He has far better things in store for us than mere salvation. He has an inheritance prepared which, in contrast with the darkness of this world, is the realm of light.

His Word is freighted with the promise of a new creation, which shall supersede the old. These fair fields, the product of His creative power and skill, are not always to be eclipsed by this present darkness. A great light shall one day break through it. And Satan and his brood shall be driven into regions of outer darkness. And then, the day of glory, of which God and the Lamb are the everlasting light. Far deeper than the foundations on which Satan has reared the throne of his kingdom of darkness are those of that kingdom, prepared from the foundation of the world, spoken of in the text as "the kingdom of His dear Son." Into this kingdom we are even

now translated.

And such is the nature of the fellowship into which we are called with Christ, that for this inheritance of the saints in light we are even now made meet.

And for the accomplishment of this overthrow of the power of darkness, and our complete and eternal deliverance from it, the context assures us that the Father hath now raised Him to the highest seat in heaven. He contemplated, indeed, this grand issue from the beginning of creation. For we read here that by Him, who is our Deliverer,

were all things at first created, whether they be things on earth or things in heaven. And He is the Head of the body, the church, who is the beginning, the first-born from the dead. We have said something of the far-reaching power of the ruler of this world's darkness. But here we learn that our triumphant Lord made and holds in the hollow of His hand all these adverse powers. And, moreover, that they, in their blind rage, are themselves but workers in that eternal plan which shall issue in the exaltation of Christ and His church to the perpetual ownership and dominion over this vast heritage created by His hands. Around that throne, on which the Father seated Him as the Head of the body, the church, there now centre those lines of power and blessing that reach out to the remotest past and radiate over all the future, and which shall lift us, as by the hands of mighty angels, above all the downward pressure of the power of darkness and death, and out of the dungeon of the grave, until, with all the saints in light, we shall stand upon His holy mountain, transfigured and glorified with Christ, in raiment white as the light, and prepared to enter with Him upon those administrations of His kingdom, which shall fill the earth with the knowledge of His glory, and flood the heavens with a brighter light than that which shines from suns and stars.

VIII.

THE NATURAL AND THE SPIRITUAL.

Howbeit that was not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural; and afterward that which is spiritual. The first man is of the earth, earthy: the second man is the Lord from heaven. As is the earthy, such are they also that are earthy and as is the heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly. And as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly.—1 CORINTHIANS XV. 46-49.

THIS passage occurs in the course of that sublime argument by which the apostle established the faith of the Corinthian church in the resurrection of the dead. No topic is more prominent in the sermons and letters of the apostles. In their view the resurrection of the saints was that arch of triumph which God is building over the chasm that separates earth from heaven, the realm of death from the realm of life; and of that arch the resurrection of Christ was the keystone.

In the first verse of this passage a general principle is announced, which pervades all God's works and ways, and in accordance with which the resurrection must proceed. "Howbeit that

was not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural; and afterward that which is spiritual."

Let us observe, first, how this principle applies to the works of God in creation, and, secondly, how it requires, as the succeeding verses state, our resurrection from the dead.

The human mind, in every age, has cherished the conviction that the works of God in nature reveal Him. The heavens declare His glory. And on the earth, fields, floods, and mountains, teeming with life and beauty, and pouring out their treasures for man's sustenance and delight, have ever spoken to him of God. And yet, in every age, men have forgotten that nature is now but a shadowy and imperfect revelation of Him. It is crowded, indeed, with the symbols of His glory. It is a grand store-house of patterns of things in the heavens. But a symbol is not the thing itself, nor is the pattern of a thing that upon which our thoughts and affections should terminate. This prime mistake lies at the root of that universal sin of the race,-idolatry. The things that are made have been a veil, which God has hung out of heaven, inscribed all over with testimonies to things invisible. They have revealed His eternal power and Godhead. But men have mistaken the creature for the Creator. They have transferred to it their homage and service, and have crowded and shrouded the glory

of the incorruptible God within the limits of its corruptible forms. And hence their debasing worship and service of the creature. And this is still the germ of all ungodliness in our day and in Christian lands. Naturalism is now the great foe of Christianity. The great effort of the enemy, in every age, is to blind men to the knowledge of God, whom to know is eternal life, by substituting in their minds God revealed in nature for God revealed in Christ. Liberal Christianity, so called, is but a disguised form cf this old error of the Wicked One. In subtle and unsuspected ways it summons men to the study and admiration of God in nature, as an adequate and supreme revelation of Himself, and reduces the meaning of the life, the death, and the resurrection of Jesus within its sphere.

But the distinctive teaching of the Bible as to this point is, that nature, as now constituted, is not the final and complete revelation of God; that it is merely the shadow of a concealed substance, the transient and corruptible form of that which is incorruptible and abiding; that the likeness of anything in heaven, earth, or sea, nor the likeness of man, as now subject to sin and death, is not an adequate image of God, but that Christ, the new and risen Man, is His only true image; that He, through resurrection, has become the Head and harbinger of a new crea