am trying to show that Christ ought to be our only
guide, and if we do as he did then alone w^e shall be
right, — right inside and outside. He tells me that,



68 THE EESURKECTION.

as far as he can see aroimd him, life goes as smooth
or smoother on exactly the opposite plan, of doing
what you like, and that this world is quite as much
man's, or rather the devil's, as it is God's. I believe
he is wrong, but I feel it hard to answer him, — there
is so much truth in what he says.

Yet God does live, he does speak to us, — his law
is true, his judgment is terrible, his promise is
certain, — and Jesus is infinitely the noblest teacher
and guide and friend we can have, talking of God as
no man ever did. Then — therefore — necessarily —
this life is not all, there is something beyond the
grave. Christ's kingdom is not of this world, and
God's design is not finished here. When the wicked
fail to get their punishment, — when the good fail
to be rewarded, — when the promising are cut off pre-
maturely, — when the struggling soul never achieves
anything, and the wretched never are comforted, —
it is because death is only an instant, only a passage,

— because the soul, the invisible spirit, lives out of
the body, and goes elsewhere where God employs it
in other ways, and vindicates his purpose, which has
seemed dark and puzzling here, satisfying justice and
mercy too.

That there is a life beyond the grave, — that the
soul is immortal, — that you and I shall live again,

— is what many men had hoped and argued and
asserted and believed long before Christ came. Such



THE RESURRECTION. 69

men as Socrates and Cicero had devoted all the
energy of their mighty minds, and all the treasures
of their wonderful tongues, to prove that this life
is not all, .and that the world has another to set it
right. But hoping and arguing and asserting and
believing was all, — prove it they never did, for they
never could. And unproved it remained, — and tlie
wicked and the selfish and the idle might scoff for-
ever, and call the good and the active and the devoted
silly for thinking there w^as anything but this life
to live for.

Our Savior came, — and all this is changed. He
told his disciples they were to live again, — or rather
he assumed it as a matter of course, that no one ever
could have doubted. " If it were not so, I would
have told you. I go to prepare a place for you."
That death was a sleep, that the resurrection was
now, that he was the way to the Father, that life
eternal was his great gift, and that knowledge of
him meant eternal life, — this comes up again and
again in the midst of all his doctrine about God, and
his precepts about this world. There might be a
religious man without immortal life, — there is an
entire revolution in our views of earthly life made
by our Savior, — but that religion would not be the
Christian, and that revolution is only half his work.

The verse I made my text — promising Christ's
servants a reward for all their labor — ends the



70 THE EESURRECTION.

chapter in which St. Paul expands, in the most won-
derful piece of eloquence ever delivered by an orator,
the doctrine of the resurrection. And he begins it
with the words, " Moreover, brethren, I declare unto
you the Gospel I have preached unto you, how that
Jesus Christ rose from the dead, and that he was seen."
That is the Gospel, — the good tidings ; that is the
end of prophecy, the w^ord of promise, that Jesus of
Nazareth, who had been seen to die on the cross, —
whose body had been seen laid aw^ay in the grave, —
rose again, and left the grave empty on the first
Easter Sunday, and was seen again and again by
scores and hundreds of men and women. Like others
called malefactors, for whom the barbarism of an-
cient times and distant lands devised the cruel pun-
ishments which England and America were the first
to forbid by the people's will, he had been slain by
a death which wore out slowly every vestige of
bodily strength. He had been laid in the tomb with
all the tender care that love in everj" age lavishes on
the mortal remains of those we love, — as that age
believed, not on the mortal remains, but on the very
loved one himself. Then on the first day of the
week those who came to find him only found the
tomb and the grave-clothes, and did not know what
it meant till they met him in his glorious body.

This is the one miracle on which the Apostles
dwell ; this is the matchless proof transcending every



THE RESURRECTION. - 71

other that he came from God and went to God, and
that if we suffer with him we shall also reign with
him. The Sabbath — the day on which he lay in
the silence of the tomb — is now no longer the
sacred day. It is the first day of the week, the
Lord's day, which has taken on itself the holiness of
the old covenant, exalted to a richer and loftier holi-
ness by the rising of Jesus Christ from the dead.

