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"I am

pointed for our race. Jesus said unto her, the resurrection and the life." Martha had expressed frankly her belief in a general resurrection; but she seemed not to associate this resurrection with Jesus as a cause and an agent. The Redeemer, therefore, gathers, as it were, the general resurrection into Himself; and, as though asserting that all men shall indeed rise, but only through mysterious union with Himself, he declares, not that he will effect the resurrection, summoning by his voice the tenantry from the sepulchres, but that he is Himself that resurrection; "I am the resurrection, and the life."

Now it were beside our purpose to follow further the narrative of the raising of Lazarus. We have shewn you how the words of our text are introduced, and we shall find that, when detached from the context, they furnish material of thought amply sufficient for a single discourse.

It seems to us that, in claiming such titles as those which are to come under review, Christ declared himself the cause and the origin of the immortality of our bodies and souls. In announcing himself as "the resurrection," he must be considered as stating that he alone effects the wondrous result of the corruptible putting on incorruption. In announcing himself as "the life," he equally states that he endows the spirit with its happiness, yea rather with its existence, through eternity. If Christ had only termed himself " the resurrection," we might have considered him as

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referring merely to the body; asserting it to be a consequence on his work of mediation that the dust of ages shall again quicken into life. But when He terms himself also "the life," we cannot but suppose a reference to the immortality of the soul, so that this noble and sublime fact is, in some way, associated with the achievements of redemption.

We are accustomed, indeed, to think that the immortality of the soul is independent on the atonement; so that, although had there been no redemption there would have been no resurrection, the principle within us would have remained unquenched, subsisting for ever, and for ever accessible to pain and penalty. We shall not pause to examine the justice or injustice of the opinion. We shall only remark that the existence of the soul is, undoubtedly, as dependent upon God as that of the body; that no spirit, except Deity himself, can be necessarily, and inherently, immortal; and that if it should please the Almighty to put an arrest on those momentary outgoings of life which flow from himself, and permeate the universe, he would instantly once more be alone in infinity, and one vast bankruptcy of being overspread all the provinces of creation. There seems no reason, if we may thus speak, in the nature of things, why the soul should not die. Her life is a derived life, and a dependent; and that which is derived and dependent may, of course, cease to be, at the will of the author and upholder. And it is

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far beyond us to ascertain what term of being would have been assigned to the soul, had there arisen no champion and surety of the fallen. We throw ourselves into a region of speculation, across which there runs no discernible pathway, when we enquire whether there would have been an annihilation, supposing there had not been a redemption of man.

We can only say that the soul has

not, and cannot have, any more than the body, the sources of vitality in herself. We can, therefore, see the possibility, if not prove the certainty, that it is only because "the word was made flesh," and struggled for us and died, that the human spirit is unquenchable, and that the principle, which distinguishes us from the brutes, shall retain everlastingly its strength and its majesty.

But without travelling into speculative questions, we wish to take our text as a revelation, or announcement, of the immortality of the soul; and to examine how, by joining the terms, resurrection and life, Christ made up what was wanting in the calculations of natural religion when turned on determining this grand article of faith.

Now with this as our chief object of discourse, we shall endeavour, first of all, to shew briefly the accuracy with which Christ may be designated "the Resurrection." We shall then, in the second place, attempt to prove that the resurrection of the body is a great element in the demonstration of "the life," the immortality of the soul.

We begin by reminding you of a fact, not easily

to be overlooked, that the resurrection is, in the very strictest sense, a consequence on redemption. Had not Christ undertaken the suretyship of our race, there would never have come a time when the dead shall be raised. If there had been no interposition on behalf of the fallen, whatever had become of the souls of men, their bodies must have remained under the tyranny of death. The original curse was a curse of death on the whole man. And it cannot be argued that the curse of the body's death could allow, so long as unrepealed, the body's resurrection. So that we may lay it down as an undisputed truth that Christ Jesus achieved man's resurrection. He was, emphatically, the author of man's resurrection. Without Christ, and apart from that redemption of our nature which he wrought out by obedience and suffering, there would have been no resurrection. It is just because the Eternal Son took our nature into union with his own, and endured therein the curse provoked by disobedience, that a time is yet to arrive when the buried generations shall throw off the dishonours of corruption.

But we are ready to allow that the proving Christ the cause, or the author of the resurrection, is not, in strict truth, the proving him that resurrection itself. There must be some broad sense in which it holds good that the resurrection of Christ was the resurrection of all men; otherwise it would be hard to vindicate the thorough accuracy of our text. And if you call to mind the statement

of St. Paul, "since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead," you will perceive that the resurrection came by Christ, in exactly the same manner as death had come by Adam. Now we know that death came by Adam as the representative of human nature; and we, therefore, infer that the resurrection came by Christ as the representative of human nature. Retaining always his divine personality, the second person of the Trinity took our nature into union with his own; and in all his obedience, and in all his suffering, occupied this nature in the character, and with the properties, of a head. When he obeyed, it was the nature, and not a human person which obeyed. When he suffered, it was the nature, and not a human person which suffered. So that, when he died, he died as our head; and when he rose, he rose also as our head. And thus, keeping up the alleged parallel between Adam and Christ, as every man dies because concerned in the disobedience of the one, so he rises because included in the ransom of the other. Human nature having been crucified, and buried, and raised in Jesus, all who partake of this nature partake of it in the state into which it has been brought by a Mediator, a state of rescue from the power of the grave, and not of continuance in its dark dishonours. The nature had most literally died in Adam, and this nature did as literally revive in Christ. Christ carried it through all its scenes of trial, and toil, and temptation, up to the closing

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