PRAYER BEFORE THE SERMON.

We draw near to thee, with humble boldness, our best Friend, and highest. With thee is all power and all discernment. With thee is all goodness. Infinitely more tender art thou than man knows how to be. For the human soul is a desert, parched, that bears no good thing; but thou hast an everlasting garden on which comes no winter. Thou art infinite in all excellence, beautiful in holiness, standing above all conception of man---beyond all power to conceive. Thou art the One overflowing with excellence, which is imparted to all that are near, and that can receive the joy, the light, the life, the love, of all that are garnered in heaven. Toward that blissful centre tend all things that are good. Time, that sifts all things, shall collect and bring to thee whatever is worth preserving in all the wide outlying realms of universal being. And thou art the Father, the best Companion, the nearest Friend. Thou art the One most suited to all the moods and exigencies of the human heart. And though there are gradations of being infinite, and those that reach nearer to the companionship of the Almighty than we do, yet thou dost condescend unto us; nor dost thou stop upon the outskirt where they are that have reached the highest, with the noblest endowments. Thou dost also dwell with the broken in spirit, with the humble, and with the contrite ones. Thou dost love, not because of our excellence, but because of the stores of lovingness that are in thy nature. Thou dost come to us as the day comes, that does not seek out the things that are the fairest, but rests upon all things, and makes them fair in its own beauty. And so is thy righteousness unto us, which covers our imperfection and homeliness. In thee we become gracious and beauteous. All our good is of God. Thou art perpetually sending forth that influence which should create us into true holiness. We bless thee for what thou art, and for what thou hast revealed of thyself. And we are glad to believe that this is but the beginning; that we know but the alphabet; and that though even this little so transcends the measure of human experience that we can scarcely take it in, yet, forever and forever, in ascending vision, we shall still find thee out, and forever there shall be more to be known than has been compassed. Thou art infinite; and in our immortality we shall not exhaust thee. And we rejoice that we may call ourselves the sons of such a God; and that we may, with humble boldness, draw near to obtain mercy and help in every time of need. And we come, this morning, because there is no hour and there is no moment that has not its need. We need thee for sanctification. We need thee to instruct us and to warn us. We need thee to rebuke us and to chastise us. We need thee in thy providences, in our own volitions, in every home experience, in all our work and way of life. And we rejoice in that fullness of providence, and in that divinity of providence, by which we are still with God.

We pray, this morning, that in every heart there may arise gratitude and thanksgiving for all the mercies of the past. And may every heart lift up a consecrating fervor to-day for the future. May we desire to be more truly thine than we have ever been; and may we lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily_beset us, and run with patience the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the Author and Finisher of our faith. May we behold him in all things, and always behold him, and live in him, so that there shall be but one life-thine in us, and ours in thee.

Wilt thou bless this congregation, and look upon all that are gathered here from diverse ways, but that have one nature, pointing in one direction -toward the great future. We all march together. Grant that it may be under one banner, and to the sound of one voice. And we pray that we may be united in fervent faith. And grant that in the great union of hearts in the love of God, and in the hope of immortality, we may stand more to rejoice in this unity than to look upon the things which dissever us out

wardly. Oh! may we be ashamed, as a part of the universal church, that we suffer the figments of our own imagination, the inventions of our own hearts, to dissever the body of Christ. May we look upon God; and knowing that love is greater than all other things, and that all thy people are united in love to God and in love to man, may we refuse to thrust away our brethren, or to be separated from them. And still, though in outward life walls and partitions are built up, grant that there may be that fervor of love which shall fly over every wall. And as birds find each other in the upper air, loosed from the entangling thicket, so may thy people of every name fly high enough to reach each other when they reach their God. And so may there be spreading upon the earth the one living, blessed church of God, and the union of all true hearts.

We pray that thou wilt bless thy cause in every form. Wilt thou advance civilization throughout the globe. Wilt thou lift up the poor, the naked and the needy, from the outskirts of creation. Grant, we pray thee, that barbarism may cease, and that civilization may take its place, and that superstition may pass away, and that a true religion of love may be breathed upon all hearts. May wars cease, and therefore the provocations of war. May oppression pass away, and may the glory of the Lord arise and shine in all the earth.

We thank thee for the great things that thou hast done in our day and generation, for the regeneration of this nation. We had not hoped to live to see the day of emancipation. We had not expected to behold that wondrous work which thou hast done, and by which thy name shall be glorified for ever and for ever.

We thank thee for the mercies which thou hast granted to this nation, and that after so great and cruel a war such peace hath come, in such measure, upon the land; and that the channels of industry are filled again; and that prosperity comes with the seasons over the continent. Still be our God, as thou wast our fathers'. Let us not provoke thee by our sins. May we humble ourselves, and cleanse our hands, and learn to do justly, and to live rightly. And so we pray that we may have peace in our time.

Bless, we pray thee, all the nations which struggle for their liberties. Strike on the side of the weak that are right, against the strong that are wrong. And we pray that thou wilt overturn in all the earth till He whose right it is shall come and reign. And to the Father, the Son and the Spirit, shall be praises everlasting. Amen.

