stature, and enables it to enter into full relations with the beings and the things that stir its interest and make the charm of its life.

This principle of embodiment, which connects the body directly with the spiritual principle, with the moral mind which makes the man, has its terrible as well as its gracious aspects. There are men living, and this book may come into the hands of such, who are sedulously, however unconsciously, preparing themselves to put on at death the body of a beast. You doubt it? Why, look at them; you may see it already forming within. Watch them; they grow more gross, more prone, literally more brute-like, year by year. What is that but the soul moulding from within the body that is, and shaping here and now the body that is to rise out of its wreck.

This lends an awful significance to the elections of our freedom. We are making, by our daily habits of thought and action, the limbs and organs which are to stand up in death in the eternal world. We may be fitting ourselves to wear at once a form radiant and exulting, strong to roam in freedom through the celestial spaces, and to take in all the bright impressions of the worlds which are hidden from us by the veil of death. Or we may be fitting ourselves to put on a form obscene and loathsome, meet to herd with all the base rout of the Creation, and to crawl in the dust of that loftier sphere. Men, women, understand that you are making now the body of the future; you are making that which is to be the blessed organ and helpmeet, or the tor

ment and curse, of the spirit in eternity. Live like a beast, and you may see in faces that you sometimes meet and shudder to look upon, the likeness to which you are growing. Live like Christ, and the form which He bore through the gate of death is the image of the glorious tabernacle which awaits you, when the death-swoon for the moment is over, and "in your flesh" you shall see God.

And as is the body of the resurrection so is the world. As the Bible knows nothing of a disembodied, so also it knows nothing of a homeless spirit. How much of the purest joy of life springs from our contact and relation with the Creation which surrounds us. The Creation animate and inanimate. Why should we believe that one single source of delight and culture which is open to us here shall be closed by death, if death means resurrection? We know nothing about the immortality of animals. I see no reason for believing it. The personality of the individual is wanting, and it is that which survives the shock of death, and stands up in life in higher worlds. But though the individual may perish, the type may be immortal. And the end of all this groaning and travailing of the animal Creation, to watch which here sometimes fills us with sadness, may be the survival of the nobler forms and those most related to the human, to attend us as the outer fringe of our humanity, in the world which lies, for us, beyond the river of death.

And as the Creation has shared our fall, the Scripture assures us it shall share our resurrection.

We know not where the Immortal are, what splendour their eyes are already beholding, what power is throbbing in the pulses of their twice-born life. Some suppose that they are still around us; that here is the new earth and the new heaven which has already received them to its home and to its rest. This earth may be the home of two humanities; the humanity which is being, and the humanity which has been, redeemed. I know not. Sometimes one feels that the blessed ones are not far away; that their forms still tread unseen the pathways of the world, seeing, knowing, wonders and splendours which at times flash out on us, but in the main are hidden from our sinful sight. But here or there God has worlds into which to bring forth the children of the resurrection, in which Nature shall bask in a light, and shine with a splendour, of which here we see faint images only in our dreams.

But this we know. The lost peace, the lost purity, the lost glory of the Creation, shall one day be restored to us. "This corruptible shall put on incorruption, this mortal creature shall put on immortality." Highly as the faculties of the body and the spirit may be developed, keen as may be their perceptions, intense as may be the delight which they are capable of taking in the sights, the sounds, and the myriad suggestions of an external world, there will always be around us a Creation that is attuned to the keynote of our spirits-capable of yielding to the child of the resurrection the purest satisfactions, while it draws him ever upward to the uncreated fountain of

life and benediction, and is the minister which leads him to, not the syren that tempts him from, God. There are worlds awaiting our purified and perfected nature, where all that jars in this corruptible Creation shall be for ever silenced, where the moaning shall be hushed, the struggle shall be ended, and the peace of God, which is the peace of love, shall be established and shall rule for evermore.

And this is the inheritance which some of you are selling for a beast's indulgences; drinking, gambling, rioting, or dawdling through a round of vapid amusements, and despising the citizenship of all these worlds. As the man is, so will be the character of the Creation that surrounds him. The universe has worlds where the most glorious human faculty, perfected by life's tremendous discipline, shall see face to face the things which God hath prepared, at once to satisfy its most passionate longings, and to educate its power for yet higher developments in store. But remember, the universe has, too, lairs for beasts, and sties for swine. "Behold then, ye despisers, and wonder." Wonder at the work which the Lord will do, at the world which He will bring forth from all the wreck and waste of this sin-stricken Creation, and tremble lest the home of your being should be found at last, not in the heights of that blessed celestial sphere, but in its dust.

'Awake, awake, thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee life;" life that shall lift up thy head, a risen man, in a world of such glory as eye hath not seen, ear hath not heard,

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imagination hath not conceived of here-when the kiss of death hath sealed thy immortality. That life shall still expand and discipline thy regenerate powers, drawing them forth to their full perfection in the last, the great resurrection day. Then the day of the manifestation of the sons of God, and of the whole fruit of life's travail, shall be fully come; the creature shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children; and then for man, for nature, "the sun shall no more go down nor the moon withdraw herself; but the Lord shall be their everlasting light, and the days of their mourning shall be ended."