The Pulpit Commentary — 1 Corinthians — Section 492

III. ~'HE vo~cE BY W~ICH WE ARE SUMMONED. '!'his may be regarded as God's voice to man m all ~1mes and m_ all lands. Wake up to the right. 'l.'o the right in politics, commerce, religion, and 1n all departments of life. Healize the right, embody the right. The crime and curse of humanity is that it is gone from the right. Vers. 35-44.-The resurrection-body. "With what body do they come?" The question which Paul puts into the mouth of the ancient sceptic assumes the fact of a general resurrecticn of mankind. And why should we not assume this fact? "Why should it be thought a thing incredible with you that God should raise the dead?" Incredible! Has not he who has engaged to do it all-sufficient power? Scepticism parades the difficulties connected with the work of the resurrection. Let them be a million times more than the fancy of the infidel can figure to himself, will they amount to anything as an argument against its aooomplishment? Nay, the difficulty ()fa work should always be estimated by the capacity of the agent engaged to perform it. What is impossible for one being to perform, can be achieved by another with the greatest facility. Where Omnipotence is the agent, the talk about difficulties is manifestly absurd. What would baffle and overmaster the combined power of all created existences, .Almightiness can effect by a single fiat. "Is there anything too hard for the Lord?" Incredible! Changes are constantly going on in the creation bearing some resemblance to the event. Spring is a resurrection of buried life. Unnumbered graves, some that have been sealed for centuries, are opened every hour by the warm touch of the vernal ray. Incredible I It meets the universaol longtngs of ihe human heart. The cry of all generations is this: "We would not be uuclothed, but clothed upon, that mortality might be swallowed up in life." The world's heart waits "for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of the body." Incredible I It is unmistakably stated in that gospel which has been demonstrated Divine. To ths que,tion, "If a man die shall he live again?" we have in the Bible replies the most varied, expressive, and full. The subject of the general resurrection is a very extensivs one; it has many bra.nches, and touches a vast variety of truth. In the light of the apostle's i;tatements, I inl'er the following answers to tliis question:- I. \Vith a body not IDENTICAL WITH THAT WHICH DESCENDED TO THE GRAVE. "Thou fool, that which thou sowest is not quickened, except it die," etc. Not a few of ths advocates of the doctrine of the resurrection have exposed it to the ridicule of the sceptic and the contempt of the philosopher by representing the resurrection-body as the literal re-organization of the buried dust. To work upon the passions of ths unreB.ecting and the vulgar, the sensuous poem and the declamatory pulpit have given representa- tions of the resurrection most extravagant in their materiality and their grossness. 'l'he particles of the buried body, which through the course of centuries have undergone ~numerable transformations, and been separated from each other wide as the poles ')Sunder, are described as coming together in the last day to take the very same placs JJl that very same body as was conveyed to the grave. In poetry we have an ex.ample iJl such lines as Blair'~- " Now monuments prove faithful to their trust, Anti render back their Jong corumittod dust; I Now churnels rattle, scattered limbs, and all The nnious Lones, ouatquious to the c11ll, on. xv. 1-58.J THE FITIST EPISTLE TO THE CORINTHIANS. 501