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during all the pilgrimage of the children of Israel. And is not
Peter's saying the same as Paul's, in his picture of the suffering
creation: "But ourselves also, which have the first-fruits of the
Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the
adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body" (Rom. 8: 23). Not yet
have we reached the consummation of our hope, at the "appearing of the
glory of our great God and Saviour Jesus Christ" (Titus 2: 13, R. V.);
but the Spirit, through whose inworking power this great change is to
be wrought, already dwells in us, giving us by his present quickening
the pledge and earnest of our final glory. And so we read in another
Scripture: "But if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead
dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken
your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you" (Rom. 8: 11).
It is not our dead bodies which are here spoken of as the objects of
the Spirit's quickening, but our mortal bodies--bodies liable to death
and doomed to death if the Lord {120} tarry, but not yet having
experienced death. Hence the quickening referred to has to do rather
with the vivifying of the living saints than the resurrection of the
dead saints.

Of course the consummation of this vivifying is at the Lord's coming,
when those who have died shall be raised, and those who are alive shall
be transfigured; but because of the Spirit of life dwelling in us, who
shall say that the process has not even now begun? To explain: "Behold
I shew you a mystery," says Paul; "we shall not all sleep, but we shall
all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last
trump" (1 Cor. 15: 51, 52). That is, as at Christ's coming the dead
saints will be raised, so the living saints will be translated without
seeing death. A change will come to them, so far as we can understand,
like that which came to Jesus at his resurrection--the body glorified,
all of mortal and earthly belonging to it by nature eliminated in an
instant, and the Holy Ghost so completely transforming and
immortalizing it that it shall become perfectly fashioned to the
likeness of Christ's glorified body. But having the Spirit dwelling in
us we have, even now, the first-fruits of this transformation in the
daily renewing of our inward man, in the helping and healing and
strengthening which sometimes comes to our bodies through the hidden
life of the Holy Ghost. Sa