Page:The kernel and the husk (Abbott, 1886).djvu/267

Letter 23] the most comforting belief in the end will be found to be that Jesus was "put to death in the flesh but quickened (not in the flesh but) in the spirit." And as it was with Him, so we believe it will be with us.

But perhaps you will remind me that one of the Creeds mentions "the Resurrection of the body;" and that St. Paul anticipates the Resurrection, not of a "spirit," but of "a spiritual body;" and you may ask me what I infer from this. I for my part infer that St. Paul desired to guard against the notion that the dead lose their identity and are merged in God or in some other essence; he wished to convey to his hearers that they would still retain their individuality, the power of loving and of being loved; possibly also he wished to suggest a life of continued activity in the service of God; and in order to express this he used such language (metaphorical of course) as would unmistakeably imply that identity would be preserved, and activity would be possible. But he took care to guard his language against materialistic misinterpretation by insisting that the body would be "spiritual" and therefore invisible to the earthly eye and cognizable only by the spirit. The new body, he says, is "a building from God," "a house not made with hands, eternal;" and he prefaces this by saying "the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal." Hereby he clearly implies that the new body will be "not seen." Elsewhere he tells us that "the things prepared by God" for them that love Him (and of course he includes in these the "building from God, the house not made with hands") are such as eye "hath not seen nor ear heard, nor have they entered into the heart of man; but God hath revealed them unto us by the Spirit;" and again, "the things of God none knoweth save the Spirit of God," which has been imparted to the faithful.

To speak honestly, I must add that, even if I found St.