has been the w ildest dream ever conceived by fraudu len t minds, th e preaching of the Gospel has been a' gross deception, and m iracles are. altogether untfub, be cause th e resurrection is said to be the crowning m iracle of the New T esta ment, and forms onp of the g reat foun dation tru th s of Christianity. “Who was delivered for our offenses, and was raised again for our justification." You see, then, th a t th e resurrection of the body of Christ is th e pledge of our ju sti fication; but if th e dead rise not, we are s till in our sins. If you do not ad m it th e fact of a literal resurrection, th e n your unbelief is th e hammer by which you b reak in pieces and u tterly destroy the most precious tru th s in th e Word of God. But when you say Christ rose in bodily form, and so shall we, then you perceive the symmetry of th e New Testament, and th a t is a ju st arrangem ent of the several p arts in the body of tru th to one ano th er and to the whole, which makes a convincing appeal to an unprejudiced mind. W hat the fu tu re body may be is a profound mystery, bu t I th ink th ere are glimpses of it to be seen on the T ransfiguration Mount. Peter, Jam es and John saw Jesu s’ form glowing w ith a brilliance above th e beauty of th e sun; the Apos tle John some years later one day looked into heaven and saw in form a glorious man and knew Him to be the Christ of God, as He walked am id the golden candlesticks clothed in purest white. Both these visions, the one on earth and the other in heaven, suggest a transform ation of th e present body, but th is is difficult to determ ine. Paul uses th e figure of a corn of w heat: “It is sown a n atu ra l body, it is raised a sp iritu al body.” When a grain of
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