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mystery be made plain:" then " shall we," they and we together (for we are not to prevent them); all, I say, together 'shall appear with HIM in glory." Till then, it will be all a secret; and as Hooker says again, "The strength of our faith will be tried by those things wherein our wits and capacities are not strong."

Any how, we cannot believe that the heavenly life, in a Christian continuing such to the end, can ever die; since our LORD has expressly said, "I AM the Resurrection and the Life; whosoever believeth in ME, though he were dead, yet shall he live, and whosoever liveth and believeth in ME shall never die." Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, all live unto HIM;" but he that is least in the Kingdom of Heaven is greater than they; and therefore, if we will speak correctly, no Christian at all can properly be called dead; their bodies, indeed, sleep for a while, but even they have in them the seed of a new life; and their souls are not only living, but in Paradise: that is, in consciousness, hope, and comfort, though not yet in perfect consummation and bliss. And of all this the holy Communion is the seal, conveying to us the benefit of His death, His burial, His descent into Hell, Who is the true and only Cause and Author of all.

And what if the whole be covered, I will not say with clouds and darkness, but with the skirts of that overpowering glory, which will be about our Blessed LORD, when He shall come at last in our sight? Yet surely the use and comfort of it all is under no cloud, no darkness whatever. Is there a night of our lives, which we might not, if we would, sanctify and bless with this thought; that our lying down to rest is indeed a kind of token, a remembrance and rehearsal of our LORD's burial, as plainly and as certainly as sleep is an image of death; and that we, as members of HIM, may humbly hope for such care over us, both in our beds and in our graves, as guarded His Blessed Body, during this day's brief and mysterious rest? Can we look at a sleeping child, or watch by the slumbers of any one whom we love, or whom we are trusted with, and not enter, however faintly, into the transporting yet awful thought, that every moment of their deep quietness is the fruit of His presence, and the purchase of His blood? Is it no comfort, when we part with a Christian brother or sister, to know that if they were such as they seemed, they really are not dead, no, not for a while their souls are with CHRIST, and CHRIST

with their bodies in the grave Is it no gain in our own dying hours, to be rid of perplexing cares and fears, such as even faithful men, wanting these consolations, are apt to be tried with, concerning the condition of our own souls and bodies, between death and resurrection? Finally, is it not one reason more, why the young should make haste to communicate, lest they die without the seed of immortality in them; why those who have begun, should communicate often, to cherish and quicken that spark of divine life; why all should be very much afraid of coming unworthily, lest they stifle and quench it utterly, and depart, after all, not living members of CHRIST?

SERMON CLXXVI.

CHRISTIAN UPRISING.

PREACHED ON EASTER DAY.

PSALM iii. 5.

"I laid Me down and slept, and rose up again; for the LORD sustained Me."

IF Christians would but observe what they read or hear in the Bible, and what they experience in life, and compare diligently the one with the other, they would find that the whole world around them is, in a certain sense, full of divine tokens; every thing almost would put them in mind, more or less directly, of JESUS CHRIST our SAVIOUR, and they would see that God meant it so to do much in the same way as, when people's hearts are turned any way, towards any thing on earth, with entire affection, whatever they see, hear, or meet with, reminds them, they hardly know how, of that beloved object. Our SAVIOUR, perhaps, meant something of this kind, when He told His disciples that "every Scribe instructed into the Kingdom of Heaven is like unto a man that is an householder, who bringeth out of his treasures things new and old;" that is, as it has been explained, "the old things of nature," and of this world of sight and sense, things of grace," and of the other world, which is only known by faith. A well-instructed Christian heart, HE seems to say, will know how to connect these two one with another ;-will discern what part of GoD's mysterious dealings with us through JESUS CHRIST may be fitly represented as in parable, by the several ways of His Providence, as seen in the things of this world;-will understand, in short, "all parables;" that is CHRIST's own word.

" and the new

What I mean is not, perhaps, clear: I will try and explain it by some examples. We know that our SAVIOUR is called "the Sun of Righteousness," "the Dayspring from on high," and that on that account particular respect has been shown, in various ordinances of the Church Catholic, to the east above all the other quarters of the heaven; we know that on Christmas-Day that Psalm is used, which speaks of HIM as the Sun coming out of His chamber, like a bridegroom, and "rejoicing as a giant to run His Whoever has considered these things, if he be a true lover of CHRIST, will never be able to see the sun rise, without thinking of HIM who is the true light of the world; and thus so common a thing as the sunrise, a thing which must happen every day so long as the world lasts, is made a token,-the old Christians would call it a sacrament,-of a great mystery of divine faith and salvation.

course.

The sun rising in the east is nature's token, to remind us of Christmas-Day; and here in the text, if we consider it well, we find a no less clear token of the mysteries of this solemn time of Easter: our LORD dying and rising again. "I laid me down and slept, and rose up again, for the LORD sustained me:" once let it be well understood that the Psalms all relate to JESUS CHRIST, to His Church, and to His Members, and it will be very clear that this verse, plain and simple as it sounds, contains a deep mystery also. If the Person who speaks is JESUS CHRIST, no doubt His lying down is His death upon the Cross, His sleep is the rest which He took, from Friday evening to Sunday morning, in the sepulchre, which Joseph's faithful love had provided for HIM: His rising up again is that glorious awaking, and bursting of the bonds of death, which makes the Church joyful this day, and every Sunday in the year.

Neither is it any thing new, to have such a verse as this applied to the Death, Burial, and Resurrection of our LORD. The old Fathers and Bishops so explained it from the very beginning of the Church; and one of them in particular, would have us observe the particular stress to be laid on the word “I” in this verse. It so stands in the Hebrew language, in which David spake by the HOLY GHOST, as to mean I myself" and no other, I of mine own accord and free will, "laid me down and slept,

and rose up again; for the LORD sustained ME." Thus it sig

nifies our LORD's own voluntary consent and purpose, in all that happened to HIM; according to that saying of His, "Therefore doth My FATHER love ME, because I lay down My life, that I might take it again. No man taketh it from Mɛ, but I lay it down of Myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. Not against Mine own will, therefore, did you seize and slay ME; but it was I who laid Me down, slept so long as I pleased, and rose up again when I would."

Thus speaks the holy Bishop St. Augustin of the meaning of this Psalm. Upon his authority, and that of the whole Church, we conclude that the words, "I laid ME down and slept, and rose up again," plain and simple as they sound, contain in them a great mystery, the beginning and end of a Christian's hope, the death and resurrection of JESUS CHRIST.

And surely we do well to connect that mystery with our own lying down and rising up, as often as night and morning return. Sleep, to all men, even to the heathen and unbeliever, has always secmed an image of death; to a Christian it is an image of the death of CHRIST; and not only an image, but a token from above, a sign and pledge from the Truth itself, that He died, and died for us. Rising again in the morning may be to Jews or Heathens a ground of hope, that possibly, for aught they know, GOD may provide for us even after death: but to Christian people it is as a word from Heaven, a promise and warning, though a silent one, that by the virtue of HIM who is the Resurrection and the Life, we, too, shall rise again; we shall but sleep in our graves, and never really die. In a word, our daily lying down and rising up is given us for a sacramental sign and pledge of CHRIST's death and resurrection, and of our own.

Thus we see that Christmas and Easter have each their outward and visible sign, something to remind us of them, in the common course of life, which every one of us has to go through continually. Whitsuntide, too, has its own proper token, chosen out among natural things, and assigned to it by the highest of all authorities; but I will not say more of that until the time comes. At present the season itself leads us to consider, what use we should make of the mystery of our own sleep and awakening, taught as we are by Scripture and the Church the high things which are betokened therein.