clouded regions behind us, through the illuminated path-
ways of human experience, we pass on to the unveiled realms
of death. Where are they who have preceded us in this end-
less march? Will they ever appear in full personality, in
that mysterious future to which we are forced by human
destiny and if so, how will this countless throng of the ages,
appear? Is there any assurance that we shall appear in per-
sonal identity and with personal consciousness, to meet again
the old friends and touch again the vanished hands, we loved

21



22 THE SPIRITUAL BODY

to clasp on earth ? The king and the peasant alike ask these
question, with deep earnestness and long to be instructed
more fully, in the mysterious law of the Divine life.

Hence Paul's earnestness in discussing the resurrection
and the spiritual body, as its outcome and divine reply to hu-
man questionings. He does not speak as if by permission,
but with supreme authority. He is proclaiming the essential
Gospel which he had received from the risen Christ. If
there be essentials of the Gospel they must appear in this
memorable fifteenth chapter of First Corinthians where
Paul says "I declare unto you the Gospel — wherein ye
stand" and then proceeds to discuss and exalt the vital doc-
trine of the resurrection of the dead and the glory of the
spiritual body as the outcome of spiritual progress, incor-
ruptible, powerful, glorious, the painless inheritance of the
Saints of God.

In the face of these facts, the doctrine of the resurrection
has become so mystified that multitudes long for a new and
clear statement of the Gospel doctrine.

The average mind has associated the resurrection with the
material body and has no clear perception of it as a spiritual
outcome or as an expression of life entirely apart from ma-
terial relations. The angels must have had spiritual bodies
long ere man was formed from the dust of the ground and
the eternal Son of God must have had a substantial body
long ere he was born of the Virgin. The average mind is
filled with doubts because the church at large has confused
ideas of the nature of the soul and its essential relation to
a spiritual body. The nature of the resurrection body as
material, has been discussed throughout all the Christian
centuries and enforced as essential to personality, apparently
oblivious of the fact that God created man a living soul, a



THE RESURRECTION 23

substantial well defined entity, entirely apart from his own
spiritual being. As the devout Phillips Brooks well says:
"In the image of God created he man. Yes, from the be-
ginning there had been a second person in the Trinity, a
Christ whose nature included the man-type. In due time
this man type was copied and incorporated, in the special
exhibition of a race." Thus is it manifested that the spir-
itual man — Christ — was a spiritual entity, ages before the
creation of this world of humanity.

"What is the nature of the soul is the all important ques-
tion. Is it a passing zephyr, formless and intangible or has
it a well defined form, the great essential to a distinct person-
ality, so that soul can be distinguished from soul, both here
and hereafter, and at any point in God's Universe." Many
to-day deny the existence of the soul except as a mere organ-
izing force, associated with a material body and destined to
perish at death. To such the future is a dead blank. In no
respect has the Gospel been made so dim, dark and dismal as
upon the resurrection, whose glorious light dispelled the
gloom and darkness of the Roman world. These facts indi-
cate a decided demand for a restatement of this vital doctrine.

It is certain that the doctrine of the resurrection was su-
preme during the Apostolic age and while it is certain that
the body of Jesus disappeared from the tomb, it is equally
certain that his natural body of flesh and blood did not
enter the kingdom of Heaven. Paul in his memorable dis-
cussion of the resurrection admits that Jesus rose from the
tomb and was recognized by his followers as their Master
and Lord and yet in the same discussion he denies that the
resurrection of flesh and blood was the true resurrection
which he proclaimed. According to the Gospel record the
resurrection of Jesus occurred immediately after his death



H THE SPIRITUAL BODY

and it was a complete resurrection, for his transformation
was complete. His new body seemed to flit in and out of
both worlds, of the seen and unseen, as if it dominated all
natural forces. It was not a mere resuscitated body, restored
to die again but a body at once painless and powerful, able
to resist death and also able to mount to the Heavens, to
assume his sceptre of spiritual power. Whatever its quality.
It was capable of identification and yet it was far more of
Heaven than earth and as the first-fruits of the resurrec-
tion was designed to teach the ages to come, the nature of
the spiritual body to be possessed by all the saints of God.
According to Paul, the spiritual body seen in Christ is the
glorious body of the resurrection, incorruptible, honorable,
powerful and worthy of eternal Son of God.

