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REV. JAMES FREEMAN CLARKE.

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2 TIM. 1: 10.

WHO HATH abolished Death.

[Indiana-Place Chapel was decorated on Easter with appropriate and symbolic ornaments. The entire chancel was covered with a rich purple fabric looped to the wall at different points with wreaths of white flowers. Over the chancel, fixed to the wall, was a large cross surmounted by a crown, and at the side appeared the words "He is Risen," each worked in foliage and flowers. There were also numerous bouquets and single specimens of choice flowers and plants placed at different points in the chapel, which, with the national colors draped in mourning drooping from the gallery, heightened the general effect.]

WHEN JESUS died, it seemed as if the last hope of the world had perished. It seemed as if God had left the earth alone, - it seemed as if there was no Providence left. It was the blackest hour in the history of the human race. The power of darkness was at its height. Satan had conquered God. One man had at last appeared capable of redeeming mankind; he had given himself to that work, one man teaching and believing a religion spiritual, humane, free; above ceremony, above dogmas, above all fanaticism, enthusiasm, formality.

He was here; the one being who knew God wholly and human nature exactly; who could say, "I and my Father are one," "I and my brother are one." No sin terrified him, for he was able to cure the foulest diseases of the human heart and soul. From him flowed a life, a vital power, which strangely overcame diseases of the body and the soul. He was young: he had just begun his work. A world dying of weariness, an exhausted civilization, a worn-out faith, longed to be regenerated. The great auroral light of Greek intelligence had died away. The stern virtue of Rome had ended in effeminacy and slavery. The world, prematurely old, asked to be made young again; and here was the being who could do it. And then men took him and murdered him. They assassinated their best friend. BLACK TREASON, in the form of Judas; COWARDLY DESERTION, in his disciples; SHAMEFUL DENIAL and FALSEHOOD, in the person of Peter; TIME-SERVING SELFISHNESS, in Pilate; CRUEL POLICY, in the priests; BLIND RAGE, in the people; COLD-BLOODED BARBARISM, in the Roman soldiers, all these united in one black, concentrated storm of evil, to destroy the being so true, so tender, so gentle, so brave, so firm, so generous, so loving. It was the blackest day in the history of man.

And yet we do not call it Black Friday or Bad Friday; we call it GOOD FRIDAY. We call it so, because the death of Christ has abolished death; because evil that day destroyed itself; sin, seeming to conquer, was conquered. And so we see, in the death and resurrection of Jesus, the great law revealed, that we pass through death to life, through sorrow to joy, through sin to holi

ness, through evil and pain to ultimate and perfect good.

We dress our church in flowers to-day in token of this triumph. Nature, every spring, renews her miracle of life coming out of death. The little, tender buds push

out through the hard bark. The delicate stalks break their way up through the tough ground. The limbs of the trees, which yesterday clattered in the wind, mere skeletons, are now covered with a soft veil of foliage. Earth clothes itself with verdure, and these spring flowers come, the most tender of the year. They come, like spirits, out of their graves, to say that Nature is not dead but risen. Look at these flowers,-living preachers! each cup a pulpit and each bell a book," and hear from every one of them the word of comfort: "Be not anxious, be not fearful, be not cast down; for if God so clothe us, and so brings our life out of decay, will He not care for you and yours evermore ?"

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On this day of the resurrection we commemorate the subjugation of the last enemy,-Death. He has abolished death," says our text. Abolished it; or, as the same word is elsewhere translated, “made it void"; that is, emptied it of reality and substance; left it only a form; "made it of no effect; destroyed it; brought it to nothing; caused it to vanish away." Death to the Christian ought not to be anything. If we are living in terror of death, if we are afraid to die, if we sorrow for our friends who die as those who have no hope, then we are

not looking at it as Christians ought.

We ought to be,

and we can be, in that state of mind in which death is nothing to us.

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