That is to say, the first outstanding difference which arises before the Apostle as blessed and glorious, is the contrast between the fragile dwelling-place, with its thin canvas, its bending poles, its certain removal some day, and the permanence of that which is not a ‘tent,’ but a ‘building’ which is ‘eternal.’  Involved in that is the thought that all the limitations and weaknesses which are necessarily associated with the perishableness of the present abode are at an end for ever.  No more fatigue, no more working beyond the measure of power, no more need for recuperation and repose; no more dread of sickness and weakness; no more possibility of decay, ’It is sown in corruption; it is raised in incorruption’—­neither ‘can they die any more.’  Whether that be by reason of any inherent immortality, or by reason of the uninterrupted flow into the creature of the immortal life of Christ, to whom he is joined, is a question that need not trouble us now.  Enough for us that the contrast between the Bedouin tent—­which is folded up and carried away, and nothing left but the black circle where the cheerful hearth once glinted amidst the sands of the desert—­and the stately mansion reared for eternity, is the contrast between the organ of the spirit in which we now dwell and that which shall be ours.

And the other contrast is no less glorious and wonderful.  ’The earthly house of this tent’ does not merely define the composition, but also the whole relations and capacities of that to which it refers.  The ‘tent’ is ‘earthly’, not merely because, to use a kindred metaphor, it is a ‘building of clay,’ but because, by all its capacities, it belongs to, corresponds with, and is fitted only for, this lower order of things, the seen and the perishable.  And, on the other hand, the ‘mansion’ is in ‘the heavens,’ even whilst the future tenant is a nomad in his tent.  That is so, because the power which can create that future abode is ‘in the heavens.’  It is so called in order to express the security in which it is kept for those who shall one day enter upon it.  And it is so, further, to express the order of things with which it brings its dwellers into contact.  ’Flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of God; neither doth corruption inherit incorruption.’  That future home of the spirit will be congruous with the region in which it dwells; fitted for the heavens in which it is now preserved.  And thus the two contrasts—­adapted to the perishable, and itself perishable, belonging to the eternal and itself incorruptible—­are the two which loom largest before the Apostle’s mind.

Let no man say that such ideas of a possible future bodily frame are altogether inconsistent with all that we know of the limitations and characteristics of what we call matter.  ’There is one flesh of beasts and another of birds,’ says Paul; ’there is one glory of the sun and another of the moon.’  And his old-fashioned argument is perfectly sound to-day.