without a Helper to assist, or a promise to cheer. “If ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live” (Rom. viii. 13). Such shall not be

like the thorny ground, where the seed was choked. Grace will keep sin from í having dominion; and faith, through grace, will“ overcome the world,” and

“ crucify the flesh with the affections and lusts." The most heavenly minded I Christian must look down after the weeds, as well as look up to the throne. In

the same breath it is said, “ Seek those things which are above," and, “Mortify your members which are upon the earth” (Col. iii. 1-5).

How humble, how watchful, how prayerful should the Christian be! The thought that even in that heart, which may be compared to good ground e bringing forth a plenteous crop the seeds of evil are still abundantly found,

should lay us low in self-abasement, and cause us to“ pray without ceasing," and to watch as well as pray. What reason have we to distrust ourselves, to renounce our best services, and to cling to the only perfect One. And should

it not induce us to submit to all God's dealings and chastenings? Well hath 's the poet sung,

« God in Israel sows the seeds
Of affliction, pain, and toil :
These spring up, and choke the weeds,

Which would else o'erspread the soil. The husbandman, we know, uses sharp instruments to cut up the weeds; nor is the fire spared when needed : and thus God acts to make his people more fruitful.

Let us take one more glance at the fruitful field at first contemplated, and learn therefrom what, through grace, a Christian may attain to, and what he should honestly and heartily aim at. Has not the believer good reason to to expect that his soul, his life, his character, may become as this fair field is

beautiful, uniform, and useful; honourable to God, and a pattern to others ? Bo And what he hopes for he should aim at. Hope is proved to be genuine by its

activity. “Every man that hath this hope,” even a hope of glorifying God here by fruitfulness, as well as being perfectly like Christ hereafter,“ will

purify himself, even as He is pure." Let us also ever bear in mind who hath abu said, “Herein is my Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit; 80 shall ye be to my disciples."

Ipswich.

CHRIST THE RESURRECTION AND THE LIFE.*

BY THE LATE REV. E. L. HULL, B.A.

“I am the Resurrection and the Life."-John xi, 25. EVERY one who considers the circum- | She believed that her brother would rise instances under which these words were again “in the resurrection at the last day;"

spoken, must feel that Christ meant them but she had found that belief too vague and s to express the great truth that should distant to bear the overwhelming pressure

henceforth cheer the sorrow and illuminate of her sorrow. Our Saviour was about to the darkness of the grave. They were raise her brother, but he told her not of spoken to a woman who stood heart. | that. He spoke of a truth without which broken before the veiled mystery of death. I the resurrection of the dead to this

strange, confused world, would have been having established his throne in the dead, a poor consolation. He pointed her from stands defiantly face to face with the so a dead brother to a living Friend ; from a l of man. Here, therefore, the problem of remote resurrection to a present Redeemer; the ages - the dark question of the work. and his words told her of a life in Him 1 -stands in his path, and demands a reply. which would rise through death into a For thousands of years men had looked more grand and perfect being. If, then, into the unutterable darkness of the tomb on the threshold of his rightiest miracle, and asked in agony, “What does it mean? Christ said to that sorrowing sister, “ The Is not Death the conqueror ? Has not life Resurrection and the Life are in me," is it burnt itself out into cold grey ashes there, not evident that be meant that to express to be rekindled no more? Is not that the the truth which explained the meaning of end, the mournful end of it all ?" And death, and lighted up its profoundest for all the ages the generations of sorrow gloom?

stricken men had stood with rending I want you now, while our hearts are | hearts, passionately asking of the awful awed and saddened by a recent and startling stillness, whither the vanished soula had death, to try and look steadily at the great gone; crying to great Death to tell them light of life which, from this sublime saying whether the fair companionships of earth of our Lord, streams through all the mys were broken for ever; praying fortery of our sorrow.

« The touch of a vanished band. By way of introduction to its depth of

And the sound of a voice that was still;" meaning, let us begin by placing ourselves for a few moments in the scene where it and fearing that in that dim other world was first spoken: for in the act of raising the departed would know no more their Lazarus, Christ expounded his own truth ancient friendships, and had entered into and showed visibly how the "Resurrection the eternal secret with a "Farewell, for ever and the Life" were in him.

