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1. There are two ideas of life — necessary existence and voluntary action. Thousands of men live, pass away, and are nameless for ever. Others live in a higher sense — Live an idea — and hence leave behind them a heritage of good deeds and life-inspiring words.

2. The unit of life is the most strongly marked fact in the universe of God. It begins with an eternal thought in the existence of a supreme personality, and is traceable through every order of beings. We speak of a nation's history. What is it? The history of men and women in the aggregate ends of their actions. The Magna Charta and the Declaration of Independence, while expressions of national sentiment, are yet histories, to that extent, of every man whose voice and hands were raised in their defence or promotion. Every great working principle, every theory of reformation and progress must have a life-force behind it. Its recommendation, its truth, and its power are one with this vital force. The gospel of Jesus Christ has behind it this vital force in a transcendently striking fulness. It is pre-eminently a life. It is not a theory, but an experience; not a speculation, but a certainty; not an abstract idea, but a vital truth.

I. IT WAS SPOKEN. Men live by what they speak. All that is left of human life in the past are the few 'scattered words of poets, seers, and philosophers, gathered up after the banquet of time. The words of the gospel were spoken by a man, the man Christ Jesus. It came welling up from the life-fountains, as His holy eyes looked on sin and sorrow. "Language was given man to conceal his thoughts." But the language of Christ brought them forth in a revelation of beauty and power. So Divine were these words in their meaning that, when rough men were sent to bind the people's Teacher, they were disarmed and went back to those who sent them, saying, "Never man spake like this arian." But His words were also linked with the power of life. Each was a life-principle. "The words which I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life." Yea, He was Himself the living Word — the eternal Loges — spoken from the beginning. Peter read this truth in the Master's early utterances, and boldly asked, "Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life."

II. IT WAS ACTED. Its precepts and promises were not spoken, like the philosophy of Greece, in the retirement of the academy, to a few disciples, but they were given to the thirsting multitudes in the midst of arduous toils. Christ worked while He preached. In the highest sense the gospel is a drama, enacted upon the stage of the universe. It represents itself, and its effect is its own eternal life-necessity and life-efficiency. The sympathy provoked in the hearts of its spectators also deepens the life-idea. It is not an aesthetic sentiment awakened by its delicate finish of language and character, or of profound emotion stirred by its tragic colouring, but of deep self-felt interest in the letter of its purpose and the efficacy of its sacrifice. Every scene in the grand drama is real. The real feet of the "Man of Sorrows" pressed the sands of Galilee; a hand of flesh touched the blind eyes; a human heart wept tears through human eyes over the grave of Lazarus. Human blood was found on the cross, and stained the grass in "the place of a skull." A real body was laid in the new tomb of Joseph, and a glorified human body rose through ethereal depths, and on a cloud-chariot ascended to the kingdom above.

III. IT WAS LIVED. Christ practised what He preached. The great truths and heavenly virtues which He held up to others found illustration and shone with Divinest radiance in His own life. In an absolute sense, then, this gospel may be styled a life — a perfect life. None other is. It stands out in chiselled beauty and symmetry. The Child of children; the Brother of brothers; the Friend of friends; the Man of men; His life was confined to the proper channels of duty, while the perfect balance of His whole nature made Him ever the Just, the True, the Good.

IV. IT WAS FELT. It felt not only for humanity, but felt with it; and came not only with a relief for human woe, but came to share that woe.

1. There is a time in every life when sorrow and care are a strange and pathetic poetry. But after a while they become strangely real. Experience makes them part of life, and thus the chords of sympathy are struck through all the race. It was thus that Christ learned to sympathise with man. With man He quaffed the bitter chalice; with man, trod the path of thorns; with man, tasted death, and with him, slumbered in the grave. But He rose as the earnest of immortality to man's slumbering dust.

2. But this sympathy is not only with human sorrow, but also with human joy. It is a lyre strung with chords of grief and chords of joy. Sometimes they are struck in unison, sometimes singly, but always to throbs of human hope. The gospel is a religion of light. Gloom was never on His face.

(H. M. Dubose.)

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KJV: But the angel of the Lord by night opened the prison doors, and brought them forth, and said,

WEB: But an angel of the Lord opened the prison doors by night, and brought them out, and said,