only show the changes and the appearances of which a glorified body is susceptible, not the form or condition in which it must necessarily be found, or must always continue. You will observe, that it was necessary that the body of our Lord at his transfiguration, at his appearance after his resurrection, at his ascension into heaven, at his appearance to Stephen, should preserve a resemblance to his human person upon earth, because it was by that resemblance alone he could be known to his disciples, at least by any means of knowledge naturally belonging to them in that human state. But this was not always necessary, nor continues to be necessary: nor is there any sufficient reason to suppose that this resemblance to our present bodies will be retained in our future bodies, or be at all wanted. Upon the whole, the conclusions, which we seem authorised to draw from these intimations of Scripture, are,

First, that we shall have bodies.

Secondly, that they will be so far different from our present bodies, as to be suited, by that difference, to the state and life into which they are to enter, agreeably to that rule which prevails throughout universal nature; that the body of every being is suited to its state, and that, when it changes its state, it changes its body.

Thirdly, that it is a question by which we need not at all be disturbed, whether the bodies with which we shall arise be new bodies, or the same bodies under a new form; for,

Fourthly, no alteration will hinder us from remaining the same, provided we are sensible and conscious that we are so; any more than the changes which our visible person undergoes even in this life, and which

from infancy to manhood are undoubtedly very great, hinder us from being the same, to ourselves and in ourselves, and to all intents and purposes whatsoever.

Lastly, that though, from the imperfection of our faculties, we neither are, nor, without a constant miracle upon our minds, could be made, able to conceive or comprehend the nature of our future bodies; yet we are assured that the change will be infinitely beneficial; that our new bodies will be infinitely superior to those which we carry about with us in our present state; in a word, that whereas our bodies are now comparatively vile (and are so denominated), they will so far rise in glory, as to be made like unto his glorious body; that whereas, through our pilgrimage here, we have borne that which we inherited, the image of the earthy, of our parent the first Adam, created for a life upon this earth; we shall, in our future state, bear another image, a new resemblance, that of the heavenly inhabitant, the second man, the second nature, even that of the Lord from heaven.

XXIX.

THE KNOWLEDGE OF ONE ANOTHER IN A
FUTURE STATE.

COL. I. 28..

Whom we preach, warning every man, and teaching every man, in all wisdom; that we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus.

THESE words have a primary and a secondary use. In their first and most obvious view, they express the extreme earnestness and anxiety with which the apostle Paul sought the salvation of his converts. To bring men to Jesus Christ, and, when brought, to turn and save them from their sins, and to keep them steadfast unto the end in the faith and obedience to which they were called, was the whole work of the great apostle's ministry, the desire of his heart, and the labour of his life. It was that in which he spent all his time and all his thought; for the sake of which he travelled from country to country, warning every man, as he speaks in the text, and exhorting every man, enduring every hardship and every injury, ready at all times to sacrifice his life, and at last actually sacrificing it, in order to accomplish the great purpose of his mission, that he might at the last day present his beloved converts perfect in Christ Jesus. This is the direct scope of the text. But it is not for this that I have made choice of it. The last clause of the verse contains

within it, indirectly and by implication, a doctrine, certainly of great personal importance, and, I trust, also of great comfort to every man who hears me. The clause is this, "that we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus:" by which I understand Saint Paul to express his hope and prayer, that at the general judgement of the world, he might present to Christ the fruits of his ministry, the converts whom he had made to his faith and religion, and might present them perfect in every good work. And if this be rightly interpreted, then it affords a manifest and necessary inference, that the saints in a future life will meet and be known again to one another; for how, without knowing again his converts in their new and glorified state, could Saint Paul desire or expect to present them at the last day?

My brethren, this is a doctrine of real consequence. That we shall come again to a new life; that we shall, by some method or other, be made happy, or be made miserable, in that new state, according to the deeds done in the body, according as we have acted and governed ourselves in this world, is a point affirmed absolutely and positively, in all shapes, and under every variety of expression, in almost every page of the New Testament. It is the grand point inculcated from the beginning to the end of that book. But concerning the particular nature of the change we are to undergo, and in what is to consist the employment and happiness of those blessed spirits which are received into heaven, 'our information, even under the Gospel, is very limited. We own it is so. Even Saint Paul, who had extraordinary communications, confessed, "that in these things we see through a glass darkly." But at the same time that we acknowledge that we

VOL. VII.

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know little, we ought to remember that, without Christ, we should have known nothing. It might not be possible, in our present state, to convey to us, by words, more clear or explicit conceptions of what will hereafter become of us; if possible, it might not be fitting. In that celebrated chapter, the 15th of 1 Corinthians, Saint Paul makes an inquisitive person ask, “How are the dead raised, and with what body do they come ?" From his answer to this question we are able, I think, to collect thus much clearly and certainly: that at the resurrection we shall have bodies of some sort or other; that they will be totally different from, and greatly excelling, our present bodies, though possibly in some manner or other proceeding from them, as a plant from its seed; that as there exists in nature a great variety of animal substances; one flesh of man, another of beasts, another of birds, another of fishes; as there exist also great differences in the nature, dignity, and splendour of inanimate substances, "one glory of the sun, another of the moon, another of the stars: there subsist, likewise, in the magazines of God Almighty's creation, two very distinct kinds of bodies (still both bodies), a natural body and a spiritual body: that the natural body is what human beings bear about with them now; the spiritual body, far surpassing the other, what the blessed will be clothed with hereafter. “Flesh and blood," our apostle teaches, "cannot inherit the kingdom of God;" that is, is by no means suited to that state, is not capable of it. Yet living men are flesh and blood; the dead in the graves are the remains of the same; wherefore to make all, who are Christ's, capable of entering into his eternal kingdom, and at all fitted for it, a great change shall be suddenly wrought. As well all the just, who shall be alive at the coming of

so