-and this being done, that he himself, in sign that he could not die any more, that he was indeed made partaker of immortality, that death could have no more dominion over him, should be wedded to eternal Youth amid the blissful mansions of the immortal gods.*

Such, no doubt, is the interpretation of this pregnant symbol; and thus, brethren, by a thousand voices, in a thousand ways, the world has been declaring that it was not made for death, for that dread and alien thing, which, notwithstanding, it found in the midst of it. Thus has it looked round for one who should roll away the stone from the door of that sepulchre, to which it had seen its sons one after another unreturningly descend; and eking out the weakness of its arguments for immortality by the strength of its desires, it has been forward to believe that for this one and that the stone had been actually rolled away. But yet presently again, it has felt only too surely that it had but the shadow,

* In Buttmann's Mythologus, vol. i. p. 252 seq., the higher significance of the whole mythus of Herakles is unfolded with an exquisite tact and beauty. Without entering into the merits or demerits of other parts of the book, it may yet be as well to say that it is only this single treatise which I wish to speak of in this language of admiration. If K. O. Müller is right in his conjecture that 'Αδμητος=ἀδάμαστος (Il. ix. 158) the indomitable, a name belonging to Hades, and that Apollo's service of Admetus is his passing down to the infernal world in consequence of having slain the earth-born Python; if this be true, and he brings much that is curious in confirmation of this view, we may then add one more, and that not the least remarkable, to the Greek mythic narrations of this description. (See his Scientific Mythology, pp. 243-246, Engl. Transl.)

and not the very substance, of the things hoped for: and in doubt and perplexity, in despondency and fear, has made the words of the Psalmist its own: "Dost thou shew wonders among the dead? Shall the dead rise up and praise thee?" but, unlike to him, it has not known what answer to give to its own question.

And so it went on, until at length, after many a false dawn, the world's Easter morning indeed broke, and from beside an empty tomb they went forth, the witnesses of Jesus, preaching Him and the resurrection; men able to declare things which they had seen-that there was indeed a risen Head of our race, one who had tasted death for every man, who, not in poet's dreams, or in legend of olden time, but in very truth, had burst its bands, because it was impossible He should be holden by them; that there was one for whom death was what men had so often, and so fondly and significantly called it-even a sleep; for He had laid Him down and slept, and after his three days' rest in the grave, risen up again, because the Lord had sustained Him. The day at length arrived, when men were able to go forth, preaching Him who had shown himself alive by many infallible proofs; in whom too, being risen, mortality was swallowed up in life; and who was now seated at the right hand of the Majesty on high, angels and principalities and powers being made subject unto Him.

Such was the word of their message that the stone was rolled away, that the riddle of death was solved; and hearts unnumbered welcomed the tidings

and expanded themselves to it, as flowers, shut through some long dreary night, unfold themselves to the warmth and the light of the returning day. And shall not we, brethren, bear our part in the great jubilee which that message of theirs has summoned the world to keep, in the glory and gladness of this day and of this day's mystery, before which all phantoms and shadows of the night flee away, before which all sadness and despair are weak to stand? Truly, with a deep insight into the mystery of this Easter morn, did the great poet of our later time make the glad voices of that Easter hymn which proclaimed that Christ was risen, these, caught by accident, of potency sufficient to wrest the poisoncup untasted from the hand of the despairing one, who had already raised it to his lips.*

And how fares it with ourselves? Is that word for us a scatterer of sadnesses, a quickener of joys? Does it enable us to put off the sackcloth of our spirits, and to gird ourselves with gladness? Let us earnestly ask ourselves this question; for surely it is a sign that all is not right with us, when other things make us glad, but not this; when the natural spring fills our hearts with a natural joy, but this with no spiritual; when we stand aloof, cold and unsympathising, as the wondrous cycle of the Christian Year goes round, as the great events of our Lord's life and death and resurrection and glory succeed one another in a marvellous order; not humbling ourselves in the humiliations of that life, and therefore not exulting in its triumph; never

* See Goethe's Faust, Scene 1.

having stood beside the cross of Jesus, and therefore having no right and no desire to stand beside that open tomb, where he reared his first, his everlasting trophy over death. If we feel not this gladness, let us take shame to our dull hearts, and claim it as a gift from our God, which He will not deny us. Let us ask that we too may be borne upward and borne onward on the great stream of the Church's exultation. Let us ask this earnestly; let us ask it as something which we ought not to be without. For of this let us be sure, that now, after eighteen hundred years, that announcement of the angel, "He is not here, but is risen,” should be as fresh and new, as full of an unutterable joy to us, as it was to those weeping women, who came to pay the last sad honours of a pious homage to their dead Lord, but found only his empty and forsaken grave.*

* I had been reading just before and during the composition of these lectures, the earlier portions of Lange's Leben Jesu, and, though I have not looked back at the book in preparing this third edition for the press, am persuaded that I owe more to it, especially in this lecture, than ought to have remained till now unacknowledged.

LECTURE III.

THE SON OF GOD.

ACTS XIV. 11.

And when the people saw what Paul had done, they lifted up their voices, saying in the speech of Lycaonia, The gods are come down to us in the likeness of men.

I ENDEAVOURED, when we last met, to trace out the manner in which humanity has ever been looking in one quarter or another for its redeemers and saviours for deliverers from physical, deliverers from moral, evil. Carrying forward my subject a step, I will now remind you of the fact that it has not merely been heroic men, men who triumphed over all, even death itself, but divine men, for whom the world has been craving. In such, and in such only, it has felt deeply that its help must lie,-a most true voice of man's spirit ever telling him that only from heaven the true deliverance of the earth could proceed. We shall see how men have been ever cherishing the conviction of a real fellowship between earth and heaven, and that, not an outward one merely, but an inward; one wherein the two worlds truly met, not by external contact only, but in the deeps of personal being, in persons who most really belonged and held on to both worlds. We