s argumentative, results. It stirs up the powers and
awakens the yearnings of the soul, opens heaven to the gaze,
locates there, as it were visibly, a glorious ideal, and thus
helps one to enter upon an inward realization of the immortal
world. The one essential thing is not that Jesus appeared alive in
the flesh after his physical death, the revealer of superhuman
power and possessor of infallibility, but that he divinely lives
now, the forerunner and type of our immortality.

CHAPTER VIII.

ESSENTIAL CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF DEATH AND LIFE.

LET US first notice the uncommon amount of meaning which Christ
and the apostolic writers usually put into the words "death,"
"life," and other kindred terms. These words are scarcely ever
used in their merely literal sense, but are charged with a vivid
fulness of significance not to be fathomed without especial
attention. "If thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments."
Obviously this means more than simple life; because those who
neglect the laws of virtue may live. It signifies, distinctively,
true life, the experience of inward peace and of Divine favor.
"Whosoever hateth his brother hath not eternal life abiding in
him, but abideth in death;" that is to say, a soul rankling with
bad passions is "in the gall of bitterness and the bond of
iniquity," but, when converted from hatred to love, it passes from
wretchedness to blessedness. "Let the dead bury their dead." No
one reading this passage with its context can fail to perceive
that it means, substantially, "Let those who are absorbed in the
affairs of this world, and indifferent to the revelation I have
brought from heaven, attend to the interment of the dead; but
delay not thou, who art kindled with a lively interest in the
truth, to proclaim the kingdom of God." When the returning
prodigal had been joyfully received, the father said, in reply to
the murmurs of the elder son, "Thy brother was dead and is alive
again;" he was lost in sin and misery, he is found in penitence
and happiness. Paul writes to the Romans, "Without the law sin was
dead, and I was alive; but when the law was made known, sin came
to life, and I died." In other words, when a man is ignorant of
the moral law, immoral conduct does not prevent him from feeling
innocent and being at peace; but when a knowledge of the law shows
the wickedness of that conduct, he becomes conscious of guilt, and
is unhappy. For instance, to state the thought a little