heard in the city of his God confirms his diligence and animates his hope. He takes the experience of others, and proceeds upon the supposition that it may be made his own. And it is made his own. Through faith the same wonders are wrought. Through prayer the same mercies are obtained. The same promises are accomplished, the same assistances communicated, the same victories achieved. And as the man remembers how his spirit glowed at the mention of noble things done on behalf of the righteous; how the records of good men's lives soothed him, and cheered him, and excited him; how their prayers taught him to be a suppliant, and their praises moved him to be hopeful; how they seemed to have lived for his instruction, and died for his comfort and then as he feels, how, through treading the same path, and trusting in the same Mediator, he has already obtained a measure, and may expect a yet larger, of the blessings wherewith they were blessed of their God-oh, his language will be that of our text; and he will join, heart and soul, with those who are confessing, as we have heard, so have we seen, in the city of our God." ९९ There will be a yet finer use of these words: they shall be woven into a nobler than the noblest earthly chant. Are we deceiving men, are we merely sketching ideal pictures, to whose beauty and brilliancy there is nothing correspondent in future realities, when we expatiate on the glories of heaven, and task imagination to build its palaces, and portray its inhabitants? Yes, in one sense we deceive them: they are but ideal pictures which we draw. What human pencil can delineate scenes in which God manifests his presence? What human coloring emulate the effulgence which issues from his throne? But we deceive them only through inability to rise sufficiently high; we exhaust imagination, but not the thousandth part is told. They are deceived, only if they think we tell them all, if they take the pictures which we draw as perfect representations of the majesty of the future. When we speak to them of the deep and permanent repose of heaven; when we enlarge on the manifestations of Deity; when we declare that Christ, as "the Minister of the Sanctuary," will unfold to his church the mysteries which have perplexed them; when we gather together what is gorgeous, and precious, and beautiful, in the visible creation, and crowd it into the imagery wherewith we delineate the final home of the saints; when we take the sun from the firmament, that the Lord God may shine there, and remove all temples from the city, that the Almighty may be its Sanctuary, and hush all human minstrelsy, that the immense tide of song may roll from thousand times ten thousand voices-we speak only the words of truth and soberness, though we have not compassed the greatness, nor depicted the loveliness, of the portion which awaits the disciples of Christ. If there be one passage of Scripture which we may venture to put into the lips of redeemed men in glory, it is our text; in this instance, we may be confident that the change from earth to heaven will not have made the language of the one unsuited to the other. Oh, as the shining company take the circuit of the celestial city; as they "walk about Zion, and go round about her," telling the towers thereof, marking well her bulwarks, and considering her palaces; who can doubt that they say one to another, "as we have heard, so have we seen in the city of our God!" We heard that here ९९ the wicked cease from troubling," and now we behold the deep rich calm. We heard that here we should be with the Lord, and now we see him face to face. We heard that here we should know, and now the ample page of universal truth is open to our inspection. We heard that here, with the crown on the head, and the harp in the hand, we should execute the will, and hymn the praises, of our God, and now we wear the diadem, and wake the melody. They can take to themselves the words which the dying leader Joshua used of the Israelites, "not one thing hath failed of all the good things which the Lord our God spake concerning us; all are come to pass, and not one thing hath failed thereof." Shall it be said of any amongst our selves, that they heard of heaven, but made no effort to behold it? Is there one who can be indifferent to the an ven. God is summoning you. Angels nouncement of its glories, one who can SERMON IV. THE GENERAL RESURRECTION AND JUDGMENT '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: they that have done good unto the resurrection of life, and they that have done evil unto the resurrection of damnation."-St. John, 5:28, 29. You will at once perceive that these words of our Savior are not to be understood without a reference to those by which they are preceded. They show that surprise was both felt and expressed at something which he had just said; for they are a direction to his audience not to marvel, or wonder, at what he had affirmed, seeing that he had to state what was yet more astonishing. If you examine the context of the passage, you will find that our Lord had been speaking of the effects which should follow upon belief of his word, and that he had used language in regard of those effects, which borrowed its imagery from death and a resurrection. This surprised and displeased his hearers. They could not understand how the word of Christ could possess such a power as he had claimed; and they perhaps even doubted whether the new creation of which he spake, the quickening of souls "dead in trespasses and sins," ever took place. It was to meet these feelings, which he perceived stirring in their minds, that Christ proceeded to address them in the words of our text. "Marvel not at this." As though he had said, you are staggered at what I have declared, fancying it incredible, or, at least, far beyond my power. But I have a yet more wonderful thing of which to tell you, a thing that shall be done by myself, though requiring still greater might. You are amazed that I should speak of