solemnity. It is not "the pains, the groans, the dying strife;" not the parting with all the possessions and friendships of earth; not the narrow house of gloom and corruption, awaiting the body, that imparts the shrinking dread to death ;—it is the fact that the undying spirit is about to open its eye on the tremendous scenes of eternity. That active, conscious, immortal spirit, is about to meet its Judge, and render its last account! The curtain that has hitherto hung before the eye of the probationer is about to rise, and all that is glorious in an eternity saved, or awful in an eternity lost, is about to burst on his vision. A few hours or moments, and his eternal destiny will be fixed in heaven or in hell! The hour, the moment, at length comes! There is an awful pause. The last struggle of nature is over;-the gates of mortality are thrown open ;-the struggling spirit has escaped. And as we gaze upon the calm, pale form, now only a form, that deathless spirit is awaking to more amazing realities and more mighty activities than we have ever conceived. Is it a spirit of sin ? He that is filthy is filthy still. No welcome voice of love from heaven falls on his ear; he cannot soar and sing with angels; he cannot see that glorious face which illumines the heavenly worlds,-for only the pure in heart can see God; no sweet remembrances of the past, or anticipations of the future cheer him, and he sinks into the unutterable woes of an undone eternity.

Is he a spirit of holiness? He that is holy is holy still. His pure and piercing eye descries the far-rolling worlds of brightness, all radiant with the glory of God and the Lamb. An innumerable company of

angels, and the spirits of just men made perfect, invite him with their hallelujahs to come up higher. With bounding joy, he exclaims,

"I mount, I fly :

O death, where is thy victory?
O grave, where is thy sting?"

In a moment the gates of glory receive him ;-and while our tears are falling, he is in the midst of the visions of that world, where God wipes all tears away; while our mournful silence is broken only with sobs of grief, his ears are drinking the melodies of heaven, and he is beginning to sing that new song which no man on earth can learn. He has reached his home-and so shall he be "forever with the Lord."

CHAPTER XV.

RESURRECTION.

AT the famous pool of Bethesda lay a great multitude of the victims of disease—the blind, the halt, the withered awaiting the angelic blessing of the waters. Among these was one who had been bowed under infirmity thirty-eight years. His case touched the compassion of Jesus, and, at the bidding of that almighty power which will eventually quicken all the dead, the bands of disease fell off, the man was made whole and took up his bed and walked. The gazing multitude marvelled. But Jesus said, "Marvel not at this, for the hour is coming in which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice, and shall come forth."* As much as to say, 'This is unworthy of a marvel, compared with what I shall do hereafter. For with the same power which has raised this sick man to health, I shall hereafter raise all the dead.'

The resurrection of the dead is emphatically a doctrine of the New Testament. Faintly indeed was it

* John v. 28.

shadowed forth in the Old. It was not till Christ himself had in his own person robbed the tomb of its prey, and become the first fruits of the slumbering myriads, that this glorious doctrine took firm possession of the apostolic mind. Then it was that that mind was so mightily electrified. A stream of light came upon it all at once from the chambers of hitherto impenetrable darkness;-a new world opened. Death was to the apostles no longer death ;-the gates of the grave became the portals to a state of perfected and everlasting life.

To this doctrine philosophy has urged her strong objections. She tells us that the bodies of the dead have passed through endless transformations ;-their fluids, now exhaling in vapors or descending in raindrops, now becoming alternately the juice of vegetables, or the sap of the forest trees;-their solids, passing at one time into the bones of other animals, at another into the stones or timber or furniture of our dwellings, at another into the lightest dust, and flying in every direction on the wings of the wind. At length, all comes round again, both fluid and solid, into some other form of organized life.

"Where is the dust that has not been alive?
The spade, the plough, disturb our ancestors;
From human mould we reap our daily bread.
The globe around earth's hollow surface shakes,
And is the ceiling of her sleeping sons."

The Pharaohs of Egypt sought to perpetuate their dust in a rocky immortality, but they could not. Even those massive and stupendous pyramids were too feeble

to hold the monarchs' ashes, that they should not frustrate the designs of selfishness and go forth in generous servitude, to do for ages coming what they had done for ages past..

But let two things be distinctly remembered ;-first, no matter is annihilated. Every particle that shall compose our bodies when entombed, will be in existence on the resurrection morning, and the eye of Omniscience will know where to find it. Secondly, the same power which could mould this matter into so many earthly shapes, and make it subservient to so many earthly purposes, can transform it into celestial bodies, and thus make it subservient to the purposes of immortal spirits.

The doctrine of the resurrection is this,―That at the end of the world the almighty power of Christ will transform the dust of all the dead into immortal bodies. These bodies will be spiritualized; not strictly immaterial, for then they would not be bodies. They will be made "like unto" spirit as distinguished from the grossness, clumsiness, sensuality, and decay of these earthly bodies. The bodies of the saints will be like that of Christ, of ineffable beauty and transcendent glory.

And now for the proof of this doctrine. As it has been so confidently urged that science is against it, I shall consider it, first, in the light of science, and then in the light of Scripture.

The argument from science would be needless, but for the fact that the utter incompatibility of the doctrine of a literal resurrection with natural philosophy