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| From This Perfection of Our Restored Bodies Will Flow the Consciousness of Undisturbed Joy and Peace. PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP
Chapter
LVIII.—From This Perfection of Our Restored Bodies Will Flow the
Consciousness of Undisturbed Joy and Peace.
“Everlasting joy,” says Isaiah,
“shall be upon their heads.”7728
Well, there is nothing eternal until after the resurrection. “And
sorrow and sighing,” continues he, “shall flee
away.”7729 The angel echoes
the same to John: “And God shall wipe away all tears from their
eyes;”7730 from the same eyes
indeed which had formerly wept, and which might weep again, if the
loving-kindness of God did not dry up every fountain of tears. And
again: “God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and
there shall be no more death,”7731 and therefore
no more corruption, it being chased away by incorruption, even as death
is by immortality. If sorrow, and mourning, and sighing, and death
itself, assail us from the afflictions both of soul and body, how shall
they be removed, except by the cessation of their causes, that is to
say, the afflictions of flesh and soul? where will you find adversities
in the presence of God? where, incursions of an enemy in the bosom of
Christ? where, attacks of the devil in the face of the Holy
Spirit?—now that the devil himself and his angels are “cast
into the lake of fire.”7732 Where now is
necessity, and what they call fortune or fate? What plague awaits the
redeemed from death, after their eternal pardon? What wrath is there
for the reconciled, after grace? What weakness, after their
renewed strength? What risk
and danger, after their salvation? That the raiment and shoes of the
children of Israel remained unworn and fresh for the space of forty
years;7733 that in their very
persons the exact point7734 of convenience and
propriety checked the rank growth of their nails and hair, so that any
excess herein might not be attributed to indecency; that the fires of
Babylon injured not either the mitres or the trousers of the three
brethren, however foreign such dress might be to the Jews;7735 that Jonah was swallowed by the monster of
the deep, in whose belly whole ships were devoured, and after three
days was vomited out again safe and sound;7736
that Enoch and Elias, who even now, without experiencing a resurrection
(because they have not even encountered death), are learning to the
full what it is for the flesh to be exempted from all humiliation, and
all loss, and all injury, and all disgrace—translated as they
have been from this world, and from this very cause already candidates
for everlasting life;7737 —to what faith
do these notable facts bear witness, if not to that which ought to
inspire in us the belief that they are proofs and documents of our own
future integrity and perfect resurrection? For, to borrow the
apostle’s phrase, these were “figures of
ourselves;”7738 and they are
written that we may believe both that the Lord is more powerful than
all natural laws about the body, and that He shows Himself the
preserver of the flesh the more emphatically, in that He has preserved
for it its very clothes and shoes.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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