April 4

"How are the dead raised up? and with what body do they come?" 1 Cor. 15:35

The identical body that was sown, yet so changed, so spiritualized, so glorified, so immortalized, as to rival in beauty the highest form of spirit, while it shall resemble, in its fashion, the glorious body of Christ Himself. We can form but a faint conception, even from the glowing representations of the apostle, of the glory of the raised body of the just. But this we know, it will be in every respect a structure worthy of the perfected soul that will inhabit it. Now 'the body' is the antagonist, and not the auxiliary of 'the soul'- its clog, its prison, its foe. The moment that Jesus condescends to "grace this mean abode" with His indwelling presence, there commences that fierce and harassing conflict between holiness and sin, which so often wrings the bitter cry from the believer, "Oh wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" Oh, what a cumbrance is this body of sin! Its corruptions, its infirmities, its weaknesses, its ailments, its diseases, all conspire to render it the tyrant of the soul, if grace does not keep it under, and bring it into subjection as its slave. How often, when the mind would pursue its favorite study, the wearied and over-tasked body enfeebles it! How often, when the spirit would expatiate and soar in its contemplations of, and in its communings with, God, the inferior nature detains it by its weight, or occupies it with its needs! How often, when the soul thirsts for divine knowledge, and the heart pants for holiness, its highest aspirations and its strongest efforts are discouraged and thwarted by the clinging infirmities of a corrupt and suffering humanity!

Not so will it be in the morning of the resurrection. "Then shall this corruptible put on incorruption, and this mortal shall put on immortality." Mysterious and glorious change! "In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump," the dead in Christ shall awake from their long sleep, and spring from their tombs into a blissful immortality. Oh, how altered! oh, how transformed! oh, how changed! "Sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body." "A spiritual body!" Who can imagine, who describe it? What anatomy can explain its mysteries? What pencil can paint its beauties! "A spiritual body!" All the remains, all the vestiges of corrupt matter passed away. "A spiritual body!" So regenerated, so sanctified, so etherealized, so invested with the high and glorious attributes of spirit, yet retaining the "form and pressure" of matter; that now sympathizing and blending with the soul in its high employment of obeying the will and chanting the praises of God, it shall rise with it in its lofty soarings, and accompany and aid it in its deep researches in the hidden and sublime mysteries of eternity.