for not only the greatest, but the most salutary and the most hopeful changes in the progress of human society. It, alone, arrested the ruin, the imminent wreck and foundering of Western society; and with Western society must have gone the hopes of mankind. It, alone, was equal to support a moral and religious revolution, of which the forces are not yet spent, and which act with the greatest intensity on numbers who now refuse to recognise in the darkness of the past, the Power from which those forces have originated; who cannot see in Christ risen, the seal, the only seal, of that "mind of Christ" which, so often in disinterested service-often with heroic selfsacrifice they recognise to be the greatest ideal possible to man. It alone has been the basis of what none can look back to without wonder, the perpetual advance of all the centuries of our modern world: centuries which with monotonous and inconsistent mixtures of good and evil, yet never-or only once perhaps, in the tenth century, and that with much that was hopeful,-never went back in those conquests, specially necessary for men in mere human. society, of larger and truer ideas of justice and mercy and beneficence. Christendom has much to answer for, but it has done that which no other social phenomenon in the world, political, moral, religious, has ever approached to, has ever conceived of. We can see how it should, as well as that, in matter of fact, it did, flow from Christ's open tomb. Those who think differently must believe that the memory of

an obscure Syrian devotee, poor and miserable and ruined, floated up by accident, by the chances of an age of Oriental fanaticism, no one can tell how, to the summit and control of all those forces which shape the world; that it gained them, and kept them, and developed them, indefinitely,—and was, in fact, the inspirer of the greatest and noblest times the world. has seen, the inspirer of the enthusiasm and worship of its greatest children.

We live in times of energy and unquiet and change. Around us, familiar to us, are questionings on every conceivable subject of human thought, challenging every human belief, every human law, every human hope. As we walk through life, we cannot help hearing these awful voices on all sides. of us, threatening what is best and dearest, implanting doubt, terrible in their seriousness. Don't let us weakly complain of what is inevitable, as this is; God can bring abundant good out of danger and evil, if only men are true. But it is indeed a blessing to pass out of the fevers and anxieties of the day into the calm of Easter. It is not less a blessing to pass out of the dull heavy pressure of custom, into the presence of such an awful opening of another world, as Christ risen from the dead. For, do not let us deceive ourselves, it is most awful; it has no fellow in all that has happened in time. It is the living reality, on which depends the fate of mankind; it is this or it is something we dare not think of. It is idle indeed to think of toying with ingenious guesses

about forgeries, or allegories, or legends affecting and poetic. It is not such things that can bear the weight of Christianity-of historical Christianity, much more of spiritual Christianity.—And to this, Easter leads us. It invites us to make that step of which I spoke, from intellectual assent to the effort and living energy of faith. We are brought close to the very centre of that vast system of witness by which we know of Christ. And if we will yield to its gracious influences, if we will stir ourselves up to see with the inward eye what our words declare, if we let love and devotion, and awe and reverence and hope, have their due scope, Easter will bring us, in the midst of perplexity and trouble, what St. Paul calls "peace in believing :" we shall know in whom we have believed.

It will bring the peace of conviction, of belief, of faith.

2. And next; Easter, by its wonderful memories, and its gracious persuasions, invites to peace of conscience. Christ's Resurrection, I need not remind you, has been, from the first, the great call, and the great power, to newness of life.-" Raised again for our justification." "As Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life." This is a familiar line of thought in the New Testament, echoed in the services of our Prayer Book. And so Easter is the natural start for correction, for amendment, for learning and facing the truth in our lives, which are always drifting and straying from the standard. which we acknowledge. Easter is the natural

beginning of a renewed and purified conscience. The past time of reflection and repentance has, we may hope, opened many eyes, torn asunder many selfdeceptions, filled many souls with goodwill and hope and courage, in their efforts against sin; has brought home to many, the misery and the darkness of living apart from God, or in rebellion against Him. And now Easter comes to send them on their way rejoicing, to make new and straight paths for their feet, to breathe over them, for their further work in life, the peace, the strength, the living hope, of which the Resurrection is the fountain. Only let them keep themselves pure. Only let them jealously guard, as their best treasure, their Easter peace of conscience. Only let them remember that nothing will keep it pure-neither thoughts, nor feelings, nor prayers, nor even sacraments, much less the outward environments of a religious life-without the continual activity of a watchful and honest will. The man's self must do it by the grace of God, not things outside him; where he is, in what he chooses and does, there God's grace will meet him: where he is only passive, and lets circumstances decide for him, he cannot hope for the conqueror's crown, or for the disciple's peace.

I might, I think, appeal to a wide experience in saying that there is one condition of the religious conscience, where all seems fairly right, except one little uneasy, unhealthy spot, never really healed, but intermittent in its mischief, which seems at times to

disappear, and then breaks out again with its old life. It is not for nothing that an Apostle has given to the language of morals as well as of religion, the profound thought and the phrase of a "besetting sin," "the sin which doth so easily beset us."

And he

gave it to religious men, to men like so many of us here, surrounded by the memorials and the gifts of religion. It may be any sin,-impure thoughts, uncharitable judgments, evil speaking, selfishness, insincerity, cowardice, slackness, inattention, irreverence in prayer: but it comes and goes, is repented of and returns, and conscience knows it but too well. And there is one feature characteristic of this ill-satisfied conscience, where all would be honest and well but for this one reserved dark corner,-that it seems to be pursued, dogged, haunted by appeals and warnings, from unexpected quarters, and with startling force, in which it cannot help believing that it hears the voice of God. one, and it makes all the who know something of a besetting sin, know something of this experience?

The touch of nature is world kin. Do not all

When conscience is thus uneasy, everything round it, like the fragments of a mirror, seems to multiply the reflection of its unsound condition. The consciousness that we are not quite true to God and duty, the consciousness of the "unlit lamp, and ungirt loin," gives a meaning and colour even to trivial accidents; we see in them our own story, our own portraiture; and the eye of the portrait is ever