“The glory of the terrestrial is one, the glory of the celestial another. Take away sin and sickness and misery, and that of itself would make difference enough.” “You do not suppose that we shall look as we look now?” “I certainly do. At least, I think it more than possible that the ‘human form divine,’ or something like it, is to be retained. Not only from the fact that risen Elijah bore it; and Moses, who, if he had not passed through his resurrection, does not seem to have looked different from the other,--I have to use those two poor prophets on all occasions, but, as we are told of them neither by parable nor picture, they are important,--and that angels never appeared in any other, but because, in sinless Eden, God chose it for Adam and Eve. What came in unmarred beauty direct from His hand cannot be unworthy of His other Paradise ‘beyond the stars.’ It would chime in pleasantly, too, with the idea of Redemption, that our very bodies, free from all the distortion of guilt, shall return to something akin to the pure ideal in which He moulded them. Then there is another reason, and stronger.” “What is that?” “The human form has been borne and dignified forever by Christ. And, further than that, He ascended to His Father in it, and lives there in it as human God to-day.” I had never thought of that, and said so. “Yes, with the very feet which trod the dusty road to Emmaus; the very wounded hands which Thomas touched, believing; the very lips which ate of the broiled fish and honeycomb; the very voice which murmured ‘Mary!’ in the garden, and which told her that He ascended unto His Father and her Father, to His God and her God, He ‘was parted from them,’ and was ‘received up into heaven.’ His death and resurrection stand forever the great prototype of ours. Otherwise, what is the meaning of such statements as these: ‘When He shall appear, we shall be _like Him_’; ‘The first man (Adam) is of the earth; the second man is the Lord. As we have borne the image of the earthy, _we shall also bear the image of the heavenly_’? And what of this, when we are told that our ‘vile bodies,’ being changed, shall be fashioned ‘_like unto His glorious body_’?” I asked her if she inferred from that, that we should have just such bodies as the freedom from pain and sin would make of these. “Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom,” she said. “There is no escaping that, even if I had the smallest desire to escape it, which I have not. Whatever is essentially earthly and temporary in the arrangements of this world will be out of place and unnecessary there. Earthly and temporary, flesh and blood certainly are.” “Christ said, ‘A spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have.’”