If you have followed my argument, you will perceive that our Lord declared that the evidence of the resurrection is of the self-same sort as that on which we act in the common affairs of life, and that it is hypocrisy to act on one and not on the other.

But let me carry you one step further. The evidence on which those facts which the resurrection of Christ establishes, and which depend upon it, is of the self-same nature. These facts are: 1. That He who raised Himself from the dead was the eternal Son of God. 2. That His resurrection gave us a renewed assurance that our souls should live for ever, and that our bodies should be raised at the last day, like unto His glorious Body; and 3. That Christ's resurrection was a triumph over sin and death, and through it the life of Christ was to be given to Christians, in and through the Sacramental life of the Church.

Do I need to prove from Holy Scripture that Christ's resurrection establishes these facts? "He was declared to be the Son of God with power, by the resurrection from the dead." "Life and immortality have been brought to light through the Gospel." "We have been begotten unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ." "Christ is risen from the dead, and become the first fruits of them that slept." "As in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive." "The like figure whereunto even Baptism doth now save us, by the resurrection of Jesus Christ." "Buried with Him in Baptism, wherein also ye are risen with Him." "Whoso eateth My flesh, and drinketh My blood, hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day."

The proof of the eternal Sonship of Jesus, the proof of the immortality of the soul, of the resurrection of the body, of the sacramental power of Baptism and the Eucha

rist, all rest in a great degree on the proof of Christ's resurrection; and rest not on demonstrative, but on probable evidence, addressed not to the senses, but to the higher reason, the moral nature, the better self of each human being. No voice from on high, no splendor flashing from the courts of heaven, no sapphire throne with emerald rainbow round about, no sound of living creatures chanting by the crystal sea, "Worthy is the Lamb that was slain," has yet declared to eye and ear that Jesus Christ is God; yet from ten thousand hearts, from king and peasant, from learned and unlearned, in the midst of days of peace, and much more in the times of sorrow and distress, goes up the world-wide confession, "I believe that Jesus is the Son of God."

You can not find within the folds of the brain the immortal soul of man. The knife of the anatomist can not detect it. You can not tell how it leaves with the parting breath the inanimate form. You can not watch it as it speeds away; you know not whither it goes. No one has ever returned from that other world to tell the story of judgment, or purgation, or eternal woe or bliss. You stand as it were on the brink of a lonely river, you waft your farewells from the shore, and they depart and come no more, or come as phantoms and as ghosts. And yet, from broken hearts and sorrowing souls, from the gloom of churchyards and the shadow of cypress-trees, goes up in the Easter-tide the cry, "O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?" "For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus, shall God bring with him." You bury the body deep down in the earth; the ashes are scattered to the four winds of heaven. Science proves to you that the particles

of matter are transformed into other bodies, and blossom again in flowers, and wave in fields of abundant grain; and yet you hear and believe, at every burial, the words, full of immortal cheer, of the great apostle: "It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body."

Nor is it otherwise with the sacramental life of the Church. You bring your little children to the font; you hear the solemn words, you see the cleansing flood; yet as you do so, accusing voices rebuke you as they did the disciples of old, and declare it to be a meaningless ceremony. You kneel before the altar of God; the sacrificial words are uttered, the mysterious sentence of consecration is pronounced; the sorrowing and the penitent, the tempted and the forlorn, the thankful and the afflicted, alike press near and kneel as at the foot of the Cross. As they do so, louder still are angry and rebuking words, and the sacrament of love is made a sacrament of wrath. Yet, in spite of all, the words of Jesus fall on the ear: children to come unto Me, and forbid them not, for of such is the kingdom of God"; "As often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do show forth the Lord's death till He come"; and ye know that He who is the Resurrection and the Life is there. You can not see His form, yet you say to Him, "Abide with me; for it is toward evening, and the day is far spent," and He is known to you in the breaking of bread.

66

Suffer little

Brethren, do you need any other proof of these things? Let scribe and Pharisee clamor for a sign from heaven: these signs that speak to heart and soul and to the inner life of thousands of Christians, are enough for us.

Finally, beloved, do you read, as a Christian ought, the signs of our own day and times? You talk, no doubt, of the Eastern question, of Turk and Russian. You have a word for Bismarck, or Gortschakoff, or Disraeli; you know something about gold, and silver, and specie payments, and the course of trade, and what we call preëminently good or bad times; you watch uneasily, perchance, the busy war of words, the lack of high principle, the downward rush of our dreary political life; you hear this muttering of communism, which, only on Good Friday last, burst forth into a shriek of blasphemy in the greatest city of the land; you are appalled at the stories of crime and shame even in children, which are crowded together in those daily papers that are at once the accusers and the corrupters of our national morality; but do you see, behind them all, the deep spiritual realities?

Immortal souls are hurrying to their last account; the increasing throng of the dead crowd upon the footsteps of the living; accusing voices from the land of silence intercede against the world; a divided Church clamors for unity of faith and worship. Heresies, hundreds of years old, are dying of decrepitude, and their own children expose their wasted limbs and whitened hair upon the lonely moors. Behind the veil, the New Jerusalem is getting ready for the hour when, to a wondering world, she shall appear. In the darkness of the night the watchman calls, again and again, "The morning cometh!" There is a tremulous movement, as if all things would awake to God.

Hear, O my friends, the distant crowing of the cock; behold the first faint streaks of rosy light; the everlasting Easter draws nearer and nearer!

XXVI.

LOST OPPORTUNITIES.

(Freached at Racine College, one of the late Sundays after Trinity, 1878.)

"See then that ye walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise, redeeming the time, because the days are evil. Wherefore be ye not unwise, but understanding what the will of the Lord is."--EPH. V., 15, 16, 17.

THE text gives three precepts closely connected with one another. The Apostle bids his hearers-1. To walk circumspectly; 2. To understand what the will of the Lord is; 3. To redeem the time, and for the reason that the days are evil. And to do all this he declares is a mark of that true wisdom which is the highest gift and grace of the Spirit of God.

Perhaps it may be inferred that the walking circumspectly and the understanding what the will of the Lord is are the two methods, outward and inward, whereby the time is redeemed in an evil day. To walk circumspectly refers evidently to our relations with others. Circumspectly is the self-same word as was used when Herod commanded the wise men to go and search diligently for