world than He is now; that His voice was clearer and more intelligible; that His government was more direct and uniform. He is, if only we will look, still among us, speaking to those who listen through the manifold discoveries of the age, guiding even our fierce and selfish conflicts so as to minister to His purpose.

And we ourselves consciously or unconsciously are serving Him. He uses us if we do not bring ourselves to Him a willing sacrifice.

Departure in Blessing

IN ordinary life nothing is treasured up with more

sacred affection, nothing is more powerful to move us with silent and abiding persuasiveness, nothing is more able to unite together the seen and the unseen than the last words, the last look of those who have passed away from us, the last revelation of the life which trembles, as it were, on the verge of its transfigurement. The last words of Christ were a promise and a charge. act of Christ was an act of blessing. of Christ was the elevation of the temporal into the eternal, beyond sight and yet with the assurance of an unbroken fellowship.

The last

The last revelation

That promise, that charge, that blessing, that revelation, are for us, the unchanged and unchangeable bequest of the Risen Lord. His hands are stretched out still. His Spirit is still hovering about us. work is waiting to be accomplished.

His

THE

GOSPEL OF THE RESURRECTION

The Resurrection True or False-no Mean

THE power of the Resurrection, as the ground of

religious hope, lies in the very circumstance that the event which changed the whole character of the disciples was external to them, independent of them, unexpected by them.

It is a real link between the seen and the unseen worlds, or it is at best the expression of a human instinct. Christ has escaped from the corruption of death; or men, as far as the future is concerned, are exactly where they were before He came.

Whatever may be the civilising power of Christian morality, it can throw no light upon the grave.

If the Resurrection be not true in the same sense in which the Passion is true, then death still remains the great conqueror.

We cannot allow our thoughts to be vague and uncertain upon it with impunity. We must place it in the very front of our confession, with all that it includes, or we must be prepared to lay aside the Christian name.

If the Resurrection be not true, the basis of Christian

morality, no less than the basis of Christian theology, is gone. The issue cannot be stated too broadly. We are not Christians unless we are clear in our confession on this point.

To preach the fact of the Resurrection was the first function of the Evangelists; to embody the doctrine of the Resurrection is the great office of the Church; to learn the meaning of the Resurrection is the task, not of one age only, but of all.

The Value of an Historical Revelation

A SUBJECTIVE religion brings with it no element

A

of progress, and cannot lift man out of himself. historical revelation alone can present God as an object of personal love.

Pure Theism is unable to form a living religion. Mohammedanism lost all religious power in a few generations. Judaism survived for fifteen centuries every form of assault in virtue of the records of a past deliverance on which it was based, and the hope of a future Deliverer, which it included.

In proportion as the Resurrection is lost sight of in the popular Creed, doctrine is divorced from life, and the broad promises of divine hope are lost in an individual struggle after good.

Like all historical facts, the Resurrection differs from the facts of science as being incapable of direct and present verification. And it differs from all other facts of history because it is necessarily unique. Yet it is not therefore incapable of that kind of verification which is appropriate to its peculiar nature.

Its verification lies in its abiding harmony with all the

progressive developments of man, and with each discovery which casts light upon his destiny.

Completeness, indeed, is but another name for ascertained limitation. The grandest and highest faculties of man are exactly those in which he most feels his weakness and imperfection. They are at present only halffulfilled prophecies of powers which, as we believe, shall yet find an ample field for unrestricted development.

Special prayer is based upon a fundamental instinct of our nature. And in the fellowship which is established in prayer between man and God, we are brought into personal union with Him in Whom all things have their being.

In this lies the possibility of boundless power; for when the connection is once formed, who can lay down the limits of what man can do in virtue of the communion of his spirit with the Infinite Spirit?

That which on one occasion would be felt to be a personal revelation of God might convey an impression wholly different at another. The miracles of one period or state of society might be morally impossible in another.

Theology and Science

THE requirements of exact science bind the attention

of each student to some one small field, and this little fragment almost necessarily becomes for him the measure of the whole, if, indeed, he has ever leisure to lift up his eyes to the whole at all.

For physical students as such, and for those who take their impressions of the universe solely from them,

miracles can have no real existence. Nor is this all: not miracles only, and this is commonly forgotten, but every manifestation of will is at the same time removed from the world: all life falls under the power of absolute materialism, a conclusion which is at variance with the fundamental idea of religion, and so with one of the original assumptions on which our argument is based.

Theology deals with the origin and destiny of things: Science with things as they are according to human observation of them. Theology claims to connect this world with the world to come: Science is of this world only. Theology is confessedly partial, provisional, analogical in its expression of truth: Science, that is human science, can be complete, final, and absolute in its enunciation of the laws of phenomena.

Theology accepts without the least reserve the conclusions of Science as such it only rejects the claim of Science to contain within itself every spring of knowledge and every domain of thought.

This holds true of the lower and more exact forms of Science, which deal with organic bodies; but as soon as account is taken of the Science of organic bodies-of Biology and Sociology-then Science itself becomes a prophet of Theology.

In this broader and truer view of Science, Theology closes a series, 66 a hierarchy of Sciences," as it has been well called, in which each successive member gains in dignity what it loses in definiteness, and by taking account of a more complex and far-reaching play of powers, opens out nobler views of being.

While we admit that the tendency of a scientific age is adverse to a living belief in miracles, we see that this tendency is due, not to the antagonism of science and