He resumes His powers of life; He takes out of His enemy's hands that which for a time He

gave up.

O how wonderful the joy, the amazement, the holy rapture that must have burst upon the souls of the disciples, when after all He whom they had seen utterly bereft, as they thought, of all power, suddenly recovers all, comes forth from the tomb, shews Himself alive to them by infallible proofs, again treads the earth with His risen body, proves Himself Lord even of death! How different from the scene of the cross! How changed all their thoughts, how renewed, rekindled, all the fires of weak and wasting faith! "The Lord is risen indeed!" these few words tell all; all is there summed up; it is enough; all is true; He is indeed the Lord; none else could rise; all is fulfilled; death is conquered; the grave overcome, when it seemed to have gotten the victory.

How expressively is the feeling which filled the hearts of the disciples, as this great truth was made manifest, described in the words, "they returned from the sepulchre with fear and great joy." What must it have been to have heard the words, "the Lord is risen indeed;" what must it have been to have beheld the risen Lord,

to have looked into the empty sepulchre, to have seen Him alive again who had died upon the cross! This was indeed a mystery, a mystery that must needs have inspired awe and dread, holy fear and holy joy. Who, I ask, could see a friend's grave opened, and the friend come forth without fear as well as love; though the whole heart would thrill with joy to see a friend's face again full of life, yet we could not behold one who had been dead alive again without many wondering and awful thoughts. But if there would be this mixture of awe and love in any common case, far deeper must have been their feelings when our Lord rose from the dead on this most holy and blessed day. Then was revealed to them in clearer and stronger light than ever the great truth that this Christ was in truth, "Immanuel," "God manifest in the flesh;" then were sealed all former proofs of His power and Godhead; then were confirmed all their former acts of faith, all their confessions of Christ, all their thoughts concerning Him, all their trust. Whatever clouds of doubt the Cross might have cast, now this rising of the Sun of Righteousness, this glorious Resurrection, scattered away every distrustful thought, and warmed their loving hearts into a brightness and clearness

of faith not possessed before. It was the consummation and perfecting of their faith, as it was the more open manifestation of His Godhead.

In short, they and all Christ's disciples were able to look upon the scene of the cross with very altered eyes, to interpret it in a very different sense from that which must have struck them at the time. The mystery of the Cross received clear interpretation from the mystery of the Resurrection; and when they received their Isaac back, they understood more deeply the virtue of the sacrifice, the meaning of that temporary subjection to the power of death. They who wondered when He gave His life into the enemy's hand understood the act when He took it again from the seemingly victorious enemy. Easter Day made the act of Good Friday plain; the words were doubtless remembered, "I lay down My life, that I might take it again. No man taketh it from Me, but I lay it down of Myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again." What was the cross, if the stone had remained at the door of the sepulchre? Surely the stone had remained at the door of the kingdom of heaven. What was the virtue of the cross, if there had been no

power in Christ to rise? The power of the Cross comes from the power of the Resurrection. The Cross was death, not life; it was obedience unto death, a following of the old Adam; but if the last Adam had not risen, could He be the quickening spirit to the dead race of men? The Cross would only have added one proof more of the power of death, if there had not been the after scene of the Resurrection; if Christ be not risen, we are yet in our sins.

But what shall we say now, now that Christ is risen? His risen life assures us of the power and virtue of His death; now that He has come forth from the place of death, we see the value of His death; now we see that as He took back His life, and ever liveth unto God, He died unto sin once and made the one sufficient sacrifice for sin. In our mind's eye we must bring the two scenes of the Cross and of the Resurrection near together; though the one be full of sorrow, the other of joy, we must use the one as the light for the clearer reading of the other. We must gaze at Christ crucified, yea, risen again. The Creed is our Easter hymn, “crucified, dead, buried, the third day He rose again from the dead."

Oh how changed the whole state of man by

the death and resurrection of Christ, by those two acts which are one in the wonderful work which they effect, the one work of utterly changing us in this life and in the next. In this world and beyond all is changed; without these things we were a dead, lost, accursed race; but through Christ crucified and Christ risen, we pass from death unto life; we are found of Him whose lost children we were; we get the blessing instead of cursing; what was dead is quickened; what was lost is found; what was condemned is saved. All is changed, our present state, our future state, things in earth and things beyond the world, things temporal, things eternal, things before death, and things after death. The living have power to rise from dead works, and to serve the living God; the dead obtain paradise; and after judgment, heaven. See here the height and depth of the love and of the power of Christ. All the states of man, his state on earth, his state after death, before the day of judgment, his eternal state after judgment, are entirely changed.

Now let us consider at present only one of these states, that in which we now are while we dwell on earth. We are described as being naturally "children of wrath," as being under