In most countries of Europe the resurrection Sun-
day takes its name from the Hebrew Pascha, the
Passover, when God brought his chosen people out
of Egypt, in the day when he smote the first-born of
the heathen. In English it has the name of the old
spring festival Easter, which celebrated the opening
of the earth to the sun, and the resurrection of the
buried seed into the new life of the year. It is worth
while to see how both these names, with the thoughts
they suggest, coincide in this central day of our re-
ligion, what the Greek Church caUs the great and
holy Lord's Day.

It is, in the first place, the Easter festival which
recalls the time when men considered the powers of
nature as gods and goddesses. They knelt in prayer
and paid their offering to the goddess of the spring, —
the Xjower that unlocked the frozen earth, caused tlie
rivers to flow from the mountains, the seed to burst
its covering, the plant to force itself to the light.
The Easter tide, the spring-time, is the time when the



72 THE RESUKEECTION.

days, which for six months have been shorter than
the nights, have at last gained on them ; and for six
blessed months to come, the sun will have more than
half the hours for his own. With Easter begins the
triumph of heat over chill, of light over darkness,
of cheer over sadness, of brilliancy over dulness, of
death over life. The spring is the resurrection, the
new birth of the year. In Athens it was celebrated
by magnificent festivals to Bacchus, when those won-
derful plays were acted which astonish us on the
stage as they did the Athenians twenty-five centuries
ago ; and in Northern countries the return of spring,
the resurrection of nature, belonged to the goddess
Easter.

Secondly, the same festival, Pasque as it was some-
times called in old English, is the memorial of the
Jewish Passover, — the night when the children of
Israel, after serving in bondage to the kings of Egypt
for centuries, suddenly achieved their liberty, their
independence, their escape, and came free out of the
slavery and the task-work, and living out of the
plague that smote all the first-born of Egypt.

The old record runs that in one nio-ht the stroke of

o

the Lord passed through all the houses of Egypt from
that of Pharaoh to that of his meanest slave, and there
was not one house in which there was not one dead.
But he passed over the houses of the children of
Israel, and in all this destruction they remained un-



THE KESUERECTION. 73

scathed, and walked out in triumph from among their
oppressors. From that time to this, the Jewish
nation, dispersed throughout every people on earth,
gratefully and proudly celebrates its rescue. It hails
it as the seal of its exceptional position in the world,
as the race chosen of God, rich in the possession of
secrets about his nature and his plans that no other
nation ever had, a hidden life that no exile or per-
secution or contempt or hatred can ever kill.

And now our Savior's resurrection unites these
two mighty festivals. From Israelite and lieathen,
Pasque and Easter alike, it makes the great and
holy Lord's day, the better springtime, the more tri-
umphant Passover, the truer deliverance, the loftier
resurrection. There is no frost so cold, no winter so
dead, as that which threatens to seize the hope and
faith and love of man if this life is everything ; no
spring so gay and bright as the certainty that we
have an eternity to set things right.

A very few years before our Savior was born there
died at Eome the poet Horace, the wittiest and
shrewdest man that ever wrote in an ancient lan-
guage. All that people knew then to make life
happy he had received from the world, for he began
with no advantages of birth or wealth. No man that
ever wrote has written so much that every one can
understand and enjoy, all over the world. He was
sensible, cultivated, good-natured, affectionate, patri-



74 THE RESUKRECTION.

otic, and, as far as the world would let him, believed
in God. But to him death ended all. He could
describe in a few exquisite verses, that no man need
think of matching now, the charms of spring, and the
resurrection of nature ; and in contrast to all that,
he says, " We, w^hen we die, are reduced to dust and
a shade " ; therefore he brings us in so many words
right back to what I told you St. Paul declares all
who disbelieve in immortality must say, — " Let us
eat aud drink, for to-morrow we die." One can but
fancy what an astounding revelation it would be to a
man of his acuteness if he could suddenly be recalled
to Eome, and see the Easter celebration, — the hun-
dreds of thousands crowding to witness the ceremony^
— the processions, the music, the blessings, — the
illumination, of itself the most gorgeous sight the
world has to show, — and all bursting up in one uncon-
trolled anthem of joy to Him who broke tlie bonds
of death«and brought life and immortality to light.

