I sent my soul through the Invisible,
Some letter of that After-life to spell;
And by-and-by my Soul returned to me,

And whispered, I myself am Heaven and Hell.

Faith in Christ is faith in love, the love of man wedded to the love of God. Nothing in the long run can prevail against that love in this world or the next. It makes hell; it is heaven. I believe that the mere crossing of the mysterious gulf called physical death matters very little. It only means a change of lights. The wicked man finds that he has been living by false values, and the good man finds how much more has yet to be learned and how many richer depths of the divine nature are yet to be plumbed. One thing we shall all find, and that is that the truest life is the life that Jesus lived. That is the eternal life, whether here or beyond, this side or the farther side of the tomb. Live it we must by the redeeming power of God. We shall make our bed in pain until we do; and, the nearer a man approaches to the stature of a perfect man in Christ Jesus, the more he will yearn over the failure of the lost, the more he will long to lift up and heal and save. How can Christhood ever be content with anything less? In the presence of sin and suffering, here or on the farther side of death, what do you suppose the love of Christ is doing? What can it be doing but identifying itself with the lot of the sinner and laying itself alongside every darksome experience until it has transformed it into light and

love? The love of Christ must be making war against sin until He had subdued all things unto Himself. "For He must reign until He hath put all enemies under His feet. The last enemy that

This is the faith of

shall be destroyed is death." St. Paul, in the power of which he lived and died. Thus it is that to the spiritual man to die is gain. It is the shattering of limitations, the opening of the prison to them that are bound, the discovery of new faculties, new powers, wider and deeper experience of God; it is more Christ. "To me to live is Christ, and to die is gain."

Think when our one soul understands

The great word that makes all things new,
When earth breaks up and heaven expands,
How will the change strike me and you,
In the house not made with hands?

Oh, I must feel your brain prompt mine,
Your heart anticipate my heart,

You must be just before in fine,
See and make me see for your part
New depths of the divine.

THE RISEN CHRIST

He is not here; for He is risen, as He said.
Come see the place where the Lord lay.—
MATT. xxviii. 6.

THE question of the resurrection of Jesus is one which does not easily lend itself to dispassionate discussion, for so many important issues are bound up with it that few people are able to regard it with an open mind. The almost universally held opinion is that Christianity stands or falls by the belief that its Founder actually rose from the dead. This is not quite the case, but it is so nearly the case that few will be inclined to dispute it. Still, a better and more accurate way of describing the situation would be to say that Christianity stands or falls by faith in the risen Christ, and that as a historical religion it started with a belief that its Founder had revealed Himself to His disciples after the world believed Him to be dead. This belief had farreaching consequences, for it demonstrated the truth that wickedness cannot kill anything which is really of God, and that love is in the end victorious over hate. This way of stating the case is one which not only answers to the facts, but would hold good under any theory as to the circumstances attending

the resurrection of Jesus. What I now wish to do is to set before you what I take to be its everyday spiritual value.

The words of our text are, taken literally, not quite consistent with the account given in the other gospels. Indeed, it will be no news to you that there is no subject indicated in the New Testament on which the various accounts are so conflicting; but it is a curious thing that so few people seem able to read them critically and get beneath the various discrepancies to the salient and unassailable fact with which they are concerned. It is impossible to reconcile the various gospel accounts of the details of the resurrection and post-resurrection appearances of Jesus; but one thing is unescapable, namely, that if the primitive Christians had not been absolutely certain that they had seen Jesus alive after His crucifixion and burial, they would never have dared to preach Him to the world. This belief made all the difference to their feelings and conduct. For an expression as to what they really felt about the matter we have something earlier even than the gospels, namely, the words of St. Paul as contained in 1 Cor. xv. These show beyond all possibility of doubt that primitive Christian belief centred on the conviction that Jesus was alive and reigning in the world unseen, and that presently He would return to establish His dominion over the kingdoms of the earth. Surely if there is one fact well authenticated in history, it is this belief in the risen Jesus.

But the modern mind balks at the suggestion of an empty tomb, and this suggestion is with most intelligent people held to be the chief difficulty in considering the question to-day. I cannot now pause to examine the evidence with any pretence to thoroughness, but I would point out that in my judgment it is impossible to escape the conclusion that the primitive Christians did believe in the empty tomb simply because they had no conception of an existence apart from the body. I do not think many of you have really grasped this fact. You are inclined to take for granted that our present-day view of the structure of the universe, and the separation of the spirit from the body, is precisely the same as that of the ancient world; but it is not. The modern Western mind tends to draw a hard and fast distinction between matter and spirit which did not exist in the minds of the writers of the New Testament. Let me show you what I mean, for I think you may find it somewhat interesting.

I dare say you all know that the ancient civilised world was rather small. Leaving out the Far East, which had a civilisation of its own, and was hardly known to the West, we may say that the whole world of thought and action as known to the men of the New Testament lay around the Mediterranean Sea. Now try to picture the way in which the people of that day must have thought about the universe. Remember, they knew nothing about the vast interstellar systems in which our earth is only as a speck