which is 'eternal.' Involved in that is
the thought that all the limitations and weaknesses which are
necessarily associated with the perishableness of the present
abode are at an end for ever. No more fatigue, no more working beyond
the measure of power, no more need for recuperation and repose; no
more dread of sickness and weakness; no more possibility of decay,
'It is sown in corruption; it is raised in incorruption'--neither
'_can_ they die any more.' Whether that be by reason of any inherent
immortality, or by reason of the uninterrupted flow into the creature
of the immortal life of Christ, to whom he is joined, is a question
that need not trouble us now. Enough for us that the contrast between
the Bedouin tent--which is folded up and carried away, and nothing
left but the black circle where the cheerful hearth once glinted
amidst the sands of the desert--and the stately mansion reared for
eternity, is the contrast between the organ of the spirit in which we
now dwell and that which shall be ours.

And the other contrast is no less glorious and wonderful. 'The
_earthly_ house of this tent' does not merely define the composition,
but also the whole relations and capacities of that to which it
refers. The 'tent' is 'earthly', not merely because, to use a kindred
metaphor, it is a 'building of clay,' but because, by all its
capacities, it belongs to, corresponds with, and is fitted only for,
this lower order of things, the seen and the perishable. And, on the
other hand, the 'mansion' is in 'the heavens,' even whilst the future
tenant is a nomad in his tent. That is so, because the power which
can create that future abode is 'in the heavens.' It is so called in
order to express the security in which it is kept for those who shall
one day enter upon it. And it is so, further, to express the order of
things with which it brings its dwellers into contact. 'Flesh and
blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of God; neither doth corruption
inherit incorruption.' That future home of the spirit will be
congruous with the region in which it dwells; fitted for the heavens
in which it is now preserved. And thus the two contrasts--adapted to
the perishable, and itself perishable, belonging to the eternal and
itself incorruptible--are the two which loom largest before the
Apostle's mind.

Let no man say that such ideas of a possible future bodily frame are
altogether inconsistent with all that we know of the limitations and
charact