"O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not in vain in the Lord."—1 COR. xv. 55-8. "Now concerning the collection for the saints, as I have given order to the churches of Galatia, even so do ye. Upon the first day of the week let every one of you lay by him in store, as God hath prospered him, that there be no gatherings when I come. And when I come, whomsoever ye shall approve by your letters, them will I send to bring your liberality unto Jerusalem."—1 COR. xvi. 1-3. I have read this passage for one single purpose; it is to draw your attention to the singular way in which St. Paul passes from the doctrine of the Resurrection to the practical duty of Christian giving. It almost startles us, who have not quite St. Paul's way of thinking about collections, to hear him pass from that triumphant apostrophe of death, "O death, where is thy sting?" to "Now concerning the collection." This seeming incongruity in the Epistle, and in the Church's work, is not confined to the Bible or to the Church; it runs all through life. Man has a poor, fleshly body, needing food, and drink, and sleep, and nursing; and he has an immortal soul. Say what you will, we cannot deny that the body is there; and I do not think we shall ever come to deny that the soul is there too, and will live, so long as goodness, tenderness, and devotion, and truth, and being last. Life has got into it; and the material framework which carries that soul-man's life corresponds to himself. In our homes, in our national life, in our business life there is the strangest intermingling of tragedy and comedy, of what is reverent and sacred, and what is most secular, and common, and mean. You cannot divorce the two. You may dislike the commonplace, and the mean, and the material; but if you hope to preserve the region of the spiritual and the sympathy of the good, that you can only do by preserving the body; they are gone when you forget the body.