g in the Christian heart, that is a sign that there is
such a glorified body waiting for us. He says, 'we know that if our
house ... were dissolved, we have a building of God.' And his reason
for knowing it is this, '_for_ in this we groan.' That is a bold
position to say that a yearning in the Christian consciousness
prophesies its own fulfilment. Our desires are the prophecies of His
gifts. Then, on this certainty--which he deduces from the fact of the
longing for it--on this certainty of the glorious, ultimate body of
the Resurrection he bases his willingness expressed in the text, to
go through the unwelcome process of leaving the old house, although
he shrinks from it.

So, then, Christian faith does not destroy the natural reluctance to
put aside the old companion of our lives. The old house, though it be
smoky, dimly lighted, and, by our own careless keeping, sluttish and
grimy in many a corner, yet is the only house we have ever known, and
to be absent from it is untried and strange. There is nothing wrong
in saying 'we would not be unclothed but clothed upon.' Nature speaks
there. We may reverently entertain the same feelings which our
Pattern acknowledged, when He said, 'I have a baptism to be baptized
with, and how am I straitened until it be accomplished.' And there
would be nothing sinful in repeating His prayer with His conditions,
'If it be possible, let this cup pass from Me.'

But then the text suggests to us the large Christian possessions and
hope which counterwork this reluctance, in the measure in which we
live lives of faith. There is the assurance of that ultimate home in
which all the transiency of the present material organisation is
exchanged for the enduring permanence which knows no corruption. The
'tent' is swept away to make room for the 'building.' The earthly
house is dissolved in order that there may be reared round the
homeless tenant the house eternal, 'not made with hands,' God's own
work, which is waiting in the heavens; because the power that shall
frame it is there. Not only that great hope of the 'body of His
glory,' with which at the last all true souls shall be invested, but
furthermore, 'the earnest of the spirit,' and the blessed experiences
therefrom, resulting even here, ought to make the unwelcome necessity
less unwelcome. If the firstfruits be righteousness and peace and joy
of the Holy Ghost, what shall the harvest be? If the 'earnest,' the
shilling given in advance, be