Yes, the fulness of grace has come at last, and the body of sin and death is no more. It is now changed into a spiritual body, which is not only totally subject to the spirit, but even aids and perfects it, in all its intellectual operations, as well as in its moral affections. The spiritual body is, therefore, no lounger a burden and a temptation; it is become like a spirit, which cannot be enslaved to inordinate animal passions or instincts.
What a blessedness is here promised to us! No more involuntary cravings after forbidden pleasures; no more of those involuntary thoughts and inclinations which are so humiliating to pure souls; no more danger of being turned away from God by the beauty of creatures; no more wandering of the mind from His presence. In a word, the spiritual body is totally subject to the spirit, and "the law of sin," which received its birth at the fall of our first parents, is totally destroyed.
3. Rising a spiritual body means, in the third place, that the matter of which the body is now composed will become so refined and delicately organized, as, in some sense, to approach the nature of a spirit, while retaining its essential material nature. Our body will therefore lose its material grossness, roughness of texture, and weight, and will be clothed with the attributes of agility and subtlety.
Agility implies the power of transporting ourselves from place to place with the rapidity of thought. In this world we can, in the twinkling of an eye, send our thoughts on the wings of electricity across a whole continent, or the vast expanse of the ocean; after the resurrection, we shall possess that power in our very bodies, because they shall rise spiritual bodies, entirely under the control of the soul.
Subtilty means that our risen bodies will be endowed with the power of penetrating all things, even the hardest substances, as easily as the sun's rays penetrate a clear crystal. This is the power which our blessed Lord possessed and exercised, when He arose from the dead, without removing the stone that covered the mouth of the sepulchre. He simply passed through it with his glorified body. Again, after eight days, when the Apostles were gathered together, "Jesus cometh, the doors being shut, and stood in the midst, and said: Peace be to you."* This is a supernatural gift with which we shall be clothed, because we must rise conformable to the glorious body of Jesus Christ.
* John xx. 26.
These, then, are some of the attributes of a spiritual body. They are evidently the natural properties of spirits. But God will clothe the bodies of his children with them, as a reward for their love of Him and the holy lives they have led in this world.
CHAPTER VII.
THE IMPASSIBILITY AND IMMORTALITY OF THE RISEN BODY.
Besides the attributes which immediately flow from the fact that our animal bodies will rise spiritualized, there are two more qualities, which we shall now consider; namely, the impassibility and immortality of our risen bodies.