The Person and Office Of The Holy Ghost. 12.

By Very Rev. THOMAS S. PRESTON, V.G.,

While this is the voice of revelation, it is also in accordance with reason, which can see neither justice nor consistency in a salvation which regards only the immaterial and invisible part of man. Man would be at the same time destroyed by the theory of redemption which takes up the soul and leaves the body to perish. God could not so contradict Himself, writing His image in the creature made by the holy Trinity to rule over the visible earth, and then abandoning, in the richer work of grace, the body, which is the symbol of superiority in the visible creation. Again, our Lord took a visible body in all things like unto ours, sin only-excepted. Thus is He, the second Adam, as visible as the first; and hence, by necessary consequence, the bodies of the just are quickened with His life. Through the humanity He shows Himself to us ; by the humanity He touches us. "The bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world. He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood, abideth in me, and I in Him."

The action of redemption upon the visible bodies of men requires logically external signs of grace; and such external signs require an outward organization and a tangible, corporate existence of the redeemed. We cannot conceive of such exterior signs of grace without divine authority; and divine authority exacts order as its first essential. Such signs of spiritual life are sacraments conveying under visible forms an inward power. They demand, and by the just requirements of logic, one visible body on earth as the sacrament and sign of unity with God, the invisible Worker. And, to demonstrate that our reasoning is just, as a matter of fact, where such a visible organization is denied, sacraments are soon rejected; and where sacraments are rejected the redemption of the body is contradicted. And soon, by the necessity of the argument, men scoff at a visible Redeemer and fall into blank materialism. There is nothing more unreasonable than materialism; but to it inevitably come the deniers of revelation; and this denial of truth revealed is the legitimate consequence of the rejection of any of its essential verities. Through the visible church God meets us in redemption. Here He touches us, and here all is in harmony. Deny the church, and the chain is broken which binds man to his Maker. In sin and blindness, he cannot stand alone. He falls not only from the pinnacle of grace, but even from the height of natural reason. "The fool hath said in his heart: There is no God." 

The Person and Office Of The Holy Ghost. 11.

By Very Rev. THOMAS S. PRESTON, V.G.,

I.

From our knowledge of God and ourselves reason demands a visible body, in which, with visible signs, the wonders of redemption shall be wrought.

1. The race of man is a visible race, and must be treated as such in all the operations of God. We are not pure spirits, and can never be considered as purely spiritual. Our bodies, which are material and visible, are an integral part of our nature. They are concerned in our sin, and they must in like manner be concerned in our redemption. The operations of the soul are in and through the senses, which are the means of our communication with the external world.
The human race fell in Adam, its father, and visibly was exiled from Eden, and in its corporate life passed into the shadow of death away from God. "By one man sin entered into the world, and by sin, death: and so death passed upon all men, in whom all have sinned." The action of life among those dead in the transgression of one father must be in accordance with the nature of their death. As a visible race they died; as a visible race they must be raised from that death. "By the disobedience of one man, many were made sinners ; so also by the obedience of one many shall be made just," The visibility of the redeemed corresponds to that of the fallen. The first Adam and his children are fallen in the unity of race. The second Adam, with His children, are the living race with the same unity, visibility, and corporate life.

2. If the redeemed were invisible to the eyes of men, there would be no redemption of the body, and therefore no redemption of man. Whatever may happen to the soul can never be made known to us except through the body. If the soul could be restored to God without any change passing upon the body, God alone would know it, and the man could not be saved. Such a redemption is impossible, and for manifest reasons.

On such a supposition the soul addressed by grace "will pass its trial and come to its reward. In the trial the body has its share. It can have none in the reward. Then the body must perish, as the soul redeemed cannot peacefully inform it in eternity. This contradicts the voice of reason, since it destroys in the future life the integrity of man. The soul is an immortal spirit. Man is essentially composed of a soul and a body. It contradicts also the plain words of revelation, which teaches us that the body shall rise in the latter day from the grave, and that " this mortal shall put on immortality."

In the body man has sinned, and in the body he ought to suffer. " Sin reigned in the mortal body of the sinner, who has yielded his members as instruments of iniquity unto sin." So "the hands and feet of the lost are to go into hell, into unquenchable fire." In like manner they are to have part in the resurrection by reason of their share in redemption. "If the Spirit of Him who raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, He shall quicken your mortal bodies, because of His Spirit that dwelleth in you." "Know you not that your members are the temple of the Holy Ghost, who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own ? For you are bought with a price. Glorify and bear God in your body."