The Pulpit Commentary — 1 Corinthians — Section 493

Bclf-move,l, advance: the distant head, the feet Drendful to view, see, through the dusky sky l<'ragrncnts of bodies in confusion fly; To distant regions journeying there to claim Deserted members and complete the frame." Science, of course, laughs all this to scorn. It tells us how the human body, as to the particles that compose it, is in a state of perpetual flux; that portions of it are stream in" oft' every moment from every pore; that at the end of seven years not one atom shall ~ found in the body which was there in the beginnin~, and that at the end of seventy years a man will have had no less than ten different bodies. It tells us how that no sooner is the body dead, than the various particles begin to liberate themselves from rnch other, and in the course of time mix themselves up as parts of other existences ; how they form the grass upon which the cattle browse, flow in the stream, and become the fruit and flesh on which their children live. So that, in the course of ages, the same particles might have formed the frames of a thousand different men. 1t teils us, moreover, that millions of men have had no graves. In some of the Oriental nations the dead are not buried, but burned, and in the process of combustion the greater portions of the body pass into invisible gases, and are lost in the immensity of the atmosphere, while the handful of ashes that remain are borne away on the four winds of heaven. Now, it is our happiness to know that not on this point, any more than on any other, does the Bible teach what true science repudiates. "That which thou sowest, thou sowest not that body that shall be." There is a difference between the dead seed sown, and the Jiving plant that springs from it. You drop into the earth a bare grain, and what comes up? Not a bare grain, but a green stalk, which grows_ perhaps, to a tree with many branches, rich foliage, lovely blossoms, and delicious fruit~. 'l'bere is not a particle on that tree of the bare grain that you buried. It will be thu• with the resurrection-body; it will not be tho bare grain that was put into the earth, but something else, that will come up. The resurrection-body will be no more identical with the buried one than the majestic tree of the forest is the same in particle or bulk a8 the acorn from which it sprang. "·with what body do they come?" The apostle enables us to reply further- H. With a body that WILL HAVE SOME ORGANIC C0ID-ECTION WITH THAT WHICH WAS DEPOSITED IN THE DUST. The plant, though very dissimilar to the bare grain, has a vital connection with it. It grows out of it., and is of the same order; there is an unbroken continuity. If the resurrection of the body from the grave means anything, it must f!lenn that something from the old body comes up and takes a fresh form. What else is meant by such expressions as this: "All that are in the gra1·es shall hear the voice of the SQ'!l of mo.n and come forth"? It is true that this connection between the buried and the raised body is for more inexplicable than the connection between the buried grain and the up-growing plant, or between the chrysalis and the moth. In neither of these cases is life really extinct; death is only apparent. There is an unbroken continuity traceable from the smallest seed to tho mightiest tree, from the embryo iu the shell to the mon,nch of the air. But no continuity is traceable between the raised and the buried man; there seems an awful break. Still it exists. Whatever theories are accepted as satisfactory, we hold to the scriptural fact that the new body will have an organic connection with the old; otherwise, the resurrection of the body is nothing but a pure fiction. Further, in answer to the sceptic's question, ",vith what body do they come?" the apostle's language enables us to give another reply. Ill. With 11, body wmcn Goo IN ms sovEIIEIG!.TY WILL DEST0W. "God giveth it a body as it hath pleased him." 1. That God clothes life. "To every seed his own body." There is no dot.bt that in the universe there is life unclothed by matter. le may be so with the angels: it is so, I trow, with God himself. It is true we know nothing of life only by its clothing. Around us there may be. immeasurable oceans of naked life, but we only know something of the embodied. No science has yet told us what life is. 2. That God cluthes life with the fittest body. "All flesh is not the same flesh." Life has boundless varieties, but Goel gives to each its fitting body. Paul points to the life of "beasts," and "fish," aud " birds;" to each ho has gh·eu bod ics. The hare and the elephant, the wreu and the eagle, the minnow and the le\'i:lthi,rn, all have bodies fitted to the peculiarities of their •listiuctivc life. 3. That Guel cluthc.; life 502 THE FIRST EPISTLE. TO THE CORINTHIANS. [cu. xv. 1-58,