and, if once a body that represented the soul, now a body that is in perfect sympathy with spirit RB the highest organ in man for communion with God. The last antithesis is so important as to demand restatement: "'l.'here is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body." Notice that the term "body" as used here derives its import as to its character or quality, not from anything in itself, but from its subsidiary relations, in the one case being "natural," "psychical," as connected with the soul, and, in the other, as contradistinguished from the" psychical" or" soul-body," represented as the •• spiritual body." What does the clear discrimination made by the apostle between the two forms of body require of us? A primary recognition of the difference between soul and spirit as determinative of the difference between the body natural and the body spiritual. Without entering into metaphysics, we may remark that the soul is that form of mind which connects man with the senses and the outer world of the senses, while the spirit is that form of mind which connects man with unseen ar;d eternal objects. If this distinction were .not real-a distinction that often develops in the feeling of most pain- ful contrariety-how sl,all we explain our consciousness; how understand the amazing inconsistencies into which we fall; how give any account of moods and transitions, reactions, and rebounds? The fact of difference is plain to every student-thinker: the nature of it is difficult, perhaps impossible to make obvious in language. Is there not a poetry that finds access to the innermost life, and a poetry that goes no further than the external intellect nnd its correlated sensibilities? And of painting, sculpture, music, eloquence, are there not everywhere two vividly marked divisions, so that while the one kind is very palpable to the soul, the other is felt rather than known, and works by hints and intimations more than by communications actually defined? Still more as to persons: who• has not known some individuals that always called forth by their presence the best within him? whereas there were others whose tones and looks were solicitations to evil? Only a few consciously note these experiences, and still fewer analyze them, bnt assuredly they are facts of life, and life would be barren of its most advantageous suggestions, were it otherwise. :r--ow, it is this difference between soul and spirit which t,t. Paul employs to give the contrast in the verse: "There is a natural body, and. there i11 a spiritual body." In this world, the body is so organized as to correspond to the soul; iu the resurrection, the new corporeity will represent the spirit. ,vould you see how a great Christian thinker weaves into one pattern thoughts from nature and from Scripture? Ver. 45 presents St. Paul in these words: '' lt is written." Nature, though prolific of types, sha,lows, parables, cannot long detain him, and now he returns to the Mosaic account of the creo.tio:1 in the first aud secoud chapters of Genesis. "Adam was marle a living soul" (eh. ii. 7). Animal he was in corporeal organization, placed at the head of the animal kingdom, so\·ercign over all creatures and things, and, moreover, much else, for he was the image of God in his reason, intelligence, and moral nature. He had a soul in him, an,l, it was God's breath. It was therefore God-like. It was a capacity for whatever was good about him, aud for whatever was best above him, in the order of creation to which humanity belonged. But he was put on trial, and he failed; his capacity sank instead of rising; it narrowerl and shrank within the body, and then and there ended the po~sibility or tbe "living soul" having as such a Divine history of progrrss and perfect development. \Ve are leaving St. Paul, however, who remarks, in jnxtaposition to the statement touching Adam," the first man," that "the last Adam was made a qnickening [life-giving] spirit." How intimately associated in his mind were the two, Adam and Christ, is seeu in the fact that he is the only Biblical writer who calls Christ by the name of Adaw; while, at the same time that they stand in such close connection with humanity, tho contrast between them is forcibly given. Wh:it Adam was is expressed in "living soul" as the starting-point or initiation of human nature, the designation expressing the predominant aspects of his earthly position a_nd h_is. candirl~cy as a being in liod's i_ma~e for a much loftier development.. By the "life-g1vrn~ spmr," we understand Clmst 111 .the power and glory of his resurrection, when" he led captivity Ca[Jtirn, ant! gave gifts untu men," chief of which was the Holy Ghost. 'l"ho "natural" precedes tho "spiritual;" and what a philosophy of the nniverso opens in this single ide:. ! The natural in law and government, the "do this a11,l live," the special rule and the special test, the appeal to the senses aud the sc1!sc-i11tellcct, and the prinu,l_ guardi,~nship of conscience by means of fear over moral rnterests-tl1c natural m social rdaL1ons-the 522 TIIE FIRST EPISTLE TO THE CORINTHIANS. [ou. xv. 1-58,
natural in the motives to obedience and the uses of God's grace and the offering of worship• :--m~1st lead. the way, since by no othm: me~l10d _apparent to us could humanity at.lain its high destmy. ".Afterward that which 1s spmtual." First the natural, afterward the spiritual,-tbis is the order in everything that concerns man. Every one of his attributes, such as perception, reasoning, volition, faith, love, obeys this paramount law; :md the miracle of life is, whenever the Divine plan is carried out, that man is. Feen, as Milton describes the lion in Eden, extricating himself from earthly entangle- ments and winning his freedom. St. P<iul multiplies tho forms of this idea. "Of the earth, C'arthy," was Adam; " the second man is of heaven;" and as we bear here "the image of the ~arthy" i:i body and soul, so shall we bear '' the image of the heavenly." Slowly the likeness of Adam fades even now under the fashionin()' hand of God. Natural law is made subservieut to spiritual law, so that while the sens~s decay and the- other animal functious abate more or less, the diviner seusibilities acquire the vitality thus disengaged and expand with uew vigour. Providence co-operates with orace. And thus, liue after line, lineament after lineament, disappearin()' from the "livin" son!," and also from the lower functions of the body, there comes o~t in its stead "th; imRge of the heavenly." Our growing years, if we are consecrated to God, are all on the side of Christ, and are all helpers and auxiliaries to prepare us for the fulness of· spiritual life in a spiritual body.-L.