other belongs to that state in which the spirit is to wield a far more ethereal organization. Indications of the powers of such a spiritual body are seen not only in the acts of our Saviour after his resurrection, but also in His assurance that the children of the resurrection are made like and equal unto the angels.

That spiritual body, in contrast with the body which was sown, is described as glorious, powerful, and incorruptible and immortal. It is to the body in the grave what the rich, waving tree, with its broad branches, its green foliage and its golden fruit, is to the dull, dead atoms of the little seed under the furrows. The bodies of the just shall be fashioned like unto that glorious body, of which some glimpses were given in the transfiguration. Of that body it is told that it was brighter than the sun, and that the raiment outshone the light. When angels have appeared, it has been, at least often, in white apparel, in shining garments. Perhaps there is an alliance between the ethereal element of light and all which is most glorious in the higher worlds from which it emanates; perhaps it is the nearest approach in this earthly state to the splendours of a state of which no actual resemblance can here be attained.

A spiritual body must exercise far mightier powers than the present body over the material elements, since it is not restrained by its own fetters. What capacities of motion and action belong necessarily to the spirit, were the organs through which it must operate less gross and earthy! Every sensation, every perception, every operation in which the mind employs the body, must then be inconceivably subtler, quicker, more comprehensive and more intense. To the corruptible body alone belong inability, weariness, pain, disease, obstruction, by the necessity of its constitution,

But, vast as is the change, all that are in the graves shall come forth; each body the same, by a law of identity, with that which slept; the same, yet another, as the butterfly, the soaring emblem of immortality, is the same with the worm and the chrysalis. One generation, we know, will not even suffer the change of the grave, but another change, by which, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, the present mortal nature shall rather be clothed upon than unclothed, and mortality be swallowed up of life.

The resurrection in the last day is one in which "all that are in the graves shall come forth :" but whatever is more minutely said or intimated of the body of the resurrection is spoken of those who have slept and lived in Jesus. They that come unto the resurrection of damnation are also endued with an immortal body, prepared for the endurance of that just doom which sends them "away into everlasting punishment."

So little can we know of the deepest seeds of even the corporeal organization, that it is impossible to say or judge whether the germ of the immortal body, mysteriously enclosed in the mortal, may or may not be made, through the direct effect of holiness or of sin, the germ of necessary bliss or woe hereafter. The body of the believer is the temple of the Holy Ghost. They that sow to the flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption. How deep that sanctification or that corruption may now reach into the depths of our corporeal being, is known to the Author of that being. The blessing and the taint are corporeal as well as spiritual, both now and in the resurrection; and both perhaps may extend their electric chain through the very darkness of the grave.

LXVII.

Death of Death.

"The isles

With heaving ocean, rocked; the mountains shook
Their ancient coronets; the avalanche
Thundered; silence succeeded through the nations
Earth never listened to a sound like this.

It struck the general pulse of nature still,
And broke for ever the dull sleep of death."

HILLHOUSE.

THE events of the last resurrection are painted in the Scriptures with a peculiar grandeur. From various portions of the New Testament a mighty picture is formed, on which the eyes of successive generations were to be fastened, in the sure knowledge that every eye should see the stupendous reality.

In a day and an hour of which no man or angel knoweth, the Lord Jesus shall return from heaven as He ascended into heaven. "He shall come in His own glory, and in His Father's." The presence of the angels, of all the angels, and the magnificence of His train, is everywhere signified, in contrast with His former humiliation. Some amazing sign shall herald His coming: Then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven; and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn; and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven, with power and great glory." They "shall see Him sitting on the right

hand of power," clothed with the might and majesty of the Godhead. "The heavens must receive Him until the times of restitution of all things." We "wait for the Son of God from heaven;" from heaven we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ.

It is particularly told us, that He shall come with all His saints." They who have "slept in Jesus" shall be brought with Him" as a part of His shining train, so that those who are alive and remain" shall not "prevent," or precede, "them which are asleep."

He shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God." For the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible." It was with the same sound that the presence of God on Mount Sinai, when the law came to man, was proclaimed in the ears of Israel. The trump of the archangel, whatever else it be, must be a summons that shall be heard by innumerable beings; one that shall echo, like a thousand thunders, through this visible universe. An archangel may utter such a summons by means which, could they be named, might be regarded as sudden and tremendous operations of nature; for what are all such but effects proceeding from causes which lie behind, in the hands of angels and of the Lord of angels?

The word of God covers these mighty events with an awful indistinctness; the characteristic, from necessity, of all which connects the finite with the infinite. At one time, it is the voice of the archangel, which seems to ring in our ears; at another, the voice of Christ, at which, like Lazarus of old, the dead come forth from their graves. The sea gives up the dead which are in it; and death and hell deliver up the dead which are in them;" body and soul are united; wher

ever the seed of the immortal body may have fallen, wherever the spirit may have had its unseen abode.

Of all the dead, "the dead in Christ shall rise first:" "Christ the first-fruits, afterward they that are Christ's at His coming: then cometh the end." They are named first in all the descriptions of the resurrection and the judgment; and it is declared that the saints shall judge the world, and that the apostles shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. For, He shall sit upon the throne of His glory; and before Him shall be gathered all nations of the quick and dead. To gather them, too, He will send His angels, whose office it especially is, to gather together His elect from the uttermost part of earth to the uttermost part of heaven. They are the reapers, who separate the tares from the wheat in that great harvest.

Then, those who were mingled on earth must be for ever divided; and when the righteous shall have been welcomed by their Judge and Saviour to His kingdom, the wicked also shall hear their sentence. The scene of the universal judgment would seem to be upon the earth; possibly on a vast valley or plain, which, if literal, is fast by the walls of Jerusalem; and, if symbolical, has its name, "the valley of Jehoshaphat," "the valley of divine judgment," from the events of that day.

Divided, as the sheep and the goats, the righteous first, and then the wicked, shall be judged according to the deeds done here in the body. Their Judge is the Son of man: "Him hath God ordained;" and by Him "the dead are judged out of those things which are written in the books, according to their works:"«And another book is opened, which is the book of life,” in which are written the names of all the final heirs of