previous Friday of sorrow and of suffering. There is no way to the crown, but the way of the cross. There is no really founded hope of everlasting life, except on the blood, the death, and sacrifice of Christ Jesus. Have you then believed on Him? Have you committed your souls to Him? Are you living under a sense of real, vital, influential, constraining religion? Christianity is not a Sabbath-day profession, but a week-day life. It is not a form, but power; it is not a name, but life. And that man who has no well-founded hope for believing that his sins have been forgiven, through Christ's blood, has no well-founded evidence that he shall be found in that resurrection,—that resurrection from among the dead, of which it is said, "Blessed and holy is he that hath part in it."

LECTURE XXXII.

THE BLESSED AND HOLY PART.

"Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection: on such the second death hath no power, but they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with him a thousand years." -REVELATION xx. 6.

THERE is in the minds of us all a lurking notion, even in those who do not accept it, that there is something in matter, in our corporeal nature, in the earth, in all the things connected with the earth, essentially and intrinsically sinful. When you hear of dwelling in a literal world, or of the body being raised and your living in it, and that body being admitted into a state of perfect happiness; the question does occur to you, whether you like or not, how can this vile body be admitted into that holy, holy, holy presence? All of us have the remains of the old gnostic, Gentile, or rather heathen philosophy, that spirit was made by God, that matter was made by the devil; that the two are antagonists, and never can dwell together; and that the body is the prison of the soul, and must be annihilated in order that the glorious inhabitant within may emerge, and enjoy the full blessedness of them that are forever with God. The consequence is, that in many minds the state of the happy dead is so etherealized (185

that they cannot appreciate or comprehend it. I know that in the preaching of some most excellent ministers, whose preaching of the Gospel is powerful, and full, and faithful, this thought is implied. But I must ask all not to accept what doctors say, nor what rabbis believe; but to read this doom book, for we are Protestants; what is here is everlasting truth, if the whole world should denounce it; what is not here is not necessary for any man to believe in order to salvation. Now let me show you, in the first place, that your idea about matter cannot be correct; for matter, in all its multitudinous developments, is as much the creature of God as the holiest seraph that wings his flight and sings beside the throne of Deity. God made the stars of the sky, the flowers of the earth, the waters of the deep sea, and the streams of all earth's rivers. And if God made all things visible and material that we see, that we touch, that we handle, will you believe that a holy God made matter originally tainted, poisoned, polluted; with disease and decay, with disorder and discord, and finally with death-can you believe that? If God made matter so, He made sin; and if he made sin, how can you reconcile his constant denunciation of it; his declaration that he will extirpate and banish it from his world for ever? Does He hate what He himself made? Does He war against what He himself introduced? The idea is absurd; the contradiction is too gross to be for one moment entertained. Does not all the teaching of Scripture, on the contrary, demonstrate that all creation, this orb, and that sky, and those stars, and those flowers, and that great sea, were all made originally holy, perfect, harmonious, pure; and that sin is a subsequent interpolation; that

it is an after-creation intrusion? Whence it came, why it came, are questions I cannot solve, and need not discuss; but the fact that sin was introduced after the earth was made is a fact that appears upon every page of God's blessed book. If sin was introduced after creation, and if sin be not part and parcel of the original constitution of creation, then sin is not part of God's creation. Do you think discase is part of my body? that blindness, deafness, paralysis, decay, death, were ever made originally as part and parcel of my nature? They are imperfections, the fruits of sin, and subsequently introduced, and were not made by God. I was no more made to die than the angels in glory; I was made immortal, holy, happy; and whatever of disease, whatever of ache, whatever of decay are felt in me, are not from God, and Him I cannot blame : they are simply from myself; that is, from the creature. But, blessed thought! they are destined to be expunged; God will purify the creature He made once so holy; and earth restored will be a grander spectacle than earth as originally created, and its last Paradise will be a more brilliant scene than the first with which time dawned and in which Adam dwelt. Now then, if this be true, that sin is an interpolation, let me ask, is there any difficulty in supposing that God will eliminate from my nature that which has infected it? Is man, for instance, able to purify the infected dwelling; is he able to detach decay, and arrest it; is he able, by the most sifting and exquisite analysis, to trace the retreats and the hiding-places of the subtle poison that has been introduced into the body; and literally to bring up from the grave the evidences of the poisoner's guilt and criminality? Is man able to do all

unable to extract the Shall Omniscience fail

this; and shall Omnipotence be poison from the work it made? in tracking through all its windings the evil that has been introduced? Shall He who expelled the leprosy, who opened the blind eye, who arrested the corruption of the grave, and brought forth the dead, living and happy, to mingle again with living men ;-shall He be unable to purify a world He had made?-to eliminate from this body the sin, and the decay, and the diseases that have entered; and to reconstruct and to constitute me a creature far nobler and better than when he gazed upon the new made Adam, and behold, all was very good? But we are not left to a mere conjecture; there are express declarations in Scripture to that effect for what does it say? "We look for the Savior, who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body." That one text settles the matter. What was his glorious body? That body with which He rose from the mount. But our vile bodies shall be fashioned like unto his glorious body. And, says Paul, "the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised; and we shall be changed; for this mortal must put on immortality." And therefore we believe, that out of the dust the fallen shrine of human nature shall be rebuilt, and consecrated afresh by God himself: on its cold altar a new vestal fire shall be kindled; and the second temple of humanity will be grander than the first; and there will be heard over it, in its beauty and in its perfection, a shout-an anthem peal of praise, richer, greater, more lasting than when the morning stars sang together for joy over a new born world.