How such an estimate of all holy men will be or can be made and published, utterly surpasses our present powers to imagine. We have no faculties now whereby to deal thus truly and fairly with all men: our organs of sense in this present state, and the minds themselves to which those organs convey impressions, are too feeble and limited for the effort required to apprehend all respecting all, as we shall then apprehend it. But this need not form any difficulty in our way to believe that such a thing shall be. The power to understand it and the power to receive it surely do not dwell farther off from our matured powers now, than the full powers of a grownup man from the faculties and conceptions of a child. In all such matters, we are children now. Think we then of the blessed dead at that day of the resurrection, as rising sure of bliss and of their perfection in Him to whom they were united; being as though there were no judgment, seeing that they have One who shall answer for them at the tribunal: judged notwithstanding before the bar of God, and passing not to condemnation, but to their exceeding great and eternal reward.
One more thing only now is left us: to ask what we know of that last and perfected state of man—that highest development and dignity of our race, when body, soul, and spirit, freed from sin and sorrow, shall reign with Christ in light.
With that question, and its answer, we hope to conclude this course of sermons next Sunday.
[IV.]
We are to speak to-day of the final state of bliss of those who have died in the Lord. Their state of waiting has ended; the resurrection has clothed them again with the body, the final judgment has passed over them, and their last unending state has begun. There are no words in Holy Scripture so well calculated to give a general summary of that state as those concluding ones of a passage from which I have before largely quoted: 1 Thess. iv. 17: “And so shall we ever be with the Lord.”
For these words contain in them all that has been revealed of that glorious state, included in one simple description. The bliss of the moment after death consisted in being with Christ: the bliss of unlimited ages can only be measured by the same. Nearness to Him that made us, union with Him who redeemed us, the everlasting and unvexed company of Him who sanctifieth us: what glory, what dignity, what happiness can be imagined for man greater than this?
And yet it is not by dwelling upon this, and this alone, that we shall be able to arrive at even that appreciation of heaven which is within our present powers. We may take these words, “for ever with the Lord,” and we may find in them, as in our Father’s house itself, many mansions. In various ways we are far from the Lord here; in various ways we shall be near Him and with Him there.
But first of all we must approach these various mansions through their portals and the avenues which lead up to them. And one of those is the consideration, who, and of what sort, they shall be, of whom we are about to speak. It will be very necessary that we should conceive of them aright.
Well, then, they will be men, with bodies, souls, and spirits like ourselves. The disembodied state will be over, and every one will have been reunited to the body which he or she had before death. What do we know of this body? Very glorious thoughts rise up in our minds when we think of it: but in this course of sermons I am not speculating; I am inquiring soberly what is revealed to us about the blessed dead. Well then, again, what do we know of this body of the resurrection? In Phil. iii. 21, there is a revelation on this point. It is there said that “our home is in heaven, from whence also we expect the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ: who shall change the body of our degradation that it may be fashioned like unto the body of His glory.” And this change is very much dwelt on as a necessary condition of the heavenly state in 1 Cor. xv. “Flesh and blood,” we are told, i.e., this present natural or psychical body, the body whose informing tenant is the animal soul, cannot inherit the kingdom of God; neither can corruption, that which decays and passes away, inherit incorruption, that state where there is no decay nor passing away. So, then, a change must take place at the resurrection: a change which shall pass also on those who are alive and remain at the Lord’s coming. The bodies of the risen saints, and of those who are to join them in being for ever with the Lord, will be spiritual bodies: bodies tenanted and informed in chief by that highest part of man, which during this present life is so much dwarfed down and crushed by the usurpations of the animal soul; viz., his spirit.
Now, it would be idle to conceal the fact, that we cannot form any distinct conception what this spiritual body may be. No such thing has ever come within the range of our experience. But some particulars we do know about it, because God has revealed them. And of those, the principal are specified in this very passage: “It is sown in corruption: it is raised in incorruption.” It cannot decay. Eternal ages will pass over it, and it will remain the same. Again, “it is sown in dishonour: it is raised in glory.” There will be no shame about it, as there will be no sin. Thus much from these words is undoubted. What else they may imply we cannot say for certain; probably, unimagined degrees of beauty and radiancy, for so the word glory as applied to anything material seems to imply. Further: “it is sown in weakness: it is raised in power.” That is, I suppose, with all its faculties wonderfully intensified, and possibly with fresh faculties granted, which here it never possessed, and the mind of man could not even imagine. This last also seems to be implied by its being called a spiritual body. As here it was an animal body, subject to the mere animal life or soul, hemmed in by the conditions of that animal life, so there it will be under the dominion of, and suited to the wants of, man’s spirit, the lofty and heavenly part of him.