so easily won by fraud. " For if in this life only," says St. Paul, " we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable, but now Christ is risen from the dead the first fruits of them that sleep."
" Christ is risen from the dead the first fruits of them that sleep," but what shall be the aftermath? We, my brethren, our bodies, for if Christ be risen, we also shall rise again. His Resurrection is the pledge of ours and proves it possible and certain. It is a law of spirit and of matter that whatsoever dissolution may take place, no particle of God's creation can be ever lost. Nature's law is universal; naught withers but to rise again, and naught can rise again except it first decay. How easy then it is for God, who made all things from nothing, to reunite the scattered portions of our being! If summer's sun resuscitates the world of plants and trees, can we deny an equal power over our bodies to the Son of God? True, the flowers that bloom this spring are not the same that bloomed a year ago, but were they rational and capable of merit and demerit, God's justice would preserve from year to year their absolute identity. And since fair lilies are often born to bloom unseen while noxious weeds encumber the choicest soil, so there must be a hereafter where justice's scales may find their equilibrium. And this is true of bodies and souls alike, for through joy and sorrow, through happiness and pain, through virtue and through sin, our bodies are the necessary inseparable companions of our souls and Both, if God is just, must share alike reward or punishment. To
