grow
warm. At the fifth, they shall be crowned with the head. At the
sixth, the soul shall re enter the body. And at the seventh, they
shall stand erect." Corrodi, Geschichte des Chiliasmus, band i. s.
355.

of the earth, earthy; the second man was the Lord from heaven; and
as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the
image of the heavenly; for flesh and blood cannot inherit the
kingdom of God." In view of these declarations, it is astonishing
that any one can suppose that Paul believed in the resurrection of
these present bodies and in their transference into heaven. "In
this tabernacle we groan, being burdened," and, "Who shall deliver
me from this body of death?" he cries. If ever there was a man
whose goading experience, keen intellectual energies, and moral
sensibilities, made him weary of this slow, gross body, and
passionately to long for a more corresponding, swift, and pure
investiture, it was Paul. And in his theory of "the glorious body
of Christ, according to which our vile body shall be changed," he
relieved his impatience and fed his desire. What his conception of
that body was, definitely, we cannot tell; but doubtless it was
the idea of a vehicle adapted to his mounting and ardent soul, and
in many particulars very unlike this present groaning load of
clay. The epistles of Paul contain no clear implication of the
notion of a millennium, a thousand years' reign of Christ with his
saints on the earth after his second advent. On the contrary, in
many places, particularly in the fourth chapter of the First
Epistle to the Thessalonians, (supposing that letter to be his,)
he says that the Lord and they that are his will directly pass
into heaven after the consummation of his descent from heaven and
their resurrection from the dead. But the declaration "He must
reign till he hath put all enemies under his feet," taken with its
context, is thought, by Bertholdt, Billroth, De Wette, and others,
to imply that Christ would establish a millennial kingdom on
earth, and reign in it engaged in vanquishing all hostile forces.
Against this exegesis we have to say, first, that, so far as that
goes, the vast preponderance of critical authorities is opposed to
it. Secondly, if this conquest were to be secured on earth, there
is nothing to show that it need occupy much time: one hour might
answer for it as well as a thousand years. There is nothing here
to show that Paul means just what the Rabbins