It is the opinion of some that every created being has a corporeal part, and that God alone is perfectly a spirit.  However this may be, it is evident that the souls of believers after death, though advanced far beyond their present earthly condition, and though they are “with Christ,” and though to die is gain, and though they are in the heaven of heavens with Christ, (which is where the penitent thief went, and where Paul had his revelation, and where Christ went when he died;—­for Paul uses the words “third heavens,” and “Paradise,” interchangeably,) are, nevertheless, incomplete as to their natures, “waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body.”  Where in the Bible are we led to suppose that they are detained in an inferior region, or that there are, at most, only two redeemed human beings now in “heaven,” viz., Enoch and Elijah, or probably not even they?  But a corporeal part, we may suppose, is necessary to the fullest participation in the employments and enjoyments of the spiritual world.  Light requires atmosphere to modify it for the human eye, which otherwise could not endure its brightness.  So it may be that a corporeal part is necessary to modify many of the things which are unseen and eternal, that they may be apprehended by the soul.  Let no one say that matter must obstruct or dim the senses of the soul; that a body must act as a veil to the spirit, and shut out much knowledge.  It is not so here.  Matter helps us in the acquisition of knowledge, as, for example, glass in optical instruments.  The telescope, with its lenses, gives the eye vast compass; the microscope gives it a power, equally wonderful, of minute vision.  True, in these cases it is matter helping matter—­glass assisting the eye; the analogy is not perfect between this and the aid which the spiritual body may afford the soul.  But, if we remember that there is to be progression in the powers and faculties of our nature, and that if a body is added to the glorified spirit, it must be to assist it, to put it forward in its acquisitions and enjoyments, we cannot resist the belief that the addition of the new body to the soul will be a vast accession of power and capability.  If the eye and the mind can receive such aid from the telescope here, who knows that the eye of the glorified body may not be itself a telescope, increasing in its capability with the progress of its being.

We may have some view of what the glorified body must necessarily be, in thinking of it as a fit companion to the glorified spirit.  The soul having been in heaven for ages, and having grown in all spiritual excellence, the body, to be a help to such a spirit, to be an occasion of joy, and not of regret, must, of course, be in advance of our present corporeal nature.  What must the body of Isaiah, and of David, be, at the resurrection, to correspond with the vast powers and attainments of those glorified spirits?  We could not believe, certainly we could not see, how these bodies of ours could be made capable of such union, were it not that, in the man Christ Jesus, we see our corporeal nature capable of such transformation as to make it compatible for his human mind, and indwelling Deity, to receive it into their ineffable union.