be to him "the overwhelming deluge, but without an ark." The friend with whose happiness his own was intertwined, is torn from him by a catastrophe the most painful and mysterious; and the same dismal catastrophe awaits himself. His own body must become the victim of corruption; and, for ought he knows, his spirit may be swallowed up in the fearful abyss of utter annihilation, or plunged for its guilt into the still more fearful gulf of eternal perdition. To a person in such circumstances, how grateful would be the intelligence that provision was made for repairing the desolations of death. The gospel, which contains a balm for every wound, reveals to us both the origin of that fearful and universal malady, and the means by which its terrors may be vanquished, and its effects counteracted. "The sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law." By making satisfaction to the law, and atonement for sin, Jesus Christ has obtained the power to deliver from that future punishment to which death would otherwise have been the inlet; and there is a day appointed when he will raise the bodies of his saints in incorruption and glory. He has thus secured to his followers a glorious conquest over death; and hence they are invited to join in the song of triumph, which is to be the subject of our present consideration. "But thanks be unto God, who giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ." There are six things in these words to which, in reliance on divine aid, I shall call your attention:-A war presupposed; a victory gained; the originating cause of this victory; the person by whose agency the victory is gained; the person to whom the victory is given; and the requital which is due for this blessing.

I. There is a war presupposed. The text mentions a victory, and every victory supposes a previous con

test. You will easily perceive that, in that contest, the parties are death on the one side, and the human race, or rather believers, on the other.

When we reflect on the nature, the circumstances, and the consequences of death, we are not surprised to find that, in the language of almost all nations, savage and civilised, it has been represented as an enemy armed with powers the most extended and destructive, and actuated by dispositions the most cruel and unrelenting. Even while life is spared, that enemy often breaks in on our peace, and robs us of those whose society augmented our joys, and alleviated our sufferings, and sooner or later he will assail our own persons in close and desperate strife, and, in a manner the most painful and agonising, dislodge the immortal spirit from its mortal tenement, and reduce the latter to its kindred dust. As death involves the extinction of our earthly existence, it involves, of course, the extinction of all our earthly hopes, and enterprises, and enjoyments. Not only so, but it introduces us into a new and untried state of being; and if we enter that state with our guilt unpardoned, and our natures unsanctified, death will be to us only the beginning of sorrows, the commencement of a woe that will have no termination. Such being the fearful changes involved in death, it is surely a mode of expression so natural that it can scarcely be regarded as figurative, to invest death with a sort of personality, and to represent it as a foe carrying on war against the successive generations of men. In other contests, the aged and the infirm are generally exempted from the toils and perils of the warfare; but, in the contest with death, there is no exemption. The whole human race are engaged in it. In that war there is no intermission. Not a day or an hour but some are falling before the enemy. Not a day

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or an hour should we regard ourselves as invulnerable to his darts; for, from the moment of our entrance into the world, life and death, like two antagonist principles, are engaged in an incessant struggle, sometimes the one promising to gain the ascendancy, and sometimes the other. In the midst of life we are in death. In other wars, peace may be concluded between the belligerent powers; or the warrior, after encountering the perils of many a bloody day, may be honourably discharged from the service, and return home unwounded. "In this warfare there is no discharge;" the contest is not for liberty, or property, or glory, it is for life. The foe is one among whose harbingers are to be found diseases the most loathsome and excruciating. He is a foe whose stab is necessarily fatal; before whom you must all fall. His name is death, and hell follows in his train.

We have dwelt long enough, however, on the character and the ravages of this enemy. Let us now turn to the brighter side of the picture, and contemplate,

II. The victory gained over this foe. This conquest, as we have already intimated, does not involve immediate exemption from his power; but, notwithstanding of this, it is both decisive and glorious. In this conquest there are various parts or stages. There is a victory gained by the saints when they are enabled to meet the king of terrors without despair and without dismay, animated by the triumphant anticipation, that, though they now fall by his dart, their bodies shall hereafter be emancipated from his dreary dominions. They gain a further victory by their souls being saved from eternal death, and admitted, immediately on their separation from the body, into a state of perfect purity and peace. And there is, lastly, the completion of the

conquest, by their bodies being raised up in glory, and reunited to their glorified and immortal spirits. It is to that part of the victory, as appears from the preceding context, that the apostle particularly refers in the words before us.

Of this last stage of the victory, we are not favoured, as of those which precede it, with any sensible tokens or prognostics. Not only must the righteous, as well as the wicked, descend to the mansions of death, but from those dark abodes to which all go, none return; nor is there found in them one symptom of reviving life. Look into the grave, and you find that all is cold and dreary, mute and motionless. "There is hope of a tree, if it be cut down, that it will sprout again, and that the tender branch thereof will not cease; though the root thereof wax old in the earth; and the stock thereof die in the ground: yet, through the scent of water, it will bud and bring forth boughs like a plant. But man dieth, and wasteth away, yea, man giveth up the ghost, and where is he." "Wilt thou show wonders to the dead," says the Psalmist; "shall the dead arise and praise thee? Shall thy loving kindness be declared in the grave? Or thy faithfulness in destruction? Shall thy wonders be known in the dark? and thy righteousness in the land of forgetfulness?" The expectation of such changes is represented by the Psalmist as wild and chimerical; and wild and chimerical it would doubtless be to expect such changes during the continuance of the present arrangement of things; but hopeless and impossible though they seem, they shall yet be realised. There is a period appointed when God will show his wonders to the dead; when the dead shall arise and praise him; and when death shall be not only vanquished, but swallowed up in victory. Were the body rescued from the grave without receiv

ing any new property or privilege beyond that of exemption thenceforward from death, the victory would be complete and glorious. In this, however, as in other respects, the believer is "more than a conqueror." Not only will his body be rescued from the grave, and rendered incorruptible, but it will be invested with other new and wondrous qualities-qualities such as the body of Adam did not possess, even before sin had rendered it mortal. "It is sown in corruption, it is raised in incorruption; it is sown in dishonour, it is raised in glory: it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power it is sown a natural, it is raised a spiritual body. And so it is written, The first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit. And as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly."

These properties will qualify it, not for an earthly, but for the heavenly paradise, and will render its future as far superior to its present state, as the celestial luminaries surpass in splendour the gross objects of this sublunary sphere. But is this glory destined to all believers? Yes, "this honour is to all the saints;" "for as in Adam they all die, even so in Christ shall they all be made alive." The church is the Mediator's body and his fulness; and were the least of the members wanting, he would not be complete as a mystical

person.

Thus certain and glorious is the victory which the saints shall gain over death; and that victory is connected with complete deliverance from every other evil, and with the total subjugation of every other foe. They shall be delivered from all the effects of sin which is the cause and the sting of death, and from all the charges of the law, which is the strength of sin; for they shall be honoured with a glorious acquittal in.