of right, and the champion of the weak, to that bourne from which he will return to bless the world no more? No sting in death? Is there one among us such a miracle of uninterrupted happiness, so insensible to others' grief, as not to have felt its keen and lingering sharpness?

Where is the victory of the grave? Where is it not? Power can not resist it. The kings of the earth lie in "the desolate places they built for themselves." Riches can purchase no allies skillful to avert the blow. The marble in its sculptured pomp acknowledges the struggle to have been in vain. There is no discharge in this war for wisdom, or youth, or virtue, or strength. In the crowded burial-place they lie together, smitten down by the same hand. Obscurity affords us refuge. The slave falls beside his master, and the beggar is slain by the wayside. Some may maintain the fight a little longer, but "the same event happeneth unto all."

Where is the victory of the grave? What conqueror is so mighty, when all conquerors fight in its battles, and then bow themselves to death with their victims? The track of its march is cumbered with the wreck of fairest symmetry, and beauty, and vigor. The entire generations of past ages are crumbled into dust; all the living are following in one vast funeral; all posterity shall follow us. Were all the cries of those who have perished by flood, or battle, or famine, or fire, or sickness, and the wails of the bereaved over their dead, crowded into one, the shriek would shake the earth to the center. Were all the corpses that are crumbling, or have crumbled to dust, laid upon the surface, as the slain upon a battlefield, there would not be room for the living among the disfigured trophies of the conquering grave, which, with the world for its prisonhouse, must consume its captives to make room for more. Where is the victory of the grave? The silence of the dead, the anguish of the surviving, the mortality of all that shall be born of mortals, confess it to be universal.

Yet, were there nothing beside this, the calamity would be light. A gloomy anticipation, a few tears, a sharp pang, and all would be over. We should sleep, and dream not. We should forget, and be forgotten. But there is more than this. Whence came death? Why must man, with his upward-bearing countenance, his vast affections, his far-reaching thought, the most fearfully made of all God's wonderful works, die? How came there to be graves in this decorated earth, which God looked down upon with smiles, and pronounced very good? My fellow-children of the dust, God is angry with us. None but God could take the life God gave, or dissolve what God has made. God has armed Death with fatal strength, and sent him forth, the executioner of a divine sentence, the avenger of a broken law. The victory of the grave is the conquest of justice over rebellion. It is omnipotence, putting to shame and eternal defeat the treason of man against his Maker. It is holiness consuming the sinner. Death is God's wrath, for his favor is life.

"The sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law." Death had no sting for man, and the grave no victory, till sin entered into the world; but now "death hath passed upon all men, for that all have sinned." The law of God, which condemns the sinner, gives Death power to seize and hold him fast, with all the strength of God's wrath against the guilty. Wherever there is sin, its wages are death. Wherever death is, there must be sin. Yes! even in thy death, thou sinless, crucified Lamb of God, for thou didst bear the sins of thy people! It is enough that we are mortal, to prove that we are sinners, and condemned already by him who declares, “the soul that sinneth it shall die." Does any one doubt this? Let him solve the question why God slays his creatures. There is no evading it. Man must be a sinner, or his Maker a tyrant. Here is the sharpness of death's sting. It is the evidence and punishment of sin. It is the lowering darkness of the storm of wrath, which is eternal. It is the hand of God tearing the sinner's shrieking spirit out of the world, and dragging him to judgment, thence to be cast down into pangs everlasting; while the grave holds the body in its unyielding grasp, till the Son of man comes in the clouds to execute his final vengeance upon each guilty soul, and its guilty instrument the polluted flesh. O my hearers, it is the bitterness of death, that pleasant as sins may be now, death will soon and surely come; and after death the judg ment, when every sin shall find us out, and the sinner have no excuse, nor plea, nor refuge from the flashing terrors of the inexorable law; and after the judgment, eternal woe for all the condemned, and a prisonhouse, whose doors allow no escape, where remorse preys upon the soul like a venomous worm that never dies, and the wrath of God burns in fire unquenchable. O my God, what a strange lethargy must that sinner be in, who feels not the sting of death, but sleeps stupidly on, dreaming of lust, and gain, and pride, till death wakens him with eternal agony! Here we see the apostle's boldness, the strength and valor of Christian faith; for, knowing that he must die, and the grave cover him, he stands up bravely, and flings defiance in their faces:

"O Death, where is thy sting? O Grave, where is thy victory ?" To learn the secret of his courage, we must consider,

II. THE THANKSGIVING.

"Thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ!"

