preaching is vain. Ye are yet in your sins, and they which have
fallen asleep in Christ' with unfulfilled hopes fixed upon a baseless
vision--they of whom we hoped, through our tears, that they live with
Him--they 'are perished.' For, if He be not risen, there is no
resurrection; and, if He be not risen, there is no forgiveness; and,
if He be not risen, there is no Son of God; and the world is
desolate, and the heaven is empty, and the grave is dark, and sin
abides, and death is eternal. If Christ be dead, then that awful
vision is true, 'As I looked up into the immeasurable heavens for the
Divine Eye, it froze me with an empty, bottomless eye-socket.'

There is nothing between us and darkness, despair, death, but that
ancient message, 'I declare unto you the Gospel which I preach, by
which ye are saved if ye keep in memory what I preached unto you, how
that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that
He was raised the third day according to the Scriptures.'

Well, then, may we take up the ancient glad salutation, 'The Lord is
risen!' and, turning from these thoughts of the disaster and despair
that that awful supposition drags after it, fall back upon sober
certainty, and with the Apostle break forth in triumph, 'Now is
Christ risen from the dead, and become the first-fruits of them that
slept'!



THE ABIDING GIFT AND ITS TRANSITORY ACCOMPANIMENTS

'And when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with
one accord in one place. 2 And suddenly there came a sound from