clearness; it is overclouded by exhalations that rise out of the physical order to which we are linked. Hence I would not attempt to convince one skeptical of immortality through his reason alone. But when the spiritual nature is brought into exercise, it generates not only a faith in eternal life, but reasons for it. When life begins to be true, it announces itself as an eternal thing to the mind; as a caged bird when let loose into the sky might say: Now I know that my wings are made to beat the air in flight; and no logic could ever persuade the bird that it was not designed to fly; but when caged, it might have doubted, at times, as it beat the bars of its prison with unavailing stroke, if its wings were made for flight. So it is not until a man begins to use his soul aright that he knows for what it is made. When he puts his life into harmony with God's laws; when he begins to pray; when he clothes himself with the graces of Christian faith and conduct-love, humility, self-denial, service; when he begins to live out of, and unto, his spiritual nature, he begins to realize what life is, a reality that death and time cannot touch. But when his life is made up of the world, it is not strange that it should seem to himself as liable to perish with the world. Hence we are not to regard the prevailing general belief in future existence as a genuine faith in immortality; this is the product alone of spiritual life. Christ made no recognition of immortality, except in connection with faith, and by faith He meant the result of faith, righteous character.

Those who believe have everlasting life.

Others may exist, but existence is not life. Others may continue to exist, but continuance is not immortality. Here we find the significance, and the self-witnessing reality of the miracles in which Christ raised the dead. They are specimens of his universal work, a dramatic setting forth of the process of life He is bringing to light, an overflow of the fullness of life behind the veil, dawn-streaks of a sun not yet risen. But these pre-resurrections, these interruptions of the course and order of death, are wrought only in an atmosphere of faith; and thus He asserts that life has no value, except as it is linked with goodness. Of what avail to restore one to life, unless it be to life indeed! To have brought forward these images of the resurrection upon a background of sin and unbelief, would have been a discord; the drama of eternal righteousness that He is enacting in living ways would thus have no unity. Not even in hint, or symbol, not even to do a work of apparent mercy, will He deal with life, except in connection with morality. He will have nothing to do with bare existence, that stands forever fixed in the sure order of creation; when it is under sin, He will not recognize it as life. To lift men out of existence into life, was his mission.

Christ not only gave us the true law of immortality, but was Himself a perfect illustration of it, and even named Himself by it- the Life. It is a great thing for us that this truth of immortality has been put into actual fact. Human nature is crowded with hints and omens of it, but prophecy does not convince till it is fulfilled. And from the divine

side also we get assurances of endless life; but in so hard a matter we are like Thomas, who needed the sight and touch to assure him. And in Christ we have both, - the human omen and the divine promise turned into fact. In some of the cathedrals of Europe, on Christmas-eve, two small lights, typifying the divine and human nature, are gradually made to approach one another until they meet and blend, forming a bright flame. Thus, in Christ, we have the light of two worlds thrown upon human destiny. Death, as the extinction of being, cannot be associated with Him; He is life, its fullness and perfection, and perfect life must be stronger than death. The whole bearing of Christ towards death, and his treatment of it, was as one superior to it, and as having no lot nor part in it. He will indeed bow his head and cease to breathe in obedience to the physical laws of the humanity He shares, but already He enters the gates of Paradise, not alone but leading a penitent child of humanity by the hand. And in order that we may know He simply changed worlds, He comes back and shows Himself alive; for He is not here in the world simply to assert truth, but to enact it. And still further to show us how phantasmal death is, He finally departs in all the fullness of life, simply drawing about Himself the thin drapery of a cloud.

I cannot close without directing your attention to a lesson implied in all that has been said, namely, a true and satisfying sense of immortality must be achieved. It cannot be taken second-hand. We cannot read it in the pages of a book, whether of

nature or inspiration. We cannot even look upon the man Jesus issuing from the tomb, and draw from thence a faith that yields peace. There must be fellowship with the Christ of the resurrection before we can feel its power; in other words, we must get over upon the divine side of life before we can be assured of eternal life. A full predication of immortality can only be made through the moral and spiritual faculties. It is because we are, in part, under the dominion of the world, and worldly sense, and worldly maxims, that we doubt, or see dimly; we are like Milton's "tawny lion " in creation, fully formed in head, and "pawing to get free his hinder parts," which are still one with the dust of the earth; or like the Sphinx, of human head and the body of an animal, —

"Gazing right onward with calm, eternal eyes;"

intelligent of eternity, yet linked to perishable nature. And so there are two voices within us: the voice of our earthly nature and the voice of the spirit, and they utter conflicting words. It is our business in life to silence one, and give full ear to the other. By humility, by self-denial, by unworldliness, by spiritual thought, by devout aspiration, by silent communion with God, we grow into an abiding sense of eternal life. "Join thyself," says Augustine, "to the eternal God, and thou wilt be eternal." Just in the degree in which we attain height of spiritual nature are we able to predicate immortality of ourselves. It is not a thing announced by any "Lo here" or "Lo there," but is

within us, the fruit of faith, the achievement of spiritual endeavor. It will be strong or weak, steady or fluctuating, just in the degree in which our life is rooted in the eternal verities of God's kingdom. Yet it will ever be a matter of degree so long as faith is weighted with present conditions; a matter of degree, yet doubt ever lessening to the vanishing point of nothingness, and faith growing towards the fullness of utter knowledge; as one climbing a mountain sees an ever-widening horizon, till, upon the summit, he beholds the circle of visible things melt into the infinity of space.