Till that objective is obtained redemption is not complete and the blood of the cross is not justified. Do you call the redemption of Paul complete so long as his body lies mingled with the dust of the highway by the banks of that yellow Tiber where he was slain? Do you call complete the redemption of those you love and I love so long as the Devil like the strong man armed with the law holds the mortgage on their bodies and keeps them in his dark and worm-filled house--the grave? It is true, blessedly true, thank God, the moment a believer dies he is absent from his home in the body and immediately present at his home with the Lord in the third heaven, in the beautiful country of Paradise, in the Holy City, the place prepared. It is true the dear departed ones are clothed with the white robe of immaculate light woven on the unjarring looms of heaven, a temporary clothing which preserves their form and makes them visible and recognizable to one another; but with it all they are disembodied, and in spite of the comfort and the consolation of it, in spite of the fact that their state is "far better" than this at its best, still they are souls whose vehicle is no longer body, but spirit (wherefore after death they are sometimes spoken of as spirits); nevertheless, the Son of God did not come to make us eternal, even if happy--ghosts. If Christians should continue to die and should remain as white clothed ghosts in heaven forever they would be an incongruous environment and abiding scandal to the immortality of the Son of God Himself. A living, immortal man shining in a glorified human body surrounded by bodiless souls forever! What a contradiction that would be, what a scandal, indeed. It would be the declaration that the Son of God had power to rise from the dead, make His own body immortal, impervious to death, but in respect to those for whom He died and who died trusting in His promise He either did not have the power or did not care to keep His promise. Such a conclusion in either member of the proposition is impossible. It is impossible, for no such postulate as inability or faithlessness can be laid against the Son of God. By His own immortality as the first-fruits of them that slept, as the ordained forerunner and sample of all those whom He has redeemed He is, and in the nature of things, under bonds to give immortality to each, to raise the dead and transfigure the living in His likeness. As the dead can be raised and the living changed only when He is personally present then He must come to this world again to give that immortality of which seated on yonder throne in heaven He is the promise and the pledge. He made this promise by the grave of Lazarus.