St. Paul does not say, "I would desire to be accursed," nor does he speak of any deliberated result of his consideration; but represents a transient passion of his soul, an actual but undetermined impulse,--an impulse existing in and for itself in the moment of its ebullience, and not completed by an act and confirmation of the will,--as a striking proof of the exceeding interest which he continued to feel in the welfare of his countrymen, His heart so swelled with love and compassion for them, that if it were possible, if reason and conscience permitted it, 'Methinks,' says he, 'I could wish that myself were accursed, if so they might be saved.' Might not a mother, figuring to herself as possible and existing an impossible or not existing remedy for a dying child, exclaim, 'Oh, I could fly to the end of the earth to procure it!' Let it not be irreverent, if I refer to the fine passage in Shakspeare--Hotspur's rapture-like reverie--so often ridiculed by shallow wits. In great passion, the crust opake of present and existing weakness and boundedness is, as it were, fused and vitrified for the moment, and through the transparency the soul, catching a gleam of the infinity of the potential in the will of man, reads the future for the present. Percy is wrapt in the contemplation of the physical might inherent in the concentrated will; the inspired Apostle in the sudden sense of the depth of its moral strength. SERMON ON THE RESURRECTION. Acts II. 4. Thirdly, the necessity of it: 'for it was not possible that he should be holden of death'. One great error of textual divines is their inadvertence to the dates, occasion, object and circumstances, at and under which the words were written or spoken. Thus the simple assertion of one or two facts introductory to the teaching of the Christian religion is taken as comprising or constituting the Christian religion itself. Hence the disproportionate weight laid on the simple fact of the resurrection of Jesus, detached from the mysteries of the Incarnation and Redemption. Ib. St. Austin says, that Tully, in his '3 lib. de Republica', disputed against the reuniting of soul and body. His argument was, To what end? Where should they remain together? For a body cannot be assumed into heaven. I believe God caused those famous monuments of his wit to perish, because of such impious opinions wherewith they were farced. I believe, however, that these books have recently themselves enjoyed a resurrection by the labor of Angelo Mai. [3] Ib. And let any equal auditor judge if Job were not an Anti-Socinian; Job xix. 26. 'Though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God, whom I shall behold for myself, and mine eyes shall see, and not another'.