n and pure for his lungs.
Can there be any possibility of making him fit to live in a spiritual
world? Apart from revelation, the dreary answer must be 'No.' But the
'mystery' answers with 'Yes.' The change from physical to spiritual
is clearly necessary, if there is to be a blessed life hereafter.

That necessary change is assured to all Christians, whether they die
or 'remain till the coming of the Lord.' Paul varies in his
anticipations as to whether he and his contemporaries will belong to
the one class or the other; but he is quite sure that in either case
the indwelling Spirit of Jesus will effect on living and dead the
needful change. The grand description in verse 52, like the parallel
in 1 Thessalonians iv. 16, is modelled on the account of the
theophany on Sinai. The trumpet was the signal of the Divine
Presence. That last manifestation will be sudden, and its startling
breaking in on daily commonplace is intensified by the reduplication:
'In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye.' With sudden crash that
awful blare of 'loud, uplifted angel trumpet' will silence all
other sounds, and hush the world. The stages of what follows are
distinctly marked. First, the rising of the dead changed in passing
through death, so as to rise in incorruptible bodies, and then the
change of the bodies of the living into like incorruption. The former
will not be found naked, but will be clothed with their white
garments; the latter will, as it were, put on the glorious robes
above the 'muddy vesture of decay,' or, more truly, will see the
miracle of these being transfigured till they shine 'so as no fuller
on earth could white them.' The living will witness the resurrection
of the dead; the risen dead will witness the transformation of the
living. Then both hosts will be united, and, through all eternity,
'live together,' and that 'with Him.' Paul evidently expects that he
and the Corinthians will be in the latter class, as appears by the
'we' in verse 52. He, as it were, points to his own body when he
says, recurring to his former thought of the necessity of harmony
between organism and environment, '_this_ corruptible must put on
incorruption.' Here 'corruption' is used in its physical application,
though the ethical meaning may be in the background.

The Apostle closes his long argument and revelation with a burst,
almost a shout, of triumph. Glowing words of old prophets rush into
his mind, and he breathes a new, grander mea