indwelling of the Spirit enables man to bring forth the fruits of the Spirit; and therefore every Christian soul must be, at least potentially, holy, charitable, and self-denying. Hence it is that St. Paul speaks of Christians as being not merely dead to, and risen from, their former state of unbelief, but as dead and risen with Christ in a still higher sense than this. He describes them as dead to the world, crucified with Christ, mortifying the flesh with its passions and its lusts; and further, as risen with their Lord to a truer life, even that life which is hid with Christ in God; as born again unto righteousness; as delivered from the bondage of the flesh; as dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord; as being made free from sin, and having become the servants of righteousness; as conquerors over the grave, through the resurrection of Him who led captivity captive, and received gifts for men. All this every Christian may be; the means of being so are in his power; and if he is not all this, the cause of his failure is his own will, not God's will. And therefore Scripture, speaking generally of Christians, sometimes describes them as being actually what they are potentially. Nor could a more impressive way be found of teaching the high requirements of our heavenly calling. For who that calls himself by the name of Christ, can hear the lofty virtue, the self-renouncing love, thus attributed to the whole Christian body, without asking himself whether indeed he have "any part or lot in this matter." In And if any one feels even a painful degree of unreality attaching to such descriptions, when he contrasts them with the lives he sees around him, and perhaps with his own, then let him call to mind. that when the apostles wrote, this bright picture not only imaged what might be, but what was. their days the great majority of Christians really did live above the world, seeking not selfish interests or earthly gratifications, but an inheritance incorruptible, that fadeth not away. And let him remember also, that if we are fallen (as in truth we are) from that high estate, yet it is not the less rightly ours, nor less attainable to us than to them. But what shall tell us whether we have so died with Christ, whether we are so risen with him; not in that lower sense which speaks but of a privilege bestowed, a responsibility incurred, but in that fullest and truest sense, in which to die with him is to share in all the benefits of his most precious death, to rise with him is to partake prospectively of the resurrection to life eternal? The criterion is given us by St. Paul. He tells us that they who are so dead with Christ have crucified the flesh with the lusts thereof; that they mortify their members which are on the earth; in other words, that they have, by God's grace, destroyed, or are destroying, their impurity, their selfishness, their evil passions, their carnal will: he tells us that those who have so risen with Him seek the things which are above, where Christ sitteth at the right hand of God; that their affections are set, not on things temporal, but on things eternal; that the law of the Spirit of life hath made them free from the law of sin and death. They who are content to live on, with their corrupt desires and sinful passions unsubdued, their hearts set on things below, their highest objects selfish, their most valued future ending on this side the grave; they (if they pause long enough to ask themselves the question,) cannot doubt that Christ's death and resurrection has in them remained unaccomplished. And if so, their admission into the flock of Christ, their reception of the Holy Spirit, their capacity of goodness, their potential holiness, does but increase their condemnation. Much need then there is for all of us to examine our own hearts, whether this heathen state of mind be ours. And that we may avoid the vagueness of a selfexamination extended over the whole of our bygone existence, it would be well for us to fix our attention on a definite and limited period of past time, and more especially, to-day, on that penitential season which has but now given place to this triumphant festival. The opportunities of solemn thought, of repentance, and of prayer which it offered us, are gone for ever; but have they vanished and left no trace behind on our characters? Do we stand where we did when we celebrated the birth-day of our Redeemer, now that we have kept in memory His baptism, fasting, and temptation, His agony and bloody sweat, His cross and passion, His precious death and burial? Or have we so used the intervening hours, as to have made some steps forward towards that promised rest where He is gone before? Have we been exercising ourselves in self-conquest, and training ourselves to win a more perfect mastery over every evil passion, that we might bring the flesh into subjection to the Spirit? And have we been so denying ourselves that we might the more abundantly minister to the wants of others? Have we been striving to become more humble, more charitable, more pure? If our Lent have indeed been so spent, if love to Christ, and in Him to our brethren, have grown in our hearts as its weeks have faded into the past, our Easter may well be a happy one. For then we may trust that we have so died with Christ, as to believe that we shall also live with Him; then we may think of His resurrection as a type and pledge of ours; we may feel that though here we have no continuing city, yet we seek one to come; that though this life be no true life, we have a better life, which is hid with Christ in God,—a life in some measure imparted to us even here, by His Spirit which dwelleth in us; but how far more perfectly to be identified with our very being hereafter. For when Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall we also appear with Him in glory. SERMON VIII. WHY SEEK YE THE LIVING AMONG THE DEAD. ST. LUKE v. 6. WHY SEEK YE THE LIVING AMONG THE DEAD? HE IS NOT THE touching mixture of consolation and rebuke which these words contain, must have been felt, I trust, by many among us, who have followed the guidance of our Church during the solemn fasts and festivals which have so lately passed over us in their annual recurrence. As yet, indeed, the events of those sacred days are fresh in our minds; as yet, the impression they have left (if, indeed, they have left any,) can hardly have been effaced and worn away by the trivial routine of our ordinary life. As yet we have scarcely suffered Easter to fade from our sight, among the crowd of common days, which fill up, without marking, the calendar of our past. It would be needless, therefore, to do more than barely |