attain who die in Adam.  But in the first resurrection none had a part except those who died in the cause of Christ, and the living who continued faithful to the day of his appearing.  On them and them only devolved the honor of establishing the truth of Christianity for the happiness of future generations, by not only testifying that they had seen Jesus alive from the dead, but by cheerfully submitting to death, and showing themselves miracles of suffering in his cause.  Both the departed and those that remained alive, attained to the first resurrection, were glorified together, and their crowns shall shine in the gospel heavens with undiminished splendor long after those of kings and tyrants shall be dimmed and lost in the vortex of revolutions.

He concludes the chapter by noticing the change of the “vile body” which we have explained.  Here then is no evidence of a general resurrection, nor of the end of time.  The context, the silence of Jesus about the change of the living into immortal beings, and the whole tenor of revelation combine to set it at defiance.  Of one thing I am satisfied; that no man ever has, and I believe, no man ever can reconcile the change of the living and the resurrection of the dead recorded in Philippians and 1 Thessalonians with their respective contexts, so as to prove a general and immortal resurrection at the end of time.  As I have traveled in an untrodden path, I do not know but that I may have erred in some minor points, but am satisfied that my general positions are sound and tenable.

[To be continued.]

SERMON XXIV

“For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.” 1 Cor. xv:20.

We have now come to that point in our subject where it will be necessary to cite a few passages to prove that the immortal resurrection is successive, not general, and will conclude by considering some of the principal texts, which may be urged as objections.

We have already shown that the resurrection of the dead was to be at the sound of the last trump.  And as that trump commenced sounding at the end of the Jewish age, when Christ came in his kingdom, I deem it sufficient to establish the fact that the dead are continually rising in this last, this gospel day.  But the question presents itself—­ were any of the human family raised immortal before that period?  To this question I give an affirmative answer.  I firmly believe, that the dead have been rising immortal from Adam to the present day, for God has never changed the established order of the universe.  I believe that the dead are raised without any miracle, in the common acceptance of that term, as much as I believe that we are born, and die, not by a miracle, but according to that constitution of things which God has immutably established from the beginning.  I believe this