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SERMON I.

THE RESURRECTION OF THE JUST.

I. Cor. xv, 35.

BUT SOME MAN WILL SAY, HOW ARE THE DEAD RAISED UP? AND WITH WHAT BODY DO THEY COME?

We know that St. Paul supposes some infidel enquirer to put these questions, and so in answering them he addresses him by the name which the Holy Ghost, by the mouth of David, has given to the infidel for ever. "Thou fool,"

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He supposes an objection started to that article of the Christian Faith which he was then declaring that most comfortable and animating article the Resurrection of the Dead. I lay

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stress on the words "comfortable" and "animating" because the Apostle is speaking, in this chapter, of the Resurrection of the Just: in other places he bears witness that all mankind just and unjust, faithful and false, shall rise again in their own bodies and give account of their life and conversation in this present world, but here he is speaking especially of those who sleep in the Lord Jesus Christ, and enforcing, in language of triumphant certainty, their glorious resurrection to eternal life. To this article of Faith he supposes the infidel to raise the objection signified in the text. "But how are the dead raised up? and with what body do they come?"

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propose to state presently the precise meaning of this objection, and the manner in which St. Paul disposes of it: but before I do so let me take advantage of this happy season,* so full of cheerful and invigorating signs, to suppose that these same questions are put in a teachable and faithful spirit. Surely a little child, just learning to repeat that glorious Creed which since his Baptism he has shared with the whole company of God's Elect, might feel the mysteries of Truth to

* Easter.

be at work within him, holding communion with his untried powers and calling forth that frank and serious wonder which is the blessing of his childhood; and so, nothing doubting of the truth which he has heard, but only eager to know more and enter further into the marvellous reality, might reverently ask, "How are the dead raised up, and with what body do they come?" And so asking, surely he might gain from the reply another and another mystery; surely the first kind teacher whom God hath appointed for him in the Church,-she who is of all earthly things the highest and loveliest type of holy Church herself,-his own dear natural mother might reward his earnest longing after heavenly wisdom by adding line upon line and truth upon truth, until he has gained an ample portion of his best inheritance. Will he not learn more and more of Christ his Saviour? how that being before all worlds, from all eternity, the onlybegotten Son of God-God begotten of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, He ceased not to be God when for our sakes He became Man? Will he not learn that when the Son of God was conceived by the Holy Ghost

in the womb of the blessed Virgin Mary,—when He was born in an inn and cradled in a manger, -when He lived in dutiful and true subjection to His Mother and her husband Joseph,-when He sat at the feet of the Doctors, a patient and attentive child, both hearing them and asking them questions, even then, in each and in all of these humble circumstances, He was still the everlasting Son of the Father, still the great and glorious Being by whom the worlds were made, who coming forth for that purpose from the Father, caused the Light to shine out of darkness, the earth to be formed out of nothing, and man out of the dust of the ground? Will not the earnest wondering listener further learn, how that the Power, the Majesty, the Substance of the Godhead still dwelt (as it ever has, and ever shall dwell) in the Person of the blessed Jesus when He left His humble home at Nazareth to go about doing good, being first called to His office by a voice from heaven, and thenceforth being continually employed in teaching, and healing, and working wonders among men? Will not the child be told how that the very substance of the One Almighty God was dwelling

bodily in Jesus Christ when men reviled and disbelieved Him, when Herod and his soldiers mocked Him, when Pilate condemned Him; how that He was God, as well as man, on the Cross and in the Grave; how that by virtue of this union with God,-by His own infinite and almighty Power derived from everlasting of the Father,— He rose again from Death, on the third day; and lastly how it is that by the same Power, all they whose nature He hath taken to Himself, all the dead of every name and nation upon earth, shall be raised up at the sound of His Voice and the trumpet of His Angels?

But with what body do they come?

Askest thou, dear child, in all the steady faith and earnest simplicity of thy tender years? Know then that there are yet more and more excellent mysteries to tell thee of, concerning Him who died for our sins and rose again for our justification. In what Body did He rise up out of the rich man's tomb?

It was the same Body in which He died and yet It was not the same.

The same It was, so far as to render Him the very same Person who had suffered on the

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