ere, and ask from Him strength, according to the
riches that are treasured in Jesus Christ, we shall get the old answer,
'According to your faith be it unto you.'

THE RESURRECTION OF DEAD SOULS

'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.'--Eph. ii. 4, 5.

Scripture paints man as he is, in darker tints, and man as he may
become, in brighter ones, than are elsewhere found. The range of this
portrait painter's palette is from pitchiest black to most dazzling
white, as of snow smitten by sunlight. Nowhere else are there such sad,
stern words about the actualities of human nature; nowhere else such
glowing and wonderful ones about its possibilities. This Physician
knows that He can cure the worst cases, if they will take His medicine,
and is under no temptation to minimise the severity of the symptoms or
the fatality of the disease. We have got both sides in my text; man's
actual condition, 'dead in trespasses'; man's possible condition, and
the actual condition of thousands of men--made to live again in Jesus
Christ, and with Him raised from the dead, and with Him gone up on high,
and with Him sitting at God's right hand. That is what you and I may be
if we will; if we will not, then we must be the other.

So there are three things here to look at for a few moments--the dead
souls; the pitying love that looks down upon them; and the resurrection
of the dead.

I. First, here is a picture, a dogmatic statement if you like, about the
actual condition of human nature apart from Jesus Christ--'Dead in
trespasses.'

The Apostle looks upon the world--many-coloured, full of activity, full
of intellectual stir, full of human emotions, affections, joys, sorrows,
fluctuations--as if it were one great cemetery, and on every gravestone
there were written the same inscription. They all died of the same
disease--'dead _through_ sin,' as the original more properly means.

Now, I dare say many who are listening to me are saying in their hearts,
'Oh! Exaggeration! The old gloomy, narrow view of human nature cropping
up again.' Well, I am not at all unwilling to acknowledge that truths
like this have very often been preached both with a tone and in a manner
that repels, and which is rightly chargeable with exaggeration and undue
gloom and narrowness. But let me remind you that it is not the
Evangelical preacher