For these ends have we been baptized into His death, and for these ends are we invited to partake of His body and blood. That this may be the blessed effects of His passion in each one of us, may He, of His infinite mercy, grant, who once hung upon the cross for us, and is now at the right hand of God interceding for us, and on whom we shall all look in joy or in despair at the last day.

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SERMON XVIII.

THE GOSPEL.

ROMANS i. 1-4.

"The gospel of God, (which He had promised afore by His prophets in the Holy Scriptures,) concerning His Son Jesus Christ our Lord, which was made of the seed of David according to the flesh; and declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead.

My brethren, why is Easter Sunday the greatest day of the year? Before I answer this question for you, I shall ask another. Why do we keep Sunday at all? In the times before Christ Sunday was not the Sabbath. Sunday is not the last, but the first day of the week. God said, " Remember that thou keep holy the Sabbath-day," and "the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God." And we believe that we in spirit fulfil His command by keeping holy the first day. Why this change of the day? and why exalt this Easterday over all other days? Because on this day a greater thing took place than the resting of God after the work of creation. Redemp tion is greater than creation, and so we com memorate the finishing of the work of re

demption rather than the finishing of the work of creation; and so it is that we Christians keep the day of the week on which redemption was completed as the "day of God," and the day of the year on which redemption was completed as the "day of days" in the Christian

year.

Now, in so doing, are we acting according to the spirit of the New Testament? Assuredly we are; for if there is one fact put above another in the New Testament, it is the resurrection of Christ as following close upon His death. The whole Gospel and everything connected with it is bound up in Christ's resurrection. I will give one or two proofs of this, to which I earnestly direct your attention. We have in the Acts of the holy Apostles, two sermons by the Apostles SS. Peter and Paul. One of these sermons, or part of it, has just been read for the second lesson this evening-i. e., St. Peter's to the assembled multitude at Jerusalem, who were looking with astonishment and awe at the signs of divine power in the apostles when the Pentecostal shower of the Spirit had just descended upon them-the other, St. Paul's sermon to the people at Antioch, in Pisidia, will, D.V., be read for the Epistle on Easter Tuesday. These two sermons are the exact counterpart of each other. They go over the same ground of doctrine and are on one

thing-viz., the resurrection of Jesus Christ and its consequences. St. Peter says in his sermon, that Jesus of Nazareth, whom the Jews by wicked hands had crucified and slain, had yet been raised up by God, who had loosed the pains of death, (or rather the bonds in which death held Him.) Then the Apostle goes on to speak of David as alluding, in the sixteenth Psalm, not to himself but to Christ, when he utters prophesies, "Thou wilt not leave my soul in hell, neither wilt Thou suffer Thine Holy One to see corruption." "He seeing this before," the apostle proceeds, "spake of the resurrection of Christ, that His soul was not left in hell, neither His flesh did see corruption. This Jesus hath God raised up, whereof we all are witnesses." My brethren, this is the first Christian sermon that ever was preached; it was the very first sermon, in point of time, that ever fell from the lips of man which set forth Christ as a redeemer from sin and the grave, and invited men to repent and be baptized into Christ's Church. It was blessed by the Holy Ghost more than any sermon has ever been since, for three thousand persons were by it made, not only Christians, but good and faithful ones; and it is almost all upon the resurrection. It sets forth Christ crucified, and passes on to Christ risen from the dead.

Turn we now to St. Paul's sermon. It winds

up

in these words: "We declare unto you glad tidings, how that the promise which was made unto the fathers, God hath fulfilled the same unto us their children, in that He hath raised up Jesus again; as it is also written in the second Psalm, Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten Thee. And as concerning that He raised Him up from the dead, now no more to return to corruption, He said on this wise, I will give you the sure mercies of David. Wherefore He saith also in another Psalm, Thou shalt not suffer Thine Holy One to see corruption. For David, after he had served his own generation by the will of God, fell on sleep, and saw corruption. But He, whom God raised again, saw no corruption. Be it known unto you therefore, men and brethren, that through this Man is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins." (Acts xiii. 32-38.) You see from this that the glad tidings of the ancient promise and the forgiveness of sins are all made to depend upon Christ's resurrection; and this, remember, is the only sermon of St. Paul's which remains to us.

When we turn to the Epistles of St. Paul, we find the same place given to the resurrection of the Saviour. In the beginning of the fifteenth chapter of his first Epistle to the Corinthians, we have the apostle declaring his gospel. Now, what was St. Paul's gospel? These are his words: "Moreover, brethren,