Part 5 (2/2)

This is sufficient to prove that human nature is intrinsically capable and great; and, indeed, it reveals to us as nothing else does, the real dignity of our nature. Some, who have rejected the doctrine of Christ's two natures, have written much and eloquently with regard to man's greatness in creation. They, however, missed the very thing which chiefly proves it; for all who believe in the Deity of Christ have a proof and ill.u.s.tration of this great theme which trancend all others.

This idea, of future capability and exaltation for human nature, as proved by the Saviour's incarnation, is brought to view in the second chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews. The second Psalm is there quoted as speaking of man: ”Thou hast put all things under his feet.” ”But now,” the apostle says, ”we see not yet all things put under him;” man, as a race, has not reached his full destiny of glory and honor; but, in the person of Christ, human nature has taken possession of its future inheritance. We see not yet all things put under man, as a race; but ”we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honor;”--a sign and pledge of our destiny.

To the mind of Paul, the sight, in heaven, of what he was to become, set forth by the glorified person of the Son of G.o.d, his Saviour and infinite Friend, no doubt made the resumption of the body, at the last day, the most desirable experience of which it was possible for him to conceive. Paradise, with all its social pleasures, gates of pearl, streets of gold, every thing, in short, external to him, must have seemed, to the apostle, not worthy to be compared with the glory which was to be revealed in him. An intelligent man is far more interested in his own personal endowments, than in the accidental circ.u.mstances of his situation. Every one, who is not degraded in his feelings, would prefer to be enriched with natural, moral, and intellectual powers, rather than be the richest of men, or an hereditary monarch, with inferior talents and worth. To such a man as Paul, the possession of his complete, glorified nature, at the resurrection, must, for this reason, have seemed far better than all the pleasures or honors of the heavenly world. That completed nature would const.i.tute him a being wholly perfected, invest him with a likeness to the Son of G.o.d, bring him into still nearer union with that adorable Redeemer, who, Paul says, loved him and gave himself for him, and for whom, he says, he had suffered the loss of all things. The sight of the man Christ Jesus wearing Paul's nature in a glorified state, no doubt lived and glowed in his memory after his return to earth, and made him think of the resurrection as the event, in his personal history, to which every thing else was subordinate. He shows the interest which he felt in this event, when, writing to the Romans, he says, ”And not only they,”--that is, ”the creatures,” or creation,--”but ourselves, also, which have the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption, of our body.” In his address, at Jerusalem, before his accusers and the people, he cried out, ”Of the hope and resurrection of the dead I am called in question.” It was uniformly a prominent topic of his thoughts.

It is by no means impossible, nor improbable, judging from a.n.a.logy, that there may be, in the human soul, faculties which are slumbering, until a glorified body a.s.sists in their development. Persons born blind have the dormant faculty of seeing; the gift of the eye would bring it into exercise. So of the other senses, and their related mental faculties.

With a glorified body, then, truly it doth not yet appear what we shall be; but the thought itself is rapture, that our souls at present may be as disproportioned to their future expansion, as the acorn is to the oak of a century's growth, which is infolded now, and dormant, in the seed.

The addition of a body to the glorified spirit will, therefore, be a help, and not an enc.u.mbrance. For we are not to suppose that the soul, after having been for centuries in a state superior to its present condition, would retrograde, in returning to the body. A common idea respecting a body is, that it is necessarily a clog. True, by reason of sin and its effects, it is now a ”vile body;” and Paul speaks of it as ”the body of this death.” But, even while we are in this world, a body is an indispensable help to the soul. The disembodied spirit, probably, is not capable of sustaining a full, active relation to a world of matter; a material form is necessary to make its powers serviceable here. This being so, there is certainly reason, from a.n.a.logy, to suppose that the addition of a spiritual body to the glorified soul will not necessarily work any deterioration to the spirit. At all events, we cannot suppose that the bliss of heaven will be suffered to diminish, by remanding the emanc.i.p.ated spirit into connection with any thing which will subtract from the state to which it will have arrived. There is a law of progress in the divine government, by which the intelligent universe will be forever advancing. We are to be changed ”from glory to glory;” not from a greater glory to a less, but into the same image with Christ.

