that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in me, shall never die."

Every feeling of nature would wish to cherish as true, the assurance that life and immortality are brought to light by the resurrection of Christ from the dead: it claims our belief by an evidence which wilful prejudice and obstinate incredulity can alone withstand. The disciples of a man crucified as a malefactor, they who forsook their dying Master, suddenly became bold, courageous, undismayed in danger, in persecution, in death: illiterate, feeble, contemned, they established a pure, and holy, and self-denying religion on the ruins of those superstitions and corrupt systems which held so firm a hold on the prejudices, the power, the pride, and the passions of mankind. This must have been the Lord's doing: this moral conquest, this conversion of a corrupt and opposing world to a pure faith and a holy practice, could have been effected only by divine power, that divine power by which the Master whom they beheld crucified was raised' from the dead. This was the truth forced on their own tardy belief, and which they attested by signs, and wonders, and mighty works, and to the belief of which they converted an unwilling and incredulous world.

Brethren, let us then seriously consider, if Christ be indeed raised from the dead, and is seated in power and majesty, the King of kings and Lord of lords, great will be the peril of rejecting or neglecting his offers of mercy, great the peril of remaining in rebellion against his righteous sway: and in rebellion against his righteous sway are all vho have not, by the power of his grace, become

dead to sin, and new creatures in holiness. "God, who at sundry times, and in divers manners, spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds." "Great is the mystery of godliness: God manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory."+ "Put to death in the flesh, but quickened in the Spirit," he is declared to be "the Son of God with power, by the resurrection from the dead." Let us not then neglect this wonderful counsel of God for our salvation; let us not be unaffected by this most stupendous display of divine power, and love, and mercy; let us not reject the offers of peace and salvation from the God whom we have offended, and the Sovereign who is finally to judge us. But, on the contrary, let us gratefully adore the majesty, the mercy, and the grace of the Godhead in the plan of redemption, effected in the incarnation, the obedience, the sufferings, the death, and the triumphant resurrection of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Let it be our great object to be conformed to the likeness of his death, in mortifying all our corrupt affections, and to experience the power of his resurrection in living a new and holy life, that we may enjoy the new and lively hopes of everlasting glory which his resurrection assures to all true believers. And to testify our belief in our once crucified but now highly exalted Saviour--to show forth our confidence, our gratitude, our love to him who died for us, and for us rose again—let us humbly and joyfully advance † 1 Tim. iii. 16.

* Heb. i. 1.

to that holy supper which he instituted, and receive the pledges of his mercy, his grace, and his everlasting favour: there let us keep the feast, in memory of Christ, that very Paschal Lamb who was offered for us, and hath taken away the sin of the world-who by his death hath destroyed death, and by his rising to life again, hath restored to us everlasting life: there let us proclaim, with holy triumph, that Christ hath risen from the dead, and become the first fruits of them that slept; and there let us receive the pledges of that hope, at once our triumph and our joy-our triumph over the doubts and the errors of this mortal life-our joy amidst the changes, the sorrows, and the trials of this uncertain world-that when Christ, who is our life, shall appear, we also shall appear with him in glory, and be made like unto him in his eternal and glorious kingdom.

SERMON XXVIII.

THE REASONS OF JOY IN CONTEMPLATING THE DAY OF THE LORD.

PSALM CXviii. 24.

This is the day which the Lord hath made; we will rejoice and be glad in it.

THIS, my brethren, is the voice of triumph which, on the recent festival of Esther, was heard in the church. What a different scene, even to the eye of the world, does the day of Christ's resurrection present, from that which marked the day of his crucifixion! We, my brethren, even on that day, penetrated by faith the cloud of humiliation which enveloped our Lord and Master, and beheld his cross and passion but as the preludes to his glorious resurrection-to the triumphs of this day. But the incredulous world could only have seen in Jesus Christ a malefactor suffering the ignominious death of the cross.

What is the spectacle which the day of Christ's resurrection presents? The sepulchre to which the body of this malefactor was consigned, the entrance of which was sealed by the seal of the Roman governor, and which was guarded by the implacable enemies of Christ, is open-the body of Jesus is gone. Even the incredulous world must adopt the language of the faithful-" The Lord is risen indeed." "This is the day which the Lord hath made; let us rejoice and be glad."

Yes, my brethren, this one circumstance alone, if there is faith to be given to what no man in his senses will doubt-historical testimony-this one circumstance, that the body of the crucified Jesus disappeared from that tomb which his vigilant enemies guarded with the express purpose of preventing its being stolen away-this one circumstance proves that he must have burst the bands of the grave through divine power-that God raised him from the dead.

But we have other evidence of this glorious event. It is morally impossible that the apostles should violate every dictate of common sense, and every feeling of interest, by enduring persecutions and privations without a parallel, in the service of a crucified impostor-in the testimony that their Master had risen; that they had seen him, conversed with him, handled him, and associated with him for a considerable time-when, in fact, his body was rotting in the grave. It is morally impossible that they should have submitted to persecution and death in attestation of an event which they knew had never happened; that they, who, timid and cowardly, forsook their Master and fled when he was taken and crucified, should suddenly become bold and undaunted in proclaiming what they knew to be false--that this crucified malefactor had risen from the dead. We shall discover an incredulity which sets common sense at defiance, if we can believe that these unlettered, friendless, and despised fishermen of Galilee could, by their own unassisted efforts, induce the Jew to forsake the magnificent ceremonies of his law, and the Pagan to renounce his vices, and the splendid, wanton, and sensual worship that allured him in