Some fears remain. Yes! we are not more saintly than the saints of old, as they followed, they were afraid.'

As they followed; then let none turn back.

The great counsel is, 'Follow on to know the Lord.' Even where the intellectual beliefs are more burdened with difficulty than they were! Never give up-never be afraid! Follow on! and your now grey light shall brighten into noonday. Even where there has been family defection, and some have gone back, though the inspiration of fellowship is lessened, follow on! Even where some grave fault-some special sin-has shown you how deceitful your heart is, yet, seeking renewed cleansing and forgiveness, follow on! Even where your enjoyment of God is less, and divine realities are dimmer, as physical strength and renewed health and energy sometimes comes back, so may the old joy in God return.

Follow on! For sooner than you think the golden gates may be before you, and the angels'may greet you with their welcome, and the last scales fall from your eyes, and the last burden from your heart. Follow on! Often a range of hills just hides the City-all seems toil and peril still; but in a moment you have passed the crowning mountain, and there lies dear Jerusalem at your feet.

Follow on! Be thou faithful unto death! I will never leave thee,' You will be glad that you have girded up your loins again when you so run as to obtain-when with beating heart and exulting voice you say, 'This is Home!'

THE EDITOR.

Of Mystic Providence committed safe
Into His hands! In all his vast domain
Nothing too great to be beyond His sway,
Nothing too mean to be beneath His care!
While it is He who wheels in realms of ether

Worlds upon worlds; gives to the wandering comet
Its tortuous course, tracking immensity,

In cycles measuring a thousand years;

"Tis He who 'feeds the ravens when they cry,'
Pencils the hue of every desert flower.

CHRIST'S cross is the sweetest burden that ever I bore; it is such a burden as wings are to a bird, or sails to a ship, to carry me forward to my harbour.

EASTER.

'Did our Lord rise, or was He raised from the dead?

THE Lord Jesus Christ sent forth His Apostles to be witnesses for Him (Acts i. 8; xxii. 15; xxvi. 16); and that which they were especially to attest was the fact of His resurrection. That they might be fully qualified for this, they were chosen before of God to be witnesses of the fact, to whom the Lord was showed openly, and who did eat and drink with Him after He was raised from the dead (Acts x. 40, 41). To attest this fact the Apostles themselves regarded as the main purpose of their commission; and, wherever they went, this was one of the things which, first of all, they delivered to those to whom they preached (Acts ii. 32; iv. 33; xiii. 31; xxv. 19; xxvi. 20-23; 1 Cor. xv. 3-5).

What was it, then, that the Apostles specially testified concerning our Lord's resurrection? It was that He was raised from the dead by the power of God the Father. The first utterance of their testimony was by the mouth of St. Peter on the day of Pentecost, and it was in these words: Whom God hath raised up, having loosed the pains (pangs) of death' (Acts ii. 24). This was their first utterance, and from this they never varied. 'This Jesus hath God raised up, whereof we are witnesses,' was Peter's repeated declaration in the same discourse (verse 32); Ye denied the Holy One and the Just,' said Peter and John to the Jews at the gate of the Temple, 'and killed the Prince of life whom God hath raised from the dead, whereof we are witnesses' (iii. 14, 15); a testimony which they immediately after repeated before the Sanhedrim when they were examined of the good deed done to the impotent man, by what means he was made whole' (iv. 8-10), and again on a subsequent occasion before the same tribunal (v. 30). When Peter preached to Cornelius and his company his testimony was the same: 'Him God raised up the third day, and showed Him openly' (x. 40). In his Epistle also the Apostle employs the same phraseology (cf. 1 Pet. i. 21). Paul, in his discourse in the synagogue at Antioch in Pisidia, and in his address to the Athenians on Mars Hill, used the same form of expression (xiii. 30 et seq.; xvii. 31); and in his Epistles the same repeatedly occurs (Rom. iv. 24; vi. 4; viii. 11; x. 9; 1 Cor. vi. 14; xv. 15; 2 Cor. iv. 14; Gal. i. 1; Eph. i. 20; Col. ii. 12; 1 Thess. i. 10; Heb. xiii. 20). In accordance with this, the Apostle, when he refers to the fact of Christ's resurrection, invariably uses the aorist passive or the perfect passive of the verb eyelpew, to raise (ἠγέρθη, ἐγερθεὶς, ἐγήγερται, κας raised, being raised,

has been raised). These words, it is true, may be taken intransitively, for eyeípew is one of those verbs which, though properly transitive, may be used intransitively, or with a reflexive force in the passive (see Winer, by Moulton, p. 315). Instances of this are numerous in the New Testament (cf., for instance, éyépeis maρúλaße, arise, take (Matt. ii. 13); ¿yépon καὶ διηκόνει, she arose and ministered (viii. 5); οὐκ ἐγήγερται, there hath not arisen (xi. 11). In the Authorized Version this rendering of these words is given in several of the passages in which they are used of the resurrection of our Lord: Rom. viii. 34, 'Who died, yea rather, that is risen again' (éyépleɩs); 1 Cor. xv. 4, 12, 13, 14, 20, 'rose again, rose from the dead, is risen' (eynyéρTai); 2 Cor. v. 15, 'Who died for them, and rose again' (aπolavóvτi Kai eyeρbévтi). Grammatically, these renderings, which the revisers of 1611 have retained from Tyndale, are perfectly justifiable; but they are objectionable on the ground that they disturb the continuity of Apostolic testimony, and represent St. Paul as in conflict, not only with the other witnesses, but also with himself, on a most important point in their testimony. Happily, in the Revised Version this discrepancy is almost entirely removed, 'rose again' being retained only in 2 Cor. v. 15. Why the revisers have not rendered the participle here in the same way as in Rom. viii. 34—' was raised from the dead'-does not appear.