It is the opinion of some that every created being has a corporeal part, and that G.o.d alone is perfectly a spirit. However this may be, it is evident that the souls of believers after death, though advanced far beyond their present earthly condition, and though they are ”with Christ,” and though to die is gain, and though they are in the heaven of heavens with Christ, (which is where the penitent thief went, and where Paul had his revelation, and where Christ went when he died;--for Paul uses the words ”third heavens,” and ”Paradise,” interchangeably,) are, nevertheless, incomplete as to their natures, ”waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body.” Where in the Bible are we led to suppose that they are detained in an inferior region, or that there are, at most, only two redeemed human beings now in ”heaven,” viz., Enoch and Elijah, or probably not even they? But a corporeal part, we may suppose, is necessary to the fullest partic.i.p.ation in the employments and enjoyments of the spiritual world. Light requires atmosphere to modify it for the human eye, which otherwise could not endure its brightness.

So it may be that a corporeal part is necessary to modify many of the things which are unseen and eternal, that they may be apprehended by the soul. Let no one say that matter must obstruct or dim the senses of the soul; that a body must act as a veil to the spirit, and shut out much knowledge. It is not so here. Matter helps us in the acquisition of knowledge, as, for example, gla.s.s in optical instruments. The telescope, with its lenses, gives the eye vast compa.s.s; the microscope gives it a power, equally wonderful, of minute vision. True, in these cases it is matter helping matter--gla.s.s a.s.sisting the eye; the a.n.a.logy is not perfect between this and the aid which the spiritual body may afford the soul. But, if we remember that there is to be progression in the powers and faculties of our nature, and that if a body is added to the glorified spirit, it must be to a.s.sist it, to put it forward in its acquisitions and enjoyments, we cannot resist the belief that the addition of the new body to the soul will be a vast accession of power and capability. If the eye and the mind can receive such aid from the telescope here, who knows that the eye of the glorified body may not be itself a telescope, increasing in its capability with the progress of its being.

We may have some view of what the glorified body must necessarily be, in thinking of it as a fit companion to the glorified spirit. The soul having been in heaven for ages, and having grown in all spiritual excellence, the body, to be a help to such a spirit, to be an occasion of joy, and not of regret, must, of course, be in advance of our present corporeal nature. What must the body of Isaiah, and of David, be, at the resurrection, to correspond with the vast powers and attainments of those glorified spirits? We could not believe, certainly we could not see, how these bodies of ours could be made capable of such union, were it not that, in the man Christ Jesus, we see our corporeal nature capable of such transformation as to make it compatible for his human mind, and indwelling Deity, to receive it into their ineffable union.

All this being so, we may, in some measure, conceive of the feelings with which the souls in heaven antic.i.p.ate the resurrection; and we cease to wonder why Paul speaks of his resurrection as the great object of his desire--not merely to be in heaven, but, being in heaven, with Christ, to be in possession of a completed nature, like Christ's.

From the grave where it was sown in corruption, it will come forth in incorruption; sown in dishonor, it will be raised in glory; sown in weakness, it will be raised in power; sown a natural body, it will be raised a spiritual body. It was ”bare grain” when it fell into the earth; but the corn, with its stalk, and leaves, and the curious ear, with its silk, and its wrappings, the multiplication of the ”bare grain”

into such a product, are an ill.u.s.tration of the apostle's words,--”Thou sowest not that body that shall be;” hence, he argues, say not, incredulously, ”How are the dead raised, and with what body do they come?” G.o.d giveth the grain a body as it hath pleased him; he can do the same with regard to that part of man's nature which is committed for a while to the earth. Let not the natural difficulties connected with this subject make us sceptical. There are no more difficulties connected with a grave than with a grape vine. Those distant twigs, on that dry vine, begin to bud and blossom; grapes form upon them; it is filled with cl.u.s.ters. Is there any thing in the resurrection more strange than this?

