* Goethe, the world's favourite, if one may so speak, confessed when about eighty years old, that he could not remember being in a really happy state of mind even for a few weeks together ; and that when he wished to feel comfortable he had to veil his self- consciousness ! And the following is the closing sen- tence of his self-biography : " Child ! child ! no more. The coursers of time, lashed, as it were, by invisible spirits, hurry on the light car of our destiny ; and all that we can do, is in cool self-possession to hold the reins with a firm hand, and to guide the wheels, now to the left, now to the right, a stone here, a precipice there. Whither it is hurrying who can tell? And who indeed can remember the point from which it started ? " Alas ! for the poor world, that, with all its refinement and poetry and philosophy, knows not whither it is hurrying ! As if no voice (more than man's) had ever said, " I am the way, and the truth, and the life."
CHAPTER VH
THE VICTORY OVER DEATH.
The issue of the conflict between the saints and death was decided when the Lord arose. He met the enemy on his own territory, his own battle-field, and over- came. He entered the palace of the king of terrors, and there laid hold of the strong man, shaking his dwelling to its founda- tions as he came forth, carrying away its gates along with him, and giving warning of being about to return, in order to complete his conquest by " spoiling his goods," and robbing him of the treasures which he had kept so long, — the dust of sleeping saints.
The first act of spoiling the strong man
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of his goods begins at the resurrection. Of this we have already spoken generally; but the subject is so largely dwelt upon in Scripture, that something more special is needed. For it is a hope so fruitful in con- solation to us who are still sojourners in a dying world like this, and yet so little prized, that we must not pass it slightly by. Let us look at it in the aspects in which the apostle spreads it out before us in the 15th of his first Epistle to the Corinthians. The vision which he there holds before us, is one of glory and joy. It is a morning landscape, and contrasts brightly with pre- sent night and sorrow. It draws aside the veil that hides from view our much-longed- for heritage, showing us from our prospect- hill the excellence of the land that shall so soon be ours, — plains richer than Sharon, valleys more fruitful than Sibmah, moun- tains goodlier than Carmel or Lebanon. The then and the now, the there and the here, are strangely diverse. Here the mor-
THE VICTORY OYEK DEATH. 95
tal, there the immortal ; here the corrupt- ible, there the incorruptible ; here the earthly, there the heavenly; here the do- minion of death, there death swallowed up of victory ; here the grave devouring its prey, there the spoiler of the grave coming forth in resurrection-power, to claim each particle of holy dust, undoing death's handi- work, spoiling the spoiler, bringing forth in beauty that which had been laid down in vileness, clothing with honour that which had been sown in shame.
" The trumpet shall sound, the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed ! " All this " in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye." Other changes are gradual, this sudden. There is the ebbing and the flowing; there is the growing up in- to manhood, and the growing down into old age ; there is the slow opening of spring into summer, and of summer into autumn ; but this shall be unlike all these changes. It shall be instantaneous, — like the lightning's
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flash, or the twinkling of an eye. He who spake and it was done, shall speak again, and it shall be done ; he who said, Let there be light, and there was light, shall speak, and light shall come forth out of the grave's thick darkness.
" This corruptible shall put on incorrup- tion ! " There will be an entire casting aside of mortality with all its wrappings of corruption, with all its relics of dishonour. Every particle of evil shall be shaken out of us, and " this vile body " transfigured into the likeness of the Lord's own glo- rious body. We entered this world mortal and corruptible; all our life long we are imbibing mortality and corruption, becom- ing more and more thoroughly mortal and corruptible ; the grave sets its seal to all this, and crumbles us down into common earth. But the trumpet sounds, and all this is gone. Mortality falls off, and all per- taining to it is left behind. No more of dross or disease in our frame. We can then
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defy sickness, and pain, and death. We can say to our bodies, be pained no more ; to our limbs, be weary no more; to oui lips, be parched no more ; to our eye, be dim no more.