It is all one festival. Heathen, Jewish, Cliristian.
It is the one day when God's truth comes down from
heaven and meets the soaring human soul. Pasque or
Easter, it is all the same, — the passing of the human
soul out of the bondage of the law, the bondage of sin,
the bondaoie of death, the chains and fetters and
limitations of this earthly life, that lies between the
wailings of birth and the groans of death, — into
the freedom of the Gospel, the freedom of grace, the



THE RESURRECTION. 75

freedom of eternity, where we have ages upon ages in
which to advance without end in our Father's light
and hope and beauty.

Henceforth our risen Lord has a glory which no
other teacher that ever lived could claim. One by
one they taught and lived and died, — one by one
they passed away, and only their sacred memories
were left. The new faith indeed teaches us to hope
they are still living, — that every noble soul that
spoke words to warn and cheer us on the path of
this life still looks down with tenderness on those
that loved him here, — that Socrates and Cicero and
Aurelius and Bernard and Pascal and Milton and
Thomas Arnold and James Walker still surround
his throne and ask him for tidings of those they
taught below; but of him and him alone we know
that he did live and walk and teach and heal after
the spear and the grave had tried their power in
vain, and that he still lives to be our helper at the
right hand of God, and waits to receive us there.

Two years ago, my brothers, the last days of March
called away from you the soul of him who stood where
I stand ; a soul whose faith rested, if ever man's did,
on Christ's resurrection, — whose hope broke the bonds
of flesh, and pierced, if ever man's did, into God's
heaven.* On Easter Sunday two years ago I spoke
the first words of Christian teaching I ever spoke in

* William Reynolds Dimmock died 29 March, 1878.



76 THE RESURRECTION.

this room. To that faith, to that hope, I call you as
he would have called you. I would have the begin-
ning and middle and end of all my teaching faith in
him who offers you as a reward for your patient con-
tinuance in well-doing, which in due season you shall
reap if you faint not, not strength and beauty and
health, not wit or learning or eloquence, not riches,
power, or influence, or even happiness in this life, but
the destruction of death, the abolishment of the grave,
the victory over sin and over time, an eternity of
eternities to work out the aspirations of God's people
and the love of God's family.



VIII.

PRACTICAL DUTY.

" If ye know these things, hai^jnj are ye if ye do them" —
John xiii. 17.

"IT THATEVER you a.re taught in school is taught
^ ^ as knowledge, as something that you ought
to know, to help you know something else. The
country does not believe in turning out its boys into
the world with no more than they can pick up by
talking to the people they know, and going to such
places as are convenient, and reading such books as
they fancy. So what we take up at school is aimed
at the mind, — to try to make that as strong and full
as we can, — that is, to teach you to think. But when
it comes to religious and moral teaching, when it
comes to taking such subjects as God and Clirist and
duty, however interesting and valuable such knowl-
edge may be in itself, however powerful a man's
mind may become after a course of theological train-
ing, — and some of the most wonderful thinkers of
the world have been trained by just such study, —
that is not the chief end of it. The object is ac-
tion ; it is to teach you to live according to a law;



78 PRACTICAL DUTY.

the teaching works on the will, that is to say, and
not on the mind.

I have tried during the past term to show you
some of the fundamental ideas of the Christian re-
ligion, — where men got the notion of God, how they
are bound to his law, and what Christ taught us
about him. I wish, in the term that is before us, to
show how God's law is to be carried out. He promises
that if men know his law they will have true wisdom,
but only if they keep it will they have true happiness.

