1 Cor. XV. 1,2. Moreover, brethren, I declare unto you the Gospel zvhich I preached unto you, which also ye have received, and ivherein ye stand ; hy which also ye are saved, if ye keep in memory ivhat I preached unto you, unless ye have believed in vain.
SCARCELY had the good seed of the Gospel been sown in the world, before Satan, by his agents.
3i'6 1 CORINTHIANS, XV. 1, 2. [1989.
scattered tares, which in the earher stages of their growth could not easily be distinguished from them, and from which the field will never be wholly freed until the harvest. The resurrection itself, that most fundamental doctrine of Christianity, on which every other doctrine rests, was denied by many. A Sad- ducean spirit of infidelity was imported into the Church from among the Jewish converts, as a vain philosophy was from among the Gentiles ; and both concurred to bring into doubt the resurrection from the dead ; — the one denying that it ever could take place, and the other asserting that it was only a mystical change which had taken place already : and between them both " the faith of many was over- thrown." St. Paul therefore, in the close of this epistle, set himself to counteract these errors, and to establish, for the benefit of the Church in all future ages, the truth which he had invariably maintained. He first shews that Christ had risen ; and from thence he proceeds to prove that we also shall rise in like manner. But it is with the former position alone that we are concerned at present, that alone being referred to in the words before us ; from which we shall be led to shew you, 1. What was the Gospel which Paul preached —
This is told us more fully in the words following our text.
The Apostle preached, that Christ had both died and risen according to the Scriptures —
[The Scriptures of the Old Testament had invariably asserted that Christ should suffer, and that he should rise again on the third day. Both these things were in some degree intimated in the first promise, that " the seed of the woman should bruise the serpent's head;" but they were more plainly revealed in the institutions of the Mosaic law, especially in the ordinance of the two birds ; the one of which was killed, and the other, when dipped in the blood of the one that had been killed, being suffered to fly away^: as also in the appointment of the scape-goat, which carried into the wilderness all the sins which had been previously expiated by the blood of another
» Lev. xiv. 49 — 53.