PRAYER AFTER THE SERMON.

Our heavenly Father, we pray that thou wilt bless us. Out of the wealth of thine own nature, pour upon the poverty of ours. For we are the sand that has nothing, and thou art the cloud that is full and waiting to drop down fatness. Grant, we pray thee, to all that are whelmed by influences which are greater than their own resolution, the mighty strivings of thy spirit. May none grieve the Spirit of God by which he is filled. May every one hear God calling him to holiness, to glory, to immortality. And grant, we pray thee, that there may be many who, instead of being enemies, may be sons, rejoicing in the Lord, and in the full liberty of the household of faith. Wilt thou bless us while we sing again. Go home with us. when life is over, bring us home with thee. Which we ask for Christ's sake. Amen.

And

ALL HAIL!

"As they went to tell his disciples, behold, Jesus met them, saying, All hail. And they came, and held him by the feet, and worshipped him. Then said Jesus unto them, Be not afraid: go tell my brethren, that they go into Galilee, and there shall they see me."-Matt, xxviii. 9, 10.

It seems appropriate that on such a day as this, we should turn aside from a more formal discourse, and review, with some familiarity, the scenes, or some part of the scenes, which transpired upon the oocasion which all the world joyfully celebrate to-day.

We have selected, for our opening sentence, the first words which our Master spake, and which are recorded. They are the words of cheer and of hope. He brought from the grave with him no chill. He came back from death with no message of terror. He had been in the spirit-land, and in the spirit of it had returned again most companionable, to recognize his friends, to pity their weakness, to reassure them with love and confidence, and to fill them with joy.

All the circumstances of our Lord's return are full of exquisite beauty. The things omitted, as well as the things told, are worthy of note. The sepulchre was shut. And during his sleep no word is spoken. There is no dwelling upon the morbid features of his death. The whole description of our Lord's crucifixion is sublimely abstinent and simple. A few strong lines are drawn upon the dark and stormy background, and the main features stand out never to be forgotten. Beyond that there is no attempt at effect-nothing minute-no stroke after stroke to work up the effect. He is laid away quietly; and just enough incidental record is given to enable our imagination to follow the events and not always to follow them consecutively. There is many a gap to be filled up. There are some things that we cannot were irreconcilable, but simply because some link was left untouched. There is a sublime carelessness in the record.

reconcile not because they

:

He was conveyed by loving hands-though not by those of his dis ciples-to his rest in the rock-hewn sepulchre. Nothing more is said. How he was borne in, what tears fell upon him, what lamentations

EASTER SUNDAY MORNING, April 17, 1870. LESSON: MATT. XXVII. 62–66; XXVIII. 1-10; LUKE XXIV. 9-11. HYMNS (Plymouth Collection): No. 255. Te Deum. No. 296.

there might have been, we are not told; nor anything of his condition while lying there. No light is held, by the record, at the sacred portal, to reveal the form that lies muffled within. It might have heightened some dramatic interest: it was deemed, however, not profitable to deal in this matter. Nor are we shown the act of the resurrection itself.. In none of the narratives is the precise time of the first act given, nor any approaching symptoms of emotion. All that we know is reflected from the experience of those outside. There is no revelation, by a line, of what went on within. Nor has the Master ever spoken a syllable of his own experience. All that is recorded from his lips is of the most general character. He speaks of the past in the most generic manner. He never specializes, never details, and never draws out at length any one experience. Had we, that are of an inquisitive temper, with a habit of analyzing our own experiences and those of others, and with the philosophic curiosity which is so common to our agehad we been in the disciples' place, we should have asked a thousand questions of our Lord respecting his sufferings; of his thoughts while suffering; of his state after death; as to where his spirit roamed, or went; of his resurrection to life; of the power by which it was ef fected; of his earliest thought in rising from his bier. But none of all these things ever appear to have been asked, and certainly to them no answer was given. At any rate, there is no trace, there is no record, of any.

The time, however, is to be noticed. For, in reading of what the affectionate women did, we learn what was the period of our Lord's resurrection. No stress is laid upon the fact; no effort is made to set forth the divine reappearance in the dawning light of the early morning; but it is said, not with reference to Christ, but in explanation of the women's conduct, that it was between dark and light that Christ came again. "As it began to dawn," says one; "When it was yet dark," says another; "Very early in the morning," says a third; and all of them are descriptive of the dawn of day out of the darkness of night. Long before men came forth to work; before the air was berdened with noises; just as the first tentative notes of waking birds began to be heard; while the leaf unshaken was yet loaded with dew; while nature was cool, and pure, and tender, as if newly made-in this early morning hour it was, that Christ came forth into newness of life from the sepulchre.

Think what you will of it, I never stand in a summer's morning before the sun dawns, long before waked by birds, to look out upon the yet dim and dusky landscape, that I do not think that this is the hour of resurrection. As the night held the day, but could not long hold it, and unclasped its dark arms to let forth the morning again, so