Christ went down into hell and preached to the spirits in prison. It is written that “as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive;” and again, “When the wicked man turns from his wickedness he shall save his soul alive.” And we know that in the same chapter God tells us that His ways are not unequal. It is possible, therefore, that He has not one law for this life and another for the life to come. Let us hope, then, that David’s words may be true after all, when, speaking by the Spirit of God, he says not only “if I ascend up to heaven, thou art there,” but “if I go down to hell, thou art there also.”
MS. Sermon.
Easter Day.
The Creed says, “I believe in the Resurrection of the flesh.” I believe that we, each of us, as human beings, men and women, shall have a share in that glorious day; not merely as ghosts and disembodied spirits, but as real live human beings, with new bodies of our own, on a new earth, under a new heaven. “Therefore,” David says, “my flesh shall rest in hope;” not merely my soul, my ghost, but my flesh. For the Lord, who not only died but rose again with His body, shall raise our bodies according to His mighty working, and then the whole manhood of us—body, soul, and spirit—shall have our perfect consummation and bliss in His eternal and everlasting glory.
National Sermons.
APRIL 25.
St. Mark, Evangelist and Martyr.
God’s apostles, saints, and martyrs are our spiritual ancestors. They spread the Gospel into all lands, and they spread it, remember always, not only by preaching what they knew, but by being what they were. Their characters, their personal histories, are as important to us as their writings.
Sermons.
May.
Is it merely a fancy that we are losing that love for Spring which among our old forefathers rose almost to worship? That the perpetual miracle of the budding leaves and the returning song-birds awakes no longer in us the astonishment which it awoke yearly among the dwellers in the old world, when the sun was a god who was sick to death each winter, and returned in spring to life, and health, and glory; when Freya, the goddess of youth and love, went forth over the earth while the flowers broke forth under her tread over the brown moors, and the birds welcomed her with song? To those simpler children of a simpler age winter and spring were the two great facts of existence; the symbols, the one of death, the other of life; and the battle between the two—the battle of the sun with darkness, of winter with spring, of death with life, of bereavement with love—lay at the root of all their myths and all their creeds. Surely a change has come over our fancies! The seasons are little to us now!