This, with the preceding verse, answers three questions: Whence is the victory? How is it given us? In what does it consist?

1. "Thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory!" God gives death its sting, and the grave its victory. So long as God arms and strengthens them, it is impossible to resist them. They are God's ministers, and in their ministry omnipotent. God, therefore, alone can give us the victory, by becoming our friend. When he is our friend,

his ministers, which were our enemies, must be our friends and servants. Thus the believer looks to God, and relies wholly upon him. If there be no help from God, there can be none. He hopes not to deserve, or earn, or work the victory for himself. It must be given him by an act of free grace, sovereign mercy, and redeeming love. But when God comes to his rescue, his deliverance is certain. Therefore he says, "Thanks be to God!"

2. How is the victory given? Will the sting remain with death? or strength with the grave? If so, how will the believer conquer? Will God arm his enemies against him, and yet fight for him? Will omnipotence contend with omnipotence? or mercy deliver the sinner whom justice holds bound? Does sin cease to be guilty, or the law abate its force? Hear the apostle :

"Thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ."

"The sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law." Death is the penalty of sin, and, while the law condemns the sinner, he must remain captive to death and the grave. But our Lord Jesus Christ, by satisfying the law for his people, plucked out the sting of death, and ravished the victory from the grave.

For this the Son of God became incarnate, that, as man, in the place of man the sinner, he might be capable of suffering the punishment of the law, which is death; while his indwelling divinity gave to those sufferings an infinite worth. As God, he had the power to dissolve the bonds of death; but as the Redeemer, by his infinite atonement, he purchased the right to remit the penalty of the law, which passed death upon the sinner. He became man to suffer; he died that man might live. This the apostle expressly says (Heb., ii. 9), that Jesus" was made a little" (or, as some read, a little while) "lower than the angels for the suffering of death;" and, again (14, 15), "Forasmuch, then, as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself took part of the same, that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death; that is, the devil (the tormentor of the damned sinner), and deliver them, who through fear of death, were all their life-time subject to bondage."

He stood forth in our stead, to answer all the demands of the law against us; and the Sovereign Lawgiver accepted the substitute, and laid upon him the iniquity of us all. Then, having for us honored the law, by a life of perfect obedience, and infinite merit, he came to the passion of death. On the cross he invoked the death we deserved, in its most cruel and shameful forms.. He stood between the venomed monster and us, and into his heart death struck his sting deep, so deep that he could not draw it forth again; and losing all his power to harm, hung gasping and dying with the dying Saviour, and died in slaying Christ. In plain words, he exhausted the penalty, and satisfied the law,

and thus death lost all its strength to hurt those who by faith are crucified with Christ.

More than this, he demonstrated his victory over the grave. For, though he was buried, and the stone rolled to the door of the sepulcher in the rock, and sealed and guarded, and the grave and the powers of darkness struggled mightily to hold him fast, "it was not possible that he could be holden by them;" but, bursting the bars asunder, he drag ged them forth, captivity captive, making an ostentation of his spoils, openly triumphing. Thus did God the Father own him as his Son, and acknowledge the penalty paid, the atonement complete. Thus did the Holy Spirit crown him conqueror, and anoint him Prince of Life. Thus did he show himself to the believing sight of his church, as their triumphant champion, JEHOVAH THEIR RIGHTEOUSNESS, and their "Living Way" through death and the grave, to the glory on high.

