X.

THE NAME HIGHLY EXALTED.

PREACHED IN THE CATHEDRAL CHURCH OF ST PETER'S, MARITZBURG, ON EASTER-DAY MORNING, APRIL 1, 1866.

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PHIL. II. 9-11.

WHEREFORE GOD ALSO HATH HIGHLY EXALTED HIM, AND GIVEN HIM A NAME WHICH IS ABOVE EVERY NAME, THAT AT THE NAME OF JESUS EVERY KNEE SHOULD BOW, OF THINGS IN HEAVEN, AND THINGS IN EARTH, AND THINGS UNDER THE EARTH, AND THAT EVERY TONGUE SHOULD CONFESS THAT JESUS CHRIST IS LORD, TO THE GLORY OF GOD THE FATHER.'

WE are assembled this day, according to the custom of the Church, to celebrate the festival of Easter, the day which is set apart for the special consideration of the subject of our Lord's Resurrection. Last Sunday, and during the whole of Passion Week, now past, the passages of Scripture, selected for the Epistles and Gospels of the day, have been chosen so as to bring out in full view the humiliation of Christ, hisobedience unto death, even the death of the cross.' Now the tone of the Service is changed. Songs of cheerful joy and triumph rise on every side from the lips and hearts of innumerable worshippers; and the lessons of the Church, which testified beforehand of the sufferings of Christ,' now tell us of the glory that should follow.' May God enable us to have our share in the gladness of this great festival, and go from this place to-day quickened with the desire to tread more closely in the steps of him, who by his patient faith has overcome death, and opened unto us the gate of everlasting life,’—to ‘follow the example of his patience,' that we may also be partakers of his resurrection,'-to 'die with Christ,' that we may ' also live with him,' that 'like as Christ was raised

up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also may walk in newness of life.'

The name " Easter' is believed to be derived from that of an ancient Saxon goddess, whose feast was held about the spring-time of the year, and, consequently, near enough to the time of the Christian festival, to allow of the latter being substituted for it, according to the practice of ancient times, to which I have before referred, of replacing the wild excesses and idolatrous feasts of the heathen by the soberer enjoyments of Christian festivity. Thus, as one writes (Miller, History of the Anglo-Saxons, p.63)

April the Saxons named Easter-month after their goddess Eostre. Thus we still retain a name, which, though commemorating the worship of an ancient idol, has now become endeared to us by the Resurrection of Christ,-a holy time which we can never forget, for at every return it seems to bring back a spirit of beauty into the world, whose pathway is strown with the sweetest and earliest flowers of spring. But here, again, we have a similar phenomenon to that which we noticed before with reference to the feast of Christmas. In this southern clime, our Easter does not fall in spring-time. We cannot point to the gladness of reviving Nature, to the fresh delights of the vernal season,to the white blossoms that cover the thorn, to the budding flowers and the new-springing grass, or to 'the woods so full of song,'-as symbols of the event which we celebrate, as helping to pour new life into our hearts, to brighten what the English poet calls

the vernal light of Easter Morn.

We cannot here point, as he does, to the snow-drop,—

Thou first-born of the year's delight,

Pride of the dewy glade,

In vernal green and virgin white,

Thy vestal robes arrayed!

and remind you that, when we see such flowers as these, rising again in all their beauty after the passage of the winter-season, with its cold shade, as it were, of death

They tell us, all will glisten soon

As green and bright as they.

We cannot here spur on the drooping heart to Easter joy by such an argument drawn from them, as this which he employs in England

Is there a heart that loves the Spring,
Their witness can refuse?

Yet mortals doubt, when angels bring
From heaven their Easter news.

Our Easter falls in autumn, when the crops are ripe, and the harvest is begun, and leaves have begun to fall, and the winter-with its bright, clear sky, but with its cold and drought-will soon be here. As before, then, we must dismiss all thought of appealing to the adventitious circumstances, which make the great Christian festivals seasons of special gladness in northern climes, and mix up, doubtless, with the devotional feelings, which properly belong to these occasions, a great deal of mere natural excitement and seasonable exhilaration of spirit. We must fall back here upon the true Easter joy, that which belongs to it merely as a religious festival, and seek to derive from the consideration of the subject, which is specially brought before us this day, some food for the soul, some thoughts which may help us to go forward, with a brighter hope and a firmer constancy, to our own work and duty in life.

