tiate, and they tell us of the laws of the under this head let me endeavour to contrast animal and the vegetable kingdom. These the insufficiency of the light of nature with laws may prove an impassable barrier to the sufficiency and fulness of the light of the us, but in the hand of the omnipotent gospel. Saviour they were nothing-he reversed or supported them at pleasure; he blasted the fig tree by a single word; and what to us was the basis of high anticipation, he made man the subject of his miracles. He restored sight to the blind, he restored speech to the dumb, he restored motion to the palsied, and to crown his triumph over nature and her processes, he restored life to the dead, he laid down his own life, and took it up again. The disciples gave up all for lost when they saw the champion of their hopes made the victim of the very mortality which he promised to destroy. It was like the contest and victory of nature-but it was only to make his triumph the more complete. entered

He

"That undiscover'd country from whose bourn No traveller e'er returns"

First, Then, in regard to the physical state of the mind. An argument for its immortality has been drawn from the consideration of what we should term the physics of the mind, i. e. from the consideration of its properties when it is regarded as having a separate or substantive being of its own. For example-it has been said the spirit is not matter, and therefore must be imperishable. We confess that we see not the force of this reasoning. We are not sure of the premises, and neither do we apprehend how the conclusion flows from them. We think ourselves familiar with the subtleties and scholastics that have been uttered upon this subject-they are to us far from satisfactory; nor are we persuaded of it by evidence on which we rest our belief in any coming event, or coming state, of the futurity that lies before us. We cannot have the force of practical evidence on those abstract and metaphysical generalities which are employed to demonstrate the endurance, or rather the indestructibleness, of the thinking principle, so as to be persuaded that it shall indeed survive the dissolution of the body, and shall But man not only wants power to separately maintain its consciousness and achieve his own immortality, he also powers on the other side of the grave, wants light to discover it. That such, Now, in the recorded fact of our Sain spite of every appalling exhibition to viour's resurrection, we see what we the contrary, is really to be the ultimate might call a more popular, as well as a state of man, is not brought to light by more substantial and convincing argureason. The text indeed says as much, ment, for the soul's immortality, than any in saying that "it is brought to light by thing furnished by the speculations we the gospel." It represents the great truth have now referred to. To us the one apas groped by nature, and only made clear pears as much superior to the other as by revelation; it seems to cast discredit history is more solid than hypothesis, or on all the arguments of science, in behalf as experience is of a texture more firm of a future state; and just for want of a than imagination, or as the philosophy of sufficient basis in the evidence of philoso- our modern Bacon is of a surer and juster phy, on which to rear this noble antici-character than the philosophy of the old pation, it would rest and establish it wholly on the evidence of faith.

But he did. He broke asunder the mighty barriers of the grave; he entered and he reanimated that body which expired on the cross, and by that most striking of all testimonies he has given us to know that he hath fought against the law of death, and hath carried it.

In the further prosecution of this discourse, let me

schoolmen. Now, it is on the fact of his own resurrection that Christ rests the hope and the promise of resurrection to all of us." If he be not risen from the

I. Advert to what may be called the phy-dead," saith one of the apostles, "we are sical state; and

of all men the most miserable." It is to

II. To the moral state of the mind; and this fact that he appeals for the foundation

and the hope of immortality. To every | living population above them; but though cavil and to every difficulty he opposes remote from the hearing of every earthly this as a sufficient argument-that Christ sound, yet shall the sound of the last has risen. This was Paul's argument, and trumpet enter the loneliness of their dwellit has descended by inheritance to us. ing, and be heard through death's remotest We have received the testimony-we caverns. When we open the sepulhave access to the documents-we can chres of the men of other times, the fragtake a view of the unexampled evidence ments, the skeletons, and the mouldering which has been carried down to us in the of bones, form indeed a humiliating specvehicles of history; and in opposition to tacle; but the working of the same power all which fancy or speculation can muster which raised Jesus from the dead shall against us, we can appeal to the fact. It raise corruption to a glorious form, and is not a doctrine excogitated by the inge- invest it in all the blush and vigour of nuities of human reasoning-it is a doc-immortality. "So is the resurrection of trine submitted to the observation of the human senses. It is not an untried experiment; while Jesus Christ lived on our earth he made it repeatedly, and with uniform success, upon others; and in giving up his body to the cross he made it upon himself. One who could carry an experiment such as this to a successful termination, has a claim to be listened to; and he tells us, by the mouth of an apostle, that the fact of himself having risen bears most decidedly upon the doctrine that we shall rise also; "for if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so they who sleep in Jesus shall God bring with him."