farewell.” Standing, then, by that grave, the first I say these two mighty questions thing that strikes us is, that Christ's What is Death ? Can it rend the friend greatest utterance on death was spoken on ships of life ? were questions that at the the first occasion on which its dark ques- tomb of his friend confronted the Re tion had come closely to his own soul. deemer. And now, come close to the Elsewhere he had gone to meet death grave, and listen for his reply. Sheddini here it had come to meet him. That quiet his tears for the common woe of man. household at Bethany had often been a | groaning iu his spirit in sympathy with the region of congenial retirement after the groan of all his creatures, he approaches tumult of the great unfriendly city. There, the tomb. His calm, majestic voice sounds when the glowing Eastern day was burning through the sepulchral gloom into the un into evening, and the cool shadows fell known land, and the dead hears it; and be from the hills over the silent village, he comes, life lighting the eye, mantling ca had spoken his thoughts to a little band of the brow, streaming through every nerve Joving disciples, and in rest fitted himself and muscle of his once rigid frame ; and for the cares and toils of the morrow. Into | loosed from the shroud, he goes to be that inner circle of his friendship death home. There was Christ's answer to the had dared to come, and dash its awful great question of death that had cruiken question against the Saviour's heart. Elae. his path ; and now observe the meaning where, too, he had rebuked its power when which that miracle throws on the truth # life had just left the body, and seemed yet was meant to expound_“I am the Reset lingering on the threshold of the house of rection and the Life." Christ showed thai clay. The daughter of Jairus lay sleeping there was in him a life which death had D with the rosy flush of life fading like twi: power to destroy, a life which in desti light from her brow, when he called it found its resurrection into greater fulness back into a morning of light and beauty and freedom. Death had not sundere: The widow's son was moving towards his Lazarus from Jesus : through resurrectior burial, when he made the freezing tides of it had brought him nearer in reverentia life start afresh through that cold, sleeping | love. It had not divided him from bs frame. But here, death has gained com- sisters : it had made the ties of affection plete possession. Lazarus is in the tomb, 1 more strong and holy than they had ever and the great foe in his ghastliest form, | been before. It had not quenched one

faculty of his being; for to him every 1 path of our progress, while on every side a power of sight, and speech, and hearing, thousand outward forces tend to quench would be more sacred and noble than they the love of Christ within. Nay, so intense were in his former life. In one word, and permanent is that battle, that unless Christ showed this—that there was in him we are progressing we have inevitably a life that rendered death only the gateway begun to decline. No man can reach a through which it rose into life more per point in Christian life in which he can say fect, and holy, and free ; and that is the to himself, “Here I am content to remeaning given by the mirrcle to this great main ;" for in the moment he ceases to saying of our Lord.

struggle onwards he has begun to go back Take the words, then, in the light which into the world. In the valley and on the that scene throws upon them, and see how mountain, through the flood and through in these days they explain to us the mys. the fire, the battle-cry of our life is ever tery, and illuminate the sorrow of the this: “Upwards and onwards still.” And grave. I want to sbow you that in just now you will see how this life cries out for the same sense they are true of every a resurrection, if you obsetve that that perChristian man. It has been beautifully petual struggle is in reality a battle with said, that there is a glorious harmony in death. For sin is death, and death is sin : the words, “resurrection and life." Either death has no other terror. Every day, of them alone would be insufficient; com then, the Christian is fighting with death, bined they are divinely satisfying. If for every power that tries to tear him from Christ had said only, “I am the Resurrec his Saviour is in truth the power of the

tion,” without promising to bestow a new grave. Thus the act of dying is but the I spiritual life, be would have told us merely outward and visible sign of a constant

of misery. To rise again into the life we struggle: it is only the last scene of a battle have now, with its struggle, and care, and that has been as enduring as his life. And failure-to repeat it age after age-what this explains to us that strange combination were this but perpetual conflict and ever. of horror and triumph that we feel in the lasting unrest ? Or if he had said merely, presence of the last foe. We stand beside “I am the Life," without saying, “I am the Christian dead, and in spite of all our the Resurrection, we should still be of all faith we feel that death is something that men most miserable. For if he had given ought not to be ; and, conceal it as we us now spiritual life in the love of God, will, a deep horror of its ghastly presence without raising us after death, we should penetrates our souls : and why? Because have been haunted with grand hopes and death is the shadow of sin, and we feel

infinite aspirations that were destined never that there is the deadly shade of that evil There to be fulfilled. Christ combines the two, which filled the man's life with struggles,

and therefore he tells us, There is in Me a and toils, and tears. But intermingled to life which, by dying, rises to its perfection; with this thrill of horror, there comes as

therefore death is no more death, but re we gaze a feeling of triumph unspeakable surrection to the fulness of life.

and full of glory; and wby? Because the In three ways this is true :

foe is dead, the fight is finished, the victory Our life in Christ is a Battle : through won; while the triumphant expression you is death it becomes a victory. It is a Hope : may so often see on the face of the dead

through death it rises into fulfilment. It Christian combatant, seems to tell of the 1' is a spiritual Fellowship, and by death ineffable victory that has crowned the life3 that Fellowship is made perfect and battle with eternal repose. eternal.

