pattern? Which of us, I do not say, has mastered and ejected pride, but is setting Himself in good earnest, and with all the energy which might be brought to the work, to the wrestling with pride and sweeping it from the breast? Would to God that this Passion season may leave us more humble, more self-denying, more disposed to bear one another's burdens, than it finds us. Would to God that it may write, more deeply than ever, on our hearts the doctrine which is the alone engine against the haughtiness and self-sufficiency of the fallen, that the Mediator between earth and heaven was "perfect God and perfect man." 1 There must be Deity in the rock which could bear up a foundered world. May none of you forget this. The young amongst you more especially, keep ye this diligently in mind. I have lived much amid the choicest assemblies of the literary youth of our land, and I know full well how commonly the pride of talent, or the appetite for novelty, or the desire to be singular, or the aversion from what is holy, will cause an unstable mind to yield itself to the specious sophistry, or the licentious effrontery, of sceptical writings. I pray God that none of you be drawn within the eddies of that whirlpool of infidelity which rends into a thousand shivers the noblest barks, freighted with a rich lading of intellect and learning. Be ye watchful alike against the dogmas of an insolent reasoning, and the siren strains of a voluptuous poetry, and the fiend-like sneers of reprobate men, and the polished cavils of fashionable contempt. Let none of these seduce or scare you from the simplicity of the faith, and breathe blightingly on your allegiance, and shrivel you into that withered and sapless thing, the disciple of a creed which owns not divinity in Christ. If I durst choose between

1 Athanasian Creed.

falsehoods, I would take Deism rather than Socinianism. It seems better to reject as forgery, than, having received as truth, to drain of meaning, to use, without reserve, the sponge and the thumb-screw, the one when passages are too plain for controversy, the other when against us till unmercifully tortured. May you all see, that, unless a Mediator, more than human, had stood in the gap to stay the plague, the penalties of a broken law, unsatisfied through eternity, must have entered like fiery arrows, and scathed and maddened each descendant of Adam. May you all learn to use the doctrine of the Atonement as the basis of hope, and the motive to holiness. Thus shall this Passion season be a new starting-point to all of us: to those who have never entered on a heavenward course; to those who have entered, and then loitered; so that none, at last, may occupy the strange and fearful position of men for whom a Saviour died, but died in vain.

SERMON V

THE DOCTRINE OF THE RESURRECTION VIEWED IN CONNECTION WITH THAT OF THE SOUL'S IMMORTALITY

"Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection and the life.”— JOHN Xi. 25

THERE is perhaps no narrative in the New Testament

more deeply interesting than that of the raising of Lazarus. It was nearly the last miracle which Christ performed whilst sojourning on earth; and, as though intended for a great seal of His mission, you find the Saviour preparing Himself, with extraordinary care, for this exhibition of His power. He had indeed on two other occasions raised the dead. The daughter of Jairus, and the widow's son of Nain, had both, at His bidding, been restored to life. But you will remember that, with regard to the former, Christ had used the expression, "The damsel is not dead, but sleepeth:" and that, probably, the latter had been only a short time deceased when carried out for burial. Hence, in neither case was the evidence that death had taken place, and that the party was not in a trance, so clear and decisive that no room was left for the cavils of the sceptic. And accordingly, there is ground of doubt 1 Mark v. 39.

1

whether the apostles themselves were thoroughly convinced of Christ's power over death: whether, that is, they believed Him able to recover life when once totally and truly extinguished. At least, you will observe, that, when told that Lazarus was actually dead, they were filled with sorrow; and that, when Christ said that He would go and awaken him from sleep, they resolved indeed to accompany their Master, but expected rather to be themselves stoned by the Jews than to see their friend brought back from the sepulchre.

We may suppose, therefore, that it was with the design of furnishing an irresistible demonstration of His power, that, after hearing of the illness of Lazarus, Jesus tarried two days in the place where the message had found him. He loved Lazarus, and Martha and Mary his sisters. It must then have been the dictate of affection that He should hasten to the distressed family, as soon as informed of their affliction. But had He reached Bethany before Lazarus expired, or soon after the catastrophe had occurred, we may readily see that the same objection might have been urged against the miracle of restoration, as in the other instances in which the grave had been deprived of its prey. There would not have been incontrovertible proof of actual death; and neither, therefore, would there have been incontrovertible proof that Jesus was "the prince of life." But, by so delaying His journey that He arrived not at Bethany until Lazarus had been four days dead, Christ cut off all occasion of cavil, and, rendering it undeniable that the soul had been separated from the body, rendered it equally undeniable, when He had wrought the miracle, that He possessed the power of reuniting the two.

1

1 Acts iii. 15.

As Jesus approached Bethany, He was met by Martha, who seems to have entertained some indistinct apprehension that His prevalence with God, if not His own might, rendered possible, even then, the restoration of her brother. "I know that, even now, whatsoever Thou wilt ask of God, God will give it Thee." This drew from Jesus the saying, "Thy brother shall rise again." The resurrection of the body was, at this time, an article of the national creed, being confessed by the great mass of the Jews, though denied by the Sadducees. Hence Martha had no difficulty in assenting to what Jesus declared; though she plainly implied that she both wished and hoped something more on behalf of her brother. "I know that he shall rise again in the resurrection at the last day." And now it was, that, in order to obtain a precise declaration of faith in His power, Jesus addressed Martha in the words of our text, words of an extraordinary beauty and solemnity, put by the Church into the mouth of the minister, as He meets the sorrowing band who bear a brother, or a sister, to the long home appointed for our race. Jesus said unto her, "I am the resurrection, and the life." Martha had expressed frankly her belief in a general resurrection; but she seemed not to associate this resurrection with Jesus as a cause and an agent. The Redeemer, therefore, gathers, as it were, the general resurrection into Himself; and, as though asserting that all men shall indeed rise, but only through mysterious union with Himself, He declares not that He will effect the resurrection, summoning by His voice the tenantry from the sepulchres, but that He is Himself that resurrection: "I am the resurrection, and the life."

Now it were beside our purpose to follow further the narrative of the raising of Lazarus. We have shown you