spectacles with indifference, and make no efforts on God's behalf, and come not to the help of the Lord against the mighty, and to the rescue of souls perishing for lack of knowledge? Christians, arouse yourselves! Consecrate your service this day to God's great cause. He is doing a great work. He will accept of you as his instruments. He invites, he demands. your co-operation. Surely you will not refuse it. Set about the task immediately. You may, under God, bring many to glory. Begin with your own children, neighbors, relations, friends. What you cannot do in person, help others to do by your prayers, and by your pecuniary aid to every Christian object. Thus shall you be followers of God, as dear children. Thus shall you show yourselves

"The true adherents to your Saviour's plan,
Who lived and died to save apostate man."

And God will bless your work; for it is his work, though you be the visible agents. You shall meet in glory some whom you were the thrice happy instruments of bringing to it. Then "they that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament; and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars for ever and ever."

1

IV.

BAPTIZED FOR THE DEAD.

PREACHED AT THE NEW CHAPEL, CITY ROAD, FRIDAY, MARCH 2, 1821, ON THE DEATH OF THE REV. JOSEPH BENSON.

ELSE WHAT SHALL THEY DO WHICH ARE BAPTIZED FOR THE DEAD, IF THE DEAD RISE NOT AT ALL? WHY ARE THEY THEN BAPTIZED FOR THE DEAD?-1 Corinthians XV, 29.

MOST of you have so often heard these words recited at the funeral solemnities of departed friends, that you will at once recollect the general scope and connection of the passage in which they occur. It appears that certain false teachers had arisen at Corinth, and perhaps elsewhere, who maintained the absolute impossibility of an actual resurrection from the grave, and resolved everything which our Saviour had said on that subject into allegory and metaphor. This heresy the apostle strenuously combats. He begins by asserting the resurrection of Jesus Christ as a fact which had been decisively proved by the evidence of many credible witnesses. From the fact, thus proved, he proceeds to deduce the most conclusive arguments. "Now, if Christ," says he, "be preached, that he rose from the dead, how say some among you that there is no resurrection" can be no resurrection-" of the dead? But if there be no resurrection of the dead, then is Christ not risen: and if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain”—vain as to its subject and matter, for we preach Jesus and the resurrection; vain as to its authority and obligation, for we preach by virtue of a commission professedly received from a risen Saviour, who said to us, "Go ye into all the world, and preach the Gospel to every creature;" vain as to its efficacy and success, which depend altogether upon the promised influence and grace of this risen and exalted Lord. "If," therefore, "Christ

be not risen, then is our preaching vain; and your faith”— produced instrumentally by that preaching, and fixed on that risen and exalted Saviour whom we preach-“is also vain. Yea, and we are found false witnesses of God; because we have testified of God that he raised up Christ: whom he raised not up, if so be that the dead rise not. For, if the dead rise not, then is not Christ raised:" if the thing be not only impossible to man, but impossible to God, as these false teachers affirm, after the example of the scornful philosophers of paganism, "then is not Christ raised and if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain ; ye are yet in your sins;" under the guilt and liable to the punishment of them, since we have no demonstration of the acceptance and sufficiency of our Saviour's atoning sacrifice, but that which is furnished by or connected with his resurrection from the grave. If this, therefore, be invalidated, you can have no well-founded hope of pardon and life eternal. Moreover, if Christ be not raised, 66 then they also which are fallen asleep in Christ," who have died in the faith and fear of his name, "are perished." And what a cheerless, disheartening, and unreasonable supposition would this be! "If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable:" if we have no prospects beyond the grave, if there be no pleasures in reversion for those who are now exposed to trouble, suffering, and martyrdom, then we, who have abandoned the pleasures of this life, its honors and rewards, for the hope of Christ, "are of all men most miserable." "But," the apostle triumphantly exclaims, "now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the first-fruits of them that slept." Therefore our preaching is not vain; your faith and hope are well founded; and though of all men most hated and persecuted, we are not of all men most miserable. "For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory; while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal.” Then, after a short digression respecting the mediatorial kingdom of our Lord, the apostle resumes his argument, and asks, "Else what

shall they do which are baptized for the dead, if the dead rise not at all? why are they then baptized for the dead? and why stand we in jeopardy every hour? I protest by your rejoicing which I have in Christ Jesus our Lord, I die daily. If after the manner of men I have fought with beasts at Ephesus"-if I have contended there with violent and persecuting men -"what advantageth it me, if the dead rise not?"

I have taken this general view of St. Paul's argument in this chapter, in order that we may be prepared for apprehending the force and meaning of the text itself. There are, perhaps, few passages of Holy Scripture which have received so great a variety of interpretations. The main question to be determined is, what we ought to understand by the phrase, baptized for the dead.

1. Some are of opinion that the passage should be paraphrased thus: "Now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the proof and pledge of the future resurrection of his people. Else what will they do-how foolish is their conduct, and how gloomy and hopeless are their prospects-who are baptized for the dead, admitted by the baptism of water into the Church, in the name of Jesus, who, if this doctrine be true, is himself still numbered among the dead? If the dead rise not at all, then is not Christ himself risen; and, if so, why are they baptized in his name? why do they acknowledge a dead man as their Lord, Saviour, and protector, the object of their faith and hope?" To this explication, which Dr. Whitby and others have largely defended, it is a strong objection, that the word used to signify the dead is found in the plural number, (vπèρ TV VEKρwv,) and not in the singular, which latter such an interpretation would obviously require. It is not said, Why are they baptized for one who is dead, or for him that is dead? but, Why are they baptized for the dead, them that are dead, collectively?

2. Others explain the text by supposing that in the phrase, baptized for the dead, there is an ellipsis left to be supplied by the reader; and that it means, baptized, or admitted into the Church, on the profession of their faith in the resurrection of the dead. This interpretation, I think, is liable to objection;

since we are bound to adhere to the most literal rendering of Scripture, when no absurdity or other impropriety requires us to do otherwise; and this exposition is by no means literal. Neither does it, in my mind, harmonize very closely with the train of thinking apparent in the succeeding verses, or identify itself as a first link in the chain of an argument, the second being, "Why stand we in jeopardy every hour?"

3. Others, again, suppose that the baptism here mentioned is not the baptism of water, as the sign of the admission of new converts into the Church, but that which is sometimes termed, figuratively, the baptism of blood and martyrdom. In this sense our Lord uses the word, when he says, "I have a baptism to be baptized with; and how am I straitened till it be accomplished!" (Luke xii, 50.) And when he tells the sons of Zebedee, "Ye shall drink indeed of my cup, and be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with." (Matthew xx, 23.) This hypothesis, certainly, does consist with the words which follow the text. "If the dead rise not," St. Paul is on this supposition understood to say, "what shall they do that are offered up as martyrs for the truth? Why do they expose themselves to the most cruel and painful modes of death; why do they allow themselves, rather than renounce Christianity, to be killed all the day long; and why stand we in jeopardy every hour; if, as your false teachers assert, there be no resurrection to eternal life and recompense?" But, however well this paraphrase may agree with the apostle's argument at large, it does not come fully up to the plain, literal, and grammatical construction of his words. For, although martyrdom be legitimately termed a baptism, in what sense can those who were thus martyred be said to be martyred for the dead?

Other views of this passage may be seen by consulting the works of learned commentators. This is not a season in which it would be fitting to enter at greater length into merely critical inquiries. I shall proceed by stating immediately that view of the text which appears to me preferable to every other. I prefer it, because, first, it is the most literal. It supposes no ellipsis, as some other interpretations do: it leaves nothing to be supplied by the arbitrary discretion of the reader. I prefer