consummate that living hope to which God hath begotten us again by the Spirit. For as the resurrection of Christ shows us the perfection and sufficiency of his work, so it is our resurrection that will bring to perfection in us the fruit of his work. As it was His resurrection that shewed him to have come out from under the effects of imputed sin, into the possession of the unclouded glory which he had with the Father before the world was; so it is our resurrection that will shew us to have come out of the course of sin and of the flesh, into the unlouded vision and perpetual enjoyment of that glory. As it was His resurrection chat shewed him to have been the conqueror of Satan; so it is our resurrection that will shew us to be conquerors over all evil through him. As it was by His resurrection that he was declared to be the Son of God with power; so it is our resurrection by which we shall be manifested to be sons of God: for though low sons, we are not yet manifestly so; "it does not yet appear what we shall e." Though now we have eternal life, that life is not manifest; it is as yet hid with Christ in God:" but "when Christ, who is our life, shall appear, her shall we also appear with him in glory.”

O then, beloved brethren, think not lightly of the resurrection of the body. Be not deceived by a miscalled spirituality (which is not the spirituality of the Bible), which would direct all your attention to the soul, and make little of what comes of the body; which will hold up before you as the object of your hope, he passage of the soul into its disembodied state, and leave in darkness and obscurity the re-animating of the body in the likeness, and its transmutation into the glorious image, of our Lord Jesus Christ. "Now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the first-fruits of them that slept :" and as surely as the firstfruits have been gathered, so certainly shall the harvest follow.

See in this the true discomfiture of Satan see in this the ultimate triumph of divine power: see in this the final glory of the last Adam as a quickening spirit that in the very body, as well as the soul, wherein you have rebelled, the last traces of sin shall be obliterated, and the Lord Jesus Christ shall be magnified both in our bodies and in our spirits.

And now may I conclude with the Apostle's prayer: "The very God of peace sanctify you wholly; and I pray God your whole spirit, and soul, and body, be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ."

THE HOPE OF THE RESURRECTION.

REV. M. O'SULLIVAN, A.M.

ST. MARK'S CHURCH, PENTONVILLE, APRIL 26, 1835.

"Of the hope and resurrection of the dead I am called in question."-ACTS, xxiii. 6.

THIS was the declaration of St. Paul when he stood before a partial tribunal, surrounded by adverse hearers. There was injustice on the tribunal; their was hostility against him on the part of those who were assembled: but he was sustained by that blessed hope for which he was that day called in question.

Such was the influence of this hope upon the early Christians, as well as upon the apostles, that even the philosophers among the heathens accounted them persons of diseased understanding. Nor was it strange that they should form this opinion: for, if the hope which influenced their own actions were true; if the principles upon which they regulated their lives were correct; the Christians were of all men least wise, as they were of all men confessedly most miserable. This was accordingly the opinion which the heathen philosophers entertained. They saw how patiently the followers of One whom they regarded only as a crucified man, endured the afflictions to which their calling exposed them. They saw that terror could not shake them; nor could the blandishments of friendship soothe them, so as that they should renounce what they esteemed their mad opinions. They saw with what a triumphant assurance they gloried in their reproach; with how firm and how scornful an indifference they looked away from the glories of the world: and while they beheld men, as it would seem upon their principles, thus rejoicing in their shame, and indifferent to the proper motives of man's exertion, they naturally chose rather to consider the Christians mad than to acknowledge themselves to be in

error.

Yet these philosophers were not unacquainted with the doctrine that there was to be a life after death; nor was this a subject upon which they were indifferent, of which they were regardless. On the contrary, it was a subject to which they devoted their attention closely, and upon which they have left us ample record to prove their industry, as well as their zeal, in the study of it. In fact, the human mind cannot contentedly repose in the idea, that, when the mortal crumbles into dust, human existence is ended. Man cannot repose upon such an idea: and accordingly before the light of revelation shone upon him, and before the grave was conquered, and death swallowed up in immortality, men did apply themselves to investigate such precarious and uncertain

evidences as nature furnished, to give them a hope that they might live again. They saw how the flower springs from the decayed seed; how the winged and animated insect proceeds from the torpid worm. They saw how in the external world nothing is altogether destroyed: and they would not believe that the mind of man was to perish by a change which was incapable of destroying the principle of existence even in the meanest reptile.

