popular belief that the souls of the faithful pass directly into heaven. An eminent Nonconformist minister died in the South of France, and it was flashed along the telegraph wires that he "entered heaven" at such an hour on such a day. The dreadful teaching on Purgatory by the Romanists has driven half-instructed pious folk into errors of an opposite character. Who has not shuddered to see in a foreign mortuary chapel, depicted on the altar, flames of fire, in which the souls of the rude forefathers of the hamlet are supposed to be tormented for their purification; and from a part of these pains their friends on earth may deliver them by paying for the saying of "masses." Yet this horrible teaching must not lead us to neglect the doctrine of the Intermediate State, in which there is for those who die in faith (1) an advance in fitness for the glories of heaven; (2) a sustained interest and intercession for those whom they have left on earth; (3) apparently a knowledge of the spiritual progress of those thus left behind (Heb. xii. 1); (4) a blessed consciousness of the near presence of Christ.*

3. Could the passing of the spirit be more beautifully pictured than in the following passage from Hare's "Biographical Sketches," in which is told the passing of Arthur Penrhyn Stanley : "There he lay, immovable and speechless, only just breathing heavily. We gathered round his bed, the deep silence was only broken by a few prayers. Thus, for the last half hour, as the breathing became fainter, the silence grew more intense. No one stirred or spoke, only the nurse went on fanning his dear face as the shadows of death grew darker. At length the fan ceased. A long pause-another faint breath-a pause yet longer-again a breath fainter than the last. Another long, long pause; and when for some moments we knew that he had left us, we knelt down and offered up our thanks for the peaceful departure of our dear, dear brother."

professional career. They led him, by their sympathy and their questions, to travel in memory through a long series of years; and as he described skirmishes, battles, sieges, personal encounters, hair-breadth escapes all the swift alternations of anxiety and hope which a man must know who is entrusted with command and is before the enemy, their interest in his story, as was natural, became more and more exacting. At last he paused, with the observation, 'I expect to see something more remarkable than anything I have been describing.' As he was seventy years of age, and was understood to have retired from active service, his listeners failed to catch his meaning. There was a pause, and then he said in an undertone, 'I mean in the first five minutes after death.' Surely the expression is worth remembering."

some

5. Reverent care for the burial of the dead has become a marked feature of our common Christianity. St. Hugh of Lincoln claimed it as a service of special honour reverently to dispose of the dead. When on a journey he would stay that he might help the priest in the burials; and at times, when there were many such burials, he would be quite heedless as to who might be waiting for him-great men, expecting him to a banquet, might murmur as they would. At Rouen two kings were thus obliged to wait for him. "I am occupied in the service of the King of Heaven, and I cannot neglect it for that of an earthly monarch." (See Canon Perry's "St. Hugh," quoted by Rev. W. F. Shaw.) The far-famed brotherhood of Florence, the "Brothers of Pity," so well known for its hideous habit, has the reverent disposal of the dead as its chief duty.

6. The marvellous "Passional" (Isa. lii. 13 to liii. 12), read on Good Friday at Evening Prayer, should be understood as spoken in view of the dead Christ as He lies in the tomb. It consists of five strophes of three verses each, and should be read in the R.V.

7. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem is said to mark the spot where our Lord was laid. Rival Christian Churches are represented there, and the quarrels between their members have made needful the presence of the Turkish guard. A dispute as to the repairs of a portion of this building is said to have been the ostensible cause

happier on Easter morning; in hymns, flowers, Holy Communion, Easter joy is set forth; this the first poor heart to feel it. Sun shining through drops of rain, intense joy after tears (Ps. xxx. 5).

Why is the Lord's Resurrection such a joyful event? Take only two reasons to-day.

(i.) The Resurrection shows that He was the Son of God.

How? Think of village Carpenter : kindly, grave, respected, good; yet poor: in rough garb, hard hands, speaking like a countryman; by-and-bye, leaving His shop, coming forth, claiming to be from heaven; Son of God. Astounding (St. Mark vi. 3). He did great works, greater than old prophets did; people mystified, the clever ones ask a sign, so that might be no mistake. He gives one. What? Jonah (St. Matt. xii. 38-40). Now come into Joseph's garden on Good Friday evening; listen in twilight, tread of men bearing a burden; turn down the linen; ah! the Carpenter! dead; now remember the sign-will He live again? Was He true or a deceiver? His enemies fear (St. Matt. xxvii. 63), friends have no hope now (St. Luke xxiv. 21). How did it turn out? This the joy of Easter. He is what He claimed to be; we can truly trust Him. (Illust.-An arch of hewn stones; in the centre a keystone, so shaped as to hold all the rest in their places; remove that and all will fall. The Articles or parts of the Creed like stones in an arch; the Resurrection of Christ is the keystone, if that not true all else fall with it (1 Cor. xv. 17—20).

(ii.) The Resurrection shows that Christ's sacrifice for us was accepted.

