those who, having passed through death, still believe on Him, and says that
these _shall_ live--a future event. And at the same time He speaks of those
who are living and believe on Him, and says that they shall never die--thus
contemplating the entire elimination of the contingency of death (John xi.
25).

Again St. Paul expresses his wish not to be unclothed but to be clothed
upon, which he certainly would not have done had he considered the latter
alternative a nonsensical fancy. And in another place he expressly states
that we shall not all die, but that some shall be transmuted into the
Resurrection body without passing through physical death. And if we turn to
the Old Testament we find two instances in which this is said to have
actually occurred, those of Enoch and Elijah. And we may note in passing
that the Bible draws our attention to certain facts about these two
personages which are important as striking at the root of the notion that
austerities of some sort are necessary for the great attainment. Of Enoch
we are expressly told that he was the father of a large family, and of
Elijah that he was a man of like nature with ourselves--thus showing us
what is wanted is not a shutting of ourselves off from ordinary human life
but such a clear realization of the Universal Principle, of which our
personal life is the more or less conscious manifestation, that our
commonest actions will be hallowed by the Divine Presence; and so the grand
dénouement will be only the natural result of our daily habit of walking
with God. From the stand-point of the Bible, therefore, the attainment of
physical regeneration without passing through death is not an
impossibility, nor is it necessarily relegated to some far off future.
Whatever any one else may say to the contrary, the Bible contemplates such
a dénouement of human evolution as a present possibility.

Then if we argue from the philosophical stand-point we arrive at precisely