that the obedience of the whole human family was gathered up and presented at the footstool of the Almighty Father, and that those who are drawn by the power of the uplifted Saviour are lifted with Him to the right hand of God. But while the plan of salvation, as it is called, is often enough expounded, what we need for our own soul's life is to feel the attractive power of Christ crucified. The Atonement has been often preached as a means whereby punishment may be escaped. I am not sure that we have sufficiently preached it as an inspiration for the future, as well as a comfort for the past. God asks, not that we should be anxious about exemption from suffering, but that the thought of the sacrifice of Christ should fire us with love for Him; and with gratitude for the assurance that sin shall not reign for ever, but that rising nearer and nearer towards the uplifted Christ, we shall find at last perfect holiness, and hence perfect happiness, in the kingdom of the just.

SERMON VII.

THE RESURRECTION.

(EASTER DAY, 1867.)

"And if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain."-I COR. XV. 14.

IT is natural for us to attribute our own views and thoughts about Christ to the first disciples, and to wonder that those of them who loved and trusted Him most did not act under certain circumstances as we suppose we should have acted. But it is quite certain that the full meaning of our Lord's mission and nature was not revealed even to those who were most truly devoted to Him until after His ascension. They knew Him indeed enough to trust Him, to know that He was the full satisfaction of their hearts' desires; and that was sufficient. In that knowledge stood their salvation, as in that knowledge stands ours and all men's for ever. But the germinating principle of love was to

grow into full knowledge by degrees, as they could bear to receive it. And there can be no doubt that the Saviour's death, so far from being regarded as a boon to the race of men, was looked on by the disciples when it happened as the deathblow to their hopes. Before that event, when it seemed imminent and inevitable, we read (and we have all perhaps been conscious of a deep awe and humiliation when we read) that "all the disciples forsook Him and fled." We are not told that this was from fear of sharing the fate which was reserved for their Master. This may have been the feeling of some. They were but human, and were not miraculously placed beyond the reach of temptation. But the question may occur to us, Why were there none found then to welcome martyrdom for Christ, when so soon after the death of Christ, men like Stephen gladly suffered a mortal agony; when men like Paul counted their lives as worthless in the great cause? The reason, I think, is that on the first occasion the disciples looked upon their Master's death as the end of Christianity. Though He had spoken often and not ambiguously of His death and resurrection, still the hope survived in them which had been openly expressed by Peter, that this

would be far from Him, and that some other issue must await Him and His cause. When His death seemed inevitable, their faith and their courage failed them. What profit, they may have asked themselves, to give up their lives in a cause which at the very time was proving itself a failure? They would die for the truth, but how if this was not the truth? My brethren, let us neither judge hardly nor yet extenuate the conduct of these poor men. The lesson of it is for our own hearts and consciences.

But if their hearts failed them as they followed afar off, when their Master was led to His death, how much more utter must have been their desolation when He had given up the ghost, and death seemed to have claimed Him, as it claims all other men, in its victorious march? The darkness that rested upon the earth from the sixth hour even unto the ninth was a symbol of that more fearful darkness that possessed the hearts of those who loved the Lord Jesus during those two days. Not alone because the Shepherd was smitten, and the flock were scattered, with no defence from the wolves by whom they were surrounded; not alone because they had lost the truest, the best,

the most loving Friend, who had ever made them. purer and better by the very might of His example and His words. But they had hoped, for He had led them to hope, that this was He who should redeem Israel. They knew now

that what they needed to be redeemed from was not the domination of an earthly tyrant, but the slavery of sin; and they knew that if they or others obeyed His words and took His yoke upon them, they should be freed from this slavery. But it was not enough; they wanted also the assurance that man was not made to die; that death was not meant to have the dominion over Him or over His brethren. They had the vague and unsatisfactory creed with which the sister of Lazarus had tried to console herself when her brother died; they could have repeated with their lips the belief that the man Jesus would rise again at the last day; but it was not enough for them, any more than it had been enough for Martha and Mary. All creeds crumbled into ruins; the interpretations of lawyers, the glosses of scribes, shrivelled up like burning parchment in the presence of the tremendous fact that He who had called Himself the Resurrection and the Life was being carried by human hands to His burial. My