Let it be remembered, before we conclude this head of discourse, that the word which is rendered “abolished,” signifies also "made of none effect." "He hath abolished death, or made death of none effect." The latter interpretation of the word is certainly more applicable to our first or temporal death. He has not abolished temporal death; it still reigns with unmitigated violence, and sweeps off each successive generation with as great sureness and rapidity as ever. This part of the sentence is not abolished, but it is rendered ineffectual. Death still lays us in the grave, but it cannot chain us there to everlasting forgetfulness; it puts its cold hand on every one of us, but a power higher than death will lift it off, and these forms be again reanimated with all the warmth of life and of sentiment. The churchyard has been called the land of silence and silent it is indeed to them who occupy it-the Sabbath-bell is no longer heard, nor yet the tread of the

the dead; it is sown in corruption, it is raised in incorruption; it is sown in dishonour, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, death is swallowed up in victory."

There is much need that we be habitually reminded of these things, for in truth we live in almost constant forgetfulness of them. The region of sense and the region of spirituality are so unlike the one to the other, that there is positively nothing in our experience of the former which can at all familiarize our minds to the conception of the latter. And then, as if to obstruct the flight of our imaginations onward to eternity, there is such a dark and cloudy interceptment that hangs upon the very entrance of it; ere we can realize that distant world of souls, we must press our way beyond the curtain of the grave-we must scale the awful barricado which separates the visible from the invisible-we must make our escape from all the close, and warm, and besetting urgencies, which in the land of human beings are ever plying us with constant and powerful solicitations, and force our spirits across the boundaries of sense to that mysterious scene where cold, and meagre, and evanescent spirits dwell together in some unknown and incomprehensible mode of existence.

powering. Why, it may be thought, neighbour in the dust, he remains buried, should we be so anxious for urging a as it were, in the concerns of the world, truth which may safely be left to its own and will betake himself again with an evidence, or take occasion strenuously eagerness as intense and unbroken to its and repeatedly to affirm what none is able concerns and companies as before. We to deny? And this is just the marvellous affirm that, of the spell which binds him anomaly of our nature which it is so to earth, no power within the compass of difficult to explain. In the face of all this nature is able to disenchant him; that arevidence, and in utter opposition to the gument will not; that instances of morjudgment extracted thereby, there is an tality in his own dwelling will not; that obstinate practical delusion that resides sermons will not; and the evident apmost constantly within the heart, and proach of the last messenger to his own rules most imperiously over the judg- person will not: and it is indeed a most ments of the vast majority of our species. affecting spectacle to behold, with the It is not that we are incapable of all in- warnings and the symbols of a dissolution fluence from futurity—for it is the future which so speedily awaits him, that he gain of the present adventure, or the fu- just hugs more closely to his heart when ture issue of the present arrangement, or on the eve of being taken away from his the future result of the present contrivance, treasures for ever. Give me then a man that sets almost the whole of human ac- who is actually alive to the realities of tivity a going. But it is the future death, faith; and the inference from all is, that and the future condition on the other side another power than that of the influence of it, to which we are so strangely insen- of nature over the feelings of nature sible. We are all in the glow, and the must have been put forth to awaken him. bustle, and eagerness of most intense ex- There is not, within the compass of all pectation, about the events that lie in the that is visible, any cause conpetent to the intermediate distance between us and production of such an effect on the human death, and as blind to the certainty of the spirit. The power which awakens him death itself, as if this distance stretched to a sense of spiritual things cometh from indefinitely onward in the region of anti- a spiritual Creator. There is naught in cipation before us, or as if it were indeed the world that is present, which can bring an eternity. There is a deep sleep into a human soul under the dominion of the which our world has been lulled, as if by world that is to come. And although one all the powers of fascination, from which would have thought that the follies and it should seem impossible to awaken us. fluctuations of time would have been suffiNor do we now expect of any utterance cient to wean men from a portion so evanof the brevity of time that it will awaken escent and unsatisfying, and to point them you. For this purpose there must be the to the things of eternity, yet it would apputting forth of a force that is supernatu- pear not; the loss and desolation which ral; and the most experimental demonstra- attach to the life of sense, and the certion that we know of this necessity, is tainty of all it can command being speedily the torpor of the human soul about death, and totally swept away, these will not of and the temerity wherewith it stands its themselves germinate within the man the ground amidst pathetic and plain exhibi- life of faith. This wondrous phenometions of it. We are never more assured non of our nature convinces me of the of man, that he is wholly sold over to the doctrine of regeneration-that there is no captivity of this world, than in witness-power short of this which can spiritualize ing the strong adherence of his heart to it under the most touching experience of its vanity than in perceiving how unemptied he is of all his earthliness, whether he goes from business to burials, or back again from burials to business-than in observing how, after having buried his

