The first isThat

Two answers suggest themselves. the Sadducees, who came to Christ thinking completely to silence him, would, as a matter of course, being practised and subtle disputants, select the more difficult and less credible of two obnoxious tenets, held by an opponent, in order the more easily to perplex him. Now the existence of the soul after death, is one thing; the resurrection of a body-all whose particles have been dissipated and have entered into countless other combinations,-and the re-occupancy thereof by the conscious spirit, some thousands of years or ages hence, is a second and very different thing. To the eye of reason this latter tenet would appear very much less credible than the former. Now the Sadducees, I say, would as a matter of course choose the more difficult of the two, in order the more surely to succeed. And accordingly we find that it was the resurrection they fastened on. For their question shows this, 'In the resurrection, whose wife shall she be?' Which inquiry proves that it was not about a separate existence of the naked spirit, that they were come to dispute, but about the resurrection, generally believed in and properly so called, an embodied state,—and still future, (as the phrase shows-shall she be ?') to which such a question might not be wholly irrelavent.

My second reply as intimated on a previous page, isThat if avάotaois refer to the existence after death simply, then, since this word, either as a noun or a verb, is commonly used to express the resurrection from the grave, the rising again at the last day, at the end of the world, &c., and since we also believe in a conscious existence immediately after death, it will have to be maintained, in order to be consistent, that the phrases 'last day,' 'end of the world,' are used relatively to the individual, or in accordance with popular phraseology current at the time; seeing that this ȧvaotaois takes place at once on dying, this very avάotaσis which is elsewhere represented as taking place at the last day, &c. Nor will I affirm that this view is therefore necessarily incorrect. That which contradicts our previous notion is not for that reason false. But I bring forward the consequences to show that this endeavor to escape from the view I have taken, only renders me a service, by shortening my process. For to repeat what was said on the xvth to the Corinthians,-if the future existence of man be itself the resurrection, then, since every christian con

cedes the resurrection to be effected by Christ, it follows that but for the Saviour there would have been no conscious existence for the sinner after death. By man came also the resurrection [vάotaois] of the dead."

§ It has been already submitted that scripture recognises only two bodies for man-the present animal-body, o@ua ψυχικόν, and the spiritual-body, σῶμα πνευςικόν, and at the same time knows nothing of any conscious existence in a perfectly disembodied state. Which of course makes the resurrection [leaving it as yet an open question, what is meant by it precisely, and when it takes place] to be allimportant. It at the same time undoubtedly teaches the immediate enjoyment by the saint of the presence of his Saviour, and the blessedness of heaven. In confirmation of which remarks, the reader is requested to study attentively in its connection—

2. CORINTHIANS, chap. iv.

17 For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory.

18 While we look not at

the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal.

Chapter v.

1 For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.

2 For in this we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with our house which is from heaven.

3 If SO be that being clothed we shall not be found naked.

4 For we that are in this tabernacle do groan, being burdened: not for that we would be unclothed, but clothed upon, that mortality

might be swallowed up of life.

5 Now he that hath wrought us for the self-same thing is God, who also hath given unto us the earnest of the Spirit.

6 Therefore we are always confident, knowing that whilst we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord.

7 (For we walk by faith, not by sight :)

8 We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and present with the Lord.

At the close of chap. iv. the apostle testifies how lightly his manifold afflictions sat upon him. And afflictions

side

were they of no ordinary kind,-'troubled on every perplexed persecuted-always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus-always delivered unto death for Jesus' sake;' or, as he speaks in a subsequent chapter, when he is compelled to compare himself with others—' in labors more abundant, in stripes above measure, in prisons more frequent, in deaths oft. Of the Jews five times received I forty stripes, save one: thrice was I beaten with rods, once was I stoned, thrice I suffered shipwreck, a night and a day I have been in the deep; in journeyings often, in perils of water, in perils of robbers, in perils by mine own countrymen, in perils by the heathen, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils among false brethren: in weariness and painfulness, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness.' Yet with sublimest heroism he points to calamities and sufferings which would drink up the spirits of most of us, and says These light afflictions! these light afflictions!' Do we ask the secret of this victorious composure? He tells us that he was habitually regarding the unseen realities of the next state, 'Knowing that he which raised up the Lord Jesus, shall raise up us also by Jesus, and shall present us with you.'

