Page:The Last Judgement and Second Coming of the Lord Illustrated.djvu/154

 goes on to declare, "There are also celestial bodies and bodies terrestrial: but the glory of the celestial is one, and the glory of the terrestrial is another:" thus there is an essential distinction between the quality of the bodies of which he speaks,—the one plainly belonging to nature and subject to its mutations, and the other as plainly belonging to the spirit. And it is of importance to notice, that he expressly tells us "we sow not that body which shall be;" that God giveth it a body as it pleaseth Him, to every seed his own body; thus, to that which is natural He giveth a natural body, and to that which is spiritual He giveth a spiritual body. He likens the resurrection to the sowing and germination of wheat or some other grain, and tells us that what is sown is not quickened except it die, and that so also is the resurrection of the dead. Thus, death is not only the necessary prelude to the resurrection, but the death of one body is indispensable to the raising of the other. When the grain of wheat dies it does not rise again: it is the germ, the kernel, the soul of the wheat which lives and rises; and the resurrection of the one is concurrent with the death of the other. "Thou sowest not that body which shall be." Can anything be plainer? Is it not evident that man's resurrection body is a spiritual body? A natural body is sown, a spiritual body is raised. "There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body." The facts, the arguments, and the ilustrations of the apostle all go to show that the resurrection body of which he treats is not that material covering which had experienced disease, death, and burial. The real resurrection follows these events with as much closeness as a dream succeeds to sleep. In sleep the body passes into a condition of insensibility to all the phenomena of the outer world; and yet, in the dream which