Is this to be an instantaneous work? I think not. It is granted that the passage of the soul over the threshhold which intervenes between this life and another, is instantaneous. But the

process of the resurrection, which gives the soul moral and intellectual strength, is not a momentary work. Neither Scripture, reason, nor analogy sustain such an idea. The soul will grow into its perfect condition. To those who die in faith and virtue, it will be a work of joy. To those who die sinful, the process will be one of remorse and of sorrow; for the passage from a state of sin to reconciliation, is always one of regret. This work of moral discipline commences at death. The soul, freed from the body and its passions, freed from all motives to sin, is, at once, reached by the truth of Christ; and it works within, until it becomes perfectly fitted for its new condition; until forgiveness is fully felt; until the resurrection is perfected in immortality; when it enters upon that condition of endless joy and knowledge, which is the gift of God for all his children through Christ Jesus.

These views are necessary deductions from the fact, that our Savior has all power given him in heaven as well as on earth, to effect a work there as well as here. What is that work? The apostle has answered that question. "For it pleased the Father that in him should all fulness dwell; and, having made peace through the blood of his cross, by him to reconcile all things unto himself; by him, I say, whether they be things in earth or things in heaven." Col. 1: 19, 20. Jesus is carrying on the divine plan of reconciliation beyond death, as well as this side of the grave. That work he will perfect. And when he shall have subdued all men to himself,

then will he give up the kingdom to God, the Father, that he may be all in all. Beyond this period there will be neither sin, suffering, nor death. There will be perpetual life, increasing knowledge, and unmixed felicity for each and every member of the race. So be it. To God belongs the glory.

SERMON IV.

THE SPIRIT RETURNING TO GOD.

Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was; and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it." (Ecclesiastes 12; 7.)

1.

This passage affirms three propositions. At death, the body shall return to earth. 2. God gave to man spirit or mind. 3. This spirit or mind shall return to God, who shall thus receive again that which he gave in the beginning. These propositions are susceptible of clear demonstration; of forcible illustration. That God endowed man with mind, by which he is crowned with reason, is enabled to illuminate long sealed pages of nature with the light of discovery, and is advancing step by step into the holiest places of knowledge, is a proposition which both Scripture and reason sustain. The sacred historian said; "And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul." (Gen. 2: 7.)From God, human beings received all that constitutes them men, "living souls," comprising both body and mind. They could not receive mind from any other source. Mere matter has it not to give, and it can not give what it does not itself possess. Though man has mind, yet he can not confer that mind upon a senseless rock; much less can senseless matter confer

mind upon him. Hence, it must have come from a Being who possesses mind in and of himself, and who not only has power to create the universe in wisdom, but also to endow organic life with intelligence. God is pure mind; the great Spirit of infinity; the vast, central Sun of life, of moral and intellectual power;, who is, beyond thought, sublimer than all created things, for all created things were planned and fashioned in his boundless wisdom. To him, the everlasting Father; in whose unchanging love all creatures securely rest, man is indebted for mind that mind which raises him to an elevated scale of being; by which, he has produced the marvelous sciences; by which, he has filled the earth with the wonders of skillful and intricate mechanism; and which, the scurce of all intelligence and moral power in man, is destined to immortality, to endless life, to an existence which shall exceed the stars in duration, in splendor, and glory.

That the body, which the mind inhabits and uses as the instrument of all its operations, will return to the earth as it was, will commingle with its original elements, there can be no doubt. Material, perishing, earthly, its tendency is earthward, and its end is dissolution. Decay is its portion. The death of nations; the ruin of vast cities; the inevitable change of generations; the passage of time on its ebbless flood; destruction in the vegetable kingdom; the fall of the sere leaf nipped by the chilling frost of autumn; are all proofs of the operation of the unavoidable law, "dust thou art; and unto dust shalt thou return.' With sure, steady, and silent progress, the work has been going on since man was organized. The ceaseless current of

time proceeds with stately flow, bearing millions into the gulf of oblivion, leaving not one to lin. ger on the banks of its stream. Past life, with all its splendid and marvelous works, has disappeared like a vast phantom gliding into the dim years which have fled forever. Present exist. ence is hastening to the same doom, the same conclusion. There is no escape. So sure as man lives, so surely must he die. God has commanded, and the command must be obeyed.

Equally true is it, that the spirit must return to the Ocean of all mind from whence it emanated. The propositions, that mind came from God, and that all men must die, being clearly true, as science and experience demonstrate, it seems to follow that the third proposition of the text must also be true. For as the mind came from God, to be connected with the body, thus making man a moral and intellectual being, what can be more rational, than that, when the body perishes, the same mind shall return to God. The body returns to its kindred dust.The mind returns to its kindred nature. The apostle, in concluding an admirable exhibition of the plan of salvation, sustains this position. "For of him, and through him, and to him, are all things." (Rom. 11: 36.) "For of him," man came into existence; for He, the only source of mind and life, could alone confer these upon organic matter-" through him," man is preserved in existence; for by his Providence all physical and mental wants are supplied-and "to him," the moral and intellectual power, which makes man an intelligent being, returns; seeks the parent-fountain; enters into the im. mediate and spiritual presence of God; dwells in the light which fills the universe with sublimi