THE NECESSITY OF CHRIST's RESURRECTION.
1 Cor. XV. 17, 18. If Christ he not raised, your faith is vain ; ye are yet in your sins : then they also tvhich are fallen asleep in Christ are perished.
THE wisest among the heathen philosophers could not speak with any certainty respecting the future existence of the soul : they could only form conjec- tures respecting it ; so little could unassisted reason do towards the ascertaining of this most important point. As for the resurrection of the body, they
deemed it ridiculous and absurd ; and considered it as impossible that atoms, so widely dispersed and so variously combined, should ever be reduced to their original form. The Gospel, however, has brought life and immortality to light ; and assured us, not only that every soul shall exist in a future world, but that the bodies of men also shall rise out of their graves, and be re-united each to that very soul that once inhabited it. Nevertheless, some, who made a profession of Christianity, were still blinded by the prejudices which they had formerly imbibed. Hence they explained the doctrine of the resurrection in a figurative manner; and said, that it was passed already. The Apostle, therefore, set himself to coun- teract this dangerous delusion, by proving that there should indeed be a resurrection of the body This he proved from what was fully beheved among them, the resurrection of Christ : he shewed, that, if Christ was actually risen, there could be no reason why we should not rise in like manner ; but that, on the con- trary, his resurrection was a pattern and an earnest of ours. In order to give additional weight to this argument, he proves incontestibly that Christ himself had risen ; he proves it, I say, by an appeal to num- berless living witnesses who had seen him : and then he sets before them three most tremendous conse- quences which would follow, on a supposition that he was not risen : " If Christ be not raised, your faith is vain ; ye are yet in your sins ; then they also that are fallen asleep in Christ are perished." This argument of the Apostle's being of the greatest importance, we will endeavour,
I. To confirm ; II. To improve it. I. To confirm his argument — It consists of three parts, which he mentions as consequences that will follow from a denial of Christ's resurrection — 1. If Christ be not risen, our faith is vain — The Christian, as long as he is in the world, is called to the exercise of faith : he walks by faith, and