The Pulpit Commentary — 1 Corinthians — Section 494

according to his own l)leasure. "Giveth it a body as it has pleased him." He chose the form, the hue, the gait of each life. Our resurrection-body will be as it "hath pleased him." Then it will be beautiful, for he is the God of all taste, tho Fountain of all beauty, the Standard of all resthetics. Then it will be u.~eful, for he is tho God of l 1cneYolence. Exquisitely suited to our present sphere are tho bodies through which he streams into us the most exquisite sensations, and through which we convey and work out the best things withiu us. It will be glorious. "There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars : " so also with the resur- rection of the just. Once more, to the question of the sceptic the apostle answers- IV. \\'ith a body THAT SHALL BE A VAST IMPROVEMENT UPON THE OLD ONE, "It is sown in corruption." Between the buried body and the resurrection-body we have a series of antitheses, showing the vast superiority of the one to the other. 1. 'J.'he one is corruptible, the other is inrorruptible. "It is sown in corruption ; it is raised in incor- ruption." Our present frames are frail and dying. The resurrection-body will be incorruptible; it will be deathless as the immortal spirit itself. 2. The one is degraded• the other is glorious. Our present corporeal system is dishonoured, but it is raised i~ glory. How great the difierence between the corrupting seed and the stately plant and full-blown flower! 3. The one is wealc, and the other is poweiful. How foeble is our present body! It is not like the oak that can stand the storms of centuries, but like the frail flower that withers in an hour. It is raised in power-power that shall never fatigue with labour or wear out by time. 4. The one is natural.;, the. other. is spiritual. The present body is called a" natural body," probably because it is more the organ of the animal than the spiritual; and the future body the spiritual, because it will be. the organ of the intelligent and immortal min<l. Man bas in him two principles of life- the animal, which connects him with the material and local, and the rational, which connects him with the spiritual and the infinite, The body of, the one falls at death, and will be required no more; the perfected body pf the other ,irill be taken up at the resurrection, and will be continued for ever. What is death to him who has this hope? Not the king of terrors, but the angel of immortality bearing to him the passport of an ever-blessed future. Ver. 36.-Man: his birth, death, and 1·esurreceion. "Thou fool, that which thou so,vest is not quickened, except it die." I shall take the verse as suggesting three great facts in man's existence. I. MAN'S BIRTH. The text suggests-I do not say it was intended to teach-that man's birth is a sowing of his existence in the earth. The sowing of the grain of which the apostle speaks is not, I think, so analogous to the burial of his body as to the birth of his existence. The sowing of the grain takes place before its death. It dies after it is sown. But in the burial of the body the man has previously died. Birth, and not burial, then, must be considered as sown. Man, at birth, is sown into the earth like seed, in two respects. (1) The seed existed before it was sown; man existed before he was born. (2) The seed required sowing in order for its development. Man required birth into this world in order for the development of his powers. What the soil is to tile seed the external universe is to the soul-the developing agent. As a seed, however, man differs from all other genninant existences on this earth in several respects. 1. He has a self-:formative power. The germs of all other life run into forms by tbe necessity of their nature. The grain has no power of determining w)lat shape it shall take in its growth; man has. Man has the power of determining whether he shall grow into a beast, a fiend, or an angel. 2. He has boundless possibi!i,ties .. All other germinant exist- ences on earth exhaust themselves in their growth. lhe time comes when thoy reach their culmination and decay sets in. Not so with man. He is a seed that shall grow for ever. At birth, then, we are sown into this world-immortal seeds we all are which the hand of the great Husbandman scatters over the earth. II. MAN'S DEATH, His death is here represented as a reduction of the body to earth, not the reduction of himself. "That which thou sowest is not quickened, except it die." In the grain it is not the germ, but the huslc, the shell, which dies. The wrappage of the germ was made to rot. Nothi~g was necessary to the development of the life which it contained. The human body 1s the mere shell and wrappage of the man. It was made to die. Death is an essenLial element in the constitution of the  ,on. xv. :!.-58.J THE FIRST EPISTLE TO THE CORINTll1AXS. 503