An

was in progress. It was a uniform movement. It was an unbroken train. First and last, only sooner or later, were speeding to their country of inheritance. Shout was prolonged by shout from those who were foremost and from those who were behind. It was one great armament impelled by a common spirit, throbbing with a common life. The triumph of every one momentarily advanced. "All passed clean over." So, Dear Christians, onward hasten the pilgrim saints of the Most High. Innumerable are the throngs which have found their way to heaven. entrance has been ministered to them. At this hour many feel the pains of death. Jordan is driven back. What companies still crowd this desert-world, and shall increasingly crowd it, but all journeying to the same goodly place! "Now is their salvation nearer than when they believed." The glorified, the dying, the living, they are marshalled into one procession, and constitute but one host. There is no interval nor interruption in their array. In mighty series they urge their course or find their rest. The gate of heaven is never shut. They who enter in, encourage those who follow them. The succession never fails. They come! They come! From the four corners of earth, from the fours winds of heaven! The celestial conquerors bend from their thrones to meet them! And they who are still in this wilderness, with death between them and heaven, are not cut off from that congregated infinite,-" Ye are come to the spirits of just men made perfect!"

SERMON XV.

THE RESURRECTION OF THE JUST.

PHIL. iii. 11.

"IF BY ANY MEANS I MIGHT ATTAIN UNTO THE RESURRECTION

OF THE DEAD."

No man could be more thoroughly convinced, more satisfactorily persuaded, more consciously assured, than was the Writer of these words, that the Christian is advanced to an exalted sphere of existence and to as exalted a condition of happiness, without delay or pause, at death. No sacred writer is so perspicuous in this statement, so weighty in this argument, so full and urgent in the illustration of this fact. To him the idea of death suggests no interruption of being. He sees in the event of mortal dissolution only that which is transitive, expanding, and climacteric. The conception of life is raised in his mind to something more strict, intense, and perfect. "The body is dead because of sin; but the spirit is life because of righteousness." It is accession. The high purposes, meditated in its creation, are more maturely developed. The seed has germinated, the flower blows, the fruit is ripened. The precious principle is disencumbered of much hinderance and is concentrated into much power. "Mortality is swallowed up of life." It is liberation. "There is lifting up." The life of the spirit is wrought out. The soul is more like itself. PAUL will not endure the momentary suspicion that aught is lost or suspended,—" to die is gain." "It is a faithful saying: for if we be dead with Him, we shall also live with him."

And he was wonderfully qualified, mightily warranted, to pronounce on themes like these. He had been caught up to the

third heaven. He had gazed upon the immortals inhabiting those realms. He had mingled with "the souls under the altar." He had received dread proof that they who "have fallen asleep in Christ" have not "perished." He had expatiated among the scenes which surround them. He had dived into the depths which absorb them. He had listened to their accents. He had walked on high with spirits once in the flesh. We know not that there were any, whom he was suffered to discriminate among those crowds: if there were any whom he recognised, we know not who they were. He had heard the parting prayer of one: "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit." Was not that gentle, lovely, spirit made known to the converted persecutor whom it had already forgiven, and whose conversion was an answer to its prayer? Having beheld those glorious visions, he was forced back to earth. The glories of Paradise could not be uttered in other language than its own. He found it impossible to repeat those secrets. They were "unspeakable words." He was not so much forbidden to declare the revelations of his rapture, as that he found nothing common, between them and mortals, by which he could have been understood. But in no hesitating manner does he affirm that such region of blessedness exists. With no faltering jealousy does he reason concerning it. He calls it by its name. He assigns its supernal position. In this Epistle* he describes himself alternating between immediate reward and prolonged usefulness: "I am in a strait betwixt two, having a desire to depart, and to be with Christ; which is far better: Nevertheless to abide in the flesh is more needful for you." We cannot construe this language into any meaning, if he were not convinced that he should be with Christ directly upon his death. If that felicity was delayed until the resurrection of the body, he would have incurred no abridgment of it however his life and labour might be perpetuated on earth. The suspense of his mind was whether he should be sooner, or later, with Christ: whether for the sake of others he should submit to the delay. In an avowal like this, we read his perfect confidence that death would bring him at once to Chap. i. 23, 24.

the presence of his Lord.-In another Epistle* he describes the same fact with equal precision: "We are confident and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord." The separation of the soul from the body is marked as a desirable event, because its "absence" is compensated most transcendently by its "presence" in another state. It is evident that the points of time for the two consequences, in all common understanding, must be the same. An exact synchronism is supposed. Why otherwise should the first be borne, and the second be preferred?—It was doubtless he who thus addressed the Hebrew Christians: "Ye are come to the spirits of just men made perfect." "That ye be not slothful, but followers of them who through faith and patience inherit the promises."+ Every thing, not to pursue the argument any farther,—in his writings and in his actions demonstrates, that this assurance fully possessed his mind, that it operated as a law upon his whole being and conduct; and that his faith, always clear and strong, peculiarly discerned, embraced, and clung to, this truth. We behold him, so to speak, invariably treading on the verge, the awful confines, of that spiritual abode, and all that is material, between him and it, seems but as the transparent curtain or the fleecy cloud. We witness his perfect conviction, like an intuition, that his spirit, in a moment, at a bound, would spring up, when death released him, to be partaker of the inheritance of the saints in light. Those blessed groups, those sumless multitudes, live to his eye. He suffers and toils and dies daily as in their animating presence, stretching out his hands to them and mingling his songs with theirs!

Yet knowing all this,-dwelling in the ecstacy of such a vision, the heavenly Apostle sets his heart upon that which is ulterior and which could only be remote. He knew that the day of Christ was not at hand, and warned others against the strange conjecture. To his prophetic view not less than Thirty Ages stood up defined, illuminated, big with mighty events and issues, all which must intervene ere that consummation. During the whole interval, until "the time of the end," he would "be with

Christ," basking in the light of the Godhead, mingled with the unfallen essences and the redeemed saints who are round about the throne. His body, which had so oft encumbered him with its weakness and infirmity, a body of sin, a body of death, a body which always made it possible that he should be a castaway, would have ceased to oppress his aspiration and endanger his safety. His piercing intelligence and ardent love would have found congenial companionship and scene. His warfare would be accomplished. He would have finished his course. What acclamations would have welcomed him! What a rest had remained for him! What a reward must he have found! But not slighting this, he postpones it. It does not satisfy him. It cannot engage the last effort, the utmost solicitude, of his soul. With a sublime impatience he outruns it. He pants with an ambition which this does not exhaust. He is fired with a zeal which this does not appease. THEN, when the dead shall rise up at the sound of the trumpet,—then, when the sleeping dust of the holy shall be reconstructed and resuscitated,-then, when the body is given back to the spirit and the spirit to the body,-then only has he seized his aim, then only realised his triumph!

It is His

The language which he employs in the context is agonistic. "This one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus:" or, as the latter part of the quotation might be more correctly translated, "I press along the course unto the prize of God's calling by Christ Jesus from on high." It is His voice out of heaven to his people in their graves. Resurrection-Summons. It is "the trump of God." the goal and guerdon. So the Patriarch exclaimed: "Thou shalt call, and I will answer thee: thou wilt have a desire to the work of thy hands."* Give the Apostle heaven itself without this,-robe and crown and mansion,-and he "counts not that he has apprehended" the full prize "for which he was apprehended of Christ Jesus;" he feels himself far from his absolute inauguration of glory and gladness; "he has not already attained,

Job xiv. 15.

This is