There is not only an immortality of the soul, but also a resurrection of the body.
Wherefore the glory of the New Jerusalem may not be presented as consisting only in the
spiritual and invisible. Heaven exists, and in that heaven Christ sits upon the throne in the
body which the Father has prepared for Him. The Father’s house is not a fiction, but a real
city with many mansions; and when the glory shall have come, after the great and notable
day of the Lord, the felicity of God’s children shall be not only a spiritual delight, but also
the enjoyment of outward and visible glory and beauty. As there were in Eden, so there will
be in heaven, external goods in relation to man’s external bodily appearance, when he shall
walk in his glorified body. And, since body and soul in perfect and indissoluble union shall
work upon each other in a harmonious manner, the communion of saints must have two
557sides: a communion of spiritual good, and a communion of the outward and visible glory.
And inasmuch as this twofold nature of the communion of saints must be illustrated to the
church of Jerusalem in its perfect unity, therefore the communion in the breaking of bread
had to be accompanied by a communion equally intimate in the possession of temporal
goods. The division of property contained the prophecy of this future communion, a glorious
prophecy which contains a threefold exhortation for the Christian Church of all ages.
The first exhortation is what St. Paul calls “to possess as not possessing”; to be loose from
the world; the consistent carrying out of the idea that we are but stewards of the Lord Jesus
Christ, who is the only Proprietor of all men’s personal property and real estate. It is always
the choice between Jehovah and Mammon.
Not Baal, nor Kamosh, nor Molech, but Mammon, is the idolatrous power in which
Satan appears against the glory of Jehovah, especially among mercantile nations. Many men,
otherwise not unspiritual, can scarcely separate from the altar of Mammon—visible things
have such strong attraction, and entrench themselves so firmly in the impressionable heart.
Compared to the treasures on earth, those of heaven seem to us something accidental
and of uncertain value. To possess as not possessing is to our flesh such a bitter cross. And
for this reason the early church of Jerusalem appears in the beginning of the dispensation
of the New Covenant glorious in her communion of goods, in order to illustrate against the
dark background of the half-heartedness of Ananias and Sapphira the power of the Holy
Ghost to make the children of God at Jerusalem at once loose from their earthly possessions.
Of course it did not last, for the spiritual forces of Paradise were lacking to make it lasting;
but it shows the majestic act of the Holy Spirit, and the majestic preaching which proceeded
from it: “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth,” “but let your treasure be in
heaven.”
And the second exhortationis, that the poor be remembered. They did not merely sell
their possessions, but they divided them among the poor; and from this divine manifestation
of love sprang the fair flower of mercy, as indigenous to the Church of Christ. It may be
said that it was the effect of excitement; but remember that, unless the impressions on our
XXVI. The Communion of Goods.