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the fadeless vigor of eternal youth. Thus the future body will be the fulfilment of this. The animal will become spiritual. The natural will be glorified. What now nature sustains will then be sustained by spirit. What now depends upon nature will then depend upon spirit. What is now organ and instrument of nature will then be organ and instrument of spirit.

Farther, the spiritual body is one in which dwells, in a plenary way, the power of the Holy Spirit. Such was the opinion of the fathers, as appears from quotations found in various commentaries. The spiritual body, say they, "is a body possessed and actuated by the Holy Spirit, as the natural body is by the animal and vital spirits." Tertullian says, "It is called spiritual as putting on the spirit." "It is spiritual," says Methodius, "as receiving the whole energy and communion of the Spirit;" and again, "He calls that a spiritual body which is wholly subject to the Spirit."

Augustine, as quoted by Ursinus, says, "We must not imagine that because the Apostle says that the body which we have in the resurrection will be spiritual, that it will be purely spiritual without any body. But he calls that a spiritual body, which is wholly subject to the Spirit, and which is free from corruption and death. For when he calls the body which we now have a natural body, we must not suppose that it is not a body, but a soul. Therefore as the body which we now have is called natural, because it is subject to the soul, and cannot be spiritual, because it is not yet fully subject to the Spirit, as long as it may be corrupted, so it will then be called

spiritual, when it will not be able with any corruption to resist the Spirit."

There is much manifest to enable us to know that the influence of the Holy Spirit, even in this life, exerts a refining and ennobling influence upon the under texture, or tissue-work, of the bodily organization. In the eye, the countenance, and in every feature, as well as in all the graces of conduct, the fruits of the Spirit are incarnated. "What! know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own?" Even now we walk in the Spirit. Even now already "the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus, hath made us free from the law of sin and death." Even now "to be spiritually minded is life and peace.

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Thus already in this life, the Spirit, dwelling in the saints, banishes more and more the life of nature. Heaven this victory will be complete. There the Holy Spirit, who dwells in the bodies of the saints as a quickening power, will so permeate the matter of the new body, as to quicken it with His own life, and render it radiant with His own glory. "If Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin; but the Spirit is life because of righteousness. But if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you." Rom. viii. 10, 11.

Who can measure the happy advantages which will flow to the saints in light by means of their glorified bodies? Truly it doth not yet appear what we shall

be! We wait for that which shall be revealed; and, while we wait, we rejoice in hope of the blessedness that awaits us.

O glorious hour! O blest abode !
I shall be near and like my God!
And flesh and sin no more control
The sacred pleasures of the soul.

CHAPTER X.

Che Spirits of the Saints glorified.

Now we see through a glass darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.

PAUL.

Ye are come unto mount Zion and to the spirits of just men made perfect.

EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS.

WE are rising still higher in our meditations on the happiness of the saints in their Heavenly Home. Having treated of the heavenly place, and of the glorified bodies of the saints in that place, we must now proceed to speak of the glorification of the spirit. Here is a still higher point in the blessed argument. It is the spirit that poises in bliss, between the highest form of matter, as it exists in the glorified body, and the great God, the Father of Spirits, and the source of all their blessedness. Hence we ascend higher, in

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our conceptions of heavenly blessedness, when we contemplate "the spirits of just men made perfect."

The spirit, as well as the body, has been injured by sin. Darkness, weakness, and confusion have taken the place of that light, vigor, and harmony which reigned in our unfallen nature. This ruin, which sin has wrought, needs to be repaired. It is plain, however, that this is not fully accomplished in this life. Grace lays the foundation, renovates the fallen nature, and carries on the work of sanctification, and, in a sense, finishes the work of salvation; yet still glorification lies beyond, and "it doth not yet appear what we shall be." The spirit of life in Christ Jesus only triumphs fully and finally in the resurrection of the body, and the full glorification of the spirit in the higher world. The marks of the face are found as a blemish upon the spirit, as long as it is united to the body of death. The influences of an imperfect body hem and hinder the perfection of the spirit. We can only expect fully glorified souls in connection with fully glorified bodies, in the Heavenly Home.

The complete glorification of the spirit involves three things; of them we shall treat in this Chapter. First, the perfection of the senses. Secondly, the perfection of the mental powers. Thirdly, the perfection of the moral nature.

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