O GRAVE, WHERE IS THY VICTORY?

"O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? The sting of

death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ."-1 CORINTHIANS XV. 55-57.

How beautiful the symbol under which death is represented, so frequently, in Scripture-a sweet and a refreshing sleep! Not the unconsciousness but the refreshment of sleep, the rest and repose enjoyed by the weary, when the toil and turmoil of the day are over. Our last sleep is thus everlasting refreshment; we lie down in the grave not hopeless of a resurrection, but in full expectation of the dawn of that bright morn when the trumpet shall sound, and the sleeping dust shall be kindled with more than its former life, and we shall see God in our flesh.

Many a time the sweet chime has sounded over all the world, "The Lord is risen;" it is not without echoes, for many a heart hears the tone as the first note of an everlasting jubilee. It is only sad at this time and in this year, that in Eastern lands the boom of cannon, and the sharp ring of musketry, and the roll of the conquering drum, should mingle with the

Easter chimes, that tell us that the Prince of Peace is risen from the dead, and become the first-fruits of them that slept. But it will not be so always; the noise of battle shall be merged in the glad accents of peace; and the awful roar of artillery in that still, small, sweet voice, which, the feeblest in its present force, will yet have supremacy from sea to sea, and from the river to the very ends of the earth.

It is an interesting coincidence that Easter Sunday occurs in the beautiful and joyous season of spring. One likes the idea that thoughts of the resurrection should mingle with the sight of the first violet in spring, with the first rose of summer, with the song of the ascending lark and the chirp of the returning swallow. It is interesting, surely, that when nature seems to burst from the grave, and to lay aside the winding-sheet of snow, in which she has been wrapped for a season, and to put on her Easter and her resurrection garb, that Christians should meet together and praise Him who has revealed to us, and taught us to shout, the joyous words, "Christ is risen, and is become the first-fruits of them that sleep."

There are two leading thoughts, in the passage we have chosen for study. First, there is death, or the separation of the soul from the body; and secondly, there is the victory of the grave, or the emancipation of the body from the dominion of the tomb. Two great truths will become the subject of our comment; namely, death, or the separation of the soul from the body; and the resurrection, or the emancipation of the body from the grave in which it has been kept as a prisoner. We may now say in anticipation, "O death,

where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?" but it is only by anticipation. We shall never be able to look down upon the grave as an exposed and broken fortress, and upon death as a chained captive at the chariot-wheels of the mighty Conqueror, till we look down from the skies, and see earth re-baptized, and all flesh raised, and the glory of the Lord lightening every land. Then we shall not only say, but sing and shout for joy, "O death, where now is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? Thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ."

Let us first of all look at the first half of the truth before us, namely, Death: "O death, where is thy sting?" Instinctively we shrink from death; we shrink no less instinctively from pain; this law of our being is needful, or man under many of the ills of life would prematurely seek shelter in the tomb. Death is our foe, he is the last enemy that shall be destroyed, but an enemy, not a friend. For a man to say, "I wish to die," is either to speak deceivingly or to speak falsely. We cannot wish to die; it is monstrously unnatural to die. We were never made to die; whatever be the solution of it, death was not meant for us, nor we for death; and to shrink instinctively from death is the most natural thing in the world. But we can have within, in spite of death, elements of eternal hope, principles of truth, so powerful, so bright, so cheering, that we can treat the valley between time and eternity as if it were invisible, and see beyond only the sunlit peaks of the better land that sparkle in the rays of the Sun of righteousness.

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Death consists very much in the fear of death. Let the fear of death be extinguished in the heart, and then death is transition, it is not dying. Christ in the heart our life, Christ in the heart our resurrection and our hope, strikes his beams upon the mists that lie on the valley of the shadow of death, turns those mists. into golden splendour, and enables us to go down into its depths rejoicing in the companionship of Him who is our rod and our staff, even in the valley of the shadow of death.

And when the death hour comes to a Christian, and the hour of his departure is arrived, the summons that is addressed to him is not, "Go down into the grave," but, "Come up hither;" and joyously we ascend at the Master's bidding, and a cloud receives us out of sight. "Jesus died," has transmuted and transformed death for me; "Jesus rose again," has transmuted and transformed the grave for me; my grave is to me now only the strong cave of Arimathea, and I can say of it what may be written over it, "Here the Lord lay." The feeling that makes us shrink from death perhaps is not only what we have already stated the instinctive recoil of human nature from it—but feelings, and fears, and misgivings, that start up in our reflective hours, and make us fear and hesitate to die. We think of death too frequently as extinction, we think of the future too much as a blank. We fancy, not it may be in our soberest moments, but in those of despondency and grief, that the future is blank, because we do not know, and cannot understand, how we shall live there. We cannot conceive life without these organs, faculties, and limbs; and we fancy, when

our visible framework is laid in the grave, that we not only cease to live upon earth, but either cease to live at all, or live in some mysterious way that conveys no comfort and inspires no hope. But if we think deeply, we shall find that we know nothing how we live now, we assume that we know more than we do. How do I know why or by what power the heart beats? The God that keeps my heart beating here can keep my life going there. How do I know how sounds that penetrate the ear touch my soul, and awaken their echoes and their reverberations there? How do I know how sights that enter the eye, and are reflected on its retina, can imprint themselves upon the immaterial tablets of my immaterial and immortal soul? I know nothing of it at all. We know much less than we imagine; and if we cannot understand life here, and yet live, may we not live a joyous and a nobler life hereafter? Though now we so see through a glass darkly, and know not how it shall be, we are, nevertheless, assured by Him who cannot lie, that it will be better than we expect.

And, in the next place, we are often afraid to die, because we cannot see what is to be the enjoyment and employment of the soul in its first state, or in its separation from the body. All that we know is, that it will be happy. Some bright gleams come down at intervals to tell us how it is happy. "At thy right hand there is fulness of joy: with thee there are pleasures for evermore." Paul had been in the third heaven, and Paul said, "Absent from the body," what proof of the soul's distinctness from the body! "is present with the Lord." And so delighted with the