religion has also failed. It has become the fashion in these days to hold that, just in proportion as a belief in the resurrection enters into our motives for right-doing, that right-doing loses its value; and in a very remarkable but very sophistical work, published not many months ago, it is argued that he alone can be enabled to do any really good spiritual work who disbelieves in a life hereafter, and, for this reason, that he alone does good for its own sake, and not from the hope of reward. It is not for a future life that such a one works, but for posterity: he loves the men around him, knowing all the while that he himself must perish.

Brethren, let us examine the depths of this sophistry. In the first place, you will observe that, in removing the hope of the Life to come, you have taken away all value from the present life—all that makes life worth possessing, or mankind worth living for. Why should we live and labour for such a posterity, for beings scarcely higher than the "half-reasoning elephant ?" And thus, in endeavouring to give worth to human goodness, you have taken away the dignity and value of human existence. Besides, you will observe the sophistry of the argument in this respect, that to do right christianly is not doing so for the sake of happiness in the world to come, but for Life. This it is which is the deep, irrepressible craving of the human soul. "It is more life and fuller that we want." So that the Apostle forces us to the conclusion, that if there be no resurrection from the dead, there is nothing whatever that can save man from sin and the Gospel, sanctioned as it is by the Cross of Christ itself, turns out to be one fatal, tremendous, awful failure.

3. Again another absurdity arises from this supposition; that the Apostles would be found false witnesses. "Yea, and we are found false witnesses of God; because we have testified of God that He raised up Christ: whom He raised not up, if so be that the dead rise not." There is something very

touching, Christian brethren, in the manner in which the Apostle writes this monstrous supposition. That he should be a false witness !—a thing to him incredible and monstrous. You will observe he does not leave room one moment for supposing the possibility of a mistake. There was no mistake. It was either true, or it was a falsehood. The resurrection of Christ was or was not a matter of fact; James, Cephas, the twelve, the five hundred, either had or had not seen the Lord Jesus; Thomas either had, or had not, put his finger into the print of the nails; either the resurrection was a fact, or else it followed with the certainty of demonstration that the Apostles were intentional false witnesses before God.

There may be some, however, to whom this would not seem so monstrous a supposition as it did to the Apostle Paul. Well, let us examine it a little more closely. There is a certain instinct within us generally which enables us to detect when a man is speaking the truth. When you are listening to an advocate, you can generally tell whether he really believes what he says. You may generally see whether he is earnest merely to gain his cause, or because he believes that his client's cause is right. Truth, so to speak, has a certain ring by which it may be known. Now, this chapter rings with truth: every word is, as it were, alive with it; and before you can believe that there is no resurrection of the dead, you must believe that this glorious chapter, with all its earnestness of argument, and all its richness of metaphor and force of illustration, was written by one who was speaking what was false, and who, moreover, knew at his heart that he was speaking what was false.

Another witness to this fact was the Apostle Peter. Brethren, there are two things which rarely go together, courage and falsehood; a brave man is almost always an honest man, and St. Peter was by nature a brave man. But let us qualify this assertion. There are circumstances in which

a brave and honest man may be betrayed by the sudden force of temptation into a dereliction from the truth, and such a thing had occurred in the life of St. Peter. In the moment of Christ's apprehension he said that which was not true, and afterwards, as we should have expected from his character, "he went out and wept bitterly." Now, it was after this bitter repentance, when his whole demeanour was changed, and his trembling hesitation had given way to certainty, that he went forth and stood, as upon a rock, before the kings and councils of the world, protesting that he knew that the Lord was risen. Brethren, there must be a cause given for this. Can we believe that the man who laid his hand on the sharp edge of the axe; or he who asked that he might be crucified with his head downwards, as unworthy to die as his Redeemer died—can we believe that he went through all his life falsely? that his life was not only a falsehood, but a systematic and continued falsehood, kept up to the very last; and that the bravehearted, true man with his dying lips gave utterance to a lie?

4. Once more: the opponents of this doctrine of the resurrection are driven to the conclusion that those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. Brethren, let us examine that absurdity. And in the first place, distinguish that monstrous supposition from one which somewhat resembles it. The Apostle does not say that it is impossible that man should perish. It is a favourite argument with many to point to the lofty attainments and the irrepressible aspirations of the human soul as a proof of its immortality. I am free to confess that arguments such as these, founded upon the excellence of human nature, have no power with me. For human life, taken in itself and viewed in its common aspects, is a mean and paltry thing, and there are days and hours when it seems to us almost incredible that such things as we are should live again at all. There is nothing which makes annihilation impossible. God, in the superabundance of His power, creates seeds merely

to cast them again into annihilation. We do not see why He cannot create souls and cast them again into nothingness as easily as He does seeds. They have lived-they have had their 20, or 40, or 60 years of existence-why should they ask for more?

This is not St. Paul's argument. He does not speak of the excellence of human nature: it is not from this that he draws his inference and proof of immortality. But it is from this, that if there be no resurrection of the dead, then they "who have fallen asleep in Christ" have perished: in other words the best, the purest, the noblest of the human race, have lived-only to die for ever. For even our adversaries will grant us this, that since the days of Christ there have been exhibited to the world a purity, a self-sacrifice, a humility, such as the world never saw before: earth in all its ages has nothing which can be compared with "the noble army of martyrs." Now, you are called upon to believe that all these have perished everlastingly: that they served God, loved Him, did His will, and that He sent them down like the Son of God into annihilation! You are required to believe, moreover, that, as they attained to this goodness, purity, and excellence by believing what was false, namely, the Resurrection, so it is only by believing what is true that they could arrive at the opposite, that is, the selfish and base character. So that we are driven to this strange paradox-that by believing that which is false we become pure and noble, and by believing that which is true, we become base and selfish! Believe this who can ?

These are the difficulties of infidelity,—we put them before the infidel triumphantly. And if you are unable to believe his argument, if you cannot come to his conclusion, then there remains the other and the plain conclusion of the Apostle : "Now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept."

LECTURE XXIX.

I CORINTHIANS, xv. 13-20.- -Easter day: April 20, 1851.
(MORNING SERMON.)

HE Church of Corinth exhibited in the time of the Apostle

together with a disbelief in immortality. The history of the anomaly was this, that when Christianity first came into contact with the then existing philosophy and religion of the world, it partly superseded them, and partly engrafted itself upon them. The result of that engraftation was, that the fruit which arose from the admixture savoured partly of the new graft, and partly of the old stock. Among the philosophies of the world then existing there was an opinion which regarded all evil as belonging to the body, not that which the Apostle speaks of as "the body of sin and death," but the real material body. It was held that the cause of sin in the world was the admixture of pure spirit with an inherently corrupt materialism. The result of this opinion was a twofold heresy, which branched into directions totally divergent. According to the first, men believing in the depravity of matter held that materialism was all evil, that the spirit was itself innocent, and that to the body alone was guilt to be referred. The result of this conception of Christianity was the belief that the spirit was permitted to act as it chose, for to the body was all the sin imputed. This was the origin of that Antinomianism which St. James so forcibly contradicts. The other heresy was in a totally different direction men believing that the body was the cause of all evil, endeavoured to crush and entirely subdue it; and this