But it is a bitter mistake to suppose, as many
people do, that religious duty is somehow different
from moral duty or social duty. Duty is that law to
which men must subject their wills, if they are to live
in this world with satisfaction. It is like any other
law. If your house catches fire, you will not save it
from burning down because you never agreed to
Maxwell's theory of heat. If Congress says it does
not believe the accepted theories about money, and
proceeds to call eighty-three cents a dollar, it will
not succeed in making that dollar worth a hundred
cents. And just so, if a man says he disbelieves in
the Bible, or cares nothing for conscience, or does
not see what good it does to worship God, he will
not thereby free himself from the necessity of doing
what God and conscience and the Bible tell him.
God and conscience and morality have a way of exe-
cuting their judgments, which is very apt to be found



PRACTICAL DUTY. 79

out by those who believe in the authorities very
little.

It is just as it is with the question of health.
A great many persons, when warned about eating
too much, or drinking too much, or wearing wet
shoes, or keeping their rooms too hot, say they don't
believe you, or they mean to do as they please, or
they don't care. And then after a few years they
find, not only that it is true, but that they have got
to care, and that they can no longer do as they please,
because the laws of health, that wdll not be violated,
are exacting their penalties. The moral law, the
law of God, works just so. You may start in life, if
you will, with the determination to do what you like,
and let duty alone, just as you may determine to eat
what you like, and let health alone; and in due
time you will find yourself just as morally sick
and wretched in the one case, as you will physically
sick and wretched in the other. Or, if you please,
there is another way to look at it. Suppose I want to
send a message by the telephone, and just as I am
ready to speak, some one comes and tells me that
Bell is not really the inventor of it ; that the com-
pany just established is an outrageous monopoly, and
that I do not understand the theory of its operation
at all. I reply, " All that may be true, but I know
it will transmit my message and the answer for a
reasonable price, and what I care now for is to be



80 PRACTICAL DUTY.

told how to put my moutli to it so as to bring that
about."

Now the rule of life that religion shows is a purely
practical thing, like speaking through a telephone.
You can obey it with far more confidence, far more
real interest, and far more satisfaction to yourself,
if you understand the theory of religion ; but you
can, and as the world goes now you must use it,
theory or no theory.

I have heard a very noble woman, who did her
duty as she understood it with vast energy and per-
sistency, say that duty was what you did n't want to
do. Of course it is ; for if you did want to do it, you
would call it pleasure. But some people will keep
on doing what they have entirely ceased to care for,
like going to parties or the theatre, because they have
been accustomed to do it, and give it the name of pleas-
ure. And so when duty once becomes a habit, you
entirely cease to think of the effort, and it becomes as
natural as going to sleep, or as pleasant as eating and
drinking. The true meaning of the word is what
you do because something outside of your own pres-
ent inclination — call it God, call it society, call it
regard for others, call it your true interest — has a
claim on you; and duty is only thoroughly done
when all these claims have been considered and set
in their proper order. It is exactly like getting a
Greek lesson, or a mathematical lesson ; there are



PRACTICAL DUTY. 81

nouns to be looked up, with cases, genders, and num-
bers ; there are verbs, with voices, moods, and tenses ;
there are rules for agreement and dependence, and
the sentence has got to be put together and the sense
extracted ; and if you leave out any one, you stand a
good chance of getting the whole wrong. If it is Al-
gebra, there are coefficients and exponents and signs,
there is the original statement and the solution,
and there is the trick to be thought out which will
clear up the whole ; and if you leave out any one
point, the whole will break down.

Hence you see that when all people, old as well as
young, fail in what they have to do, and are called to
account for it, the answer or the excuse they give is
almost always the same, '' I did not think " ; that is,
I neglected, or failed to consider, one of the many
claims of others that make up the sum of duty.

But man is a thinking animal ; it is thought which
raises him above the brutes ; if he is simply carried
on by whim, if he merely goes on doing just what he
wants to, he is no better than a beast. His will, his
desires, have got to be regulated by thought, or he is
no man ; he must think of what other people's claims
are, and act by them.

