helps us to read it—he who can read it stands unshaken when public anxieties press, and social ills and national wrongs and dangers are a ceaseless weight and weariness, and when personal sorrows fill his heart, for he knows that all is working up towards the one reality of existence, the far-off divine event, the eternal life, by the one only and divine law of working, "first that which is natural, and afterward that which is spiritual."

Time is running away, and I have but barely touched even this one truth I want to impress on you, that St. Paul saw, and that we ought to be able to see far more plainly, this profound truth of the natural passing into the spiritual, or as Plato would have expressed it, the τὰ γιγνόμενα into the τὰ ὄντα, a unity of nature corresponding to the unity of God. And yet there are two things I have to say, and I will say them briefly.

First, what are we to say of the fact of our Lord's resurrection ? Did He rise? or was it all an illusion, and therefore no confirmation at all of the general law above spoken of? On this I can only say that mind after mind, most sceptical by nature, has gone over the evidence, and it stands fast and sure that something happened on that first Easter Day, which we can best describe as the resurrection of Christ from the dead. Few would venture now to define precisely, as is defined in our articles, all that then occurred; or to express it in scientific and materialistic terms. There is a human element in the narrative, and under any circumstances human words must necessarily fail to describe so transcendent a fact. Our pictorial imagination of the event, taken from the literal narrative, may be childishly inade

quate; but the underlying fact stands fast which we may well content ourselves in all humility of intellect with describing in the old familiar words of the Creed, "The third day He rose again from the dead." Out of the natural, according to the universal law, He passed through the grave and gate of death to the spiritual life, and in that spiritual life He permitted Himself, by processes we know not, to be recognised and felt as real by His earthly friends. He gave them the proof, and may I not say that He gives to us a proof, less vivid, not less real, by His spiritual presence with us, the proof that the world longed for, that death is not annihilation.

Mark

The second thing I have to say is this. how St. Paul closes what I have ventured to call his great hymn to death. Step by step he has risen in that great lyric and reaches that outburst of glorious thankfulness. "Thanks be to God which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ." And then you might expect that he would have paused in solemn silence. But no-that same conviction of continuity that takes him from earth to heaven brings him back from heaven to earth. Life is one in all its parts, death is but an episode; and it is as natural to St. Paul to infer from the heavenly what must be the ideal of the earthly life, as it is to see in the earthly the foretaste and foreshadowing of the heavenly. The one is as real to him as the other. And so he closes his lyric with that ever-memorable, that magnificent "Therefore": "Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye steadfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not in vain in the Lord."

What marvellous words and thoughts are these,

too pregnant perhaps with meaning and wisdom to introduce now, when some of you may be weary of listening, and yet I will ask you to listen yet for a few moments more while I tell you how such a faith as this affects your life. Therefore, because spiritual life is continuous, undying; because the pure and sweet and loving and generous soul on earth passes pure and sweet and loving and generous into the light of heaven; because no pains you take for another to check what will stain and mislead and debase, to guide towards what is noble and heavenly and Christ-like; because no self-discipline, no prayer, no falling at the feet of your Father in heaven and listening in silence for His voice, no efforts after the life of brotherliness and the service of your fellows in the spirit of Christ and as stewards of His gifts; because nothing that is good perishes; "forasmuch"

-to use St. Paul's own phrase,—“ forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not in vain in the Lord," therefore, therefore," be ye steadfast, unmoveable, and always abounding in the work of the Lord."

That work always lies to our hand. "The work of the Lord" is work in the spirit of Christ, and with the aim of Christ. He, living in the constant presence of God and of the eternal world, revealed to men, both by life and death, the significance of the life they now lead, and uplifted the spiritual nature of man by the vast power of His presence. We can but add our tiny efforts in the same cause. too live in the presence of God and of the eternal world, we too after our measure shall work in Christ's spirit, wisely, devotedly, serving our fellow-men, even the least of His brethren.

If we

This is the lesson that the ever-recurring prophetic

voice of Death sounds in our ears, sometimes far off, sometimes very near. Therefore, it says, therefore, because ye and all around you will soon die and pass into the other world; therefore, because the natural is passing away and the spiritual is close at hand, "be ye steadfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not in vain in the Lord."

XII

JESUS CHRIST THE SON OF GOD1

"Truly this was the Son of God."-MATT. xxvii. 54.

THROUGH your Vicar's kindness I am again privileged to speak to you in this church, which will be in the memories of very many of you associated with the name of a near and honoured relative 2 of my own; one who was largely instrumental in the erection of this church and its schools, and who for many years faithfully preached Christ to you, and that not only in word, but by the witness of a Christian life. He has lately passed away to his rest. As I think of him, I recall the words on the monument erected in Westminster Abbey to the memory of John and Charles Wesley, "God buries His workmen, and carries on His work." We need not fear that that shall fail.

The last time I preached here I spoke of the witness to Christ of a Christian life. Now, I shall

1 Preached in St. James's Church, Congleton, on Sunday evening, 12th September 1886.

2 The Rev. Jonathan Wilson, Vicar of Long Newton.

NOTE. It will be recognised that the main thought and many of the expressions in this sermon were taken from a paper by Professor Goldwin Smith.