SPIRITUAL RESURRECTION.

If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above.-Col. iii, 1.

HERE can be but little difficnlty in understand

ing the Apostle's meaning in this place. He has been speaking of those who were buried with Christ in baptism-those who were dead with him from the rudiments of the world. Now, proceeding with the association of ideas, he speaks of those who are risen or were raised with Christ. Those having entered into spiritual relations with Jesus are called upon to live on the same spiritual plane with their risen and ascended Lord. He exhorts them to set their affections on things above, not on things on the earth; by which antithesis I understand the contrast between the good and the evil, the pure and the impure-the estimates which are according to the standard of the risen Christ, and the estimates which are according to the standard of our evil affections and desires. I do not understand the literal heaven and earth to be referred to here, but I repeat, estimates from above as compared with estimates from below, of good as contrasted with evil.

If

ye be risen with Christ-the idea is, live upon the same plane with Christ; live and move in the same atmosphere—in the very spirit of Christ. This was

an exhortation fitted to those early Christians then, and it is an exhortation fitted to Christians now; but I wish especially, in this discourse, to call attention to the peculiar suggestiveness of these words: "If ye then be risen with Christ." Whether we interpret this as referring to the external significance of the act of baptism, or to an internal experience and assimilation, it certainly indicates a resurrection in the present tense, and among the present conditions of the existence, and suggests the spiritual and instant significancy of our Saviour's resurrection.

Here, then, open before us those practical points which, upon this Easter Sunday, I propose to urge. This, I repeat, is the general proposition which is based upon the words of the text, that the most essential element in Christ's resurrection, the most essential element in what may be called the resurrection of any man, is spiritual in its result. No matter where you place the resurrection, or with what mode you may arrive at it, its chief result is the up-rising and victory of the soul.

No man has ever drawn aside the vail of the future life so that we could look full upon its realities; for although Christ spoke of it as a truth, and demonstrated it as a fact, he left its chief features hidden in their own grand shadow. We look to-day into his

open sepulcher, and see angels sitting there, but we behold nothing distinctly beyond that point of vision. Yet in all the shapings of our fancy, in all the conclusions of our reason, our most essential idea of the immortal state is that it is a spiritual condition, a mode of existence in which we are freed from the despotism of the flesh. We believe that there we shall discern absolute truth with clearer vision, and that there we shall neither linger for appetite nor halt for repose.

Our language shall be speech of action. There we shall know even as we are known; there we shall see the great and good whom death took long ago-now the beatified over whom death has no power. There we shall commune with Christ, not through the distance of time or the perplexities of interpretation, but face to face. There no anxiety shall trouble our worship, no doubt overcast our faith, for we shall bathe in the stream of uncreated Being, and dwell in the eternal noon of God. Now, there is such a thing, to be sure, as conceiving a future state, an immortal state, too exclusively spiritual. We may refine it away until it means nothing at all, until we leave man nothing through which or on which his spirit can act ; and you must remember that sometimes the most intense spiritualism is really the most gross materialism, and comes around to the same point by the minuteness of its details and the very elaborateness of spirituality. But while we should not speak of the immortal state as too exclusively spiritual, still with

that state into which the resurrection introduces us, we must associate all that implies deliverance from sensual frailty and blindness. Whatever may be its external scenery, its surrounding glories, these accessories will derive their harmony and their splendor not so much from any intrinsic qualities as from the light in which each soul shall perceive them. Set a man anywhere, in this world or any other, and the same place can not be the same place to the sinner as to the saint.

Now I proceed to observe that out of the doctrine of the essential spirituality of the resurrection state grows another proposition, namely, that the essential resurrection may take place even now, and among existing conditions. My friends, the great crises of man's existence do not consist primarily in changes of place, or of external fortune, but in changes of state or inward condition. Any one of you can verify this from his own experience, if he will. How common

it is for a man to say, "I feel just as young as ever! The pulses of enjoyment are as quick within me as when I was a boy; nature looks to me as beautiful as ever; and my heart beats in sympathy to-day with all this fresh-springing life; and my faculties throb in accordance with the budding trees, and the bright sunshine, and the growing grass; I feel just as young as ever." Now, in saying this, a man virtually confesses that fading complexion, wrinkles, and gray hairs do not make any change in the real substance and quality of his being; and oftentimes, were it not for

some sharp intimations external to ourselves, we should not realize that we are growing old. We are often reminded by these, rather than by any interior consciousness. Yet a man of the most serene outward conditions; a man with whom time has dealt most gently, will find, if he will carefully examine, that he has changed. Perhaps he can not tell precisely when he passed from boyhood to manhood, but he does not take a boy's views of life any more. The most frivolous being does not make life merely a play-day, or a game with toys.

There are shadows on his thoughts that never lay there in boyhood; shadows of great realities, that, like the shadows of mountains to which we are getting nearer, throw themselves over the soul. His soul has another lens. He sees farther into the future, and his vision takes a wider range. It is so with every man, no matter how limited his education, how cramped his conditions. No man passes from the stage of his youth into the period of manhood without seeing things differently, or looking at them from a different point of view; and it is no compliment to a man to say that he is just the same at forty years of age that he was at twenty. What! has he gone through all these changes of life, has he stood at the marriage altar, and beside the death-bed, near life's light and darkness, its great mysteries, and known its cares and responsibilities? I ask, is it possible that any one can go through all these changes, and the spiritual depths