Now many persons at all ages, but particularly at
yours, are trying to get rid of this truth. They are
trying to find some place, or some set of people, or
some profession, where they shall do what they

6



82 PRACTICAL DUTY.

please, without thinking at all, — running right on
by whim ; or if they do think, merely planning how
to accommodate different pleasures, so as to have a
little of everything that they like. It is of no use,
my friends ; it cannot be done. This time of eman-
cipation from duty, this grand age of liberty, when
you can do just as you like, never would come if you
lived forever. Before you can do exactly as you
please, you must first destroy all the other men and
women in the world, for they will wish to do as they
please, and their rights are as good as yours ; you
must then drive God out of his universe, for he will
execute his rights on you ; and when you have done
both these, you will still find, in your own self, tastes
fighting with powers, and passions with reason, and
all four utterly impotent to get what you want with-
out the help of men and God, whom you did not
choose to consider.

Now those who propose to live a selfish life, to do
as they please, without submitting to duty, generally
propose to manage it this way. Of the three obsta-
cles they dispose of God very simply by deciding not
to mind him ; they do not see him, and, as it would be
very inconvenient to have the opposition of such a
being, they leave him out. In consequence, all their
lives are troubled by various annoyances and cares
which they cannot account for, but which are simply
the results of livinf]^ for themselves, and not for God.



PRACTICAL DUTY. 83

Secondly, — and this is always the hard business, —
they patch up a kind of peace with themselves ; they
determine that, on the whole, they will give up some
things that they like very much, and live for others
only. They would like to eat and drink everything
they wish ; but that will make them sick ; they would
like to read books and know what there is to be known,
but that would be too hard work ; so after a good deal
of discussion and compromise and arrangement with
one's self, a treaty is struck. Now there remains the
world to be subdued, or got round, or cajoled in some
way, so that it may let us have what we like, and be
great, or rich, or jolly, or whatever the favorite notion
is, in our own way.

It is astonishing how many young men on enter-
ing life calmly entertain this ambition, — calmly
suppose that somehow they are going to get money
enough, or employment enough, or consideration
enouo'h, or time enou<:?h, to work thino's their own
way, and induce other men to release them from the
law of duty, — that is, thinking of others, — in order
that they may be free to think only of themselves.
It cannot be done, my friends ; these men that have
everything their own way do not exist. You see
some of them in the world, who you fancy have got
it at their feet, and override every law in the world.
Why, in the first place, to get such a position those
men have had to work harder than any self-sacrifi-



84 PEACTICAL DUTY.

cing men ever did to get an honest living ; giving up
comfort and pleasure of every sort, merely to get this
position when it is almost too late to use it. But
secondly, in order to make their money, to get their
authority, they have had to do just what the man of
duty has to do. They have had to consult others,
and give up what they wish to suit others. They
have had to do this in the meanest way, bowing to
others, fawning on others, sacrificing their manhood
to those they despise, in order to win their weaMi
and their empire. And then having got this posi-
tion which seems so powerful, they have to submit
to abuse for their selfishness and tyranny, which
is alone enough to make them renounce it forever.
Then, when the crisis comes, when people really
want the man who is to set his mark on the age,
they pass over the men who have lived for self, and
take the man who has lived for duty.

The beginning and end of duty, then, — the prin-
ciple which is to guide you, if you are willing to give
up the hopeless task of living by whim, — is self-
control. That name is commonly given merely to
the power of controlling your temper, — of preventing
yourself from breaking out into a fit of passion. But
it is fair to apply it to the whole art and practice of
controlling your whims and fancies, — of giving up
what you would like to do now, because duty —
that is, the claims of others, or your own better



PKACTICAL DUTY. 85

self — says you must not. If you can once get
this power over yourself, — if you can once set up
in your heart and mind a throne, and put conscience
ujDon it, — the work is begun ; and when you are in
any difficulty, when you honestly wish to do what
you ought, but don't quite know how to begin, it is
pretty safe to ask, " What claims are there on me ?
Who besides myself will be affected ? "

There is one more way in which people try to
evade duty, to shuffle with it, and substitute selfish-
ness in disguise : by always thinking and acting for
their own set, — their friends, their class, their party,
their church, — and thinking, because they are not
purely given to their own wishes, because they do
respect others, that they have done their whole duty.
Those are the thoroughly good fellows, w^ho will do
anything for you, — the earnest workers, whom you
can depend upon, that we hear so much about in