Perhaps the most important consideration to be derived from this passage is that St. Paul's thought is equally alien to a one-sided spiritualism and a one-sided materialism. A one-sided spiritualism, such as is represented to-day by (most falsely-called) 'Christian Science,' either disbelieves in the reality of matter altogether, or regards it with its attendant qualities of weakness and pain as evil and a thing to be ignored. The religion of {307} the Incarnation, on the other hand, as represented by St. Paul, recognizes it as God's creation and the temple of His presence. In our manhood, as scientific investigation assures us, we can exercise no activity of spirit except as parts of a material world, through the senses and by the instrumentality of the bodily organs. Spirit and matter are in us so linked together that the real difficulty to a thinking Christian is to conceive at all of a 'disembodied' state of the personal human spirit after death which is in any sense a living state. But such a 'disembodied' state--if the word really represents the truth--is unnatural and temporary. The perfected human spirit is to have an embodiment which is to be material, as being truly a body, but also spiritual, because it is to be the fitting organ of the perfected spirit, in no way embarrassing or clogging its activity by any grossness or corruption. This is the Christian hope, definite in principle, if quite unaccompanied by any anticipated knowledge of method or details. And this destiny of the human body cannot be separated from the destiny of the material universe as a whole. Matter as a whole is to have an unending development like spirit, and a development with a justifying purpose of glory in it. {308} And St. Paul is equally opposed to the materialism which gives to matter a substantive existence apart from spirit. Metaphysical inquiry assures us that we can have no conception of a material object, or of matter in general, except as related to a consciousness or spirit; or, in other words, except as an adjunct to some sort of personality. Such metaphysical inquiry did not lie in St. Paul's way. But he is in harmony with its results when he contemplates a glorified nature as still relative to glorified personalities. Nature is to share the revelation of the glory of the _sons_ of God. We cannot help wondering, as we read these verses, whether St. Paul had in mind that occasion when, before the chosen witnesses, Christ was bodily transfigured on the holy mount by an anticipation of the glory destined for His sonship; and the apostles felt their hearts thereby encouraged to believe more surely in the teaching of the prophets about the general glory that was to accompany the final manifestation of the Christ[8].