Twice, inspiration says to a man, ”Thou fool!”--once, to a G.o.dless, rich man, and, once, to him who is sceptical about the resurrection of the body.

When the glorified spirit and the glorified body meet, the moment when the invest.i.ture of the soul with its spiritual form takes place, and the forcible divorce of the soul and body is terminated by new, strange nuptials, there must be an experience which now defies all power of imagination. We may have known, in this world, all the thrilling experiences of which our natures here are capable; we shall also have seen and felt what it is to awake in heaven, satisfied with Christ's likeness; and all the new-born joys of heavenly sensations will have seemed to leave us nothing to be experienced which can bring a new rapture to the heart; yet when the body is raised, and the triumphant spirit comes to put it on afresh, it will be an addition to all the past joys of the heavenly state. As we look on one another, and see, in each other's beauty and glory, an image of our own; as we remember how we visited the graves of loved ones, and what thoughts and feelings we had there, and then see those graves yielding forms like Christ's; as we see the Saviour's person mirrored in ours on every side, and behold the living changed in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, there will be an exceeding great joy, such, perhaps, as the universe had never before known. But to each of us the most perfect joy will be his own consciousness, existence being then a rapture such as we never experienced. Then the bird is winged, the jewel is set in gold, the flower blooms, the harp receives all her strings, the heir is crowned.

No wonder that Paul said, looking through and beyond heaven, ”If by any means I might attain unto the resurrection of the dead.”

Perhaps we now think of the last day with dread, as a day of consternation. It is not always that we can think of the heavens on fire, the earth dissolved, the dead arising, and the judgment proceeding, without some feeling of dismay. But in heaven, we shall long have antic.i.p.ated that day as the day of our complete triumph. The grave will, till that time, have imprisoned one part of our nature. The curse of the law will not have pa.s.sed away entirely, and in every respect, till all which belongs to us is redeemed from every natural, as well as moral, consequence of sin. It will be an expectation of unmingled joy to see this accomplished. The approach of the day will fill us with more pleasure than the arrival of any other wished-for moment. We shall come with Christ to judgment. ”Them that sleep in Jesus will G.o.d bring with him.” We shall have a part in the glory of Christ, and be a.s.sociated with him; for, ”Do ye not know that the saints shall judge the world?”

”Know ye not that we shall judge angels?” What curious interest there will be to receive back from the dust of the earth the dishonored, corrupted, mouldered, wasted, perished body. In the Saviour, even, we shall not have seen all the wonders of the resurrection from the dead; for, ”He whom G.o.d raised saw no corruption;” but we shall be raised from corruption. To be clothed upon with that house which is from heaven, to be a completed, perfected human being, will be, up to that time, the greatest possible manifestation to us of divine wisdom and power.

The new body will bring with it sources of enjoyment which will be a vast addition to the previous happiness of heaven. There will be perfect satisfaction in every one with his own body--no consciousness of defects, of deformity, of weakness. Comparisons of ourselves with others will not excite dissatisfaction and envy; every one will be perfect of his kind, and will differ in some things from every other, and will be an object of love and admiration with all. We are astonished here with the intellectual, oratorical, vocal powers of others, with their knowledge, their talent, their skill; but there we shall no doubt be filled also with astonishment at our own powers and acquisitions, and thus we shall be more capable of appreciating and enjoying the endowments of others. G.o.d is pleased to raise up one and another, from time to time, with great powers to charm their fellow-creatures; and thus he would lure us on to heaven, teaching us how much we can enjoy, and how much we shall lose if we are not saved. Those who are deprived of very many intellectual and social pleasures here, which they could appreciate as well as their more favored friends, will soon have it made up to them. By the likeness of their glorified nature to the human nature of Christ, they are to be intimately a.s.sociated with him forever.

