The life and work of St. Paul

CONDITION OV THE CHUBCH AT COBINTH. 399
And aa for material difficulties, Paul does not merely fling them aside with a
" Senseless one
"
! but says that the body dies as the seed dies, and our resurrection
bodies shall differ as the grain differs with the nature of the sown seed, or as one
star differs from another in glory. The corruption, the indignity, the strengthlessness
of the mortal body, into which at birth the soul is sown, shall be replaced by
the incorruption, glory, power of the risen body. The spiritual shall follow the
natural the ; heavenly image of Christ's quickening spirit replace the earthly image
of Adam, the mere living souL 1 Thus in a few simple words does St. Paul sweep
away the errors of Christians about the physical identity of the resurrection-body
with the actual corpse, which have given rise to so many scornful materialist objec-
tions. St. Paul does not say with Prudentius . .
"He nee dente, nee ungne
Vraodatum redimet patefacti foen Kpulcri;"
but that " flesh and blood" cannot enter into the kingdom of God ;
that at Christ's
coining the body of the living Christian will pass by transition, that of the dead
Christian by resurrection, into a heavenly, spiritual, and glorious body. 3
The body, then, was not the same, but a spiritual body ; so that all coarse
material difficulties were idle and beside the point.
In one moment, whether quick
or dead, at the sounding of the last trumpet, we should be changed from the
corruptible to incorruption, from the mortal to "
immortality. Then shall be
fulfilled the promise that is written, Death is swallowed up into victory. Where, O
death, is thy sting ? where, O death, thy victory ?* The sting of death is sin, the
power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who is giving us the victory through
our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, my brethren beloved, prove yourselves steadfast,
immovable, abounding in the work of the Lord always, knowing that your toil ia
not fruitless in the Lord." 4
So ends this glorious chapter the hope of millions of the living, the consolation
for the loss of millions of the dead. And if, as we have seen, Paul was the most
tried, in this life the most to be pitied of men, yet what a glorious privilege to him
in his trouble, what a glorious reward to him for all his labours and sufferings, that
he should have been so gifted and enlightened by the Holy Spirit as to be enabled
thus, incidentally as it were, to pour forth words which rise to a region far above
all difficulties and objections, and which teach us to recognise in death, not the
curse, but the coronation, not the defeat, but the victory, not the venomous serpent,
1 xv. 35 50. In this chapter there is the nearest approach to natural (as apart from wrcMUctural
and agonistic) metaphors. Dean Howson (Charact. of St. P. 6) point* out that there is more imagery
from natural phenomena in the single Epistle of St. James than in all St. Paul's Epistles put
together. "
Ver. 52. The dead shall be raised, we (the living) shall be changed." Into the question of
the intermediate state St. Paul, expecting a near coming of Christ, scarcely enters. Death was
Koiiiacrdat, resurrection was &ota.