be unquestionable confirmation of the "trembling hope" within them.

To the nation of the Jews, God, designing them for lofty uses in his plan for saving sinners, did not so leave without encouragement man's inborn aspirations for the future. To Moses, as the Saviour in the context clearly proves, the Lord, declaring himself to be the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, long after their departure from this mortal state of being, plainly declared the existence of another, and so virtually revealed a future, if not an immortal, life. While the sublime strains of David, and Isaiah, and Hosea,-" Thou wilt not leave my soul in hell, neither wilt thou suffer thy Holy One to see corruption; thou wilt show me the path of life, in thy presence is fulness of joy, at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore,”*—and again, "Thy dead men shall live, together with my dead body shall they arise;" "the earth shall cast out the dead,”+—and again, “I will ransom them from the power of the grave, I will redeem them from death: O death, I will be thy plagues; O grave, I will be thy destruction ;"-contain such explicit declarations of this most comfortable truth, as render it inconceivable by us, enlightened as we are by the glorious Gospel, how any could have avoided the power of its conviction. And yet, when Jesus, citing the example of Moses at the bush, refuted the Sadducees, proving against them the doctrine of the resurrection, St. Matthew records,

66

Psalm xvi. 10, 11.

+ Isaiah xxvi. 10.

Hosea xiii. 14.

that "when the multitude heard this, they were astonished at his doctrine." Of the whole world, then, it may be said,—a few illustrious examples, the patriarchs, prophets, and holy men among the Jews excepted,→ that, as to any powerful, permanent, or practical impressions of a future world, they groped miserably in the dark. The multitude, in a thick and palpable darkness, like that of Egypt; the few philosophers and sages, in that uncertain, glimmering twilight, which is more deceptive even than the thickest gloom. They saw, the most enlightened of them, like the bewildered mariner in the gray dawn, some undefined and distant object, which might be the fair land of promise, or which might be fog. The Sun of righteousness arose, and the dim haze passed off, and the celestial world shone out, resplendent with perennial verdure and eternal radiance. It is "our Saviour Jesus Christ" alone, who "hath abolished death, and hath brought life and immortallty" fully " to light."

66

My brethren, it is this perfect certainty, this cloudless light thrown on it by the Gospel, which makes the revelation of immortality a valuable revelation, and the Christian "hope of everlasting life" indeed a "blessed hope." To what purpose, as we stood by the bedside of our beloved, and saw the glazing eye, and marked the creeping chill, and heard the struggling breath,—to what purpose, in the estimate of yearning love, the shadowy confidence of Socrates, "I hope to go hence to

* St. Matthew xxii. 33.

good men and to God, but of that I am not very certain !" And when the death stroke reaches our own heart, and one by one we hear the last sands falling in the glass, and feel the slow drops, one by one, creep coldly from the fount of life, to find their way to it again no more, then to what purpose the surmise, the conjecture, the faint hope, half doubt, half fear, of something after death, we know not where, we know not what! "Thanks be to God,"-let us proclaim it with a fuller and more fervent exultation, as, year after year, the best beloved of our bosom fall beside us from the tree of life!" thanks be to God,"-let us acknowledge it with deeper and more glowing gratitude, as, day by day, the stealing canker, or the pelting storm weakens our hold upon its laden boughs!" thanks be to God," that we are not so left to "sorrow, even as others who have no hope!" For, if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him!"* Blessed are they who "shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world, and the resurrection of the dead,”—“ NEITHER CAN THEY DIE ANY MORE: for they are equal to the angels; and are the children of God, being the children of the resurrection !"+

66

It is when we turn, my Christian brethren, to the page of revelation, for instruction on this grandest of all themes that have connexion with mortality, its promise of immortal being, that we find the assertion of it clear and strong, its record written as with a sunbeam. Listen

1 Thessalonians iv. 13, 14.

+ St. Luke 11. 35, 36.

to Jesus at the tomb of the beloved Lazarus :-" I am THE RESURRECTION AND THE LIFE; he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live; and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die."* Listen to the words of the same divine teacher, by the Sea of Galilee :-" Verily, verily I say unto you, he that believeth on me hath everlasting life.”+ Hear the solemn prayer, which, as he went forth to the garden to be betrayed, he offered for all that should believe on him; declaring in the strongest forms of language, the inseparable union designed to be effected between the divine and human natures, himself to be the medium :-"That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and 1 in thee, that they also may be one in us." And hear him on the same touching occasion,-the Prince of life, "the Father everlasting," who is "alive for evermore," and "the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever,"¶―hear him utter to his disciples the solemn declaration, pledging, as it were, his own immortality for theirs:-"Because I live, ye shall live also ;"**—as certainly as mine is, so certainly is your existence, for EVER AND FOR EVER! And hear him, finally,-if the intense desire of human nature require a farther assurance, and if the powers of language avail for its conveyance,―hear him in the words of the text, expressly assert of them, that "are accounted worthy to obtain

* St. John xi, 25, 26. † St. John vi. 47. Revelation i. 18. Hebrews xiii. 8.

St. John xvii. 21. § Isaiah lx. 6. ** St. John xiv. 19.

that world, and the resurrection from the dead," “NEITHER CAN THEY DIE ANY MORE." It is not that they will not die. It is not that they shall not die. But it is that they can not die any more. They are under an impossibility of death. They are heirs of an indestructible existence. They are the subjects of a divine constraint to live for ever.* "Blessed is every one that obtaineth part in the first resurrection, for on such the second death can have no power!"+

Nor is it to immortal existence only, that the pious dead are called, but to unmingled blessedness. The context tells us of them who cannot die any more, that they are "equal unto the angels," the peers and fellows of the host of heaven,-seeing the same sights, employed in the same work, sharing in the same joys, with the pure spirits that surround the throne. Into the blaze of that effulgence in which they bask,—a day to which there is no night, and of which the Lord God himself is the light and glory,—it is not ours to look. "Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him." "Behold,"

*The train of thought suggested here, is more fully developed by the ingenious author of "Saturday evening."

+ Revelation xx. 6. Ought not this view of the immortality to which our nature may attain, through Christ, to be more dwelt on in vindication of the divine justice and mercy to our race? Fallen from its original righteousness by the abuse of its own freedom, it is made capable of an elevation, through Christ, to a state of security greater than that of angels. They have fallen. The risen in Christ can fall no more Over them the second death can have