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cumstances 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 demeanor 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 axe's sharp edge; 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 brave-hearted, 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 favorite 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 argu ments 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 twenty, or forty, or sixty years o 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. It is 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. 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 first-fruits of them that slept."

LECTURE XXVIII.

1 CORINTHIANS, xv. 18-20,-"But if there be no resurrection of the dead, then is Christ not risen :- And if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain. - 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. For if the dead rise not, then is not Christ raised: --And if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins. Then they also which are fallen asleep in Christ are perished. If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable. But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the first-fruits of them that slept."

THE Church of Corinth exhibited in the time of the Apostle Paul the remarkable spectacle of a Christianity existing 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 savored 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, endeavored to crush and entirely subdue it; and this was the origin of that ascetic system, against which St. Paul sets himself in so many of his Epistles.

These opinions then existing in the world, it was to be expected that when Christianity was preached to such men, the expressions of Christianity should be misunderstood and misinterpreted. For every expression used by the Apostles had already been used by those philosophers; so that when the Apostles spake of Regeneration, "Yes," said these men, "this is the religion we want; we desire the regeneration of society. When they spake of the resurrection of Christ, and told men to rise above the lusts of the flesh: "Yes," they replied, "this is the resurrection we need; a spiritual not a literal one: the resurrection is past already, the only grave from which we are to be delivered is the grave of sin." And when, again, the Apostle told of the redemption of the body, "Yes," said they, "we will cleave to this, for it is the redemption of the body that we want." So that, in the Church of Corinth, the resurrection, plainly as it was preached by the Apostles, had become diluted into a question of the temporal regeneration of society.

Now what was remarkable in this form of infidelity was, that it was to some extent spiritual, sublime, and unselfish. Sublime, for it commanded to dispense with all enjoyments of the senses; spiritual and unselfish, because it demanded virtue quite separate from the hope of immortality. And what makes this interesting to us now is, that ours somewhat resembles that old infidelity; there are sounds heard which, widely as they may differ from those Corinthian views in some respects, . agree in this, that there is much in them spiritual and sublime. We are told that men die, and that an end then comes upon them; that the hope of immortality is

merely a remnant of our selfishness, and that the only immortality for man is to enter by faith into the kingdom of goodness. Now the way in which the Apostle Paul met these views was with that line of argument which consists in demonstrating the impossibility of such a supposition, by deducing from it all the absurdities in which it clothes itself. For one moment he grants it; there is then no resurrection, no immortality! Let us, therefore, see the consequences: they are so awful and incredible, that no sane mind can possibly receive them. In other words, the Apostle demonstrates that, great as may be the difficulty in believing in immortality, the difficulty in disbelieving it is tenfold greater.

We will then endeavor, to-day, to elaborate and draw out the four incredibilities of which the Apostle speaks, The first absurdity of which he speaks, resulting from a denial of the resurrection of Jesus, is, 66 we are found false witnesses before God." Fulse witnesses, not mistaken witnesses. He allows no loophole of escape: the resurrection is a fact, or else a falsehood. And now consider the results of that supposition,- Who are they that are the false witnesses of the resurrection? Among them we find prominently two; with these two the Book of the Acts of the Apostles is chiefly occupied, The first is St. Peter, the other St. Paul. St. Peter goes forth into the world strong in his conviction that Jesus Christ is risen from the dead; for in the early ages of Christianity the doctrine most preached was not the Cross, but the Resurrection. From a mistaken view of the writings of the Apostle Paul, as when he said, "I preach Christ crucified," it has been inferred, that the chief doctrine of his life was the Crucifixion; but it was the crucified and risen Saviour that he preached, rather than the mere fact of the Crucifixion. In the early ages it was almost unnecessary to speak of the Cross, for the crucifixion of the Redeemer was a thing not done in a corner: no one thought of denying that, But instead of this, the Apostles went forth, preaching that from which the world recoiled, that Christ had risen. If the Apostle Peter went forth to proclaim the

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