Again, the future body is identical with the present true body of man. For what is our _true body_? Not the particles of flesh and blood, but the principle of its organization. The identity of our body does not consist in the identity of its material particles, for these come and go, are in constant flux, and are wholly changed, it is said, every seven years. But, notwithstanding this change, the body of the man is the same with that of the child. The same features, figure, temperament, morbid and passional tendencies, are reproduced year after year. These flying particles, gathered from earth and air, are manufactured into brain, bone, blood, according to an unvarying law, and then given back again to air and earth. There is, therefore, a hidden mysterious principle of organization working on during the whole seventy years of our earthly existence, which makes the body of the infant and the child identical with that of the man and the old man. This is the true body; and this, extricated at death from its present envelope, and clothed upon with a higher spiritual and immortal form, will constitute the future body. But again, it will be a _higher development of the body_. Paul plainly teaches this. He uses the analogy of the seed, showing that the future body is related to this; and differenced from this, as the plant is related to the seed, and yet different from it. “Thou sowest _not_ that body _that shall be_, but bare grain.” You do not sow the stalk, but the kernel; you do not sow the oak, but the acorn. Yet the oak is contained potentially in the acorn, and so the future body is contained potentially in the present. The condition of the germination of the acorn is its dissolution; then the germ is able to separate itself from the rest of the seed, and start forward in a new career of development. In like manner the spiritual body cannot be developed until the present organization is dissolved. Paul goes on to say that “there is a natural body and there is a spiritual.” This body is the natural body; the future will be the spiritual. Two things may be implied in this distinction. As by the natural body we come into communion with the natural world, the world of phenomena, so by the spiritual we commune with the spiritual world, the world of essential being and cause. _Here_ and _now_ we see things through a glass, darkly, _then_ face to face. _Here_ we look at things on the outside only; but how often a longing seizes us to know the essences, to penetrate to their interior life! That longing is an instinctive prophecy of its own fulfilment hereafter. The spiritual body must also _manifest the spirit_ hereafter, as the natural or soul body now manifests the soul. For while the present body expresses adequately enough present wishes and emotions, it fails of expressing the spiritual emotions, and fails of being a true servant of the higher life.