than that of the others, when we remember that it was His own. They were raised by Him, He raised Himself. For though His resurrection is often spoken of as effected by the power of His Father, yet passages are not wanting in which it is represented as His own doing. "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up." (John ii. 19). "I have power to lay down my life, and I have power to take it again." (John x. 18). These various representations will present no difficulty if we remember the communion in power and will of the Son and the Father.

Again Christ's resurrection contrasts advantageously with the others in regard to ground or reason. The damsel was raised in answer to her father's earnest entreaty. The widow's only son, because Jesus "had compassion" on the mother; Lazarus, because he and his sisters were friends of Jesus. But Christ was raised by virtue of His own holiness. He was "God's Holy One, and could not see corruption." "It was not possible that he should be holden (kpatεiodai) of death." (Acts ii. 24, 27.) The power which raised Him was His own holiness. Holiness and life are unalterably and indissolubly blent. The Holy One of God is mightier than death; He is the Resurrection and the Life.

In conformity with these conceptions, St. Paul speaks to the Ephesians (i. 19, 20), of Christ's resurrection, as the grand typical instance of Divine power, according to the working of His mighty power, which He wrought in Christ when He raised Him from the dead.

The power of Christ's resurrection includes

II. ITS WEIGHTY SIGNIFICANCE.

This significance is twofold, having an aspect

First: Towards Himself. He had many times predicted, not His death only, but also His resurrection. This He had done to the Jews openly, and to the disciples privately. Sometimes He denoted the third day as the time when this resurrection should take place. These announcements were mysterious and wonderful to the disciples. In Mark ix. 10,

we read that they "questioned one with another, what the rising from the dead should mean." Moreover, those glorious, living words of farewell, which are reported by the disciple whom Jesus loved as spoken at the Supper, contain references, not only to His approaching death, but also to His subsequent resurrection. "Yet a little while, and the world seeth me no more; but ye see me because I live, ye shall live also. A little while, and ye shall not see me, and again a little while, and ye shall see me, because I go to the Father." These beautiful sayings were uttered just when the disciples most needed comfort. The thought that He was preparing them for His death, seems to have so dulled their ears, that He was but imperfectly understood, until, in answer to their questioning, He spake plainly, " And ye now therefore have sorrow; but I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no man taketh from you."

The return of Jesus from the grave was, therefore, needful to made good His own prediction. The sequel must justify His words, or the disciples would have been thrown into most painful perplexity, between their conviction of the truth. of His doctrine and the holiness of His character on the one hand, and suspicion of His credibility as a foreteller on the other. During the interval of sorrow, quiet consideration, and mutual impartation of sentiment which immediately followed the crucifixion, we cannot help imagining that predictions such as these must have been recalled. On the arrival of the critical morning, they were unprepared to believe at once the too joyful tidings of the women, who remembered His words. Yet in wonder, blent with imperfect and timid bodings of the truth, they hastened to the sepulchre. Convinced at last, they of necessity clung with double steadfastness to all that had been said by One who, in so eminent an instance, and in so grand and wonderful a manner, could make good His words.

Again: The resurrection of Jesus was a convincing demonstration of His Messiahship. The prophets had spoken on the one hand of humiliation, suffering, and death; but on

the other, of triumph and length of days. (Ps. xvi. 10, 11; Isa. liii. 10-12.) These were the marks of the Messiah. The one had been inconclusive without the other; but the force of both united was irresistible. This was the proof urged by the Apostle Peter on the Jews at Pentecost. He told them that the crucifixion was in accordance with the "determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God," and that the resurrection, of which he and the other apostles were appointed witnesses, and whose marvellously glorious effects were now apparent, was predicted by the prophet David. This argument brought about sharp and sudden conviction. St. Paul, also, in his Epistle to the Romans, (i. 4) speaks of Christ 66 as of the seed of David according to the flesh," by which He was mortal; but "determined as the Son of God in power, (èv dvráμe) according to the Spirit of holiness, by resurrection from the dead."

