it but it is a matter of common observation as to the fact itself. We cannot explain how the sin of Adam attaches to every being of the human race, but it is a plain matter of fact which meets us at every turn.

Now the use which is to be made of this in the text, is this: That there is, in truth, no greater difficulty in the idea that having union with the last Adam as a quickening spirit-with Jesus Christ raised from the dead-we are endowed with his life and his likeness, and are thereby partakers of his condition, as much as we are, in our natural state, partakers of the life, and likeness, and condition of the first Adam. By raising him from the dead, God has constituted his Son Jesus Christ a quickening spirit: as a man invested with the fulness of the spirit, he quickens with eternal life, as many as the Father has given him. He so quickens them, as that they are his seed as truly now as they have been hitherto the seed of the first Adam; and so his seed, that they have his life, that they have his likeness, that they are the partakers in all the blessedness of his condition. Even as Christ is, so are we in this world.

Here then, beloved brethren, is the only foundation of our salvation; it is the life which Christ now possesses. Union with him in his risen glory is the only source of spiritual life, the only link by which we can retain it. There is no way of being saved but by becoming the recipients of this new life from Christ; no other way of being saved but by our becoming thus the part of a new creation, members of a new body, joined to a new head, built upon a new foundation. Of one or the other Adam, we must necessarily hold our life; for there is no other head of life except these two Adams, the first and the last and if our life be but of the first Adam, then we are partakers of that life under the forfeit incurred by the fall; we have but, as it were, a kind of dying life, or living death-whichever you please to have it. But if it be of the last Adam, then are we partakers of that life which he received out of death. He is the quickening spirit; but we are spirits quickened by him: he living by the Father, and we living by Him; He the living stone, the tried stone, the sure foundationstone; but we also living stones, built up upon him, a spiritual building for the habitation of the Lord: He the vine; we the branches grafted into him, deriving the living sap from him as the root.

Here then, my brethren, I repeat, I would affectionately urge it upon you— here is the only foundation for a sinner's salvation. Away with all the vain subterfuges which the wisdom of this world hath invented wherewith to deceive the souls of men. Away with all the shallow resources of a ruined nature; as if man, by his own efforts, or by any power within himself-by his prayers, his repentance, his tears, his sorrows, or any other mode, could find his way back to God. Away with all dependence on such and such works; and equally with such and such frames of spirit. Away with all dependence on a sound faith. Salvation is not to be found in these things: it is not to be found in the reformation of conduct; it is not to be found in a difference of feeling; it is not to be found in an act of the mind, whatever the act may be; it is not to be found in the feelings of the heart, whatever those feelings may be but it is to be found in a vital union with Jesus Christ, and with a supernatural existence in Christ. "Ye must be born again:" "Marvel not that I said unto you, Ye must be born again." You must live by union to Jesus Christ: you must live by feeding upon Jesus Christ; for he hath said, "Except ye eat the flesh of

the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you:" which is equivalent to his having said, "Except you have that union with me which alone is to be sustained and kept up by this spiritual food, you have no life in you."

O then, brethren, submit your ways to the ways of God. Be content to be recipients of his grace. Behold, God has laid help upon One that is mighty. who, having put away sin by the sacrifice of himself, is now anointed with a higher life, wherewith to quicken you, and to make you alive, by grafting you into himself. Seek not for life from yourself; but be willing to receive it as a boon from Christ.

But further, let us look at this subject as it bears ON THE TRIALS of the CHRISTIAN'S PRESENT CONDITION. It furnishes the great Christian foundation. For what is the Christian's state? He is united to the risen Saviour; he is quickened by that quickening spirit; he is endowed with higher life: and yet he dwells in a body derived from the first man Adam, who was only made a living soul, and by transgression became a fallen, guilty, and sinful soul. Contrast the first Adam and his being, with the last Adam and his being. "There is," says the Apostle, "a body proper to a soul; and there is a body proper to a spirit." But the great peculiarity in the Christian's condition in the present state of warfare, is this: that while he is a quickened spirit in union with Christ the quickening spirit, he yet has a body proper only to a soul, by still having, in his own nature, union with the first Adam : he has a body which, even in its origin, was fitted to contain no higher life than that of a living soul; which since its origin has been deteriorated and injured by the fall; and which yet must serve as the habitation (rather say the prison-house) to a spirit quickened by union with Him who quickeneth all things.

