its despair, and preserve its high and ministrative functions. What has Christ done for civilization? He secured free action for the mainspring of civilization. Get down to its heart and there you will find the brooding, creative spirit of Christ, filling it with hope and strength.

By what mighty arguments are we thus led up to Christ? Come, then, all ye who are in bondage to the fear of death; and ye who have laid away beloved ones in the sleep called death, and ye who are cherishing seeds of sin that make death real, come all to Christ, sit at his feet, believe on Him; be one with Him; and as He lives, ye shall live also, and shall never die.

THE

RESURRECTION FROM THE DEAD.

"Then long eternity shall greet our bliss

With an individual kiss."

MILTON, On Time.

"Then, soul, live thou upon thy servant's loss,
And let that pine to aggravate thy store;
Buy terms divine in selling hours of dross;
Within be fed, without be rich no more;

So shalt thou feed on Death, that feeds on men,
And, Death once dead, there's no more dying then."
SHAKESPEARE, Sonnet cxlvi.

"This wonderfully woven life of ours shall not be broken by death in a single strand of it; shall run on and on, an unbroken life, upheld by the will of the Eternal. Death cannot break it, but it shall change it. It shall draw from it all perishable dross. While the life remains the same, some elements of which its strands are woven shall be changed; instead of the silver cord shall be the thread of gold; for the corruptible shall be the incorruptible; and there shall be no more entanglement and imperfection, no more strain upon any strand of it; the flesh shall not chafe against the spirit, nor the spirit against the flesh, but there shall be at last the one perfectly accorded, incorruptible, and beautiful life." -REV. NEWMAN SMYTH, Old Faiths in New Lights, page 366.

THE RESURRECTION FROM THE DEAD.

"He is not here; for He is risen, even as IIe said." — ST. MATTHEW xxviii. 6.

"If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body."-1 COR. XV. 44.

THE doctrine of immortality and the doctrine of resurrection from the dead stand somewhat in the same relation as a block of marble to a finished statue. The Christian doctrine of resurrection is the natural fact of immortality wrought into shape. We may know there is a statue in the marble, but how beautiful it may be, in what grace of posture it may stand, what emblems may hang upon its neck or crown its head, what spirit may breathe from its features, we do not know till the inspired sculptor has uncovered his ideal and brought it to light. The analogy may go farther. As an artist works a mass of marble into a statue, putting mental conceptions and meanings into it that are no part of the marble, so Christ has given a divine shape to immortality and filled it with beautiful suggestions and gracious meaning. We see in the statue the mind of the sculptor as well as the marble; so in the doctrine of the resurrection we see the mind and purpose of Christ as well as the bare fact of future existence.