Page:The Last Judgement and Second Coming of the Lord Illustrated.djvu/152

 at His coming." Here he plainly calls attention to the distinction which there is between the resurrection of Christ and the resurrection of ordinary men. Christ is called the first fruits, not to indicate that He was the first who had been raised since the death of Adam, for patriarchs and prophets had been raised before, but to inform us that He was the Chief, the Head, the Author of this astounding phenomenon. And when the apostle tells us "that every one is made alive in his own order," he plainly intends to point out a distinction between the resurrection of the Lord and the resurrection of ordinary men. Doubtless there is a divinity about the quality of the Lord's resurrection-body which cannot belong to man's. Ours "may be fashioned like unto His glorious body;" but there is the same distinction between His and ours as there is between the likeness and the original. There cannot be any true parallelism between the Lord's resurrection and man's: there being no equality between their essential natures, there can be no equality between their ultimate appearances. Jesus, because He was "the first"—the essential life, became also, "the last"—the ultimate of formal life, by rising in a Divine Humanity, and which, therefore, must be different from that which distinguishes the bodies of risen men. He who is the Resurrection and the Life, must needs present an appearance in His resurrection which cannot pertain to the bodies of risen men. He was "the Holy One" who did not "see corruption." Man is not holy, and his body sees corruption; therefore it may be evident that, however much the resurrection of the Lord may prove the resurrection of man, there are circumstances and characteristics attending the former which afford no parallel from which to argue concerning the resurrection body of