Because the resurrection body which Jesus possessed
seemed needful to prove his identity, there has been
a constant historic attempt made to prove it was a
more material body and not the true type of the future
spiritual bodies of the saints. The subject is burdened
with difficulties, but if we assert that this body was
a material body, we contradict Paul's assertion that flesh
and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God. But if we
assume the body in which our Lord arose to be the true body
of the resurrection and the spiritual body of eternity, it is
only needful to accept the fact that this body, although sub-
stantial, was not material, and already possessed the power
which Paul declared was to be its eternal attribute. This
fully relieves the question of all difficulty and enables us to
account for those incidents which seemed essential to prove
the identity of our Lord, such as eating in their presence.
Matthew Pool declares that our Lord ate and drank in the
presence of his disciples, "not to satisfy his hunger, but to



THE RESURRECTION 25

confirm the truth of his resurrection," his glorious body not
now being clothed with those infirmities which it had before
his death.

The term resurrection is used in a loose sense as if the
mere resurrection of a material body were a true resurrec-
tion, while Paul uses the term in a far broader sense, as in-
cluding, the rising up in the Spiritual body and entire domi-
nation of material elements. If this seems not to accord
with the fact of Jesus saying to his disciples "A spirit hath
not flesh and bones as ye see me have" again we reply, that
it is not for us to limit the power of the resurrection body
to assume or cast ofiE material elements at will. Luke and
John both tell us of the linen grave clothes which Peter saw
in the tomb when he went into the sepulchre after the resur-
rection and no wise commentator presumes to tell us with
what clothes Jesus appeared during the forty days after his
resurrection.

The assumption that the body of Jesus underwent a grad-
ual change from his resurrection until his ascension is en-
tirely without support in the Gospel and really limits the
power of the spiritual body to manifest itself. Paul's teach-
ing is that if we have a material or physical body, we have
also a psychical or spiritual body and both are the factors of
our common humanity and the factor which dominates char-
acterizes the body as either material or spiritual. If
Christ had a spiritual body in eternity as his heritage, as Son
of God and man was created in his likeness, it is evident that
the release of the material body in death, gives freedom to
the spiritual or permanent body, which fully identifies him
beyond death. When God said "Let us make man in our
image and likeness" man must have been created with only
a spiritual body like the Son of God, by whom God created



26 THE SPIRITUAL BODY

all things. And let it be carefully noted that a spiritual
body is a contradiction in terms. The spiritual body must be
a body entirely dominated by the Spirit and if Paul sets the
example by inspiration of so revealing the future body of the
saints, let us cling to the divine revelation disclosed, that
there is at once a material and spiritual body in our common
humanity and death frees us from the domination of the ma-
terial to enjoy the power and glory and permanence of the
spiritual body. Such a body of power Jesus Christ seemed
to possess immediately at his deliverance through death, the
type of the spiritual body of God's Saints in glory — the first
fruits of them that slept.

In the mind of the Christian Church the material body
has received supreme attention, while in the mind of Paul
the spiritual body was the supreme consideration. Says the
enraptured Apostle ''Now is Christ risen from the dead";
the spiritual Christ of eternity, the first fruits of them that
slept. Dismissed from physical limitations he displayed his
wonderful power. His spiritual body seemed equal to any-
thing demanded for the furtherance of the kingdom of God.
During his forty days upon earth his one overmastering de-
sire seemed to be to impress his Apostles and disciples with
the fact of his personal identity and selfhood, for they all
seemed to doubt the almost incredible fact of his rising from
the dead. From his resurrection to his ascension and imme-
diately thereafter, he sought by every wise device to assure
the Christian brotherhood that he still lived and was in su-
preme control of the spiritual kingdom of God. Hence Dr.
Henry Van Dyke wisely says "in whatever form Jesus ap-
peared during the forty days after His resurrection He was
recognized as the same Jesus." We can easily discern how
important was this work and how needful to qualify the



THE RESURRECTION 27

brotherhood for their unusual mission. They needed the
deepest conviction and their risen Lord gave all his needful
divine aid to qualify them for spiritual conquest of a sinful
world.