This, of itself, is an a.s.surance and pledge, that their heavenly happiness will not be measured by their relative inferiority to their brethren in this world. To a benevolent mind it is a great joy to think of good people, who are deprived, in this world, of education and culture, entering upon a career of boundless knowledge, rising to the highest pitch of mental development, and enjoying it all the more for their former disadvantages in their probationary state. ”And, behold, there are last which shall be first.” Distinctions made here by knowledge will be transient, like gifts of prophecy, and tongues; for it is in this sense that it is said, ”whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away.” And when we look upon those dear children of G.o.d who have long suffered under bodily deformity, and ”have borne, and have had patience, and have not fainted,” we love to think of their glorified bodies, and of that rich zest in the possession of them which will be both the natural consequence, and the gracious reward, of their patience; nay, we love to think that some special, personal beauty, some peculiar grace and glory, may be given them by Him who so delights in compensatory acts in nature, in providence, and in grace.

Was it not the object of the transfiguration, in part, to give the human soul of Christ such an idea of his future glory in heaven, as to strengthen him for his agony and death? Yes; for the heavenly visitants ”spake of his decease which he should accomplish at Jerusalem.” That antic.i.p.ation of his glorified nature was a part of ”the joy set before him.” Let Christ on Tabor, and faith, do for us, with regard to present bodily sorrows and sufferings, that which the transfiguration did for Jesus in the days of his humiliation. ”Who shall change our vile body, that it may be fas.h.i.+oned like unto his glorious body, according to the working whereby he is able even to subdue all things unto himself.”

Through the long interval of death and the separate state, the antic.i.p.ation of the last day and of the resurrection will, no doubt, be to the wicked a predominant source of terror. While the joyful antic.i.p.ations of it, in heaven, will be like the advancing steps of morning, when there begin to be signs, in the tabernacle for the sun, of that bridegroom coming out of his chamber, and of that strong man rejoicing to run a race, and every thing will be astir with the notes of preparation for that day, for which all other days were made, the approach of it will be, to the lost, a deepening gloom, its arrival the settling down of interminable night. Instead of entering into their bodies with transport, as the righteous do, they will each be like a prisoner removed from one jail to another with new bars and bolts. If it be not unreasonable to suppose that the appearance of the body will conform to the character, and if the bodies of Isaiah, and Paul, and John must be seraphic, to correspond with their experience and attainments, what must the bodies of the wicked be! They will have spent centuries in sinning, and suffering, debased in every part, the image of G.o.d supplanted by the image of him whose service they preferred to that of a holy G.o.d and Saviour. What a moment will that be, when the sinner's grave is opened by the last trumpet, and a hideous form rises to receive a frantic spirit! ”The harvest is the end of the world, and the reapers are the angels.” ”As, therefore, the tares are gathered and burned in the fire, so shall it be in the end of this world. The Son of man shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity, and shall cast them into a furnace of fire; there shall be wailing and gnas.h.i.+ng of teeth.” ”And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.” There will be separations at the graves of those who lay side by side in death; many a tomb will yield up subjects both for heaven and for h.e.l.l; the differences in character, between the regenerate and unregenerate, will there be made conspicuous in the correspondence of the risen body to the soul, according as the soul shall have arrived at the grave from a state of joy or of woe. Arrests will be made, there will be forcible detentions, overpowering strength, disregard of entreaties, remorseless rendings asunder of families, unclasping of embraces, and an indiscriminate mixture of all cla.s.ses among the wicked, indicated by the command, ”Bind ye the tares together, in bundles, to be burned.” Nor will this be worse for holy angels to witness, than it was to see those sinners turn their backs on the Lord's supper, year after year. They could treat their Saviour's dying agonies, and his blood, with perfect neglect and contempt, through their love of the world and sin; now they eat the fruit of their own way, and are filled with their own devices.

