preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ." "At
his appearing he shall judge the living and the dead." "The Lord
is at hand." The author of these sentences undeniably looked for
the great advent soon. Than Paul, indeed, no one more earnestly
believed (or did more to strengthen in others that belief) in that
speedy return of Christ, the anticipation of which thrilled all
early Christendom with hope and dread, and kept the disciples day
and night on the stretch and start of expectation to hear the
awful blast of the judgment trump and to see the glorious vision
of the Son of God descending amidst a convoy of angels. What
sublime emotions must have rushed through the apostle's soul when
he thought that he, as a survivor of death's reign on earth, might
behold the resurrection without himself entering the grave! Upon a
time when he should be perchance at home, or at Damascus, or, it
might be, at Jerusalem, the sun would become as blood, the moon as
sackcloth of hair, the last trump would swell the sky, and,

"Lo! the nations of the dead, Which do outnumber all earth's
races, rise, And high in sumless myriads overhead Sweep past him
in a cloud, as 'twere the skirts Of the Eternal passing by."

The resurrection which Paul thought would attend the second coming
of Christ was the rising of the summoned spirits of the deceased
from their rest in the under world. Most certainly it was not the
restoration of their decomposed bodies from their graves, although
that incredible surmise has been generally entertained. He says,
while answering the question, How are the dead raised up, and with
what body do they come? "That which thou sowest, thou sowest not
that body which shall be, but naked grain: God giveth it a body as
it hath pleased him." The comparison is, that so the naked soul is
sown in the under world, and God, when he raiseth it, giveth it a
fitting body. He does not hesitate to call the man "a fool" who
expects the restoration of the same body that was buried. His
whole argument is explicitly against that idea. "There are bodies
celestial, as well as bodies terrestrial: the first man was

19 Rabbi Akiba says, in the Talmud, "God shall take and blow a
trumpet a thousand godlike yards in length, whose echo shall sound
from end to end of the world. At the first blast the earth shall
tremble. At the second, the dust shall part. At the third, the
bones shall come together. At the fourth, the members shall