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spiritual things; through all these ages he is teaching. Christ is perfectly clear, yet there are mysteries in him. Water may be clear, and yet we can not see to the bottom. So Christ is perfectly clear, yet so deep in some things, that we can not understand him.

He says,

Jesus does not spend time over opinions. "Amen, amen. He does not give us so much on some subjects as we would like; but all that is good for us, no doubt. So it is with the subject of the resurrec

tion.

We need to examine some negative and the positive way.

subjects in both the Some truths can be

presented only in the negative way. Several words. bearing on the subject of resurrection need to be looked.

up.

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לי

The man who has the Spirit, and lives in grace, already has eternal life, though he may be able to lose it. They who attain to that state of life after the resurrection shall not die any more. "They shall be as the angels." They shall never perish." This shuts out all power of decay. "Not a hair of your head shall perish." (Luke 21: 18.) What does it mean? Not literal, can it be? Does not he mean "the life?" The hair is the least organ of the body. The full organization of the man complete in Christ shall be preserved. A sick man loses his hair, and does not get the same hair back, and yet he says, "I have got my hair back." It is not necessary that we should have the same flesh, and blood, and hair; yet we shall have all that belongs to the man. Some think that there is a germ in this body that shall spring into a new growth. God is able to give us what we need in his own way.

About the home in which we shall be there are two words "In the resurrection they neither marry, nor are given in marriage; but are as the angels of God in heaven." (Matthew 22: 30.) If they are truly married here there is no need of it there. Spiritual relations of love, I think, will continue through all eternity. Christ does not deny this. Eve will be more

to Adam than any other one could be. My wife will be more to me than any other; but there will be nothing carnal there.

The temple was a figure of the Father's house. This, to the Jews, was the Father's house (seen); and he says, "In my Father's house (unseen) there are many mansions." The last word of the carpenter is, "I go to prepare a place for you." We would like to know more, but this is all that we now need. He dwells more

on "the life" than anything else.

It seems to me that this life has in it a consciousness of immortality. If we have the divine life, must it not bè conscious of itself?

Does the fear of death belong to the divine life? No. The fear of death is everywhere in the flesh. "Marvel not at this; for the hour is coming, in the which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice, and shall come forth," etc.

those in the state of death.

from the conditions of death.

"In the graves" means

They shall come forth

Those who were raised

to life before Christ's resurrection were not raised to the resurrection state, but to the same conditions of bodily life. Christ is Lord of all souls,—both the dead and the living, in the body or out of it. These ques

tions of future life and its conditions came up in Greek times. Plato had his philosophy of the future life.

Dr. Trench says that the study of words is the study of theology. True. Properly, however, the study of the word of God is theology. The study of words is full of interest and instruction. Words grow in their meaning to us, and we adopt them as new articles of our faith. Some words are creeds in themselves. Thus it is with the word "immortality." Moses does not use it, and indeed it is not in the gospel as a word. The idea is then in this: "They shall never die." The idea must come before the word to express it. Moses had not the New Testament idea of immortality. Christ gave the new idea to men. The word is found in use in the epistles. The trouble with most writers on this subject is, they take the language of the East as though it was the language of matter-of-fact New England.

There are two words in Greek for immortality: Athanasia and aphtharsia. They have not the same meaning. The first means undeathly; the second, incorruptibility. The study of their use is the study of the subject of immortality. G、d only has immortality. "The Father hath life in himself." The Son hath life in himself, but it was given him that he might give it to men. The Holy Spirit in the inner man gives him immortality. It has power to assimilate the man to Christ, but not to the outward man. "Though our outward man perish, the inner man is renewed day by day." (Romans 8: 10, 11.)

Finally, the body is to be redeemed and made alive in Christ. There is immortality for the inner man, and

These subjects

incorruptibility for the outward inan. were doubtful and dark to the heathen, obscure to the Jew, but are clear to the Christian.

This brings us to the subject of Christ's glorification. The false French idea of glory spoils the sense of the word to us. Most history has been written with that false idea of glory, which has worked the ruin of the French nation. Englishmen fought from a sense of duty; Frenchmen for glory. But the true glory of Christ is the will of his Father.

MISCELLANEOUS.

John's gospel has many deep things. He gives the advanced lessons of Christianity. He begins with, and treats of, the spiritual Christ. He comes near to him. He was the disciple of love; and he it was who, after several unveilings of God's character, could, at the last, going into the depths of these things, discern the great truth, "God is love." Thus we should expect to find in John the deeper insight into the secrets of heavenly things.

There is no complete fullness in any of these men. John is the greatest measure, but he is dipped from the great ocean of divine love. Put all together, from Moses clear down through, and, although it is sufficient for our wants, it is not the fullness of glory there is in God. After all this the Spirit of Truth-the Holy Spirit comes to our aid. It takes the Spirit to discern and appreciate these deep things. Spirit only can comprehend spirit. "The natural man can not understand the things of the Spirit."

John is the book for Christians; it is not for others. In order to understand it we need to be like John. There are things here hard to be understood. Not as Paul's writings-hard to be understood by the intellect because of their logic, but because of their spiritual

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