Now comes the resurrection from the dead, as the climax of such a history as this. The divine nature; the reasons of it; the harmonious execution of all those objects that brought God into human conditions; that detail of teaching and of miraculous interference; the death by which Death itself was to be divested of its terror, and made morally significant-all these require an appropriate ending, and they all have it in the fact that Christ rose again from the dead, and became the first fruits of those who shall die.

Now, looking at the coming, at the living, at the dying, and at the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ, in this continuous view, where was there ever a drama so sublime ? Where was there ever one lifted up so far above any possible conception or invention of man? Where was there ever one which included in its scenes and contents such a vast sweep of things which were so unimaginable to antiquity, but which, as the race develops, become more and more admira ble to men? And what is the origin of such a life, such a progress, and such a disclosure? What is its origin other than divine, which is so large in its scope, and so wonderful in its contents, that men, with the light of nature, and with successive disclosures in history, are not competent to take in the whole of it, nor even a full conception of it?

It is said that historical Christianity is waning. It is waning, if at all, only as the blossom wanes, that the apple or the orange may swell under it into life and beauty. It may be that there are many conceptions that have grown out of the physical conditions of Christianity, which are changing and are to change; but their spiritual import, the relations of the divine nature to the human, the route of the progress and destiny of the human race, the revelation of the great oversphere of spirituality, the powers that have been at work in times past and that are at work now to deliver men from the thrall of the flesh-these things are not waning. They are augmenting, and are growing in the intelligence and in the faith of men from generation to generation.

The broad question of resurrection, which will occupy our thought for the residue of the morning, I shall not discuss as a matter of fact-although as a mere matter of fact it is full

of the profoundest interest; nor shall I discuss it as a pledge of immortality, as the apostles did-notably Paul, who in the fifteenth of first Corinthians, and in other writings of his, argues it against Grecian scepticism, and makes it the opening of the door of hope to the whole human race.

Besides the constant witness of the resurrection of Christ which the apostles gave; besides their continual appeal to it as the ground and reason of hope of our own immortality, as it were repeating continually the words of the Master, "Because I live ye shall live also"-he being the first fruits, and we the after harvest-besides that, the apostles were accustomed to spiritualize this fact, as they were likewise accustomed to spiritualize the divine nature of Christ and his passion and death. They looked upon them both as historic facts; they looked upon them both, also, in their spiritual. relations; and the death of Christ stood over against the decay, the weakness, the want, the perpetual dying, that is going on in mankind. The resurrection of Christ was spiritualized, also, by the apostles, and made to stand over against one of those steps or degrees of development by which the spiritual element in man gains ascendancy over the physical and carnal element.

Look at the passage which I read in your hearing:

"If ye then be risen with Christ [the resurrection evidently was meant; but they were not dead as to the body; they had never died a natural death; and if he was speaking of the physical resurrection alone there is no understanding the passage; but he is spiritualizing it, as it comes out in the sequence] seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth. For ye are dead."

They were walking about, living in their houses, breaking bread from house to house, singing songs, saying prayers, exhorting each other, etc; and yet, he says to them, "You are dead," spiritualizing death, or assuming that men who are yet encompassed in the flesh and under its supreme control may be fitly called dead; and that every emission from, every going out of, that encompassing of the flesh about them, is in the nature of, or corresponds to, the resurrection of Jesus Christ. That great personal uprising of Christ from the dead stood not alone as a fact in his history, and not alon

as a disclosure in respect to immortality: it had also continuity, and a relative application to that work which is going on in the hearts and dispositions of men under the divine influence.

"If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth. For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God."

Nobody is what he seems.

The life which is outside and

which we see is not the real life. The real life, as yet, is locked up is hidden. You will not know what it is to be until you see it complete.

A person, going into a jeweler's shop to look at a necklace, is shown one opal, and another opal, in their separateness, a diamond here and a diamond there; but he sees not the whole. He sees not their real proportions, their gradations, their setting, every thing that belongs to them; and yet, he has some conception of how exceedingly rich the necklace will be from seeing the individual parts of it, although he knows nothing of the particulars as to how these parts will be put together.

