hopes of future happiness depend. For poor would be the state of man in this world; miserably narrow and confined his best prospects, transient and delusive his pleasures, without the certainty of this great truth, that his body shall rise again. “If,” as the apostle reasons, "in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable.'

Let us, in connexion with our Easter services, consider,

1st. The body of man in its present state. It is corruptible.

2ndly. In its future state. This corruptible will put on incorruption.

3rdly. The final consummation-Death will be swallowed up in victory.

And may God give us all grace to meditate upon these highly important points with the seriousness which they deserve.

1st. Let us look at the body of man in its present state. It is corruptible. It is gradually tending to decay. From our very birth we carry about with us the seeds of our dissolution. We reach, perhaps, the summit of an ascent not very high, and then we go down the hill of life until the grave

receives this perishing body. There are, at the most, but a few years of youth, health, and comparative enjoyment; and then the body of the most active returns to the dust. from whence it came. We speak to the sad experience of many. Pain, sickness, disease, infirmity, old age, make the word corruptible peculiarly to attach itself to the human body. Look only at your hospitals and infirmaries; all raised in mercy, but all unanswerable proofs of man's corruption. Look at those veteran soldiers and sailors, once the flower of our army and navy, crippled, disabled, dying; all these speak to the truth of my position, that the body of man is corruptible. Nay, the very chair of sickness, with every increasing help which we need, speaks the same language. And what a wretched state would this be, if the aged and the infirm, and those whom we dearly love, were thus sinking into the grave, and we had no hope of a future state with which to cheer and animate them. What a poverty is there in all consolation not drawn from the Gospel! In the works of nature, the very seasons of autumn and winter would be too gloomy for the mind,

if it were not for the return of spring. But, as instructed out of the Holy Scriptures, we look beyond this scene of darkness and of gloominess. Lo, the winter is past; the rain is over and gone; the flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come; and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land!" Thus creation rises again and in strict accordance we behold our great Leader dying, and rising from the grave. Dying indeed for our sins; and rising again for our justification. We see him breaking the fetters of the grave, and leading captivity captive. We see the first sheaf of a glorious harvest carried home. We stand upon a sure foundation, which no subtilty or false philosophy can shake; which no specious sophistry can undermine. "We know that if Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus shall God bring with him."

Let us learn, from this first division of our subject, to regard our bodies (though corruptible) as the curious workmanship of God. They are fearfully and wonderfully made. To remember likewise that they are said to be “the temples of the Holy Ghost;"

that as these earthly tabernacles wear out by years and infirmity, we must labour so to live, as to ensure an incorruptible body in a state of blessedness. We see the prospects which are before us. Nothing but a just view of time and eternity; nothing but an experimental knowledge of Jesus Christ, as a Saviour; nothing but a good hope, built upon the word and promise of God, can lead a man to go down into the grave in peace and composure: which

brings me,

2ndly. To speak of our future state. This corruptible body will put on incorruption. What a change will be produced, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, when the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible! The present state of man is not merely subject to sickness and disease, but we carry about with us a body of sin. The grand enemy Death was produced by sin. And it is a sense of indwelling sin which adds weight to a load of troubles which daily press down the spirit; insomuch that the apostle exclaims, "O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death? I thank God through

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Jesus Christ our Lord." The second Adam, then, brings life and immortality to light by the Gospel. So that the hope of the faithful in all ages of the church is realised. The Jew looked for eternal life faintly and imperfectly in the type. beholds it in the antitype.

The Christian The gift of God

is eternal life, through Jesus Christ our Lord. When therefore the body dies, it returns to the dust, as it is; and the spirit returns unto God who gave it. Then the soul enters upon a state either of comparative happiness or misery, until the great day of account. And here I would just observe that it is a common mistake to speak of the blessedness of heaven, as if the soul only of the redeemed was there; and in like manner of the torments of hell, as if the soul only of the miserable would be condemned to suffer punishment. Whereas, after the general judgment, body and soul, the whole man, will either be happy or miserable through all eternity. We are too apt to forget that the body will rise again; and that these companions, separated by death for a time, will, after the judgment, be inseparably united together. The prophet asks, when