n. If the devil should approach that spot, to work some
unknown, and, to us, inconceivable, harm to that body,--be it the body
of the humblest saint, one of those little ones who believe in Jesus, or
of those infants whose angels do always behold the face of God,--thou,
mighty cherub, wouldst be there, and, if need be, with a band of angels,
"every one with his sword upon his thigh, because of fear in the night;"
and Nebo and its "dispute" would reappear. Poor, dying, mouldering body!
hast thou the archangel himself for thy keeper? Not only so:

"God, my Redeemer, lives,
And often from the skies
Looks down and watches all my dust,
Till he shall bid it rise."

Nor is it strange, since we read, "The body is for the Lord, and the
Lord for the body." "Know ye not that your body is the temple of the
Holy Ghost which is in you?"

To rise from the dead seems to have been something more to Paul than
going to heaven, or than being in heaven. He knew that he was to spend
the interval between death and the resurrection in heaven; but beyond
even this, he had a joy which he felt was essential to the completeness
of the heavenly state.

See the proof of this in the following words: "If by any means I might
attain unto the resurrection of the dead."

Since he was destined, like all of Adam's race, to come forth from his
grave, he needed to make no effort whatever merely to rise from the
dead; that was inevitable, and irrespective of character. Besides, he
represents this object for which he strove as something which required
effort, which cannot be said of merely rising from the grave.

Paul had been permitted to know, by personal observation, what the
rising from the dead implies. Caught up into Paradise, we may suppose
that he had seen the patriarch Enoch, and the prophet Elijah, with their
glorified bodies; the presence of which in heaven, we may imagine, has
ever served to enhance the happiness of that world, by holding forth,
before the eyes of the redeemed, the sign and pledge of their future
experience when they shall receive their bodies. For it is not
presumptuous to suppose that the sight of Enoch and Elijah has been, and
will be, till the last trumpet sounds, a source of joyful expectation to
the inhabitants of heaven, leading them to anticipate the final day with
intense interest, as the time when they will be invested, like those
honored saints, with all the capacities of their completed natu