I need hardly tell you,-if you have at all carefully considered the question yourselves, that the story of our Lord's Resurrection, as told in the four Gospels, is full of difficulties.

I cannot attempt to reconcile the different accounts as we now have them, nor say what parts of them bear the stamp of historical truth, and what do not. That some

portions, at all events, are legendary, cannot be doubted: how much, it is impossible to say, until the critical work, to which this age is called, shall have been more fully completed than now. But it is not my intention at the present time to point out any of those difficulties. I would rather dwell this morning upon a view of the subject which is free from all doubts, and beyond the reach of criticism. What we really believe, as Christians, is that Christ is risen,—that death and the grave have not prevailed against him, that he who died upon the Cross, still lives,-and we, if we are faithful, if in heart and soul we have died with Christ, have also risen, shall even now live with him, and live eternally.

Such is the teaching of the Apostle in many passages :—

'We are buried with him by baptism into death; that, like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. For, if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection. . . . If we be dead with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him.'

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If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God.'

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'God who is rich in mercy, for His great love wherewith He loved us, even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, and hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus,'-whom He raised from the dead, and set him at His own right hand in the heavenly places, far above all principality and power and might and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come, and hath put all things under his feet, and gave him to be the head over all things to the Church, which is his body, the fulness of Him that filleth all in all.'

What wonderful and awful words are these! We, Christians, are raised from the dead,'-we sit in heavenly places with Christ,'-and those heavenly places are at God's right hand,'-where we, the body, are even now seated in glory with our head!

in us.

With him we are gone up on high,
Since he is ours and we are his;
With him we reign above the sky,
We walk upon the subject seas.

We boast of our recovered powers;

Lords are we of the lands and floods;

And earth and heaven and all is ours,

And we are Christ's, and Christ is God's.

Nay, as in him, St Paul says, dwelt all the fulness of the Godhead bodily,' so we, he tells us, are the fulness of Him that filleth all in all!' The glory, that was revealed in Christ, is revealed also in our measure in us; the Father, that dwelt in him, dwells also by the Living Word These words express a great mystery, which we cannot altogether fathom. But they remind us of the greatness of our high calling to be the sons and daughters of the Lord Almighty,'' heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ,'-made in our Father's image, after His likeness, gifted with reason, conscience, will. They remind us of our glorious duty and privilege to be followers of God, as dear children.' They encourage us to be ready to suffer with Christ, the servant of Jehovah,' the 'man of

sorrows and acquainted with grief,' that we may be also glorified with him. For, as the Apostle says in the text'God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven and things in earth and things under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.'

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St Paul, when he speaks here of things under the earth,' was, no doubt, thinking of Hades or Hell, as the place of departed spirits under his feet. He supposed,as was generally believed in those days,-that the earth was flat, with heaven above and hell beneath it; and the same idea we perceive in the ancient creed of the Church, 'he descended-went down-into hell.' It is of no use to shut our eyes to such facts as these, and pretend that we can serve God or glorify Him, by refusing to use our reason upon such points, by refusing to recognize that St Paul, after all, like the writers of the Creeds, was but a fellowman, who, however Divinely taught upon the things of highest import,—the spiritual truths of Christ's kingdom, that kingdom of righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost,'-was still left under the same influences as other men in respect of other matters, even such as concern the spiritual world, as in the case now before us. We shall show best our true regard and veneration for the Bible, by not building theories about the other world on chance expressions like these of the Scripture writers, which show only that they were not so well aware, as Modern Science has made us, of the limits of our knowledge in respect of these matters. We know now, however, that the earth is a globe; and hence we are obliged to dismiss, as unmeaning, except when used in a mystical or symbolical sense, all ideas of above or below in reference to the spirit-world. We can only speak metaphorically of ascending up into Heaven' or going down into Hell.' We must be satisfied with the assurance, which Christ's gospel gives us, of a 'hope full of immortality,' that, 'when absent from the body, we shall be present with the Lord.'

But the general meaning of the Apostle is plain, that he who had been brought low unto death, the death of the cross, by the Will of God, his Heavenly Father, should now by the same Will be highly exalted, so that 'every