lies; the Spirit of God acting first on the spirit of man in renewing
grace, then upon the soul, till at last it reaches the outer court of
the body, at the resurrection and translation. When the body is
glorified, then only will sanctification be consummated, for then only
will the whole man, spirit, soul, and body, have come under the
Spirit's perfecting power.

We may see the difference between progressive {123} sanctification and
perfected sanctification, or glorification, by comparing familiar
texts. One already has been quoted in this chapter: "We all, beholding
as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image
from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord" (2 Cor. 3: 18).
Here are degrees of progress "from glory to glory," and it is a
progress in the glorified life--gradual conformity to the Lord of
glory, through successive stages of glory, effected by the Spirit of
glory. The word-painting of the passage inevitably associates it in
our thought with the great transfiguration experience of our Lord, when
by a kind of rapture he was for a little while taken out of "this
present evil age" (Gal. 1: 4), and translated into "the age to come,"
and made to taste of its powers as "he appeared in glory" (Heb. 6: 5,
R. V.). So says the apostle: "Be not fashioned _according to this
age_, but be ye transformed by the renewing of your minds" (Rom. 12: 2,
R. V.). That is, by his inward transformation the Holy Spirit is to be
daily repeating in us the Lord's glorification, separating us from the
present age of sin and death and assimilating us to the age to come,
with its resurrection triumph and its perfected restoration to God,
when we shall be presented "faultless before the presence of his glory
with exceeding joy" (Jude 24). This is our step-by-step advancement
into a predestined inheritance; and it must for the present be {124}
step by step. "Of his fullness have all we received," but we can
appropriate that fullness only "grace by grace" (John 1: 16). Of his
righteousness we have all been made partakers, but we only advance in
its possession "from faith to faith" (Rom. 1: 17). Even in passing
through the valley of Baca we can make it a place of springs, going
"from strength to strength" as we appear "before God in Zion" (Ps. 84:
6). Thus our growth in grace is our glory begun; but the progress is
like the artist's slow and patient perfecting of his picture. Turn now
to another state