Thus it is that Christ our life is Christ I. Our life in Christ is a Battle: through our resurrection. The life he gives being to death it rises into a victory. You know within us a perpetual battle, demands a

how the beginning of a life of love is the resurrection for its completion, and a reį dawn of a battle-day, that closes only in surrection in Christ makes death the ful.

the night of the grave. The new creature nege of life in victory. in Christ must struggle with the old II. Our life in Christ is a Hope: by

nature that will cleave to it till the sharp death it rises into its consummation. The ť stroke of death cuts them in twain. And grand, all-embracing hope of a Christian

that battle is a daily and hourly thing. spirit is ever this-to see Christ, to be with

We carry within us our perpetual foe. him, to be like him. From the earliest 1 We bear our own temptations along the dawn of the new life, that inextinguishable,

ever.impassioned desire is kindled in the

All our deep communion fails heart, and it deepens until it colours every

To remove that shadowy screen." aspiration, and finds its whole, eternal and until that veil of the body be rent in heaven in the one thought of being “absent twain we shall not see Jesus as he is. from the body and present with the Lord.” | Hence the hope of seeing him is, in its So intense, indeed, is its power, that to the every panting, a longing for the resurrection, Christian time and place are nothing, so It is a cry of the deep eternal life for that long as that hope be even in part fulfilled. | fulness and perfection of its energies which You see this in the first disciples. To can only be reached through dying. And those fishermen the storms that swept the thus again, he who is the Life is the ResurGalilean lake had often been things of rection, for as his death-angel uplifte the terror ; but once Christ came across the veil of the body, the grand hope of life crested wave, and his voice hushed its rises to its fruition in eternal glory. thunder to a great calm; and henceforth III. Our life in Christ is a spiritual every storm would seem holy with the Fellowship : by death it becomes perfect memory of his presence, and there would and eternal. We say that Christian life is be joy even in the wild darkness of the and must be a spiritual fellowship, for no tempest, because they knew that in every man can be constrained by the love of tempest their Lord was emphatically near. Christ without feeling that henceforth he The desert had often seemed to them a is bound by now and holy ties to the strange, unfriendly region, with its perpetual "whole family in earth and heaven." It silence, and its homeless wastes shut in by | is true, that in the solemn change we call the eternal hills ; but once they saw him conversion the human spirit realizes most feed the great multitude there ; and hence, intensely its individuality; it has sins and forth the very wilderness would be sacred sorrows of its own into which no other soul with the memory of the human pity of the can enter, and it stands for a while shiver. Saviour, Mount Tabor had long worn to ing in awful solitude, amid the light of them an aspect of sternness—they had awakened conscience, and under the glance heard the wind moan through its rocky of the eternal God. But wbile in the gorges, and seen the awful scars of the dawn of the new life the soul thus feels its storms of ages on its rugged brow; but individual loneliness, the first flash of the once they beheld there the unveiled glory great conviction, “ Christ loved me, and of the Christ, and heard there the first I gave himself for me," makes it feel that it great hints of the mighty sorrow of Cal, is alone no more-it has entered into the vary: and would not that wild mountain brotherhood of the holy-it hails as fellow. be henceforth a temple as grand and pilgrims all souls who follow in the foot. glorious as the house of stone in old steps of the Saviour, and as fellow-citizens Jerusalem ? And so it has been ever. The all who have reached the eternal home. It felt presence of Jesus has transfigured was just the depth and power of that fel. earth's saddest and gloomiest places, and lowship which, in the first disciples, startled made them holy. The belief that he was the world as a new thing. The world saw there has poured a sacred light into the that between “that glorious band of dense darkness of prisons, diffused an brothers" there was a link holier than the unearthly peace through the cruel tortures common ties of earth, and stronger than of the rack, and filled the martyr's soul the powers of the grave. It might crush with the radiant dawn of paradise even the men, but it could not crush the power while the flames came wildly leaping around of that new fellowship which was extending his outward man. In one word, so intense through every land. It might try to break is the hope of being with Christ in the heart up their union by the sword and the fire, of the Christian, that it matters not where but in vain; for, as the apostle and the he may be, if he feels Christ with him, then martyr passed away, the brethren who reand there he is in heaven.

mained behind said only that they had gone But observe, again, how that hope de the earlier home ; that the link of fellow. mands a resurrection. Here we may have ship had become immortal by death; our transient spiritual visions of the that they were waiting in the Father's Saviour, but we see him only " through a house the reunion of the whole family of glass darkly.”