The significance of Christ's resurrection respects

Secondly: His believing followers. Christ, as one with the race of mankind, suffered death, which was their sin working on His body. But His holiness, which is the life of the soul, raised His body from the grave. Now, from His union with the race, His spirit of holiness goes freely forth to sanctify mankind. As many as receive unresistingly the influence of that blest Spirit, repent, believe, are pardoned, and finally raised in likeness to Christ, by the same Spirit of holiness. Thus they receive entire redemption.

This explains

(1) The obligation to repentance as a consequence of Christ's resurrection. Repentance is the first step towards holiness. It is, so to speak, a spontaneous revolution of the mind, a turning away from sin and a turning towards God. Christ Himself, in His charge to the apostles, shortly before His ascension, particularizes the preaching of repentance as a consequence of His resurrection (Luke xxiv. 47). "That repentance and remission of sins, should be preached among all nations." So when the convinced Jews at Pentecost asked-What shall we do? Peter answered, Repent. So

when he ascribes the healing of the lame beggar to the name of Jesus, the Risen Christ, he subjoins: Repent ye, therefore, and be converted. Acts iii. 19. And when the apostles were brought before the Sanhedrim, to answer for their preaching all the words of this life, Peter's vindication again runs thus: "The God of our fathers raised up Jesus"—that is, from the dead-" whom ye slew and hanged on a tree; Him hath God exalted with His right hand”—a symbol of power-“ to be a Prince and a Saviour, for to give repentance to Israel, and forgiveness of sins."

(2) The obligation to confidence in Christ as the Saviour. The resurrection is often represented as the basis of faith, since it undeniably demonstrates God's acceptance of Christ's voluntary death; and that what the Serpent which Moses lifted up in the wilderness once effected for the bitten Israelites, God now accomplishes in spirit and in truth for all believing men.

(3) The inspired hope of our own resurrection. The resurrection of the body is only the outward climax of the work which begins in the sanctification of the soul. The two conceptions are continually blent in the mind and teaching of St. Paul. "If Christ be not raised, ye are yet in your sins. Then they also which are fallen asleep in Christ, are perished." 1. Cor. IV. 18, 19. Again he says in Rom. viii. 10, 11. "If Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin, but the spirit is life because of righteousness. But if the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, He that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by His Spirit that dwelleth in you," St. Peter's words in his first epistle have the same mystic comprehensiveness. "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which, according to His abundant mercy hath begotten us again unto a living hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled, and that fadeth not away.

It is this power of Christ's resurrection, then, which St. Paul in our text so ardently desires to know, for which he declined

all other pursuits, regarding them as comparatively mean and contemptible. He desires to know this power. He desires a thorough reception into his mind of the truth that God's power had raised up Christ His Holy One. He desires to understand the weighty significance of Christ's resurrection as a confirmation of His doctrine, as a proof of His Divine Sonship. He desires to know by experience the same power working evermore in himself, removing him ever further from self and sin, bearing him ever nearer to Christ. He desires "by any means to attain unto that resurrection from the dead." * Christ was his model; and since Christ, as such, was perfected by resurrection, by the same, St. Paul regarded redemption consummated in His followers. All which he desired for himself in this world and in the future, and for which he strives to excite a like longing in the Philippians, he expresses in the one glorious and comprehensive word, that resurrection from the dead.

τὴν ἐξανάστασιν τὴν ἐκ νεκρῶν.-Lachmann and Tischendorf.

The Preacher's Finger-Post.

THE WONDERFULNESS OF GOD'S
COUNSEL.

"Wonderful in counsel."Isaiah xxviii. 29.

THE context presents to us physical husbandry in two very different aspects. First: As the effect of God's teaching. And-Secondly: As the emblem of God's teaching.* God's counsel is wonderful in all. His departments of action as

*See Homilist, vol. III., p. 36.

a Creator, a Sovereign and a Redeemer. We shall confine our attention to the wonderfulness of His procedure as a Redeemer; and our illustration shall be taken from the nature, the formation and the propagation of the redemptive system.

I. ITS NATURE IS WONDERFUL. What is it? One word perhaps will best describe it : Reconciliation. It is called