Paul's critical discussion of the resurrection is to assure
the Church that he served a risen Savior the eternal spiritual
Son of God and still further to assure them the evolution
of time would enrich them also with spiritual bodies, worthy
the anticipated kingdom of their hopes and aspirations. If
the church of Jesus Christ believes in the great brotherhood
of angels, with their spiritual bodies, it should have very
little difficulty in believing that death divests our common
humanity of its material vesture and reveals the spiritual
body, with all the marks of personality. The magic touch
of death reveals the true selfhood and places the soul in align-
ment with the divine law of life and progress. To assume
that the material body, in any sense, is a dominating factor
of the resurrection, is to assume that pain will continue with
all the discomforts and weaknesses of our present condition,
and entirely out of sympathy with a spiritual body or spirit-
ual kingdom, or the divine order of the resurrection.



CHAPTER III
The Human Soul a Revelation of the Divine Order

WHAT is the soul and what is its relation to
the Spiritual body are vital questions, but far
more vital is it to know its relation to the
eternal future. In the fifteenth Chapter of
First Corinthians Paul labors to reveal precisely what he
believes about future identity and personality. He is illum-
inating the church of the Ages upon the mysterious and ab-
sorbing themes, of death, resurrection, and future life and
especially impressing the future power and glory of the
Saints in the Spiritual body, which defies death and illus-
trates the true resurrection. The one belongs to the Pseucha
and is a thing of earth, while the other belongs to the
Pneuma and is a thing of Heaven. They are factors of dif-
ferent realms. The one belongs to time, the other to eternity.
Paul could not reveal what he did not know about the es-
sence of the spiritual body, but all his rhetorical art seems
drafted, in order to show that the material or Psychical body
belongs to this world, while the Pneumatical or Spiritual
body belongs to the eternal world and has eternal perman-
ence.

How strange is it that the spiritual body, which filled so
large a place in Paul's mind has received such slight consid-
eration from Bible interpreters. These wise men have tried
to rule out the spiritual body while Paul labors to rule out
the material body. Material minds have vainly tried to

28



HUMAN SOUL A REVELATION 29

create a material world, for the future kingdom of God. If
the coming kingdom of God is not a purely spiritual king-
dom, what relation or place can a spiritual body have in it?
The main trend of discussion upon the resurrection even up
to the last century has favored the idea of a material resur-
rection, and entirely opposed to Paul's historic exposition
of the doctrine.

Paul's whole discussion is an exaltation of the spiritual
realm. He assumes a spiritual world, of which this world
is a mere temporary expression. This is a time world, a
shadow world, a changeful world, while the enduring, the
eternal, the real world, with all its adaption to man's spir-
itual powers, surrounds and pervades all, and is the prin-
cipal factor in determining Man's final Destiny.

Moses boldly sets forth these facts when he declares con-
cerning the processes of creation '^These are the generations
of the Heavens and the earth, when they were created — and
every plant of the field BEFORE it was in the earth and
every herb of the field BEFORE it grew." The new ver-
sion reads "And no plant of the field was yet in the earth
and no herb of the field had yet sprung up." But both trans-
lations declare that there were plants and herbs before they
grew in the fields — the invisible patterns of things soon to
appear, in visible forms. Had there been no anterior forms
in the mind of God, these inspired w^ords could not have
been written. So the Apostle Paul declares that God giv-
eth to every seed, his own body. The pattern of the coming
form is imbedded in the seed the very life and soul of it as it
came originally from the mind of God and has continued
through the centuries, thus creating the varied panorama
of nature for the sustentation and delight of humanity.

The fact of an anterior world is fundamental. In the be-



30 THE SPIRITUAL BODY

ginning God created the Heavens and the earth but the pat-
tern of this world and of all worlds, in the Universe, lay
enfolded in the mind of the Creator, to be revealed in the
fullness of time. The writer to the Hebrews teaches us that,
"Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed,
by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not
made of things which do appear." This clearly implies and
assumes that the invisible world is the permanent world
which lay concealed behind this present time world of God's
creation.

