A Goodly Heritage

In  2 Corinthians v. 2 , the Apostle says: “We know, that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.” There are three ways in which these words, in connection with those which follow, are interpreted. (1.) According to one view, the house not made with hands into which the believer is received at death, is heaven. (2.) According to another view the meaning of the Apostle is, that when our present body is dissolved the soul will not be found naked, but will be immediately clothed with another and more spiritual body suited to the altered state of its existence. (3.) That the new house or body intended is the resurrection body. The second of these interpretations is founded on a gratuitous assumption. It assumes  729 that the soul is furnished with a body of which the Scriptures make no mention, and of the existence of which we have no evidence. The Bible knows nothing of any human bod...

    The goodness of God in the form of benevolence is revealed in the whole constitution of nature. As the universe teems with life, it teems also with enjoyment. There are no devices in nature for the promotion of pain for its own sake; whereas the manifestations of design for the production of happiness are beyond computation. The manifestation of the goodness of God in the form of love, and specially of love to the undeserving, is, as just stated, the great end of the work of redemption. "God so loved the world, that He gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life." (John iii. 16.) "Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins." (1 John iv. 10.) The Apostle prays that believers might be able to comprehend the height and depth, the length and breadth, of that love which passes knowledge. (Eph. iii. 19.)