Bear this in mind, brethren, and it will throw a striking light on many passages in Scripture which are descriptive of the Christian experience. For instance, "We know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this (tabernacle) we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with our house which is from heaven: if so be that being clothed we shall not be found naked. For we that are in this tabernacle do groan, being burdened: not for that we would be unclothed, but clothed upon, that mortality might be swallowed up of life." Again: "We know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now. And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the first-fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body." And again: "O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" What do these (and a variety of similar passages which will readily occur to you) express, but the desires of the quickened spirit to be released from this prison-house in which it is pent up, and shackled, and hindered in all those exercises which it desires to have with God? They express the longing of the quickened spirit for an abode more suitable to its powers and its faculties; for a body which will not be a clog, but a help, in its goings towards the Author of its being.

And does not this also point out the Christian's resource under such trials? What is it, but to walk by faith and not by sight? What is it, but to realize

in the actings of our faith, what St. Paul realized when he said, “The body is dead because of sin; but the spirit is life because of righteousness. Therefore, brethren, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live after the flesh. For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die; but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live." What is it, but to keep under the body? What is it, but to crucify and mortify this tabernacle of the flesh, that we may give free scope to the quickening Spirit? What is it, but to realize what the Apostle says: "If ye be risen with Christ"—that is, if you be indeed thus quickened of him-" seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. Set your affections on things above, not on things on the earth. For ye are dead, and your life"-your quickened life-"is hid with Christ in God."

And O! what does this part of the subject say, to those who feel no such burden, no such incumbrance, while they tabernacle in the body of this death; who find the enjoyments of sense congenial to the inner man? O, how obvious must it be that such know not Christ as a quickening Spirit! How obvious that it is "because there is no life in them!" "They that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh;" and what is the alternative? "If we live after the flesh we shall die:" "To be carnally-minded is death.

But finally, let us look at this subject, as it bears also ON THE CHRISTIAN'S FUTURE PROSPECTS, We are as yet, indeed, in the natural body—the body proper to a soul: but there is a spiritual body. Let us not forget that the body is a part of man as essentially as the spirit; and that as we are now by faith quickened in spirit, so there is a renewal unto holiness to this body also, which shall be revived, and glorified, and changed into the likeness of Christ's glorious body, according to the mighty working whereby he is able even to subdue all things unto himself.

This shall be—when? At the second glorious advent of our Lord Jesus Christ. Now he is gone to the Father; now he is quickening those whom the Father hath given him. He is hewing out the living stones, and building them together for a temple of the Lord: and when all the stones are prepared, and the number of the elect is accomplished, then will he return that he may gather all into one; not merely in a spiritual union-such a union as can be apprehended by faith; but also in a bodily, local union-such a union as can be apprehended by sense also.

This has been too much lost sight of in the church in these latter times. Man has been too much spoken of, and spoken to, as if he had no body to be saved; as if the saving of his soul were every thing. And this, besides giving a vagueness and indistinctness to the great subject of redemption, does also deprive the Lord Jesus Christ of the glory of one part of his work as "a quickening spirit." For in deriving from him as the life, we must derive in body as well as in spirit. He came to save, not the soul, but to save the man, both body and soul. We are to be like him, not in spirit only, but, as the promise of Scripture expressly is, in body also. And then-but not till then-that which is imperfect shall be done away, and that which is perfect shall have come. It is this which will be the close of humiliation-this that will be the 'destruction of the last enemy. It is this that will blot out the last sharp and dreary memorial of the flesh, and