It

Thus they had a hope, and often it was a strong hope, of a life after death; but it was not an abiding hope. It was not a hope which could remain fixed within their souls secure against the assaults of sophistry, or steadfast even under mental depression. It served, no doubt, for many an important use. gave majesty to the philosopher's speculations: it refined the tone of civilized society and it shed a pure, a solemn, and a tender interest over the conferences of the wise, and the friendships of the affectionate. But as it had in the deductions of human judgments its sole foundation, it necessarily partook of the frailties of human nature, variable in its strength, and tardy in its operations. In retirement and security, when the philosopher calmly examined his hopes, it had considerable power over his mind: he acknowledged its interest, and he felt and respected his authority. But in the sudden emergencies of life; amidst the hasty sallies of the passions, when terror shook the soul, or the senses warred against virtue; in these, and all such cases, the existence of the hope was scarcely to be perceived, and its authority was uniformly disregarded.

The hope on which Christian men rely was different in its origin, as well as its nature. For this there was no need to pursue long processes of reasoning; for this there was no need to scrutinize nature, and see what comparisons she might suggest that would encourage it. The Christian had seen unquestionable proofs of the resurrection; he felt the powers of the world to come: and therefore was his faith steadfast. To the heathen, God spake through probable analogy, and arguments which his reason might examine. To the Christian, he spoke with authority by his only-begotten Son; by whom also he made the worlds. Here was the foundation of the Christian's faith: and as the foundation was strong, so was the belief steadfast, and the hope effectual. And yet upon this hope the heathen thought that none but madmen could build it was to them foolishness. They would acknowledge in our blessed Lord only " a man of sorrows," one who had "no form or comeliness that they should desire him." They saw him through his life occupying no splendid eminence in the world's regard; and in his death experiencing the torments of the vilest malefactor. They saw him, not like their own demagogues, terminating a bright and terrible career in that blaze of glory in which a hero sets, and leaves the world behind him; but concluding a life of sorrows by an end as ignominious as it was painful; condemned among an obscure people, and incapable of escaping the condemnation. And while they beheld him thus " despised and rejected of men," so they did esteem him also "stricken of God and afflicted."

The Christian looked upon the life of his blessed Master in a different light from that which guided others: they did not see our Lord; they saw no further than the tabernacle in which he dwelt, the veil he had assumed in his humiliation : the Christian, through that veil, saw where the glory dwelt that was full of grace

and truth. The heathen thought he had crushed what he accounted a pestilential superstition, when he had put its Founder to an ignominious death. He thought of death as the natural man might think of the insults of the persecuting populace; the forlorn condition of the sufferer, the torment, and the shame. The Christian saw that this was the death his Blessed Master came to die; that this was the struggle in which he had won from death his victory; that this was the mighty effort by which he had burst the chains of death, loosed the bonds of sin, and brightened the grave with the glory of the resurrection. Therefore, as the Christian looked upon the life and the death of our Blessed Lord with light so different to that which exhibited him to the heathen; so was it natural that the blessed hope of the Christian should elevate him into acts and endurances which caused his persecutors to marvel. The world was in arms against the Christian; but his hopes, his conversation, were not in the world. The names of the Christians were blotted from the rolls of society's cold intercourse: but they were written in the Book of Life. The law was fierce against them; power gave them no protection. The law issued dread proclamations; and the loosened passions of the insatiate people fiercely raged against them. But through all the storms, through all the tumult, they adhered to the principles they professed, and were supported by the hope that was vouchsafed to them; ready to sink, if God so willed it, in the dread commotion; but not to be influenced by all that power or terror could do to loose them from the hold to which they clung, to dissever them from that hope which was the anchor of their souls.

