Perpetual Youth.
I. The life of the faithful dead is eternal progress towards infinite perfection. The life of man, being under the law of growth, is in all its parts subject to the consequent necessity of decline. But the perfect life of the dead in Christ has but one phase youth. It is growth without a limit and without decline. To say that they are ever young is the same thing as to say that their being never reaches its climax, that it is ever but entering on its glory.
II. The life of the faithful dead recovers and retains the best characteristics of youth. The perfect man in the heavens will include the graces of childhood, the energies of youth, the steadfastness of manhood, the calmness of old age; as on some tropical tree, blooming on more fertile soil, and quickened by a nearer sun than ours, you may see at once bud, blossom, and fruit the expectancy of spring, the maturing promise of summer, and the fulfilled fruition of autumn hanging together on the unexhausted bough.
III. The faithful dead shall live in a body that cannot grow old. The glorious and undecaying body shall then be the equal and fit instrument of the perfected spirit, not as it is now, the adequate instrument only of the natural life.
A. Maclaren, Sermons preached in Manchester,2nd series, p. 190.