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SERMON XXVI.

THE RESURRECTION OF THE BODY.

1 COR. XV. 53, 54.

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 broaght to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory.

ALL men are naturally appalled at the thought of death. They see in it an enemy who lurks about their path by night and by day, to rob them of all they account valuable; to deprive them of their possessions, their honours, their pleasures, their very earthly being itself. Still more are they appalled, when they look beyond it, and remember, that after death comes judgment; that not only is every earthly tie broken, but that they must enter upon a new and eternal state of existence for which they feel themselves unprepared, and which, when they review their transgressions against their Creator,

they cannot but fear will be a state of the bitterest misery. But the true believer views this last enemy in a very different light. He considers death, though a part of the original curse pronounced against sin, as having lost its sting to all who die in Christ. He thinks of dying, or wishes to think of it, not with its original terrors; but as one link in the golden chain by which all the privileges of this world and that which is to come are bound together. Without death he cannot enter upon a blissful eternity; he must continue in a world of change and trial, of sin and temptation, of sorrow and bereavement; a world which is not his home, and is incapable of making him really happy. To be happy therefore, unspeakably happy, eternally happy, he must die. Yet still death is awful; the body and soul, which in the present state of being have been constant companions, must be separated: the former must become senseless, motionless, breathless; it must decay; it must mix with its native dust; it must lose all that distinguished it as a living body; it must exchange warmth and action, and cheerfulness and loveliness, for all that is most painful and revolting to the natural senses and perceptions. The soul in the mean time, disentangled from the flesh, has winged its flight to the presence of God. Though hitherto known only in connexion with its mortal habi

tation, it is not dependent upon it; it can exist disembodied; it survives, either a happy spirit before the throne of God, or a condemned spirit in the world of darkness and despair.

But shall this disunion last for ever? In the world of blessedness is only the soul redeemed and safely housed, beyond the reach of earthly storms; and in the world of misery, is the body, which was the companion of the soul in sin, exempt from its share of punishment? The word of God alone can answer this inquiry. Multitudes of the heathen, perhaps the large majority, have scarcely any intelligible persuasion of the resurrection either of the body or the soul; and, of those who acknowledge the latter, very few seem to have any fixed opinion respecting the former; so that, even by the Athenians themselves, St. Paul was accounted a babbler, for preaching the resurrection of the body. The soul The soul they could perhaps more easily think of as incorruptible, and heir to a future existence; but the body, being corruptible, being actually seen in a state of dissolution, they could not look beyond its present degraded condition, to comtemplate its resurrection. Yet the youngest child who has been instructed in the Holy Scriptures, has learned this surprisingly interesting and momentous truth. Our belief in the resurrection of the body is expressed in the very

same creeds, and with the same certainty, as even our belief in a God. And with the revelation of our Creator in our hands, well may it be so expressed. For it was disclosed in the early stages of that revelation; so that the patriarch Job knew that, though worms should destroy his earthly dwelling, yet that, in the latter day, he should in his flesh see God. But we need not go back to dates so ancient; for we live under a dispensation in which life and immortality are more visibly brought to light, through Christ Jesus; we are not left to doubt whether these mortal bodies, which, frail and sinful as they are, are still endeared to us by innumerable sympathies and tender associations, by our attachments and friendships towards those whom we have known and loved in the present life, shall be preserved and glorified, so as to become fit dwellings for our immortal spirits. The certainty of this truth is revealed to us in Scripture beyond any possibility of mistake: it shall so be: "this corruptible," as the Apostle Paul declares in our text, "must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality."

The Apostle, when he penned this declaration, was replying to a twofold inquiry, or objection, which might be brought respecting the doctrine of the resurrection. "But some

man will say, How are the dead raised up, and with what body do they come?"

The former question he passes over very shortly. Do you ask, as though he said, how this thing can be: what power is sufficient for so mighty, so miraculous, a process? The power of God is sufficient: by that power the seed sown in the ground, while it seems to die away and to be for ever lost, is clothed with new properties, and is made to vegetate with teeming life and beauty: "God giveth it a body as it hath pleased him, and to every seed its own body." Thus we learn, even from the inferior works of his creation, his ability to raise these feeble and mortal bodies from their slumber in the grave, and to clothe them with immortality. But far more clearly and convincingly do we see this power displayed in the resurrection of Christ. Here is a proof that cannot be questioned; for "now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the first fruits of them that slept." So far as respects the ability of God, if evidence were necessary on such a point, we thus have evidence the strongest, and exactly applicable to the case we have not only our own miraculous creation and preservation from day to day, but we have the resurrection of Christ, the pledge, the proof, the pattern of our own. God therefore can