Christ's empty tomb is the token of—

II. Victory.

I visit a home where the body of a youth awaits burial. His chair is empty; his musical voice is silent; his brain can work no more; his education seems all in vain; his many prize-books on the table seem the cruel mockery of all our hopes. The very small part of God's plan for him that we can see greatly perplexes us. We cannot even see his body, for the doctor will not allow us to breathe the atmosphere of the room in which his coffin lies. Those who love him best are fain to hide his dear form from their eyes. Death has spared nothing, and his victory seems complete. If death ended all, how desolate earth and human life should seem! But my spirit takes a walk in Joseph's garden, and with Mary Magdalene I stoop down and gaze into the tomb. The stone is rolled away, and in the light of the Gospels I see all within. The grave is empty-ours is not a dead Jewish Christ-and shining ones sit by. I see "the linen clothes lying," and "the napkin that was about His head, not lying with the linen clothes, but wrapped together in a place by itself" (John xx. 5, 7). He hath triumphed, and triumphed with greatest ease. No sign of hurry or confusion can I detect. The Risen One has attended even to the details of tidiness and beautiful arrangement; the linen clothes are not in a confused heap, for the napkin is carefully disposed. This is a sure token of perfect calmness, and of a heart and hand at

leisure. These fine little touches are eloquent of the thoroughness of Christ's victory. And so I, a perishing man among the perishing, praise God that sin and sickness, sorrow and death, are not to have all their own way on earth. By the side of the coffin and at the mouth of the grave I can use these very bold words, "O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?" I can say, "Christ hath abolished death." He has done far more than wounded or checked it, or promised to conquer it at last. This empty grave, with its angels and well-wrapped napkin, tells me that death itself shall die.

may set it agoing, Every garden has

Now Christ's victory was not for His solitary self, but for all His faithful people. He died for us only, but He rose for Himself and us. The grave was to Him an avenue into life. Ah, we sometimes feel that death hangs over us as the avalanche hangs over an Alpine village. A word, a breath of air, and then we shall be swept away. its grave. The earth is rinded and coloured with the dust of the dead. But that empty grave in Joseph's garden speaks of other empty graves, and Christ's victory is ours if we are His. All this should help you to conquer that horror of death which casts its chilling shadow over many a young heart. Why should your fancy dwell gloomily upon the death-bed and its strange possibilities, the weakness, the pain, the tyranny and cruelty of the last enemy, the horrid black coffin, the yawning deep grave? Your faith in Christ should overleap all these dark things, and land you amid the

revealed blessedness of heaven. Why should we shudder at the thought of death as the bird shudders when the hawk is hovering over it? The disciples found the grave empty and angels around it, and we should find them there too, though our tears and fears often hinder us from doing so. Let not a fearful fancy overcome your faith, “for fear is more pain than is the pain it fears." Let not your imagination erect over the grave a tombstone with a grinning death's-head and crossbones. Be like that Christian who, seeing a painter painting death as a skeleton with a scythe, advised him to put in its place an angel with a golden ray.

I witness many deathbeds of old and young that have nothing terrifying about them. I have just read the life of a minister's wife. A young woman who often visited her said, "If the minister's wife had to die, I am glad she died here; it makes death so much easier for me." The last sentence in the book is, "Her friends felt that it was the shadow of the wing of the Angel of Life that darkened their dwellings as he came to call her home." God seems often in His most merciful providence to prepare children especially for their end, so that they are content to die before death comes. When they are old enough to think, something within, which they know to be true, tells them that they will not be separated for ever from those they completely love. God has given them a strange affliction which carries with it the pledge of eternity. When there is a love stronger than death, the loving soul must also be stronger than death. The moment