Here we perceive distinctly that it was his confidence in a resurrection that lightened his spirit of its load, and cheered him on his lonely and stormy way. We ought to compel ourselves to notice this, agreeing exactly as it does with his wont on other occasions. For it was his habit to console himself with the thought of being raised from the dead, which was the 'recompense of the reward' unto which ‘he had respect;' as the first chapter of this epistle also shows, for having said 'We would not, brethren, have you ignorant of our trouble which came to us in Asia, that we were pressed out of measure above strength, insomuch, that we despaired even of life,' he goes on to say, 'But we had the sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God who raiseth the dead. 2. Cor. i. 8–9.

But let us return to our proper passage. The apostle having said that notwithstanding all his troubles he persevered in his arduous course, animated with the confident hope that God who raised up Jesus would also raise him up, v. 14, regarded without displacency the perishing of his outward man, v. 16, seeing that his afflictions would work out

for him a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory, v. 17. For he was accustomed not to look at the visible, which is the fugitive, but at the unseen and eternal. v. 18. Let it be observed that all this grows directly and continuously out of v. 14, (v. 15 being parenthetical, and arising out of the last clause of the preceding verse). The being raised up by Jesus is the thought which, as the grand source of his joy, and secret of his career, he is dwelling on, which reconciles him to the perishing of the outward man, and makes his afflictions light as the gossamer. Our division of chapters here is peculiarly unfortunate; v. 1-8 being but a continuation of the interesting subject, the word, For, marking the close logical connection,- For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle be dissolved,' called before our outward man perishing, we have a building of God, a house not made with hands,' that is, another body, -'eternal in the heavens.' Which does not mean that the body he would have was at that time in heaven waiting for him to enter into it, but it was a heavenly body, a body invested wherewith, he should dwell for ever in the heavens. But it may be allowed me to paraphrase the entire passage, without pausing to give the reasons for the rendering I shall adopt, which I trust, will be obvious to the general reader. Continuing the thought which he had announced towards the close of chapter iv. he thus proceeds,

"For we know full well, that if our body, which alone persecutors can hurt, or hunger and fatigue affect, were to be overcome of death, which sooner or later must be, we are quite assured that we shall be found more gloriously arrayed. This indeed is a vile body in which we often groan, feeling acutely the ills of life, but Christ is able to endow us with a body fashioned like unto his own glorious body. And such awaits us. I have called the present body a house, and as such what is it but an earthly house-a house of dust-in the formation of which human beings were (instrumentally) employed; but the body I shall have, or to keep to the figure, the house which awaits me, is in no-wise of human origin [not made with hands] it is celestial [in the heavens] and unlike this changing decaying structure, is eternal.

"Oh! how I long to find myself in this celestial body, [earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with my house which

is from heaven.] I say, I could long for evening to un dress, to lay down this gross corporeal investiture, and find myself in that body of heavenly texture which awaits me. For I have no fear of being found utterly disembodied; and though, if such a thing might be, I could prefer to pass without dying into my ultimate condition as Enoch and Elijah did, yet am I more than ready to welcome the sharpest pangs of death, in order to find myself relieved of all the ills attendant on humanity in its present condition, and invested with that spiritual body in which I shall, oh glorious hour! find myself present with the Lord. For in this body I am absent from my Saviour, in that I shall be for ever with the Lord."

To me it appears that this purposely free paraphrase gives the exact idea of the passage. In which Paul contrasts the present body with the next; longs to lay down the one and assume the other, which he calls eternal, and on the assumption of which he would find himself present with the Lord; and recognises nothing as intervening between quitting the one body and finding himself in the other and eternal one, the investiture with which was essential to his being present with the Lord. The eighth verse is the logical conclusion of the whole.

Now remembering that scripture recognises no perfectly disembodied state, and only two bodies, and that the next is the resurrection body, we are again conducted to the same conclusion to which Matt. xxiii. and 1. Cor. xv. brought us, and are again reminded of the grand importance of the resurrection, which is a more capital doctrine in scripture than in our modern systems of theology. And we may just refer to another text which seems to look in the same direction.

1. Cor. i. 30. But of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption.

Here there is a beautiful order maintained in the ideas suggested, and a very admirable gradation till the highest good is reached. Paul speaking as a Jew, and using abstract terms instead of expressing himself as would be natural with us, here teaches that Christ first of all enlightens the mind, makes us wise: which we all know to be the first thing in order. Then, when the enlightened sinner, per