Christ not risen: and if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain. Yea, and we are found false witnesses of God; because we have testified of God, that he raised up Christ; whom he raised not up, if so be that the dead rise not. For if the dead rise not, then is not Christ raised; and if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins. Then they also who are fallen asleep in Christ, are perished." Language could not declare more plainly, that if Christ had not really risen from the dead, then the gospel which the apostles preached was false; that believing it was vain; that those who believe it are not saved from sin; and that those who die expecting the salvation of which the gospel speaks, perish like other men; in short, that if the body of Christ was not raised, then the gospel is a fable, and its promises and hopes unworthy of confidence. Let no one, then, presume to call himself a Christian, who does not believe that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day."

CHAPTER III.

THE GENERAL RESURRECTION AND GENERAL JUDGMENT.

THE four following propositions may most conveniently be discussed simultaneously; as the proof of their truth rests mainly on the

same texts.

1. There will be a second coming of Christ. 2. At the second coming of Christ, the bodies, both of the just and of the unjust, will be raised from the dead.

3. The dead, when raised, will be judged according to the deeds done in the body.

4. At the judgment, some will be approved, and admitted to a state of happiness; and others will be condemned, and sentenced to a state of misery.

1

If these propositions are true, then this life is not the only scene of punishment for those who persevere in sin; but there is a state of retribution after death, for which it behooves us to prepare.

The great difficulty to be overcome, in establishing the truth of these propositions, is the notion that the resurrection of the dead is impossible. That the soul is immortal, and that it will exist, and be happy or miserable after death, most men find little difficulty in believing. But the Resurrection of the Body appears to many impossible, and the belief of it absurd. Hence they conclude, if they receive the Scriptures as true, that those passages which seem to speak of it, really mean something else. Such views were entertained by some members of the church at Corinth, and Paul occupies the whole of the fifteenth chapter of his first epistle to that church, in confuting them. Let us consider his arguments in their order.

First, addressing them as professed believers, he reminds them what the gospel is.

"Moreover, brethren, I declare unto you the gospel which I preached unto you, which also ye have received, and wherein ye stand; by which also ye are saved, if ye keep in memory what I preached unto you; unless ye have believed in vain." That which he was about to declare unto them was not some unimportant circumstance of the gospel, but that very essential truth, by which, if at all, they were to be saved. That truth he proceeds to state. "For I delivered unto you, first of all, that which I also received; how that Christ died for our sins, according to the Scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day, according to the Scriptures; and that he was seen of Cephas; then of the twelve; after that, he was seen of above five hundred brethren at once, of whom the greater part remain unto this present, but some are fallen asleep; after that he was seen of James; then of all the apostles; and last of all he was seen of me also." The death of Christ for our sins, his burial, and his resurrection from the dead, are then the essential, saving truth

of the gospel. They are, substantially, the gospel itself; and every one who professes to believe the gospel, thereby professes to believe them.

He then proceeds to show how absurd it is, for a professed believer in Christianity to say that the dead never rise. "Now, if Christ be preached, that he rose from the dead, how say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead? But if there be no resurrection of the dead," that is-if the dead never rise; if the resurrection of the dead be impossible or absurd-" then is Christ not risen ; and if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain. Yea, and we are found false witnesses of God; because we have testified of God that he raised up Christ; whom he raised not up, if so be that the dead rise not. For if the dead rise not, then is not Christ raised; and if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins. Then they also which are fallen asleep in Christ, are perished." Christ was really dead; and if the dead never rise, if the