to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He rose again the
third day, according to the Scriptures.' There are three facts--death,
burial, resurrection. These are the things that any eye could have
seen. Are these the gospel? Is there any saving power in them? Not
unless you add the commentary 'for our sins,' and 'according to the
Scriptures.' That death was a death for us all, by which we are
delivered from our sins--that is the main thing; and in subordination
to that thought, the other that Christ's death was the accomplishment
of prophecies--these make the history a gospel. The bare facts,
without the exhibition of their purpose and meaning, are no more a
gospel than any other story of a death would be. The facts with any
lower explanation of their meaning are no gospel, any more than the
story of the death of Socrates or any innocent martyr would be. If you
would know the good news that will lift your heavy heart from sorrow
and break your chains of sin, that will put music into your life and
make your days blaze into brightness as when the sunlight strikes some
sullen mountain-side that lay black in shadow, you must take the fact
with its meaning, and find your gospel in the life and death of Him
who is more than example and more than martyr. 'How that Christ died
for our sins, according to the Scriptures,' is 'the gospel of Christ.'

II. The Gospel of Christ is the 'Gospel of God.'

This form of the expression, though by no means so frequent as the
other, is found throughout Paul's epistles, thrice in the
earliest--Thessalonians (1 Thess. ii. 8), once in the great Epistle to
the Romans (i. 1), once in Corinthians (2 Cor. xi. 7), and once in a
modified form in the pathetic letter from the dungeon, which the old
man addressed to his 'son Timothy' (1 Tim. i. 11). It is also found in
the writings of Peter (1 Pet. iv. 17). In all these cases the phrase,