So we, in this life, see manly strength, and courage, and p. ity, and truth, and patience, and love, and the other higaer elements of the soul; these are scattered parts of our future life; but what we are to be we do not know. We are entombed, as it were; we are undisclosed; we are, using Christ Jesus as a figure, buried in him, as he was buried in the sepulcher; and as he waited to come forth, so we are waiting to come forth, and to be as he was in power, in beauty, in harmony, and in joyfulness. We are to be that compared with which all this mortal state is as the blackness of death.

Spiritualizing both ways, on the question of death and of the resurrection, it is perfectly fair, then, to say that the resurrection may be employed in the way of practical application, and in the way of comfort and of cheer, after the manner of the apostles. It is fair to say of it, if we spiritualize it, and apply it to all the separate elements of our life from day to day, and derive comfort and consolation

from it, taking it, as it were, in particles, in broken parts, that it is like the separate elements of a beautiful coronet. We are not doing violence to the spirit of Scripture, nor substituting our own ingenuity for the divine teaching, but are following the apostles' example, in spiritualizing it.

I remark, then, that every man is born buried in the flesh, imprisoned in matter, sensible to decay and death, and that all the steps by which he rises from his burial in the flesh are a participation, and are in some sense an intimation and prefiguring, of the great and complete resurrection. In other words, that change which takes place at death and after death in its entirety is also taking place little by little as we go on in this world. The full disclosure of resurrection—that is to say, the rising of the spirit, in all its amplitude and power, after the body is dropped-is the grand climacteric fact; but the preparation for it, which is a part of it, and which leads to it, is going on in all this mortal struggle.

In a few days now, when the hyacinth shoots its bold stalk of flowers into the air, and when the tulip, hardly waiting for the frost to let go, begins to expand its brilliant bud, do you suppose they will have organized all their work since the north wind forgot to blow? Do you suppose that these early blooming bulbs first think of that which they develop, the moment their inflorescence comes out? Do you suppose that inflorescence is the result of immediate action or cause?

Last August and September my hyacinths were beginning to develop the flowers which are about to show themselves. They were at work preparing for them then. All through those months there was being stored in the little invisible cells of the cormus, or bulb, that which was to support and take care of it during the cold season; and it lay through the dead winter waiting for liberty to come forth. And now, in the milder nights and warmer days of spring it is blossoming and bringing out that which has been getting ready to come out since last mid-summer.

Do you suppose that when, by-and-by, the crowned spirit spreads its wings and begins its wonderful flight from earth to heaven, from light to greater light, that flight will be a

miraculous, instantaneous creation? All the victories of that spirit will run back through its earthly years. All its attainments will have been gathering through its whole life. All the efforts by which the body has been kept under, so that the mind, inspired of God, might go forth and take hold upon resurrection and upon immortality—these have wrought out their fruits in the time that is past, and the great change discloses what has been effected. Every true man; every man who is unwilling to live as he is living; every man who is seeking to be better, to purify his soul, to exalt and ennoble himself-every such man, in everything that he is gaining of education, and of victory over that which is low, is preparing the elements of resurrection, and is beginning, as it were, to have a foretaste of it in himself.

Hence, every clear ascendancy of our nobler nature over the body brings us within the charmed circle of resurrection. Every man who finds himself unhappily situated ; every man who is set afloat on the sea of life ill-equipped, with a thousand influences throbbing in him, and driving him on with basilar forces-every such man who, by the inspiration of the truth, and by the power of the Holy Ghost in his soul, makes fit resistance to whatever is evil in him-every such man, at every single step, in which he puts the yoke on the beastly neck, and bows down his passions into a proper servitude, and gives ascendancy in himself to that which is right and good and true and just-every such man is, by each victory which he gains, reaching forward toward the sphere of spiritual resurrection.

Now, I would not lower the standard of rectitude one whit; but I say that when God shall show us the truth balanced and proportioned, there will be a great many men that are hardly considered more than respectable here of whom he will say that they have done more, and fought a braver battle, than those who have gone out of life with all eyes streaming, and everybody looking up to them, as the servants of the prophet looked up to him when he went up in his chariot of fire.

There are men low down in the scale of spirituality and morality, who, if you weigh the power which is required to