Book Description

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1886 edition. Excerpt: ...and bring it into subjection, lest that by some means, after preaching to others, he himself should be a castaway?' The cry 'even of the regenerate' must be for resurrection, for the transfiguration and spiritualization of the body. There are times--they come, I suppose, to all of us--when the cry of the text becomes an agony and a death-struggle. St Paul felt his body a snare to him. Much as he lived in heaven, it was by an effort and a self-crucifixion. We naturally suppose that in his case it was chiefly the enfeeblement that was the stumblingblock. We picture him to ourselves as a man of feeble strength and many infirmities--consumed by a fire of zeal which burned up the very energies of the frame. I doubt whether even this will fully account for his language, here and elsewhere, concerning his body. Men of intense sympathy, of glowing affection, have trials all their own in consequence of it. St Paul's mistrust, St Paul's dread, St Paul's abhorrence, I had almost said, of the body, points possibly to trials and temptations very definite, and in which he may have been more one with us than we imagine. His desire for resurrection was a passion. 'If by any means I may attain to the resurrection of the dead.' To anticipate and antedate the resurrection--to live now as having died and risen--is St Paul's mystery of Christian living. We love him for the words, and for the thoughts which breathe in them. We feel as he felt--might we but aspire like him and after him! It is easy to talk of Christian progress. It is easy to paint the advance, and the progress, and the saintly life, and the foretaste of heaven. But, after all, where is the best of us, really, on his way? Is there one in all this audience, who is always, who is permanently, ..