“There is no one, I feel sure, in this room who doubts any part of the foregoing, but if there is, let me again pray him to confer with me in private, and I doubt not that by the blessing of God his doubts will cease.

“The next day but one after our Lord was buried, the tomb being still jealously guarded by enemies, an angel was seen descending from Heaven with glittering raiment and a countenance that shone like fire.  This glorious being rolled away the stone from the grave, and our Lord himself came forth, risen from the dead.

“My young friends, this is no fanciful story like those of the ancient deities, but a matter of plain history as certain as that you and I are now here together.  If there is one fact better vouched for than another in the whole range of certainties it is the Resurrection of Jesus Christ; nor is it less well assured that a few weeks after he had risen from the dead, our Lord was seen by many hundreds of men and women to rise amid a host of angels into the air upon a heavenward journey till the clouds covered him and concealed him from the sight of men.

“It may be said that the truth of these statements has been denied, but what, let me ask you, has become of the questioners?  Where are they now?  Do we see them or hear of them?  Have they been able to hold what little ground they made during the supineness of the last century?  Is there one of your fathers or mothers or friends who does not see through them?  Is there a single teacher or preacher in this great University who has not examined what these men had to say, and found it naught?  Did you ever meet one of them, or do you find any of their books securing the respectful attention of those competent to judge concerning them?  I think not; and I think also you know as well as I do why it is that they have sunk back into the abyss from which they for a time emerged:  it is because after the most careful and patient examination by the ablest and most judicial minds of many countries, their arguments were found so untenable that they themselves renounced them.  They fled from the field routed, dismayed, and suing for peace; nor have they again come to the front in any civilised country.

“You know these things.  Why, then, do I insist upon them?  My dear young friends, your own consciousness will have made the answer to each one of you already; it is because, though you know so well that these things did verily and indeed happen, you know also that you have not realised them to yourselves as it was your duty to do, nor heeded their momentous, awful import.

“And now let me go further.  You all know that you will one day come to die, or if not to die—­for there are not wanting signs which make me hope that the Lord may come again, while some of us now present are alive—­yet to be changed; for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, for this corruption must put on incorruption, and this mortal put on immortality, and the saying shall be brought to pass that is written, ‘Death is swallowed up in victory.’