"girding up the loins of his mind in sobriety and hope." This is not Calvinism. The third fortification of this exposition is furnished by the following fact. According to our view, the death of Christ is emphasized, not on account of any importance in itself, but as the necessary condition preliminary to his resurrection, the humiliating prelude to his glorious ascent into heaven. The really essential, significant thing is not his suffering, vicarious death, but his triumphing, typical ascension. Now, the plain, repeated statements of Peter strikingly coincide with this representation. He says, "God raised Christ up from the dead, and gave him glory, [that is, received him into heaven,] that your faith and hope might be in God." Again he writes, "Blessed be God, who according to his abundant mercy hath begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead unto an incorruptible inheritance in heaven." Still again, he declares that "the figure of baptism, signifying thereby the answer of a good conscience toward God, saves us by the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who is gone into heaven." According to the commonly received doctrine, instead of these last words the apostle ought to have said, "saves us by the death of him who suffered in expiation of our sins." He does not say so. Finally, in the intrepid speech that Peter made before the Jewish council, referring to their wicked crucifixion of Jesus, he says, "Him hath God raised up to his own right hand, to be a Leader and a Savior, to give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins." How plainly remission of sins is here predicated, not through Christ's ignominious suffering, but through his heavenly exaltation! That exaltation showed in dramatic proof that by God's grace the dominion of the lower world was about to be broken and an access to the celestial world to be vouchsafed.