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our Saviour is to be understood. He that is the Way, and the Truth, is also the Life; and what a blessed hearing is this in such a world as ours, where death spoils every prospect, dissolves all society, and renders every possession vain and empty! What is your life? It is a vapour that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth; like a cloud that passes over our heads before the wind, and is gone. Even a wise Heathen can tell us, that it is rather death than life; and that the only real life is to be found, not in this world, but out of it. Ask the man of pleasure how he finds it? He must answer, according to matter of fact, (if he has any sense in him) that it is a life, which through the fear of death brings him into continual bondage. The thought of death may be profitable, as it leads us toward another world; but it turns this into a Golgotha, a place of a scull; a place to which men are brought only to be executed. When the Saviour appears in it, it is no longer that lamentable place it was before; its very nature is changed: for when he beheld the funeral procession of a young man that was carried out to be buried, and the widow his mother following, he said unto her, weep not: and what he said to her, he saith to us all it is a voice to the whole Christian world. He who

spake

spake these words to that poor widow, was himself the resurrection and the life, and was about to raise her son. She did not know that, and therefore she wept. But now we all know it; and therefore we ought not to weep.

Since the resurrection of Christ, death is no death, because he has no sting; for sin is the sting of death: and when sin is taken away, as by the atonement of Christ, death should no longer be terrible. Hence the apostle exclaims, O death, where is thy sting? For if Christ be risen, it is a proof that the debt is paid; and that sin, which kills us all, is no longer imputed.

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From the history of man it is known, that if sin had not entered, man would not have died for death cometh by sin; without it there would have been none. The life of paradise would have been sustained perpetually by the tree of life. But when man fell into sin, he was driven from the tree of life, to return to the dust out of which he was taken. To restore that life which we lost in Adam, and give us that to which the tree of life would have raised us, the Saviour came into the world. How much more than this his own words may promise to us, we cannot affirm; but he tells us-I am come that ye might have life, and that ye might have it more

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abundantly: whence we may gather indubitably, that the life which we obtain through Christ is better than we should have derived from Adam; and that for this reason he is called the Tree of Life: he does what that would have done, and more: and as we have no title but through him, he is therefore called our Life.

It is a plain doctrine, and generally understood, that Christ becomes our life by his resurrection from the dead; and that therefore he calls himself the resurrection and the life: but the gospel teaches, that Christ is our life before the resurrection of the body; there being a resurrection to grace and newness of life, which begins here, and is the pledge and earnest of the resurrection of the body. Modern Christians seem to think that the christian religion is a history (a very true history) of things without us: but is it not also a history of something within us? does it not also preach up a principle of life, given to Christians, at this time, and distinguishing them from a dead world that lieth in darkness? is not Christ now a life to animate and revive the dead; as well as a light to instruct the ignorant? Doth not the prophet say the same-awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ

shall

shall give thee light? Can the sun of the spring shew itself, without raising the roots that lie buried in the earth? Even so, he that gives light must give life at the same time, and by the same act. And this must be the life of which Christ himself speaketh, where he saith, he that believeth in me, though he were dead yet shall he live; and he that liveth and believeth in me shall never die. This must be meant of that spiritual life with which we now live: and the occasion on which the words were spoken, the resurrection of Lazarus, relates to the same for Martha had said, I know that he shall rise again in the resurrection at the last day. But this confession was not sufficient; the resurrection of Lazarus was to shew something more: it was to shew, not only that the hour is coming, but that it now is, when the dead in sin hear his voice and come forth. Reason therefore requires that the words which follow should be strictly taken-"I am the resurrection and the life"-and were they not strictly fulfilled, when the Gentile world were raised up by the gospel from that hopeless death of sin in which they lay? And are they not now fulfilled in every sinner, who at this time is raised up from the death of sin to the life of

righteousness?

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