raising those who are morally dead; but "marvel not at this; for the hour is coming, in which all that are in the graves shall hear my voice." This appears to us the true account of our Lord's reasoning. The resurrection of the body, the calling from the graves those who had long slumbered therein, is represented as a more wonderful thing than what had just excited the amazement of the Jews. And thus the passage sets, as we think, the resurrection of the body under a most imposing point of view, making it the great prodigy in God's dealings with our race. That there is nothing else to marvel at, in comparison of the resurrection of the dead-this seems to us the assertion of Christ, and such assertion demands a most careful consideration. Of course, independently on this assertion, there is a great deal in the passage which affords material for profitable meditation, seeing that the whole business of the last audit is summarily, but strikingly, described. The remarkable feature, however, of the text is undoubtedly that of its making the resurrection of the body the first of all marvels; and it is, therefore, to the illustration of this that we shall give our chief care, though not to the exclusion of the more general truths affirmed by our Lord. Now we are accustomed to think, and, doubtless, with justice, that there is an affinity between God and our souls, but nothing of the kind between God and our bodies. We do not indeed presume to speak of the human soul, any more than of the human body, as having congeniality, or sameness of nature, with the great first cause, the self-existent Deity. But we may venture to declare that all the separation which there is between the soul and the body, is an advance towards the nature of God, so that the soul, inasmuch as it is spiritual, far more nearly resembles the divine Being than the body, inasmuch as it is material And when we reach this conclusion, we are at a point from which to view with great amazement the resurrection of the body. So long as a divine interference is limited to the soul, we may be said to be prepared, at least in a degree, for whatever can be told us of its greatness and disinterestedness. We attach a dignity to the soul, which, though it could not, after there had been sin, establish any claim to the succors of God, seems to make it, if not to be expected, yet not to be wondered at, that it was not abandoned to degradation and ruin. The soul is so much more nearly of the same nature with God than the body, that a spiritual resurrection appears a thousandfold more likely than a corporeal. And you are to observe that there is nothing in the nature of the case, to make it clear to us, that, if the soul were redeemed, so also must be the body. The ordinary current of thought and feeling may almost be said to be against the redemption of the body. The body is felt to be an incumbrance to the soul, hindering it in its noblest occupations, and contributing nothing to its most elevated pleasure. So far from the soul being incapable of happiness, if detached from the body, it is actually its union with the body, which, to all appearance, detains it from happiness; so that, in its finest and loftiest musings, its exclamation often is, "O that I had wings like a dove, for then would I flee away and be at rest!" Even now the soul is often able to rise above the body, to detach itself, for a while, from matter, and to soar into regions which it feels to be more its home than this earth. And when compelled to return from so splendid an excursion, there is a sentiment of regret that it must still tabernacle in flesh; and it is conscious of longing for a day when it may finally abandon its perishable dwelling. Thus there is nothing of a felt necessity for the re-union of the soul to the body, to guide us in expecting the corporeal as well as the spiritual resurrection. We might almost affirm that the feeling is all the other way. And though, through some fine workings of reason, or, through attention to lingering traces of patriarchal religion, men, destitute of the light of revelation, have reached a persuasion of the soul's im mortality, never have they formed even a conjecture of the body's resurrection. They have imaged to themselves the spirit, which they felt burning and beating within them, emancipated from thraldom, and admitted into a new and eternal estate. But they have consigned the body to the interminable dishonors of the grave; and never, in the boldest imaginings, whether of their philosophy or their poetry, have they thrown life into the ashes of the sepulchre. It is almost the voice of nature, that the soul survives death: the soul gives its own testimony, and often so impressively, that a man could as easily doubt his present as his future existence. But there is no such voice put forth in regard of the body; no solemn and mysterious whisperings are heard from its resting-place, the echo of a truth which seems syllabled within us, that bone shall come again to bone, and sinews bind them, and skin cover them, and breath stir them. link of association with the lowest of observing how his hearers were surprised, because he had spoken of the spiritually dead as quickened by his word, he might well say unto them, marvel not at this," and give as his reason, ९९ for the hour is coming, in which all that are in the graves shall hear my voice." And we may safely argue, that, if the immortality of the soul be an article of natural theology, but the resur-ins, and gloriously reconstructed. Yes, rection of the body were never even thought of by the most profound of its disciples, there can be no feeling in man that the matter, as well as the spirit, of which he is composed, must reappear in another state of being, in order either to the possibility or the felicity of his existence. So that-for this is the point to which our remarks tend-we may declare of the resurrection of the body, that it is altogether an unexpected fact, one which no exercise