ther who could tell? At last He passed away to
heaven; but while in heaven, He was still on earth.
His body became the body of His Church on earth, not
in metaphor, but in fact. His very material body, in
which and by which the faithful would be saved. His
flesh and blood were thenceforth to be their food.
They were to eat it as they would eat ordinary meat.
They were to take it into their system, a pure material
substance, to leaven the old natural substance and
assimilate it to itself. As they fed upon it it would
grow into them, and it would become their own real
body. Flesh grown in the old way was the body of
death, but the flesh of Christ was the life of the world,
over which death had no power. Circumcision availed
nothing, nor uncircumcision--but a new creature--this
new creature, which the child first put on in baptism,
being born again into Christ of water and the spirit.
In the Eucharist he was fed and sustained and going
on from strength to strength, and ever as the nature of
his body changed, being able to render a more complete
obedience, he would at last pass away to God through
the gate of the grave, and stand holy and perfect in the
presence of Christ. Christ had indeed been ever present
with him; but because while life lasted some
particles of the old Adam would necessarily cling to
him, the Christian's mortal eye on earth cannot see
Him. Hedged in by "his muddy vesture of decay,"
his eyes, like the eyes of the disciples of Emmaus, are
holden, and only in faith he feels Him. But death,
which till Christ had died had been the last victory of
evil, in virtue of His submission to it, became its own
destroyer, for it had power only over the tainted
particles of the old substance, and there was nothing
needed but that these should be washed away and the
elect would stand out at once pure and holy, clothed
in immortal bodies, like refined gold, the redeemed
of God.

The being who accomplished a work so vast, a work
compared to which the first creation appears but a
trifling difficulty, what could He be but God? God
Himself! Who but God could have wrested His prize
from a power which half the thinking world believed to
be His coequal and coeternal adversary. He was God.
He was man also, for He was the second Adam--the
second starting point of human growth. He was virgin
born, that no original impurity might infect the substance
which He assumed; and being Himself sinless, He
showed in the nature of