God grant that the prayers that we offered this morning at our Easter Communion, and the prayers that we have offered here to-night, may bring down on all of us, and all whom we love, the richest blessings of God's grace; and that we may be able to look back when our last hour comes upon this Easter Day and to thank God that here, at least, we have spent some hours in looking upon the King in His beauty, and in trying, even if only trying, to realise what it was which the disciples felt, as they were glad when they saw the Lord.

IV.

'He preached unto them Jesus and the Resurrection.'
Acts, xvii. 18.

SERMONS and addresses on religious subjects

are perhaps more frequently criticised, canvassed, and talked about, than addresses on any other class of subjects; and it is not altogether unnatural that it should be so, because when man takes up the task of speaking to his brother men and women about things that concern their immortal souls, he assumes a great responsibility, and necessarily exposes himself to remark and criticism. How often, for instance, do we hear people say, 'What a pity it is that Mr. Soand-So does not preach the simple Gospel! What a pity that he preaches so much about this doctrine and that doctrine, and does not simply preach Jesus!' Now, my friends, if we want to get models of preaching we should go back to the Apostles. They had just come from the Cross of Calvary; or, as with St. Paul, from the vision of Jesus Christ. They had just come from that little upper room, where they were endued with power from on high

to preach Christ's Kingdom and to establish His Church (for the two are one and the same) in this world, and to set before men the means of saving their immortal souls. And what do we find was the main subject of the Apostolic preaching? It was 'Jesus and the Resurrection.' And let us ask ourselves why it was that in the foundation of this Kingdom of Christ among men the Apostles chose to speak first and foremost of the Resurrection? Why was it that they based their preaching so constantly on the Resurrection, and led men to think even more deeply about that miraculous event than about the Crucifixion ? Surely it was because the very teaching that we need for our lives here on earth, as well as for our salvation after death, is, in effect, the teaching of the Resurrection-the principle, that is, of life, and the exercise of life giving power, as the one thing needful for poor dying men and women, who without it would have nothing to raise them and ennoble them here, and nothing to look forward to beyond the grave.

'If the dead rise not, then let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die.' Therefore it was that the preaching of the Resurrection was not simply the preaching of that grand fact which summed up the reality of Christianity, and which proved to the world as well as to the Church that Jesus was, as He claimed to be, the Son of God; but it was the preaching which was needed by men and women

to enable them to live the risen life, so that they should be standing examples of the resurrection power of Him Who on that first Easter Day burst through the grave and rose triumphant from the dead. And from that day to this men have shown forth this resurrection power, and when they have done great things for their brethren it has been by the working of this principle, which not only leads them to strive to live higher lives but to raise the lives of those around them. The man, no matter who he may be, who devotes himself to the true interests of his fellow-creatures-whether he be a politician, a poet, a preacher, or the humble craftsman who gives up his leisure to the service of God —that man preaches the true resurrection principle of seeking to live higher and higher, with a hope for better things.

It was not simply the miracle which Christ Himself wrought when, by the power inherent in Him as God, He burst the sealed grave, but it was that He stood forth as the risen Man, the Representative Man, whose resurrection was to be repeated in the resurrection of every single human creature who should have given to him a resurrection body like unto that which Christ Himself took. know not what we shall be; but we know that when He shall appear we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.' Therefore the message of that first Easter Day was the opening out of a new, a resurrection life, which ends not with death,

'We

a life to which death is but the entrance, a more glorious and never-ending existence.

And from the Apostolic age down to our own days we find this resurrection principle bearing fruit in the lives of saints and martyrs, and of men who may without irreverence be called the 'saviours of mankind,' inasmuch as they have succeeded in their true mission of raising men and women above what is low and base, and lifting them up to this higher life. And it is also true, although we may not be so ready to see it, that the men who are now working for the human race, even if they be not engaged in what, strictly speaking, we call religious work, are still purifiers of their brethren, ennoblers of the people, men whose lives are instinct with that same principle which energised a Peter and a Paul, and made them fearless and eloquent preachers of Jesus and the Resurrection. In nearly every English church to-night some reference will probably be made to that great statesman* whose body is at this moment waiting its removal to its last resting-place, so far as this earth is concerned. And if the dead could speak tonight, I think that his voice would be heard on the same side-' on the side of the angels,' to use his own words. Without referring to his political views, without touching at all on any questions

* This address was given on the Sunday after the death of the Earl of Beaconsfield.