than in mind; so the whole man, perfected
in glory, is to have his place in a world emancipated in like manner
from failure and pain.

Perhaps the most important consideration to be derived from this
passage is that St. Paul's thought is equally alien to a one-sided
spiritualism and a one-sided materialism. A one-sided spiritualism,
such as is represented to-day by (most falsely-called) 'Christian
Science,' either disbelieves in the reality of matter altogether, or
regards it with its attendant qualities of weakness and pain as evil
and a thing to be ignored. The religion of {307} the Incarnation, on
the other hand, as represented by St. Paul, recognizes it as God's
creation and the temple of His presence. In our manhood, as scientific
investigation assures us, we can exercise no activity of spirit except
as parts of a material world, through the senses and by the
instrumentality of the bodily organs. Spirit and matter are in us so
linked together that the real difficulty to a thinking Christian is to
conceive at all of a 'disembodied' state of the personal human spirit
after death which is in any sense a living state. But such a
'disembodied' state--if the word really represents the truth--is
unnatural and temporary. The perfected human spirit is to have an
embodiment which is to be material, as being truly a body, but also
spiritual, because it is to be the fitting organ of the perfected
spirit, in no way embarrassing or clogging its activity by any
grossness or corruption. This is the Christian hope, definite in
principle, if quite unaccompanied by any anticipated knowledge of
method or details. And this destiny of the human body cannot be
separated from the destiny of the material universe as a whole. Matter
as a whole is to have an unending development like spirit, and a
development with a justifying purpose of glory in it.

{308}

And St. Paul is equally opposed to the materialism which gives to
matter a substantive existence apart from spirit. Metaphysical inquiry
assures us that we can have no conception of a material object, or of
matter in general, except as related to a consciousness or spirit; or,
in other words, except as an adjunct to some sort of personality. Such
metaphysical inquiry did not lie in St. Paul's way. But he is in
harmony with its results when he contemplates a glorified nature as
still relative to glorified personalities. Nature is to share the
revelation of the glory of t