SERMON XXXIV.

THE KNOWLEDGE OF ONE ANOTHER IN A

FUTURE STATE.

COL. i. 28.

Whom we preach, warning every man, and teaching every man in all wisdom; that we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus.

THESE words have a primary and a

secondary use. In their first and most obvious view, they express the extreme earnestness and anxiety with which the apostle Paul sought the salvation of his converts. To bring men to Jesus Christ, and, when brought, to turn and save them from their sins, and to keep them stedfast unto the end in the faith and obedience to which

they were called, was the whole work of the great apostle's ministry, the desire of his heart, and the labour of his life. It was that in which he spent all his time and all his thought; for the sake of which he travelled from country to country, warning every man, as he speaks in the text, and exhorting every man, enduring every hardship and every injury, ready at all times to sacrifice his life, and at last actually sacrificing it, in order to accomplish the great purpose of his mission, that he might at the last day present his beloved converts perfect in Christ Jesus. This is the direct scope of the text. But it is not for this that I have made choice of it. The last clause of the verse contains within it, indirectly and by implication, a doctrine, certainly of great personal importance, and, I trust also of great comfort to every man who hears me. The clause is this, "that we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus" by which I understand St. Paul to express his hope and prayer, that at the general judgment of the world, he might present to Christ the fruits of his ministry, the converts whom he had made

to his faith and religion, and might present them perfect in every good work.

And if

this be rightly interpreted, then it affords a manifest and necessary inference, that the saints in a future life will meet and be known again to one another: for how, without knowing again his converts in their new and glorified state, could St. Paul desire or expect to present them at the last day?

My brethren, this is a doctrine of real consequence. That we shall come again to a new life; that we shall, by some method or other, be made happy, or be made miserable, in that new state, according to the deeds done in the body, according as we have acted and governed ourselves in this world, is a point affirmed absolutely and positively, in all shapes, and under every variety of expression, in almost every page of the New Testament. It is the grand point inculcated from the beginning to the end of that book. But concerning the particular nature of the change we are to undergo, and in what is to consist the employment and happiness of those blessed

spirits which are received into heaven, our information, even under the Gospel, is very limited. We own it is so. Even St. Paul, who had extraordinary communications, confessed" that in these things we see through a glass darkly." But at the same time that we acknowledge that we know little, we ought to remember, that, without Christ, we should have known nothing. It might not be possible in our present state, to convey to us, by words, more clear or explicit conceptions of what will hereafter become of us; if possible it might not be fitting. In that celebrated chapter, the 15th of 1 Corinthians, St. Paul makes an inquisitive person ask, “How are the dead raised, and with what body do they come?" From his answer to this question we are able, I think, to collect thus much clearly and certainly that at the resurrection we shall have bodies of some sort or other; that they will be totally different from, and greatly excelling, our present bodies, though possibly in some manner or other proceeding from them, as a plant from its seed; that as there exists in nature a great variety of animal substances; one

flesh of man, another of beasts, another of birds, another of fishes; as there exist also great differences in the nature, dignity, and splendour of inanimate substances," one glory of the sun, another of the moon, another of the stars:" so there subsists likewise in the magazines of God Almighty's creation, two very distinct kinds of bodies (still both bodies), a natural body and a spiritual body; that the natural body is what human beings bear about with them now; the Spiritual body, far surpassing the other, what the blessed will be clothed with hereafter. "Flesh and blood," our apostle teaches, "cannot inherit the kingdom of God," that is, is by no means suited to that state, is not capable of it. Yet living men are flesh and blood; the dead in the graves are the remains of the same; wherefore to make all who are Christ's, capable of entering into his eternal kingdom, and at all fitted for it, a great change shall be suddenly wrought. As well all the just, who shall be alive at the coming of Christ (whenever that event takes place,) as those who shall be raised from the dead, shall in the twinkling of an eye be

an