What the Apostles, then, as our Lord's witnesses have testified in regard to His resurrection is not that He rose, but that He was raised from the dead. It is not implied in this that He had not power to raise Himself had He so willed. As to this there can be no question; our Lord Himself has emphatically declared that as He had power to lay down His life, so He had power to take it again (John x. 18). But this power He did not will to exercise. As He was obedient unto death,' that He might finish the work which the Father had given Him to do, so He submitted to be holden by death until He was released by the power of Him Who alone can raise the dead.

Nor is it to be denied that in a sense Christ raised Himself from the dead. For, as Bishop Pearson says, 'To whomsoever that infinite power doth belong, by which Christ was raised, that Person must be acknowledged to have raised Him. And because . . . the eternal Son of God is of the same essence, and consequently of the same power with the Father . . . we must likewise acknowledge'* that the Son as well as the Father raised Christ from the dead. But as that which was raised was not the divine nature of our Lord as such, but that body in which * Exposition of 'The Creed,' Art. v.

the God-man had died, it is properly said that Jesus was raised from the dead by God the Father, as representing the One Godhead (Gal. i. 1).

This is not a mere question of words and phrases; weighty conclusions are involved in the fact that it was by God the Father that Jesus was raised from the dead.

1. This fact assures us that here was a true, a real resurrection: not a mere revival through inherent energy from a protracted syncope, but an actual resuscitation from actual death by

divine energy.

2. In the raising of Jesus from the dead by the power of God we have the divine vindication of our Lord's pretensions and justification of His claims. The Jews adjudged Him to death. on a charge of blasphemy because He called Himself the Son of God, thereby, as they justly argued, making Himself equal with God (John xix. 7; v. 18). God rebutted this charge, and vindicated our Lord's pretensions by raising Him from the dead, whereby He was declared to be the Son of God with power' (Rom. i. 4).

3. God's raising of His Son from the dead was the divine attestation of the sufficiency of the work which Christ accomplished on our behalf. God sent His Son into the world that He might be a propitiation for our sins, and that we might live. through Him (John iv. 9, 10); and to accomplish this Christ offered Himself as a sacrifice for man's sins. Was this sufficient for the end designed? Did God accept the sacrifice thus offered as an adequate propitiation for sin? The raising of Christ from the dead is the divine reply to these questions. Whatever the death of Christ was designed by God to effect, the resurrection of Christ is the evidence of its being effected. If, as we are taught by the Gospel to regard it, the death of Christ was designed to be an atonement for sin; then the resurrection of Christ is the great proof of that atonement having been completely made; of its having been satisfactory to the Father, and of the consequent security of all who confide in it for pardon and justification.' As He was delivered on account of our offences,' so He was raised again on account of (did with the accusative) our justification.' He Who was put to death in the flesh was quickened, and thus justified in the Spirit; and in His justification that of all His people was involved. God raised Him up from the dead,

and
gave Him glory, that our faith and hope might be in God.†
'Though the atonement for sins was made by Christ's death, it
was proved and manifested by His resurrection, and so presented
as an object of faith. The resurrection, therefore, serves this

* Wardlaw, 'Systematic Theology,' vol. ii. p. 616.
+ Rom. iv. 24; 1 Pet. iii. 18; 1 Tim. iii. 16; 1 Pet. i. 21.

purpose, that we may thereby be led to believe that Christ died for our sins, and by so believing may realize and appropriate the benefits of His death; in other words, that we may be justified.'*

4. The raising of Christ from the dead by the power of God is the pledge and assurance of the resurrection of all those who believe in Him. 'If we believe that Jesus died and was raised again, even so them also that have fallen asleep in Jesus will God bring with Him. If the spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, He that raised up Christ from the dead shall quicken also your mortal bodies through His Spirit that dwelleth in you. Now if we be dead with Christ, we believe we shall also live with Him; knowing that Christ being raised from the dead, dieth no more; death hath no more dominion over Him. For if when we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son, much more being reconciled we shall be saved by His life.' Therefore may the believer comfort himself in the prospect of death with the assurance that as Christ lives, so all that are His shall live also; when called to commit to the grave the body of some beloved one, dearer to him than life itself, may do it 'in sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life, through our Lord Jesus Christ,' and so be assured of receiving his dead again.'

FIDUCIA CHRISTIANORUM RESURRECTIO MORTUORUM.

and

W. LINDSAY ALEXANDER.

STUDIES IN PLANT-LIFE.

I. WHAT IS A PLANT?

(Continued from page 116.)

6. Function of Digestion. Animals possess mobility; therefore they need some internal apartment, or digestive cavity,' whence their food may be drawn by blood vessels to the various organs. So, with his well-known love of teleological reasoning, argued Cuvier, who, accordingly, made the possession of this internal cavity his primary distinctive character of animals. His argument for the presence of such a cavity (namely, motile power) has broken down; the deduction itself also fails to be of diagnostic value, as we shall now see. The minute Amoeba, and many of his relations, little masses of soft gelatinous matter found in our fresh-water ponds, possess neither

Dr. Gifford in 'Speaker's Commentary,' note on Rom iv. 25.
+ 1 Thess. iv. 14; Rom. viii. 11; vi. 8, 9; v. 10.
Tertullian' De Resur. Carnis,' i.