But the full manifestation of his triumph and ours, is kept for that day when the voice of the archangel and the trump of God shall proclaim his final coming to judgment; and all the dead, the countless dead, whose dust is scattered over the earth, beneath the sea, and in the very air, shall start to life; his redeemed, glorious in beauty, incorruptible, like his own glorified body, to shine with him, his brightest trophies, forever; and the wicked, who would not have him to reign over them, confounded and terrified by the terrible splendor of the once crucified Jesus, to hear the sentence of death, whose mortal agonies are eternal, and to be cast down to shame unspeakable, horror, and fiery torment, whose smoke shall rise forever. Thus will our Lord vindicate his conquest over death and the grave, by compelling them to give freedom to the holy bodies of the redeemed; that, as Adam walked in Paradise, body and soul, a perfect man, they, in their entire humanity, may enter the second Paradise of their inheritance undefiled, and that fadeth not away; and by making them ministers of his just vengeance upon the souls and bodies of all the wicked.

3. Wherein does our victory, through the Lord Jesus Christ, consist? "Thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ!"

The believer triumphs in Christ's perfect atonement.

By faith he through Christ By faith he is

By faith he is born again with Christ, and as Christ became incarnate for him, so is Christ formed in him, the hope of glory. obeys in Christ, walks with Christ in his holy life, and honors the divine law, which before he had broken. crucified with Christ: "I am crucified with Christ," says the apostle (Gal., ii. 20). Every drop of the bloody sweat, every pang of the lacerated flesh, every agony of the sinking spirit, in which Christ poured out his soul- unto death, went to pay his penalty, and discharge him from the grasp of death, the executioner of the law's vengeance. For him death has no more sting. Death remains. Its precursors, pain and sick

ness and infirmity remain. But their mastery over him exists no longer. He knows that they are changed. The curse is changed to blessing, the enemies to friends. Pain and sickness and infirmity are now God's faithful chastenings; not precursors of death, but of a far more exceeding and an eternal weight of glory; and death is no more death, but life, life eternal, life exalted and heavenly. The grave has no victory over him; for there he buried his sins, his sorrows, his misery, lusts and vileness. He leaves his body there to be purified against the final redemption, while his soul goes free to exult where it can feel no shackle, no warring law, nor foul temptation. Thus he bears affliction with patient hope, as he would take a medicine with the certainty of better health, or submit to surgery, that an inveterate plague may be eradicated; and he calmly awaits the coming of death to unbolt his prison door, knock off his fetters, and lead him forth into purer air and bound. less delight. The sting of death lost its power when his sins were pardoned; and death itself waits like a captive upon its Christian master.

The believer triumphs in Christ's resurrection. "I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me," says the apostle. (Galatians, ii. 20.) He was dead in trespasses and sins; but as the apostle reasons in Ephesians, first and second chapters, he is quickened, together with Christ's body, by the same Holy Spirit, to a new and better life. He has a divine life in him. He is a new man in Christ Jesus; not in body, for there are natural causes which render its dissolution necessary; but a new man in soul, strengthened to bear the burden and resist the evil lusts of the flesh. Eternal life is begun in him, faint, indeed, as life in the new-born babe; but, more than the earnest, the very pulsations of immortality. For this is the office and power of Christ, to give eternal life to as many as receive him; and this is the privilege of the Christian, even on earth, to have his conversation in heaven. Death has lost its power to divide him from God. He soars upon the wings of faith far above and beyond the gloomy barrier, enters the company of the church of the first-born, and listens to the harpings of innumerable angels. Is not this a victory over death and the grave?

The believer triumphs in the final resurrection. Christ not only arose, but ascended up on high. There the body, which was here bent by sorrow, has been made glorious in divine beauty; and the countenance, here channeled by tears, buffeted and spit upon, is altogether lovely, the radiation of its smile, the fairest light of heaven; and the crown of all power, might, and dominion, is bright in the splendor of many priceless jewels upon the brow scarred by the mocking thorns; and heaven rolls up its waves of hallelujahs to the feet, in which the prints of the nails perpetuate the memory of the cross; and the hands, yet manifesting the cruel malice of men, are stretched forth to bless the countless throngs uttering praises to the name of Jesus, the Lamb that was slain.

As the Redeemer is glorified in his flesh, so shall the believer be raised