very fact to spread his doctrines from one end of the world to the other, thus turning the devices of his enemies into the means of his perfect triumph.

Truly, if even this had been so, we might well have believed his word when he declared that he came forth from God. But the truth of the evidence before us repels our belief of this wonderful interposition to establish an interposition yet more wonderful: it proves, beyond all doubt, that Christ properly died. In the first place, the centurion and soldiers appointed for that very purpose examined the body, and found that it was dead: yet, to make sure of it, so little was their inclination to make a false report in order to save Jesus, one of them pierced his side with his spearthe Roman pilum-the shaft of which was four inches wide, and which made, therefore, a wound so large, that, as appears afterwards, a hand might be thrust into it. And what name shall we give to the improbability of supposing, that in addition to the double improbability of any one surviving crucifixion, and, above all, a person under our Lord's circumstances, we have the further improbability, or rather, what is in itself an impossibility, of a person surviving such a

wound, inflicted for the very purpose of ensuring his death, in the most vital part of the human body? Further; the body of Jesus, after having been taken down from the cross, was laid in a cave in a rock, bound round with linen cloths about his body, and over his head and face, in a manner which would have ensured death by suffocation, if he had not been dead before; and watched by a guard of soldiers. And yet, within eight and forty hours afterwards, he was seen not only alive, but in perfect strength and vigour, presenting himself to Mary Magdalene, in the garden, in the morning; to two of his disciples, at Emmaus, six miles distant from Jerusalem, in the afternoon; and to his apostles at Jerusalem, in the evening; not as a man saved by miracle from dying of wounds, which must, at any rate, have left him in a state of the most helpless weakness, but as he was in truth, the Son of God, who had overcome death, and who retained only so much of his earthly nature as might prove to his apostles that it was he himself, Jesus, who had been crucified, Jesus, who was now risen to live for ever.

I might go on further, and ask, if he were not truly risen from the dead to die no more,

and therefore to ascend, as the Son of God, to his own place in heaven, what became of him afterwards, where did he live, or with whom did he conceal himself; since we know that his own mother passed the rest of her days in the house of John, the beloved disciple of her Son, to whose care Jesus had himself commended her while hanging on the cross? But the time would fail to go fully through the whole tissue of monstrous impossibilities which we must believe if we refuse to believe the simple words of christian truth, that Christ died and was buried, and rose again the third day, and ascended into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of the Father. Most monstrous are the impossibilities which we must believe, if we will not believe the truth; most perfect the consistency, the probability, and the beauty, of the truth in Christ Jesus! But I said that the certainty of this truth might, to many of you at present, appear of little interest you think that you believe it already. Do you believe it indeed? Then why do so many live as though Christ had neither died for them, nor yet was risen? The certainty of the resurrection of Christ is indeed our best comfort when we fear death, and hate our sins; but is it not equally ter

rible to us when we do not fear the one, and when we love the other? He rose to save his own, but to judge the world, and to destroy his enemies. And of a truth it may be said, and the dreadfulness of the word is the best proof of their dreadful state to whom it applies, that for those who do not believe, for those to whom Christ's resurrection is no joy, it will indeed grind them to powder; good would it have been for them if Christ had never risen, if this Easter Day, which all Christians so love and cherish, could be blotted out of the list of time as though it had never been.

SERMON XIII.

MORAL CERTAINTY OF THE TRUE
CHRISTIAN'S RESURRECTION.

1 CORINTHIANS XV. 18.

Then they also which are fallen asleep in Christ are
perished.

THESE seem strange words, when taken apart from what goes before and follows them; and I wish them to press upon our minds in all their strangeness. It would be well indeed if they appeared not only strange, but monstrous; the most unlikely, the most impossible thing which our minds can conceive. If we fully dwelt on them, and were quite aware of all their monstrousness, then our faith would stand far surer than it commonly does stand, and through that faith we should gain an undoubted victory over all the temptations with which we now find it so hard to struggle.