absorbed by the rejoicing waters. And then he
says, 'Now He that hath wrought us for this very thing, is God.'

Of course it is impossible that he can mean by this 'very thing' the
second of the roads by which it was possible to reach the ultimate
issue, because he did not know whether his brethren and he were to
die or to be changed. He speaks in the context about death as a
possible contingency for himself and for them,--'_If_ our earthly
house of this tabernacle were dissolved,' and so on. Therefore we
must suppose that 'the self-same thing' of which he is thinking as
the divine purpose in all His dealings with us, is not the manner in
which we may attain that ultimate condition, but the condition itself
which, by one road or another, God's children shall attain. Or, in
other words, the highest aim of the divine love in all its dealings
with us Christian men, is not merely a blessed spiritual life, but
the completion of our humanity in a perfect spirit dwelling in a
glorified body. Corporeity--the dwelling in a body by which the pure
spirit moves amidst pure universes--is the highest end of God's will
concerning us.

That glorified body is described in our context in wonderful words,
which it would take me far too long to do more than just touch upon.
Here we dwell in a tent, there we shall dwell in a building. Here in
a house made with hands, a corporeal frame derived from parents by
material transmission and intervention; there we shall dwell in a
building of which God is the maker. Here we dwell in a crumbling clay
tenement, which rains dissolve, which lightning strikes, and winds
overthrow, and which finally lies on the ground a heap of tumbled
ruin. There we dwell in a building, God's direct work, eternal, and
knowing no corruption nor change. Here we dwell in a body congruous
with, and part of, the perishable earthly world in which it abides,
and with which it stands in relation; there we dwell in a house
partaking of the nature of the heavens in which it moves, a body that
is the fit organ of a perfect spirit.

And so, says Paul, the end of what God means with us is not stated in
all its wonderfulness, when we speak of spirits imbued with His
wisdom and surcharged with His light and perfectness, but when we add
to that the thought of a fitting organ in which these spirits dwell,
whereby they can come into contact with an external universe,
incorruptible, and so reach the summit of their destined
completen