God. And in these days, though under a “ We are spirits clad in veils :

different form, the fellowship of spiritual Dían, by man, was never seen,

life is as real and as powerful as of old.

It binds men together as brothers still, in, to the world for ever that our communion defiance of the isolating influence of a cor- l shall rise from the shadow of death, having rupt and commercial age. It gives rise to lost nothing but its infirmity, and clothed many a self-sacrifice of which the world in a beauty and blessedness which we must knows nothing, and compels many a man, die to know. Believe, then, death can do for his brethren's sake, to lead in grand nothing to our friendships but give them silence a life which is one daily martyrdom, the perfection for which we vainly sigh and which wastes him to death before his | here. They pass through the burial to time. And now observe once moro how | rise in the fairer colours of an eternal this fellowship, which rises 80 essentiallyspring. The hands we grasped once, and from a Christian life, and attains in it, for whose “ vanished touch” we wept in when real, such marvellous power, demands agony, shall be clasped again in the aga resurrection for its completion. Death surance of an eternal brotherhood. The Beenis to be the great divider. He often voices that grew still, and left a silence unlinks the soonest the hands that were which seemed the very bitterness of death, bound in truest brotherhood, and stills the shall be heard again, only purified from the harmony of voices that were most sweetly notes of sorrow, and resonant with the blended in Christian faith ; and the deepest praises of the Lamb. Yes! and those Christian friendships seem thus only to dying eyes that seemed to watch you with yield the most heart-rending agony, when a tenderness unspeakable, until they looked their holy tie is broken by the iron grasp of beyond your ken, and gazed for one the last foe. But there is in Christian fel strange moment on the vision of the lowship an instinctive belief in, or rather spiritual world, shall gaze on you again, an unconquerable panting for, its own in- filled with the light of a celestial beauty, mortality. No friendship here is perfect, and with a love that shall shed no tears. no sympathy complete; no love ever And only when we walk with the departed reaches the fulness of which it dreams. in those white robes of victory, and feel as And are we to believe that all this fellow- | the seal of our joy that from that heavenly ship is a delusion, a mockery, and a lie ? temple they go out no more-only then, I Are we to believe that God has given us a say, will the life we have in Christ have life in Christ that makes our friendships risen through death into its perfect glory; holy, and is trained by them into beauty for He who is the Life is also the Resurand power, only that death may rend for rection. ever those holy bonds, crush them in a And now let us glance for one moment, state of imperfection, and transform their in closing, at the new light which this noble hopes into pitiable and perishable truth throws on the grave, and listen to dreams ? No! it is impossible to believe the voices with which it summons us all. it; for our Christian friendships bear the It tells us that there is no death to the bestamp of immortality, and in their constant liever ; that death is the gate of his life, longing for complete communion, they are the crowning perfection of his being. the soul's grand outcry for the resurrection | Wben we believe this it will reverse all day. And here again, Christ, who is the our natural thoughts regarding those wbo life of our fellowship, gives us the pledge are gone. They are not the dead, but the of its rising. In restoring Lazarus to his living, who bave cast off the weight of this home, he showed that the ties that bind a body : we are dead while we groan, being brother to a sister are, when spiritual, burdened, in these houses of clay. They among the things which shall rise again. are at home, not away from home, who are In his beautiful words of farewell, when, with the Lord : we are the strangers, who with his own heart breaking, he told are absent from him here. They are broken-hearted men of a Father's house, awake, not sleeping, who have reached the where they should meet again, he uttered clear, unclouded light of the eternal day: in this world of death the everlasting we dream in this strange, confused worid, assurance that no dying could shatter the for as yet we are in the twilight only. And Christian fellowship of man. And in his as heaven is drawing away friend after own resurrection, when for forty days he friend, let us learn this lesson: to look on moved among the disciples—with his old death as the entrance of the perfect life. love and his former pity shining through To learn it we must live in Christ, for the a Divine strength and majesty which had life that makes death its crown is only in left all weakness in the grave-he showed him, Live near him in daily intercourse,