yet in order to secure a safe and Christian interpretation to these and numerous other passages of like phrase and import in the Old Testament, it is of highest concernment that we should distinguish the personeity or spirit, as the source and principle of personality, from the person itself as the particular product at any one period, and as that which cannot be evolved or sustained but by the co-agency of the system and circumstances in which the individuals are placed.  In this latter sense it is that ‘man’ is used in the Psalms, in Job, and elsewhere—­and the term made synonymous with flesh.  That which constitutes the spirit in man, both for others and itself, is the real man; and to this the elements and elementary powers contribute its bulk ([Greek:  to] ‘videri et tangi’) wholly, and its phenomenal form in part, both as co-efficients, and as conditions.  Now as these are under a law of vanity and incessant change,—­[Greek:  ta mae onta, all’ aei ginomena],—­so must all be, to the production and continuance of which they are indispensable.  On this hangs the doctrine of the resurrection of the body, as an essential part of the doctrine of immortality;—­on this the Scriptural (and only true and philosophical) sense of the soul, ‘psyche’ or life, as resulting from the continual assurgency of the spirit through the body;—­and on this the begetting of a new life, a regenerate soul, by the descent of the divine Spirit on the spirit of man.  When the spirit by sanctification is fitted for an incorruptible body, then shall it be raised into a world of incorruption, and a celestial body shall burgeon forth thereto, the germ of which had been implanted by the redeeming and creative Word in this world.  Truly hath it been said of the elect:—­They fall asleep in earth, but awake in heaven.  So St. Paul expressly teaches:  and as the passage (1.  ‘Cor’. xv. 35—­54,) was written for the express purpose of rectifying the notions of the converts concerning the Resurrection, all other passages in the New Testament must be interpreted in harmony with it.  But John, likewise,—­describing the same great event, as subsequent to, and contra-distinguished from, the partial or millennary Resurrection—­which (whether we are to understand the Apostle symbolically or literally) is to take place in the present world,—­beholds ‘a new earth’ and ’a new heaven’ as antecedent to, or coincident with, the appearance of the New Jerusalem,—­that is, the state of glory, and the resurrection to life everlasting.  The old earth and its heaven had passed away from the face of Him on the throne, at the moment that it gave up the dead.  ‘Rev’. xx.-xxi.

Ib. pp. 174-5.

  ‘But the word of the Lord endureth for ever.’

  And with respect to those learned men that apply the text to God, I
  remember not that this ‘abiding for ever’ is used to express God’s
  eternity in himself.

No; nor is it here used for that purpose; but yet I cannot doubt but that either the Word, [Greek:  Ho Logos en archae], or the Divine promises in and through the incarnate Word, with the gracious influences proceeding from him, are here meant—­and not the written [Greek:  rhaemata] or Scriptures.