Revelation shows us a substantial world and divine Uni-
verse back of all visible worlds — our Father's House — the
Home of Angels — the peculiar dwelling place of the Most
High — the Spiritual kingdom of Jehovah — the realm of di-
vine fullness out of which all worlds are born, according to
the fiat of Omnipotence. Our small earth is but a single
atom of Star-Dust born from the treasure-house of God's
wisdom and power. It is but a time-revelation of creative
wisdom, which gave it birth for eternal purposes. Were it
linked merely with time-forces and for a mere material rev-
elation, how insignificant would it be; but linked as It is
with the spiritual kingdom of God, as a world created for
the discipline of God's children, how^ mightily is it exalted!
Our Father's House lies just behind the scenes of time, and
there he is gathering his chosen.

The Creation, the discipline, and the resurrection all an-
ticipate this glorious consummation. Even the eternal Son
of God came to earth in the all wise purpose of God —
Immanuel — God with us — the Lord from Heaven, the Spir-
itual man in whose Image we are created, revealing to us
the divine law of eternal manhood. This enabled him to
say, "I am the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and end,



HUMAN SOUL A REVELATION 31

the First and the Last." And in thus announcing Himself
he also adds — ''Blessed are they who do his commandments,
that they may have right to the tree of Life and may enter
in through the gates into the city." This reveals the Eternal
Humanity and the law of the Soul as seen in Christ. He
stands before the ages, past, present and future, as the spir-
itual man, with a spiritual body, working out an eternal
destiny, according to the law of divine life. This life is the
true life, the everlasting life, the ideal soul-life of humanity,
manifested before the world was, and to be manifested in the
future kingdom of God.

The incisive mind of Bishop Brooks, in his sermon on
Eternal Humanity, uses these illuminating words "Christ
the God-Man, was made before the worlds. Here we make
man a late thing in the history of the Universe ; and how is it
possible then that Christ, who is God with the element of
human sympathy, should be eternal? And just here as it
seems to me, there comes in one of the key-passages of the
Bible, which we are always far too apt to overlook. It is
that verse in Genesis, 'In the image of God created he man.'
God made man like Himself. Ages before the Incarnation
made God, so wonderfully in the image of man, the Creation
had made man in the image of God. Now if we comprehend
that truth at all, it must be evident that before man was
made, the Man-Type existed in God. Before the clay was
fashioned and the breath was given, the humanity existed in
Divinity; already there was a union of the divine and human,
and thus there was already the eternal Christ."

Again the Bishop says, "Stop here a minute and see how
this exalts the human nature we wear. In the midst of the
eternity of God, there bursts forth into being the new life of
man. What shall we say of it? Is it just a creature of a



32 THE SPIRITUAL BODY

moment which comes to birth? Is it a new type of being
made to be born and die? What if the type of life we live
were part and parcel of the everlasting Godhead, that he has
worn forever, bound with his perfect Deity, the perfect and
archetype and pattern of this humanity of mine? What if
there be a Christ the beginning of all things, who only
brought into exhibition, when he came in human flesh, that
genuine brotherhood which has been in him forever?"

If this be true, humanity is eternal, and the human soul
no after thought, projected like a beast upon the stage of
time. Like the Son of God, our humanity comes out of the
very heart and being of God, and belongs to the spiritual
Universe by birthright and is akin to Christ's universal
brotherhood. Wherever God is pleased to breathe upon
formless dust, his divine life, and life-giving breath will re-
veal the human form, in all the lineaments of the eternal
Christ, the image of God. Hence the Bishop concludes, "I
hold that the Incarnation was God's commentary on that
verse in Genesis 'In the image of God created he man,' Yes,
from the beginning there was a second person in the Trinity
— a Christ whose nature included the man-type. In due
time this man-type was copied and incorporated, in the special
exhibition of a race. Let me carr>^ away from revelation this
supreme truth of the eternal humanity of Christ. In him I
find the eternal pattern after which my nature was to be
fashioned, the eternal perfection which my nature was to
seek." The concluding application of the Bishop's words
reveal an almost infinite tenderness, as he touches human life
in its trials and struggles. He brings sorrowing hearts against
the very heart of Christ with their burdens of grief, saying,
**We have all sent some beloved soul into the unknown
world, but where have we sent it? To God we say, but



