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JAINISM, CHRISTIANITY & SCIENCE
completed the course of training and the process of purging the element of matter from its constitution, through successive and repeated resurrections,' that is to say, in plain language, through successive re-incarnations or rebirths.
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Clement explains the point in this way, that after the adoption of the Right Faith, if it is grounded on scientific conviction, the soul is always changing for the better, in every succeeding incarnation, obtaining the highest excellences even in the state of embodied existence; and this process continues till it is able to attain to perfection. He is right, therefore, when he says:
"Accordingly after the highest excellence in flesh, changing always duly to the better, he urges his flight to the ancestral hall, through the holy septenniad to the Lord's own mansions; to be a light, steady, and continuing eternally, entirely and in every part immutable."-A.N.C.L. vol. x. p. 455.
As regards the final resurrection, Methodius (A.N. C.L. vol. xiv. p. 96) points out:
"For account the resurrection to be the erection of the taber
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nacle.
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But what is the tabernacle itself? It is the heavenly dwelling' of the soul (Ibid. p. 51):
"For the pattern which was shown to Moses' in the mount, to which he was to have regard in fashioning the Tabernacle, was a kind of accurate representation of the heavenly dwelling, which we now perceive more clearly than through types, yet more darkly than if we saw the reality."
It was a state which was to be attained by right living:
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"Account that the things which are taken for the putting together of the tabernacle are the works of righteousness."-Ibid. p. 96.
