CHAPTER IX.

COMMON OBJECTIONS TO THE DOCTRINE OF

RECOGNITION IN HEAVEN.

VARIOUS objections have been urged

against the doctrine of recognition in heaven, some of them of greater and some of less force; while some that have been brought forward are speedily found on examination to have no force at all. It is right that we should look these objections fairly in the face. They perplex some people, and prevent their enjoying, as they should, the delightful prospect of meeting and holding intercourse with their friends above. And they perhaps affect a still larger number who have never taken the trouble to acquaint themselves accurately either with the nature of the objections or with the replies which have been made to them, by

remaining in a shadowy, undefined, unexamined form to darken their outlook into the great future. Let us therefore see what such objections really amount to, and how far they militate against the reception of the truth we have been considering.

Perhaps it may be well to remark before doing so, that the mere fact of objections having been raised against this doctrine is no reason for rejecting it. If we are to abandon every belief which has been objected to, our creed will be indeed scanty. I do not know any Scripture doctrine whatever to which objections have not been made. Even the most fundamental articles of the faith have had difficulties cast in their way. The doctrines of the Trinity, the Incarnation, the Resurrection of Christ, our own Resurrection, all these have had objections urged against them. But you do not therefore give them up, even although you cannot in every case completely meet the objector or explain away the difficulties which he starts. You are still as convinced as you are of your own existence of the truth of every one of the doctrines I have mentioned. You

feel that you have sufficient proof of them to entitle, nay, to compel you, to hold them. The mere fact, therefore, that objections can be and have been raised to a doctrine, objections, it may be, weighty and strong, is not a sufficient reason for refusing to accept it. Even though you may not be able to dispose of them completely, you may yet be obliged to cling to it by the strength of the proof.

The question in all such cases is, are the objections of such weight and character as to render it impossible to hold the doctrine against which they are urged? Do they outweigh the evidences and proofs ? Placing these in one scale and the objections in the other, how does the beam stand? Let us see how this is as regards the matter now before us.

1. It is sometimes objected to the doctrine of recognition in heaven, that our body will be so changed at the resurrection as to render mutual recognition thereafter impossible.

Now, of course, our bodies will be changedgreatly changed, at the resurrection. That is the plain teaching of Scripture. "We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed"

(1 Cor. xv. 51). The dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed" (1 Cor. xv. 52). But the point to be settled is, what will be the character and extent of this change? Will it be such as to alter the features, to change the general aspect, to make the person unrecognisable? Unless this is to be the case, obviously the argument based upon it proves nothing. It is fortunate that we can answer the question now put, and tell precisely what is to be the character and extent of the change which will supervene at the resurrection. Our vile body shall be changed, "that it may be fashioned like unto His glorious body" (Phil. iii. 21). "If we have been planted together in the likeness of His death, we shall be also in the likeness of His resurrection" (Rom. vi. 5). "We shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is" (1 John iii. 2). Frequently and plainly this coming change is so described. The question then is, what was Christ's resurrection body like? It is the pattern after which our resurrection bodies are to be modelled. What change passed over it after His rising from Joseph's grave? Was He not the same Christ

after as before? For forty days did He not go about among the disciples talking to them as He used to do? Did He not eat with them, and appear and behave as before? Did they not hear the same voice? Did they not see the same face? Indeed, to convince them that He was the same, did He not allow them to handle Him, to put their fingers into the prints of the nails, and their hands into His wounded side?

Perhaps you say you are not quite so sure that He looked the same after the resurrection as before. You remind me possibly of some incidents which you think bear a different construction. You tell me of that evening of which it is said: "Then the same day at evening, being the first day of the week, when the doors were shut where the disciples were assembled for fear of the Jews, came Jesus, and stood in their midst, and saith unto them : Peace be unto you" (John xx. 19). You say His body must have become altogether different from what it was before He died, when closed doors proved no barrier to its progress, when it passed through them into the room where the disciples were.