HUMAN SOUL A REVELATION 33

God is so far off. The child we sent him was all in his fresh
genuine humanity. But what if there be humanity in God
to whom they go? What if since it went out from us, that
human nature made first in the image of Christ, the human,
has touched again that perfect nature out of which it sprang
and finds itself at home? Yes, let me set this Christ eternally
in the midst of the other world and the human soul which
goes there, goes to its own. It meets no strangeness on the
other shore. The human just loosened on the one side, fas-
tens into a completer unity and assurance on the other."

In this interpretation we have all that can be desired to
prove that back of this world, is a corresponding spirital
world, including the beginnings of all that we see here and
infinitely more. The eternal man — the Christ — the God-
man — the eternal Son of God, with a human soul was there
from all eternity and his spiritual body is the one essential
factor, without which he could not be the God-man. If we
exclude this spiritual body, where shall we look for the im-
age of God in man? What was the image of God in which
man was formed, if not this spiritual image or divine-human
soul of the eternal Christ — the God-man? The whole be-
ing of the great Apostle is evoked and inspired to disclose
the power and glory of this spiritual body, which is conse-
crated to God, to reveal the beauty and permanence of the
redeemed brotherhood of Christ and the great family of God.

Paul is exalting the spiritual kingdom of God to its true
place and illuminating the ages, as to the great fact of the
spiritual body and its divine factors. He says "If there be
a natural body, there is also a spiritual body" alike the gift
of God to man as his original endowment. The spiritual
body was first in order for it is written "And God said, Let
us make man in our image, after our likeness" with a spirit-



34 THE SPIRITUAL BODY

ual body or a body entirely apart from the material body
afterwards created for earthly discipline. This spiritual
man afterwards encased in dust became the living soul of
our common humanity. The commentators hastened to call
the "Breath of life" a living soul, but there is nothing in the
original which indicates a moral or spiritual quality in the
breath, except that it is called the breath of the Lord. The
words translated "Living Soul" mean literally "Breath of
lives" as if there were two lives, the material and spiritual
associated together. If the Bible Translators found the liv-
ing soul of man under the Hebrew words, it should not be
difficult to find the soul of man under the Greek words trans-
lated spiritual body, especially since the Greek word here
used is generally applied to the soul or spirit of man.

The breath of God makes the living soul of man and this
spiritual entity or being passes through three stages of exis-
tence. The human soul was in Christ before the creation
of this world and in this image man is born. In earth this
human soul works out its destiny and finally enters upon its
eternal reward; or the human soul is first born from God,
then disciplined in this life and afterwards passes on to a
larger destiny and reward. The same breath which created
the original spiritual man or divine-human soul is disciplined
in the man of dust and thus prepared for an eternal career
of progress.

Paul teaches us what he learned from his divine Master,
that life is continuous and that human life reaches toward
eternity. Nothing grows from dead wheat; it returns to
dust. It is the succession of the life principle, which gives
promise of the harvest. Thus is it with the succession of
humanity. The divine breath cannot be destroyed but is
destined to express its quality and power while the ages en-



HUMAN SOUL A REVELATION 35

dure. It has limitless, exhaustless powers. Here the soul
works towards its destiny in a material body but beyond this
life in a spiritual body. This is Paul's climax.

Paul says: "As we have borne the image of the earthly, we
shall bear the image of the Heavenly." Who or what is this
"We" this personality of whom the Apostle speaks, if it be
not the soul of man, the spiritual body or the divine-human,
passing on to its final career or returning to the God who
gave it?

Again we press the Apostle's Analogy which inculcates
succession of life. The life of the wheat is a constant succes-
sion and expansion as it produces its abundant harvests. The
spiritual form or life-form, which God gave it in the begin-