being, from which we seek to teach him the nature of God's heavenly things. If it is so that God has made him, to what does such a nature point? In the compass of one human breast are all the mysteries of God assembled. In the peace of self-surrender is a foretaste of heaven; in the pangs of remorse is the veil lifted from hell. There is God within you, whether you choose to acknowledge Him or not. We appeal to you, as Christ appealed to Nicodemus, not to let your imagination go wandering through space for that which lies so close to you. Be true to what you know. If you shut your eyes, and refuse to see what meets you daily on your earthly pilgrimage, you cannot hope to penetrate into the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven.

I do not know why the Church appointed this narrative of St. John as the Gospel for Trinity Sunday. It may have been that in the compass of a short story the names of the three persons of the blessed Trinity occur in peculiar juxtaposition; the Son declaring, that only through the new birth of the Holy Spirit can there be union with the Father. However this may be, we may receive this narrative to-day as a warning that the great mystery of the Trinity can be approached, as all other mysteries, through fidelity

to our spiritual nature.

If our own dim lives

show us the need of a Father in the heaven, a Redeemer from our sin, a Sanctifier and Consoler, we shall not easily find a stumbling-block in the mystery of a Triune God. We tell you of earthly things; that is, we tell you of your lives, their needs and their satisfaction. Seek God there, not in some remote heaven, or in the intricacies of theology. Obey the voice that dwells within you; and then, though you may have to abide as long as you are in this world in "the region of yourselves," you may find that that region, in the language of the moral poet whom Coleridge loved to quote, is one

"Neighbouring on heaven, and that no foreign land.”

SERMON XVI.

THE RESURRECTION A FACT OF HISTORY.

(EASTER DAY, 1870.)

"Why should it be thought a thing incredible with you, that God should raise the dead?"-ACTS xxvi. 8.

ST. PAUL was before Herod Agrippa when he asked this remarkable question. His cause, which had been heard before the Procurator Festus, was now being reheard in the presence of the Jewish King. The Roman Governor was, no doubt, glad to have the responsibility in part removed from his own shoulders, and to share it with one who was better informed than himself on questions of Jewish law. St. Paul's accusers were his own countrymen. He had been preaching Christ with the freedom and simplicity which distinguished the man; and as on so many other occasions, it was when he came to speak of His Resurrection that the smouldering wrath of his hearers burst into a

flame. Among those hearers were both Pharisees and Sadducees, the two great opponents of Christianity and of one another; and he had touched a note which roused this dormant enmity. "For the Sadducees say that there is no resurrection, neither angel nor spirit, but the Pharisees confess both." So there arose a great cry-the great cry which always arises when on some point of dogma the crowd is divided—the cry which is not the battle-cry of truth, but the alarm of panic-stricken party. The speaker is rescued from them with difficulty; and after many risks and adventures he is found making a statement of his history and its issuesspeaking his "Apologia Vitæ Sua"-before the Gentile and the Jewish rulers. He has nothing to defend, nothing to excuse, nothing to ask indulgence for. He trusts to the power and eloquence of the truth as his best defence, as the completest answer to his enemies. He tells them of himself, his education, his career as a persecutor of the faith for which now he stood forth as champion, the vision which came to him in his course, the change of his whole life which resulted from it. He tells them how he had preached and taught everywhere in the name of his new-found Lord; and that in doing so he

was telling no new, wild romance, but echoing the ancient strain of the prophets and the lawgivers of Israel. For they, too, had told long before that Christ should suffer, that He should rise from the dead, and should show light to the people and the Gentiles. Moreover, he asserts that in so preaching he used no arguments, alleged no facts, that were not open and easily to be refuted, if he spoke not the truth. He appeals to his judge, and his former co-religionist, Agrippa, to deny, if he can, the truth of what he says. "The king before whom I speak knoweth of these things. For I am persuaded that none of these things are hidden from him: for this thing was not done in a corner." And Agrippa could dare, in reply to this appeal, to be ironical, but he could not deny it. On this point Paul's facts were facts within the knowledge of all, and did not rest on the assertions of a handful of zealots. Agrippa allowed his silence to express assent.

The

"This thing was not done in a corner." event which we commemorate to-day is here referred to, although St. Paul's remark probably included more than the resurrection of our Lord. It applied to all the main external facts of His career, His life, teaching, and death