Ever see outside of a prison? Thick door, iron studs, chains, guarded by warders. Prisoners ever let out? When? Sentence expired. Why imprisoned at all? To be punished for sin. Who measures the right punishment ? Judge; two things he will insist on if he is just: (a) Prisoner to be kept safely till time up; (b) to be let out the moment he has suffered punishment enough. The Lord in the tomb like a prisoner. How so? Stone at door, sealed, guard; this was part of

III. THOUGHTS

1. Canon Liddon's Easter sermons are a very treasure house of sanctified thought and of powerful reasoning on the subject of our Lord's Resurrection.

the humiliation for us, part of being Head of our race. He is there for us, and death is the punishment; we lie there in Him (2 Cor. v. 14). What does it mean when He came forth? Stand, see over dark hills of Judæa bright angel of the Resurrection moving in swift flight from heaven to the tomb. Why? To let Christ out? No; His risen Body does not need being let out. But the rolling back of the stone, opening of grave, and showing it, a sign, as when prison door open, prisoner punished enough; Christ not held prisoner for His offences, but for ours; open grave a sign, all that Christ had borne, and His sacrifice for us was accepted. God is just, we are free (say this). Yes, all who are baptized into Christ and who rise up from sin are free, they rise with Him (Rom. iv. 25). This the joy of Easter.

(Illust.-Pilgrim's Progress; Christian with his burden on his back pressing on sorely; he comes to a cross by wayside on rising ground, and a little below in the hollow is a sepulchre; as he stands by the cross, to his joy the burden falls off, lo it rolls to mouth of sepulchre, falls in, no more seen. Three shining ones draw near with "Peace be to thee." The meaning of the burden in the tomb? Our sin seemed, even when He was in the tomb, to be resting_on Christ; but when the angel of God opened the tomb it was a sign that the condemnation was all gone. This the joy of Easter, the reason for flowers, anthems, services of praise.)

Now mark, each happy season brings us something to do; if we don't do it the happiness is lost to us. What to do at Easter? Had you been in the dark, silent tomb for a while with Christ, when suddenly the earth quivered, Christ was gone, the grave clothes dropped, the stone rolled back, what would you have done? Gone forth into the morning light. Just so we must exert ourselves and go forth from sinful, thoughtless, selfish habits and ways; things that make for death, that bind us, condemn us, these not for us now; Christ died to save us from these. Rise with Him into the higher life, better life, God-pleasing life (Easter Epistle, Col. iii. 1).

FOR TEACHERS.

Some of the more striking passages in Vol. I. are here brought together and arranged under heads, as follows:

(a) The certainty of the Resurrection

of Christ. "There can, I apprehend, be no sort of doubt that if an ordinary historical occurrence, such as the death of Julius Cæsar, were attested as clearly as the Resurrection of our Lord as having taken place nineteen centuries ago, all the world would believe it as a matter of course. Nay more, if an extraordinary occurrence traversing the usual operations of God in nature were similarly attested it would be easily believed, if only it stood alone, as an isolated wonder, connected with no religious claim, implying no religious duties, appealing only to the understanding, and having no bearing, however remote, upon the will."

(b) The nature of the Resurrection of Christ. Max Müller writes, "Is it credible that when we are told again and again that Christ came to bring life and immortality to light, the simple words that Christ rose from the dead should be taken in a carnal, not in a spiritual, sense? If you had said to Stanley, 'Am I a Christian if I believe only in the spiritual Resurrection of Christ?' he would have said, 'Yes, and all the more if you do not believe that His body was taken up to the clouds.' I often regret that the Jews buried, and did not burn their dead, for in that case the Christian idea of the Resurrection would have remained far more spiritual." Liddon meets this. "Carnal" is a word that has acquired a bad sense from its association with the idea of sin. We must say, unshrinkingly, that a resurrection to be real, must be carnal, "a resurrection of the flesh" . . the restoration to life of the flesh which composes that body our Lord repudiates the idea that His Resurrection was spiritual in any sense which excluded the quickening of the flesh. "Handle Me and see," &c. . . Christian reverence shrinks from discussing the cremation of our Lord's sacred Body; but cremation, had it taken place, could have made no difference except in the sphere of imagination. The resurrection of a body from its ashes is not a greater miracle than the resurrection of an unburnt body. "If it be asked how could a solid and palpable body. vanish and reappear like a ghost, it is better at once to say that we do not know. The Infinite Creator is not limited in resources, and if He pleases to enrich a body such as ours with one or more properties belonging to another order or sphere of being He not debarred from doing so.

Our

Lord's Risen Body had properties which belong to spirit, but they did not suspend or impair its reality as a body." The Soul of Jus

Paused at the Body's wounded side;
Bright flushed the cave, and upward rose
The living Jesus glorified."

(c) The evidential value of the Resurrection.

