We do not believe either fortune likely to happen to any of us, therefore we do not prepare for it. Alas! so many Catholics do not prepare for the sudden call to rise to a glory and dignity far higher than that of any prelate or prince, or to sink to a miserable state infinitely worse than to starve and die on a desert island; and why not? I say the heathen would answer, because they do not believe that either fortune will be likely to happen to them. If they did their lives would prove their faith. Now, I know I have set some of you thinking, and that has just been my purpose. Have I a right to participate in the Easter joy of to-day, or am I only making an outside show of it, while my conscience tells me I am a hypocrite? Have I kept the commandments of God and of the church? Have I made my Easter duty, or resolved to make it? {210} What kind of a life would I rise to on the day of resurrection, if I died to-night? What would Jesus Christ, my Judge and Saviour, find in me that looked like him, and therefore ought to give me the same glorious resurrection as he had? Dear brethren, that is what he wants to find in us all. That is what he died to give us. That is what the Holy Spirit is striving hard to help every one of us to obtain. Come, a little more courage, and let us rise _now_ from all that is deathly, or dead, or corrupt, or rotten in this life we are leading, and Jesus will be sure to find in us what will fashion us unto the likeness of his own resplendent and divine resurrection to eternal life. ------------------- Sermon LX. _Christ, our pasch, is sacrificed. Therefore let us feast, not with the old leaven nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth._ --1 Corinthians v, 7, 8. There are none of us, my dear brethren, I am sure, who can fail on this Easter morning to have something of the spirit of joy which fills the church at this time, and which runs through all her offices at this season. "This is the day that the Lord hath made," she is continually saying to us; "let us rejoice and be glad in it." Yes, we are all glad now; we all have something of the Easter spirit, in spite of the troubles and sorrows which are perhaps weighing on us, and from which we shall never be quite free till we celebrate Easter in heaven--in that blessed country where death shall be no more, nor mourning, nor crying, nor sorrow shall be any more; where God shall dwell with us, and he himself with us shall be our God. {211}