Vers. 51-58.-Concluding argument and exhortation. If "flesh and blood" is. "corruption," and cannot inherit" incorruption," what then? Educate the present body to the offices of the mind; let every function do its legitimate work, and every organ be faithful to the organism; refine, beautify, ennoble it by all natural and providential· agencies; it is, nevertheless, "flesh and blood," and inherits "corruption.". No such corporeal structure could go to heaven unchanged. The earthly body of Jesus Christ,. which was fully adequate to the pre-resurrection state of humiliation, sorrow, death, and fitted him to show forth the Father, had .yet to be changed by the resurrection before he, though "holy, harmless, undefiled," could ascend to the dominion of the universe. If,. then, our "flesh and blood" be so debased by its mortality, by its animal connections, by its habits and functions, "Behold, I show you a mystery," a truth once concealed but now revealed by the Spirit, that those who are alive when Christ comes at the last day "shall all be changed." No graves shall open to receive and then restore them. Land and sea shall give up their dead, ai)rd, simultaneously therewith, the liYing shall be instantly transformed, rising out of fueir mortality and corruption into immortality and incor- ruption. ,vhat a scene here for picturesque description! But the apostle was too wise• and re,erent to indulge his imagination. The sublimity gathered no images about itself. Words for its spleudid conceptions were not asked, nor were poetic transports suffered to obtrude on the awful glory of the hour. Yet there was speech, yet there was rapture,. and the utterance and the feeling partook in full measure of the grandeur of the occasion. It was not the voice of imagination and its emotions, but the voice of pure and devout passion that exclaimed, "0 death, where is thy sting? 0 grave, where is thy victory?" The battle has been fought, the victory won; and the victory is most alorions in this, that it is the gift to God to us, and a gift" through our Lord Jesus Christ." For what would a deliverance from mortality and debasement be to a Christian if won by his own arm, and what would heaven be if it were an outgrowth and final efflorescence of earthly culture and progress? "Through our Lord Jesus Christ:" this is the joy of the triumph, and this the heart of heaven. And "therefore'' follows with the exhortation to his beloved brethren to be constant, enduring, abundant in the Lord's work since they were well assured that their devotion to this labour, with its burdens, cares: and sacrifices, could. not be " in vain in the Lord." It is a "therefore," indeed,. and such a one as he had never had an opportunity to use before, nor would ever find. just such an occasion to repeat. 'l'he thanksgiving, the tender appeal, the entire out- burst stands alone among all those effusions with which his grandest hours are impe1\shably associated. It has happened again a!ld again that in Bome _grave crisis of a nation, or when the fortunes of the human family seemed to be touchmg an epochal period, there has been some Demosthenes or Burke to pl~ad for th_e_ hope of a bett~r future for the state; or some Savonarola, Luther, Knox, Milton, to hit up a prophetic· voice in behalf of the Church, But it foll to the lot of St. Paul to write the :fifteenth, en. xv. 1-6B.] THE FIRST EPISTLE TO THE COltl.NTHIANS. 523
clmpler of the First Corinthians, to make an argument proof against every assault, to set fortL. the argument with such force and in such amplitude as to bring nature from thP. vegetable and animal kingdoms about us and from the remote heights of the firmament, so as to put her testimony in alliance with his logic in favour of the most precious of all truths, the doctrine of a perfected and immortal humanity in the Lord Jesus Christ. Nor can it be irreverent in us to borrow the language of his own exultant faith and say, "Thanks be to God, which giveth" to Christianity the "victory" over materialism and false spiritualism. Body is the meeting-ground of matter and mind ; they have met, they have united ; they separate to meet again in a nearer and holier fellowship, and they meet to be together for ever. Soul is spirit in its rudimentary life, in the childhood of thought and beauty and affection, in a state of trial and discipline, but its instincts, greater incomparably than its abilities, show their prophetic outreachings towards the infinite and eternal. So far as our dim reason can perceive, a fully developecl spirit could not exist ii). a mortal body, nor a soul exist in an immortal body. Soul and body, each "natural" for this life; spirit and a "spiritual body" for the kingdom of God." "Thanks be to God."-L.