(a) As a proof of Christ's Divinity. Strange to say there are men in our day who deny the true Resurrection of Jesus, yet still cling to the Christian name." At a synod of French Protestants in Paris, it was advanced that denial of the Resurrection did not really much matter. "We agree with you in valuing the moral teaching of Jesus; why should we quarrel about His Corpse ?" "But if St. Paul had been there he certainly would have held that this question about the Corpse' of Jesus Christ is vital. If His Body never left the grave thus, however

we may be attracted by His moral teaching, we have no ground for hoping in Him as our Redeemer: there is nothing to prove that He was the Son of God in the way He pointed out, or that He has established any new relation between earth and heaven" (1 Cor. xv. 14). "Wherever Christ's true Resurrection from the tomb is denied, though genius and eloquence should do their best to disguise the aching void, there, depend upon it, Christ is not."

(8) As a pledge of the ultimate victory of goodness. "When Jesus Christ was crucified it might have seemed... that the sun of God's justice had gone down behind thick clouds; and that a moral darkness, of which that in the sky was but a shadow, had settled on the earth. It might have seemed that while all the vices were being crowned and feasted at Rome all the virtues could be crucified with impunity in Jerusalem. And when He burst forth from the grave in which they laid Him, under seal and stone, He proclaimed to men's senses, as well as to their consciences, that the real law which rules the world is moral, not material law; and that if the sun of God's righteousness is at times overclouded in human history it is sure to reappear."

(7) As a pledge of our own resurrection. "The company of the dead!" All here remains as it was, at least for a while; but they-they are gone, they have disappeared beyond recall; their bodies indeed, we know, lie beneath the sod... but their souls, their spirits,

themselves, that which flashed through the eye, that which was felt in the manner, in the tone of the voice, as well as in the thought and action. Where is it? Has it become absorbed into some sea of life in which all personality, and with it all consciousness, perishes? Or has it sunk back, after a momentary flicker, into an abyss of nothing, now that the material framework, whose energy it was, is withdrawn? . . . Man is not surely a spiritual being; he is also an animal organism, and if his spiritual part were to be isolated for an eternity, wrenched away for ever from the senses and framework in which it has been lodged since the first moment of its existence, then man would be no longer the same being. . . . We hope to meet our friends, those whom we have known long since and lost awhile, not as formless, unrecognisable shades, but with the features, the expressions, which they wore on earth. "For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus shall God bring with Him." "To believe in the risen Jesus is to live under a sky which is ever bright."

2. Ps. cxviii. is splendidly appropriate as an Easter Psalm; ver. 22, The stone which the builders refused is become the headstone of the corner," is illustrated by an ancient legend in connexion with the building of Solomon's Temple. The stones were all brought to the building, having been fashioned at the quarry. The legend runs that one such arrived which none of the builders could fit into its place; they tried it here and there, but could fit it nowhere. It was cast aside as useless, "rejected"; the building progressed to its completion; before the stately ceremonial, which was to mark the opening of the Temple, there was found to be one stone wanting, the crowning stone.

This had not come it was thought; but after a while it occurred to one to try the stone long cast aside; this was discovered to be the very stone wanting, and it was drawn up and fixed amidst universal shoutings of joy. The rejected Christ is the stone cast aside. The "builders" of His day could not fit Him into their systems. The risen Christ is the stone set amidst rejoicing as the Head Stone of the Temple.

3. Destroy this Temple, and in three days I will raise it up." "His Body was the true Temple of God. In it was the true and abiding Shechinah: the presence of the Word. 'In Him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily!' In the rending of it upon the Cross the veil between God and Man was rent, and now we have boldness to enter into the holiest through the veil, viz., His flesh. And because His Body is the Temple of God, so are ours."(Prebendary Sadler.)

4. The knights' song in "The Coming of Arthur " expresses the feelings of Christians on Easter morn.

"Blow trumpet, for the world is white with May;

Blow trumpet, the long night hath roll'd away!

Blow thro' the living world-Let the king reign !'

Strike for the king, and live; His knights have heard

That God hath told the king a secret word. Fall battle-axe and clash brand! 'Let the king reign!'

Blow trumpet! He will lift us from the dust.

Blow trumpet! Live the strength and die the lust!

Clang battle-axe and clash brand! 'Let the king reign!'

Blow, for our Sun is mighty in His May! Blow, for our Sun is mightier day by day! Clang battle-axe and clash brand. 'Let the king reign!'"

Collect of First after Easter.

151. How many days passed between our Lord's Resurrection and His Ascension ?

Forty days passed between our Lord's Resurrection and Ascension, called "the Great Forty Days."

152. How did our Lord specially help us during the Great Forty Days?

Our Lord specially helped us during

the Great Forty Days in two ways: (1) By showing Himself frequently, so that we might be sure He rose from the dead; (2) by speaking to His Apostles of what they were to do in the ordering of His Church (Acts i. 3). 153. What is heaven?

Heaven is the place into which the bodies and souls of saved persons pass