This was the faith and the conduct of Christian men, at a time when their profession of obedience to the Lord Jesus was held in universal reprobation. And in looking back to those days, and in comparing them with the times which succeeded, we cannot fail to be impressed with a strong sense of man's perverseness. Whilst the law forbad the profession of Christianity, and whilst the zeal of a misguided people persecuted its professors; while they were obliged to hide within closed doors for fear of the Jews, and while, as they went forth, they found some to denounce and some to persecute them wherever they appeared, they sustained all faithfully: their hopes gave comfort to them, and their faith was fearlessly professed. But when persecution declined, so it would seem did the faith of Christian men likewise fail: then the world became more awful in its attractions than it had been in its terrors; then the passions which demanded instant gratification rebelled against a hope which had its object in futurity; and then it was, when heathen idolatry had passed away, that the lusts of the flesh, and the pride of life, and spiritual idolatry, were insinuated into the soul, and raised up to the ascendancy from which the idols of earlier days had been violently displaced.

It would be happy indeed for us, if we could justly consider observations of this kind applicable to other times than the present, and to other beings than ourselves. But it is a truth, to which the memories of all who hear me will bear testimony, and which many may esteem it a tedious common-place to repeat, that the hope for which the early Christians held temporal afflictions as matters of no moment, and for which they were ready to renounce every worldly

advantage, is a hope from which naturally our cares and our stations are so remote, that it is not, and cannot plausibly be termed, the anchor of our souls. Is this the case? Examine yourselves, and say whether your hope in Christ resembles the hope of the early Christian, or the hope of the heathens: whether your hope is a kind of ornament to your life, or is its impelling and sufficient momentum. What think you of Christ? To the apostles he was the substitute for all the enjoyment they forfeited; the solace for all the misery they endured; their guide; their companion, I might almost say, for he was constant in their thoughts. Is he so to you? Be well assured that heathenism has not departed, because its shrines have been made bare, and its altars overthrown. What was it in which heathenism was formidable? Was it that the earth groaned under its temples? Was it that the air was darkened by its idolatrous ceremonies? Or was it that it had made its residence in the hearts of those who did not worship in the spirit of truth? And is it not a mournful truth, and a truth to which there needs no necessity of giving proof, that now, at the present day, in every heart which the Spirit of the Lord does not sanctify, and upon which the law of the Lord is not impressed, there is the spirit of heathenism, and that law of death which heathenism inculcated? It surely is so. See now how it is. In truth we should put to ourselves this question. We know perfectly well that man lives by hope, as far as this world is concerned. The hope of pleasure can rouse him; the hope of wealth can excite him; the hope of distinction can agitate him; and the hope of immortality remain barren and unproductive within his soul. This world is full of interests and affections. Life is kept in perpetual agitation by the active affections of man; and the passions which agitate him, the pleasures which incite him, the hopes which deceive him, are the cause of this agitation: and he is comparatively indifferent to that one hope which cannot be deceived or destroyed; the hope which is beyond the reach of fraud, and the shock of accident; the hope, to communicate which God sent into the world his only begotten Son; to confirm which our Saviour has died for our sins, and risen again for our justification.

Do not mistake me. Do not suppose that I mean to impute to you, knowingly or wilfully, indifference to this hope. I am fully persuaded, that to any frequenter of public worship-I will say the coldest and most careless-if it were proposed that he should have all the enjoyment which the world gives, on condition of formally and for ever renouncing the hope that Christ hath purchased; he would (I speak of the most cold and careless) he would reject the paltry bribe for which his salvation would be renounced, and he would cling to the ill-assured, because not properly sought for, hope, that he might obtain mercy. But the enemy of souls adopts no such clumsy device: he asks of no man to renounce for ever his hopes of salvation. He simply asks you to postpone the laying hold of that hope: he asks you only to give him to-day: each day he renews his demand, that you shall defer unto the morrow the seeking that hope which purifieth and saveth; and relies upon that, if he can induce you to persevere in this practice of procrastination: without ever demanding a formal denial of your hopes, he will produce within you an effectual separation from hope.

I wish every man who has upon any occasion said to himself that he would