Our treatment of the Saviour will return upon our own heads. What a change will be made in the ideas which many sentimentalists had of holy angels, when they see them executing the terrible orders of their King!

and what an ill.u.s.tration it will give of the severity of justice,--the rigors of its execution being compatible with the pure benevolence of holy angels, because of G.o.d. We are constantly admonished that the punishment of the wicked will be a great part of the proceedings on that day. It is called ”the day of judgment and perdition of unG.o.dly men.”

”Behold, the Lord cometh, with ten thousands of his saints, to execute judgment.”

All this serves to invest the death of a dear Christian friend, in our thoughts, with inexpressible peace and comfort. He, with his Redeemer, can say, ”My flesh, also, shall rest in hope.” If we are confident that a friend is gone to be with Christ, death is, even now, swallowed up of life; and now the thought of what the soul is to inherit, both before and after the resurrection, and its contrast with the experience of the lost, should make us joyful in tribulation. True, we cannot, by any artifice or illusion, make death itself cease to be a curse. Full of beauty and consolation as it may be,--nay, we will call it triumphant,--yet nothing saddens the mind, for the time, more than the sight of true beauty. In heaven things beautiful will not make us sad; nor will the remembrance of a past joy, which so inevitably has that effect upon us here. We are beholding a sunset. Day is flinging up all its treasures, as though it were breaking to pieces its pavilion forever and scattering the fragments; and now, when all seemed past, one more flood of glory streams over the scene, but only for a moment; then comes a last touch of pathos, here and there, like a more distant farewell, a whispered good night. Have tears never come unbidden, do we never feel sad, at such a time? Is not the whole of life, past, present, and to come, then tinged with sombre hues? and all because the dying day expires with such beauty and peace. Not so when a storm suddenly brings in night upon us. Then we are nerved and braced; we hear no minor key in the voice of the departing day. It is perfectly natural, therefore, to weep over our dead, even when every thing in their departure is consolatory and beautiful. It is interesting to observe that it was even when he was on his way to raise the dead body of his friend, and thus to comfort the weeping sisters, that ”Jesus wept.”

Let us more and more love the Christian's grave. Angels love it. Two of them sat in the tomb where the body of Jesus had lain--they loosed the napkin that was about his head, and ”wrapped” it ”together in a place by itself;” and when Jesus had left the place, instead of following him, they lingered, to comfort the weeping friends on their arrival at the sepulchre. Can it be Michael, guardian of the dead Moses and his grave, on ”the great stone” which has been rolled ”from the door of the sepulchre”? Is he thinking how he will one day hear the command, ”Take ye away the stone” which covers all who sleep in Jesus? As the cross is hallowed by the death of the Son of G.o.d upon it, the grave is hallowed for the believer through the Saviour's burial. There are three places which must possess intense interest for a glorified friend. One is his home; another is his seat in the house of G.o.d; and another is his grave.

Let us cherish it. We do well to visit such a spot. Sometimes approaching it with sadness and fear, we go away with surprising peace; looking back for a last view of the stone, and feeling towards the spot as we do when we are leaving little children in the dark for the night, unutterable love, we find, has cast out fear. Those graves are treasures which heaven has made sure, ”sealing the stone, and setting a watch.” Of those who still live, we are not certain that, in the providence of G.o.d, they will henceforth be an unmingled source of comfort; but they who are in those graves are garnered fruits, are finished works, are each like the rod of Aaron laid up in the ark, which ”bloomed blossoms and yielded almonds.” All else which is dear to us on earth may seem changeful, or changed; the property may have disappeared, the home may have been broken tip, the plighted faith and love may have been recalled; the whole condition of life may have been altered: but we visit that burial spot, and there is permanence; that fast-anch.o.r.ed isle has defied the surges and roaring currents; the grave seems beautifully constant; it has not betrayed our confidence; it is not weary of its precious charge; it has kindly staid behind to permit and encourage our griefs when all else may have fled. The winter's snows have fallen, the tempests have beaten, there; and now, this April or May morning, it is as steadfast and quiet as when the slumber there began.

<script>