lay hold of, and will make it the hand by which we grasp His strong
hand, which lifts us 'out of the horrible pit and the miry clay, and
sets our feet upon a rock.' But if He lie dead in the grave your
faith is vain, because it grasps nothing but a shadow; and it is vain
as being purposeless; you are yet in your sins.

The last thought is that the risen Christ gives us the certitude of
our Resurrection. I do not for a moment mean to say that, apart from
the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, the thought, be it a wish or a
dread, of immortality, has not been found in men, but there is all
the difference in the world between forebodings, aspirations, wishes
it were so, fears that it might be so, and the calm certitude that it
is so. Many men talked about a western continent, but Columbus went
there and came back again, and that ended doubt. Many men before, and
apart from Jesus, have cherished thoughts of an immortal life beyond
the grave, but He has been there and returned. And that, and, as I
believe, that only puts the doctrine of immortality upon an
irrefragable foundation; and we can say, 'Now, I know that there is
that land beyond.' They tell us that death ends everything. Modern
materialism, in all its forms, asserts that it is the extinction of
the personality. Jesus Christ died, and went through it, and came out
of it the same, and I will trust Him. Brethren, the set of opinion
amongst the educated and cultured classes in England, and all over
Europe, at this moment, proves to anybody who has eyes to see, that
for this generation, rejection of immortality will follow certainly
on the rejection of Jesus Christ. And for England to-day, as for
Greece when Paul sent his letter to Corinth, the one light of
certitude in the great darkness is the fact that Jesus Christ hath
died, and is risen again.

If you will let Him, He will make you partakers of His own immortal
life. 'The first fruits of them that slept' is the pledge and the
prophecy of all the waving abundance of golden grain that shall be
gathered into the great husbandman's barns. The Apostle goes on to
represent the resurrection of 'them that are Christ's' as a
consequence of their union to Jesus. He has conquered for us all. He
has entered the prison-house and come forth bearing its iron gates on
His shoulders, and henceforth it is not possible that we should be
holden of it. There are two resurrections--one, that of Christ's
servants, one that of others. They