What will a Manchester man that knows nothing except goods and office work, and knows these only in their superficial aspect, and not as related to God, what, in the name of common-sense, will he do with himself when he gets into a world where there is not a single ledger, nor a desk, nor a yard of cloth of any sort?  What will some of us do when, in like manner, we are stripped of all the things that we have cared about, and worked for, and have made our aims down here?  Suppose that you knew that you were under sailing orders to go somewhere or other, and that at any moment a breathless messenger might appear and say, ‘Come along! we are all waiting for you’; and suppose that you never did a single thing towards getting your outfit ready, or preparing yourself in any way for that which might come at any moment, and could not but come before very long.  Would you be a wise man?  But that is what a great many of us are doing; doing every day, and all day long, and doing that only.  ’He shall leave them in the midst of his days,’ says a grim text, ’and at his latter end shall be a fool.’

What will drop?  Modes of apprehension, modes of utterance, occupations, duties, relationships, loves; and we shall be left standing naked, stripped, as it were, to the very quick, and only as much left as will keep our souls alive.  But if we are clothed with faith, hope, love, we shall not be found naked.  Cultivate the high things, the permanent things; then death will not wrench you violently from all that you have been and cared for; but it will usher you into the perfect form of all that you have been and done upon earth.  All these things will pass, but faith, hope, love, ’stay not behind nor in the grave are trod,’ but will last as long as Christ, their Object, lives, and as long as we in Him live also.

THE POWER OF THE RESURRECTION

’I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures; 4.  And that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures.’—­1 COR. xv. 3, 4.

Christmas day is probably not the true anniversary of the Nativity, but Easter is certainly that of the Resurrection.  The season is appropriate.  In the climate of Palestine the first fruits of the harvest were ready at the Passover for presentation in the Temple.  It was an agricultural as well as a historical festival; and the connection between that aspect of the feast and the Resurrection of our Lord is in the Apostle’s mind when he says, in a subsequent part of this chapter, that Christ is ’risen from the dead and become the first fruits of them that slept.’

In our colder climate the season is no less appropriate.  The ’life re-orient out of dust’ which shows itself to-day in every bursting leaf-bud and springing flower is Nature’s parable of the spring that awaits man after the winter of death.  No doubt, apart from the Resurrection of Jesus, the yearly miracle kindles sad thoughts in mourning hearts, and suggests bitter contrasts to those who sorrow, having no hope, but the grave in the garden has turned every blossom into a smiling prophet of the Resurrection.