y" is perhaps a fallacious one. In St. Paul's
great argument on this subject in 1 Cor. xv. he expressly tells us,
that it is not that body which was sown in the earth, but a new and
glorified one, even as the beautiful plant, which springs from the
insignificant or the ill-favoured seed, is not that which was sown,
but a body which God has given. Whatever the bodies shall be, they
will be recognised as those befitting the spirits which are reunited
to them, as they also befit the new and glorious state into which they
are now entering.

This done, they who are alive and remain on earth, having been, which
is not asserted here, but is in 1 Cor. xv., changed so as to be in the
image of the incorruptible, spiritual, heavenly, will be caught up
together with the risen saints in clouds, to meet the Lord in the air:
to _meet_ Him, because He is in His way from heaven to earth, on which
He is about to stand in that latter day.

Thus, then, the words which I have chosen for my text will have their
fulfilment. Christ has been the first-fruits of this great
harvest,--already risen, the first-born from the dead, the example and
pattern of that which all His shall be. This was His order, His place
in the great procession from death into life; and between Him and His,
the space, indefinite to our eyes, is fixed and determined in the
counsels of God. The day of His coming hastens onward. While men are
speculating and questioning, God's purpose remains fixed. He is not
slack concerning His promise, as some men count slackness. His
dealings with the world are on too large a scale for us to be able to
measure them, but in them the golden rule is kept, every one in his
own order. Christ's part has been fulfilled. He was seen alive in His
resurrection body; He was seen taking up that body from earth to
heaven. And now we are waiting for the next great event, His coming.
Wisely has the Church set apart a season in every year in which this
subject may be uppermost in our thoughts. For there is nothing we are
so apt--nothing, we may say, that our whole race is so determined to
forget and put out of sight. It is alien from our common ideas, it ill
suits our settled notions, that the personal appearing of Him in whom
we believe should break in upon the natural sequence of things in
which we are concerned. And the consequence is, that you will hardly
find, even among believing men, more than one here and there who at
all realizes to himself,