of reason could have led us to conjecture, and for which there is not even that natural longing which might be interpreted into an argument of its probability. It is not then when God interposes on behalf of the soul, it is when he interposes on behalf of the body, that the great cause is given for amazement. A spark, one might almost call it, of himself, an emanation from his own immortality, mighty in its powers, mysterious in its wanderings, sublime in its anticipations, we scarcely wonder that a spiritual thing like the soul should engage the carefulness of its Maker, and that, if it sully its brightness, and mar its strength, he should provide for its final recovery. But the body-matter, which is man's Now, throughout this examination of the truth, that the resurrection of the body furnishes, in an extraordinary degree, cause of wonder and surprise, we have made no reference to the display of divine power which this resurrection must present. We have simply enlarged on what may be called the unexpectedness of the event, proving this unexpectedness from the inferiority of matter, its utter want of affinity to Deity, and the feelings of even man himself in regard to its detracting from his dignity and happiness. But we do not know, that, in the whole range of things effected by God, there is aught so surprising, regard being had only to the power displayed, as the resurrection of the body. If you will ponder, for a few moments, the facts of a resurrection, you will probably allow that the power which must be exerted in order to the final recon struction of every man's body, is more signal than that displayed in any spiritual renovation, or in any of those operations which we are able to trace in the visible universe. You are just to think that this framework of flesh, in which my soul is now enclosed, will be reduced at death to the dust from which it was taken. I cannot tell where or what will be my sepulchre-whether I shall sleep in one of the quiet churchyards of my own land, or be exposed on some foreign shore, or fall a prey to the beasts of the desert, or seek a tomb in the depths of the unfathomable waters. But an irreversible sentence has gone forth-" dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt return"-and assuredly, ere many years, and perhaps even ere many days have elapsed, must my "earthly house of this tabernacle be dissolved," rafter from rafter, beam from beam, and the particles, of which it has been curiously compounded, be separated from each other, and perhaps scattered to the four winds of heaven. And who will pretend to trace the wanderings of these particles, into what other substances they may enter, of what other bodies they may form part so as to appear and disap-surrection. Thus myriads upon myripear many times in living shape before the dawn of the great Easter of the universe? There is manifestly the most thorough possibility, that the elements of which my body is composed, may have belonged to the bone and flesh of successive generations; and that, when I shall have passed away and be forgotten, they will be again wrought into the structure of animated beings. of none but myself, if it were only in my solitary case that a certain portion of matter had thus to be watched, kept distinct though mingled, and appropriated to myself whilst belonging to others. But try to suppose the same holding good of every human being, of Adam, and each member of his countless posterity, and see whether the resurrection will not utterly confound and overburden the mind. To every individual in the interminable throng shall his own body be given, a body so literally his own, that it shall be made up, to at least a certain extent, of the matter which composed it whilst he dwelt on this earth. And yet this matter may have passed through innumerable changes. It may have circulated through the living tribes of many generations; or it may have been waving in the trees of the forest; or it may have floated on the wide waters of the deep. But there has been an eye upon it in all its appropriations, and in all its transformations; so that, just as though it had been indelibly stamped, from the first, with the name of the human being to whom it should finally belong, it has been unerringly reserved for the great day of re And when you think that my body, at the resurrection, must have at least so much of its original matter, as shall be necessary for the preservation of identity, for the making me know and feel myself the very same being who sinned, and suffered, and was disciplined on earth, you must allow that nothing short of infinite knowledge and power could prevail to the watching, and disentangling, and keeping duly separate, whatever is to be again builded into a habitation for my spirit, so that it may be brought together from the four ends of the earth, detached from other creatures, or extracted from other substances. This would be indeed a wonderful thing, if it were true ads of atoms-for you may count up till imagination is wearied, and then reckon that you have but one unit of the still inapproachable sum-myriads upon myriads of atoms, the dust of kingdoms, the ashes of all that have lived, are perpetually jostled, and mingled, and separated, and animated, and swept away, and reproduced, and, nevertheless, not a solitary particle but holds itself ready, at the sound of the last trump, to combine itself with a multitude of others, in a human body in which they once met perhaps a thousand years before. We frankly own that this appears to us among the most inscrutable of wonders. That God should have produced countless worlds, and that he should marshal all their motions, as they walk the immensity of his empire-it is an amazing contemplation; and the mind cannot compass the greatness of a power which had only to speak and it was done, and which hath ever since upheld its own magnificent creation, in all the grandeur of its structures, and in all the harmony of its relations. But, |