are yet in your sins." Infidelity must be selfish: if to-morrow we die, then to-day let us eat and drink; it is but a matter of taste how we live. If man is to die the death of the swine, why may he not live the life of the swine? If there be no immortality, why am I to be the declarer and defender of injured rights? Why am I not to execute vengeance, knowing that if it be not executed now, it never can be? Tell us why, when every passion is craving for gratification, a man is to deny himself their satisfaction, if he is no exalted thing, no heir of immortality, but only a mere sensitive worm, endowed with the questionable good of a consciousness of his own misery? These are the questions which infidelity has to answer.

The last incredibility from which the Apostle argues is that, if there be no resurrection, then they that have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. When the Apostle speaks of those fallen asleep in Christ, he does not necessarily mean only those who have borne the Christian name, but those who have lived with the mind of Christ and died with His Spirit. Those who in the elder dispensation only dimly descried the coming of that purer day, scarcely knowing what it was, who still in that faith lived the high and noble life of the ancient Jew; also those, neither Jew nor Christian, who lived in heathen days, but were yet not disobedient to the Eternal Voice speaking in their hearts; and who by means of that lived above their generations, penetrating into the invisible, and so became heirs of the righteousness which is by faith: all those, therefore, have perished! Now see what these sceptics require us to believe: that all those who have shed a sunshine upon earth, and whose affections were so pure and good that they seemed to tell you of an Eternity, perished utterly, as the selfish and impure! You are required to believe that those who died in the field of battle, bravely giving up their lives for others, died even as the false and the coward dies. You are required to believe that, when there arose a great cry at midnight, and the Wreck went

down, they who passed out of the world with the oath of blasphemy, or the shriek of despair, shared the same fate with those who calmly resigned their departing spirits into their Father's hand, with nothing but an awful silence to greet them, like that which greeted the priests of Baal on Mount Carmel ! You are required to believe that the pure and wise of this world have all been wrong, and the selfish and sensual all right. If from this you shrink as from a thing derogatory to God, then there remains but that conclusion to which St. Paul conducts us: "Now is Christ risen from the dead." The spiritual resurrection is but the mere foretaste and pledge of the literal. Let us, brethren, seek to rise with Christ above this world and our own selves, for every act tells on that Eternity, every thought and every word reap an everlasting harvest.

"Therefore," says the Apostle, in the conclusion of this chapter, "be ye stedfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not in vain in the Lord."

IN

LECTURE XXX.

I CORINTHIANS, XV. 21-34 -June 6, 1852.

N following the train of argument contained in this chapter, it must be clearly kept in remembrance that the error combated by St. Paul was not the denial of immortality, but the denial of a resurrection. The ultra-spiritualizers in Corinth did not say, "Man perishes for ever in the grave," but, "The form in which the spirit lived shall never be restored. From the moment death touches earthly life, Man becomes for ever a bodiless spirit." No doubt in this chapter there are passages in which the Apostle speaks of Immortality, but they are only incidental to the general argument; as for example, "Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die." The chief thing therefore, to lay stress on is, that in the early Church there was not so much a denial of an Immortality, as of a Resurrection.

In the earlier part of this chapter St. Paul proved the Resurrection by the fact of the resurrection of Christ, which he treats neither as a doctrine, nor a hope, nor an aspiration of the soul, but as an historical reality which, duly recorded and witnessed, took place actually and visibly upon this earth. Eye-witnesses tell us, said the Apostle, that on numerous occasions openly, and after death, they saw, felt, heard, and talked with Christ. On that fact Christianity rests, and if there is anything in the universe that can be substantiated, it is that fact. With this he triumphantly concludes that reductio ad absurdum, which is contained in verses 13-29: “Now is Christ risen from the dead."

To-day we consider

I. The results of Christ's resurrection to us. II. Corroborative proofs.

I. The first result is thus expressed : "He is become the firstfruits of them that sleep." The expression is Jewish; and to discover what it implies we must remember the ancient custom. The firstfruits of the harvest were dedicated to God, whereby He put in His claim for the whole, just as shutting up a road once a year puts in a claim of proprietorship to the right of way for ever. It was thus St. Paul understood the ceremony: "for if the firstfruits be holy, the lump is also holy." Thus when the Apostle says that "Christ is the firstfruits of them that slept," he implies that part of the harvest has been claimed for God, and, therefore, that the rest is His too. The resurrection of Christ is a pledge of the resurrection of all who share in His Humanity.

Now two questions arise on this:-1. Why does this result take place? 2. When will it take place?

1. The ground on which it rests :-" For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive."—ver. 22. Two doctrines are given to us in this text-original sin, and original righteousness; the doctrine of the natural corruption and fault of our nature, and the doctrine of the Divine life which belongs to our higher nature.

And first: "In Adam all die."

Do not understand this as if the Apostle merely said, “If you sin as Adam sinned, you will die as Adam died." This were mere Pelagianism, and is expressly condemned in the article of our Church on Original Sin. According to the Scriptures we inherit the first man's nature, and that nature has in it the mortal, not the immortal. And yet there are in all of us two natures, that of the animal and that of the Spirit, an Adam and a Christ.

Let us see what St. Paul meant by being "in Adam." He explains himself: "The first man was of the earth, earthy;" and again, "The first man Adam was made a living soul." But here we must recollect that the term “a living soul" means a mere natural man. The soul, as used by St. Paul, is distinguished from the body and the spirit, as that part of our complex humanity which embraces all our natural powers. "A living soul" is, then, the term used by the Apostle to express the natural man endowed with intellectual powers, with passions, and with those appetites which belong to us in common with the animals. In this our immortality does not reside; and it is from fixing our attention on the decay of these that doubt of our immortality begins. It is a dismal and appalling thing to witness the slow failure of living powers: as life goes on to watch the eye losing its lustre, and the cheek its roundness; to see the limbs it was once such a pure delight to gaze on, becoming feeble and worn; to perceive the memory wander, and the features no longer bright with the light of expression; to mark the mind relax its grasp; and to ask the dreary question—Are these things immortal? You cannot but disbelieve, if you rest your hope of immortality on their endurance. When you have identified these things with the man, no wonder if a cold and faithless feeling steals over the heart-no wonder if the gloomy thought be yours, The end is coming, the long night on which no dawn shall ever break!

Now the simple reply to all this is, that the extinction of these powers is no proof against immortality, because they are not the seat of the immortal. They belong to the animal-to the organs of our intercourse with the visible world. And though it may be proved that that eye shall never open again, those limbs never again thrill with life, yet such proof does not touch the truth that the man-the spirit-shall live for evermore. Therefore, it is not in what we inherit from Adam the