us--that ere our affections can be set on things that are above, an influence from above must descend upon us-and that before we become alive to the delights and glories of the upper sanctuary, there must come down from that sanctuary the light and the power of a special revelation.

ble reward that is due to his characteras being little more than a step that leads him to a blessed immortality. Ay, this is all very fine, but it is the fineness of poetry. Where is the evidence that it is real? We see it not. Why so cruel an interruption to the progress ?-why cross this awful and mysterious death ?-why is the good man not suffered to carry on in his triumphant progress?-and why comes this dark and unintelligible event to be interposed between him and the full accomplishment of his destiny? You may choose to call it a step, but there is no virtue in a name to quell our suspicions

A far more satisfactory argument than ments. These have been drawn by phithat which is founded upon the reasonings losophers from the moral state of the of philosophy, for this doctrine is to be mind, and more especially from the profound in the fact of the resurrection of gressive expansion which they affirm to Christ. To satisfy yourselves upon ra- belong to it. Still we fear that, in retional grounds as to the immortality of spect of this argument, there is no expethe soul, we would say, study the histo- rience to support it. There is a beauty rical evidence for the truth of this fact. we do confess in many of their represenThe physical argument of nature for the tations. But beauty is only for them that doctrine is grounded on certain obscure sit at ease. It is a cruel mockery for the reasonings about the properties and inde- man who is stretched on the bed of death, structibleness of the mind; the physical and has in his view the dark ocean of argument of Christianity again is grounded annihilation and despair. Yes, we have on the truth, the historically established heard them talk, and talk eloquently too, truth, that Christ has actually risen; on of the high and triumphant progression the credit of this specimen, and with all of the good man-of his virtues and of his the authority that is given by a miracle prospects—and of his death being a genso stupendous, rests the doctrine of the tle transition to a better world-of its begeneral resurrection. The moral argu-ing the goal where he reaps the honourament again of nature for the soul's immortality is furnished by the sense which is in all spirits of God's justice, and of his yet unsettled controversy with sin. In the moral argument of Christianity again the doctrine is revealed in connexion with the doctrine of the atonement; it rises every day in strength and in assurance in the experience of the believer, who feels in himself what nature never feels a growing meetness of spirit and character, which forms at once the preparation and the earnest of the inheritance which awaits him. In order to get at the physical argument of Christianity, you have to study the historical evidence for it bears in every circumstance all the the truth of Christianity, considered as a religion of facts. In point of fact, however, this rational conviction will do very little in the way of bringing you under the power of things unseen and things eternal. I believe we are never effectually brought under this power but by the study of the moral argument; and this moral argument can only be drawn from the internal evidence of Christianity in opposition to the external evidence. The moral argument never can be appreciated adequately, but by those on whom the internal evidence of Christianity has produced its right impressions. But before we proceed to consider strictly this argument, let us attend to how it really stands in the theology of nature-for natural theology also lays claim to moral argu

marks of a termination. We see their fortitude giving way to the power of disease-we see them withering into feebleness, and, instead of what has been called the dignity of man, we see the weakness and the fretfulness of age-we see the body bending to the dust-we see it extended in all the agony of helplessness and pain, and yet we must call this a triumphant procession to eternity! We observe the emission of the last breath, but whether the spirit is extinct, or has fled to another region, nature tells us not. We call upon the philosopher to reveal the mystery of death-we ask why the good man has such an ordeal to undergo?

why, like the angels, does he not flourish in perpetual vigour ?—and how shall we explain that universal allotment, with