^ The Bishop of Caledonia had opened a Mission on the Skeena river, which he and his wife had carried on for a year. Then a Missionary and his wife were left in charge. And now let us hear the Bishop's own words. He says — " They recoiled from the horrors of savage life, and to our great surprise, at the end of one year, suddenly appeared at my house on the coast en route to England. It was too late to find a clergyman to succeed him, and a long winter's break would probably ruin the work and prospects. Before they had been in my house an hour, I had a volunteer. It was my wife. She said, ' Let me go, I will hold it together until you find somebody else.' ' Do you mean it ? ' I asked. ' Yes ! ' ' Then wait till morning, and we will discuss it.' Early in the morning, being pressed for an answer, I said ' Yes.'
" It was difficult to get a crew to face a November * Skeena,' which freezes in hummocks from end to end ; but that same day, with a year's provisions, we started. ... It was a dismal journey for both of us, camping and sleeping on the snow being the least of the discomforts. At the end of fifteen days we arrived, and packed the provisions in the little log house. I offered my crew an extra pound a-piece if they would delay their return but a single day, but nothing would induce them to wait, lest the river would freeze. So I left her behind among Indians and miners, the only white woman within one hundred and seventy miles, and the first to ascend the river. The isolation was complete. Events forced me to visit England, but I had returned before she knew that I had left the diocese, and travelled fourteen thousand miles. ... At the end of a year I had found an excellent man for the new Mission so that I was able to fetch away my wife. The miners said she was the best Missionary they ever had, and the Indians call her ' Mother ' to this day. It was a hard time. Her entire household consisted of two Indian schoolboys." ^ Life and Letters of Brooke Foss TFestcott, i. 145.
4/8 THE RESURRECTION AND THE LIFE
Foil'd by our fellow-men, depress'd, outworn,
We leave the brutal world to take its way,
And "Patience! in another life," we say,
"The world shall be thrust down, and we up-borne."
And will not, then, the immortal armies scorn The world's poor, routed leavings ? or will they. Who fail'd under the heat of this life's day, Support the fervours of the heavenly morn?
No, no! the energy of life may be Kept on after the grave, but not begun ; And he who flagg'd not in the earthly strife.
From strength to strength advancing — only he, His soul well-knit, and all his battles won, Mounts, and that hardly, to eternal life.^
2. He shall never die. — The quality of this life has a direct bearing on its survival beyond the grave. When God so raises the soul of man to the level of His own holy and loving life, will He allow death to destroy His handiwork? Imagine an artist carving a statue. He has chosen rare and costly materials. He has provided delicate tools. He spends long years in bringing the work to perfection. Do you think that when his purpose is almost complete he will summon his servant and bid him break the work in pieces ? Imagine a master training a servant. He is very thorough, very patient, very loving. He treats the servant as a son and not as a slave. And he is well repaid by the response the servant gives : the blunders are almost past ; the faults are almost conquered; there is a co-operation of sympathy and of intelligence that is almost perfect. Do you think he will then cast his servant aside like some worn-out tool ? Yet that is what happens if God trains the souls of men and bestows His best gifts upon them to make them His true children, and then refuses to dower them with immortality. Christ spends Himself, He gives Himself to raise men from spiritual death to spiritual life. Will He do the greater miracle and not do the less ? Will He lose His own work when it is almost complete ? It is unthinkable. There is deepest reason in His words, " Because I live, ye shall
* Matthew Arnold.
ST. JOHN XI. 25, 26 479
live also"; there is unanswerable logic in the contention that when Christ has made men sharers of His holiness, He will make them sharers of His immortality as well.
In Jesus Christ the believer has an enriched spiritual experi- ence, a more intense consciousness of union with the Divine Hfe. The sense of spiritual renewal in Christ is in many ways a new spiritual experience for the world. God has come nearer to men in the Son of Man. Already in union with Christ there is the experience of a spiritual resurrection, which must imply the fuller resurrection of the complete life. For " if any man be in Christ Jesus, he is a new creature. Old things have passed away. Behold, all things have become new." We already feel the life of Christ coursing even in our mortal body. It is not we that live, but Christ liveth in us. We are conscious of having " risen with him," and we know that when Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall we also appear with Him in glory.