consummate that living hope to which God hath begotten us again by the Spirit. For as the resurrection of Christ shows us the perfection and sufficiency of his work, so it is our resurrection that will bring to perfection in us the fruit of his work. As it was His resurrection that shewed him to have come out from under the effects of imputed sin, into the possession of the unclouded glory which he had with the Father before the world was; so it is our resurrection that will shew us to have come out of the course of sin and of the flesh, into the unclouded vision and perpetual enjoyment of that glory. As it was His resurrection that shewed him to have been the conqueror of Satan; so it is our resurrection that will shew us to be conquerors over all evil through him. As it was by His resurrection that he was declared to be the Son of God with power; so it is our resurrection by which we shall be manifested to be sons of God: for though now sons, we are not yet manifestly so; "it does not yet appear what we shalı be." Though now we have eternal life, that life is not manifest; it is as yet hid with Christ in God:" but "when Christ, who is our life, shall appear, ther shall we also appear with him in glory."

O then, beloved brethren, think not lightly of the resurrection of the body. Be not deceived by a miscalled spirituality (which is not the spirituality of the Bible), which would direct all your attention to the soul, and make little of what becomes of the body; which will hold up before you as the object of your hope, the passage of the soul into its disembodied state, and leave in darkness and obscurity the re-animating of the body in the likeness, and its transmutation into the glorious image, of our Lord Jesus Christ. "Now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the first-fruits of them that slept :" and as surely as the firstfruits have been gathered, so certainly shall the harvest follow.

See in this the true discomfiture of Satan see in this the ultimate triumph of divine power: see in this the final glory of the last Adam as a quickening spirit: that in the very body, as well as the soul, wherein you have rebelled, the last traces of sin shall be obliterated, and the Lord Jesus Christ shall be magnified both in our bodies and in our spirits.

And now may I conclude with the Apostle's prayer: "The very God of peace sanctify you wholly; and I pray God your whole spirit, and soul, and body, be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ."

THE HOPE OF THE RESURRECTION.

REV. M. O'SULLIVAN, A.M.

ST. MARK'S CHURCH, PENTONVILLE, APRIL 26, 1835.

"Of the hope and resurrection of the dead I am called in question."-Acts, xxiii. 6.

THIS was the declaration of St. Paul when he stood before a partial tribunal, surrounded by adverse hearers. There was injustice on the tribunal; their was hostility against him on the part of those who were assembled: but he was sustained by that blessed hope for which he was that day called in question.

Such was the influence of this hope upon the early Christians, as well as upon the apostles, that even the philosophers among the heathens accounted them persons of diseased understanding. Nor was it strange that they should form this opinion: for, if the hope which influenced their own actions were true; if the principles upon which they regulated their lives were correct; the Christians were of all men least wise, as they were of all men confessedly most miserable. This was accordingly the opinion which the heathen philosophers entertained. They saw how patiently the followers of One whom they regarded only as a crucified man, endured the afflictions to which their calling exposed them. They saw that terror could not shake them; nor could the blandishments of friendship soothe them, so as that they should renounce what they esteemed their mad opinions. They saw with what a triumphant assurance they gloried in their reproach; with how firm and how scornful an indifference they looked away from the glories of the world and while they beheld men, as it would seem upon their principles, thus rejoicing in their shame, and indifferent to the proper motives of man's exertion, they naturally chose rather to consider the Christians mad than to acknowledge themselves to be in

error.

Yet these philosophers were not unacquainted with the doctrine that there was to be a life after death; nor was this a subject upon which they were indifferent, of which they were regardless. On the contrary, it was a subject to which they devoted their attention closely, and upon which they have left us ample record to prove their industry, as well as their zeal, in the study of it. In fact, the human mind cannot contentedly repose in the idea, that, when the mortal crumbles into dust, human existence is ended. Man cannot repose upon such an idea: and accordingly before the light of revelation shone upon him, and before the grave was conquered, and death swallowed up in immortality, men did apply themselves to investigate such precarious and uncertain