Sundays such as these are to many of us like shafts in a long tunnel; they admit at regular intervals light and air. And, though we pass them all too soon, their helpful influence does not vanish with the passing. It furnishes us with strength and light for the duties which await us, and makes it easier to follow loyally the road towards our eternal home which God's loving Providence may have traced for each of us. Let us endeavour, while we may, to make the most of these hours of grace and mercy, and to lead others to do so; in the solemn conviction that as each such day passes one more decisive step has been taken, of whatever kind, in the direction of a destiny, which, once fixed by death, is fixed irrevocably.

SERMON XXV.

THE LORD OF LIFE.

THIS

ST. JOHN XIV. 19.

Because I live, ye shall live also.

HIS saying of our Lord's in the supper-room, like so much else which He uttered there, is only to be fully understood in the light of His Resurrection and Ascension into heaven. When He said, " Because I live," He had death immediately before Him. He was taking the measure of death; death was to be no real interruption of His ever-continuing Life. Death, with all its physical and mental miseries, was only an incident in His Existence. Already He sees the Resurrection beyond, and He exclaims, "I live." It was not possible, as St. Peter says, that He, the Prince of Life, should be holden of death; and He treats death as an already vanquished enemy, which cannot have any lasting effect upon His indestructible Life.

a

And further, this Life of His, thus inaccessible to permanent injury, enduring beyond the Cross and Grave, is the cause of ours. "Because I live, ye shall live also." He describes what is impending: "Yet a little while, and the a Acts ii. 24.

world seeth Me no more." He would be hidden away in the tomb. "But ye see Me." a His disciples would see Him; first with their bodily eyes, during the forty days after His Resurrection, and next with the eyes of faith, throughout all the ages, until He comes to judgment. And thus "Because I live, ye shall live also." Assured of the enduring continuity of His Life, the disciples might be certain of their own. Because He lives after His Resurrection, after His Ascension, in the Life of Glory, therefore His disciples, in some sense, will live also.

I.

Here let us observe, first of all, what our Lord's words do not mean.

They do not mean that the immortality of the soul of man is dependent upon the Redemptive Work, or upon the Glorified Life of Christ. Man is an immortal being, just as he is a thinking and feeling being, by the original terms of his nature. God has made him immortal, whether for weal or woe. Whether a man is redeemed or not, whether he is sanctified or not, he will exist for ever. God might have given him a soul subject to annihilation. But God has given him a soul which is indestructible. And this quality of the soul of man is just as much a part of man's nature as are the limbs of his body or the faculties of his mind.

Of late we have heard something of a phrase new to Christian ears, "conditional immortality." We are told that man is not immortal by the terms of his nature, that he may become immortal if he is saved by Christ. Unredeemed man, the man who dies in a state of nature, so we are told, becomes extinct, if not at death, yet very

a St. John xiv. 19.

shortly afterwards, when anything that may survive death will fade away into nothingness. This, it is said, is more in keeping with what we see around us than the old Christian doctrine that every human being must necessarily exist, in whatever condition, for ever. Everything around us changes, decays, passes away, and this dissolution of all the organised forms of matter seems, it is suggested, to forewarn man of his own approaching and complete destruction; unless, indeed, some Great and Superhuman Power should take him by the hand, and confer on him the gift of immortality which, in virtue of his own nature, he does not possess. Some of the persons who talk and think thus forget that the New Testament treats man as a being who will live after death whether in happiness or in misery. And others forget that, before our Lord came, the best and most thoughtful men in the heathen world were satisfied of this truth; as indeed any of us may be who will consider how generally unlike the spirit or soul of man is to any merely material creature. Let us dwell for a while on some considerations which go to establish this unlikeness between spiritual and material beings.

1. The first is that the spirit or soul of man knows itself to be capable, I do not say of unlimited, but certainly of continuous, development. However vigorous a tree or an animal may be, it soon reaches a point at which it can grow no longer. The tree has borne all the leaves, buds, flowers, fruits, that it can. Its vital force is exhausted; it can do no more. The animal has attained, we will suppose, to the finest proportions of which its species is capable; it has done its best in the way of strength and beauty, and the limit has been reached; it can do no more. With the soul of man, whether as a

thinking or feeling power, it is otherwise.

Of this, we

can never say that it has certainly exhausted itself. When a man of science has made a great discovery, or a man of letters has written a great book, or a statesman has carried a great measure or series of measures, we cannot say "He has done his all; he is exhausted." Undoubtedly in man the spirit is largely dependent on the material body which encases it: "the corruptible body," so says ancient Hebrew wisdom, "presseth down the soul."a As the body moves towards decay and dissolution, it inflicts something of its weakness and incapacity upon its spiritual companion, the soul. But the soul

constantly resists and protests against this, asserting its own separate and vigorous existence. The mind knows that each new effort, instead of exhausting its powers, really enlarges them, and that, if only the physical conditions necessary to continued exertion in the present state of things are not withdrawn, it will go on continuously making larger and nobler acquirements. So too with the heart, the conscience, the sense of duty. In these too there is no such thing as finality. One noble art suggests another: one great sacrifice for truth or duty prompts another. The virtuous impulse in the soul is not, like the life-power of a tree or an animal, a self-exhausting force. On the contrary, it is always, even more consistently than thought, moving forward, conceiving of and aiming at higher duties, and understanding more clearly that, advance as it may, it will not reach the limits of its activity. "Be not weary in well-doing" is the language of the Eternal Wisdom to the human will. But never has it been said to the body of man or animal, or to tree or flower, "Be not weary of growing or thriving." For organised matter, in its noblest forms, differs from spirit 2 Thess. iii. 13.

a Wisdom ix. 15.

b