unto the flesh, and of the flesh he shall reap corruption. As he falleth, so shall he rise; and the body wherewith he is enveloped on the day of resurrection, will not, like that of the glorified saint, be expurgated of its tendencies to evil: But as he indulged them through life, so will they rise up against him in the full vigour of their absolute and imperious sway; and be his merciless, his inexorable tormentors, through all eternity. As he never resisted them with effect here, so there will he find them to be irresistible. They will lord it over him; and he be the miserable slave of vile and worthless affections, under the sense of which his now convicted soul cannot escape from the agonies of remorse, that undying worm, which gives to hell its fiercest anguish, and far its sorest tribulation. He thus pursued by a fire that is unquenchable within, and a fear without of that holy and righteous countenance that is now turned in rebuke towards him, will be made to taste of that second death which has been called the wages of sin, because it is both its penal and its natural consummation.

Not so with him whose spirit has been made righteous; and who, vexed and annoyed with the urgències of his vile body, has, to the hour of death, carried on against it a resolute and unsparing warfare. He will have no part in the second death. His spirit because of its righteousness has become meet for that life, which is both spiritual and everlasting. So soon as it quits its earthly tenement, it will be with Christ in Paradise, where, freed from the incumbrance of a tainted materialism, it

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will instantly find that, though to live for a season in the flesh was needful and salutary, yet to have departed and to be with Christ is far better. He soweth to the Spirit here, and hereafter he shall reap of the Spirit life everlasting. He has the very evil tendencies which the other hath who soweth unto the flesh; but, instead of giving to them his consent, he enters with them into combat, and he fights the good fight which terminates in victory, and he earns the blessedness of him that overcometh, and of him that endureth unto the end. Those inclinations of a corrupt nature, which the other pampered into lordly and domineering appetites, that will wield for ever their merciless tyranny over him, he hath in every way thwarted and buffeted and starved—so that though still alive while the breath was in his body, and he had even to weep their presence on his death-bed, and still to mourn even then the carnalities and the spiritual sins which he could not utterly extinguish-yet his reward is, that, at the moment of his dissolution, they will expire for ever; and not be raised up again to be his plagues and his persecutors through eternity. The reward is, that his risen body shall also be a regenerated body-that all about him shall then be in fullest harmony with the desires of his glorified spirit and that the evil instigations which so perplex and disquiet him on earth, shall never haunt nor harass him in heaven. He will be altogether freed from those corrupt elements, which still adhere to the unbeliever when he arises from his grave, and which constitute in fact the elements of his

moral hell. There will be nothing adverse to the love or to the services of God in any part of his constitution; and he will be fully enabled to glorify the Lord, with his soul and body and spirit, which are the Lord's.

This is not an idle speculation. It may be carried personally and practically to the conscience. Are you or are you not engaged in a warfare with moral evil? Are you busily employed in the work of subduing and bringing under discipline, all the irregularities of your perverse nature? Or, instead of this, are you in peace with yourself; and that because of the friendly terms, in which your spirit and your body are with each other? Remember that there is a peace where there is no peace. Do you imagine that you are at peace with God, because you believe the Gospel? Remember that Paul preached the Gospel, yet, had he not kept the body under subjection, he would have been a castAnd therefore in this did he always exercise himself, mortifying his affections for the things which are beneath-and this not only the grosser affections of our nature, but the more reputable, the more refined, the affections for wealth, for honour, for fame, for literary reputation-for these too are among the things which are beneath-these also will perish in the using-these have their place on earth, and have no place in heaven; and it is only by the spirit being above all these, and resting its affections on the things which are above, it is only thus that it will be made to inherit life, and because of its righteousness.

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LECTURE LII.

ROMANS, viii, 11, 12.

"But if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you. Therefore, brethren, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live after the flesh."

V. 11. IN the last verse it is affirmed that Christ being in us will not avail to prevent the death of the body, though it will avail to the preparing of the soul for life everlasting. And in the present verse, the apostle recurs to the body, and now affirms that it too will at length have a benefit conferred on it— that neither is it altogether overlooked in this great work of regeneration that though permitted for a season to moulder in the dust, and though every vestige of what it was is made to disappear; yet will it emerge from the hideous receptacle in which it lies, and come forth a quickened and a glorified body on the day of resurrection—that though the present occupation of it by God's Holy Spirit, does not save it from decaying into a loathsome spectacle of corruption; yet if that Spirit dwell in us now, it will again animate that matter which has gone into dissolution-raising it to a new framework, and investing it as before with all those graces which are expressive of the life and sensibility within.

But it is to be observed that the wicked as well as the righteous are to rise again-that all the dead both small and great are to stand before God-and that therefore there must be a something which peculiarizes the resurrection of the believer, from that of a sinful and unconverted man. Now we know of no other peculiarity than this-that his body shall be delivered from that moral virus against which he struggled through life, and by overcoming which he is to be rewarded with a complete and conclusive exemption from its presence for everthat the same power which helped him to the conquest, will rid him altogether of his enemy; and his body will be so purified and transformed, as to become like unto the glorious body of Christ. The wicked are not so. As the tree falleth so it lies; and as they went to their graves with all the pensities of corruption unmitigated, they will again come forth from their graves, with these propensities in lordly and despotic rigour to be their tyrants and their tormentors through all eternity. And this, I imagine, will explain a verse which enters into the prophetic narrative of the earthly consummation of all things" He that is unjust let him be unjust still, and he which is filthy let him be filthy still, and he that is righteous let him be righteous still, and he that is holy, let him be holy still."

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Now it is, in the first place, to be remarked-that the very same agent who raised up Christ from the dead, is to raise up all who are in Christ also. That He was the agent employed by God in the