ch a body as the Lord
died with, changed by the interpenetrating of the creative indwelling
will, to a heavenly body, the body with which he rose. A body like the
Lord's is, I imagine, necessary to bring us into true and perfect
contact with the creation, of which there must be multitudinous phases
whereof we cannot now be even aware.

The way in which both good and indifferent people alike lay the blame on
their bodies, and look to death rather than God-aided struggle to set
them at liberty, appears to me low and cowardly: it is the master
fleeing from the slave, despising at once and fearing him. We must hold
the supremacy over our bodies, but we must not despise body; it is a
divine thing. Body and soul are in the image of God; and the lord of
life was last seen in the glorified body of his death. I believe that he
still wears that body. But we shall do better without these bodies that
suffer and grow old--which may indeed, as some think, be but the outer
cases, the husks of our real bodies. Endlessly helpful as they have been
to us, and that, in a measure incalculable, through their very
subjection to vanity, we are yet surely not in altogether and only
helpful company, so long as the houses wherein we live have so many
spots and stains in them which friendly death, it may be, can alone wash
out--so many weather-eaten and self-engendered sores which the builder's
hand, pulling down and rebuilding of fresh and nobler material, alone
can banish.

When the sons, then, are free, when their bodies are redeemed, they will
lift up with them the lower creation into their liberty. St Paul seems
to believe that perfection in their kind awaits also the humbler
inhabitants of our world, its advent to follow immediately on the
manifestation of the sons of God: for our sakes and their own they have
been made subject to vanity; for our sakes and their own they shall be
restored and glorified, that is, raised higher with us.

Has the question no interest for you? It would have much, had you now
what you must one day have--a heart big enough to love any life God has
thought fit to create. Had the Lord cared no more for what of his
father's was lower than himself, than you do for what of your father's
is lower than you, you would not now be looking for any sort of
redemption.

I have omitted in my quotations the word _adoption_ used in both English
versions: it is no translation of the Greek word for which it stands. It
is used